Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Sorry for my inability to keep to my weekly schedule :/
"Again: why in Merlin's name are we going down to a chamber which is the house of a basilisk, infamous for petrifying-sprees and killing?"
"I told you, she's asleep."
"She could wake up."
"She won't," Harry waved Mike off, who sputtered incredulously, clearly not happy with Harry's lack of concern about his fear of basilisks. "I spent a lot of time at the end of second year finding things to feed her so she'd hibernate." Harry said with a shudder. Things weren't great right now, but at least he didn't have to skirt around the Forbidden Forest killing copious amounts of rats to feed her.
"Stop being a wimp, Mike." Terry said calmly, and that shut Mike right up. Terry had always that affect on him.
The four tentatively slipped into the girls' bathroom - or, as it was colloquially known: Myrtle's Bathroom. Harry walked over to the sinks with an air of familiarity, despite the fact that he hadn't been visited the chamber since the start of the year, when he went to double-check the basilisk was still in hibernation. Running his hand along the engraved snake, Harry hissed the magic words, and stepped back, basking in the shocked expressions on Mike and Anthony's faces as the sinks twisted and connived open, revealing the tunnel down to the Chamber of Secrets.
"You guys have no idea how lucky you are." Harry said as he inspected the grimy, slimy slide down, his finger tapping the side of his broom.
Anthony grimaced. "You're making us fly into some mysterious, dark chamber on brooms - to murder us for all we know - and you're calling us lucky?"
"Yep." Harry laughed, before pulling a face as he remembered the first time he'd come down here. How the dirt had clung to his robes for hours, and how even when it was magically cleaned off, he would swear he could still feel it. At least on brooms they wouldn't have that, nor would they have to step on the little bones of mice and rats that had been a basilisk's dinner. Harry turned to his friends. "Come on then."
"Woah." Terry whistled appreciatively as they stepped into the main room. "How come something this big could remain hidden for so long?"
"Slytherin was a powerful wizard. If he didn't want something to be found..." Harry shrugged.
Terry shot him a grin. "That could work out in our favour nicely."
Harry surveyed the room curiously. It felt odd to be in here with other people. Well, it felt odd to be in here at all. He'd come down a few times since second year, but each time felt like a glaring reminder of his impetuosity. How he'd tricked Terry and gone down to the Chamber, his fight with Tom Riddle - Voldemort himself - and then finding out he was a metamorphmagus. It also reminded him of how bad a friend he had been recently to Ginny. With all the fourth year drama - the Triwizard tournament; various people figuring out his identity - it had been easy to fall out of touch with Ginny. Even Neville, and Dean, and pretty much everyone, bar his group of 'claws, and the Slytherins of course, who had gradually become almost omnipresent in their lives.
But falling out of touch with Ginny felt worse than any of the others, the two shared the same trauma of the Chamber of Secrets, and the truth behind the Tom Riddle/Voldemort debacle - though, Ginny had it far worse, with her own feelings of guilt over her involvement. Ginny was also one of the few people in the world who knew Harry was a metamorphmagus, which luckily wasn't common knowledge, or it might have been a lot more obvious that Harry Reynolds was indeed Harry Potter. Merlin, he really needed to talk to her soon. Hopefully she wasn't focussed enough - or considered the idea too ludicrous - to figure out that he was Harry Potter, but currently, she definitely had enough information too...
"I still don't know why you're showing us this." Mike finally piped up again, pulling Harry out of his thoughts.
Harry turned to face him, gripping his hands together. "I thought this could be our... place."
"Our place? We have a dormitory." Mike replied.
"No, like, another place, which isn't our dormitory. Look, it needs a bit of cleaning up, which we - or I, or whatever - will get to, once we get past next week," Harry bit his lip, trying to stop his mind from imprinting the word 'if' into his head: if he got past next week. Harry turned his head away from his friends and stared down the statue where the basilisk was hiding in, "but after that we can use it. We all know that something's happening, something big, and out of our control, something powerful and something scary. The Quidditch World Cup was just the start, and if our worst fears are right... If our worst fears are right then one day we're going to need to be powerful ourselves. We're going to need to be able to fight. I just thought down here would be a good place to do that, incognito style."
"Like a lair. A secret base." Mike said, grinning now.
"Exactly." Harry turned back round to face his friends, all who were now looking at the Chamber with newly reinforced excitement. "You in?"
"Secret staging ground for a training ground so we're ready when danger comes knocking? Yeah, we're in." Mike replied, and the other two nodded along with him.
"How secret?" Terry asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, is this just for us four? Or do we invite the Slytherins, or any of our other friends."
Harry rubbed the back of his neck. He'd originally only considered using this place for the four of them, but now that Terry had brought up, it seemed obvious that he could get Draco and Daphne, and all the others to come along too. They all already knew he was a parselmouth, so this wasn't exactly part of his big web of secrets. He could even invite Neville, or Ginny. They could all help train each other, everyone coming with their own skillsets and specialities. But maybe not yet.
"Harry?" Terry prompted and Harry shook himself out of his thoughts.
"Just us for now. We get this place in good shape, figure out the logistics, and then we take a vote on whether to expand our secret farming committee." Harry explained, alluding to their codename with a grin.
The four exchanged looks of excitement, before a frown suddenly appeared on Anthony's face. "Wait," he held up a hand, drawing everyone's attention to him. "we have to clean?"
"Ok, but seriously. That place was massive... How do you expect us to clean all of it?" Anthony asked again, and Harry rolled his eyes. The blonde had become particularly fixated on that detail of Harry's plan.
"Oh, I don't know Ant, magic?" Harry snarked as he slid off his broom, the tunnel closing behind him after a quick, hissed instruction.
"As though we don't have," Anthony paused as he peered out of the bathroom door, checking the coast was clear before stepping out and resuming his train of thoughts, "enough things to do at the moment." Anthony replied, clearly referring to both the enormous workload and the tournament research and practice.
Harry exited the bathroom. "I obviously meant it for when we were done with the tourna-"
"Hey guys." The boys all spun round, startled by the sudden noise. "Wait, were you just in the girls' bathroom?" Draco raised a disapproving eyebrow. "With brooms?"
"Well, you know, when you have to go..." Terry trailed off with a sheepish grin.
"And you all had to go, at the same time...?" Draco asked sceptically. Harry exchanged a glance with the others, and shrugged in acceptance. It was better Draco knew this than the truth. "You Ravenclaws are an odd bunch."
Harry laughed nervously. "Yep. The oddest..." He replied, and Terry shot him a bemused look, as if to say 'what on earth are you playing at'.
"Right." Draco looked confused. "I was about to go to dinner, are you lot joining or do you have more girls' bathrooms to check out?"
"Food sounds good-" Terry began, just as Harry started speaking.
"I don't have much of an appetite-"
"Yeah, neither I guess-" Terry corrected.
"On the other hand-" Harry began.
"Ok." Draco raised his eyebrows, before shaking his head and turning his gaze away from Terry and Harry. "You two in?" Draco asked, nodding his head in Michael and Anthony's direction. The two shared a quick look before nodding. "Good. When you two make up your minds I'll see you down there." Draco told Terry and Harry, a small smirk tugging at his lips. "I can't believe you all went flying without me," Draco's voice echoed down the corridor.
"Smooth." Terry said as soon as Draco, Mike and Anthony got out of earshot.
"Hypocrite." Harry mumbled.
"Dorms or dinner then?"
"Library. Flitwick says I've been slacking." Harry finally said the words which had been nagging at him all day.
"Flitwick spoke to you? When?"
"Yesterday, after charms. He told me that he was disappointed in my trajectory over the course of this year, and that he wished I would apply myself better and show more enthusiasm to my studies."
"What did you say?"
"What do you think? I couldn't exactly explain that the reason my homeworks have gotten progressively worse since February is because I'm actually-" Harry quickly scanned the corridor, lowering his voice before continuing. "-the fourth champion and the elusive Harry Potter." Harry raised his eyebrow at Terry nodded in acceptance. "I told him I was having family issues. Guess it's not exactly a lie."
"Yeah." Terry paused speculatively. "Do the teachers know? About-"
"What happened with my aunt and uncle?" Harry cut off. "Not exactly. Madam Pomfrey knows about the coma for medical reasons, so I presume Dumbledore knows too, and maybe Flitwick as head of my house. I don't really know what my dad told them. I don't think they know I'm adopted though, so they probably just think I was bullied or took a freak fall or something."
"I guess it would be too revealing if they knew too much more."
Harry shrugged. "Everyone knows Harry Potter was abused. If they knew Harry Reynolds was too, I doubt they'd connect the dots... but it's better to not leave it up to chance anyway. Keep Potter, and Reynolds, as separate as possible."
Terry nodded. "So, how can I help?"
"Help?!" Harry asked incredulously. Terry had been non-stop in helping him since the day he'd found out about his identity. Even on days when he was angry with Harry, he still went down to the duelling room with him (maybe Terry liked being able to fire spells at him when he was annoyed with Harry... those days were certainly harder than normal!) and every second not spent in class, dinner or doing homework, had been spent researching spells and potential scenarios for the third task, and then practicing said spells and scenarios. Mike and Anthony too, hadn't taken a day off.
"Of course." Terry seemed amused at Harry's surprise.
"You've helped enough."
"Harry... I can't even start to imagine what you're going through this past school year - what you've been going through your entire life. You're fourteen, and yet you have to worry about your life. If I can do something so minor as help you with your homework, there's no chance of you stopping me. Understood?" Terry took Harry's stunned expression as acceptance, and nodded. "So, to the library."
Harry sighed. He'd spent more time in the library this past month, then he had in his dorm. But in only three days time it'd all be over, so, despite his attempts to take his mind off the damn tournament by planning for the future and showing his friends the Chamber of Secrets, he needed to get his head down, and make sure that in three days the thing that was over was the tournament, and not his life. "To the library," he nodded.
Three days later
Harry's eyes widened as a strong hand pushed at his back. "See Harry my boy," the man said in a hushed voice, "what we realised after the last two tasks, is that you had no inclination to respect the traditions and rules of this tournament. So, we had to adapt. The tournament, as I'm sure you're aware by your conniving - I'm not judging, I am a politician after all - manipulation of the rules, requires you to compete in each task. What we've done here is make it so you are only classified as competing, once you enter the maze." Harry gritted his teeth, trying to show no reaction as the Minister revealed the thing that Harry had been dreading for months: that he had no choice but to enter the deadly maze.
He'd seen what happened to the contestants before him. He was the last in after all, and by quite some time at that. The second the contestants had stepped forward, into the maze, the hedges had swallowed them up, trapping them inside. Fudge glanced at his pocket watch. "I'll give you a minute to collect yourself." He said with a small smirk, inclining his bowler hat in Harry's direction before stepping back into the stands.
"Ass." Harry muttered as he watched the minister make his way over to Lucius Malfoy, who was staring at Harry curiously, his eyes narrowed in what Harry could only presume was disdain. Harry lifted his head tauntingly at the man, feeling hatred rise up within him, all directed at Draco's father, who no doubt had some nefarious hand in this task. Lucius lifted an eyebrow at Harry, before pointedly turning his gaze towards the minister, and with that Harry's distraction vanished, and he was forced to survey the situation in front of him. Not that there was much he could do now. He'd practiced all he could, researched all he could. Now all he could do was wait for his stopwatch to start and step inside. The seconds seemed to tick faster now that Harry knew he had no escape, and all of a sudden Bagman's annoyingly enthusiastic voice boomed through the microphone, and Harry forced himself to take a step forwards.
He straightened his back, and lifted his head. He was terrified, but there was no way he was letting anyone in the stands know that. Especially not the likes of Cornelius Fudge and Lucius Malfoy. Besides, if this was the last time his friends were ever going to seem him, he wanted them to know he wasn't scared (even though he was, he really, really was), he wanted them to think he was brave, and strong. So he took the step forwards, and didn't look back as he heard the maze shift behind him, the plants forming an indestructible wall where there once was his exit.
Harry took in a deep breath, calmer once he realised that no one could seem him now, before he remembered with a start what that meant. Then all his strength and faux-confidence crumbled. "Fuck." Harry hissed. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. I'm so screwed." He said to the wind. He couldn't hear the crowds anymore. He couldn't see anything but towering, dark green hedges enclosing in on him. All he could do was move forwards, move towards the danger.