*...solution to everything...* Harry's and Malfoy's wands flared back into brilliant light, causing them to squint and blink in an attempt to adjust quickly. Harry shook his head and looked around, bizarrely expecting to see something that would explain that vision of the Founders.
"What just happened?" Malfoy demanded angrily.
"It's no good asking me, I've not got the slightest idea," Harry answered, eyes once more adjusted to the light.
"You've never got the slightest idea," Malfoy scoffed. "I wasn't asking *you.*"
"Then who were you asking?" Harry asked as reasonably as he could. "You saw it too, then?"
The pale boy gave him a withering look. "Saw what?"
"The duel," Harry said softly. "Their duel...." He didn't mention any names. He didn't have to; if Malfoy had seen it, he'd know what Harry was talking about. If not... well, they were enemies anyway, Malfoy's opinion of him couldn't get any lower.
After a moment though, the other boy nodded shortly. "I saw." Then he sniffed. "Wonderful. I'm sharing delusions with my worst enemy in a dusty hole filled with Muggle riddles. I am in hell."
"What if they're not delusions?" Harry asked. Malfoy burst out laughing. "Say goodbye to what was left of your sanity, Potter. Slytherin *died* in that duel, remember? You slept through the same lecture I did." He shrugged. "Besides which, I'm still left with dusty hole, worst enemy, and moronic riddles."
"No, I mean... I was *there*, you know? I was affecting things! Not much, but I made him keep fighting when all he wanted to do was drop his wand... and that means since you saw it all too that you were Slytherin..."
Malfoy rolled his eyes." As if getting that lummox to fight was an accomplishment. Look, even if what you're thinking in your tiny brain was *possible*, which it isn't, that would mean that I decided for whatever reason to *let you live*. In fact, that I actually tried not to kill you-"
Harry was silent, then touched his broken arm in its careful bandage and sling. How could someone who would shred robes to bandage his mortal enemy talk so easily about killing? "Is it so weird that you'd choose not to kill?" Harry asked suddenly. "It's no secret that I hate you and it's mutual, I'm sure, but are you so sure you could be a killer? And how do *you* know it's not possible?"
Malfoy didn't answer, but his silence was more one of someone who feels a question beneath him rather than someone who's been presented with food for thought. After a moment, he said quietly, "I will admit that it's *possible* I would choose not to kill you presented with the opportunity... if you might prove useful later." He shook his head again, managing to get hair out of the gash on his head.
Harry shrugged in a whatever-you-say gesture. He really didn't have the energy or will to argue the point any more. "The tunnel curves around," he said suddenly. "I bet it goes to where we found the ending of the story." Without waiting for Malfoy, Harry hurried along the tunnel path, taking only slight note of the runes that were still scribbled along the walls.
As expected, he came full circle, out a doorway from beside the story ending. Only something was different in the amphitheatre... a shimmery ladder was resting beside the hole in the ceiling he and Malfoy had fallen through. A quick, slightly panicked glance at the ending runes by the exit he was standing in showed that instead of the rough, jerky carving they'd been before, the were now the same intricate, curvy carving that was everywhere else.
Harry turned and looked at them more closely, wondering if he'd seen them right the first time. Malfoy came up silently behind him, "Potter, we've seen... those... already...." He trailed off, staring at them.
"What? What? I can't read them! Tell me!"
"Shut up," Malfoy ordered tersely. He tracked a finger along the runes, apparently reading them silently to himself. "It seems it *is* possible to change the past...."
"Only with great difficulty, my dears. And it takes so very, very long," said a voice behind them.
Both boys spun nearly as one to face an elderly witch in yellow robes who was leaning up against the shimmery ladder. She smiled. "Hello, my dears." Malfoy started back slightly, then gazed at her narrowed eyes.
"Who are you?" Harry asked. Clearly Malfoy recognized her, but he didn't and didn't trust the Slytherin boy to tell him anything. "How'd you get down here?"
She laughed. "Don't you know me? Your little friend does-"
"He's *not* my friend," they chorused indignantly, then glared at each other.
"So they all say, my dears, so they all say. And as for how I got down here...." She nodded at the ladder. "I climbed down to fetch the two of you." The witch frowned slightly, got out her wand, and flicked it at them. "There. I really didn't mean to injure either of you."
Harry blinked. The pain in his arm was gone! He took off the sling and flexed his arm experimentally, then his eyes widened. Completely healed... even Madam Pomfrey couldn't have done it that quickly or easily. "What *did* you mean to do...uh... ma'am?"
She smiled. "I'm very glad you asked that, my dear... but as I have very little time, I will merely give you the short version. You both were... sent back in time, shall we say... although only your minds and souls actually went... to make something right."
Malfoy had touched his head a few times, feeling for blood. When he found none, he crossed his arms and watched the witch calmly. "Us specifically?"
"Oh, no, dear, just whoever happened by and gained entrance." at both Harry's and Malfoy's black stares, she continued. "The portrait, you see? And the runes... the riddle... all my keys to unlock the secret."
"See!" Harry cried triumphantly. "It *was* another Chamber of Secrets! It's just a different secret!"
The witch nodded sadly. "Yes... I'm afraid we all kept secrets from each other, and this one was mine. I called it the Tomb of Days, and was ever so proud of it. I could tell a story and key it magically to actions or states of mind, and send someone's spirit back in time to watch the history, not to change anything. I was almost finished, when...." She trailed off, with her eyes starting to tear.
Harry knew who she was now. "You're... you're Helga Hufflepuff...." he whispered.
"I was, dear," she responded, dashing her eyes. "Now, I'm... well, let's call me a memory, shall we? At any rate, I was almost finished with my lovely Tomb, and was beginning to look for a story to put in it when Salazar and Godric had that childish duel...." She trailed off again, then continued. "I don't expect either of you children to understand how awful it was to see... Salazar was all broken on the ground like some child's doll and Godric was never the same... he jumped at shadows and cried over drowned earthworms...." She drew herself up to her full height. "I finished this place soon after that, made it so that the people who unlocked the Tomb would not only experience history, they'd be able to alter it as well."
Harry and Malfoy exchanged slow glances. Harry fought back the urge to tell Malfoy, "I told you so! You're no killer!" but the icy glint in Malfoy's eye said that he heard it even unspoken.
Helga took no note of them, but looked around quickly. "I'm out of time, children... I have to go back now. Climb the ladder, hurry... once I'm gone, I can't hold it here."
The boys wasted no time, scrambling up the ladder with an alacrity usually reserved for squirrels and monkeys. Once they were back in the corridor they'd originally fallen from, not only did the ladder disappear, but the floor closed back up as well. Harry stared at the repaired floor and decided not to talk about it. It was just another weird thing in a day full of them.
Malfoy thought the same thing, because he turned his back on the hole-less floor to stare at the portrait. The formerly blank portrait. "That's new," he remarked casually.
Harry turned to look at it. Instead of simple canvas in a dirty, though gilded frame, there was now a life-size portrait of all four of the Hogwarts founders, with Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff sitting in stools and Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin standing beside him. Every so often, one of the women would fix her hair or shift in her seat. Godric's image beamed around him impartially, smiling at everyone, and Slytherin occasionally stroked the snake he appeared to be using as a scarf. A plaque beneath the portrait read, " Last known portrait of all Hogwarts founders together, two weeks before Salazar Slytherin's disappearance."
"Yeah," Harry agreed, smiling and waving. "It's new."
Malfoy sniffed and began walking back towards Hogwarts proper. "I find I'm no longer in the mood to fight you, Potter," he drawled lazily, looking behind him. "So I'll give you a break this time. But next time... you'll go down. Hard."
Harry glanced at the pale boy, who had turned back and was rapidly disappearing down the dusty hallway, then he turned back to the portrait for a final look before he, too, left. "Yeah, next time," he agreed under his breath. "And it'll be you who loses, Malfoy, not me."
Once Harry was out of sight, the images in the portrait began talking to one another. "Wow, Helga!" cried Godric ecstatically. "That was magnificent!"
"Very skilled," commented Rowena.
"Oh, my dear ones, how often must I say it? All things come to she who waits!"
Salazar shrugged. "I have already congratulated you," he said softly, "so I shall not do it again. But remember now... you've marked those two boys... and that may count against you in the final point tally."
"Point tally?" Godric laughed. "That's so you! Not everything's a competition!"
"No?" The image of Salazar Slytherin stroked his snake. "We'll see about that, 'old friend'... I may yet have a card or two up my sleeve...."
END
Author's note: First off, I would like to thank everyone who read the story, liked it enough to review it, and in so doing encouraged me to perform the herculean feat of actually finishing it. I hope at some point to be inspired to further HP stories, although we'll all have to see whether inspiration strikes me. :-)
Next, I would like to apologize for the oblique nature of this fic. I had a very definite idea of what I wanted to accomplish with it, and to my mind at least I succeeded. I had a blast writing it, at any rate, but I feel I have to apologize to anyone who expected a spectacular ending. In essence, this fic ended exactly as it began, although I would like to think that there was some character growth in it.
Character growth, to my mind at least, meaning that I hope to have opened the door in later of my fics (and possibly other people's?) to a "nice" Malfoy... or at least one who is not necessarily evil. But then I am an obsessive fan who loves to see good in characters who seem to have none.
So, to end, thank you all for reading my story and bearing through my ranting. I hope that you have enjoyed the story in its entirety, and if you have not, I apologize. Thanks all, for your kind words and praise, and I hope to be worthy of it. :-) And if anyone is still not sure what happened... I'm sorry for that too.
Slytherin Dragon