Chapter Thirteen

Jennifer in the Chamber of Secrets

Jennifer found herself lying in the mud at the bottom of the pipe as Hermione lit up the area, showing her down the cavern.

"It's over this way," Hermione said, trudging down the cavern, one hand on the slimy walls as if feeling for something.

"How did you guys ever manage to find this in the first place?" Jennifer asked after awhile. Hermione reached a break in the rock and squeezed into a narrow tunnel. Jennifer followed slowly behind and they picked their way through, Hermione telling her a strange story about a diary and an ancient serpent basilisk. Even though Jennifer was far from claustrophobic, she had begun to get unnerved before the long, winding tunnel ended. She tried to concentrate on the story being told, listening intrigued when Hermione got to the part that Harry had told her about his fight with the basilisk. It was amazing at best, but Jennifer never doubted for a second it was true, especially when it came to Fawkes coming down to help.

"They never had a chance to look around, though, he had to get Ginny back, and they never came down here again. I guess we thought that Dumbledore sealed it up, and I know we never thought about it after that year. But when all this stuff came up about Janus Craw being one of Slytherin's apprentices, that's when I realized that perhaps his apprentices had been down here after him, and maybe Janus left something behind to point the way to the Tomb."

Suddenly Jennifer saw a light ahead, and she crawled into a long, tall chamber with snake carved pillars and a tall, imposing statue of a strange looking wizard, towering above them. The huge statue, however, had been moved slightly to the side, revealing a chamber behind it. Sitting beside the other door was Ginny, getting up with a look of relief on her face.

"They're in here, Professor, we found it last night…be careful, though, there are traps everywhere in this place," Hermione warned.

"Of course there are traps everywhere. You didn't think this place was completely unprotected, did you?" Jennifer said in annoyance.

The nearest section of the hidden chamber had a sandy dirt floor, separated from the rest of the chamber by a strange elaborate obsidian arch. At the apex of the arch was the chiseled design of two snakes twisted into what looked like an eight on its side, biting each other's tails. Beyond it was a black stone floor covered with glowing red lines and complex geometric patterns where the different lines intersected.

Unlike the sandy area which was covered with filth and pieces of shed snakeskin, the black marble section of the floor seemed immaculate. It was polished like glass, and hazy reflections of the lines appeared in the radius of the dim lamplight. The room was not a perfect shape, cutting off at strange angles and imperfect corners; the smooth black walls climbed up to an oddly domed ceiling with the similar angles that had neither symmetry or any apparent reason to its design, jutting out in jags and strangely deformed shapes all made up of straight lines and sharp angles.

In the very back of the room, a square pedestal sat in a diagram of simple line shapes that combined together to form a protective seal. It was this, Jennifer realized, that Harry and Ron must have been trying to get to. But instead of reaching it, Harry had found himself in the exact center of the room, surrounded by a three-dimensional design of magic light that had manifested in the air around him, encasing him in the center of a complex mesh of oddly angled lines that criss-crossed in a painstakingly calculated matrix. Ron, who must have tried to go and help him, was stuck off to one side, sitting in the middle of his ward looking exhausted and frustrated.

"Hello, Professor," Harry said tiredly. "We seem to have gotten into a bit of a jam."

"So it seems," Jennifer said, trying to control her anger. "How long have you guys been in here?"

"All night," Ron said tiredly.

"I thought I could solve it since it was obviously a mathematical ward, but…nothing seems to work," Hermione said with frustration.

"That's because these are paradox wards, Hermione. You can't find a solution to this kind of ward because they are designed in a way that you need to know the answer to the problem before you can dispel the angles. I've never seen anything quite this complex before," Jennifer admitted with a frown. Arithmantics of any kind were not her strong point. "This sort of thing is normally used in summoning, for holding creatures from other dimensions that can't be controlled any other way…" Jennifer said thoughtfully. "What could he have been attempting to do?" she murmured to herself quietly. More importantly, how was she going to be able to get these two out?

Glancing across the room at the pedestal, she couldn't help but wonder if the box didn't have the final answer to the paradox, the number that would, when put in a specific formula, be used to take the ward apart and allow anyone trapped inside to escape. Trial and error would take forever. The only way would be to get the answer itself, and that meant trying to figure out which of the patterns on the floor led to it. Jennifer studied them carefully, but several of the designs seemed to intersect with the pedestal. Which could possibly be the right one?

"Anyway I can help, Professor?" Hermione asked.

"Perhaps it'd be better if you and Ginny went on up. This is probably going to take a while."

"No, we're staying. Someone needs to stay here anyhow in case something else goes wrong to try and get more help." Hermione said, stubbornly.

"You shouldn't have come down here on your own in the first place," Jennifer snapped loudly out of anger and frustration. "How many times have I warned you about running off without thinking and doing stuff like this? You don't know what any of these traps do or what consequences they might have. You could have easily been killed coming down here. Why in the world do you insist on tackling these sorts of things by yourselves?"

"Funny, I was just meaning to ask you the exact same questions," an annoyed voice said from right behind them. Jennifer turned around in surprise to meet Severus' stern flashing gaze as he stood in the doorway with an expression that would have sent most students running for cover had it been directed at them. "Sit down, Weasley, Granger, you're not going anywhere. And whatever you do, don't touch anything."

"How did you find us?" Jennifer asked. He stared at her for a long moment.

"I had a feeling you were going to pull something like this again, so I had a compass point added to my watch at the same time I had yours made so I could tell which way you are heading," Severus explained. "Don't think you're ever going to get away from me again. Now help me find that key."

"A key?" Ginny asked.

"A number or a letter for the ward," Hermione told her.

"Be quiet," Severus snapped, studying the layout of the room. After a moment he glanced up thoughtfully at the ceiling, then back down at the floor. "Potter, stand up and raise your lantern for a moment."

Tiredly Harry got to his feet and did as he was told, watching Snape thoughtfully. Harry saw that for some reason the anger had completely vanished from his face, replaced with a keen, calculating look as he studied the lines and patterns of the floor, completely absorbed in the problem at hand.

"Jennifer, notice the subtle reflection of the angles off the ceiling? The ceiling lines appear to play a part in the floor design. And several of those lines don't seem to connect, they end at the beginning of the floor." Severus said.

Well, of course they would end at the beginning of the floor, Jennifer thought, the reflection couldn't continue in the dirt. Was he saying the dead lines were intentional? As Jennifer studied the floor she began to see what he meant with the patterning, the lines did seem to delicately interconnect with what was already on the floor, completing and melding several patterns that on the surface looked like separate designs altogether. The lines that stopped at the arch seemed more incomplete to her, and didn't seem to have much reason to them, weaving in and out of the designs and crisscrossing each other in several, random-seeming directions.

"One of these three here leads to that pedestal design," Severus said with certainty, squinting to try and sort out where each of those three were going after it intersected the main pattern.

It was at that point that Harry realized something that he really hadn't before; he had come to trust Severus Snape. Oh, perhaps not with everything; there were definitely many things he'd never dream of telling him. But at the same time, he knew, somehow, he could trust him with his life. It was a startling realization with as much animosity that had been between them over the years, but somehow in that brief moment, Harry got a glimpse of why Dumbledore trusted him as well.

"All right, I've found it," Severus said at last, making a mark in the dirt just beyond the floor to which one it was. "The box is almost certainly set up so only certain people can unlock it, so you'll have to go, Jennifer. It would have been set up with descendants of the apprentices in mind. Besides, you have more knowledge of item curses than I."

"You knew about Janus Craw?" Jennifer asked, somewhat annoyed that everyone seemed to know more about what was going on than she did.

"You'd be surprised at how much I know. Pity that you never talk to me," he said in her ear, guiding her over to the correct line. "All right, make sure you stay on this line and don't go off of it," he said in a louder tone. "Stray onto another line and you'll probably be trapped as well, then we'll have a real problem on our hands. I'll stay here and keep you covered in case anything goes wrong."

Jennifer stepped out on the line, walking several steps out before she realized the line was beginning to fade in front of her. She had to pause; trying to discern which line it was from ahead.

"I can't see the reflection from out here," she said, "there's not enough light."

"Well, don't cast a regular light spell, because if you do you'll see the ceiling instead of the angle lines," Severus said, searching his pockets. "I think I have something that will help." He took out a small box of burner candles, and after lighting them, he cast a spell sending them up over Jennifer's head, the light flickering onto the floor below. The reflection instantly reappeared, and Jennifer was able to pick up the pace again.

"Is there anything you don't keep in your pockets?" Ron asked.

"I thought I told you to be quiet," Severus snapped, watching Jennifer's progress with tension. Jennifer finally made it through the first major pattern and was on her way towards the pedestal, the candles following along with her. At last she stepped into the pedestal's ward and began to study the box.

The box was covered with ritualistic symbols, delicately etched into the gold. There were no latches of any kind that Jennifer could see, but she hadn't expected any. What concerned her more was the small silver indention in the center of the box like an inverted half-sphere. She took out her wand a moment, glanced at it then put it back away.

"What's wrong?" Severus asked, watching the movement.

"It wants a blood offering to open it," she told him, "but I suddenly realized trying to use this particular wand to try and identify curses on this would be a bad idea. I have a feeling they would have trapped it against any of the other three founders trying to meddle."

"Good point." Severus frowned thoughtfully. "You'd better come back so I can look at it."

As Jennifer turned to take a step back onto the line, there was an immediate response as the entire room began to shake, the rumble nearly deafening. Jennifer pulled back and grabbed onto the pedestal to keep herself from falling, but the rumbling didn't stop, and Jennifer couldn't help but wonder if the entire ceiling wasn't going to fall down on them. Without wasting another second, Jennifer took out her letter opener and transformed it into a dagger, slashing the palm of her hand and holding it over the indention. As she stood with her hands leaning over the box, the rumbling subsided, slowly coming to a stop. As she moved to get her wand out, a crease appeared in the center of the box and it flipped open, causing Jennifer to take a cautious step back.

But the world had changed from what it was a moment ago.

She saw herself standing in the same room, but no lines of any kind were on the floors, and she was standing a few feet back. Four figures stood near the open box, their robes strange to her, covering every bit of skin but their faces, draping around them in dull, dark gray, but all wearing familiar crests.

"Does Godric suspect what we have done, Seeker?" asked the auburn-haired man in the Slytherin robe.

"No, no… we wouldn't have gotten him to understand," the grey-haired man in the Gryffindor robe said slowly. "The price would have been too great even for him. It had to be us."

"Do you think there will ever come a time when this is over?" a woman wearing a Hufflepuff robe asked. "This rivalry… this curse. It'll live long past our own lives, perhaps even our own legacies. What if it never ends?"

"It will end, Chaser," the dark-haired man in the Ravenclaw robe said. His face was scarred somehow, and he looked much older than his voice would have indicated. "No one will know in our time who my father was, or that I was the one that killed him. It may perhaps be generations before the entire truth is discovered. If we are lucky, they never will. And if this is all for naught, then let the blame fall on me, and for what this may bring to the future of your families to come."

"Surely, Beater, you do not plan to go ahead and take your own family! You cannot seriously blame them in this!" the Gryffindor protested.

"Blame them? Of course not. I blame no one but my father for this," the dark haired man said, taking out a red bottle and putting it in the box. "I shall do it out of love, for only then can I bear it. As for my brother, with any luck he is dead."

"And if he isn't?" asked the auburn-haired man. He took out a large, oddly sided clear gem and put it in the box. The Hufflepuff woman then added a scroll, looking at the contents thoughtfully.

"That, Keeper, is why we must do this, as you well know," the Ravenclaw said, looking over at the auburn-haired man. "I do not envy you your destinies."

"I don't think anyone would envy any of us if they had any idea what we were doing," the Seeker said, setting a mirror in the box. "But what must be, must be, to save the school and the future. I do not regret this pact we have made."

"Nor do I," the other three said, giving each other a weak, private smile.

"Very well, brothers and sister, let's then close the box with our memory and seal it…for all time, or the time of greater evil, whichever lies in our path."

"For Witches and Wizards of any descent," said the Chaser, putting her hand on the box.

"For Knowledge and Wisdom," said the Keeper, adding his hand to her own.

"For the future of all, Magic or Muggle alike," said the Seeker, smiling sadly as he joined them.

"And for the preservation of Hogwarts," said the Beater, adding his hand to seal the box.

Harry scrambled to his feet as the rumbling stopped, glancing around. Ron was warily watching the ceiling as if expecting it to come down on his head as he sat up, looking perfectly miserable. Hermione and Ginny had somehow managed to scramble into the doorway, holding onto the frame as they gazed in with worried expressions, while Snape stood clutching the side of the arch, looking towards the pedestal worriedly. Harry glanced over towards the pedestal where Professor Craw was leaning over the box with her hand bleeding and a dagger in her hand. Suddenly, a light seemed to pierce through the box, revealing the seal. It flipped open as she took a step back and the blinding light came full force towards her, hitting her in the face. Harry blinked and looked again, but Jennifer was standing as still as a statue with her eyes closed, her hand still bleeding onto the floor.

"Jennifer! Jennifer, snap out of it!" Snape shouted. Glancing around at where all the students were, he was about to step out onto the pattern when she shook herself awake, falling to her knees.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she stammered, slowly taking out her wand and bandaging her hand. She then put her hand in the box and took out an oddly shaped gem, carefully counting its sides. "The answer's thirteen," she said after a moment. She still had a dazed look in her face.

"Fine. Get back over here before I have to go out there and drag you back," he said with sudden irritation. Quickly Jennifer put the gem in her pocket and grabbed a bottle, a small scroll, and a mirror out of the box. Taking her Puzzlebox out of her shirt pocket and expanding it, she put those three in there thoughtfully, shutting it and ignoring Severus' insistence for her to hurry.

"Never mind about me. Start the formulas so we can get these two out of here," Jennifer said, stepping onto the line.

Harry watched as Snape pointed his wand towards him, muttering an incantation. For a moment the ward around him glowed, and then suddenly a brilliant blue equation appeared in front of the ward, hovering as if on an invisible chalkboard. After adding the number to the answer and looking carefully at a moment, he pointed at the formula again, dictating, and a line appeared above it. Behind him, Hermione watched with interest, even taking out a notebook and quietly writing in it as he went. Harry, Ron, and Ginny, who had all opted for Divination instead, were having great trouble following the process and soon lost interest in watching.

"So, what happened to you out there, Professor Craw? When the box opened, you seemed to go into a trance." Ginny asked.

"The box was memory sealed," Jennifer explained as she cast at Ron's ward, pulling up the formula. "It had an enchantment on it so that whoever managed to open the box would see the memory of the last people who closed it." Jennifer stared at the final answer of the equation for a long time before putting up the next line, stopping to check herself a dozen times before even attempting to move on.

"So who was it?" Harry asked.

"Can't this wait until we get out of here?" Ron asked impatiently. "I've had about all I can stand of this place."

"So have I, and unless you've forgotten, there was supposed to be a Quidditch game with two of you in it over an hour ago." Snape said, putting in another line.

"We are going to be in so much trouble," said Ginny.

"You are already in so much trouble," Jennifer assured them. "Especially considering I have one of the next detention shifts." Hermione tapped her on the shoulder and quietly pointed something out to Jennifer, which she corrected, then she brooded over the next line.

Snape, having finished what he was sure was the last line, checked it over carefully then looked over at the matrix with grim determination.

"Equate!" The formula went crashing towards the ward one line at a time, breaking apart bits of the ward as the code began to negate itself until it finally disappeared all together. Harry gratefully stepped onto the line that Snape had indicated was safe to follow, and walked over as Snape turned his attention to the formula Jennifer was working on. Harry soon found himself in the middle of a hug as he stepped into the sand and Ginny and Hermione came over to meet him. In next to no time, Snape was able to finish the last few lines of the other formula, and Ron too was standing back out of the room getting hugs all around.

"All right, let's get out of here. Jennifer, any reason we can't seal that room?" Snape asked as they filed out behind the statue.

"No, that sounds like a good idea," Jennifer agreed. Standing back from the statue, the two of them aimed their wands together at the door, slamming it shut and blasting it with an array of wards, sealing it from entry and marking it with their wizard signatures. "There, no more traps!" Jennifer said with satisfaction putting back her wand.

"Wow, look, I can't believe this is still here! It's the quill I was using to write in the diary with," Ginny said, walking over to pick it up.

"Wait, watch where you're walking!" Jennifer cried out, noticing the snake symbol on the floor beneath her feet. Severus leapt across the cavern to where Ginny was, pushing her out of the way just as the symbol disappeared from under his feet. "Severus!" In a panic, Jennifer dove to grab onto him, falling in after only to have the seal reappear above them.

Slime had built up within the twisting pipe, making it difficult to try and slow down as it took a nasty turn downwards. Suddenly as the pipe opened up into a plummeting drop, Jennifer ran into something in front of her and felt an arm tightly around her, keeping her from falling.

"Lumos!" Severus intoned, giving Jennifer a chance to look at their predicament.

He was hanging with one arm wrapped around her and the other around a long rope that seemed to be suspended in air. They were dangling just outside the pipe, that spewed its green ooze down its front and dropped into a large underground channel far below. Giant snakeskins and bones lying at the bottom were telltale signs of its former resident; the Ancient Baslisk that Harry had encountered had probably spent most of its time in the dark caverns before being called forth into the chamber above.

"Well, this is going to complicate things," Severus smirked weakly. Jennifer glared at him, trying to keep hold around his waist.

"Oh, this is a swell time for you to develop a sense of humor. Where did this rope come from?" Jennifer asked.

"Where do you think it came from? I got it out of my cloak pocket."

"I don't know if you're overly paranoid or just brilliant," Jennifer said in amazement.

"Can you manage to get to your wand?" he asked.

"Not and still hold on," Jennifer admitted.

"Then try to get your arms around my neck so I can get to mine. Don't worry, I have you," he reassured her, winding his leg around the bottom of the rope for support. It was then that they started hearing frantic shouts faintly coming down the pipe.

"Professors! We figured out how to keep it open! Can you hear us?" Harry's voice filtered down.

"STAY THERE!" Severus shouted up the pipe so loud it made Jennifer wince. "Come on, Jennifer, before those four try to rescue us and get us all into trouble."

Jennifer slowly crept an arm up to his shoulder, carefully pulling herself up enough so that she could get the other one around his neck.

"All right, hang on, we're going to go weightless in a moment," he warned her as got out his wand, casting the spell first at her. She felt herself begin to lift away, and she made a quick grab for the pipe pushing herself up inside, cringing every time she touched the side. "Come on, it's no time to be squeamish. This spell doesn't last that long, you know," Severus snapped impatiently floating behind her.

At last Jennifer noticed a light up ahead, and she was able to make a quick shove up to the top. Harry offered a hand up, grimacing as he touched her slime-caked hand.

"Thanks, Harry, uh, sorry about that," Jennifer said apologetically.

"We're just glad you're all right. The seal was opened with parseltongue so it was all about finding the right word. What was it like down there?"

"Just have to watch out for the drop at the end," Jennifer said, glancing around as Severus climbed out behind her. Jennifer, who had not noticed that she herself was covered with slime from head to toe and with stench enough to wake the dead, suddenly burst out laughing at the sight of Severus, having to hold onto Harry to keep herself from flying across the room.

"Severus, you look like you fell into a barrel of swampmuck eel ichor!" Jennifer said, and burst into another round of laughter as the spell suddenly ended and she dropped to the floor.

"You don't exactly look like a spring blossom yourself at the moment," muttered Severus, who not only didn't see anything particularly funny. He was glaring at all of the students as if daring them to even chuckle (Ron had to turn away and quickly broke into a coughing fit). "Enough is enough. Let's get out of here before we run into any more surprises. You first, Jennifer, and the rest follow. I am going to make sure none of you leave my sight. Harry, make sure that door is closed."

Harry paused a moment as they left, hissing something softly in parseltongue to make the large doors into the Chamber swing shut. Severus nudged him ahead looking as irritated as always as they began the long trek up to the surface.