Disclaimer: This story is based on characters created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
AN:
Thanks for all your suggestions! You taught me plenty of very helpful new things, and now all my stories are saved and even all your reviews of my fics! Love you guys! :D
I've already started posting the first chapters of Twist of Fate on adultfanfiction net. My username is the same as in here, so you can easily find my fic there.
And I'm trying to get an account in the site many of you mentioned as being the best – Archive of Your Own. A reader is very generously helping me with that. You know who you are, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and owe you a huge favor! ;)
Though, the thing is that it might take a while before I'm given an account on that site, so for the moment the backup is AFFnet.
That said, I hope you enjoy this chappie!
Oh, some things described here are in accordance to descriptions given in the books, and not how these things looked in the movies. Just to warn you beforehand so that you aren't put off by the differences if you remember the movies more than the books. ^^
Part I: Chapter 31
"We stink," pointed out Alphard, snickering when he caught sight of Harry's scrunched up nose.
Ulysses let out a meow of agreement, though there wasn't much Harry could do about the way they looked and smelled.
They had been exploring the castle for the last two months and the end of June, and thus the school year, was approaching.
Thankfully, now that he counted with Alphard's and Ulysses' help, the search for the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets was much faster.
After all, Tom was certain that Salazar Slytherin must have marked the secret entrance with a symbol of a snake, and that was what Harry and Alphard went around looking for.
"It would make sense," Tom had said superiorly, shooting Harry a pointed glance. "We need to look at a snake or representation of one in order to be able to speak Parseltongue. Hence, Salazar must have marked the entrance with a figure of a serpent. I'm sure the only way in or out of the Chamber is through the use of Parseltongue – that way, Salazar ensured that only Parselmouths, namely him and his descendants, could access it."
Harry had nodded, since it sounded convincing, though he hadn't expected what his brother's continued research would lead to.
Ever since they had found out about John Gaunt in the muggle library during their Christmas Holidays, Tom had looked into wizarding families with renewed fervor. The boy hadn't found a single mention about any 'Riddles', which hadn't surprised Harry the slightest given what the Gringotts' goblin had told them, but he had found a bit about the Gaunts.
" 'Minor pureblood family of no consequence'," Tom had hissed out, quoting from the battered, old book that he was angrily waving in front of Harry's face. "That's all it says about the Gaunts! And it's the only book that even mentions them." The boy's dark blue eyes narrowed to slits, as he spat furiously, "They couldn't have been so insignificant if M.G. managed to slip in and out of Hogwarts to impregnate Sherisse Slytherin, could they? M. Gaunt must have been very resourceful, cunning, and powerful to manage that!"
Harry had bitten his lip, knowing he couldn't tell his brother about what Santi had revealed to him regarding Morgon Gaunt.
Moreover, he was quite certain Tom wouldn't be at all pleased to know that Morgon Gaunt had been a mediocre, embittered old wizard, and just the Caretaker of Hogwarts, to boot.
By the looks of things, it was clear that his brother was of the idea that their ancestors from that side must have been impressive and noteworthy, even if everything indicated they had been cowardly hiding amidst muggles since Morgon Gaunt did his nasty deeds.
"And we know that M. Gaunt took off with the Slytherins' belongings," continued ranting Tom angrily. "We saw that locket in Borgin and Burkes. And if Slughorn is right about it, then it is a Slytherin heirloom and it's clear that the Gaunts sold it at some point." He skewered Harry with a piercing, narrowed-eyed look. "And it should belong to us! We must steal it before that Hephzibah Smith witch Slughorn blabbered about buys it!"
Harry became alarmed at that. He had thought he had managed to convince his brother to wait until they were older. They were only in their first-year of Hogwarts and he certainly didn't feel prepared to pull off a heist of that magnitude.
"When we go to Diagon Alley to buy our school supplies for next year," Tom added in a firm, decisive tone, "we'll go to Knockturn Alley and take a closer look at the locket and we'll inspect Borgin and Burke's store and their security measures. We must begin to plan the theft."
After that, Tom had continued doing even more research in Hogwarts' library, three days later presenting a long parchment filled with notes to Harry. It was a list of all the possible magical creatures that could be guarding the Chamber of Secrets. All of them with one sole trait in common: they were part snake and could be understood by Parselmouths.
"If the legend is right and Salazar brought in some kind of monster to guard his Chamber of Secrets," Tom had intoned arrogantly, as he handed over the piece of parchment to Harry, "then he must have chosen a creature only he could communicate with and give orders to. Read that list and be prepared."
By then, Tom had already known that Harry had resumed his exploration of the Castle, though Harry had certainly not told him about Alphard's involvement or even about all the things he had disclosed to his friend.
Nevertheless, he had shared that piece of parchment with Alphard and the boy had paled when reading it.
"All of these are terribly dangerous creatures," choked out Alphard, gazing at Harry with big grey eyes filled with apprehension. He gestured at the parchment jerkily. "Lamias, Nagas, Leviathans, Gorgons, Chimeras, Basilisks!"
"Yes," Harry conceded undaunted, to then grin brightly at his friend as he pointed a finger at his brother's notes. "But look there. Tom has also written about the things that can be used to protect oneself from those creatures."
Lamias and Nagas were half-human creatures with the bottom part of their bodies being like a long serpent's tail, as closely related to each other as merfolk and sirens were.
There were differences, though. Lamias were all females and used their magic to look like their victim's most desired woman or man, in order to suck out their life-forces and feed from their lust through a kiss. Apparently, they also preferred to steal babies and feed from their lives to gain youthfulness. On the other hand, Nagas were all males, bulky, fierce and strong, who hunted down muggles with spears to eat their flesh.
Harry certainly didn't want to know how they reproduced with their own kind, being all female and all male, respectively, but he had read that wizards, in turn, hunted Lamias and Nagas to use their parts as ingredients for those Breeder Potions Alphard had told him about, for Sappho witches and Ganymede wizards, first invented by Salazar Slytherin so long ago.
Leviathans were huge seven-headed sea monsters that lived in every ocean, part serpent, but also part crocodile and could thus also live on the ground, while Gorgons were women with serpents for hair whose gaze turned their victims into stone, and Chimeras had the body of a lion, with a tail that ended in a snake's head and with the head of a goat rising on their back at the center of their spine, and they breathed fire and were vicious.
And finally, the Basilisks, which concerned Harry the most because unlike the others there wasn't a simple thing that could ward them off. Their direct gazes killed instantly, and the reflection of it petrified the victim.
It was with that that Harry and Alphard had the most trouble when trying to find a way to protect themselves in the eventuality that they found the Chamber and were faced with a Basilisk.
Nevertheless, preparing themselves for the other creatures hadn't gone all that well either.
Lamias couldn't bear the smell of onions, Nagas for some reason fled with fear from chili peppers, Gorgons couldn't stand lemons, poppy seeds made the Chimera's three heads sneeze and sneeze until they choked so hard that they swallowed their own breathing-fire and scorched their throats, and Leviathans keeled over and fell asleep if they smelled bat dung. Magical creatures were very bizarre, had been Harry's conclusion.
He had slipped into Horace Slughorn's potions storeroom to steal the dung and had then happily gone to the kitchens with Alphard, asking the house-elves for the rest of the things. He had put everything in a bowl, meshed it all together and pounded it into a pulp until it became a juice with small bits and pieces.
"This is what we have to do when we go looking for the Chamber," Harry had said grinning, as he proudly and demonstratively applied the concoction on his face. "Whichever creature there's in the Chamber will smell this on us and-"
He had released a yelp when his face suddenly went red and throbbed and ached, his eyes tearing from the onion, his skin painfully tingling from the astringent lemon juice and unbearably burning due to the chilly peppers, with the poppy seeds and bat dung only making everything all the worse.
He had cried out so loudly, attempting to scratch his face off, that Alphard had quickly cast an Aguamenti spell, dousing Harry with water to help him scrub off the concoction. It had been so bad that Harry's skin was left pink and raw, and he had ended up paying a visit to the Infirmary.
Miss Nightingale had shaken her head and clucked her tongue at him, as she said chidingly, "What were you thinking, boy, putting those things on your face?"
"Um… I read in the Witch Weekly that it was good for getting rid of pimples," mumbled Harry, shamed-faced, as he made up the only lie that could sound half-convincing.
Miss Nightingale shot him an incredulous look as she flicked her wand and cast a spell to soothe Harry's skin. "Bat excrement, onions, chilly peppers and whatnot, for pimples? And you don't even have pimples, child!"
"Er… I do. Here, I think," said Harry lamely, pointing at his chin.
The mediwitch leaned forward and squinted hard, until she huffed. "You have nothing, Mr. Riddle! Don't be ridiculous. I could have expected something like this from some of the girls, but not you. I've never taken you for a vain boy."
She shook her head when she was done with him, adding sternly, "Next time, instead of taking advice from that rag, you come to me first if you ever have acne!"
Mortified, Harry muttered a thanks and ran back to the kitchens, where Alphard was waiting for him just to guffaw and snicker when Harry told him about the mediwitch's sharp remarks.
In the end, they had wisely chosen to simply string lemons, chili peppers, and onions together and wear them around their wrists and necks. That left the poppy seeds, which they carried in small pouches tied to their belts, and the bat dung – which they could only smear on their faces in streaks running along their cheeks and foreheads.
Furthermore, Alphard had finally bought by owl two hand mirrors from a store in Hogsmeade and ridiculously expensive drops of Phoenix tears from the Apothecary.
The idea was that if they ever came upon a Basilisk, they would have the mirrors in hand so that the reflected creature's gaze could only petrify them, and the Phoenix tears to counteract the creature's poison, since it was the only thing that could heal a wound infected with a Basilisk's lethal venom.
"If it is a Basilisk," Alphard had intoned gravely and a tad nervously, "then it's best if I'm the one who's petrified, because then you'll have the chance to quickly close your eyes and speak to it in Parseltongue and ask it to not attack us. And you can levitate me to our common room afterwards and fetch Dorea. She'll know what to do to unpetrify me."
Harry had nodded, a mite uncertain because he dearly hoped the 'monster' wasn't a Basilisk. It was by far the most dangerous of all.
Hence, every time they waited for their roommates to fall asleep in order to put on everything and slip away to inspect the Castle, they stank, as Alphard had just remarked so precisely.
Harry was quite sure that if anyone saw them, the person would be rolling on the floor laughing themselves silly. Alphard and him had to look very weird, like a pair of wild indians from the Amazons, with stringed vegetables and lemons hanging from their necks and wrists and dung all over their faces, not to mention Ulysses with his small bandit's mask.
Indeed, it seemed that the Scorcrup had a keen sense of smell, and just how the bat dung, onions, lemons, and chili peppers bothered the magical creatures that could be guarding the Chamber of Secrets, they also annoyed Harry's familiar.
The first time they had gone out, little Ulysses had constantly sneezed so hard and his tiny nose had twitched so much that the Scorcrup had finally let out a piteous meow as he pressed a small paw against his nose.
Harry resorted to cutting a small, triangular piece of cloth from a clean sock, charming it to block smells and then tying it around Ulysses' muzzle. The Scorcrup had been quick to catch on, and he could easily roll up his mask with a paw to make use of his nose to sniff around things or just as simply roll it back down when he was perched on top of Harry's head and needed to avoid suffering the stench that came off his owner.
Moreover, Ulysses had already proven that his senses were as useful as they were keen.
The little Scorcrup could hear the flap of wings of the Caretaker's nasty pet crow Rascal the Raven and the clank of Apollyon Pringle's wooden leg on the floors way before either Harry or Alphard could take notice.
Ulysses always quickly patted Harry on the forehead with a paw, warning him, and thus allowing the boys to swiftly change directions and flee into another corridor before they were caught out of bed after curfew.
The Scorcrup's sense of smell had also led to some discoveries.
"He's like a bloodhound," Harry had said, marveled and enthused, one night when Ulysses had hopped off his head to land on the floor and rush forward along a corridor, with his tiny nose pressed against the floor as he went sniffing around.
The boys had scrambled after him and halted before a large cabinet that Ulysses was clawing and sniffing at with much eagerness.
"What have you found?" said Harry curiously as he eyed the cabinet that had caught his familiar's attention.
It was large, black, and with double doors. Intrigued, he opened them, but there was nothing inside, just an empty space wide enough for someone to fit in if ducking and crouching.
"Oh, I think I know what it is!" breathed out Alphard enthusiastically, his grey eyes big as he trailed a finger along the frame of the doors. "See these marks here? They are magical Runes."
Harry bent forward and squinted at them with puzzlement. "So?"
"I think it's a Vanishing Cabinet!" declared Alphard excitedly. "I've heard of them. They are not very common. They always come in pairs and they're used to go from one cabinet to the other." He glanced around, bemused. "Though it doesn't look as if this cabinet's match is around here."
"They are used to travel from one spot to another?" said Harry, his eyebrows shooting upwards. He opened the double doors again and gazed into the emptiness, mystified. "Where do you reckon this one leads to?"
Harry was about to put a foot inside when Alphard grabbed his arm and swiftly pulled him back, as he said anxiously, "You shouldn't. Their magic form some sort of portal between the pair, but they aren't very reliable, that's why there aren't many and not commonly used for travelling."
"Oh," said Harry, deflating. However, as they left, he shot the cabinet a lingering look and marked its location on The Three Musketeers' Map, vouching to explore it some other time when he was alone.
A couple of weeks after that, they were almost done going through all the rooms of the seventh floor, since it was the floor in which Harry had started in when he had been looking for the Chamber of Secrets by himself, and now that they were three, they had quickly gone through the rooms left.
They had divided the task between the three of them and separately perused their assigned rooms. Sometimes, Alphard or Ulysses would fetch Harry when they discovered something that could be suspicious, and Harry would trail after them into the room they were checking out and hiss in Parseltongue at the furniture or decoration that could be hiding the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
Alas, it had yielded no results thus far, but at least, in just two months, they were nearly over their inspection of the top floor of Hogwarts.
Harry thought they were managing it at an excellent rate, since Tom expected him to complete his scrutiny of one floor of the Castle every year.
At present, with Alphard snickering about their smell, they were climbing up a moving staircase to reach the seventh floor and finalize their examination of it.
The boy suddenly stopped chuckling as he shot Harry a quizzical glance. "Things between you and Abraxas have gotten stranger, haven't they? What do you think he meant with the things he said to you?"
Harry released a weary sigh at that. Abraxas Malfoy had become unavoidable ever since Slytherin House imposed its rule that every Slytherin had to move around the Castle in groups of five, with one of the older Slytherins escorting them like a guard.
Indeed, Alphard's hopes that the tension and enmity between Slytherins and Gryffindors would diminish after Dorea got back together with Charlus Potter hadn't become true. The couple certainly tried to soothe the tempers of their respective housemates, but constant news about the Dark Lord and the fear it inspired worked against them.
At least, there had only been a few skirmishes between older Slytherins and Gryffindors, which had been quickly halted since the teachers had started to make rounds around the school precisely to break off in time any quarrels. Harsh detentions were doled out to those involved and Headmaster Dippet gave stern, reprimanding speeches during lunch in the Great Hall, but it hadn't gone beyond that.
Nevertheless, Slytherin House's tactic meant that Harry was constantly in the company of his group: Tom, Abraxas Malfoy, Alphard and Orion Black. The pity was that he couldn't openly be friendly to Alphard and that they had to curtail the frequency of their secret meetings in the kitchens.
Furthermore, he couldn't even go to the Dueling Arena with his brother to practice Dark Curses from Grindelwald's books, since when they weren't in class, they were expected to be safely ensconced in their common room. And the older Slytherins were always checking up on them to make sure the younger years were complying.
Tom hadn't been at all happy with the limitation, given that it meant they could only keep up with their study of German. They did that in the midst of their common room and no one had shot them a suspicious look due to it, thus far.
Well, Abraxas was the exception, because now that Harry was always around him, the boy kept glancing at him more frequently and intensely than ever before.
"Why is Malfoy always looking at you?" Tom had demanded one day, looking extremely foul-tempered. His dark blue eyes narrowed to slits as he skewered Harry with his gaze. "Has anything happened between you? Has he spoken to you?"
"No," Harry lied smoothly, remembering what Abraxas had threatened to do if he ever told his brother about their conversation. He rolled his eyes. "Malfoy is just weird. Pay no attention to him."
Tom wasn't at all mollified, and he said insistently, his tone sharp and acerbic, "He stares at you, and smirks, as if there's some undercurrent between you two - as if he knows something and is holding it over your head."
Harry gritted his teeth. His brother was seriously too bloody observant and perceptive. He reined in his temper and coolly shot him a glance, frowning when he saw the glint in his brother's eyes.
Tom looked angered and deeply annoyed, and something else Harry couldn't quite put his finger on. Well, he figured his brother didn't like that he could be interacting with yet another person.
"He's not my friend," said Harry firmly, trying to soothe his brother's ruffled feathers.
"Of course he's not," scoffed out Tom. "He's a Malfoy and a pureblood, he wouldn't be interested in someone like you – not when he thinks you're a mudblood." He let out a snide sound from the back of his throat as he added matter-of-factly, "And even if you were a pureblood, you wouldn't catch the attention of someone like him."
Harry frowned at that, starting to get really angered. Ever since Tom had first caught sight of Abraxas constantly glancing at him, his brother had been treating him very nastily and disparagingly, even more than usual.
"And why is that?" he gritted out crossly.
Tom gestured at him, as if making his point, and said scathingly, "Because of the way you look – always disheveled and with your hair sticking up as if you have just rolled out of bed." He shot him a contemptuous sneer. "And because you're a simpleton, and you have no manners and you don't groom yourself and always wear wrinkled clothes and you gobble down your food like a savage and your vocabulary is pathetic-"
Harry slammed shut the Charms book he had been reading and glowered at him, snapping waspishly, "Right. So he couldn't be paying attention to me because of the way I am, and yet you want to know why he's glancing at me all the time, showing interest. So which one is it?"
"I just want to know what's going on!" hissed out Tom furiously, leaning forward to have his face inches away from Harry's, his eyes narrowed to mere slits.
At the end of his rope, Harry shot to feet and hurled his book at his brother's head, as he yelled with anger and exasperation, "Nothing is going on!"
And he marched off from their dormitory, bristling and seething.
The next morning, he had realized just how mistaken he was.
A hand shaking his shoulder had waked him up, making him mumble words of complain and groggily open his eyes.
"What on earth?" grumbled Harry sleepy as he grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and put them on, peering at the figure standing by his bed.
There, was Abraxas Malfoy, apparently having cancelled the charms Harry always cast on his bed's curtains, clearly to intrude upon his sleep.
"What are you doing, Malfoy?" spat Harry, frowning when he glanced around and saw the darkness in the room. "What time is it?"
"Six in the morning," drawled Abraxas impassively in his lilting voice.
"What?" choked out Harry scandalized, before he groaned loudly and snapped with much anger, "Why the hell did you wake me up? Bugger off, Malfoy, and let me sleep!"
He plopped back to bed and rolled to a side, giving the boy his back as he darkly grumbled under his breath.
He heard Abraxas tsking chidingly, and suddenly, his body was tingling as if a thousand ants were crawling all over him.
Yelping, Harry shot up from his bed, bewildered, and then caught sight of Abraxas smirking down at him with satisfaction. Harry's green eyes narrowed with fury.
"Cancel the hex you cast on me!" he bellowed, as his skin kept unpleasantly twitching, making him shiver in disgust.
Abraxas arched an eyebrow at him, his smirk widening. "I will if you behave. Do you not remember our agreement?"
"Fine, I'll be civil to you!" spat Harry impatiently. "Now take it off!"
"I think not," drawled Abraxas pleasantly, shooting him a mocking look. "Your tone is not very nice, is it?"
Harry gritted his teeth, and then leaped to a side and took his wand from the nightstand, in a flash pointing it under Abraxas's chin, poking at him hard, as he growled, "Take. it. off."
"My, my, not a morning person, are we?" intoned Abraxas, yet he flicked his wand at him and Harry suddenly felt deep relief as his skin stopped itching.
The boy then proceeded to causally sit down on Harry's bed, in a fluid, poised, elegant motion, to then gaze at him with his silvery eyes.
Harry could merely gape at him, dumbstruck.
"I received this last night," said Abraxas placidly, taking out a scroll from the pocket of his tunic-like nightgown. "I have not told anyone yet. I decided you should be the first to know."
"Know what?" said Harry nonplussed, starting to think that he was perhaps in a dream, given Malfoy's bizarre behavior.
Abraxas held up the scroll, as he drawled loftily, "This is my marital contract. My grandfather finally concluded negotiations yesterday. I am officially betrothed."
He arched a pale eyebrow when Harry remained mute, blinking at him. "Congratulate me, Riddle, it is what a civilized, well-mannered wizard would do in such occasion."
Harry shot him an incredulous look at that. Malfoy himself didn't seem too thrilled with the event. Indeed, the boy's expression was closed off and a tad rigid.
He shook his head, casting the boy another disbelieving glance as he bit out, "Have you gone bonkers, Malfoy! You've woken me up at six in the bloody morning to tell me that you're engaged? And I care because?"
"My fiancée is Kasimira Von Krauss, Riddle," said Abraxas slowly, as if wanting to give Harry time for the fact to sink in, as if it should mean something devastating for him.
"Who?" Harry frowned, the surname vaguely ringing a distant bell.
Abraxas' pale eyebrows quirked upwards as he stared at him. "Surely you are not serious. Kasimira Von Krauss - the daughter of Konrad Von Krauss, the Dark Lord's right hand man."
"Oh. Right, if you say so." Harry then stared at him, utterly confused. "That's all very well for you, I suppose. But why are you telling me?" His green eyes narrowed as he snapped impatiently, "What the hell do you really want?"
Abraxas let out a suffering sigh, before he fluidly rose to his feet. He pointedly waved the scroll in the air, as he widely smirked at him and drawled smugly, "For you, this means we shall be seeing much of each other in the future. After all, I am expected to spend some holidays with my fiancée and her father in Germany."
And with that, the boy sauntered back to his bed.
"What! What's that supposed to mean?" yelled Harry after him, perching from the side of his bed to stare at the boy's back, feeling thoroughly perplexed.
Malfoy didn't reply and Harry had the inkling that they boy couldn't hear him. One of the spells he always cast around his bed was a Silencing Charm, and given that none of their roommates had woken up with Harry's bellows, it was clear that Malfoy hadn't cancelled that particular charm.
He certainly hadn't told Tom about that interaction with Malfoy, but he did to Alphard. And it was precisely on that subject that his friend was currently questioning him.
"I haven't the foggiest what Malfoy's up to," replied Harry with exasperation, before he huffed, vastly miffed. "As far as I'm concerned he can just sod off and get himself lost in a forest. He just seems to like to-"
"Play with you," said Alphard, finishing the sentence for him and frowning.
"Yeah, I suppose," bit out Harry, peeved.
Alphard shot him a careful glance, his expression turning pensive. "But Abraxas wouldn't be yanking you around if he had no purpose behind it. He isn't the type."
Harry released a weary exhalation of breath. "Well, I know he came back from Winter Holidays knowing something – something his nasty old grandfather must have told him, because he keeps shooting me these pointed, knowing looks…"
"Something about what?" prompted Alphard, glancing at him with befuddlement and much curiosity.
Harry had some suspicions that it was all related to Grindelwald, but of course he couldn't tell Alphard that. He had never told his friend about the meeting he had witnessed in Grimmauld Place, when he had been in Phineas Nigellus' portrait – Alphard's very own ancestor in the boy's family's very own townhouse, at that. No, he had no intention to ever tell his friend about those things or about Grindelwald's letter and books.
"Don't know," mumbled Harry, shrugging, just as he was about to step onto a landing.
To his misfortune, the moving staircase suddenly shifted before they had the chance to get off, and Harry grumbled darkly under his breath, glaring up at the castle.
Hogwarts was clearly in one of her mischievous moods once more, and she always seemed to enjoy pulling those stunts particularly on him, if the behavior of the magic covering her walls was anything to go by - just then, the magic he could see with his ability was vibrating and pulsing as if she was having a jolly good laugh at his expense.
Vexed, Harry shot the Castle glowers in every direction, whilst he waited for her to decide to which floor she was going to move her staircase to.
They finally landed on the fourth floor and Harry was quick to get off the stairway before Hogwarts could change her mind. They were now forced to take a roundabout route to make their way to the seventh floor.
However, before they had the chance, Ulysses startled them by suddenly hopping off Harry's head and rushing forth along a corridor, sniffing at full speed. The boys ran after the Scorcrup, Alphard excited and Harry glancing around with curiosity.
He had never been in the fourth floor before, since he didn't have any of his classes there. Furthermore, he was utterly flummoxed when they followed Ulysses until they came upon an enormous mirror hanging on a wall in the middle of the corridor.
"Is there something behind?" Alphard asked bemused, as he stared at the little Scorcrup that had begun to spit hisses at the huge mirror whilst scratching its ornate frame with his claws.
Meanwhile, Harry was staring at the mirror with a dumbstruck expression on his face, gaping, before he clutched Alphard's forearm and breathed out slowly, "Al, it's covered with Salazar Slytherin's magic."
Alphard snapped his head around so fast that there was a cracking sound, and he gazed at Harry with eyes filled with awe and fascination. "What are you seeing?"
"A net of silver and green magic," mumbled Harry, without being able to peel his entranced gaze away from the mirror, "covering it. Just like the magic I always see on the wall that leads to our common room."
Alphard's grey eyes grew as wide as moons, as he whispered excitedly, nearly bouncing up and down on his toes, "Do you think this could be the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Maybe," said Harry uncertainly, as he ripped his gaze away to glance at the frame of the mirror. He frowned, as he murmured, "But there are no snakes there."
Alphard snorted and rolled his eyes. "Your brother was wrong, then. It seems Salazar didn't use something so obvious as the figure of a snake to mark the entrance, doesn't it?"
"There's something written up there, though," whispered Harry, craning his neck to gaze up at the top of the mirror. There were incomprehensible words inscribed on the upper frame, and he frowned as he took several steps forward to be in front of the mirror and take a closer look.
Just then, he caught a glimpse of something from the corner of his eyes and he brought his head back down to stare forward. There was a very clear reflection of himself on the mirror, but he didn't have strings of vegetables dangling from his neck and wrists, or a hand mirror tucked under his belt, or his face covered with bat dung.
It was him, yes, but he was happily grinning, with Tom at his side. His brother had an arrogant smirk on his face and his dark blue eyes were gleaming with giddy gleefulness and excitement, as they were when practicing Dark Curses from Grindelwald's Durmstrang textbooks when they were in Slytherin House's secret Dueling Arena.
Tom had an arm over Harry's shoulders, pressing them together, the gesture looking protective and affectionate. That wasn't the strange part, though, but the others in the reflection.
Alice and Robert Hutchins were there, holding each other's hands, standing right behind Harry and Tom, gazing down at them with wide, loving smiles on their faces.
The mysterious, breathtakingly beautiful woman of his dreams was also there, beside Harry, her delicate features looking content and proud, a shadow of a smile slightly tilting up one corner of her lips.
And at the back, along with Alice and Hutchins, there were two more that Harry instantly recognized.
One was Julian Erlichmann, but not looking stoic or haunted as he had looked in the picture of the Daily Prophet when the young man had been standing next to the Dark Lord while the Czechoslovakian Minister of Magic was on his knees breaking his wand in half. In the mirror, Julian looked joyful and carefree, and he had a hand on Harry's shoulder, squeezing it gently as he winked at him and laughed happily.
The other figure was Santi, just how the man had looked like when he had comforted Harry on the bridge, shimmering in golden light, his handsome face wearing a soft expression, his milky eyes filled with yearning as he gazed at Harry and tenderly and possessively carded his fingers through Harry's disorderly mop of hair.
There they were, all looking blissfully happy, and it felt so right that Harry kept staring with a wide smile and a mesmerized expression on his face.
All those disconnected people together, surrounding him, yet… something nagged at the back of his mind. Yes, they were people that didn't know each other in some cases: Alice and Hutchins had never met Santi or Julian, Tom didn't know about Santi, and Harry himself had never met Julian in person, whilst the woman of his dreams who always sang Alice's lullaby to him and filled him with love was still a mystery.
For a moment, he felt utterly bewildered, but he beamed a grin in the next second, chuckling as he touched his own shoulder, his reflection doing the same, coming in contact with his brother's arm and Julian's hand. He could almost feel Santi's fingers caressing his hair too, like had happened on the bridge.
"Oh, it's you and me!" suddenly exclaimed Alphard joyfully. "Are you seeing it? Do you think it shows the future?"
His friend's words took a moment to sink in through the misty happiness filling Harry's mind and he snapped his head around to stare at the boy. "What?"
Alphard was gazing at the mirror, beaming and chortling. "Ah, good pass!"
"What are you talking about?" said Harry, blinking at the boy, disconcerted.
"You just passed me the Quaffle in an spectacular move!" said Alphard, his light grey eyes still fixed on the mirror, looking entranced and marveled. "Aren't you seeing it? We're playing Quidditch, just the two of us, and my parents are there watching! They are smiling and clapping and cheering us on. It must show the future! It must mean that some day I'll tell them about you and they'll accept our friendship instead of disowning me!"
Realizing what the boy was saying and seeing his friend's enthralled expression, Harry was gripped by such a sudden surge of trepidation and misgivings that he instantly jerked Alphard away from the mirror, as he rushed out worriedly, "No, I don't think it shows the future, Al."
Alphard blinked at him in confusion. "Why not? Didn't you see it?" At Harry's alarmed and troubled look, the boy frowned. "What's the matter?"
Harry didn't reply as he shot the mirror a wary and apprehensive look. Thankfully, they were not close enough for its surface to show anything.
He frowned as he caught sight of Ulysses. Unlike the two of them, the little Scorcrup wasn't stupidly staring into the mirror but apparently had kept scratching its frame, persistently.
"Ulysses senses there's something behind," pointed out Harry.
At that, the little Scorcrup turned around to bob his head up and down as he let out a meow of affirmation.
"Right. Let me try then," muttered Harry, whipping out his wand and swiftly casting, "Dissendium!"
It was one of the several charms he had found in books in the library, commonly used precisely to reveal secret passages that were being kept hidden by statues, portraits, and the like.
He had already tested it on the statue of the one-eyed witch and it had worked. Though if he ever needed to use the tunnel to Honeyduke's cellar, he would still prefer to push down her hump, which he always saw covered in Godric Gryffindor's red and golden magic.
However, nothing happened in this case.
"Of course!" Harry breathed out in the next second, as he glanced back at the mirror from a distance. "It still has Salazar Slytherin's magic covering it. I see it again now… So what should work is…"
He trailed off as he closed his eyes tightly, imaging Nagini in his mind as clearly and with as many details as possible. He managed it in an instant, since he had frequently resorted to that ever since they had begun looking together for the Chamber of Secrets and he had to go around hissing at anything Ulysses and Alphard found in rooms and thought suspicious.
Keeping his eyes shut, imagining he was speaking to Nagini, he hissed, "Open!"
He heard Alphard gasping and he immediately snapped his eyes wide, grinning triumphantly when he saw that the mirror had moved. It had shifted as if it was a door, parting open a few inches from the wall. There was some sort of huge hole behind it, but it was too dark inside to see anything.
"It IS the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!" gushed out Alphard, his eyes big and filled with thrilled excitement. He grabbed Harry's arm and jumped up and down. "We did it! We found it!"
The boy suddenly clamped his mouth shut and paled a mite, as he locked gazes with Harry and swallowed thickly. "Then we should get ready."
They nodded at each other in mutual, instant agreement, and as if one, they checked they had everything in place -the bat dung smeared on their faces, their vegetables and lemons hanging from their necks and wrists, the pouch containing poppy seeds tied around their belts, and the tiny glass vials with Phoenix tears in their pockets- and they finally pulled their hand mirrors from under their belts.
It was when Harry was wielding the small mirror in his left hand that he caught sight of something as he approached the enormous one covered in green and silver magic.
The incomprehensible words that were inscribed in the upper frame of the large mirror - 'erised s'traeh ruoy tub ecaf ruoy ton wohs I'- were reflected in Harry's hand mirror, and he could understand them now that he saw them backwards.
"I show not your face but your heart's desire," he read out loud, nonplussed.
"That's what it says there?" said Alphard, peering into Harry's hand mirror. He chuckled merrily. "It makes sense. That's why I saw us playing Quidditch together, with my parents watching and cheering! That's certainly something I want…" He blinked and his shoulders slumped. "Oh, but then it means that it wasn't really showing the future."
The boy looked deeply dejected and disappointed before he shot Harry a curious glance as he piped, "But you didn't see what I did, did you? What did you see, then?"
Harry was still too baffled to answer him. The mirror had supposedly showed him his 'heart's desire'? If so, he could understand why he had seen Alice and Hutchins with him, and Tom, looking as he always did, with an arrogant smirk and eyes gleaming with gleeful viciousness, only just with an arm around Harry's shoulders.
He could even comprehend the reason for the mysterious woman's presence in the image, since in his dreams he always felt love for her. But Santi and Julian Erlichmann? He 'desired' them?
Harry didn't even know them, even if he constantly thought of and worried about Julian, and even if he had begun to like Santi a bit after the way the man had comforted him on the bridge. Yet, he didn't 'love' them as he loved Alice, Hutchins, and his brother.
Moreover, the mirror had showed him Santi and Julian wholly focused on him: Julian looking happy, winking and smiling at him, with a hand on his shoulder and squeezing, as if they were very close, friends or something of the sort; and Santi caressingly trailing his fingers through Harry's hair, with that weird longing look in his strange milky eyes – like they had been on the bridge and also when he had woken Harry up from his dreams to tell him about Morgon Gaunt. So… he 'desired' all that?
Harry felt stupefied, and suddenly, very awkward and discomfited due to the puzzling thoughts swirling in his mind.
He vehemently shook his head, getting rid of such notions, and went back to concentrate on the task at hand.
"It didn't show me anything important," he stated shortly as he waved a hand dismissively. He gave his friend a quizzical look. "Are you ready?"
Alphard hesitated for a second before he nodded and beamed at him. "Sure! Let's plunge in!"
Noticing the pause, Harry eyed him closely. His expression softened as he intoned gently and understandingly, "Al, if you're afraid, you don't need to come with me. I can manage on my own-"
"Well, I am a bit afraid, of course. Who knows which of the creatures is in there," interrupted Alphard in a hushed whisper, tilting to a side to take a peek into the darkness behind the mirror. He stepped back into place to shoot Harry a firm look. "But I promised I would help you find the Chamber of Secrets and I'm not about to abandon you when you'll need my help the most! And we're as prepared as we can be." He puffed his chest out. "I am ready."
"If you're sure…" murmured Harry quietly, a bit uneasy for his friend but not wanting to insult him either by implying that perhaps it was best for the boy to remain behind.
"I am," said Alphard decisively.
Harry nodded and gave him a small grin, before he checked again that everything was in place. He saw Alphard doing the same, touching his face to confirm that the bat dung was still there, looking only a mite nervous.
Even Ulysses made his own preparations. The little Scorcrup used a paw to roll down his bandit's mask over his muzzle and then climbed up Harry's leg, to jump on his shoulder and finally land on top of Harry's head, hissing as he transformed his tail into a scorpion's.
Harry finally yanked the mirror of desires fully away from the wall and they all stepped into the hole.
"Close!" he hissed, and he watched as the back of the mirror settled back into place, plunging them into absolute darkness.
"Lumos!" whispered Alphard.
The moment the tip of the boy's wand lit up, they realized they weren't in a hole but some sort of huge, round tunnel made of metal.
"What is this?" said Alphard bemusedly, glancing around.
"I think…" Harry frowned. "Um… I think it's a pipe, actually."
"A pipe!" Alphard's grey eyes went as wide as saucers. "But it's humungous! And that can only mean that-"
"That the creature is big," murmured Harry pensively, as he nodded. "A Leviathan or Basilisk, I reckon."
"Oh this is so not good," whispered Alphard shakily, paling dramatically. "Those two are the worst out of all of them! One as big as a manor and with seven heads, the other with a gaze that kills!" He frantically patted his face and brought up his left hand brandishing the small mirror. "Dung for one and mirror for the other, remember!"
"I will," Harry said, smiling at him soothingly. "Let's get going."
And they did, just to find, when they walked down the pipe for a few feet, that there were torch holders embedded on the metallic walls of the pipe. The holders were silver, decorated with small serpent figures, many still carrying torches that didn't seem to have been used in ages, all blackened, grimy, and dusty.
"This is the way to the Chamber of Secrets!" said Harry excitedly as he pointed at one of the ornamental snakes. "Tom wasn't that mistaken after all!"
"I suppose," muttered Alphard grudgingly, before he eyed the torches quizzically. "Let me try something."
The boy cast a spell that immediately made the lined up torches lit up, all the way into the distance.
"You have to teach me that spell!" said Harry marveled.
"Certainly," said Alphard, looking quite proud of himself.
They were all tense and alert as they followed the torches into the depths of the pipe: Harry and Alphard with their fingers tightly clutching their wands and with mirrors held upwards, Ulysses with his scorpion's tail poised for attack.
However, their journey down the pipe proved to be utterly uneventful. The walked for over an hour and saw nothing at all except more torches, until they finally reached the end.
Harry stared, blinking, at the block in their path. It was a gigantic boulder, which looked as if it had been jammed into the end of the pipe. He hadn't expected that.
"Erm… Open?" he hissed uncertainly.
Thankfully, it did the trick. The boulder rippled and changed into rocks that crumbled to the ground, the noise loud and nearly deafening. The clouds of dust nearly choked them and made them cough repeatedly whilst little Ulysses sneezed.
When the dust had settled down, they finally stepped through the wide opening, careful of not tripping over rocks and pebbles to not make any noise, and with mirrors and wands in hand.
As soon as they went through, Harry saw for a moment how the rocks morphed back to form a boulder that began to cover the end of the pipe. The light of the torches vanished and they were suddenly enveloped in pitch-black darkness.
"Lumos!" whispered Harry warily, straining his ears in case the creature was lurking around wherever they were.
When the light of his wand bathed their surroundings, they realized they had stepped into some sort of-
"It's a cave?" whispered Alphard sounding extremely disappointed. "The Chamber of Secrets is just a cave?"
Harry glanced around, blinking. He had certainly expected something else – something more magnificent and awe-inspiring, for sure. However, it did indeed look like a common cave, just very vast.
Feeling a frisson of apprehension, he briefly closed his eyes and quickly envisioned Nagini in his mind, to then hiss loudly, "Um, we are two boys and a Scorcrup and we… er… come in peace! Don't attack!"
And with that, he opened his eyes and glanced around, his fingers tightly clutching his wand and dearly hoping Tom had been right and that Salazar Slytherin had indeed chosen a creature that could understand Parseltongue.
"What did you say?" whispered Alphard, eyeing his surroundings anxiously as if expecting the creature to pounce on them at any given moment.
Harry told him and his friend eyed him with utter disbelief before he broke into peals of laughter.
"We - come in - peace?" choked out Alphard in between guffaws so loud that it made dust and dirt fall down on them from the top of the cave.
"What's wrong with that?" demanded Harry, scowling at his chortling and snickering friend. He huffed, thoroughly annoyed, as he gritted out between clenched teeth, "I didn't prepare a speech for the monster! If you were expecting some hoity-toity, snooty grand speech then we should have brought Tom along and he could've delivered! That's right up his alley, not mine!"
That shut up Alphard instantly, the boy squaring his shoulders as he said indignantly, "I didn't mean it that way. I rather be with you than your twin. I don't want Tom to tag along. Looking for the Chamber of Secrets is our adventure, not his, right?"
"Exactly," said Harry firmly, his vexation vanishing instantly as he gave him a pleased grin.
"Good." Alphard nodded, looking mollified and relieved, and as he then began to walk around the cave, sticking close to Harry, both alert and on guard.
It was then that Harry caught sight of stalagmites sticking up from the ground and stalactites hanging from the cavernous, rocky ceiling. But the long ones, he realized, were only those at the sides. Those in the middle of the cave were just stumps, as if something had broken them in half.
He took a closer look at one of the stumps on the ground that had something sticking on it. As he inspected it, he saw that it was a flimsy, very thin layer of something yellowish and nearly transparent, looking a bit rigid and very wrinkled.
With much curiosity, Harry poked it with a finger. At his touch, it crumbled and fell to the ground as it turned to dust.
Harry shot Alphard a bewildered glance as he whispered urgently, "That was skin, I think. Which one sheds its skin, the Leviathan or the Basilisk?"
"Both," replied Alphard, his grey eyes wide as he nervously glanced around, gripping his wand tighter. "This is not the Chamber but the creature's lair, then?"
"Maybe," said Harry frowning, as he glanced once more at the stalagmites that were mere stumps on the ground. "Or just some cave the creature passed through, very long ago by the look of things. The skin turned to dust the moment I touched it – it must've been ancient. And I don't see any bones around, and there would be left over bones in its lair from whatever the creature eats, right?"
"True," murmured Alphard, looking mightily reassured that they couldn't be, in fact, in the monster's den.
They soon decided they couldn't leave without finding out more and began to fully explore the cave.
It took them hours, since the cave was huge, filled with twists, nooks, and paths that led to other caves; such a maze of them that they ended up being irredeemably lost, exhausted, beyond sleepy, and with their tummies grumbling with hunger. Not even Ulysses managed to sniff his way into finding again the boulder that hid the pipe. All boulders looked alike and apparently smelled the same.
And for once, Harry dearly regretted that his Magic-Sight ability wasn't stronger, because if it were, he could have perhaps seen the magic of the boulder and thus found it again in order to return to Hogwarts through the pipe.
Alas, their situation became so dire, as they frantically tried to find a way out of the caves, that Harry whooped with joy when Alphard suddenly cried out frenziedly, "Light! I see light coming from over there!"
They desperately rushed towards the source, the light getting bigger and bigger and blinding them as they approached it. And suddenly, they were careening out into open air, panting for breath, worn out and drained from all energy, and with their sides aching.
"Sunlight!" breathed out Alphard ecstatic, as if the feeling of rays of sun on his dung-smeared face was the most glorious sensation he had ever felt.
Though, after long hours amidst the darkness and dampness of the caves, with only the Lumos of their wands to give them some light, Harry did feel quite content to see the sun as well.
Then he glanced again at it, as he murmured, dismayed, "It's dawning. We spent the whole night! And where the bloody hell are we?"
They both looked around, utterly bewildered. They were on a hill, filled with wide openings - cave entrances pilled together, one on top of the other and at all sides, indicating that they had indeed been in a system of caves.
Far away, in the distance, Harry suddenly spotted Hogwarts, looking tiny, yet to his eyes beautifully glowing with the colorful magic of its wards.
"Hogsmeade!" abruptly gasped out Alphard.
Harry swiveled around to gaze into the direction his friend was pointing a finger at. He blinked. The town was below them, just some short distance away. He could clearly see all the thatched houses and quaint cottages, with its main street already showing signs of early morning activity.
"Well," said Harry vastly relieved, "we know where we are, at least." He frowned the next second, shooting Alphard a bemused glance. "But that cave couldn't have been the Chamber of Secrets or the creature's lair. There was nothing in it." He shook his head as he added in a musing mutter, "We must've overlooked something. Maybe it was one of those torch holders… they had decorative figures of snakes, after all… we should try pushing one of them or I could speak Parseltongue to them and see if they reveal-"
"There were hundreds of torch holders!" interjected Alphard, looking deeply alarmed. "You want to go back to the caves and find again the pipe to check every single holder?"
"Not today!" said Harry, his eyebrows shooting upwards. "We're dead on our feet – we need some sleep!"
"Thank Mordred," faintly whispered Alphard to himself, rubbing a hand over his sweaty forehead, and then scrunching his nose with disgust when he just managed to get his fingers icky with bat dung. "And we urgently need to take a bath too." He shot Harry a desperate look, his expression piteous. "How are we going to get back?"
Harry grimaced as he glanced at Hogwarts, looking so far away and small. He let out a deep, weary sigh as he patted Alphard on the shoulder. "The only way we can, Al. We already tried to find the pipe and failed. We'll have to walk back and hope that no one will see us entering the Castle." He brightened and glanced up through his fringe of disorderly hair to the creature tiredly curled up on the top of his head. "You will help us with that, right?"
He caught Ulysses mid-yawn, though the little Scorcrup reassuringly patted his forehead with a paw in response.
Harry grinned at Alphard. "See? Ulysses will be on guard and he'll let us know if he hears any teachers strolling about the castle when we slip inside. And I doubt there will be any, not at this ungodly hour."
And so, they began their arduous trek back to Hogwarts. Thankfully, it had been Friday when they had initiated their expedition, which meant they had the entirety of that Saturday to drop dead from exhaustion on their beds - which they certainly did, not even waking up to have meals.
However, in the two weeks left of school, Harry would have very little rest and the summer holidays he was looking forward to with much excitement and expectations would prove to be daunting, unnerving, and deeply disheartening.