The Adventure That Lies Ahead | PJO x HP

CHAPTER 59

For a moment there was silence as Harry, Ron, Ginny, Isa, and Lockhart stood in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and (in Harry's case) blood. Then there was a scream.

"Ginny!"

It was Mrs. Weasley, who had been sitting crying in front of the fire⎼Isa recognized her when she met Ginny at Madam Malkins. She leaped to her feet, closely followed by Mr. Weasley, and both of them flung themselves on their daughter.

The Potters, however, were looking past them. Professor Dumbledore was standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who was taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest. Fawkes went whooshing past the Potter's ear and settled on Dumbledore's shoulder, just as Harry found himself and Ron being swept into Mrs. Weasley's tight embrace.

"You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?"

"I think we'd all like to know that," Professor McGonagall said weakly.

"Here," Isa said, twirling the sword in her hand and handing it over to Dumbledore by the hilt.

Dumbledore took it with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, here's this as well," Isa said, dumping the Sorting Hat and Riddle's diary on the table.

Once Mrs. Wasley let go of Harry, he started telling them everything. For nearly a quarter of an hour, he spoke into the rapt silence: He told them about hearing the disembodied voice, how Hermione had finally realized that he was hearing a basilisk in the pipes; how he, Ron, and Isa had followed the spiders into the forest, that Aragog had told them where the last victim of the basilisk had died; how he and Isa had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom...

All of a sudden, Isa also found her seld being brought into a bone-crushing hug by Mrs. Weasley. Isa didn't fight it and allowed herself to be hugged. She didn't find the woman's hug that tight, but she would if she's never hugged Tyson before.

"Very well," Professor McGonagall prompted him as Harry paused, "so you found out where the entrance was⎼breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add⎼but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Potters?"

So Harry, his voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, told them about Fawkes's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving him the sword. But then he faltered. He had so far avoided mentioning Riddle's diary⎼or Ginny. She was standing with her head against Mrs. Weasley's shoulder, and tears were still coursing silently down her cheeks.

'What if they expelled her?' Harry thought in panic. Riddle's diary didn't work anymore... How could they prove it had been he who'd made her do it all?

Instinctively, Harry looked at Dumbledore, who smiled faintly, the firelight glancing off his half-moon spectacles.

"What interests me most," Dumbledore said gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

Relief⎼warm, sweeping, glorious relief⎼swept over Harry and Isa.

"W-what's that?" Mr. Weasley said in a stunned voice. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not... Ginny hasn't been... has she?"

"It was this diary," Isa said quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen..."

Dumbledore took the diary from Isa and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.