Chapter Four
"OK, Myrtle!" Harry yelled. "You win—I'm going down!"
Harry took out his wand.
"Lumos." The tip of his wand began to glow.
He spoke in Parseltongue and the sink began to slowly open. Harry jumped into the void that led to the Chamber. He began to slide down. It was dark, but he could tell he was moving very fast.
Harry hit the bottom with a thud. He immediately brought his wand up. If the Basilisk was gone, did that mean that the spiders had returned to the Chamber? He started to panic.
He made his way to the inner sanctum. He moved slowly and very cautiously, quickly turning around if he heard anything. It was very quiet. Disturbingly quiet.
Harry finally came to the inner sanctum—the actual place he had killed the Basilisk. He remembered seeing Fawkes flying in with the sorting hat. He shuddered as if feeling the Basilisk fang go into his arm again.
He then saw something that he did not expect—a glimmer caught the corner of his eye. Off in the shadows, he could see something. He moved closer to whatever it was. Holding his wand up, he began to make out a shape. It was a mirror.
Harry pulled the mirror out into what little light was in the room. Harry lit some of the torches with a quick spell, and with this additional light he quickly recognized the mirror. It was the Mirror of Erised.
"I haven't seen you in a while," he said aloud to the mirror.
Harry peered into the mirror. In his first year he had seen his family standing around him, but now he saw many things flash before him. He saw Hermione. He saw images of Ron and him fighting the mountain troll. He saw himself riding Buckbeak, and Sirius, his godfather. He saw Hermione. Over and over again, Hermione. Himself and Hermione at the Christmas Ball. Walking in moonlight with Hermione across the snowy grounds of Hogwarts. Having ice cream with Hermione at Florean Fortescue's in Diagon Alley.
"Why do I keep seeing you?" Harry asked. The mirror was silent, but something in the Chamber was not. Harry began to hear strange tapping noises. There was no rhythm to the taps, but they were getting louder. Harry held his wand up. He saw nothing.
Something was extinguishing the torches as the tapping grew louder. Still, Harry could see nothing.
"Lumos maxima," he said. The sudden flare of light showed the source of the tapping, but he instantly wished he hadn't seen it.
The spiders had come to the Chamber, and they were everywhere. They were crawling on the walls and on the ceiling. There were some so large that they reached the ceiling, and some were the size of small elephants. More were coming up out of the water and emerging from the shadows. They were surrounding him and he was alone in the dark at the very bottom the Chamber of Secrets.
The spiders stopped moving. Everything became eerily silent. The spiders that were closest to him moved to one side and he could see a spider was coming forward. The spider that came to the front was not a large spider, but it looked like it had seen many battles. It had a broken mandible and was missing a joint on one of its many legs.
"Harry." The spider addressed him with a high raspy voice. "Harry, you shouldn't have come here. We let you get away in the forest, but once again you come looking for us.'
"Who are you?" Harry asked nervously.
"My name is unpronounceable in human tongue" the spider said in its raspy voice. "I am Aragog's eldest son."
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, still very much afraid.
"The question is, what are you doing here, but since you asked me, I will tell you. Aragog told us to let you escape. This caused many of us to question Aragog's ability to function as our meat-giver. He is old. I feared for my children's future in the forest. Meat was scarce. The giant that now lives in the forest has scared much of our food away. The centaurs take whatever is left. Very little arrives so deep in the forest anymore. I took whatever family would follow me and we began entering the Chamber in hopes of finding food and shelter. I feel I should tell you that we have not been so fortunate." The spider paused. "So that brings us to you, Harry."
The spider paused as if waiting for Harry to speak.
"I…I…" Harry stammered. "I came down here at the suggestion of a ghost named Moaning Myrtle. She said I would find what I was looking for."
The spider made more raspy sounds, this time in its own language. At once the congregation of spiders began to move closer to Harry.
"And did you find what you were looking for?" the spider asked.
"Yes, I did."
Once again the spider started talking to the others and they inched closer still. Harry thought about his warm four-poster bed and wished that he were there.
"Harry, I'm sorry you have come here."
Harry began to back up.
"This is the end of your journey."
The spiders were making horrible screeching sounds. Harry began to panic.
"Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."
The spiders continued to move towards him, slow but menacing, as Harry backed away. One of the smaller spiders suddenly lunged at him from the side. Harry tried to jump away, but fell backward, hitting his head on something hard. Looking up, he saw the ceiling in his dorm room—half of his body had fallen into the mirror! He could still see his lower half inside the Chamber of Secrets and all the spiders were converging on it. He frantically pulled his feet towards him and as soon as they passed through the frame of the mirror, the Chamber, the spiders and mirror disappeared completely with a small pop.
Harry got up shakily and sat down on his bed, trying to get the images of the spiders out of his head. After his last disastrous encounter with them, he had been fully prepared to never see them again, and he just ended up facing them a second time.
Harry was almost more shocked to see how much Hermione permeated his thoughts. The mirror showed them doing things that never happened. He remembered seeing Hermione at the dance. He'd wanted to dance with her. He'd wanted to hold her hand. But why hadn't his feelings changed now in light of Hermione's treachery?
Harry lay down and went to sleep.
A/N: This story is suffering from a strange phenomenon: plenty of readers and a lack of reviews. Thus far it's just been give give give on my part and not a lot of getting. So take a moment and hit that little "review" button. To paraphrase everyone's favorite werewolf, if you don't, I shall know!