Harry had received Bart's letter. This made things a bit difficult. With what Bart said was being true then Voldemort was more powerful than before. Fortunately there were two horcruxes Harry and Bart had knowledge about. The diary was with Harry as Bart had sent it to him and there was the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw somewhere here in the castle. At least Voldemort won't have those two in the near future if Harry was able to extract some of the venom from the basilisk in the secret chamber.
Harry wandered towards the school rounds making sure he was near the vicinity of Hagrid's hut who was growing a new batch of roosters for both the school's needs and his happiness. It melted Harrys' heard how much the half giant loved the creatures as if they were his own. It also made him sad that he would have to steal these creatures away from Hagrid so he intended to not let Hagrid know about who stole his roosters.
He had received glasses made from hecatolite mineral. It was fairly easily available in the magical black market as werewolves often used it as one of the construction additives in their house so as to avoid the rays of the full moon. According to what Remus had said when Bart had asked him about the mineral that it was rather effective but it was also costly so he couldn't afford it. Also avoiding a transformation led to the body reaching to a limit so if a werewolf transformed after preventing it for a few times his rage and bloodlust reached new heights. This was also one of the reasons why Remus didn't use the hecatolite mineral.
Harry had looked at the glasses. There were ten of them. He wondered why would Bart send him so many but then again he didn't know how strong the basilisk was going to be and Benjamin's words rang inside his head that it could be a possibility that these glasses might not even work.
Perhaps that was a good thing that Harry had his training then.
Taking a stroll around the small hut Harry noticed Hagrid had about fifty or so small roosters. They would do but Harry would need a lot of them as small roosters didn't produce that loud a sound so a good number of them would be what Harry needed to bring down the basilisk. Besides, that monster was a thousand year old at least.
Another month went by and Harry had managed to get himself acquainted with the ghost of the Grey Lady and that, too, after telling her the truth. It was something to see that expression of shock on her face but that gave Harry her trust and not to mention the location of where her mother's diadem was.
Two dragon leather containers laced with several layers of powerful wards accompanied by protection from rune stones made sure that the two horcruxes wouldn't affect anyone with their power to seduce and so one Friday night Harry grabbed the map, his cloak and the axe he had received from Benjamin and set off towards the abandoned girls' bathroom.
En route he stopped on the floor below his quarters and went inside an unused classroom which he had locked using several charms for security purposes and revealed a large cage where he had kept at least twenty roosters which he had stolen from Hagrid last night. Word was that the half giant didn't show during any of the meals today and McGonagall was also worried about who could steal roosters. She was adamant that some student had done it so as to prank the half giant and naturally her suspects were the Weasely twins. Harry didn't know what happened to them or whether or not they were able to get out of the deputy headmistress' clasps as he had bigger things to worry about.
He shrank the cage, picked it up and then put it in his pocket along with the axe and headed towards the bathroom. A careful casting of silencing spells on his foot ensure no one could hear his footsteps as he walked through the abandoned corridors at two in the night. Fortunately he didn't have to wait for any of the professors to go through as none were strolling in his route over to the abandoned bathroom.
Harry opened the door making sure he had applied silencing charms over the door's hinges, learning from his past mistake as h made sure that Myrtle's ghost wasn't there at the moment. That was the reason why Harry chose this hour. He walked towards the huge sink pillar, placed the rune stone on the floor, activated it and stepped back as the hissing sound echoed inside the bathroom and the pillar parted, revealing the giant hole. Harry then took out another rune stone that Bart had sent him and activated it. according to Bart this was just a guess that perhaps speaking words like 'open', ' stairs', 'climb', 'path', etcetera would make some sort of path appear down the hole. Harry was prepared to gently slide through the slimy sewer line of a hole in case the rune didn't work but surprisingly it did as long horizontal pillars came out of the walls inside the hole forming a series of stairs that went down. Harry wasted no time as he grabbed everything and climbed down the hole.
It smelled. It smelled like the sewers of a bathroom would smell. Harry didn't know because he had never smelled one but it smelled bad but nothing a bubble-head charm couldn't solve as Harry also threw in a lumos charm ahead of him as it was getting darker as he climbed down the hole.
A good twenty minutes of climbing down later Harry was finally at the bottom of the pit and stepping the foot first off at the base he immediately noticed the tiny bones of rats and other small animals that covered the base of this pit. He immediately did a quick proximity check because now his map was useless as it wasn't designed for this part of the castle because the chamber was unknown to anyone.
He knew he could add this location in the map but that wouldn't be a great idea at the moment. Bart had taught him how the map was constructed and the layers of spells behind it. It was a marvelous invention, a one of a kind that worked exactly like it was designed to and since it was directly and cautiously linked to the wards around the castle it showed location of any and everyone inside the castle and within the vicinity of the castle's wards. But the fact that it didn't show anything about this chamber said two things about it – the first one was that either the chamber was not added into the map because of the fact that no one knew about its existence or the fact that the chamber wasn't actually a part of the castle's wards.
Harry quickly did some complicated wand movements, utilizing both of his wands and the result was soon in front of him. The wards around the chamber was even older than that of the castle. If his guess was right that this chamber existed before the castle itself and the wards would make it more powerful a stronghold. Tis place could prove to be a quite effective bunker in case the castle was attacked. It was probably huge enough to house everyone in the castle also.
Harry walked further ahead, his lumos charm lighting the way when he noticed the huge round iron door with snakes on it. he also didn't miss to see the rather huge discarded skin of the giant basilisk that was supposedly behind that door. He had his hecatolite glasses on just in case. He knew that even with the glasses on he would have to avoid a direct eye contact with the creature because if Benjamin wasn't sure about this basilisk than Harry didn't want to take any chances.
Using the stone he opened the round door and then peaked inside. His surprise knew no bounds as he marveled at the scale of the area on the other side of the door. It looked lik a whole different world down here with seemingly no roof above it. This place could easily house three to four Hogwarts castle easily with space to spare.
Carefully walking down the ladder Harry noticed the place was seemingly flooded with an inch level of water. It was good news as Harry would easily be able to notice any other movement than his own in case someone or something decided to attack him.
Harry no longer needed his lumos spell as he realized this place was rather fairly filled with natural light. He wondered where the light came from but he had bigger problems to worry about. He could see the drag marks of the snake on the floor and they seemed wider than the skin that he had seen while coming here. No doubt that this snake had grown considerably larger. The marks were at least two meters thick and perhaps they were so old that the snake had probably outgrown them. There were lots of assumptions to make as Harry took the assessment of the situation and the place where he was.
He stopped a few yards away from the huge head statue of Salazar Slytherin. It was as if Slytherin thought himself as a dictator or something. This entire place was filled with his statues, the statues of snakes, his heads and whatnot. When carefully examining Harry noticed that the carving for the mouth of the giant statue head seemed separate from the rest of the statue itself it didn't take him any longer to know that the mouth was in fact a door.
Casting an assessment charm on the statue revealed it to be hollow from the inside and a very ancient locking spell on the door. Harry didn't know the key for it as he silently cursed but then took out his parseltongue rune stones and placing them on the floor activated them. He didn't know if they would work but when the rumbling sound filled the chamber he thought that maybe they did. Picking them up he immediately ran and hid behind one of the smaller head statues of Slytherin, the shrunken cage filled with roosters already in his hand.
The door slid open and a moment later Harry could already see the flicking tongue which he guessed was even thicker than his thigh. Half a minute later he saw the huge snake slide out of the mouth of the giant head statue and it was easily at least a hundred and fifty meters in length, not to mention the width of the snake was nowhere near to the marks Harry had seen on the floor. The snake was easily as thick as the Hogwarts express' boiler and that was saying something.
He knew casting any sort of transfiguration or conjuring spells to cover the snake's eyes wouldn't work as nothing magical would work on the snake. But that didn't mean that nothing muggle would not work in here either as Harry fished out a smoke bomb, enlarged it and threw it towards the snake. He then cast a bubblehead charm around his head to protect himself from the smoke which was a mixture of teargas and a very strong sedative designed to bring down animals like wild buffalos and bears.
The basilisk had acute sense of hearing as Harry wouldn't doubt as it immediately turned its head towards where the bomb had landed. It bent down, sniffing at the small gas filled grenade when it exploded. Harry didn't think the snake would get this close but it was in his favor after all.
An ear shattering scream filled the chamber as the snake screamed, thrashing its head from left to right. It seemed the sedative wasn't working but its eyes had definitely turned a very light shade of red. So Harry then threw the cage of roosters, enlarging it in mid-air and then breaking it apart. The clucking sound of the roosters falling on the floor grabbed the basilisk's attention increasing its screams.
Rooster sounds were a poison to its ears.
Harry grabbed the opportunity, taking out the axe and solidifying it with a summoning charm before throwing it towards the basilisk. As soon as Harry was out from his place of hiding and running towards the beast it looked at him. It was only for a millisecond and Harry was wearing the glasses but the glare's effect was felt by him and Harry immediately fell down, his head feeling very light as if there was no weight to it. He realized his nose was bleeding. So this was the power Benjamin was talking about. He also noticed that his hecatolite glasses had already cracked. He used a wind charm and brought a gust of teargas between himself and the snake, buying himself precious seconds in which he somehow managed to stand up, wear another pair of glasses and eyeballing the snake's tail threw the axe towards it with full force.
The axe connected and sliced deep into the snake's take only increasing the snake's scream as it thrashed its tail hard on the ground causing the axe to be thrown away. Harrys imply extended his arm, mentally summoning the axe as it flew back into his hand. This was a useful spell although it had limitations. He only had two rounds of it left before applying another one to it and Harry knew it would cost him valuable time in this situation which he could not risk. So he ran and hid behind another head statue, throwing another teargas bomb towards the basilisk. With the damage done to the snake all Harry had to do now was to cast a powerful spell where the cut was and nothing but the killing curse would do the job perfectly well.
The snake was distracted and Harry realized that because of the roosters its sense of hearing had been affected greatly as it didn't respond to the sound of the second teargas hitting the floor like before.
Harry knew that although the cut he had made was deep but its opening was small which meant he needed to get close to the snake in order for his spell to hit the damaged point. This was risky as one hit from that huge tail and Harry would break every bone in his body if he didn't immediately died from the impact.
Making sure the silencing spell was still intact in his legs he made a run towards the tail as the snake was still disoriented from the roosters and the teargas bomb. Once close enough Harry threw the axe at the tail, amplifying its speed with a spell once he had thrown it. The axe hit dead into the tail, cutting it in two. Harry cast a shield in sudden movement regretting it later as the Basilisk threw its tail towards Harry in retaliation without even knowing that Harry was there.
Harry's shied broke as if it wasn't even there and Harry's two hands took in the full force of the tackle of that tail. He felt the sharp pain which didn't needed to tell him that his arms were broken. He was thrown away but managed to somehow use wandless magic to cushion down his fall to some extent. He groaned in pain as the snake thrashed around. Harry knew he needed to finish it off as he mentally summoned the axe before throwing it towards the snake's head using wandless magic hoping to hit it but he didn't. He missed and regretted it. The summoning charm had worn off with the last throw and Harry was out of teargas bombs as well. Using wandless magic he pushed himself on to his feet and applied a jelly-leg charm on his left hand. At least that would give him some control over his hand as he leveled his wand towards the tail section of the snake.
The fact that this chamber was not linked to the wards of the castle was a good thing as casting this spell inside the wards of the caste would've alerted McGonagall. The green spell left Harry's wand, tearing through the smoke and hitting the snake's skin. It dissipated like nothing. Harry cursed, throwing another killing curse at it and missing again. It didn't help the fact that the snake had now noticed his location and was now heading towards him. Harry ignored the direction of the snake's eyes as his lightheadedness increased with each passing moment when something came into his mind. He changed the direction of his wand and threw a spell towards the roosters. It hit some of them and the basilisk fell down, screaming in agony.
Harry had quickly cast a sound amplifying charm on the roosters increasing their cries. The time that it gave him was god as Harry wasted no moment in casting a well-aimed killing curse at the cut section of the basilisk's tail where it spread throughout the snake's body killing it in an instant. Harry fired a few more just to be sure before casting a spell to make sure that the snake was actually dead. One couldn't be too sure around basilisk.
Carefully walking towards the beast Harry took out the vials he had brought with himself and also picked up the axe before using it to cut open the snake's closed mouth. With the monster dead and a spell destroying its ability to resist magic it was now easy to use any spells on the snake as Harry then used an extraction charm to pull out some venom from the snake's glands and stored it in the vials. He extracted more than enough before extracting some more to cover the axe just like Benjamin had requested. The man would be very happy.
Once getting what he had come here for Harry conjured a cage and put back whatever roosters were alive and hadn't been crushed under the snake and shrank it back into his pocket. He carefully placed the axe and the vials in a dragon leather pouch before securing it with several layers of protection charms before casting a rotting charm on the basilisk that would disintegrate the huge mass of this now dead snake within a week or two. Harry thought about coming back here once in a while.
By the time Harry returned back it was already morning and the sun was rising on the horizon. With his two broken arms it was a good thing that it was a weekend as he could rest and let his arms heal. He had the necessary healing potions for that although he would have to go to Pomfrey for his other hand which he had turned to rubber. A simple innocent excuse would be enough to make her believe in his young and curious mind. But first a few letters and packages were in order to be sent to Bart and Benjamin. Harry also wanted to be there when they destroyed the horcruxes.
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A/N: Thanks for reading…