Ch 18 Secrets of The Chamber of Secrets
Friday, May 6, the morning the Daily Prophet arrived, with a big headline, Scorpius Malfoy Kills Six Basilisks. Underneath that was a smaller headline, Scorpius, Albus Potter and their friends discover a way into the Chamber of Secrets.
The Daily Prophet featured a photograph of Scorpius standing proudly with the Sword of Gryffindor in his hand, the dead two-meter-long basilisk with its head and tail cut off at his feet.
Throughout the day students stopped Scorpius to congratulate him. Scorpius knew killing the basilisks was a joint effort, but his attempts to say so were interpreted as humility. It was only in Slytherin that some students seemed to treat him as someone who had done something wrong instead of something heroic.
Albus apologized to Cleopatra as soon as he saw her. "I am embarrassed that the newspaper did not highlight your part in finding the chamber, Cleo. I am sorry if I didn't stress enough how central you were to finding the chamber."
"That's all right, Albus," Cleo replied. "They didn't say anything about Galadriel's wand and how important it was to opening the door either. I think Scorpius needs to be the hero here." She looked over at her friend who shook his head.
"I do not deserve to be a big hero," Scorpius protested.
Albus countered putting his arm around Scorpius' shoulders, "You are sounding just like my dad. He says the papers give him credit for things the other Aurors do. Sometimes when people thank you, the only proper response is, 'you are welcome.' You did kill the basilisks, after all. We all know you had help, but just acknowledge the thanks and keep acknowledging the help." Scorpius just sighed but nodded his head in agreement.
Friday afternoon after classes Albus, Scorpius, Cleo and Rose were at the door to the Chamber of Secrets. Galadriel was with them, and Albus, Cleo and Galadriel all examined the charms on the doorway.
After a few moments of examining the mantel, Cleo asked, "Do these spells feel brittle to you?"
Galadriel replied, "A little unstable, maybe."
"What would happen if we put a hole in them, put a hole in the spell right at the doorway?" Albus wondered.
"How?" Galadriel asked.
The group thought for a few moments, when Rose remembered the other entrance and suggested, "With that drill that Auror used in Myrtle's bathroom?"
Albus nodded yes that could work.
Harry had assigned Department of Magic Law Enforcement personnel, usually a patrol officer, to stand guard over the doorway. The guard on duty told the students, "I am not sure how you could get permission to have Greg Cooper come with the drill."
"Oh, I'll just call my father," Albus casually replied. He proceeded to take out the fully functional Magic/Muggle mobile that he was not supposed to be using until he was a seventh year student, and rang up his father.
"Hi, dad.
"We are standing at the door to the Chamber of Secrets, and Cleopatra and Galadriel both think the spell keeping anyone but Slytherin from crossing the threshold are old and, Cleo calls them brittle, Galadriel calls them unstable. We should be able to drill through them."
…
"No, we have not opened the door. We are not going to until there are Aurors and other adults around.
"Tomorrow, after breakfast? We will be there.
"I do not think there is any reason for you to be here. You can get here quickly enough from the Potter/Weasley box at the Harpies game.
"I promise, dad, that we will not go in by ourselves. We will wait for you and the other adults.
…
"Thank you, dad. Good Bye."
Harry called Greg Cooper, the Auror who most often used the Magical/Muggle contraptions that Angelina's Angel Armor came up with, and explained the situation to him. Greg called Albus, and they agreed to meet Saturday morning.
Friday evening Narcissa Malfoy placed a Floo call to Molly Weasley, and then came over. "Can you have Harry Potter come over," Narcissa asked her friend.
Molly took out her Magic/Muggle mobile and placed a call. "Harry, could you come over to the New Burrow, please. Narcissa wants to talk to us. … I will tell her you will be her in about fifteen minutes."
"Would you like a cup of tea?" Molly asked Narcissa.
"Yes, please," Narcissa replied. She sat quietly drinking her tea, and Molly sat drinking tea with her, not pushing Narcissa to say anything until she was ready.
Harry came through the Floo about fifteen minutes after the phone call.
"Thank you for coming, Harry," Narcissa started. "About five this afternoon Niles Hanley came through the Floo, mad as a dragon who has had an egg stolen. He and Draco went into Draco's private office, what was Lucius's private office until he was sent to prison. About an hour later Draco came out of the office alone.
"Harry, I cannot read my son any more. Draco was upset, but why I cannot tell you. I don't like it that people go into that office and do not come out of it, or come out of it even though they have not entered. Just a few people, too."
"Do you remember who?" Harry asked.
"I think I do," Narcissa thought. "I think it would be William Bulstrode, Niles Hanley, Arthur Lestrange, James Rosier and Edward Yaxley. At least those are the five the last few years. Their fathers may have been the ones meeting with Lucius, and there has been a transition, I think. I think that the same thing was happening when Lucius and I were first married, with Lucius's father. I know that it is only men who have ever gone in and not come out, or come out without having gone in. Once in a while it is a father and son, but only after the son has graduated from Hogwarts."
"This is a tremendous help," Harry confirmed. "It may take a while, maybe even years, but this information confirms some other information. Thank you."
"You are most welcome, Harry," Narcissa said. "That is all I have for you."
"I'll leave you and Mum then," Harry replied. He kissed his mother-in-law and left through the Floo.
Saturday morning Greg Cooper and another person from the DMLE arrived at Hogwarts with the drill and a large container that said "80/20" on the side. They met Albus, Scorpius, Rose and Cleo in the corridor and they walked to the guard who was at the doorway of the Chamber of Secrets. Also present were Orion Ollivander, Galadriel and her sister Luthien, and Thorin the Goblin. Professor McGonagall was there, along with Gabriel Habsburg and his wife, Hermeli, the Aurors who lived in the Hogwarts castle. Professor Olivia Ollivander was also there, looking like she had been ordered to be there. Professor Ollivander was obviously not happy, showing it by glowering at the wall or the floor.
Gabriel Habsburg examined the closed door with his wand, and then told Albus, "You may open the door."
Everyone had their wands out, as Albus, Cleo and Galadriel put their wands up to the door and opened it.
"Olivia, go in and make sure nothing has changed," professor McGonagall ordered.
A surly professor Ollivander went into the corridor, and fifteen minutes later was out. "Everything looks the same," she griped. "Waste of time," she muttered under her breath. Minerva glared at her, and she flinched at Minerva's sharp look.
Once the professor was out, Greg looked at the open doorway, and examined it with his wand. He had Albus and his friends go through the doorway, and tried to himself. "I need to place the holes reasonably precisely," he explained, as he took out lengths of aluminum with joints and other gadgets.
"Is that a Muggle or a magical device?" Albus pondered as he watched the man work with the lengths of aluminum.
"The parts are mostly Muggle, but we can get custom lengths out of this package, and duplicate joiners and other things magically," Greg explained. "If I make a framework first I can more precisely place the holes."
Greg and his helper assembled an extruded aluminum framework the same size as the door, with devices on it to allow Greg to precisely hold the drill in position. Once Greg had drilled a big hole he could put his hand through it. He eventually drilled through the entire perimeter of the doorway, and once he had finished anyone could walk through the doorway.
There was a small portion of the doorway above the aluminum framework. Cleo asked for a chair to stand on, and once she was on the chair started to poke at the area above the framework, sometimes with her wand, sometimes just with her hand. Eventually Cleo remarked, "I think the spell is broken."
Cleo climbed off the chair, and Galadriel mounted it. After feeling around, she agreed.
The Aluminum framework had the magical drill bits all around it. Greg started to remove them, one at a time, as he and Rose tried to go into and out of the doorway. Apparently the spell was broken, because anyone could now go through the doorway and into the passageway, even after the magical drill holes were removed.
Greg took his Magic/Muggle Mobile out and called Harry.
"The spell is broken," Greg told his boss.
"Tell everyone that I will be there after lunch," Harry advised. "The game is not all that good, and Ginny doesn't need me here. I will meet my son and his friends, plus Minerva and other members of the staff, at the doorway about one-thirty."
"I'm going to pack up the framework I've set up and go home, then," Greg let Harry know.
After lunch Harry, Minerva, Professor Olivia Ollivander and Oliver Oddpick met with Albus, Rose, Scorpius and Cleopatra, plus the Elves Galadriel and Luthien and the Goblin Thorin, outside the door to the Chamber of Secrets. Orion Ollivander was also there, as, Albus explained, lead prefect in Slytherin. Gabriel Habsburg and his wife, Hermeli, the Hogwarts Aurors, were also there.
Harry was accompanied by Dobedo, his Elf shadow and guard, but also Jim Shook, the Auror in charge of guarding the Potter/Weasley family.
The assembled crowd slowly and carefully entered the chamber, the adults first. Harry let the Habsburg's go first, followed by Jim Snook.
"I have not led a raid since joining the Aurors, Albus," Harry told his son. "Prophesies say you will be important to the world of the Magi. Don't go first into these types of situations!"
"Yes, dad," Albus sighed. His father was right. They should have called for help once they found out that they could open that door.
They seemed to be entering via a back way. One door led to the imposing main chamber, with an oversized statue of Salazar Slytherin at one end. There was an underground stream running through the chamber, with fish swimming in it. Another door led to a room that had apparently been used to raise the basilisk. There were at least two passageways out of this room, one a tunnel just a little larger in diameter than the diameter of the basilisk, another one much smaller.
"How did the large basilisk eat and survive in here?" Harry pondered, looking at the size of the tunnel. He remembered the huge basilisk he had to kill.
Thorin looked at the tunnel, and examined it with his wand. He said something in Elfish to Galadriel, who also examined the tunnel. Then Thorin told the group, "There is some magic in both of these tunnels to attract small animals into them. I would guess that the original large basilisk survived for years with magic causing it to need very little to eat. There are also fish in the stream, and the basilisk could eat fish and drink water from the stream."
Behind the statue there was another room, behind a closed door. This door resisted the attempts of most people to open it, but eventually Galadriel, Thorin, and Albus used their wands together, and the door opened.
"Where did those wands come from?" Olivia Ollivander asked Galadriel and Thorin. "Who made them?"
"We have been ordered not to talk about our wands," Galadriel insisted, ignoring the Professor and moving her wand to hid it from her view.
"There are people in Switzerland who know about those wands," Harry confirmed as he moved to block the woman's view, "and the less said about them the better. Please do not ask again." He gave her a stern look of warning.
Professor Ollivander gave everyone there a dirty look. Professor McGonagall returned the look with one of her own. You could feel the tension between the two professors.
The room looked like a working office, with books and parchments. It also looked like it had been left in a hurry.
Harry and Minerva looked at some of the book titles, and shook their heads 'no.'
"Everyone out," Professor McGonagall ordered.
"Can you make it so Professor McGonagall and I can open this door?" Harry asked.
The three students put their wands up to the door. Galadriel then touched first Harry Potter's wand, and then Minerva McGonagall's. Both of them tried and succeeded in opening and closing the door.
"You should be able to allow other wands to open this door as well," Galadriel told Harry and Minerva. "We can do the same for the door to the chamber. Elves can Apparate into the Chamber of Secrets, but not so easily into this room.
Everybody spend about half an hour going over the rest of the Chamber, but did not find anything else significant. When everyone was in the hall, Harry closed the door, and then asked, "Can you please do the same thing for this door, make it so we can open it?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Potter," Galadriel replied, and Galadriel proceeded to touch both Professor McGonagall's wand and the wand of Harry Potter. They all ignored Professor Ollivander's huff of aggravation.
After dismissing the rest of the people who had gone into the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall, and the Habsburgs met in Minerva's office, along with Sidney Stanford, the longtime professor of Defense against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.
Harry started by observing, "I am sure I saw a well-used copy of 'Secrets of the Darkest Art' in that chamber. That book should not even be available in the restricted section of the library."
"That is not the only book that should be kept locked up and unavailable," Minerva muttered. "Some of those books were not all that old. Tom Riddle must have used that office."
"Who can we get to look over the material in that office?" Harry wondered.
"I do not want Ollivander near that room!" Minerva exclaimed. "Sidney, as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, you should be the one taking care of that material."
Sidney spent a moment seemingly pondering the situation, before confessing, "I have a whole bookcase of dark magic. A thousand years of Defense against the Dark Arts professors compiled dark spells and curses and the counter-spell or antidote. I think I have found all of them, but it has taken twenty years to find them all.
"I think I need to add this collection to the list. I am compiling a book of counter-curses. Harry and most of the Auror Departments in the world have copies, as do many of the Defense against the Dark Arts professors. The schools I trust have sent me curses and the counter-curse as well. I will have to admit I have not shared the information with a few schools that I do not trust."
"What happens if something happens to you?" Harry wondered.
"My wife knows all the spells to access the bookcase and information, and it is in our private quarters, not the classroom," Sidney told the group. "If something happens to both of us, Minerva has an envelope with information on where the bookcase is, and how to get into it."
Harry was the last to leave Minerva's office. Before he did, Harry mused, "Only someone from Slytherin could go into the chamber until the spell was broken."
"From what I could see," Minerva confirmed.
"Except for Cleopatra?" Harry asked.
Minerva looked at Harry, obviously puzzled.
"I want to ask the Sorting Hat if someone could be in more than one house," Harry proposed.
Minerva pointed out where the hat was stored, and Harry put it on.
"Mr. Sorting Hat," Harry said out loud. "Can someone be in more than one house?"
"What are you asking?" the Sorting Hat replied.
"Cleopatra was sorted into Gryffindor, but when there were wards protecting an area from everyone but Slytherin students she could go in. Is she in two houses?"
"Did she go in with Albus?" the hat asked.
"Yes," Harry replied.
"That explains it," the hat replied, and refused to say any more, much to Harry's annoyance.
"Does that explain it?" Harry asked Minerva when he could get no more from the hat.
"No," Minerva sighed. "Cleopatra is by far the strangest student I have encountered in all the years I have been at Hogwarts, and I taught Luna Lovegood and her father." The two had a fond chuckle at that.
"Dad would kill me if he knew I was going to church," Scorpius remarked as he headed to the Saturday evening church services with Albus. "I received an owl from grandmother Malfoy congratulating me for killing the basilisk, saying great-grandmother Black also was proud of me, but nothing from my father or his mother my great-grandmother Malfoy. It is like if I do anything good they are mad at me."
"At least you have some people at your house who love you and approve of what you do," Albus volunteered. "The Muggles my dad was raised with all hated him. Uncle Dursley is always apologizing for how he treated dad, but I don't think Uncle Dursley's mother has. I guess I saw her at Uncle Dursley's father's funeral, but not since. Uncle Dursley is married to a witch, and I am almost sure his children are going to be going to Hogwarts in a few years.
"I like Uncle and Aunt Dursley. I like their three children. We see then at the pond, and Perri, she is the oldest, she says they almost never see grandmother Dursley, and her grandmother hates magic."
"I like nice families," Cleo sighed. "That is what is so great about your family, Albus. You have a big, happy family!"
"Everybody has two grandparents except us," Albus noted, as he shook his head. "There are so many Weasley's it makes up for it, I guess, but it is still hard on dad sometimes."
"All I have is my grandmother Granger, and she is getting old," Rose remarked. "Muggles do not live as long as Magi."
"I hope I get to meet my family someday," Cleo muttered.
By this time, they were in the moderate sized room they used for Christian church services. Cleo played on her portable organ, and Albus played his guitar, for the services. They had assembled a small choir to lead the singing, but most of the songs were sung by the congregation.
When the service was finished, Scorpius and Rose went up to talk to Bishop Apollo Scherica. Scorpius asked, "What should I say when people try to make me a big hero for something, like, like killing the basilisk. Once I was there with the sword I really didn't have a choice."
"You stay humble," Apollo replied. "A wise Christian author, C.S. Lewis, said that humility did not consist in beautiful people saying they were ugly or smart people saying they were dumb. Humility is more an honest evaluation of ourselves, acknowledging the people who help us, and the people who taught us. Something like, 'I did not do it by myself, but thank you' is not a bad way to respond."
"I guess," Scorpius replied. "My father is upset unless I'm bragging, I think. He is not much for humility."
"I do not know his whole history," Apollo remarked, "but from what I know you have demonstrated more courage than your father ever did. Besides, you have good friends, and if you let them they will keep you humble."
"Thank you, Bishop Scherica," Scorpius declared. "I want to be good, and I think going to church and listening to the lessons her will help me be good."
As they walked away, Rose approved of what Scorpius had said. "I'm really proud of you, Scorpius, for working so hard to be good. It is easier when you are taught to be good. It has to be harder when you are taught something else."
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