Just think. This was all originally going to be part of the previous chapter. Good lord.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

The slide down into the Chamber of Secrets was just as slimy and disgusting as he remembered. Not being able to see anything added an extra tinge of terror that he could certainly have done without, and the supersensory charm meant that absolutely none of the putrid smells, squelching sounds, or slick muck was lost to him.

At least he was hyper-aware of the pipe leveling out, so he wasn't thrown unexpectedly off the end. He hopped off with little trouble and landed with a sickening crunch on what he knew from memory to be a floor full of small animal bones. He heard Ginny land beside him moments later.

'Ugh,' she said, sounding queasy. 'Maybe I should have practiced that charm more; I think I cast it too strong.'

'No, this is what it's supposed to be like,' Harry assured her. 'Most aurors don't like using it unless we absolutely have to for exactly this reason.' The dank and rot of the underground cavern was nearly overpowering. He fought to get his gag reflex under control.

'I can see why,' Ginny said. 'This is disgusting.' There was another crunch. 'I don't even want to know what I'm stepping on.'

'It's nothing too terrible,' he assured her. 'I mean, if I had a choice of where to spend my evening...'

'All right, I get it,' she said. 'At least I don't have to look at anything. I'm not sure I could handle that. Let's just get this over with and get out of here before I have a panic attack.'

'You didn't have to come, you know.'

'Harry,' she said, her dangerously stern tone instantly putting him on guard,'I'm going to hex you. We've been over this and over this. I absolutely did have to come, because there is no way in hell I was going to let you do something this insanely dangerous by yourself.'

'Don't get me wrong; I'm happy for the backup. I don't want to do this at all, let alone by myself, but if being down here is going to be too hard for you -'

'Don't even finish that thought,' she cut across him. 'For someone who puts his life on the line on a regular basis, you seem to have an exceptionally difficult time understanding why anyone else would.'

'I understand,' he said. 'I just don't like it. But it's your decision; if you say you're all right then I believe you. Let's get going. Merlin, I can taste the bloody stench in here.'

They began creeping through the tunnel, their footsteps slapping almost unbearably loudly on the wet floor. This had an interesting effect, however. As the sound of their footsteps reverberated off the walls of the stone tunnel, his magically enhanced senses registered the sounds and he was able to picture everything in his environment clearly without seeing it. Even though Harry had only spent a very short time here before, he still had a very clear memory of it. As he recalled, there wasn't much to see even when he could, so he was not surprised to discover that the tunnel was bland and featureless, and dreadfully long.

'This must be how bats feel,' Ginny whispered from beside him. 'It's like I can almost see the walls just from the sound echoing off them.'

'That'll be useful, I expect, if we run into the basilisk here,' he replied. 'Though I don't think it'll do us much good in the chamber; it's too big.'

Before long, they sensed a bend in the tunnel ahead and slowed down, just in case.

'This is about where Lockhart attacked us, I think,' Harry said once they rounded it and straightened out again. 'And there was a giant snakeskin just ahead.'

'Hang on,' Ginny said. She tapped her foot several times, filling the tunnel with a great clatter. Harry was about to ask what she was doing when he realized; he could tell that the tunnel ahead of them was empty, just as it had been for their entire trek so far. No snake skin.

'You're brilliant,' he said. 'I suppose it stands to reason. If there was no one around to let it out...'

'Do you think it's just in the chamber, waiting?' Ginny asked.

'I don't know, but we've come this far.'

They resumed their previous pace. Now the tunnel was turning more and more, back and forth, winding along…Like a snake, thought Harry. Of course. I just got that.

Eventually they sensed a solid wall ahead of them. They held their breaths and listened, making sure there was absolutely no chance that anything else was in the tunnel with them.

'I'm going to have to take my blindfold off,' Harry said. 'I need to speak parseltongue to open the chamber, and I've never been able to do it without looking at a snake.'

'There are snakes here?' Ginny asked.

'Fake ones. They're part of the door. But they look real enough.' He didn't know if he should be glad or not that she couldn't remember. Would that make it more or less traumatizing for her? It was something they should talk about at some point. But not now.

He slowly removed his blindfold and opened his eyes. It was pitch black; even with the supersensory charm active he still couldn't see anything.

'Lumos,' he whispered, and a beam of light shone from the tip of his wand. The rooster he still held in his other hand, which had been quite docile up until this point, began squirming erratically. Ginny's was too. He didn't dare stun them, so this would have to be quick. He focused his eyes on the entwined snakes on the door to the Chamber, their glittering emerald eyes making them look more alive than ever when viewed through his currently enhanced vision.

'Open,' he said, though he could hear the hiss coming from his own mouth, and could sense Ginny's shudder from next to him. The snakes parted and the door slid open, the grinding stone almost deafening to his charmed ears. He doused his wand and reapplied his blindfold. His rooster immediately began to calm down with the loss of light, though was still stirring more than it had since their descent from Myrtle's bathroom.

'Do you hear anything?' Ginny whispered from his right.

'No,' he replied. 'It's unnerving. Even if it's asleep, it's big enough that we should be able to hear it breathing, don't you think?'

She shuddered again. 'Let's go,' she said. 'Slowly.'

They crept into the chamber, placing their feet very softly and deliberately so as to make as little noise as possible. The ambient noise, minuscule as it remained, was enough to tell them that this was a much larger, more cavernous space than any they'd walked through so far. That matched up with Harry's memory perfectly.

Once they had reached what they felt was probably the center of the chamber, they stopped. They waited several seconds, listening intently. Still they heard nothing. Harry suggested refreshing their charms, just in case, but even afterward there was nothing. They heard no breathing or slithering, and sensed no movement.

'This is wrong,' Harry muttered. 'It should be here. We should be able to sense it even if it's lying completely still.'

'Do you think it's roaming around the tunnels somewhere?' Ginny asked.

'What tunnels? You mean like the one we came by? Are there more? It shouldn't be able to leave the chamber unless someone releases it, right?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'I was just throwing out an idea. It has to be somewhere.'

'I'm going to look,' said Harry, reaching up to remove his blindfold.

'Oh Harry, don't!' Ginny pleaded, clutching his arm.

'We have to do something, Ginny. If it's not here, we have to find it. And if it's not here, looking won't be dangerous.' He understood the logic of his own words, but it was still with a shaking hand that he pulled his blindfold away, and still several seconds more before he dared open his eyes even just a crack.

The first thing he noticed was that it was no longer pitch black. There was an eerie green gloom to the place. This made sense as soon as he thought about it. He clearly remembered being able to see through his original ordeal here; the light had to have come from somewhere.

Sure now that they were alone, he opened his eyes all the way and immediately knew what was wrong.

'Ginny, it's safe,' he said. 'And I know what we have to do. Look.'

She removed her own blindfold and opened her eyes. The moment she did, her body went through a quick jerking motion as though she were going to throw up, but managed to suppress it.

'Are you all right?' he asked (rather stupidly, he thought almost immediately).

'Of course not,' she growled, gritting her teeth. 'But I knew what I signed up for.'

He wanted to take her hand, but there was a squirming rooster in it. Ahead of them lay their problem: a massive statue of Salazar Slytherin spanning the entire height of the Chamber. Ginny was staring at it unblinkingly, barely moving. He remembered that Riddle had called the basilisk from within, but he couldn't remember how.

'It's behind there,' he explained. 'Riddle said something in parseltongue to get it to come out – some kinds of password – but I don't remember what it is. Shit!'

'Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four,' murmured Ginny, nearly inaudible. She was still staring at it without blinking, but he could see tears leaking from her eyes.

'What?' he asked in shock.

'That's the password,' she said, finally blinking. More tears leaked out. 'I remember. I don't know how I remember but I do. He must have had me say it dozens of times that year and it's just engraved on my brain.'

'Are you sure?'

'Positive,' she said, nodding firmly. 'As soon as I looked at that wretched thing, those words just rose up in my mind. I can't make sense of it. He would have had me speaking parseltongue, so why can I remember?'

'When you're speaking parseltongue and you understand it, it feels just like English. Even after I lost the ability, I still remembered the few important conversations I'd heard in it over the years.'

'I reckon it's a good thing I came, then,' she said, wiping her tears away and attempting to put on a brave smile. 'You would have been stuck right here without me.'

'We still might,' he said. 'There isn't anything on that statue I can even pretend is a real snake. How am I supposed to speak parseltongue to it?'

'Have you tried closing your eyes and just imagining a snake?' Ginny suggested, her voice still sounding a little shaky. 'Or if that doesn't work, there are snakes carved onto the pillars all around us. If we're lucky, you don't have to be facing the statue directly for it to work.'

'You're brilliant,' he said. 'Let me try the imaginary one first, since we're going to want to have our eyes closed anyway. Put your blindfold back on, and get ready to lift the silencing spells on these chaps.' He hefted his rooster and gestured to hers. 'And get behind me.'

Either she knew better than to argue with him on that point, or she didn't have the energy to. She stepped behind him after affixing her blindfold. 'I'm ready,' she said.

'Okay, here goes.' Harry put on his own blindfold and closed his eyes, trying his best to visualize a snake in his mind's eye. The snake that came most readily to mind was Nagini, Voldemort's future familiar, but he didn't let that deter him.

Once he was concentrating as hard as he could on the image of Nagini, he spoke. 'Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four.' As before, he could hear the hissing sounds emerging from his own mouth, even as his brain registered them as English words. There was a grinding sound that Harry knew to be the statue opening its mouth, accompanied by several more noises that curdled his blood.

He could hear the massive form of the great serpent, writhing around, slithering and slowly uncoiling itself as it became aware its confinement was ending. He could hear its heavy breathing, even its heartbeat, echoing out from within whatever nightmare chamber existed behind Slytherin's stone visage. And he could hear a voice, one he had not heard in over a decade and had hoped to never hear again, crying out in exultation.

'Yes! I am free! I smell blood. I smell fear! Let me kill. Let me rip, tear, devour. Let me KILL!'

A great thud that shook the chamber and Harry could feel through his whole body signaled that the basilisk had dropped to the floor. In his left hand, the rooster he had been carrying went limp.

SHIT! 'Ginny, cover your rooster's eyes!' he yelled, hoping he was not too late. He flung the now useless dead bird aside. He could hear the great serpent unwinding itself, raising itself up again to strike. He could hear it saying over and over how much it wanted to kill them, to tear them apart.

'Stop!' He cried, but could tell it was English as soon as he said it. He'd lost his concentration. 'Stand down! Don't attack us!' He tried to focus on the snake's voice, hoping it would get his brain in the right frame of mind again to speak parrseltongue, but his blood was pumping too heavily in his ears and he couldn't focus.

'PROTEGO!' he shouted at the last second, casting as strong a shield as he could muster just as the basilisk lunged forward at them. It crashed into his barrier with full force and it was all he could do to keep it in place. He didn't think it could withstand another hit.

'Ginny, the rooster!' he yelled.

'It won't crow, Harry!' she cried, audibly near panic herself. 'It's blinded so it thinks it's dark, or else it's too scared; I don't know! But it won't make a sound!'

He could sense the snake shaking off its disorientation. It would be ready for another strike in mere moments. His mind raced.

'Confund it!' he yelled.

'What?'

'If we can make it forget about being scared or that it's dark, it might crow! I don't think I can hold this thing off through another strike like that!'

'All right, I'll try!'

He heard her muttering the spell just as the basilisk lunged again. His shield wavered, then collapsed. He wouldn't have time to cast another one before -

A deafening crow rang out. It would have hurt his ears even without the supersensory charm, and he winced and instinctively clamped his hands over them. There was another great thud, just like before, and this time he knew it was the result of the basilisk falling to the floor of the chamber, dead. He was panting, taking a moment in the sudden calm to try and catch his breath. He could hear Ginny doing the same from behind him.

'Was the sonorus charm really necessary?' he asked once he felt he could speak again.

'I didn't want to take any chances,' she said. 'Plus it still wouldn't crow even after I confunded it, so I hit it with a stinging hex.' Her voice was still shaking, and he was standing close enough to her that he could feel she herself was, too.

'Fair enough,' he said. 'Let's finish with this bloody thing so we can get the hell out of here.' They carefully made their way over to where the snake's body had fallen. There was very little literature on what harmful effects there were (if any) from looking a dead basilisk in the eye, but they didn't particularly want to be test subjects on the matter.

'Did you remember to put your gloves on?' Ginny asked. He froze in his tracks.

'No, I didn't,' he said. 'Thanks.' He pulled out his dragon hide gloves from within his robes and slipped them on. 'I can't believe we didn't think to blind the bloody chickens.'

'We're bound to make mistakes,' Ginny said. 'It's not like this was even our first. We'll just have to be that much more careful in future.'

'Eugh,' said Harry. A wave of the stench of blood and death washed over him as he approached the beast's head. 'And I didn't think it could possibly smell any worse down here.' He conjured a sword – more of a jagged piece of metal with a handle than a proper one – and put his hand out to feel for his target. It took a bit of probing, but he finally located the large protrusion that would be the snake's eye. He plunged his conjured weapon into it and was rewarded with a fresh spray of putrid blood and gore. He repeated the process with the other eye. Only then did he and Ginny finally remove their blindfolds.

'Blimey, it's bigger than I remember,' said Harry. An involuntary shudder ran through his entire body. Ginny nearly wretched again.

'How many do you think we need?' she asked, looking at the creature's fangs. Her voice was no longer shaking, but carried the unmistakable hesitancy of one who was on the verge of being sick.

'Just two or three, I'd say. If it's missing too many it'll look strange.'

They very carefully pulled out three of the basilisk's fangs and placed them in the dragonhide bag Ginny had brought with her, then secured it tightly. Harry broke a couple more of its teeth for appearance's sake, and left the broken tips on the floor of the chamber.

'They'll be insurance if anything goes catastrophically wrong,' he said. 'We can always come back and get them if we need to.'

Ginny was looking critically at the giant snake. 'Harry, this thing is massive,' she said. 'How are we going to get it out of here? I don't think we'll be able to shrink it.'

'You might be right, but let's give it a try.' They worked together to cast the spell, but even dead the basilisk was too powerfully magical to be shrunk by two people. They both cursed.

'Let's try a featherweight, then,' suggested Harry. 'We might be able to lighten it enough that the two of us can levitate it out of here.'

Ginny nodded, and they cast the charms. Even when charmed lighter, the two of them working together were barely able to move it afterward.

'This is going to take a long time,' Ginny said. 'We'd better hope Myrtle doesn't calm down any time soon.'

It took the better part of an hour, trudging through the muck and debris of the winding tunnel, but they finally made it back to the entrance pipe.

'I'm going to have to rest before I try conjuring us any stairs,' Ginny said, sitting down and breathing heavily.

'I've got another idea,' said Harry. He'd been thinking about it ever since he managed to open the statue of Slytherin's mouth. 'This can't be a one-way slide. There has to be a way for the heir to get out of here after getting in.' He looked around, but nothing obvious jumped out at him. He began examining the area around the mouth of the slide carefully, looking for some sort of marking like the one on the tap on Myrtle's bathroom. Ginny caught on to what he was doing and joined in. After about five minutes she called out.

'Here, Harry, look!'

She shone her wand light on an area of the wall just inside the mouth of the slide on the left. On it was carved a little snake, exactly like the one on the sink above them.

'This must be it,' he said. 'Climb on here and make sure we've got the snake.' They crouched on the area of the slide that leveled out at the bottom. Harry started intently at the little snake carving, trying to think of what the command might be. 'Up,' he hissed. Nothing. 'Take us up. Return.' Still nothing. A thought occurred to him. Could spells work if spoken in parseltongue? 'Ascendio.'

The reaction was instantaneous. The rocks underneath them started rumbling, and then they found themselves riding a sort of platform back up through the pipe, dragging the basilisk's carcass behind them.

When they poked their heads out into the bathroom, they could still hear wet gurgling sounds coming from Myrtle's cubicle. She was still sobbing away down in her S-bend. Ginny went first, looking out into the hallway, and when she gave the all-clear, Harry followed. They dragged the dead serpent all the way out of the tunnel so that it could seal itself again, then positioned it in such a way that it would look like it had burst through the bathroom door (they broke the door for good measure).

The finishing touch was the part that Ginny had volunteered to to, as she was more capable of disguising her handwriting, but Harry wouldn't hear of it.

'You were even more traumatized by all this than we ever thought,' he said. 'The fact that you remembered Slytherin's password is proof of that. I won't ask you to do something that could trigger you again when I can just as easily do it myself.'

It was a sign of just how right he was that she didn't even put up a fight about it.

Conjuring an indelible paint, Harry wrote on the wall with his wand a message he would never forget until the day he died:

'THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEW'
He stopped before finishing so as to give the impression that the perpetrator had been interrupted.

'That's everything,' he said. 'Dumbledore will be able to make the connection, and Hagrid's name will be cleared. It might take a little longer than before, but he should still be able to teach by next year, I think.'

Ginny stared at the message, breathing heavily through her nose, but her gaze was steady and her breath not quavering.

'Hand me Sir Clucks-a-lot,' he said.

'Harry,' she groaned, shooting him a withering look. However, he grinned, having successfully lightened the mood.

He took the rooster, then disillusioned Ginny, being better at the spell than her, so as to give her a head start getting back to the tower before all hell broke loose. She bade him good luck and was off, not a moment too soon. The early twinges of pre-dawn twilight were visible out the nearest window, and he himself we have precious little time to return to the hospital wing once the final phase of the plan was set in motion.

Once he was satisfied that Ginny would be at least close enough to Gryffindor Tower, he cast the specially designed spell on their one remaining rooster. He hoped Hagrid wouldn't miss the other one too much. Each time it crowed, it would copy itself, until the whole castle was overrun with madly crowing roosters. The idea was to make it look like the Heir of Slytherin had simply had the misfortune of beginning his attack on the same night as a completely unrelated prank that just happened to be a spanner in his plans.

Donning his invisibility cloak once more, he made off down the corridor in the direction of the hospital wing. Only once he was at the very end did he point back toward the rooster and remove its tiny blindfold and the silencing charm. Remembering what Ginny had said in the Chamber, he also shot a mild stinging hex at it. By the time he rounded the corner, he heard the first of what would be many, many crows that morning.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

When Madam Pomfrey came to wake him up to check on him (he had mercifully remembered to clean the blood and grime off himself and his robes at the last minute before climbing into bed) it was with a sort of vindicated satisfaction.

'Clearly you needed your rest if all that racket hasn't woken you up yet,' she said.

'What?' he asked, feigning confusion. Outside, he could hear the distant sounds of chaos. Evidently the staff had not yet managed to round up and dispel all the fake roosters. Dumbledore could likely have done it in seconds, but more likely than not found the whole situation highly amusing. Did that mean no one had stumbled on the dead basilisk yet? Surely if they had, the staff would be taking this much more seriously.

The Matron gave him a once-over, declared him hale and healthy, and cleared him to leave.

'I suspect your schoolmates are just starting to set out for breakfast,' she said. 'Go on and join them. Make sure to eat hearty; your body is still recovering no matter how well you think you feel.'

He thanked her and left. It made sense, he reasoned. If it was that early, he shouldn't be surprised no one had been past Myrtle's bathroom yet; it wasn't exactly on the beaten path to or from anywhere. Not anywhere that anyone would be visiting this early in the morning, anyway.

He was tempted to get the ball rolling himself – just "happen" to walk by there on his way to breakfast – but he knew Ginny wouldn't be happy with him doing so without running it by her and besides, Dumbledore would certainly want to question whoever discovered it, and being interrogated by the headmaster was high on the list of things he wanted to avoid if at all possible. He would just have to wait.

As it turned out, he wouldn't have to wait very long. He'd arrived at the Gryffindor table to find Ron and Hermione already there – they had apparently planned to eat quickly and visit him early – and had barely tucked into his porridge when Filch came bursting into the Great Hall and ran up to the head table where Dumbledore was eating with Professors McGonagall and Flitwick. The rest of the staff had yet to arrive.

Filch had a brief whispered conversation with the headmaster, who then abruptly stood up, seemed to consider something, and then hurriedly followed Filch out of the hall without saying a word. After a shared glance, McGonagall and Flitwick went after him.

'What do you suppose that was about?' Ron asked, his mouth half full of toast.

Harry, struck with a sudden surge of mischief, pulled out his invisibility cloak.

'Want to find out?'

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Hermione tried to persuade them not to, but in the end she proved too curious for her own good (as always). The three of them followed behind the trio of professors at a distance, waiting until they were only one corridor away before donning the cloak. They hid around the corner just out of sight even so, just in case.

'My word!' exclaimed McGonagall. 'Albus, what is this?'

'It appears,' said Dumbledore gravely, 'that the Chamber of Secrets has indeed been opened again, precisely as this message declares. Moreover, it would seem that the monster contained within was and has always been a basilisk, which makes far more sense than anything else, considering what we know about Salazar Slytherin. I will need to write a letter. Regardless, whoever was responsible for this clearly did not count upon the more mischievous of our student population and timed their coming out party at the worst possible moment. Most fortunate for the rest of us.'

'They didn't even have time to finish their message,' Flitwick pointed out.

'Indeed not,' said Dumbledore. 'Their servant likely fell dead at their feet at the very moment that should have been their most triumphant. I expect this was done to avoid any potential injury beyond their control. These wounds are fresh.' They couldn't see what he was referring to, but based on context Harry surmised it was the snake's put-out eyes.

'Can a basilisk kill even after it's dead?' asked McGonagall.

'The common wisdom is no, but they are so rare that it is difficult to say for certain,' said Dumbledore. 'We can assume that whoever is responsible for this at least had reason to believe that they can. Most troubling indeed. Everything is exactly as you discovered it, Argus?'

'Yes, Headmaster,' Filch growled. 'I've had Mrs. Norris standing watch. No one else has been by here yet, sir.'

'We cannot count on that for much longer,' Dumbledore said. 'Students will be heading to class soon. An announcement will have to be made, and we will need to cordon off this corridor for the time being. We must also assume that someone in the castle is in possession of as many as three basilisk fangs. This was done recently as well.'

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

Rumors were flying all over the school by that afternoon. No one had yet been allowed down the corridor in question (which only fueled more wild speculation), but there was already a story going around that a giant two-headed snake had tried to eat Filch during breakfast.

'Unkind of people to get our hopes up like that,' said Fred when he relayed that one at lunch. Hermione gasped.

'Relax, Hermione,' said George. 'We don't actually want Filch to get eaten. Fun to joke about, though. Now, Mrs. Norris on the other hand...'

'Do you suppose it really was a basilisk?' Hermione whispered once the twins' attention was elsewhere.'

'Must've been, mustn't it?' Ron said. 'Dumbledore said it was; who'd know better than him?'

'I can't argue with that,' said Hermione. 'But how did it get in?'

'What even is a basilisk?' asked Harry, playing dumb.

'I'd have thought you knew,' said Ron, 'seeing as how you two always seem to know everything. Glad I'm not the only one in the dark for a change.'

'It's a massive serpent,' said Hermione. 'I looked it up this morning between classes. Apparently it can live for centuries and its gaze is lethal.'

'What, it just looks at you and you snuff it?' asked Ron, aghast.

'Not quite,' explained Hermione. 'You have to meet its eye. But if you do, death is supposed to be instant.'

'Merlin's balls,' Ron swore. 'How the bloody hell did something like that get in here?'

'Remember what Dumbledore said about the "Chamber of Secrets"?' Harry asked, steering the conversation. 'And how something like this has happened before?'

'But what is the Chamber of Secrets?' Hermione asked. 'I know I remember reading something about it in Hogwarts: A History, but it's supposed to be a legend, I thought. I wish I hadn't left my copy at home; I'll have to check out another one from the library.'

Most other students seemed to be discussing similar things. Despite Dumbledore himself blocking off the corridor, the contents of Harry's painted message seemed to have disseminated throughout the student body by the end of the day. Hermione reported she managed to acquire the last copy of Hogwarts: A History that the library had in stock, everyone else evidently thinking along the same lines she ways.

Most of the conversations in the common room that night were about who the heir might be, what they had been planning to do, and what they might do now that their plan had so obviously been foiled. Harry would have much preferred to have kept the whole thing a secret and avoided the panic and speculation entirely – especially since Dumbledore would not be getting answers to any of his questions any time soon – but he and Ginny had been over it and over it, and they could not think of any other way of clearing Hagrid's name. They both agreed that not doing so was out of the question, so they would merely have to deal with the fallout.

'It looks like we didn't cover our tracks nearly as well as we thought we did,' Harry told her that night in the Room of Requirement. They were sitting together on the loveseat, commiserating with one another and trying to let some of the trauma of the previous night ebb away. 'Dumbledore knew right away that those wounds were fresh, and that someone had taken some of the fangs.'

She was initially irritated with him for following Filch and the professors that morning, but came to agree that the information he gleaned had been worth it.

'We knew that was a risk,' she said. 'It might make things difficult for us later on down the line, especially if Dumbledore thinks someone is running around with nefarious plans for basilisk fangs, but helping Hagrid was worth it.'

'Dumbledore said he needed to write a letter,' Harry said. 'I'll bet you anything he's writing to Fudge right away to get things moving on clearing Hagrid's record.'

'Hopefully Fudge isn't too stubborn to go along with it,' Ginny said.

'He tended to follow Dumbledore's lead back in his early days,' Harry said. 'He'll do it. And we can't risk giving Dumbledore the diary; that'll put him on the path of the Horcruxes, which at the very least will put him at odds with what we're planning and at worst get him killed just like last time.'

'I know, I know,' said Ginny. 'Speaking of that fucking thing, here.' She reached into her robes and pulled out a fang, passing it to him. 'Take care of it tonight and good riddance. Have you got a place you can hide that fang afterward?'

'My trunk should be good enough. I can cast spells so that even if one of the lads does start rooting around in it for some reason, they won't see anything I don't want them to.'

'Good enough,' said Ginny. 'I don't know about you, but after last night I'm ready to turn in early today. Back to the routine tomorrow?'

'Sounds good to me,' said Harry, happy that he wasn't the only one too exhausted to work on the plan that night. 'Are you sure you don't want to talk some more about what happened? That seemed to hit you pretty hard. Worse than we were expecting.'

She squeezed him gently round the middle. 'It did. And I do, Harry. But not right now. It's still...it's still too fresh. Unless...do you need to talk about it?'

He shook his head. 'I can manage if you can. I know it's worse for you. I'm here as soon as you're ready.'

'I know. I love you.' She hugged him again.

They crept back to Gryffindor Tower, after which Harry still had to wait for all his dorm mates to go to sleep before he quietly opened his trunk and dug out Riddle's diary. He took it into the bathroom, just in case, then stabbed it with the fang. Black ink gushed out of the hole, covering him and most of the bathroom, and he could have sworn he heard a faint screaming sound, which he convinced himself was his imagination. At last the ink was reduced to a few pitiful spurts, and then stopped entirely. It took him three attempts to magically clean all traces of it away.

Afterwards he looked down at the warped, misshapen and drenched book, now with a smoldering hole punched all the way through it. He set it on fire, and as it was no longer a horcrux, it burned quickly. He vanished the ash, and then returned to bed, his heart considerably lighter than it had been in some time.

One down.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

I've had the general idea of how this chapter would go down for some time. Years, really. But until I actually got to writing it, I didn't appreciate just how complicated it was going to be. I'm glad I cut the last chapter off when I did; it would have been an absolute monster otherwise, no pun intended.

Thanks everyone who left a review after the last chapter. I would ask everyone kindly to do so for this one as well, even if it's just to briefly say that you did or didn't like it.

See you next time.