Chapter One Hundred and Thirty: Slytherin's Grave
The ground was soggy and squelchy, despite the fact it hadn't rained in days. Daphne didn't know enough about fens to really be able to tell if that was strange, but it was quite distracting; with each step, she expected her foot to get stuck in the mud. Fortunately, the grass did seem to keep everything together enough to prevent that from happening, at least for the moment.
She and the others had their wands out, although for the time being it didn't look like any of the defensive magic on the gravesites was trying to harm them yet. They weren't necessarily following a set path. Rather, they were simply walking away from Hemwick in a more-or-less straight line, toward a cluster of burial mounds a bit further into the fen. The vegetation here was higher than it had been closer to the village, and Daphne hoped that nothing sinister was lurking within it.
When they neared the first burial mound, they stopped walking. This particular mound was covered in grass, and was perfectly smooth and circular apart from its 'door', which had been sealed by a large rock engraved with runes.
"Should we…get closer?" Daphne asked hesitantly.
"I don't think this is the right burial mound," Harry said. "It's too close to the village, still. If Slytherin's grave was the very first one someone would run into, its location wouldn't be hidden, would it? Besides, I don't see anything resembling a snake anywhere, and I can't see Slytherin's tomb lacking any snakes."
He looked at the other nearby burial mounds. "I don't really think it's any of those mounds, either." He made a frustrated noise. "The problem is that I have no idea where the real one could be, and we don't really have any way to tell them apart."
"Maybe not just by looking," Ginny said, "but there might be another way." She looked at Daphne. "When we were at the Pentre Ifan Burial Chamber with Valentina, you could sense its magic, right? Well, maybe you'll be able to do something like that here, as well."
Daphne considered that for a moment. "Most of these mounds have enchantments on them, don't they? How would I know which one to go for, even if I could sense the magic?" she asked.
"The gravedigger said there were many of Slytherin's descendants around as well, didn't he?" Hermione asked. "If they all placed enchantments on their graves that require Parseltongue to open, perhaps that magic would feel similar to you? And in that case, I would presume Slytherin's own magic would be the strongest."
"That sounds like it might work," Ron said hopefully.
Daphne hesitated for a moment. "I'm not sure I'll be able to pick up on anything, but I'll give it a try, I suppose," she said.
She closed her eyes and reached out, first looking for the gray wave of the Taboo and then the golden wave of the Trace, just to make sure she had the right frame of reference, but she immediately noticed that there was a lot of magic in the air, emanating from the burial mounds. It wasn't nearly as noisy as Valentina's detection spells had been, though, and it wasn't too hard to keep all the waves separate, though it wasn't exactly easy, either.
The waves of magic in the air mostly had shades of green and brown in them, but their shapes were just different enough to make out the differences between them, and with a bit of focus, Daphne could tell which grave sent out which wave. At least all of them were solid and regular, which Daphne assumed to mean that nothing they'd done had triggered any of the defensive magic yet.
"Can you sense anything?" Harry asked.
"A lot, but nothing that screams 'I am Slytherin'," Daphne said. "If I just knew what to look for…"
"I saw in a memory in Dumbledore's office that both Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup were said to possess powerful magic. I'm not sure how much of that power remains now that Riddle has made them into Horcruxes, but maybe you can still feel it," Harry said.
"What if she gets possessed?" Ginny asked angrily.
Daphne opened her eyes and saw Ginny glaring at Harry, who didn't look happy with his own idea, either.
"She wouldn't be wearing it, or anything. Just touching it to feel the magic it gives off," Harry said, though he didn't sound too convinced himself. He sighed. "The problem is that if we don't come up with a way to speed up our search, we'll have to check every individual burial mound in here, and that's going to take us months.
"Yeah, it might be dangerous, and if Daphne doesn't want to do it then obviously I'm not going to make her, but this entire mission is going to be dangerous. Right now, our choice is between the danger of trying to find the right grave this way, or the danger of getting it wrong and setting off the enchantments on every other grave in here while we're blundering around looking for the right one, or the danger of still being here when it gets dark, which is apparently so dangerous even ghosts fear it."
He looked at Daphne. "I'm sorry, I just…don't really know what else to suggest."
"I know," Daphne said softly. She smiled wryly. "After all those years of telling me not to sacrifice myself, I'm pretty convinced you don't actually want me getting hurt."
She looked around at the burial mounds surrounding them. With her eyes open, she didn't really feel anything from any of them, and they even looked quite peaceful.
"It's probably the best bet we have," she said. "Give me the locket and I'll…see if I can find anything."
"Are you really sure about this?" Ginny asked unhappily. "I don't want to see you getting possessed by that thing, especially since we don't have a way of destroying it."
"I'm not too keen on it, either," Daphne said. "But Harry's right. This mission is dangerous no matter what we do. This might be the least dangerous option, all things considered."
Harry opened his Mokeskin pouch and retrieved the locket from it. He held it out by its chain, and Daphne took it, shivering at the unnaturally cold feel of the metal in her hands.
She closed her eyes again and tried to feel the locket's magic — and instantly opened them again, reflexively throwing the locket away from her. Harry lunged and caught it before it hit the ground, and Daphne stared at it in horror, panting heavily.
"What happened?!" Ginny and Harry asked at the same time. Hermione and Ron said nothing, but both were clearly worried as well.
"That…that thing is…" Daphne stammered.
She tried to slow down her breathing and gather her thoughts. When she'd reached out for the locket's magic, all she'd felt was an overwhelming sense of hatred and fury, so potent that it seemed to sear her very soul. Every single part of her body felt both frozen and sunburned at the same time. Was that truly the power even a fragment of Voldemort's soul held? If so…what would anyone be able to do against him, even if all of his Horcruxes got destroyed. Harry was strong, but this…this felt like it was on an entirely different level.
"That magic…I've never felt anything like it," she said.
She still struggled to come up with a good description of what she'd felt in that split second.
"It was like…staring directly into the sun, only the sun was made of evil," she said eventually. She realized that description sounded stupid, but clearly not even Ron felt up to teasing her for it.
"Okay, so that's a bust, then," Ginny said firmly. "We'll have to look for the grave our–"
"I want to try again," Daphne interrupted.
Ginny looked at her like she'd lost her mind, and Harry's expression wasn't much different.
"After what it just did to you? Why?!" Ginny asked.
"I wasn't prepared for it then. Now…now I am," Daphne said.
That was a far-too-optimistic way of phrasing it, but she wasn't about to let Voldemort beat her, especially not just a single fragment of his soul. She'd already almost been killed by a soul fragment once before, and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of doing it again.
She held out her hand and tried to look determined. "Give me the locket. I'll find that damn grave if it's the last thing I bloody do," she said.
"You really shouldn't," Harry said. "I'd sooner fight an army of Inferi again."
"Harry, please," Daphne said. "I actually feel like I can help this time. I'll face all the evil in the world if it means stopping Riddle for good."
"Bloody hell, why am I in love with someone with a death wish?" Ginny muttered. She looked at Harry. "Two people with a death wish, even, considering the stuff you will probably end up doing…"
Harry looked into Daphne's eyes and she tried to look back defiantly, hoping that any traces of fear were gone from them. She wasn't even entirely sure why she was so adamant to try again; every instinct in her body screamed at her to take the locket and throw it as far away as humanly possible.
In the end, however, Harry relented and gave the locket to Daphne once more. She steeled herself and closed her eyes again, reaching out with her senses. She winced as the spike of icy-hot hatred lanced through her, but she forced herself to hold onto the locket, and even though it felt like her soul itself was cramping up, she tried to reach through the blinding shell of Voldemort's magic.
And there it was, almost unnoticeable, a faint wave of a dark green, encased within the evil that was still shooting up and down Daphne's body.
With a cry, Daphne opened her eyes again and stood, breathing heavily. The locket dangled on its chain, looking innocuous, but even now Daphne could feel it seething. She quickly handed it over to Harry, who put it back into the Mokeskin pouch.
Without saying a word, Daphne closed her eyes again, observing the waves of magic in the air. They seemed slow and distorted somehow, as if the afterimage of the locket was still interfering with her senses, but the waves were still visible, and one of them was the exact same shade of green as the locket had been. Its shape was a bit different, and there were other waves close to it which looked nearly the same, but this particular one felt like it was the right one.
"I think I've got something," Daphne said without opening her eyes. "It's…to the west."
She opened her eyes and looked at her friends, all of whom were anxiously looking at her.
"Come on, let's go," she said wearily, and she took a step.
Almost immediately, she stumbled. Her legs felt rubbery, her body sluggish. She groaned in irritation, and Harry and Ginny immediately rushed to either side of her to support her.
"I'm fine," she said irritably.
"You're clearly not, so shut up and let us help you," Ginny said.
"What she said," Harry added, sounding the tiniest bit amused underneath his worried tone.
"Is it far?" Hermione asked.
Daphne shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure. I'll try to find the direction again in a bit. For now, let's just head west," she said.
In silence, they set off through the fen, Daphne partially supported by Harry and Ginny. Their concern simultaneously annoyed her and made her happy.
She wasn't entirely sure why this particular wave seemed to be the right one when there were a number of others extremely similar to it, but perhaps this was her Divination kicking in.
After around twenty minutes, Daphne told everyone to stop and tried to pick up on the wave again. It was a bit stronger now, and still came from the west, though a bit further north than before. Again, they set off. There were more burial mounds in this part of the fen, and navigating between them without coming into contact with them was beginning to get more and more difficult. While there really wasn't any reason to assume that merely touching a burial mound would trigger its defenses, Daphne wasn't keen to find out if that was true, and neither were the others.
Some time later, Daphne again tried to feel the correct wave, but this time a very similar one overpowered it, coming from only a very short distance to her right. She opened her eyes and looked at the nearest burial mound in that direction.
"Is that the one?" Ron asked.
Daphne shook her head. "No, but I think it does belong to a relative of his."
She walked a bit closer to it, looking for the entrance. Like the first barrow they'd come across, this one had been sealed by a stone engraved with runes. The walls alongside, however, had snakes carved into them.
She grinned at the others. "Looks like we're on the right track, at least." She gestured north. "The real one is in that direction. Come on."
It took another thirty minutes, but then, when Daphne reached out again, she could clearly feel the wave she was looking for, the one the locket had given off beneath its aura of evil. She opened her eyes and pointed at the burial mound directly in front of her.
"That's it," she said.
The barrow looked exactly the same as all the ones surrounding it. Like the earlier barrows, it had a large stone in front of its entrance, and snakes were engraved in the walls alongside. Even so, it didn't stand out at all. Unlike the Chamber of Secrets, which was a grandiose celebration of Slytherin's ego, his grave was almost modest.
"Are you sure?" Harry asked, cautiously approaching the burial mound.
"Yes. This is the one," Daphne said, also getting closer.
"D'you think he put a Horcrux inside of it?" Ron asked hesitantly.
Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I guess if there's a Horcrux in here it'll be all the way at the center of the burial chamber."
He hesitantly took another step forward. He was now almost at the threshold of the short 'corridor' to the entrance. The snakes on either wall seemed to come out of the ground, leading the way to the rune-engraved door.
"So…what do we do?" Ginny asked.
Harry looked at Hermione. "Can you translate those runes?" he asked.
Hermione came a bit closer as well and pulled a book and a quill out of her beaded bag. She squinted at the engravings, which looked like they'd just been carved yesterday, untouched by the passing of the centuries. She muttered under her breath while leafing through the book, scribbling on a piece of parchment she'd conjured out of thin air. Daphne and the others watched her in silence.
"Okay, I think I have it," Hermione said after a few minutes of scribbling and muttering. "I have attained wealth and glory in life, and I defend it now in death. Seek my riches, and your life is forfeit. Only the true may enter." She shrugged. "It says nothing about whose tomb this is, and it seems like a fairly standard text. I'd presume 'the true' would refer to family members who wish to pay their respects, but that's just a guess."
"Riddle is a descendant, so he was probably able to enter without difficulties, then," Harry said. "But the five of us aren't."
He hesitated only for a moment. "Well, there's nothing for it. We have to check if there's a Horcrux inside. Be ready for anything."
He raised his wand, and the others did the same. With a deliberate step, Harry crossed the threshold and walked over to the rune-covered stone.
Before he'd even taken three steps, however, the snakes on either side of him had begun to glow emerald-green. A horrible, distorted hissing filled the air, seemingly emanating from the block of stone itself.
Harry stopped in his tracks and listened, and then replied in the same sinister way.
Daphne shuddered. She could imagine why Parseltongue had such a horrible reputation. It sounded downright demonic.
The door spoke again, and Daphne had the distinct impression it was very, very angry. Harry said something in reply. Was he pleading with the door?
A sharp, fast shockwave shot out from the barrow, passing through several of the barrows around them as well.
Daphne closed her eyes and reached out with her senses, and like she'd feared, the waves of all the nearby mounds were heavily rippling and distorting.
"It triggered every set of defensive enchantments around," Daphne yelled at her friends.
"Harry, what's going on?" Ron yelled.
"The grave's magic felt the presence of the locket," Harry said, running back over with his wand still raised. "It said that it had been defiled, and that I would pay. I tried to tell it that Riddle was the one who defiled the locket, but it wouldn't hear it…"
"Guys, look!" Ginny said.
She pointed at a patch of ground next to Slytherin's tomb. A muddy arm rose up from it, and Daphne watched in horror as something vaguely humanoid pulled itself free of the earth. The same thing now began to happen all around them. Muddy, snarling creatures were rising up from the ground. Some were humanoid, others resembled animals.
"Are those Inferi?" Ron asked, his eyes wide.
Harry shook his head. "No…I have no idea what these are…"
From cracks in the ground, a sinister fog began to rise, enveloping the mud-creatures as they righted themselves and began to shamble over to Daphne and the others.
"Incendio!" Harry shouted, pointing his wand at one of the approaching monsters.
A flame burst through its chest, but the mud simply knitted itself back together.
"Stupefy!" Ron yelled, but here, too, the blast simply punched through the wolf-like golem he'd aimed for, without causing any damage.
"Avada Kedavra!" Daphne shouted, but even that did nothing. The mud creatures weren't alive, so they couldn't be killed.
"Sectumsempra!" Harry shouted. One of the mud-men was bisected, but the two halves simply grew into full creatures.
"We have to run!" Hermione said.
But the fog continued to rise, and it was slowly billowing toward them.
"Protego!" Daphne shouted.
The encroaching fog hit the transparent bubble and was momentarily deflected upward, but then the shield began to decay, wilting as though it were melting.
"Impedimenta!" Ginny shouted.
Two of the closest mud-creatures were blown backward, struggling to get back up, but more and more were rising from the ground, and the fog crept ever closer.
"Zephyrus Maximus!" Daphne yelled, with a wide sweep of her wand.
A wall of wind blew away the fog and barreled over the mud-creatures, but almost immediately the mist began to billow in again and more mud monsters slouched forward.
"Impedimenta!" Ron shouted, blasting another pair of mud creatures away, while Hermione looked at another pair and shouted, "Aguamenti!"
The blast of water made the mud-men approaching from the other side liquefy and disintegrate, but they immediately seemed to begin to rebuild themselves.
"We have to get out of here," Ginny said urgently.
"But what if there's a Horcrux in the grave?" Daphne asked, before using the Zephyr Charm once more to blow away the mist.
"Only one way to find out," Harry said grimly. He pointed his wand at the rune-covered door. "Reducto!" he shouted. The spell hit the rock with tremendous force, but it didn't budge.
"Damn! Well, maybe this, then…"
And again, he made a horrible hissing sound…and this time the stone block moved, even as Daphne and the others kept blasting away the mud-creatures and the fog, again and again.
Harry ran into the tomb, but Daphne didn't have time to see how he was doing. The fog was now beginning to coalesce into shapes as well, and disembodied arms began to reach for them from every direction. Even the Zephyr blasts were beginning to get less effective, as the fog reformed quicker and quicker.
Then, Harry came sprinting from the grave, followed by several earthen serpents with fangs of stone, which he blasted apart with a Reducto, but of course, they immediately began to reform.
"If two of us use that Zephyr Charm at an angle, we might be able to clear a path and run for it," Harry said, already casting a Zephyr Charm ahead of him. "There weren't any Horcruxes in there, I'm sure of it. I saw the sarcophagus, or whatever it was, and a lot of treasure, but that Parseltongue voice said that such tainted magic as I was carrying on me had to be purged. I don't think even Riddle could've put a Horcrux in there without making old Salazar's enchantments angry, even if he could get in without being attacked."
"Wonderful, so we got ourselves killed for nothing," Ron said. "Just great. These things keep getting back up! Isn't there any way of keeping them down?!"
He shot several more Impediment Jinxes at the monsters. Even though they were neither fast nor intelligent, their ever-increasing numbers made them more and more dangerous, especially since the fog as well was still getting thicker.
"Everyone, Zephyr Charms, and run for it!" Harry said. "Zephyrus Maximus!" he shouted, followed by Daphne, who sent hers at an angle to Harry's, carving out a momentary path for the group to run to, but already it was closing up again.
"Just run! Keep casting!" Harry yelled.
A misty hand brushed Daphne's arm and she screamed as the touch burned her skin, leaving an angry red mark where the ghostly fingers had touched her.
Then, from up ahead, more shambling creatures approached, only these were somehow even worse than the mud-creatures. They had clearly been people, once, but they were gray and decaying, their clothes rags, their eyes white and clouded over. Many bore scars that looked eerily like the one on Daphne's arm, burned into them long ago when they came here to rob the tombs.
"Inferi!" Harry yelled. "Incendio!"
He shot the nearest Inferius and it fell, writhing, but the wet grass and the billowing fog quickly put out the flames, and once more it rose…
Blasting curses in every direction, Daphne and the others tried to fight their way through the hordes of Inferi and mud-monsters emerging from the grasping fog, but it was almost impossible to tell which way they were heading or where the village was.
"Just how long are they going to pursue us?!" Ron shouted angrily. "We're not even near the tomb anymore!"
"They'll probably keep coming until we're all dead," Hermione said weakly.
"No way!" Ron said. "There is no way I'm letting any of us get killed, least of all you! I'll drag them all to hell with me if I have to!"
And then, almost as if it had been waiting for those words, something silver, encrusted with rubies, soared through the air and landed, point first, into the ground next to Ron.
"The Sword of Gryffindor!" Harry, who stood further forward, shouted. "Ron, take it!"
Ron didn't hesitate and pulled the sword. It seemed to have gotten a bit stuck in the mud, so he pulled harder, and when it came free, Ron's pull made it swing up into the air, where the blade caught the sunlight high above.
Ron lowered the sword with an odd, contemplative look on his face, almost as if he were listening to someone — and then he swung the sword above his head in a circular motion, as if he were rallying an army.
The rubies glowed, and a blast of magic emanated from it, which blew the fog apart without any difficulty.
The mud-monsters kept advancing, but Ron stepped forward, swinging the sword with an expertise he absolutely shouldn't have had. He cut through the closest mud-man and it fell — and stayed down.
An Inferius lunged at him, but he deftly sidestepped and cut off its head in one single swing, his expression grim but determined.
"Get behind me!" he shouted at the others, and Daphne didn't need to be told twice.
She made her way over to Hermione, and Harry and Ginny quickly followed. They stood back-to-back, continuing to fight the Inferi and mud-monsters, but only when Ron cut them with the sword did they stay dead.
Fortunately, Ron seemed to be very good at doing just that, and though it took nearly twenty minutes, eventually, the final Inferius fell to the ground, its chest pierced by Gryffindor's sword.
The glowing rubies dulled, and Ron stumbled.
"Wh-what just happened?" he asked, looking at his friends in amazement.
"You…you were like Gryffindor himself," Hermione said, awestruck. "The way you used that sword…I've never seen anything like it…"
"Do you remember what you did?" Harry asked.
Ron nodded slowly. "I do, but…" He shook his head. "I can't explain it. I picked up the sword and…I just knew how to move. I knew how to stop…whatever we were dealing with here."
"Gryffindor and Slytherin have fought each other when they were alive, haven't they?" Daphne asked. "Maybe Slytherin used these enchantments on him back then, too, and Gryffindor created this magic specifically to deal with him?"
"Blimey," Ron said weakly. "And here I was thinking that the sword was only useful because of the Basilisk venom…"
"But how did the sword get here?" Harry asked. "When I used it, I pulled it from the Sorting Hat, but that isn't here right now…"
"Well," Daphne said uncomfortably, "it can present itself to any worthy Gryffindor, right? And we established in our first year that Ron is the truest Gryffindor out of all of us…"
She surreptitiously glanced around to see if she could spot any Disillusioned people, though how Snape, if he were indeed around, had avoided the monsters and the fog was a mystery to her. Perhaps he was simply familiar with the spells. For all she knew, Voldemort himself had taught them to him. Or maybe the sword had turned up of its own accord, and Snape had nothing to do with it. If she ever got another chance to talk to him, she'd ask him. For now, she was just glad that it had come, because they would surely have died without it.
"Let's get back to the village and then back to the regular world first," Harry said. He grinned at Ron. "And then, you can show us all your swordsmanship once again when you smash that locket. I'm sure Gryffindor won't mind you using his sword to break Slytherin's stuff, anyway…"
They all laughed, and though they were still wary and kept their wands out, they began the trip back to the portal in good spirits.
Long chapter, which is why it's so late. Given that it's nearly 2 AM here while I finish this, it might not be all that coherent, but I think it turned out fine.
