Chapter 310: The Confrontation
Harry felt as though something were physically wrenching his soul from his body, leaving him in a dizzying haze. Everything around him lost its solidity—the walls seemed to double, and the water in the basins sounded like a distant, rushing torrent. He couldn't hear clearly, no matter how hard he tried.
"No... it can't be..."
He clutched the petrified Alchem-Toad in one hand and pressed the Basilisk fang against the black diary with the other. "Tell me! How do I get in?!"
The diary remained motionless, its blank pages staring back at him.
"Let me try." Ron grabbed the diary and tried to rip it apart with his bare hands. But a strange, unseen force resisted him; no matter how much he strained, he couldn't leave so much as a crease on the paper.
That settled it. The diary was definitely cursed.
Panting, Ron threw the diary onto the edge of the sink. A battered, old quill was lying nearby. The moment the tip of the quill touched the paper, something magical happened. The ink was instantly absorbed, and words began to bleed onto the page:
[Use Parseltongue. Say 'Open.']
Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn't waste another second. Hermione bolted toward the Headmaster's office, while Harry and Ron plunged into the dark opening of the pipe.
The tunnels of the Chamber were as silent as a tomb. The only sound was a sharp crunch—Ron had stepped on a rat's skull. Harry lowered his wand, illuminating the floor, and saw that the ground was littered with the bones of small animals.
Harry fought the urge to imagine what had happened down here. The Basilisk had emerged; Sean's alchemical creations were petrified... so what had happened to Sean?
Harry ran forward, rounding a dark bend in the tunnel.
"Harry... there's something over there..." Ron's voice was hoarse with dread.
They froze, staring into the gloom. Harry could see the coiled outline of a massive creature lying on the other side of the tunnel, perfectly still. Their wand-light hit it, revealing a giant, emerald-green skin. It was vibrant and scaled—clearly the skin of a venomous serpent—lying hollow and discarded on the floor.
Judging by the skin, the creature that had shed it was at least twenty feet long. This discovery made their hearts sink even further.
After sprinting through the darkness for what felt like miles, they finally emerged into a long, dimly lit hall. Rows of towering stone pillars carved with entwined serpents rose to a ceiling lost in shadow. They looked around frantically, but the chamber seemed empty.
Harry squeezed a few drops of ink into the diary and held the fang over it like a dagger. "Tell me! Where is Sean?!"
The diary shuddered for a moment before the ink rearranged itself:
[Finally, you've fallen for it. It took a great deal of effort to influence you... the boy you speak of was indeed a nuisance. Even I couldn't deal with him immediately.]
[But my target was never him. It was you, Harry Potter.]
"What do you mean? No—tell me! Where is Sean?!" Harry shouted, bringing the fang closer to the page.
[A Basilisk fang... where did you get that? No matter. You are here now, and you have come of your own accord.]
[As for that boy... if he truly came down here... heh. He is likely dead. But before you join him, I have so many questions for you, Harry Potter.]
Ron looked as though he'd been struck by lightning. He slumped onto the floor, his expression vacant. He had completely forgotten they were in the heart of a monster's lair.
Harry's vision blurred with rage and grief. With a roar, he slammed the Basilisk fang directly into the center of the diary.
A terrible, prolonged, ear-piercing scream erupted from the book. Streams of ink geysered out, drenching Harry's hands and pooling on the floor.
Then, a dark, looming shadow materialized before him.
"You brought this on yourself! You cursed brat!"
"Speak to me, Slytherin—greatest of the Hogwarts Four!"
The shadow belonged to a tall, dark-haired boy. He was calling out to the far end of the room. The massive stone face of Salazar Slytherin began to move. Harry and Ron watched in horror as the statue's mouth opened, wider and wider, forming a gaping black void.
They knew exactly what he was doing. Harry lunged again with the fang.
"I'm waiting for you—Harry Potter!" the shadow hissed. It writhed and struggled, its arms flailing as it let out a series of agonizing shrieks.
Harry and Ron squeezed their eyes shut.
"Run!" Harry yelled.
He turned to bolt, but slammed into something solid.
"Harry?"
He heard a voice—a voice more familiar than any other.
Sean was looking down at him with a look of mild confusion. Harry had been about to run head-first into a stone pillar.
"S-Sean... so I am dead then... I'm sorry. I came too late..." Harry looked over and saw Ron, and his voice failed him. Ron's dead too...
Ron's reaction was even more dramatic. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he keeled over in a dead faint.
"You aren't dead, Harry," Sean said. He had been tracking them on the Project Map and arrived just in time to see Tom trying to summon a snake that wasn't there, only to be stabbed half to death by Harry.
Sean looked at the book on the floor. Ink was still oozing from the pages. The Basilisk venom had burned a jagged hole straight through the diary, and acrid black smoke was still hissing from the wound.
Within the shadow of the diary, the flickering image of Tom Riddle looked thin and translucent, like a wisp of smoke caught in a breeze.
"Impossible..." Tom stared at Sean, looking utterly dazed. "How could you have dealt with the Basilisk..."
Sean could feel that the memory-shade no longer had any power. Two seconds later, with a low growl of frustrated rage, Tom Riddle vanished into nothingness.
With Tom's influence severed, the diary seemed to return to being an ordinary, albeit ruined, book. Sean's eyes caught a specific name on one of the pages. He flicked his wand, and the pages turned:
[Big, blundering Hagrid... clumsy, always looking for trouble, getting into a mess once a week. Keeping werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking into the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls.]
[I must admit, even I didn't expect the plan to work so smoothly. I thought surely someone would realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin.]
Looks like Hagrid's name is about to be cleared... Sean thought.
"Sean?" Harry asked, finally regaining his senses. "You... you beat the Basilisk?"
Sean nodded.
Harry let out a breath he felt he'd been holding for a lifetime. His eyes turned red again, the overwhelming relief of finding his friend alive making his head spin.
"It seems you two did quite well on your own, didn't you?"
A kind, wise voice rang out through the chamber.
Ron stirred on the floor. He scrambled up, only to see Hermione standing there next to Professor Dumbledore. For a split second, Ron's heart sank.
"Hermione? Blimey... are you dead too?" he wailed.
Hermione delivered a sharp punch to his shoulder, which did more to wake him up than any reviving spell. "I am not dead!"
"Oh—ho ho—" Dumbledore chuckled softly, his eyes twinkling.
Realizing he had made a complete fool of himself, Ron turned a deep shade of scarlet and stood silently to the side, wishing the floor would swallow him whole.
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