DISCLAIMER: The characters aren't mine. I'm borrowing them from the esteemed Joss Whedon and J.K. Rowling.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from BtVS Season 1 to Season 6, AtS Seasons 1 to 3, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Reviews always welcome!
CHAPTER 39:
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS
Harry led Willow quickly away from the tumult in the Great Hall; several of the Gryffindors arose and moved to come with them, but Harry quickly waved them back to their seats. He gave the Slytherin quintet at the head of the House table a venomous stare back over his shoulder, but Willow never looked back. She kept her head lowered, trying to bite back tears, trying to melt into Harry's side.
They moved quickly through the Entrance Hall and up the stairs to the second floor. Once they were in the stairwell, Harry Summoned his Firebolt, explaining that it would make reaching the Chamber easier. Fortunately, it did not seem that anyone had followed them; perhaps Dumbledore or McGonagall had kept everyone in their seats, or perhaps the enormity of what had happened was doing that without the need for any explicit order from the Headmaster or the Deputy Headmistress. They did not see another living creature other than Mrs. Norris en route to the girls' bathroom that held the entrance to Salazar Slytherin's ancient den.
"Harry!" Moaning Myrtle greeted them. "Splendid to see you again!"
"Hello, Myrtle," Harry greeted her, in a rather familiar manner.
"Ooh, is this your girlfriend?" the translucent girl asked, with a slight hint of a pout.
"Um, well, yes, actually."
"Ooh. I should have known you'd go for someone living," she sniffed. "Though she does look at least somewhat dead at the moment."
Willow flinched. "Myrtle!" Harry chided.
"Hmph!" Myrtle responded with a flip of her head, and she darted away back into the bowl of her favorite toilet.
"She's a little sensitive," Harry explained.
Willow actually managed a weak smile. "We've met."
"Oh. All right. Well, the entrance is right here," he continued, motioning to one of the sinks. Willow's eyes narrowed. It was the same sink she had singled out weeks ago when she had first walked into this bathroom. As soon as her eyes fell on it again, the wand within her robes began throbbing as it had before, though the feeling in her stomach she remembered was much more faint.
"All right," she said, drawing a deep breath.
Harry gazed intently at the faucet, and Willow suddenly saw something she hadn't before: a tiny engraving of a snake on the side of the tap.
"Open up," he hissed. The faucet glowed suddenly with a white light, and the sink sank away and out of sight, revealing a dark opening into what looked to be a pipe.
"It's a bit of a wet slide down," he explained. "But the pipe's really wide, big enough for a basilisk to get through, so we can fly it."
"Oh … I see … well, I guess …" Willow managed weakly. He hadn't told her about this part. However, she took another look at him, managing a mischievously formal bow and presenting the side of his broom to her like the door of a limousine, she shook her head with a wan smile and worked her way onto the Firebolt. Harry settled in front of her a moment later. Willow wrapped her arms around him and nestled her head in the small of his back, just as she had done on the day they had first met when she had ridden behind him chasing the Hogwarts Express.
"You planned this part, didn't you?" she asked.
Harry laughed softly. "I've wanted to do this by myself for a while now. But it's definitely better this way."
"You better not drop me."
Harry turned and smiled at her over his shoulder, giving her a mock-hurt expression a moment later. "I promise," he said simply. With that, he eased the broom forward, taking his time, going even more slowly than they had in the cruise from the Quidditch pitch to the Owlery. He muttered a quick "Lumos" just as they entered the darkness.
The pipe angled steeply downward, and the surface of it was definitely wet. Willow was more than glad to be riding on a broom; she squirmed at the thought of actually sliding along this pipe. However, Harry had not been kidding about its width. Willow had been nervous about flying through dark and narrow spaces, but the pipe was wide enough that, had it been flatter, a truck could have driven through it.
Down and down they went, and Willow clutched urgently onto Harry's waist. Then, just as she was about to believe that they had taken a wrong turn and were heading straight for the center of the earth, she felt Harry leveling out the Firebolt's path. A minute later, he stopped as they emerged into a large stone tunnel.
"Are we getting off here?" Willow asked.
"The floor's pretty damp here," Harry answered, nodding downward. The floor, only two feet below them, was definitely unappealing. "Like you said. Needs a woman's touch," he added gently.
Willow smiled. "No problem," she said, pulling out her wand.
"Willow …" he said nervously. "I'm not going to stop you, but … are you sure you're up to this? Whatever 'this' is?"
"I'm fine," she answered. "Those phoenix tears were … well, amazing. Wonder what they sell for."
Harry laughed. "Trust me, the Diagon Apothecary would have to go into debt for the next century just to stock that vial of Dumbledore's."
"I believe it," Willow said. She focused her eyes a moment later, made a sweeping motion with her wand, and chanted, "Siccitas adesta." There was a rush of desert air, and the water on the floor began to shrink and fade away. A moment later, the floor was as dry as any of the Hogwarts corridors.
"Wow," Harry said.
"Drought Curse," Willow explained. "Um … can we get down now?"
Harry laughed, and shrugged resignedly. Willow grinned. He had clearly been planning on keeping her close to him on the back of the broom a while longer. However, he did land the broom.
The memory of the incident in the Great Hall was beginning to fade. Willow wondered if the phoenix' tears had the power to heal more than just physical hurt, or if it were just the effect of being alone with Harry. She was tired, but she was feeling much better already, despite the rather dark surroundings. She had been in much worse during six years on the Hellmouth.
She moved up behind Harry as he dismounted and encircled his midsection again from behind. "We could go on like this for a while longer," she whispered softly. "I know you had your heart set on it."
Harry laughed, and turned around to give her a tight hug. "Might make walking a little awkward," he whispered into her ear. "But don't worry. There's still the ride back to look forward to."
Willow laughed as she pulled away. "Hmm. My boyfriend has a devious streak."
"What can I say? You bring out the best in me," Harry laughed, turning to lead her farther along the corridor. Willow quickly summoned a light from her own wand as well. The corridor did not look so forbidding once the dark water had been eliminated; it was still rough, but it was almost like finding a cave on a camping trip now.
A moment later, they came to what looked to be a rockfall with a small hole burrowed into it.
"Do we have to squeeze through there?" she asked.
"The hole's bigger than it looks," Harry answered. "We could squeeze through without too much trouble. Or …"
"Or?" Willow pressed, seeing the mischievous spark in his eyes again, only now tinged with something more.
Harry took a deep breath, then seemed to think better of it. "Never mind. We can do it some other time."
"What?" Willow pressed. She was doing everything she could to put the incident in the Great Hall behind her. Hadn't he gotten that picture yet when she had agreed to come down here in the first place? The sane thing to do would have been to go back to her room and just wait for the day to end.
He took another breath. "Or we could find out what we're really capable of together."
Willow arched an eyebrow at him. "Oh, really?"
He quickly explained what he meant, and she listened, then looked at the rockfall again, then looked back at him and smiled. She had written him a long time ago about the fact that she and Buffy had never found a good place to practice away from prying eyes … and that she had been afraid to practice her more powerful spells.
"You're crazy," she said. Harry shrugged, smiled wistfully, as if to say 'I told you so,' and moved towards the gap in the rock.
Willow put a hand on his arm. "But I'm feeling a little crazy, too, right now," she said. She was alone with a boy she was quickly falling for more and more every day, she had recently had a close brush with death, and the wand in her hand was still pulsing. She could almost feel it wanting to be used, and something that had been awakening inside her for weeks now wanted to use it, too.
Harry backed up to stand beside her again. "You sure?" he asked uncertainly.
"Sure. Why not?" she shrugged. Seize the moment, because tomorrow you might be dead, Buffy's voice floated down to her from their first conversation at the Bronze all those years ago. "I've always sort of wanted to see what my devious boyfriend can do, too."
Harry grinned, and he reached out and took her hand, shifting his wand into his left. "Ready?" he whispered softly. She could feel the power building in him; his hand burned with it. She smiled and took a deep breath, basking in the feel of that aura for a moment, feeling him doing the same with the power that was beginning to blossom in her. Her hair rustled as though disturbed by a faint wind.
"Ready," she answered, even softer.
Harry nodded, and held her eyes. "Three … two …" he didn't even say 'one.' The thought passed between them like they were thinking with one mind.
They both turned their heads as one, lifted their wands, and cried "Reparo!"
There was a rumble of stone and earth as power surged outward from their wands in a wave, and a distant part of Willow's mind panicked for a brief instant, thinking she was witnessing a cave-in. A moment later, however, she steadied herself, and a broad grin spread across her face as she realized that she was indeed witnessing a cave-in … in reverse. Boulders were rolling away back into the walls, or lifting themselves up to cement themselves to the ceiling. Smaller fragments of rock that had been shattered were reassembling themselves before returning to their original places in the sides and roof of the tunnel. A thunderous echo boomed down the tunnel in both directions.
As the echo faded, the power of the spell did as well, and Harry and Willow both lowered their wands together. Willow slumped against Harry, but she was smiling, almost purring.
"Wow," Harry whispered breathlessly.
"Mm-hmm," Willow answered. She barely noticed that the feeling in her stomach had faded, as though it had been worked out of her system somehow. The pulsing sensation in her wand had not abated, however; in fact, it seemed to be almost exultant at finally getting some kind of release.
A moment later, she caught sight of something further down the passage, just past where the cave-in had been only moments earlier. She suddenly clutched Harry's arm. "Uh … what is that?" she whispered tensely.
Harry looked down the corridor, saw what she was looking at, and laughed knowingly. "It's not alive," he said quickly. "It's just a skin."
Willow straightened herself from Harry's embrace and walked forward curiously to get a better look. It was indeed a skin, a vivid, poisonous green skin of a snake that had to be at least twenty feet long. "A basilisk skin," she observed wonderingly. Harry had mentioned that the only thing guarding the chamber had been dead, but he had never mentioned what it was.
Harry nodded. "From when it was a lot smaller," he added. "It was a lot bigger by the time I got here."
Willow's eyes widened, and she turned to give him another appraising look. She remembered hearing that he and Ron had killed a basilisk; some of the Slytherins had mentioned it when complaining about the two hundred points Harry and Ron had each received at the end of their second years. She had never gotten to hear the details, however, since no one seemed to know anything about them. So this is where that happened, she realized. He had to fight that thing down here.
She reached out to touch the skin. It was still firm. She remembered one of her Alchemy texts saying that basilisk skin was almost indestructible. They were related to dragons and sea serpents. Looking closer, she was amazed to see some gashes in the skin, as though some pieces had been removed at some point; that should have been nearly impossible. A chill passed through her body as she touched the side of one of the pieces, and she shivered, though it was not really that cold. Her wand, back within her robes, beat briefly against her breast like a second heartbeat. The place on her neck where the cobra had bit her throbbed briefly, and she pulled her hand away, not welcoming the memory.
They followed the tunnel together for a few more turns, until they finally arrived at a solid stone wall. Two entwined serpents were carved upon it, with flickering eyes of emerald.
"Would you like to do the honors?" Harry asked. "This is it."
Willow nodded, and looked right at the eyes of the serpents. For some reason, the mindset to speak Parseltongue was coming easily to her down here. "Open up," she hissed. The stone serpents sprang to life and out of the way, and a crack opened in the wall between where they had been moments earlier. The opening widened as the two halves of the wall slid away.
Harry breathed a long breath, and for the first time, Willow realized that coming down here again had to have been an interesting experience for him, too, to put it mildly. "Well," he said. "Here we are. The most private place in Hogwarts."
"Works for me," Willow said, taking his hand comfortingly and drawing him forward.
They moved forward through a thick archway and into the Chamber. Willow's eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. The chamber was enormous, larger than any throne room of any Muggle king that had ever lived. The water that had been on the floor outside was nowhere to be found here, despite the fact that this chamber would have been well out of range of Willow's spell. The ceiling was lost in the darkness above, supported by massive stone pillars carved in the likeness of great serpents, with deep, hollow eye sockets designed to seem as though there were looking at one no matter where one stood in the chamber.
"Goddess," Willow breathed.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Harry said. "Only five people in the history of Hogwarts have been here—Salazar Slytherin, Tom Riddle, Ginny Weasley, me, and now you."
"I can't believe someone would build a place like this and then not have anyone else here."
Harry nodded. "I've always wondered why he felt he needed such a decorative place just to hide a basilisk. Actually, way back when we were first forming Dumbledore's Army, I thought about this place, but it would have been too hard to get a whole bunch of people here."
Willow nodded, remembering the pipe down. Everyone would have had to have flown, and a whole bunch of people walking around Hogwarts with their brooms with no apparent reason would have attracted attention.
"Still …" she whispered, with a light smile, "for just us …"
"Has potential, don't you think? Maybe just a few curtains?"
Willow laughed, and gave him a playful shove, fully aware that their light attitude was completely out of sync with the mood the chamber was clearly built to inspire, but not caring.
"Hmm, maybe," she joked. "Hard to tell. Let's get a better look." She raised her wand aloft like a torch. "Lumos lunas leviosa!" she chanted. A small ball of light burst from her wand, soaring up into the darkness above and slightly ahead of them like a small flare. When it reached its zenith, it suddenly blossomed into a brilliant silver light like a full moon, bathing the chamber in a soft silver radiance and driving back the greenish gloom that had seemed to permeate the air.
"Nice," Harry complimented her.
"Thanks," Willow said, sending a few more Moonlamps in the chamber to cancel out some of the glaring shadows behind pillars that the first had produced. Then, a moment later, her eyes settled on something at the far end of the chamber. It looked vaguely like the skin she had seen back in the tunnel … at least, in the way that a static spark looks like a lightning bolt.
"Oh … Goddess …" she whispered.
Harry saw what she was looking at; it was hard to miss. "Yeah, that was the real one," he said. Even at this distance, Willow was awed by its size; it had to be at least a hundred feet long, and as thick as an ancient oak.
"Wow," Willow whispered as she crossed the room towards it. It was lying like a sacrifice some way in front of a giant statue of what had to be Salazar Slytherin himself. The eyes of the serpent statues seemed to follow her as she moved, but her attention was locked on the great dead serpent in front of her. Harry brought up the rear, looking around them to take a better look at the chamber; he had seen the basilisk before, but had never really gotten a good look at the surroundings. He had had other matters on his mind the last time he came through here, Willow guessed.
She reached the dead basilisk and quickly reached out to feel the skin. It was as hard as it had been when the creature was alive; in fact, it had not even begun to decompose, save for the shriveled, punctured eyes. Other than that, she could barely tell that it was dead. There was no smell of decay.
On an impulse, she checked the serpent's jaws. The venom in the fangs had long since dried, but the fangs themselves were polished swords, hard and sharp as ever. Her wand began to pulse again as she came within view of the fangs. One was missing, right next to a vicious gash in the roof of the serpent's mouth that had to have been where Godric's sword had pierced it.
Suddenly, on a closer look, she realized that she had been mistaken. There was not one fang missing. There were two. At the back of its jaw, where its smallest fangs would have been, barely noticeable unless one was actively looking for it, there was another empty socket. She reached a hand toward it just to be sure, and could feel the wand in her hand throb furiously as she did so. She took another look at the wand.
Thirteen and a half inches. Yew. Basilisk's fang core.
The missing fang would have been just under a foot long. So that's where you came from, she mused.
"WILLOW!" Harry's startled and alarmed voice jerked her out of her reverie, and she snatched her hand back so quickly that she cut her hand on one of the fangs near where the missing one had been. She grated a quick healing charm as she bolted around the basilisk's head to where Harry's voice had been coming from.
Harry was standing behind the basilisk, in the short space in between the dead serpent and the feet of the statue of Salazar Slytherin. There was something lying on the floor there, hidden from the view of the entrance behind the great serpent's corpse. Not something, Willow corrected herself instantly. Someone.
"DRACO?!" Willow practically shrieked.
The Malfoy heir was bound to the floor by manacles of what looked to be pure shadow. He was moving his mouth to speak, but had clearly been Silenced.
"Finite Incantatem!" Willow shouted, snapping her will like a whip. The cords of shadow evaporated, and the Silencing Charm dissipated with a telltale snap.
"Look out!" Draco cried immediately.
Willow suddenly became aware of another force in the chamber, and felt power being drawn nearby. Without warning, she was picked up and catapulted forward by an unseen force, tumbling headlong into Draco. She landed atop him before she could stop herself, and her knee flew into the prostrate boy's head. There was a thud as Draco's head was knocked back against the floor, and his body went limp.
"Impedimenta!" she heard Harry shout behind her as she rose to her feet. There was the riving sound of two spells striking each other, and then she was on her feet, wheeling around and weaving a shield around herself as she did so.
She was confronted by a silhouette of shadow that had detached itself from the wall of the chamber and was bearing down on them. It was small, well shorter than herself, and humanoid, though if it were actually human, she couldn't tell. It was like a shadow wrapped in shadow; a massive smoky penumbra surrounded it like a massive cloak, making it seem taller than it was. It had to have just arrived somehow, probably having set a ward on the spells around Draco to know if they were broken.
Its spells. Something jumped into Willow's mind. It had not spoken when casting the spell against her, nor when turning aside Harry's Impedimentus blast … and it was cloaked in an aura that she sensed would make it nearly impossible to detect.
"Harry," she grated icily, "this is the guy who attacked Lupin."
Author's Notes: Cliffhanger! :-D But hey, those of you who were wondering what was up with Draco finally get a break!
In case you were wondering, things get a lot more active from here; the next few chapters are probably going to be pretty much nonstop violence. Hope no one has a tremendous problem with that. ;-) We'll see if my battle scenes measure up to the discriminating taste of HP/BtVS readers. At the very least, I hope I'll start to be able to justify the "Action" label I gave the fic way back when.
Coming Soon: Chapter 40 (Whew! Has it really been that many?), "Of Politics and War." Harry and Willow duel Lupin's attacker (currently serving as Draco's prison warden).
Sneak Preview:
With a sinking feeling, Willow realized that she had not felt any impact upon her shield. The bolt had never been aimed at her.
"Look out!" she screamed, but she was too late.