At the announcement that a student was missing, Jet Jaguar stiffened - perhaps not noticeably to most since he was a robot, but he'd been around for enough of Harry's life that he could tell. As the robot took a step towards the castle Harry started informing him of the year so far and what he'd likely be up against.
After just a few moments, Jet Jaguar stopped to listen to Harry's abbreviated tale.
Harry's story of the previous year had been published. Good.
Dumbledore had experienced trouble with the authorities. That was also good.
Hagrid had kept both of his children, Fluffy and Norberta; irrelevant, but good for the man.
Reading between the lines, Harry had a crush. That was a healthy part of growing up, but a reminder that someone needed to sit him down and have the Talk. Unavoidable.
This year's defense professor was garbage. Not good.
Students had been frozen solid - nearly turned to stone - all year because of a monster. Bad.
The monster was a basilisk, a creature with deadly venom and the ability to kill by way of eye contact. Even worse.
Even technology fried under the gaze of the basilisk; extremely bad for Jet Jaguar, but he'd trained for blind combat, he'd just need a blindfold.
Finally, the monster - or rather its controller - had abducted a student. They were now operating on borrowed time.
But Harry and his friends had a reasonably good guess where the entrance was hidden; a girls' bathroom was a strange place for such a location and implied terrible things about the original creator, but that was beside the point.
And apparently only someone who could speak to snakes - Harry and the mysterious controller - could open it. That was dangerous. Very dangerous.
Processing all this for a moment, Jet Jaguar produced a pen and a sheet of paper. He then drew a symbol on it and passed it to Harry.
"You want us to call Mothra?"
Jet Jaguar nodded. If this basilisk escaped, a creature with it's abilities would massacre the students. He signed to Harry to get his friends to work on the symbol since he had to come with the robot to deal with the basilisk.
"Neville, Luna!" Harry called, and his friends came to him. Harry continued, "My uncle and I need your help. Only a Parselmouth can open the chamber, so I have to go with my uncle even though it's dangerous, but what we need you to do is to make this symbol - conjured, drawn, doesn't matter - as large as you can near the castle. It will call Mothra, and if we fail, she will take care of the basilisk. I need you both to trust me on this. Do you?"
Luna nodded and replied, "Of course Harry."
Neville nodded as well and said, "Good luck down there Harry."
The two of them ran off to start making the symbol, and Harry began walking with Jet Jaguar towards the castle.
"Harry my boy, you cannot go in there, it is too dangerous!"
At the sound of the headmaster's voice Harry and Jet Jaguar immediately whirled around on their guard.
Harry was about to snarl out that he wasn't the headmaster's boy, but Jet Jaguar signed him a message that almost made him grin.
"HEADMASTER!" Harry bellowed at the top of his lungs, "SHOULDN'T YOU BE PROTECTING STUDENTS FROM THE ACROMANTULA COLONY IN THE FOREST?!"
That sparked panic amongst the student body and Dumbledore and all the staff started trying to get control of the situation. In the meantime, Harry jumped on his uncle's back and threw the invisibility cloak over both of them. Now concealed, Jet Jaguar ran towards the castle with Harry in tow.
They entered and with the aurors still searching the dungeons made their way quickly to the second floor girls' loo.
Harry made his way to the tap with the snake engraving and imagined it slithering and coiling and then hissed, "Open!"
And then that sink almost seemed to slither away, revealing a pipe large enough for a grown man to go in.
Harry and Jet Jaguar gave each other a pointed look. Before his uncle could sign anything, Harry said, "There might be another door down there."
Jet Jaguar nodded, but signed that if it was even remotely possible, he was to grab the hostage and escape, no matter what he could hear behind him.
Harry reluctantly nodded, then clambered onto the robot's back. As the robot flew down into the dark, his eyes began shining to banish the darkness, and Harry murmured, "Lumos" to help him.
They descended for some time, and the passage seemed to be a steep slide. When it finally ended in filthy water, countless bones, and the stench of a thousand years of serpent waste, they began walking.
Eventually they came upon a small chamber full of shed snake skin. Jet Jaguar tore off a couple of strips and blindfolded Harry. Whether he also blindfolded himself Harry couldn't see.
Guided by the robot, Harry walked until his uncle held him back. He heard the distinctive sound of metal knocking on stone, and realized that his uncle had found another sealed door.
With the stench of snake all around, Harry didn't need to imagine one to once again hiss, "Open!" and with a low groan the stone doors responded.
"So," began a soft, male voice. "Harry Potter and a mechanical golem. How curious. And blindfolded in preparation for a battle with a basilisk. How muggle of you."
A tap on the shoulder from his uncle was all he needed to know he could remove his blindfold. The chamber was filled with dim green light, and had a large pool of water at the far end, just beneath the carved face of Salazar Slytherin. Near the midpoint was an extremely pale girl with red hair, and beside her was an old book - no doubt the cursed diary - and most distressingly an… indistinct… young man in Slytherin robes. Harry could see him clearly, but it was as if his silhouette - his edges for lack of a better term - were blurred, as if by motion during a photo from an old camera.
Jet Jaguar flew to the youngest Weasley and checked for a pulse.
"She won't wake," said the man.
"Why not?" Harry growled, "What did your cursed diary do to her?"
The man looked at him as though studying an insect, "And what makes you think it is mine?"
"Besides the fact that you're just watching her without a care in the world? Let's see, there's the article in the paper about Malfoy trying to pass a cursed diary from Voldemort to a student, and the fact that you didn't panic when I told you the book was cursed. Oh, and let's not forget that you are down here where only Parselmouths can come."
The man's blurred face flitted through several emotions at once too quickly for Harry to catch all of them, but settled on anger.
"I shall make sure that I hunt down this 'Malfoy' for disposing of one of my treasures so publicly, but well done, Harry Potter. As for your question… well, let's just say that little Ginny here poured her soul into my diary, and in turn my diary poured a bit of my soul into her."
Harry could not hide how appalled he was by the prospect of a Dark Lord mingling his soul with that of a little girl. Jet Jaguar attempted a flying tackle at the figure, only to pass through with no - rather, minimal - resistance. The young Voldemort - for who else could it be? - chuckled.
"So, your champion is the golem? Very well. It is time for me to summon my champion. Speak to me Salazar Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four!"
As Slytherin's mouth began to open and Jet Jaguar blindfolded himself, Harry ran toward Ginny, but aimed his wand at the opening mouth.
"Fulgosphera!"
Another of the elemental curses Harry had learned, his wand fired several spheres of ball lightning into the mouth of the Slytherin statue, and a voice from within screamed, "RIP, TEAR, KI-ARRGH!"
Feeling satisfied, Harry gathered up Ginny and the diary and began hobbling away towards the relative safety of the tunnel.
"Kill the boy and destroy the golem!" young Voldemort commanded.
Harry could hear the basilisk approaching him, but heard the satisfying thud of what he imagined was his uncle's enlarged fist colliding with its face and smiled even has he fled.
In actual fact, Jet Jaguar still hadn't remembered how to grow. What Harry interpreted as the found of his fist was really a full-bodied charge shoulder first into the side of the snake's head. The creature immediately tried to snap at him and Jet Jaguar leapt into the air and then flew downward, his feet driving the snake into the ground chin first.
Jumping off its head and hovering just above the ground, Jet Jaguar listened for how the snake would attack next, and so he heard the splash as the tail erupted from the water at the other side of the room and did a series of backflips to get out of the way.
Dodge, punch, kick. These were Jet Jaguar's chosen weapons, and they served him well against the basilisk. Not used to fighting such tenacious prey, the basilisk was slow, and clumsy from what he could hear.
At last, the desperate Voldemort cried out, "Forget the golem and kill the boy!"
Ignoring it completely, the basilisk surged past the robot, and Jet Jaguar dug into his enemy's hide in an effort to stop it.
Meanwhile, Harry was trying every curse he could to destroy the diary. Perhaps it was instinct, or perhaps it was just desperation, but he knew that everything would be fine if he could just destroy the damn diary, but nothing worked! His own flame, flame from his wand, lightning - they all slid off it like water off a duck's back. Desperate, Harry cast with pure feeling.
Golden moths emerged from his wand and flapped their wings at it, revealing a dark, evil-looking aura, but Harry didn't know what that meant.
"AT LAST: KILL!" Harry heard from behind him, and a pit formed in his stomach. Had Jet Jaguar lost? Was he about to die?
The he heard a cry of frustration from the serpent, followed by an earth shaking slam and something clattering near the diary.
Reminding himself that he must not look back, Harry forced himself to look at the diary.
Beside it was a fang, still dripping venom. The golden moths were still trying to destroy the diary, but one flew towards the fang and revealed a similarly dark aura.
Harry realized that perhaps it was time to fight fire with fire.
He lifted the fang and stabbed the diary, which began gushing ink as if it were blood.
Behind him he could hear the young Voldemort screaming a final order as he died, "Escape this chamber, and kill everyone around the castle!"
Grabbing Ginny, Harry sped down the hall way. He'd worry about how to get out of here when he got to the exit.
Jet Jaguar, confronted with the potential death of innocents, remembered what he needed to do.
He grew, and grew, and grew, and the basilisk's momentum could carry it no farther. He heard it screech and he reached down, jerking it's head to one side and slamming it against the wall. He then pulled back on the entire body and threw it against the opposite wall, shaking the entire chamber.
The robot had outgrown his blindfold and he could see the serpent now. As thick as a tree trunk and as long as he himself was tall, it was gargantuan from a human perspective, but rather small by kaiju standards.
The creature looked as if it was about to glare up at him, but then turned toward its master, and after a moment slithered into a side tunnel. Since its master exploded moments later, Jet Jaguar decided to leave it be for the moment and go after Harry.
They met up with a now conscious Ginny at the entrance as Harry was trying to figure out a way to fly upward. Jet Jaguar grabbed both children and flew out of the bathroom, and into the hallway. And a good thing that they did too, because moments later an angry basilisk burst out from the tunnel, no doubt having gone around a side passage in an attempt to catch them. The trio flew out of the castle as aurors converged on the source of the noise.
By this time, the staff had control of the students and had assuaged their fears about an acromantula colony (something Harry intended to speak to his uncle about, since he'd had no idea such a thing was there) and the trio saw the large, complete symbol of Mothra.
Jet Jaguar set Harry and Ginny down with the rest of the Gryffindors and as her brothers surrounded her, Harry ran over to Neville and Luna.
"How long were we down there?"
"Almost two hours, what happened?" Neville asked.
Harry shook his head and said, "Don't ask, not yet. How long have you been done with the symbol?"
"Almost two hours," Luna replied. "Are you alright Harry?"
Harry nodded but turned to his uncle and said, "We need more time!"
The robot nodded, signed something to Harry, and then flew back into the castle, where the sounds of spell casting and the roars of the basilisk (mostly swearing to Harry's ears) could be heard.
Professor McGonagall ran up to him, looking grave.
"Mr. Potter, I know that the 'robot' communicated something to you. I need to know if he said anything about Ms. Weasley's health and the situation in the castle."
"He said that Ginny should be okay physically, but Professor, she was possessed by Voldemort's diary, she'll need help coping with that."
The professor winced at the name, and looked nauseated by the idea of possession, but nodded and gestured for him to continue.
"The situation in the castle is bad Professor. I destroyed the cursed diary that was trying to possess her, but the final order was to leave the chamber and go on a rampage!"
McGonagall paled, but went around and spoke to the rest of the faculty.
It was then that Harry heard something in the distance that brought hope to his heart. Rhythmic flapping as if by great wings.
Mothra arrived gliding over the forest and the student body towards the castle.
Some students screamed. Others ooh'd and aww'd. But all seemed to freeze at the sight of her majestic wings.
Her arrival was quite timely, as Jet Jaguar burst out of the castle doors and immediately turned to try to hold them shut.
Mothra let out a chirp, letting him know that all would be well. Harry heard her begin to trill at him that he needed to trust her and open the doors.
He did so without hesitation, springing away and entering a combat stance should the worst come to pass anyway.
Then Mothra began to flap her wings and release her poisonous scales, and Harry understood the plan immediately. Even as the basilisk surged out of the castle doors, it was forced to shut its eyes against the deadly poison. People screamed at the sight of the monster, but Harry could see that as the basilisk breathed it began to slow until finally, even as it approached Jet Jaguar, it collapsed, unconscious.
Jet Jaguar turned towards Mothra and began signing. From this angle the sunlight glinted off his silver skin and Harry couldn't quite tell what he was saying to her. Mothra gave an approving chirp though and landed between the students and the basilisk.
Harry wanted to run to his uncle, but he knew from Godzilla's war stories just how deadly Mothra's poison could be. He only proceeded when he got the thumbs up.
To the shock of all the students and staff, Jet Jaguar began to grow, until in one hand he held Harry, and with the other he gripped the basilisk behind its head. Harry did not know what was about to happen, and looked to Mothra, who gave him a reassuring chirp.
Harry felt the robot begin to ascend, and he knew exactly what was going to happen.
It was time for a late Christmas trip home. It was time to go to Monster Island.
Author's Note: The basilisk is off to Monster Island. Those of you who want more kaiju action are going to get it very, very soon. Harry Potter fans should be advised though that this is where things begin to go off the rails. Canon means nothing anymore, because taking the basilisk to Monster Island will have dire consequences...