December 1942 to February 1943, 5th year

Tom vanished yet another cobweb as Naenia fiddled with the last snake dial. They had found the entrance Ominis Gaunt had described without a problem, had opened the first door with ease thanks to Tom's Parseltongue and were now almost done with the second challenge.

Tom would have really liked to know what the mechanisms did if someone made the wrong choice or took too long. But Naenia had prevented him from fiddling with them before looking around for clues – which were easy to find, even without Ominis' help – and now they were already down to the last one.

Tom vanished another cobweb and waved his wand to repair some broken wall relief.

He couldn't stand all the filth.

(At first, Tom had been the one to fiddle with the snake dials, but Naenia had simply stood by and watched and Tom really could not stand all this filth.)

"There we go," Naenia said and then there was a telling click and the sound of a door opening.

Tom took a deep breath. "This is it, then."

Naenia threw him an amused glance over her shoulder. "No need to get anxious, Tom. If we can't reverse-engineer the thing, you can always cast the Cruciatus Curse on me."

Tom blanched. "Please don't joke about that, Naenia."

Naenia ducked underneath a cobweb. "Who says I'm joking?"

Tom raised his wand to vanish the cobweb and followed her.

"Charming," Naenia said dryly as they came to a halt in front of an odd door with a moving relief that depicted faces distorted in pain – just like Ominis Gaunt had described it. She looked to the side. "Huh. I thought Ominis would have taken his aunt's remains with him to give her a proper burial."

Naenia crouched down to lightly touch the skeleton lying in a heap next to the door. Then she looked up at Tom and continued their earlier conversation, "I told you the Lémures showed me how to turn off my pain receptors. I wouldn't feel a thing."

Tom levelled a glare at her. "The Cruciatus Curse does far more damage than mere pain. You know that, Naenia."

She simply shrugged, then rose, dusting off her robes. "Let's get to work, then."

They did manage to reverse-engineer the magics that made up the door and unravel them based on that – unlocking the way back was almost too easy, but unlocking the way forward took quite some time in return. Tom had, truthfully, somewhat neglected his practices of the Old Magics ever since they had come to Hogwarts. But Naenia had not and it wasn't hard following her lead and getting back into it. The Old Magics came to him almost naturally.

However, the crawling, dreadful, filthy sensation washing over Tom's senses was not one he ever wanted to feel again and also made him reconsider using this type of magic to search for the Chamber of Secrets.

If they were lucky, Slytherin had left instructions or at least useful hints in his Scriptorium.

"There we go." Naenia beamed at him as Tom unravelled the last thread. "See? Piece of cake."

Tom watched the door melt, revealing the room behind it. Candles sprung to life just as he crossed the threshold and the very first thing he saw was –

"What a narcissist."

"Hm?" Naenia appeared at his shoulder, bones cradled in her arms. "Oh, wow. That's …"

"The snakes are a nice touch."

"I guess …?" Naenia tilted her head, furrowing her brows. "Why do you think did he choose to go with the beard? Was he already that old by the time he left the school?"

Tom shrugged helplessly. "Who knows. Honestly, to put a stone head of yourself right in the middle …" He shook his head. "Unbelievable."

Naenia snorted. "Maybe we'll find a 20-foot statue of him in the Chamber."

Tom tore his eyes away from the long-bearded stone head mounted on the wall that separated the room into two parts. There were quite a lot of scrolls lying around on a table underneath the head, old vases to both sides. Snake pillars. More scrolls on shelves on the walls behind them. On top of those shelves, a couple of … skulls?

"Naenia?"

"Yes?"

"Are those real?"

"Yes. There are even more in the back."

"I see."

At least there were no cobwebs. A layer of dust, but even that was a surprisingly thin one.

The second part of the room – up a flight of stairs leading behind the stone head – looked like a proper study. Numerous bookshelves and drawers lined the walls. There were books and notes and letters strewn around everywhere. More vases and skulls. Several writing desks – who needed four writing desks all to themself? – with quill stands and dried inkwells. An abstract stone –

"Is that …?"

"Yes."

"Why is there a snake crawling into his mouth?"

"We could ask him?"

"No, I'd rather not."

"Fair enough."

Naenia leaned over, curiously examining the horrid thing, even going so far as to put down the bones so she could touch it.

"I think this would open to an exit if spoken to in Parseltongue."

"Open."

The stone head turned around. Curious, Tom stepped into the hollow part. The stone turned once more.

Tom blinked.

As expected, the moment he stepped out, the opening closed behind him and changed into an unassuming patch of stone wall. Tom looked at it critically for a moment, but could not discern any differences from the rest of the wall.

"Open," he hissed once more.

To his surprise, the wall moved.

"We're right by the entrance to our common room," he told Naenia, who was looking at the exit, head tilted, Noctua Gaunt's remains resting by her feet.

"Interesting."

"So we could have avoided the tedious challenges," Tom observed, his voice sounding oddly detached to his own ears.

"Maybe," Naenia replied, still examining the exit – or the stone head, now.

Tom left her to it and began to pick up some of the notes and books. They had come here in the hopes of finding clues about the Chamber of Secrets, after all – though Tom didn't mind the spellbooks and research journals, either. Even if most of them were quite obscure and morbid in a disappointingly useless way. Or extremely outdated. Or both.

"There are surpassingly few trinkets and little fiddly things in here," Naenia commented.

Tom arched an eyebrow at her. "This is not Dumbledore's office."

"I suppose." Naenia frowned. "It's kind of … underwhelming, though, isn't it? Except for the books, of course, but I have yet to look at them."

"You'll like them."

"Will I?" she said next to his ear, leaning over his shoulder to look at the book Tom was currently skimming – which appeared to be Slytherin's diary.

"Perhaps not this one. Here," Tom pointed to a specific passage. "I shall place the creature into a deep sleep in its chamber until it can be awakened by one who shares my views: a descendant willing to reverse the damage that the others have so carelessly wrought; one who shall rid the school of those unworthy of Hogwarts that would serve only to stain my legacy."

"Lovely."

Tom flipped through several more pages. "There doesn't seem to be anything else about the Chamber in here, though."

Naenia moved away to pick up her pile of bones once more.

"Well," she said. "I know just the person we ought to ask next. But first, we need to decide which graveyard to bury her in."

⸸

Tom stared. Then he stared some more.

"That is not twenty feet."

Naenia hummed. "More like … forty, maybe?"

Tom resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. "… why?"

"Well," Naenia said lightly, clasping her hands behind her back, "it tells you exactly what kind of person the man was. Still want to follow in his footsteps?"

"I never said I wanted to."

Naenia grinned. "You've certainly got the right amount of ego for it." She made a sweeping gesture. "The confidence. The talent. The inheritance."

"Funny."

"Oh? You don't want to purge the school, then? Rid Hogwarts of its stain on your venerable ancestor's legacy? I wonder what his monster will think about that."

"We will have to find out, won't we?" Tom turned to the statue and took a deep breath.

"Speak to me, Slytherin," he hissed, "greatest of the Hogwarts Four."

Truly, the man couldn't have been any more conceited. Tom was beginning to question how any of the other founders had been able to stand even being in a room with him long enough to build a school. Legacy? What legacy? A fancy hidden office full of useless obscure books with stone heads and a damp underground chamber with a forty feet high stone statue of the man that opened its mouth to reveal –

"I was right!" Naenia exclaimed. "Oh, look at her! Look at this gorgeous thing!"

"Close your eyes!" Tom exclaimed in panic, then hastily commanded the bloody Basilisk to do the same.

Truth be told, had the Basilisk not emerged with its eyes already closed, it would have been too late for them at this point. They really hadn't thought this through.

"The King of Serpents," Tom said, now that he had calmed down enough to look at the thing in wonder.

"Queen."

"Queen?"

"This is a female Basilisk, Tom. Although I suppose a woman can still be King."

"How do you know it's female?"

"No plume on her head." Naenia frowned. "Though that makes me wonder if Basilisks can actually reproduce like other animals. One wouldn't think so, considering they hatch from chicken eggs." She tilted her head. "I wonder whose magic is stronger."

Tom looked over at Naenia, who was looking at the Basilisk as if she was contemplating doing something incredibly unwise.

"Please don't try. I didn't bring you down here to watch you die. Or kill Slytherin's Monster."

"Am I allowed to approach her?"

"I can ask."

"Please do."

Watching Naenia pet a bemused Basilisk had not been what Tom had expected to happen upon finding the Chamber of Secrets, but Tom wasn't even sure what he had been expecting.

"What is she saying?"

"She's hungry." Tom groaned. "Great. Just what I wanted: An oversized snake as a pet I have to keep fed somehow. We should just put it back into stasis."

"The poor thing. She's already been asleep for so long. Surely she can have a bit of freedom."

Of course, Naneia had already fallen in love with the infernal thing.

"Naenia," Tom said flatly. "This is a Basilisk. We are in a school full of people."

"A few of them surely won't be missed. There are always a few that mysteriously disappear during the year."

"Why am I even talking to you." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "There's nothing else down here, let's just leave."

"But Tom –"

"I'm not dealing with this." He gestured at the Basilisk. "Unless you want me to purge the school? Rid it of all the mudbloods?"

"You know I never cared about blood." Naenia paused. "At least not in this specific sense. Blood magic, on the other hand …"

"We're leaving." Tom turned to the Basilisk and instructed it to go back to sleep.

Naenia watched the beast slither back inside Slytherin's statue with sad eyes that made Tom shake his head in exasperation. (The way the Basilisk climbed into the statue's mouth reminded Tom of that horrid stone head they had seen in Slytherin's Scriptorium. Maybe that's why it had looked like that.)

Naenia didn't say a single word on their way back up, but Tom still heard her silent complaints loud and clear.

A gigantic Basilisk of all things.

⸸

Tom only kept returning to the Chamber because of Naenia. He didn't actually have to feed the Basilisk, himself. The beast could very well hunt on its own, using pipes to move freely around the school as well as leave it through the Great Lake.

(Tom wondered, briefly, what the inhabitants of the Great Lake thought about that. Tom also wondered who had made the pipes so massive that a thousand-year-old Basilisk could move through them. And then Tom began to wonder what those pipes were used for and how clean they were or were not … Remembering how filthy the way to and the Chamber itself had been, Tom decided to cut off that line of thought entirely.)

He could have just let the beast be and look after itself, but Naenia insisted. Was it more trouble than it was worth? Yes. Unless he changed his mind and did start following Slytherin's footsteps. Did he still continue talking with the Basilisk and 'taking it out for walks' just for Naenia? Yes. It was ridiculous.

"What am I getting out of this?" Tom complained as he walked next to her and the Basilisk through the Forbidden Forest, aware of how petulant he sounded.

"Good company." Naenia threw him an amused look over her shoulder. "What else do you want?"

"How about … a soul-bond?"

"A soul-bond?"

"It's exactly what it sounds like. It would allow us to share our lifespans. And our thoughts."

Naenia stopped. The Basilisk stopped with her, having long caught on that Tom was only indulging Naenia whenever he let it out. (Naenia had also figured out a way to temporarily render its stare harmless, though she had to keep touching the beast to maintain the spell.)

"Why would you want that?" she asked, sounding genuinely confused. "We already share our thoughts most of the time."

"You are immortal – thus, I would gain immortality as well."

"I'm not. You know I'm not."

"But you told me –"

"Tom." Naenia fully turned around to face him, the Basilisk turning with her. "Even if it were guaranteed that Death will grant me immortality, I will still have to die first. I don't know the particulars of this soul-bond you have in mind, but my lifespan does not extend beyond my death. Either you would die with me or live out your remaining years and then die, anyway."

Tom looked at the Basilisk's striking yellow eyes. "You think even a soul-bond would not bind us after death?"

"If you are truly afraid of death, an undead existence will be all of your worst fears combined."

Tom fell silent at this. He walked forward, prompting Naenia and the Basilisk to resume their walk, taking his time to think.

They had almost completed their round, the edge of the forest in sight, when Tom spoke again.

"What if I wouldn't mind an undead existence?" he asked slowly.

Naenia didn't even look at him. "Then you wouldn't be afraid of Death."