Chapter 150: Action Required

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“Found her laying on the floor on the way from the castle grounds to the great hall,” Harry explained shortly in the hospital wing to Dumbledore and McGonaggal. 

“And why, pray tell, were you not at the feast?” McGonaggal asked with a quirked eyebrow as Madame Pomfrey fussed over the petrification victim. 

“Weird story, that,” Harry said awkwardly. “Let’s just say that I will neither confirm nor deny that I was testing out the oral properties of mandrake leaf on a full moon.”

McGonaggal palmed her face and dragged down her hand.

“You do realise that the animagus transformation is restricted magic,” she said.

Harry raised his arms defensively. “Hey, you just have to register if you succeed. Personally, it seems very hard. I don’t think I’ll ever manage.”

“Still, the animagus registry exists for a reason,” the professor argued softly.

“Tell that to poor old Mrs Winger. If the Death Eaters hadn’t known she could turn into a swan, she would have gotten away that day,” Harry shot back, at which the professor hardened her lips and turned towards Dumbledore, who had gone to assist Madame Pomfrey in the analysis.

“To the core,” the headmaster said, his usual twinkle missing from his eyes.

“Who could have done this?” McGonaggal asked shakily. “What could have done this?”

“Petrification is very dark magic. Incredibly dark magic,” Dumbledore said softly. “A punishment beyond compare, as the victim is usually aware of their surroundings and time passing by. Ms Waters is not currently perceiving her surroundings, which thankfully excludes that possibility. Unfortunately, the other option, that of a gorgon, doesn’t make any sense.”

“The way she was laying down, facing the window,” Harry finally said. “She was looking at the forest, then fell over backwards. It’s the only option that makes sense considering the position we found her in. Gorgon’s petrify by direct eye-sight. I read a hypothesis somewhere, forgot where, but basilisks kill when you meet their eyes. They’re in the same magical family as gorgons, so what if you met a basilisk’s eyes indirectly?”

“A basilisk!?” McGonaggal shouted brusquely. “Mr Evans, you will not sugg-”

“Minerva,” Dumbledore suddenly interrupted, his brows furrowed together, and Harry could see the cogs turning at a rapid pace.

“I talked to Moaning Myrtle at some point,” Harry continued, lying. “Don’t remember if it was in the first or second year. She told me she heard a weird voice, a language she didn’t understand, opened the stall, then died. There aren’t many such instantaneous magics like that. The case files say it was Hagrid and the baby acromantula he’d smuggled in. I call bullshit. If Moaning Myrtle had been killed by an acromantula, she would be telling everyone how she got mauled by a horse-sized spider. The person who turned Hagrid in? Tom Marvolo Riddle. An anagram for I am Lord Voldemort. I thought it was a weird coincidence until now, but maybe there’s something to it.”

“The second-floor bathroom,” Dumbledore said decisively. “We must go check it.” 

“There was a snake engraving on one of the faucets,” Harry said in a soft tone, faking thinking. He had, in fact, gone to look at the engraving once, after all, why not? It was an interesting part of Hogwarts lore.

“You’re thinking of the Chamber of Secrets?” Dumbledore asked him urgently as they turned around, leaving behind two stunned women and one petrified student.

“Seems like it,” Harry responded as the duo power-walked their way towards the second floor. “All the pieces point towards one thing. It’s the simplest conclusion to make.”

“Voldemort, how did he open it?” Dumbledore muttered thoughtfully.

Harry remained silent.

The facts he’d stated earlier were all things that he could reasonably know and conclude if he was a very smart individual.

Knowing anything about Voldemort’s immortality was beyond his scope of knowledge and would trigger alarms in Dumbledore’s head.

Harry obviously knew that the man lived on, after all, he’d faced him in the third floor corridor last year, but having any reasonable suspicions about how would just be… suspicious.

In addition, well, Harry had no idea how Voldemort or whoever had opened the chamber. After all, he wasn’t receiving any updates on Dumbledore’s part on how many Horcruxes had been destroyed or what the dark lord’s latest moves had been.

The diary was gone, but any parseltongue-speaking artefact or person, could cause what was occurring right now.

Originally, Harry hadn’t told Dumbledore about the Chamber of Secrets in his secret letter years ago because he’d thought it would be unnecessary; now it was obvious he’d made a mistake.

They quickly arrived at the afore-mentioned girls' bathroom, the corridors up until this point being empty, the students having been sent to their dorms.

“We have to check the sink and talk to Myrtle, perhaps conjuring a snake and having it hiss something out will confirm if what she heard that day was parseltongue,” Harry said rapidly as he rushed towards the white circular sinks in the middle and inspected them one by one. 

He couldn’t find the snake.

He went around again.

Expanded his magical senses.

Found nothing. 

Tried again.

After a frantic minute, he was left leaning on one of the sinks with wide eyes.

“It was supposed to be here!” he shouted angrily and turned around towards Dumbledore, wondering why the man hadn’t said anything.

He found the headmaster standing in front of an open bathroom stall and looking inside with a concerned look on his face.

Harry couldn’t see what the man was looking at, so he briskly walked to the man’s side, only to freeze.

Inside the bathroom stall was a floating spectre, but wrong.

Horrified eyes, a mouth wide open in fear.

Grey.

“To be able to petrify a ghost,” the headmaster muttered softly as he stepped into the stall, extending his wand and gently running it over the body of the double-basilisk victim, Myrtle.

“Your theory of a basilisk has merit,” the headmaster eventually said after a minute of analysis.

Then he turned around, walked past the mute Harry towards the sinks and inspected one faucet in particular.

“As I feared, the snake engraving has disappeared since I was here last,” the man said.

He sighed, aged ten years in a second and pulled off his spectacles to rub at his eyes.

“Harry, I must ask at this point, do you know anything else, can you conclude anything else that you can tell me?” he said after a few seconds of silence.

Harry sighed, bent down, sat on the floor, put his hands on the side of his head.

“The Chamber of Secrets used to be accessible through the girls’ bathroom through what must have been parseltongue,” he recited slowly. “Myrtle was murdered by Voldemort while he was a student here through the use of a basilisk. The basilisk was left at Hogwarts by Salazar Slytherin as a backup in case the school was ever attacked by muggles, or as a tool to purge the muggleborn students.” He looked at the headmaster. “The girl, blood-status?” he asked.

“Sixth year Ravenclaw, Muggleborn,” the man answered shortly.

“It’s too much of a coincidence,” Harry determined as he slowly lowered his hands and put his fingertips together in a thinking pose while he continued sitting in a lotus position.

“The basilisk can petrify if one meets its eyes in a reflection, and can petrify ghosts through direct eye contact. It also has the ability to sense a student’s blood status, or the person directing its actions is currently inside Hogwarts. Considering that Slytherin left the thing to combat muggles or muggleborns, it would make sense if he altered the creature somehow to have the ability, so we cannot conclude if the person that opened the chamber is in Hogwarts or is not at Hogwarts, if it is an artefact, or if it is not. We can conclude, however, that the basilisk is not acting of its own volition. Firstly, there was an engraving here, and an engraving that disappeared. The basilisk does not have the intelligence or the motor skills to do such a thing. Coincidentally, the one true witness to the murder of fifty years ago is now petrified; this reeks of a cover-up,” Harry prattled on, working his head.

“Intentional action, removal of previous evidence, material and personal. Question. Last time the basilisk was released, Myrtle died. Now, someone was petrified. Why?” He paused. “This why is likely at the core of the motive. If the intention was to use the muggleborn-purging basilisk to purge the muggleborn, the girl we found petrified would be dead. If not through direct eye contact, then through simply being eaten. What are the intentions of the person controlling the basilisk if the victim was petrified instead of killed? Firstly, the intention must have been that the school not be closed. Petrification is reversible. The intention is thus not to purge muggleborns, and neither is it to close the school. Spreading fear and terror is too vague and idiotic. Who suffers the most from this incident?” he looked at Dumbledore, who was patiently listening to him talk.

“The current administration,” the headmaster answered briefly. “Of which I am the symbol. In essence, then, we can conclude that the intentions of the perpetrator are to have me removed as headmaster. Continuing the train of thought, those who wish to oust me are many, but the first few who step forward to call for my resignation will be the primary suspects. Or rather, the person influencing the first few to step forward will be the primary suspect.”

“That’s all well and good,” Harry interrupted. “But finding the perpetrator and having them stop the attacks adds too much complexity to solving the actual problem, which is that we have to stop the attacks.” He sighed. “I refuse to believe that Slytherin left only one entrance. There must be others. The issue is, even if we find it, how do we get in?” He pierced the headmaster with his gaze. “You long since suspected that the entrance was here, no, but you could never enter?”

The old man shook his head. “Some magic becomes stronger the older it gets. I never quite managed to crack the code, so to say. I suspected that Slytherin left behind incredibly powerful wards tied to parseltongue, or to his blood. Those wards have since fully integrated into Hogwarts’ matrix and can hardly be influenced, removed, or weakened anymore after a thousand years.” 

“The basilisk needs a hole, it’s a big castle,” Harry muttered, before snapping his fingers. “It likely moves through the sewage pipes. I doubt Slytherin managed to leave behind an all-encompassing separate system for his pet monster to move around. That’s why this entrance was in the bathroom. He used a pre-existing system. In fact, we can thus conclude that we’re not dealing with a basilisk, but with a shittylisk. That thing must smell like hell.”

“The victim was found on the ground floor. That means there must be an exit somewhere on the ground floor,” Dumbledore mused. “After all, a basilisk would find it hard to move along the whimsical stairs of the castle.”

“A bathroom, after all, pipes only exist to go from bathrooms to the sewage.” Harry paused and furrowed his brows. “The sewage. We could enter from the exit? Wade through the shit, check all connections?”

Dumbledore coughed into his hand. “Unfortunately, I already tried that a few decades ago; it was a uniquely unpleasant experience.”

“Exit on the ground floor then.” He paused before cursing. “Fuck, it's probably Parseltongue activated. If you couldn’t open this entrance, we won’t be able to open that one. Summoned snakes don’t work?” he asked.

Dumbledore shook his head. “No, it has to be a parselmouth.” He sighed, stepped towards Harry and offered the boy a hand.

Harry took it and let the headmaster pull him up to stand.

“Let me escort you to the Hufflepuff common room. There’s nothing more we can do at the moment,” the old man said gently.

Harry pulled a face.

“So what, there’s just nothing we can do until we find the ground floor exit?” he asked with a sigh as the pair slowly left the bathroom, one more disappointed than the other.

“If it’s even there, my boy,” the headmaster said. “Your deductive reasoning is impressive, but it’s not necessarily a way of thinking that will always lead to the correct conclusion in a world of magic.”

“Maybe it just teleports,” Harry snorted.

“What?”

“Maybe the basilisk just teleports,” he repeated.

Dumbledore didn’t seem to find his joke particularly funny.

Perhaps dealing with Quirrell last year, alongside all the horcruxes Harry had unloaded on him, had truly drained the man into an early death.

“How is your enchantment project going?” the man asked, bringing the conversation into a different, lighter direction.

“Easy peasy,” Harry grunted. “A book is infinite, and a book can copy other books. Now I just need a sorting mechanism or some sort of magical index to accommodate all those segments. You’ll be handing over your pensieve in no time, old man.”

“Old man?” Dumbledore asked with a gentle laugh.

“If I’m your boy, then what are you, my grandpa?” Harry retorted, eliciting another chuckle from the man.

“No one ever called me grandpa before,” the headmaster commented as they finally arrived at the entrance to the common room.

“Try not to break a hip,” Harry replied as he tapped the barrels in the requisite sequence.

“I’ll do my best,” Dumbledore replied.

-/- 

Harry had collected enough social credit not to become the main suspect of the petrification situation just for being caught in a compromising position once.

However, what Hufflepuff did to him was even worse.

They interrogated him for hours.

They hugged him.

They cried.

It was horrible.

He appreciated the togetherness at least.

After all, it seemed like.

Well, it seemed like, just like any year, things at Hogwarts were going to get interesting again.

And wasn’t that a pain.

-/-

AN: I’m removing the fact that Ron Weasley managed to speak parseltongue that one time in book 7 by imitating harry and just keeping it as a magical ability. Too many plot-holes otherwise.

Read ahead to the end of the Chamber of Secrets Plot on P/- atreon!