A/N:

additional warnings for violence, blood, and gore in this chapter. i'd like to add that if you, like ron weasley, are bothered by the existence of giant spiders, this may not be the chapter for you.


Part Five


.

My arms you fell into

And you asked if I'd run away with you

I ain't felt that way before

Like I couldn't wait just a minute more

.

Dream, Tessa Violet.


Minutes passed without any real way of knowing how long it had been. Gradually, Harry's tears slowed, the ragged sound of his breathing easing into the numb silence of grief.

Bad enough that Tom was dead. Worse that Harry was responsible for it.

Harry had yet to open his eyes. He knew that if he did, the world would spin, and the sight of the Basilisk's body would send him spiralling back into hysterical anguish.

Perhaps he would go to Voldemort now. Go to Voldemort and beg for mercy, beg for the great serpentine monster to find a way to bring Tom back to life. Or beg the mirror, the mirror that had granted him his heart's desire once before.

Beneath Harry, the Basilisk's body shifted.

The shift was subtle. So subtle that at first, Harry mistook the motion for his own traumatized shudder. But then the beast quivered again, the length of its torso distorting, stretching—

Harry's eyes flew open. He fell backwards, cold panic rising in his chest, a dry scream building in the back of his throat. The Basilisk continued to convulse, its midsection warped with horrific lumpy shapes, the glittering scales taut and twitching.

Something was pushing out from inside the belly of the beast.

Harry imagined a dozen tiny Basilisks bursting out of the corpse. Slimy, vicious things with fangs that tore through skin like paper. He would die, slowly, with poison burning in his veins as they devoured his flesh.

It would be a relief to cease existing. To escape the horrors of the past forty-eight hours.

The Basilisk's belly distended outwards, the obscene stretch of its scaled flesh moving in strange, bulging patterns. Harry could only watch, terrified and unable to move.

Then a flash of silver slid through part of the creature's stomach, blood spilling out of the gash. Harry gagged on the thick, putrid scent that filled the air, desperately shoving himself back as he covered his nose and mouth with the soaked sleeve of his robes.

Get up and run away, he told himself. He ought to get up and run away.

The Basilisk contorted again, the misshapen tear in its body bulging in and out with rhythmic precision. More blood poured forth as the snake's muscle finally tore and a thin, human hand scrambled desperately through the opening.

Harry screamed instinctually, his pitched, ragged cry echoing resoundingly in the cavernous chamber. His hand fumbled for a rock to hurl at whatever was emerging from the creature's corpse.

The first hand was quickly joined by another. Both hands seized on the edges of the wound and shoved hard enough to rock the entire midsection of the Basilisk. Within seconds, the muscle and tissue gave way, skin splitting and tearing to make way for the intruder.

A blood-soaked head shoved through the ragged flesh. Harry was still screaming, high-pitched wheezes that rattled his chest, but some part of his petrified mind recognized the body crawling out of the Basilisk's remains, covered in slime and pieces of flesh.

Head and neck, arms and torso. All drenched in blood, all shuddering violently as they pushed their way free from the Basilisk's body.

Harry couldn't breathe. "Tom?" he whispered, unable to believe what he was seeing. "Tom?" The smell of gore hit him again; Harry gagged on the rancid air but dragged himself forward, inching across the floor. "Oh, God, Tom—"

Tom's torso was half-extended over the Basilisk's body. His curls were plastered to his forehead and cheeks with some unidentifiable substance. He groaned as Harry approached. There was a knife in his hand, silver streaked with blood. Tom brought the knife down, dragging at the snake's flesh. The hole tore further, dropping him another few inches.

Harry reached out with shaking hands. "Here, let me, let me do it, let me—" He pulled the handle of the dagger from Tom's hands, breath held in his throat as he sank to his knees and carefully dug the tip of the blade into the scaled flesh.

Despite the unstable tremors in his hands, Harry scored a deep line through the creature's corpse, mindful of Tom's fragile body on the other side. Then he tossed the knife aside and wrapped both arms tight around Tom's torso. "Push," Harry said weakly, hoping he sounded at least vaguely encouraging.

Tom's eyes were squeezed shut, but he nodded stiffly, muscles tensing under Harry's grasp. They pulled and pushed in unison, and with a sickening squelch, Tom's ribs and waist slipped free.

"Almost," Harry said nonsensically, lightheaded from the awful smell and the surrealism of the situation. "Just a bit more."

As they tried again, the wider set of Tom's hips caught on the thick wall of the Basilisk's flesh. Harry helped turn Tom onto one side, and they moved again as one, prying and shoving until Tom emerged fully from the confines of the snake. But his body slid out too fast, all of his weight slamming into Harry, who cried out and tumbled backwards, taking Tom with him.

They landed in a painful heap of limbs and disgusting fluid. On top of Harry, Tom's breaths were faint and laboured. His eyes had not opened once.

"Tom?" Harry asked, once he had caught his own breath enough to speak. "Tom?" He was shaking again, so hard that even the added weight of Tom's body could not hold him still.

Tom made a vague noise of acknowledgement. It most closely resembled a whimper.

Although Harry ached all over, he rolled them both over, depositing Tom gently onto the chamber floor. And then he stared, because he had thought, for long enough to lose his mind over it, that Tom had been dead.

"I thought you were dead," Harry said in disbelief. "I thought I killed you."

Tom stirred at that, one eye finally blinking open. His lashes were clumped together, sticky with what might have been blood.

"You let me kill you," Harry whispered. "You let me kill you!"

Tom opened his other eye and stared blankly up at Harry for what felt like ages. Then he said, "I'm here, aren't I?"

"I'm going to kill you," Harry said savagely, purely on instinct. Then, as the meaning of his own words hit him, he broke into wild, hysterical laughter.

Harry laughed so hard that the laughing turned to wheezing turned to choking, leaving him doubled over and gasping for breath.

Tom turned his dead-eyed gaze back to the ceiling, waiting for him to finish, and then said, "I don't suppose you have a wand on you?"

"No," Harry said, sobering. "No, I don't."

Tom exhaled, a low, exhausted sound. "I don't suppose you know how to get us out of here, either."

"No," Harry said. Then he added, "But I have a bit of a plan."

Tom sat up and examined himself. His clothes were soaked in gore. He waved his hand over his torso, causing some of the mess to vanish. Harry had never been able to master wandless magic, but Tom had out of his usual perverse desire to be good at absolutely everything.

"Voldemort wants this missing piece of his soul," Harry said. "I made a deal with him. If we give it to him, then he'll let us go."

Tom worked his way over each of his limbs, cleaning off more of the filth as he went along. It was a slow process, doubly so because Harry suspected that Tom was in as much pain as he was.

"And do you think he will let us go?" Tom asked. His voice was rougher than usual, deep and dry the way he often sounded after a particularly nasty cold.

"No," Harry admitted. "But we have to start somewhere."

Tom shoved at the ruined mop of his hair, pushing his bangs back. "We should go, then. I think I know where the soul piece is. The sooner we have leverage, the better."

The flat, empty edge to Tom's voice was worrying. "We don't have to leave just yet," Harry said, "you're hurt, you can stay here and I can go—"

"Don't be fucking stupid," Tom snapped, his gaze heated enough that Harry flinched in response.

Harry was not the one who had just crawled out of a gigantic corpse. "Can you stand?" he asked instead.

Tom shoved himself to his feet instead of answering. His body swayed unsteadily, legs shaking with the strain, but he remained upright as he walked over to the knife and picked it up.

"Let's go," Tom said tightly. "This way."

Harry followed Tom to the left side of Salazar's statue. Tom shuffled over to the wall and laid his hand on the cool surface. Then he hissed something Harry did not understand which made the wall groan and shift, stone by stone, until there was a door-sized opening for them to pass through.

"Where are we going?" Harry asked as they passed through to a tall set of stairs. His head was beginning to hurt. It was hard to focus on Tom, even though Tom was only a few paces away.

"The headmaster's office," Tom said. "He's afraid of that place, I don't know why. There must be something there."

This was true. Other Tom had not wanted to ask the headmaster for help. Was there a Dumbledore here? Or at least, a version of Dumbledore that could help him and Tom escape?

"Why would it be in the headmaster's office?" Harry wondered aloud.

Tom made a noise of frustration. "What does it matter? It's all that we have, unless you've any better idea."

Harry fell silent. He pretended not to notice as Tom leaned on the railing for support. It was not as if he was faring much better; by the time they reached the top, they were both winded.

"We're going to die here," Tom said in a morbid tone as he stared down the empty length of hallway that stretched ahead of them. "That fucking monster is going to kill us."

Harry did not know what to say to that. He was used to Tom being the one to drive them forward. Tom was the one who urged Harry to study and apply himself in class. He was the one with grand aspirations and big plans for the future.

"It's not that bad," Harry said, wincing. "We can still get out of this."

Tom did not deign to respond. Harry did not blame him because it wasn't as if he would have believed himself either.

"I'm sorry," Harry tried instead. "I shouldn't have dragged you into this. It's my fault."

"Shut up," Tom said, not turning around. His hand clenched white around the handle of his knife.

Harry scowled. "I'm trying to apologize, you stupid git. I almost died back there! You almost died back there! The least you can do, for once in your goddamn life, is try not to be a complete fucking asshole—"

Tom finally whirled on him. "You think this is your fault?" Tom demanded. "You think I blame you for this?"

Harry didn't know what to think. "You came in here because of me."

"Of course I did," Tom hissed, jamming his finger into Harry's shoulder. "I wasn't going to leave you in here with that—that cheap copy of me!"

"You should have gone for help," Harry retorted. "If you had just gone to a teacher instead of all this—"

"You are so fucking stupid," Tom said angrily. "I can't believe you! I came in here to save you, got stuffed into that fucking Basilisk for all my trouble, and now we're going to die here and all you do is yell at me for it!"

"Well, I came back in here to save you, too," Harry threw back, "I came back for you—"

Tom was so worked up that his chest was heaving. "You should have just stayed away," he said in a flat voice.

"And left you to die?" Harry snapped.

"Left me to get out of here on my own," Tom snarled. "Because now I'm stuck with you, I don't even have my wand, and when that fucking beast comes back I'll have to protect you from it, too."

"I don't need protecting!" Harry shouted back, incensed beyond belief. His hands balled into fists. It was taking every bit of his self control not to punch Tom in the face. "Why did you even want to show me that bloody mirror in the first place?"

Tom's jaw tensed. He shook his head. "Stop changing the subject," he said severely. "The point is, we still have to get out of here and—"

Harry wasn't letting it go that easily. "No," he said, "no, I want you to tell me what was so fucking important that you had to wake me up in the middle of the night and drag me through the castle to see it!"

"It was a mirror showing doubles. Showing another world. I wanted you to see it."

The answer was reasonable, but the delivery of it—too quick, too natural—set off alarm bells in Harry's head.

"I don't believe you," Harry said, folding his arms across his chest.

"Well, I didn't fucking ask you to," Tom bit out. "You got your answer, now let's go. We're wasting time."

Harry wanted to push the matter further, but Tom was right. Nightfall was rapidly approaching. If they were to make it back to Voldemort in time, they had to hurry.

"Fine," Harry said. "But I'm not done talking about this."

Tom picked up his pace instead of responding. They half-walked, half-jogged to the headmaster's office. By the time they arrived, Harry was slightly out of breath and feeling dizzy again. He wanted to clutch at the sore parts of his body to support them, but it felt like everywhere was in pain.

"The door is open," Harry stated unnecessarily as they came to a stop in front of the empty doorway that led to the winding staircase.

Tom glanced around them, then strode over to one of the castle's many suits of armour. He tucked his knife into his belt, then wrenched the spear from the knight's grasp and examined the metal tip.

"Do you even know how to use a spear?" Harry couldn't help but ask.

Tom shot him a dirty look and tossed the spear to him before turning to the next knight and repeating the process of tugging its spear free.

It was better than a rock. Harry wished he'd thought to grab a spear before heading haphazardly into the Chamber. Truthfully, he'd been too stressed and frightened to think straight. He was used to ignoring the backdrop of Hogwarts' medieval decor.

"Let's go," Tom said curtly, nudging Harry aside so he could be the first up the stairs.

Harry grit his teeth against the throb of his migraine and followed, careful to listen for any footsteps ahead or behind.

Tom's steps slowed as they approached the top of the stairs. His hands tightened around the handle of his spear as he peered up at the opening that led into the office. After a few long seconds, he seemed to deem it safe to approach.

The two of them crept up final steps and entered the room.

Harry had only been to the headmaster's office two or three times, but he was pretty sure that the room was not meant to be this… tall. The ceiling stretched so high that Harry could not make out the end of it. There were no lights towards the top, which gave it the appearance of a long, pitch-black tunnel.

As Harry moved further into the room, however, he caught sight of silver lines that ran back and forth, suspended in air. The higher he looked, the more lines there were. The world around him swayed lazily, his vision blurring around the edges. Did he have a concussion? Wizards weren't supposed to really get those so easily, but Harry had taken quite the beating down in the Chamber.

Tom did not have his eyes on the ceiling. He was stiff as he examined the empty office, shoulders hunched, jaw tense.

"This office is a mess," he muttered as he began picking through the desk's contents with one hand. "Fucking Dumbledore."

Harry was still mystified by the strange, decorative ceiling. The silver lines were… gleaming. Like they were made of magic. "What would a soul piece look like?" he asked Tom.

"How would I know?" Tom asked irritably. "It could be anything." He glanced over his shoulder. "Help me look."

Harry cast a final look at the ceiling, then stumbled forward to help. He noticed that there were silver lines attached to some of the items that sat around the office. Some sat on the shelf affixed to the back wall. Others lay strewn around on bookshelves, hanging from the room's singular cloak rack, or abandoned on a dusty side table that did not look as if it had been touched in centuries.

It was then that Tom pushed at his shoulder. "Are you listening to me?"

Harry blinked to clear the fog in his head. The fog failed to dissipate. "Yeah. Sorry. What should I be looking for?" Tom knew more about dark objects than he did.

"I said I don't know," Tom snapped. "Just look around for anything that looks different or valuable."

Harry started looking. Empty glass bowl full of dust-covered lemon candies. Pile of old textbooks. A pair of fuzzy neon socks.

On the other side of the room, Tom rifled through the desk drawers, pulling things out and dumping them on the floor. Harry decided to move away from the desk and look somewhere else. The bookshelf, maybe. It was also covered in a thick layer of dust.

Harry held his breath as he began to examine the titles. His eyes kept unfocusing, making him lose his place. It took him three times longer than normal to scan across one row of books.

It was on the third shelf that Harry noticed the thin strand of silver that led directly to one book in particular. Secrets of the Darkest Art. The spine was black and the embossed title was a stark, chalky white. The letters were so crisp and outlined that they seemed to float off of the leather all on their own.

His hand rose to greet them, to touch the waxen white and see if the book felt as interesting as it looked. When his fingertips met the spine, the book quivered, the subtle vibration travelling from finger to wrist to elbow. How peculiar.

Harry gripped the spine firmly and wrenched it from the bookcase, causing the attached silver thread to snap.

Once freed from the shelf, the book began burning. The leather seared against the rough calluses of his hand, the temperature rising so quickly that he barely registered the painful heat before his hold loosened reflexively.

The book tumbled to the ground, bashing against a lower shelf before landing on its back.

Tom's head jerked up at the sound, his eyes darting to the fallen tome.

Harry had opened his mouth to apologize when something fell from the ceiling and knocked him on the head. He winced as his headache throbbed in response to the blow.

Tom lifted his gaze to the dark tunnel of the high ceiling and squinted into the endless black. Another chip of stone from the castle ceiling fell, clattering noisily across the desk.

Then a shadow descended, a massive shape that threatened to block out what little light there was as it gradually lowered to greet them.

Harry stumbled back, shocked, the spear in his hand forgotten as he fell against the bookshelf.

The creature's body was a misshapen grey mass with eight long, spindly legs that ended in paw-like stumps. Two tiny black claws jutted out from the centre of each paw, and it was these claws that dug solidly into the various shelves resting against the circular walls, supporting the enormous spider's weight as it lowered from the ceiling by a single, shining thread.

Harry would have screamed if his breath hadn't frozen solid in his lungs at the sight.

The spider tilted to gaze down at them, its black eyes twinkling under the low light of the setting sun that filtered into the office. Sitting on its face where a nose might have been were it a human, was a single pair of half-moon spectacles.

Tom had raised his spear, aggressively aiming the pointy end towards the arachnid intruder, but it was Harry who spoke first.

"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry asked numbly.

The spider cocked its head at him, eyes unblinking and curious. Did it understand him? Could it understand him?

Tom's eyes had narrowed to slits. "Been hiding up here, have you? I know spiders are afraid of Basilisks."

That might have been true, but it also made no sense. Voldemort had been the one afraid of coming up here. If Voldemort could control the Basilisk, then surely he would have gotten rid of the giant spider living in the headmaster's office.

The spider's pincers twitched, as if in response to his thoughts. Harry set his spear down against the bookshelf and raised his hands in a gesture of good faith.

"We're looking for a piece of Voldemort's soul," Harry said slowly. "The mirror is keeping it from him. Do you know where it is? Can you help us find it?"

The spider—Professor Dumbledore, maybe—gave no sign of acknowledgement.

Tom had yet to lower his spear. "Stupid creature," he said in a voice full of disgust. "I bet the spider ate him. If there is a Professor Dumbledore, he's probably gone mad in there."

Harry glanced back at the spider. Although it hadn't responded to him, Harry couldn't help but think there was a glimmer of intelligence in the spider's large, luminous eyes. Actually, now that he had calmed enough to take a closer look, he noticed that one of the eyes was different from the others. It was not black—instead, it was a strange, milky white. Like someone had pried an eye of the same shape and size and jammed it into the empty socket.

"Tom?" Harry asked, willing his voice not to shake. "Do you see its eyes?"

"Yes," Tom said dryly, not daring to look away from the arachnid. "There are eight of them."

"The white one," Harry said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Is it just me, or is that one glowing?"

There was a beat of silence. No one moved, not him or Tom or the spider. The three of them stood, watching each other, as Tom scrutinized the milky white eye.

Then a grim look passed over Tom's face—an impressive achievement given his already cheerless expression. He hefted the spear. Harry felt sick.

"Come here," Tom said in a calm voice. When Harry did not obey, he added, "Harry. Come here."

Harry kept his feet firmly in place and turned back to the giant spider.

"You understand me," Harry asked softly. "Don't you? Tom and I, we're trying to defeat him. Voldemort. And I think—I think we need your eye to do that."

To his left, Harry could see Tom staring at him like he thought Harry had gone mad. And perhaps he had gone mad, thinking that he could convince this gigantic spider, who he thought might be this world's version of Dumbledore, to give up its eye.

The spider made a soft, chirping sound, its large body lowering by another few inches. The movement, slow though it was, prompted Tom into making a warning swipe with his spear.

But the spider did not so much as flinch.

Harry took a step closer. What had happened here? Was Tom right? Had Dumbledore been stuffed inside this spider, just as Tom had been stuffed inside the Basilisk? For how long?

"Harry, stay back," Tom said between gritted teeth. "The creatures in this world are dangerous. Do you really think that thing is just going to let us take its eye?" He raised the spear again, jabbing into the air, still hoping to threaten the spider back. "And even if we do get it," Tom continued, "who knows if he'll truly free us? He might let us go first then kill us once he's gone from this place."

The spider's head rotated by the slightest of degrees in Tom's direction, as if considering his words. Then the spider dropped from its perch on the bookshelves, legs braced as it landed in a crouch on the desk, toppling all of the contents onto the floor.

Tom did not hesitate in trying to impale his spear in the spider's midsection. The tip hit the flesh, then stopped cold. Tom tried again, but he might as well have been hitting stone for all the good it did. He made an incoherent growl of frustration and increased his speed, stabbing and slashing with vicious vigour.

"Stop it," Harry snapped, reaching out to shove Tom aside. Tom shoved back, hard, his weight alone nearly enough to topple Harry to the floor.

The spider raised one of its legs in Harry's direction. Harry went still, time slowing as he watched the creature's strange paw approach him. Then the paw laid itself gently against Harry's chest, over his heart.

Harry shuddered. He thought he could feel dozens of tiny hairs tickling him despite the layers of clothing between him and the paw.

The spider half-raised its other paw. Would that rest paw against his chest, too? Harry felt cold, certain that he would topple over if that happened. But the leg only came to rest on his shoulder, a gesture that might have been comforting if it hadn't come from a spider.

Tom had given up on attacking. He reached for Harry's arm, clearly intending to yank Harry back so they could flee down the stairs and regroup.

"Wait," Harry protested, "wait!"

The spider's fangs shifted, and then it spoke, its voice low and gravelly. "I… want… him… gone…"

"Then help us!" Harry pleaded. "Give us the eye. Either we'll kill him, or he'll kill us and leave the mirror world for good."

The spider regarded him in silence. Harry could see himself reflected in each of its large, shining eyes.

"If you want to defeat him," Harry added, "then come with us. Help us fight him." Having a giant spider on their side, however terrifying, would improve their chances of survival.

"You… believe…" the spider rasped, its rough voice increasing in strength and volume as it continued to speak, like the stretching of unused muscles, "you… can… defeat him?" It lowered its paws back to the floor. "You… a mere… child… defeat… Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes." Harry nodded, injecting as much confidence as he could into his voice. "Tom and I, we will. We're going to. We just need your eye." He stuck his hand out, palm up.

"If you… fail… he will… escape."

"He'll manage that someday anyway," Tom interjected. "If he's as smart as you say he is, he'll find the right soul to snatch someday. We're your best chance at killing him for good. And if we do fail, then at least he'll be out of your way. We'll even tell him we killed you, if you want. So he won't come for you afterwards."

Harry did not think that Dumbledore cared if Voldemort came to kill him. But the spider made the funny chirping noise again, and there was an edge to it that made Harry think the creature was laughing.

"Very… well…" The spider raised its left forepaw. "I will give you… what you so desire… and in return… you will tell him of my demise…"

"Yes," Tom said sharply. "Deal."

The spider's milk-white eye began to glow. Soft, bright light that illuminated the entire room. The spider's paw rose higher, seeming to guide the eye from its socket with wandless, wordless magic.

The pure white eye floated away from its owner and into the air. The spider made more noises, pained ones, but did not move to strike them as it directed Voldemort's soul piece into Harry's outstretched hand.

When the sphere made contact—its texture smooth and clean, like glass—the light extinguished and the spider slumped heavily to the ground, startling both Harry and Tom.

Harry closed his hand around the soul piece. The spider was motionless. Its eyes no longer twinkled with intelligence, with that glimmer of life Harry had recognized as belonging to a sentient being.

Tom cautiously dropped to one knee and examined the creature. He was quiet for a few seconds, then said, "I think it's dead."

Harry swallowed. "Are you sure?"

Tom laid a hand on the massive corpse. "Yeah," he said, after a few more moments. "It's not moving. Not breathing."

Harry felt a wave of grief crash down on him. It was so heavy that for a second, his legs wobbled, his knees too weak to support his own weight. He hadn't wanted anyone to die.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispered to the spider.

Tom's expression was once again grim as he rose to his feet. "Let's go. The spider knew what it was doing. The best we can do now is try to kill Voldemort for it."

Harry exhaled and gave a shaky nod. "Okay."

Tom retrieved Harry's spear from across the room and offered it out. "Let's go," he repeated.

Harry took the spear, but his hand was trembling so badly that the base shuddered noisily against the floor. Tom's free hand snapped out to cover his, squeezing down until the tremors finally subsided. Until Harry felt calm again.

Tom was right. They had to end this. The sun was nearly gone; all the light that came through the open window was now a deep, rich red. Harry shut his eyes. He and Tom were tired and injured and afraid. But they would finish this. They had to. They didn't have any other choice.

"Ready?" Tom asked. His voice was calmer than before. Gentler, maybe.

Harry opened his eyes. He slid his free hand over Tom's and allowed some of the tension to seep from his shoulders. He had not lost hope, not yet. His hope was warm and alive. It was Tom. So long as Tom was with him, so long as they stood together, he knew they could do this. They could win.


A/N:

i WANT to say there will be one more chapter but. there will probably be two. still, i live in denial. feel free to feed my delusions in the reviews!

also interested in the speculation regarding 1. what tom saw in the mirror and 2. the dumble...spider... (most cursed thing i've written, probably. which is saying something.)