Allow me to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: I can't believe I didn't wish Neville or JKR a Happy Birthday! I'm a horrible person. Why did none of you tell me? Happy Belated Birthday Neville! Happy Belated Birthday, JKR! Also, RIP Robert Hardy AKA Minister Fudge.
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program. (We still don't own HP, we hope you enjoy, RM and JKR did a lot of the hard work on this chapter. Please review.)
Into the Chamber
May 29th, 1993
Fourth Year
The boys marched Lockhart down to the third floor girls bathroom to visit Myrtle, "Oh, it's you," she said sourly when she saw Harry. "What do you want this time?"
"To ask you how you died," said Harry.
Myrtle's whole attitude did a 180, she looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question. "Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well! I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses.
"The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny, a kind of a different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go away, and then I died." Myrtle's face shone, she almost looked alive again.
"How?" Harry asked.
"No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away..." She gazed dreamily at Harry. "And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses."
"Where exactly did you see the eyes?" said Harry.
"Over there," Myrtle pointed at the sinks, "Somewhere."
Harry closely examined the sinks. "This one," he said, stopped in front of a sink with a small snake engraved in the faucet. He squinted at it and turned his head to try and imagine it alive, then, he hissed at it.
Skulking behind Harry and Ron, the girls watched as one sink slid forward and the boys pushed Lockhart forward before they jumped into what had been a hidden tunnel. Seeing no other option but to follow, the girls launched themselves after them. The tunnel went on for miles, twisting and turning until finally it spit them out in a stone room covered in the bones of small animals. Beyond it was darkness, more tunnel.
The girls edged ahead of Harry and Ron sticking to the shadows so they mightn't be seen, they were still disillusioned, but that didn't mean they were taking unnecessary risks. Suddenly there was a sound behind them, Lockhart had collapsed, the coward.
"Get up," Ron ordered, pointing his poorly repaired wand and him. Lockhart gathered his feet under him and launched himself at Ron, snatching away his wand.
"The adventure ends here, boys!" he said. "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body — say good-bye to your memories!" He raised Ron's Spellotaped wand high over his head and cried, "Obliviate!"
It backfired.
Literally and rather explosively.
The shock wave forced Harry and the girls further into the chamber while blocking the only exit out, trapping Ron and Lockhart.
"Ron! Ron, are you okay?"
Ron coughed, "Yeah, he's not though, the git; He got blasted by the wand. What now?"
Harry looked at the rocks, he'd never tried to move anything so large before, there were cracks in the other walls too; what if trying brought the whole tunnel down on them? "Wait here, I'll try and find Ginny. If I'm not back in an hour…"
"I'll try and shift some of this rock so you can get back through," Ron was not tolerating the idea of losing his best friend and his little sister in the same night.
Harry stepped forward and Ron stayed behind with the Obliviated Lockhart. The girls carefully picked their way through the bones trying not to create enough noise to be noticed. They followed a long and dimly lit tunnel. It turned this way and that way until it stopped at a great stone lock.
Thinking of Hermione, Harry raised his wand and cast-without much hope of it working-"Alohomora." Predictably, it didn't work. So Harry gritted his teeth and stared at the snake lock and told it in no uncertain terms, "Open," The snakes responded to the hissed command and the lock began to open. It took its sweet time doing it though.
The chamber beyond was a stone path surrounded by dark water, lined with snake twined stone pillars and giant stone snake heads. At the far end was a statue, the only well lit thing in the place, the head of a man-probably Slytherin himself.
There at the end of the giant stone pillar and snake-lined path, standing before the statue was a dark haired boy, probably in his sixth year or so. The girls didn't recognize him, but Harry saw red hair and hurried forward.
The girls followed, stopping at a distance, partially hidden behind a pillar as Harry confronted the older boy.
Unsure what to do, they stared for a moment, but they were talking, just talking. Ginny was right there and they were chatting? But perhaps Harry knew the guy, it was possible, the girls didn't know everybody at school. So they waited.
They caught snippets of the conversation, "It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," the boy went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back."
The girls could hear the boy pitch his voice to imitate Ginny, but they were too far away and the room, despite being stone, seemed to absorb most of the words.
"…couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people … You… most anxious to meet."
"…why…meet me?" They heard Harry say.
"…Fascinating history," they caught, and "Hagrid's my friend!" came through loud and clear because Harry had practically shouted it. More words were mumbled; man this boy could talk!
"…finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work." Most of the next bit was too quiet to catch but they did understand when they boy said, "there isn't much life left in her. . . . She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last!" and "Dumbledore's been driven out of this castle by the mere memory of me!" he half shouted, half hissed.
"He's not as gone as you might think!" Suddenly song filled the chamber and Fawkes appeared, dropping the sorting hat in Harry's lap. Fawkes gleamed in the low light, almost seeming a living flame. There was some more talking before the sound of stone sliding against stone and more hissing filled the stone room.
Then, an enormous snake came slithering out of what appeared to be Salazar Slytherin's giant mouth.
"Is that-?" Leilani started.
"A basilisk," Jo responded.
"Merlin 'n' Morrigan save us," Leilani muttered under her breath.
The older boy raised his wand to curse Harry, who was scrambling away from the snake.
"Well that's just not fair," said Jo, raising her wand as well.
"We're doing this?" Leili asked.
"We're doing this. Bombarda!" Jo aimed for the boy, blasting the area around him into rubble.
"Protego!" shouted Leilani immediately, not waiting to see if it would be necessary. As they ducked around their hiding place to aim their spells, they caught glimpses of words written in the air. Between the two of them they managed to read 'Riddle' and 'Voldemort', which alone told them all they needed to know, really.
The boy Voldemort hissed something to the Basilisk before a jet of spell-light came hurtling at the girls from the dust cloud, off its mark by a hair, and superheated the pillar they were crouched behind, turning it into magma.
Jo grabbed Leili's hand and pulled them out of the way, into the water. Jo cast lumos and they dove, swimming along the path towards Ginny. The water was just deep enough to swim through without mass amounts of splashing.
While Harry scuttled along the walls, Fawkes blinded the basilisk. Riddle was hiss/shouting something to the snake but it wasn't listening. The snake's tail swept the hat into Harry's lap. Riddle was looking wildly around the magma pillar for his invisible opponents; they'd traded places, he by the pillar, they by Ginny.
"I've got an idea, gonna need a distraction. In all fairness, there's a strong chance this won't work," Leili whispered when they surfaced.
"Try it anyway!" Jo said with a hint of reprimand as she looked around for something she could use. Distractions were her specialty. "Aguamenti!" she cast and a jet of cold water collided with the magma pillar, filling the area with steam. Out of their sight, Harry pulled on the sorting hat and begged for help, a sword fell on his head.
Leili took a deep breath and dredged up a memory of an exorcism they'd found in a book locked away in the restricted section-because of course they'd been in the restricted section. They'd spent their second year tripping the alarm spells and running away.
She hoped pronunciation didn't count against her as she began to chant, "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, ergo draco maledicte, ut ecclesiam tuam secura, tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos!"
The boy Voldemort flickered and vanished.
"Is he gone?" Leili asked hesitantly. "Oddly corporeal for a ghost. Too corporeal."
"I'm not hanging around to find out!" Jo retorted. Luckily for them, Harry was too busy grappling with the basilik to hear them. Not-so-lucky for them, Riddle wasn't actually a ghost and therefore bounced back from exorcisms.
The steam had started to dissipate and he could see the ripples they caused in the water well enough to aim, blasting them out of the water. They never knew what spell hit them. As they collided with the wall, Harry skewered the basilisk, ripping out a fang when he reclaimed the sword from the roof of the snake's mouth.
As Harry began to die, Riddle taunted him, saying, "So ends the famous Harry Potter, alone in the Chamber of Secrets. You'll be back with your dearly departed mud-blood mother soon, Harry. Eleven years of borrowed time, but Lord Voldemort got you in the end. Oh yes, I got you in the end."
Fawkes dropped the diary into Harry's lap and Harry with his last bit of strength rammed the fang into the center of it. Panicked now, Riddle raised Harry's wand and began the curse he was so famous for.
"Avada-" he started but Harry shish-ka-bobbed the diary with the fang that had pierced his arm.
Repeatedly.
Riddle screamed as the Basilisk venom ate away at the bits of leather and paper, the thing bled. Admittedly it was ink but still, it bled. When Riddle was gone, Harry tried to rouse Ginny as Fawkes looked balefully at him and his wounded arm.
The girls knew just enough about phoenixes to figure out that as Harry collapsed into a seemingly unconscious heap, Fawkes was crying on his arm, purging the Basilisk venom from his system.
Pretty sure the 12 year old was out like a light, the girls picked themselves up and dripped over to where the mangled diary lay. Leili pressed wet fingers to both kids' throats, just to make sure they still had pulses, before they turned their attention to the stupid little diary that had caused so much trouble.
Suffering the effects of Basilisk venom, Harry faded in and out of consciousness. Fawkes had healed his arm, but even phoenix tears took some time for full potency.
"Is it dead?" Harry heard a voice ask. His eyes flickered open to take in two blurry pairs of shoes before drifting shut again; it was so much effort to keep them open.
"It's a book, how can it be alive?" a different voice responded, Harry barely had time to realize it sounded exasperated before he blacked out.
"Do you really want to argue this right now?" Jo whispered.
Leili paused, "Right. So…steal it?"
"Steal it," Jo nodded once.
"Can we touch it?" She wasn't sure, after all it had done some major damage to Ginny.
Before Leili could stop her, Jo reached down and grasped the book's spine firmly, almost as though it was trying to escape. "Looks like it. So, hide?"
"…Why?"
"Do you wanna explain the stalking?"
"Good point. Yes, hide."
"I call the left nostril!" Jo cried gleefully.
"Ew! No! I'm not getting in there!" Leili said, repulsed.
"Fine. Mouth."
"What? How is that better? A giant snake used to live in that mouth!"
Ginny groaned behind them.
"No time to argue!" Jo took Leilani's hand and dragged her to the statue's gaping maw, hoisting her inside.
"This is by far the stupidest idea we've had," Leili groused as she settled into the cavernous shadows.
"Hush, hide behind his tongue."
"You hide behind his tongue!"
"Shh!" Jo hushed her.
On the floor Harry was coming back to, prodded by Ginny shaking his shoulder, "Harry! I didn't mean to! I t-tried to tell you but I c-couldn't in front of Percy. It was me! I-I s-swear I d-didn't mean to! R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over and how did you kill that-that thing? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary…"
"It's all right," said Harry, now roused and healed and sitting up, "Riddle's finished. Him and the basilisk. C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here." He looked around for the diary, but it was nowhere to be seen.
"I'm going to be expelled!" Ginny wept as Harry helped her awkwardly to her feet. "I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came and n-now I'll have to leave and — w-what'll Mum and Dad say?"
The girls waited until they were sure the kids and Lockhart had made it out, until they could no longer hear phoenix song before climbing out of the statue. "Good riddance to that thing!" Jo said as they limped past the dead basilisk. They made it to the Chamber entrance and sat down on a particularly large piece of rubble.
Tiredly Leili pointed her wand at the pipe above them and sighed, "Ascendio." The rubble launched into the air, following the pipe before bursting out of the circle of sinks in Myrtle's bathroom.
Not bothering to extend the Disillusionment charm to the rubble, the girls flew down the halls to their common room. They stopped, disembarked and crawled through the barrel, down the stairs and into bed.
Then, just as Leilani was about to fall asleep, she jerked awake with a gasp.
"What?! What is it?!" Jo jolted awake.
"I've just had the greatest idea of my life!"
"Yeah? What is it?" Jo asked around a yawn.
"Lockhart! He uses Occamy Egg yolks in his hair concoction! I can get the shells from him!"
"He doesn't even remember who he is, let alone who makes his shampoo."
"A narcissist like him, I'll bet he has a standing order," Leili touted, feeling mighty proud of herself.
"Ok, but how do we get the shells? Or the rest of the ingredients?"
"The Ashwinder is spawned from an unattended fire, that's easy, the Murtlap tentacles I can actually get from my dad-he'll ask why I want them, though, that could be tricky-and we actually has Snow Glory flowers here, in the common room, and the Rue I can also get from my dad."
"You have the potion memorized?" Jo asked, slightly incredulous.
"I've been trying to get ingredients for it since this time last year, I got tired of carrying a list."
Jo sighed and stood up, crossing to Leili's bed. She put her hands on Leili's shoulders and looked down at her face in the darkness, "It's late. Go to sleep."
Leili grinned, "I'm keeping you up. Sorry."
PS. Thanks to Supernatural for the exorcism.