The Chamber
…What?
Arthur blinks as the pieces float together all too well. Pureblood lineage- not a likely victim. Ginny’s panic attack right after Merlin went down. The secrecy. The guilt. She’s had no friends to speak of this year, no connections… spiralling alone, pouring herself into something…
…Arthur should’ve seen it.
“We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow,” McGonagall continues. “This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said...”
She doesn’t get to finish, interrupted by the sudden BANG of the staffroom door. Arthur whirls around, Excalibur drawn, a second away from disintegrating the threat.
“So sorry — dozed off — what have I missed?” beams the golden fraud who’s just skipped in. He must be accustomed to abject hatred from his audience, because he doesn’t seem bothered by the reaction he garners. Were Arthur visible, his own wrath might be harder to ignore. As it is, Lockhart remains ignorant to just how close he is to becoming the latest in a long line of casualties by Arthur’s blade.
Something about the way Snape slithers forward with barely contained loathing simmering in his eyes tempers Arthur enough to stay his hand for another moment.
“Just the man,” Snape annunciates dangerously. “The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last.”
Hm. Maybe Merlin was onto something with Snape after all, Arthur muses, watching the colour drain from the showman’s face.
“That’s right, Gilderoy,” Sprout chips in. “Weren’t you saying just last night that you’ve known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?”
“I — well, I —”
“Yes, didn’t you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?” Even Flitwick? Lockhart truly has estranged himself from the reasonable.
“D-did I? I don’t recall —”
“I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn’t had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested,” sneers Snape. “Didn’t you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given free rein from the first?”
Lockhart whips around, meeting stony face after stony face. It’s almost poetic.
“I — I really never — you may have misunderstood —”
“We’ll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy,” Professor McGonagall concludes sharply, and ohh, isn’t that just the cherry on top. “Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We’ll make sure everyone’s out of your way. You’ll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. Free rein at last.”
Lockhart looks desperately around, as if he’ll find a friend in this sea of people he’s been belittling all year. His really rather weak chin wobbles feebly. His foundation has coagulated with his sweat. He swallows thickly.
“V-very well,” he finally stutters. “I’ll — I’ll be in my office, getting — getting ready.” And with that he sweeps bravely out the door.
“Right,” snaps Professor McGonagall, nostrils flared, “that’s got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories.”
Arthur doesn’t stay for a moment longer. He slips out after Lockhart, the beginnings of a plan forming in his ancient, war-carved mind.
Arthur doesn’t bother being sneaky about it anymore. If he’s honest, he can’t. He’s been stuck in this circle, helpless, for most of the year, and he’s had it. Arthur’s going to look this fool in the eyes as he finally does something of worth.
He doesn’t mean to be quiet as he enters, but Arthur is coiled tightly enough that his instincts respond as if he were in the middle of a battle, and so Lockhart doesn’t hear him come in. He doesn’t hear the boy step calmly down the length of the classroom or slip in through the half-open door to his office, wand pointed steadily at his teacher’s chest the whole way.
A veritable rainbow of rich fabric is stuffed hastily into two open trunks, each embossed with the owner’s initials. Hair products fly as Lockhart throws all he can into his bags with the fervency of a hunted man. Arthur finds it disrespectful to the space- so still and timeless. The wind does not reach here, and sound is swallowed up by the age of the stone. This farce of a man does not belong here. He never did.
Lockhart finally whirls around and jumps about a foot in the air seeing Arthur. He yelps a bit, and then doubles over in a huff with a caught-off-guard smile and a hand on his chest, laughing his dramatics off. Arthur stares back at him with a face flat enough to put Snape to shame. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t so much as twitch.
“Oh, Mr. Penn! Well done, you might be the first man to ever get the jump on me! I’m afraid I’ve no time for autographs right now, really got to be getting on-”
“You’re going into the chamber, Lockhart. Any arrangements you want made, make them now.”
Lockhart looks back at him in bright yellow shock. It slowly dies and sours a little, going a sickly shade approaching muddy green.
“I don’t think so,” he says simply.
“I do.” Is the reply.
Lockhart turns and ducks under his desk, bumbling the whole way. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, because I really hate to do this-”
He breaks off as he clocks that the wand he’s searching for is in Arthur’s other hand. Arthur steps neatly aside, giving Lockhart an open path to the door in a clear sign.
Lockhart gulps.
Considering the entrance is in a girl’s bathroom, it’s impressively dramatic. The snakes on the silver taps are a nice touch.
“My boy, are you quite mad? You’ve brought me to a lavatory? I must insist you leave this to th-”
“Shut up,” Arthur cuts him off in a tone that would quieten a raging elephant, hardly paying attention to him. He ignores Lockhart’s gasp when he speaks the code word as well.
The grand, imposing sinks, standing back to back in a great circle, shudder into forgotten movement. The horrid grating sound it makes is telling of its age, edges cutting into chips in the stone that weren’t there when it was designed, the snakes on the faucets squirming sluggishly having not been granted life in fifty years. Gradually, the ancient structure separates and sinks out of sight, making way for the entrance of a gaping, neglected pipe plunging straight down.
“It was you,” Lockhart gapes. Arthur doesn’t deign to roll his eyes, and he certainly doesn’t bother correcting him. “You! All along! Saints above…”
A common failing in wizards, even competent ones, is the tendency to overlook the tried and true method of just pushing someone down a hole. They all want to use magic for every little thing. None of them even think to guard against something like a good shove to the chest. It’s quite the disadvantage.
Proceeding on the basis of caution, Arthur follows Lockhart down the pipe invisibly, flying himself rather than sliding. This old pipe looks rife with tetanus, and chafing besides. He'd rather not touch it.
They shoot out (or float out, in Arthur’s case) into a wet corridor that looks like a great compromise for a Basilisk and a wizard to strike. This would’ve been where Sal brought his familiar food when they were sulking. Arthur can see somewhat dryer islands of rubble, like stepping stones, crushed as they are beneath the weight of time and the castle far above. Unsteady dripping echoes through the dark space where cracks have slithered through the walls of this once-sacred haven. Mould chokes the place, stifles the stone like an infection, making a gangrenous limb out of Basil’s sanctuary. Arthur’s throat closes for a few reasons. This is one of his family members’ homes.
Lockhart, near hysterical with fear and what might be a concussion, isn’t hard to corral into movement. Arthur keeps himself invisible, which probably doesn’t help the coward’s hysterics, especially when the charm doesn’t extend to his shadow. Arthur doesn’t much care.
On they trudge, Lockhart’s tailored shoes slapping against the beaten floor the only sound puncturing the dismal, stagnant air. At one point, he crunches down on a rat’s skull and nearly passes out for fright. This time Arthur does roll his eyes.
He catches his breath when they come across the snake skin. It’s not Basil- it’s hardly a husk of them, transparent and flaking, crumbling shamefully, less than the footprint of a great beast. The colour and depth leached out of it, the only movement it makes is to shudder brittly against Lockhart’s harsh breath at the sight. It’s a dead, empty thing. Aside from entertaining a vague memory of Sal framing Basil’s first shed skin (despite the rest of them loudly protesting that it was gross), Arthur pays it no mind. Lockhart’s knees give way, and Arthur finally decides to just set him off on a marching curse. He goes ahead and casts a mild calming charm over the man while he’s there. For insurance, of course. Can’t have the fool passing out when Arthur still has a use for him.
Finally, one last bend brings them to a great circular door staring resolutely at its challengers. The old serpents moulded into it wink at them with emerald eyes. Arthur has to give it to Sal- he knew how to stick to a theme.
“Open,” Arthur hisses. Lockhart leaps and whips his head around for the source, but manages not to whimper aloud. Thank you, calming charm.
The serpents regard the two of them for a heavy moment. Then they stutter into action, disentangling themselves from each other, flakes of rust and grime scraping hideously off in the process. It’s violent and final. The doors they guard, by comparison, part much more smoothly.
Arthur prods Lockhart inside.
The chamber has changed. Arthur never spent much time down here, but he’s sure this is not the home of the Basil he knew. There are no creature comforts, reptilian or otherwise- no lights, no bedding, no food or movement. As it is, it resembles a crypt; the large serpentine monuments lining the space, graves. Sal originally carved a snake statue for Basil so they wouldn’t get lonely (and to satisfy his flair for dramatic decor). Godric rolled his eyes and loudly asked him how many snakes a man needed, so Sal, the shit, carved twelve more to line each of the walls. Thirteen is an unlucky number, and Godric was very superstitious. Sal had always liked snakes, but that was the beginning of his mission to slap the things on every surface he could get his crafty little hands on. Purely out of spite, Hogwarts to this day is absolutely covered in reptilian reliefs.
Thirteen snakes stare condemningly down at them now from either side. The great face of the old philosopher Sal carved into the far wall watches as well, unmoved. Funny how Sal grew up to look quite like those philosophers he so worshipped. It could just as easily be him in that stone.
At the foot of the stone sentinel is a stroke of flame red splashed starkly against the dim green haze of the tomb. Ginny’s black robes blend her into the floor, but there’s no mistaking that hair.
Arthur takes stock of the situation, the arena, and makes his way silently and invisibly to her side. He directs Lockhart to follow much less subtly. He casts a charm of silence over the man as a last measure. He has to keep his mouth shut for this to work… well, sort of.
Out from the shadows of a serpentine pillar, quite literally seeping from the darkness like a pool of sickly ink, steps a boy Arthur knows to be the soul of the soulless enemy. His skin isn’t white with pallor, but the curse of timelessness. His wavy black hair is neat, combed back in an old-fashioned schoolboy style. He is handsome in a weaponized way, skin so pale it almost overrides the fact that there is no colour in his being at all. He is only shades of grey. There is a great depth to him, the black parts of him like voids and the light parts of him white as bone, as if to make up for the dimensions he is missing. Even the mole dotting his cheek seems placed there purposefully to distract from the chilling… emptiness, of him. He resembles Basil’s shed skin.
“She won’t wake,” the facsimile of a human person speaks emotionlessly after a few moments studying Lockhart. Arthur’s presence remains a secret. With Riddle’s attention on Lockhart, he quickly checks Ginny over. She’s pale and cold as marble.
Arthur’s never seen a possession taken this far before. Complete takeover through a horcrux is plausible in theory, but to trade one soul for another in this way… yet again, Riddle’s pressing buttons a smidge too close to home. The Balance is not a thing to fuck with, not for personal gain or any other reason. Merlin, as the Keeper of the Balance, as the Master of Life and Death with the authority to make those calls, knows better than to ask Magic for his loved ones back. He watches his children, his family, his friends, die because he knows it is the right thing to do. That is why he was entrusted with that kind of power. Merlin was made to bear that. Merlin was made to be that. And here is Tom Marvolo Riddle: a completely unremarkable mortal human boy, who decided he was more worthy because he said so. Trying to bully the Balance into submitting to him. It’s such a display of baseless, mindless, devastating arrogance that Arthur almost can’t comprehend it.
Arthur swallows around the unfathomable entitlement of humans and puts the first and second parts of his plan into action at once. He opens Gilderoy Lockhart’s mouth and lets his own voice come out of it.
“Do you still believe this will come at a price you can afford to pay?”
The King of Camelot’s voice echoes strongly through the chamber, infusing the air with warmth much more effectively than Riddle leeches it out. Arthur speaks with his true voice, the one that’s addressed winners and losers of wars untold, armies and senates and gods. It must be strange to hear coming from Gilderoy Lockhart, but it would probably be stranger still coming from a twelve year old boy. It will serve its purpose.
While Riddle recovers, Arthur searches Ginny and the surrounding area for the damned vessel. The poor thing’s lying on its side, pages facing Ginny as if in apology. Riddle’s just left it there. There’s that arrogance.
“You!”
Arthur whips his head back to look at Riddle. His eyes are wide. He’s taken half a step back, eyes and nostrils flaring as all of him rebels against this confrontation, building up to a tantrum the likes of which redeemable toddlers could only ever dream of.
“You’re the one who impeded me last year,” he seethes, fiery eyes raking Lockhart up and down with unspeakable loathing. “This is your true form, then?”
Arthur almost laughs. Yeah, sure, this guy has every chance of beating Death, with brains like that.
“Who are you?” he spits. “TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!”
“I’m going to kill you again, Tom. Don’t come back.”
Tom’s eyes burn with renewed hatred, bugging out of his pallid face. Spittle flies from his lips as he bares his teeth. He looks rabid. The kind of animal you put down out of kindness and try to forget. What hisses out of him is little more than vitriol in a snakey accent.
“Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four!”
Wow. What a password, Sal.
The mouth of the great stone visage scrapes slowly open with a deep SCREEEEEECH. Arthur moves quickly. He shuts his eyes and snatches the leather bound book that a delusional killer poured a sliver of the soul he didn’t have to spare into, reaching immediately after for his wand. Hearing his blood sing, Excalibur responds.
Arthur can hear the smile in Riddle’s voice as he opens his mouth to give his orders.
“Ki-”
Arthur plunges his blade into the belly of the book.
It screams.
Tom also screams. Basil cries in heartbreaking confusion, and in the excitement Arthur feels more than hears the weight of their enormous body slap down against the wet floor.
Arthur digs his blade in further. He pulls back and stabs it again, once, twice, efficient and precise until Riddle falls silent and the place no longer smells of the poisonous components of ink. Arthur feels the stuff bleed out of the book, pooling around his hands.
Basil cries again in horror. They sound like they think their heart has just been ripped out, but they can’t trust themself to be sure. It’s such an agonised uncertainty that for a few moments all they can do is swing their great head back and forth and scream like a child who’s lost their mother.
His son’s baby has been left too long without direction. Arthur takes a deep breath and corrects this.
“BASIL!”
The strength of his bellow sends vibrations through the stone around them, filling the cavern up entirely and likely causing ripples. Arthur feels the displacement of air as the great serpent snaps to attention. They fall utterly silent. Arthur would guess their lethal eyes are locked straight on Arthur’s double. Arthur casts a quick illusion to make it look like Lockhart’s eyes are open and staring straight back.
“That’s right,” Arthur croons in a much gentler tone that he’s put every one of his kids through time to sleep with at some point or another. “It’s me. Do you remember?”
A questioning trill. Their voice cracks from disuse and fear.
“You remember. It hasn’t been so long,” Arthur continues soothingly. “I think you’re a little confused, Basil. Aren’t you?” Arthur waits. There’s no reply, so he continues, moving Lockhart’s hands up into the air slowly so they can see he means no harm.
Basil moves sharply. If Arthur were to guess, he’d say they reel back a little. Their reactions are delayed. The evidence is stacking up.
“It’s just me, sweetheart,” he hums, staying slow as they settle down. After another couple of beats, he keeps going. “I think I know why. Your eyes…”
Moment of truth. Arthur takes a deep breath.
He opens Lockhart’s eyes.
“...They’re not so good anymore, are they?”
Arthur- the real Arthur- shuffles forward to catch Lockhart before he falls. At first contact it’s obvious he isn’t dead. Petrified. From direct eye contact.
Oh, Basil.
“That boy who could speak to you. He could look you in the eye,” Arthur continues softly. Basil doesn’t react, confirming that they can’t tell from here that Lockhart’s mouth isn’t moving. “Black hair. Pale skin. Demanding. You thought he was Sally, didn’t you?”
At their person’s old nickname, Basil lets out another tragic cry. They sound so lost. ‘Where is he?’ they’re asking. ‘Where is he?’
“He’s been looking for you, sweetheart,” Arthur assures them. He can’t move yet- they’re still talking to the petrified blur of blonde hair and tanned skin that they think is Arthur. He has to keep holding Lockhart in place until he can get through this next part. “I can take you to him. But you have to close your eyes, Bas.”
A quizzical squawk. Arthur racks his brain. What was it Sal used to do? There was a song, he thinks. They were trained well enough not to open their eyes, but sometimes they’d get stroppy about it and Sal felt bad ordering them blind all the time. Sal would sing them this song, though, almost to apologise. To calm them. It worked every time. How did it go?
Something, lullaby.
Something…
…
“Lay down your head,” Arthur remembers. He hums indistinctly for a moment. “hmmm...lullaby… loo-li-lai-lay… and I’ll sing you to sleep… and I’ll sing still tomorrow… hmmmm…mmhhhmmm, hmmmmmmm…”
It seems that Arthur’s piss-poor recall of the song and very much not-Salazar voice are secondary concerns to the familiarity of the tune. Basil croons softly along. Arthur hears them swaying, shifting their weight as they remember a time when they were safe. Not lost. Finally, something recognizable has returned to them. Finally, something they can follow home.
Arthur does his best, but it’s truly been so long he can’t remember the words. He only vaguely heard Sal sing it over the years anyway. He just hums and hopes, feeling Basil slow and calm with each stilted refrain until he decides to risk it.
Arthur cracks open one eye.
Basil has come a long way from the little gummy worm Sal found them as. They are as thick as Arthur is tall, and he’d guess about fifty feet long. Their scales are each the size of his stretched hand, iridescent and glistening darkly like an oil slick in the watery reflections of their once grand home. Their body shudders with deep pulls of breath that break off into violent rattling exhales, leaving them shaking. Now that Arthur listens, he can hear the wheezing of their tired lungs. Basil is a very old baby now.
Hesitantly, Arthur lets his eyes skip up further.
He smiles.
Both of Basil’s eyes are closed.