Chapter Twelve – Building A Circle From Scratch

I knew that the Chamber of Secrets was normally reached through a long, twisty tunnel at the narrow end, far from where we were standing. It was too dark to see into that area. The first order of business was to search the dark end of the cavern and the tunnel to confirm that we really were alone.

I asked the others to set up camp, while Hermione, Barb, Barb's collie, and a phoenix searched the tunnel. Soarer squawked at me. I released her from her cage and allowed her to come with us. She perched on my shoulder. She was definitely becoming friendlier and I was beginning to think of her as at least a semi-thinking being. I reminded Cho to keep two wands pointed at the seal to the basilisk's lair, lest a nasty surprise sneak up behind them.

That reminded me to set up the monolith and the anti-apparation devices,which Ellie had lent to us. Hermione, Cissy, Barb, and I had all been taught how to operate them. I didn't know how much protection they could provide us against unwanted godly guests apparating into our camp, but wanted the security of any possible defense. This was a shaky defense – I knew that Catta could defeat it at will, just as all the Elves could apparate through the Hogwarts defenses. Using our full Stone powers, Hermione and I had also been able to apparate into an area protected by the monolith. In our experiment, Cissy and Barb could not do this. While it is likely arrogant to think a God would have less apparating ability than myself, I hoped to be protected against at least weak or not fully capable Gods.

With the monolith in operation, we set off toward the dark end of the chamber, with Barb's collie leading the way. Every few seconds one of us lobbed another ball of light ahead of us. I saw nothing. The collie was happily sniffing the ground and wagging its tail in a manner which suggested that a danger was not lying in wait ahead of us. I guess that assumes that a collie is able to smell a God.

Oops! Yet another error. I suddenly remembered that Aagog actually could smell a God. I hastened back to our camp to retrieve Aagog, telling her "please help us search the far end of the Chamber. We need you to sense for the presence of a God or Goddess."

Aagog happily scrabbled along the floor ahead of me. When we rejoined the others, Aagog asked us to wait a moment. "No God be in front of us," she intoned with certainty.

Barb assured me that she also was not sensing danger. That made me feel more secure, as I lobbed another ball of light ahead of us and into the first tunnel turning. Because the tunnel twisted so much, I could only see ten feet ahead of me. The walls were also a lot closer together and the ceiling only half as high as when we entered the tunnel. The closeness made me feel uneasy, although I saw no threat.

As we approached the second turning, I heard a scuffling noise ahead of us. I fired an 'off!' over the collie's head, then shouted 'shield!'. Soarer launched herself after the collie. Hermione reached around the turning in the tunnel to fire her own 'off!', before Barb pushed her way into the lead. Her collie was now barking furiously as she charged ahead of all of us. I flattened myself against the side wall of the tunnel, wand pointed forward.

I sensed motion close to the ground and just avoiding cursing the collie, as it walked back to us with quite a large rat clutched in her jaws. I'm not a fan of large rats, but sooner that than our first encounter with a God who chose to be as sneaky as any God hiding this far up the tunnel would have to be. Soarer returned bearing a second rat in her talons. Like the collie, she decided that it was now dinner time.

I relaxed and started to walk further into the tunnel. Barb was not at all relaxed, as she once again took the lead.

"It would be an easy trick to use a rat to district us from a more serious threat. Stay behind me."

Hermione and I obediently stayed behind Barb, but we did not find anything more serious than a smaller rat, before we reached the end of the tunnel and the shaft up to the Moaning Myrtle bathroom.

"Too easy an entrance from Hogwarts," Barb pointed upward. "I'm going to install an alarm spell and a caterwauling spell, so that an enemy Wizard can't sneak up on us."

We returned to the rest of the group. I apologized to them for not yet sending the first shift off to their beds. "I know it's late, actually it's almost daybreak up above, but we need to make sure we're alone before the first half of us gets to sleep. Please keep organizing our camp, while we check out the basilisk's lair."

Hermione and Barb set up in guard position, prepared to launch an 'ex-term-mee-nate!' curse against anything nasty which might be present behind the seal, while I stood to the side and spoke Parseltongue to the seal.

As the seal gave way and the statue parted, I hastened to get behind Hermione and Barb. When the gap was barely wide enough I lobbed several balls of light into the lair. I saw a shadow off to my left and fired 'Off!' at where I thought the source of the shadow must be located. There was no return fire and no motion at all.

"What were you cursing?" Barb asked me.

I confessed to perhaps imagining a presence in the play of light and shadow caused by the still moving inner edges of the statue. I lobbed in several more balls of light, but couldn't see the shadow anymore. Something smaller than a basilisk could have hidden out of our line of sight behind the edges of the now stationary statue.

"No choice but to explore from inside the basilisk lair," Barb told me. "I'll do it. You and Hermione are the practiced double-curse team anyway. I'd feel safer if you set the monolith so that I can apparate behind you, if I run into trouble."

I did that, alerting the rest of my team to halt their unpacking and watch for the possibility of an intruder apparating into our midst.

"I'm going to apparate to the rear of the lair," Barb told us. "On three, but please lob a ball of light on two. Okay, one, two, three."

She was gone, to instantly appear at the rear of the lair, facing us with her wand pointed to the right. She crouched down almost immediately, as the pivoted to face the corner on her left.

"Nothing here," she shouted. "Join me and I'll check behind the rear seal."

We stood guard as Barb used her ring to open the rear seal of the basilisk's lair. The space was empty. We all knew that beyond this point lay the outlets from the Hogwarts drains, the larger drain going down to the Goblin utility cavern, and beyond stairs to the tunnel which led to the cave where we began our Quest.

Hermione and I guarded Barb, while Barb installed alarm and caterwauling charms on the far side of the seal. She planned to place other alarms inside the lair and on our side of the statue. Once the rear entrance to the lair was closed, I felt safe leaving Barb and Hermione.

Hermione grabbed my arm and pointed beyond the rear seal: "water, and lots of it. This is the realm of the Cailleach. She could use her staff to freeze us in place, if she caught us back there. A local storm curse could spread that water everywhere. We must be very cautious, whenever the rear seal to the lair is open."

I nodded agreement.

While they were engaged with installing the rest of our magical defenses, I returned to the rest of our group, dividing us into two halves and encouraging the second half to get some sleep. I assigned Narcissa to our half, not trusting her enough to sleep while she was awake. Also, I wanted her awake so that I could check on her health. Now that I knew the cavern was secure, my next priority was checking whether Narcissa still had the Voldemort horcrux inside her head.

"Do you feel any different?" I asked her. "If Cotto and Firenze are correct, your horcrux should be gone. Did you feel anything more than a normal ride-along apparate?"

"I don't know for certain, but I think perhaps it felt different. The sense of a ride-along depends so much upon who is doing the apparating. This time I felt a very slight sharp pain in my head and heard a short, shrill whistle. That's all new. My mind suddenly felt slightly vacant and then expanded, if that makes any sense. It wouldn't surprise me if the horcrux is gone, but you brought your viewers. We can walk to the dark end of the cavern and you can check me out."

I waited for Hermione to finish applying the alarm charms and then I grabbed a viewer and we did that. Barb came with Hermione and me, just in case the horcrux had survived and was feeling feisty. As we walked toward the dark end of the cavern, I felt confident that the horcrux had departed.

The viewer confirmed my belief. The glow we had previously seen around Narcissa's head was gone. Cotto and Firenze had been correct. I wondered if the Stone had told them to do this, or if they were just that far ahead of me.

"I hope that you will trust me now," Narcissa pleaded in her logical tone of voice. "The Quest will be dangerous enough and it will be difficult enough for your team to maintain the necessary positive attitude, without you expecting that I am about to betray or murder you. I think the logical side of you knows that I saved Harry, that I was dominated by my husband and phony sister, that the horcrux and ghost controlled my mind (for I hesitate to think how much of the time), and that protecting Draco was always at the front of my mind. You are seeing the real me for the first time. I may be seeing the real me for the first time. I hope we both like the real me and that we can start to trust each other and work together."

"I think that is possible," I told her.

"Thank you, may I have my wand back? I feel uncomfortable and frankly a little frightened facing the hazards of the Quest without my wand. I also won't be much use in building this circle if I must work with just my bare hands. I'm not that physically strong."

"Sorry, I forgot that I have your wand. Harry gave it to me, when you joined the Quest. Keeping it was just a precaution against Voldemolt ordering you to kill yourself, as Lucius did. I was hoping you didn't have his skill at the wandless 'Avada Kedavra'."

I returned her wand. She smiled as she stowed it in her robes. I was once again startled at the incongruity of seeing Narcissa Malfoy, or Narcissa Caulfield, as she now preferred to call herself, in the white robes of a Light Guardian priestess.

"Okay, crew, the cavern is empty for now, but that can change at any time. Obviously someone has been here in the last twelve hours and stolen some of our gear. Keep your wands handy, while we deploy Madame Delacour's boar defenses. I'm going to hang two packets from the ceiling and put two others over against the far side wall, so don't wander next to them. The final two are in Hermione's bag."

Hermione and I unwrapped the foil around four of the anti-boar packets and positioned them. The ones on the roof of the cavern could be dropped to the floor by a simple spell from any of us. I remembered Madame Delacour's warning to perform extreme cleansing spells on our hands and arms, after deploying the packages.

"We have a lot of work to do, but we have some tricks that the ancients didn't use," I told my associates. "We are going to do a lot of Witch sculpting to speed the work. At least we have all the stones we will need, and we don't need to mess with the dimensions of the cavern. The ancients spent a lot of time on those things."

"We have another advantage," Hermione told us, as she began drawing lines in the floor with a pointed metal stick. "The ring depressions in the stone floor, in which the stones were anchored in silver – they must still be here somewhere. There's a lot of dirt, bones, and basilisk droppings covering the stone floor, but there's stone under here and the depressions will show us where the stones are supposed to go. I thought perhaps we can get a quick start on that, before half of us sleep."

Hermione and Barb started to scratch lines along the floor with pointed metal stakes. It didn't take long before Barb encountered a soft spot, which could be the location for one of the stone rings.

We all used spells to clean the trough, which turned out to be three feet wide and four inches deep. It was going to take a lot of silver to fill it up. While Harry and Ron had greatly increased our pile of silver bars, I was worried that it still might not be enough. I wondered what had become of the silver used for the original circle.

"Okay, we all know where we're going to be working for the next several shifts. Given the width of the trench, this is the outer ring. While the second shift sleeps, we'll continue to clean out this trench and try to find the inner ring. I knew the size of the stones from the inner circle, so I expected that trench to be a little less than a foot wide."

Half of our group was crawling into sleeping bags. My suggestion that we sleep near the entry to the basilisk lair had been rejected. It was too bright and too loud. The sleepers carried their gear to the narrow, dark end of the chamber.

Barb had wanted to be on my shift, so that she could better protect me. I argued against this, telling her "Hermione and I are well able to defend ourselves – while we're awake. We can't protect ourselves while we sleep. That is when we need your help."

Barb instantly accepted the logic of my argument and turned to follow the others to the rear of the chamber.

Just as Barb turned to leave, a young Witch appeared between Barb and me.

"Hold your fire," I shouted, then speaking to the young Witch, I promised "we come in peace to build a magical circle. We mean you no harm."

"And I mean you no harm," the young Witch told me. "I am Brighid. This cavern is part of my domain. I approve of your efforts to rebuild this circle. I remember it well. It was a source of power to me."