AN
According to the internet, a Basilisk's weakness can also be weasels.
1993, 2nd year
Harry stared up at the massive statue of Salazar Slytherin and tried not to let his mouth fall open.
Somewhere behind him, Blaise whistled at the sight.
"Narcissistic much, wasn't he?" Oliver said with a laugh.
"To no one's surprise."
"So, what now?" Harry asked. "Do I just call for the Basilisk in Parseltongue?"
"I can sense it inside the statue," Rhea said. "So you may try speaking to it."
"Let's first get into position," Daphne said, directing them all to retreat further away from the statue, retrieving a wayward Theodore, who had wandered off to examine the carved pillars.
Harry had to be close enough to the statue to actually talk to it. Rhea was next to him as the only one who would keep their eyes open once Harry tried to summon the Basilisk. No one knew whether Rhea would survive a Basilisk's stare or simply did not care for her life at all – they all hoped it was the former – but they couldn't just tell her not to, either, and having one person to see what was going on would be helpful.
If the monster turned out not to be a Basilisk … Well, the situation could go either way.
Rhea was also responsible for lifting the silencing charm on the struggling rooster Oliver now placed in Harry's arms in case the Basilisk tried to attack. If the books they had perused could be trusted, the rooster's cry would kill the thing immediately.
(Acquiring the rooster had been harder than expected, for all of the roosters kept on the grounds had apparently been killed earlier during the school year. Another point in favour of the Basilisk theory.)
Things could still go completely wrong here and they were all aware of that, but they had already come this far.
"I will summon the ghosts now," Harry heard Rhea say – another security measure they had come up with based on the attack on Sir Nicholas.
Apparently, indirect eye contact only petrified you. A very odd twist of Death's magic, according to Rhea, but it did solidify the Basilisk theory.
"You can call for it now, Harry."
Harry took a deep breath, conjured up the image of a large snake in his mind, and then called for the Basilisk, instructing it to close its before emerging.
He could hear the movement of stone against stone above him and then the movement of a gigantic creature slithering out of what Harry assumed must have been the statue's mouth, hitting the floor with a loud thump.
"Ohhh, what a magnificent creature you are!" Rhea cooed. "Such a beauty!"
Harry felt her move away from his side. Because he was still holding a struggling rooster, he couldn't reach out to grab her and only cry out, "Rhea, wait!"
"It's fine, Harry. She closed her eyes as instructed. You can all open your eyes and look at her. She's gorgeous."
"Are the ghosts still there?"
"Yes. Of course, they are."
Slowly, carefully, Harry opened his eyes to slits and peeked around. There were the ghosts – milky and translucent, eerily still and silent as they surrounded an enormous, green snake. Harry didn't recognise any of the ghosts, so he assumed Rhea must have summoned them from outside the castle.
To no one's surprise, Rhea was at the beast's side, stroking its snout almost lovingly, cooing sweet nothings at it. Blaise and Oliver were slowly, cautiously approaching, Daphne remaining behind at a safe-ish distance. Theodore had gone back to examining the Chamber.
"You should ask it about Slytherin's heir," Daphne called to Harry. "And about its own motives in all of this."
"Ask her," Rhea corrected. "This is a female Basilisk."
"How do you know that?" Harry asked.
"No plume on its head," came Oliver's voice from the other side of the beast. "Though it begs the question why a creature that is hatched via magical means and not known to reproduce sexually exists with two distinct biological sexes in the first place."
Harry saw Rhea tilt her head, still petting the Basilisk's snout. "Isn't it? Has it been tested?"
"Doubtful," Blaise said. "But perhaps this is a leftover trait from the chicken it would have grown into – had it become a rooster, it turns into a male Basilisk; had it become a hen, it turns into a female Basilisk."
"Everyone," Daphne called. "We are not here to discuss Basilisk reproduction. We are here to determine whether this thing needs to be killed for the safety of our school. You can always examine it to your heart's content after. Harry, if you please?"
The Basilisk was … not easy to communicate with. It seemed to have no troubles understanding Harry, but had a hard time trying to convey its answers to him.
Slowly, with a lot of help from the others – Daphne, mostly – they learned that the same person that had woken it up from its hibernation the last time had returned. There was no definite answer to the question whether the Basilisk wanted to attack the students, it … didn't appear to really care?
"And who is the person that opened the Chamber?" Daphne asked.
"She doesn't know," Harry replied. "She said they smelled differently this time, but their magic felt the same."
He could see Daphne furrow her brows.
"So … do we kill it?" Oliver asked.
"It would be the safest option," Daphne said.
"But is that fair? It only ever followed orders."
"Is it fair to the Basilisk to put it to sleep for centuries, perhaps millennia?" Daphne returned. "Is it fair to ask it to return to hibernation now, possibly to never be woken up again?"
"She wants to be free," Rhea said.
"We cannot let a Basilisk roam free," Daphne said. "There is no place on earth where such a thing would be reasonably possible. And as long as we cannot guarantee that the person behind the attacks won't return, we will have to ensure our safety by other means."
"By killing the Basilisk," Harry said.
"By killing the Basilisk," Daphne agreed.
Harry turned to the others. "Rhea?"
Rhea hummed. "It will be fine."
"Theo?"
When no reply came, Harry looked around, spotting him between the feet of the gigantic statue.
"Theo?"
"Don't ask me," came the reply and nothing else.
"Right," Harry said. "Right, then – er –" He looked at the rooster in his arms, who had at one point fainted. He set it down.
"You might want to back away," he told Rhea, Oliver and Blaise. Then Harry pointed his wand at the rooster. "Finite. Rennervate."
They collectively flinched at the loud squawk and subsequent panicked cries.
A tremor went through the Basilisk, a trash of its tail and then – it went limp.
"Are you alright, Rhea?"
Harry tore his eyes from the dead snake to find his friend shivering violently. He couldn't see her face from where he stood, but he could see Oliver's disturbed expression and Blaise's concerned one.
He could see them more clearly now and it took a moment for Harry to realise that all the ghosts had vanished.
"Just a lot of power to take in all at once," Rhea croaked. "Go on, I'll be fine in a moment."
"Don't mind if I do," Oliver said, promptly taking out the tools he had brought to harvest ingredients from the Basilisk.
"Remember to be careful with the teeth," Harry reminded Oliver as he came over to help.
The thought of harvesting ingredients from a creature they had just killed for the safety of the entire school was … Harry didn't know what to do with it, so he put the thought into a box and let his academic curiosity take over instead.
o
"Oh, hello," came an airy voice, making Harry and his friends freeze in place.
The girl that greeted them in Myrtle's bathroom looked vaguely familiar, though Harry couldn't place her.
"Where you chasing Wrackspurts?"
"Little kings, rather," came Rhea's reply. "Or a little queen, in this case."
"Oh, I see. That was a very ambitious endeavour of you."
"I'm sorry," Daphne interjected, giving the girl a polite smile. "But we really ought to be going." Then she made as if to grab Rhea, only to abort the motion and shoo her towards the exit instead.
Harry looked back over his shoulder as they left the bathroom, only to find the girl's attention had already wandered elsewhere, looking at something Harry couldn't perceive.
Right outside the bathroom, Oliver split off to return to Ravenclaw Tower and Rhea to 'bathe her pet cat'.
Harry looked after her, baffled. This wasn't the first time she had said such a thing. "I thought she doesn't have a cat?"
"And cats don't like baths." Blaise said, before giving him a meaningful look. "That's code for Necromancy things. It's better not to ask, trust me."
Ah. Yes, that did actually make sense.
"And what are we going to do now?" he asked.
Blaise gave him a wry smile. "Hope Snape doesn't bite our heads off for going to face a Basilisk on our own. Without telling anyone."
"Do we have to tell him at all?" Harry asked, wincing at the scolding he would definitely receive in private afterwards.
"Of course, we do. Hopefully, the sheer value of the Basilisk skin and fangs we collected will soothe his temper."
"It has been worth it," Theodore said. "All that historical knowledge preserved down there …" He nodded to himself. "I can die happily, now."
Blaise huffed in amusement. "I have no idea what you could have possibly learned from some stone pillars and a statue, but good for you."
"It was definitely interesting," Daphne said. "But also incredibly, idiotically reckless. We could have all died down there!"
"Rhea –"
"Is not a fool-proof shield to hide behind. I wouldn't put it past her to simply let us all to die one day 'because Death said so' or something."
Blaise opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"She does have a point," Harry said quietly.
"I still can't believe we did that."
"Still worth it," Theodore said firmly.
In the end, Theodore was the only one who did not wilt under Severus' stern glare and even harsher words. (Though Rhea wasn't present and who knew how she would have reacted.)
o
They all had detention until the end of the school year 'for being immature, reckless, little children'. Even Sue, who hadn't even gone down to the Chamber with them.
Severus assigned different kinds of detention to each of them, specifically to make the experience worse. Harry would have much rather scrubbed cauldrons clean than play errand boy for Severus during his free period that happened to overlap with a class of rowdy teenagers that shouldn't have been allowed near any potions classroom whatsoever. The alternative would have been 'volunteering' to act out scenes from Lockhart's books with the man for his classes and help the peacock with his fan-mail and – well, it had hardly been a choice at all. (Poor Theodore.)
Harry was both looking forward to the year finally being over and dreading it. Severus had not taken Harry's risky little adventure well (for good reason, Harry was aware) and Severus was also Harry's guardian, so …
Harry would survive, somehow.
It wasn't easy finding the time to gather with everyone serving detention at different times and trying to avoid the people not in the know – Susan and Hannah were busy catching up a finally cured Justin, anyway – but they did occasionally manage a brief meeting in the library when their limited free time overlapped. They mainly used the time to discuss the remaining Secret of the Chamber: Who was the culprit?
They had unanimously, wordlessly agreed not to involve Draco (who was still deluding himself that everything was fine and his father had nothing to do with this) or they could have tried using their housemate to get some information about what, exactly his father had done to set off the attacks.
"If the house-elf's words can be trusted in the first place," Blaise pointed out. "He seemed rather … unhinged."
"True," Daphne agreed. "And the Basilisk told us it was the same person from fifty years ago but different. How does that work? It can't be a student in that case, can it?"
Harry frowned. "And we already asked all of the relatives we know attended Hogwarts at the time. Do you think going to Hagrid might tell us more?"
"I highly doubt it."
"Well," Oliver began, "we do still have another witness. Didn't Riddle say he had preserved his memories in that diary specifically because the incident had been swept under the rug?"
They all turned to Rhea.
"I can ask." She shrugged. "Riddle has been learning how to read my handwriting."
Sue made a pained expression. "Please tell me you did not write in the diary."
"I did not. But when I checked that the spells were still working properly, I saw he had left a message for me. He must have studied what I had previously written. So it appears that despite the script vanishing from the pages, it is not lost forever."
"That somehow makes it even worse."
Rhea fished the box containing the diary out of her bag and placed it on the table. "What shall I say?"
"Ask it directly about what happened," Daphne said. "And that you do not trust it enough to let it show you the memory."
Rhea uncorked her inkwell, dipped her quill in and began to write.
After a lot of back and forth, mainly dictated by Daphne, with a lot of speculating and carefully phrased questions, they eventually figured out that Riddle definitely knew Hagrid had not been the real culprit and only framed him to prevent the school from closing.
"Living in a Muggle orphanage during the Second World War …" Theodore shook his head. "No wonder he wanted desperately to stay at Hogwarts."
Harry scowled. "That doesn't justify framing an innocent student for a crime he didn't commit."
"No, it does not." Daphne paused. "But it makes me wonder whether it wasn't Riddle who did it. Think about it – he clearly knew Hagrid was innocent, but he said he preserved his memory specifically because others would want the truth to disappear. It doesn't make sense. It sounds compelling at first, but it falls apart as soon as you begin to pick at the edges."
"Well, then it's obvious, isn't it?" Oliver grinned at them. "Riddle is the real culprit."
There was a moment of stunned silence.
"It does make sense," Harry said slowly. "He was there fifty years ago and he is here now in the form of this diary – which we know is a Dark Object. And when did the attacks stop? Around the time Rhea fished the diary out of Myrtle's toilet."
"He must have possessed another student to do their bidding," Daphne realised. "That's why the Basilisk said he smelled differently but his magic still felt the same."
Sue looked at them with wide eyes. "We could have fallen victim to him any time."
"No," Rhea said. "I believe writing in it and connecting with it would have led to that, but I only sparsely wrote in it and always under your supervision. We have the advantage of being a larger group. The diary is not powerful enough to influence all of us at once. We would have noticed someone being off."
Blaise nodded. "And once you put it in that box, it couldn't even have passively influenced its surroundings anymore."
They all looked at the diary, lying innocently on the table.
"So," Oliver clapped his hands. "How do we kill it?"
"By handing it in to a teacher," Sue said in a stern voice. "I am not letting you make the same mistake twice. Headmaster Dumbledore should be informed of this, anyway. You know – as the person responsible for this entire school?"
There was a collective sigh.
"Let's just take it to Professor Snape," Harry said, still hearing the disappointed 'I thought you were better than this' that had almost made him cry right in front of Severus. "He already knows about the Basilisk. And he can inform Dumbledore for us."
o
Harry stopped short in the middle of the staircase leading down from the entrance and gaped at the hundreds of horse-drawn carriages lined up in front of him.
In their first year, they had taken boats to and from the castle. Harry had missed the train at the beginning of this year and the topic of how the older students were transported from Hogsmeade Station up to the castle had never come up.
Horse-drawn carriages made sense and did fit in, only … Those were some very, very strange horses. Even if their appearance hadn't reminded Harry of bat-winged skeleton monsters and their eyes of the undead creatures Rhea surrounded herself with … Almost not a single person paid them any mind. He saw one or two people eyeing the horses warily, but most people simply ignored them.
There were exactly two people that directly interacted with the horses, going so far as petting them, and those were Rhea and the girl with the long, dirty blonde hair.
"Those are Thestrals," came Theodore's quiet voice and Harry shook himself out of his trance, finally moving from where he had been standing in the way of just about everyone else leaving the castle.
"Thestrals?"
"They can only be perceived by those who have seen death. Most think they are bad omens."
"They are not," said the blonde girl as they passed her. "They are quite gentle, really." She turned to Harry with a warm smile. "Would you like to pet them?"
"Ah – I –" Harry looked between her and the horse. While unsettling in appearance, it did seem very calm and … harmless. "Sure?"
The leathery skin felt foreign under his hands, but he could sense the warmth emanating from the horse, could feel the way its flank moved when it breathed and snorted and that, somehow, made all the difference.
Despite his initial trepidations, Harry felt himself smile.
AN
I'm sorry, I am abandoning the fic here.
Thank you for reading. 💕