Harry Potter and the Founders
LuvFantasy
Chapter Twenty Five: The Snake and the Spider
It seemed like hours had passed since they first entered the lake, but the simple fact that he was still a fish told Harry that it was not so. All around him the only visible thing was the murky, never changing green water. He couldn't even tell if he was going in the right direction.
As he looked around in confusion for what must have been the tenth time, he thought he saw something long and dark twist in the water blow them. Looking over at Ron and Hermione he could tell that they had seen it too. The murky green water now reflected on their faces in the small sliver of silver moonlight that had found its way down to them. Ron's eyes were wide and unsure, Hermione's face was fearful. Harry swallowed his own anxiety as he thought of what swam beneath them and motioned for them to follow in his wake, drawing their wands as they did so.
Again, they advanced downwards. Thick green and brown weeds were all around them now and they knew they were reaching the bottom of the lake. Twice, Harry imagined something swim past him, but both times it turned out to be nothing more than the slimy leaves of the marine plants. As they reached the muddy bottom of the lake, Harry's webbed feet touched the muck, leaving him feeling rather disconcerted on the whole surroundings.
Before them lay and incredible treasure trove. Silver necklaces, golden crowns, strings of pearls. Ron's eyes nearly exploded. He made to zoom towards the treasure with his newly acquired fins, but Harry and Hermione both pulled him back.
"No, Ron!" Harry warned, bubbles issuing from his mouth, his voice distorted by the dirty water. "We have no idea what that's been cursed with!"
Ron hesitated for a moment but then nodded slowly, "Right. Okay – Aah!"
Something long and dark had twisted up between Ron and Hermione; its jaws open wide to reveal gleaming white fangs and a dark, cavernous pit of a throat.
"Ron! Hermione! MOVE!" Harry bellowed, yanking out his wand and taking aim, a whine of panic searing through his numb mind. The basilisk had come so fast… "Impediamenta!"
The beast was catapulted backwards through the water, leaving ripples and bubbles in its wake, and Hary found himself shouting hoarsely, "Don't look at it! Don't look at the eyes!"
Ron and Hermione quickened to Harry's side and took aim as well, their faces pale and taunt in the face of this terror. "Accide!" Hermione shrieked. A hissing stream of liquid shot from her wand, narrowly missing the long coils of the snake.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Ron roared, missing too.
"Harry, try talking to it!" Hermione shouted, taking aim again, "Talk to it in Parseltongue!"
Doubting very much that anything would happen, Harry opened his mouth and spoke in what he supposed was Parseltongue, though it was impossible for him to tell. "Leave them alone." He commanded, shutting his eyes to concentrate above the noises of Hermione's curses and Ron's bellows. "Go away. Leave them and the treasure alone-!"
A scream of pain rent Harry's concentration, and he opened his eyes just in time to see the basilisk's fangs close over Hermione's shoulder. For a moment, time seemed to stand still. The fangs were merely gleaming icicles in the pale light of the moon so many feet above them, Hermione's scream had faded, Ron's jinx was still flashing bright red in the reservoir of green.
Then there was a sickening crunching sound and Hermione began to wilt to the bottom of the lake. Harry couldn't move, he couldn't think – couldn't talk, a wave of panic such as he had never known before was sweeping through him, closing his throat, wrenching his eyes wide open, preventing him from breathing…
"Hermione!" His voice sounded strangled and choked even to his own ears. Her face was paling quickly, her eyes were closing, blood was floating in the water – twisting upwards in small, red clouds.
"Stupefy!" Ron exclaimed, his voice breaking. "STUPEFY!"
The basilisk pulled back from Hermione, wrenching its teeth from her shoulder with a sickening sound, leaving her to collapse on to the muddy floor and lie there motionless. It turned to Ron who immediately looked away to avoid its eyes.
Harry, acting more on panic than logic grabbed the nearest thing to him, a sharp rock. He could see the monster's profile as it began to stalk Ron and knew what he had to do. Swimming up beside it, he raised the rock and was about to strike when Ron roared,
"Harry look out!"
The basilisk whipped around to face Harry. He threw the rock and missed the eyes, hitting it instead in the center of the forehead. As the beast recoiled slightly, Harry grabbed for his wand and took aim,
"Acido!" The jet of burning acid succeeded where the rock had not, streaming directly into the basilisk's left eye. It gave a horrifying roar of pain, but Harry wasn't done yet.
As the monster flailed around in agony, stirring up great clouds of mud and dirt, Harry raised his wand again, "Acido!" He shouted once more, the hissing shot wide, and Harry appealed to Ron.
"Hex it, Ron! Shout Aicido!" The acid hissed once more and there was another sickening roar from the mud cloud. Ron took aim as while, firing at random into the center of the mud storm, listening to the screams of the beast.
Harry was the first to lower his wand and hasten over to where Hermione lay, half concealed in the mud dredged up from the lake floor, half illuminated by the shaft of moonlight. Harry sank down next to her, touching the gash on her shoulder and knowing instantly from its angle that it was broken.
"Is she dead?" Unnoticed by Harry, Ron had crept up behind him and was now reaching for her limp form. Harry pulled instantly away from her as if burned, unable to look away as Ron lifted her up into a sitting position, staring into her pale face and the thin trickle of blood floating above her lip.
"No," Harry found himself murmuring, the words rattling off his tongue as if he were at a recitation. "Not yet. Fortunately it didn't bite her above the heart. But she doesn't have long. It takes minutes for the basilisk venom to work. We have to get her up to the shore."
"How?" Ron asked, "She'll suffocate the second we get above water level."
"We'll figure out something." Harry helped Ron drag Hermione out of the mud and began to kick upwards, the basilisk's scream of agony still reverberating in his ears. In truth he had no idea how to save her, or what they would do when they reached the surface. The fact that they were fish eliminated any thoughts of Apparating into Number 17 for help, or even getting out of the lake. Harry couldn't even force himself to come up with an antidote. There was nothing in the world that could cure a basilisk bite – only phoenix tears. And neither Dumbledores were anywhere in the area…no one even knew where they were except maybe Ginny…
It was these thoughts that haunted Harry, rather than the roars of the basilisk as they swam upwards, the unchanging emerald water rippling coldly around them, Hermione trailing away her life's blood in their wake. Their only hope of saving Hermione was that the water would have deluded most of the poison…giving her the precious minutes she had to have before they would become human again.
Harry couldn't bring himself to look on Hermione as they continued to swim, lest he lose his head completely. He closed his eyes tightly as they continued to kick upwards. There had to be something…something other than phoenix tears… he remembered reading something over the summer, back in Number 17 when Hermione had gone on her book craze and examined nearly every scroll in the house. There was something on basilisks… one antidote for their venom…
Ron's voice cut through his concentration, "We're almost there, and she's still breathing."
Harry felt some of the numbness leave his body. She was still alive then – but for how much longer he didn't know. They broke the surface, flopping onto the shore, Hermione continuing to bleed, their gills bursting, gasping for breath. He realized they couldn't stay.
"We have to get back in the water, Ron!" He gasped, reaching out for Hermione again. Ron nodded and they began to slide back into the water. And then he saw it. The spider. Spiders flee before the basilisk because their webs are the only known antidote for basilisk poison…
"The spider, Ron!" He shouted, the gills in his neck burning more and more with every second they remained above the water.
"W-What?" Ron looked at him in confusion. Not willing to waste precious moments of Hermione's remaining life on an answer, Harry sprang from the water again – ignoring the buzzing and the fogginess creeping in on his mind.
He grabbed blindly at the web, ignoring the hairy creature as it scuttled up his arm and then fell off. Splashing back into the lake, he stuffed the silvery threads into the deep gash in Hermione's arm, knowing with a sinking feeling that was all he could do – before collapsing into the water, his breathing ragged. Ron and Hermione sank down immediately, and they waited. It was then that the basilisk appeared again.
Harry saw its sinnowy shape uncurling in the darkness below and remembered suddenly why they had come. Looking back at Ron he warned,
"Stay here with Hermione. I need to get that Horcrux."
"What? No! You can't, Harry!" Ron shouted.
"I have to, Ron. If I don't – and she dies, it will all be for nothing."
"That's not a reason!" Ron bellowed.
"Stay there, Ron!" Harry said in a commanding tone, "I'm going down there."
He flipped over and dove downwards, swimming in the direction of the blinded basilisk, his wand outstretched. He could see its bloody sockets even from that distance as the moonlight illuminated the water between them, it was swimming at an incredible speed, faster than it ever had been in the Chamber of Secrets, and he understood immediately why the preferred battle ground of this giant serpent was the marine world.
"Impediamenta!" The basilisk spiraled to the side for a moment as Harry's hex hit it, and then it shot forwards, rebounding at an incredible speed, opening its jaws wide. Harry racked his mind for hexes that would work in this type of situation. Hermione had taught them a million over the summer…
"Acido!" He said automatically. The hissing acid zoomed down the open throat of the serpent, causing it to let out a horrific scream. "Acido!" Harry shouted again, "Acido!"
The serpent twisted and writhed in the water before him, narrowly missing him with its tail. Harry twisted aside nimbly and then he felt it, a sharp pain in his knee and a metallic cling. Godric's sword. How had he forgotten about it?
As his blood spiraled about them both, monster and human, Harry yanked the sword from his robes and held it at arms length, surveying the screaming monster, making his decision. He swam forwards, raising the sword high and hacked viciously at the sinewy neck of the green serpent. On the first blow, the sword rebounded off the metal like scales, on the second it delivered a shallow gash – the third succeeded where the others had not, and the basilisk's head was removed entirely from its curling body, the screeching immediately ceasing.
Harry stared at the corpse as it began to sink for a moment, his breathing ragged and his hands blistered from the hard, gleaming hilt of the shining sword. Spiraling, scarlet flowers floated around him – upwards towards the silhouettes of three figures… but that was just a trick of the light.
Harry blinked and looked again. There, it was only two again. He sheathed the sword and looked back down towards the bottom of the lake. The Horcrux was down there somewhere, amidst all that cursed treasure…
Harry began to swim downwards once more, feeling the change in temperature and the blood trickling slowly from his knee. The underwater vegetation brushed against his legs, leaving a gel-like slime upon them, adding to the gathered grime and algae mixed in blood that covered him already.
Harry stopped swimming when he reached the bottom, wiling himself to think about the task before him rather than Hermione breathing what was possibly her last in the arms of Ron…
The treasure gleamed coldly in the silvery-green light, and Harry found his eyes traveling over it uncertainly. If Voldemort was going to leave a mound of cursed treasure at the bottom of the lake with a basilisk, then the Horcrux concealed within it would have to be a treasure itself. Which would make it Hufflepuff's Cup, or Slytherin's locket…
Harry stared more intently at the pile of glimmering objects, searching with every sweep of his eyes for either of the two – and then he saw it. A shining, golden cup in the very center of the pile of treasure – looking rather worthless beside a fist sized diamond and ruby tiara.
Harry swam over to it eagerly, taking care not to allow even his flippers to touch the other treasure. When he stopped in front of it, Harry's mind – unbidden – replayed the last encounter he had had with a Horcrux…
"But what if – what if it kills you?"
"Oh I doubt it would work like that," said Dumbledore easily. "Lord Voldemort would not want to kill the person who reached this island."
Harry couldn't believe it. Was this more of Dumbledore's insane determination to see the truth in everyone?
"Sir," said Harry, struggling to keep his voice reasonable. "Sir this is Voldemort we're – "
"I'm sorry, Harry; I should have said he would not want to immediately kill the person who reached this island," Dumbledore corrected himself, "He would want to keep them alive long enough to find out how they managed to penetrate so far through his defenses and, most importantly of all, why they were so intent upon emptying the basin. Do not forget that Lord Voldemort believes that he alone knows about his Horcruxes."
Harry made to speak again, but this time Dumbledore raised his hand for silence, frowning slightly at the emerald liquid, evidently thinking hard.
"Undoubtedly," he said finally, "this potion will act in a way to prevent me taking the Horcrux. It might paralyze me, cause me to forget what I am here for, create so much pain that I am distracted, or render me incapable in come other way…"
Well, the potion had caused pain. Which meant that the cup might very well act in the same manner, or it was probably one of the others, loss of memory, or paralysis. Harry stared at it, thinking hard. Dumbledore had tried to summon the locket from the potion, and in the end had had to drink it – but there was no such visible guard around the cup.
Harry reached forwards tentatively, within a millimeter of the cup before withdrawing his hand anxiously, not wanting to touch the cup. The enchantment had to be on it then. There was no other guardian – other than the treasure surrounding it, which was probably hexed to the enth degree. Harry scrutinized it for some time, if it was pain he could handle it – but losing his memory wasn't something he was willing to barter with, not when Hermione was floating so precariously between life and death above him… No, no he couldn't think about that now.
Seconds…minutes dragged by. It was getting ridiculous now. He should just grab it, and deal with the worst when it came. It wouldn't be long before he turned back to human…
Harry pulled out his wand, waving it at the Horcrux. Voldemort would have left himself a way to get at it…Voldemort would have left a way to access it. Or would he have? All he needed was to see the Horcrux, not touch it…
Harry pocketed his wand again, staring at the cup with indecision. He didn't know anything about removing jinxes, Hermione had focused more on the offensive and defensive aspects in their training…he'd have to have a word with her about that later on…if there was later on.
Harry shook his head, ridding it of unnecessary thoughts, staring at the cup. And then he felt it, his feet were changing – the toes were shrinking, separating – this was it, the moment of truth.
Harry leaned forwards and stretched out to grab the handle of the shiny, golden cup. For a moment it was cool and smooth, held firmly in his hand…and then he was plunged into darkness.
A/N:
Wow. This chapter turned out to be shorter than I expected. Well, it didn't have very much dialogue after all, it was mostly fighting, so I think I did fairly well lengthwise. Note: the dialogue between Harry/Dumbledore was taken from page 569 of the Halfblood Prince by J.K. Rowling. Now that I feel properly legal on to the replies…
Renevatio: Ah yes, the tragedies of a dark hour on the lawns during which Hermione is being questioned on her feelings for Harry... how I wish that scene would be included in the real books slightly off topic I guess we'll never know what her expression was, but we shall know her feelings...in time. :) Thanks about the writing compliment, I've actually started to plan out my chapters before I write them rather than scrawl rather type them out on whim. Which is an improvement for me.
CharmedNightSkye: Well, I don't think it's just H/Hr fans who are prejudiced against Ginny. Deep down, every ship hates her okay maybe not, but I wish actually, you are right, Hermione is too smart for her good. But I won't say anything more, about that or the possible red herring on Ginny & Voldie's past. Because that would say too much or maybe I'm just giving it all away now? scratches chin speculatively. oh well. I'm too tired to think about it at the moment anyways, thanks for reviewing and hopefully I'll type up a longer chappie next!
Winnipeg: SHE IS?!?!? the caps signify my screaming and the winces of my family two floors up OH MY GOSH! I'm so happy now! does happy jig was it on her site or what? But anyways. I think we all have a tad bit of Krum inside each of us. You are right. There's something addicting about saying "vell". So far though, the writer's block hasn't hit me yet which is a first, I usually get stuck ten chappies in to a fic which is good for everyone involved in the writing/reading stage of this fic. Which means Umbridge is for the moment, off the list of recurring characters. On to the "malferret". Can't say anything about him helping the trio, or about enemies asking each other out, only time will tell though as a hint, the next chappie might give away a little somthin' somthing and until then, adiue or however it's spelled, I don't take French/?, I'm an Italian student :)
grannyHPfan: Ah, several bad things happen in a short amount of time, that's all I'll say for now on the scar/summoning. by the way, the coma thing - didn't work out too well. little sis bounced on me repeatedly until I got off my bed, will try again soon. However, the next chappie will reveal several/all haven't written it yet so am not positive things that you mentioned/others have mentioned. Except for the spy of course. Or Rowena's Heir. Or who Hermy likes. Okay, so it's not all, but it will be important.
mathiasgranger: Thanks, now I can fully understand when someone says "Red Herring alert!" or whatever. It was bothering me for quite some time not knowing what it was oh, and yeah, Hermy does tend to calm down Harry. I've noticed she's the only one... throughout the whole series unless you count Dumbledore who only calmed H down because there was a lack of things to break who can make him stop yelling and start thinking. Which makes her totally better than Ginny, who would just jump off the cliff with Harry and think it was romantic. Ugh. She disgusts me. and that was totally off topic
Cordi W: Hmm, really? Sorry, about that. always thought it was a Scottish thing will have to double check & then fix the mistake. Thanks for the thumbs up:)
harry'n'mione4ever: Sorry, Horcrux destruction wasn't this chappie H got into a little trouble instead hopefully I'll get it in the next chapter. Depends on how much I plan on jamming into the poor thing. Until then!
To all of my readers/reviewers: thanks for taking the time to review (and/or) read my story! Your support really does encourage me about the story and may be the reason I haven't hit writer's block yet and I wish you all a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays! which is pointless to say now, considering I mean to say it again in the next few chappies right before the holiday break