Harry Potter: Love Bites
This is a work of fan fiction, not for profit. All characters you recognize either belong to JK Rowling, the creator of the world of Harry Potter and owner of all its intellectual property, or fellow fan fiction authors who also were drawn to create something amazing in this world she lets us play in. If you see this work reposted anywhere you had to pay to read it, it has been stolen, please report it.
Warning: This work will contain scenes and themes of a sexual and adult nature. Honestly a whole bunch of violence too, but that is totally okay for all ages in our society, so I warn you that there will be consensual sex between age mates in this fiction. For that exact reason, I have switched the age of your Hogwarts letter to age 14, which in Middle Ages England was a woman's "age of majority" for purposes of marriage. A males age of majority was 21, which would mean every girl entered Hogwarts of marriable age, and every male left it at age to assume his title, profession, and take a wife.
My reasoning being, all witch and wizard children had to go to Hogwarts, there are far too many broom closets for the place with the largest recorded number of House Elves, and outside of Hogwarts, broom closets do not come with full sized fold out couches with hide-a-beds. Mostly they contain brooms and cleaning supplies. Hogwarts in cannon was set up pretty much like an Otome game (Japanese romance video game), for relationship drama, so I'm going to embrace the trope.
$ Indicates dialogue in parseltongue
Itallics indicates a prophecy.
%%%
(Dumbledore POV)
Harry Potter had been marked by the Dark Lord. More than marked. Something of Voldemort lived inside Harry right now. The magic of Lilly Potter had done something. Something that caused the killing curse Voldemort was using to make a Horcrux out of Harry's sacrifice and turned the boy into a Horcrux himself.
Lilly's magic stood between Voldemort's soul fragment, and Harry Potter's own infant magical core, a core that could indeed grow to be Voldemort's equal. Dumbledore smiled. He made a mistake with Tom. Power corrupts, and the powerful never sacrifice themselves. He and Gellert Grindelwald learned that bitter truth together. No, the prophecy made it clear that it was the power of love that would defeat the Dark Lord. Clearly, Voldemort would destroy his own Horcrux when he struck down the boy, and when he did so, the curse would rebound again and kill him permanently.
Of course, Harry might well grow up strong enough to have other ideas than dying to save wizarding Britain. Placing the Elder Wand upon the infant Harry's belly, just below his heart, Dumbledore began engraving charms on the boy's own magical core, restricting and binding it. Harry would not grow strong enough to resist Voldemort, he would grow more and more vulnerable over time, as the Dark Lord rose in power, and returned for revenge, the temptation to destroy Potter personally would be his downfall.
It was regrettable, but for the Greater Good. What was left of Harry Potter was a pawn to be sacrificed, there were already two kings on the board. Harry would be sacrificed to take the dark one.
(Hermione POV)
Hermione Granger had The Dream again. She had the dream whenever she went to sleep thinking about Harry Potter. She had tried asking her mom about dreaming about a boy when you thought about him before bed. That had been a mistake. While Hermione Granger loved knowledge above all things, having a mother who is a dentist can have dangerous side effects. For instance, mentioning to any mother who is a medical professional of any kind that you had disturbing, tear the bed apart, dreams about a boy will cause you to have a very long, extremely embarrassing discussion about birth control, consent, male and female anatomy, various forms of ways girls and boys could indulge in play that did not risk pregnancy, and way too much information about how a girl could take care of such needs without requiring the risky involvement of a boy.
It had also resulted in the post owl bringing Hermione's return letter having a second letter to Madame Pomfrey, who took Hermione aside for a really interesting lecture on magical birth control methods, and other ways a young witch could use magic that Hermione swore she only memorized because of course all knowledge was valuable. She would never actually try them. I mean, probably.
The embarrassing part about it all, was it hadn't been that sort of dream. Not that sort of dream at all. The Dream was not something that Hermione liked to think about. She had of course gone to the library to find out everything she could about the girl in the dream. It wasn't until Hogwarts that she heard any mention of the man in the dream, and even then, all true lore of him was so deeply restricted she got detention from the librarian for asking.
The Dream:
The girl sat swaying in the cave. The great python swayed with her, and the herbs thrown upon the brazier let her slip into the dream place, where the Pythian serpent subdued so long ago by the god Apollo gave to his chosen oracles the gift of prophesy, always and only the gift of the serpent kind.
"Three shall be the abominations of the first. Seven shall be the abominations of the last. Three shall be the heads of serpent he shall become, seven shall be the years of his trial. Magic herself will not survive his fall."
The girl's eyes were the white of ivory or opal, with the whirling rainbow sheen of the wild magic, and her voice echoed in every hall of prophesy, for she was the last Oracle at Delphi, and for centuries her cult had only spoken truth.
She felt, rather than heard the last of the priests and the younger priestess acolytes die. He was here now. Herpo the Foul. They Egyptians named him only "The Greek", but the Hellenic world knew him as "The Serpent Lord", for he was a parselmouth that did not use the snake tongue for prophesy or healing as Apollo's temples taught, but for death and necromancy.
Herpo looked at her and his slit pu piled eyes marked the inhumanity of one who had violated his soul past all rational limits. He hissed, and Hermione remembered the words, but she could never understand them. If she had, much would have changed.
"$ So, it is true. The Pythian oracle can see my Horcrux, and know they number three. Your sight cannot be allowed to penetrate my secrets. A secret known by two can only be kept when one is dead. $" Herpo the Foul, the first magician every to split his soul into Horcrux to escape death hissed in the serpent speach or parseltongue.
The Oracle at Delphi, last of the Pythian Oracles answered in the same tongue.
"$ You cannot escape Hades. Death will not be denied. You are the first abomination, but there will be a last. The gods have seen it. $" Spoke the last Oracle of Delphi, choosing the last words of this life carefully.
Herpo spoke again. This time his tongue was human speech. "There are no gods. There is only power, and those too afraid to weak to seize it." He raised up his hand again and made a lightning shape in the air before chanting "Avada Kedavera" and with a flash of green light, Hermione awoke screaming.
Again.
She hated the dream. She hated not understanding what that hissing was that was clearly not a normal language, because she was sure the important parts were spoken in it.
The Oracle at Delphi was a famous order of seeress in ancient Greece. For centuries they had been associated with the god Apollo, and with the mythical serpent Pythia that he defeated to earn the gift of prophesy. Hermione had found lots of scholarly evidence and writings on the Oracle in respectable British archaeological books. She was happy with that.
Discovering she was a witch, she had been excited to learn that there was indeed a magical language of snakes, but to speak it in Britain was to be at least suspected of being a Dark Wizard. Further, Herpo the Foul was a real person. A person so terrible that asking about him got her detention FROM A LIBRARIAN. What kind of librarian gives detention for research? A Hogwarts Librarian it turns out.
That Harry Potter made her dream of Herpo the Foul made sense. He was the Boy Who Lived, the boy who survived the curse in her dream. The Killing Curse. He was the boy who struck down the Dark Lord Voldemort when just a baby. Seemed a bit odd, as he was quite a normal enough boy. Semi feral, and she suspected quite malnourished and completely unsocialized, but basically a good boy.
Then, in second year, she realized he could speak that magic language. The language of snakes. Harry was a parseltongue! She knew he was the answer to her dreams. Not sure how, but that just meant she needed to research him deeply.
In second year, Hermione had been brewing entirely illegal dreamless sleep potions, as The Dream was becoming a problem, in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Moaning Myrtle was a drama queen, and emotionally fragile. As Hermione roomed with Lavender Brown and Parvarti Patil, managing Moaning Myrtle was a no brainer. When she heard a weeping girl enter the bathroom, then have a debate with herself in two distinct voices, one of which spoke in the hissing sounds of the serpent language, before tossing a black diary into one of the toilets and attempting to flush it, Hermione was curious.
Moaning Myrtle shouted "I DON'T LIKE THAT THING!" and the toilets all blasted water out, soaking the floor. Hermione had to use a quick "Protego" to cover her cauldron to keep her Dreamless Sleep potion from being ruined. Honestly, that spell took a lot out of her, and she almost fainted.
Pushing out the door, she walked over to the puddle with the book. Picking it up, she saw it was black leather, with 'Diary of Tom Riddle' embossed in gold on it. Tom Riddle had been Slytherin Prefect and Head Boy. She had been compared to him by an enthusiastic Professor Flitwick as a charms prodigy, along with Harry Potter's muggle-born mother Lilly Evans (later Potter). Opening the book, she saw it was empty, and somehow also dry. Still, the book gave her the sense of The Dream. Somehow, both like and unlike Harry Potter, this book reminded her of The Dream.
More research! Harry may be hard to figure out, but a diary had to be simpler. From what the young girl who tossed it out had said, she had been writing in it, and it had been writing back. Perhaps Hermione would try that. What is the worst that could happen?
%%%
(Harry Potter POV)
Harry knew Hermione had been hiding something from him. The Dreamless Sleep potions she had been sharing with him had helped him, but she had been growing thinner and paler, he eyes having the bruised look of someone running on Pepper Up potions and enough tea to float the Ark Royal. She had been sullen, withdrawn, angry and crying by turns. Yet, alone of the whole castle, she had stood with him. She knew he was not the Heir of Slytherin. She trusted him. Her alone Now she was missing.
Half a dozen students, and a cat, were missing. The entire castle had decided that as a muggle raised half blood, and the one they claimed destroyed their precious Dark Lord, Harry Potter was actually the new Dark Lord, the Heir of Slytherin. Lets ignore the fact the old Dark Lord WASN"T DEAD. I mean Dumbledore knew, and was covering it up. Harry had faced and fought the dark lord, with Dumbledore, Snape, and McGonagall as witnesses to the end, but still everyone including those worthy professors were sure he was going around petrifying random muggleborns and a cat as part of some cunning plan for, I don't know, the ability to have even fewer friends than just Ron the mannerless idiot and Hermione of the Information Dump?
Ron was even avoiding him. Harry can talk to snakes. Harry bad. Honestly, it took generations of inbreeding to produce an idiot like Malfoy. In the Weasley's case, maybe it was overbreeding. Arthur Weasley had only so many decent Y chromosomes to spare, and six sons in when he got to Ron, he came out somewhere on the Garden-Gnome/Troll spectrum of intellectual and social abilities. Ginny turned out alright, so clearly the never used Weasley X chromosome had some life left in it.
Ginny had been found petrified. She and Hermione had been researching something in the library, and on there way back to the common room when they had been attacked. Ginny was petrified, and Hermione was gone.
'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.' The words written in human blood were Hermione's. Harry had been having problems ever since he began speaking parselmouth. Sometimes he could smell things that people can't smell, or seeing things they can't see, like body heat. He could tell people apart by the taste of the air around them. He would find his tongue flickering out to taste the air. Especially around Hermione. It relaxed him to taste her, and the blood on the wall tasted of her.
Harry was tasting the air, it tasted of Hermione. He felt a coldness fill his veins. Hermione was gone. His Hermione. His eyes flickered, his pupils turned slit and his face grew somehow sharper. His body became still in a way that was not fully human. Harry felt his magic straining against the usual bonds that bound it. For himself, he had grown used to accepting it, but now, she had been taken. Hermione. His Hermione. That was different somehow. Harry wasn't sure how, but now his magic was coiling and thrashing at the bonds placed on it .
Ron's punch came out of nowhere, and made Harry's head ring.
"You snake bastard. It wasn't enough you petrifying muggle borns and half bloods like yourself, you had to attack Ginny? She is pureblood. She even liked you. You waited until Dumbledore was gone and then you showed yourself. She defended you. She told me it couldn't be you, when I told her it was, and now look, you attacked her too." Ron said, too angry to go for his wand, he came in to hit Harry again.
His eyes slit pupiled as any serpent, Harry felt cold all over. He could see Ron's body in shades of head, see the minute tells of his body as he prepared to strike. A detached part of him realized he should care. His first friend was attacking him, and that should mean something.
Hermione was taken to the Chamber of Secrets. His Hermione.
Ron swung his fist. Absently, Harry snatched it out of the air, and twisted, breaking his arm.
Ron was making too much noise, so Harry struck him on the side of the head, and the boy went silent. When had Harry gotten this strong? He had felt it sometimes playing Quidditch when the hunt-urge came over him. He had felt it against Quirell when they fought at the end of first year. The kill-urge was even purer than the hunt-urge.
Why did he feel this way. Why was his magic storming inside him this way?
Hermione. Hermione had been taken. Harry noted that while he wasn't in any way normal right now, his thoughts were inhumanly clear.
Harry saw something clutched in Ginny's hand. A mirror. Something in her other hand, a parchment note. Pulling the note, he looked at it. Hermione had either done or allowed Ginny to rip a page out of a book, about as severe an offence for Hermione as dancing naked on the tables during the year end feast.
Pulling the page out, he read basilisk, king of serpents. Spiders flee before it. Its gaze brings death, in reflection, it petrifies. Doing some quick memory review, Hermione's study habits having more tactical application than he thought, he realized everyone petrified had seen the basilisk through a camera lens, through a ghost, reflected in water, or in a mirror.
Hermione figured it out. Harry figured it out. There is no chance that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry, with full access to the finest Care of Magical Creatures professors in living memory (Professor Grubbly-Plank), and the restricted section of his own library hadn't figured this out in fifty years since it happened last.
In fact, Professor Grubbly-Plank was replaced by Hagrid just in time for this fiasco, a move which suddenly Harry trusted about as much as a candy from the Weasley twins. Harry loved Hagrid, but he was both thick as two thick planks hammered together at the thick end, and entirely Dumbledore's creature.
Dumbledore had ordered Professor Sprout to cultivate Mandrakes this year on a huge scale, by coincidence, just in time for his students to begin getting petrified. I mean, they are a class C restricted plant, it takes serious Ministry pull to be allowed to cultivate them because of the risk, but they are a class project the year that a basilisk starts running around the castle petrifying people. Totally a coincidence.
Moaning Myrtle died the last time, to end it. Harry would talk to her now, because it would be up to Harry to end it this time, if he wanted his Hermione back.
Entering a girl's bathroom ought not to make Harry nervous. Harry had just assaulted his first friend, and looted his sister's petrified body for clues. This is what should scare him. However, it was a GIRL'S bathroom, and the chasers of the Gryffindor quidditch team had given Harry a very clear understanding of boundaries, consent, and gender segregated spaces. When three witches together tell you of the many and varied punishments for coming across girls "accidentally" unclothed in spaces where they should be free to change without male observation, you swiftly take those dire warnings as truth.
Harry knocked. "Is anyone in there?"
Myrtle poked her head through the door, which was not a metaphor, as a ghost, she literally came through the door to shout at him.
"Of course someone is in there, it is my bathroom. I died here, and you can't make me leave!" Blinking as she recognized Harry.
"Oh, it's you Harry. You know, if you died here, you could stay too." Myrtle offered cheerfully, then looked again.
"Or maybe not. Harry, your eyes have turned all snakey. I don't like them. They remind me of...THEN." Myrtle frowned. Unable to hold any emotion long without reinforcement, she smiled at Harry. "But you at least are polite, so you can come in."
Harry pushed into the bathroom, checking the stalls to see Hermione's brewing cauldron was cold and empty. He frowned. Why had she stopped brewing the Dreamless Sleep? She said she had been having trouble sleeping, and even had some blackouts when awake. Why did she stop brewing?
"Myrtle, when did Hermione stop brewing potions here?" Harry asked softly, on the edge of figuring something out.
Myrtle was mad, raising in the air to tower over Harry. "About the same time she stopped being polite to me. Hissing like that. She knows it makes me scared. It reminds me of, THEN." Myrtle shuddered.
Harry had a terrible feeling about this. "Myrtle, can you tell me about 'then'. I mean, you are the only student ghost, and nobody knows how you died. You should be the most famous ghost, but nobody knows your story at all. I mean, your first Death Day is important, right?" Harry said, trying to appeal to Myrtle's ego to get her past the fear of discussing her death trauma. It worked.
She floated down until she was eye level, almost nose to nose wtih Harry.
"Well, I was in here alone, having a good cry after that skeleton little twiglett Hannah made a joke about my weight, and Ermintrude brought up the acne I had to brew my own potion to get rid of, when I heard someone coming into the bathroom. A boy! Not like you. He didn't ask if it was okay to come in or anything. Then he started hissing, just like Hermione today.
I came out to give him what for. I had my wand out, ready to Hex him so bad he would have to crawl to the hospital wing when I saw them. Two great yellow snake eyes, shining at me."
Myrtle nodded in satisfaction as if the injustice of her plight had been captured fully.
"I died. In a bathroom, looking at two terrible yellow snake eyes. Not like yours Harry. They are a rather attractive green, even when you go snakey." Myrtle cooed. Reaching out to stroke his cheek, leaving him feeling the cold of the ghost touch.
Harry thought about it. Then he thought about snakes, and let his mind shift deeper into that awareness. "Did the sound Hermione was making, and the bad boy who came before sound like this?" Harry asked, before Harry switched to Parseltongue.
"$ Did they speak the language of serpents? $" Harry said, and watched as Myrtle shot back through the bathroom stall door to poke just her head back.
"Stop that!" Myrtle shouted. "That is how the bad man hissed THEN, and how Hermione hissed when she came in a few minutes ago." Myrtle said.
Harry already knew the answer. "Myrtle, she came in. She isn't here now. Did she ever open the door to leave?"
Myrtle blinked in confusion, then floated back through the door and looked around. "No she didn't. She isn't here. She isn't invisible either. I'm a ghost, and this is where I died. I can see everything here. Isn't that strange?" The Ravenclaw ghost girl looked around with happy interest.
Harry turned to look at the stalls, the walls, the sinks, looking for a sign. Finally he noticed one sink had serpents for taps. None of the rest did. He went and turned the taps, and nothing came out.
"That one doesn't work." Myrtle sniffed. It never has, and even asking Dumbledore to fix it did nothing. He kept saying it worked perfectly as it was, which is silly because it never made water even when I was alive. "
Harry smiled, and his voice turned to a cold and dangerous hiss.
$ Then it will work fine for me. Open you useless piece of shit secret door, before I blast you. $" Harry hissed. Either something in his command was the code word for opening it, or the door simply did what it was told in parseltongue. The sink retreated and a dark downward tunnel was revealed.
Myrtle looked at it and blinked "The snake thingy that killed me came up through a secret door in my bathroom? It's my bathroom, I should be the one opening it and letting things out to kill people!" Myrtle fumed.
Harry blinked, not really sure what the correct response to that was. "I'm sorry Myrtle, it kind of a parseltongue thing. I think something bad happened to Hermione, because she can't speak parseltongue, and she wouldn't ever go around petrifying muggleborns like herself unless something bad was making her do it."
Myrtle looked at Harry for a long second. "You really aren't very bright are you? No Ravenclaw would ever go down a hole that had at least a basilisk, and possibly a mind controlling dark wizard or cursed item controlling their friend."
Harry smiled. "I'm not very bright. I am a Gryffindor, so being stupid and brave is what people will call it if I die. You want to know the real truth? If it wasn't Hermione, I would go back to my room and hide like everyone else. Not one living person in this castle has stayed on my side, except Hermione, and something took her down this hole. I am going to get her back."
Myrtle tried to give him a ghostly hug. "You are so cute when you get manly like that. When you die, you can share my bathroom with me."
Harry blinked again. That was definitely the most supportive comment he had received from anyone who was not Hermione this entire year. "Thank you Myrtle, that would be lovely." Harry offered as he looked down the long tube and failed to see any elegant way to go down.
Consider haunting the toilet with Myrtle as plan B. Plan A, get Hermione back was now under way.
Sliding down the ramp, Harry gave up on silence when he hit a huge pile of bones at the bottom with sound equivalent to knocking over the kitchen table at meal time. Pulling out his wand, Harry felt his eyes go strange, and in the darkness, he could see blurs. Letting his tongue flick out, he tasted the stale and unmoving air for Hermione, and he followed the scent until he saw her.
Lying before the statue of Salazar Slytherin Hermione lay with her arms crossed over her chest, the black leather of the diary he had seen her writing in for the last few weeks on her breast.
"Hermione!" Harry roared and charged towards her.
"She's almost gone now, your mudblood friend." A voice called out from the darkness. Harry turned and could see no body heat. A ghost? No. The voice was full, not the empty echoing thing ghosts had. He was holding a ball of Lumos light hovering above his hand. Wandless magic, no ghost could do magic at all.
The figure waved and Harry could feel the rumble of stone as the Chamber of Secrets sealed shut behind them.
"Who are you? One of Voldemort's little Dung Eaters?" Harry snarled, pointing his wand at the boy who looked to be at least a sixth year.
"DO NOT DEFAME THE NAME DEATH EATERS!" The not-ghost roared. "I am Tom Marvolo Riddle, the Heir of Slytherin, and saviour of magical Britain. Thanks to this mudblood whore, I am almost restored. When the last of her life is mine, I will again have a body, and resume my work saving our kind." Tom Riddle spoke haughtily.
The sneering Riddle looked down his aristocratic nose at Harry and continued with an endless weary contempt, as if Harry was wasting his time by attempting resistance.
"You are very brave to come here and face me when Albus Dumbledore has been driven from Hogwarts by my machinations." Tom Riddle thrust his chest out as if this move had secured his ultimate victory.
Harry shrugged. "Didn't really seem important."
Riddle looked almost offended, but Harry had the cold reptilian brain that had been running since Hermione was taken reviewing his interactions with the Headmaster without any emotion, and in the context of what he had learned of the real history of his family.
Harry ticked off on his fingers with his wand.
"Dumbledore convinces my parents to leave the heavily defended Potter Manor where half a dozen veteran Aurors were on hand, and more just a shout away to go hide all alone in a cottage whose total protection was a spell to keep them secret, that somehow failed utterly. Without friends, without defenses, they both die without Albus the savior of us all Dumbledore bothering to show up. I somehow kill Voldemort by accident as a toddler, and his response is to take me, and dump me in the hands of the people on the planet who hate me worse than the Dung Eaters and Moldyshorts."
Harry ticked off the next finger. "Dumbledore convinces Nicholas Flamel to give him the magic return from the dead rock, tells the whole school where it is, invites Moldyshort's possessed minion to teach me how to defend myself, then leaves me to save the magic back from the dead rock from Moldyshorts and my own Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, who I kind of killed."
Harry cocked his head and shrugged again. "Sort of feels like if Dumbledore was in the next room listening in, I would still be facing you alone. Honestly after Moldyshorts and the Dung Eaters, the ghost of a forgotten Head Boy is not much of a threat."
Riddle seemed like he was about to explode, and was clearly preparing some epic speech. It seemed like an excellent time to do some wizarding.
Harry shot a stunner at him with a shouted "Stupify!" but the red beam passed through him. Walking forward to place himself between Hermione and Riddle, Harry bought himself time to think by talking.
"If you are supposed to be the saviour of wizardkind, why haven't you snuffed that nut job Voldemort yet? The only thing that wanker does is get decent witches and wizards killed." Harry said, probing to see if he was right about Tom Riddle's connection with the Death Eaters, based on his reaction to Harry's calling them Dung Eaters.
The shade of Riddle hissed in parseltongue "$ Depulso!$" and flung his hand at Harry. Shocked at how much power parseltonge put into a wandless banishing charm, Harry was caught and tossed into Hermione's body by the spell.
Holding his hands in front of himself, Tom Marvolo Riddle wrote his name in burning letters in the air. Waving his hands, he caused the letters to shift until they shone like a death sentence between them.
"I am Lord Voldemort."
Harry felt rage well up, but his blood was reptile cold right now. The screaming fury at the murderer of his parents, the one that was stealing Hermione's life right in front of him did not come. Harry felt time slow, his thoughts clear, and the missing bits slot into place like Voldemort's name.
Hermione could not speak parseltongue, but Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort, could. Hermione spoke parseltongue to get down here, and now she was quietly dying holding Tom Riddle's diary as the not quite ghost of Tom Riddle grew stronger.
Harry turned his wand upon the diary. "Incindio!" The diary took the spell that should have burned it to ash, nothing happened but Riddle screaming.
"NO!" Riddle screamed in obvious alarm.
Riddle turned to the statue of Slytherin and hissed. "$ Hear me Sytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four. Send forth your invincible destroyer to cut down my enemies$"
The mouth of the statue irised open, and it didn't take Hermione to figure out what was going to come out. Riddle had commanded it to kill Harry, and from what he had read, basilisks were almost immune to magic. They ignored muggle weapons, which Harry didn't have, and only the strongest of magical weapons, which Harry didn't have, could harm them.
That was the bad part. The good part is that Riddle hadn't figured out yet that Harry was a parselmouth. Basilisk venom could kill anything, so since Harry couldn't destroy the diary, and couldn't simply tell the basilisk to be a nice snake and not kill him while Riddle was here to argue the point, Harry had two problems.
Harry shut his eyes, he let his tongue flicker out, and tasted the air. He felt the vibrations in the ground that told him that something improbably large just hit the ground twelve feet to his right. The hissing sound came from roughly six feet farther back, and ten feet up, the smell of snake was so thick you could have cut it with a knife, if Harry had one.
Harry's instincts painted the picture, he knew, somehow, how the snake would coil, rear and strike. The timing of it was as natural as the movements of his own body. He didn't have to see to know where the basilisk was.
"$ Bite him$" Tom Marvolo Riddle commanded, and at the command of the Heir of Slytherin, the basilisk struck.
"$ Bite this! $" Harry Potter hissed as he thrust out the diary of Tom Riddle to the striking basilisk.
The fangs of the basilisk struck through both the diary and Harry Potter's left arm. Riddle screamed "no" again, but it was both too late, and not in parseltongue, as the blow had already been struck.
The basilisk, aware that it had struck a Speaker began to panic as the terrible magics that had bound it to the service of Salazar Slytherin and his heirs for a thousand years required it to always obey and protect Speakers, and at the command of one, it had struck another.
Voldemort screamed as ink flowed from the punctured diary. Harry Potter screamed as the poison entered his body, and the basilisk screamed as the magics that bound it to serve the line of Slytherin and its speakers turned against it and exacted the price for oath breaking in its most ancient and terrible form.
Hermione screamed as her soul and magic flowed back into her from Tom Riddle who had seduced and possessed her. Forbidden knowledge had been her weakness, and she felt such shame to have fallen, even though she only began to write in the diary to learn enough to protect Harry, in the end, he had to protect her.
As the terrible venom of the basilisk destroyed the Horcrux that was Tom Riddle's diary, it began to break down the Horcrux that was Harry Potter's famous curse scar. Because irony makes rusty and jagged wounds, it also began to break down the protective magic of Lilly Potter's blood sacrifice to protect Harry, and Dumbledore's magical binding on Harry Potter's core.
After fifteen years trapped by Lilly Potter's magic able to feel but not touch the magic of young Harry Potter, the barrier between Voldemort's last Horcrux and his chosen victims magical core collapsed. Sadly, the venom worked faster on the weak and poorly formed Horcrux faster, so the core of Voldemort's will broke even as the flood of his magic and memories entered the boy.
Harry Potter's own magic shattered its bonds to scream through every cell of body, filling it with the potential of the powerful Potter bloodline, and the wild magic of his mother's own blood.
Sura, the basilisk who had been Slytherin's companion for over a century prior to his death, and who had remained to protect his beloved Hogwarts and future generations of Speakers had done the only thing she could do to correct her crime, the killing of a Speaker by her own fang and venom, she sent her own life and magic burning into the young Potter boy.
Harry Potter writhed in agony. Three souls and three magics warred inside his body. Voldemort's dissolving hatred, Sura's failing desire to heal, and Harry Potter's own instinctive embracing of his Animagi other self to escape the venom worked a strange alchemy in the heir to both Potter and Slytherin, and embraced both.
Where a dying Harry was being dissolved by venom that could unmake reality itself, and a storm of magic that could reshape the world, a balance was struck.
Harry felt his awareness cleave into three, even as he felt his body fall to the ground. He cried out in pain, and three hissing voices answered. Harry struggled to gather his thoughts, but they pooled in three separate and distinct pools.
Harry turned to look at himself, and himself and himself.
Harry was the right hand head, and he felt that analytical planning tactical brain that he had been sinking into since Hermione went missing come to the fore and identify this right most head as Harry.
The second head felt the flow of the magic, of the twisting of fate and destiny that this new creation had wrought and lost itself in the paths of probabilities, possibilities, and inevitabilities that would flow from this. Prophesy was its gift to give others, but without a single mind to hold it, this head was likely to wander the endless paths of potential and stay lost in the dream. Harry called this head Pythia, for it was the dreamer and seer.
The rage of a forgotten and abused boy, the rage of a betrayed child, had gathered to it the memories of Tom Riddle and Voldemort to make the left head into one of matchless hate and violence. The gift of Sura had transformed this head's venom to that of the basilisk. The name for this head flowered in his mind. This was NIdhogg, the world ending serpent.
Hermione watched as Harry Potter died under the fangs of the basilisk to save her life. She began to cry, when she froze instead in shock.
Harry's body did dissolve, but from it rose a snake nearly twelve feet long. Three heads swayed on long necks. The right-hand head met her eyes with what was almost a familiar green gaze. If Harry was slit pupiled not round pupiled, he might look at her like this. The middle head swayed like The Dream snake, its eyes were like white opals, a faint rainbow sheen of wild magic danced over them, promising wonders and horrors as it dreamed terrible dreams of what was, what is, and what might be. The last head had the burning red eyes of Voldemort, or Herpo the Foul from The Dream. They were the eyes of death.
Hermione asked softly. "Harry?"
The right head, the one with almost Harry eyes nodded enthusiastically. The middle head seemed lost in thought until the right head hissed at it, then it gave a slow and majestic nod. The third head hissed at her, seeming to not want to answer the question. After a loud but impossible to understand argument, it also eventually nodded.
Hermione nodded. Situation understood. Harry had saved her life. Harry was a Runespoor three headed magical snake. They were trapped in Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets with no idea how to get out.
Hermione stood and nodded. "Right, you are a three headed talking snake I can't talk to. We are in a Chamber no one else can find, and you can't explain. You are most likely going to be shot on sight if a professor or Auror see's you, its too dark to see, we have no food, and I don't have my wand."
Harry thought about that, then hissed. "$ Lights on. Heat on. $"
All around the chamber, torches lit, and four huge fireplaces roared to life. Hermione got a really good look at the dead basilisk, closed her eyes, and if Harry's ability to read lips was as good as Nidhogg swore it was, she was simply repeating "Nope, nope, nope." and refusing to process a dead sixty foot basilisk.
Harry saw something on the floor where Hermione had been placed by Tom. It was a circle. A ritual circle. There were permanent enchantments and runic inscriptions on the floor marking this clearly as a circle of transformation or enhancement. Harry was a parselmouth so he could read the runes written in that most secret language of magic. Sadly, Hermione is the one taking an interest in ancient runes and arithmancy, so all Harry could say for sure is that this was a very powerful magic circle for snake related transformation or enhancement rituals.
Pythia and Nidhogg both knew that Salazar Slytherin's private library lay beyond the statue of Slytherin that the basilisk had come out of. Harry needed a magical de-snaking ritual, and the greatest library of snake related magic was behind that, currently open, mouth/cave. Hermione was the greatest bibliophile Harry had ever met, with a total lack of self-preservation where dangerous books were concerned. This seemed like everything Harry needed to solve his problem. Too bad Hermione didn't know it, and he couldn't tell her. Harry and Nidhogg hissed in deep frustration but Pythia, the dreaming head laughed in a strange "$ ki ki ki ki ki$" causing Hermione to drift closer.
Having located and retrieved her wand, Hermione looked at the carvings and engravings of the Chamber of Secrets and decided that she would need about a decade and access to the restricted section of the Hogwarts library to begin to understand them. She heard the snake behind her laughing.
Looking at the three-headed snake, she saw what could pass for a smirk on the central head, the one with the dreamy eyes of the snake from her dreams of the Pythian Oracle.
Hermione drifted to the snake, and caressed the central head, causing all three snakes to tremble in shared bliss, but the central snake just rubbed its head against Hermione's hand as she looked it in the eye and asked. "What has you laughing. I would give anything to know what you find funny about this.
This would be, of course, when Pythia bit her.
Hermione's scream caused Harry to hiss her name "$ Hermione! $ Although being in parseltongue, she didn't notice.
Nidhogg hissed "$ Have you lost your tiny little mind you white eyed egg sucker?" Although being in parseltongue, Hermione didn't smack him for swearing.
The venom hit Hermione's system, and her eyes rolled white, the rainbow sheen that covered them matched the flow of the visions that flooded her.
"A king of light, a king of dark, a single pawn between them. If stays a pawn, death will claim him, and all the board will burn. If promoted, let the King of chaos reign."
The prophesy tore through Hermione with all the force she remembered from The Dream. Beyond the prophesy were a flood of images, of bits of what was, of what is, and what could be. Too many images, too fast to grasp. This was her first time, and no seer can grasp beyond the surface of her vision upon the first experience.
Yet, Hermione had suffered The Dream so many times. She had lived the last Oracle at Delphi's final vision, and had shared a child's mind with the last great seer of Hellenic Greece a thousand times. Hermione had been a child, a clever and obsessive child. It seems endless attempts to parse the wild and chaotic visions of The Dream left her some skills to process the same flood when it was her vision filling her mind.
She saw an old man who looked like the statues around the Chamber, presumably Salazar Slytherin. He was talking to the basilisk that had just died when it was perhaps half this size. He was writing at a desk, and when he closed the book, he shelved it with other books in a large book case. He then went to a bare wall, and pushed aside a panel. Behind it were half a dozen books, each bound in leather and gold, each bearing a powerful "notice me not" charm. He took one, then glanced to make sure no one could see, and slipped away."
Harry was in full panic mode when Hermione's eyes rolled back white and she began speaking in prophesy. That had to be bad. No one makes prophesies about the Witch Weakly sweepstakes numbers or the Quibbler's Quiz secret answer. It's always what terrible thing will happen to Harry next. Admittedly, his experience with prophesies was limited, but so far, consistent.
Hermione's eyes rolled back, and she grinned at him. Kissing all three heads of the Runespoor, although Nidhogg made a big deal about protesting, Hermione thrust her wand in the air with a defiant cry.
"We are trapped with no food, you as a magical three headed snake I can't talk to, no way out, and I found the LIBRARY!" Hermione cheered.
Harry watched his bushy haired friend charge the Chamber of Secrets most forbidden portal with the total lack of concern that would do any Gryffindor proud and knew that everything was okay.
%%%
(Dumbledore's POV)
Dumbledore's cottage.
Dumbledore watched as Harry's various threat detectors went off the rails on his personal danger, and held out the Sorting Hat for Fawkes to take to Harry for his final confrontation with Tom Riddle.
Once Harry expressed his loyalty to Dumbledore, Fawkes would be able to bring Harry the hat and the Sword of Gryffindor it hid and refused to give to Dumbledore. In one fell swoop he would be rid of Slytherin's monster, Harry Potter would have sworn his devotion to Dumbledore, Dumbledore would have access at last to Salazar Slytherin's secret magical knowledge, and Dumbledore could even expect the boy to simply hand over the Sword of Gryffindor to his Headmaster for "safekeeping." It was all going to plan.
The threat detectors went ballistic, two of them actually caught fire. Harry's life was in jeopardy, and still he did not call for Dumbledore. The Chamber of Secrets could not be opened by any save a parselmouth. Only one who had entered the chamber by rights could summon another to it. No phoenix, house elf or wizard could enter until one who had the right to open the chamber called him.
Harry wasn't calling. The threat detectors slowed and went steady. Harry was at risk, but not serious risk.
Harry had...not needed him? Not died? Dumbledore fell back into his chair.
Everything was not okay.
%%%
Ministry of Magic, Department of Mysteries,
(Unspeakable Croaker POV)
Alarms were blaring, Unspeakables were running to their posts. Fate was weaving, those three pesky goddesses were setting their hands to the warp and woof of time and space and weaving a true prophecy into existence.
No one ever made prophecy that said "Tuesday the fifth of June will be sunny and nothing at all will go wrong." They were always obscure and dangerous, like "the witch with nostril hairs numbering the date of her birth will sneeze twice and end the universe unless she is given pudding before noon."
The golden orb formed in the great ward matrix where shifts in reality were codified, copied, and verified. The golden orb rolled down the chute like a muggle bingo ball and Croaker read the note.
HJG to HJP in the Chamber of Secrets re Lord of Light, Dark Lord, Lord of Chaos.
Croaker nearly dropped the prophecy. They had ones regarding Dumbledore as the Lord of Light. It was well established that they had a few of Voldemort as the new Dark Lord since Grindelwald's fall. Now there was a third lord, a Lord of Chaos?
"Merlin futtering a unicorn. A third lord. That is all we bloody need. Who the hell is HJG? HJP could be Harry James Potter, because he is in a prophesy already, but how is he still alive if someone dragged the Boy Who Lived into the Chamber of Secrets?" Croaker asked.
Four masked Unspeakables looked back at him and shook their heads. This was not good news. Once the Minister or Dumbledore checked their alarms, they would know a true prophecy had just been recorded. Croaker wouldn't bet a sickle on the odds Dumbledore didn't have a way to tell when a prophecy about the Potter boy, or himself was recorded. No way he could miss them both.
Who was HJG, and how the hell did they get into the Chamber of Secrets that every power in the wizarding world had been trying to find and loot for centuries?
Croaker eyed the orb, and fingered his wand. No. Disintegrating it wouldn't work, it would just mean the Ministry didn't have a copy of it. Tempting though. Two unbearably irritating men were about to descend on him for answers like "What is inside", "Who the hell is HJG", and "How do WE get into the Chamber of Secrets?"
Croaker pointed the wand at his head and contemplated suicide as the only reasonable option, when a stinging hex hit him in the ass. His coworkers had seen is attempted suicide and expressed their displeasure at the thought of them having to deal with two very powerful (politically or magically) and utterly unreasonable idiots if Croaker died before they got here.
He sighed. Everything was not okay.