Harry was sitting in the locker room, waiting for the last member of the Quidditch team to arrive. She was already 10 minutes late, and Oliver's face was steadily growing redder.
Finally, Alicia walked in. Her eyes were unfocused and extremely bloodshot.
Katie jumped up. "How high are you?" she exclaimed.
Alicia shook her head. "No no no, it's – Hi, how are you? How high are you, Katie?"
Katie blanched.
"Yes!" Fred and George chorused with matching grins.
Harry could feel his brain cells weeping in agony.
~-O-~
Trevor was sleuthing around the castle one night, doing his bouncy thing. He happened upon a Hat, in a private and important-looking office. Trevor took note of the hat, his bowtie was tingling to tell him that it would be important later.
It was April. Because it was April, it was wet, which wasn't very cash-money of the weather, but hey, it did this every year, so points for consistency. Seamus Finnegan exploded his breakfast one morning, and Cedric Diggory did a backflip in surprise. He received a polite golf clap from the Slytherin table for his accidental acrobatics.
Trevor the Tremendous Toad poked his head out of Neville's robe pocket, bowtie senses tingling harder than ever. It was nearly time.
—HP—
Oliver Wood was sniffling quietly in a corner away from the common room fire. He had taken the Quidditch season cancellation horribly from a month ago.
The rest of the House of Gryffindor, while not shedding tears of misery, was getting pretty worn out from the state of the school. Being constantly monitored, shepherded from class to class, and locked up in the tower during all free time was taking a toll on the students. Mostly boredom now, after a few weeks of nothing interesting happening.
Unfortunately, things were about to get interesting.
With a screech and a loud crash, a blur of white
Hedwig landed on Hermione, and a blast of raw magic sent everyone surrounding the two flying away. Hedwig spread her wings, eyes rippling a dark red and a dreadful aura spreading to everyone watching. Then, the bird spoke, and almost more surprising than the fact that the bird was speaking English was the voice English was spoken in a thick, male, londonian accent.
"HARRY POTTER," bellowed Hedwig. "Meet me in the Chamber of Secrets, by dusk tomorrow, or this pitiful boy will MEET HER END! HOOT! GOODBYE!" Hedwig took off, impossibly lifting Hermione into the air with just a single talon, the other claw preoccupied with clutching a simple black notebook.
A heavy blanket of surreal silence settled over the Gryffindor common room.
A young Ron Weasley was the first to break the silence. "Well, Harry, let's get to it then," he clapped his hands together in a peppy way. The red haired boy dragged his friend into the hall, muttering about sending Harry in as a "first wave" and he would follow with "intentional cannon fodder" and "hopeful sacrifices" (Gilderoy Lockhart).
As the voices of the second year's bickering faded, the rest of Gryffindor fixed their collective gaze on the eldest Weasley present. Percy shrugged, "obligatory 5 points from Gryffindor, but they seem to have it under control…"
–000–
Standing in the vast cavern of the Chamber of Secrets was a boy, appearing a few years older than Harry, and wearing a Slytherin robe. He carried a simple leather-bound notebook. To the side were the unconscious bodies of Hermione Granger and Hedwig. A ball of fire hovered over Hermione and seemed to prod her, but Harry took no notice of it.
"WHO DARES TOUCH MY PRECIOUS OWL…AND MY BEST FRIEND, I GUESS."
"'Tis I," an older-looking boy said, literally stepping out of the shadows. Harry squinted his eyes at this stranger, observing how his figure rippled intangibly. "I am Tom Riddle, owner of the journal that possessed your precious bird, and now I will destroy you, Harry Potter."
"Wait what."
"Hm?"
"You're the bad guy, aren't you supposed to like, monologue or something?"
"Perhaps normally, but I am rather eager to return to being a more tangible being. I will have plenty of time to gloat once I reassume my full power as Lord Voldemort," Riddle said with a sly smirk. "Now then," he turned to face the massively overbearing statue dominating the center of the chamber. *"Oh Salzey Daddy, do me a solid, lemme use your snakey."*
Before Harry could so much as contemplate the ramifications of Salazar Slytherin somehow being a deceased sugar daddy, a massive serpent cannoned out of the statue's mouth. Harry ducked instinctively, and the snake flew overhead and crashed into a pillar near where Riddle was.
With some weird hissing-approximiation of a groan, the basilisk righted itself, slithering and recoiling to sit next to its master. *"I wanna snack,"* the behemoth grumbled.
*"Later,"* snapped Riddle, still smirking his annoying smirk at Harry.
Harry Potter stood alone against a semi-alive Tom Riddle and his overweight pet snake. He thought all hope was lost until harmonic singing began echoing distantly from the tunnel. All three, snake, phantom, and boy froze. Through the entrance drifted Luna Lovegood, wearing a severely battered hat as she and a phoenix, perched on one shoulder, sang a wordless tune in harmony. Trevor the bowtied-toad sat on her other shoulder, croaking along to the beat. Seeing Harry and his predicament, the large red bird took flight, swooping up and back to snag the hat off of Luna's head before depositing it in front of the boy.
Harry snatched up the hat with a gasp. "The Sorting Hat? Luna, what's going on?"
Luna just tilted her head and gave Harry one of her patented dreamy expressions. Before the Boy could prod further, Tom Riddle began to laugh.
"This is what Dumbledore sends to protect his students, a hat, a girl, a toad, and a glorified pheasant!" The preserved teen cackled gleefully. Harry started laughing too, although a good bit more hysterically.
"Oh, Dumbledore didn't send me," Luna cut off their laughter. "It was a worstrel that woke me up and then guided me to Fawkes. What a pretty chicken she is!"
Fawkes squawked indignantly, though also slid in undertones of affection. It was a weird noise, to be sure.
Harry stuck the hat on his head, even as his bewilderment began to overtake is fear. An instant later, both feelings were driven away as a heavy blunt object struck his head. Shaking his head like a waterlogged puppy, Harry looked into the hat. To his disbelief, a beautiful saber was peeking out of the hat. The boy raised the blade, looking at the rubies inlaid in the hilt. All of a sudden, his task didn't feel quite so hopeless.
Riddle sneered at the turn of events. Then he spoke in a different tongue, *"Attack them!"*
The Basilisk struck, narrowly missing Harry as he jumped out of the way.
*"You're just a fat garden snake,"* Harry jeered. *"There's nothing special about you!"*
The basilisk whipped around, letting out an outraged, hissing screech. Fawkes dove, and swiped at its snout, deterring a strike. Harry swung his sword, chopping off a couple of fangs but not really damaging the huge snake at all.
"Even with a girl and her farm animals, you are still no match for Lord Voldemort, Heir of Slytherin!" Riddle triumphantly proclaimed, with a manic look to his eye.
Trevor seemed to take offense at this. From Luna's shoulder, he sprung, soaring across the chamber to land on Harry's head. The toad let out a gruff croak, before opening its mouth, stretching impossibly wide. Just when it looked like the toad might rip itself apart, it shot a massive laser out of its mouth. The huge blue beam of magic hit the basilisk, throwing it several metres away, and crashed into a snake statue. Writhing, the basilisk let out a groan, as it tried to reorient itself.
"Oh," Luna said, not seeming to have noticed any part of Trevor's badassery, "I have a book on farm animals, do you want to see it?" The girl's situational awareness was either nonexistent or so good that it wrapped back around into completely absent anyway.
Riddle watched the small Ravenclaw, mouth agape in befuddlement, as she pulled out a children's book. It was maybe ten pages, all made out of cardboard, with a thick plastic part attached to the last page.
Luna dropped to the floor, making herself comfortable with her book, legs crossed. "Animals of the Farm," she began to read, turning the first page. "This is a cow. What does the cow say?" Luna held the book up, to show everyone the simple image of a cow drawn. She pressed a button on the plastic part.
"The cow says: moooo," a fuzzy recording told Luna and her audience.
Every being in that Chamber of Secrets, down to the chunky snake and the bowtie toad, was transfixed as Luna turned to the next page.
"This is a pig. They like to snuffle for roots and roll in the mud. What does a pig say?"
Seemingly against his will, Riddle muttered "oink."
Luna pressed the button, and the recording confirmed that it was, indeed, "oink."
"Good job, Tommy!" Luna giggled, turning to the next page. "This is a rooster," she alerted her audience. "They are illegal to own in cities and it is the first animal in the opening credits of every Shawn the Sheep episode. What does the rooster say?" Luna pressed the button.
Far too late, Riddle realized what was about to happen. His eyes widened in shock.
"The rooster says: cock-a-doodle-doo!"
The basilisk let out a terrified yelp, writhing around in panic.
"No!" Tom Riddle screamed, but it was too late. His thick snake had coiled itself vertically and was rolling at a horrific speed towards the chamber. Blue sparks flew off of its scales, the same color as Trevor's laser attack, and forcibly reminded Harry of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Without losing any momentum, The basilisk struck the wall and continued to roll up. It crashed through the ceiling, leaving a sizeable dent in the wall and a gaping hole in the ceiling to climb through
Riddle was the first to move, snatching up his diary ("It's a journal dipshit!") and clambering up the destructive path after his monster. Harry scooped up Hermione, and with Luna and the phoenix's help, picked his way out of the destruction.
The Boy-Who-Lived and his incredibly odd companions emerged to see a sight of absolute chaos on the Hogwarts lawns. The Basilisk was flailing about, turning trees and teachers into those horrific white chocolate statues with no discrimination. Riddle was still screaming at it, trying to shout sense into the creature.
"Tally ho, lads!" Rang a shout from the ramparts of the castle. It was Ron, wearing a stack of ridiculous pirate hats balanced on his head, and gripping Professor Lockhart's collar. "I a-heard of some scallywags wantin ta be doin some skirmishing, and came to throw my hat in the lot!"
Harry cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled back, "That's a terrible joke, Ron!"
Ron shrugged back. Harry sighed to himself.
Riddle, who was still struggling with his snake (what a horrendous sentence), screamed suddenly, as a jet of magic from the basilisk had just struck him. "No, no, no! This isn't how it was supposed to happen!"
Up on the ramparts, Ron looked at his teacher. "Well, Gildey me boy, yeh've always wanted teh be a hero, aye?" And without waiting for an answer from the terrified man, Ron threw him off of the castle. Lockhart screamed as he fell, then screamed louder as beams of magic and toad lasers began to pinball him through the sky. Ron cackled madly, brandishing his wand with no particular rhyme or reason.
Lockhart sailed through the air, tumbling over himself, and suddenly the trajectory was clear. With a final yelp, the man crashed down on top of a mostly statue-fied Tom Riddle, completely obliterating the spectral teenager.
However, it wasn't over yet. The basilisk was still tumbling over itself, spitting blue sparks, tripping improvised NAPALM booby traps (to the loud cheers of Ronald Weasley), and writhing all over the place near the lake.
Harry, Ron, and Luna stared at the creature. "What do we do now?" the dark-haired boy groaned.
Suddenly, the still surface of the lake exploded into activity. A massive tentacle shot out and wrapped around the giant snake, and just as quickly as it had appeared, the giant squid sunk back into the lake with its new victim.
"Huh," said Luna. "Well, I suppose that's sorted, then." She flashed a smile at Trevor, who croaked triumphantly.
Harry shook his head, leagues beyond disbelief. "I wanna take a nap," he moaned to no one in particular.
Luna patted his shoulder affectionately. "Come on, let's get Hermione to the hospital wing. Look, I think she's starting to stir now."
The two children dragged a semi-conscious Hermione to her feet, and then Harry bent and scooped up Hedwig who hooted blearily. Thankfully, this time she sounded like a normal (well, mostly normal) owl again.
"Wazzat," Hermione mumbled.
"That's alright girly," said Luna with a cheerful grin, tugging her companions towards the Main Entrance. "Madame Pomphrey will have you straight in no time! Unless the gumbobats infected her potion supply again. It has been known to happen in apothecaries and the like on a regular basis…"
Hermione sighed loudly. Trevor let out a chortling sort of croak.
As the group strolled back into the castle, they failed to notice the little black prop itself into an upright position and waddle past the mound of white chocolate and into the forest. Besides, how much damage could a stupid diary do anyway?
[AN]: Well, it's been another couple of months, but I did finish up this chapter. It's hard to remember since it's been so long, but I'm pretty sure Luna Lovegood defeating the basilisk with a muggle children's book was one of the first scenes I wrote for second year. It's probably been almost 2 years since I drafted that, although maybe it was just a year ago. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. I have one more chapter to wrap up 2nd year, which I hope to release in the next few days (it's a lot shorter). I love love love Luna Lovegood, she's absolutely my favorite character in this franchise. Expect to see her pop up on a regular basis, assuming this story continues to be updated (I know that sounds ominous, more on that in next chapter's endnotes).
Like I said, I really hope to get one more chapter posted very soon, because a major chapter of my life is about to start and I won't be able to update for several months to a year. If nothing has been posted by this time next week, you know what happened (Aslan has called me to Narnia)
Fuck a proofread, this is getting posted right now.