"You should eat. You've barely eaten anything for days." Ephiriam held up a spoon full of bland porridge, a food still unappetising at the best of times. "Say, ahh."
Ophelia brushed his hand away from her face with no small degree of disgust. "I'm not a child, and I'm not hungry."
He granted her a skeptical smile. "Could have fooled me, kiddo. Why the long face? You should be celebrating, like the rest of us."
Against her better judgement, she ducked her head low and asked, "You don't actually believe that's the end of it, right? You can't seriously think everything— the attacks on the animals, the petrification, the murder— were all accidents?"
He lowered the threatening spoon. "Of course not, it's obvious the school is covering something up, but who cares? They wouldn't have us all back if it weren't safe again. Although... I wouldn't mind them closing it again, just until O.W.L season has passed, you know."
"Your optimism is dazzling." She pushed her empty plate away and rested her eyes in her palms, letting the muted reds and blues of her eyelids soothe her aching conscience.
"Oh, no. None of that. We are both going to sit here until you eat, young lady." Ephiriam crossed his arms in wait.
"You are too young to be my mother," Ophelia sighed grudgingly lifting her gaze to look at him, but they snagged on something else at the other end of the hall.
"Please, your mother could only dream of being as dazzling as myself— your words, not mine..."
He might have kept taking, but Ophelia didn't hear it. She didn't wait and eat, as Ephiriam so strongly recommended. No, she was across the room before the incessant waterfall of words even finished falling from his mouth.
"Rubeus," she breathed, not sure if she said it or merely thought the word, until he looked up.
Hagrid followed after the brittle, battered gameskeeper like a dutiful little duckling, except "little" was not a use one would often use to describe the boy, who already towered over just about every person she'd ever met. She supposed he was lucky for the gamekeeper's conveniently timed retirement, though it was difficult to imagine any part of the present circumstance was "lucky". He at least had a few weeks to get a hang of what his future duties would be.
Upon spotting her, Hagrid's face immediately broke into a wide grin. Ophelia marvelled at how that was even possible. He was framed for murder. His wand had been snapped. What was there possibly left to smile about?
He waved a massive paw and she took it as an invitation. Not one to take risks, however, she asked the gamekeeper if she could borrow his charge, if only for a few minutes, first.
As soon as they were standing on the stone steps outside, away from prying eyes, she wrapped her arms around his much larger frame. "I'm sorry, Rubeus. I'm so sorry."
She kept repeating the words until they lost all meaning. Her whole body trembled with the force of his shaking, the tears he was trying and failing to contain.
"It wasn' Aragog," he mumbled into her hair. "He swore it wasn' him. He swore. He wouldn't hurt a fly."
Privately, Ophelia thought that wasn't the best analogy for a spider. Instead, she said, "I know."
"But- but the professors- they all said," a sob shot through him and rocked them both, "well, what else could it be? What'f he lied? What'f it's really me fault?"
She pulled back and waited until he was looking at her, his warm, beetle black eyes wet with tears. "Look at me. You know more about," horrible, "magical creatures than just about anybody. Could Aragog have killed someone without leaving a mark, even if he had snuck out of your cupboard? Could he petrify someone in a hall without anyone seeing him?"
He shook his head and wiped at his face with a sleeve.
"Believe in yourself. Don't feel guilty for something you know had nothing to do with you. You were just unlucky enough to get caught."
She had no idea where the confident words were coming from, because she certainly didn't feel any of it. Still, Hagrid needed to know he was innocent. It was the least she could do. She should have done more.
Residual tears continued to leak from his eyes, but rubbed them away again and when his face reappeared his forehead was wrinkled with concern. "If it wasn' Aragog, nobody's safe are they? Everybody thinks it's gone. Somebody'll be hurt again."
Ophelia patted his arm in what she hoped was a reassuring way. It felt weak. Wrong. "Don't worry, Rubeus."
She wasn't about to let that happen.
III
It only took two missed tries to get into the Chamber. Two wrong tries more than it should have, really, considering she'd heard Tom hiss the words at least four times in the past two weeks, but she'd long since accepted that her memory was an irredeemable mess, so she let the fact slide with an annoyed sigh.
The fact that her shoes padded silent as death upon the cold stone didn't matter much in the end, either, because when the doors slid open to reveal the final room with Salazar Slytherin's domineering statue it did not do so quietly. Stone grating upon stone flooded her ear drums and the chamber beyond, leaving any plans for utilising the element of surprise null and void.
The basilisk had to know she was there. If it didn't see her, it could smell her. If it couldn't smell her, it could hear her arrival.
So where was he? Why was the chamber so suspiciously empty?
Ophelia took three more light, hesitant steps into the chamber and, eyes low, scanned the ground from corner to corner. Nothing. Every subtle drip of water or patter of tiny paws pounded on her ears and still no sign of the beast that had caused so much devastation.
"Appare Vestigium." She mouthed the words, though didn't dare speak them aloud.
Ophelia blew softly on the tip of her wand and, as though a breeze had somehow swept through the chamber, gold dust sparkled from its point and floated languidly through the air in a slow moving wave, before taking the hollow shape of a great serpent.
Her gaze followed it, perplexed, as it moved up, up, higher and higher until—
She couldn't have rolled away a moment too soon. Her eyes had barely traces over the contours of a single scale before it clicked that, while she'd been intending to sneak down there and kill the beast with both it and Tom were none the wiser, this monster had enough presence of mind to think the same exact thing.
It smelled her coming and had set its own trap.
Seeing no point in keeping quiet any longer, she cursed loudly and colourfully as she dove to the side, the Basilisk landing, hissing and spitting, a mere hairsbreadth from her leg. So close she could feel it rustle the fabric on her pants.
The whole earth quaked at the tons upon tons of impact and the shockwave that shot up her legs made Ophelia's knees buckle. Broken shards of stone and tile fled through the air in every direction at the beast's unimaginable weight. But the sound... it should have been enough to wake the whole highlands. It was certainly enough to drown out her select choice in obscenities that would have left Dumbledore disappointed and her uncle proud in equal measure.
Knowing she wouldn't get a better shot than that and not daring to look to see where Basilisk's head was at, Ophelia held her wand directly to deep, forest green scales and uttered, "Bombarda Maxima!"
One second she kneeled there, wand to serpent, the next she was slamming into a wall the next room over, the room from whence she had just come. The impact took her breath away, but breathing seemed overrated in the face of a furious beast that could crush, poison, eat, or simply kill her outright with a passing glance. She was running as soon as she hit the ground, thanking the heavens that she had had enough presence of mind not to release her wand.
Darkness curled around the edges of her vision from the blow to her head, although, Ophelia considered with a great deal of ill-humour, it could have been a mixed blessing. If she couldn't see, it was one less way to die. And dying seemed like a more and more likely possibility.
No. Her grip around the smooth, polished surface of her wand tightened until her knuckles showed white. She hadn't ventured down here to be killed. Only to kill.
Aiming blindly from under the crook of her arm, she let out a muted, "Avis," and four sapphire and emerald bellied hummingbirds darted out her wand's ignited tip. They fluttered like a crown above the monster's head, poking and prodding and dancing with swift wings that moved too quick for the eye to follow. A crown fit for the king of serpents.
Still, it jerked away from them, swiping the air indiscriminately to be rid of the irritating creatures that buzzed about his vision. They were too agile, however, and were already gone a full second before the Basilisk even lunged. Something so big could never hope for the flexible movement of something so small, an advantage Ophelia shared.
Her distraction wouldn't last long; she knew that. She was the far more enticing prey, but the move gave her time to get her bearings. To find her balance and adjust to the new ringing in her ears. Most of all, it gave her a chance to scramble for her next move. If magic barely fazed it, if magic was merely deflected off of its thick hide, what was left? What was a witch without magic?
She brushed aside the thoughts. They wouldn't help her. She replaced them with images of Hagrid. Myrtle. Everyone this remorseless, merciless beast had harmed.
Perhaps if she bypassed its scales and went straight for its mouth or eyes. Never mind the fact that those two places were where anyone in their right mind would least like to be. Luckily, no one had ever accused her of being in her right mind.
She took a deep, bracing breath, held it, and ran.
Eyes were out of the question. To aim for the eyes would require actually looking at them, which, naturally, posed an immediate problem. The mouth, then. She just had to get him to open it.
"Hungry, are you?" It's head snapped in her direction, gauging the distance between them just as she had done. "Does Tom not feed his poor, baby Basilisk enough?"
She doubted it could understand the words, but they certainly got its attention. Dutifully, Ophelia kept her eyes trained just below its jawline, squinted just enough to close at a moment's notice.
It lunged, muscles contorting and stretching, pulled taut beneath the vivid, poisonous green scales. Ophelia fired fast and hard, any spell that came to mind. Her wand whipped and weaved and sent a constellation of sparks shattering through the air. At first, the flashing spellwork seemed to daze the creature, but not for long. It was too inherently magical to be affected for more than a couple of seconds, even when she managed to actually land direct shots onto its tongue. It shook off the blows like they were drops of water, ignoring the birds entirely, and continued its mad dash.
She backed away quickly, too rushed to calculate where to place her feet. Her ankle snagged on something small in her haste, causing her to topple back.
The basilisk was still coming. Ten feet. Five feet. She scrambled backwards on her hands, futilely kicking her feet in the beast's direction, as though that could help keep it away. Her shoe made contact with something— a nose?— but she didn't dare look. Desperately, she flung out her wand arm, intending to fire off some spell— any spell— though the closer it got the more her mind panicked, froze, drew horribly blank, until a searing pain snapped her back to reality. First, a single fang buried itself in her flesh. Then, the mighty jaws snapped shut around her arm, splintering the bone in two or perhaps two thousand different agonising pieces. Broken.
She screamed and the chamber screamed back a dozen times over using her own voice, the echo twisting and distorting with each repetition until it evolved into something else entirely. Something ghostly and haunting.
Suddenly, as the pain consumed her senses, she longed desperately for her uncle. She yearned for the only father figure she had ever known. He would save her if he were there. He could do anything. Better yet, he'd teach her how to save herself and then step back and watch proudly.
He'd keep her safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. Safe. She couldn't remember how that felt anymore.
Grindelwald would know what to do. He always did. But he wasn't there. He wasn't even in Europe, she suspected. She was alone. All alone. Why had she thought it was a good idea to run away? He'd always been kind to her. He loved her. She'd been so stupid. She missed him so much and she'd never see him again. Her heart broke in half, and then fourths and eighths and sixteenths and again and again and again until she couldn't count all the jagged pieces. Until she couldn't hold them all in her hands and they shattered like glass on the floor, slick with her blood.
When the Basilisk was through, there wouldn't even be a body to mourn. Large as it was, she'd probably be swallowed whole. It was that troubling thought— and there were certainly plenty to choose from— that pushed Ophelia to bite down her agony and make a move. The idea of disappearing from the world, like she'd never existed in the first place, burned a hole through her gut. She spent so long trying to disappear before she even entered a room in the past, but she existed damn it! Tom, with all his faults, had made her feel like she could set the whole world on fire if she wanted to. The world would not forget. She would not disappear without a trace.
"Incendio," she hissed through gritted teeth
Close as she was, close enough to reach forth and pat the beast's snout with her other hand if she'd absolutely lost her mind, with her wand and arm within its mouth and poking the back of its throat, the single spell did the trick. The basilisk recoiled, releasing her.
Already, the poison slowed Ophelia's breathing. Her heartbeat lost its comfortingly constant rhythm she hadn't even known she noticed before.
While the serpent flailed furiously, she pushed herself up from the slippery stones with her uninjured arm and sprinted for the exit. Or tried to anyway. The ground seemed to shake unevenly, rising up and dropping away at random intervals. The wall provided some support, if only a little, but the blood on her palm left a trail of crimson across the wall. All she wanted to do was close her eyes for a second. One second and she'd be fine again.
She didn't really believe that. She didn't even feel the pain of the wound anymore. She was dying. Her thoughts were jumbled and distant, like another person was whispering from separate room. She didn't remember dragging herself out of the chamber, nor how she actually managed it. The only thing left in whole world was was a single word: run.
A/N
Okay, so I know some have been concerned with toms lack of interest in immortality so far and let me just say: it's all a part of the plan, my guy. Not to spoil but things are about to change verrryyy soon in that department. I've just been setting up the right... er... catalyst. I figured it would be odd if Tom was always like "You know what? I wanna live forever." I mean, I'm sure we've all had the thought in passing but I've never been more than slightly interested in the idea myself. Honestly, I'd find immortality quite miserable. I'd hate to outlive my dad and my brothers, so unless they were immortal too I'm not really a big fan tbh.
Also, I feel like I need to come clean here. Did you know. That snakes. Don't. Have. Eyelids? Because I sure as hell did NOT and I feel like one day a snake enthusiast is gonna call me out on it in two of my earlier chapters. It honestly never occurred to me that that was a thing I should look up and I've never been around snakes enough to notice. Two of my (absolutely bonkers) friends have boas but I honestly didn't realise. They were weirdly soft.