Author's Note:
We are approaching the end of the second installment and I would like to thank everyone that has stuck by this one because I will admit, having finished the third now, that I hated writing this one and will likely be one of the first to admit that it isn't my best work and didn't turn out nearly as well written as I'd hoped, so, again, thank you for sticking with it.
Despite this, hopefully you'll all enjoy the remaining chapters of the story as we finally get some real action.
Here's the first of four of
Harry Potter, the Valerians, and the Chamber of Secrets
Chapter Fifteen: Aragog and the Shadow
Harry, Ron, and Draco attempt to help Fallen but stumble upon something a little larger than they anticipate; and a shadow arrives at Hogwarts.
The edicts implemented by Dumbledore were put in place even with the Headmaster no longer present.
In the ensuing weeks, no new Headmaster had been selected for the school, likely, as Draco had pointed out quietly to his friends, because he hadn't necessarily been sacked, so it appeared that McGonagall, the Deputy Headmistress, was running things in the interim as best she could, while still teaching her students and running her House.
Teachers were escorting their students from class to class, with only a select few exceptions they were also patrolling the corridors at all hours of the evening, to prevent students from being out past the six o'clock curfew.
But in Gryffindor Tower, it was Pomfrey's decision to close the Hospital Wing from any and all visitors, that was the worst.
Though Blaise had been allowed to spend the first three nights that Yoko was in the infirmary beside his guardian, he had been sent back to the Tower on the fourth night, under the instruction that he wasn't getting the sleep he required by staring at the fox all night.
He still took his meals and free periods in the infirmary, however, glued as ever to Yoko's side as the fox struggled simply to breathe from moment to moment.
When Pomfrey had, very gently, told him that he was just as barred from the Wing as everyone else, he'd needed to be sedated, the panic attack was so bad.
In the hours that followed, McGonagall and Pomfrey had been locked in a battle of wills, with Pomfrey insisting that the attacker could come at any moment to finish off the petrified victims, and McGonagall ruthlessly pointing out that Yoko wasn't petrified, he was dying. It was callous to keep Blaise away in the fox's potential last days.
Pomfrey had, only once, tried to inform Fallen of the same.
In contrast to Blaise, who had panicked, one would have thought the wolf's Element was Ice, not Wind, with how chill the air between the two got.
"The moment you step between him and I, mortal, is the moment I separate your head from your shoulders and dangle it for the creature to take myself. Your body may or may not follow," the General had informed her calmly.
The wolf had been spending every night in the Hospital Wing, both before and since, and it was that alone that seemed to help Blaise get a couple of hours of sleep a night.
"Nothing and no one is getting past Fallen in the state he's in," Blaise had whispered to Draco one night.
Draco tipped his head toward Blaise, confused because he had waited until Harry was occupied with Fred and George to whisper his confession to himself and Ron, then shifted his body to hide the other from view as tears welled in his eyes.
"I'm scared," he whispered wetly. "Yoko isn't getting any better, but he won't enter the Trance either. I'm afraid of ending up like Harry but worse. If I don't have Yoko, Desmond'll kill me."
"It won't happen," Draco assured him forcefully, grabbing him by the forearms and forcing his attention.
"Right," Ron said. "I'm sure mum and dad'll take you in if Yoko does-" he couldn't bring himself to say it."
"And it won't happen," Draco repeated, passing on Severus' own reassurance when Draco had shared his own fears for the fox. "Yoko's alive because he's strong."
"Blaise."
The trio jumped, having not heard Fallen's return to the common room, however brief the visit was likely to be.
Blaise rushed to wipe his eyes and got to his feet, head hanging before the General. "I-"
"If you give up on him now," Fallen interrupted. "There will be nothing for Yoko to fight to return for."
Blaise wiped his eyes again and nodded.
Fallen returned the gesture and looked around the common room.
Seeing nothing of note or suspicion, he turned to his armchair and, with a barked command at the third year sitting in it to move, settled in for a nap before he escorted his charges, now four to their classes for the day.
XX
Harry, Draco, and Ron were confused by the wolf.
Harry and Draco had returned straight to the common room after watching Dumbledore get suspended and Hagrid arrested - or whatever - and after Fallen had finished destroying the cabin and had returned to the school.
They had been afraid that they would find Fallen there and the wolf would know that they'd been out of bed under the cloak again.
Instead, Fallen hadn't joined them until lunch the following day, leaving Harry and Draco plenty of time to fill Ron in on what they'd seen and heart at Hagrid's that night.
Draco and Ron had disagreed on what Fallen's next move would be, with Ron insisting that, without Hagrid, he would follow the half-giant's advice and search out the spiders.
Draco figured that it was just as likely that Fallen would wait. His uncle couldn't keep Hagrid out of Hogwarts indefinitely, given that Fallen had made it clear that Yoko was a priority and Hagrid was necessary to his survival.
\/\/\/
"If the Ministry wants to avoid going to war with Valeria, or whatever's left of it, they'll heed Fallen's warning," Draco told them.
"But it's not like there's going to be a war," Harry pointed out. "Even if Yoko wasn't hurt, it's still two against the Ministry."
Draco glanced around the common room, lowering his voice.
"If the Valerians go to war, the families that are bound to them go to war with them. It's part of the agreement between the Families and the Crown. According to Father, if Fallen goes to war, it wouldn't simply be a fight, it would be every favor and piece of blackmail the wolf had been hanging onto for centuries and not just against witches and wizards."
Ron and Harry looked at one another, Harry in confusion and Ron in something akin to awe.
"If Fallen starts a war with the Ministry," Ron clarified quietly. "He could probably fracture it before the two ever spilled blood."
/\/\/\
That conversation had been three days ago, though and, not only had Hagrid not returned, but Fallen hadn't appeared to be at all interested in 'following the spiders'.
To the Heirs, it seemed that with Yoko out of commission, the wolf had lost the drive to find out who the supposed Heir of Slytherin was.
XX
If Dumbledore's dismissal, temporary or not, was spreading terror through the school, you wouldn't know it to look at Katelyn.
Two weeks had passed since that night in Hagrid's cabin, and while Hagrid was rumored to be returning soon because Fallen's wrath was growing and the Ministry could no longer hold him, there had been no word of Dumbledore's return.
Katelyn appeared pleased with the Headmaster's removal from the school, preening as she walked through the halls from class to class as though it had been her, not her father, that had gotten him removed in the first place.
She had, in fact, been telling any Slytherin who would listen - and some that wouldn't - that her father had been the one to finally removed the 'old fool' from Hogwarts and heavily implied that Draco didn't feel the same way.
Theodore had sent Draco a message via a school owl one morning detailing the problem, and thus, when she mentioned it during their mutual Potions class, the blond Heir was ready.
"Uncle Lucius always did say that Dumbledore's the worst headmaster the school's ever had. We're better off with him gone. Father says now we can get someone who won't want the Chamber of Secrets closed. Pity some people don't agree with us."
"Actually," Draco said, not looking up from his cauldron, "I've been talking to my father, trying to figure out if the removal is going to be permanent. I wanted to ask Severus if he would ever have been interested in being Headmaster."
Severus gave the boy a frosty smile but didn't say one way or the other and the tips of Katelyn's ears turned a dark red.
The rest of the Gryffindors smiled wanly.
Draco hadn't truly been in contact with his father since Christmas.
XX
There was one good thing, Harry supposed, that came from the most recent attack.
Ernie Macmillan, who had made such an outspoken argument that Harry was the Heir of Slytherin, approached him, Draco, and Blaise in Herbology.
"I just wanted to say, Harry," he glanced at Blaise and swallowed nervously, which didn't make a lick of sense to Harry, though, he supposed, Blaise had been in an understandably dark mood recently, "that I'm sorry I ever suspected you. I know you'd never attack Hermione Granger, and I apologize for all the stuff I said…."
Blaise sniffed derisively. "Awfully late, aren't you?"
Draco hummed in agreement. "Slander like that, you'll likely owe the family a favor."
"Draco," Harry hissed when the comment caused Ernie to pale.
Blaise rolled his eyes and jerked a thumb at Harry. "Seriously?" he asked unkindly. "You still think he is going to ask for something bad?"
"If he ever uses it at all," Ron said distractedly from a foot or so away. "Harry doesn't always remember to ask for help."
Harry shrugged apologetically, but honestly wasn't paying much attention to the conversation around him.
Draco, Ron, and Harry had spent the last few days searching for the one thing that Hagrid had said could bring them answers.
Spiders.
If Fallen was too busy keeping Yoko safe, then the boys had decided, though Ron had taken some convincing, given his fear of them, that they'd follow the lead in the General's stead.
Mindful of the wolf in question behind them, Harry blindly whacked Ron over the top of the hand with his pruning shears.
Ron, turning to swear at Harry's supposed clumsiness, froze when he saw what Harry was looking at. Reaching behind himself, he poked Draco in the lower back.
Ignoring Blaise's questioning glance, Draco looked toward the window, then at his guardian, before stretching as far as he could to follow the line of tiny arachnids as they trailed down the window, cutting across diagonally.
"They're heading for the Forest," he whispered.
His voice drew Fallen out of his doze.
"What are you doing?" the wolf asked suspiciously.
Draco quickly returned to the Abyssinian Shrivelfig, a tall, stalk-like plant which bore purple fruit, that he was supposed to be trimming. "Nothing," he said quickly.
Fallen was far more watchful of the boys after that.
XX
Fallen clashed, again, with Lockhart in the Defense class later that afternoon.
Like Katelyn, Lockhart didn't appear to be all that concerned with the grim state of the school, instead, becoming more buoyant with every passing day.
His beaming smile when he joined the class earned him stares from the students and a derisive snort from Fallen.
"Come now," the man cried, smiling brightly. "Why all these long faces?"
Now there were some students who rolled their eyes, sharing exasperated looks with their seatmates or friends.
No one answered him.
"Don't you people realize," Lockhart said, speaking slowly as though he honestly couldn't understand why people weren't happier, "the danger has passed! The culprit has been taken away-"
"If you're referring to Hagrid-" Draco interrupted, only to be interrupted in turn.
"My dear young man," Lockhart said, ignoring the warning rumble from Fallen and the narrowed eyes of the blond in question. "the Minister of Magic wouldn't have taken Hagrid if he hadn't been one hundred percent sure that he was guilty."
"Oh, yes he would," Ron told him, speaking perhaps a touch louder than he needed to, given the silence of the classroom.
"I flatter myself I know a touch more about Hagrid's arrest than you do, Mr. Weasley-"
"Are you so sure of that?" Fallen asked shortly. "I was in that cabin when Hagrid left it, and I don't recall seeing you there. I'd also like to remind you that Draco's uncle was as well and I would imagine that he might know, between the two of us, a touch more than you."
Lockhart opened his mouth, likely to argue the point, but Fallen spoke right over him, having no patience left for him.
"Furthermore, Hagrid hasn't been arrested. For anything. He was taken to the Ministry for questioning on a completely unrelated matter and is due to return shortly."
The wolf put his head back down on his paws, effectively ending the conversation.
The sheer aura that surrounded him caused some nearby students to exchange worried looks, and not even Lockhart wanted to start the conversation again.
Harry looked down at the wolf before scratching out a quick note on the bottom of his notes, telling Draco and Ron that they would follow Hagrid's advice later that night.
Draco agreed immediately and, after a glance at the empty seat where Hermione usually sat, Ron nodded as well.
XX
Harry waited until Fallen had escorted Blaise down to the hospital wing for his half-hour visit with Yoko, before rushing up to the dorm to retrieve his cloak.
He hid it beneath the cushion of the armchair that Draco was sitting in for his and Ron's tie-breaker chess match, in the hopes that they wouldn't end up waking Blaise up to retrieve it later.
When their friend returned nearly an hour later and Fallen had departed, again, for his nightly vigil in the infirmary, he was immediately suspicious when none of his remaining friends came up to bed with him.
"What are you three doing?" he asked them.
"Just…have to go let Fang out for Hagrid," Harry said, smiling weakly at him.
Blaise tilted his head, before half-heartedly offering, "Do you want me to go with you?"
Draco shook his head. "You look like you need the sleep more than we do," he told his dark-skinned friend honestly. "We can manage this on our own."
"Call the cavalry if we don't come back by dawn," Ron called over his shoulder, only half-joking.
Given the state of the school at the moment, neither Harry nor Draco felt any remorse for slapping the redhead upside the head.
"It was just a joke!" Ron cried; voice already muffled by the closing portrait.
"It was in the worst taste, Weasley," Blaise could hear Draco retort sharply. "Were you born in a bloody barn?"
The portrait shut on their argument and any drive to be useful disappeared from the worried Gryffindor.
Instead of sitting down with the three essays he needed to write or any of the studying he needed to do for the upcoming exams, Blaise turned his feet to his bed.
XX
Harry and Draco had both been to the Forbidden Forest once before to serve detention, and neither was in any real hurry to return to it again.
The last time they'd been there, they'd nearly been killed by Quirrell, and Harry had found out that the man who had spent the better part of the school year a) teaching him Defense Against the Dark Arts and b) trying to kill him, was also being possessed by the man who had killed his parents.
The near-death experience, and the information gained from that ill-fated detention, had given both boys nightmares that had only left them when new fodder was fed to their brains.
And their First Year had given them plenty of fodder.
Ron was, dubiously, lucky enough not to have those memories as the three boys struggled to make their way through the crowded school corridors that night, but the rumors of what the Forest did contain were enough that his knees were clacking together just as much as those of his friends.
Even after they managed to slip out through the massive front doors (it took two of them to simply move the lock keeping them shut at night), they were too terrified of discovery to risk taking off the Cloak and, given that at any moment a professor could come by and find the doors unlocked, they'd decided not to risk it until they were inside Hagrid's cabin.
Once that door shut behind them, however, they wasted no time in sliding it off their shoulders and Harry laid it reverently on Hagrid's kitchen table while Ron and Draco struggled to contain and quiet Fang, who was simply excited to see them.
There wasn't much light to see by, only what little the crescent moon above them gave off, but it was obvious that someone had been by and cleaned up the mess Fallen had made two weeks prior.
"Last chance to back out," Draco said, looking between his two companions.
Ron looked down at the floor, fists clenched.
Harry looked up at the castle, where Fallen was likely holding vigil over the last of the Valerians and Hermione lay petrified.
He thought of lying awake the last few nights, listening to Blaise try and muffle how he cried himself to sleep.
"Fallen's too busy to get the information he needs," Harry whispered.
"We don't have to act on it," Ron said, sounding more like he was convincing himself than either of his friends.
Draco nodded. "We should see if we can find any more spiders to follow. I'm guessing the ones from the greenhouse are already wherever they were going."
The boys split up, with Draco and Harry casting the Wand-Lighting Charm on their wands and hoping that the witch-light wouldn't attract attention to the cabin, given that there wasn't supposed to be anyone in it.
While Ron went in search of Hagrid's lantern ("Seriously, Ron, your wand barely functions, find the bloody lantern."), Harry and Draco searched for their spider-guides.
Given that Draco had little patience for the boarhound, Ron and Harry exchanged amused glances when Fang followed the blond from first one window, then the second, whining fretfully the whole time.
It's equally as surprising that, even with that distraction, Draco was still the one who found the two spiders, skittering out of his wand light quickly.
Draco whistled, moving quickly for the door, not wanting to risk losing their only guides.
As he'd predicted, the two spiders were heading into the Forbidden Forest.
Draco looked up, away from the fleeing spiders, to glance between Ron and Harry.
Harry took a steadying breath and stepped into the trees.
XX
Given the size of the spiders they were following, Harry was honestly kind of surprised that they didn't lose them in the underbrush of the Forest in their meager lighting.
The lantern, which was large enough that Hagrid could hold it with one hand but required Ron to hold it with both, gave off the widest rays, but his and Draco's wand-light was brighter, and each, in their own way, cast additional shadows that made keeping track of the tiny spiders difficult.
Twenty minutes into their trek, the boys were beginning to get nervous - more nervous than they had originally been.
Harry and Draco hadn't realized just how terrifying the Forest was the year before, even after they'd been attacked in it because at the time they'd had their guardians with them, and had still been operating under the mindset that nothing could hurt them so long as they remained nearby.
Harry had since learned that it wasn't the case, not only because Tarana had died with him nearby, but also because he and his friends had been injured, some more seriously than others, in their defense of the Philosopher's Stone the year before alongside the same Valerians that were supposed to be unbeatable.
The Forest without the Valerians at their sides was darker, the trees thicker.
Their nerves on edge, the boys pressed close together, with Fang, in response to their fears, pressing close in turn.
All three of them, though they didn't mention it to the others, nearly turned back when their spider-guides left the path and disappeared into the undergrowth alongside it, making it even harder to spot the tiny arachnids.
The boys exchanged looks, each waiting to see if one of the others would be the one to suggest they forget the whole thing and turn back, but no one said anything and they - highly reluctantly on Harry and Draco's part, because they had been warned against leaving it for any reason during their last 'visit' - stepped off the path and into the trees.
By now, if Harry's watch was right, they had spent nearly forty minutes in the Forest and had lost the spiders several times, only to pick them back up in a miraculously bare patch of ground and have to scramble to catch up.
With every step they took further into the Forest, the more terrified Fang seemed to become, whining and whimpering with his tail between his legs and his ears alternately pressed back against his head and forward, as though hearing something the humans couldn't.
Draco, who had grown up with a canine companion from birth, knew that he probably did and reacted with the appropriate understanding that they weren't alone in the Forest anymore.
"Be careful," he whispered. "I think we're being followed."
"By the centaurs, probably," Harry said, looking around nervously. "They never seemed to like it when the Valerians came into the Forest to hunt, remember?"
"But…wouldn't they have come out and wondered why we were here?" Ron asked, fists tightening on the massive lantern, trying to lift it higher so it would illuminate more of the area, but it was so heavy and he was only so tall.
Harry cursed quietly, looking around his feet frantically. "I think we lost them again," he said, looking up at his companions, each of them unconsciously drifting closer together in their nerves and fear.
They were rapidly losing their resolve to try and get this information, regardless of their original good intentions.
"We should go back," Ron whispered, voice getting higher.
There was a crashing sound to their right, distant but coming closer, causing all three to jump and make uncharacteristic noises that no one would ever mention again.
Fang lowered his head and showed his fangs, but there was none of the aggressiveness behind the action like when one of the Valerians did it, his tail still tucked up between his hind legs and his ears pressed nervously against his massive head.
Even the growl he let loose seemed unimpressive, given the noise they knew the boarhound capable of.
The boys pressed close, backing away and, hopefully, in the direction of where they'd come from, shaking and terrified.
"We're gonna die," Ron whimpered.
"Shut up," Draco hissed, "it'll hear you."
The crunching noise felt like it was right there, just outside the collective light sphere, when it abruptly stopped and went silent.
Harry swallowed nervously, shoulders hunching up around his ears, and wished, not for the first time, that Tarana would come lunging out of the shadows like she had the last time there'd been a threat in the Forest with him.
The darkness felt like it was strangling them, pulling the air from their lungs as they panted, terrified, and caught in a stalemate, too afraid to run, but terrified to stay.
Light suddenly exploded before them and Fang yelped sharp and painful, and darted to the side, yowling in pain when he was caught in a tangle of thorns.
The boys cried out and instinctively raised their hands to shield their eyes.
Draco recovered first.
"Holy-"
"Is that-"
"It's the car." Ron cried, laughing in relief.
Harry's own relieved laugh was high pitched and unnatural, but he followed Ron toward the wild-looking Ford Anglia willingly enough.
The car certainly looked like it had been in the Forest for the better part of six months or so, with mud caking the sides and hood and twigs and leaves stuck in the creases and openings.
The windshield was more cracked than Harry remembered it being, but given the last time he'd seen it, he wasn't sure if it was because of the Willow's attack or because of its long stay in the Forest.
While his friends went over to the car, Draco took a moment to breathe and help Fang free himself from the bramble vines.
The task was made difficult by the boarhound's repeated attempts to lick him, almost obsessively, much to Draco's irritation.
"Fang, knock it off," he grumbled irritably, finally freeing the dog.
It said much about his nerves, however, that Draco kept the dog close as they returned to where Harry and Ron were patting the hood of the Anglia, looking around nervously though his eyes could no more pierce the darkness now than they had before.
Harry looked up as he approached, his relieved smile freezing and falling from his face.
"Draco!" he cried, wand pointing at something about ten feet above his head.
Draco ducked his head and scrambled forward, pressing his back against the metal of the car and brandishing his own wand.
It was a massive fucking spider and Draco had narrowly missed being caught in two of its eight legs.
"Acromantulas," Draco breathed, high and terrified. "You can't be serious. These are the spiders Hagrid thinks we can get answers from?! He's out of his bloody mind!"
Given that they're twelve years old and had never, truly, had to defend themselves, it was predictable that they'd all be caught, especially given that there were at least half a dozen of the Acromantulas stepping out of the shadows or falling from the thick branches above them.
"FALLEN!" Draco cried, closing his eyes against the sight of those hairy arms coming around him.
It had been a stupid idea to come out here alone.
XX
They didn't know how long they'd been carried, but judging by the fast and sharp breathing from his friends, Harry or Ron was going to have a heart attack if they didn't reach their destination shortly, and Draco was honestly not much better.
The only one he could see from his position was Fang, who was limp and useless in his own spider captor's grip.
Thankfully, it wasn't much longer, by his admittedly faulty reckoning, before they arrived at a massive domed web in a clearing that could have easily fit Hagrid's cabin.
Worse, the entire clearing was crawling with Acromantulas, some as large as carthorses and others at least as tall as Ron, the tallest of the three by a matter of inches.
Draco made an unconscious noise of pain as he was dropped with little warning, his legs buckling. He could feel blood welling in the scrapes on his palms as he caught himself, but quickly scrambled to his feet and wiped them on his robes.
He cursed when he realized that, at some point, he'd lost his wand in the trek between one 'clearing' and this more obvious one.
Ron was dropped beside him but didn't immediately gain his feet, too horrified to get past the creatures that scuttled around them.
Harry fell on his other side but did no more than push up to his knees, staring at the domed web before them.
Draco ignored Fang entirely, the dog curling up as best he could and whimpering, trying to remain a small target.
There would be no help from that corner.
Draco knew, from watching Fallen research the creatures of the Forbidden Forest before his First Year, that Acromantulas were capable of human speech because they weren't as stupid as some wizards would have believed.
It was still unnerving to try and pick out human words between the clicks of the pincers.
"Aragog," the spider above him called. "Aragog!"
Draco heard Ron make another high pitched squeaking noise as, from the dome of webbing that Harry, who must have somehow known, had been staring at, came the largest yet of the whole colony, easily the size of a small elephant with gray in the black hair of its body.
Even more horrifying was its silence because each of its eight eyes was milky white.
It was blind and it didn't run into anything or make noise to figure out where it was going.
It was a predator in its element.
"What is it?" the large, old spider demanded, pincers going just as rapidly as the ones that stood over Draco and his friends.
Desperately, Draco struggled to remember anything and everything his guardian had ever said about Acromantulas and how best to avoid offending them, but Fallen's great and noble advice had pretty much amounted to 'don't get caught' because Acromantulas preferred human flesh, though they didn't actively search it out.
Little late now. Draco thought miserably.
There had still been no response to his fear-driven cry for the General and Draco could only guess that he had been too far away from Fallen to hear him and if he was too far away then, he was too far away now, because he had no doubt that the colony was farther away than where they'd been caught.
"Men," clicked the spider still standing over Harry.
The blind leader, Aragog, stepped closer, milky eyes roving. "Is it Hagrid?" he asked.
"Strangers," answered the one over Draco, causing the blond to flinch.
He was beginning to regret having ever teased Ron for his fear of spiders.
"Kill them," clicked Aragog fretfully, already turning away from the collection of students and spiders. "I was sleeping."
The Acromantulas moved forward, clicking and drooling their venom.
"We're friends of Hagrid!" Harry cried, bowing his head. "He sent us here for answers. We didn't know what we were walking into. We didn't mean to offend anyone!"
Ron and Draco stared at Harry, mouths gaping.
It was one thing to see Harry twist his mannerisms to meet the expectations of a human, but to see him try and match that of a spider, even a magical one like the Acromantula, was a sort of cross between awe-inspiring and terrifying.
"Hagrid does not send men into our hollow," Aragog said slowly.
"Hagrid's in trouble," Harry told him, still on his knees.
Slowly, Draco dropped back to his.
Whatever Harry was doing, the colony had all stepped away, watching, so even if just for the moment, it was working.
"He sent us here hoping that you could help clear his name," Draco added, glancing at Harry.
"Why would he send you?" Aragog asked, suspiciously. "Why not one of the Old Ones?"
Draco swallowed. "The Scout was attacked by whatever is hurting people up at the school," he said, hoping he was guessing right about what 'old ones' referred to. "The General is my Bonded. He sent me to find out what was really attacking students because they think Hagrid is responsible and took him to Azkaban two weeks ago."
The Acromantula behind him shifted away, as though Fallen would appear at any moment.
"We do not speak of what is in the castle," Aragog told them. "It is an ancient creature that we spiders fear above all others. I remember well, how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go when I sensed the beast moving about the school all those years ago."
Harry ducked his head further against his chest. "We'll go report to Fallen that you don't know," he told the old spider. "Thank you for your help."
The colony leader clicked his pincers. "Go?" he said slowly. "On my command, my sons and daughters don't harm Hagrid. But the General knows better than to send such fresh meat here to our home. I cannot let it go when it wanders in so willingly."
Ron whimpered.
"I recommend," a voice purred, cold and forbidding, "that you release the children back to the castle immediately, Aragog of the Forest, as they are Bonded of the Valerians. This is by order of the King."
It wasn't Dark, who had more of a rasp to his voice, but it wasn't Fallen either.
It wasn't any of the Valerians that the boys had ever come across before.
The Acromantulas spin to search the shadows, the clearing suddenly a cacophony of noise.
The Valerian, however, never stepped forward.
With no visual evidence that there was more than a single Valerian, Aragog called his potential bluff.
"There is no Valerian alive," Aragog said slowly, testing the words, "that can take on all of my children."
As though summoned by the challenge, the wind abruptly came to life, four spiders shredded before Fallen ever bound out of the shadows beyond the trees.
Two more were cut in half and another three lost legs as Fallen lunged, fangs tearing into the body of the Acromantula that moved to intercept him.
He threw back his head from the thrashing, dying corpse, and howled, the sound causing the others of the colony to shift back and away.
"Release my charges to me, Acromantula, or face me in combat," Fallen growled, looking truly terrifying with black eyes and blacker blood dripping from his jaws.
Aragog hesitated.
In seconds, he had lost six of his children and would lose three more by the time the night was over.
Above and behind the General, the shadows of the trees twisted and morphed until a massive cat head with five-inch fangs gnashed its teeth together in a soundless challenge.
With a terrified shriek, Aragog scrambled back into his web and screeched at his children, "Leave them! Leave them!"
It was mere seconds for the Forest floor to be cleared of all the still-living spiders, the three mutilated ones thrashing as they struggled to stand with half their limbs missing, slowly bleeding out on the ground.
The black-eyed glare that Fallen leveled on the children as they scrambled to their feet almost made them wish they'd taken their chances with the spiders.
XX
Out of self-preservation, no one mentioned the fact that they had lost their wands trying to defend themselves from the Acromantula attack.
In fact, they don't say anything on the way back to Hagrid's cabin, even though they're all burning to know about the strange Valerian that had appeared to protect them from Aragog and his colony.
Once inside the cabin, with Fang burrowing his massive form under Hagrid's bed, Fallen ended the silence on both sides.
"What," he asked slowly, evenly, and all the more terrifying for it, "were you thinking?"
The three boys exchanged nervous looks, and Draco gave Harry a great deal of credit, first with the Acromantula and now with the General, he lowered his head.
"We were just trying to help," Harry whispered. "You were so busy, watching us and helping Blaise and protecting Yoko. We just…it seemed easy to get the information from the spiders for you."
Fallen's eyes narrowed and Draco rushed to tell him everything that Aragog had shared, to prove that the trip hadn't been a total loss.
Fallen listened in silence, though the cabin felt oppressing with the wolf's anger a dull thrum around them, but Draco could feel the moment the General relented.
He was still livid with them, but Draco was pretty sure they were all going to survive to dawn.
"Foolish children," Fallen sighed. "I had guessed that the Acromantula colony was what Hagrid had been referring to when he spoke those words. You forget that we regularly hunt in the Forest, Draco you know that I refresh my knowledge before we arrive here yearly, as to what lives there. But given the likelihood that Hagrid was trying to raise an Acromantula inside Hogwarts, I doubted that it would have the access to the school that I required for the questions I had to be answered by them."
Fallen appeared to fight with himself for a moment before sighing and hanging his head, appearing for all the world like he had a heavy, heavy weight on his shoulders.
The boys immediately felt horrible for having added to it with their, again, ill-fated trip to the Forest.
"Though it took us most of the year, we are certain that the creature attacking your classmates is a basilisk. We no longer need to know what the creature is, but there are still three questions that remain to us. Given that the creature is a basilisk, why are the victims not dying, but instead being petrified? We are currently assuming that Salazar bred this particular basilisk and spliced it with the genetic material of something else, creating a hybrid or mutant."
The boys looked at one another, startled at how candid the wolf was suddenly being.
"Our next question was who? Who could possibly be opening the Chamber of Secrets and, following the most recent attack, Severus and I have narrowed it down to two students."
Harry's mouth, which had been hanging open, clacked closed in surprise. Students?
"The only question with which we have no answers, is where the Chamber of Secrets is located," Fallen finished. "We were aware that the last time it was opened, a student had died, and I needed an identity, a potential location as to where the Chamber might have been, based on the location of her death. Information that Hagrid as the only member of the staff who would be willing to share that information that was there that year can give me."
"So, the whole thing, the trip to the Forest, the almost dying, it was all for nothing?!" Ron cried.
"Yes," Fallen told them bluntly. "You have, thus far, managed to avoid investigating anything regarding this Chamber and you have no business doing so now."
The boys exchanged glances and apologized for putting themselves in danger.
They couldn't find it in themselves to apologize for trying to help, though.
As they left the cabin, Ron whispered to the others, "When should we tell him that our wands are somewhere in the Forest?"
Fallen growled and Draco and Harry hissed at their friend to shut up.
He turned, at the entrance to the castle, and looked back at the Forest.
'Thank you,' He murmured into the Ether.
XX
As the group traveled back up to the school, Fallen calling all three of them seven shades of idiots for having lost their wands, a thin, black tail flicked in the shadows of the tree line, as an eavesdropper slipped back between the trees.
