Chapter 4
Hermione POV
"Potter, stop snickering and get behind Thomas. Weasley clean than dirt off of your nose and fix your tie.", snapped McGonagall as she eyed all her Gryffindors testily. Her appearance was somewhat antsy as they stood out on the lawn waiting for the other two schools to arrive.
"McGonagall looks like she's going to have an aneurysm if we have to stand here any longer", snickered Harry from next to her.
She gave him a glare at that but she didn't really mean it. She herself was getting antsy standing here not knowing what to expect.
"LOOK THERE! What is that", someone suddenly said, pointing towards the sky.
Like every other person on the lawn, she looked up, trying to spot it but at first she couldn't even spot anything but after looking around for it, she finally saw a small speck. It slowly seemed to be getting larger as it got closer but she could not tell what it was.
"I think it's a carriage", murmured Harry to her.
She tried her best to see if it was actually so but she still couldn't see any resemblance of a carriage.
It was only after a minute or two that she could finally make out that it was a carriage, a carriage pulled by enormous horses.
"It's a carriage!", yelled someone else finally for the rest of the people to figure out what they were staring at.
The carriage swooped down with grace and came to a running stop in front of the assembled students. Now that she could see it upclose, she had to admit the carriage was beautiful, and the horses that pulled it even more so. The carriage was everything that Cinderella's carriage in the children's books was but more. It was painted in a shimmering blue color with rich golden accents flowing throughout, and the horses, while beautiful in their own natural forms, were also decorated from head to toe in gold and blue. They had to be a herd of Abraxans she deduced, given their size and their likely origin in Northern France.
The carriage door swung open and steps appeared below the door, and immediately after an enormous figure walked down the steps. Her size matched that of Hagrid's but her steps were as elegant as any. She was dressed nice if not a little warm and carried herself with grace. She knew Hagrid was already in love if the way he was staring at her was any clue, but the large woman either didn't see him or chose to ignore him for now.
She was immediately followed down the carriage steps by a large group of people that were adorned in blue blue robes and berets. They all came down the steps one after the other and lined up behind the large woman. Students around her were quietly watching the procession unfold when the last girl stepped down from the carriage, and suddenly all eyes seemed to be focused on her.
She looked around her and noticed that it wasn't all the eyes that were focused on the last girl, it was only about half the eyes, which most notably belonged to mostly guys. Her eyes immediately snapped to Harry to check if he was acting like the rest of the male population, but he instead seemed to be staring around him with a bewildered face. For reasons she couldn't explain, she felt incredibly happy that Harry was unbothered by the girl.
"I think she's a veela Harry",she whispered to him to alleviate his confusion. She had concluded that it could be the only reason that the boys around them were acting so, unless she was a siren of some sort.
"Ah like the bulgarian cheerleaders during the world cup", he murmured back.
She looked back towards the people in blue and found that they had walked across the lawn to where Professor Dumbledore was and the large woman was now talking to him. After exchanging a few words, Dumbledore seemed to invite them in and Professor McGonagall escorted the group inside.
Almost as if on cue, someone from the crowd yelled out again.
"Over the water!"
She looked across the grounds to the lake and watched as an enormous mast broke the surface of the water, and soon along with it an entire ship. The vessel was painted almost entirely in blood red, and had huge white sails that hung from top to bottom. While definitely not as elegant of a transport as the other school, it was equally as impressive.
The ship got to the edge of the lake and neatly docked on the shore, and a bridge was lowered onto the ground. A man clad entirely in black strode across the bridge followed by students dressed in red combat uniform marching behind him. The group marched to Dumbledore like the previous delegation and they too were sent in with Professor Flitwick.
Dumbledore then beckoned the rest of the professors and they began herding the Hogwarts students back into the castle.
The feast had begun and so had the Triwizard tournament. Dumbledore had made some introductions and then announced the opening of the tournament before flourishing the tables with food. There were quite a few new dishes today, clearly meant to welcome their new guests even if neither school had decided to sit at the Gryffindor table.
Beauxbatons had chosen the Ravenclaw table and were mingling with the ravens sat around the table, whereas the Drunmstrang had decided to sit with the snakes at theirs. She could spy Viktor Krum talking to Malfoy as he ate his food and from how red Ron seemed to be getting down the table, he had clearly taken that as a personal insult from Krum.
"What is this?" asked Harry, as he warily eyed a bowl in front of him.
She pulled it towards herself and smelled it in delight as she ladled some out for herself.
"It's bouillabaisse Harry, a french dish that is delicious. It's like a stew of sorts", she replied as she dug in.
Harry seemed to take her word for it as he too heaped a serving and tried it.
"It's pretty good", he praised.
She only smiled and looked for more new food around her. She spotted a plate of kebapche in front of Dean that looked good. She'd had it before and remembered liking it. She was about to ask for it when a voice interrupted her.
" Are you done with 'he bouillabaisse?" someone asked from behind her.
She looked behind her and was met by the visage of the same girl from beauxbatons that had enthralled the male population earlier, and from a quick glance around the table right now as well.
Of course the lone exception seemed to be Harry who the girl had directed the question towards.
Harry grabbed the bowl in front of him and offered it to the girl and she saw a flicker of surprise pass through the girl's face but she quickly recovered.
"Merci", she replied as she grabbed the bowl and almost seemed to hesitate for a second before she headed back towards the Ravenclaw table.
She turned towards her best friend who had already gone back to his food.
"Harry, do you not feel anything from the girl?" she asked, unable to hold her intrigue at her friend's resistance.
"I do", he replied after a moment,"It's like a whisper that I am able to ignore in my head".
"Only a whisper? It's more like a thirst for me when she gets close. One that I can only quench by looking at her " said Neville's voice from across the table, having recovered from the girl's visit.
Harry only shrugged, having no answer to why he was different.
She eyed him for a second and decided to simply chalk it up to being one of those Harry Potter things and not worry too much about it. He had an uncanny tendency to defy odds that she had simply come to not ask questions anymore.
Harry POV
He tried not to get overwhelmed as he walked down the second floor hallway. The castle was busier than he had ever seen before and there never seemed to be a moment when people weren't occupying every single hallway in the castle. Halloween was only two days away and along with it the choosing of the champions, but that wasn't the only thing that occupied the minds of the students. This morning a notice had been put up in the common rooms announcing the tryout dates and times for the Hogwarts quidditch, and knowledge bowl teams.
Hermione had immediately rushed away as soon as she had seen the flier, probably to the library. He didn't know why because the tryouts weren't until next week after the champions had been picked so going to eat breakfast before going to the library wouldn't have hurt much. He would leave her be, if she didn't come down for lunch then he would drag her out if he had to.
He debated if he should practice for the quidditch tryouts as well, considering he had already basically promised McGonagall that he would be joining the team. He would put in some time this week to practice, he decided as he got to the great hall.
There seemed to be a large crowd of people in the front where the Goblet of Fire stood on a pedestal with bright flames burning on top. He watched a few seventh years put in their name and decided that he was going to watch who was entering the tournament as he ate, so he grabbed a few things on a plate and headed to find an empty seat he could find around the goblet. He saw one next to Diggory who seemed to have had a similar idea and was simply watching the commotion around him.
"Hey Cedric", he greeted the boy and slid into the empty seat.
"Hey Harry", the older boy replied back as he gave him a pat on the back.
"You enter your name yet?",he asked.
"Yea I did it yesterday, didn't see the point in waiting around.",he said and gave him an easy smile.
There really wasn't as the goblet most likely did not care about the order in which the names came to it.
"So does that mean you're not going to try out for quidditch?", he asked Cedric.
"I might not if i get chosen as champion since I should probably focus on that but if not then I'm going to try my best to get seeker".
He grinned at the boy and gave him his best patronizing face which the boy simply laughed at.
They were distracted from the banter when a group of Durmstrang students walked in and along with them Viktor Krum. They all held a piece of paper and in turns proceeded to enter their names in the Goblet. They then simply walked out, their task here done.
He wondered if Krum would be playing for the Drumstrang quidditch team. If he was then the quidditch tournament was going to be one hell of a battle.
It was later in the evening when he and Hermione had once again taken residence in the library as had almost become a routine. They would find themselves here more nights than not working on their assignments, and Occlumency.
While Occlumency was an inherently individual journey, they would together take the time to talk about their progress and keep each other updated as well as next steps. They had gotten as far as the fourth chapter in the book Sirius had provided about Occlumency which focused on trying to get your mind to think of only one thing instead of many different thoughts and then try to keep their focus on that one thing for as long as they could. The task itself sounded simple enough but much harder to execute since every five seconds he would fail to stop his mind from imagining something else. He had taken to meditating as often as he could to calm his mind as the book had suggested he do so.
Hermione was faring slightly worse as she simply could not calm her thoughts but she too had been meditating as much as she could. He could only imagine how hard it must be to calm your thoughts when there is simply too much information running around at all times. Still they were progressing and that's what mattered, while they were weeks away from reaching their goal, rushing would not help.
Today however he and Hermione were researching for the upcoming Duelling competitions and the knowledge bowls. They had both been buried in books for a while now and he had been noting down spells that would be good to use during a duel. He was on his second book now and had a pretty good list of spells to add to his repertoire but not before practice. He would need to find a place to practice the spells or they would be as good as any other word in latin.
He looked up to Hermione and found her furiously scratching away at her parchment.
"Mione, we need to find a place to practice spells, knowing about them is only going to do so much",
She stopped her scratching and pushed her hair away from her face as she turned her gaze on him.
"We do need to find somewhere to do magic.", she agreed," maybe we can find an empty classroom to use".
It wasn't a terrible idea. Finding an empty classroom wouldn't be hard but finding one in any shape to be used however would be. There was another place that they could use, one that nobody but him to access, and one that would keep them safe from prying eyes. It would be perfect, other than ofcourse the fact that there's a sixty foot long basilisk dead on one side.
"I know of a place", he told Hermione.
She gave him a questioning look but he just gave her an impish smile and started packing.
"Let's go Mione", he told her.
She narrowed her eyes at him but did as he said and packed up her things.
They left the library and he led them down to the second floor and then to the girl's bathroom at the end of the hallway. They reached the bathroom when Hermione grabbed his arm.
"Harry, that's where the entrance to the Slytherin's chamber isn't it", she hissed at him.
He simply nodded and was surprised when Hermione's eyes started to water.
"Mione, are you ok? Is it the basilisk? It's dead I promise", he said as he put an arm around her shoulders to pull her close.
"It's not about the basilisk Harry. It's you, you almost died that day and I wasn't even there to help you. Had you died I would've been all alone again." she said, her voice trembling.
He simply pulled her into a hug as he tried his best to comfort her. He had never been afraid of dying, not after what the dursleys had put him through and not after trying to survive year after year, but he had also never had anyone care if he died or not. He had always been alone with only him to fend for himself, but now he had Herminoe. She cared for him more than anyone ever had, anyone he had any memories of at least. If he died, she would be alone and he would hurt her. That he could not do, he wouldn't hurt the one person that cared for him.
"I'm not going anywhere Mione. I'll always be by you, no matter what, and you'll never be alone ok", he spoke to her softly as he held her.
He felt her nod against him and pulled back. She wiped her eyes with her sleeves and gave him a shaky smile.
He gave her a reassuring one back and waited for her to compose herself.
She took a couple deep breaths and finally nodded that she was ready.
He led them in and in front of the sink with the snake engraving.
"Open", he hissed, in the language of the serpents.
The sink slowly moved aside and opened up to a huge pit that seemed to lead into never ending darkness.
"Please don't tell me we're jumping in there," he heard Hermione say as she gazed down into the pit.
"We are", he confirmed, readying himself to jump.
"Wait", said Hermione,"how are we going to come back".
He paused, he hadn't gotten that far. In his excitement of using the chamber, he had forgotten that he had been airlifted out of the chamber by fawkes last time, and he really doubted fawkes would want to be his personal flying taxi everytime.
"You hadn't thought of that, did you", she said accusingly, to which he sheepishly shook his head.
She just shook her head in exasperation, muttering about brash Gryffindors.
"Try telling it to bring stairs or something", she said.
Couldn't hurt, he decided.
"Stairs" he hissed, but nothing seemed to happen.
"Ladder"
Still nothing. Maybe there was magic to simply lower them into the chamber.
"Elevator?"
Maybe they weren't going to use the chamber after all.
"Platform?" He tried one last time and to his surprise, he heard a grating noise as a huge stone platform appeared on top of the pit.
"You did it !"Hermione said," makes sense Slytherin would not bother with stairs".
They stepped on the platform and immediately it began to lower itself into the pit. He felt Herminoe's hand slide into his and he simply gave a small squeeze. They both pulled out their wands and cast Lumos so they could see.
The platform reached the bottom with a soft thud and they stepped off. There was a huge cave in like he remembered from when he was here with Ron but there was an opening off to one side that was plenty big for them to pass through. He let Hermione climb through and before he could climb down the other side he heard her gasp.
He scrambled down, scared that Hermione was hurt but he found her staring at something on the floor. He realized it was the snake skin that was there before, and it seemed to have not deteriorated at all. It almost seemed to have been recently shed even though it had been years since it was shed.
"Harry" came Hermione's voice quivering,"please don't tell me the actual snake was longer than that".
The skin was probably around forty feet long and only three feet wide. The actual snake was much bigger but he decided against saying it.
"I won't", he replied and grabbed her hand to pull her forward.
They came upon the door with the intertwined serpents with a very quiet Hermione.
"Open", he hissed.
The snakes moved aside and the door slowly opened to the huge chamber. Torches lit up from either side and the entire chamber was illuminated in an eerie light and along with it the dead carcass of the snake.
A sixty foot long snake that is also about five feet wide and menacing from head to toe was the snake in question.
Hermione screamed at the sight of the snake and he felt her grip his hands tight.
"Harry, you said that snake wasn't longer", she hissed as she squeezed his hands even tighter.
He winced as he felt his hands lose all blood flow.
"I just said I wouldn't tell you that it was", he replied.
Apparently that wasn't the reply she was looking for because his hands were only getting more numb.
Finally she let go and he saw her furiously wipe her eyes as she tried not looking at him.
He sighed as he realized maybe he should've warned her. He softly brought her to him and gave her a small hug. He had to stop making a habit of upsetting Hermione, but then again trouble followed him like the plague and he would always want her by him.
While he held her, he realized that the snake carcass too seemed to be untouched by time. The snake had not decomposed at all and it could've passed for being killed yesterday.
He felt her let go and he released her as she too turned around to look at the snake.
"The snake looks so well preserved", Hermione said, having observed the same thing.
"Maybe it's the chamber's magic preserving it?", he guessed.
Hermione simply replied with a," hmm", having no other reasoning.
The chamber itself was much bigger than he remembered. While the snake was laying about twenty feet into the chamber from the door, there was still another hundred feet behind it that was simply an empty floor leading up to the statue of presumably Salazar Slytherin. On either side of the floor were large pools of water from which snake sculptures lined as if on guard. The hole through which the snake had come through, on the mouth of the statue, was now also closed.
"Harry, did you know that a vial of basilisk venom can cost as much as a hundred thousand galleons?",suddenly asked Hermione.
He definitely did not know that.
"And how many vials worth of venom do you think this snake might have?" he asked her back.
"I'm entirely speculating but I would say at least twenty", she replied, her voice taking an awe-like quality.
So close to 2 million galleons, he pondered. That was a mind boggling amount of money. He would have to ponder on that later but for now they had the rest of the chamber to explore.
"I suppose we'll worry about our riches later. Let's explore the rest of the chamber first", he said to her as he walked past the snake and further into the chamber.
They walked up to the statue of Slytherin and found the fang of the basilisk where he had left it next to the body of Ginny Weasley or atleast the imprint of her body now. He had a flashback to when the fang had pierced his arm and knew that he would never pray for that pain to anyone.
He turned his gaze to Hermione as she stood there looking at the face of slytherin. He could see her trying to visualize everything that had happened in the chamber from the through accounting he had given her.
"Should we open the hole?", he asked her as he too gazed at the mouth where he knew the hole was.
"As long as there is not another basilisk in there", she replied, half-jokingly.
"There's not", he said in what he hoped was a convincing voice. He was trying to reassure himself as much as her.
"Speak to me Slytherin",he hissed as it echoed around the chamber.
The hole slowly opened, revealing nothing but darkness and they both simply stood there, waiting, in case there was another basilisk. When none came, they both breathed a small sigh of relief.
He went first this time, not knowing what to expect from within the statue. He stepped inside the mouth and was immediately surprised by how much more space there was than he had thought. Instead of a small tunnel, there was actually a spacious but small hallway that immediately lit up as the torches on walls lit up.
He helped Hermione step in and they both walked down the hallway to where there was a large room that had clearly been designed as a small study/library. The room held rows of shelves that held books from what looked like hundreds of years ago and in the middle of the room there were 2 tables with some chairs around each; one simply with a couple ink pots as well as some parchment and the other with a bunch of potions equipment. He didn't even have to look at Hermione to know that she was already salivating at the sight of the treasure before her.
"Stop drooling, Mione", he said, bumping her shoulder.
She gave him a mock glare.
"You better be prepared to let me in here all the time Harry", she said.
"Anytime", he replied, giving a mock glare back.
"I wonder where the snake came from then", she said, looking around the room.
He looked around wondering the same. The hallway was just barely large enough to fit its width and the space inside the room was definitely not big enough to house the whole snake comfortably. There also wasn't any other visible opening that he could see.
"It is strange", he agreed," but I think this is perfect for our needs."
He was glad that he had thought of the chamber; he and Mione could spend their free time here to train, study, or simply get away from the rest of the school.
Hermione POV
There was a strange aura of anticipation in the great hall as the students of the 3 schools sat along the 4 tables, eagerly watching the Goblet of Fire. The feast had just finished and the only things students were waiting for tonight was some excitement that they had been promised. From where she sat, she could see that quite a few seventh years were almost jittery as they waited to see if their names would come out of the Goblet.
"I think it'll be Cedric", she heard Harry from next to her.
"Don't let Angelina hear you say that", she replied back to him, but she didn't think Angelina would be picked either.
Right then Dumbledore got up from his seat and walked up to the podium. Beside him Professor Karkaroff and Madam Maxime did the same. The other tournament stayed seated, instead choosing to watch the naming from where they sat. There were also a couple people from the media present, chattering among themselves in the corner.
"Now that you have been fed and watered, it is now time to begin the naming ceremony for the Triwizard Tournament. As you are already aware, there will be three champions picked, one for each school competing. If your name is called then please come up and head to the door that is to the right of me." announced Professor Dumbledore, his voice easily carrying across the quiet hall.
He then waved his hand at the Goblet and suddenly it lit up a bright blue before bursting into orange and a piece of parchment flew up from it into the air. The old professor deftly caught the paper and read it.
"The champion for Beuxbatons is Fleur Delacour", he called.
Applause burst from the Ravenclaw table as the Veela from Beauxbatons got up with poise that would make any French aristocrat proud and without a glance at anyone, she simply glided over to the door and went in.
The goblet turned orange again and another piece of parchment flew up.
"The champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum", rang Dumbledore's voice
The slytherin table burst into a mix of clapping and banging as the famous quidditch player got up from his seat and made his way
to the door. His face giving away nothing but his seemingly ever present frown.
Once more the goblet flared orange and a piece of parchment was thrown up.
"Finally the champion for Hogwarts will be Cedric Diggory",
This time yells and whistles were heard around the hall but the Hufflepuff table was the loudest as they cheered for their champion. Cedric got up from his table, thanking all the people who were wishing him a congratulations and he too walked up to the door and disappeared behind it.
The excitement of picking the champions had ended far too quickly than anyone had expected, but students were beginning to get up to leave. She saw Dumbledore too talking with the other headmasters when they goblet flared a bright orange and another paper flew up into the air.
All eyes were immediately drawn to the paper as it floated down and into the hands of Dumbledore who seemed as bewildered as anyone else. He read the piece in his hand and he seemed almost resigned when he looked up right at her. She felt her blood turn cold as he whispered out into the hall.
"Hermione Granger"
