A/N: Long time no fuckin' talk, y'all. I know. I haven't updated in almost literally a year. I'm so sorry. I've had funerals to go to and infants growing into toddlers and just life to deal with and this chapter has been sitting unfinished for months. Well, I finished it! Is it perfect? Nope! Is it beta'd? Nope again! I was just so excited to have it finished that I'm posting it raw and when/if my beta gets a chance to look over it, it might be updated. No big changes would take place, just grammatical things that I may have missed. If that's not your jam, feel free to not read and just wait a few days, I'll let you know here in the author notes if I update with a beta'd version.
PS To those who asked, this story is absolutely not abandoned even though my updates are very seriously not regular.
oOo
The whole of Hogwarts shook. A cacophony of spells and curses and hexes reverberated through the castle, sending ripples of power even deep underground. The whole of Hermione's body shook. She was alive with adrenaline and magic and fear. She was acutely aware, in the deepest recesses of her heart, that above her people were dying- her friends, the only family she had left, lay strewn across the halls of this, her home. The witch swallowed a great breath and ground her teeth together while Ron's sweaty hand gripped her own tighter and tighter as they ran through the Chamber, searching for the corpse.
Hermione had only been in the Chamber of Secrets once before and she had to admit, returning was a more startling experience than she had expected. She had steeled herself to the inevitability of finding a basilisk, of risking her muggle-born life once again, but she had not been expecting the surge of adrenaline that had laced it's wicked way through her veins.
The Brightest Witch of Her Age was an auror trained by war and nearly perfected by experience. The rush of anticipation she felt on the job was familiar and, at times, even welcomed.
But this, this was different.
This was not the thrill of capturing dark wizards. This was not the electrifying satisfaction of a mystery solved.
This was something else entirely.
The fang felt oddly mundane in her hand, it could've easily been a quill or even a stick, but the cup reverberated with energy, as if the soul inside knew its master was close.
The Chamber was lit only by the three wands each of them carried, casting eery and unsettling shadows on the stone walls. Hermione shivered despite herself. As they approached the end of the long hallway, the witch stopped; she could hear the sounds of trickling water.
"Alright," she whispered, turning to the wizards, "from here on out I'll go first. No going down corners until I've looked around them with the mirror and signaled that the coast is clear."
"What's the signal?" Remus asked, glancing about nervously.
"Me not getting petrified," Hermione chuckled.
"Fuck that," Sirius breathed, the look of concern on his pale features unmistakeable, "no, then you can't go first."
"It was just a- what do you mean, of course I'm going first." Hermione insisted, placing her empty hand on her hip and replacing the discomfort she felt at the wizard's concern with icy exasperation.
I'm not here for your heroics, Black.
"No, not if the signal is you NOT getting petrified, what if you do get petrified?"
"It's happened before, it's really not a big deal, you'll just-"
"Not a big deal!" Sirius interrupted, running a hand through his ebony hair. "How is you being petrified not a big bloody deal?" He demanded.
Why do you care?
"If it happens," Hermione explained matter-of-factly, "you two will simply have to quickly carry me back through the Chamber and take the appropriate countermeasures to unpetrify me."
"What are the appropriate countermeasures?" Remus asked, brows furrowed.
"Oh don't worry, I've written them down and charmed them to appear on my forehead should I be petrified." Hermione smiled reassuringly, pointing at the aforementioned forehead.
Both the wizards stared at her for a moment.
"Y'know, your forehead is quite dainty." Remus commented.
"I considered that, but I figured this way you would have the instructions right here if you needed them. I didn't want to risk putting them on a parchment one of you might lose."
"That is," Sirius began, "the most absolutely absurd thing you've ever said." Folding his arms across his chest, he looked at her forehead again. "Wouldn't it make more sense, seeing as you're the only one of the three of us who knows how to reverse a petrification, for you to not be the first line of defense looking around corners? Surely, it's more logical for Remus or I to do it so you can unpetrify us and we won't be squinting over your- as Moony put it- dainty forehead."
Oh good try, appealing to my logical side, you must think yourself quite clever, Sirius. Hermione almost rolled her eyes at the thought.
"No," the witch said firmly, "I'm the only one who has been in the Chamber before or has dealt with basilisks, it makes more sense for me to peak around the corners."
Hermione opted not to mention that the only time she had dealt with a basilisk, she ended up petrified.
Best save that story for oh, let's say never.
Sirius visibly set his jaw and Remus looked between the other wizard and witch before sighing.
"Not that I'm interested in an argument right now," the werewolf whispered, "but I have to agree with Sirius on this one."
Traitor!
Hermione opened her mouth but Remus continued quickly.
"He's right"- oh don't look so bloody smug, Black!- "the most logical thing would be for one of us to do the peaking and for you to be not petrified and thus capable of unpetrifying us."
"No," Hermione said again. "I'm the only one-"
"I get it, love," Remus placed a hand on her shoulder, "I get it, I really do, you're protecting us, but you're doing so at the expense of yourself and what makes the most sense for the mission."
"Oh for heaven's sake," Hermione sighed.
But is he wrong, Granger? Shut the fuck up.
"It's not about protecting the two of you-" Hermione countered with more venom than she'd intended. Why could neither of them just listen to her? Why could no one listen to the Brightest fucking Witch of Her Age? Harry listened maybe half the time, Seamus didn't listen, Ron sure as fuck didn't listen. Hermione was surrounded by males who just couldn't bloody listen. "-so much as it is protecting the mission from his incompetence-" Hermione jabbed her wand towards Sirius.
"Hey now!" Sirius growled.
"-and your inexperience." Hermione swung her wand back towards Remus.
"Listen," Sirius bit back, "I know you think you're the only one on this bloody planet that has any sense but I am also a sodding Auror and the both of us are Marauders and we got along just bloody fine before Hermione Granger popped out of my goddamn Floo."
Hermione leveled Sirius with a gaze that would have made weaker men tremble, but it wasn't backed with her usual unwavering sense of self-righteousness. The witch knew she had cruelly misspoke, she knew Remus had been right, she knew Sirius was currently right, but she did not get flung through space and time to let two wizards she had already seen die once perish again on her watch.
"I'm in charge," Hermione whispered harshly.
Sirius guffawed. "By whose bloody authority?"
The witch narrowed her amber eyes, "And I am ordering the two of you to stand down while I look around the corners."
"Oh fuck it, you bloody sodding swot, I am done." Sirius moved swiftly towards Hermione, who quickly twisted out of his grasp, surprised by his sudden attack.
"What the hell, Black!" Hermione screeched, her voice and wand rising.
"Give me your fucking mirror, you can't be trusted with it." Sirius demanded, lunging at her again, this time going for the pocket where she'd placed the mirror.
"If you put a hand in my pocket, I swear to every god, Sirius Black, you will lose that hand." Hermione hissed, dodging him again.
"Guys," Remus whispered nervously.
"I am so tired of your secrets and your swottiness and you thinking you're the only one on the entire planet that has any goddamn sense!' Sirius grabbed Hermione around the waist and triumphantly cried out, "Got you!"
Until the back of Hermione's head collided with his nose.
"OH MY GOD!" Sirius cried out as blood sprayed from his face. "YOU BROKE MY GODDAMN NOSE!"
"SERVES YOU RIGHT, SIRIUS FUCKING BLACK!" Hermione screamed, whipping around as of to smack him for good measure.
"YOU GODDAMN QUEEN OF THE HARPIES!"
"Guys," Remus tried again with a bit more force. "Do you hear that?"
"I"ll fix it for you later once you have some fucking sense back in your pretty little head!"
"HOW ARE YOU SO SMALL BUT SO STRONG?" Sirius's voice was muffled by his hands now clasping his face.
"GUYS!" Remus yelled finally and, startled, both Hermione and Sirius turned to him.
"Fucking listen." The werewolf hissed.
They both stopped, Hermione now with wand raised and Sirius with hands over his perhaps broken nose, both barely breathing, neither moving.
"I don't-" Sirius began and then a rumble, low like thunder, traveled down the blackness of the hallway and behind it a sudden gust of warm, putrid air.
"Is that-" Remus coughed, waving his hand in front of his face, "Is that the basilisk?" He asked between coughs.
"I don't recall the smell," Hermione gagged on the stench, her mind a whirl of pages, flipping through books once read.
The basilisk didn't have a smell, did it? Did Harry ever mention a smell?
And then the sound again, rising this time, shaking their very bones as it echoed through what the trio could now see was no longer a hallway, but a giant chamber as suddenly unlit torches burst to life, illuminating the room around them.
And in the middle a creature Hermione quickly recognized.
"Oh shite," she whispered, stunned.
"Don't look in it's eyes!" Remus yelled, closing his own.
"It's not a basilisk!" Hermione screamed, grabbing the wizards and quickly pulling them behind one of the pillars that lined the perimeter of the giant room.
"What the hell is it?" Sirius demanded, twisting around the pillar for a better look. "Shite!"
Crapity crap crap!
"Too many heads! It's got too many heads!" Remus gasped, his face glistening with sweat.
And indeed it did.
Hermione could count five, possibly six, heads springing from what was definitely a giant snake's body. Two of the heads reared back suddenly and spit a green liquid towards the trio. The liquid hit the stone above them, causing the pillar to collapse as it quickly melted away.
Hermione and the wizards dove out of the way of the falling debris, each to different pillars as the hallway they had originally come through was now almost entirely sealed off by the fallen rock and stone.
"It's a hydra!" Hermione yelled, the acid confirming what the heads had already told her. The witch glanced at the blocked hallway and then back at the many headed serpent, biting the inside of her cheek.
"Can we look at it's eyes?!" Sirius asked from behind a pillar to Hermione's left, dried blood smeared across his face.
"Yes!" Hermione stuck her head out from behind her pillar to get a better look at the serpentine creature. "But avoid the acid! It's spit is deadly!"
Hydra, hydra. She had not been expecting a fucking hydra. Think, Granger, think think think...
"The Twelve Trials of Hercules!" Hermione yelled, as three of the heads began spitting acid at them again.
"What?!" Remus yelled, rushing from his collapsing pillar.
Are these pillars load bearing? Hermione briefly wondered.
"A hydra was killed by Hercules!" The witch continued, running to a new pillar. "We have to cut off a head-"
"Excellent!" Sirius exclaimed, jumping out and sending a slicing hex at the head closest to him.
"NO!" Hermione screamed, but it was too late. The heads hissed in pain, unleashing a gust of acid laced breath that caused Hermione to erupt into a fit of coughs. "We have-" she wheezed, gasping for a breath, "-we have to seal it-" she coughed "-we have to cauterize the wound!" She finally managed to get out.
"Shite!" Remus gasped and Hermione's eyes snapped up to the sickening sound of bones and flesh growing anew as two new bloody heads sprung forth from the stump where the old head had been.
"Oh damn," Sirius whispered before looking back at Hermione. "What do we do?"
"Incapacitate- shite look out!" The trio jumped away again, each finding new pillars for protection.
"You're daft, witch!" Sirius growled, wiping his face with the back of his hand as blood continued to drip from his nose.
Maybe, but we can't just murder it. Hermione thought desperately, but even in all the vast amounts of reading she had done in her life, brushing up on hydra facts had never seemed a priority when you spend so much time trying to keep The Chosen One alive.
"Gimme a moment!" She pleaded.
"We don't have a moment!" Remus screamed and as the trio began a dangerous dance, running for cover as the hydra continued it's onslaught.
"I don't know how much more the room can take of this!" Sirius called from behind a half melted pillar.
"I don't know how much more I can take of this!" Remus screamed back.
"Granger!" The growl that escaped from Sirius then was low and more canine than Hermione had heard before.
Think, think, think, goddamnit. Hercules. Trials. The heads come back. More heads come back. Acid. Toxic breath.
"Stupefy!" Remus shot off a spell as he ran to a new pillar. The spell was laughably ineffective. The many heads turned towards Remus in the same manner Hermione was sure she had turned to swat an insect; with both mild amusement and utter annoyance.
Remus, for his part, froze and continued to stand rooted in place as the heads unlatched their jaws and sprayed their venom.
"VENTUS!" Hermione screamed, whipping her wand around her head in a half moon motion before sending a twister of wind from her wand toward the hydra, blowing the acid back at the serpentine beast.
"FUCKING SERIOUSLY!?" Hermione pulled Remus against the wall as the hydra shook it's heads now covered in acid.
"Worth a try?" The werewolf shrugged lamely. Hermione rolled her amber eyes.
"Well, what was your plan?" Sirius asked, running to them as the snake continued to struggle.
"Weasel odor." Hermione stated matter-of-factly. "Basilisks are weak to weasel odor."
Sirius made a face, "The fuck?"
Hermione shrugged, "Magical creatures are bizarre, what can I say?"
"Fuck fuck fuck!" Remus yelled, scrambling to push his friends out of the way as acid was once again shot at them.
The trio spread out, but to no avail, each head picked one of them to spit at while the body remained in the middle of the room.
Think, think, think! But Hermione had nothing.
Well, we can at least chop off these heads without killing it and dealing with one acid spitting head will be much easier than dealing with seven sodding acid spitting heads.
"Ok!" Hermione thought out loud, yelling at the boys. "This is what we'll do. Sirius! You're going to chop off heads!"
"Y'sure?" He yelled frantically.
"Yes!" She turned to Remus, "And Remus, you're going to cauterize the wound with Incendio."
Remus nodded, his face pale. "W-what're you going to do?" He asked shakily.
"Distraction," Hermione breathed and then took off in a dead sprint across the chamber, drawing the attention of all seven heads.
"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!" Remus exclaimed, his voice awash of panic.
"CUT OFF A HEAD!" Hermione screamed over her shoulder as she slid behind a pillar, her hip making painful contact with the ground.
From behind her, Hermione heard the unmistakable hiss of a slicing hex cutting through the air and turned in time to watch one of the giant snake's heads fall to the stone floor. Sirius she never doubted, but Remus, sweet Remus had never been in a battle before, had never stared into the face of someone who wanted him dead, had never felt that rise in his stomach that is the unmistakable fear of pain.
Or, at least, not this Remus.
The first corpse Hermione had seen was her paternal great-grandmother when she was nine years old. The funeral had been unremarkable and as Hermione had never spent much time with her great-grandmother, the entire affair was rather boring for the precocious. Remus's body was the first corpse had ever really seen. His face like it was in life, yet somehow not, somehow other. It was as if changelings had stolen her beloved professor and replaced him with a doll, a wax figure. She reached a shaking hand out to touch him, barely registering that besides him lay Tonks, just as pale and rigid, but Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her into a fierce hug, urging her to look awaye and it was only then she realized she was screaming.
Panic rose in her. He can't do it, she thought to herself over and over, scrambling to get up, scrambling for her wand, curses and hexes on her lips.
He can't do it, he can't-
And then,
"Incendio!"
"Yes!" Hermione, wide eyed, jumped and nearly clapped her hands with glee as the hydra's wounded neck sealed shut. The remaining six heads turned to the wizards and that was when Hermione cast a light spell, like muggle fireworks, from her wand to draw the hydra's attention back to her.
And so she ran from pillar to pillar, distracting the snake as the wizards did their own work, until only two heads remained. As the giant serpent had not yet died, Hermione kenw one of the remaining heads had to be the main head, immortal in the myths.
"Ok, ok! No more!" Hermione yelled as the hydra hissed in pain, thrashing its neck stumps.
"Why?" Sirius demanded, wand raised.
"I want to incapacitate it, not kill it!"
"Well it sure as hell wants to kill us!"
"For all we know this could be the last hydra!" Hermione pointed out desperately, "In the Twelve Trials there was only one!"
Sirius visibly fumed, "I don't give a flying fuck! We're trapped in a room with a A GIANT MURDER SNAKE I DON'T CARE IF IT'S THE LAST GIANT MURDER SNAKE IT IS STILL A MURDER SNAKE."
Circe, he's right. In the myths the hydra stays alive even after the final head is severed, the head has to go under a rock. Fuck, Sirius is right.
"Fuck, you're right!" Hermione yelled and then ran across the chamber, lights erupting from her wand.
"I-I'm right?" For a moment neither Sirius nor Remus moved, both taken aback by Hermione's sudden admittance.
"CUT OFF THE BLOODY HEADS, YOU WANKERS!" She screamed as the hydra darted towards her.
"Fuck!" She heard Remus exclaim before a head fell to the floor, but it was only then that Hermione realized she had let the snake get too close and as blood sprayed from the neck turned stump, the witch felt the spray of acid across her thigh and arm.
"Hermione!" One or both of the wizards called out.
The witch screamed and fell to the ground as the pain seared it's way through skin and muscle. Hermione screamed again as she frantically flicked her wand, using a silent accio to pull the poison from the wound. She wasn't even sure that would work, but the pain was clouding her thoughts.
"Fuck you, murder snake!" Remus yelled as Sirius cast the final hex, slicing off the remaining head, which continued to wrythe on the stone floor.
"Cover it-" Hermione grit her teeth through the flesh peeling agony in her leg and arm, "-cover it with stone."
The wizards did not hesitate, both using magic to pile the stoney debri atop the still moving head.
"Someone-someone-" Hermione's vision began to pool at the sides of her eyes as in the middle everything went black, "-someone tell Hagrid, he can-"
The blood, the blood!
"Hermione!" She felt hands on her face.
"Not my b-blood-" she stuttered, coughing, "the hydra, get the hydra blood-"
And then, darkness.