“Your hand on the door, please. On the snake’s mouth in the middle.” The words were soft and whispered and she could almost forget how the hisses started to translate themselves since she touched the snake – Ailith - and how they sent shivers down her spine.
She stole a glance towards the professor next to her and reached for the stone snake, with only a small hesitation. There was a sting and the snake’s eyes started to glow. There was a release of some mechanism another stone snake slithered on the frame of the door, and it opened.
“This is the entrance hall.”
Hermione blinked the tears away, flexing her hand.
She was alive. She needed to focus on that. She had looked at the basilisk – Ailith – in the eye and survived. She was still alive. And now she had a teacher by her side. She would deal with this. Almost nothing in her original plan had changed. She would see this through, go to her room and cry herself to sleep. Maybe now she wouldn’t tell everything to Harry and Ron. Harry might understand or try to. After a couple of months. Maybe.
But Ron… Ron would blow up. Ron would never understand.
Professor Snape climbed down the stairs first, then helped her down, both turning around to study the rolls of snake heads coming out of the water on both sides of the lane that headed to the statue head.
“Is that Salazar Slytherin?”
“Yes,” Ailith answered as Hermione translated for the professor. “He thought it funny because people thought he was big-headed. So, he built himself a big head.”
“Hum…” The Potion Master looked around as they approached the statue. “For some reason, I’d never thought he’d have a sense of humour.”
“I think the same could be said about you,” Hermione snorted, hastily adding a “sir,” at his glare. She thought he looked like he was smoothing over a grin. It could also be a trick of the light. On a night such as this, anything was possible.
“So, this is the Chamber of Secrets…” Hermione stated, looking around, as they stopped in front of the head of Salazar Slytherin. “Is it wrong that I sort of expected… more?”
“This is just the entrance,” Ailith hissed in a way that sounded like a laugh. Again, Hermione felt that maybe she was reading too much into everything. Maybe hysteria was setting in.
“Oh! So…”
“You go through his mouth.”
“Really?” Snape side-eyed her, with a raised eyebrow. “Hum… She says we need to go through his mouth to enter the chamber. This is just the entrance.”
The only response she got from him was a hum and a distasteful curl of the lips. She quite agreed. Didn’t Salazar Slytherin have self-respect? To have people go into the mouth of a huge statue of yourself was just…
“Go through the mouth. Enter the first door you find. You’ll have to offer blood.” She slithered away through one of the pipelines on the side of the head, heedless of Hermione’s protests.
She turned to the statue, with a frown in place, frustration and nerves mixing inside her stomach, wondering how to through a closed mouth.
“Should I just ask it to open? Like with the sink?” She asked the professor when he put a hand on her shoulder. He seemed to be very aware of her moods so far, seemingly always aware when her thoughts ran away from her.
“We’ve come so far.” His black eyes turned to her when he spoke, and Hermione took a second to contemplate how alive they looked. He always looked controlled. Cool, calm and collected. Even when berating someone and giving detentions, his eyes were unchanging. But now, here, he looked curious and interested, his eyes glinting in the flickering light of the torches. It seemed like his soul was up to attention.
“As weird and terrifying as this night has been so far, I can barely wait to see what is hidden here,” she shared, watching his reaction. “I mean, everyone just assumes that the secret is only the monster, but… It’s Chamber of Secrets. Plural. As in more than one… There must be more… right?”
“One can only hope.” She nodded, staring at the statue, gathering her courage around her, and ordering the mouth to open. A stone platform rose from within the pool, as the mouth opened to reveal a set of stairs. “Miss Granger,” the hand on her shoulder stopped her first step, the deep and sharp voice sounding remarkably soft. “Considering the events so far this evening, in regards to your sudden ability to communicate with the basilisk and its change in behaviour, I suggest you prepare yourself for whatever you’ll find inside that statue. I have a feeling you’ll be discovering a lot, not all of it palatable.”
She nodded, studying the statue again, reaching for the Potion Master’s hand. He seemed a bit taken aback but he didn’t move to free his hand, so she took it as a win.
“You’ll help me with it? Whatever ‘it’ is?” She didn’t need to look at him to know his eyes were on her. His stare always felt heavy but this time, alone in this ancient chamber, looking into the stone eyes of Salazar Slytherin, it felt more like a blanket than a threat.
“You have my word.”