The Christmas holidays finally came around, and with them, some peace and quiet for Harry Potter.
His tediously long to-do list was finally under control: all the thank you notes and curse-checking completed, a couple of advertising offers turned down, two letters handed into the Department of Magical Law enforcement for some rather risqué opportunities that Harry really didn't want to think about.
He'd also finished his holiday homework early, and once again enjoyed wandering the halls of Hogwarts without hundred of eyes and whispers following his every move. The worst of the fans had gone home, of course, as had Ron, Hermione and Neville. Each of them had very kindly invited him home for the holidays, apparently being rather concerned by his own, perfectly competent plans.
"I've got stuff to catch up on," Harry had tried repeatedly to explain. "I don't want to intrude on family time."
They still felt holidaying at Hogwarts was some kind of consolation prize.
"Are your family away?" Hermione had asked curiously.
"Hrm? I don't know. Why?"
They all looked at Harry as if it was obvious. "Why aren't you going home to be with them?"
Harry realised that somehow he'd managed to avoid explaining his complex relationship with the Dursleys. "They – the magic bothers them," he grinned awkwardly. "I, uh, need to catch up on my theory and the Hogwarts library just can't be beaten."
Hermione looked intrigued. "Perhaps we should stay? You've got a point about the library...Are you thinking about exams already? Have you worked out a study timetable? Are you working on your Transfiguration again? What reference texts–"
"J-just some catch-up stuff."
Ron looked less than impressed with his plans. "Mate, are you sure you don't want to come back to the Burrow? Mum'd love to have you over again, and I think Percy, of all people, wanted to talk to you a bit abo–"
Harry had insisted, forcefully, that they spend time with their families. It was irreplaceable, after all. Not everybody had a chance to create previous family memories to treasure forever. The most famous orphan in Britain, Harry had discovered, could leverage the fact quite effectively when he needed to.
They weren't happy about it, but they went.
Around the same time of year as everyone else was packing for the Express, Harry had also noticed that his presence in the paper had died down significantly. The rehash of his parents' death, his father's gift at flying, his first few successes at Hogwarts had been publicised openly and slowly died off as other news finally took its place. Suddenly Christmas plans and presents and holidays and lost luggage became more important to think about that Harry Potter still being good on a broom.
He found himself wandering the hallways once the castle had emptied, isolated footsteps tapping through silent corridors. He always got his favourite table in the library when he went there: the older students who remained apparently had their own favourite study spots, and Harry enjoyed his own little routine that didn't involve bumping into any of them. With the castle so empty, all the people remaining sat together at the tables for meals. The small scattering of skeleton staff were generally content to huddle together at mealtimes and leave the students to sort themselves out. Harry himself ate in the kitchens for every meal except evening dinner, which he had to take with the other students.
Strangely enough, only a small contingent of Slytherins remained behind of his own year: Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle being most obvious. Harry'd remembered that fact despite the intervening years, funnily enough. Hermione's polyjuice accident was still fresh in his memory after all this time. But he'd never wondered before why Malfoy and his sidekicks had stayed in the castle that Christmas.
After a few days of squeezing in between older students – who had mostly stayed to study for O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s, and therefore usually brought their books to the dinner table – Harry found himself chatting tentatively with his old enemies. From the direction of Snape's seat at the table came an awfully odd stare, but Harry ignored it while he played nice with Malfoy.
"Draco says you must be bored hanging out in Gryffindor all alone," Crabbe of all people stated one day over dinner.
"What?" Harry paused, his fork of peas halfway to his mouth. "Not at all, though?"
Crabbe shrugged and took another mouthful himself, before gesturing at a rapidly reddening Malfoy. "He says you probably really want to hang out with us and are just waiting for an invitation."
At Harry's amused glance, Draco failed to meet his eyes, but Goyle nodded carefully. Harry finished his mouthful slowly. A long and complicated history stood between him and the kid, and he would have to speak cautiously.
"Are you saying you three are volunteering to support me through my...er, isolation?"
"Draco said it would be our civic duty."
Harry's silver cutlery clinked gently as he placed them precisely against the edges of his plate. "The invitation is very, erm, gracious of you, but I truly do have things that are keeping me busy at Hogwarts, so I, erm, regret to –"
"Draco said –"
"Vincent!"
"–you wouldn't want to be seen to show weakness," the large boy continued stoically over Malfoy's flustered protests. "Draco said that we shouldn't show charity to you, but rather point out that being seen with the Boy-Who-Lived is a social coup, and therefore we're not showing you pity."
Harry stifled a grin. "Look, I appreciate the offer, but–"
"Draco said that you probably felt bad for being a Gryffindor, but that we shouldn't hold that against you. Draco said that you can't help following in your parent's footsteps, and that that's admirable family loyalty, and that we should show c-curtain, curts, uh..."
"Courtesy," Malfoy mumbled, looking down at his plate in fascination.
"Yeah, that," Crabbe nodded, "because you would surely respond to a civilised invitation."
Harry looked thoughtfully at the very earnest Crabbe and Goyle, and the somewhat more embarrassed Malfoy. He thought back to all that had happened because he rejected Malfoy's handshake on the train that very first day at Hogwarts. "Well, I guess I'd be," Harry's mouth worked, "honoured. To, uh, accompany you occasionally through the break."
Crabbe nodded, entirely unsurprised, and continued eating. "Draco said you would be."
Harry's dancing eyes met Malfoy's shamefaced ones over the table. From somewhere up by the teacher seats, Snape's familiar stare drilled into Harry's forehead, but Harry ignored that with the ease of long practice.
"Perhaps after dinner might suit?" Malfoy raised his goblet in Harry's direction before drinking to the thought.
Harry scowled, paused, sat thoughtfully before finally nodding. His plans could work around that, and combined with a lack of petrifications in the castle due to Harry's possession of the diary, there was a strange empty sensation that was surrounding him these days. The calm before the storm, Harry thought. He could do with some distraction.
The situation left Harry at an impasse for a number of days. The castle was busiest in the mornings, so he hid in Gryffindor tower alone, avoiding the gazes and mutters of those few who remained. His days therefore lingered, long and empty, until he finally filled them with more self-study. It wasn't quite what his holiday plans had originally involved. Somehow Harry recalled catching less attention last timeline, he didn't quite know why.
The house-elves in the kitchen became used to his schedule, and pounced upon him in worry if he turned up late to breakfast, or lunch, or if he forgot to request snack food midday. To his astonishment, Harry soon found it impossible to escape notice in the castle for more than an hour. And to Harry's surprise, all evening after dinner was taken up by playing games with his cautious acquaintances.
Malfoy, to Harry's utter bemusement, seemed strangely dedicated to following Harry around. He kept suggesting games, to Harry's baffled confusion. Exploding Snap worked best, since both Crabbe and Goyle knew the rules to that one. On those occasions, all four boys would find a spare classroom and bunker down for an inclusive game or ten. But occasionally Harry found himself wrangled into a game of chess with Malfoy, while the side-kicks looked on. When there was a break in the snowstorm outside, Harry allowed himself to be persuaded into two-to-a-side quidditch until it grew too dark to see. It was all very social. Frankly, it felt like a surreal time.
The only downside was his inability to sneak away to the Chamber of Secrets without drawing attention to himself. Harry had to make himself new plans.
Eventually, slightly after one o'clock at in the morning, a couple of days before Christmas, he found himself sitting behind the drawn curtains of his bed in his dormitory, waiting to Pookey to bring him the last of the tools for his plan.
He sat upright, cross-legged, just to make sure he didn't doze off while he waited in the empty dark silence of the boys' dormitory. There were no snores or sleepy snuffles – no one else in the dorm had stayed over the break, and the silence was heavy.
Combined with the heavy blanket of snow that lay over the grounds of Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest and drove all the animals into hibernation or deeper cover – and the rush of white noise, the static of the storms outside – Harry felt a little like the only person left in the world.
Sitting there in the dark, all Harry could hear was the slow, even rushing of his own pulse, and the whisper of fabric that rustled when he moved. He awaited the quiet creak of the dormitory door and the gentle sound of Pookey's light footsteps tapping her way towards his bed.
He was therefore somewhat astonished when Pookey appeared on his bed with a rather loud crack and a number of small, jolting thuds.
House-elves can apparate around Hogwarts, was Harry's first ridiculous thought, and then his brain snapped into gear. Leaning forward, his eyes worked hard to identify the shifting silhouettes on his bedcovers, and his wand up snapped up to deal with any accidents.
Wand-light lit the bed canopy.
To Harry's surprise and satisfaction, the small eager elf had landed on his bed in the company of twenty-five sleeping roosters, and feathers and dander were flying in the air. There was an irritating tickle in the back of his nose where some kind of fluff or dander teased him.
"From the kitchens," Pookey squeaked proudly, and Harry realised with a jolt that the school must buy in live chickens for their meals. The table tomorrow might be low on its meat.
"Thanks," Harry garbled, still caught by surprise, but he unfolded his legs and put his wand to work quick.
While Pookey beamed on, he gamely ferried them all over into the third compartment of his trunk. He thanked Pookey generously for her help – she twisted her fists through her tea towel in pride and pleasure – before letting her leave, and then he picked up, lightened, and shrunk his luggage in a few economical moves. Carefully pulling his Invisibility Cloak over his head and body, he silently picked up the bag and snuck down the tower stairs and out the Fat Lady's portrait.
Harry fit easily beneath the Invisibility Cloak, but still snuck warily towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Argus Filch, these days positively radiating nervous energy and fury, had taken to prowling the castle's corridors at night with unprecedented paranoia. Harry grimaced. He felt no particular fondness for the man or his cat, but Harry's chest still twisted with guilt whenever he considered that he was personally responsible for Mrs Norris' gruesome death. He would feel even worse if he also became responsible for Filch's eventual descent into madness. Perhaps there was something he could do...
But meanwhile, he successfully reached their destination and crept into the flooded bathroom with barely a sound.
Harry tiptoed into the quiet room, eyes sharp, ears alert, and realised after a long moment of silence that Moaning Myrtle must be off down her u-bend again. The bathroom was empty.
Still under his Cloak, Harry stepped over and placed himself at the far end of the huge mirror, by the furthermost sink.
"Right, I'm here, so I'll just take my stuff and sneak down to the Chamber," he muttered to himself. He sternly repressed the nervous thrill of his body. "Just psyching myself up, just like a Quidditch game, we're all good to go." It felt strange, Harry hovering on the precipice of a life-threatening encounter, without Ron or Hermione by his side.
He fumbled around for a moment to organise things. He stuffed his wand safely into his mokeskin pouch, so it would be safe from any immediate damage. He pulled off his Invisibility Cloak and popped it inside of his trunk for now – it would do no good covered in slime and weird gloop. Harry grabbed his luggage tightly to his chest with both hands, he gave his reflection little nod.
In the dim lighting, his face looked pale and sickly.
"Alright then," Harry said, and turned his attention to the snake on the side of one of the taps. "..Open.." he hissed sibilantly.
Anticipation rose.
The tap glowed a brilliant white and began to spin rapidly. The sink lurched with a groan of stone and porcelain and then sank immediately out of sight.
Harry awkwardly positioned himself in front of the gaping hole and levered his feet into the edge of the dirty pipe.
"If I don't make it back, sooner or later Hermione will notice the note on my bed. Nothing can go wrong." His voice reverberated a little in the empty room, and Harry suddenly felt ridiculous for speaking out loud. He glanced around, embarrassed.
His pallid reflection stared back at him, silent, and Harry chose not to think too deeply about what its complex expression revealed. But with that, Harry drew his hands and arms in as close as possible to his body, and, with a little grimace of nerves and reluctance, jerked himself down into the hole.
This time Harry kept his eyes closed as his body whooshed down the slimy pipe. He did not see the offshoots and branching attachments, but clenched his teeth and hoped to land without a problem.
He descended rapidly.
Just as he was starting to wonder if he had fallen down a wrong turn somewhere – had the twists always been so sudden? Did he knock his elbows and knuckles quite this much before? Surely the last ride hadn't taken this long? – Harry's pipe levelled out and he shot out of the chute and landed with a bump and a skid.
Bottom stinging and bruised-feeling, Harry groaned and sat up.
He rose to his feet and reorganised himself, hands busy despite the painful knocks to his elbows. A couple of cleaning spells later, his trunk was opened, his dad's Cloak pulled on, and he tucked the diary Horcrux securely into a pocket in his robe. Having arranged himself satisfactorily, Harry retrieved his wand for his pouch, and lit up the space with a silent, "Lumos."
The light brightened painfully as he peered into the dark. Old brickwork, too dirty to have a discernable colour, loomed out of the blackness in the light of Harry's wand, and then faded away into grey as it passed beyond his purview. Silence surrounded him. He determined he was alone.
With a grim look of determination and his raised wand light, Harry leaned down to collect the trunk in his left hand and walked cautiously into danger.
He passed the yellowing bones of dead animals on the floor, consciously not looking for anything that might resemble the regurgitated skeleton of a cat. The smell was dry and dusty, not the rotting meaty smell he had been half afraid of, but not exactly pleasant either.
Remembering Ron and Lockhart's previous problems, Harry took note of the ceiling as he walked and paused to stabilise dodgy-looking rock when he saw it.
All too soon he passed the humongous moult skin as it lay across the corridor, and began twitching with nerves every time he rounded a corner, wondering if this time he had reached his destination. The tension grew.
The corridor – the pipe, or sewer – seemed long and interminable, and all he could hear was his own breathing and the scrape of his shoes on the ground.
Some indeterminate time later, Harry slowed to a halt. Before him, he saw the wall of rock and serpent carvings on his path, and licked his lips anxiously while he paused for a breath. The ignoble brickwork continued beyond him, but the blandness of archway he'd been walking in positively paled beneath the sudden grandeur that was the door into the Chamber. The door loomed large, and looked strangely well-kept to Harry's amateur eye. Elaborate carvings framed the door and the serpentine enchantments that blocked the door played tricks on his eyes, dark shadows lurked and coils gleamed in the light. Harry took a moment to lick his lips. Then he hissed at the emerald-eyed snakes that barred his passage into the Chamber. Without a hiss or a whisper, they fell back out of his way in eerie silence.
Ancient wall sconces flickered dimly to life as Harry stepped beyond the doors into the Chamber itself, and he sensed, through the still air, that they remained open behind him. The available escape route settled his heart rate a little, and he walked on.
Harry kept his eyes keen, ready to squeeze them closed at the first sign of serpentine movement – not willing to bet his life on the fact that the Basilisk was probably locked up – but positioned himself in the shadows away from the middle of the long room, and quickly crept towards its end.
The Chamber was larger than he remembered, he had shrunk it in his memory, and all was calm except for the sinister crackle of flames in the sconces and what might have been the patter of rats leaving the light.
Harry stepped on.
Finally seeing the huge, crude statue of Salazar Slytherin against the distant wall, he paused in his progress. Turning, organising, Harry pattered instead to one side and hid himself carefully behind a convenient pillar – not too close, not too far – and set himself up. The diary would be safe in his pocket for now, but he placed his trunk on the floor and withdrew twenty of the slumbering roosters. With a few flicks of his wand he placed them around at the bases of a number of distant columns.
The plan, thought Harry as he levitated them around, was simple.
He would call the Basilisk out, and kill it as soon as it left the statue's mouth by waking up the roosters. By leaving the roosters in plain sight and hiding himself he would simultaneously draw attention away from himself, and be able to check if the Basilisk was still killing – or Petrifying – with its eyes. Each rooster was carefully placed so that he could mark the passage of the Basilisk as it moved.
After more long minutes passed, Harry realised that he was fussing in order to delay the inevitable, and drew forth the calm of his Occlumency trance. It would not help him, exactly, but it would stop him panicking if his plans fell apart.
He braced his back against a stone column, facing away from the statue just to be safe.
Then, with a small summoned snake in front of him to stimulate his Parseltongue, Harry shouted out loudly.
"Ssspeak to me, Ssslytherin, greatest of the Hogwartss Four."
There was silence.
The garden snake stared at him curiously. After a long moment while Harry took note of the tension in his body, and carefully, purposefully forced his muscles to relax, he realised that there was no sound of scales on stone. The conjured serpent flicked its tongue out and watched him curiously.
Very cautiously Harry edged his tiny glass hand-mirror – borrowed off Lavender weeks ago for this purpose – around the edge of the column, and peeped around the corner. To his disgust, he saw that the statue's mouth remained closed.
Harry tried again three more times, before banishing the conjured snake in irritation and determinedly stalking to the base of the statue.
He gazed up at its great height, in his best imitation of Tom Riddle, and repeated the words firmly, this time gazing up into the face of Salazar Slytherin.
The distant crumble of small stones and gravel falling revealed to Harry the success of his attempt, even before he saw movement or heard the snake uncoil as it moved. Stupid enchanted hoops to fly through.
He jogged back to his trunk behind the pillar and pulled out his final tool.
With a silent kick-off, Harry and his broomstick rose up silently into the air. With the increased manoeuvrability, improved vantage point and decreased sound to attract the Basilisk, Harry felt the likelihood of his success rise.
Was he worried? ...Nooo, not really. He was moderately sure that there would be no danger. If everything went right. Which it probably would.
With luck. He was due some good luck.
He had the mirror, the broomstick, the roosters, his wand, his memory, all working to his advantage.
He'd left a note.
He heard the great beast glide down the statue's body and onto the floor. With a sharp jab and silent incantation, Harry woke up the closest roosters.
Four roosters jerked awake in their distant positions below Harry, and rose to their feet. Harry watched with eager eyes as they clucked, and they gobbled, and squawked, but strangely, not one raised its voice in a cock-crow.
First one, then the others strutted stupidly out from behind the safety of their pillars and fell instantly dead to the floor.
The immediate silence was dominated by the sound of smooth scales gliding over rough stone below him.
Harry, his grand plan still not yet failed, noticed with detachment that his heartbeat was increasing.
He woke up six more roosters with another jab of his wand, and promptly saw half of them, too, wander directly out into the gaze of the deadly beast, where they collapsed in rigid seizure. The other three, inconveniently, decided to strut off the wrong way and disappeared into the darkness.
"Stupid birds," thought Harry distantly, a small flutter of panic burgeoning in his chest, as he heard their scratches and clucks diminish into the darkness. "Why aren't they crowing?"
The remaining birds woke with a surge of his magic, and Harry looked on in frustration and growing worry as they pecked stupidly at the stone tiles.
Not a cock-a-doodle, or even a full-throated squawk among them.
In fact, now that he looked, Harry wondered if they all looked a little sleepy. It was night time, after all.
Suddenly, he remembered with a pang that roosters traditionally crowed around dawn. Even taking into account Pookey's late arrival, the sneaking around the castle, his careful meanderings through the pipes and methodical preparations, Harry's silent tempus spell revealed it was still before three in the morning. Daylight was hours away.
And now the lurid green snake slithered into view below. He watched first its shadow, and then its back, as it paused to devour the corpses of the first few roosters to die.
But perhaps, a calm voice whispered to him from this stillness of his mind, he could perk the others up.
A few urgent waves of his wand saw the flames of the torches on the walls enlarged to three times their previous size. The flickering light grew brighter, steadier, warmer, and the shadows darkened as light illuminated the room. The cavernous silence was broken by the sound of stone on scales, the chicken pecks as they stalked around, and now a warm crackling as the flames snapped energetically in the sconces. And his harsh breathing, Harry realised. He tried to modulate his breath.
The Basilisk paused for an instant in suspicious or confusion, Harry couldn't tell. Then to his bemusement, it continued gliding forward towards more of the dead birds.
A single rooster came wandering back from wherever it had been and scratched around in the dust below Harry, where the Basilisk had already passed. Did it have no survival instincts? Even if it had no sense, where was its evolutionary fight or flight response? But the beast itself had moved on now, to devour the bodies of its later victims.
Harry realised with a stab of horror that perhaps his clever plan was not so clever after all.
How did he force the Basilisk back into the statue? Could he escape the Chamber without the Basilisk Petrifying – or killing – him? Were the students all safe, asleep in their beds, or had others – like himself – decided to bend the rules during holidays? Could he stop the huge snake leaving the Chamber to find other, sentient victims? Were the house elves working late? What time did the kitchen open?
A cold chill shivered down his spine, and goosebumps stood up on Harry's invisible arms. Harry gazed on in dismay. Perhaps it was time for his backup plan?
"Dumbledore is the greatest. Dumbledore is the best. You will never be stronger than Dumbledore," he chanted under his breath, but no Fawkes or Sorting Hat or Sword of Gryffindor answered his call. Heart trembling, he repeated himself louder, not worrying that the Basilisk would hear, but no phoenix song answered his voice.
His heart sank. Still hovering safe above and behind the Basilisk, Harry thought frantically of what to do next. The Basilisk had finished swallowing its rooster victims and was beginning to move rapidly – what speed! How did it move so fast? – towards the exit of the room.
His skin broke out in a sheen of cold sweat, but Harry had no time to notice as he flicked through useless strategies in his mind.
With no plan yet fixed in his mind, Harry leaned into his broom and shot through the Chamber like a shooting star. All he could think to do was trap the creature in the Chamber, and buy himself a little time.
The Basilisk, huge and ponderous though it seemed, was nearly at the door.
"ENGORGIO! COLLOPORTUS!" Harry bellowed, as he let his reflexes work for him.
He threw out his little glass hand-mirror, which arced in a shallow curve as it flew towards the gap in the wall where the entwined serpents had moved aside to let him pass.
The enlargement charm sparked from his wand in a flash of blue and hit the mirror directly. Harry saw it doubling, tripling, quadrupling and more in size as it fell towards the exit in the Chamber wall.
The locking charm that followed immediately in its wake hit the little mirror with a flash of white, and dragged the swollen silver-and-glass object to bind it tightly against the edges of the gap. It was not perfect, the circular object left gaps in the corners, but they were not large enough for the King of Serpents.
The Basilisk – mere metres from the exit – heard his desperate shout, saw the mirror fall from above and slithered to a halt.
A gleam of light flashed over the mirror surface, and Harry saw with mounting expectation the poisonous green of the Basilisk's scales reflect in the clear silver pane. The research had theorised, of course...it was perfectly possible that with its deadly eyes...
It caught its own gaze.
Harry held his breath.