School of prompts: [Genre] Adventure
Drabble club: [Creature] Ashwinder
Quidditch Pitch: [Sentence] He couldn't believe what he saw.
Summary: Harry and Daphne explore the unknown hidden depths of the Chamber of Secrets.
-v-
Daphne stared in shock. Her mouth opening an d closing soundlessly. Her eyes focused on the rotting corpse of the basalisk in the center of the room.
Harry took a few tentative steps in, cringing at some of the memories that the place brought up. A reminder of the near death that both Ginny and he nearly succumbed to. Harry walked in, accidentally kicking a small rock into the water. The splash broke Daphne out of her shock.
She tentatively stepped into the chamber, and took a look around the chamber noticing the snake heads that lined the path to the sculptor of Salazaar Slytherin. She kept looking at the basalisk though.
"So how did you kill it?"
Harry went into a simple explanation of how Fawkes pretty much did most of the hard work for him and pecked out the eyes; he just kind of stumbled about and accidentally stabbed the snake in the head with the Sword of Gryffindor, getting bitten in the process. Fawkes saved him again there.
Daphne was gobsmacked. For one thing, because Harry had zero ability to embellish the tale at all. Heck, he gave most of the credit to Fawkes. She then asked how Harry got the Sword of Gryffindor, but he just shrugged at that. He didn't really know, he just found it in the sorting hat.
"I didn't really have time to explore last time, so lets go take a look around."
Daphne nodded. "Can we expect something to kill you?"
Harry just laughed. "I hope not, I've had enough of that."
They journeyed through the central chamber, there wasn't really anything there. Daphne wasn't really willing to walk through the sewers and Harry admitted that there wasn't anything back there.
It seemed disappointing that there wasn't really anything here, until Harry got a thought. He walked up to the sculpture of Slytherin and hissed out, "Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four."
The mouth opened up slowly, and Daphne came over to watch what was happening. The mouth opened and Harry gave a quick glance back at Daphne. He gave a quick gesture towards the mouth.
"You first, Potter."
Harry smiled. "Lumos!" With the bright wand light leading the way he stepped into the chamber. Harry didn't think anything was back here, especially with such a lethal snake taking up most of the space, but he followed the passage way down. Pulling out her own wand, she followed Harry down into the passage.
Wandering down the passageway for a bit, they eventually came to a fork. "Which way should we go?" Harry asked, wincing as his voiced echoed down the chamber.
"Lets go right." They took the right fork and came to a wide opening. Their wands illuminated a grim scene of various bones of small and large creatures alike. At least there didn't appear to be any human bones down there.
"This must be where the snake nested. Lets go back." They headed back down the passageway and took the other fork. Slowly the passage way became less round and eventually they appeared to be in an ordinary looking corridor.
Harry looked around and saw a few doors lining the corridor. He picked the first one on his left and opened it.
Peeking inside, it was an ornately decorated bedchamber, largely green and silver; it reminded him of the Slytherin Common Room. Harry closed the door and turned around, Daphne had opened a door on the opposite side of the hallway and then slipped in.
Harry followed her into the door, and nearly bumped into Daphne, looking around in awe. Harry looked into the room, to see what Daphne was amazed at. He couldn't believe what he saw. The room was a potions chamber, full of cauldrons of all sorts and cabinets. What really amazed the two of them was the magical field that lined one wall of the room. Behind the the field a magical fire burned in midair on one side, the fire spat out a wooden plank which fell to the floor with a clatter, still on fire. On the opposite side of the fire, in a dark corner, they could just make out some what appeared to be embers.
They walked up to get a closer look. Even through the field they could feel the heat.
"Ashwinder eggs." Daphne stated. Looking at the distinct glow that made the eggs look like embers. Daphne looked over the field, and the little platforms behind the field. "Looks like Slytherin found a way to harvest Ashwinder eggs."
They moved over to the edge, Daphne looked along the wall and found what she was looking for. The shield wall was powered by runes. She bent down to inspect the runes, though she quickly realized that these were way above the fourth year runes class.
"Ah, Greengrass?"
"Hang on, Potter." Daphne gently blew on the rune stone and cleared away the dust around it to get a better image. Perhaps she could copy the runic array and get Professor Babbling to look at it.
"Uhm... Greengrass, you might want to see this."
Daphne was about to turn around when she noticed the dull glow of the runes. She leaned over closer to inspect it. The dull glow increased slightly, before the rune seemed to crack slightly. The stone the runes were carved on had hairline cracks all over it, and some of the cracks started enlarging before her eyes.
Daphne's eyes widened as she stumbled back, falling to the floor. "Potter, the runes about to give out!" she shouted in warning.
"What? What about runes?" Harry asked, attention still focused on the fire. "Nevermind the runes Greengrass, the fire just created an Ashwinder."
That couldn't be a good combo. The flaming snake unwound it self from the ashes of the piece of wood earlier and hissed at the two people in the room and lunged at them—only to be stopped short by the field. The field however flickered and sputtered out. The rune stone in the corner of the room cracked apart. The snake reared back to strike again, this time without the glowing wall between itself and its targets.
The snake lashed out again. Harry's reflexed saved him from getting torched by the fiery snake. He ducked as the snake sailed over him—right into a wooden supply cabinent. Harry turned to see the burning eyes look at him again.
Harry could smell the smoke that started rising out of the cabinet, which had started smoldering when the snake landed in it. Strange scents tickled their noses too, the small of various dried potion ingredients adding fuel to the fire.
"We have to get out of here!" Daphne called out, scrambling back to her feet.
The snake lunged again, this time Harry decided to stand his ground. Casting the first spell that came to his mind and fired a stream of water at the lunging snake.
Steam burst forth as the water evaporating on contact, stinging Harry's and Daphne's skin with heat. The steam added to the smokey room and made it harder to see. Harry couldn't see the snake anymore, but he could still hear the angry hissing.
Instead of putting out the fire and the snake. The fire had evaporated all of the water. Harry noticed that Daphne had crawled over to him. Harry crouched down too, avoiding the smokey air that filled most of the top of the room. Together they headed towards the door.
A hissing was the only warning they got of an impending attack. Daphne saw the outline of a cauldron sitting on the table, with a swish and flick she levitated the cauldron to where she thought the snake was. When a clang and an angry hiss indicated her success she flipped the cauldron over, trapping the snake underneath.
They didn't have any time to celebrate their success against the snake though as smoke was rapidly filling the room. They spotted the bottom portion of the door across the room and made a mad dash towards it.
Moments later they tumbled out the door. An absentminded door locking spell from Daphne slammed the door shut behind them.
They spent the next few minutes coughing up the smoke that they had inhaled, and breathing in the semi-fresh air of the corridor.
"Are all of your adventures this exciting, Potter?"
"Well, compared to basalisks and dementors, Ashwinders seem pretty tame."
Harry stood up and moved towards another door, peeking inside.
Daphne looked on, shocked. "Haven't you had enough excitement, and now you are throwing open other doors?"
Harry gave her a wide grin. "Don't you want to see Slytherin's library?"
He disappeared into the room. Daphne begrudgingly got up, curiosity getting the better of her; she followed him into the room.
-v-
WC: 1400 ish
A/N: Ashwinders are confusing. They lay eggs but they are actually born from the remains of magical fires? So like do the eggs actually ever produce Ashwinders? Do Ashwinders even mate? Are there Ashwinders that last longer than an hour? Do they hiss in Parseltongue[I wrote this under the impression that being strange fiery things that weren't technically living that they didn't speak understand Parseltongue]?
Yeah… something something. Fiery snakes are neat though, so have fiery snakes. Next two prompts (being romance and family) should be coming soonish (like hopefully later this week).