Harry and the Pirates, Chapter 38

Into the Chamber

by Technomad

Every Slytherin felt ice down his or her back at the words. While Pansy was a dedicated pain-in-the-ass, they didn't want to see her dead.

Draco Malfoy broke the silence. "She's my fiancee. I'm going after her!" The others stared at him as though he'd just announced that he was transferring to Hufflepuff House or had decided to undergo a sex-change. Draco was usually a dedicated believer in "All for one, and that one is Draco Malfoy!" This was literally unprecedented.

Harry stepped up. "You aren't going alone, Draco. I'll go in with you."

"You?" Draco gaped at Harry. "But you despise me."

"Don't feel bad, Draco. We all despise you," Ron said, putting his arm around Draco's shoulders in a pals-together way as the others made agreeing noises. "But on this, we stick together. I'll be right with you."

"And me," said Hermione. "If there is a basilisk down there, I know of some countermeasures that might be able to deal with it."

"If Harry goes, I go too," said Dudley. He turned to Luna, who looked as though she wanted to say something. "And you are staying behind, Luna-moth. Harry and I are used to danger. We live in a dangerous place. I couldn't bear it if something happened to you."

"That's sweet of you, Dudley," Luna said. Harry regarded her narrowly. She had not said that she was actually staying behind…

"In any case, we're wasting time we don't have! There's ropes in the storerooms. Get them! Dudley and I can rig rappells. The Chamber's almost certainly below the castle, proper," Harry snapped, and people leaped to obey his orders. He and his friends had earned Slytherin House's respect the previous year by taking down trolls, and it was generally understood that second-years or no second-years, when he and his friends took charge, it was better to obey.

Soon, the search party was gathered in Myrtle's loo. Myrtle, herself, looked unsettled at this invasion, particularly since so many of them were male, but the Bloody Baron's gimlet eye ensured that whatever thoughts she had in her so-called mind stayed unspoken.

"Search for anything that could be a hidden door!" At that command, the searchers spread out, examining literally every inch of the room, testing cracks in the walls with their pocket knives to see if they could be widened, and all but checking with magnifying glasses.

Hermione, alone, did not join in the search. She looked around the room narrowly, then strolled over to Myrtle. "Myrtle, dear, could you be a love and tell me which stall you were in when you died?"

Swelling with importance at being consulted, Myrtle led Hermione over to a stall. Hermione looked at the stall, then toward the center of the round room. Hermione went over, carefully looking at the sinks that dominated the center of the room. She peered at them, examining each one closely. Then she let out a piercing whistle. Everybody stopped dead to hear what she had to say.

"Harry? Take a look at this." Harry, with Dudley and Ron in tow, came over to see what Hermione had found. "See that? There's a serpent scratched on it."

Sure enough, on the copper tap, there was a rather well-drawn snake. Hermione scrunched up her face in thought. "It occurs to me, Harry, that the password, or whatever, might be in Parseltongue. Could you try to say something in it?"

Harry nodded. "Open," he said, but the secret entrance, if there was one, stayed firmly shut. Hermione gave him a fond, exasperated look. "That was in English, Harry. I could understand it."

"I think I need a snake. A real one."

"Great! And just where are we going to find a snake?" By now, everybody was watching this byplay; whatever Hermione had found seemed more promising than probing the walls and floors endlessly.

"Allow me!" With a flourish, Draco stepped forward, waved his wand, and intoned "Serpensortia!" A large snake appeared in the sink. Hermione, Dudley, Harry and everybody else stared at him. He preened under their attention. "Snape taught me that spell. I was going to use it in the next duelling tournament."

"Bloody favoritism," Ron muttered. "Draco, when this is all over, could you show me that one? Looks dead useful!" He grinned evilly. "I have this unpleasant aunt who hates snakes! Next time she visits…"

"We're. Wasting. Time!" snapped Hermione. "Harry! Try talking to the snake in Parseltongue! See if you can come up with a password that opens that passage!"

"Uh, okay." Feeling like an utter fool, and disliking being stared at, Harry began: "Uh, open sesame? Open up?" Much to everyone's surprise, the sink rose up, revealing a vertical shaft going down. "Blimey!"

"Note to self," they heard Ron mutter, "do not argue with Hermione. She's generally right." Hermione looked very smug for a second, before remembering that this was serious business.

Ginny and Luna came back in, toting coils of rope. A second later, Lockhart burst into the room, a wild-eyed expression on his face, his wand in his hand. He swung the wand around to cover everybody at once. "Nobody move!" His face split in an ugly grin of triumph. "Don't think for a second I don't know who it was who plotted against me, who planted those stories in that hateful little magazine!" He jabbed his wand into Luna's back, and Harry had to signal to keep Dudley from going for their teacher's throat, wand or no wand. At that moment, Lockhart reminded Harry of people he'd seen in Roanapur…people who'd gone clean 'round the bend.

Lockhart giggled insanely. "Ah, and I see you've found the Chamber of Secrets itself! What a triumph that'll be for my next book…after I Obliviate the lot of you and throw you to whatever's down there!" His face twisted in a parody of sadness. "Oh, what a shame that I wasn't in time to save you…but this'll prove that I am really a great hero! And all those other people I Obliviated will have to shut up!" He grabbed Luna by the back of her collar, jerking her in close. "Starting with this one will be sweet, sweet revenge!"

Ginny saw her chance. Her hand darted for her waist, coming out with her own wand, and she screamed "Petrificus Totalus!" Lockhart froze in place, like a sculpture of "Insanity," and Luna pulled free, heedless of her collar ripping. Dudley ran forward and grabbed her, holding her tightly. Ginny looked on with an approving smile.

"I'm all right, Dudley. And I'm sorry about leading him here. We were just coming out of the storerooms with these ropes, when he came on us and had us covered with his wand. He forced us to lead him in here."

"Not your fault, Luna," Dudley reassured her, releasing her when he noticed that he was squeezing her so tightly that she couldn't breathe easily. "The fault is all his."

"Now that we've got him, what do we do with him?" asked Harry.

Hermione was pale. "We've attacked a teacher! We're going to be in so much trouble!"

Draco, of all people, reassured her. "He attacked a student first. We all witnessed him doing it. And after those exposes, I don't think he has much credibility left." Hermione looked somewhat relieved, but she was still plainly frightened.

"We're wasting time," Harry snapped. He gestured Dudley over, and they began rigging up a rappelling rig. "We'll go down first, one at a time, and then we'll lower the rest of you with our wands." He looked over at Lockhart, and smiled evilly. "Matter of fact, we'll bring our dear professor along, too. Dealing with evil beasts is his specialty, after all!"

That idea met with general approval. Once the rappelling rigs were ready, Harry went over the side, lowering himself in the way he'd been taught in Roanapur by Sergeant Boris. If it hadn't been quite so dark, and he hadn't been going into danger, he'd have enjoyed it. Rappelling, in his opinion, was worlds of fun.

After a longish drop, he found himself standing in a damp, muddy-smelling chamber, with a tunnel stretching off into the distance in front of him. "I'm down!" he called up. A few minutes later, Dudley was coming down the rope, soon standing by his side. "We're ready! Come on down, one at a time!"

One of the first people to come was Professor Lockhart. Petrified as he was, he was plainly terrified at what he'd got himself into; his eyes rolled madly. Finally, Ginny, Luna, Hermione, Ron and Draco had joined Harry and Dudley at the bottom of the shaft.

Ginny un-Petrified Lockhart, after making sure she had his wand. "Right, you prancing phony. It's time to live up to those lying books you wrote…or had written for you! Get on down that tunnel!" With a whimper, but clearly fully conscious of how many wands were trained on him, Lockhart stumbled off down the tunnel.

As they walked, their footsteps crunched on small bones, and Luna leaned down and picked one up. She examined it carefully by the light of her wand. "Some sort of small rodent. Most likely a rat," she decided. She tossed it aside. "Something's eating them. There's something or other alive down here."

"Or was." That was Ron. He was sticking close by Hermione, both of them with their wands out and lit, like the rest of their companions.

"Is," Harry said flatly. "I've heard something speaking Parseltongue in the walls. I'd say that some sort of snake lives down here."

"A basilisk is a 'kind of snake.'" That observation from Hermione killed conversation, and they slogged on in silence.

After a while, they came to a huge set of doors, with serpents carved in them. "Alohomora" did no good at opening them, so Harry gestured the others to one side.

He stared at the carved snakes, willing himself to see them as alive. When he spoke, "Open!" came out in Parseltongue, and the door slowly creaked open. With the door open, Ginny pointed ahead, and Gilderoy Lockhart entered the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry and Ginny exchanged glances. "Well…he is expendable, isn't he?" whispered Ginny. Harry nodded, making a mental note to himself to get to know this girl better. She had the right attitude to make it in Roanapur, and he looked forward to introducing his pal's sister to the outlaw town. Maybe someday…But right then, they had another problem to deal with.

The Chamber of Secrets was surprisingly large, and surprisingly dry. Harry wondered how it was kept dry, then reminded himself about the existence of magic. The Four Founders had been supremely skilled sorcerers, and he supposed that waterproofing an underground chamber was child's play to them.

At one end of the chamber, there was a large stone statue of a man in wizard's robes, with a rather monkey-like face. Hermione peered at it. "Is that Salazar Slytherin?" she asked.

"Beats me," said Draco, following her gaze. "But I think I see Pansy!" He ran to the dark bundle that lay between the feet of the statue, and the others followed. Sure enough, it was Pansy Parkinson, unconscious.

"Pansy! Wake up! Oh, please, wake up!" Draco's distress at his fiancee's condition was patently real, as he knelt by her and tried to revive her. Dudley turned to Harry.

"If Draco doesn't watch out, he'll turn into a human being one of these days," he muttered in Russian. Harry nodded, then caught his breath as a strange figure appeared…a dark-haired, handsome boy who seemed rather familiar, dressed in Hogwarts robes trimmed in green and white. He had been standing nearby, in the shadows.

"She won't wake, you know," the strange boy drawled, and Draco looked up, wild-eyed.

"What? What do you mean? Who are you, anyway?" Draco got up off the floor, his wand in his hand. "Who are you and what are you doing down here?"

"Me?" The boy seemed amused. "You should know who I am." He raised his own wand, and wrote in the air. The words "Tom Marvolo Riddle" formed, glowing in the dimness.

"What do you know about Lord Voldemort? He's supposed to be the Heir of Slytherin! Is he down here?" asked Harry, not caring that his use of the name startled or frightened his friends who'd been raised to say "You-know-who."

"Oh, Harry," purred Tom, "you are so entertainingly dense!" With a flick of his wand, the letters he'd drawn in the air rearranged themselves, to spell "I Am Lord Voldemort."

"That was a name I already used in my Hogwarts years," Tom explained, as the Slytherins gasped in horror and Lockhart, off in a corner and forgotten, whimpered with fear. "I wouldn't use my father's common, filthy, Muggle name! Not when I could come up with one that would be respected and feared, when I became the greatest wizard of all!"

"Let me get this straight," Ron drawled, from where he was helping Draco try vainly to revive Pansy. "You are the same bloke we know as…as…Voldemort?"

"That is correct, you red-headed tosswit." Tom bowed ironically. "To use words you've never heard before and won't ever hear again!"

"Oh?" Ron purred. He flicked his arm and his wand slid into his hand. "You do mean 'red-headed tosswit,' don't you, now?"

Tom sneered. "No, I meant 'you are correct.' Pansy here was nice enough to tell me all about you, when she was writing in her diary! My old diary!" He gave them all a triumphant grin. "I put part of my soul into that book, and it was easy to possess her!" His face twisted in an exaggerated moue of woe. "Dear Tommy, you're the only person who understands me! Dear Tommy, that Mudblood bitch I have to room with gets all the points and attention, just because she's smarter and everybody likes her! Dear Tommy, I'm affianced to a tow-headed egomaniac who's so in love with himself that when we get married, I'll have to take Polyjuice to look like him if I want to get shagged!"

"What?" shouted Draco. Everybody else was trying to suppress their giggles. "What did she say about me?"

In Russian, Dudley muttered to Harry: "Sounds like our Pansy…and she does know Draco well, doesn't she?" Harry nodded.

"But it was you I wanted most to meet," Tom went on, looking straight at Harry. "I want to know how you…a common, half-blooded brat of no distinction…managed to beat the greatest wizard who ever lived!"

"Me?" Harry said, in theatrical astonishment. "You mean to tell me that I defeated Dumbledore? Oh, come on now! There's no need to flatter me by telling me wild stories!"

"No! Me! I'm the greatest wizard who ever lived!" Tom was so angry, he nearly jumped up and down. "And I'll prove it! Speak to me, Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four!" The last sentence was in Parseltongue, and Harry heard a sound as of stone creaking against stone. He looked up to see the statue opening its mouth. Something moved inside…something with scales.

"The Basilisk!" Harry screamed. Everybody drew their wands.\

END