A Bright Star

Chapter 22: The Chamber of Secrets

Harry was panicking.

His magic thrummed along his body, coiling around his limbs as visible wisps of crackling, static, gold and blue tendons sparked up and down his arm. There was a pull on his magic, an urging. A need.

His heart beat rapidly, chest tight with worry.

"Mate, you're creating a chasm."

Dean was making a good point. Harry was pacing in their dorm, needing to move, to do something.

"Are you sure you heard McGonagall correctly?" Neville insisted, perched on the end of his bed and watching his two friends worriedly.

Ron was on his own bed, sat right in the middle with his head in his hands, pulling at his hair.

"They're in the chamber. They're in the chamber and we have no bloody clue where it is!" Ron moaned, hands shaking slightly.

"What if we did?" Seamus asked. Ron and Harry's head shot up, swiveling around to stare at the Irishman. "I don't know where it is!" he said hurriedly, palms face up and out in defense at their glares. "But surely we could try to figure it out."

"How? No one's found it in fifty years!" Ron said frustratingly.

But Harry had paused in his step, a contemplative look on his face.

"The Chamber is said to host Salazar Slytherin's monster. Something that would protect his students." Harry recalled what Percy had told him.

"What would Slytherin use?" Seamus asked, gently pushing Harry back to sit on the end of his bed when his magic had notably calmed.

They sat in silence for a minute thinking.

"Wasn't Slytherin a Parselmouth?" Dean asked a few minutes later, a contemplative expression on his face.

"Yea, it's why everyone thinks I'm the Heir," Harry answered confusedly. They knew this already, what did that have to do with the issue at hand?

"Of course!" Neville shot up from his bed, "A snake!"

"A snake?" Seamus blinked.

Harry understood though. It was so obvious! A snake. Slytherin's mascot was a snake, the founder was known to be a parselmouth, what better 'monster' than one you could control.

"It has to be. Slytherin was able to control snakes, why wouldn't that be what the monster is?" Dean asked rhetorically.

"But what kind of snake petrifies people?" Neville murmured, a finger held against his chin in contemplation.

"I - I think I might know," Ron looked sick to his stomach. "I remember Bill telling us, when we were younger, about Egyptian lore. There was one story of an Egyptian cobra, a - a basilikos I think," Ron's face scrunched in frustration as he tried to remember. "It had the power to destroy all the animals and vegetable life by its mere look or breath."

Well, that fits the situation.

"But no one was actually destroyed or killed." Harry pointed out. "They've all just been petrified."

"What if no one actually saw the snake though?" Ron answered.

"But how?"

That was the question that stumped them all.

Luckily, they had eavesdroppers.

"That's pretty impressive, all these years and no one's thought of the monster being a basilisk."

The five second years yelped, startled as Percy, flanked by the twins, entered the room. Ron looked at his older brothers wide eyed. He hadn't spoken to them since he and Harry had told them what they had overheard before squestering themselves in their dorm.