Eric idly spiked another drink with a single drop of love potion. Lucky for him, the longer you had love potions sitting the stronger they became. So since he had been holding onto them for months they had become rather potent. The real hard part had been getting the sample of his amusing subject. Professor Snape the unpleasant potions professor. It had taken Eric weeks after they returned to school to get a few hairs from the suspicious man.

Professor Snape often leaned over the cauldrons to inspect the potions of the students of the class. Usually with an unpleasant expression as he prepared to absolutely skewer them with criticism in the following minutes, picking apart every tiny mistake they had made in one long impassioned rant on how they were disgracing the art of potions making with such shoddy work.

As Snape had leaned over Eric’s cauldron, Eric had injected a tiny amount of his magic into the concoction to make it explode in the professor’s face. It had managed to singe the professor’s hair and a few black strands had come loose. Another wandless spell of wind had carried the hairs into his pocket for collection later. It was nothing more than five or six hairs in total, but it had lasted him this long as a targeting mechanism for the love potions. Eric had received a few days detention as a result, but that was a worthy price for the payoff Eric ended up receiving.

The potion’s professor had been rather swamped by potioned admirers all term, much to Eric’s amusement. The students were all rather shell shocked and embarrassed when they came to, but it seemed to hurt Snape’s pride that literally no one had any reaction but utter disgust when the potions effects finally wore off or they were given the antidote by either the potions master himself or Madame Pomfrey, the school’s nurse.

The day of one of the big potion’s exams, Eric had managed to slip a drop of love potion in the goblets of almost a dozen Slytherins and Gryffindors that were in his class. He had to make it even so no one house got singled out. It was easier to slip the drops of love potion in the Gryffindor’s drinks because they were more relaxed around him and were less wary of what they ate and drank. How unfortunate for them.

The Slytherins were harder, but all Eric had to do was bother Draco again in order to get close enough to send little drops of potion floating around and plopping into their drinks with his wandless magic while they were distracted by his boisterous speech and dialogue with Draco.

During the potion’s exam nearly all of them had stood up and declared their undying love for Snape all at once. It seems that even in their addled state they realized that Snape would feed them an antidote if more than one of them confessed during class. So they decided as a group to stand up as one and confess at once so Snape couldn’t silence them before they could say their piece.

It was all rather amusing and Eric had to sit back and try to avoid smiling too wide at the resulting chaos and destroying the integrity of their current test. It had been very easy to sneakily glance over at Hermione’s test while everyone, including her, was distracted, and he copied over the choiciest answers in Eric’s own words. Hermione loathed cheating of any kind, but that was okay. She never had to know.

After that was done, Eric had just watched and listened with amusement as Snape tried to feed as many of the lovestruck students the antidote while the rest hounded him and professed their ‘true feelings’ for the man. It took over twenty minutes for all of them to be fed a proper potion and trudge back to their seats, mortified by what had happened.

Eric had bought five bottles of love potion and had only used up three of them so far. He would have to up his game if he wanted to end up using it all by the end of the year. Among the whole student body there was now rampant paranoia and accusations on who the person doing all of it could be. Many thought that it was an organized group of some kind doing it, especially considering Eric’s LSD spree last year. Many people thought Eric was one of the top contenders for suspects, but it was implausible that it was him.

After all, the Slytherins and other houses were hit hard too and he only went over for short conversations with Draco or someone in one of the other houses for a few minutes before returning to the Gryffindor table. All the while as Eric spoke, their housemates eyed him suspiciously. His hand didn’t even get close to any of their drinks.

His hands were visible and not even on his wand. How could he possibly be the culprit? Far more likely it was one of their housemates doing it under the radar. How unfortunate for them that they were wrong. So the chaos and confusion only grew as Eric sat back and suppressed his smiles.

Christmas break had come and gone, Eric staying at Hogwarts almost alone. He missed dancing with the dance club and started getting twitchy as he walked the empty hallways. But luckily he managed to contain himself for the week break and just danced harder when the semester resumed to make up for lost time.

Some students were petrified by some mysterious beast throughout the school year. Someone left messages with chicken’s blood on the walls proclaiming that the school would be purged of the impure. People talked about the heir of slytherin being in control of the Chamber of Secrets. Ron and Hermione were quite concerned about it. Eric did think that whoever was doing it was overdoing it with the chicken’s blood a bit. Seemed like way too much work for only a little payoff. They went all the way to be all sinister with the blood message, then it was undercut that it was just chicken’s blood. Lame.

Anyway, more importantly Lockhart was annoying in class and kept calling him Harry instead of Eric. This was a serious matter, but no matter what Eric thought of nothing seemed to be able to dissuade the man. He had slipped a Snape love potion into the teacher’s goblet no less than ten times, and Lockhart had simply laughed and shrugged off his behavior when the potion expired. Telling Snape that the man would be ‘lucky to have him if he swung that way’. Which seemed to rattle even the normally perpetually annoyed potion’s professor. Lockhart was always so affable that it was difficult to tell if he was being serious or not.

Eventually Eric had to give up the game and simply accept it. It seems that Lockhart had won, and in his Defense against the Dark Arts class he would be known as Harry from now and until the future.

Ron was slightly concerned about Ginny being rather withdrawn this year. Thinking that she was isolated or lonely or something. He seemed to expect Eric to do something about it, so Eric hummed sympathetically and nodded as he told him about his concerns. Then promptly forgot all about it.

Eric had seen Ginny carrying around that little black book that Mr. Malfoy had given her. It seems she liked it quite a bit, carrying it nearly everywhere with her. He should try to steal it and see how she would react. That could be fun.

— — —

Hermione had been petrified two weeks ago or so. It was rather horrible. Ron was devastated, looking rather down during classes and having a low appetite. Eric was sad too. Hermione’s notes were the best, he would do so badly on his tests without her…

Eric was up late studying for his potion’s test tomorrow in the common room, in one of the high backed chairs by the fire. It had wrap around cushions that surrounded the sides so it sort of felt like you were being surrounded by the chair on all sides but the front. He looked at his patchy incomplete notes and sighed as he tried to make sense of them. Where was Hermione and her perfect notes when you needed them…

Eric paused as he heard soft footsteps in the main room. They were spaced slowly, like somebody who was trying to sneak. He heard the person breathing softly as they walked by and towards the portrait that led out of the Gryffindor common room. It seems they hadn’t seen him sitting inside the large chair as they passed.

Eric popped his head around the side of the chair and spotted a head of long red hair running down a girl’s back just before the portrait closed. Huh. Now, that was interesting. He could study later, time to practice his stealth.

He stood and went to quickly follow the girl before quickly remembering to go back and pick up his wand. It was much more powerful than the spells that Balthazar had taught him even if they required much less control of your magic to do.

He left the common room and cast a spell on himself with his wand. The air shimmered around him and he faded slightly into the background. The full disillusionment charm would make him disappear entirely, but with the high control he had over his magic he was able to manage to perform this kind of half step to it. Blending into the background a bit but not totally disappearing. If the girl, Ginny Weasley probably, looked directly at him, then he would be caught. But otherwise he might be well hidden.

Tilting his head to the side, Eric listened for the sound of the girl’s footsteps. It took a moment, but he finally heard them in the empty hallways. She wasn’t trying to be stealthy anymore now that she was out of the common rooms. Eric rushed after her, using his true stealth skills to try to make as little sound as possible as he moved.

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When you were made of sticky black mud it was unsurprisingly difficult to be all that quiet. So when he tried playing hide and seek with the demons, he picked up some of the basics of moving silently if he wanted to stand the slightest chance of not immediately being caught by them as soon as they heard the squelch of Eric’s mud if he shifted his body even slightly in the wrong way.

After a minute or two, Eric managed to catch up to the girl who was hurrying down hallway after hallway. He hung back, but made sure to be close enough that there was no chance of him losing her in the hallways. She didn’t seem to notice him, her head down as she speed walked forward. She was clutching her black book in one hand and her wand in the other, the magical foci held at the ready as if to cast a spell at a moment’s notice.

Eventually they reached the third floor bathrooms and Ginny went inside the girl’s room. Eric went to the door and paused. Then slowly opened the door as quietly as he could and slipped in. Like he was going to leave the mystery hanging just for something as silly as going into the girl’s bathroom. They had bathrooms just off the boys and girls dormitory wings respectively. There was no need to be so suspicious and come all this way if that’s what she was doing.

He slipped inside the bathroom just to hear the tail end of Ginny hissing something like a snake. There was a loud grinding of stone and then there was a thump then there was no sound at all. Eric listened, but the stone began grinding again and he rushed forward to see what was happening. The sink on one of the stalls had swung open revealing a dark pipe into the dark abyss below.

And it was now slowly sliding back closed again. Eric hesitated for a moment, debating what to do. But he had to know what was going on now, he was far too invested. So he quickly darted forward and before the sink could fully close back up he jumped foot first into the pipe and began sliding downwards into the darkness.

Suddenly a cushioning blast of air hit Eric and he slowed his descent until he was gently lowered onto the ground. His foot landed with a crunch on some sort of animal bone and he froze. In the distance he could see Ginny’s raised wand glowing with white light. There were a series of pipes surrounding this central circular room filled with small animal bones like the one that Eric had just crushed under his foot.

At the sound, Ginny stopped walking and turned around and looked back, shining her light towards where Eric stood. He froze where he stood and hoped the spell would keep him concealed. The light played over him and Ginny eyed the dim chamber behind her for a long moment. But then she shook her head and turned around and kept walking deeper into the pipe.

Eric carefully sneaked through the floor scattered with bones to make minimal noise. He didn’t have much light as Ginny’s glowing wand began to recede from where it shone from around the bend of the pipe.

Eventually, Eric reached the pipe propper and rapidly picked up his pace. While also making sure to stay extra quiet, it would be a big let down to get caught so late in the game when he had already come so far. He just followed the light of Ginny’s wand lighting the way with every turn through the pipes. After a few minutes he caught sight of her in the distance and slowed his pace so he was still at a good distance.

She stopped around a bend and started hissing like a snake again and there was more grinding stone, just like when she had opened the entrance in the bathroom. What was this place? Wait, was this the Chamber of Secrets? That important thing everybody else had been worried about all year? Could that be why she had to make snake sounds to get in? Slytherin always had liked snakes from what Eric could tell. Seems like the kind of thing he would do so only snake lovers like himself could get into his super secret chamber.

The heir of Slytherin was Ginny Weasley? Hoh hoh hoh. Now that was surprising. Eric wondered what the beast of the chamber truly was. Did she really control it like the legends said? He heard the grinding stone again and hurried his pace. Door was closing, gotta get through fast, hopefully still undetected.

He sprinted through the circular door and immediately darted to the side. Ginny turned at the noise, but luckily it seems the loud grinding of the stone door had muffled most of the noise.

He waited and watched as she walked to the other end of the chamber and laid down on her back and went still and didn’t seem to do anything but lay there.

How odd.

Eric cautiously approached, prepared in case it was a trap. But her eyes closed and her hand was limp around her wand, the wood barely held between her limp fingers. Although the black journal was held in a white knuckled death grip in her other hand.

Well, best to take care of the wand first… Eric used his intrinsic magic to gently tug on the wand one little bit at a time until it rolled out of Ginny’s hand and towards him. He rolled it behind him out of reach of where the girl couldn’t grab it if she leapt up and tried to attack him.

She was looking rather pale as she lay there with her eyes closed. Or was that just the lighting of the Chamber? It was rather dim in this place with only the magical torches on the walls pushing back the gloom. Slytherin really liked his snakes, Eric couldn’t look anywhere in this place without seeing another one of those snake statues staring directly at him…

He tried to lift the black journal with his magic, but it was slick and Eric couldn’t get a good hold onto it with his magic. He narrowed his eyes at the thing as Ginny grew paler and paler. How to get it out of her hands?

Suddenly Eric led back startled as something flickered in the air next to Ginny. It was like static on the old TV at the orphanage. Over the course of a few seconds the static grew brighter and began resolving into the form of an eighteen or nineteen year old boy. The boy stared at Eric in surprise.

“You? Harry Potter? How are you here?”

“It’s Eric,” he said in annoyance. Was it really that complicated for people to understand?

“Who are you? What are you doing to Ginny?” Eric asked.

“There’s no stopping it now,” the boy said, “As she grows weaker, I grow stronger. Soon only I shall remain. I…”

The boy squatted down over Ginny and reached out only to pause as he spotted Ginny’s wand across the room behind Eric, who had his own wand raised.

“Yeah,” Eric said, “So the book is draining her, is that it? You were trapped in it or something and you are killing Ginny to let you escape?”

The boy tilted his head to the side and inspected Eric as if seeing him for the first time.

“Interesting. You don’t seem overly concerned for the girl. Perhaps a deal could be made? We need not be enemies. I have many things to offer, even if I am relatively powerless at this moment.”

“Are you the one that controls the chamber? The beast inside?”

Eric’s mouth almost watered as he thought how amazing it would be to establish a familiar bond with a beast that powerful! Let alone getting control of the chamber itself.

The boy considered.

“I will transfer control of the Chamber to you,” he said eventually even as his body began to solidify further and Ginny paled more, “In return you will swear on your magic to not attack me or act against me for seven days. The vow will be binding in case you don’t already know. Your magic will attack you and in most cases instantly kill you if you break your word.”

Eric considered, “But you’ll also swear to do the same to me,” he said, “And leave Hogwarts grounds in twenty four hours from when we swear on our magic and stay outside it for the remainder of the seven days.”

The boy inclined his head approvingly, “Very good. Is that all?”

“And the beast? It comes with the chamber?” Eric continued, keeping his wand pointed at the boy.

“Yes. Shall we begin, then? Unless there is more?”

Eric thought about it. Everything seemed in order.

“Fine, let's swear. You first.”

“I, Tom Marvello Riddle, Swear on my magic that I shall transfer control of the Chamber to H-”

“Eric Smith,” he interrupted, “I’m Eric Smith. Use that name.”

The image halted and looked surprised but started over from the beginning.

“ —transfer control of the Chamber to Eric Smith and not take any hostile action against him for seven days, as well leave Hogwarts grounds within one day, and not return to Hogwarts ground within seven days, on the condition that Eric Smith swears on his magic that—” Tom Riddle outlined the exact terms that Eric would be swearing.

Eric took a deep breath and did his end, feeling the vow settle into his magic as soon as he finished.

“I, Tom Marvello Riddle, forfeit my ownership of this chamber and transfer it to Eric Smith, may he bring glory to our Ancestor's name.”

Eric felt a pulse in his magic from the chamber around him and suddenly he felt steadier here. Like it was home.

“Fascinating,” Riddle said, “It seems you are Slytherin’s descendent somehow.”

“And if I wasn’t?” Eric asked suspiciously.

“Oh, you would have been instantly killed by the chamber’s magic,” Riddle admitted easily, “I would not have harmed you in the slightest. The Chamber would have done it all on its own. But you survived, so here we are. You have received your prize. Do you have some devious betrayal you’d like to spring on me now? Or shall we part ways peacefully?”

Eric looked to the statue of Slytherin’s head and with a simple blast of intent, the mouth of the statue grinded open to reveal a tunnel behind it. Eric felt his excitement rise. What kind of ancient secrets and magical trinkets would be behind there for him to explore?

He glanced back at Ginny who was still splayed out on the floor. He saw her eyes were open slightly and she was staring at him and mouthing something weakly. Eric looked down at her.

“Sorry about this, Ginny,” Eric said, “But control of the Chamber was just too amazing to pass up. I can have so much fun with everything in there. Better luck in your next life.”

With that, Eric let his grin spread over his face as he walked over to the tunnel and walked inside. With another flick of his will the mouth began to close behind him. Wouldn’t do to have Riddle follow in after him when his back was turned.

Eric started humming a jaunty little tune to himself, already putting the girl he had left in the chamber behind him out of his mind. He had much more important things to worry about. Like all the amazing things he was about to discover at the end of this tunnel and how he would use them.

He bet that the real Harry would have tried to save that girl, and completely lost any chance of getting control of the chamber. Really it was for the best of everyone that Eric was here instead. Who knew what would happen if this place were to fall into the… wrong hands?

Any hands that weren’t his, that is.