The cauldron went off like a pipe bomb. Most potions were already dangerous when left on the heat for too long. Being part of a dark magic revivification ritual couldn't have made this one less temperamental. Even with my shield up, I was flung back into the wall behind me and briefly staggered. Lockhart and Macnair at ground zero didn't stand a chance.
Unfortunately, the basilisk was also fine. It was far enough away and tough enough that it hissed in pain from being hit by explosively-accelerated cauldron chunks, but didn't actually seem to be harmed, even though the crates and chair half the distance between ground zero and the snake were reduced to splinters. Good snake. Nice snake. Simple, stupid snake made of super-durable, magic-resistant scales that wouldn't come after me without orders. Right?
I felt bad for Lockhart. The guy may have turned out to be a prick, but his fans, at least, would have deserved an open-casket funeral.
My brain was already considering this a victory while shifting toward how to get out of this room without inspiring the basilisk to think of me as a target. But then I heard it. After enough encounters, I was discovering that Voldemort as a wraith almost had a particular noise, like barely-heard horror movie ghostly sound effects. So I wasn't exactly surprised to see the black, smokey form congeal out of the haze of flash-evaporated potion fumes where the cauldron had been.
He actually spent a moment taking stock of the near-crater he appeared in, working out what must have happened. After a moment, his eyes, deeper dark pools within the spectral form, looked toward me and his unearthly voice explained, "I hate you ssso much."
"I… actually, you're not even at the top of my list, man," I shrugged, pulling out my Apologies focus so I could summon a patronus if he tried to possess me again. "Kind of hard to hate someone who you've seen as a creepy baby. Pitiful, really."
McGonagall was going to be so mad I was still needling the guy. Hopefully she'd survived and would be able to chastise me. I figured, though, maybe if more people had brought him down a peg over the years, he'd have been less of a megalomaniac.
"You think you've won," he glowered. "But with no Dumbledore and no need to be sssubtle, why ssshouldn't I unleasssh dessstruction upon Hogwartsss? Let the basssilisssk reign until I am, inevitably, ressstored?"
Well, crap, I'd kind of hoped he couldn't command the big snake in this form. I tried a stalling tactic, "And just how sure are you that there's no Dumbledore? The guy's a planner. Doesn't share information. This whole thing could be to put someone in position to find your Chamber of Secrets and end the threat of your monster once and for all…"
Honestly, after saying it, it didn't seem that far out of the realm of possibility. During the previous attack, Fawkes had showed up so fast that I couldn't even really be sure the Headmaster had been truly paralyzed. I hadn't seen it for myself. And even if he was, surely he'd had a plan for if someone managed to take him out? We'd done okay with the rest of the old crowd at the Wizengamot with him missing.
With the old crowd. At the Wizengamot. Where Moody had happened to bump into me on the side where I'd felt some cloth object I didn't remember putting in my belt…
I yanked the cloth bundle that I'd passed over a minute before out with my left hand, glancing down at what unfurled into the Sorting Hat. "The… hell?" I baffled, shrugging and pulling the thing onto my head. I thought at it, "Hey, Hat, do you know what's going on?"
"Took you long enough," the seemingly-sapient magic clothing graveled at me. "No weapons. Facing down great danger. No plan. Making jokes even though you're terrified. That's about what we expected. Take this, then put me back on."
"Ow!" I winced as something metal and heavy clocked me on the top of the head. I yanked the hat off, stowed my focus, and drew a whole freaking broadsword out of the undetectable extension charm that was apparently part of the hat. It was gleaming, rune-etched silver and festooned with rubies, but seemed no less deadly for the ostentation. The name Godric Gryffindor was distinct from the enchanting runes etched by the hilt.
Well that was cool.
"The sssword!" Voldemort hissed. "The lassst treasssure I couldn't find! We will take it from your corpssse!" And, with that, hissing in that echoing magic that seemed to command the basilisk, the wraith dived at its head. Great. A Voldemort-possessed giant snake was even worse than him giving it orders.
I pulled the hat back on my head and it told me, "Yank me down around your eyes." I did so, and suddenly the room went from true sight to an almost-painted scene. It was like the hat was sending me a colorful sketch of what it saw in the room.
And the hat was just a clever magical object, not a person, so it could look at basilisk eyes all day without a problem.
It took me a few stumbling steps to adjust to seeing the room as interpreted by Don Bluth, but the hat could also apparently see in the dark, so that made it a lot easier to get a sense of the whole room. Long chamber, snake columns to either side, Slytherin carving at the far end, exit at the other end? Worth a shot.
The immense, possessed snake began to build its implacable momentum as I ran, trying to juke between columns to get it to follow me. But, with Voldemort driving, it wasn't easy to fake out. All the slalom did was slow me down. I broke right and dashed across the floor, hoping it at least couldn't corner well in all that bulk, sword held out to the side trying not to cut my own legs off. It was a cool weapon, but I'd prefer a focus.
"It is a focus, Dresden" the hat told me, sarcastically.
Right! Thinking back to the very first time I'd met McGonagall and explained my problems with wands, Dumbledore had mentioned that Godric Gryffindor preferred to cast with sword and rod. And if this was the sword… "Depulso!" I incanted, hoping to banish myself ahead.
And it worked. Maybe better than my staff. I sent myself on a mighty, flailing leap across the chamber. Which was good, because the snake could corner pretty fast. I even stuck the landing, with a bit of a stumble on the wet stones.
But the hat-augmented vision of the other end of the chamber showed two immense stone doors shut fast and no obvious way to exit. I could maybe knock them open with some blasting charms, but not while being chased by the snake. Without Voldemort driving, I'd have tried to dive at the last second to see if I could get it to crush open the doors, but with how he cornered, it seemed unlikely.
Okay, what did I have? Lots of room to maneuver for both me and the giant snake, check. Magic sword that worked as a focus for unknown spells, check. Magic hat that protected me from basilisk vision but not its terrifying bulk, magic resistance, or venom that couldn't be neutralized by anything short of a phoenix, check.
"Look, you're going to have to put some of your own work in," grumbled the hat, following my mental checklist.
"Any ideas on what kind of spells Godric could cast with the sword, rather than the rod?" I thought at it, while banishing myself at another oblique angle into the side of the room I'd started tied up in. "What spells did they even have back then?"
"It's goblin-forged," the hat offered. "It increases in power by being used in battle and imbibes that which strengthens it, so it's likely picked up some new tricks when it's had to be used against other wizards over the years. But mostly sword-relevant magic?"
"So only slightly cheatery?" I thought at the hat. "If this counts as inheriting, probably very good against werewolves, too," I mused about the silver blade, before getting down to it. Wild Bill and I had been working on what spells a knife could use for Millicent's focus all year, so I had some ideas.
"Diffindo!" I tried, lashing against a snake column as I ran past. It, indeed, left a mighty gash in the stone, but not nearly deep enough to topple it on the snake in the time I had available. "Sectumsempra!" I tried, not-quite-blindly trying Snape's spell on the beast hissing like an angry locomotive behind me. It, again, worked, but even the powerful cutting curse splashed off of the snake's magic resistant scales.
I was running out of room on my side of the gallery, and I nearly tripped in detritus from the cauldron explosion, including some organic bits I probably shouldn't think much about. Running out between the columns, I banished myself again, barely clearing a shallow pool of water where the ground of the chamber had settled near Salazar Slytherin, which gave me a moment to try Wild Bill's favorite trick, "Focus retractum!" The variation on the seize-and-pull charm allowed me to fling the sword at the snake, still connected by a line of light that would let me yank it back.
It definitely bit into a scale but didn't slide in like butter as I'd hoped. The basilisk reared up and roared. Snakes shouldn't be able to roar. I also didn't cut my arm off as I willed the sword to return to my hand along its magical tether, so that was a bonus. As it reared back, I remembered the scales that had been prized off from beneath its head for the ritual.
"Hat, double-check me here, is this really dumb?" I wondered.
"Maybe?" it wavered. "It's no dumber than things I remember Godric doing. There's a reason I put you in the house I did."
With that ringing endorsement for ye olde Gryffindor stupidity echoing through my brain, I did the last thing any wizard expects, even when they aren't currently piloting a multi-ton death machine.
I charged.
Now, I knew a little bit of how to use a sword in theory, from Moody's melee combat lessons (which, I groaned internally as I realized, were also likely preparing me for this eventuality). And my battlecry was, "Lumos solem!" to cause my amulet to blaze with a light as bright as sunlight. It didn't seem to quite unravel the dark magic of the snake as well as true sunlight, but it certainly made it unhappy enough to avert its eyes and rear further back. So this wasn't really a St. George and the dragon situation, I told myself. Maybe an Alice and the Jabberwock situation?
Don't get crushed. Don't get bitten. Sword goes there. Snicker-snack!
My height was a big asset with how high the snake had pulled its head up, and I managed to nail the right spot (the handy little targeting circle the hat painted onto the vision was also extremely helpful). With the missing scales, the blade slid in with only a little desperate pressure and into the skull above—which was fortunately less protected against magic swords than the outer armor. I thought I faintly heard a venom sac pop in the roof of the basilisk's mouth, then the silver went right into its brain.
And I only got slightly hit by the suddenly spasming snake head. It certainly didn't nail me hard enough to fling me several yards onto the hard floor where I narrowly avoided a concussion. That was a tactical retreat and nobody can prove otherwise, except maybe the hat.
I'm pretty sure he's not allowed to share other people's secrets.
Regardless, I skittered back some more. A fifty-foot long, multi-ton snake in its death throes is not something you want to be anywhere near. It was also flinging caustic venom out of the corners of its stapled-shut mouth. I hastily shielded just to be sure nothing spattered me.
Finally, the basilisk stopped struggling and went still, the head almost upside down on the floor, offering me the Sword of Gryffindor like some particularly gruesome Excalibur. But this time I was ready and not willing to give Voldemort another chance for mischief, so rather than walking up I fished out the unicorn-horn focus and summoned my patronus.
"See you next time," I waved mockingly to the shadowy wraith that extricated itself from the body before Mouse once again gave a silent bark, the wash of patronus energy expelling the evil spirit from Hogwarts for the second time in less than a year.
They should have been paying me fees as a Ghostbuster, I swear.
