Harry clenches the hilt of the sword in both hands, and thrusts up into the roof of the basilisks mouth, with all the strength of a scrawny twelve year old filled with adrenaline. The Sword of Gryffindor cuts easily through flesh, and a curtain of blood dreches Harry. The huge head seems to collapse, and he struggles to find his footing to move out of the way, though Harry sees the last fading ember of life leave the overgrown snakes eye, it shoved it mouths closed around Harry's arm, a fang piercing his skin. Oh no. Already it's agony, and he faintly registers the sound of more teeth coming loose and skittering across the floor as the snake crashes into the stone floor. Harry following not a second later. His arm is on fire, and not like it was in first year when confronting Quirrel, this hurts more than anything the Dursley's ever did to him, it's like every cell, every atom, is alight in one function of experiencing pain. Tom Riddle is crowing about his victory, while simultaneously being scornful about the death of his Basilisk and insulting Harry perfectly. The black of death is so close, until Harry realises that he's just focusing on the black of the diary.
"H-hey, Tom", Harry rasps out, while Tom's shade turns down to look at him, and Harry watches his lips form the words, 'I'm not Tom', and grasps a fang that had fallen behind him, his hand burning in the biting sting of its venom, "watch this," and lifts his arm, screaming at the effort to do so, and slamming down on the diary. Black ink surges forth from the diary, spreading outwards. If it there wasn't the fact that it didn't shine, didn't reflect the torchlight, you could have mistaken it for blood. There's a sort of scream of something not human and Toms shade vanishes in a whirl of light and smoke contorting into itself, and a mirrored scream of a little girl across the room- Ginny!
He'd like to go over there, my comfort her, tell her that Ron and Hermione are waiting just beyond those doors, but he can't seem to move his head. There's a bird now, a fantastic flare of fire, throwing everything in warmth. Fawkes lands on his chest, talons screwing into his robes as it finds a grip, and lowers it head over his arm. Something drops into it, something sparkly and radiating something pure. At once his pain lessons, less like a forest fire and more like a fireplace.
"Thanks, Fawkes", he whispers, he can't see now, and the tang of blood that had risen in his mouth disappearing, he feels a weight settle on his chest, until that sensation falls away too, through he relishes in the comforting touch of the bird. He can still hear though, and in the distance, hears his name being repeated, right, Ginny, this must be traumatising for her. A song fills his mind, and it's like every muscle in his body relaxes and calm washes over him. Until that too, fades away, along with his consciousness.
Surprisingly, he wakes up. What happened when he was asleep, seems… odd, private, something he doesn't want to think about right now. Instead he focuses on his surroundings. He still in the chamber. There's a basilisk and a bird and a girl with red hair. And a boy drenched in blood with no rise of his chest. Oh. That's him. Wait, what?
He glanced down, shouting out loud as he seems to be able to look at the floor. Through his feet. Through… all of him actually. And he doesn't seems to be touching the floor. What in Hell.
He stumbles backwards, in a stupid attempt to get away from the fact that his hands are transparent. His legs push backwards, in a cycling pattern, pushing against air, and yet he still moving back.
There's a short scream and Harry twists around to see Ginny staring at him, one hand clamping around her mouth, the other pointing out at him, eyes wide in disbelief. "Harry?" She whispers through her fingers.
"Ginny!" And he starts drifting forward, without moving his legs, "woahwoahwoahwoahwoah", he stumbles to a hat in front of her, and despite the fact he knows he should be asking if she's okay, the words, "do I look transparent to you", burst out. She nods mutely, and he continues, "and is that really my body, over there?" She starts to turn until Harry realising how horrible he's being along her to confirm that, "wait wait, you don't have to look, how are you? Did you get hurt? How long have we been down here?"
Ginny takes a deep breath and starts answering the questions methodically, it's probably the shock, he thinks, "I'm…. not okay, but I'm not hurt, just hungry, uhm, I don't exactly know how long, but it must be more than a day." She seems aware now that her hand is still around her face, and her finger is actually through his chest, and drops them hurriedly into a cross across her chest and her gaze focuses on him left arm, "Are… are you okay?"
"I don't know." She was still staring at him arm. "What's up with… oh". He's brought up his arm and is staring at it with Ginny, there's seems to be a literal hole in his arm, you can see through it, and not just because he is transparent. Where the fang went through, fractured the bone, and fragmented around the wound, blood bubbling around it. "Wow."
Ginny looks like she's going to be sick. She does when Harry pokes a finger through it experimentally, onto him. Well, it would be it falls through, and he shudders, finally understanding Moaning Myrtle.
"Oh God, I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't mean to!" She drags a hand across her mouth and takes a step back.
"Please, don't mention it," he cringes, and Ginny nods frantically back.
He changes the subject, no wish to discuss his arm, or the incident of someone puking through him, "Should we get out of here?"
She perks up at that, "you need to do your snake-y thing at the door, I can carry the sword and the hat, and the bird can fly themselves out."
The bird? Oh, the bird. Fawkes. He glances around for it, and sees it napping on a overhang of broken rock from Slytherins carving, just in time to watch it burst into flame and fall to ash. Bloody hell. "You may have to carry Fawkes out in the hat", he sighs. Of all the time for Fawkes to end his cycle.
"You'll do no such thing!" A ratchedy old voice croaks out from nearby. Right, the hat could talk. "I am the hat of Godric Gryffindor, you will not be doing something so lowly as carrying a baby bird in me". Ginny moves over to a hill of rubble, and pulls out the hat. She bends down over it and picks up a rock, whispering to it, she motions with it, and gestures to the rest of the cavern. After a moment of silence, and then it shouts out the words, "Fine! The blasted bird can ride along."
Harry moves over (how does he do that?) to Fawkes with a satisfied look on his face, he doesn't know what Ginny said, but it was obviously a threat, and bends over to pick up the bird. His fingers pass straight through it.
"Right," the smile falls off his face in place of a annoyed frown, "I can't do that stuff, sorry Ginny."
Ginny seems to be hiding a smile when he turns around, coughing slightly, "it's fine Harry, I mean, you saved my life, I can carry a couple things."
He frowns harder, "but you must be so tired! You haven't eaten anything in ages!" She shakes her head stubbornly, "I can do this."
He sighs, but there's no other solution, and Ginny seems to see this as a victory, and starts gathering everything together, gently placing Fawkes into the hat, which was packed at the bottom with Ginny's scarf, and then cradled into her arm, while using the sword as a walking stick. At Harry's look, she shrugs, "I might as well," and he lets it slide, she right. At the last minute, she picks up the diary and shoved it in her pocket, along with the Basilisk fang. Together they set off together set off across the vast cavern, Ginny sloshing straight through the puddles. Commenting on the fact that's not the worst thing that's happened is not wet feet. Harry explains what happened after Ginny was found to be gone, about Lockhart being a phoney and his backfired Obliviate after they realised the truth. She is silent throughout. They end up at the door, and Ginny is panting, and Harry makes her take a break, she's gone days without food, as an eleven year old, and sicker up what remains in her stomach, and is now walking a very long distance. (Harry remembers the feeling all too well, too many days had been like that at the Dursley's).
While Ginny is sitting on the floor, staring at the ground, Harry is still there just floating, (and God isn't that weird to think about, staring at the door in harsh concentration, willing the words in parseltongue (snakeything) to rise to his memory. The door is magnificent, he realises as he focuses on one tiny snake. Millions of stones are carved into snakes of thousands sized, entwined together in a complex that his eyes can't follow. Unbidden, the rasping hiss forms at the back of his throat, the words foreign and unknown yet understood, "Open, Forever. no longer shall the chamber be a secret, but free for Hogwarts, as it should have been".
His drawn out of his reverie by Ginny staring at him with an arched eyebrow, "I never knew you knew so much of the language,"
There's a grinding sound of stone that signals the door is starting to open, "I don't, it's more… instinctive", he shrugs, "I never learnt it, it's just there".
They turn back around to see the door open completely at 3 wands pointed at him. He puts his hands up in the air, "I swear I'm not the heir of Slytherin, this is just a coincidence," then remembers that spells can't hurt him, and drops his arms, "also, uhm, surprise? Harry Potter's dead and Ginny lived? You might want to carry her back, she tireder than she' telling me". Ginny glares mutinously at him. He lifts his arms again, this time in a 'Well what can ya do' gesture. "Wait, who are you guys?"
There's a dim light, but Harry can make out their faces easily, and wonders if this is the perks of being a ghost. The man closest to him, seems to have lost more than enough flesh, a chunk of nose missing, part of an ear, not to mention a whole leg and eye. One other is one with flaming ginger hair that might be a relative of the Weasley's, and a bald black man. The mutilated one speaks first, "we're the Aurors," he raised his wand higher, seeming unaffected by the fact that he's speaking to Harry Potter or a ghost. Harry likes this man already. "How can we be sure you're who you say you are," he peers suspiciously, the fake eye swivelling around to look at Ginny too.
Harry wonders that too, "well, uhm, my body is back there? Next to the dead basilisk, can't miss it. And, we've got Fawkes with us, he's only meant to like good people right? I bet Dumbledore could confirm it," glancing at Ginny, trying to hide a smile, who seems to be enjoying Harry's questioning. She doesn't like it as much when the man with startlingly bad fashion, (tan overcoat with a tan raincoat underneath, on top of a bright pink T-shirt that he can see poking out of the coat), grunts at Harry and turns on Ginny, fake eye turning on him. Harry waves at it. The black man walks up to Harry, looking very troubled, "Mr Potter, I'm Kingsley Shacklebolt, and this is Steven Weasley, and that man is Alastor Moody. Two days ago, Professor Snape And McGonagall found Miss Granger and Mr Weasley with Lockhart, saying you went on alone to save Miss Weasley, we'd like to take you up into the school- and Miss Weasley to the infirmary to answer some questions." He looks exasperatingly at Moody, "Auror Moody, I'm certain that the twelve year old isn't going to be hiding any weapons on her, stop badgering her, she needs a meal and her parents-"
Moody turns around only to snap the words "Constant Vigilance", and move on ahead of them.
Steve Weasley takes the hat off Ginny, seeming surprised to find a bird in it, but keeps his mouth shut with an eyebrow raised, and moves to take the sword of her, but Ginny holds it tightly and glares at him. "You are not taking any more of my things, Steven".
He rolls his eyes, a light blush rising, "I'm an Auror now," he hisses at her, "I was just trying to help". Ginny turns her nose up at him and follows Moody. Harry trails after her, and after a few moments, he hears footsteps start up behind him. This area is all rubble, and they have to pick their way through, Harry realising this is where Lockhart obliviated himself. He finally realises the irony of that moment and grins, thanking the Angelina Ford for helping to break Ron's wand.
They come up to a large figure taller than Shacklebolt, (who was very very tall), and even longer, Harry almost goes for his wand, (not that it would help, not having a wand on him), before he sees the way it's hard and transparent. Just the Basilisks shed skin. He relaxes. (Only slightly). They move past it, the Aurors seem more relaxed than they should have been, but he supposed if they were infancy guarding the doors like Harry thought they were, they'd probably have to make regular shifts. Still, the ghost notices, Moody's wand is held at the ready in his hand, pointing suddenly at every sudden noise. Sometime during that long trek, Weasley says a spell, and a white animal- a sturdy looking retrieve- bursts out, he talks to it and then it runs off, in the direction they're heading. He doesn't comment on it.
They arrive at the long slide up, and the three Aurors produce shrunken broomsticks, and make them proper sized with a flick of their wands. Ginny ends up sitting on the front of the other Weasleys broom. They almost start to rise when Harry panics, "Wait!" He shouts, and they twist to look at him, Moody aiming his wand somewhere being him. Ignoring him, Harry continues in a small voice, "how do I get up?"
Shacklebolt looks like he's trying very hard not to cry, either from frustration, or he believes Harry has forgotten he's a ghost. "You're a ghost, now, Harry, you can just.. float".
Harry twists his face up, hand fiddling with a flap of school robes around the hole in his arm, "Yeah… but… I don't know how".
It might have not been frustration before, but it is now.
"Oh, um." He can tell that the Auror is trying his best to think about it, and to be polite, "just think it?"
"Right…", And focuses hard, he never really thought about moving before, he just did, "shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit". He's shooting upwards into the slide, leaving behind the four others, rocketing upwards, in a way he might have found exciting when he was alive, but now is just terrifying, "How do I stop!?" He shouts out, and comes into contact with the ceiling. Except he doesn't stop, he squeezes his eyes shot, and… he's floating again. There's a scream and a thud, his eyes shoot back open, he's in the middle of a class, Muggle Studies, fourth year, by the look of the computers in the corner and the size of the students. Ravenclaw and Slytherin. One of them had fainted, and more than one were looking faint and where gasping, close to a scream.
"Sorry?" He wills himself to go down, and he does, through the ceiling… floor? The bathroom flashes before him, and now he's back down the slide, shite, he goes back upwards and stops, in the girls bathroom. Finally, he feels exhausted and he flops down on the floor. He's halfway through it, the tips of his shoes visible above the time, while Moody comes out of the gap between two sinks, landing somehow gracefully for the shape and size of him. "Got here safe them, Potter?" Harry doesn't even look up. That must be one of the most embarrassing things he's ever done.
"Oh God," he whispers suddenly, as Ginny lands with Steve, "I'm going to be here forever, I'm going to be making embarrassing mistakes forever".
Unaware of his life changing- wait, death changing?- realisation, they carry on in a protective formation around Ginny, Harry trails behind them, looking at his hands, and then his arm. Will he become like Nearly Headless Nick?
He becomes entranced with the way the flagstones flicker by through his shoes. Oh god, I'll be in school uniform for the rest of my life? Death? It was a very brain exploding thing to think about, and he resolves to talk to one of the ghosts of Hogwarts. All too soon, apparently more time goes by that it feels like when one is experiencing an existential crisis, they arrive at the door of the Infirmary.
"How do you think they're going to react?" Harry wonders outloud, "I mean, I'm the Boy Who Lived, now I'm just the.. the Boy-Who-Came-Back-To-Haunt-People!"
Ginny stares at him, "Well, I took it pretty well".
Harry sighs back, "Yeah but you're in shock, what's Hermione and Ron gonna think about the way I'm yunno…. see through".
She shrugs back, "Time to find out".
Shacklebolt pushes open the door, to reveal… a lot of people. It seems all the Weasley family is there, from Bill to Mr and Mrs Weasley, huddles together in anticipation, even George and Fred we're looking solemn. Hermione is there too, next to Ron, and a ragged looking man with scars on his face, standing next to Dumbledore, the twinkle gone from his eye.
There's a collection of choked gasps as he and Ginny move forward, his hand lifted up in a tiny wave, and Hermione bursts out crying, along with, strangely, the scarred man, who looks absolutely devastated. Ron is griping Hermione hand tightly, close to his chest, looking like he'll start in floods soon too.
There's silent tears running down Mrs Weasley's cheeks, matching the twins shocked expressions and strangely wet eyes.
Harry realises what a pair the two must make, Ginny's robes are dusty and covered in blood- from where he doesn't know- oh, his body- carry a sword that's much too tall for her, with a very casual expression on her face, which changes to huge relief as she sees her parents, and a ghost.
He ushers Ginny forward to her family as best as he can- she seems to get the hint when his hand actually goes through the small of her back talks quickly, "look! It's okay! Ginny's fine, no harm on her I swear! I told you I'd save her".
This seems to only set them off further, Mrs Weasley clinging onto Ginny. HHarry is just bewildered, ruffling his hand through his hair- oh no, too late, they've all seen the massive hole in his arm.
A 'sort of laugh, sort of sob' catches his attention, the man is covering his mouth with a weak hand, having fallen onto one of the beds for support, "I-I'm sorry, it's just," he sniffs wetly, he shakes his head abruptly, "I'm sorry, I'm intruding, I should go". He stands up and slips out the room, pressing a hand to his eyes.
"Uhm," Harry says because he can't think of anything else to say, "I killed the basilisk too, turns out a shade of Voldemort was controlling it, there was no Heir of Slytherin."
There's still no reply from any of them, staring at him as if they can't quite believe their eyes.
"Oh, and, Fawkes is a baby again, he's in the hat".
The hat grumbles slightly, from its place in Weasley's arms, "'In the hat'… I helped a lot more than carrying that chicken up here you know".
Harry rolls his eyes slightly, "Ginny's threat still stands".
There's no more talk from the hat.
Harry moves forward until he's just in front of Ron and Hermione, "are you two okay? How long were you down there, Ron? Did Lockhart give you any more trouble? Did you wake up alright, Hermione?" He wishes he could touch them, they evidently wish the same as Hermione reaches out to brush his form with her fingers. They're shaking. They stop millimetres from him, then drop. Ron's fingers are white against Hermione's dark skin, with her hand still clutched in his.
They both nod, but Ron answers first, voice wavery, "I- I was fine, nothing Pomfrey couldn't fix," He gulps, "Lockhart's been taken to St. Mungo's…." he trails off, apparently looking for words, and Harry finally realises they're all wearing their own clothes, Ron in a maroon jumper with a golden R on the front, Hermione in a comfy looking turtleneck, frayed around the neck.
Hermione takes over, sniffing and wet eyed, "Yeah… Madame Pomfrey fixed me up," she gives a sideways glance to the nurse, loitering in the side of the room, evidently waiting for someone to need medical attention, from her poised wand and tray filled with potions on a trolley next to her, and continues, sounding choked up, "I… I don't know whether or not to feel glad that you found the clue," a few tears slipped out, "h-how are you?"
"He's dead! That's how he is!" Ron bursts out suddenly, very distraught, "It's true!" Is the words the outburst is followed with, weakly.
Harry realises he is going to be in so much trouble for this.