Another chapter. Aren't I productive? Blame the downtime on the fact that college is a lot of work, and inspiration has been low lately.
There's a rather important update-speed-related AN at the bottom, so please don't skip the boldtext.
ON WITH THE STORY!
RECAP TIME
After much protesting, John is given his mission. Fermier is dragged along too because Croaker wants to limit the collateral. They sneak Edward past everybody posing as an Auror investigation unit, and proceed to do their jobs. Doe gets character development, Luna learns some new spells, and Xenophilius Lovegood acquires some depth. Also, something about a Basilisk attack.
John silently stepped into the staff room right behind the Deputy Headmistress. Instead of worrying about the fact that Fermier and Elric together had just been unleashed on Hogwarts, he focused on a head count.
'Let's see… everyone but Lockhart. Ah, well, not like he'd be much use anyway, if what the students have said are any indication.'
He tuned out the questioning chatter of the Professors as he ran a mental assessment of the situation.
'One student missing, acting under some form of mind control. Likely Imperius. The three of us could take any single opponent in the castle, but a hostage situation makes things difficult, not to mention the Basilisk. Best if we had some professors along, extra wands would be useful, especially experienced ones…'
He broke off from his train of thought.
"Deputy Headmistress, I would like to request that some of the Professors remain with our Auror unit to help apprehend the Heir. Preferably yourself and any of the other House Heads."
The entire staff room went quiet at his first contribution to the conversation. Doe suddenly felt the weight of the stares, particularly that of the Scottish witch now directly in front of him.
Minerva McGonagall drew herself up and looked John square in the eye.
"My first duty, above all else, is to ensure the safety of my students. Only when every single one of the students still with us are safely out of the castle will I consider helping you, and not a moment before."
Behind her, Flitwick and Sprout nodded a silent affirmation. Snape simply narrowed his eyes.
John had prepared arguments to get rid of any hesitance. He had thought himself prepared to deal with any resistance to getting the help he needed to get the job done. He had counted on reluctance, worry, even fear. He had not, however, been prepared for single-minded determination.
He nodded silently in acknowledgement.
"As I was saying," Professor McGonagall continued, "We will need to have every student out of the castle by tomorrow at the latest. Notifications will be sent out to the parents tonight, and hopefully the students will have the good sense to pack quickly enough that we can evacuate quickly." She slowly took off her hat, and continued gravely.
"This may very well be the end of Hogwarts."
Suddenly, the door burst open and Doe had to catch himself halfway before he hexed the intruder on reflex. It was an action he found himself regretting, as in the next moment Lockhart walked through the opening, seemingly oblivious of the atmosphere of the room he had just entered.
"So sorry—dozed off—what have I missed?"
John took a quick look at the rest of the Professors' faces, one glance at Lockhart's stupidly grinning one, and made his decision.
"Well if it isn't exactly the man I've been looking for," he said grandly, striding forwards and shaking the confused professor's hand firmly. "I had been looking for a professor to assist my squad in fighting the Heir, you see, but the others are all so terribly indisposed."
Lockhart was beginning to look a little lost.
"And then just as I was giving up all hope of ever retrieving poor Ginevra Weasley from the Chamber, you walked in! I suppose it must have been fate. After all, didn't you spend just last Sunday telling me all of the ways you could be doing a far better job than my colleagues?" John let a bit of steel enter his voice and his grip. Lockhart started to pale as he grasped the situation.
"I would be honored if you would lead my squad and myself in rescuing the poor girl. Come on, I'll take you to where we think the culprit fled to."
With a quick bit of footwork, the handshake turned into an innocuous-looking hold on the hapless idiot's arm as Doe steered him back out of the staffroom. As the door swung shut behind them, he couldn't help but smile a bit more genuinely when he saw the satisfaction on McGonagall's face.
Not that he would ever admit it to anybody, but Pride was just the slightest bit lost. While it was true he had spent the last week and a bit spying on every room he could spread his eyes to, there was a big difference between omnipresence and actually running around through the halls. Not to mention that his navigational range was limited by his need to remain conscious, and the fact that the architecture of this castle was actively defying any sort of visualization.
"Admit it, you're lost."
And then there was the snarky, bored alchemist he'd been attempting to ignore.
He took a left, a right, went down a staircase, across a hallway…and somehow ended up on a landing a floor above the staircase he'd just gone down. With the stupid suits of armor and everything.
"If you just let me take charge I could probably transmute a straight path, you know."
'Shut. Up. I can figure this out on my own.'
"Sure. And I'm positive Fermier and Doe won't mind waiting a few extra hours."
Down a staircase. Through a hallway. Down two more flights of stairs, around a corner, and…
That was the same goddamn armor he'd passed five minutes ago.
With an incoherent shout of rage, Pride shredded the armor from the inside out, punting the helmet off the staircase. It clattered once off a far wall, then fell out of sight.
"Well, that wasn't very nice."
Pride almost turned the speaker behind him into a fine mist before he realized it was a student. All his shadows innocuously retracted back under their owner's cloak as he straightened innocently.
"I," he said in a dignified tone, "Have no idea what you are talking about."
The blonde girl cocked her head.
"Are you a Wrackspurt?"
Pride had no clue what she was talking about. His posture dropped somewhat as he raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"Say what?"
"A Wrackspurt. Though I must say, you'd be the biggest Wrackspurt I ever saw. Why, I'd even say the largest one ever!"
Pride had the vague feeling he was being insulted.
"But anyway, Lord Wrackspurt, if you're looking for your fake Auror friends, you might want to head down the next staircase, take a left, then turn around twice in front of the fourth tapestry. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must get on with hunting the Nargles who took the rest of my things. We have to leave tomorrow, and I must be packed."
And just like that, she was gone.
'Normally, I'd be angry. But that? That was just too weird to even be properly insulting.'
"I concur. Now, are we taking her advice?"
In the five minutes it took John to frogmarch Lockhart to Fermier in the Second Floor girl's bathroom, he had become thoroughly convinced that he wouldn't be the least bit sad if they lost the fool to the Chamber.
"Really, my good man, I must say, if you'd just let me explain, you absolutely must let me get back to my office. Got a lot of good equipment in there, you know, absolutely can't do without it. Won't be any use without any of my Dark creature hunting gear, don't you know—"
They stopped in front of the bathroom door, just in time to run into a pair of students coming the other way. The two kids were moving so fast they almost ran past the door and into Doe, who pulled Lockhart in front of him to absorb any impacts.
"Professor Lockhart!"
Wait, this was the Potter kid and his sidekick.
"We know where to find the Chamber!"
What.
Doe stepped back out from behind his meat shield.
"You're sure about that?"
The two boys nodded and started breathlessly chronicling a story that sounded like it could take up the better part of a book. From what Doe could identify as actually important, it seems that someone in the castle had finally managed to identify the monster as a basilisk, and through some rather questionable guesswork they'd pinned the entrance down to this room, based on Moaning Myrtle's presence.
"Good work," he smiled and nodded encouragingly. Always good to see the next generation taking an interest in solving their own god damn problems.
"One of my partners is already searching the room as the likely location, but it's good to have confirmation. Now, I need you two to go back to your dorms and stay out of trouble."
He said that last bit just as his brain registered the red and gold of Gryffindor, and the probable character of the two students he was brushing off. They both protested vigorously. Apparently because the Weasley's sister was down in the Chamber, that gave them the imperative to commit assisted suicide. He was going to have to be the bad guy, it seems.
"No. Stop. Listen to me. You're twelve. Slytherin's basilisk is one of the oldest in existence, and these things only get stronger as they age. Going to fight it isn't brave. It isn't noble. It's stupid. Let myself, my two colleagues, and the Professor handle this, and go back to your dorms where it's safe."
Lockhart spotted an out.
"You know, maybe I should escort them back to their Common Room. It's dangerous to be walking around without a professor, anything could happen. I'd consider it my responsibility, even-urk"
John tightened his grip.
"No, I'm quite sure that you're going to be absolutely necessary, Professor. Now, you two," he waved at the students, "go to your Common Rooms. Let the adults handle this."
He dragged a protesting Lockhart into the bathroom.
Harry and Ron, feeling rebellious, lingered around the bathroom for a few more minutes.
"S'not fair. She's my sister, I've got to do something."
Harry sighed.
"I know, Ron, but he's got a point. There's going to be three Aurors and Lockhart. We'd only get in the way."
He paused.
"Wait, three Aurors? There's only ever been the two—the one with Lockhart just now, and the one who spent all his time in the Library."
Ron shrugged, turned, and started the long walk back to Gryffindor Tower.
"Who knows? Maybe the third one's just been staying out of the way?"
Harry turned to follow Ron, just in time to see his friend run into a figure wearing an Auror's cloak who rounded the corner the other way.
"Watch where you're going, kid," the Auror said, seemingly unaffected by Ron's bouncing off of him. He then caught sight of the bathroom door.
"Hey, is that the second floor girls' bathroom?"
Harry nodded mutely.
"Finally. You two should probably get to your rooms or whatever, things are going to get pretty exciting around here."
The red-cloaked man walked past them and into the bathroom.
"Jerk," Ron muttered, brushing himself off. "Hey, Harry, you alright?"
Harry snapped back to attention.
"What? Yeah, I'm fine. That Auror just looked familiar, is all."
"You think you've seen him before?"
Harry frowned, wincing against a sudden headache.
"Must have. Let's get going."
Pride burst through the bathroom doors.
"You would not believe the trouble I had to go through to get here. I swear, it's a miracle they don't lose children just from the bullshit architecture."
Fermier looked up from where he was inspecting a mirror.
"They do. A first-year Hufflepuff disappeared sometime late last year, name of Perks. That's following the general pattern of one per year since they started bothering to write these things down. Nobody's gone missing yet this year, but that's more because everyone's been traveling in packs since Halloween."
Pride shrugged.
"Huh. Any luck so far?"
"None," Doe called out from behind one of the bathroom stalls. "We've checked the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, so now we're on fixtures."
"Can't we just use some kind of detection spell?"
"No," Fermier replied. "There's so much magic in the castle that general detection spells are all but useless. Spells to see through objects can't get through the walls, and the ghost was singularly useless. Now would be the time to tell us you saw where she went after entering this room, Elric."
The homunculus shrugged, then started carefully investigating one of the sinks he was standing next to.
"The lights were off when she went in. I told you, I can't follow if I don't have a consistent light source to act off of."
He paused his inspection for a moment to regard the wizard frantically tugging at the handcuffs restraining him to a pipe.
"And who's the guy chained to the wall?"
Doe spoke up.
"Gilderoy Lockhart. Officially, he's here because he's the best master of Defense in the last fifty years. Unofficially, we have some questions for him about a retired Operative who went missing around the same time he published his latest adventure." Lockhart froze as Doe pinned him with a look.
"An adventure which, coincidentally, was almost identical to the missing witch's mission report."
The stupid-looking blond man, who appeared to have been Silenced, turned deathly pale.
"Found something."
Fermier stood up from where he was bent over a sink, looking satisfied. He pointed at the faucet.
"It's got a snake engraving on it. Not much, but at this point I'll take it."
Ed walked over as Doe Vanished Lockhart's chain.
"So what now?"
Fermier took several steps away from the wall before taking steady aim. He began to flick his wand through a series of complicated-looking motions.
"Well, I'm guessing that what with the Slytherin themes in this whole debacle, we'd need to be Parselmouths to open the thing. The only one in the castle with that skill is Potter, and he's all the way up in Griffindor Tower by now. So instead," he emphatically jabbed his wand three times, forming a triangle with the faucet at the center, "we use the universal password."
"What's the universal—"
A yellow-black ball was tossed from Fermier's wand, impacting the snake faucet. The sink, pipes, and most of the wall behind it were pulled inwards. Piping shrieked as stone and metal were compressed into a roughly spherical ball, leaving a gaping hole where the sink had been.
"Couldn't you have just Vanished it or something?"
Fermier used his foot to roll the sphere of metal and masonry down into the darkness. It clattered down the massive pipe until the sound faded.
"All of Hogwarts is spelled against most common destructive magic, including Vanishing. So instead, all we have to do is apply massive amounts of physical force."
He turned around, rubbing his hands together.
"So! Who wants to go first? Lockhart?"
The man in question began shaking his head rapidly, eyes wide. Doe spoke up.
"We need to make sure he's alive until we can question him. Tossing him down a pit wouldn't be a very good way to keep track of him."
Fermier ceded the point.
"Alright, then. Elric, it's up to you."
Pride crossed his arms.
"No way in hell am I being your guinea pig."
Fermier cocked an eyebrow.
"There are two ways we can go about this. Either you choose to go first in a dignified fashion of your own free will, or you continue to indulge your ego and I curse you, and send you down headfirst Your choice."
Pride grimaced.
"He's serious. At this range, and with Doe there to back him up, I don't think we could take them both without killing them."
'And is that such a bad thing?'
"Look at him. He's ready and waiting for you to give him a reason. We're burning time, just get this over with."
The homunculus sighed, swallowed the indignity of being the test dummy, and nodded.
He stepped up to the edge of the hole, gazing down into the abyss. Its gloomy depths revealed no secrets, other than a rather off-putting smell and centuries worth of grime. Somewhere down there was a Basilisk, a little girl, and Voldemort. He steeled himself to jump headlong into the darkness.
Then Fermier pushed him.
For a second, Pride wildly flailed his arms, balancing on his toes as he tried to stay standing. He managed to turn halfway around and send a hate-filled glare at his boss, and then the darkness swallowed him up.
John peered down the pipe where their alchemist had disappeared, trying to see if he could still spot the bright red cloak.
"Died horribly yet?" he called, trying to keep the note of hope out of his voice.
"FUCK YOU."
The Unspeakable shrugged.
"Guess it's a safe landing, then. Lockhart, you're next."
The Defense professor, still mute, gestured violently in a way that indicated extreme disagreement. John put a hand on his shoulder and gazed straight into his eyes.
"Listen. I know you're not actually a hero. You know that I know, and you're trying to escape any kind of responsibility for your actions. But don't you see? This is your chance. You could actually do something worthwhile, earn a bit of the respect that you've spent so hard faking. And when you look back on your life, you'll be able know it was this moment when you proved your worth."
The man seemed to actually consider his speech for a second. Before he could make up his mind, John took advantage of his lack of resistance, using the grip on his shoulder as leverage to flip the hapless wizard into the pipe with a soundless scream.
"Not that that wasn't hilarious, why didn't you go down with him? Wouldn't that be more secure?"
John waved off his technical superior.
"Come on. It's Elric at the bottom. Lockhart couldn't manage anything even if he tried." John paused, then, under his breath, muttered, "unfortunately."
"Also, Elric didn't manage to wipe off nearly enough grime on his trip down. That pipe is filthy and needed a second go-over." John glanced down the tube again, "Still is, come to think of it."
He felt a wand poke into his back and realized where he was standing. He froze.
"You know, John, you're absolutely right. I think that there's only one way to make sure that pipe gets clean enough for me to go down it. Now, just like with Elric, we can do this two ways. You cooperate, or I stun you and throw you down, and Elric keeps you company while I'm on my way. Your choice."
Without hesitation, John jumped. He landed squarely on his feet, and was doing a fairly good job at staying upright while sliding until Fermier's Tripping Jinx hit him.
Three wizards and one Homunculus walked down the dimly lit hallway. The weak, flickering illumination of ancient dying torches was aided by the light of a Lumos charm, but only slightly. There was a tense silence in the air.
Fermier broke.
"Alright, I understand that you're all slightly upset at the order in which we came down here—"
"You pushed us down," Ed interjected petulantly.
"—But I feel that we can let bygones be bygones in the face of imminent life-or-death combat."
"You pushed us down."
"Actually, I only pushed you. Doe pushed Lockhart, and jumped himself."
"And then you hexed me in the back."
Fermier sighed in exasperation.
"Well you weren't exactly cleaning the pipe very well just using your shoes—"
"You came down on a broomstick! You didn't NEED the pipe to be clean!"
The scientist huffed and crossed his arms, stopping at a massive snake-engraved door.
"And I hope you're all sorry that you did such a substandard job cleaning the pipe that I needed to pull out my broom."
John was forced to grab Ed's hood as the enraged alchemist made a lunge for his boss's back. He made incoherent choking noises of rage and flailed against the restraint as Fermier studied the door intently. Lockhart saw an opportunity and began quietly backing away from the group.
Fermier stepped back with a sigh. John raised an eyebrow.
"Parseltounge locked?"
"Parseltounge locked."
"Universal password?"
"Universal password."
As the senior Unspeakable began preparing his spell, John snapped a Body-Bind Hex over his shoulder, the muffled thump of the Defense Professor's rigid body hitting the ground none-too-gently bringing a smile to his face. He released a now-calmer alchemist's hood, only to immediately grab it again as he realized Elric was just faking in order to lower their guards.
"Look," he began to the snarling being of terror in front of him, "I want to murder him too. I would have, if I wasn't absolutely sure he could wipe the floor with both of us. Also, there's the fact that he's given us both some very nice toys for this mission, and we're going to get to use all of them on a rather massive Basilisk in the next—" he checked Fermier's progress "ten seconds. So, hold on to that murdery feeling you have right now, and let it out at whatever we see once that door opens, yeah?"
Elric relaxed again and crossed his arms.
"Fine," he muttered, "but this better be some top-quality murder time or I won't be held responsible for what I do to make up for the disappointment."
Fermier's spell completed, but instead of compressing, this time the resulting spell was white and green and suddenly the door was absent, along with quite a bit of the wall. A fraction of a second later there came an almighty CRASH from the gloom where the remaining wreckage had presumably hit something solid. Amid the clattering of rubble settling, the alchemist's mismatched footsteps were barely audible as he rushed headlong into the gloom. John drew up next to Fermier.
"How much did that last one take out of you?"
The head of Research let out a measured breath.
"Quite a bit. I'll be good for support, though I'm afraid you'll be forced to carry the burden of being the one to use the heavy equipment."
John grinned wickedly and pulled out a meter-and-a-half long pipe with shining runes scrawled down its entire length, the one open end pulsing ominously. A sudden shifting and crashing from the darkness heralded a hiss so loud that both Unspeakables could feel it rattling in their bones.
"FUCK"
The two men threw themselves flat as Elric's limp body suddenly flew from the gloom, landing with a clang of metal on stone and rolling to a stop several meters away. The alchemist picked himself up unsteadily, lightning flashing briefly around his neck and ribcage.
"Alright, so that thing's awake in there and it is pissed. What's our plan?"
Doe bit back a snide remark and composed himself.
"Fermier's got light, I'm on heavy firepower. Use your shadows when you can, see if you can't get a few good hits in to slow it down."
Elric nodded, dusting himself off. Shadows began to spread from under his coat, rising into a vaguely defensive position around him.
Fermier raised his wand.
"Lumos Maxima!"
The illumination lanced through the darkness of the Chamber, spreading ten, fifteen, twenty meters in all directions, casting insanely twisting shadows off the now-revealed snake-carved columns and dimly revealing the remains of the door. The ceiling and far walls remained invisible in the darkness.
The tail end of something unreasonably large disappeared into the unlit recesses of the cavernous room, and an ominous sandpapery shushushushush filled the air.
The group slowly moved into the Chamber. John kept his head on a swivel, spying for any indication of movement as Elric's twisting shadows writhed along the perimeter of their circle of light. The only warning any of them got was a sudden shout of surprise from Elric before something moving fast—too fast—shot towards them. The alchemist dove left while Fermier and John leapt backwards, the massive bulk of snake shooting through the middle of their group and back into the darkness on the other side of the circle, slipping through the constricting shadows which moved far too slowly by comparison.
Scrambling back to his feet, Doe brought his weapon to bear on the spot the Basilisk had disappeared to.
"How the hell can something that large move that fast?"
Fermier smiled grimly, glowing wand still held aloft as his eyes flicked back and forth.
"Magic."
Elric joined back up with them as they made a dash for the relative high ground of the door wreckage. His shadows, which had previously lingered at the edges of the circle, drew much closer to the group, the formation becoming denser and the movements more frantic.
Shushushushushushush
John bared his teeth as the sound echoed around the Chamber, providing no clues as to the source of the next attack. Nothing, nothing—there!
He squeezed his eyes shut, spun around, brought the pipe to bear, and pumped magic into the device. Even through his closed eyelids, he saw the flash of purple light as the weapon discharged, nearly jerking out of his arms. A fraction of a second later something far away exploded.
CRRRACKABOOOOOM
At the sound, he opened his eyes again just in time to catch a glimpse of the Basilisk disappearing at an angle from where he had seen it coming from, once again avoiding the shadowy lances that sought to pierce it. It had dodged. Moving at that ridiculous speed, it had somehow changed direction enough to avoid whatever it was the now-smoking pipe in his hands had done.
A pipe that Elric was now staring at with more than a little bit of awe.
"What the hell?"
Fermier never stopped turning.
"Rune-powered railgun. Not quite enough power to kill this thing in one shot, judging by its size, but certainly enough to leave it hurting. That said, you've only got four shots left before it burns out, so don't waste them."
He barely finished his sentence before he threw himself to the ground, Elric and John following his example moments later. A massive scaly body flew over them, so close that Doe could clearly make out the grain of the scales on its underside. He absently noted that its body was thick enough to be taller than him, and half again. The tail flicked over not a second later, and from the ground Fermier blasted after it with a bolt of lightning so powerful the smell of ozone lingered in the air.
That bone-rattling hiss sounded again as they leapt back to their feet.
Shushushushushushushushush—
Elric apparently had an idea, because the shadows went out briefly and he crouched to the ground, clapping and slamming his hands to the rock under their feet. The mound they had been standing on solidified and shot upwards, and suddenly they were standing on a platform three meters high.
The Basilisk's next pass, which had begun while they had all been regaining their balance, abruptly shifted to avoid crashing into the new column, instead rushing just below where they stood.
John fired.
He was briefly blinded by the flash of magical discharge as the railgun launched a magically accelerated sphere of tungsten past several sound barriers and straight towards the broad side of the Basilisk. He registered the round slamming into the back third of the Basilisk through the pain in his eyes, and suddenly the massive serpent wasn't moving forward so much as flying diagonally.
One of the ornately carved pillars cracked and crumbled as the airborne King of Serpents slammed into it, and Slytherin's Monster was lost in the dust and darkness.
Elric dropped his defensive posture.
"Do you think-"
Doe eyeballed where he thought the Basilisk had ended up and fired once more, this time remembering to close his eyes first.
CRRACKBOOOM
No such luck, the shot had hit stone. It hadn't made that sound when it had struck the snake, after all.
"Hey, Fermier?" he called, hefting the sizzling gun in his arms, "On a scale of one to ten, how bad do you think it's hurting right now?"
"Basilisks are famed for their magical resistance, on a scale only comparable with Dragons. Their skin is extremely thick, made up of layers of interlocking, magically resistant scales. That said-"
Before, the hiss of the Basilisk had simply been loud. This was deafening. John felt his teeth rattle in his skull and his ears pop as their opponent revealed not only that it was alive, but that it was pissed. The Basilisk's rage reverberated throughout the Chamber.
"Oh, for fuck's sake-"
The Basilisk shot out of the darkness, coiling up around their platform before stopping with its head directly above them, glaring down at their group. Or so John assumed—he didn't dare look further up than the lip of stone the snake's neck rose from.
Next to him, Elric made a strangled sound and tumbled to the ground, red lightning flashing furiously up and down his twitching body as all the shadows in the vicinity stretched impossibly, wide purple eyes spinning madly, then snapped back to their original positions, eyes and teeth absent. John swung the railgun around even as he dove, desperate to escape the strike he just knew was coming next. Even as he saw the massive head slam into the floor in his peripheral vision, he directed the muzzle of the gun right to the biggest part of the snake he could still see and—
Fired.
In slow motion, he saw the flash of the magic activating, and then the round suddenly appearing, a perfectly formed sphere punching through layers of scales before time caught back up, and everything happened at once.
The Basilisk had barely started flying away before the sections of its coils that were still wrapped around the pillar tightened, and hastily transmuted stone cracked and crumbled under the extreme forces being applied. The snake's head slammed backwards into the ground, and Doe pitched backwards as the floor disappeared underneath him. He bounced once off an inert section of Basilisk before rolling to the floor, hard. With a wince, he registered that even through the Unspeakable-issue combat robes, he'd sustained at least one broken rib. Elric was nowhere to be seen, and Fermier, who was wobbling on his feet a short distance away looked about as good as he felt.
He watched the scientist's mouth silently move with a dazed sort of confusion before reaching up to his ears. His fingers came away damp and red-burst eardrums. Likely from being in close proximity to a direct hit with the railgun.
After a quick application of basic healing spells, he kicked the railgun up into his hands from where he had dropped it and gestured for Fermier to repeat himself again.
"GET DOWN!"
Without question, John flung himself away from the suddenly-moving-again pile of shattered stone and snake as the tail flicked the tip of his nose, inches away from messy decapitation. The massive serpent hissed madly, the reverberations shaking dust loose from the ceiling as it flailed wildly in the semi-gloom just beyond Fermier's light, the darkness occasionally lit by brief flashes of red.
John watched carefully, railgun at the ready if a clear shot should come up.
"Any idea what it's doing?"
Carefully, Fermier directed his light towards where the Basilisk was still writhing, illuminating the cause of its distress.
Clinging to the monster's back, metal arm buried up to his shoulder in its hide was Elric. Even as he was tossed like a ragdoll by his opponent's movement, his eyes shone and his mouth was fixed in an insane grin. The distance and the Basilisk's continuous hissing rendered his words impossible to hear, but John was almost certain that he could make out a continuous stream of expletives. Crimson lightning snapped and hissed from his shoulder down his arm, disappearing along with the metal into the creature's skin. As they watched, he slapped his left hand down onto his opposite shoulder, and for an instant even the enraged Basilisk was still.
Then Elric was flying up towards the ceiling sans right arm and most of his upper torso. As he disappeared into the darkness, both Unspeakables realized their error and quickly directed their attention back to the Basilisk.
The King of Serpents was twitching, a gaping bloody hole blown out two meters from the base of its skull. Almost drunkenly, the beast twisted back up to face its remaining two attackers, and John realized in that moment—
They were too close.
As the muscles in the snake's body coiled for a strike, John recognized that Fermier had made the same conclusion he had. The scientist grabbed the gun out of his hands.
"Sorry about this, Doe. Do make sure Elric's alright, it would be a shame to lose him."
And then he was sent flying as a banishing spell tossed him out of the way— those were the broken ribs—and he rolled to a stop, fetched up against one of the columns by the devastated doorway. He attempted to scramble to his feet, but then stars and spots filled his vision as his body decided it had quite enough thank you very much and he collapsed back to the cold stone floor. He turned his gaze towards Fermier, very much expecting to see either him or the Basilisk dead, most likely both. Instead, it was neither.
The Basilisk, sizzling blood dribbling down its back, was stuck with its mouth open, pressing down against Fermier's crouching form. At first he couldn't make sense of the scene before he caught the tell-tale glow of the runic railgun inside the serpent's mouth, where Fermier had used it to hold the thing's maw open. Just above him and right below him, fangs strained to make the final inches to his chest, while the Unspeakable struggled against the snake's monstrous weight with all his strength. He had dropped his wand to the floor, still lit, to hold his lifeline up with both hands lest he be crushed.
He was losing.
As John watched, the wizard sank to one knee against the load he was attempting to hold up. His arms slowly sank, shaking, as the Basilisk's head pressed down on him, attempting to skip the bite and simply devour him whole.
Then, from within the serpent's mouth, the glow of runes intensified, and flashed purple.
The top of the Basilisk's head exploded.
"Well," Fermier said, applying field-medic charms to Doe's broken ribs, "That went well."
Ed stared at his boss incredulously from his vantage point atop what was formerly Slytherin's Monster.
"How on earth can you possibly define this as 'well'?" he demanded. "I just lost my entire shoulder port, and let me tell you, that shit doesn't fix easily. Doe's going to be spending at least three days in the hospital having his bones repaired, and I'm still not convinced you didn't do yourself some serious brain damage with that last shot!"
"We're alive, and the Basilisk isn't. You get hands-on experience in collecting highly toxic Potions ingredients, John gets a new story to tell at bars, and I get a whole bunch of semi-legal Potions ingredients. Good times all around."
"You know what, I take it back. It would be impossible to tell if you got brain damage."
Ed ruefully poked at the shrapnel that was left of his shoulder automail port. It sparked slightly, and a twinge of phantom pain stabbed through his non-existent hand. He grimaced.
"I can't help but feel like we forgot something."
Fermier looked askance at his subordinate.
"We came here to kill a Basilisk." He waved an expressive arm at the very dead Basilisk.
"I'd say that we killed a Basilisk."
"Oh yes, indeed you did."
All three Unspeakables turned to the speaker, who was standing in the entryway and smiling beautifully, though in a somewhat unhinged fashion.
"You know," Ed started slowly, "I completely forgot about him."
The Defense Professor pointed his wand at the nearest two wizards, who were both regarding him cautiously. Doe began to slowly stand up, aided by Fermier. Lockhart smiled some more.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I fully intended on losing my life down here, fighting the legendary monster of the Chamber. The three Aurors who followed me-"
"Followed," Doe mouthed.
"-were certainly brave, but we were hopelessly outmatched. As it was, I do think I was lucky to come out of this alive."
His grin widened and his voice took on a cast that Ed certainly recognized. He'd heard it often enough from the serial killers he'd brought down.
"Such a shame that none of my compatriots survived with me. Obliv-hurk."
John lowered his smoking wand as Lockhart's perforated corpse swayed, then dropped to the floor.
"Such a shame that the good Professor died fighting the Basilisk with us," he remarked casually.
Fermier nodded solemnly, tossing the corpse with a gesture of his wand to rest near the body of the Basilisk.
"Shame indeed. We'll have to write a book about the whole thing. You know, commemorate the final adventure of Gilderoy Lockhart and all."
Doe nodded in agreement, adding superficial wounds to Lockhart's cadaver with lazy gestures of his wand.
"My thoughts exactly. And if we should happen to make a small fortune in the process, well, it's what Gilderoy would have wanted from the allies of his final battle."
Ed hopped down from atop the Basilisk, a bottomless bag full of Potions ingredients cradled in his arm. Briefly, he looked at the thoroughly mutilated body of the late professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, then back up to the people he called his coworkers.
"You two are terrifying."
Doe grinned brightly.
"All right, you two. Let's get out of here before Dumbledore gets back and figures out that the 'Auror team' wasn't cleared by Scrimgeour.
Albus Dumbledore strode into the destroyed Girls' Bathroom, mind whirling. He'd only just been informed that the youngest Weasley had been taken into the Chamber by Minerva, who had prioritized securing the rest of the school. While he commended her dedication to her job, he was slightly annoyed that he had lost such precious time to act. Especially when he heard about the three-man 'Auror squad' that had been let into the school in his absence.
The Hogsmeade Auror unit hadn't left the town, and Dumbledore had contacts in the Ministry who would have informed him of any incoming investigations into Hogwarts, Headmaster or no.
Which begged the question—just who had spent nearly two weeks in close contact with his students?
And more importantly, what was their real intention? Good Samaritans rarely impersonated law enforcement on undercover missions. There was an ulterior motive here—and he needed to know what it was.
He pulled out a broomstick and descended the pipe, noting the three skid tracks in the grime below him. As he reached the bottom, the scholar in him took the time to study and appreciate the intricate carvings on the walls. That same part of him shouted in outrage at the blasted doorway, and the ruin of a room he could see beyond.
Several flicks of his wand sent globes of light orbiting above his head, providing ample illumination upon the grisly scene. In the center of the Chamber laid the Basilisk, its noxious blood pooled around and still steaming. The top of its head had been blown almost entirely off, and there was an irregular crater further down its back that looked like it had been inflicted internally. Even more mysteriously were the postmortem wounds that bore the marks of a potions ingredients harvesting. Wizards with the power to take down a Basilisk were rare; wizards with that power and the necessary potions expertise to correctly identify useful parts and safely harvest them were practically nonexistent.
He paused in shock as he came upon the half-melted corpse of Gilderoy Lockhart, two fang-sized holes punched in his torso and a number of minor perforations across his body. Lying in a pool of highly poisonous blood had not done any favors for his body, and his funeral would have to be closed-casket.
He walked slowly around the bodies, deeper into the Chamber, wand held tightly in front of him. He did not know what he would find, but he expected the worst.
As he approached the far wall, he came upon what he had been expecting and fearing. The still, cold corpse of Ginevra Weasley lay against Salazar's bust, almost as if sleeping. In her hands was clutched a battered old diary.
This officially ends the Year Two story arc. Let me tell you, I had so much fun writing the Basilisk I can't even begin to describe. Other fight scenes will have to be equally awesome, because I refuse to let this story peak before it's even halfway done.
And now, here's the lowdown on update speed.
I spent quite a bit of the last few months writing. Mostly for school, but also fanfiction. And quite a bit of that was put into this chapter. But it was also to get the random plot bunnies I had in my head down, because I want to write other things once Shadows is done consuming my life. If you guys want to see other projects, it willslow down the speed of this story. On the other hand, it will also give more variety as I have more things to write. Tell me what you want in the poll on my profile.
And now, I bring you an
OMAKE
Or why, in no uncertain terms, Ed is a terrible teacher.
Harry was thoroughly confused. There was a new course being offered in Hogwarts and for some inexplicable reason he and both his friends had all signed up for it. This despite the fact that none of them had dropped any classes to make room for it in their schedule, and Ron would rather die than take any course that used phrases like "practical applications of chemistry and stoichiometry as used through the lens of alchemic reactive equations and the properties of potential energy reassignment in the forms of molecular bonds".
Yet here they were, in some randomly placed classroom (he had no idea where it actually was in the school, he just went 'to the alchemy classroom'), and now the whole class, which happened to include all four houses, was being stared down by the professor.
"This is Alchemy class. You're here because your Headmaster assigned you all to this class automatically. I'm here because I lost a bet with one of my bosses and he made me take the job in his place."
The brief laughter his greeting had inspired died very quickly.
"Understand," he ground out, "That I learned Alchemy from a tutor, alongside my brother. The vast majority of my education would be considered illegal, immoral, or criminally insane by your Board of Directors, and I'm not entirely sure why anybody thought I was safe to even allow near children, much less teach them to use one of the most dangerous applications of magical energy known to man. But here I am, and here you are. Let's learn some shit, yeah?"
From her seat at the front of the room Hermione looked very anxious.
"Now, let's start out with something simple. This is a little trick I picked up in my military days, for when you don't have any explosives handy…"
PS. There's an update schedule for the Omakes as well. Cyber cookie to anyone who can guess it.