Chapter - 7 : Aftermath
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The hospital wing was dark and quiet when he peeked in.
Carefully, and as silently as he could, he snuck along the beds full of sleeping students. When he found his friends, his throat tightened. Hermione's features were no longer frozen under the force of the dead Basilisk's petrification. Ron was on the bed to her right - no doubt dosed into peaceful sleep - but the faint light illuminated dried tear tracks on his cheeks. Ron was the second oldest of the three of them, but right now he managed to look even younger than Harry.
He shook his head. He couldn't wake them. He thought about staying, but his robes were beginning to smell truly awful,and he desperately needed a shower. He could come back when he was more properly dressed. He briefly touched Ron's shoulder, then Hermione's hand, and turned and left the wing.
He made the trip up to Gryffindor tower in a near-zombie state, and it took several minutes of staring blankly at the Fat Lady's portrait before he remembered the password. Only a few people were awake – dimly, he recognized that Professor McGonagall must have said something while fetching Fred, George, and Percy – and no one seemed willing to interrupt him. Silently thanking his head of house, he retrieved fresh clothes from his trunk and headed to the showers.
The showers were private and lockable - something else to be grateful for - and he relaxed for the first time in hours now that he was finally both safe and alone.
He reached into his pocket to remove his wand and hit a roll of scrunched cloth instead. He pulled the Sorting Hat out, realizing he'd forgotten to return it to the headmaster earlier. "Sorry," he said, gently setting it on the floor, out of the shower or reach of stray spray. "I'll bring you back to Dumbledore tomorrow." He wasn't sure if the Hat could hear him when not on his head, but he figured better safe than regretful.
Beneath the Hat was his wand and the diary. The wand he carefully set on the shelf inside the shower, the diary he tossed on the floor, kicking it slightly aside to make room for his robes. Leaving them in a dirty pile, he turned the temperature to as hot as he could stand, and slid under the spray.
He had to scrub hard to get fully clean, the ink having started to stain his skin and the dirt remaining stubbornly embedded under his fingernails. The blood and muck in his hair had dried, making it clump in places, and the clear saliva of the Basilisk required scraping remove from his forearm.
It felt like hours before he was completely clean.
Finally, patches of skin slightly reddened from scrubbing, and thoroughly grateful that Hogwart's showers didn't run out of hot water, he sank down the wall to sit under the spray. It'd been long enough that his bruises from landing on various hard surfaces were beginning to truly show, and his time spent curled kneeling on the cold stone floor of the Chamber had left his muscles stiffened. Massage and heat source at once, he couldn't find it in himself to leave.
Besides, he needed to think.
This was the third time he had been forced to stop Voldemort.
This was the third time lives were sacrificed for that cause.
My parents, when I was a baby, he counted off. Professor Quirrell, broken by Voldemort's possession. And now Ginny.
And Voldemort was still out there. Alive.
Will he come after me again?
Part of him desperately wanted to say no. Voldemort was supposed to be focused on taking over the wizarding world! What type of general in the muggle world would focus all his plots around, say, Eton? It made no bloody sense. Voldemort should be attacking government buildings and aurors, not going after a school child.
It was a comforting thought.
Harry ran a hand through his hair, twisting his fingers through the wet tangles. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it's completely wrong.
He remembered Voldemort's behavior last year, his preoccupation with discovering how an infant had been his downfall. Then, earlier this day, Riddle had told Harry that he'd forced Ginny to write her own farewell specifically to lure Harry down into the Chamber of Secrets.
Voldemort, he was beginning to realize, could not leave proof of a weakness unconquered.
So, what did that mean?
Voldemort will be back for me.
He squeezed his eyes shut, resting his head back against the tile wall, trying hard to keep calm. The implications of that, illustrated in the lives already lost, terrified him.
At the end of first year, Dumbledore had said that Voldemort was trying to resurrect when he went to steal the Philosopher's stone. And since Dumbledore had destroyed it – the philosopher's stone: immortality, unlimited wealth, the pinnacle of alchemical achievement – rather than see it fall into Voldemort's hands, that implied that Voldemort could indeed come back.
A prospect that made him go cold.
He'd barely survived a disembodied spirit and the memory of a sixteen-year-old boy. Wouldn't have, in fact, if not for the aid he had received. He had few illusions about the outcome of a confrontation with Voldemort in his prime.
Any incarnation of Voldemort might still attack him, but if Voldemort returned fully recovered- God, he would be hunted.
He had to keep Voldemort from coming back.
No. To truly be safe, for my friends to be safe, I have to get rid of Voldemort once and for all.
Which… he had no chance in hell of doing. Not anytime soon, at least.
More than anything else right now, he realized slowly, I need more knowledge. He hadn't known enough about the wizarding world to even understand that enchanted diaries could be dangerous. He hadn't known what could stop them. He hadn't known what spells would work on Riddle's insubstantial image, even if he'd managed to reclaim his wand. The list of things he hadn't known tonight could fill a trunk.
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