In which the centaurs' prophecy is fulfilled.
Dar'st thou die?- Measure for Measure III.1.77
"Ready, guys? Great. On three, then. One, two, three!"
"Reducto!" the four Gryffindors chorused, firing at the wall.
"What are you doing to my bathroom?" Myrtle shrieked, eyes bulging in horror. "I live- exist- here!"
They ignored the ghost girl, choosing instead to inspect the wall. They'd done some damage, yes, but it was still standing. "Again," Mark declared. "One, two. Three. Reducto!"
"Knock it off!" Myrtle screamed. "Quit it!" She charged at them, trying in vain to physically knock them aside, but she was a ghost. She flew right through them. Desperate, silver tears of frustration leaking from her eyes, she tried to intercept their third volley of curses, but that too failed.
"One more round should do it," Mark announced, ignoring the hysterical girl. "One, two, three. Reducto!"
He was right. The wall crumbled, revealing a surprisingly well-kept secret passage. It was shaped like a large slide- serpent-shaped, Mark thought, perfect for a giant bloody basilisk to slither through. The tunnel's surface was smooth, worn down by the force of time. All the rubble which had fallen into the passage had slid down into the depths of the earth.
"I'll go first," the Boy-Who-Lived decided, squaring his shoulders. Wand-tip shining with magical light, he descended into the tunnel.
The fall was faster than he'd anticipated. The walls were so smooth that very little friction barred his way. He whizzed down, down, down into the bowels of the castle. Only the thin, shaky light of his mistletoe wand illuminated the vast, ancient darkness.
Fortunately for Mark, the incline leveled out several hundred feet before he hit the bottom. The leveling out was gradual, and the surface became rougher as it grew more even. Unfortunately, he collided with several stones- bits of the wall which had fallen through the tunnel- not badly enough to seriously wound him, but with enough force that he'd be bruised in the morning.
The Gryffindor flinched, rubbed his aching knee. "I'm fine!" he called, hoping his friends could hear him. "Just let me move these rocks out of the way."
He heard some kind of response from Myrtle's bathroom, but not clearly enough to discern any words. He thought for a second before deciding to move the rocks as quickly as possible, because if he couldn't hear them, they probably hadn't heard him either.
It was a good decision, because seconds later Ron slid into the Chamber of Secrets, nearly hitting the rocks. "Quite a ride, eh?" he joked.
"Yeah, quite a ride. Now help me move these rocks, okay?"
Seamus and Dean arrived shortly after he redhead. "Ugly place, isn't it?" Seamus commented.
"Cleaner than I expected, though," Mark noted. "I expected- I dunno- slime and stuff."
Had he been thinking of anything but the fact that he was voluntarily attacking a gigantic snake monster, he might have realized that cleanliness implied use by humans. (Actually, it had most recently been cleaned by Norberta the dragoness for Saysa's thousand and seventeenth birthday, but Occam's Eazor implied human intervention. Occam's Razor was technically correct, as Norberta had been told to clean by a human, but it was also quite wrong.) But thoughts of the basilisk consumed his mind. He didn't notice anything suspicious about the Chamber of Secrets.
Well, besides its very existence. And the fact that it was in a school. And the fact that it contained the world's largest mutant snake thing.
But he was a hero. Heroes weren't afraid of snakes, no matter how large or deadly. He would defeat it, and then he would feel like a hero again. He'd be a hero again.
Mark Potter, who thought himself the Boy-Who-Lived, was many things- but coward was not among them. He squared his shoulders, firmed his jaw, and said, "Let's get going."
They got going.
"If you see anything move," Mark cautioned them, "close your eyes and fire that one curse at it." He strode ahead, outpacing the other boys. "Then-"
Ron yelled. As his friend had been talking, he'd glimpsed something on the ceiling. "Conjunctivo!" he bellowed, aiming wildly.
Fawkes dodged the curse. His red plumage, bright though it was, faded into the shadows of the Chamber's ceiling.
The Gryffindor's curse wasn't strong enough to destroy the ceiling by itself, but it had help. Fawkes, compelled by his master, used the light of the hex colliding with stone as camouflage for a burst of flame. The fire ignited the explosive powder Dumbledore had placed in the ceiling.
For the second time in under an hour, an explosion rocked the Chamber of Secrets. Rocks tumbled from the ceiling, loud and obvious, separating Mark from his friends. Dust rose, filled the air, choked them.
Seamus was the first to recover his breath. "Ron, you idiot," he hissed, shoving the boy. "What was that for?"
"I saw something!" he replied defensively.
"You thought there was a snake on the ceiling?"
The redhead reddened. "Oh. Er- Mark, you all right?"
"I'm fine," his friend called back. His eyes watered because of the dust, but he was physically unhurt (except for the bruises from earlier). He coughed. "You guys start moving those rocks. I'm going on ahead."
"Wouldn't it be smarter to wait for us?" demanded Dean.
Mark shook his head, ignoring the fact that they couldn't see him. "The snake heard that."
"Maybe it's sleeping," Seamus suggested weakly.
"It's not," Mark replied. His skin felt cold and clammy. Sweat streamed from his body, into his eyes, down his back.
"How do you know?" asked Ron.
"Because it's right here. And it looks very, very awake."
Her prison had changed, these past few days, transformed into something designed to wear down her will. Bright light, loud noises, illusions of people crowding close: everything her Chamber, her home, was not, this was.
But despite the distractions, she couldn't stop thinking about what Dumbledore had said. Inferi. Sweet Merlin, he would change her into an Inferius….
I made a promise to the acromantulas, you see, he had told her. His voice was smug, confident, and hateful. They've desired your death for fifty years now, and they would make far better allies than you. So I'm going to kill three birds with one stone: Mark Potter will be trained, the spiders will be satisfied, and I will still be able to use you as bait. I have much experience with bespelling lifelike Inferi.
Bait. She wouldn't be able to betray her friends, but they would still perish because of her. Hermione especially was in horrible danger.
And once she was dead, she could do nothing to stop it. Her will would be sapped, destroyed, enslaved to her new master's whims.
But her friends wouldn't know. They'd think she was still alive, still in danger. Eventually, they would come to rescue her- or rather, her reanimated corpse; a corpse that would betray them.
And then it would be over.
Her only hope was to escape alive, to run or fly or slither, anything that would get her away from him. But how?
It was too late. She heard a door opening, a human walking in. Her entire body went stiff.
Today was the day the centaurs' prophecy would come true.
"Crucio!"
Pain. Awful, obliterating pain. It wiped all conscious thought from her mind. The world ceased to be. Only the pain was real.
A few seconds' reprieve, and the pain struck again. Her scream tore at her throat, ripping the tissue. Her eyes filled with automatic tears, soaking into the blindfold.
Then it was over. She lay there, panting and soaked in sweat, trembling like an autumn leaf.
Dumbledore's voice was soft, almost gentle. "Imperio."
And the pain was… not gone, but somehow not real anymore. Saysa floated in an ocean of warmth. A gentle light suffused her, washed away the spasms of leftover agony. She felt half-asleep, like a dreamer about to wake up- or a dreamer who had just fallen into slumber.
Go with him… don't resist, Saysa, follow him….
She followed, dazed and confused and tired. The pain had been a preemptive strike, a way to shatter her already crumbling defenses. She was too weak, too tired and afraid, to mount a defense against the curse infecting her mind.
And so she followed him into the Chamber of Secrets, her home (how had he gotten inside? Why hadn't the defenses kept him out? And how had he known to find it? These thoughts barely penetrated the haze of light. They were irrelevant.) She obeyed when he ordered her to close her eyes, to revert to the form of her birth. He had removed the shrinking spell. Her full length, sixty-plus feet of muscle and scales, stretched across the room.
Saysa's eyes were closed. The whispers in the light told her to keep them shut, and she obeyed. She had no choice in the matter.
Dumbledore left. She didn't know why. Perhaps it was to establish an alibi. Perhaps it was because he was confident in the power of his curse, a spell that would drive her willingly towards her own death. Whatever the reason, he left her alone.
She waited placidly through the first explosion (it had been Mark's first attempt at muffliato, and it had failed miserably). Then another boom echoed through the chamber, and the soft voices told her to go forward. Once again, she obeyed without question.
Her eyes opened of their own accord. A young boy crouched in front of her, clutching his wand, hissing spells that missed by a mile. His eyes were closed, his face contorted in fear. But despite his obvious terror, he kept shooting, methodically moving his wand from left to right, intending to sweep through the entire room.
Saysa hissed. There were no words in that hiss, just a terrifying warning. The boy before her froze for a moment before resuming his volley of spells. His hand shook, but he kept firing.
A curse ricocheted off Saysa's thick hide, hitting the chamber's walls. She hissed again- the voices wanted her to alert the boy that she had been hit.
Keeping his gaze low, the boy risked opening his eyes. He caught a glimpse of green and aimed his wand accordingly. "Conjunctivo! Conjunctivo!"
The voices hummed in approval: a brave boy, if nothing else. Now go forward, Saysa, and make noise while moving. He needs to hear you.
Once again, she obeyed. The boy lunged aside, barely avoiding her open-mouthed strike. He backed into a corner, face pale. His wand hung limply by his side.
Slow, they murmured, slowly towards him….
A song like liquid fire echoed throughout the Chamber. It thrilled her blood, scorched her very bones. The music drowned out the voices, burned through the soft golden haze fogging her thoughts. Her mind snapped back into focus, filled with horrified clarity.
Mark Potter. Mark Potter, Harry's beloved twin brother, was in her Chamber. And she had tried to kill him.
Oh, not willingly, but she had tried to kill him. She had… she had….
Her eyes snapped shut. She turned to flee, to get away before death came to the Chamber of Secrets.
But Mark, too, had been emboldened by the fire song. He peeked through half-closed eyes, glimpsed the retreating streak of green. More importantly, he glimpsed that her eyes were lidded, her mouth open in a silent scream.
"CONJUNCTIVO!"
His aim was true. His curse flew into Saysa's mouth, damaging the unprotected tissue of her gums. The copper taste of blood coated her tongue. She paused her retreat, stunned by the injury. Then she realized how it had happened and closed her mouth. With all parts of her body protected by armor-like scales, he couldn't hurt her again.
But Mark wasn't alone. Fawkes and the Sorting Hat were there, and they were slaves to the Spider's will. He was Headmaster of Hogwarts, and he knew Fawkes's true name. Saysa might have been freed by the phoenix song, but they were still bound.
The bird dove, pecked at her lidded eyes. He was a magical creature, too; his beak was strong enough to draw blood, though not strong enough to go all the way through. His song had ended, becoming nothing more than hisses and shrieks of fury- not at her, as Mark undoubtedly thought, but at the one who forced him to attack an innocent soul.
Saysa backed away more quickly. She'd almost turned completely around; it was a clear shot to the Chamber proper, if only she could finish turning. Not even Fawkes could stop her then- not that he would try very hard.
In his office, Albus Dumbledore lifted his head, gazed sightlessly at a place beneath his feet. He felt that his spell had been broken- and not by Saysa's death. A tiny frown marred his mouth and forehead, but it was nothing compared to the rage bubbling within.
"Albus?" Minerva McGonagall asked. "Are you all right?"
The headmaster forced a smile. "I'm fine, Minerva. Just a stray thought." He was a skilled enough actor that she detected no trace of his fury.
Fawkes shuddered. He could sense his master's wrath; he knew that he would pay, and dearly…. But he forced the thought from his mind. This one was marked by fate itself, and he would not let her die.
Never mind that he knew, deep in his bones, that today death would visit the Chamber of Secrets.
Mark hadn't been idle. As the phoenix flew around Saysa's head, pecking and clawing and singing, he had been firing useless spells off the basilisk's hide. She hadn't even noticed, being rather too preoccupied with things that could hurt her.
The Boy-Who-Lived finally realized that spells wouldn't work just as Saysa's head reached the corner. Wild-eyed, he glanced around the Chamber for something- anything- that would help. His gaze fell upon the ratty, tattered Sorting Hat.
It wasn't a weapon, but he didn't have any other options. Fawkes was keeping that thing (how big was it? A hundred feet? Two hundred? And sweet Merlin, those fangs….) busy, but how long would that last? Phoenixes were just birds, puny compared to the basilisk's bulk.
Perhaps, he reasoned, grabbing at the hat's still form, it can teach me a spell or something to kill that snake with; or maybe a spell for removing the rocks. Maybe another spell for bringing the ceiling down on that snake. Speaking of which, how did Ron do that?
No, never mind. Stay focused, Potter! Put the hat on your head and ask for- ow!
As he had jammed the headpiece onto his cranium, something hard had fallen out of it. Both the hat and the thing within it toppled from his head. He bit back a curse- the basilisk would hear it- and lunged at the hat, intending to shake whatever was inside it out and jam it on his head again.
He had expected a rock. It was perfectly reasonable that a rock had ended up inside the Sorting Hat. He had not expected a shimmering silver sword.
Its blade was long as his arm. Three fingers thick it was, with an upraised groove in the center. The pommel was studded with rubies- real, genuine rubies! A stylized lion prepared to pounce off the hilt.
Mark gawked at the sword. His brain skittered, refusing to accept its reality: a sword falling out of a hat. How deus ex machina was that?
Fawkes sang again. The Boy-Who-Lived jumped, thinking that the phoenix had been calling him back to battle (he hadn't, of course. Fawkes had no intention of letting the Imperious Curse reclaim Saysa's mind. His master was powerful, and if the enchantment wasn't rooted out of the basilisk's consciousness entirely, he might be able to reclaim her. But Mark had no idea of this).
He smiled, fingers tightening on the hilt of his new sword. The Sorting Hat was by his side, but he ignored it, launching himself once more into battle. Who needed a hat when he had a gleaming silver blade?
Goblin-made steel is one of the strongest substances known to man. It is indestructible by magical and physical means, unable even to be tarnished. A strong man could have plunged a blade constructed of goblin-made steel right through Saysa's emerald scales, into the unprotected muscle and bone beneath.
Mark was not a strong man. He was a wizard boy, one who had neglected physical activity for the past two years in favor of wandwork and Quidditch. Moreover, he had no idea how to properly wield a sword. As a result, he was physically incapable of boring through Saysa's protection to skewer her heart.
Not that that stopped him from trying.
Saysa jumped in alarm as something cracked one of her scales. She began to turn towards it, saw Mark's head, and glanced away. She couldn't risk accidentally meeting his eyes, not even now that he had a weapon that might actually injure her.
For a moment, she was tempted to shift into her human form. Surely he wouldn't attack a defenseless woman, would he?
But even as the thought entered her mind, she knew it would be futile. Fawkes at least would be forced to keep attacking her, and humans had none of her natural protection. Even if Mark didn't follow the phoenix's example (which was not particularly likely), Fawkes would have to go for her throat.
Mark came up on her side. She squeezed her eyes even more, terrified of accidentally killing him. "I don't want to fight you!" she cried, but he didn't understand.
Was today the day she would die?
No. Today was the day of the centaurs' prophecy. A day of death, yes, but not of hers.
But was her life worth Mark Potter's?
With ruthlessness she hadn't known she possessed, Saysa found herself considering, weighing the options. Mark was the Spider's pawn; she was not. He played a tangential role in the prophecies; she was one of its main players. But he was Harry's brother, his twin, and she was nothing but a foul worthless pile of slime for even considering letting him die.
And yet, slime or no, she couldn't die yet. She had a role to play; she-
She froze.
Phoenix song filled the air, music purer and brighter than any she had heard before. Even the Fae would be hard-pressed to compete with Fawkes.
Fawkes, the third being in the Chamber, was a phoenix; one who would rise from the ashes of his own grave.
Was it just her imagination, or did the firebird's song really sound happier than it had a moment ago?
Sharp pain by her jaw snapped Saysa out of her thoughts. She started, nearly opened her eyes to gawk at the child who had jammed a sword into her mouth. Fortunately for Mark, she stopped herself at the last possible second. He raised his sword to strike again-
-and Saysa slammed her head against his body, knocking him into the wall.
The breath whooshed from his lungs. He coughed, gasped. The sword fell from his hands, clattered against the floor.
Once again, Saysa head-butted him. Her aim was truer, this time. Mark's skull bounced against the wall. He didn't lose consciousness, but the blow had done its job. He was paralyzed, too dazed and surprised to move.
Fawkes screamed a battle-cry. Compelled by dark magic, he lunged at her eye.
The eye opened, focused on him. Dark-slit gold met beady black, and Fawkes burst into flames.
Mark screamed a horrified denial. Saysa jerked her head aside, slamming her eyelid shut. The flaming bird bounced off. Still burning, he hit the floor.
The Boy-Who-Lived lunged towards the dying fire. "Fawkes! No!"
Saysa hit him again, and the world went black.
PSYCH! You all thought that Saysa would die- but she DIDN'T! Did I mislead you or what?
Remember, folksies, the poll is still up. If you care about Blaise's Animagus form, please vote.
-Antares