Finally flipping his map back on, Harry didn't have time to really count the dots out in the hallway since he was so focused on the big red one swiftly rising upwards in the semi-3D projection, where, sure enough, the shaft down into the Chamber of Secrets had finally been displayed in what had previously been empty space.
Harry had a moment of doubt. Maybe he could try to talk to the monster. Maybe he could control it. Get it to stop killing. But what little he'd heard it saying made it seem more than a simple animal, being controlled by a bad guy. The further reading Hermione had turned up (and which had made its way to his codex) had indicated that it took dark magic to breed a basilisk, and nobody had ever managed to use one for anything nice.
SLYTHERIN'S MONSTER
Basilisk, Level 20
As that bit of text rose up out of the pipe just slightly ahead of the serpent's head, Harry made his snap decision to not try diplomacy. He looked away from potentially-petrifying eyes, careful to not catch them in the bathroom's dirty mirrors, and withdrew the rooster.
The poor, traumatized rooster had been moments from crowing for sunrise and wouldn't let a little thing like weeks in a temporal void and a sudden and dramatic shift in scenery keep him from doing his duty. "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!"
It was after the massive crow that the bird realized what had entered the room with him that he starting making new, surprised chickeny noises before Harry thrust him back into the menagerie to have an avian mental breakdown later. Harry was ready to bolt out the door if the crowing hadn't worked, but he was pleased to note the full-body sensation of a massive serpent suddenly ragdolling to the toilet-water-slick bathroom floor. Another of the toilet doors broke as the basilisk spasmed into it in its death throes.
800 Combat XP Awarded
Level Up!
Heartened by the flash of lights and sound of excited trumpets that would probably be invisible and inaudible to anyone else, Harry risked a glance over. Sure enough, that was a big snake. Its head was almost as big as he was, and he was pretty sure the couple of yards of body protruding into the bathroom from the secret passage wasn't nearly all of it. He would never have wanted to battle something like that even if it didn't have a death gaze. The deadly venom would have been bad enough.
Speaking of which, in front of the snake was one of its long fangs, nearly as big as a short sword for Harry. Maybe it had broken off in the impact with the stall, but it seemed to be in the standard loot location. Harry inspected it.
This fang of an ancient basilisk is still impregnated
with its venom. It could be quite a deadly weapon,
though almost as dangerous to its own wielder.
"Magic poison dagger, got it," Harry said, donning his herbology gloves by moving them from his inventory onto his gloves slot and gingerly placing the basilisk fang into the vacated spot in his storage. Before he had time to think more about it, he noticed that the quest was updating itself in a very strange way.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (MAIN QUEST)
Dark conspiracies are afoot at Hogwarts.
* Get to Hogwarts
* Overhear a Strange Whispering
X Attend a Deathday Party
X N/A
X N/A
X N/A
X N/A
X N/A
O Don't get obliviated
* Slay Slytherin's Monster
O Defeat the Heir of Slytherin
O (Optional) Prove Hagrid wasn't responsible
for the last time the Chamber opened
"I… uh… may have skipped a few steps, huh?" Harry realized. Honestly, that list of skipped entries felt like the quest log just being petulant. Maybe he really should take divination class in third year to get more of an idea of how the game system might be trying to predict his future. "Wait, what is 'obliviated' and why didn't it get skipped?" he wondered quietly to himself.
Hermione would know. He was honestly a little surprised that they hadn't come in to check on him yet. Maybe he needed to yell that he was okay.
"I'm fine, everybody!" he yelled loudly enough that they'd hear him from outside. "It's dead."
"And I'm thrilled to hear it!" said a voice he had not been expecting, as the periwinkle-robed figure of Professor Lockhart pushed his way into the room. The man's eyes boggled at the giant dead snake, but fixed in some kind of avaricious resolve. "My my! What a triumph! You know, Harry my boy, we had the rumors of the Chamber of Secrets in my day as well. Such an excellent way of cementing one's fame, having found it after all these years and slain the monster to boot!"
"I didn't do it for the fame, sir," Harry demurred, cocking his head to glance behind the professor, hoping to see his friends through the door as it closed behind Lockhart. He could still see their dots out in the hallway, but they didn't seem to be moving.
"Of course you didn't," Lockhart waved away. "That's something I've sadly realized about you in our last month together. No sense of what you could do with that fame. Tell me, how did you even find out about the monster?"
Harry shrugged, and summed up, "We heard the hissing a few weeks ago and worked out where it had to be coming from. Then we asked Myrtle about how she died, and she pointed us at the sink that had never worked, right where we'd mapped out there had to be a shaft down." It omitted a few parts, but it would do as an on-the-fly excuse. He'd probably need to build it up a little more if Dumbledore asked.
He realized that with the giant snake, someone probably would ask. He hadn't expected a professor to show up in moments, but it would be hard to just make the giant snake corpse vanish. Well, probably. Magic was weird.
In fact, he glanced up and saw at least one other dot incoming, so he'd probably need to re-explain it to a prefect or Filch in a moment. But Lockhart was frowning, "Myrtle, huh. Tricky that. But, yes, don't worry, young Harry. You won't have to worry about this little incident making mouths wag and tabloids spill ink all over you."
"I won't?" Harry looked quizzically at the professor, not sure of his angle but hoping it meant he was interested in helping them get out of this.
"No," Lockhart agreed with a smile that caused his teeth to glisten, even in the dim candlelight of the bathroom. "You see, 'twas Gilderoy Lockhart that slayed the beast. The old rooster trick! You know I included a similar tactic in Year with the Yeti. Basic monster-hunter secret."
"Wait… what?" Harry was confused.
"Shame the trauma of the experience affected some students that happened along," Lockhart continued to talk, almost as if working out a story aloud rather than telling Harry. "You said hissing a few weeks ago, yes? Fortunately, we're only a month into the school year, so it's not like you'll be losing too much."
Harry's eyes narrowed. He'd never heard of the memory charm, but his newfound basic comprehension of Latin let him know that "obliviate" might have something to do with forgetfulness rather than the modern idea of oblivion.
So when Lockhart suddenly whipped his wand out and yelled, "Obliviate," at him, Harry was already dodging into Myrtle's stall and drawing his own wand. The energy of the spell splashed harmlessly against the far wall of the bathroom. "Get back out here, Harry!" Lockhart ordered. "This is better for both of us. You don't want fame."
"But I want my memories!" Harry yelled back. He'd spent so many hours cramming skill books into his head over the last month, at the very least. "Wait. Did you obliviate my friends!?"
"I will in a moment. They're simply stunned for now," Lockhart admitted. "Why are you making this so hard?" The voice was tentatively moving closer to the stall, and it told Harry a lot that the adult wizard was worried enough about a twelve-year-old to not just rush in, wand blazing.
To be fair, Harry had several options, from putting on his invisibility cloak, to trying to cast a spell on the professor, to stabbing him to death with his new fang dagger. But with the incoming dot that was just outside of the bathroom door after clearly stopping briefly at each of the dots representing his unconscious friends… Harry yelled pitifully, "No, Professor Lockhart! Don't steal my memories!"
DECEPTION CHECK SUCCEEDED
"You leave me no choice, boy!" Lockhart said, moving into view and leveling his wand again since it seemed that Harry was helpless, "Now hold still. Oblivi–"
"Expelliarmus!" a man's voice whipped out, faster than Lockhart could complete his spell. Lockhart was bodily shoved sideways as his wand was yanked out of his hand toward the bathroom door. The foppish professor shrieked as he bounced off of the basilisk corpse and onto the damp floor. It was unclear whether he was more frightened by the attack, by falling against the giant snake, or by getting his robes dirty. "What the hell is going on here!" the voice insisted.
Harry didn't actually recognize the voice, and poked his head out of the stall to get a look at the man standing baffled in the doorway. He was middle-aged, clean-shaven, and had short, graying blond hair. Deep red robes were somewhat-weirdly topped with a well-worn brown trench coat.
JOHN DAWLISH
Auror, Level 12
[MINISTRY OF MAGIC,
HUFFLEPUFF]
Blinking in his confusion at an auror being in the castle but knowing he needed to start talking before Lockhart used his position as a professor to lie, Harry explained, "Me and my friends saved the school from Slytherin's Monster. But Professor Lockhart said he was going to obliviate us and take credit."
"Did he now?" Dawlish said, looking shrewdly at the professor, who was struggling to get up without touching any of the surfaces in the room and getting his hands grimy. Seeing that the suspect wasn't much of a threat at the moment, the auror went ahead and incanted, "Prior Incantato," over the wand he'd captured.
Impressed at the use of magic, Harry was trying to remember the disarming charm and this new spell enough to add them to his spellbook so he could look them up in more detail later. The disarming charm in particular had looked very useful.
A few puffs of light emerged from Lockhart's wand, and they seemed to mean something to Dawlish, who said, "Gilderoy Lockhart. Are you aware that use of the memory charm is a serious crime if you aren't a duty-bound obliviator on Ministry business? And using the stunning charm on students… well, that's frowned upon."
Lockhart finally realized that, in his haste to capitalize on a heroic deed that would be the capstone on his falsified career, he had gotten himself in trouble. He struggled for an explanation and settled on, "The imperius curse! The Heir of Slytherin bewitched me! In fact… in fact, that Heir is Harry Potter! You stopped me just as I had broken his curse and defeated his monster! He was going to unleash it on the whole school!"
"Harry Potter is the Heir of Slytherin?" Dawlish drawled, clearly not believing it.
While he thought this would probably work out for him, Harry decided to add a bit more proof. "I killed the basilisk, sir. With a rooster. My friends were waiting out in the hall in case it didn't work. They'll tell you the same when they wake up if he didn't already remove their memories." Leaning back into the stall so neither Dawlish nor Lockhart could exactly see what he was doing, he once again retrieved the now-very-agitated rooster from his menagerie and held it out for the auror to view.
Dawlish nodded, "Habeas corpus, sure enough. Lockhart, you don't have to have a rooster on you, do you?"
Lockhart, deflating—particularly since he couldn't find a clean surface to grab to stand and because his beautiful robes were slowly but surely filling up with toilet water from the bathroom floor—said, "I… uh… I want a solicitor."