The night after the opening quidditch match, the Intruder Charm that Dumbledore had cast on Moaning Myrtle's loo went off.
He had altered the charm so that instead of sounding its alarm inside of the house (or bathroom, in this case) that it had been cast on like the charm normally did (so that the house's occupant would know that someone had entered inside the charm's boundaries and was likely trying to break into the house, or something similar), it instead sounded its alarm in the staff room, Dumbledore's circular office, and each of the staff living quarters (except Lockhart's, of course, as they all knew he was completely useless for anything more important than bragging about himself), so that they would all be alerted when someone entered that bathroom, instead of the person who had gone into the bathroom (whom they were trying to catch) being alerted like the charm normally would have done.
When everyone heard the alarm they quickly threw on their robes and grabbed their wands, before disillusioning themselves and sneaking down to the second floor. They gathered at the end of the corridor in question, waiting for a few minutes to make sure that it wasn't just some curfew-breaking student accidentally going in there to actually pee, before Dumbledore led them down the empty hallway to the door of Moaning Myrtle's out-of-order bathroom.
Quietly pushing the door open, they slipped inside. The bathroom was as still as ever, but across from the very last stall, where there should have been another sink in the long row of sinks on that side of the room, was instead an empty space, and a large, exposed pipe, wide enough for a man to slide into.
"That's the sink Potter and Granger found the snake etching on!" Professor McGonagall gasped in a whisper, as everyone quickly disillusioned themselves so that they could all see each other now that it was clear that the culprit wasn't in the bathroom itself.
"The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, no doubt," Dumbledore replied gravely.
"But how did no headmaster ever find it?" Ghost Binns asked in confusion. "Every headmaster through the ages has looked for this entrance and never found it."
"If I were to wager a guess — it can only be opened using parseltongue," Dumbledore answered. "Slytherin was the most famous parseltongue of all time, and it would explain why it hasn't been opened more often than it has — parselmouths are very rare indeed."
"So what do we do now?" Professor Flitwick asked.
"Aurora, Charity, stay up her and make sure no one comes in. The rest of us will go down and see what awaits us," Dumbledore answered. "And remember, we don't know what we're going to find down there, but it's dark enough magic to petrify a cat, and there is most likely a student under some kind of possession or spell down there to have set off the charm and opened the Chamber, so be alert and ready for anything."
Then they each jumped down the pipe, Dumbledore leading the way. At the bottom they found themselves in a pitch-black stone tunnel high enough for even Dumbledore to stand up in with his tall, pointed, stereotypical wizard's hat. Their quickly lit wands only showed a little ways down the tunnel, but they slowly began creeping their way forward, on the lookout for any motion and on the hearout for any noises. But they saw and heard nothing until their wand-light fell on a gigantic, vivid, poisonous green snake skin lying around a bend in the tunnel.
Pausing to study it, Dumbledore finally announced, "Basilisk skin. We now know what Slytherin's monster is, and what that means. Wait here a moment. Fawkes!"
There was a flash of fire, and suddenly Fawkes was fluttering in the air above him. The next second Dumbledore had grabbed onto the bird's long, golden tail feathers, and with another flash of fire the pair of them were gone. Up to Dumbledore's office where Dumbledore quickly grabbed the Sword of Gryffindor out of its glass case, before grabbing Fawkes' tail feathers again and reappearing down in the Chamber of Secrets.
Onward Dumbledore led them again, sword and wand held out in front of him, until finally the tunnel opened into a very long, dimly lit secret chamber. The floor was a dark green marble, and all along the sides stood towering stone pillars with carved serpents running up their lengths, supporting a ceiling lost in the gloom above them. At the far end of the chamber loomed a gigantic statue of Salazar Slytherin himself, and standing in front of that statue stood a short student with flaming red hair, hissing at the statue.
Pointing his wand and aiming carefully, Dumbledore silently thought 'Stupefy' — the girl dropped like a rock. But before the professors could begin crossing the chamber, the statue's giant stone mouth had already begun opening, and then a giant basilisk began uncoiling itself from inside, slithering out of the mouth.
Shutting their eyes tightly, the professors flattened themselves against the walls of the tunnel that they were still in, as Dumbledore shouted, "Fawkes! Take its eyes!"
Fawkes disappeared in a ball of fire again, before reappearing right over the snake's head, diving at it with his sharp talons and long, golden beak, until there was a shower of dark blood and the basilisk's eyeballs ceased to be, leaving the snake thrashing about and spitting in agony. Fawkes flew up to the top of the nearest pillar, where it gave a long sharp cry. Hearing Fawkes' signal, Dumbledore led the rest of the professors forward, no longer having to worry about the beast's deadly glare.
As soon as it heard the professors' echoing footsteps on the marble floor, the beast turned in their direction, sniffing the air. But as the professors had all fanned out across the chamber, it had a hard time pinpointing one exact person to attack. The professors began firing spells at it, which while ineffectual in actually hurting the beast, did serve to distract it for long enough that Dumbledore could leap out from behind a pillar and take a swipe at its neck with the Sword of Gryffindor.
The basilisk let out a great hiss as it swung away from the sting. The sword had barely managed to slice any of its thick scales, but its open-mouthed hiss allowed Professor Flitwick to cast a powerful spell straight into the fleshy back of its mouth, actually doing some damage. The professors continued on similarly for several long minutes, Dumbledore hacking away at its neck while the professors shot spells in its open mouth whenever they could to actually weaken it, and Fawkes flying all around its head still pecking at its eyes in order to distract it further. Until finally in its slowed, weakened state the basilisk swung its massive head low enough to the ground in the direction that Dumbledore was waiting, where he thrust the long, thin sword straight up the slit of the beast's nostril, clear to its brain. Blood gushed out in waves, and the snake thudded to the marble floor of the chamber with a ground-shaking thud.
It was dead.
Definitely not just resting. Or stunned. Or pinin' for the fjords. Or kipping on its back. He had passed on. Was no more. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet its Maker. He was a stiff. Bereft of life, he rested in peace. Pushing up the daisies, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
It was an ex-basilisk.
The danger dead and defeated (or possibly just sleeping), Dumbledore walked over to a still unconscious Ginevra Weasley, for that is whom the girl was, looking around to see if he could find whatever had caused her to unleash Slytherin's beast, or even get into the Chamber of Secrets in the first place. And lying next to her, having fallen out of her hand when she was hit by his Stunning Spell, was a small, thin, nondescript book with a shabby black cover. The date on the front said that it was fifty years old, placing it right in the time of the previous opening of the Chamber, so after casting several charms on it to make sure that it couldn't hurt him, he picked it up. On the very first page in smudged ink was the name 'T. M. Riddle', confirming his suspicions.
"It's Voldemort again," he said to the other professors, who had all walked up by that point. "He was using this diary to posses a student, in this case Miss Weasley."
"But how did she get it?" Professor McGonagall asked. "Where did it come from?"
Dumbledore thought hard for several seconds, before finally remembering something that McGonagall had told him after the first attack and asked, "Minerva, what exactly did you tell me after the first attack on Mrs Norris that Harry and his muggleborn friend had told you at the beginning of the year? About being warned that something bad was going to happen at Hogwarts this year?"
Professor McGonagall thought back for a second, before answering, "A house elf told Potter not to come back to Hogwarts because there was a plot to make terrible things happen here this year. Which I guess it turns out he was correct, as the Chamber opening again is definitely a terrible thing, or would have been if Potter and Granger hadn't figured out that the entrance was in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom."
"Do you remember the name of the house elf?" Dumbledore asked.
"It was…um…Dobby — yes, I believe they said the house elf's name was Dobby."
Dumbledore nodded his head gravely before calling out, "Hogwarts house elf!"
A second later there was an echoing crack, and one of the many Hogwarts house elves was standing before them.
"Headmaster called?" it squeaked.
"Do you know of a fellow house elf named Dobby?" Dumbledore asked. "And specifically whom he belongs to."
"Dobby! Yes, of course!" the house elf squeaked, before shaking its head sadly. "Poor Dobby. He belongs to the Malfoys. Such a nice house elf in such a terrible family."
"Malfoy?! Isn't that who the Weasleys got in a fight with over the summer at Flourish and Blotts that made the front page of the Prophet since Lockhart was there as well?" Professor Flitwick asked.
"Indeed — indeed," Dumbledore replied thoughtfully. "And we know that the Malfoys served Voldemort. Perhaps Mr Malfoy slipped this diary into young Miss Weasley's belongings during the fight, in an attempt to bring disgrace upon the unblemished name of Weasley. A plot Dobby had heard his Masters talking about, and wanted to keep Harry from having to be here for it."
"So now what do we do?" Professor McGonagall asked. "There's no way we can prove that Malfoy gave that diary to Miss Weasley, or that he knew what the diary could do."
"No, we cannot," Dumbledore answered. "But we can destroy this diary so that the Chamber can no longer be opened that way, and Voldemort can't posses any other students through this diary for any other purposes — besides the fact that the monster within has been destroyed, and will be killing and petrifying no more students."
And with that he carried the diary to the middle of the chamber and set it down on the marble floor, before backing up some and saying, "Bombarda!
"Reducto! Confringo! Expulso! Incendio! Diffindo! Finite Incantatem!"
Nothing worked. The diary sat there unchanged, still raggedy but no more so than before Dumbledore had started casting spells at it. But Dumbledore had one more idea. A very scary thought for sure, but one that he'd had his suspicions of ever since obtaining a certain memory from his dear friend Horace Slughorn, that would explain the possession of Miss Weasley and the reopening of the Chamber of Secrets. So taking the Sword of Gryffindor, he stabbed the book right in the heart. There was a long, piercing, echoing scream, and ink spurted out of the diary in torrents like a severed carotid, coating the floor around the diary in a black pool. When silence returned it was absolute except for the steady drip of ink still oozing out of the book, all of the other professors and Snape just staring at the diary in shock and incomprehension as Dumbledore sighed internally, now much more confident of what he'd feared beforehand.
But finally Dumbledore bent down and picked the destroyed book back up, before saying, "Let us levitate Miss Weasley back up to my office, and revive her there. We are done here."
Back through the tunnel they walked, before climbing back up the pipe to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom using the recesses built into both sides of the pipe to allow the opener of the Chamber to get back out again once they were done killing mudbloods and halfbloods. Once they had all stepped out of the pipe back into the abandoned bathroom, the sink that hid the pipe slid neatly back into place on its own, hiding the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets once more, detectable by (almost) no one.
In Dumbledore's office a few minutes later, after having sent all of the professors and Snape off to bed again, Dumbledore revived Ginevra Weasley. Once she was awake, he asked her to tell him everything. She explained how she had been writing in the diary ever since the beginning of the school year, and how it had been writing back to her. How twice now she'd had blank spaces that she couldn't remember any of, the second ending when he'd just reawoken her in his office.
When she was finished with her tale, Dumbledore solemnly nodded his head a few times before saying, "The diary was cursed, but it has been destroyed, and can hurt you no more. But I must insist you that you tell no one about any of this — we wouldn't want to create any unnecessary panic amongst the other students by telling them that there was a book in the school that could create memory loss."
And with that he sent her off to bed, confident that the Chamber and its secrets would remain securely under wraps forever, swept under the rug where he liked it.
~FS~
The following morning at breakfast, Dumbledore stood up to make an announcement.
"We are pleased to inform you that the culprit behind the petrification of Mrs Norris has been caught, and the Chamber of Secrets is closed for good. Mrs Norris will be safely revived by the end of the year once Madam Sprout's mandrakes have finished growing."
And with that he sat back down, clearly done with his announcement. There were a few scattered applauses that died quickly when everyone didn't join in applauding, no one really sure what exactly they were supposed to do, before everyone went back to eating. Everyone except FitzSimmons, that is, who would have really liked just a tiny bit more information — and were also done eating already anyway.
And it wasn't that everyone wasn't happy to hear the news that the Chamber of Secrets was closed and no one else was going to get petrified, it was just that there really wasn't any kind of public response to be made to the announcement that it was over, especially after the only incident that had happened was that the universally disliked Mrs Norris had been removed from the castle for the year, decreasing the efficiency of Filch in catching them breaking school rules. Everyone was going to of course talk about it amongst themselves, and start rumors on who the culprit had been, how they had got caught, and what exactly it was that they had been releasing from the Chamber of Secrets, but none of that was a reaction to make in the middle of the Great Hall after Dumbledore's announcement.
There did, however, start up quite a few private conversations amongst friends sitting together at the four House tables talking about exactly those things, including FitzSimmons at the end of the Gryffindor table.
"A cat is petrified, Voldemort may be involved, and all he can say is, 'the culprit's caught and it won't happen again'?" Fitz said to his wife in disbelief.
"Well, everyone here is just a student," Simmons answered slowly. "I mean, yes, obviously I want more information too, but when it comes down to it, that is probably about all you would normally tell eleven to eighteen year olds in a situation like this, especially if you are intentionally trying not to create panic and fear by saying what it was doing the petrifying, or who the culprit was, especially if it really was the bloke who all of these kids have been brainwashed by these very generations of adults into believing that they can't even say his name. Now, in our world, there's usually a lot more words used, so that it sounds all nice and pretty and meaningful, but in the end it still only says about the same amount — Dumbledore just actually cut straight to the chase and only said the information that he was willing to pass on, instead of padding his speech with a lot of verbiage that means nothing in the end and gives no more facts."
"Oh," Fitz replied. "I guess you're right. We've just known more than 99% of adults since we turned teenagers, and the 1% remaining knew how smart we were and told us all the relevant information — classified secrets not included, of course."
"We've always been different, Fitzy," Simmons answered softly with a tender smile, reaching over to rub her husband's back lightly. "Doctorates when you're sixteen and joining a spy organization will do that to you, especially when you've been amongst the six senior agents of said organization for nearly a decade, and technically the six founding agents of the organization if you consider Coulson's Shield to be a new organization from Fury's Shield."
"I know, I know," Fitz sighed. "I just never really think about it that way since we all know that I should never be put in charge of anything, even if I am technically a senior agent by default — the Framework proved that once and for all. But since we did tell them where the entrance was — presumably, at least — think Professor McGonagall will give us any real details?"
"Worth a shot," Simmons replied with a slight shrug. "And if nothing else, we'll probably learn something from what she refuses to tell us, and what she brushes over. But let's wait until she starts to leave, and make sure she isn't going to come to us to thank us for all our hard work enabling them to save the school from doom and despair — or, you know, something like that."
So when Professor McGonagall left the Great Hall thirty minutes later and on her way out didn't come by where they were sitting, FitzSimmons stood up and followed after her, tailing a little ways behind her to where she soon arrived at her office. Once she had entered and closed the door behind her, they walked up and knocked lightly. A second later it opened again, as Professor McGonagall hadn't even made it over to her desk to sit down yet before they knocked.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"We were hoping you would tell us more about catching the culprit and closing the Chamber of Secrets," Simmons replied. "After all, it was presumably because we showed you the snake tap in Myrtle's bathroom, but even if it wasn't and the timing was purely coincidental, we're still smarter and intellectually more mature than everyone else in this castle — probably combined — and we want to know."
Professor McGonagall stared at them in shock for several seconds, before moving on to chewing her lip for a few seconds thinking, before finally answering in the most obvious pass in the history of avoiding responsibility, "I will take you to Dumbledore's office, and he can tell you however much he deems appropriate."
A few minutes later Professor McGonagall had led them to a large and extremely ugly stone gargoyle. When Professor McGonagall gave it the password of 'lemon drop' it sprang to the side, and the wall behind it split in two revealing a rotating, stone spiral staircase. On this they stepped, riding it to the very top where they came to a landing in front of a gleaming oak door with a griffin-shaped brass knocker. Upon Professor McGonagall's knock it swung open on its own, revealing the beautiful, circular headmaster's office with silver instruments set all about on spindle-legged tables, magical portraits of old headmasters covering the walls, a bird with absolutely beautiful plumage definitely not nailed to a golden perch, and Dumbledore sitting behind his desk staring at paperwork that despite being in a magical world still didn't do itself. So it was with a very eager expression on his face that he looked up, any excuse to push it off until later more than welcome.
"Potter and Granger wanted to ask about the Chamber of Secrets, so I brought them to you," Professor McGonagall greeted sternly, before turning around and walking back out the door, leaving FitzSimmons standing in the middle of Dumbledore's office.
"Come in, come in, sit down," Dumbledore said cheerfully to the two Shield agents, pointing to the three chairs across from him at his desk. Once FitzSimmons were seated, he continued on, "First of all, Harry and Hermione, I want to thank you. Without your discovery of the tap in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, I doubt that we ever would have realized it was the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. I did have a question for you, though, Harry. When you discovered the tap, did you try saying anything to it to see if it would open?"
"Uh, no," Fitz answered in confusion. "Like what? Just telling it 'open', or giving it some password or something?"
"The snake carving didn't make you feel like you could talk to it at all, like it would understand you?" Dumbledore pressed on, in clear search of a particular answer.
"Talk to an inanimate object, or talk to a snake?" Simmons asked in return, thinking that she was beginning to catch on to what Dumbledore was fishing for.
Dumbledore glanced over at her slightly surprised, before relenting and saying, "As in feeling like you could talk to the snake, as if it was alive. Speak a language the snake could understand."
"No. Definitely not," Fitz answered shaking his head, as Simmons asked intrigued, "Is that possible? Can witches and wizards actually talk to animals? That's too cool! I thought it was just the Doctor being able to talk with cats."
"Well, it is generally considered a bad thing, and it is only snakes that an exclusive few wizards can talk to," Dumbledore answered, looking strangely at Fitz, almost as if he had for some reason expected Harry to be one of those exclusive few.
And in fact, Dumbledore very much expected Harry Potter to be one of those few, and was therefore very surprised that Harry hadn't had even the slightest stirring inside of him that he could talk to this snake scratching. Unless he was very much mistaken, Voldemort had transferred some of his own powers to Harry the night that he cursed the boy, accidentally putting a very specific, horcrux-y bit of himself inside of young Harry that night, and one of those powers should have been his ability to speak parseltongue.
But after a few moments of staring at Fitz curiously, Dumbledore continued on, "Well, as I was saying, thanks to you two we captured the culprit and closed the Chamber for good. Nothing else in the castle will be petrified."
"And who was the culprit, and how did you close the Chamber of Secrets for good?" Simmons asked, hoping to get at least something of an answer to any of their questions. "And what was it in the Chamber that petrified Mrs Norris?"
Dumbledore looked at them in silence for a long time, clearly debating how much to tell them, before finally sighing, "None of this is to leave this room, as I wouldn't want to panic any of the other students now that everything is safe, and the Ministry would not approve of me telling any students this. But as it was, Voldemort was using a cursed item to posses a student to open the Chamber for him, and release a basilisk. The rest of the professors and I were able to kill the basilisk and destroy the cursed item, so Voldemort can posses no one else to open the Chamber for him. And even if the Chamber could be opened again by some other means, there is nothing left in it to harm the school."
Knowing that they were going to get nothing more, and honestly a bit surprised that they had got as much as they had from the headmaster, FitzSimmons nodded politely and said, "Thank you, Professor Dumbledore."
"Very well, then — if there was nothing else you wanted to ask me?"
"No, Sir," Simmons answered, standing up. "That was all. And thank you again."
She did actually have something else that she wanted to ask him, or one of the professors, but she figured in the upheaval that catching the culprit must have been, they wouldn't have had time yet to thoroughly investigate the rogue bludger from the previous morning, so she wasn't about to try to ask that as well when she had got so much out of Dumbledore about the Chamber of Secrets — no reason to press their luck and potentially get no information about anything the next time around.
~FS~
But on the Saturday morning a whole week after the bludger had tried to take Fitz/Harry's head off at the first quidditch match, she figured that it had been plenty long enough to ask if they had at least made any progress on the threat.
So when Professor McGonagall left breakfast that morning they followed after her again, knocking on her door for the second time in seven days. And once inside, Simmons asked her, "Have you made any progress in your investigation into the out-of-control bludger that kept trying to kill Harry last week?"
McGonagall just sat there staring at them for the longest time, like they were completely out of their minds for thinking that there had been an 'investigation' into why some random bludger had acted abnormally one time, before finally saying dismissively, "You don't have to worry, we got rid of the bludger so it can't do it again at the next match — Harry will be perfectly safe."
But Simmons wasn't about to be dismissed when it had been her husband's life on the line, especially with no paradox version of him for her to rescue this time. Nor, for that matter, would she have been so easily dismissed if it had been any other student's life on the line. Snape, she might have let the Good Samaritan assassin get on with their job of removing a child abuser from the world, but never a student, not even a bully like Malfoy.
So leaping up from her seat, she exclaimed in disbelief and more than a little disgust at McGonagall and the rest of the staff, "There was a bludger exclusively targeting a fan, it could have killed him if he wasn't paying attention and as smart as we are, and you just 'got rid of it'?! You didn't spend a single moment of your precious time trying to figure out why the bloody fuck it was trying to kill a student?! Of all the monumentally stupid and reckless things that I have seen you idiot adults do at this castle, this has to be one of the worst! And you let Snape set foot inside these grounds, for god's sake! And I can't believe you didn't at least look into it as an assassination attempt of the Boy-Who-Lived, even if you didn't for the sake of protecting the rest of the students placed in your care! You can't expel him, I kind of thought you might want to at least keep him alive!"
As Fitz reached up from where he was still seated to rub his wife's lower back and bum soothingly (he could only reach so high, after all, and it was so very tempting and hidden from the professor in front of them's view), McGonagall seemed to at least absorb the last part of what Simmons had said, as she mumbled to herself in genuine confusion, "But why would someone try to use a bludger to kill Potter, when he doesn't even play quidditch?"
Then she looked directly at FitzSimmons and said sternly, "It is done, and the bludger has been destroyed. I am sure it will never happen again, as it has never happened before in the over half a century I have been a student and then professor here."
"Right...like it didn't happen last match," Fitz retorted sarcastically mostly to himself and little to his wife, as he knew that it wouldn't sink through McGonagall's thick skull, instead bouncing right off just as the bludger wouldn't have had it hit him.
Simmons, however, did answer McGonagall directly, saying coldly, "It certainly won't happen to us, as we won't be going to any more quidditch matches this year until someone can give us some answers!"
And with that she turned and fake stormed out of the room with Fitz quickly hurrying after her, leaving a shocked McGonagall just sitting there, unable to comprehend the idea that they wouldn't attend what was only the most important thing held at Hogwarts, with the possible exception of the House Cup, which they had already shown repeatedly that they didn't care about either.