Disclaimer: No own, no money, may TERFs slide down the chute to Slytherin's Chamber and land right in a rotting basilisk carcass.
Chapter 41
In Which Ginny Does a Thing
Harry could feel Ginny seething, and it occurred to him that maybe he should have done more to make sure she was okay after the events of her first year. But she'd hardly been able to look at him, and Harry really hadn't known how to handle that. Not at twelve.
She was looking at him now, though, keeping up a quiet litany of the Elric brothers' offenses. She was all but whispering in his ear, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder against him under the cloak.
"They weren't there, Ginny," Harry finally said. "I don't think it's possible to understand unless you were there."
"So they should be listening to the people who were!" said Ginny. Harry really couldn't argue with that. As it turned out, he didn't even have the time to, because they were descending on Moaning Myrtle's bathroom faster than he thought possible. Ginny moved quickly when she was angry, and Harry couldn't help but match her pace.
"It's you," said Myrtle, looking thoroughly disgusted to see them when they pushed through the doors of her bathroom and slipped off the cloak. "Isn't it past curfew?"
"Sorry to bother you," said Harry. "But it's important."
Myrtle did not seem to believe him. But her eyes alighted on Ginny and her expression softened. "I'm surprised to see you here again. You've grown."
Ginny gave her a half-smile. "Yeah. It's been a few years."
Myrtle let out a loud wail. "Years and years and I'll never grow or even change again!" With a splash that managed to dampen Harry's robe, she disappeared down a toilet. Harry grimaced, cast a quick scourgify over both himself and Ginny.
"Not that it'll do us much good in a minute," he said. "Fair warning, it was gross down there even before a dead snake sat there for four years."
"I don't remember it at all," Ginny said quietly. Harry opened the passage, and she insisted on going down first. When Harry slid down behind her, she was staring vacantly into space. She startled at the sound of Harry's footsteps. "I really don't remember it at all."
"I don't think the diary wanted you to."
He couldn't quite see her in the dark, but there was a flash of motion that he thought was Ginny shaking her head. "Right," she said. "Incendio." The fire issued orange from her wand, but burned green when they landed in the torches bracketed to the walls.
"Still nothing," said Ginny, peering around at the illuminated space. "Let's go. Through there?" She pointed at the door to the inner chamber.
Harry nodded. "I have to speak to that one, too." By Ginny's expression, he thought he might have already transitioned to Parseltongue. "Open," he said to the serpentine statues draped protectively over the doorway. He didn't shudder as the door opened, but it was a near thing. Ginny stepped right through, pushing past Harry. Her red hair took on an odd tone in the gloom. She was already pulling her potions gloves from the pocket of her robes, sliding them on with deft movements as she walked.
She had wide hands, Harry noticed. Both genetically and also in how she held them, fingers constantly grasping for a quaffle that wasn't always there.
While he was busy noticing Ginny's hands, the scent of the air changed. It was a more subtle shift than Harry had expected. "I guess four years did a lot to get rid of the smell," he said, thinking of the time that a badger had died under the porch stairs of Number 4 and Aunt Petunia had made him crawl underneath to get it. Nobody else would fit, you see, and a grateful un-freakish nephew would do it without question.
Ginny distinctly sniffed the air. "I smell it," she said, and continued. "Do we need blindfolds?"
It was good she asked then, because there ahead of them was the snake, lying sprawled and dead where Harry had left it. "No," he said. "Fawkes scratched out her eyes."
"Good," said Ginny, and Harry wasn't sure how he felt about that. He had a sneaking suspicion that if the basilisk hadn't been hurting people, he might have tried to befriend it.
"Why are you doing this?" he said to Ginny suddenly. "Voldemort's my problem, you could have just told me that you thought the diadem was in the Room of Requirement, and I could have taken care of it."
The look Ginny shot him over her shoulder was absolutely withering. "There's the head," she said instead of answering the question. She knelt down, pulled a sturdy leather sack from her robe pocket. "Help me open the jaws." Harry knelt himself, reached for the maw of the great snake. "Not with your hands! You don't have gloves!"
Right. Whoops. Harry wondered at the odds of Fawkes getting down here to heal basilisk bites a second time, and brandished his wand. Not quite sure how to go about the task magically, he aimed a quiet Wingardium Leviosa at the upper jaw. "Well," he said. "That worked."
Ginny giggled, but did not pause in wrapping two hands around a giant fang and rocking it back and forth in its socket. There was a creaking of bone before it gave. She placed it into the leather sack. Harry made to let the upper jaw go.
"Wait," said Ginny. "I think we should grab more. Even if we don't end up needing them, they sell for a lot of money." Even in the dim lighting, Harry could see her face wrinkle with disgruntlement. "But I think I'll use severing charms for the rest."
Sure enough, the severing charms were faster. Once the basilisk was completely deprived of its teeth, and the leather sack was distinctly and magically not bulging from its burden, Ginny stood, then carefully slipped off her gloves. Those went into the leather sack too.
Harry let the basilisk's upper jaw settle back into place. He remembered quite viscerally the feeling of the basilisk's breath, the feeling of her fangs. He remembered the clear-headed not-fear that had come from the certainty that he would be snake food. But, and maybe it was the parselmouth in him, he couldn't stop himself from shuffling closer to her skeleton on his knees. Gently, so gently, he patted her greasy skull.
"Thank you," he said, and knew it was in parseltongue. He took a moment, just looking at the remains of the snake that nearly killed him. She wasn't so different from any other snake, he thought. She was just extra deadly, and had been encouraged to use that against people by someone she trusted.
When he realized that Ginny was watching him, he stood up hastily. But it didn't seem like she was judging him harshly. She just bumped his shoulder with hers, and made her way back to the sliding chute they'd come down.
Now Harry felt really stupid. "I forgot we can't get back up without flying," he said.
"Let me think about this," said Ginny. She paced the room, and Harry wracked his brain.
"We could try summoning broomsticks," he said, going for the option that came most naturally to him.
"But do we want to carry them to the Room of Requirement?"
"We could try banishing the broomsticks."
Ginny looked at him flatly. "You could not pay me to banish my broomstick. It deserves to go lovingly back into its place with utmost care."
That. Was true. Harry cast his gaze around the chamber, looking for anything he could think to use. "We could try summoning school-owned broomsticks. They're crud anyway."
"But they've got the caterwaul charm on them after hours," said Ginny.
"Huh," said Harry, though he supposed that made sense. "I didn't know that. Wait. How do you know that?"
Ginny did not answer him. She snapped her fingers instead. "I've got it! We can cast sticking charms on the bones down here and make hand holds up the chute!"
"I don't think I know the sticking charm," said Harry.
Ginny looked very self-satisfied when she said, "I do." Like she was savoring a memory. Nope. Harry did not want to know.
"Let's see if it works then," said Harry. There really was no shortage of bones, even in the antechamber. "But let's not use the bones from the basilisk." They'd desecrated her corpse enough for one night.
Of course, snakes could fully digest bones, so Harry had to wonder why exactly there were so many of them littered all over the floor, but the chamber did have an abundance of them.
"I was thinking we'd use the ones in here, anyway. They're closer," said Ginny. But before Harry could feel foolish, she said, "but I get it. Using its body like this has to feel weird when you can talk to snakes like they're people."
"Her," said Harry, not understanding why he felt the need to insist.
Ginny might have understood better than he did, though, because there was the warmth of her shoulder again. "Her," she said, just correcting herself, not asking. Suddenly, Harry felt warm from more than just the press of Ginny's shoulder.
But then the moment was over, and Harry began levitating bones into strategic places along the chute for Ginny to stick in place. "We should make sure to double them up, and double up the sticking charms," said Ginny. "Even sticking with the larger ones, these bones look fragile."
"Yeah," said Harry. "I was thinking the same thing."
They worked well together but it still took nearly an hour to build their bone ladder. "Let's go up one at a time," said Ginny, skeptically eyeing it for weak points. "We could take the time to make it stronger, but it's late and the only thing we know about the diadem is that it's in the Room of Hidden Things. Searching for it will take hours all by itself."
"Let's try it," said Harry. "You go up first. I've got a spell that will hoist someone up by the ankle if things go wrong."
He'd been more careful about the spells in the Half Blood Prince's textbook since shredding one of his better socks with Sectumsempra, but he'd used Levicorpus a few times. It seemed safe enough. Better than falling down the chute unexpectedly because something gave, anyway. That seemed like a recipe for a concussion. Harry had some experience with concussions.
"Thanks," said Ginny. "For this dubious honor."
Harry laughed, and Ginny began to make her way up the chute, a sure-footed mountain goat. It was weird, how he could look at her in the gloom of Slytherin's chamber and see her climbing the hill to their portkey before the Quidditch World Cup.
She was more careful here than in the hilly scrublands beyond her home, but that didn't seem to matter to his mind's eye.
Damn, he thought as her foot slid on the round end of a skull and she lurched sideways. His wand was out, Levicorpus waiting on his tongue, but she steadied herself before he said the word. And then she was at the top.
"Wasn't so bad!" she said in a carrying half-whisper. "If you can get up to where I can reach you, I can haul you the rest of the way."
But it really wasn't so bad, Harry reflected as he picked his way up the careful array of bone supports. He wasn't quite so sure-footed as Ginny - nobody would be making mountain goat comparisons about him, certainly - but when Ginny grabbed for his collar near the top, it was for reassurance more than need.
"Impressive," said Myrtle from her perch on top of a stall door. "Now close it up and get out of here. I don't like looking at it." Harry thought that was fair. He probably wouldn't like visual reminders of his death either, if he was a ghost.
His invisibility cloak was right where he left it, tucked under one of the sinks, where it was out of the way of the muck of the chamber. "Tergeo," he said, pointing at himself and Ginny. Cleaning spells were never as good as actually getting clean, but it was better than nothing. He picked up his cloak.
"We'll get out of your way," said Harry to Myrtle.
"Have a good night," said Ginny. Harry threw the cloak over both of them and they shuffled out of the lav. "Am I even supposed to wish ghosts a good night?" Ginny wondered once they were out of Myrtle's ear shot.
"No idea," said Harry. "You'd know better than me. Can't go wrong with pleasantries, though, right?"
"I guess," said Ginny.
They fell quiet, crept as quickly as they could from the second floor to the seventh. Harry wasn't sure how long they'd spent in the chamber, but he didn't want to run out of time. When they arrived at the Room of Requirement and paced their seven rounds into the Room of Hidden Things, it was to find that Hermione had beaten them there.
She was sitting on the floor next to a giant mound of trash, generations of textbooks spread around her in heaps. "Hermione?" said Ginny, throwing the cloak off them.
Hermione looked up, glanced at her watch. "Oh finally, I've been here for hours."
What? Did she and Ron just come straight here to start looking? Harry thought they'd disapproved of his and Ginny's plan to disrupt research on the diadem.
"Ron and I left the common room immediately to try to stop you, but we got caught by Professor McGonagall and had to pretend we were looking for a place to snog. I think she's still chewing out Ron and my current self for 'spitting on the responsibilities of prefects.'"
Harry spied a glimmer of gold around her neck. Right. The time turner.
"If you're going to try to stop us," said Harry, brandishing his wand. He loved her, but he wasn't above putting her in a full-body bind if it was necessary.
"Oh I already found it," she said, gesturing at the books. "I was planning to take it straight to Professor Elric and tell him to find a better place for it. But then I touched it." She shuddered violently.
"The diary did always feel weird," said Ginny. "I just wasn't practiced enough at magic to know how bad it was. Not until it was too late."
"Alphonse has only known he's a wizard for a few months, and Professor Elric can't do magic at all. I trust Luna, but I don't know how much time she spends in the real world at all. And. Well." Hermione cut herself off, stood from her circle of books, and banished them back to her original places. "I figured the two of you would show up eventually and either you would already have a basilisk fang or we'd go get one together, while Professor McGonagall's distracted."
"We have several," said Ginny, hefting her leather sack.
"Good," said Hermione, and Harry wasn't sure what to do with the utterly mercenary expression on her face. "It's over there." She pointed at a small wooden table, where an innocuous-looking tiara sat. "I cleared off the table because I didn't like the idea of it touching things."
"Can I destroy it?" said Ginny quietly.
"Please," said Hermione. And then Ginny was already pulling her dragon skin potions gloves back on. It was all just moving too fast; Harry wasn't quite sure what was happening.
Ravenclaw's diadem was beautiful, hypnotic, and it was starting to glow. "You knew my diary," said the diadem, in a voice that wasn't a voice. "I can feel it on you. You won't ever escape the taint."
"Shut up," said Ginny.
"But if you let me, I can make you realize that it isn't a taint. Not really. It's just -" whatever the diadem was going to say was cut off. In a flurry of red hair and black robes, with a mighty shriek of rage, Ginny firmly thrust the point of the basilisk fang into the widest point of the main band. Whether through force or by magic, it went straight through, the delicate silver-and-bronze circlet hissing madly. The diadem screamed, shriveled, bent, and fell silent.
Harry stared, blinking in the aftermath. "I almost feel bad for it," he said.
"I don't," said Ginny, panting as she pulled away from the thing. She tossed her hair and pulled the basilisk fang back out of the diadem with a sickening shick. It went back into the leather sack.
There was a moment of silence. "Let's go tell Professor Elric," said Hermione.
"Right now?" said Ginny. Harry noticed belatedly that she was trembling. He wondered if it would be appropriate to wrap an arm around her. He settled for placing a hand on her shoulder. She seemed steadied by his touch, so he left it there.
Hermione was watching them, eyes shrewd. "I'll go tell Professor Elric. Can I take the diadem? Or should I leave it?"
"Leave it," said Ginny.
"I'll just take one of the fangs, then. Professor Elric should have one, just in case."
Ginny nodded her assent, held out the leather sack. Harry watched as Hermione cautiously magicked a single fang into a bag of her own. There was a swish of robes, and Hermione was gone. Ginny pulled away from Harry's hand, dropped to the floor, bag of fangs landing with a thud beside her. She leaned her head against a leg of the diadem's little wooden table. "It's done," she said, seeming to whisper into the wood more than to Harry.
"Yeah," he said. "Only two more to go."
Ginny groaned. "Fuck that," she said, and Harry couldn't disagree. He sat down next to her on the floor of the Room of Hidden Things. They sat there for a long while, amongst generations of Hogwarts detritus. They sat there and watched the twisted remains of Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem, just listening to each other breathe.
Hermione was doing some trembling of her own when she arrived at Professor Elric's door in the middle of the night, increasingly aware that her earlier self had probably already turned back time. Everyone but Harry and Ginny thought there was a Hermione tucked away in her bed, but there wasn't, and she was one roommate prank away from somebody noticing her absence.
Her relationship with Lavender and Parvati had improved as they all had gotten older, and their behavior had turned away from 'semi-politely ignoring each other, except for when arguing' to 'lightheartedly annoying each other, except when they were being passive aggressive,' so the risk was there.
She also wasn't sure how Professor Elric was going to react to Harry and Ginny going rogue, and Hermione's ultimate decision to help them. When did I become afraid of Edward and Alphonse Elric? she asked herself, looking up at the ceiling and feeling utterly ridiculous. She gave herself one more moment to breathe, then knocked on the heavy wooden door, wincing at how the sound echoed through the hallways. But she had to allow the sound - Merlin knew it was late enough that she hoped Professor Elric was asleep.
By how quickly he appeared at the doorway, she thought he probably hadn't been. "Hermione," he said, peering around the door. "What are you doing here?"
"Not in the hallway," said Hermione. "May I come in, Professor?"
Professor Elric muttered something undoubtedly rude in German, but she could hardly blame him. The door opened a smidge wider, and Hermione slipped through the crack. There was an utter explosion of papers on the little round table. She looked at it askance.
"Grading," said Professor Elric. "Also my friend Nyorok is annoyed wis me."
Hermione could, at a glance, see that there was an abundance of parchment that seemed of a slightly different weight than the average student's, and in a very particular scrolling handwriting. "That's a lot for one letter," she said.
"He's angry. I'm convenient," said Professor Elric. "Now what is it you've come by in zee middle of zee night for?"
Right. "Well. Ginny might have figured out where you hid the diadem."
"Vas?" He started to scramble around her for the door, but Hermione put herself firmly in his way.
"It's too late. Ginny and Harry have destroyed it," she said, and Professor Elric sagged into one of his hardback wooden chairs like a puppet with cut strings. Hermione took the other seat, pressed on. "I tried to stop them using the time turner, managed to beat them to it. But Professor. When I held it." She suppressed a shudder.
"It's awful, I know," said Professor Elric. "So you ended up helping zem."
"I did," said Hermione. She had wondered if muggles could feel how awful the horcrux had felt. But. "Iif you could feel how awful it was, why didn't you want to destroy it as soon as possible?"
Professor Elric was staring off into the middle distance. "Because doing it right might be my only way home," he said. "And I sink I need to have most of zem - if not all of zem - in my possession at once to do it."
What. "What?"
"Is open secret now," said Ed. His voice was distant, like he hardly even knew he was talking. "I don't even care anymore who knows. Alphonse and I aren't from Germany."
"What?" said Hermione again.
"We're from Amestris, which seems to be an alternate universe equivalent to Germany, and we were sent here as part of a transmutation. No, Hermione, I vill not be telling you vhich transmutation."
Suddenly Hermione felt very angry indeed. "For all your talk about the Headmaster keeping too many secrets from us! You went ahead and withheld information that might have actually changed our decisions!"
"I'm not Lieutenant Colonel Hughes! I am not a master of information management, who could keep a million secrets wisout fucking up anyone's plans and wisout making anyone mad at him! I am sixteen years old and zee only reason I know anysing at all about what I'm doing is because I've been in zee Amestrian military since I was twelve!"
And now Hermione felt like a puppet with cut strings. "What?" she said.
"Fuck," said Ed. "Can you pretend I didn't say any of zat?"
He was younger than her. She'd always known that eighteen was young, and that he looked a little young for eighteen. She'd known that her recent birthday had put their ages at less than two years apart. But.
"You're sixteen?" she said. No. Wait. That wasn't the most important thing. "You've been in your country's military since you were twelve?"
"Almost seventeen," he said, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
"You've been in your country's military since you were twelve?" Hermione said again, stuck on that.
"Look. I needed-" he looked away from her. "I needed resources. I got zem. Anyway, Alphonse and I helped oversrow zee government right before we came here. I don't sink zee new administration will be letting in children. Well. Except for me, because I'm already in. And I helped oversrow zee government. But I might have technically resigned right before leaving, I don't even know anymore."
"That's not okay," said Hermione.
"I know," said Professor Elric. "But it was necessary. And I don't regret it."
"The other professors always go on about us being children, and not prepared to fight. And then they go and rely on you! I'm assuming they know about some of this?"
"Zey knew about my age from zee start. Alphonse and I only told zem zee rest after Minerva went to Berlin to figure us out."
"They spied on you?" Hermione could not remember feeling so indignant in her life.
"I'm surprised zey didn't do it sooner, honestly," said Ed. "Only bozered after zee raid on Malfoy Manor. And I can understand why."
Maybe Hermione could see the reasoning. Maybe. "That doesn't give them the right to invade your privacy!" she said. "You're still legally a child!"
"A child who isn't protected at all by magical governments," Ed pointed out. "And in loco parentis applies, right? I learned about zat during my debrief at zee secondary school."
That was another thing. "How does a minor with no paperwork end up teaching chemistry?" Hermione asked. Ed gave her an exceedingly flat look. Oh. Oh. "Fake paperwork, right. Nevermind. Stupid question."
Professor Elric shrugged. "It vas a skill I had, and you see young-looking teachers all zee time. Seemed easier zan trying to go government or private sector. And I needed a job."
"Another world," said Hermione. "What was that like? I can't imagine!"
"I didn't even know it was possible until it happened," said Professor Elric.
There was a part of Hermione that couldn't believe it at all, and another part of her that thought it made perfect sense. Alphonse and Professor Elric had always seemed a little off-kilter. Hermione had chalked it up to trying to integrate first into English society, and then into Wizard society in such short order.
It was then that she remembered what had brought her to Professor Elric's quarters in the first place. "And somehow the horcruxes are the key to you getting back home?"
"Voldemort," said Professor Elric - proving once and for all that he did know the name, and was totally using his succession of unflattering substitutes for fun. "We bring him to zee Gate, we get to go home. Alphonse killed him because he sought zat he was going to kill me, but we went into zat fight already willing to kill him because we already sought we had to."
"What Gate?" said Hermione, but it became clear that Professor Elric wasn't going to answer that question. She decided to change course, said plaintively, "I don't like things I can't see. Magic was easy to wrap my head around, because I'd been giving myself concrete examples my entire life."
"You don't have to believe me," said Ed. "I probably shouldn't even be telling you any of zis."
"But I do believe you," said Hermione. "That's the trouble. And now we're a horcrux down."
"We'll find more," said Ed. "It just means zat each piece means more, by percent."
"I'm sorry," said Hermione, because she realized that the apology was owed. "For what it's worth."
"Sanks," said Ed, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. His yellow braid was longer than when Hermione had first met him, she realized.
"I should be getting back to the tower before somebody notices I'm not where I'm supposed to be," she said.
"Definitely," said Professor Elric, sitting back upright. "And while you still have some time to sleep."
Hermione looked at him pointedly, because he was clearly not sleeping when he should be, either.
And that was when a silvery butterfly patronus fluttered through the wall and began to speak. Suddenly, Hermione wasn't going anywhere.
Word Count: 4496
Posted: 2/24/2023
Me: yooo we can have a consistent update schedule, finally!
Also me: No. Lol.
Hope everyone's doing well! I'm so ready for winter to be over, y'all. I had a lot of fun editing this chapter today. Lmk your thoughts! We're officially only three chapters ahead of AO3, so we'll be moving to concurrent posting soon.
