Chapter 15
The Domino Effect.
04:57 pm 11th March, Hogwarts 2nd floor girls lavatory.
"Yes I understand the disbelieve you're feeling at this very moment, and i jest you not, but the entrance to the fabled Chambers Of Secrets, is most probably here, specifically beneath that particular sink with a snake embossed on it, and Usha if you would be kind enough to" Dumbledore began as he saw the disbelief clear on the faces of his companions.
Taking a deep breath, and putting her current reservations of Dumbledore's sanity aside; for now, she went near to the aforementioned embossment and spoke, "§Grant me Access Oh Chamber of Secrets§", none of her companions gave any reaction to the terrifying feeling of parseltongue and patiently waited for something to happen, and then when nothing did she started speaking ever phrase she could think of some like Salazar Slytherin setting to be used as a password, getting more and more frustrated with each failed attempt she started to believe that they were not only shooting in the blind but were also missing quite terribly, and their failure could cost a young girl her life, that was till she screamed in her frustration "§Open you gods damned fucking Chamber of Shit!§" and as soon as the first word was out of her mouth the sink started to make a creaking sound to reveal a gaping opening that went downwards.
Dumbledore turning to Flitwick said, "Filius continue with the evacuation, the battle could go out of hand and if the circumstances were different, I would have preferred to do this after evacuating everyone from Hogwarts but given the circumstances are what they are, I believe we should do what we can, though to err on the side of caution I have taken steps to ensure that should we fail to neutralise the beast and it's master someone would do it for us and for that too we need to ensure that not a single innocent life remains in castle" with his piece said he donned the glasses given to him by Rasende and took a dive in the entrance, swiftly followed by Tina, Newt, and the young man with them, immediately followed by an annoyed exclamation of "what happened to the plan of letting the old man scout the place first?" and then the sound of another person jumping down the hole.
They were greeted with a dark and damp cavern which further opened in a tunnel, as they started heading towards the only available direction, they picked up their already fast pace after noticing the skeletons of animals lying around them, the tunnel seemed to have endless twists and turns and then, at last, as they sprinted around yet another bend, they saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds, this was it they believed again Usha did what she was here for, though in a quiet tone this time, she said §Open§ and with an equally low creak the gate opened and Dumbledore once again rushed forward but this time only Tina and Newt followed him while the other two remained behind as the door closed once again.
As soon as they had left Usha's partner removed the huge scroll from his back, he opened it splayed it on the ground and then he started to further unroll the scroll in such a fashion that it formed a perfect loop along the lines of the tunnel, sticking to the wall and roof with a sticking charm, she voiced a question in her mind, "So Johnathan, why do this? I mean I know that you come from the japan's infamous 100 hands sealing corps but you're taking a huge risk in many ways."
Without turning to her, the now named Johnathan removed a satchel from the pocket of his jeans and from it he removed a small rectangular box which he immediately opened to reveal a set of calligraphy brushes and a huge barrel, opening the barrel which apparently contained ink, he removed a black brush with red feathered ti[p, and started writing on the scroll in japanese, the silence seemed to stretch for a few more minutes but before Usha could say something else he replied, "while i would like to regale you with my life story, right now i believe is nor the time nor the place, but to sum it up i would like to quote my teacher, Namikaze-Sensei "There are times when the risks of the task are daunting but a true member of the sealing corps would look at the reward and forge ahead" at first I didn't understand what he meant but now i do, oh i so do, and by the way I'm a former member, I was expelled from the corps."
Usha blinked, a little fazed by the new information and silently let the man return to doing what he was.
While the duo was guarding the gate the trio went ahead, Tina and Newt with their eyes trained towards the ground, were staying a few feet behind Dumbledore who was using all the detection spells he knew - which was quite a lot - to look out for everything he could expect in enemy stronghold, ranging from traps to defensive wards which could delay them and of course the obvious enemies, much to his surprise and not a little gratitude towards every deity that was listening, he found none as that meant they could allot more time towards rescuing Ms Weasley and less towards fighting for their own lives, afterall dead men cannot protect anything.
As soon as they had exited the latest tunnel they were in, they encountered the main chamber, filled with humongous statues of serpents, the light was quite dim and the silence haunting, faced against something that could see as clearly in darkness as it could in light, the darkness was so encompassing that it made them paranoid for the beast could very well be a few feet away from them and they wouldn't know until it was too late, there was of course the obvious choice for arranging their own lighting, though that too came at the price of giving away their position and rendering them vulnerable, not to mention there was always the possibility that if they were undetected thus far their sudden appearance could put an end to ms Weasley's life due to an instinctual move by their enemy.
After a short amount of contemplation he sent a silent prayer towards all deities once again and hoped that their luck held, then he used a small obscure charm meant to conjure up a ball of light that could be used to not only shed light but because the ball was once conjured, controlled by will rather than wand it also left the caster able to fight, of course if the caster couldn't concentrate on the light properly then it would dissipate.
The moment the lights went on in the room he went on full alert as the first thing he saw was the head of the basilisk protruding out of a statue - of Salazar Slytherin ofcourse - he was about to start using some of his more destructive spells, ones that few people knew even existed, and even less knew how they worked, simultaneously he yelled to the ones behind him to "take cover!" from both the beast and him, -all of this happened in a second, enough of a time span for an average witch or wizard to panic and get themselves killed - but then before he even used the first spell he noticed something peculiar, the beast was unmoving, as he dared to look at the beast with a closer inspection as he hadn't wanted to look for a gift in the horse's mouth till now with testing the glasses he observed that the eyes of the beast were destroyed, he again started using spells, these were meant to specifically detect life in creatures like basilisk or chimera, abominations created with destructive purposes, and they came up negative as expected, a small part of his mind grimly noted that the serpent was just big enough to swallow someone of ms Weasley's size whole.
He called out to the Scamanders as he moved towards the beast, his eyes darting around the chamber as he looked for the ms Weasley or the master of the beast - Tom as he assumed - but he found nothing, Newt meanwhile had gone to inspect the serpent was frowning and was quite silent lost in his thoughts, Tina who too had took a cursory check around them took it upon herself to snap her husband out of his ruminations and started rubbing her hand on his back in a clockwise motion, it always made him snap out of his thoughts, just like he did right now.
Looking at the expectant faces of his two companions he began, "The basilisk was killed by being stabbed through the eyes, and then being lobotomized" both Tina and Albus waited for Newt to elaborate as it wasn't like him to state something that was awfully obvious, "now you see the eyes being destroyed is not that big of a deal, aside from their death stare they aren't all that tough, just like any other creature's eyes, but beneath the eyes there is an inside hide which is as tough as its outer hide, if she was killed by some spell it would make sense, but basilisk hide is tough, it would take quite a sharp object to cut through it, like something of a goblin forged, if not tougher."
Both Albus and Tina took a moment to digest this information and then redoubled their efforts to find young Ginny, after having searched the whole chamber when they found nothing they went back to their companions, their mood utterly grim and a single question haunting them, "what in Merlin's name happened here?".
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03:59 pm 11th March, Hogwarts 2nd floor girls lavatory.
Harry left both Professor Mcgonagall and Ms Granger in the school nurse Madam Pomphery's care, that is to say he teleported them in the infirmary and after making a sound to alter her of their presence he teleported out of the room without being seen, as Poseidon had taught him, "if you ever need to get involved in a dangerous situation try to keep the non-combatants away from it as far as possible as it makes it easier for you to do what is needed to be done," though before he left he took the piece of parchment that was in Granger's hands, it was a brief description of the Basilisk from the book "Fantastic Beasts by Newt Scamander" and there was a small notation of 'pipes' written on it, as his mind worked to piece the puzzle together with all the clues he had.
Now his first stop was in the girl's chamber where she was playing with a few toys he had bought for her, as soon as she spotted him she abandoned her thoughts and started to run towards him babbling as fast as she could, as soon as her sprint towards her guardian had began she lost her footing and started falling as it was typical for children to, but before she could hit the ground she had been caught by her guardian, who immediately summoned a bag of necessities he had made for her, changed in his Hades gear sans the hood - and then promptly teleported to Spectre's office.
The woman had recently offered to look after the girl whenever he needed someone to, no questions asked, though he didn't understood what that bit meant, but chalking it up to normal people's behaviour he simply did as he had been instructed and after bringing her to the office handed her to the woman, the girl despite being as young as she was understood that she was being left behind and started crying instantly, not wanting to be separated from her favourite person, Spectre immediately began trying to placate the girl and gave Hades a nod which was returned by the young man, who immediately teleported away again.
He returned to Hogwarts, just outside the infirmary intime to overhear professor Flitwick saying "first ms Weasley gets taken into the chamber now this, Merlin help us" then he moved to where he had found both the women, and started his trail from there, mentally going over all the information he had on the Chamber of Secrets, the petrifications that took place over the course of the year, and the fact that the last time the Chamber had been opened a student namely Myrtle Warren had died, a piece of information he overheard Greengrass and Longbottom talking about in a class of History of Magic, so treating the said first victim as ground zero he went to her usual adobe, the bathroom she haunted, at first glance he found nothing, then on closer inspection he saw a small snake sigil embossed underneath a sink, he figured that this was not only an indicator to where the chamber was but also a form of lock that could be unlocked by a parselmouth, that was a problem as he didn't know anyone who could help him right now, the few Parselmouths he did know were civilians hence a liability in a fight.
He looked around the bathroom, and soon enough he found what he was looking for, an opening, located near the ceiling of the room a small vent, barely big enough to get one's hand through but that was enough, if the beast was traveling by means of pipe line it was most likely huge enough for someone to enter, he went close to the wall and levitated himself upto the level of the vent and then placing his wand on the edges of the vent he focused and willed his magic to do the needful, soon the vent was big enough for him to enter it and thus enter the pipeline, as expected the inside was large enough for a few people to stand in - or for a large serpent to maneuver itself - with a flick of his wand he undid that magic that had made the opening for him, thus eliminating the possibility of any stray following him.
Now the biggest problem was that he wasn't familiar with the layout of the pipe lines and he didn't have the time to go around searching old-school as Magenta had put it, there was a life on line and Shadow Hit Wizard protocol dictated that at all times the life of a hostage is paramount, unless the circumstances force you otherwise, so he used a sonar technique he had developed recently to cartograph unknown places while reducing the possible danger, but here he tweaked it, his usual technique worked very much like a modern submarine sonar from which it was inspired but right now his enemy could use these vibrations to find him, and that could put ms Weasley's life at risk, so he stabbed his wand on the floor of the pipe and focused, sending low amounts of vibrations throughout the tunnel slowly, it took him the better part of 10 minutes to find what he needed right now, and armed with that knowledge he stood ramrod and removed a broom - Nimbus 2000 - that he kept with him at all times as he was taught by Shadow and started flying towards his destination.
It took him another 10 minutes to reach where he needed, he had taken a longer route - which included destroying some of the barred sections of the tunnel - which was a necessity as he didn't have a parselmouth who could open the main entrance, but it was all for the better as when he got to the chamber itself he arrived from the back side and had a clear view of the whole room and the situation before he had to engage in combat.
There was ms Weasley lying naked on the floor inside a Greek runic circle which appeared to have been made by blood, and another runic circle which was connected to ms Weasley's which had a similar makeup, and more importantly there was someone or something in the circle, it was a spirit of a boy, probably what was controlling the beast thus far, without anything else of note he simply teleported near the two circles startling the boy for a second.
The boy smiled at Harry and began, "Hello Harry Potter, it's a pleasure to meet you, my Name is Lord Voldermort, the greatest wizard to ever live!..."
Harry simply kept staring at the spirit, his transparent apparition making his state of being quite obvious, but he couldn't understand how this was happening, it wasn't a ghost, a ghost couldn't do any of what this spirit was doing, he looked at the runic spheres again and it became quite clear that it was a transference ritual, one that not only absorbed life force from ms Weasley but also would transfer the spirit to the body, after ms Weasley's life force had been absorbed, thus rendering it capable of acting as a vessel, and quite a compatible one given the amount of modification magics he could sense from the girl's body, and enough time had passed that even if the ritual were stopped she would die.
"I've seen and heard what you can do, as such I would like to form a friendship with you mr Potter, I've also heard what happened between my other self and your parents, terrible business that is! But I believe that was just caused by some misunderstanding, and I'm sure we can work our way through it," said Voldemort in a smooth voice, but as he saw that he was being utterly ignored by the boy in front of him he heaved a sigh and said, "and here I thought you had potential, potential to clean this world from muggle filth, afterall you have seen the power of the dark, just like me, and you too can achieve greatness under me, but if you won't side with me I'm afraid you are to die."
At this point others would consider her a lost cause and focus on defeating their adversary, he however was not others, hence he kept focusing on finding a way to keep her alive, if he simply rushed in and broke the ritual circle the shock will kill her regardless, and then he heard the spirit hiss something, followed by a rumble by the backend of the room where Salazar Slytherin's statue stood, and soon the great serpent started to make its way out of the statue's now gaping mouth and as he was about to look at it he saw something, a diary, under ms Weasley's head, which was till now previously hidden by her hair, and Harry who had been distracted by the sight of the diary rendered himself to be a perfect target, or would have been until he waved his hand towards the general direction of the serpent and two swords appeared out of nowhere; shining brilliantly, and descended into the serpent in a cross far faster than anyone could follow.
As Voldemort saw the destruction of one of his greatest weapons in a display of what he assumed to be effortless and powerful wandless magic, he trembled in fury, envy and not a little fear, how dare the child destroy something that was his! HIS! Lord Voldemort's! He would punish the child so utterly, so painfully like the children he had destroyed in the orphanage, as a vicious snarl left his mouth he turned towards the boy who had started to become his bane only to be horrified and terrified for his being as they boy held his previous vessel in his hand.
Meanwhile Harry who had been wondering what he should do came to a conclusion, till now one of the other reasons he hadn't dealt with Voldemort was because he hadn't known how the dark lord's apparition was here, to be more precise, which means he was using, there were more than one and if he was wrong about how to deal with it, if done wrong he could end up causing more harm than benefit, but now that he knew that he was dealing with a horcrux he quickly assimilated a quick plan of action, using his wand he sent a low powered cutting charm on ms Weasley's wrist and drew some blood, and then telekinetically directed that blood to coat the diary, as soon as he had the required amount of blood he turned towards the teenager version of the dark lord and stabbed his wand on the diary and poured a lot of magic in it, then a sudden bright explosion took place in the chamber and when it died down the apparition was nowhere to be seen, then he took his wand a bit away from the diary and then shot a small projectile of flame from his wand - very much like a bullet from an automatic rifle - towards the said diary which soon let out a muted shriek.
The moment the diary's shriek ended ms Weasley's eyes snapped open for a second, her eyes changed from the absolutely blood red orb they had become, to something quite more normal but while her sclera had returned to their former white her irises remained red, revolving around everywhere in not a little terror, and as soon as she spotted him she felt something she couldn't place almost like an implicit feeling like she could trust him, and then she once again lost consciousness.
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05:15 pm 11th March, Hogwarts 2nd floor girls lavatory.
Dumbledore's retrieval party which had went in to rescue ms Weasley had just exited the chambers, their mood quite grim, the feeling of failure was quite heavy on them, and even Fawkes's songs of encouragement weren't helping them, had Dumbledore not been despairing ms Weasley's death he would have noticed what his friend was trying to convey, fortunately for Fawkes, there was someone to do it for him, as an owl patronus came barging into the toilet and Flitwick's voice spoke from it, "Albus quickly come to the infirmary, ms Weasley just appeared here!"
For a second the whole party stood still, and as soon as his message sunk in them they rushed towards their new destination being led by Dumbledore, whose speed Usha noted absentmindedly was way faster than anyone of his age had the right to, and as soon as they entered the infirmary they saw the resident mediwitch running diagnostic spells on the girl.
Alerted of their entrance made by the commotion they made, Flitwick took the party away from the patient and mediwitch to a corner of the room to give answers to questions they undoubtedly had, "well from what Poppy has told me she was packing the essentials of the infirmary, after all the patients had been moved to hogsmeade for the emergency evacuation, then as she was about to leave ms weasley appeared in front of her out of thin air! And after alerting me she started running all the diagnostic spells she knows and is still doing so."
With a grim but hopeful look in his eyes Dumbledore nodded towards the charms master and sat as he hoped for the best.
01:13 am 18th March, Hogwarts infirmary.
A stocky young red headed man sat on a chair, his calloused hands were steepled quite forcefully, and his body appeared to be quite tense, he was observing an even younger girl who was lying on a bed nearby him, he was watching her like a hawk as if she would disappear if he took his eyes off her, and all he could do was pray, pray that his baby sister woke up, that she started laughing again, like she normally did.
And fortunes shined upon him, while his sister didn't exactly sat up and started acting like everything was normal, she did groan once, and pried open her eyes, blinking a few times after which she looked at him and blinked a few more times, and then lost consciousness.
He immediately yelled to alert the mediwitch, who within a minute rushed towards them.
05:02 pm 21st March, Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts.
Albus was seated behind his desk, his hands were steepled but they were quite calm unlike the young man who was sitting vigil towards his sister, he recalled everything that had happened recently and heaved a great sigh.
From what they had been informed of by ms Weasley, he was able to piece together the story, she had been possessed by Tom, or a horcrux made by Tom, when he was still at Hogwarts, via a diary given to her by most probably Lucius Malfoy and then Tom used her body as a proxy for his own and unleashed the basilisk on the school, thankfully no one died, but there were still too many questions without answers, who saved her? What happened to the Horcrux? And what had happened to ms Weaasley?
The issue with the girl was different, while there were quite a few changes in her, most obviously her new eye color, her personality had died a quite death from the psychological trauma she had suffered, and would require quite a lot of help, thankfully he was able to squash any official enquiries into the matter as the department of unspeakables would have wanted to cut open ms Weasley, both metaphorically and literally, and the ministry would have been quite happy to comply thereby sweep the whole problem under the rug.
He just heaved a sigh and started completing some of the paperwork he had, after all, just because his deputy had woken up it didn't mean he was going to let her go all… what was the expression again, ah yes gung ho on the burdens she bore for him.
09:38 pm 20th May, Torch of the Statue of Liberty, Newyork.
A young boy and a teenage girl were standing here, normally this would be considered a romantic scene - or the beginning of one - but there was nothing romantic here. The girl had called the boy here because he needed some help and this just happened to be the closest hangout she frequented.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked him, as she took a pouch from his outstretched hands, they were both dressed in their respective combat uniforms, in response he simply wrote her a note of "yes".
She eyed him once again and then left to do what was requested of her, two days ago the aforementioned boy came to her asking questions like, "what should they do about the people they rescue from their captives?" "has our mission failed if they are still suffering from the after-effects?" "and could they help? If yes, how?"
As she started answering his questions she learned that he had recently rescued a girl from a dangerous situation on which he refused to elaborate, and apparently she was suffering from depression and PTSD, and her family couldn't afford psychological treatment for her, so he took it as his responsibility to help her out after all her life was still under threat.
She slowly explained to him how it was not his responsibility and how he had done everything he could have, but when he seemed adamant about helping her out, she simply smiled at him and ruffled his hair by reaching in his hoodie, then she informed him about how she had some contacts who could help out depending on where the girl's family lived.
After getting the necessary information she asked him to deliver the required amount of money in 2 days time.
13:25 25th of May, Near Ministry of Magic, Britain.
A lean bald man was distributing a set of free promo lottery tickets, he scanned the people around him as he looked for his target, as soon as he found the portly red headed man he approached him in the most inconspicuous manner he could and just as with others thus far he handed the man a promo lottery ticket to the man, except this one that he had just removed from the pocket of his pants and handed it to him and then moved on continuing with what he was doing.
11:32 am 02nd June, Azkaban.
A portly man stood shocked as a man imprisoned in this facility asked for a newspaper, as if it were a joke, the sheer boredom on his face terrified him, but what he didn't know was that the man was not focused on the paper so much as on a family photo displayed in it, more specifically a rat displayed in the said photo.
A/n : that's it for today folks, I am terribly sorry for the delay but you know stuff happens in real life, have a good day and read, till next time!
