Chapter 28
His chair tumbled to the floor as Snape leapt to his feet. Granger recoiled as he, Lupin and Dumbledore rushed towards her.
"What..."
"How..."
"Gentlemen, please." Dumbledore called them to order. "Miss Granger, where is the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Um... I don't know." Then she added hurriedly, "but I know how to get there – there's an entrance in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom."
"Come with me, Miss Granger, you can explain on the way. Remus, use the floo in my office, as soon as you can get somewhere you can apparate, go to The Farm and bring us a rooster. The conjured kind won't work at all. Severus you're with me. Everyone else, divide the houses between you and get everyone into the common rooms."
With a speed completely at odds with his age, Dumbledore sprinted out the door and down the corridors, his wand making circles in the air and sending off huge crimson smoke rings which shot off round the corners in front of them. "Miss Granger?"
"Oh yes," she was panting as she kept up with them but her story was concise and lucid. "Harry really doesn't want to go home. I mean he really really doesn't want to go. I think maybe.. well, I think they abuse him."
"Not quite, Miss Granger." Snape skidded round a corner and they set off down the stairs. "I was going to tell him he didn't have to go until at least the Summer but I forgot."
"Well, we got talking in the Common Room and one of the sixth formers said her granddad told her that the last time the Chamber was open was before the War and a girl died. We wondered after a bit if that might be Moaning Myrtle, her clothes and glasses look about the right time period. We tried to get someone to tell the teachers but Percy wouldn't let anyone leave. When no one came at dinner time he got desperate. I got a mirror to look round corners and I came with him, if someone was going to see the monster and get turned into stone it had better be me and he could keep looking."
They pounded into the dingy lavatory and looked round. There was a huge gaping hole in the floor by the sinks.
Granger was still speaking. "We got someone to make a disturbance and sneaked out. When we got here, Myrtle said she saw these huge yellow eyes and just died. Harry found a sort of carved snake on one of the taps and hissed at it and that hole came."
Snape peered down the hole. "Looks like a long slide. Shall I go first?"
"No!" Granger looked pale but determined. "I haven't finished. It's important, please." She gulped and went on. "When the hole appeared I had to go..."
"Go? Go where?"
"Severus, really. What happened while you were using the lavatory?"
"Someone came. I hid in case it was the monster but it was a boy. I peered under the door but I could only see him from the back. Slytherin, not a first year, with that reddish blond hair cut really short at the back. He was carrying a book under one arm."
Hell and the devil, Julius Mulciber. No wonder the boy had looked so bad when he came back from the Christmas break.
"His voice sounded all grown up, and sort of echoey and he had his wand out. He made Harry give him his wand and then made him jump down the hole. Said he was going to feed his pet."
Dumbledore took command. "Miss Granger, Hermione, you wait outside the door until Professor Lupin arrives. Tell him where we've gone. If you hear the monster coming, run into the classroom over there. Severus, come with me." Then without waiting to see if his orders were obeyed, he turned and jumped down the hole.
"Professor Snape?" He turned as he prepared to jump. "Harry, was going to come and find you as soon as we found out anything. He said he wanted to prove he could be sensible and not dash off and be stupid. He was. Really." Snape nodded and jumped, seeing her leave the room as he did so.
The pipe was long, twisting and filthy but it had been carefully designed, the slope of his descent shallowing rapidly as the reached the end, decanting him neatly on to his feet at the bottom.
There was a horrible scrunching noise between his feet which he realised with a shudder were animal bones, thousands upon thousands of animal bones. Dumbledore had gone ahead, Snape could see a small circle of light up ahead and hurried to join him.
Before them, curling in a great arc at least fifty feet long, was a shed skin. They stared at in for a moment, appalled, then set off together at a run. Snape was conscious of the thud of blood in his ears and a terror unlike any he had ever felt for himself.
Round another corner and there, in front of them, rose a huge pair of bronze doors, with curling serpents as handles and from within only the sound of hushed voices. Without a sound, they cast the disillusionment charm on themselves and crept forward.
Beyond the doors there was a huge cavern, and at one end a massive and curiously unsettling statue of what Snape presumed to be Salazar himself, though it looked nothing like how he had imagined the Founder. At its feet, huddled together, were two small boys.
Harry was talking. "Don't worry," he was saying. "I don't think Dumbledore expels people especially if you didn't mean to do it."
They couldn't hear when the other boy said but the reply was clear. "I don't blame you. Why would I?It wasn't your fault. Though I bet Professor Snape is going to be right mad with me when he finds out."
Snape looked round and almost vomited. The basilisk was bigger than anything even his terrified imagination had produced. The head with its ruined eyes was almost as big as a Hogwarts' coach. He turned to find Dumbledore had walked away from him and was staring down at something on the floor. Snape went over to join him to find him staring at a book, a diary by the look of it, lying in a pool of something that looked more like black blood than ink.
There was the noise of running feet in the corridor and Lupin, a rooster in a cage in one hand and wand in the other, dashed into the chamber. He called out, "Harry!"and in the confusion of the boys getting to their feet and Lupin exclaiming over the size of the monster, he and the Headmaster dispelled the charm and approached the boys.
Harry was protesting wildly, and it was several seconds before Snape would work out what he was trying to say. "I'm sorry, Professor, honestly, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get into trouble. I was going to come and find you as soon as I had some proof. Honest I was, I wasn't ignoring you..."
"Oh be quiet, you sill boy," said Snape, the gentleness of his voice at complete odds with his words. "Never mind that now. Are you hurt?"
"No: not now anyway. I mean I was but Fawkes came and cried on me." His clothes were badly torn, especially about one arm.
"He was bitten." Mulciber, swaying on his feet, pale but determined. "That bloody thing bit him and if it wasn't for Fawkes..." and he began to cry.
That galvanised the adults into action; Lupin took the wailing child in his arms and attempted to calm him, Snape went over to Harry and began to cast diagnostic charms and the Headmaster conjured a lead box and levitated the book into it.
Dumbledore looked around. "Fawkes!" he called and the phoenix flew over, carrying of all things the Sword of Gryffindor in his beak. "Why didn't you come and tell me?" he said. There was a pause, then, "No, I quite understand that but surely... ah then in that case... really? Really? Well, can you carry us back up the pipe, young Mr Mulciber is not feeling quite the thing."
The tears had dwindled into hitched breaths and hiccups. Harry went to walk next to Mulciber, a friendly arm round his shoulders and they all trudged back up the passage way, the lead box bobbing in front of them. At the foot of the pipe, they formed a chain of held hands, the Headmaster grasped Fawkes' tail and they were all towed to back to the bathroom. Snape had Harry's hand in his and could feel how cold it was. It was all very well the boy claiming he wasn't hurt but sure as Morgana made lethifolds he wasn't well either.
Granger was waiting outside the bathroom and, as Dumbledore send off his patronus to assure the staff all was well, there was a lot of hugging and scolding and excuses between her and Harry.
"My office I think," said Dumbledore. "No need to involve the whole school. Miss Granger, you've been very brave but..." he looked down and her and obviously changed his mind. "You had better come along too, I'm sure Harry will tell you everything anyway."
The boys limped through the corridors and up the stairs. After the first few steps, Snape put a discreet hand under Harry's arm to help him keep moving. Poppy Pomfrey was waiting in the Headmaster's office and it took all of Dumbledore's authority to get her to leave again, and only then after she'd administered first aid and threatened grievous body harm to all and sundry unless the boys were in the infirmary within the hour.
When she had finally gone and they were all seated in a ring around the Headmaster's desk drinking hot chocolate, Dumbledore floated the lead box on to his desk and then floated the diary out of it.
"So, Mr Mulciber," he said. "I presume this is your diary."
Mulciber went white and screwed his eyes shut. Harry, who was sitting next to him, leaned over and took his hand. Mulciber squeezed it so tightly Harry winced, but he didn't move, and soon Mulciber's story came pouring out.
"When I went home at Christmas, my dad was ever so mad, about the trick I had played on Malfoy. He said I ought to know better than to pick a fight with a powerful Family like the Malfoys. There was no presents for me or anything all Christmas and he said I had to apologise to Malfoy. So when we went to their New Year's Eve party, I did. Malfoy was really nice – he said it didn't matter and he accepted my apology and to show there was no hard feelings he said he had a present for me and he gave me that diary. He said he knew it didn't look like anything much but once I started writing in it, I'd find out how great it was. And it was. At first.
You see it wrote back." His eyes were still tight shut and he didn't see Dumbledore turn the diary over and show the back and the letters in gold. "T. ." Snape went cold. It was more or less what he had expected but to see it written there before him made him shudder.
"It said its name was Tom and it was really friendly, at first. It let me tell him what I was worried about, it helped me with my homework and it was sort of comforting. Then it changed. I started forgetting things, and I was so tired all the time and it started ordering me about, and I didn't know whether I'd done what it told me to or not. I tried to ask our Janice what I should do, but it got really mad and the next thing I knew it was next day and Janice was calling me names and saying I'd said horrible things to her I couldn't remember." His lips started to tremble and he stopped, pressing them together so hard they showed white.
"And tonight?" Dumbledore was gentle but insistent.
"I don't know," wailed the boy. "I woke up down there, with the monster dead and Harry saying he'd been bitten. I thought he was going to die but then Fawkes came and cried on his arm and he started to look better."
"And you Harry," and Snape watched as the boy straightened in his chair and tried to look alert, despite the obvious adrenalin crash he was suffering. "Fawkes has explained to me about your fight with the Basilisk... Miss Granger, please, Harry will explain it all to you later I have no doubt. For the moment, I want to ask you who you were talking to before the monster appeared. Fawkes cannot see ghosts or spirits but he could tell you were talking to something."
Harry yawned hugely. "When I first saw Julius in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, he didn't look like he does now. It was like there was something inside him, making him go, like a remote-control robot. When we got into the chamber, he sort of collapsed and this thing came out of him. It wasn't a ghost and it wasn't like Peeves, it was more thickerer."
The teacher in Snape bit its tongue as the incongruous urge to correct Harry's grammar surged up from deep inside.
"It said its name was Tom Marvelo Riddle and it had been in the diary until Julius started writing in it. It had Julius's wand and it could use it. It wrote its name in letters in the air and sort juggled them around until it said 'I am Lord Voldemort' he said he got the idea from you, Professor. It didn't seem to know he was dead and got dead mad when I said it was." He was flagging now, his words slurring. "It said it was draining Julius so it could live again and then it called the Basilisk, and me and Fawkes fought it. I stabbed it but one big tooth stuck in my arm and the Tom-thing said I was going to die but then Fawkes came. The Tom-thing said it didn't matter because it was going to kill me anyway when it had got all of Julius, so I stabbed the diary with the big tooth and it screamed and all this blood-ink stuff came out."
"Anything else, Harry?"
"Not really, only..."
Dumbledore leaned forward. "Only?"
"My scar didn't half hurt all the time we were down there and when I stabbed the diary, it hurt like..." he gave a sideways look at Snape and a cheeky little grin appeared. "It hurt like bloody hell fire."
Snape smiled back, reluctantly. It looked like the adventure hadn't knocked the Harry he knew out of Harry Potter.
