Thank you for the reviews! Now that I can access them, I can post review responses on my LJ.
This is the point at which I fully expect a lot of people to stop reading. After this chapter it's uphill all the way, because it's got no place to go but up. But that means that we hit rock-bottom here. This is probably the darkest single chapter I will write. I understand if someone doesn't want to continue after this.
Ready? Down we go.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fang to FangHarry felt odd the moment he moved into the Chamber, which was as he had remembered it from the box: long, straight, narrow, crowded with pillars and filled with grim green light, with a statue of Salazar Slytherin at the far end. His mind felt pulled and stretched, and his head began to ache. A moment later, his scar flared with dazzling pain.
Tom Riddle stood at the base of the statue, nearly fully formed, not a memory but a dark-haired young man. He held Connor by the neck, one hand over his scar. At his feet lay the diary, and a thick link, green as the light, green as Avada Kedavra, stretched between the book and his hand.
"Harry Potter," said Riddle. "Welcome. I have been waiting for you." He clamped his hand onto Connor's scar more firmly.
Harry called gladly on his magic. It roared up around him, turning the immediate floor to ice—
And springing Riddle's trap.
Harry felt the magic flood out of him, seemingly pouring out through his scar and across space to Riddle, tracing the route he must have taken when he fled Harry's mind after their first battle. Riddle tilted back his head and laughed as he absorbed the magic, and his image wavered and grew stronger. At the same time, the link between the diary and his hand flared with life, and Connor screamed and began writhing in pain.
Harry gagged aloud as he shared his twin's anguish, flowing down the connection he supposed they had always shared by virtue of being born at the same time, but which he had never sensed before now. Dimly, behind the agony, he heard Dumbledore's words again, speaking of the spell contamination.
"We wished to preserve you from the possible dangers of sharing this kind of bond with your twin, but since you are twins, and not only brothers by blood, the connection is extremely hard to block. It seems so far that the bond has protected you only, and for that I am pleased and grateful. But please do not rely on it."
Now the bond had been turned against them. And Harry's magic continued to surge in response to the threat, trying to protect him, and more of it flowed over to Riddle, and more pain flowed from him to Connor and from Connor to Harry. It was more intense this time, as the initial blast of magic had been stronger. Harry could see the world pulsing white around him.
"Into the diary, I think," Riddle mused aloud. "Yes, I could put you both there, and who would think to look for you? Or perhaps I will put you alone there, as I would rather like to retain your twin in his own body for a while longer. He is, after all, my greatest enemy."
Harry could not have answered if he had tried. The pain in his head was total, and not even the urging of the phoenix fire and song could compare. He felt his muscles trembling, his mouth jerking. A thin line of drool marked his lips. He was suffering, and his brother was suffering, and he could do nothing.
"Don't hurt him, you bastard!"
But he was aware enough to know when Draco moved forward from the side, his wand out and his face contorted with a mixture of fury and fear that Harry had never seen before. His wand lashed, and he snarled, "Incendio!"
The diary briefly began to smoke, before Riddle gestured lazily, once, and the fire went out. He smiled at Draco. "Did you think that you could stop me, little boy? I am sure that—"
It was not enough to end everything. But it was enough to make a pause in the link, as Riddle's hand lifted from Connor's scar to calm the fire. And a small interruption was all Harry needed.
He surged to his feet and called for his magic, plunging deep, gathering up all he could and spreading it out around him. Anything he could do that wasn't corrupted or controlled by Riddle could be valuable in this battle.
The walls around him turned to ice, and then cracked and crazed, falling in frozen shards. At the same moment, the armband warmed, and Harry felt the magic escaping Riddle's control deepen and strengthen. He felt it asking him what he wanted, trying to follow the desires of his will.
Riddle hissed, and Harry heard his words. "Come, creature of Slytherin, obey your master and Slytherin's Heir!" The shadows behind Slytherin's statue began to lash and churn.
Harry ignored the temptation to try to speak Parseltongue himself, and control the basilisk. He was fairly sure that Riddle had been telling the truth, and he would not be able to. Instead, he told his magic, I want something that will destroy the diary. Something that will eat it up.
The air in front of him turned dark, as if he had torn a hole in the midst of the light, and then Harry saw a pair of snapping black jaws. They were connected to no mouth, but they went soaring at the diary as if they were. Riddle saw them and snarled at them, flinging out his hand.
"Reducto!" he shouted, and the jaws shuddered once, though they stubbornly tried to continue moving forward. Harry turned his attention away from them briefly. He knew they would keep Riddle busy for at least another moment, and the vicious, pounding pain in his head urged him to try and get to Connor.
Why should you? It was the cold voice, and it had more hatred in it than Harry had heard before. He is the cause of your pain. He is the reason that you have suffered as you have, then and now. You know what your parents did to you in his name.
Harry felt the memories trembling in the corners where he had put them, shuddering and ready to slide out into his awareness once again. He ignored them. He could not afford to listen to them, nor to the cold voice. He would listen when he could, and then he was sure he would find that what his parents had done for and to him was all for the best.
He whipped his hand in a descending half-circle, sending the cold blasting before him. It hit the emerging basilisk, and the creature screamed in Parseltongue, throwing its green head back. Harry caught a brief glimpse of the long, thin fangs and the staring yellow eyes, and brought his head down.
"Get the mirror out!" he hissed at Draco, hoping he spoke English. He either did, or Draco was quick enough on his own to understand what he needed to do. He pulled the mirror from its cloth and his pocket with fingers that shook and trembled with cold.
Harry turned back to Riddle as the fragment of Voldemort finally blasted his attacking black jaws apart, and tried to renew his hold on Connor. Harry concentrated intensely, and spoke through his magic and his will. Fetch me my brother. I want him. I will him to be at my side.
All around him, a wind began to howl, rising with a chill in its teeth. The cold voice snarled at him. You could do so much more with this. Why will you not do it? We might—
Harry shut it out of his awareness and focused all his attention on Connor, who lay on the ground pale and still now, his scar seeping red liquid that Harry did not think was all blood. Come to me, brother. Come here. Come here!
The wind scattered forward from around him, flinging hail and bits of snow on the floor. It whirled around Connor, and he shifted and moaned. Harry concentrated, throwing his magic into the task, hoping that it would be strong enough to pull Connor back to safety.
Unfortunately, Riddle turned just then and clamped his hand back on Connor's scar, trying to renew his link with the diary. He hissed at the basilisk in the meanwhile. "Attack them. Kill the one who smells like chalk. Leave the other one alive."
Harry glanced quickly sideways, to see that Draco held the mirror ready, and then touched his left arm. "Sylarana? Are you awake?"
He could feel her, but sluggish and struggling. She was as affected by the cold of Harry's magic as the basilisk was, sending her into a torpor. Harry cursed under his breath and tried to think of fire spells.
"You are going to lose, Harry Potter," Riddle gloated, even as the basilisk slid forward around him, in a maze of sea-green motion. "And do you know why? I am draining power from your brother even now, and from you through him. I am going to eat you alive, and then put you in the diary, and possess him again. Such a tragic story, the Boy-Who-Lived losing his brother, and coming up from the Chamber alone with such scars on his soul. And with someone beyond his eyes, looking out, as I have been for the last five months…"
Five months Connor spent alone with that madman inside his head. Five months he struggled, he screamed, and no one could hear him.
Harry closed his eyes, and then opened them. He could feel his magic rising like wings, as had happened only once before, when he faced Voldemort in Quirrell's body. This time, though, he faced only a fragment of Voldemort, and there seemed to be hope that they might be more equal in power.
Draco held the mirror high, crowding close to Harry's side, though he shivered at the touch of the rising cold. The basilisk came slowly forward, and Draco tilted the glass at it.
"Close your eyes!" Riddle commanded abruptly in Parseltongue, and Harry saw the wink of yellow vanish as the basilisk's eyes shut. A moment later, its tongue flickered out, hunting for them by scent. Then it slithered straight at Draco.
"Move!" Harry shouted, shoving at Draco, making him tumble to the side. He turned back, feeling his magic soar to an absurd height, joined by his fear for Connor, his fear for Draco, his fear of Riddle, and his anger at having to battle Riddle like this at all.
He focused that all into one enormous blast, back through the connection between Riddle and his scar, and this time it broke through whatever shields Riddle had in place. Riddle's head snapped back, and he dropped to the ground with a cry. The diary flew into the far wall. Connor moaned weakly, his scar still seeping, and tried to crawl in Harry's direction. Harry took a step forward to help him.
And then Draco screamed.
Harry whirled to face him, his heart pounding in his chest. The basilisk had managed to corner Draco against one of the pillars that held up the Chamber. It was swaying, its immense head engaged in a deadly dance, its fangs sticking out and glistening.
Harry felt his mind clear of everything but the sight in front of him. He was fairly sure that he, himself, could take a bite from the basilisk and survive due to his magic. He hurtled towards the serpent, letting the vibrations of his feet distract it, and shouted insults in Parseltongue. He lessened the cold he was projecting as he did so. He wanted the enormous snake to think he was an easy target.
The basilisk flickered its tongue out and turned towards him. Perhaps it would have obeyed Riddle's injunction not to kill him, but its hisses spoke of hunger and the desire for blood, and Riddle was still trying to recover from Harry's blast, rather than commanding Slytherin's snake. The basilisk came for Harry.
Harry raised his left arm to meet those fangs, his breathing light and fast, his thoughts crystalline. He was going to do this. He could take the bite, where Draco could not. He was fairly sure he would not sacrifice his life. He was—
"No! Mine! My human! I defend him from other snakes!"
Sylarana reared out of Harry's sleeve, and as the basilisk's head came down, she flung herself off his arm, coiling around its neck. She stabbed her fangs home, once and then twice.
The basilisk screamed in Parseltongue, a sound of agony that made Harry want to cower. He watched in wonder as the Locusta venom took effect, and it began to twitch and convulse, its smooth glide already turning to jerky angles of movement as Sylarana bit it again and again, hissing in vengeance.
Then the basilisk flung its body to the ground and rolled over, still convulsing, crushing Sylarana between its neck and the floor.
Harry went to his knees screaming as she died, and the box burst open.
All the light in the Chamber fled. Harry knelt alone in darkness, and screamed as the searing pain ran up and down his limbs, worse than Crucio, and the webs of his mind fluttered uselessly in his head, filling his thoughts with equally useless flashes of light and phoenix song and vows and memories.
So he can be extraordinary…
Sylarana coiling close around him and demanding Chocolate Frogs…
Connor grinning at him as they turned seven, and blowing out the flaring candles on their cake, then frowning again as they flared back up despite all his breath could do…
Sirius frowning at him as Harry demanded tales of pureblood customs, not understanding, telling him that he had left all that was Black behind him and he would advise his godson to do the same thing…
Claws cut at the inside of his skull, shredded and tore at his brain, and his vision and world smashed and tilted sideways. Within him, the cold voice laughed and rose, free from the deep gulfs of its imprisonment.
I told you! I told you that you could do so much more. Would you like to see the magic they have hidden away from you? Not content to bind and hold your personality, they have also hidden your power—
And then the cold voice was silenced, because a different self had come forth from the box.
It had no voice. It had no boasting. Harry could feel its rage, though, and the coldness of that rage.
He opened his eyes to see Draco encased in ice, the dead basilisk frozen, and blue-white fire cutting the darkness and racing towards Tom Riddle and Connor. In a moment, Connor, too, was a statue, and then the magic reared high above Tom Riddle and the diary and stared at them.
Riddle stared back for a long moment. Then he swung his head to look at Harry, and his eyes had gone mad.
"Not him," he breathed. "Never him. It was you, it must have been, and the nature of our connection—"
The silent self had had enough of him. Down it coiled, and made itself into a snake, a constrictor, so black that Harry's eyes bled as he watched it. His own voice was distant now, a sobbing scream, worse than a kicked animal would make. He could do nothing but watch. He was not in control right now. The silent self was.
It coiled around Tom Riddle and broke his ribs with one squeeze, his newly formed body with another, and then his life from him with a third. Then the snake placed him on the floor, stretched its jaws wide, and ate him. Harry felt, distantly, that cold power settle within him, consumed by his own magic, adding to its strength.
The snake flowed over to the diary and ate it as well, tearing it apart and absorbing every crumb of magic within its pages. Harry felt a brief knot of resistance at the center of the book, a knot that seemed self-aware, oddly like a piece of a soul, trying to escape. But the snake crushed it utterly, stripped it of its magic, and then spat out the self-awareness. It fled, wailing, naked and alone, and tattered as it flew. Harry did not think it reached the far side of the Chamber before it was gone, dissipated into oblivion.
He knelt there, and screamed, and the pain was very great.
The magic came slinking back to him. Harry could feel it studying him. For the moment, he held all its attention in the middle of that frozen Chamber. He wondered, oddly calm, the pain making him half-crazed, whether it would destroy him, too, not needing his body as a shelter any longer.
He gasped as shards of the phoenix song crunched like glass in his gut, reminding him of what he had vowed to save Connor. He could not let the magic hurt Connor. He had already let it freeze Connor. He had to control it.
He held up one hand. His fingers were blue with frostbite in the light of the white, searing cold that marked the magic, and seemed absurdly small. He reached up towards this immense force that had somehow come out of him, this force that terrified him and that was his to master, and waited. He could hear himself screaming, somewhere still, but it was not important. His throat stung and hurt with the ice particles that had slid down it, but that was not important, either.
The silent self did not speak in the cold voice again; nor did it coil back into his body and let him do what he would with it. Instead, it showed him pictures.
Lily instructing him again and again in the ways of his vows, repeating it endlessly when he would have faltered.
Harry performing mild hexes and jinxes on himself as he learned to withstand physical pain, because someday he would suffer pain like this on the battlefield, and he had to be able to keep going.
The battle with the Lestranges, and how he had given all the credit to Connor, and how that was not fair, was beyond unfair, was cruel and unjust.
His envy of Connor for being in Gryffindor.
His envy of Connor for being the favored of their parents.
His hatred of Dumbledore, for agreeing with him and using him as a pawn, and giving him the Sword of Gryffindor, which had burned him.
The shards of the phoenix song in his mind stirred and pushed back, trying to reassert themselves. Harry had long since lost his breath to scream, but he knelt, hands around his head, and gasped and trembled. He could not hate Connor the way the self from the box wanted him to. How could he? Connor was a child, and had been possessed by Riddle even as he had, and was a victim of their parents even as he was.
But how could he hate his parents?
An absolute torrent of images answered him.
Ignoring him in favor of Connor.
Not knowing anything about his wandless magic, or praising him for keeping it secret.
Their disappointment when they could not get him moved from Slytherin to Gryffindor.
Lily's suspicion over the Malfoy owl, whether Harry's friends could be trusted not to betray them.
The way that they had accepted the story last year, the way that Dumbledore had accepted the story last year, about Connor defeating Voldemort, and no one had ever asked whether Harry had been hurt or had suffered in that battle, and no one had known how long he fought against him.
His parents not coming to see him in the hospital wing when he had battled with Riddle and lain unconscious for a week.
Connor lying about coming to see him.
He couldn't help it! He was possessed! Harry felt himself begin to dissolve and shred on the edges of that truth. He had to think as he always had, or what was the use of things? He could not possibly think badly of Connor. It was not in him to do so. He had to remember that. The things the magic wanted him to think were not true.
But the magic steadily presented him with truths, jealousies and resentments he had forgotten, treatment he should never have had to endure, and yanked him forward, even as the truths he knew pierced him again. Harry could feel his mind beginning to unravel, pushed and pulled between those two opposing forces.
When he heard the song begin, he thought it was imagining it, or that the golden web in his head had grown stronger. He gasped and lifted his eyes towards the ceiling of the Chamber, from which the music came, blinking away blood so that he could see.
Fawkes circled there, holding something long and glittering in his talons. With him came fire, and with him came light, and when he circled down and landed on Harry's shoulder, dropping the Sword of Gryffindor not far from Harry's feet, it was as if all the beauty in the world had entered the Chamber of Secrets.
The phoenix bowed his head and wept on Harry's temple. His tears melted the ice that had begun to take Harry's hair, and Harry reached up and clutched convulsively at the warm feathers. The magic hesitated.
He felt a third force move into his head, gently inserting itself between him and the tattered shreds of his duty, and blocking the magic from showing him any more memories. Relief from pain was the most wonderful sensation Harry had ever known. This time, the phoenix's voice that moved through his head brought true beauty and peace, and he could finally take a breath without the urge to scream.
Fawkes could not heal everything, of course. Harry was well-aware that this was only temporary, that his webs were torn beyond all redemption, and that the magic wanted to reach out and do unforgivable things to the people who had hurt him unforgivably. But it permitted him a breathing space, and in that breathing space he reached out and pulled the ice back into himself.
It collapsed in ringing shards from Draco, who abruptly gasped and coughed and spat out half an icicle. He turned and looked at Harry, stumbling hard enough—he'd been frozen in an awkward position—that the mirror dropped from his hand and shattered. He didn't appear to notice. "Harry?" he whispered.
Harry turned his head from the trust and fear in that voice—fear for him, not of him. He could not bear it. How could he tell Draco that he was going to die in a short time? He faced Connor, and saw his brother breathing slowly and regularly, a healthy tint coming back into his cheeks.
His magic stirred. You are not leaving without doing something to him, said the cold voice.
Harry tried to resist, and lost. The best thing he could hope for was not to do permanent damage to Connor. The magic would be satisfied with nothing less than an impact on his mind, the kind that he had had on Harry throughout the school year by stirring up his emotions and doing unfair things and ordering him to stand aside so Ron could attack Draco and—
Harry gasped and pushed away the anger. There was a time and place for the rage, and it was not here. He reached out, and, as Connor opened his eyes, whispered, "Obliviate."
Connor blinked and stared at him with glazed eyes.
"You fought Tom Riddle," Harry told him quietly. "Fawkes brought the Sword of Gryffindor for you, and you picked it up and stabbed the basilisk through the mouth, but not before it bit you and one of its fangs broke off in your arm. You used the fang to destroy the diary, and with it gone, Tom Riddle was also destroyed. Fawkes healed your wound from the fang." The lies spilled from his mouth, automatic. He had always been a good liar.
Not for very much longer. Almost greater than the rage and the pain was his desire for rest, but strongest of all was his frantic desire not to hurt anyone. He had to get them out of here as soon as he possibly could, and then go somewhere else to die and release his magic, in the fervent hope that it would be content to wreak havoc on its surroundings and not Connor or their mother and father.
Connor blinked, then nodded. "How are we going to get out of here?" he whispered, looking up at the phoenix.
Fawkes trilled once and then turned and swept his tail over them.
"Phoenixes can carry great weights," said Harry, remembering something he'd read in the books that Professor Snape had given him. I'll see him once more, if ever. "He'll carry us." He reached up to Fawkes, and grabbed his tail. He felt Draco grab hold behind him, seething with silent curiosity and questions. Connor picked up the Sword of Gryffindor, which of course did not burn him, and caught Draco's hand.
Up Fawkes soared, away from the Chamber and Sylarana's body, and Harry leaned his head on the tail and wished he could cry.
They were in the Headmaster's office. Their parents had Apparated in, which was not a surprise, Harry thought distantly, when they heard about their son taken into the Chamber. He knew his safety would have been one of their concerns, but a secondary one.
His magic lashed angrily. He calmed it, and felt the walls already weakening. With Sylarana gone—
She is gone.
—he could not hold the cold self and the silent self much longer, but he would have to hold them until he could fight his way free. He had already decided what he would do. He only wanted to wait until Draco left the office. It wasn't fair to subject him to this.
Draco had at last gone, after admitting that he didn't remember anything between distracting the basilisk with his mirror and finding it dead, and Madam Pomfrey had taken charge of him. That left Harry in the Headmaster's office with Dumbledore behind his desk, Fawkes on his perch, the Sword of Gryffindor on Dumbledore's desk, Lily and James in the corner with Connor between them, Sirius kneeling in front of and hugging Connor as if his life depended on it, and Professor Snape scowling suspiciously from a chair. Connor was telling his story, his color high and flushed with excitement. He had no obvious wounds, and neither did Harry, who had made sure to avoid the eyes of both men who might be able to read his mind.
Harry let a bit of his magic free. It was longing to be used, and he would use it in the best way he could.
"Fugitivus Animus Amplector," he whispered.
The magic flooded out of him, catching the attention of everyone else in the room and directing it fiercely towards Connor. Harry slipped in their perceptions, sliding down the ladder of importance to them. He had the distinct feeling that Dumbledore had let the spell capture him, and Snape's mind had already begun subtly struggling against it; its effect on him would probably end when he left the room. But his parents and Sirius were decidedly victims of it. It increased their near-obsession with Connor into true obsession. The magic rather liked that.
So did Harry, but for different reasons. Oh, they would grieve when they knew he was dead, but it would be a muted grief. Harry knew Connor's grief would be true, and he wished he could give his brother another gift than this, but if he stayed here, he would hurt him. The anger he had locked in the box and beneath the webs of his mind was wild in him now, swirling around, and it wanted to hurt Connor.
No. He could not hurt Connor.
Harry closed his eyes as the tug-of-war began again, and sighed. He would find nothing here. He had to leave the school as soon as possible, and get as far away as he could. He would generate a magical explosion when he died, he knew, but Hogwarts's wards should protect her. And then Connor would be alive, and a true hero, and a true Gryffindor, and he would have done all he could.
He turned and slipped out of the room.
He ran, silently, for Hogwarts's front doors. The walls in his head were already collapsing. He was remembering more and more, a whirlwind of memories, a maelstrom, dancing and catching him up, flinging him from image to image and phantom pain to phantom pain. He was dying. He was going to die. He had never hurt so much, and he did not think that anything could hurt so much and live.
He burst free from Hogwarts and ran across the grounds. Night had come. Harry could see stars, and the rising slim crescent of the moon, and a distant light growing from Hagrid's hut. The dark shape of the Forbidden Forest paced him.
He went to one knee, abruptly, as the last of the walls fell in his head. He expected a moment of regret that he hadn't been able to get further away.
Then the magic roared out of him and into the heart of the sky, and called down a storm. Harry closed his eyes and let himself be swept away.