“You split your soul,” Harry repeated, but no matter that he heard the words again, they still made no sense to him. “Why would you even think of doing that?”
“Immortality,” Tom said in the kind of tone that suggested he was tired of even thinking about the subject, let alone talking about it. But he soldiered on. “All throughout my Hogwarts years I asked Dumbledore and Dippet to let me stay at Hogwarts during the summer. They always refused, even when the war broke out and the Blitz hit London. I had to spend months during the summer hoping the orphanage wouldn’t take a direct hit while around us street after street, building after building was destroyed by muggle bombs dropping from the sky.”
Harry listened quietly, wondering why no one had thought to offer those magical kids living in London during the Blitz a place to stay outside of the city. He knew from his history lessons at the muggle primary school he and Hyacinth had attended that a lot of muggle children were evacuated from London to the countryside to stay with complete strangers for their own safety.
“I was genuinely terrified I wouldn’t see my next school year,” Tom continued. “So when I came across a method for immortality in the restricted section, it seemed like a perfect solution to my problems.” Tom fell quiet for a moment, eyes squeezed shut. “I was so terrified to die, so desperate to stay alive that I never wondered about the real consequences of such a method. As I know now, all rituals that promise powers of that magnitude come at a terrible price.”
“What was the price?” Harry asked, fascinated yet horrified by the idea of achieving immortality by literally ripping your essence apart.
“Insanity,” Tom whispered, eyes still shut as though admitting these things physically pained him. “The price was slowly becoming insane without even realizing it.”
Harry wrung his hands, his head down. That certainly explained a few things, didn’t it? Why Tom choose to do some of the things he did.
“But there was another price to pay,” Tom went on, finally opening his eyes and giving Harry a resigned look. “The only way to split your soul is to commit murder.”
Inhaling a sharp breath, Harry sat back a little and stared at Tom, meeting his yellow gaze head on. There it was. The reason Tom decided to kill someone, a fellow student if Harry guessed correctly.
“I wasn’t sure I could do it,” Tom said, coiling his body tighter around himself. “At this point I was a child that had grown up in a harsh environment, that had to fight for every scrap of anything he’d ever gotten, that gave as good as he got, but I wasn’t a killer. Still, I was desperate and terrified. I got lucky when I found the Chamber of Secrets.”
Harry, who had been staring at the floor, snapped his head up. “The what now?”
“The Chamber of Secrets,” Tom said slowly with an amused glint in his eyes. “Salazar Slytherin himself built it when they constructed Hogwarts. It requires parseltongue to enter it.”
Astonished there were still parts of Hogwarts he hadn’t known about, Harry slowly closed his mouth which had dropped open. He’d used his father’s Marauder’s Map diligently throughout his Hogwarts years and he was certain he’d explored every last inch of the castle. Apparently, though, he’d missed a spot.
“Slytherin left a basilisk inside the chamber and I used her to take out my anger and resentment on the student population during my fifth year. I didn’t mean for her to kill anyone, just petrify a few muggleborn students who got to go home to safe places in the muggle world. But there was a student hiding in the bathroom when the basilisk left the tunnel to her lair and before I could stop her she’d killed the girl.”
Harry’s mouth had dropped open again. “Tom,” he said, and swallowed once, twice. “Tom, what happened to the basilisk?”
“She went back to the chamber and stayed there, hibernating. I didn’t dare open the chamber again while I was at Hogwarts.”
“Tom,” Harry said again, voice pitched higher, in tune with the rising panic bubbling in his chest. “Is there currently a basilisk at Hogwarts? A basilisk that’s already killed at least one student?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds quite terrible,” Tom said with a little shake of his head. “She’s asleep, I told you.”
“How do I get into the Chamber of Secrets?” Harry demanded as he got up from his chair. There was no way he was leaving a basilisk sleeping in a secret room at Hogwarts. People he knew and cared about worked there or attended it. “We’re getting that basilisk and we’re relocating her to your old home in India. That’s already warded and the local government knows a basilisk lives there. No need to tell anyone we’ve replaced you with her.”
“Very well,” Tom said with a resigned nod. “The girl’s bathroom on the second floor. There is a sink with a tap with a snake on it. Speak parseltongue and the entrance will open.” Tom frowned at him. “Best let me out after that point to talk to Aisa. She wasn’t all that put together after spending so many centuries alone.”
“Fine. I’ll call you out once we get there.” Harry gave Tom a firm nod and climbed the ladder out of the suitcase.
Harry had spent quite a bit of time during his Hogwarts years sneaking out of the castle, but this was the first time he’d be sneaking in. Usually, when he needed to be at Hogwarts, Hagrid simply let him in. But he couldn’t risk anyone finding out about the basilisk. She’d almost certainly be killed, especially if people found out she’d actually killed a student in the past, and Harry wouldn’t allow that to happen. Whatever happened, it wasn’t the basilisk’s fault. She’d been locked up in a castle for centuries. She deserved whatever semblance of freedom Harry could give her. A nice set of caves in a vast yet warded forest in India seemed like a pretty good deal compared to a secret chamber in a cold and damp castle in Scotland.
Thankfully, it was the summer so the castle would only house a few staff members. No students would be endangered. Still, Harry would be transporting an actual basilisk halfway around the world this time, not just a wizard stuck as one. It couldn’t hurt to be prepared, so Harry grabbed a decorative pillow from one of the armchairs near the fireplace and transfigured it into a rooster. After making sure he could make it crow on command with a well-placed imperius curse, Harry hit it with a sleeping charm and stuffed it in his backpack.
The Unforgivables were only unforgivable when cast on humans. That was a nice little loophole most magical zoologists readily exploited when subduing prey animals or relocating dangerous beasts.
Harry also grabbed the Marauder’s Map from his old school trunk that was stored in his attic. Finally, he draped the invisibility cloak around his shoulders and he was ready to do some breaking and entering.
Honeyduke’s was open for business as usual and Harry had no problem slipping inside after a customer. He wasted no time and made his way to the cellar and through the trapdoor into the dark tunnel that led straight to Hogwarts. He lit his wand and activated the map, studying the positions of various staff members as he made the long trek.
Hagrid was on the grounds, McGonagall was with teachers he wasn’t familiar with named Bilkes and Roseworth in the Great Hall and Dumbledore was in his office. Harry would enter Hogwarts on the third floor, so he’d have to hurry down one floor and into the bathroom and he’d be in the clear.
Just as Harry neared the entrance behind the statue, Dumbledore left his office. Harry wondered if he’d tripped the wards. Squeezing himself through, Harry kept a close eye on the map. Dumbledore was slowly but surely making his way to the third floor.
Bugger that. Harry was not ready in any way to explain to the headmaster why he was kidnapping a basilisk from the castle, and more importantly, how he even knew the animal was there in the first place. Thankfully, Dumbledore was beyond ancient and used a cane to get around. And Harry was in the prime of his life, supposedly.
Casting a silencing charm on his feet, Harry wrapped his invisibility cloak tightly around himself and made a run for it. He dashed through the corridor, practically threw himself down the stairs to the second floor and then was stumped for a moment where the girl’s bathroom even was. It’s not like he’d ever had to use it while attending school.
“Come on, come on,” Harry muttered to himself as he speed-walked up the corridor until he spotted the bathroom in question. He burst through the door and immediately started speaking in parseltongue. “Open, Chamber of Secrets, where ever you are.”
To his left a section of the wall started moving, stone grinding across stone.
“Yeah, that’s not loud at all,” Harry whispered, just as a female ghost came flying out of a toilet stall.
“Who is there? Who is talking? This is a girl’s bathroom, and I can hear you’re a boy!”
Harry ignored the wailing ghost and squeezed himself through the gap as soon as it was large enough. “Please close now. Good chamber, what a good chamber you are.” The wall stopped moving for a second before it started sliding closed again.
Harry let out a sigh of relief, and then realized it was quickly becoming pitch black. “Lumos,” he said as he drew his wand from its holster. What greeted him was an abyss. “Couldn’t have warned me, Tom,” he complained as he summoned his broom from his backpack. He’s learned long ago that a broom was a very valuable tool in his line of work. It only took a minute to fly down what Harry realized was some kind of big stone sewer pipe that ended in a cavern with a low, rocky ceiling.
It was probably a good idea to let Tom out now because Harry had no idea where the other basilisk was hiding. He pulled the suitcase from his backpack, opened the lid and stuck his head inside. “Tom! We’re in the chamber!”
Harry heard Tom before he saw him, scales scraping across the floor as Tom moved towards the ladder. Harry stood back as Tom emerged from the suitcase, tongue flicking in and out eagerly and almost anxiously.
“This isn’t the chamber yet,” Tom told him once he was free and Harry tucked the suitcase away. “But I can smell a shed skin to our right if you want to collect it.”
Of course Harry wanted to. More Galleons in the bank. The skin was in pretty good shape, so Harry folded it carefully and dropped it down into his suitcase. That would do for now. Tom was already moving forward and Harry had to hurry along to catch up with him. They saw a round, metal door which opened the moment Tom spoke to it in parseltongue. Apparently Salazar Slytherin wasn’t big on actual security, perhaps trusting that only his own kin could speak the language of serpents. Well, Harry was living proof good old Sal was wrong about that.
“Now this is the Chamber of Secrets,” Tom said as Harry followed him through the round door. Around them torches lit up with bright orange flames. Harry admired the charm work that must have been applied many centuries ago but still worked like, well, a charm. Statues of snakes lined a stone walkway that ended in a large room dominated by a truly ugly statue of a wizard.
“Best stay behind me now, Harry,” Tom whispered and Harry did as he was told for once. No need to accidentally provoke a thousand year old basilisk in taking a bite out of him.
“Open,” Tom called towards the statue, and Harry watched in surprise as the mouth and jaw unhinged to form a tunnel. “Aisa, wake up, dearest. It’s Tom.”
“Tom?” a hissed voice echoed in the dark tunnel before them. The voice was distinctly female though just as other-worldly as Tom’s.
“Yes, it’s me,” Tom said, slowly winding closer to the statue. “I’ve brought a friend. He’d like to meet you.”
The basilisk that emerged from the tunnel was, if anything, even bigger than Tom. On second thought, Harry realized, that wasn’t all that strange taking her age into account.
“Tom, you look different. I was so worried when you stopped visiting,” Aisa said as she slithered towards Tom and gently bumped her nose against his.
“I’m sorry I had to leave like that, but it wasn’t safe.” Tom gestured towards Harry with his head. “This is my friend Harry. He’s here to take you to a beautiful new home.”
“Hi,” Harry said with a little wave as he took a careful step closer.
“You brought me another speaker,” Aisa said happily. “Hello, Harry. Why do you want to take me away from my home?”
“Er...because your new home is a beautiful set of caves in a large forest. Lots of deer to hunt and sun to bask in.” Harry gestured around the chamber. “A much nicer environment than this.”
“Will you be there, Tom?” Aisa asked as she pressed her side against Tom’s large body.
“I will visit,” Tom assured her. “As will Harry.”
“Yes,” Harry quickly confirmed. If they played this right, they’d have a supply of basilisk venom and shed skins for the rest of their lives, even after Tom became human again. Harry did not want to screw this up.
“Harry, why don’t you show Aisa how she will be travelling,” Tom suggested with a pointed look.
“Aisa, you’ll be travelling in style,” Harry said as he got his suitcase out and opened it. Tom slid inside first while Aisa looked on curiously. “Go on, you’ll love it,” Harry told her and after a few more moments of intense tongue-flicking Aisa followed Tom down the metaphorical rabbit hole. Harry quickly slammed the lid closed, trusting Tom to give Aisa the grand tour and explain things if she had any questions.
Harry wanted to get out of there and get Aisa relocated as quickly as he could. Yes, he’d wanted to meet a basilisk, yes, he’d sought one out, but that turned out to be a wizard in disguise. The idea of taking an actual basilisk into populated areas made Harry very nervous indeed. He was immune to the basilisk’s lethal gaze, but the rest of the world wasn’t. Aisa was, in essence, a magical weapon of mass destruction and the damage she could do if she got out at the wrong moment was unimaginable. Harry inhaled a deep breath to calm his wily nerves and pulled out the map to see if it was safe for him to exit the chamber.
Dumbledore was walking through the second floor corridor.
“Buggering fuck,” Harry muttered. He was almost sure at this point that he’d tripped some kind of ward and that Dumbledore knew someone had snuck in. And the ghost in the bathroom may have told him what she’d seen and heard.
Wait a minute. Did Hogwart’s wards encompass the chamber? If it had been built to be a secret then there was a good chance the wards didn’t cover it. Harry pulled out his wand and cast every ward detection spell he knew. He smiled. He was right. He could get out of there without trekking all the way back through the castle and alerting Dumbledore even more to his presence. Harry picked up his backpack and apparated home.
He didn’t waste any time and sent a quick Patronus to Severus, telling him he was travelling back to India for reasons and not to expect him back for a week or so. Harry’s friends and family were used to Harry leaving the country at the drop of a hat, and if they needed him they knew to check with Severus where he was at any given time.
Harry booked the necessary port-keys and left immediately. He made a pit stop in the black forest in Germany and summoned a handful of deer and wild boar, which he unceremoniously levitated down into the suitcase, trusting that two basilisks knew how to hunt them. He guessed Aisa had to be hungry and this way she’d be less tempted to have him for dinner.
It wasn’t until a stopover in Pakistan that the excitement of the last few days caught up with Harry and he felt dead on his feet. He booked a simple, cheap hotel room, but still pulled out his suitcase and opened it. He preferred to sleep in his own bed in his living quarters. He made sure to close and lock the lid behind himself so there would be no basilisk encounters of the accidentally lethal kind if the maid decided to stop by unannounced. Tom and Aisa were nowhere to be found, but Harry trusted they’d found a comfortable spot for themselves to spend the journey.
Stretching out on the sofa with a cup of tea, Harry pulled out his journal to log the latest developments. Just winding down for a moment before calling it a night.
The door burst open and Tom rushed inside. All sixty foot of him. Harry’s living quarters were tiny. It didn’t fit and Harry’s coffee table cracked and then crumbled beneath Tom’s coils. Tom wound himself up as small as he could and gave a gaping Harry a pleading look.
“Harry, you have to help me!”