Disclaimer: See Part 1.
Author's Note: I know it's been a disgracefully long time since I've updated this fic; I didn't forget about it and I have no excuse except to blame my muses who went AWOL and left me high and dry while giving me plot bunnies for other fics to write out. I am so sorry!!
This chapter is longer than the rest in an attempt to make up for the long wait. Thank you all for your patience!! I hope this is worth it.
From My Soul
Part 6
Harry and Ron were waiting outside of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom when Hermione arrived, Harry with a large coil of rope under his arm.
Hermione smiled at the sight of them, Ron shifting from foot to foot, Harry not moving, but both of them looking distinctly reluctant to enter the bathroom. "How was Hagrid?"
"He was fine," Harry answered briefly but something about the expression that crossed his face told Hermione that seeing Hagrid for almost the first time since Dumbledore's funeral had been difficult for Harry. She made a mental note to ask Harry about it later.
"Ready to say hello to Myrtle?" she asked instead, glancing at them both teasingly.
Ron snorted and Harry grimaced.
"I think I'd rather go eat one of Hagrid's rock cakes," Ron grumbled.
"You should talk," Harry groused. "Myrtle doesn't go all- well, girly- when she sees you."
"Girly? And what's that supposed to mean?" Hermione asked, her hands going to her hips.
Did that mean Myrtle fancied Harry?
I knew that, another part of her mind asserted. What's the problem? She's dead, anyway.
But Harry's mine!
Wait- what? Hermione's mind stuttered at the thought, swiftly retreating from her instinctive-and possessive-response. Now I've seen everything, jealous of a dead girl's ghost. She made a mental note to never, ever mention it to Ron or he would probably laugh himself into fits.
Harry colored. "All, you know--" he made an awkward gesture with one hand, "fluttery and giggly and stuff."
"Fluttery and giggly and stuff," Hermione repeated. "So that's what you think I'm like too?" Whatever Harry had meant by the term, 'girly' he hadn't meant it as a compliment-and somehow, she found she needed to know that he didn't automatically classify all girls-oh who was she kidding, she just cared about what he thought of her-in the 'annoying' category.
Harry looked stunned at the question. "What, no!"
"Well, I am a girl, in case you hadn't noticed."
"I know that, but you're--" Harry flapped his hand through the air in a gesture of frustration, "you're different. You're-I don't know-better."
Hermione smiled in spite of herself. Harry looked so-cute-when he was flustered like this, and she wasn't indifferent to his inadvertent compliment either. Her minor irritation vanished like mist in sunshine. "Okay, let's go find the next horcrux."
"Just what I always wanted. Little pieces of You-Know-Who's soul," Ron muttered sarcastically under his breath as they opened the door and stepped inside.
"Which sink was it?" Hermione asked Harry quietly.
"That one," Harry said, pointing.
He opened his mouth to say something else but he was interrupted by a small splashing noise and then Moaning Myrtle's voice, sounding surprised and very pleased. (Fluttery, Hermione couldn't help but think, and suppressed a smile at the accuracy of Harry's description.) "Oh, it's you. Hello, Harry."
Myrtle gifted Harry with what was probably meant to be a flirtatious smile.
Harry colored, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else. "Hello, Myrtle."
"Hi, Myrtle," Hermione said.
Ron said nothing, looking around as if he half-expected girls to come out of the stalls and demand what he was doing in the girls' bathroom.
"What are you doing here? School's out, you know. It's very lonely here in the summer," Myrtle added.
"I- we- I had to find something," Harry finally said. "It's- uh- it's good to see you," he lied, turning to face the sink.
He narrowed his eyes as he focused on the serpent carved into the faucet, ignoring the sound of Myrtle's pleased little giggle, shifting slightly until it almost looked like the serpent moved. "Open up," he ordered.
Hermione shuddered slightly at the sound of Harry speaking Parseltongue, that strange, hissing coming from Harry's mouth. There was always an odd look in his eyes when he spoke Parseltongue that made him look different, somehow, dangerous-until she could almost understand how people could have suspected him of being the heir of Slytherin in their 2nd year.
And then she forgot all about that as the tap glowed with a bright white light and began to spin, before the sink sank, slowly, until it was completely out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed.
So, that's the entrance to the Chamber, Hermione thought, staring. She suddenly wondered how on earth Salazar Slytherin had first managed to create the Chamber and then kept it secret for so long. It couldn't have been easy to make one of the pipes so much larger than the others, big enough for a body, to extend down below the Castle so far.
"Well, here goes," she muttered and stepped forward, but Harry stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"I'll go first," he said simply. "You bring the rope when you come after me, okay?"
She nodded, taking the roll of rope from him.
Harry glanced at Ron who had gone slightly pale and tried to smile. "It'll be okay; the basilisk's dead, you know."
Ron nodded, his throat moving as he swallowed. "Yeah. Be careful down there, though."
"Right," Harry said and taking a breath, stepped forward and then jumped into the pipe.
Hermione jumped in spite of herself as Harry disappeared into the darkness of the pipe.
Getting a hold of herself, she pointed her wand at the rope with a quiet, "Prolatium," and knew from the slight tremor that went through the rope that the Lengthening Charm had worked.
She handed one end to Ron. "Keep a hold of this." She paused. "On second thought, tie it to something solid, like one of the faucets or something. When we're ready to be pulled out, I'll send up some sort of signal and you can pull us up."
Ron wrinkled his nose, looking doubtful. "Uh, pull you both up? By myself?"
Hermione sighed slightly. "I'll make sure I cast a Feather-light Charm on both me and Harry so we'll hardly weigh a thing."
"Right." Ron looked relieved. "Hermione, do you know exactly what you're looking for?"
Hermione smiled rather self-deprecatingly. "No, not exactly. I know that it probably isn't Hufflepuff's cup, but other than that, it could be pretty much anything."
"Oh good. Well, that narrows it down a lot," Ron said sarcastically.
"I know." Hermione's expression softened slightly as she added, "But it's what we have to do." For Harry, she added in thought, for Harry.
"I know."
Ron nodded, once, and then gestured with his head to the gaping opening of the pipe. "Go on then, get down there."
After tying her end of the rope to her wrist and taking a breath and a tight grip on her wand, Hermione stepped into the open mouth of the pipe.
Her first thought was, ugh, at the grimy dampness of the pipe as she bumped and slid and fell down, down, down. She could see flashes of other, smaller pipes branching off as she fell and had begun to wonder just how far underneath the school the Chamber was when she felt the pipe begin to level out and she shot out of the end to land with a thud on-
A mattress?
Hermione stared, her free hand (the one not gripping her wand with a force that made her knuckles white), going down to press against the mattress experimentally. Yes, it was definitely a mattress.
"Harry?" she called, raising her voice a little as she untied the rope from around her wrist.
From a slight distance she heard a small scuffling noise and then saw a light appear, with Harry behind it.
"I went ahead to try to clear some of the rubble that blocked the tunnel when Lockhart's spell rebounded the last time," Harry explained.
She picked herself up off the mattress, stepping off it, and murmuring, "Lumos" to light her own wand as well. "And the mattress?"
She could see that he flushed slightly from the light from her wand as he waved his wand at the mattress which promptly transfigured itself back into his jacket. "I- er- landed kind of hard on my tailbone and I figured there was no point in making you go through the same thing."
Hermione decided then and there that Harry was undoubtedly the sweetest boy in the world and any girl who knew him and didn't fall in love with him was either stupid or crazy-and, whatever else she might be, Hermione was neither. But all she said was, "Thanks."
"Are you okay, though, if you landed so hard?" she asked as she glanced around at the large stone tunnel they were standing in.
"I'm fine." Harry looked at the rope hanging from the opening of the pipe. "This was a good idea of yours," he commented.
She smiled slightly. "Thanks."
He lifted a shoulder a little as if to shrug off her thanks and set off back down the tunnel.
She followed, trying not to shudder at the darkness and the general, well, creepiness of the place (for lack of a better word).
Her foot crunched on something and she started, just barely managing to bite back a cry, looking down to find it was what looked like the bones of a rat.
And then the next minute she couldn't keep from letting out a sharp gasp and instinctively grabbing onto Harry's arm.
It was a snakeskin.
It was, amazingly, still almost completely preserved and she suddenly remembered reading in her 2nd year that the basilisk was no ordinary snake in that its scales were, much like the hide of a dragon, very strong and couldn't be penetrated by even Stunning spells, making the basilisk that much harder to defeat. And somehow, even though she'd read about how large basilisks could get, seeing the sheer size of its shed skin was shocking. It was enormous, had been enormous.
"You fought and killed that?" she let out in a stunned whisper, feeling, for the first time, a bit of amazement at all Harry had done combine with all her usual feelings of affection for him.
Harry glanced at her. "I didn't do it alone. I had Fawkes and Gryffindor's sword-and I knew what I was going up against because of you."
She tried to smile but could only manage a twitch of her lips.
"Did you-have a plan for how to kill the basilisk when you came down here that time?"
"There wasn't really time to think about a plan; I just sort of did what I needed to. My main 'plan' was not to get killed." He glanced at her again, a slight smile on his face. "But at least I knew what I was facing and so I knew not to look at it. Thanks for that, by the way."
She returned his smile with one of her own. "No problem." After all, Harry was still Harry…
"And here," Harry began, stopping before the rubble from where part of the tunnel had caved in, "is where your dear, charming Professor Lockhart stole Ron's wand and tried to Obliviate us both so he could get the credit for trying to rescue Ginny while leaving us-and Ginny-for dead."
Hermione blushed. "I- he wrote books and I believed them!"
"Yeah, you and every other female in the wizarding world-and of course your fancying him had nothing to do with his hair and smile."
"Okay, well, maybe a little of it had to do with his smile," Hermione admitted. "Am I ever going to live that down?"
Harry grinned. "Nope."
Hermione rolled her eyes but couldn't keep from smiling-mostly because she was just so glad to see Harry smile and have him tease her, so glad that he was acting like himself again. It really meant so much to her to see him smiling, to see the humor in his eyes chase away the shadows that had been lingering in them for so long now.
"Come on," Harry said, taking her hand and helping her clamber through the opening in the rubble.
She didn't let go of his hand when they were through, her heart fluttering slightly at her own boldness-and neither did he. He didn't react, didn't act any differently, but he retained his grip on her hand. They just kept walking down the tunnel as it twisted again.
"How long is this tunnel?" she finally asked after a moment.
"Not much longer," Harry answered. "It seemed a lot longer the last time," he added, "but then I was half-expecting to see the basilisk around every corner so every step might as well have been a kilometer."
She tightened her fingers around his, feeling an odd mixture of guilt and relief that she hadn't been conscious that last time, guilt because she hated the idea of him having to go through all that alone but relief because she just knew that she would have died from worrying over him if she had known that he had gone down to the Chamber to face the basilisk alone.
They turned another corner-and there it was.
The end of the tunnel. It was a solid wall with two snakes carved into it, their eyes set with large emeralds.
She shivered in spite of herself, even though she knew the snakes were only carvings; they just looked so-alive, so menacing.
Beside her, she heard the strange, sibilant hissing sound of Parseltongue and the wall cracked open, the two halves sliding out of sight.
And hand in hand, they stepped into the Chamber of Secrets.
Hermione's first thought was, this room is huge. The next was that Salazar Slytherin had gone out of his way to make it very clear that this chamber was meant for Slytherin and members of Slytherin House alone-although Hermione figured that with the basilisk around, anyone but Slytherin would be dead on entrance.
Pillars upon pillars, all carved with yet more snakes and all too tall to see the tops of, towered before them, lining the walls.
She shivered again and tried to joke, "I think I'm sensing a common theme here."
Harry cracked a slight smile, glancing at her, his eyes warm. "Something like, 'snakes are good'?"
"Or, 'Slytherins only; everyone else keep out.'"
He laughed softly. "Oh darn. And I was really looking forward to having a party down here too."
"Too bad. You'll have to find some other creepy place to hold a party in."
They exchanged grins, which faded as they came up to the bones of the basilisk lying in the way.
"Well, there it is. Tom Riddle's idea of the perfect pet. Poisonous with eyes that kill on sight," Harry said rather flatly.
"Right," Hermione responded rather shakily as they stepped around the enormous skeleton.
Harry swallowed and then pointed to the spot at the foot of the statue of Salazar Slytherin. "That's where Ginny was lying when I found her," he said, his voice suddenly colorless and flat.
The sound of Ginny's name made Hermione instinctively draw her hand back from Harry's, an automatic reaction to the reminder of Ginny's existence as Harry's-sort of-former girlfriend.
He let her go and she tried not to feel hurt, tried not to read anything into it except a very understandable distraction now that he was here, in this room where he'd nearly died the last time he'd been here.
She mentally shook herself for having let their purpose in coming here in the first place slip her mind, for even a moment. They couldn't afford distractions, had no time for them. They had a mission to fulfill.
She looked around, trying to see if there were any spots which could conceivably have been used to keep some object in, but quickly gave up the attempt. The sheer size of the Chamber-to say nothing of its solid stone walls made the idea of actually finding the horcrux-especially given they didn't know what exactly it was-something close to impossible.
Instead she moved to stand in the approximate center facing the statue of Salazar Slytherin (who looked, she decided, more monkey-like than human although that may have been an effect of the grimace on his face).
"What are you doing?"
She paused and glanced at Harry who was studying her curiously. "I'm going to try out a spell I read about in one of the books in the library at Grimmauld Place. It's a sort of Dark object detection spell. People used it when they broke into places for some talisman or other but didn't know exactly where to find it."
"How does that work?"
She hesitated, frowning slightly. "I- er- I think it works something like echolocation-do you know about that, how bats manage to fly without crashing into things?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I remember reading about it one time the Dursleys dragged me to the zoo."
A slight shadow crossed her face at the mention of the Dursleys but she continued on. "The way I understand it, every magical object radiates its own power; the spell is a sort of signal that should reflect off the magical object and tell the spell-caster where it is. The more powerful the object, the more powerful the signal."
"Are you sure you know how to do this?" he asked after a moment.
She managed a small smile. "Not entirely. I just read about it the other day and memorized it because I thought it could be useful. But I'm pretty sure it'll work just like any other spell." She tried to inject as much confidence as possible into her voice.
Harry didn't look quite as reassured as she'd hoped but she raised her wand. "Atrum refero revelator."
She felt a slight tremor go through her wand as the jet of magic left-and then she was being pressed, buffeted from every side, felt as if she were suffocating, being squeezed through a very small hole, was vaguely aware of crying out from the pain of it and then a final blast of power hit her full-on and she went flying backwards.
It happened so fast. Harry could only watch, rigid with shock and horror and fear, the expression of escalating pain on Hermione's face before she flew backwards several feet to land hard, and it was only then that he managed to yank his feet from where they seemed to have taken root and rush to Hermione's side.
Oh God, oh God, oh God… The words had started a terrified litany in his brain as he fell to his knees, taking one limp hand into his, chafing it, as he studied her face frantically for some sign of life.
There was a thin trickle of blood coming from her nose and, oddly, in one of those ridiculous judgments made in times of panic, that was the only thing he could think to solve as he hastily fished around in his jacket pocket for a napkin he thought he remembered having absently shoved into it, pulling it out and transfiguring it into a handkerchief.
He gently dabbed at the blood on her face and then stopped, holding his breath, his hand holding the now-soiled handkerchief pausing in mid-air, as Hermione gave a soft moan, the hand which he still held twitching, and then her eyes fluttered open slowly.
It was another moment before she blinked and her gaze focused on his face.
"Hermione, are you okay? Can you move?"
A frown wrinkled her forehead before she nodded, once, slowly. "I think so."
Tentatively, moving one muscle at a time, she slowly moved to sit up as Harry helped her up, his hands gentle.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked in concern.
"Yeah, I'll be fine," Hermione assured him, trying to smile. "Just a little sore."
He didn't look entirely convinced but let it go. "Er- was that supposed to happen?" he asked instead.
"Not really, no." A slightly sheepish expression crossed her face. "I had thought because no one's been down here for so long any remnants of Dark magic from the basilisk and everything would be gone but Slytherin put more than just magic into creating this Chamber. The walls are positively permeated with something of his spirit and the Darkest magicks he could infuse into stone. It made the reflection from the spell a lot more powerful than it should have been and, well, you see what that did."
"Yeah."
She winced as she struggled to her feet. "But I don't think it was entirely a waste. That last blast that knocked me off my feet was much stronger than the rest so I think that was the reflection from the horcrux."
Harry-to his own amazement-found himself thinking, forget about the sodding horcrux; you're hurt, and then paused to be stunned at how easily he could dismiss the horcrux, which was after all the only clue he had to finally defeating Voldemort, because of Hermione being injured.
Hermione pointed her wand at herself and murmured a quick Pain-Relieving Charm and the lines of strain smoothed out from her face.
He kept his hold on her arm, as if afraid she might not be able to stay on her feet, as she approached the statue of Slytherin, tilting her head back to look at its face.
"I think the face of the statue is the most likely place for us to find anything; it's got crevices for something to be put in." She paused and then looked at him, saying simply, "You're going to have to levitate me up."
He stared. "I- what?"
"You're going to have to levitate me. I can't climb up the statue; the stone is too smooth."
"But-are you sure you'll be okay? You were just knocked out and-why don't you levitate me instead?"
"I'll be fine and it needs to be me because I'm smaller than you are. Whatever the horcrux is and wherever it is, it's probably in some little cranny. Plus," she pointed out reasonably, "you know it's easier to control something smaller and lighter when you're trying to levitate it."
"But-but--" he stammered, trying to think of some other logical reason he could give and failing. She was, as usual, right.
Hermione's expression softened and she put her hand over his which still held her arm. "I really am fine, Harry. I promise. I wouldn't do this if I weren't sure I could handle it."
He sighed slightly, giving in. "Okay. Just-be careful up there."
He released his hold on her arm, stepping back slightly to give her room. "Ready…"
Hermione nodded, trying not to tense.
"Mobilicorpus," Harry said, his wand pointing at her and then moving ever so slowly upwards.
Hermione bit her lip to keep from crying out as she felt her feet leave the ground. It was, undoubtedly, one of the oddest sensations in the world to feel herself floating like this, rising higher and higher.
Harry clenched his jaw, his grip tightening on his wand, keeping his gaze locked on Hermione so he didn't send her bumping into the statue. It seemed to take forever but was, in reality, about a minute before she was level with the statue's parted mouth and managed to reach out and rest her feet on the statue's lower lip, keeping her balance by clinging to the statue's nose.
Harry hardly dared to blink as he kept his wand trained on her in case she lost her grip.
Hermione swallowed hard, keeping herself from looking down by dint of will, as she peered into the gaping aperture that was the statue's mouth, seeing nothing although she could sense that the mouth must have served as the basilisk's bed, of sorts, and tried not to shudder at the thought. Her gaze moved on, over the statue's stone features, the deep-set eyes carved into the stone… And then stopped, her gaze caught by something on the statue's left eye. Holding her breath, she straightened, reaching up her hand slowly.
The statue's left eye was different from the right, she could see. Where the pupil of the eye should be, a small, narrow little orifice had been carved.
Moving very slowly, very carefully, Hermione worked her fingers into the chink in the stone, her breath catching as her fingers brushed against something cool and hard and most definitely not made of stone.
She flattened her fingers on top of it and then dragged it out until she could close her fingers around it.
She felt a surge of elation but refrained from reacting. Not now, not while she was perched so precariously God-only-knew how many feet above the stone floor of the Chamber.
She kept her fist closed tightly around the small metal object as she called down to Harry, "I got it! You can get me down now."
Harry sucked in his breath, pushing aside his rising excitement to focus on bringing Hermione back down.
"Mobilicorpus," he murmured again, moving his wand slowly down this time, keeping his gaze still fixed on Hermione as he lowered her to the ground.
The moment her feet touched the ground, Hermione whirled and threw herself at him in a hug that knocked him back a step.
"Oh Harry, we found it! We did it!"
He returned her hug, feeling himself laugh, partly from shared excitement and partly from amusement at her exuberance.
It was a moment before she let go of him and held out her closed fist between them.
Their heads bent over her hand as she uncurled her fingers revealing the second horcrux.
It was a key.
They both caught their breath. This was it, they knew it. It was a small key, dull and tarnished from age. The top part of the key had been intricately shaped and in the metal-work, they could discern the letter R.
And they both knew they were thinking the same thing. R for Ravenclaw.
Their eyes met and they exchanged smiles. They had done it; they had found the next horcrux.
~*~
To be continued...
A/N 2: About the basilisk's shed skin still being pretty much intact, I'm fully aware that a normal snakeskin would likely not exist anymore after more than 4 years but I figured that the basilisk is no ordinary snake and its skin is much tougher than any normal snakes would be and so would still exist. The little tidbit about it being able to withstand Stunning Spells (like dragon hide) is from the HP Lexicon and is speculation but it made sense to me so I used it. Beyond that, any other quibbles with the basilisk's remains as compared to what a normal snake's might be, I can only say that I was too much of a snake-phobic to look up any more information on snake remains and decided that the basilisk is just special- so whatever I said, goes. ;-)
Also, the next chapter is pretty much done already so it will not be 5 months before I update this again. ;-)