My only regret is that I might've made Snape too nice.

Salazar Slytherin would probably be spinning in his grave, wherever that is.

No matter how well constructed, fortified, and enchanted the lord of snakes' little hide-away under the school was, it is still ugly, monochrome, and actually pretty boring.

So that's why we decided to spruce it up a bit.

To be honest, Ginny's brother came up with the idea after our first practice. But I'll get to that later.

We started off simple, spending about a half-hour going back-and-forth with some basic spells: the Stunner, the Disarming Spell, and the Knockback Jinx. Mostly to get into the swing of things. I was a little rusty after having the summer off, in addition to the rather irritating magical lockdown, courtesy of Umbridge.

We split off into groups of three: Potter, Granger, and Ginny's brother in one group, Luna, I, and Ginny in the other. To be honest, I'm not sure if it's because we three know each other best, or if it's just easier to group by age.

After about fifteen minutes of continuous casting, he called for a break, and we all sat down to rest up for a bit.

And that's when the brother chimed in.

"Since we're using this place as a clubhouse, why don't we make it into one?" was his suggestion.

Now, there was a small clamour of dismay from Ginny and Granger, but they didn't know what Potter and I knew: namely, that the big entry chamber isn't the only room in this complex. After all, this place extends under the entire school, not just under the bathroom. In fact, when we were looking for Ginny last year, we found at least a half-dozen different rooms of varying sizes.

If there was truly only one room in here, then I'd be against it too: at least until we smashed up that godawful statue.

So, we brought that up, much to everyone else's surprise. (Ginny colored a bit when she was mentioned. Seems she's still a bit embarrassed about the whole kidnapping thing.)

So, while we recovered our temporarily-depleted magical reserves, we did another sweep through the lower chambers, in search of a new room to convert.

After all, even if we weren't going to use it often, it'd be good to have a place to hide away. If worse came to worst, we'd have a place to hide while the heat died down.

The only problem would be finding a way out, but if the Basilisk was able to sneak out as well as it did three years ago, I'm certain we'd find a way to discreetly exit the chamber at will. I'm not sure if I'll be the one to find said way, but I'm certain we will eventually find it.

Either way, about five minutes into the search, we came across a room that was good enough for our purposes. It was, what, fourty feet square of empty floor space? I think. Might be bigger, I didn't really have a way of measuring with me.

Anyway. It was reasonably big, relatively dry compared to the rest of the place, and even better, it had another connected room to the south (About half the floor space, but it was only connected just to the room, meaning it isn't able to be flanked), which meant we'd be able to store things in the extra room. With the place marked out, and approved by all six of us, we walked back to the main room, did another ten minutes of practice, and then one-by-one flew out of the Chamber on broomsticks.

I have to say, carrying the broomsticks down felt dumb, even if it was the safest way to get down here. We'll need to fix that.

Right now, only Potter can open and close the chamber, but we plan on remedying that as quickly as we can.

Y'know, as far as this place goes, it's actually pretty homey once you start adding things to it.

To be honest, it feels good to just be able to build something, rather than actually do anything today. Dealing with Umbridge was frustrating enough for me, thanks. She's started randomly quizzing people on the chapters in the textbook. Not the actual spells, mind you, but on the authors of the stories in between said spells.

Absolutely worthless. Still, it's pretty easy to cheat and the questions are pretty straightforward. I'd be amazed if there wasn't already a Ravenclaw working his or her way through to make a cheat sheet. I've heard rumors that there's already one for History of Magic, but I've never been able to find out for sure.

Maybe I'll buy one; it'll save me time in the long run. For both of these godawful subjects.

Anyway.

Every weekend, the six of us are sneaking into the chamber to practice.

(There's also some rumors that have recently started up that Potter is just dragging Ginny off to find a broom closet, but that's neither here nor there, and I don't feel like embarrassing them with that right now. Maybe later, though. It's providing us a smokescreen of sorts.)

But we were also going down during the week, to make the chamber more liveable as well.

Each of us brought our own little touches down the chamber.

I started with the most obvious, and most mandatory change: I got mom to head out into Muggle London to purchase an extremely long rope fireman's ladder, along with about ten gallons of sawdust. The sawdust was nearly immediately dumped onto the slippery ramp, solving at once both the ooze problem, and the slippery surface problem.

Of course, we had a ladder, and no way of anchoring it correctly. Sticking charms would probably work, but those tend to not handle holding too much weight. Luckily, it seems the Weasleys are well-versed in home repair and construction.

Ginny's brother, (with Potter and Granger holding on tightly to his legs to keep him from sliding down to possible injury), volunteered himself to lean into the newly-sawdusted chute, and nail the top of the ladder into the seams of the bricks at the highest point on the slope with long, sturdy nails. To everyone's relief, no one slipped or dropped him, and the ladder was installed without incident.

Yes, we also reinforced it with Sticking Charms, but the important thing is that it's anchored even if the charms fail.

It definitely was a morale booster to be able to get in and out of the chamber at will. Sure, the ladder only covers a tenth of the width of the rather-massive slope, but that just means that, should a quick entry be required, a person could still slide down the side. Hopefully the sawdust will stop it from sliming up the person's robes, but I'd rather have slime than lose a method of escape entirely.

I can already imagine the disasters that'll happen. And they always do.

Potter's contribution to the Chamber's decorations was furniture. Apparently, he called in some favors from the groundskeeper, who is an avid wood-carver. It was a bit tricky to levitate the two carved tables and a chest of drawers, but with the ladder in place, it was much less dangerous than he had expected it to be. He must've expected to have to coat them in Cushioning Charms and then slide them down the ramp. That probably could've worked, but again, it would've been dangerous, and would have had a pretty good chance at wrecking the furniture instead.

Granger set up a half-dozen makeshift candelabras, which are alight with permanent Bluebell Flames. Sure, they don't add much heat, but the fact that I can actually see what I'm writing down here now is definitely a massive point in their favor. The room, and the room beside it, have now fully graduated from 'Gloomy' to 'Awesome Secret Base'.

The fact that I've always wanted a hidden, super secret lair has absolutely nothing to do with my opinion. Definitely not.

It might actually be a racial thing on my part to desire lairs in secluded, difficult to reach places. It'd make sense if it was. After all, most renegade demons tend to end up in caves.

Ginny and her brother, on the other hand, went for utility. They brought down a couple desks and three dozen chairs, looted from some of the many abandoned classrooms. Again, we levitated them down slowly. Unfortunately, we got bored halfway through the chairs, and just started sliding them down.

One chair landed wrong, and its backboard will probably stay bent like that until we finally settle down enough to waste time fixing it. From the looks of things, we'll probably get that done in February: we have far too many chairs down here, so it's not like we need it right now.

They also slapped up some Quidditch posters, which are currently doing their best to add at least some color to this place.

Luna's contribution was an absolutely massive dreamcatcher brought from home, woven from at least eight different colors of rope or string or yarn or something. In her words, it'll help keep away the 'Snabbering Slumberbugs'. We all took one look at the thing, and then all immediately turned to Potter, who cringed away in embarrassment.

We glued it to the inner wall, just above our door with the strongest Sticking Charm Granger could muster. Hopefully it'll bring us good luck.

Hell knows, we'll need luck.

The final step was Potter teaching us the two double-syllable passcodes to open and close the chamber. Sure, none of us actually could understand what he was saying when he did so, but you don't really need to, if you're only opening and closing a door.

Needless to say, we'd be in a bit of trouble if it ever came out that we knew how to vocalize a bit of Parseltongue, but let's be honest here, since we're only using it to open the goddamn Chamber of Secrets, it's not like that'd be a very large charge in comparison.

Snape gave me detention out of the blue today.

However, the effect of menace he was trying to do sort of died, considering how he did so while carrying the sample of the potion I had given him last week in his off hand. After all, there's not too many potions that particular shade and murkiness. I checked. Apparently, certain types of potions share physical properties too, which makes identifying them so much easier.

It truly is a shame none of the textbooks mention that particular snippet.

Either way, Ginny was a bit wary of me going to detention, but let's be honest here, as a Gryffindor, it's probably less suspicious than if I had gone the entire month without one, anyway.

So, immediately into the detention, the first question is 'Which book did you get this potion out of?'

Now, when a potion master asks you which professional's book you used to make a homebrew potion, it means you did what you tried to do right.

I tried not to look too smug when I took the credit for myself. If the groan was anything to go by though, then I failed at that pretty severely.

Either way, I was asked to prepare a complete list of ingredients and brewing instructions required for the potion, and then demonstrate my ability to make the potion. Then I was told that my grade would heavily depend on whether or not I'd be able to reproduce the potion up to his exacting standard.

Oh, and I had to do this rather quickly, preferably before January. Or else there would be 'Repercussions'.

I did of course tell him that a few of the ingredients were either expensive (it takes a very brave, very stupid, or very skilled person to properly harvest Hydra Bile), or nearly impossible to acquire commercially (I don't even know if it's possible to buy Pyrodaemon blood, at least not from any reputable merchant, and I get a feeling that counterfeit crap would hurt the potion more than help it)

Still, if he wants to learn how to duplicate something that could potentially save a whole lot of lives (and perhaps he might even figure out how to make it less terrible tasting, and maybe less poisonous), who am I to argue?

I mean, it's definitely not as powerful as Skele-Grow, but it does work wonders on soft tissue. It won't regrow an arm, but it will close a pretty nasty gash on an arm in seconds.

Not sure if it's strong enough to work on a ruined eye though, and I'm definitely not going to test it.

Actually, I still need to name the damn potion. Right now, it's still 'Recovery Mix', since I was sorta preoccupied brewing the damn thing, over attempting to name it.

Screw it, its new name is 'Mend'. Quick, simple. I'll rename it again if I come up with something better.

Last thing before I left, I couldn't help but glance at the massive pile of random potions on his desk. There were a few potions of the same kind I could recognise (If I remember correctly, it's a skin clearing potion), but the rest...

I had to ask him what the hell the rest of the potions were supposed to be. Because they sure as hell weren't the same color, nor the same thickness.

His response was that the students who brewed them obviously didn't know either.

The second batch of ingredients should fly in by next week: but I want to make sure I'm able to make the potion perfectly before I try and make it in front of Snape.

Thus, I'm in an abandoned classroom, brewing away. Ginny's sitting at a desk, reading the Transfiguration text instead.

I've got an open batch sitting to my left right now. Everything's already mixed up, and I just need to let it simmer for an hour and a half, then I need to add the cockroaches, stir it a bit, then superheat it for a couple of seconds.

Transfiguration is starting to pick up, hence the textbook. Today was our first day of actual creation of (sort of) living creatures.

I mean, there's something inherently funny about turning hats into rabbits.

How quick is the gestation cycle of a top hat, anyway? Can they even reproduce?

I'm back up in my dorms now. We barely made it back up before curfew.

And that was by far the fastest time for our year to go to hell.

By far. Usually, we make it to at least December before shit hits the fan.

Granger's on a warpath, Umbridge is finally showing her true colors and attacking people she doesn't like, excetera, excetera.

In storms Granger, clutching her hand like she was burned. She'd obviously been crying, but considering how her face was warped into something vicious…

I had to dump the potion and get moving. An empty cauldron is lighter (and less likely to do horrible things to people if I spill it on them), so voided my potion with a spell, picked up the damn thing, tucked it under an arm, and followed Granger.

She dragged the two of us out, grabbed the others, and took us all down into the Chamber.

Never mention the fact that while Luna, Ginny and I had no classes, the older three definitely did.

Yes, Granger skipped classes. Apparently it's Astronomy, but the mere fact that she did so is unprecedented.

Oh god, the world's going to end, isn't it. Granger skipping classes must be the third sign of the apocalypse, or something.

Anyway: it's now obvious what Umbridge's true plan is: to filter out anyone with an actual brain.

So, with no obvious exposed targets available for Umbridge to latch onto, she's begun to take out her anger at being unable to directly target the Headmaster upon the students.

In particular, any student brazen enough to defy her.

And everyone knows, no offense is as brazen as being born a Muggleborn.

ATG, it started relatively harmless. Quizzes upon chapters that weren't being read yet. Always getting the hard ones, while the other students got easier, simple questions.

Which explains why the questions I keep getting are so easy, actually.

When she started getting those right, the questions became trick questions, things in the book but were obviously wrong.

And poor Granger answered them correctly, not the way they were written. From what she says, Umbridge, face alight with that horrifying grin of hers, fell upon Granger with the malice of a predator going in for a kill.

Granger had only just gotten back from the first of her many, many detentions. Even worse, she has lost her 'Prefect' status, which I'm told is something important. She's going to be seeing that wretch every day, for the next few weeks.

It was at this time that Granger showed us her hand.

Carved pretty deep into the back of it, caked in fresh blood, was a six word phrase. "I will not defy my betters."

Yup. Umbridge is entirely crazy.

Right, responses:

Potter looked entirely blank as his brain stalled, Weasley looked like he wanted to kill someone, Luna looked absolutely horrified (another first), Ginny didn't really understand, but was angry nonetheless.

I just wondered what sort of crazy fucker would force someone to carve something into their own hand.

So, ATG, Umbitch has a cursed quill that carves the words written by a person into their hands. Also, Umbitch's not even trying to pretend to not be a terrible person.

Actually, what would happen if you stabbed someone with that quill? Or a wall or animal or something? Would you get the injury too? Or does it have a limit for how much damage it can inflict upon its user?

I wonder if it's worth it to try and goad Umbridge into stabbing me or a book or something with it, if that's the case.

Maybe not. She'd find a way to spin it into my fault.

Off topic again.

Even worse, Granger's now under the magnifying glass: with the heat on her, we're going to have to sculpt our weekend practices around her torture-sessions-in-all-but-name. I'm hoping that she isn't tailed when she does arrive at the chamber, but that's neither here nor there.

I had to jokingly ask whether murder was really not an option.

The silence I received back really was the only gauge I needed. No complaints, no shouts of shocked offense.

What I got instead was a hesitant "Are you sure you'd be able to get away with it?" from Potter.

Save-The-Princess, So-Called-Savior Potter is advocating the bloody murder of this woman. That really says something about what's going on here.

We left the chamber pretty much all furious. Granger was still looking miserable, and while the potion I gave her helped clean up the bleeding somewhat, there's something in the quill that makes the wounds resistant to healing. I debated giving her a dose of Mend, but it's a minor injury, and I don't think poisoning her to fix it is worth it, if she's going to do the same thing again.

I don't know what the others are planning.

But…

If Umbridge is willing to do

You know what?

No.

Fuck that.

I could run and hide, but that's not going to solve anything.

Tomorrow, we start figuring out how to take this bitch down. We can't kill her, but there are definitely ways to make this bitch miserable. The only thing we need to do is make sure she doesn't die.

But you'd be amazed at how much damage you can do to a human before they die.

She's attacked a friend.

Granger's one of the few people in this world that I actually trust. She's never betrayed me, and she treats me like a regular person.

Not to mention that it's really nice having someone able to double-check my wards.

If this wretch wants a fight, she's going to get one.

I should probably put this away. Ginny just gave me the evil eye for laughing maniacally at quarter-to-eleven.