Checking that the eyes of the snake were well and permanently closed, I pulled the Sorting Hat back up to normal hat position and adjusted to the dim light in the room again as I painfully pulled myself to my feet. Maybe, I mused, I should actually check in with Madam Pomfrey, before I shook some important tendons fully loose.

It took my foot and some leverage to yank the sword out of the snake and prove myself the true and rightful king of the Chamber of Secrets. I watched as greenish poison disappeared into the blade while the blood and brain matter just sloughed off, once again leaving a pristine weapon. "You said something about imbibing that which strengthens it. So does this thing have basilisk venom powers now?"

"Could be. Might have had them before?" the hat basically gave me a verbal shrug. "I just hang onto it between outings, and I'm not always kept up-to-date on what it's been doing."

"Fair enough," I told him as I limped over to retrieve Ravenclaw's diadem. "You want another founder's artifact to add to your collection?"

"Hover me over it," the hat suggested, and I did so, not exactly keen to even touch the mind-controlling artifact if I didn't have to. The hat wriggled away when it got within an inch, and I popped it back on my own head. "Whatever that is, I don't want it in me. Either cleanse it or destroy it."

I seriously thought about trying to destroy it right there. But I knew one very talented Ravenclaw witch who would be extremely upset with me if I didn't give her the chance to cleanse her house's artifact. And, honestly, as far as we'd gotten on our next soulfire spell, I thought there might be a chance it could work.

So, instead, I gingerly used my unicorn-horn focus to pick it up and drop it into the belt pouch that had previously held the hat. And I guessed I'd have to use tongs to pull it back out. I certainly wasn't putting my hand in.

From there, it was just the boring process of escaping from the Chamber of Secrets. Without a basilisk chasing me, it really wasn't that difficult. Tom Riddle had been about my age when he'd made the thing after all, so the doors weren't exactly spell-reinforced. If I'd had my blasting rod, I would have been out in moments. Instead, it took a couple minutes to chalk the exploding charm as a ritual circle on the door. Worked rather like a shaped charge.

Then it took me another few minutes to transfigure a hole through the cave-in the magical explosion had caused in the next room. Young Tom Riddle had apparently not studied structural engineering.

A little more hiking through the cave system and I had to groan. Really? A giant slide? I guessed it was easier on the basilisk than stairs, but still. The next time I talked to the guy, I was going to ask him if he said "Wheeee!" every time he visited. Fortunately, the sword was able to support enough motion-related spells that I was able to basically banish myself up the slide.

I am a powerful wizard, officially an adult, and very serious about… I can't even try to finish that sentence. Of course I said, "Wheeee!"

One more chalked-ritual-shaped-charge and I emerged from the door above the slide into… Myrtle's bathroom. Chunks of the "nonfunctional" sink (and its neighbors) littered the floor, and I suddenly realized how much I'd overcomplicated my search for the basilisk. It wasn't a special snake rune that I needed to find other instances of, it was a kid going, "I put the snake behind this one." I wanted to kick myself, but I thought Myrtle was going to do it for me.

"Harry Dresden! You blew up my loo!"

"I… umm…" I tried to strike a heroic pose with the sword. "I killed the basilisk that killed you (more or less)?"

The floating ghost stared at me for a moment through her giant glasses before finally nodding, "Well. Okay, then. But I want it fixed!"

"Yes ma'am," I nodded. Honestly, Filch might be more angry at me.

Not long after leaving the bathroom, I ran into Mathilda and the Weasley twins, who had been having their own adventure dealing with Nott and the imperiused Professor Belby. That all sorted, I limped up to the seventh floor after the three of them, all of us hoping to find Professor McGonagall in the Room of Requirement.

The fact that the door was still there gave me some hope that the room didn't consider itself empty. "This place is a mess!" Mathilda exclaimed, upon catching a look at it. "How are we going to find her?"

I oriented myself and said, "I think it was over this way," before heading off to where I thought the aisle of cabinets had been before it got crushed beneath a sea of detritus.

Hoping we were digging in the right place, the four of us made quick work of the pile (more because of the three of them, who could easily cast levitation charms; the most precise I could get was banishing boxes off the top with the sword). We finally unearthed the wardrobe-sized piece of furniture that I thought I'd seen her fly into. Hoping I wasn't about to discover her mangled body, I carefully opened the doors.

I felt a pop of magic and was sure the professor just appeared as I opened the door. She even fell an inch or so to hit the back wall (currently laying mostly horizontal on the pile of trash). "That was… powerfully strange," she opined, blinking away disorientation.

"Did you meet Mr. Tumnus?" I asked. Mathilda didn't even get that reference, though I was sure the Chronicles of Narnia were due for a movie adaptation one of these days.

"This isn't a wardrobe, Hoss," McGonagall scoffed at me. I was surprised she got the reference, though I guess the books must have come out when she was fairly young. "I think this might be a vanishing cabinet, actually," she decided, after looking it over. "Fortunately broken, or who knows where I could have ended up. Still. Probably not safe to have inside the school. Is that the Sword of Gryffindor?" she boggled, finally noticing what I was holding.

"Turns out there was a two for one sale on founders' relics?" I joked, then asked, more seriously, "I guess that means you weren't in on Dumbledore's plan to turn me into a basilisk slayer?"

"He left notes to make sure I got the hat to Alastor," she nodded at my headwear, "But I'd hoped that was just for planning purposes. Do you mean to tell me that Albus planned for you to fight a basilisk with a sword?"

I shrugged, "Seems like it?"

"When we get that old man unparalyzed," she growled. Taking in the amusement of four of her students, she stepped the rest of the way out of the broken vanishing cabinet, visibly got control of her temper, and asked, "Is everyone alright?"

"Lockhart didn't make it," I told her, mostly regretfully.

"Professor Belby may need to go to the infirmary. For miscellaneous prank item damage," Mathilda shrugged.

"We're both injured and traumatized," Fred suggested, though he looked perfectly fine.

"We'll probably need at least a week off of classes," George grinned.

"Then it's fortunate you have a week left for your holidays then," the professor deadpanned, clearly realizing everything was basically fine if the twins could try to "skive off" classes. "Shame about poor Gilderoy. Albus will be upset he didn't fix the wards in time."

"To be fair, he was trying to memory charm me to pretend he had been the one to defeat the basilisk. Before the basilisk had actually been defeated. He'd apparently been doing that all year every time I gave him some advice about his class." I explained.

That took her aback a bit, then she just shook her head. "Well, let's add that to the list of things for Poppy to check out. Follow me to the infirmary, all. I'll award points when we're all feeling better." As she started to lead the way, she muttered, too low for the other three to hear, "Defense professors. At least I already know what's wrong with Remus."

"Hey! He was memory charming me!" I suddenly realized as I followed her out for the long trek down to the hospital wing. "I probably won all those practice duels with Lockhart!"