Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of the story. I'm not ruling out a sequel in the future, but I think this is a nice natural stopping point for the moment.

Part Seven

"I need to ask you a very important question."

That's what David said to Dumbledore, and Dumbledore looked old when he agreed, but he did say that he wanted to talk to David alone. So right now it's just the two of them sitting in Dumbledore's office, without David's friends or his parents, and he thinks this might be the first time that he's ever been alone with Dumbledore, just the two of them.

"What is it that you want to talk to me about, my boy? Now that we know where the Chamber is, we must move on to dealing with the basilisk."

"That's what I want to know." David leans forwards insistently. "Why didn't you search for the Chamber before this? Why not find a way to stop the basilisk from Petrifying people? You must know that there's a very limited list of monsters that could do something like that. Why did Ron and Neville and Hermione and the twins and I have to risk our lives?"

"You were sensible enough not to go into the Chamber." Dumbledore twinkles at him. "I call that a good measure of caution so as not to risk your lives."

"Sir."

Dumbledore leans back behind his desk with a slow sigh. "I can give you an answer, but I am afraid that you will not like it."

"I need the answers, sir."

Dumbledore studies him one more time, as if silently asking whether David is sure about that, but then he nods. "There was fallout from the debacle with the Stone last year," he says quietly. "The idea that Voldemort is back has reached the ears of the Ministry. Specifically, Minister Fudge, who would do almost anything to keep people from realizing that he was in charge when the decade of peace came to an end. So the Ministry is watching Hogwarts most vigilantly. They would not respond well to rumors of the Chamber of Secrets and Slytherin's legendary monster."

"So you think—"

"That we could not search for it openly, yes. And as for the Petrifications, a basilisk does not normally Petrify with its eyes. It kills. Or it kills with its fangs. I did not even think that a basilisk could be responsible, David, and that is the honest truth."

David sits and struggles with that for a bit. Fawkes watches him anxiously from the perch, making little grumbling crooning noises now and again.

"But you could have searched in secret," is the only thing David can think to say.

"Pardon me, Mr. Potter?"

"You could have looked for the Chamber and not told anyone you were looking. It would have been pretty simple to do that, wouldn't it? Since you're in the school and Minister Fudge isn't?"

Dumbledore's eyes close, and he sits still for a long moment. David sort of hopes that he's taken aback and trying to absorb the point, and sort of hopes he isn't. The first one would be better, but it would also mean that Dumbledore isn't as strong or smart as David always thought he was.

Then they're probably going to lose the war.

Dumbledore finally takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. "There are eyes everywhere, Mr. Potter, even at Hogwarts."

"Here in your office?"

Dumbledore's eyes flick towards the portraits of old Headmasters and Headmistresses on the wall. David swallows, feeling cold.

He doesn't know if that's true, or if Dumbledore's just making an excuse. It's been a year since he really trusted the man, or almost, ever since the trap that he had promised would use the Mirror of Erised to destroy Voldemort didn't work.

"Rest assured, my boy," Dumbledore whispers, "that I will take care of it now that I know about it."

David nods, and wonders if Dumbledore can tell how unconvinced he is.

"He's honestly found the Chamber of Secrets."

Harry tells his magic that as he sits reading the letter from his brother that arrived just a few moments ago. Hedwig, David's snowy owl, is sitting on the headboard with all her feathers fluffed, eyes fixed on Harry.

Harry wonders why for a moment, but his magic coils close to him and supplies the answer. "She is anxious about her master. She is waiting for a reply to the letter."

Harry bites his lip. He would like to think about it and take some time to reply, but it sounds like David needs an answer right away. He reaches for the quill, parchment, and ink that he's taken to keeping by his bed most nights, and scribbles out a careful reply.

Dear David,

I'm glad that it sounds like Dumbledore is going to take care of it, but you know that you can't completely trust him, right? No matter what he says about the Ministry spying on him and preventing him from searching for the Chamber openly. I don't know much about Dumbledore, but I don't know if even he can kill a basilisk.

Not to mention that you still don't know who the Heir of Slytherin is or why they're setting the basilisk loose. If it's to Petrify people, why? The basilisk hasn't got that many people, even as scary as it must be to have some of them paralyzed. If they have some other purpose, I wonder what it is. Petrifying Muggleborns, maybe, but a cat doesn't fit in with that.

I'd urge you to keep looking for the Heir of Slytherin. It sounds like it might be less dangerous than searching for the Chamber, and it has to be less dangerous than fighting a basilisk.

I wish I could help more.

Love,
Harry.

Only when Hedwig is flying away with his response does Harry realize he really did write that he loves David. He pauses, indecisive. Part of him wants to try and get the letter back—he could send his magic after Hedwig—and make himself sound less vulnerable.

But David needs him, and Harry does at least like his brother, the only member of his family who's reached out to him. If David is prejudiced against Squibs, he hides it really well.

So Harry lets Hedwig go, and goes back to practicing his transformation. He might become a tiger soon, rather than a phoenix, although so far his magic still shows a preference for a phoenix form over anything else.

It's nothing more than a hunch that makes David follow Ginny. Ron just made a comment that he and his brothers are worried about her. She seems to be pale all the time and doesn't fit in well or have many friends.

There could be lots of possible explanations for that, including that Ginny is just worried about the basilisk Petrifying people. But David thinks that if there's nothing more than that wrong, he can at least reassure her with the idea that the basilisk will be stopped soon.

Ginny ducks into a girls' bathroom when David is just thinking about talking to her, and he pauses outside the door and winces. If she's in there crying or peeing or something, then he thinks he should stay out here.

But he hears a weird hissing noise, and a weird sound like stone shifting or falling around. David steps into the bathroom. "Ginny?" he calls, one hand over his eyes so that he doesn't have to see if she is peeing.

"David!"

The voice sounds like Ginny's and doesn't sound like her. David finds that he doesn't particularly want to remove his hand from in front of his eyes.

"Are you okay, Ginny? What are you doing?"

"Why did you have to be here?"

Yeah, that voice is deeper than Ginny's, and there's a sound in front of David that is like an immense slither of scales on stone—

Some force seizes his hand and pulls it away from his eyes. All David can do is stare downwards desperately, into the water on the floor of the bathroom, and so he sees the gigantic yellow eyes there.

He feels himself falling into something that is deeper and darker than any sleep he's ever known.

Hedwig's wings battering his head wake Harry from a sound slumber. He's just in time to prevent his magic from eating her. He yanks hard on the reins that bind him to his power, and it pulls up, hovering in the form of a flying snake, but listening to him.

"It's just Hedwig," Harry says, but when he sits up and hears Hedwig's frantic noises as she zooms around his head, he's pretty sure that there is no "just," and something must have happened to David.

There's a letter tied to her leg. Harry reaches for it.

His magic surrounds his hands like gloves and prevents him from touching the parchment directly. Harry's muscles tense as he undoes the twine. He doubts that his magic would do that unless the letter isn't from David.

Sure enough, it has the official seal of Hogwarts, like the one letter Dumbledore sent him before this, and it turns out that something has happened.

Harry, my dear boy,

I hesitate to write this to you, for fear of disturbing your peaceful solitude, and because you did not want to reply once before. But you deserve to know that you twin brother, David, was found Petrified today.

Rest assured that we will do everything we can to revive him, as well as the other students who have been Petrified. The mandrakes needed to make the restorative potion are nearly ready.

If you do not care to be disturbed, then forgive an old man who still thinks the call of family is important.

Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Harry's hands are trembling as he fists them. He told David about becoming a phoenix, and David told him about finding the Chamber of Secrets, that it was a basilisk who was Petrifying those people, and that Dumbledore would handle it.

He didn't handle it. This happened.

Harry doesn't even realize that he's making the walls shake until someone knocks on the door. Then he manages to get his anger under control enough to call, "Who is it?" His magic is sitting on his shoulder as a crow, and Hedwig is crouched next to him on the bed. She probably isn't attacking him still, trying to get him to do something, only because his magic won't allow it.

Irene, one of the younger werewolves, sticks her head around the door, frowning at him. "What's going on? You were supposed to come to dinner, and you didn't come, and now you're making the walls shake—"

"My brother has been Petrified at Hogwarts."

Irene's dark grey eyes widen. Then she says, "By the same creature or monster that's been Petrifying the others?"

Harry nods tightly. There were no stories in the Daily Prophet at first, but then someone must have told someone else, because there's been speculation on the front page every day for the past week about what's been doing it and how someone should get it to stop.

Dumbledore told David, as David said in one of his letters, that the Ministry is watching Hogwarts. They should have done it before David got Petrified.

"Well, they'll have to do something about it now," says Irene, with an uncomfortable smile. She's eyeing Harry's magic, which is stretching dark wings above his head. "Because the Boy-Who-Lived got Petrified. There'll be a huge outcry…what are you doing?"

"It's going to stop."

"Well, yes, they'll do—what are you doing?"

Harry can't answer her. His magic is spreading wings over his head, and their shadow extends down his head to his back. Hedwig has stopped acting as though she's going to take a bite out of his leg and is watching him intently.

"They haven't done anything to stop it so far," says Harry, in a voice he nearly doesn't recognize. "So it's up to me."

Irene backs away as Harry beats his wings. He has wings, he knows that, and for a moment they seem to be the wings of a crow or raven, before they settle into the familiar phoenix ones, and a shroud of dark fire surrounds him.

Harry leaps up into the air, and Hedwig seems to know what's going on, because she takes off out the open door. Harry follows her, ignoring the way that Irene ducks and shouts after him.

The Heir of Slytherin is going to pay.

Being Petrified is like being asleep without being able to wake. David knows that something is happening around him, and that there are people whispering his name. He can't answer them. He can't reach out. At one point he feels a hand on his hair and feels tears dropping on his forehead that he thinks might be from his mum.

He does try to answer her, because she's a terrible mum to Harry but she still doesn't deserve to see her son lying here, but he can't.

Sometimes he thinks he catches a snatch of conversation—Hermione reading a book to him, Ron telling him they lost a Quidditch game to Hufflepuff, Dumbledore asking him if he can speak of what happened. But it all blurs and rolls around him, and no matter how hard he strains against his frozen muscles, it makes no difference.

When Harry arrives, though, that there can be no mistake about.

There's a huge vibration, like a bell tolling, where something has assaulted the wards. And since David doesn't think the Ministry would have to break in to do their basilisk hunt, he's pretty sure that's his twin.

He tries to smile. He can't do it, really, but happiness runs through his body like a current under ice anyway.

The wards of Hogwarts do try to resist Harry when he arrives in the shape of a magical creature instead of a tendril of his power, it turns out. Maybe it's because they can sense the hostile intent he's radiating towards someone in the castle.

The wards jar against him and make Harry's head and magic buzz. But it doesn't matter. He soars through, and Hedwig leads him triumphantly towards the front gates.

People come running out to gape at him, from what look like greenhouses where they probably hold the Herbology classes. Harry folds his wings and dives over them, through the castle doors. He skims through the entrance hall and turns towards the greatest concentration of magic beneath the earth.

"Mr. Potter!"

It's Dumbledore, who's wearing bright blue robes. Harry doesn't pay much attention to him. He's too busy trying to figure out if he can pass through the walls in his phoenix form, or if he just has to fly through the corridors to get there the way that he flew to Hogwarts.

It won't take him a lot of time, either way. Slytherin's Chamber glitters and turns like a wheel in his mind's eye, and he can follow the pull of it like a map.

"Mr. Potter!"

Harry wonders how Dumbledore knows it's him, but then reckons that an ultra-powerful magical creature swooping through the wards probably alerted him. So does the fact that Harry's phoenix form doesn't resemble a normal phoenix, probably. Madame Delacour showed him himself in a mirror, and Harry's bird-form is black and crawling with glistening black flames like scorpion stingers.

Hedwig hoots. Harry follows her down a corridor where students shout and duck, and then through a low door in a wall. Then they're on a staircase, spiraling down, and another staircase, and another.

Harry can feel the wheel of magic turning closer, and his wings flex and tear at the currents of power around him. His magic speaks in a low, vibrating voice in his chest and brain. "We are here. We are coming."

Do you hear that, Heir of Slytherin? We are coming.

David is vaguely aware that he's alone. People seem to have run away from his bedside in panic or something. He thinks he can hear shouting, if he concentrates as hard as he can.

Harry would inspire shouting, David thinks, as close to contentment as he can come in this state.

The great door to the Chamber is covered with snakes and green jewels, just like it was in the letter David sent him. Hedwig lands outside it and ruffles all her feathers as she glares up at it. Harry lands on the floor and lets his magic part from him, because he's pretty sure that his magic needs to speak the words that will open the Chamber.

His power rears up into a great black snake that's nearly the twin of the ones on the Chamber doors and sways back and forth for a moment as if gathering itself. Then it speaks in a voice that slithers up the walls and drips back down like venom. "Open."

Harry nearly snorts as the doors begin to swing back. That's it? You would think Salazar Slytherin would have chosen a more secure password for accessing his most important place. Harry has read a bit about Slytherin in some of his history books, and the man seems pretty full of himself.

But there's no time to think of that. His magic flows back to Harry and wraps him in the phoenix form again, and Harry flies into the Chamber, ready to duck and protect his eyes if he has to.

The Chamber is made of stone, no surprise, with glistening water and carvings of snakes everywhere, and a big ugly statue along one wall. Harry is surprised for a long moment by how quiet it is, until he hears someone speaking over towards the far wall. And it sounds like they're speaking English, not Parseltongue. Harry alters his course that way.

A red-haired girl is standing in front of a small black book on the floor, and she's speaking to herself in different voices, in what seems to be an internal struggle. She doesn't notice Harry land on the head of the statue and listen in.

"You have to do it."

"No, Tom, please, I don't want to! I don't want to! I'm tired of waking up with blood on my hands and missing time—"

Possessed, then? But if she's missing time, she could have told someone.

Harry sighs as best he can in phoenix form, which is really more like a clacking of his beak. Afraid to get in trouble, probably. He can just remember being that way himself at Privet Drive, before the first time the Ministry officials visited.

"You must," says the voice that sounds more like a boy's, and the girl bends mechanically and snatches up the small black book. Then she turns towards the status, raising the book over her head. The words that emerge from her mouth sound like hissing nonsense to Harry, but his magic wakes within him and translates them.

"Speak to me, Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four!"

That confirms it for Harry. The girl is somehow housing the Heir of Slytherin, although she's not the Heir of Slytherin herself. And the second most magical thing in the Chamber, after the basilisk that sleeps behind the statue, is the book she holds.

Harry swoops down and snatches it from her hand.

The girl utters a little scream and turns away from the statue, whose mouth is opening, seeking the book. Harry drops it on the floor and spreads his wings. He will have to burn without letting the fire consume him, because then he would become a chick (probably) and be useless in the fight that will follow.

Flame springs up around him—

And dies away while leaving the book unharmed.

Harry croons in disgust, then picks up the book and flies away with it again when the girl rushes towards him. He'll have to find another way to destroy it, but he's not going to let her have it.

And there's a basilisk coming out of the statue.

Harry corkscrews towards it from behind, and flings the book at it when it tries to turn his head and look at him. If a basilisk's gaze can kill anything, maybe it'll destroy the book, too.

It doesn't, because Harry wouldn't be that lucky, but the girl has turned away from the basilisk and is huddling in the corner with her hands over her eyes. So at least she's not going to be a problem anymore.

Harry circles up near the ceiling of the Chamber. His magic is moving in him, restless, eager, and destructive. It knows what it wants to do, and Harry just has to find a way to accomplish it with a phoenix's form.

He tucks his talons in close—

His talons. Of course.

The basilisk is terribly dangerous, but also huge, which means that it can't spin around to fix him with its gaze nearly as fast as Harry can fly. Harry dives towards it after singing from a corner to make it look in that direction, and his talons plunge directly into the great yellow eyes.

The basilisk makes a thin, screaming sound. Whether or not it's an actual scream, Harry doesn't know. It doesn't matter. He's had another idea, and even though it's almost as dangerous as the basilisk's gaze, he can't give it up.

He throws his voice again, and when the basilisk turns in that direction with its mouth open, Harry swoops past and grabs onto a fang. He tugs, pulls, and tugs with beating wings, and the fang breaks away in his hold.

The basilisk screams again. Impromptu dental surgery probably hurts, Harry thinks, as he turns and dives at the book again.

The girl is hissing something, but Harry doesn't bother to pay attention to it, and his magic doesn't bother to translate. He's too busy twisting and coming in at the right angle to aim his stolen fang like a dagger, piercing the book's cover.

The girl screams like the snake this time, and falls to the floor. A gout of black blood runs out of the cover of the book much like it did from the basilisk's eyes.

Harry thinks that's a good sign, and hovers for a moment so that he can stab down with more strength.

The girl screams again. It sounds like she might be struggling against the force possessing her, but Harry doesn't think that's a battle he can help with. He stabs one more time, and then leaves the fang lodged in the book as he rises towards the ceiling.

The basilisk is coming for him, probably smelling him. It has great bloody holes where its eyes should be, and Harry feels a surge of vicious satisfaction. It's never going to Petrify anybody again.

It's never going to Petrify David again.

He flies at the basilisk this time, and ignores the way its mouth opens. It's stopped moving, apparently thinking that if dinner wants to dash itself to death inside its mouth, it might as well let him do it.

Harry swoops up at the last moment—hasn't it learned yet that Harry is faster?—and digs his talons deep into the eyesockets he's already torn open. The basilisk tries to shake its head and fling him off, but Harry digs, and digs, and digs—

His talons clench into its brain.

The basilisk begins to roll on the floor in its death throes, but once again, Harry isn't there. He's flying fierce and free, singing in a way that makes his heart soar inside his chest, and the girl is running towards him with tears streaming down her cheeks.

She's probably mostly innocent. Harry reaches down with his bloodstained talons, hoping that he can muster enough magic to lift a heavy load in the way that an ordinary phoenix can.

His magic responds eagerly. Harry will have to rest afterwards, he's pretty sure, but he can do this. The girl gasps as he lifts her off the floor, and they fly towards the entrance of the Chamber, away from the thrashing basilisk.

It sounds like part of the ceiling is coming down behind them. Good riddance, in Harry's opinion. This way, even if the book wasn't completely destroyed, no one can dig underneath the stone to find it again.

And that was a really ugly statue.

David wakes to the sound of the most beautiful song he's ever heard.

He wakes with water falling on him, which he doesn't understand until he turns his head and sees a black phoenix sitting beside his bed, weeping. David stares at the creature. It's the most frightening one he's ever seen, with black flame crawling all over its body and lashing at the air like whips.

But it's also the most beautiful. Its tears have woken him from the Petrification.

David reaches up a trembling hand. The phoenix stops crying and lowers its head to touch him gently with a feathered chin.

"David!"

Mum and Dad come bursting into the hospital wing. The black phoenix leaps into the air and turns towards the infirmary window.

"Wait!" David cries despite himself. "Don't go!"

The phoenix makes a nervous circle, but then lands back on his headboard. Dad flings his arms around David and hugs him. Mum does the same thing a second later, but her wide eyes are fastened on the phoenix.

"Harry?" she whispers.

David knows it's Harry. He knows. He just doesn't know if his brother will want to transform back in front of their parents.

Or, really, David's parents and the people who should have been Harry's.

The phoenix looks around for a moment as Dumbledore and Snape come into the hospital wing, and then seems to make a decision. It transforms. One moment it's a bird, the next moment it's a boy who looks almost exactly like David, except skinnier and paler, sitting on the headboard with a black cobra curled in his arms.

"Mr. Potter," Dumbledore says. David can't even tell what emotion is in his voice.

"Harry," Mum says. There's an undefinable emotion in her voice, too. Dad is just gaping.

"You're never an Animagus," Dad says at last.

"This is impossible," Snape announces in a tranquil voice that usually marks the moment before he explodes in rage.

"I'm not an Animagus," Harry says. His hair is beginning to stir around him in some invisible wind, but David is sure it's connected to the cobra in his arms. His eyes are feral. "I have wild magic."

"That's—I've never heard of that," Mum says.

"I'd never heard of bad parents abandoning kids in the Muggle world, either, but there you go," Harry says.

David chokes a little, and Harry looks down at him. He smiles. David holds up a hand—Dad's arms have gone slack in sheer astonishment—and Harry reaches down. What touches David's palm is part hand and part wing.

"Am I correct in saying that you have found the Chamber of Secrets and destroyed the Heir of Slytherin, Harry?" Dumbledore asks. His voice is low and calm, as if he's trying to soothe a wild animal.

Harry doesn't let go of David's hand as he glances over at Dumbledore. "Sort of," he says. "It turned out the real Heir was possessing this red-haired girl. She had a black book that was really magical and felt evil. It let her speak Parseltongue and command the basilisk. I tried to burn the book with phoenix fire, but it wouldn't burn, so after I blinded the basilisk, I wrenched one of its fangs loose and used it on the book. I'm pretty sure that that did the trick. Then I stabbed the basilisk in the brain and carried the red-haired girl out. She's over there." He points with his free hand—which is starting to look like a snake coil—towards another bed near the door of the infirmary.

"My boy, this is—extraordinary."

"Not bad for a Squib, huh?"

Harry's voice is light, but so bitter. David tightens his grip on Harry's hand. Harry gives him a quick smile.

"We didn't know that you were—"

"No," Harry says, lightly as dancing fire, "but you threw me away anyway."

"Squibs can't live in our world," Mum whispers. She sounds like she's choking. "I thought—my sister was jealous of me for having magic—I thought the same thing would happen with you and David—I thought it would poison everything you could have had—"

"You were wrong."

Harry's eyes sweep dismissively across Mum and Dad. David can understand that. They gave up on him and didn't even bother to write to him themselves when Dumbledore invited Harry to Hogwarts.

David wants his brother back, but he probably can't just live in the magical world, and David can understand that.

"Everything has changed now, of course," Dumbledore says in a level voice. Snape is silent, glancing back and forth between Mum and Harry as if searching for some answer written on the air. "You will have a place in our school whenever you want it, Mr. Potter. I cannot believe that you will need any elementary instruction in Transfiguration, so you should be able to join the third-year class at least—"

"I don't want to go to school here. I only came here for my brother."

"How did you even know?" Mum asks.

"Dumbledore wrote to me, since you couldn't be bothered. And Hedwig was very upset, so I followed her back here."

Hedwig swoops through the infirmary door at that moment, chattering away. She lands on the bed beside David and sweeps her wing over his head as if confirming that he's not Petrified, then lands on his shoulder and tucks herself against him.

"So now everything is fine," Harry says. His hand twists in David's for a moment, and then gently withdraws. The black cobra is swaying beside him, but already seems to be blending into his shadow, as if they're becoming one. "I'd like to come and visit with you this summer, David."

"Wait—Harry—" Mum steps forwards with her hand stretched out.

Harry avoids her like a dancing flame, or a cobra himself. Already he seems to be growing wings. "You didn't want me then. You didn't want me even when you discovered I could do magic. Why would you want me now?"

"I—Harry, we're sorry."

"He's not even speaking," Harry says, with a dismissive toss of his head at Dad. "And it's too little, too late. I could have used parents, but now that I don't have them, I think it's okay." He spread his arms, and yeah, they're edged with feathers like flames. "I'll see you this summer, David."

David nods. His eyes are stinging, but he says, "See you this summer, Harry. Thank you."

Harry smiles, then transforms and soars like smoke out the window. David gazes after him, ignoring the way that his parents and Dumbledore are talking at him, telling him to bring Harry to visit them, or telling him to stay away from Harry, or something. David doesn't bother to listen.

He'll find a way to meet up with Harry without anyone knowing. He knows that Harry can arrange it even if it's impossible for David.

And—

David once thought he would never be free from fear. Even though this year has been better than the last as far as that goes, he was still worried about the Petrifications, and the Heir of Slytherin, and what it would mean if the basilisk killed someone.

But now he knows that he has someone on his side who is quite possibly the most powerful magical person in existence.

Someone who loves him.

They can fight Voldemort together, if it comes to that.

David slumps back down in his bed, closes his eyes, and turns his head so that Hedwig's feathers brush his cheek. At the moment, he can see why Harry prefers wild creatures to human company.

He vows, silently, that he'll be the best human company to Harry that he can, in the future.