The Hall of the Serpent King
Harry rushed to Ginny's side. She was face down on the cold stone, looking for all the world as if she'd abruptly fallen dead. The only sign she lived was the occasional, tiny puff of vapour from her mouth; her breathing was so shallow Harry couldn't see it otherwise.
He checked her over thoroughly, trying to remember Patricia's abandoned first aid lesson, trying not to panic.
Pulse: He couldn't find one.
Breathing: Barely.
Temperature: Cold. Really cold. Deathly cold.
He nudged her, hard, and got nothing for the effort. When he rolled her over to the recovery position, with some effort as she was such a dead weight, he found she had been laying on a black leather book; it fell from her limp hands. He tossed it to one side, having better things to do than read, and in doing so smacked it into Hermione's shin. If she hadn't yelped he wouldn't have noticed at all.
She knelt down beside him, cloak thrown back, holding the book; absently tracing it with her fingers.
"Is it Ginny?"
"Yeah, she's… she's alive, but she's so cold."
"Tom Riddle," Hermione muttered.
"What?"
"Oh, uh, the book. Tom Riddle's Diary."
"Does that matter right now?" he snapped.
"No," Hermione agreed quickly, tucking the book under her arm. "Is she injured?"
"Nothing I can find… No blood, no… anything. What happened to her?"
"You cannot help her now," a grandiose, unfamiliar voice declared.
Harry span to face the newcomer, and saw a student lurking in the shadows - a sixth year maybe, with slick hair, crisp clothes and a superior bearing to match his voice.
"What's happening to her?" he asked, hoping an older boy would have more of a clue than he did.
"Her life force is being drained. It takes an awful lot to repair the damage to a soul; everything she has to give, in fact."
Harry had little idea what he meant; he just knew what was needed.
"How do we stop it?"
"We?" the boy chuckled, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Help me stop it!"
"Why would I do that, when it is my soul she's fuelling?"
The boy stepped forward into the light, and Harry saw that he wasn't entirely there; he shimmered at the edges like a ghost. He raised a hand in front of his face, and Harry could just barely make out his eyes through the hand. He and Hermione stood as one to face the boy, wands raised.
"Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry. Such a fool. She told me all about you, you know? All about her little crush; about how she could never get your attention, not over your mudblood girl. It was your spurning of her after the game which finally drove her into my total control; I suppose I should thank you. You, though," he growled at Hermione as he paced across the room to put Ginny between them, eyes drawn to the book in her grip, "you have been nothing but a thorn in my side. All your research, and your escaping, and it was you who brought the aurors and the roosters, wasn't it? I expect you think yourself clever. So clever, to have come down to my domain, just the two of you. No help, no plan, only two feckless Gryffindors sticking their noses into business which does not concern them! It never changes, I see. Not without being changed. Not without me."
"Who are you?" Harry challenged.
"Oh, don't worry, you'll know my name soon enough. Although, no… No, you won't be there to bear witness, will you? Very well, would like me to reveal a little secret? It is a very good one; I would say you'll be impressed, but I fear you haven't the brains to understand the sheer complexity of my brilliance."
"Get on with it," Hermione seethed, her wand twitching.
"In my own time, dear. Do not forget who is in charge here - who is your better. I have waited so long for this moment; you will not ruin it. You cannot. My glorious return is close at hand. So, Harry, to your question; who, am, I? Allow me to enlighten you."
He waved his hand, as if he held a wand, and in the frigid air before him fiery letters traced out his movements to spell 'Tom Marvolo Riddle'.
"That is my name. Tom Marvolo Riddle," he spat. "Named for my father, the useless swine. I never liked it, so I chose a new name: A more fitting name."
He waved his hand again, and the letters twisted at his command. He read them out as they reassembled.
"I. Am. Lord. Voldemort."
Harry lashed out, unthinking, with a bolt of fire. It sailed right through the boy like he wasn't there. He laughed, a cruel sound devoid of any true mirth, and flicked his wrist to send a bolt back at Harry. There was no chance to dodge it, but also no need - it passed through him with nary a tingle.
"Greetings, Harry Potter," Voldemort laughed. "I'm told you're the boy who vanquished me. Only, I don't feel particularly vanquished." - he patted himself down, clearly solid to his own spectral hands - "Why, I'm more alive by the second; Quite unlike your parents. Do you think they would be disappointed in you? They gave their lives to protect you, and now here you are, running right back to me so I can finish the job. What a waste."
"You take that back!" Harry screamed, his blood boiling, his magic bubbling like it might burst out at any moment to attack of its own accord.
"Why should I?"
"They'd be proud!"
"Would they? Are you sure? I did not realise you ever even knew them. I never knew my parents either - I know what it is like," Tom shared, softly - almost fatherly. "How it feels not to be wanted. How it feels to have your mother die pointlessly, just when you need her most. To be abandoned, forgotten, left to rot among muggles who hate you for what you are; hate you for being superior. What did they call you, Harry? Outsider? Heathen? Freak?" - Harry twitched, and Tom grinned sadistically - "Had things been just a little different, we could have made quite the team, I think. We could have shown them all the price of their betrayals."
"We would never be a team."
"So arrogant," Tom scoffed. "So small-minded. It's little wonder you didn't make it into Slytherin, even with your serpentine gift."
"I didn't want to be a treacherous little snake!"
Harry took a step forward, placing himself over Ginny.
"Then you misunderstand how the world works!" Tom thundered. "People are not good, nor brave, nor loyal! Those who pretend to be are those who will be trodden underfoot by the ones they would call friends! The only path you can trust is the one you lay for yourself! The only dagger which cannot stab you in the back is the one you hold out before you! This is the dark truth of the human soul, and it does not go away because foolish children are too scared or stupid to confront it!"
Harry felt a stab of an unexpected emotion: Pity. Tom had clearly been twisted to hate the world; he had not been born that way. That he couldn't see the good in people, something even Harry had never lost sight of… How much had he suffered?
"Don't believe me? Ask your mudblood," Tom said, and just like that any sympathy growing in Harry's heart was dug out, roots and all. "Did she lose her sight by looking out for number one? Was it selfishness which cost her so dearly?"
"She won't agree with your lies either! Tell him, Hermione."
He looked to Hermione at his side, and found her disturbed, mouth moving as she breathlessly muttered, her wand arm wavering. He placed a hand on her elbow.
"Hermione?"
"I think," she fumed, "you've said enough, Riddle."
"Now that we can agree on," he said, clapping his hands together silently. "As enjoyable as this has been, it is all rather moot, is it not? Why waste my breath on those about to die?"
"What are you going to do?" Harry taunted, with confidence born purely of anger. "Your spell didn't work."
"What am I going to do? Nothing - not directly. But then, I never needed to, did I? It has been some time since my pet's last snack, and she is ever so hungry." - he looked over his shoulder, and when he spoke next it was with a sibilant hiss - "Supreme serpent, show yourself. Suppertime."
The great bust behind him creaked, rumbled, and slowly opened its mouth. Harry heard a jubilant hiss, no words, just pure anticipation, and screwed his eyes shut. Tom laughed. Harry trembled.
"Harry, focus," Hermione snapped beside him, grabbing his hand. "We have to fight it."
"Fight?"
"We can't outrun it."
"How do we fight…?"
"Fumos!" she whispered. "Augmenosensus!" - his senses remained normal, she must have cast on herself - "Eyes closed Harry? Lumos maxima!"
Even with his eyes tightly shut, even with Hermione stepping back to stand behind him, he saw her brilliant wandlight. It was like a sun had been born in that dark chamber; he could hear her wand humming at the power she was pushing through it. Tom and his snake alike hissed in pain. The light dimmed slightly after a moment as Hermione took another step back.
"Harry, you have to open your eyes," she whispered nervously.
"But the basilisk?"
"I'm blinding it. It will have its eyes closed. I hope."
He got the feeling he wasn't meant to hear the last part, but then it wasn't as if he had any better ideas, or any chance of fighting a basilisk he couldn't see. Or any real chance of fighting one he could see, though he tried not to get lost in that beckoning hopelessness as he squinted one eye open.
The basilisk was waving its arrow-tip head about, furious at the light which blossomed in Hermione's smokecloud. Harry stood at the edge of the cloud, half concealed but able to see out well enough. Able to see the basilisk held its eyes shut. The chamber was viciously bright, light lancing off every wet surface; even the basilisk's scales shined liked mirrors under its intensity.
Thousands of scales. Thousands upon thousands were needed to cover its terrifying immensity. It thrashed once more, then quieted, forking a tongue the size of Harry's arm into the air.
"It can smell us," he told Hermione over his shoulder, hoping she had some trick up her sleeve for that.
"Oh, this is going to be foul," she groaned, before casting, "fetori fumos!"
The smokescreen rolled forward, sinking lower and thinning out, but still almost blinding Harry due to the light diffusing through it. His first whiff of it did blind him briefly, his eyes watering and his throat closing up even as he tried to gag. The only mercy was the basilisk suffered similarly.
And grew even more enraged.
It surged forward, baring its terrible fangs and hissing a curse too visceral to translate to human tongue. Harry skipped left, not wanting to be found in the last place it had seen him, and by the play of light Hermione scattered right. It was so hard not to look her way; to check she was making it to some scant safety. Fortunately, his instincts were equally screaming at him to never take his eyes of the massive predator out for his blood.
As it dived through the spot they had been standing in, Harry saw the problem at once - it wasn't as if he could miss it, because he was now looking in Hermione's direction anyway, and it was like staring into a dozen suns. He had to close his eyes before the basilisk's body stopped occluding the light's point of origin, and charge across the chamber toward her, desperate to put her at his back once more. If he didn't, he would stay blind; and the basilisk wouldn't.
He made it to her, and was doubly glad he did as the basilisk turned, lightning fast, and smashed headfirst into the buttress he had just been stood before. His jaw dropped as the heavy stonework came off far worse than the snake.
"Kill them!" Tom shouted, presumably in parseltongue, though Harry was too distracted to distinguish.
"Rip, tear, consume!" the basilisk agreed.
"How do I fight that!?" Harry asked Hermione, then wished he hadn't as it locked onto his voice immediately.
Hermione said nothing, which was a smarter approach to hiding. Harry thought fast and threw a spell, or more a ball of unfocused magic, into the next buttress along. The snake's head twitched, but it stayed focused on him as it slowly but inexorably advanced. Harry tried again, this time laying a whole spread of impacts along the ground, hoping they might sound like footsteps. The snake took the bait - he almost ruined it sighing with relief as it turned aside.
In the moment of relative calm, Hermione's hand found his shoulder, then her head popped forward just over it.
"Blasting or piercing hex into the mouth?" she whispered uncertainly.
The little whimper she gave when he reminded her he didn't know either spell was not encouraging. The basilisk turning to come back their way was infinitely worse. Hermione had blinded it, confused its sense of smell, and yet it hunted them still. Her wand was tied up maintaining a powerful lumos he knew she couldn't fuel for long, so it fell to him to fight.
A task he was failing miserably at. The lives of two of his friends lay in his hands, and what could he do? He wished he'd paid more attention to Patricia, and not pissed her off so she could have taught her sooner. He wished he'd seen through Lockhart and gone for a proper teacher. The only decision he didn't regret was sending Luna for help; it meant she wasn't down there with them. It meant he wasn't going to die along with three friends.
Despairing, but defiant, Harry stepped fully between the basilisk and Hermione. If he was going to die, he could at least go out like a hero. Maybe it would be sated eating him, and spare her? Stupid thinking, but he didn't have a better shot than that. The light of her lumos was faltering, and the basilisk's eyes were twitching as it slithered closer, so Harry closed his own. It felt so wrong, depriving himself of his senses; his instincts screamed at him to open his eyes, to keep them fixed on the predator coming to kill him, but he knew he couldn't.
How does Hermione do this?
He knew the literal answer, of course; he knew what he was going to have to do. He couldn't see the basilisk, but it was fifty feet and who knew how many tonnes of beast; he could hear it. Or he could have, if his own ragged breathing wasn't drowning it out - he took one deep, vile breath and held it, savouring it as his last.
The basilisk was closing slowly, by the sweeps of its body across the stones and the mighty blasts of air as it breathed. Then the sweeps stopped, Harry felt its next exhalation, and there came a mighty crack of stone as it launched itself forward. He swept his wand up in both hands, stretched it before him and wished for a magical miracle.
Raw magic - his magic, but so much more than he'd ever felt - pulsed through his suddenly scorching wand. A loud crack; a wet squelch; scalding liquid sprayed over his face; and he was slammed backwards onto Hermione by the dead weight of a falling basilisk.
Hermione heard the serpent lunge, and on pure instinct lifted her left hand and the diary it held in front of her face as a pointless shield. A weight crashed into her midriff, as a greater weight fell upon her lower legs, pinning her to the floor. One of her fingers upon the diary erupted in pain as though thrust into a fire. Her scream harmonised with that of Tom Riddle as a wave of impure magic washed over her, assaulting her bones, core, and mind.
Icy claws latched onto the edge of her consciousness as if it were a physical entity; storm clouds gathered over the library of her memory palace; some dark and twisted thing chased her through its hallowed halls. There was somewhere else she should be, she half-remembered, but fear demanded her full attention.
No matter how fast she ran, it stayed right there with her, just over her shoulder. No matter how she tried to mislead it through the maze of corridors, it knew where she was, and on it came. When she reached the deepest recesses, the final vaulted hall, she had no choice but to turn and face it.
It had no face, and barely any form, just a dark smoky wisp which looked vaguely humanoid. It was much less terrifying when beheld; her fear gained an edge of anger as she made her stand. Somewhere in distant parts of the library, a pack of lions growled.
"This is my mind," she declared, voice wavering a little. "Whatever you are, you are not welcome here."
"You think you can force me out?" the shade laughed. "You haven't the power."
"Get out!" she screamed, setting the chandeliers swinging and candles flickering. "Get out of my head!"
"I can feel your fear, girl. I taste it. Soon your fear will be over. Give in, Hermione Jean Granger, give in and it won't hurt at all."
Hermione backed away a step, and knocked into a bookshelf. A book fell, bounced once on the floor, and lay open. Most of the text was blurred, but one paragraph stood out crystal clear. One memory recalled, and just the one she needed. Well, my mind wasn't going to come up with something useless, was it?
"Fear is the mind killer," she whispered, reading the page, recognising the full message she was sending herself.
"I can make this so much more unpleasant, little girl," the shade threatened, floating closer.
"I will face my fear," she chanted under her breath. No time for the full thing, but she knew how to paraphrase.
"Come now, I tire of this."
"And when the fear is gone…" her voice rose, the wavering gone; the fear subsiding. "Only I shall remain."
"Petulant brat! I shall enjoy breaking you!"
"You shall break nothing!" Hermione cried, her words echoing from the walls of the library. Stubborn fury set the very stones to whisper her decree. "You are in my mind, my palace; here I am Queen."
"You dare to-"
"What a fool you are!" Hermione thundered, drowning out the shade as her voice cracked like thunder, shaking books from their shelves. "To think you have power here! What can you possibly do to me?"
She was drawing from an anger that was distant, removed, yet very much hers. Like a rage left over from a dream. Or was this the dream, and the rage bleeding in from reality? Either way, it was there, it was hers, and it was overwhelming.
The shade raised an arm and screeched at her challenge; a bolt of green light, laced with shadow, shot toward her. With a thought she summoned a desk into its path. The impact blasted the desk apart, but the splinters did not strike her, because she chose to have them not. Another bolt cast out; she allowed it to strike where she stood, but when it arrived she was already looking down at it from the balcony above. She had not run, nor jumped, nor apparated; she simply existed somewhere else. What did rules of time and space matter to a Goddess within her realm of creation?
"Foolish girl! You cannot win!"
Hermione ignored the intruder's empty words. Reaching out her arm, she flexed her fingers and as they bent so too did the pillars holding up the roof, only they no longer were needed to keep it aloft; she was granting them new purpose. They curled about the shade, closing in to crush the infestation. The pest was wily though; it flowed into an indistinct black cloud, slipped between the pillars as they ground together, and rose to coalesce on the balcony opposite.
The shade glared at her, and she could feel its fury at her defiance. She could feel everything, in fact - she didn't need to see its arm rise to know another green bolt was coming, didn't need to see the red of its eyes to know it was focused utterly on her. She didn't need to see at all, so she closed her eyes, and suddenly the shade could not see her either. That was how things worked in her palace. She willed it so.
She could even feel that the shade could not feel her in return.
An instant later, or perhaps sooner, she stood behind it with one hand firmly upon its shoulder. It swiped at her with a clawed hand, but the talon passed through her without resistance. She could touch it, but that did not mean she allowed it to touch her.
"This is my mind. You are not welcome in my mind."
Then they stood upon a white shale beach, salted air in her breaths and the library towering behind her. Out to sea there were no boats on the waves, nor birds in the sky, nor fish below; to chart those waters was to leave the mind of Hermione Granger. What lay beyond the shore she could not know.
"You cannot push me out," the shade snarled, shifting through itself to face her. "I will not leave! I will not! If I cannot have you, I will tear you apart!"
"You may try," she challenged.
Cackling madly, it pushed its dark power out into the landscape. Great ravines tore open, buildings fell, though not the library, never the library, as the ground trembled. Hermione felt the pain of the damage lance through her head, and then she didn't. The ravines were gone with the pain, leaving no trace of their opening. Why hurt when you can choose not to?
"What magic is this?" the pest hissed, shaken for the first time, taking her seriously only when it was far too late.
"No magic necessary, Tom," she answered, because that was his name. He took on the form of the spirit in the chamber when she spoke it. "But I am told I have a very active imagination. Now, I imagine you have other places to be."
She took hold of his wrists, and they left her mindscape together. Hermione knew she was back in reality when the pain in her body refused to go away. She knew Tom was back too, when his disembodied spirit, if that was what she had faced, gave a wrenching wail as she cast it into the aether. In a second he was truly gone, and the chamber fell silent but for the shallow, rasping breaths of the boy laid out across her stomach.
Harry!
Her flush of triumph died before she could understand what it represented; her best friend was collapsed upon her, pinned beneath the basilisk he had apparently managed to kill, and he was badly injured. Hermione had never heard a collapsed lung before, but there was little else could cause the deathly rattle from his throat. She fervently hoped that was the worst of it, and that whatever had just occurred in her head had taken moments, not minutes. Harry might not have minutes.
"Episkey," she hissed, before realising she wasn't holding her wand. She had held it before being crashed into, she was sure. Her hands cast about the floor wildly - when she found it she nearly knocked it out of reach. Clutching it tightly, she tried to cast again. She had no clue what his injuries were, nor where to point her wand to treat them, but she cast all the same. Her magic was so drained she felt herself at the verge of collapsing, her mind going fuzzy under the effort, but she cast all the same.
Her finger felt as though she had thrust it into a box of razor sharp ice shards, and she should probably cast an episkey on that too, but she couldn't spare the magic. Every last ounce of power in her body went into healing Harry, and when she was spent, she gathered him up in her arms, raising his head to try to ease his breathing. It still rattled, and she thought she heard gurgling in there too. She could only hope one of her episkeys had sealed whatever wound was bleeding into his airways.
The dying boy in her arms - some cold part of her admitted she was losing him, even as she riled against that fate - coughed and stirred.
"Hermione?" he croaked. He sounded so weak.
"I'm here Harry," she sobbed. "I'm here."
"It hurts."
"I know."
"Are you ok?"
"I'm ok. You saved me Harry."
She felt it was important for him to know that.
"That's good," he sighed, shuddering weakly. "I feel cold."
"Stay with me Harry," she begged. "Stay with me."
"Am I dying?" he asked, and she could tell he knew the answer already.
She was thankful she wouldn't have to say it.
"Please don't."
She felt so useless. So powerless. Nearly two years of reading every magical healing book she could find, and what could she do? Harry was dying in her arms, and what could she do?
"It's ok. It's ok. I don't mind."
What the hell is that meant to mean? Why is he the one trying to comfort me right now?"
"Did Ginny make it? Did we save her?" he asked.
Hermione had no idea; she hadn't even thought about her other friend since the basilisk came out. With Tom gone, Ginny should be alive… she couldn't have died while she was still fuelling his return to the flesh. Right?
"Yeah," she lied, "we saved her. We did good."
"That's good."
Hermione had nothing left to say, except goodbye, and she couldn't get those words to pass her lips.
"I'm cold."
His invisibility cloak was still draped about her shoulders; she took it off and pulled it over him, too tired to cast a warming charm. The thought that she would soon be lifting it over his head as well intruded and refused to leave.
"Thank you, Hermione," he whispered, his voice almost failing him. "For everything. You were… brilliant."
"I should be thanking you, Harry. You saved me."
His reply was a shuddering exhalation, and to fall still.
"Harry? Harry?"
Fighting back the sobs that threatened to wrack her body, she pulled the cloak over his face, then cradled his body even closer to her chest. She wanted nothing more than for him to push her off, complaining about the intimacy of it all, but that was wishful thinking: He would never do so again; he would never go charging into the fray to defend her again; he would never wish her good morning, or goodnight, or good luck trawling the library again.
Harry Potter, her first true friend, was gone.
He's gone.
Her chest convulsed as something broke inside her. It felt physical - like her heart was ripping itself in two.
He's really gone.
Another convulsion forced a little air from her lungs, and it tore from her throat as a short, violent screech. Something about that sound was fitting - it was right. There were no words for the tempest in her head, but that sound… it was the sound of a weak little girl, alone and helpless and breaking. It fit. It was the perfect sound for anger, too, and she was seething. How dare Tom, and that blasted snake, and the stupid useless faculty, and Ginny! Damn all of them, and herself to boot; they had killed him, or failed him, and which was truly worse she could not say.
There she was, cradling the body of the friend she failed, and she couldn't even shed a tear for him. So instead, she screamed. By Merlin did she scream; her wails echoed in the chamber as she poured forth all her shock and sorrow and smouldering rage. When she grew dizzy, she paused to breathe, then screamed again. When her throat closed up in pain, she rasped out one last wheezing dirge, in defiance of her failing body, because Harry deserved more.
Then, with nothing left to fight for and the echoes of her pain falling silent, she let her exhaustion cast her into the sweet oblivion of sleep. She didn't want to ever wake. She didn't deserve to.
A/N
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The End.
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Nah, next chapter in two days. Another thanks to my reviewers, you lot keep me going. :)