DISCLAIMER: I do not own Negima or Harry Potter. Negima is the property of Ken Akamatsu, and Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling.
Italics text = character thinking to themselves.
Underline+Italics = character communicating with telepathy
Bold text = shouting
Bold+Italcs = Casting Spell/Ability
Chapter Twenty-seven
The Chamber of Secrets
"You have got to be kidding me." Eva stated in disbelief as she stared at the now revealed entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
"What? You expected Slytherin himself to come out and greet us?" Harry asked sarcastically.
"Gah!" Eva rubbed her forehead in annoyance. "Look Potter, just tell me this: what trait to all Slytherins have?"
"Well, that would be arrogance." Hermione answered reluctantly.
"Exactly." Eva nodded and then looked at the uninvited guests: Hermione, Daphne, Asuna, Nodoka, Yue and Mana. "Was it really necessary for all of you to come?"
"There may be some wards that you need to get through." Asuna said.
"I need to check the other possible entrances and determine if it's a security risk." Mana said.
"Being part of the Mahora Library Expedition Club, me and Nodoka have experience with traps." Yue said.
"I did work as a treasure hunter this summer." Nodoka argued.
"The Greengrass have had at least one family member in Slytherin each generation. There could be hidden meanings that you are not familiar with." Daphne said as she looked at the large pipe in disgust.
"I want to see how large the basilisk really was. Harry said that it was about thirty feet long, but then again he had his eyes closed most of the time." Hermione said.
"Fine." Negi sighed.
"Back to the matter at hand, what exactly don't you agree with?" Harry asked.
"Potter, do you actually believe someone of Slytherin' caliber would lower himself to slide down a filthy pipe?" Eva groaned.
"Well, no. But this is the only entrance we know of." he pointed out.
"This entrance was solely for the basilisk. That much is obvious. Same for the one that led into the Forbidden Forest." Daphne said.
"However, since the basilisk had to be released first there has to be an entrance for humans, preferably near this one." Yue pointed out.
"Hm, can someone look the door and put a silencing spell on it? I have an idea." Negi mused.
"Alright, done." Hermione said after a few seconds.
"Harry, I'm going to cast a mild Sonorus charm on you, and then I want you to say 'open' in parceltongue." Negi said as he tapped Harry' throat.
"§Open! §" Harry called out. Almost immediately a brick in the wall glowed silver, with a small green snake carved in it that they almost missed, before the wall acted exactly like the entrance to Diagon Alley and formed a silver arch. While they were staring at it Negi made sure to cancel the charm he had placed on Harry.
"We need to be careful, in addition to the original defenses, I have no doubt Riddle has added his own." Negi cautioned.
"Me and Asuna-san should lead the way. I'll detect the traps and she can disable them." Nodoka proposed.
"Chachamaru as well. There might be poisons or venoms." Eva added and the three walked through the arch.
After a few steps they reached some stairs and went lower and lower under the school.
That was where the traps started. Steps that shoot poisonous metal spikes upwards, pits that required a parcemouth to cover, and others. There were also numerous dark and lethal curses left by Riddle all over the place. The worst that they encountered, however, was a black crystal that somehow had stored a Fiend-Fire spell and almost turned them all to ashes; good thing Negi managed to quickly put up a barrier and hold it in place until Asuna brought out her artifact sword and got rid of the flames.
"So, this is where the pipe leads huh?" Daphne looked at the floor covered in bones.
"Yeah. This is it. From here on out we need to be careful, up ahead is a cave in." Harry instructed.
"Where Lockhart tried to Obliviate you, right?" Hermione asked.
"Yep. Ron made a small opening but he collapsed more of the tunnel in the process." Harry confirmed as he led the way.
A few minutes later they arrived at the cave in. looking around, they saw that they had only two options: reinforce the walls and ceiling on give up, since even a gust of wind could collapse the place.
"Give me a few minutes" Eva said and began sending spells all over the ceiling and walls.
"What spell is that?" Hermione inquired.
"Permanent sticking charm. In this case it will stick the dirt and rocks together, and as long as you do the whole ceiling and walls, they won't cave in." Negi answered before joining Eva. A few minutes later they began levitating the fallen debris up to the ceiling and sticking it there. It took the two of them almost half hour, but the stone corridor was as good as before the cave in. They also continued casting the sticking charm all the way to the stone door behind which lay the basilisk.
"Is there any way to cancel a permanent sticking charm? I know someone that wants to get rid of a very annoying portrait, but it's stuck to the wall with this charm." Harry asked Negi.
"Only if the charm is recent. If it's older then a few months, the only way to get rid of that portrait is to cut the portion of the wall it's on." the young mage shook his head.
"Can't do it, if he damages that wall the entire house may collapse." Harry sighed.
"If he hates the portrait, why doesn't he just burn it down?" Eva asked bored.
"You know, I never thought of that. I'll make sure to tell him." Harry said with a grin. Sirius would surely like that option.
When they reached the door with the snakes on it, Eva stopped Harry from attempting to open it.
"Chachamaru recorded the sound. Let's see if it works." the vampire said and motioned the robot forward.
"§Open! §" was heard when Chachamaru opened her mouth and the door immediately unlocked and opened.
"Well, let's go." Negi said and entered the Chamber.
After a few seconds of walking the group stopped and looked in awe at the beast before them. Over sixty feet long, with skin as tough as steel and meter-long fangs: that was the basilisk.
"This. Is. Epic." Kasumi said as she took out her artifact and began taking pictures of the basilisk.
"This is without a doubt the largest snake I've ever seen." Eva said.
"How in the nine hells did you kill this thing?" Daphne asked weakly.
"Well, after Fawkes poked out its eyes, it followed my scent and tried to bite me. It ran my arm through one of its fangs, but it was the arm that had the Sword of Gryffindor in it. So the sword pierced its brain." Harry explained.
"And then Fawkes used his phoenix tears to save you." Hermione deduced.
"Yep. Right after I killed Riddle' diary with the same fang that almost killed me. That one." Harry pointed at the lone fang, half covered in ink.
"There's just one thing I don't understand: way is the basilisk still here?" Daphne asked.
"Well, since I'm the only one besides Voldemort that can come here…"Harry began.
"That's not what she meant, Potter. She's asking why haven't to sold it yet, or at least rendered it into parts." Eva said.
"Well, it's not my snake." Harry shrugged.
"Harry, you killed it. By right of conquest, it's yours." Daphne rolled her eyes.
"But what should I do with it?" Harry asked.
"Well, for starters you can sell the basilisk meat to the goblins. For them it is a rare delicacy, and with the amount of meat you have here…" Eva trailed off.
"Every bit of this snake is extremely valuable. To dumb it down for you, this basilisk is worth more then ten times its weight in gold." Eva said annoyed.
"T-Ten times! But this thing weight over a ton!" Harry said shocked.
"Look at it this way: not only are basilisks rare and hard to breed, this one is over a thousand years old. And in the world of magic, the older a creature is, the more it's worth." Daphne explained.
"But will the goblins still want the meat, even if the basilisk died two and a half years ago?" Hermione asked.
"According to my scans, the body is in a perfect state. The skin had a preservation spell on it. It is rune-based, with the runes on the tip of the tail." Chachamaru informed them.
"I doubt Slytherin put it on the Basilisk. It must have been Riddle. He probably wanted to use the snake as parts if it died while he was away." Harry said.
"Yes, it appears to be rather recent. It was done less then a sixty years ago." Chachamaru confirmed.
"Still…" Harry looked at the snake from one end to the other "How exactly can something this size be rendered into usable parts?"
"Well, I heard of something called magic." Eva said, her voice overflowing with irony.
"I know that!" Harry snapped "I meant what spell!"
"I know one, but on something this large…" Daphne hesitated.
"Give it a try." Hermione suggested.
"Alright." Daphne pointed her wand at the basilisk' mouth "Amoveo!" she called out.
Some of the teeth wiggled a bit, but none of them came loose.
"Sorry. It's too big and too full of magic." Daphne apologized, breathing hard from the effort.
"And your magic reserves aren't very large either." Eva added.
"Hm, so you just point your wand and say the incantation?" Negi asked.
"Yes, and while you do this you must think of what must happen and where you want the parts to go." Daphne confirmed.
"Let's give it a try." Negi said and began focusing magic in the ring Eva had given him during the Mahora Festival "Amoveo!" he called out and released a powerful stream of magic at the basilisk' head.
As soon as it hit, all the fangs flew out of the snake' mouth and aligned on the floor in front of them.
"It worked. Though I think we're doing something wrong; no matter how old it is, it took too much magic for removing just the teeth." Daphne said.
"Hm, I have an idea. Let me try removing the tongue." Hermione said and stepped forward "Amoveo!" she called out.
The tongued easily came out and went into the large jar Negi quickly conjured.
"How did you do it?" Daphne asked the bushy haired girl who was now a little tired. "The tongue should have been a lot harder to remove then the teeth."
"I pictured the tongue and the body as separate entities." Hermione replied with a grin.
"I see. Like most magic, willpower is just as important as magical power. You didn't go against the magic the basilisk has, you simply separated it per body parts." Eva said a little impressed.
"Yeah, but it still takes a lot out of you." Hermione sighed.
"Well, since so many of us are here, why don't we split in two groups? One will investigate the room while the other will render down the snake." Negi suggested and was met with nods of approval. "Alright, Harry, Hermione, Daphne, Eva and I will take care of the basilisk. Asuna, Yue, Nodoka and Mana will look for any secret passages while Chachamaru records everything Kasumi' artifact sees in the room."
Two hours later Harry was breathing heavily along with Hermione and Daphne. The basilisk was now stored in over a hundred jars and bottles, each with its own content.
There was over five gallons of basilisk venom and sixty of blood. The blood had been drained by Eva using a spell nobody wanted to know where or why she learned, though Negi had a pretty good idea why.
The skin had been the hardest to remove because unlike the others it had to be cut in pieces in order to be removed. Sure, the meat had been the same, but it wasn't nearly as full of magic.
The meat weighted over 1500 kilos and was placed in very large jars, each with the runic preservation spell on them. The organs were placed in the same kind of jars as the meat. Even the eyes were places in separate jars, even though they were half missing because of Fawkes.
All that was now left where the mighty snake once stood was its skeleton. And even that apparently was soon to be turned into something useful.
"What exactly do you want to do with it?" Hermione asked.
"It's a very complicated spell. It turns something of a complex shape like a skeleton into a more malleable form. It can only be used on things of the same structure. It's not a transfiguration; I'm actually breaking it down into molecules - it's alchemy" Eva explained as Negi drew a circle under the skeleton.
When Negi was done, she placed her hands on the edge of the circle and channeled an immense amount of magic into it, more then Harry, Hermione and Daphne had together when they were at 100%. The bones glowed and flew into the air, converging and taking a new shaper. When it was over, there were over a thousand ingots of basilisk bone.
"Wow, that was awesome." Harry said amazed.
"It's a useful skill, not all alchemy spells are as complex as this one. This one was because the bane is organic. Too bad you aren't taught Alchemy I school anymore; I hear it was still a course around a hundred years ago." Eva said.
"Yeah, it's barely mentioned in books, and even those are few. I only know a bit because of what happened in out first year with the Philosopher's Stone." Harry confessed.
"Philosopher's Stone? What do you mean?" Eva asked surprised and Harry and Hermione told them the full story, starting with vault 713 where the stone was kept and finishing with Dumbledore saying that the Stone was destroyed.
"He said it was destroyed? And you believed him?" Eva said in outrage.
"What do you mean? How hard could it be to smash it to bits?" Harry asked, earning a sight from Negi.
"Harry, if you smashed a diamond into smaller pieces, wouldn't it still be diamond?" He asked.
"I understand, I was just giving a generic example. I'm sure there are a lot of spells or potions that could have destroyed the Stone. Right?" Harry said.
"No there aren't any. At most it could change its shape like I did with the bones, but is would still be the Stone." Negi said.
"So the Stone is indestructible?" Harry asked.
"Well, it depends how you look at the problem." Negi reasoned.
"What do you mean?" Daphne asked.
"You can't actively destroy it, but you could use it up." Eva clarified.
"How could that happen? I mean, if that was possible, Nicolas Flamel would have done so in over six hundred years!" Harry insisted.
"No, he wouldn't have. You see, when he turns metal to gold or water into the elixir of life, he merely uses the stone as a medium for his magic, like you use wands. What I mean by 'using up' is trading the stone or parts of it for something else. You see, unlike transfiguration where a transfigured chair is still in essence a chair even if you turn it into a rabbit, when you use alchemy to make something out of the stone you actually make that something true and permanent." Eva explained.
"Then Dumbledore didn't destroy the Stone, but used it up?" Hermione asked.
"No, to entirely use up a Philosopher's Stone he would have to do things that were banned hundreds of years ago. Every Ministry of Magic in the world has world-wide detection spells to ensure that never happens. Flamel himself demanded they have them in case the Stone fell into the wrong hands." Eva shook her head.
"In other words, Dumbledore still has the Stone, since the Flamels died two years ago." Daphne deduced.
"It's the only explanation." Negi sighed before turning toward Evangeline "Still, how do you know so much about the Stone? I didn't know even half of that."
"Flamel taught me Alchemy. It was around two hundred years ago, right before I created Magia Erebea. I even used some alchemic principles when I designed the augmentation process." Eva grinned.
"He taught you? Weren't you a wanted person at the time?" Negi asked shocked.
"I was, but since I had no need for the stone and having more then enough money he didn't consider me a threat. I wanted to know if I could get rid of my vampiric side with Alchemy. Obviously, it didn't work." Eva sighed.
"So, bottom line is that Dumbledore stole the Stone and somehow convinced Flamel that he destroyed it?" Hermione asked.
"Yes. And I could bet my Resort that he told Nicolas that Voldemort' spirit destabilized the stone and made destroying it possible." Eva said a little angrily.
"Could that have been possible?" Negi asked.
"Yes. You see, there are two ways to make a Philosopher's Stone: the way Nicolas did it and the ways others did it. However, only Nicolas' method makes a Stone that may last forever. Stones made the other way require certain things to be done rather regularly. Forbidden things that I won't give details about. And those Stones are vulnerable to ghosts and other kinds of spiritual beings." Eva said.
"And the Stone Flamel made isn't." Hermione deduced.
"Not as much as the other stones. It would have taken an army of ghost to pass through the stone at the same time in order to destabilize it. There's no way a mutilated spirit like Voldemort could have done that." Eva finished.
"I always thought that Dumbledore was a little too lively for a man his age." Harry narrowed his eyes.
"Question is: where is the stone?" Daphne asked.
"In the castle, most likely. He wouldn't trust the goblins with this. Here, he controls the wards and all the portraits spy for him. I heard rumors that there are certain secure vaults at Hogwarts. Probably made by the founders. After all, there was no Gringotts at the time." Eva said.
"I really wish I could read Voldemort' mind right about now. He searched for this Chamber for nearly five years. He probably knows every nick and corner of the school." Harry said frustrated.
"I have a few ideas on how to locate those vaults, as well as the other two Chambers, but we'll deal with that tomorrow. Right now, let's see what the others found." Negi smiled mysteriously as search group approached.
"So, did you find anything interesting?" Eva asked.
"Besides that most of this stone is extremely resistant to magic?" Asuna asked.
"Yeah, besides that." Negi grinned.
"There is some sort of passageway behind the statue of Slytherin, but that's all we could tell through the cracks." Mana said.
"Because of the proprieties of the stone, my scanners are useless. Also, using the command Harry has used earlier brings no result." Chachamaru said.
"Yeah, riddle said something different." Harry nodded. "Let me rest a bit and I'll open it up. That's where the basilisk crawled out from, by the way."
"Here, take a sip of this. It's Pepper-up potion. I always have some on me on the days I have classes to teach. First years don't have too much magical energy." Negi said and passed a bottle with red liquid between Harry, Hermione, Daphne, Eva and himself.
"Alright, let's do this." Harry said and approached the statue. "§Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four! §"
At the sound of his words the mouth of the statue opened, however, unlike two years ago when the opening was only big enough for the basilisk to come out, this time the lower jaw descended along with the portion of the wall under it until it reached the floor. When he told this to the others, Evangeline grinned with satisfaction.
"The process to restore Riddle wasn't complete so the entrance only partially obeyed him." she said as she went in first.
The tunnel was about three meters wide and a hundred meters long. At he end of it was a door similar to the one at the entrance of the Chamber, only that it was made of iron and it was already open. Beyond it was a large round room with six other tunnels leading there.
One was obviously the former lair of the basilisk, with countless bones littering the floor as well as hundreds of skins the basilisk had shed. It was rather damp and it had a small water source in the form of a meter-wide bowl with a refilling charm on it.
Another was the other entrance to the Chamber they were aware of, the one that led into the Forbidden Forest, and it was still mostly collapsed according to Chachamaru' scans.
That left four more tunnels.
One of them turned out to be a library. However, try as they might they couldn't get the iron prison-like gate to open. It was obviously charmed to open when receiving some sort of stimuli, but nothing the group came up with for Harry to say had any result. On the other hand, with all the dust on the floor they could tell noone had been there for centuries. So at least Voldemort never had access to that source of information either. As they inspected the gate closely after a dozen or so cleaning charms, they saw a small hexagonal opening in the center of the gate. Chachamaru' scanners also found some scratches that looked like a triangle inside the hole, but that was it.
Next was a very large dueling room. It was circular and had its walls entirely covered in what looked like skin. After a closer inspection they realized that it really was skin, basilisk skin. It seemed Slytherin had saved up the shin his basilisk had shed and coated the entire room with it. Along the walls were aligned hundreds of armors that could be animated for practice. Also, there were all kind of shackles, chains and other restraints that apparently limited the use of magic.
The next room they visited was completely destroyed. From the looks of it, it had happened fifty years ago when the Chamber had been opened by Riddle. The aura of the room was sickening, even Eva, a full blooded Shinso Vampire was disturbed by it. So they correctly deduced that it was used only for dark magic. Whatever Riddle found or did in there, he didn't want any evidence of it. The primary spell that had been used was the Fiend Fire spell, as it rarely left even ashes behind.
The last room was by far the biggest from what they could tell through the bars of the gate. It was guarded just like the library and even the Ensis Exsequens of an annoyed Evangeline couldn't get them through, as the gate immediately absorbed the magic form it and made it it's own. Inside this last room were countless metal cages that confirmed Slytherin' passion for magical creatures. However none of them were still alive according to Chachamaru. However there were apparently preservation runes on most of them, which seemed to be where Riddle got the idea to use it on the basilisk. Also, somewhere deep inside the room was a large concentration of magic, a barrier of sorts, that didn't allow Chachamaru' scanners to detect anything within it.
With their curiosity sated for the day, the group headed to bed since it was already midnight. They agreed to have another meeting with anyone the next day and discuss their next move.
A.N.: Yep, Harry is rich and will soon get even more money. Well, with three wives he's going to need it.
The more valuable parts of the Chamber of Secrets are locked away for now. Try to figure out the key to those gates.
More of Dumbledore' manipulations revealed.
Can anyone guess how Negi intends to find those vaults?
Until next time, Review!