The tunnel had the eerie silence of a graveyard, the occasional drip the only sound.
"Lumos," Harry, Neville, and Ron muttered. The three lights illuminated wet stone walls, shining their light back at them. Even in the dim light, Neville looked very pale and frightened, while Ron just looked drawn and ill. Harry wondered what he looked like.
"Now, boys," Lockhart said, glancing around anxiously. "It hardly seems you need me at all here, I think I'll just head back up -"
He gulped as all three of them pointed their wands at him. "Or not."
Harry jerked his head down the passageway. "You can lead the way."
With a defeated look on his face, Lockhart began to step carefully down the tunnel, which was so dark that even three wands could not illuminate more than a few feet of it.
"Remember to close your eyes if you see anything," Neville whispered. "Or else we're all dead."
They continued on, stepping carefully, straining their eyes to see ahead. Was that movement? No, just a shadow from their wands...
"What's that?" Ron croaked in the same instant that Harry saw it. Neville tried to gasp but choked instead, and Lockhart had frozen as though practicing for Petrification.
It was a huge, scaly...something, blocking the tunnel, iridescent green in their wandlight but not moving.
"Maybe it's dead," Neville whispered hopefully. Harry shook his head, inching closer to it, looking out of the corner of his eye, ready to move his head at the slightest twitch of movement. Neville followed, then Ron, wands held high to make the light go farther. Harry thought his heart was going to burst out of his chest, was surprised that the sound was not echoing off the walls like their footsteps.
The lights collected on a shed snake skin, hollow and translucent and empty. Judging by the skin's size, the basilisk that had shed it couldn't be an inch shorter than a train car, and Harry didn't think he'd be able to wrap his arms round it, should he get the suicidal urge to give it a hug.
"Blimey," Ron and Neville said together. They looked at each other and tried to smile.
Behind them, Lockhart crumpled to the floor - his knees had apparently given away.
"Get up, now," Ron said, turning around and pointing his wand at the wizard. "You're still going first -"
But as Lockhart regained his feet, he dove toward Ron and tackled him against the wall and to the ground.
Harry and Neville both turned and pointed their wands, but Harry's stomach fell - Lockhart had Ron's wand, and was grinning spectacularly in an expression that made him look as though he'd finally worked out where to hide the bodies.
"Adventure's over!" he announced as though revealing that exams had been canceled. "I'll go back up to the school...tell them that you were all far too distraught at the sight of the girl's body, lost your minds in anguish, you did...or will, anyway...take a bit of skin with me, of course..." Harry could swear Lockhart had more teeth than any human had a right to, and every single one of them was gleaming in the wandlight. "Good show, boys. Now say goodbye to your memories!"
He raised Ron's wand high and bellowed, "Obliviate!"
And the wand exploded with a great booming crack.
Harry clasped his arms over his head and threw himself out of the way as pieces of ceiling the size of boulders crashed down around him. The noise thundered through the tunnel, echoing off into the darkness for what seemed to be a very long time.
When it finally quieted, Harry slowly brought his arms down.
"Harry?" Ron called. "Neville?" His voice was muffled, and Harry could soon see why: he was on the other side of the giant mound of rubble that now filled the tunnel.
"Ron!" he shouted. "You all right?"
"Mostly," Ron called back. "The idiot's not, though, my wand blasted him...You?"
"Mostly," Harry responded, kneeling down next to Neville, who was uncurling from the fetal position on the ground. "Neville?" Neville looked up with a dazed expression, his eyes unfocused. Harry could see a large lump under his hairline that was already beginning to purple. "Neville? Are you all right?" he asked again.
"Hum? Oh. Um. What?" Neville asked, blinking. He didn't seem able to blink his eyes at the same time. Harry stood up and looked around. The tunnel was completely filled with rubble, and cracks were appearing in the ceiling. If he stayed to try and clear it, it could all come down...and every second he spent here was another second Ginny would be in danger...
"Right. Okay. Ron! Wait...wait there. I'm taking Neville with me, he's hit his head, if the basilisk comes along he's dead if I leave him here. Wait with Lockhart and...if we're not back in an hour..."
There was a pause accentuated by the light sound of a pebble dislodging itself and rolling down the pile of rubble.
"I'll try to clear a way for you," Ron said finally. "So you can get back through. Later. And..."
"I'll see you later," Harry said firmly, attempting to sound a lot more confident than he felt. Once again he knelt next to Neville. "Come on," he said gently. "Can you walk?"
Neville blinked owlishly in response, but did not protest when Harry pulled him to his feet and pulled him along. He could walk, if extremely unsteadily. Harry held Neville by the upper arm in one hand, his lit wand held in front of him with the other, as he set down the winding tunnels. He walked, half-pulling, half-dragging Neville along, for what could have been hours or minutes, through the dark, wet tunnels that never seemed to end.
And then they did end, in a solid wall flanked by two great serpent carvings, their eyes set with emeralds that glinted in the wandlight.
Harry tried to swallow, already knowing what he would have to do. "Open," he said, and it came out as a dry, papery hiss.
The wall cracked down the center and opened. Trembling, he walked through, pulling the addled Neville behind him.
The dimly lit chamber was lined by looming stone pillars carved with yet more snakes, and at the end of the chamber was -
Harry's breath caught. Under an enormous, hideous carving of a bearded man lay a very small form with bright red hair.
"Ginny!" he shouted. He tried running, pulling Neville behind, but this task required slightly too much coordination from the other boy. Halfway there, he gave up and deposited Neville behind one of the pillars, hopefully out of the line of sight of the basilisk if it came, and sprinted the rest of the way down the chamber.
Neville felt very odd.
It was dark where he was, he got that much. This was good, because the light that seemed to be coming from behind him was awfully bright. It made his head hurt.
Gingerly he reached a hand up to touch the lump on his head and winced, bringing it back down. It seemed the size of a Quaffle and throbbed painfully with every heartbeat that sounded in his ears, unnaturally loud against the high whine that seemed to fill the rest of his hearing. He could not hear much else - there was a conversation happening in back of him, but it was muffled, like it was coming from very far away from under a pile of duvets...he thought he recognized Harry's voice, but he didn't know who the other person was.
He opened his eyes and turned very slightly and his head spun. Nope, that wasn't happening yet.
He felt very tired, but something screamed inside him that this was not the proper time to take a nap.
The voices behind him were raised, now, as though there were an argument happening. Were they arguing over Ginny? What was going on? Neville tried to turn his head again and could now see Harry and another boy, almost a grown man. Keeping them focused was difficult, he let his eyes relax and the scene went blurry. Head pounding, Neville closed his eyes and rested his head back against the pillar.
Whether he blacked out or actually dozed off, he couldn't tell, but the sudden loud crashing woke him with a start, as the pillar he was leaning against began to shake mightily. Great blocks of stone rained from above him and instinctively, he curled into the fetal position, arms over his head, trying to make himself as small a target as he could for the long, sinuous, green serpent he had glimpsed...
Someone was yelling loudly in a ghastly, hissing sound -
There was a horrible high screeching noise -
Neville lowered his arms from his head and slowly, so slowly, peeked around the pillar, blanching at the scene in front of him.
A great blindingly green serpent lay twitching on the ground, in its death throes...and the other young man was standing over Harry with a wand...Harry was on the ground, not moving, a giant red bird bent over him...was all that blood Harry's? It couldn't be...you couldn't lose that much blood and still be alive...a fang the size of a dagger protruded from his upper arm...
What was the other young man saying? Neville blinked hard and tried to pierce through the high humming in his ears.
"And so ends the famous Harry Potter," he was saying, a sneer in his voice. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends..."
Oh, no. That wasn't going to do at all.
Neville drew his wand and pointed it, hand shaking.
What was he doing? He'd never gotten the knack of the spell, even against someone standing still as a perfect target dummy, and unless he crossed his eyes there were two of this young man with the wand pointing at his best friend...
He squeezed one eye shut, picked the one of the figures that seemed most solid, and shouted, "Expelliarmus!"
The young man looked quite shocked as the wand he had been holding shot out of his hand toward Neville. "What -"
Neville lurched to his feet and threw himself toward Harry in a shambling sort of crawl. "Harry!" No, all that blood couldn't possibly be his, it was too much...Neville retched as he grasped the daggerlike fang that went straight through Harry's arm and pulled it out, prompting a new wash of blood. The red and orange bird bowed its head over the wound and Neville turned in a fury toward the young man.
"You killed him!" he accused in a dreadful voice he almost didn't recognize as his own. His head pounded.
"Who the hell are you?" the other young man demanded.
"I'd never forsake him!" Neville responded heatedly, not knowing why it was so important this arrogant bastard knew it. "He's always got me! Always!"
"Sorry to say it, but it would appear your friend is a dead man," the other young man said smugly, seeming to have regained his composure. "Even Dumbledore's bird knows it...look, it's crying..."
And sure enough, pearly tears were rolling from the bird's eyes, splashing Harry's wound. The boy sniffed.
"He'll be with his Mudblood mother soon...Lord Voldemort got him in the end, as it has to be, as it should be..." The young man - Voldemort? Was it possible? - turned his gaze to Neville. "And as for you."
Neville swallowed hard, his stomach dropping and his heart threatening to explode from his chest.
He was going to die. It didn't matter that the young man - who claimed to be Voldemort - had no wand, Neville was going to die, right here. A sob escaped his chest in fear, and he clutched Harry to him as though his friend's corpse could protect him.
Except...there was a pulse. Neville froze, then lowered his friend's body and gazed at it in wonder.
"Get away, bird," Voldemort said suddenly. "Get out of here!" The bird looked directly at him, gave a cry, then launched itself into the air. Neville gaped at Harry's upper arm, where a smear of blood marked where the horrible wound had been. How...?
"It makes no difference," the young Voldemort's voice said very close by. Neville jumped, startled, and began to cry out in protest as the young Voldemort wrenched his wand away from him. "It won't take much to kill two wounded children near death..." He raised the wand, opened his mouth -
In a flurry of red feathers, the bird soared overhead and dropped something into Neville's lap - a small brown book - the diary Harry had told him about, the diary of Tom Riddle -
There was a dreadful pause. Neville watched the young Voldemort's face blanch as he registered what Neville now held. A sudden bolt of understanding shot through him, shocking him into an instant of wakefulness and he grasped the basilisk fang he'd torn from Harry's arm and, without really knowing why, stabbed it as hard as he could into the heart of the diary.
His jaw dropped as the book itself began to scream and bleed - no, it wasn't bleeding...it was ink, ink spilling out of the diary as though from a faucet, the young Voldemort screaming in a horrible minor offset and flailing...
The wand dropped to the floor with a loud clatter, splashing the water and ink, and he was gone.
It was silent, but for the forlorn dripping of ink still squeezing itself from the diary. A hole was burned straight through it, the venom of the basilisk fang still sizzling on the leather cover.
Harry coughed, and all other thoughts fled from Neville's head. "Harry!" he exclaimed.
Harry blinked hard. "Neville?" he asked, incredulous. His eyes seemed to take in the diary, the fang, the ink all around them. "What just happened?"
"I think," Neville said slowly, "I just saved your life. And don't ask me how because I haven't a bloody clue." Suddenly his head pounded with a vengeance. "I think I'll pass out now," he added, and promptly did just that.
Beds in hospitals are meant for enough comfort so one could sleep, but not so comfortable that one wants to hang around and take their time getting well. Neville had decided on this fact of life during his second visit to the hospital wing in his first year, and saw no need to revise his theory. He opened his eyes as his bed shifted. Harry was sitting on the end, grinning.
"About time you woke up. How are you feeling?"
Neville considered the question, then glanced around the hospital wing.
"We're alone," Harry confirmed.
"Well then," Neville said, propping himself up on his elbows. "I've got a head full of memories that I'm pretty sure are mine going all the way through fourth year. Fourth year! And I don't remember actually doing any of it, and yet I do." Neville shook his head. "Oh. And I have a headache."
Harry grinned and patted Neville's hand. "Thanks, by the way."
"What for?"
"Saving my life." Harry winced. "That sounded a bit dramatic, didn't it?" Neville nodded. "True, though." Neville nodded again and squeezed Harry's hand. Harry smiled and squeezed back. "Did you mean what you said? You'd never forsake me? I've always got you?"
"I wasn't aware you were awake and listening," Neville said politely. "But yes." He smiled. "Seems odd that we were nearly strangers just a few days ago, about to head out for lunch to share the more socially acceptable points of interest in our lives."
"I think that's how these things always start out," Harry said. "Except with less mucking about with time and causality." He stood up, stretched, and plopped down on the bed next to Neville's. "Madam Pomfrey says one more night in the hospital wing should do us. I get the feeling we'll be out of here as soon as we fall asleep, don't you?"
Neville chuckled softly. "You could say that. Good night, Harry."