Same Morning.
Saturday, Sept. 14
To her great surprise, Hermione ended up enjoying the lesson, and when it was over and the brooms were returned, the first-years headed back into the castle for lunch talking about everything and nothing.
By some unspoken agreement, Hermione and Harry lagged behind the group to give themselves some measure of privacy to discuss their... extracurricular activities.
“We’ll have to go and make sure that thing is dead after lunch, won’t we?” Harry asked, sounding not at all excited about the prospect.
Hermione nodded, and they were both silent after that.
To be frank, there was little, if anything, to discuss. They’d already planned out everything the day before, and revisited it again this morning. The plan was well-worn in their minds by now.
All of this was just nerves.
Hermione took Harry’s hand. “Don’t worry, Harry. We’ll be fine. Besides, I’m sure it’s already dead.”
Neither really believed the words, but as Harry squeezed her hand and Hermione squeezed back, both hoped that they were true all the same.
*****
“Serpensortia,” Hermione intoned, and the familiar, green snake sprouted from her wand and landed on the sink.
She and Harry stared at each other one last time, then, without speaking, Hermione commanded her snake to open the entrance.
As soon as the pipe opened, Hedwig swooped into it, disappearing down its dark depths.
“Guess she’s going first,” Harry said, then he pointed his wand at the rooster, who was looking more serious than Hermione would have thought roosters could look, and incanted: “Wingardium leviosa.”
Harry directed the floating chicken into the pipe first, then, just before entering himself, he looked at Hermione with a strained smile and said: “See you at the bottom.”
He was gone seconds later.
Hermione swallowed, heart fluttering nervously.
Were they doing the right thing? Was there a better way? What if this didn’t work?
A thousand thoughts and doubts flitted through her brain as quickly as her pounding heart, but the girl did not hesitate, and with her wand in hand and determination in her heart, Hermione Granger walked into the dark.
*****
Hermione stared at the shed skin; it looked as wide as the sheets on her parent’s king-sized bed and as thick as her blanket.
It was also much, much longer than any material she’d ever seen in her young life.
And to think the snake outgrew this!
The rooster crowed again, distracting her from her thoughts, and Hermione focused back on the task at hand; namely, finding the snake’s corpse. Or, in the event that the broadcasted crow hadn’t killed it, getting close enough to the creature for the rooster’s untampered crowing to do the job.
Preferably before the snake snuck up on them and killed them with a glance.
The rooster crowed again.
Not that Hermione thought that was likely with how much crowing the chicken was doing though.
Honestly, the longer she was down here, and the more she heard the rooster’s crowing echo across the cavernous tunnels surrounding them, the safer she felt about this entire endeavour.
Maybe her worries had been misplaced after all.
They reached a dead-end then, where a slab of solid stone with snake motifs etched into it blocked their path.
This must be the true entrance to the chamber, Hermione decided.
She let the rooster crow once, then they all walked back and hid behind the last bend, before Hermione summoned her snake once again and had it open this door too with parseltongue.
The grinding of the heavy stone door as it slid open was loud in the silence, and, once again, Hedwig flew out first, quickly followed by the rooster, who was, as always, crowing his little heart out.
Hermione and Harry looked at one another.
“I’m starting to think we might not even be needed here,” Harry joked.
Hermione smiled, then the both of them walked out from their cover and entered the Chamber of Secrets.
That was when everything went wrong.
*****
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Interlude:: The Serpent
Basilisks did not need food, they did not need water, they never fell sick, and they never aged, only grew. Essentially, basilisks were immortal unless killed. So consequently, they feared death.
A thousand years ago, Salazar Slytherin had promised a little basilisk eternal refuge within the bowels of Hogwarts from the wizards who would hunt it down, asking only in return that it assisted his descendants in their sacred mission if they were to ever call on it.
The basilisk had not wanted to die, so it had agreed, and now, a thousand years later, people called that basilisk the monster of Slytherin.
The basilisk did not particularly care for Slytherin, or his descendants. It neither understood, nor did it concern itself with their obsession over magical heritage.
To be frank, the creature barely understood the concept of heritage, seeing as basilisks had no genders and could not reproduce.
What the creature did understand however, and what it had certainly concerned itself with over the last thousand years, was its continued survival.
It had a rather comprehensive list of everything known to Wizardkind that could end its life, and of all these things, none scared it as much as the rooster’s crow; a sound that could snuff out its existence just as easily as its own gaze had snuffed out the lives of others.
It lived in dread of that sound, and its greatest solace in life was that its home protected it from such dangers.
Then that morning had happened, and that sound that was somehow familiar even though it had never heard it before had rang through its entire world, and it had shivered in terror for hours wondering why it wasn’t dead.
Just when it was beginning to calm down; beginning to wonder if maybe it had been wrong and that wasn’t the rooster’s crow it had dreaded all its life, it felt two people walk into its home blaring that sound for all the world to hear. Two people who were not of Slytherin; two people with tainted blood.
It understood now. They had found it. They wanted to kill it.
Basilisks were creatures that were eternal unless killed. Consequently, they feared death.
Consequently, they never hesitated to protect their lives.
*****
Hedwig knew what was coming before they did.
Hermione and Harry had both been distracted, taken by the eerie but awe-inspiring ambience of the chamber.
The rooster had been crowing; loudly, incessantly, blocking out all other sound, and no one had noticed the head of a fifty foot long snake sticking out of an artfully concealed tunnel above, poised to strike down.
Hedwig did.
The owl moved so swiftly that, by the time the snake’s pained hissing made the children look (despite how many times they’d both tried to remind themselves never to), she’d turned both of its eyes to bloody shreds.
For a split second, Hermione froze at the sight of the battle going on above their heads, Harry didn’t.
“Avada Kedavra!”
The green orb shot from Harry’s wand faster than an arrow, only to splash harmlessly against an empty tunnel as the snake managed to retract its head before it made contact.
The rooster had gone wild, crowing with every bit of its strength it had and making Hermione’s ears ring with the echoing sound.
“Shut it!” Harry screamed, and thankfully, the animal went quiet.
“It didn’t work,” Hermione was saying. “Why didn’t it work? It should have worked. The books all said it would work.”
“Hermione!” Harry’s voice broke through her rising panic.
She looked at him. His face was pale, and his green eyes looked just a bit manic, but his gaze held hers steadily.
“I really, really need you here with me right now,” the boy said.
Hedwig flew back down then and perched on the ground, her head spinning in search of the elusive snake.
Hermione swallowed, took a breath, then nodded at Harry.
To Hedwig she asked: “Did you blind it?”
The owl hooted in the affirmative.
“Okay, good,” Hermione said. “That means it can’t kill us.”
“With its eyes?” Harry asked rhetorically. “Sure. With its venom, its fangs, its huge tail, and who knows what else the fucking books failed to tell us? Let’s not make any bets just yet.”
Hermione had nothing to say to that, so she cast a spell instead. A spell that she only just realised that she really should have used before now.
“Serpenti revelio.”
It was a simple spell for finding any snakes within your vicinity that she’d come across during their basilisk research yesterday. She didn’t know if it would work with the magical snake but—a huge, red blob appeared on the wall to their right.
Hedwig was already moving.
Unfortunately, it seemed the basilisk had expected this, because as soon as its head was out, it opened its maw wide and a steaming, green fluid sprayed from its throat like water from a showerhead.
Hedwig dodged, and Hermione and Harry followed accordingly.
The Gryffindor hit the ground hard with her shoulder, but she pushed through the eye-watering pain as well as she was able to and quickly scrambled to her feet, and that was when she saw the stone floor where the snake’s venom had landed; it was boiling.
Apparently, the basilisk wasn’t just immune to the rooster’s crow, it could also shoot out acidic venom from its throat.
...
How had nobody thought to record that!?
Harry was on his feet too, but before he could do anything, both he and Hermione had to retreat as far back as they could as the basilisk sprayed out more venom, all in an attempt to catch Hedwig who was ripping into its head with her sharp, powerful claws.
They were separated now, over thirty feet apart, but this was fine; they made harder targets this way.
Harry tried to assist Hedwig, his wand already glowing a familiar green before he’d even said anything.
“Avada Kedav—” he began but never finished, because the snake was completely out of its tunnel now. And at almost sixty feet long, it was a simple matter for it to reach Harry with its tail.
There was a sharp slap! sound, and Hermione watched as Harry was sent flying into the Chamber’s far wall almost forty feet away.
Hermione did not look away as she watched Harry crumple to the floor like a ragdoll, if she had she would have noticed Hedwig get distracted by Harry’s circumstances, and pay the price for it when the snake batted her into a wall with its barrel-sized head.
In the girl’s defence though, she couldn’t really notice anything in that moment. Not with how her mind was utterly swaddled with a single thought: Harry’s dead.
A single thought that was reinforced by the image of a broken boy lying in a growing pool of his own blood.
Harry’s dead.
Knowing she was the last, the snake slithered to her; leisurely, almost lazily, before rearing up to gaze at her with its destroyed eyes.
Harry’s dead.
That thought, like a mantra, repeated over and over and over.
Harry’s dead.
The basilisk hissed, and it was like a switch had been flipped as Hermione’s gaze snapped to the snake.
In a moment of utter clarity, Hermione took in the creature, all of it; its vibrant green scales, its dagger-long fangs, its shredded face where Hedwig had torn into it.
Something hot and dark sparked to life in the girl’s chest and she raised her wand.
She knew the words, she knew the motions.
“Avada Kedavra,” Hermione said.
The green bolt flashed from her wand faster than the human eye could track, aimed dead center for the serpent’s head.
The snake dodged. And Hermione barely even had the time to process this fact before it bathed her in a jet of acidic venom.
Two things happened in that moment: first, Hermione’s world became fire and pain; then Hedwig, with a broken wing and several crushed ribs, flew after the Killing Curse the girl had cast, caught it in her talons, and threw it back down at the unsuspecting snake.
As Hermione’s consciousness thankfully faded to black, sparing her from the pain, she thought she heard screaming.
It was probably hers.