lxxxii. in the heart of the earth
Harriet and Elara stood huddled in the shadow of Verna the Vexing, a rather foreboding statue guarding the corridor to the upper dungeons where the Hufflepuffs dwelt. They waited and watched students arrive in the entrance hall.
"Do you see him?" Elara whispered.
"No," Harriet replied, but she could see very little in the dim lighting, a blizzard rallying itself out beyond the bounds of the lake, making the grounds and the steps leading into the castle darker than usual. Everyone coming inside had their cloaks wrapped tight and their hoods drawn high.
Elara sighed. "We might as well get it over with. We can't hide forever."
Harriet thought she'd love to hide forever and disagreed with Elara, because if she had to spend another minute in the dungeons prepping potions ingredients or cleaning the cupboard or sitting very quietly staring at the wall, she might just pickle herself in a large jar to get away. "You know he's just waiting to swoop in like a—a vampire bat! Ready to suck the life and—and fun out of everything he can."
"You're being dramatic."
"'Course I'm being dramatic, but it doesn't make it any less true."
Elara pulled a face that Harriet chose to ignore, instead swiping her overlong fringe from her eyes as she peered into the higher hall. "I think…that's her."
"Do you see Snape?"
"Isn't that him there, with Professor McGonagall?"
The back of that black cloak had to be Snape, because Professor Slytherin didn't loom quite so much, and the pair of brawling Gryffindors he and McGonagall had cornered looked suitably cowed.
"Wait here."
Elara stepped out from behind Verna the Vexing and darted forward, maneuvering through the cold, tired crowd with relative ease. Harriet saw Hermione jump when Elara's hand suddenly grabbed her by the wrist, but she relented to the other witch's insistent tugging, and they retreated from the entrance hall not a moment too soon. Snape turned from McGonagall and the Gryffindors, his dark eyes sweeping the area. He scowled.
"Harriet!" Hermione exclaimed, and they embraced, Harriet getting a face full of snow-dampened hair, Hermione wincing when she felt Livi's coils hidden under her cloak. "What happened? Did you two finish our, erm, project? Was it successful? What did you learn—?"
"Not here," Elara interjected, her gray eyes flicking from Snape to the other professors and ears who might be listening in. "Come on, let's go to Myrtle's."
"Myrtle's? But what about dinner—."
Harriet let Elara explain why they'd be better off going hungry for the night if it meant avoiding the staff, because not only Snape had been keen on assigning detentions to students over the break. Ron Weasley actually swore at Professor Sprout when he got in trouble for throwing snowballs at her Giddy Gladiolas, and apparently got a letter sent home to his mum. Elara theorized the professors meant to keep them from wandering off and thus close at hand if anything went amiss, and Harriet was inclined to agree with her, especially after what she heard Slytherin say in the staffroom. Still, she wished the holidays hadn't been so dreadfully boring.
They found the loo as it always was; cold, wet, poorly lit and smelling damp and musty. Harriet thought they spent far too much time in there, but finding a private place for conversation at Hogwarts could prove challenging. Using Harriet's trunk had its limitations, what with Pansy always interfering and Elara's hatred for tight, confined spaces. Longbottom was mucking about, sticking his nose in everyone else's business, and that made things even more difficult. So, the trio tromped once more into Myrtle's loo, for what Harriet hoped was the last time.
"Elara doesn't even have detention anymore," Harriet commented to the ongoing conversation, pouting as they stood together in the stall where their potion had once bubbled. "It's not fair."
"Yes, but tell her why that is."
Harriet leaned on the stall wall. "It's not my fault. Snape had us squeezing ink from squids, and he started telling me off for doing it wrong, and err—."
Elara lifted a brow while Hermione looked between them, clearly confused over where this tangent was going.
"I squeezed the squid a bit too hard because the berk was frustrating me, and the eye popped, splattering on Elara and—well, you know how she gets. She sicked up all over Snape—."
"And then this little monster started cackling like it was the most brilliant thing she'd ever seen, which is why you're still in detention with Snape while I got reassigned to Professor McGonagall, whose an actual human being and only set me lines, not—squeezing squids."
"His face was pretty funny, though."
"I thought he was going to kill us both and hide the bodies in a cauldron."
Baffled, Hermione shook her head and blinked, loose coils of hair bouncing around her shoulders. "But what about the Polyjuice? What happened?"
"It worked," Harriet rushed to assure her. A little bit too well. Turning back into herself had been both a relief and a right pain. "Everything went to plan and I wasn't caught, but—um—Snape knows."
"What? How could he possibly know if you weren't caught?"
"He knows," Elara asserted before Harriet could, her face grim. "He's far too observant, and he keeps attempting to confuse or catch us at a lie. He doesn't have proof, else we'd probably be expelled, but Snape never needs proof, does he?"
Harriet nodded, remembering when they'd escaped the troll and he'd snarled at them. I don't need proof, Potter, and you're a fool to suggest otherwise. She shivered. "That's why we grabbed you straight off. We worried he'd trick a confession out of you."
Rubbing the spot between her brows, Hermione kept her eyes on the sticky tiles as she thought. "But how could he know about the Polyjuice? Or, in this instance, guess about the Polyjuice? Because that's just highly unlikely."
"I think it was my shoes," Harriet confessed, and all three witches looked down at the shoes in question—a pair of black, laced brogues with a solid, flat heel and a few scuffs on the side. "We didn't have a pair of Professor Sinistra's, and though the robes mostly covered them, he seemed to notice and look down as I was leaving. He probably would have followed me had he not been sitting with Slytherin."
A pained look crossed Hermione's face. "Of course. Those are clearly from the uniform." Girls had two choices for shoes: the brogues with laces Elara and Harriet wore, or the single-strap Mary Janes Hermione had on. "Was it worth it? Did you learn anything?"
Nodding, Harriet quickly recited all she'd heard, speaking in a low undertone so her words wouldn't bounce in the confined space. She couldn't remember every word verbatim the way Hermione might have desired, but she recalled enough of the details. The more she spoke, the more Hermione's expression twisted in shock, disgust—and finally, anger.
"But if Professor Slytherin's known where the Chamber is all this time, then he knew there was a Basilisk in there before this other person came around and let it out! A Basilisk! That's preposterous! It couldn't possibly be a Basilisk! Someone would be—." She winced, her voice high and strangled. Before she spoke again, Hermione took a breath and calmed herself. "We didn't see much information on Basilisks when we were researching, but what we did read said absolutely nothing about Petrification. Basilisks are exceedingly dangerous and Dark; not to be cruel, but we have to wonder why no one has died. And why does he assume Minister Gaunt is behind this? None of this makes any sense at all."
Hermione pressed her hands against her cheeks and chewed on her lip, as she was fond of doing when presented with a particularly daunting problem. No matter her friend's tenacity, Harriet didn't think she'd make any sense of this puzzle; somebody opened the bloody Chamber, not that it mattered, according to Slytherin. Apparently the founder's Basilisk was no longer in residence.
"It might be best to let this go and just keep our heads down," Elara muttered. Hermione shot her a look, and the taller witch returned it. "Harriet and I will make sure you're never alone, and we'll be careful not to wander."
"Like any of that matters when there's a Basilisk roving about—one that can apparently flout all laws of physics and—and magical physics and just vanish into thin air whenever it pleases!"
Her hands moved from her cheeks to cover the whole of her face, and Elara touched her shoulder, giving it an awkward rub.
Harriet tried to think of something clever or comforting to say, and as she turned over the words in her own head, she heard footsteps in the hall. Recalling how Longbottom had been seconds away from barging into the loo after she turned into Professor Sinistra, Harriet fumbled at her pockets and jerked out her Invisibility Cloak.
"Harriet?" Hermione questioned, looking up when she felt the Cloak's odd, heavy cloth fall over her head. "What are you doing?"
"Someone's coming—."
The door came open and struck the inner wall with considerable force. The three witches settling under the Invisibility Cloak flinched, drawing closer together, their breath held. At first, Harriet thought it might be Snape; the Potions Master had a terrible penchant for throwing doors open, dramatic as could be, but she couldn't imagine the wizard mad enough to go trouncing into a girls' loo. A shadow pulled along the floor, no footsteps seeming to touch the damp tiles—and the first stall door slammed open.
A knot of fear twisted in Harriet's middle as whoever had entered the loo continued to open each stall, pausing just long enough to ascertain it was empty before moving on to the next. When the door to their stall came open, Harriet felt the air ripple against the Cloak—and her throat tightened upon seeing Professor Slytherin standing there, his red eyes bright and ghastly in the lowlight, the hem of his robes gliding over the water like a snake's scaled belly.
What on earth is he doing here? Why is Professor Slytherin checking a lavatory when everyone else is at dinner? Is he—some kind of pervert?
Two more stalls extended beyond the one currently occupied by the three witches, and Slytherin checked them both. Harriet didn't dare move, and so she lost sight of the wizard for a minute, marveling at how he managed to walk without a sound, like he didn't have feet. Slytherin came into view again as he went to the sinks, and he leaned against the middle one, pale hands braced on the porcelain. He looked at himself in the mirror, his young face blank, eerie in its passivity—and, all of a sudden, he stepped back.
"Open."
Livi stirred beneath Harriet's shirt at the utterance of Parseltongue, and a faint shiver went through the floor under their feet, rattling the fixtures and toilets fixed to the walls and floors. Professor Slytherin stepped back again, and the sinks moved, the middle one rising upward, the others peeling to the side like a misshapen flower blooming, its petals unfurling to reveal its center—or, in this case, the opening of a huge pipe.
"What is he doing?" Hermione breathed in Harriet's ear, but the younger girl didn't have an answer for her. What was the professor doing? Slytherin watched the sinks until they stopped, settling in place with a jarring click, and then the wizard strode forward without an ounce of hesitation, stepped into the pipe, and vanished into its unknown depths. Hermione and Elara mirrored Harriet's gasp.
Moving together, the trio moved to the pipe's edge and looked inside, but they could nothing aside from the gray metal, corroded by years and years of water passing against it. "He said 'open' in Parseltongue," Harriet told the other two, feeling on the edge of an epiphany she wasn't sure she wanted to make. "What if—? It has to be the Chamber!"
They stared into the bottomless dark and shared a nervous, awkward breath. It was the Chamber of Secrets. They were looking down at the entrance to Salazar Slytherin's legendary Chamber—in a bloody girl's loo.
The sudden shivering started again, and the sinks began to pull in upon themselves, closing the entrance behind the professor. Elara and Hermione shuffled back, and Harriet tried to as well, but she couldn't move her feet. She swayed, caught unawares by the sudden loss of traction, and she had just enough time to see Set's black, shadowy hands wrap about her ankles before he yanked her forward, and Harriet plunged down into the closing pipe.
"Harriet!"
Hermione's shocked shriek disappeared in an instant, whipped away by the harsh clang! of Harriet smacking her head, her elbows and shins skidding on the bumpy rivets, rolling once, and then—
Crash!
She landed hard upon a solid, flat surface, the air leaving her lungs in a jagged, broken gust. Harriet heard her name again—distant now, so far she couldn't rightly say if it was her name being called or just an echo of her own thoughts—and then the dreaded, decisive thump of the sinks coming back together, trapping Harriet below their depths.
"Fuck!"
The dark pressed in on all sides and she panted, scared and more than a little rattled by the fall. As far as she could tell, she knelt on a stone landing at the bottom of the pipe, a deep gutter carved into the flagstones where water could flow and trickle into what sounded like a culvert. Harriet stuck her hand over the open space and felt the cold emptiness press against her skin. Squinting, she thought the culvert—the very one she'd almost rolled right into—turned away, and plunged downward again in another drain.
Harriet patted the surface under her until she could find the pipe that had dumped her here, and she also found the Invisibility Cloak tangled about her legs. Livius loosened his coils from around her body, cursing the sudden, quick descent.
"Are you hurt?" she asked him, keeping her voice low. How Professor Slytherin hadn't come running, she hadn't a clue. Hadn't he heard her fall? If he hadn't, should she risk lighting her wand? Would it be better to be found, to go on undetected? If this truly was the entrance to the Chamber, Harriet didn't much like the idea of Slytherin knowing she'd stumbled inside.
After he finished cursing her name and her blatant disrespect, Livi calmed down enough to report no, he wasn't hurt, Harriet's arms having taken the brunt of the impact. "Can you tell me the way out?"
"We shall sssee."
She felt the serpent move about, hissing, and neither of them could get more than foot up the first pipe before sliding back down. Harriet tried telling it to open, or to make stairs or an exit, but the pipe and surrounding wall remained obstinately still. She was stuck.
"There isss a tunnel over there."
"A tunnel?"
Blind in the dark, Harriet followed Livi's voice and finally decided to risk lighting her wand. She pulled it from her brace, whispering, "Lumos Minima."
The paltry glow illuminated the narrow brick platform she stood upon and part of the deep culvert, a wide, corroded pipe diving down into the sodden blackness of the earth. To Harriet, it looked as if someone had built the platform after the fact, as if the pipes had been put into place and the builder had cut into them specifically to form a landing place for anyone looking to enter the aforementioned tunnel. A rough stone snake encircled the rounded entrance, and the tunnel beyond swept away, curling out of sight.
Set formed on the craggy wall and pointed down into the tunnel's depths.
"Like I'd follow you, you arsehole!" Harriet hissed. "It's your fault I'm bloody stuck here!"
Unmoved, Set pointed again, and Harriet once more felt the strange, sticky weight on her feet that had dragged her down here in the first place. "Fine!"
She had little choice in the matter, since she couldn't figure out how to open the entrance behind her. Swallowing, Harriet pulled the Invisibility Cloak around her shoulders, told Livi to follow, and set off into the dark.
x X x
The passage rounded in upon itself like the coils of a huge, dozing serpent, the uneven floor slanted low with the occasional step cut into the stone. Harriet kept one hand on the inner wall, and sometimes her fingers pressed against odd runes and symbols carved deep into the bedrock. She could see striations in the earth, different minerals and stones compressed by thousands of years of time and shifting earth, thin lines of gemstones glittering when her wand passed by them.
Ahead, Harriet could hear a muffled, constant roaring, like white noise on the telly when Dudley passed out and the program went off air. The air grew thin and smelled of wet things, reeds and brine and algae. Twice Harriet stopped and considered going back, going and waiting by the entrance, because Elara and Hermione would find someone to rescue her eventually. She only moved on with Set's encouragement, and because she kept imagining horrid scenarios in which no one ever came for her, and she died alone in the miserable dark.
That's a cheery thought.
The roaring grew louder, as did the smell. The tunnel stopped curving inward—and Harriet stifled a curse when she stepped forward and found herself at the edge of a massive underground reservoir, a solid bridge of natural rock leaping over the black liquid, framed on either side by rushing waterfalls. Lights hung in the cavern overhead like bulbous green stars plucked from the sky, kept aloft by magic alone, shining on the water and the bridge—and the vault door on the other side of the cavern, the one Harriet could see Professor Slytherin disappearing through.
"Nox," she murmured, lowering her wand. "C'mon, Livi."
Harriet urged the serpent up onto her shoulders and pulled the Cloak into place before hurrying over the bridge. The water masked her footsteps, and so she ran to catch the wizard, worried he'd shut the door and strand her outside of it. Slytherin moved at a steady clip, his wand in his hand, his robes whispering over the flat, shined stone of the new solar's interior. Harriet stepped over the door's raised threshold after him.
More little spots of starlight waited in the chamber, shining upon a vast, brass contraption of concentric circles forming a loose sphere, a solid bar in the middle of the floor holding it above them. The rustic, untouched texture of the walls gave way to Transfigured blocks and pillars—and Harriet gulped when she tipped her chin back and saw the undulating waters of the lake's belly rippling where there should have been a ceiling. What's holding that up?! Magic?! What if it wears off?!
She didn't have time to puzzle the mystery of it; Slytherin crossed the space without thought to the water overhead and stepped up to a second vault door, five metal snakes forming the head of a hydra splayed out from the center.
"Open," Professor Slytherin commanded, and the snakes obeyed, heads recoiling, the lock slamming back with a thunderous bang. The door rolled open, and Slytherin continued on his way with Harriet staying a few meters behind.
They entered another tunnel, long and dark, the professor not bothering to light his wand, and they stopped before yet another door. This opened just as the others had, revealing what Harriet could only think was the true Chamber of Secrets beyond it.
A vast chasm of open space, illuminated by faint, shimmering green light, the Chamber was larger than any Muggle cathedral but just as grand and self-assuming; a palpable film of disuse maligned by the scent of rot coated the air, but it still felt sacred there, a place for quiet awe and lowered voices. The columns rose up and up and up, right into the black, nacreous haze clinging to the ribbed arches, long, reflective pools lining the wide central aisle. Dark stone doors and corridors connected to the main hall, but Harriet couldn't help but stare at the huge, bearded bust of Salazar Slytherin himself waiting at the Chamber's other end.
Professor Slytherin kept walking, tapping his wand against his open hand as if lost in thought. Harriet kept pace—until her foot connected with a puddle, creating a loud, sudden splash that had the wizard whirling around and pointing his wand directly at her head.
Harriet froze, holding her breath, and Slytherin continued to hold his wand high. For one horrid second, it looked as if he could see her, but then his eerie red eyes roved away, taking in the rest of the Chamber, flitting from shadow to shadow in search of the noise's cause. "Homenum revelio."
The spell expanded outward from his wand and crossed over Harriet, but it didn't settle. When nothing happened, Slytherin narrowed his eyes and finally—finally—lowered his wand, his eyes still searching as he turned his back. Harriet sucked in a discreet breath.
That was close.
The wizard walked, silent as ever, until he stood under the unblinking eyes of his ancestor, every line of his face cast in deep relief by that watery, aquamarine glow, a single coil of brown hair falling across his brow. Slytherin lifted his free hand toward Salazar's face and snarled in Parseltongue. "I command you Salazar Slytherin, greatest of the Founders four, to bequeath your secrets unto me!"
Stone grated on stone, and Harriet watched in horrified trepidation as Salazar's mouth opened like one of those chintzy nutcracker dolls Aunt Petunia always left on the mantel at Christmas, revealing a narrow, blackened tunnel smaller than those they'd traversed to reach the Chamber. She waited as the dust settled and the shallow pool at the bust's massive chin stopped rippling. She waited for a full minute, tense and afraid—and yet, nothing happened.
Slytherin scoffed, dropping his arm. "Miserable cretin." He started casting spells then, putting his back to the statue, muttering and reading some kind of magic relay Harriet couldn't decipher. He's looking for the Basilisk again, isn't he? the young witch thought as she observed the swift, steady motions of the professor's hands, the magic prickling her skin, seeming to brush her cheeks like warm, curious fingertips. Harriet pulled away, spooked, and minded her feet as she put distance between herself and whatever spellcraft Slytherin was evoking.
Thank Merlin the Basilisk isn't here! The witch had a soft spot for creepy, odd things, especially snakes—but she drew the line at fifty-foot long eldritch monsters capable of killing with a single look.
A tell-tale tug at her ankle dropped Harriet's gaze, and Set pooled at the cloak's hem, allowing one finger to poke out in the direction of an adjoining corridor. Harriet gave Professor Slytherin one last glance, then went where Set indicated, shivering at the biting cold nipping at her face and exposed legs. The corridor immediately twisted off into the dark, and Harriet scooted along until confident she was at out of sight, at which point she risked lighting her wand again so she could see Set.
"This is bloody mad," she muttered, brushing a cobweb out of her hair. "But I've trusted you before. Don't let me down."
Livi twitched on her shoulder, angular head nudging the Cloak. "The air isss…ssstrange here."
"How so?"
"It is…enticccing."
Harriet understood what the snake meant, though she couldn't put the sensation into words. Truly, it made her a touch leery, because anything capable of overpowering the dismal, chilling design of this place to give her that fluttery feeling in her middle couldn't possibly be benign. It was like waking up on Christmas to find presents on the foot of her bed; it was a pleasant shock, settling into a warm, elated feeling bubbling in her veins. It made her want to stay and get lost in the veritable warren of passages and corridors and long, open cloisters looking down upon the reservoir's black waters. Harriet didn't trust the feeling at all.
At length, Set stopped before a wide, Gothic door, and the funny symbols chiseled into the petrified wood flickered like bleary, blinking eyes under his shadowy fingers. Then, the runes went dark. Wary, Harriet tapped the door handle with her wand and whispered, "Aberto." The handle twisted on its own and forced the door to ease open.
She didn't know what she expected. Another chamber perhaps, or another sprawling, mystical dungeon. Maybe more blasted tunnels seeming to lead ever downward into the heart of the earth—but when Harriet stepped over the threshold, she found herself in a plain, stuffy study. Dust and time had ravaged the grand, stately desk and the tall burrow of cabinets and shelves over the stone running the length of the room, but evidence of recent occupation persisted through the space. The brocaded chair behind the desk was new—or, at least, made within the last century. The wood stool by the counter was free of rot and damp, and the large, empty cauldron hanging by the rod above the barren hearth bore no spots of rust or charring.
"Is this Salazar Slytherin's office?" Harriet asked aloud, voicing the thought to herself. Given the grandiose, if deteriorated, spectacle of the main Chamber itself, she would've anticipated something gaudier and more luxurious from the Founder, but his office bore little of that pretension. The rug on the floor had long been reduced to a thin, matted layer of rat-chewed fibers. The portraits on the wall were all empty, their backgrounds faded and gray. A single mirror hung on the wall behind the desk, framed by a pair of lank, crooked curtains.
Set spilled from her shadow in a rolling, stark pillar of black against the pitted stones, and he stretched up the desk to encircle the newer items that lay upon its surface. There were quills and inkwells, sheaves of parchment left in tidy piles, and several books—the largest of which Set shoved toward Harriet, and she jumped to catch it as the volume slid toward the floor.
It was heavy, heavy enough that Harriet needed to stoop and cradle the book in both arms to lever it back up onto the desk. The cover had a lock on it—something she'd never seen before, not even in the library—but it didn't look very fancy. The ancient leather peeled and flaked in places, the parchment edges ragged, torn, and nibbled by moths. Seeing the lock and adjoining buckle were both undone, Harriet carefully pried the tome open and scrunched her nose at the funny letters written inside. It looked like English, but the kind of English the very old portraits in the castle shouted at misbehaving students, which meant Harriet couldn't read a word of it.
An ink snake coiling about a block "S" was drawn on the first page, and the snake moved before Harriet's eyes. Above it, she could just barely decipher the faded rendering of a castle's silhouette done in charcoal.
This had to have belonged to the Founder!
Harriet closed the book, and her eyes caught upon another item nudged into view by Set's persistent prodding. She picked up a journal—a new journal, the binding still strong, if a bit creased—and thumbed through the pages, recognizing the familiar handwriting, though not the words themselves. Harriet held Professor Slytherin's notes, the lines written in some kind of code, all the letters jumbled or replaced by funny little runes and symbols. His careful script filled almost every page.
Harriet knew she should let it be; she should pretend she never saw the Chamber, let alone the notebook her cruel, sharp-eyed professor chose to hide within its depths. She needed to find the exit and she needed to leave those book there—and yet, Set continued to lap at their edges like slow ocean waves, and Harriet's wand trembled ever so slightly in her uncertain hand. She licked her bottom lip—and in a fit of Gryffindor boldness, tossed Professor Slytherin's notebook atop the Founder's tome and pulled both into her arms.
"I'm going to regret this," Harriet griped, letting the book's weight settle against her ribs. Set fell about her invisible feet once more, circling like a pleased cat, and the witch only hoped she wasn't going to get herself caught. She was horrified to realize she really didn't know what Professor Slytherin would do if he discovered her down there. She wasn't sure he wouldn't kill her.
It was not a comforting realization.
"Now…how do I get out of here?"
A/N: I can't see Slytherin going down the slip'n'slide of doom into the sewer. I just can't.
I base the entrance of the Chamber off the idea that it wasn't always located in a loo, and I just have a lot of thoughts on the place, because in canon, it's pretty boring for a secret chamber, honestly xD. Basically, I had way too much fun with it and I hope you enjoy the new details and changes.
So I pondered about this for a while: could homenum revelio detect someone inside The Invisibility Cloak? In canon it could, but for CDT, I'm saying it can't. It's a part of Death's cloak; magic cannot forcibly reveal it. Snape (and Mad Eye) can see through it, because the magic to do so is physically changing how they see and perceive things. The magic in their eyes is affecting them, not the world around them. In CDT, the Cloak resists and shrugs off the magic of Homenum Revelio.