Disclaimer: If you didn't think this story was M before, it just might cross over now...just so you know.
AEU Chapter 37
Harry was cold.
Despite having lived for over a year in Scotland, he hadn't felt this cold since that night on the hill. He was pretty sure the ground hadn't been as wet then though.
'Wait...why am I on the ground?' Harry thought blearily as he shook off his sleep, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
He wasn't where he should be, in his comfortable bed, but rather on some hard, cool surface in a very dark place. Suddenly he snapped his eyes open wider and whirled his body around to face a soft hissing sound.
The darkness surrounded him like a stifling blanket, though from what he could see of the floor made it look as if it were tiled and, this might have been a trick of the darkness, appeared to be emitting a faint ghastly green sheen.
"Creepy," he muttered, his tiny voice echoing around and around wherever he was.
'So, it's a big place then. Great.'
The hissing grew louder, morphing into a kind of chuckle as it made its way to Harry's ears.
"Ssso, you do not like my great ancessstor'sss chamber, Potter?" A cool and rhythmical voice asked from outside Harry's vision.
"Well it's a bit dark for me to fully appreciate it," Harry ventured bravely, trying to make build some sort of bravado up even though his knees were knocking.
If he truly was in the Chamber of Secrets, he was probably going to die fairly soon. And if that voice was who he thought it was, it was probably going to be excruciatingly painful.
"Ah, my apologiesss. I forget, you mortalsss need light to sssee," the voice said, its condescending tone echoing round and round, making Harry's head spin slightly as he tried to keep track of where it was coming from.
Flames licked upwards from their torches and light flickered across Harry's face. He was in a large cylindrical chamber. Its curved sides were lined with identical tiles as on the floor, giving the whole place a slightly green hue that only made the sight Harry saw at the end of the Chamber more terrifying.
There was...a figure standing there, over a pile of shivering black robes. If it was a ghost then it was out of focus, for the spectral form lacked both detail and depth. It also did not glow with the ghostly white of the dead but with a similar sickly green to its surroundings. The head was the strangest feature of it as the nose didn't seem to exist, nor was there any hair on its head.
"Harry Potter..." the figure said, "Ssso, we meet at lassst."
"Oh...I'm sorry, I thought I was talking with Voldemort. Who are you?"
"His passst," the stranger hissed, "But I ssshall outdo myself when it comesss to the future."
Harry was extremely puzzled by all of this. Or at least, he would be if he weren't fighting the desire to panic. It was not at all like his last adventure, where he had been guarded by Aurors, the Minister and Dumbledore. No, this time he was on his own, trapped in a room, specifically the chamber no one had managed to find in nearly one thousand years of searching...with Voldemort.
'Shit,' Harry thought, mentally swearing for one of the only times in his life thus far.
"Right..." Harry's mind drew a blank. What exactly did one say to a homicidal maniac? "So, about your plans for the present?" he asked, figuring that the bad guy would at least give a speech first before he did whatever evil thing he was going to do.
"I ssshall make do with killing you," the spirit said quietly but with great pleasure, his smile clear even from where Harry was standing.
"You look...young," Harry said as the figure became increasingly more solid looking.
"Ah yess," the figure said, "I was the firsst I think, in a long line, a line too long if you assk me."
"Oh I see. You're the first Horcrux," Harry blurted out.
The fragment scowled, "It is not encouraging that you know of uss but then again, I expect nothing less from the lesser oness."
"Lesser ones?" Harry asked.
"I am a full half of mysself. The others are sso limited in themsselvess that they can barely be called ssentient. And the original? Ha! He is but the weakesst of us all."
"Wait, you believe yourself to be inferior...to yourself?" Harry asked incredulously. Despite the dangerous peril he was currently in, he couldn't help but smile at that.
"SILENCE," the fragment bellowed, raising his arm as if to force him to comply magically, only to glance at the upraised hand and withdrawing it in apparent annoyance.
'No magic yet huh? Interesting...' Harry quickly noted.
The spectral figure was now almost completely normal looking, with Harry even seeing the Hogwarts crest on the sixteen/seventeen year old-ish boy's robes.
"So you killed that Muggle-Born, you petrified those people, you caused all of...this?" Harry began quietly but was nearly shouting at the end.
The Horcrux chuckled briefly back at him, "Yes, and to think, my deformed lesser self with less than half of his mind and powers forced this country to kneel before him. Imagine what I shall do when I pick up where he left off. My servant has already gathered a little greeting force and soon I shall once more be the greatest wizard in the world."
The sight of Draco's father appearing smirking at his master's side sent Harry into a rage.
"ALBUS DUMBLEDORE IS THE GREATEST WIZARD IN THE WORLD!"
Silence reigned after the echoes had stopped sounding his proclamation.
"Dumbledore, the fool who believes in the good of people? Dumbledore, the coward who cannot kill, not even to defend his own principles or to defend others?" Voldemort whispered quietly, slowly stepping forward towards Harry.
"Dumbledore, the man who cannot protect one innocent, stupid little girl in his own school?" Voldemort sneered as he waved towards the robes that Harry now realised with a horrible sinking in his stomach looked a lot like a certain witch's frayed second hand clothes. He could even see a bit of bright red hair poking out of the fold.
"He protected Hogwarts from you before and he'll do it again!" Harry said desperately, trying to will with all his heart that it was true.
Voldemort's replying scoff was cut short as the most beautiful music filled the air. Both turned to see the Fawkes the Phoenix flew swiftly through the chamber, dodging Malfoy's fired spell and dropping the Sorting Hat into Harry's hands.
All three humans looked in disbelief at the frayed old relic before the laughter began again.
"So, this is what Dumbledore sends his great champion? Very well, since you have committed the discourtesy of bringing out weapons to our confrontation, I must take pains to bring out some of my own," Voldemort said, smiling slightly at Harry.
Then his dark eyes grew cold.
"Make no mistake about this Potter. I am not my insane forebear. You will die tonight, your corpse shall be turned to ash and then I shall disappear, till the time is right for me to take over this pathetic country. The only reason you are still alive is because I want you to suffer and suffer. This is not because you diminished my other self nor for what you represent, but because I can. I shall torture you, make you watch as poor sweet Ginny Weasley dies and then I shall burn you. Or...perhaps I shall allow my great patron to help me once more..."
Voldemort ended his approximation by sweeping away towards a giant stone statue of a bearded wizard. Harry swayed on his feet, the fact that the man in front of him was not only greater than the threat he had faced before but had talked about his upcoming torture and murder so calmly shook him to his core. No matter what the fragment believed, here was the very definition of insanity.
"Ssspeak to me Ssslytherin, greatessst of Hogwart'sss four!"
The loud command reverberated across the tiles to where Harry stood before the entire chamber shook. As dust that had gathered over fifty years of rest was shaken out of its crannies, the mouth of the statue opened and a-
But Harry never saw what happened next for in that moment, his body was suddenly experiencing the most unbelievable agony. The child didn't even register falling to the floor as the pain tore into his mind, finding every pressure point, every weakness of not just his physical, but mental being and making him hurt for all of them. In mere seconds, Harry was beyond screaming in agony, the breath catching in his throat as his brain began to overstimulate itself. Bright spots showed beneath his shut eyelids and a hoarse scream escaped his lungs. It hurt to scream.
In that moment, to exist was to be in pain.
Then it vanished as quickly as it came, so abrupt in its departure yet Harry was barely conscious and not at all in control of any of his functions.
"I never claimed I would fight fair, Harry Potter," Voldemort said silkily.
Voldemort? Oh it was almost certainly him now. He may have lost his hiss and the inhuman features as he became an avatar of his younger self, but either the madness was never buried very far in or he had already become utterly evil by the time this Horcrux was made.
"No answer, Potter? No snide remark, no daring comment? How pitiful," Voldemort said downwards to the shivering body.
"Do you wish to know the greatest joy, Harry Potter? The wonderful thought I am having, right at this very moment?"
Harry could barely lift his face up to shake his head.
"No? I am not yet back fully. That was my thrall Lucius performing that torture upon you. Imagine how it shall feel when I shall begin with you?" He said with a gleam in his eyes Harry took to mean was great anticipation.
It was at this point that Harry Potter realised he was finished. There was no way he or Ginny were going to get out of this place alive. Voldemort would come back and would return stronger than he had ever been before with an unsuspecting Ministry searching in all the wrong places for him.
The finality of his thoughts gave way to the first sob before tears were streaming down his face and onto the hard floor. He hated himself, he hated the man above him for bringing him so low so easily. For trying to make him beg for a quick death...and Harry was going to beg. There was no way he could trick himself into thinking he could take another dosage of that curse, particularly if it was aimed at him by the more powerful wizard. He had no plan and no desire to fight. It had taken one, ONE bought of pain to bring him onto his knees before a genocidal maniac. Shame flooded his mind before Fawkes' song took to the air again.
"Let the bird sing! It shall be the last pleasure you will know, Potter!" Voldemort said, turning his back on his fallen enemy and stalking towards the Basilisk.
"Hear me great ssserpent! Devour the boy!"
On a normal day, Harry would have fled back up along the Chamber by now, his instincts and adrenalin giving the extra push needed to outrun the threat before him. But his brain was in shock from the pain and Harry merely look down at the stone floor as the words were spoken that sounded his doom.
Fawkes on the other hand, had other ideas. Giving a great cry, he alighted down upon the Basilisk's head and began tearing great strips off of it. His cry and the sudden action snapped Harry somewhat out of his stupor and he looked around dazedly. He saw the elder Malfoy raise his wand to presumably kill his saving grace and Harry noticed for the first time that his wand wasn't on his person.
'Only one thing for it then,' he thought even as he performed the entirely mad manoeuvre of catapulted into the wizard, sending both of them tumbling.
His Seeker eyes caught sight of the single wand rolling along the damp bottom of the chamber.
Malfoy saw it too but for all of his advantages over Harry, he certainly wasn't as fast as a wiry eleven year old with his life on the line.
Harry spun around with the new wand in his grasp, aiming it straight at Malfoy's chest and keeping it there.
The blood was pounding in his veins and the noise of the battle between the two creatures faded into the background as his rage piled on against the two men in the room. His ears filled with the sound of his heart pumping and his eyes narrowed into slits as he glared at an older version of Draco.
"I'm curious Potter," Voldemort said, turning away from the ongoing fight which he had previously watched with mild interest, "What now? You certainly do not have the power to contain the Basilisk. Will you kill it then? Will you kill him, my slave? Or even me, when I finally return after the death of Ginny here?"
"Shut up," Harry said quietly, knuckles white against the unfamiliar wand that was still currently pointed at its previous owner.
"You know he has a son don't you? Oh what a day it is when the orphan creates another."
"SHUT UP!" Harry yelled, his fury boiling over and actually releasing pent up magical energy around him, knocking Malfoy back a little as he redoubled his grip and tried to correct his shaking arm.
Fawkes was performing admirably against the Basilisk whom had already lost one eye and the use of its nose, or at least that's what Harry assumed from the quick glance he risked to look up at that fight.
'But perhaps there is something I can do.'
"LUMOS MAXIMA!" he roared at the creature's head, remembering the charm any avid nocturnal book lover worth their salt would know.
The serpent did not take kindly to having its one remaining eye bombarded with a brilliant white light. It reared up in pain, smacking its skull against the ceiling, causing the chamber to shake and the tile covering lining the roof to crack.
The seven instruments Dumbledore had striven to repair first had been scanning with all their might in trying to find the Chamber. Suddenly three little dials leapt upwards as if they had been electrocuted.
"There! The Chamber's secrecy enchantments have been damaged! We have a location!" Dumbledore said, pointing towards a football sized glass dome which was rapidly filling with pink steam. The compass began alternating between two points and still showing a two on the dial. Fawkes had for some reason left on an errand of his own, and thus left only house elves as a fast way to get around the castle.
The gathered staff of Hogwarts and the commanders of the Raker units breathed a sigh of relief before listening to Hardy and Dumbledore's urgent instructions.
Fawkes had done his job well and Harry was scrambling to meet up with him in the middle of the room. He looked over his shoulder as he ran with regret.
The creature was blind and confused now. It was a pitiful sight but Harry knew this wounded animal really did have to die for the school to be safe. Still, the Basilisk was known for its tough hide and as Harry looked at the bright toxic green scales, he could only think, 'now what?'
The miraculous bird apparently had some ideas about that too, as he dropped the Sorting Hat into Harry's hands again before alighting down over Ginny's head and flying the girl as close to the side wall as possible. He then seemed to stay there and watch over her. Glancing at Voldemort and his thrall, only to see one looking on helplessly but with murder in his eyes and the other picking himself off the floor, Harry jammed the hat onto his head.
'Help me, please!' he mentally screamed.
'Not so loud boy,' a gruff voice said in his ear, and then, more gently, 'Help will always be given at Hogwarts.'
A heavy object suddenly thudded onto his head, causing him to jerk backwards in surprise and the hat to fall off his head.
A bright silver sword fell out of it and dropped onto the tiles.
Harry's momentary mental whoop when he cast his eyes upon the deadly looking weapon died quickly in his throat when he saw that the noise had been enough for the Basilisk to snap back from its stupor.
This time, the swear word was verbal and far worse than the previous one.
Jericho and twenty other brown clad figures cracked into existence on the corridor closest to the bathroom and quickly began barrelling towards it at high speed, each quietly thankful that the students were secure and asleep in their dormitories. The men were too focused to be surprised at the many statues and suits of armour and Hogwarts clattering to life and moving towards the walls, the main gates and the House dormitories.
Humphrey and Dumbledore had just entered the bathroom the Chamber was under and were snooping around the sinks looking for any signs of the activation point or perhaps a keyhole of some kind.
"Not good," Humphrey said, lightly tapping a snake engraved tap, "Looks like a Parsletounge seal, although I could be wrong. That type of magic is most uncommon. I don't think we're-"
His eyes widened as Dumbledore violently raised his wand and brought it down like a hammer. Jericho entered to find a sizeable hole in the floor and a man with an irritated expression brushing the rubble off of his suit.
'I wonder if today can get any worse?' he mused before remembering his mission.
'Right then, here we go.'
Harry had always hated the running aspect of Oliver's training the most out of everything he had to do. Now he was fairly sure that so long as he wasn't being chased by a massive, blind and enraged snake in a rather dark room, he could live with whatever his captain came up with.
'Live' being the key word here.
After first picking up the heavy blade and swiping wildly at the lunging Basilisk, managing to pierce its side as he did so, Harry found himself in the dangerous position of fighting a wounded and cornered animal with a weapon he had never used before. To sum up how well that went...well, now he was running.
"Stop him!" Voldemort presumably ordered his minion.
'Ha! What's Malfoy going to do without his-'
Harry's muscles all lost control of themselves as the pain returned in agonising amounts. The Basilisk overshot, missing him by inches as he crumpled to the floor, mouth open in silent scream for the curse was even worse this time, rendering him mute from it all.
Harry's wand lifted and granted its former wielded some respite as Malfoy grinned savagely at him. The pair of kidnappers had obviously been smart enough to take Harry's wand off him.
"Now, now Potter, stop running away. Take it like a Gryffindor," Voldemort mocked from his end of the chamber.
'For someone who said he was above the super villainy of the other Voldemort, he sure does seem content just to watch his elaborate killing device work,' Harry thought in an attempt to distract himself from his burning thighs and his raw throat.
It wasn't really working very well.
Too late he realised that he was running towards the welcoming arms of the Horcrux and his lackey. His sloppy disarming spell only managed to ensure that Malfoy would have to physically ensnare him. The wands and sword fell with a clatter to the ground as the two bodies collided. Desperately, Harry kicked and screamed, punched and pummelled at every bit of flesh that he could see even as the man's robes blocked out the dim lights of the chamber.
"You worthless slave! Retrieve the weapons, fool!" Voldemort shouted in exasperation.
Malfoy obediently dropped the boy from his clutches and turned away to pick up Harry's wand.
This proved to be a fatal mistake.
Spotting the man's back and still filled with the rage, fear and panic of that brief fight, Harry reacted, shoving Malfoy forwards with all of his strength,
Straight into the maws of the Basilisk.
That noise...that was what Harry would remember years later, when his night terrors awoke him from his sleep. That guttural gurgling sound the dying body made when the semi-mad Basilisk finally released it from its mouth.
The blood came after, after the whole area under the statue had been painted with it. Its sound too remained with him ever after, the fast flow becoming a slow trickle before shrinking to a grotesque dripping that oozed towards Harry.
Malfoy was dead no more than two seconds before Voldemort began laughing. And here came the final part to the soundtrack of his nightmares, the laugh of the insane murder welcoming him into his exclusive club.
The boy who had just caused all of that to happen however, drank in the scene for only a moment before fleeing from it, whisking up the sword that twinkled on the ground and climbing the great statue of Slytherin himself.
"Never mind the corpse, creature. Kill the boy now!"
The voice below him only increased Harry's mad scramble to reach the top of the stone man. The Basilisk had to raise itself to its full height to follow his path up through touch and sound alone. Harry was ready this time however, and as the mighty head strewn with its own drying blood appeared over the top of the statue, he lunched, stroking it under its jaw and tearing straight through its throat. The effort nearly tore his limbs from their sockets and as it was, caused the sword to be wrenched from his hands, so embedded it was within the creature as it thrashed around dying.
Sometimes Harry would have a different dream in which he repeatedly attacked the Basilisk, it shrugging off all blows until he pierced its throat as he had originally, leaving him trapped in a torrent of blood as the life erupted out of the creature, its screams deafening him as he fell into darkness.
"Well then Mr Potter," a voice above his left ear said.
Harry groaned as he tried to push himself off the floor, only to be rammed back into it by an unseen force directed onto his back.
"Alas, Mr Potter, I'm afraid I can't allow you to do that," Voldemort said, imitating Dumbledore's soft tone.
'Wait, Voldemort did that? But...that would mean...'
He was roughly levitated and flipped over onto his back.
Lord Voldemort towered above him, holding two wands in his hands and a smirk on his face.
"It seems that...you lost."