Ron and Hermione looked at each other incredulously. Had Harry just told them to stay put in the Room of Requirement while he went out in search of the lost diadem of Ravenclaw? After everything they'd been through together, it seemed astonishing that he was still trying to protect them, to do everything himself.

"He's mental," Ron said, "if he seriously thinks we're just going to sit here and wait for him."

Hermione nodded, her face grim. "But what can we do? I mean, really? We have to find the diadem, but beyond that ... And even if we do find it, how are we going to destroy it?"

"Basilisk venom, of course," Ron said with a smile, amazed that someone as smart as Hermione hadn't thought of that.

She looked confused. "But we don't have the sword of Gryffindor any more," she pointed out. "And where else are we going to find ..." Her voice trailed off and her eyes got very wide. "The Chamber?"

"Where else?" Ron asked briskly. "We can destroy the cup while we're waiting for Harry to find the diadem, right? Come on, let's find Myrtle's bathroom." And, grabbing her arm, he picked up Helga Hufflepuff's Cup and started to lead her out of the room. Suddenly, though, he paused.

Hermione looked at him. "What's wrong?"

"We'll need a broom," Ron said, thinking furiously. Where might he find a spare broom in the next few seconds? Fortunately, though, the Room pre-empted him and he saw one leaning against the wall by the exit door. "Perfect," he said with a grin, picking it up. "Come on, let's go."

"What do we need that for?" Hermione asked, her eyes on the broom.

"To get out again," Ron explained. "We had Fawkes last time, but I somehow don't think he's likely to drop in again just to give us a lift."

The Room of Requirement let them out by a bunch of disused classrooms on the fifth floor, so they had to find their way down three flights of stairs, clutching the Cup and trying to keep out of the way of anyone who could try to stop them. Finally, after what felt like an hour, they made it.

"Weird, isn't it?" Ron said conversationally as they wandered down the deserted corridor. "Everywhere else is in chaos but there's no one anywhere near here. It's almost like they know it's the entrance to the Chamber and want to avoid it just in case the basilisk comes back out."

"But that's ridiculous," Hermione pointed out. "Everyone knows that Harry killed the basilisk back in second year. Why would they be worried about it coming out now?"

Ron shrugged. "Basilisks are weird creatures. People believe all sorts of things about them, so I wouldn't be surprised if coming back from the dead was one of them. Ah, here we are."

They stopped outside the door, both thinking of their second year when they had brewed Polyjuice Potion in this very bathroom, dodging the ghost of Myrtle in their quest to find out who the Heir of Slytherin was. Hermione looked at Ron.

"Um – Ron, how are we going to get in?" she asked. "Harry's not here, and neither of us can speak Parseltongue."

"I'll do it," Ron said, sounding more confident than he felt. "I've heard Harry say it loads of times. I'll see if I can't say it like he does." He smiled at her incredulous face. "Hey, it might work. It's worth a shot, don't you think?"

"I suppose we can try," Hermione said doubtfully. "Well, here goes nothing."

They pushed open the door and Ron quickly found the tap with the snake engraved on it. He was pleased that he knew what he was looking for because, as they had noticed all those years before, if you weren't looking for it you'd never see it.

Ron stared at the snake and made a strangled, hissing sound that he thought sounded roughly like Harry had when he'd opened the locket. The tap did nothing. Nonplussed, he tried again. It took several goes but eventually he managed to get the right hissing noise and, amazingly, he and Hermione saw the Chamber open up.

Hermione looked at him. "Ron! You did it!" There was admiration in her eyes and for a split second he allowed himself to think that, maybe, there was a chance for him after all. However, this was not the time to lapse back into those dreams. Shaking his head at himself a little gruffly, he reached for her hand.

"You ready?"

She nodded. She looked frightened, and he realised all of a sudden that she had never been down this chute before, that when he and Harry had done it in second year she had been lying in the hospital wing, Petrified. "It's okay," he said reassuringly. "Just a long slide and the landing's not that bad. A few bones and things but nothing dangerous."

She bit her lip and swallowed, looking determined. "Well, let's go, then."

One by one, they launched themselves down the slide. It was horrible and slimy and smelled revolting, but they did it. After what seemed an age, Ron landed with a thud on the cold floor of the Chamber's entrance, littered with ancient rats' skeletons and dust.

Lighting his wand, he hurried to get up so that Hermione wouldn't land on him when she exited the chute – while he would have loved to catch her, he suspected that being as lanky and bony as he was, it would probably be even less comfortable for her than landing on the floor would.

The tunnel they landed in was dark and slimy and Hermione looked slightly revolted as Ron helped her to stand. "THIS is the Chamber?" she asked, also lighting her wand and looking around disparagingly. "I would have thought Salazar Slytherin would have made it more comfortable."

"It's just the entrance," Ron explained. "We go down the tunnel and apparently the Chamber opens up further on. I guess we can leave the broom here until we need to get out …" He leaned it against the wall just by the chute exit, hoping that nothing would go wrong and that it would still be there when they needed it.

Hermione looked at him, seemingly having not heard his last sentence. "What do you mean, apparently? Haven't you been here before?"

"Yeah," Ron agreed, "but I never got further than ..." His voice trailed off until they rounded a corner and came to the rock fall that had stopped him five years earlier. "Than here," he said. "This was where Lockhart Obliviated himself, the git, so I stayed here to make sure he didn't do anything stupid, and Harry ..."

His voice trailed off again, but Hermione knew what he meant. "And Harry went on through," she finished for him.

"He didn't have much choice," Ron admitted, "because he was on the other side of the rock wall. All I could do was try to dig out a hole big enough for him to get back through, and Ginny." He paused, remembering how that had felt, how he hadn't known if he would ever see his sister alive again. It had been one of the most awful feelings of his life.

"Well, then," Hermione was saying, "let's go." She was already climbing over the fallen rocks by the time he'd realised what she'd said.

On the other side of the rock wall, Ron looked around with interest. Now he knew that there was no danger here, that he wasn't about to die just by looking at a giant snake, the place didn't seem as creepy as it had before. Then again, he was five years older now and that had to count for something, didn't it? Grabbing Hermione's hand instinctively, he walked with her down the tunnel.

Finally, it ended, and they were faced with a solid wall engraved with serpent carvings, the emeralds in their eyes glistening in the wandlight. They stopped, still holding hands, and Hermione looked at him expectantly.

"Can you do it again?" she whispered.

He cleared his throat, the noise sounding loud and echoing off the walls around them. Once more he attempted the Parseltongue impersonation, making the strange hissing sound that Harry did so well.

On the third try, the wall opened for him. Holding Hermione's hand far more tightly than he'd intended, he led her into the Chamber itself.

Even though he'd heard Harry's and Ginny's descriptions of the place, nothing really prepared him for the sheer immensity of it. Stone pillars lined the long, narrow chamber, and from the wand light he could see the faint image of a statue way up ahead.

"That must be Slytherin himself," he muttered, feeling somewhat comforted by the fact that Hermione was still holding his hand just as tightly as he was holding hers.

"And that must be the … the basilisk," Hermione whispered. Huge and decayed, the skin and skeleton of a huge snake was piled up around the foot of the great statue. Ron couldn't imagine how Harry must have felt, as a twelve year old, having to face this alive. "We are sure it's safe, aren't we?"

"We should be," Ron said, more reassuringly than he felt. Even though at an intellectual level he knew that nothing here would hurt them, the Chamber's dank smell and eerie atmosphere, combined with the remains of one of the deadliest creatures known to wizardkind, meant that he couldn't completely expel the doubts from his own mind, no matter how confident and at ease he had felt a minute or so previously. "The basilisk only kills if it sees you, right? Well, that thing isn't seeing anything. I can't imagine how we could be in danger."

Slowly, cautiously, they approached the beast. "Do you think the venom will still be good?" Hermione asked tentatively. "I've read that basilisk venom can last for years under the right conditions, but …"

"I guess there's only one way to find out," Ron said grimly. He grabbed a fang from the snake's skull and gave it a pull, and it came out far more easily than he'd anticipated. Holding it at arm's length, he looked at Hermione. "Do you want to do the honours?"

She looked taken aback. "Me?"

"Yes, you," Ron said, dropping her hand and fishing inside his jacket for the Cup. "I've already done one, I think it's your turn now."

Hermione took the fang doubtfully. "Are you sure? I thought …"

"You should do it," Ron insisted, putting the Cup on the floor in front of her. "Come on, it's not hard. Just stab it with the fang."

Taking a deep breath, Hermione took the fang and looked at the Cup. He could tell she was a bit torn between wanting to kill the Horcrux it contained, and destroying such a valuable and historical artefact, but unfortunately it couldn't be avoided. "Okay," she said, sounding like she was trying to talk herself into doing it, "here I go."

Shutting her eyes, she thrust the fang down on the Cup with all her power. Unfortunately, because she closed her eyes, she missed, and hit the stone floor a few inches to the right. "Oh," she said, clearly disappointed, as she opened her eyes. "I missed, didn't I?"

"Just try again," Ron said encouragingly. "Even if you break the fang, there are a stack more here we can use."

"Right." She gazed at the Cup again and took aim once more. This time, she kept her eyes open, and with a loud CLANG, the fang and cup collided. There was a long, drawn-out scream as the Horcrux met its end, and an ugly dark stain appeared on the mangled remains of the Cup.

Hermione looked up at him, breathless and pale. "Was that it?"

Ron nodded grimly. "Looks like it," he said. "And you got it better than I did. When I went to stab the locket, it kept talking to me, showing me things. It was awful."

She dropped the basilisk fang and took his hand, and he realised that he'd never spoken to her about the locket and what it had tormented him with. Maybe she understood anyway.

"It feels wrong, destroying something that belonged to one of the Founders," Hermione said after a while, breaking the silence and changing the subject. "I wish he hadn't used these things."

"Makes them more powerful, doesn't it?" Ron said simply. "He wanted to live forever, he probably figured that people would be like you and wouldn't want to wreck something that old." Reluctantly dropping her hand, he went back over to the basilisk and started wrenching teeth from the skull.

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked.

He shrugged. "We've got at least one more Horcrux to kill, right?" he asked. "Well, we might as well make sure we've got the means to do it."

"Of course," she said quietly, still looking a little pale, and he wondered if the Cup had in fact said something to her, tormenting her as the locket had tormented him. He wondered if he would ever know.

"Come on," he said bracingly, giving her an armful of fangs. "Grab as many as you can and we'll get out of here. Harry could have found the diadem by now and he'll be wanting to destroy it."

Between them they gathered up as many teeth as they could comfortably hold, considering they had to carry the mangled Cup and hold onto a broomstick in order to leave the Chamber. Then, picking their way over the remains of the basilisk and the bones of its many snacks over the years, they made their way back to the bottom of the chute.

"Harry should be thrilled," said Hermione, sounding much more confident and like her usual self now they were out of the Chamber proper. Ron looked at her, concerned that maybe it had had some impact on her that he hadn't realised, but took heart in the fact that the colour was returning to her cheeks. "Another Horcrux gone, and the means to destroy the diadem when we find it."

He noted the use of the word "when" rather than "if" and smiled as he set the broom up ready for her to climb on. "Yeah, when we find it," he agreed. "Now, are you ready to go back up? Heaven only knows what's been going on since we left."

Hermione looked determined, one arm clutching at the broom handle and the other full of yellowing teeth. "Yes, let's go," she said. "Harry might need us."

Taking a deep breath himself, Ron swung himself onto the broom, making sure that he had the cup, the fangs AND control of the broom. Hermione put her spare arm around his waist and he smiled again. "Yes, let's go," he echoed, pushing off and heading back up the chute. "We've got a war to win."