"Well, we'll be on our way, then," Nigel smiled. All the children chorused "Bye!" as they were ushered out of the store.
Harry waved his hand at the retreating family.
"Well, that was something," Dudley remarked.
Behind them, Severus cleared his throat. "Not to sound ignorant, but what does this string of numbers mean?"
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After they had made sure Dudley's clothes had arrived at the Haven, Severus brought Harry and Nagini back to Hogwarts to investigate the Chamber of Secrets. He felt as if it were a last straw effort to find information on the elusive form of magic, parseltongue. He didn't really think that they would find much on the issue, but it was worth a look.
Not to mention Severus secretly wished to see the basilisk. He doubted it truly was as gargantuan as the stories said, but he would withhold judgement until he saw it with his own eyes.
They were rounding the corner to the second floor girl's lavatory. Severus had heard rumours that a poltergeist or ghost of some sort dwelled there. The talk that he had overheard from the female population said that the creature was somewhat... unsavory.
Indeed, the second they stepped into the bathroom (or slithered, in Nagini's case), Severus heard a moaning, dreadful wail pierce the air. The faded image of a young girl floated down from the ceiling, with her head thrown back in sheer torment.
"Ohh, I thought I would have the entire summer break to mourn the loss of my innocent life," the annoying, high pitched voice hiccuped. "But -" she tilted her head down and caught sight of Harry.
Almost immediately, her demeanor lightened. "Harry!" she simpered.
The young man cringed almost imperceptibly. "Hello, Myrtle," he said, clasping his hands behind his back.
The ghost swooped down almost face-to-face with him. "Have you come to spend eternity with me?" She giggled, putting a hand to her face. Then, her expression fell. "Or have you come to go into that accursed chamber?" she whined.
Harry smiled awkwardly. "Er, yes I have. Come to see the chamber, I mean."
She sniffed wetly. "Well, if you happen to meet death down there, my offer still stands!" Myrtle wailed and dove backwards into a toilet. Her cry echoed around the room, sending a slight shiver down Severus's back.
Harry visibly suppressed a shudder. "Anyways..."
Severus looked around the damp bathroom critically, trying not to think of what Myrtle's offer could be. "And where is your Chamber of Secrets, Harry?" he said, a dubious tone in his voice.
The young wizard strode over to one of the faucets. He touched the silver tap, giving Severus a significant look. He glanced over at Nagini, and hissed a short, concise word.
The lavatory started to shift and change dramatically. Severus retained enough composure to keep his jaw from dropping as the sink sank into the ground and a huge, gaping hole yawned up at them. A huge gust of air blew Severus's hair back, stirring long-settled dust on the higher parts of the bathroom.
Harry gestured to the entrance awkwardly, as if they couldn't see it themselves. Severus strode over to the mouth of the chasm. He squinted, trying to make out how far the void dropped, but his eyes couldn't see past ten feet down.
Nagini and Harry then started forward. Severus stepped back to let them pass. It was almost frightening how well the young man and his snake communed with each other. It was as if they had a sort of... mental connection.
To Severus's utter surprise, Harry jumped down the hole with next to no hesitation. The serpent followed not long after, leaving the potions master staring down into the void they disappeared in.
He sighed. Whatever happens will happen, he thought resignedly. Severus took a deep breath and plunged into the dark tunnel.
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The plummet was shorter than he expected. In hardly the blink of an eye, he had landed (roughly) upon a pile of something crunchy. As he was standing up, he caught sight of what he fell on top of. In fact, the whole floor was covered in the blanched substance.
Small, brittle bones.
Severus was not a squeamish man, but this had him swallowing a small noise his vocal chords automatically tried to make. As he toed around the large pile of bones, he noticed Harry looking slightly off to the side, as if trying to make it seem like he didn't see Severus land directly on his posterior.
"Where to?" he asked wryly, once he had brushed small bits of stark white off of his ebony robes.
Harry pointed behind him to a specific tunnel. "This way was where I went in second year. I don't know, it was kind of... intuition," he said.
Severus nodded, and they went down the passage until they came to what looked like a huge rockslide. He looked over at Harry, and raised an eyebrow. "I'll have to tell you that story later," he said sheepishly. "There's actually a snake skin buried here, you just can't see it."
His mouth twisted into a wry smile, and he followed the young man through the narrow gap in the slabs of shattered stone. The various situations Harry has found himself in... they baffled Severus.
They went forward in silence for a few minutes. Harry stopped at what looked like a huge manhole cover imbedded into the wall. It was very ornate, with carvings of many different snakes on it. Harry stepped in front of it with Nagini, and hissed the same word he had heard up in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
Another enchanted snake started circling the portal, and the other serpents moved out of the way for it to pass by. With a finalizing thud, the door unlocked. The entrance opened outwards in a slow, dramatic fashion. Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes - Salazar had a penchant for the theatrical.
Harry clambered through the slightly tall mouth, and both Severus and Nagini followed him close after.
The first thing Severus saw was the gargantuan bust of Slytherin's head. Then, he really did roll his eyes. Melodrama. He looked around the room and took in the huge stone snakes rearing up. They appeared... impressive. The entire room was gloomy, dark, and wet.
Then, Severus laid his eyes upon a lump in the water that he had missed earlier. Harry and Nagini were aimlessly heading that direction, so he decided to take the lead. He speedwalked over to the suspicious-looking heap.
He stopped short of the dark, murky water. From his point of view, he could tell that whatever it was... was huge. Severus had a hunch about what the water was housing. He quickly cast a repelling spell on the edge of his robes and his shoes before stepping out.
Severus murmured a levitation spell on the large object. Doing so kept his entire attention, since the matter he was lifting was so massive. He didn't want to drop it back in the water and risk getting his entire body soaked and filthy with the tide of grime that would come his way.
Once he got the figure out of the water, he slowly turned around to set it in better lighting. He placed the long body down on the damp floor, sweat beading on his forehead. It was difficult to keep such a heavy thing aloft.
Severus blinked at what he had fished out of the water, not completely comprehending what he was seeing. The creature's sheer size had surpassed every expectation Severus had - therefore leaving him speechless and baffled.
Harry and Nagini came up behind him. He hummed. "Somehow, it looks smaller than it did in second year," he said dismissively.
Severus tore his eyes off the gargantuan basilisk. He had temporarily forgotten that Harry had battled this thing when he was around twelve years old. Harry was staring almost wistfully at the snake. Severus croaked. "Smaller?"
Harry started. "Hm? Oh, yeah. I could have fit into its mouth. Not that I've grown much since then, but still." He threw his arms up awkwardly.
Severus shook his stupor off. He walked forward and knelt before the head of the serpent. The creature's eyes seemed to have been severely scratched off, and there was a gaping stab wound going through its forehead. He remembered seeing the sword of Gryffindor in the Headmaster's office a while back, and the only explanation Dumbledore gave for it was, "It came in handy for Harry this year."
He ran his hand down the feather-less crest of the basilisk's skull. The lack of fiery red plumes along the head signified that the creature was female. This information wasn't phenomenal in the grand scheme of things, but it was important to Severus. He may know some truly useful things, but he also had a love for trivia.
Severus couldn't believe how humble the young man was. It was obvious that he legitimately thought fighting this serpent wasn't too large of a feat, even though it was a good twenty meters long. The average basilisk (or so he read) was only fifteen meters. The creature's body came up to his waist, even at the head.
Although, he had to ask himself - was this even a grand triumph for Harry? He had been exposed to many horrendous things in his lifetime.
With his hand still pressed to the creature's forehead, a thought struck him. He glanced over at Harry, who had wandered over to Salazar Slytherin's huge head, a pensive look on his face.
"Harry... many expensive... almost priceless... things can be found in a basilisk's body. I was wondering if you would let me dissect its body to salvage these things?" The body of a basilisk has the ability to resist decay for years upon years. It was almost rarer to see the skeleton of a basilisk than to see a live one.
Harry turned his head. "Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I think Salazar wouldn't mind the remains of his pet being used for a purpose, instead of sitting here and rotting."
Severus could barely contain his enthusiasm. "Yes, you are probably correct." He focused back on the serpent's body, and started to plot when and where he would start dissecting. He was in the process of discerning where the creature's huge heart must be when he heard Harry gasp and Nagini hiss loudly.
Fearing the young man had run into something unsavory, Severus jumped up and turned around immediately. Instead of being greeted with the image of Harry being attacked by something, he saw Slytherin's stony mouth somehow gape even wider than it was before.
For some reason, Harry seemed nonplussed. "Is the key to every place around here the word 'open?' I wonder what would happen if I said 'open' to every snake or fixture in this place."
Severus chuckled. "I wonder. But, let us examine this passageway you have found for us first." He had never labeled himself as being overly curious, but he felt as if something important lay inside Salazar's mouth. His mind did a small double take. He never thought he would be in the position to ever even think those words.
He hurried over to where Harry and Nagini had vanished inside the mouth of the bust. He traveled in silence for a few meters of pitch darkness before he emerged into a huge room. The best way he could describe it would be a library that spanned far above. So far, in fact, he could hardly see the ceiling. It was a slanted funnel that extended overhead, almost like a snake's den.
Severus had heard many speculations about Salazar Slytherin's mythic, sacrosanct athenaeum. When he was younger, he loved to read about the conjectures that people would come up with, trying to figure out if the place even existed, and if it did, where it resided. As he got older, however, he ceased his research for something more practical - potions.
Yet, no matter how much Severus had fantasized and envisioned, what he saw in front of him surpassed all of his dreams. Almost in a rapture, he moved forward to one of the closest shelves and picked up a large tome with ginger fingers. He looked at the title, and found that he couldn't decipher the language on the front. He opened the book up. It was the same all throughout the pages - illegible writing that looked like a cross between chicken scratches and calligraphy.
Severus closed the book, and turned around. Harry was across the room, hissing quietly to Nagini, an open volume in his hands as well. Severus carefully slid the tome back into where it came from and strode over to where the young man stood.
Harry's eyes flicked upwards to him briefly before he offered the book page for him to read. "Do you see this? The author obviously knows how parselmagic works! Do you think that all the books in this place are similar?"
Severus squinted at the page he was presented. The entire surface was covered with the chicken-calligraphy he had seen earlier. "You can read this balderdash?" he said incredulously.
"Yeah, it's written in English," Harry said, clearly confused.
Severus arched an eyebrow. Then, he glanced down at Nagini, then at Harry. This was Salazar Slytherin's library. It would make sense if every book here was written in parseltongue.
They may have just uncovered their trump card in the entire war.
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Hey, remember me? I apologize for the long wait for this chapter! Like many writers, I had to take a bit of a hiatus. If felt as if my creative energy was being squeezed out by school, family, and other things. I learned something personal about myself that I never thought I'd have to deal with, but turns out, you can't repress something of that scale. During my little break, my writing skills (if you could even call them skills) seemed to mount on each other, until I could barely hold them in anymore. Hence, the chapter here.
I hope you all have great days!