For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it. Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the Basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book.
For an instant, there was pain beyond pain, it was pain beyond understanding. For an instant, he heard a keening wail from some vast distance, which then faded and died.
His sight blinked out and he collapsed unconscious.
He awoke to indistinct, hazy images. None of them were clear in any way. And there was pain. Everything hurt.
And now he was being shaken, and someone was talking to him in a voice he could not recall having ever heard … it was a man's voice.
"Harry."
The voice was clear, but Harry could see nothing of the man speaking to him.
"It's not time yet, Harry."
Where was he? So far as Harry knew, he was in the Chamber of Secrets. But this was certainly not that filthy place. There was no Basilisk lying dead before him. There was no mocking memory of Tom Riddle … who one day would … who had, in the past, grown to call himself Lord Voldemort. There was not an eleven year old girl who he had come to save, even on the wildest chance that she might be alive.
There were only indistinct images he could not understand. Everything hurt.
No one else was around. There should be no one who could be shaking him, talking to him.
"You've destroyed it, Harry. You've destroyed them. You can't stay here; it isn't time, it isn't right."
The voice faded away. Whoever it had been, was gone. As was the rest.
He awoke to the grimy, filthy floor of the underground cavern, and recoiled but only slightly. Cautiously, he sat up inch by inch, eventually making it to a sitting position, and then to his feet.
It felt like it took years. It probably took two minutes.
Once standing, the pain disappeared all at once, which he did not understand but made himself accept. He shook himself, then picked up his wand from the floor near the ruined book. It felt dead to his touch, and would not issue a single spark no matter how he waved it. Confused, horrified, he returned it to his pocket though he knew instinctively it would do no good.
He quickly gathered the diary and the Sorting Hat from the floor. Neither could be left here. The diary was too much evidence, and the Sorting Hat was too much a part of Hogwarts. Though this Chamber, too, was part of Hogwarts. Salazar Slytherin had built it …
Harry gazed at the corpse of the Basilisk. Wandlore was not a subject about which he knew a great deal, but he did know that the weapons of magical creatures did make for good wand cores. Carefully, he pulled out the last major fang and wrapped it up in his filthy robe. He then drew the glittering sword out from the roof of its mouth. With both of the major fangs now gone, and with the great gaps left in the corpse, he could only wonder for what purpose the creature had been made.
Then he heard a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. As Harry hurried toward her, she sat up. Her eyes traveled from the huge form of the dead Basilisk, over Harry, in his blood-soaked robes, then to the diary in his hand.
She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face.
"Harry - oh, Harry - I tried to tell you at b-breakfast, but I c-couldn't say it in front of Percy - it was me, Harry - but I - I s-swear I d-didn't mean to - R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over - and - how did you kill that - that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary-"
"It's all right," said Harry, holding up the diary, and showing Ginny the fang hole, "Riddle's finished. Look! Him and the Basilisk. C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here-"
"I'm going to be expelled!" Ginny wept as Harry helped her awkwardly to her feet. "I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and - w-what'll Mum and Dad say?"
Fawkes was waiting for them, hovering in the Chamber entrance. Harry urged Ginny forward; they stepped over the motionless coils of the dead Basilisk, through the echoing gloom, and back into the tunnel. Harry heard the stone doors close behind them with a soft hiss.
After a few minutes' progress up the dark tunnel, a distant sound of slowly shifting rock reached Harry's ears.
"Ron!" Harry yelled, speeding up. "Ginny's okay! I've got her!"
He heard Ron give a strangled cheer, and they turned the next bend to see his eager face staring through the sizable gap he had managed to make in the rock fall.
"Ginny!" Ron thrust an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through first. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened?" How - what - where did that bird come from?"
Fawkes had swooped through the gap after Ginny.
"He's Dumbledore's," said Harry, squeezing through himself.
"How come you've got a sword?" said Ron, gaping at the glittering weapon in Harry's hand.
"I'll explain when we get out of here," said Harry with a sideways glance at Ginny, who was crying harder than ever.
Following the softly glowing, hovering Fawkes, they made their way back to the very mouth of the Chamber. There Harry learned that Lockhart had lost all of his memory when the Memory Charm backfired. It was far more than he had ever taken from any of the people he'd cheated.
Fawkes lifted the whole group up the great pipe-shaft. After a brief meeting with Myrtle, they all made their way towards Professor McGonagall's office, Fawkes' soft glow illuminating the otherwise completely dark hallways.
The reunion far and away exceeded any of Harry's emotional expectations. The explanation had drained him, and eventually Dumbledore had dismissed everyone else but Harry. The two remained in the office.
"Sit down, Harry," said the headmaster, and Harry sat.
"First of all, Harry, I want to thank you." Harry saw that he was smiling. "You must have shown me real loyalty, down in the Chamber of Secrets. Nothing but that could have called Fawkes to you." Dumbledore's expression turned somewhat curious. He stroked the scarlet plumage of the phoenix, who had just flown onto his knee. Harry somehow managed a grin at this sight.
"And so you met Tom Riddle," the man continued thoughtfully. "I imagine he was most interested in you."
A rush of thoughts overcame Harry, but there was one that was the most pressing. "Professor, there's a problem I didn't mention. I think something happened to my wand; it doesn't want to work."
Dumbledore's eyebrows rose; he looked alarmed. "Indeed? Wandlore is not my field, Harry, but may I see?"
Harry drew the wand out of his pocket; it remained dead to his touch. Grimacing, he passed it to the headmaster. Dumbledore took it and waved it a bit. He held it close to his right ear as though he were listening to it, then simply stared at it for a long minute.
Dumbledore handed it back to Harry, shaking his head and looking almost sad. "That is perplexing, and no doubt distressful. I shall take you to see Ollivander in the morning, Harry; I do not doubt you want this resolved as soon as possible."
Nodding, Harry returned it to his pocket again. Remembering what they had been previously speaking of, he marshaled his thoughts.
"Professor, Riddle said I'm like him. Strange likenesses, he said."
"Did he now?", the professor inquired, eyebrows raised. "And what do you think, Harry?"
Harry's answer started abruptly. "I don't think I'm like him! I'm in Gryffindor -" but then he stopped dead silent.
For a while he didn't speak, until he repeated himself, trying to inject a little more force in his voice. "I'm in Gryffindor." He was not sure he succeeded.
Dumbledore nodded anyhow. "You are."
Harry wasn't inclined to say more. Dumbledore smiled in a slightly strange way, and then said, "What you might do, Harry, if you truly doubt your place in Gryffindor, is take a closer look at this." And then he passed him the sword.
Turning the sword over, he saw the engraved name of the owner: Godric Gryffindor.
"Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the Hat, Harry." Dumbledore's smile was serene.
Some time later, after freeing Dobby from the Malfoy family, after a feast in the Great Hall where he received many thanks for ending the ordeal, as he prepared himself to sleep, Harry thought about what the Sorting Hat had told him and what Dumbledore had told him.
He couldn't make the ideas reconcile.
Harry then remembered the strange and haunting song issued by Fawkes as he flew into the Chamber; the song that had made Harry feel as though his heart was swelling in his chest, filling him with courage; the song that had seemed to frighten Riddle so badly that he had whirled around to watch the phoenix in flight.
Dumbledore had spoken of music as being a magic beyond all that was done at Hogwarts …
In the phoenix, Harry believed.
({})
The wandmaker's shop looked no different to Harry than it had almost two years before, on his eleventh birthday. It remained the last shop in the row, and also the thinnest. The tinkling bell had still signaled his entrance through the door with the peeling gold letters above it. There was considerable dust on the floor; the air in the shop made the back of his neck prickle; he knew now that it must be enchantments of some sort, perhaps or even likely to be secrets of the family to whom the shop had always belonged.
Thousands of wands were still stacked up to the ceiling on the shelves which ran all the way along the walls to the back of the shop. A single wand remained on the faded purple cushion in the dusty window. Harry recognized it as the same single wand, but he did not know to whom it had once belonged. Perhaps it had never been sold, he thought, and was only for display.
He turned as he heard footsteps, and he saw Ollivander's moon-bright eyes shining from the gloom in the rear of the shop.
"Harry Potter," said the old man, possibly in greeting. "Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple. What brings you here today? You are not expected."
Harry swallowed. "My wand doesn't seem to work anymore. I need it fixed, or replaced."
The old man stopped short at this news. "That is most sad. A very good wand, that one; perhaps one of the best I have made. Well, let me see it and we shall learn if it can be remedied."
Harry handed the wand over. The old man took it, and beckoned him to the back of the shop.
Having only been in the shop once before, Harry had never seen the backroom. There were shelves here too, but there was no dust. There were shelves with lengths of raw cut wood; Harry knew that wood needed work before it could be made into a wand. There were also shelves of the cores, and shelves of finished wood. In the center of the room was a solid oak workbench and a spindly chair. A second spindly chair sat in a corner of the room. Ollivander motioned Harry towards that chair; Harry pulled it closer to the great workbench.
Ollivander sat at the workbench, pulled his chair very close to Harry, and turned his concentration on the wand. Harry watched as the man turned it in his hands several times; he too held it to his right ear as if listening to it; and he stared at it for several long minutes. A few times he waved it experimentally, but it did not issue sparks for him either.
"The wand is lost," began the wandmaker. "Dead, in fact. It will not work again. Curious and tragic, this." Ollivander stared at Harry. "How long has it been since the wand functioned?"
Harry swallowed nervously. "Less than a day."
Ollivander gazed at Harry with a greater intensity than he had used before. "It seems to have been no more than a few hours ago, I believe."
Harry could only nod. Ollivander reached out with a long white finger and touched Harry's scar while holding the wand.
"Curious," said Ollivander. His stare was now bothering Harry. "I think that this is not a coincidence."
Harry looked down at the floor. He held the bundle of cloth he'd wrapped the fang in. "I thought I might need a new wand, and I brought this along." He unraveled the cloth and let the fang drop to the floor.
Ollivander looked at it. "My word, Mr Potter, what is that?" His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper.
"A fang from Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk. I killed it last night, down in the Chamber of Secrets."
Ollivander stared at Harry again, seemingly looking right through him. "I expected great things from you, Mr Potter, but you have exceeded even my expectations. I will examine this."
He took it off the floor, then smiled. "I have never gotten to work with any piece of a Basilisk before; few wandmakers, perhaps none at all, ever have. This may be a very great privilege."
From a pocket Ollivander produced the silver tape measure that Harry remembered. "You will need to be remeasured, to be sure of the length." He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. He moved back and let the tape measure finish by finding the distance between Harry's nostrils. It then fell to the floor.
"As expected, eleven inches is the right measurement. I think it was worth checking though," the wandmaker muttered, seemingly more to himself.
Harry only shrugged; the numbers meant little to him. He only wanted the wand to be complete.
Ollivander picked up the tape measure from the floor and moved to the shelves with the lengths of finished wood. He took many samples down and moved them to the workbench. With his wand in hand he murmured more words which Harry could not understand but knew had to be spells.
Ollivander looked up again, straight at Harry. "One further thing, Mr Potter, before I begin to make the new wand. I fear your old one must be destroyed. I offer you the choice of doing so, as you are not receiving a punishment. Do you wish to break this wand yourself?"
Harry was shocked. He had not considered that he could not keep his first wand. He found he could not answer, and some of his feelings must have shown on his face, for Ollivander said solemnly, "It is the law. This wand has ceased functioning, but the charms on it remain active, and only members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement are ever given the privilege of owning a secondary or further wands."
Harry nodded, disheartened that he could not at least have the memento. "I... could you please do it?"
Ollivander nodded. He gripped the wand between both hands and swiftly broke it. Harry winced at the sound, at the finality. "You see, Mr Potter, that the phoenix feather has come apart?"
Harry looked at the broken wand and nodded.
"A wand that has sustained this sort of damage cannot be repaired by any means I know of. We shall burn the pieces, to be certain." Ollivander muttered a spell Harry could not hear, and the pieces of the broken wand began to burn.
Harry watched as the two halves of his former wand swiftly burned away. Ollivander waved his wand again and the ashes vanished, leaving no sign. Harry was left a little bit cold; he had been very fond of that wand despite which wand it had been brother to.
"And now I shall make you a new wand." Ollivander went to the shelves of finished lengths of wood and began to pull down sample after sample. Eventually the table was piled high with dozens of pieces. Harry watched as Ollivander tested the fang with each of the pieces, the man muttering to himself all the time in languages Harry could not understand. Sometimes he seemed to whisper to the wood, sometimes he seemed to listen to it as if the wood could sing.
Eventually he seemed satisfied with just two, having returned all the other lengths to the shelves. Some of them had gone back quickly, and over others the wandmaker had needed to linger.
"I find myself with a dilemma, Mr Potter" Ollivander addressed him after quite a while without a decision. "These last two samples to me seem equally good. The fang seems to have a deep resonance with both. Yet they are very different woods." Ollivander was staring at him curiously now. "Yes, very different. But because you brought me the fang, I would have your input … provided you are willing."
Harry felt he was at a severe disadvantage. "I don't know what the two woods are, sir, much less what they mean. I don't know if I can make a useful choice."
The wandmaker seemed to consider this. He held up the first of the two lengths of wood, which had a very rich reddish color. "Cherry. A rare wood, highly prized among Japan's magical society in particular. In the past there have been those who were foolish enough to consider cherry wands purely ornamental. In fact, cherry wood makes for wands with probably the highest level of lethal force."
Ollivander then set the cherry wood down, and picked up the other. The second sample was a dark brown, with no hint of the cherry's rich tones. "Rowan. A wand wood that always has been quite highly favored. Rowan wands always seem to work best in the hands of witches and wizards with a clear head and pure heart. These wands are more protective than any other, producing magical shields which are the most difficult to break."
The wandmaker set the rowan wood down and looked at Harry. "I would leave the choice to you, Mr Potter. The wand shall be yours, after all, in either case."
Harry found he did not need long at all to decide.
Late that night, he found himself remembering the words Ollivander said before bowing him from the shop: Great things, Mr Potter. Great things indeed.
The Basilisk fang-cored wand had issued a great flood of emerald and gold flames …
The emerald was Slytherin again. The Sorting Hat had told him he would have done well in Slytherin, it had told him You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that …
More than one person, and a highly enchanted hat, had now told him he was or would be great. Harry was still not sure whether to believe any of it.
The last few days of term passed quickly, without major incident.
Draco Malfoy was forced to shelve his arrogant swagger after his father Lucius was sacked as a Hogwarts governor, and he spent the entire remainder of the term sulking. Harry, Ron, and Hermione thought this disappointment was the very least that Malfoy deserved.
Ginny Weasley seemed to be happy again after a few days spent subdued. She quietly thanked Harry for saving her, but would not say much in front of him after that. Harry noted that she had been slightly red when she thanked him. It was much toned down from the glowing flushes he recalled from the previous summer.
Without a professor, Defense lessons were canceled, to Hermione's annoyance. Harry and Ron were much less bothered about it.
Whispers followed Harry as he walked the halls, but they were no longer the aggressive sort he had been forced to hear earlier in the year. Still, he was no more fond of this type than the last. He wondered if anything would ever make the stares and whispers stop for good. It didn't seem like that had any chance of happening.
Finally, as the train moved southward to Kings Cross, Harry thought miserably about the summer he was likely to have.
[EG]
Termination Note: I have decided that relaunching this story idea yet again was a mistake. I could never really get the idea to work to my satisfaction, so it's probably better off on the scrap-heap.