Fourth step – Infinite
The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets had not changed a bit, in Ron Weasley’s opinion. It was still accessible from the same snake-marked sink in that haunted girls’ bathroom, with the same slimy pipe leading down to the tunnel that had collapsed in the middle during second year.
There were also differences. The whiny ghost girl was out floating around somewhere and Harry was similarly somewhere else in his own search for the next of Tom Riddle’s cursed bits. Hermione was here instead, insisting on accompanying Ron to the Chamber as soon as she got wind of Ron’s plans via Luna and Neville.
Mimicking Harry’s command in parseltongue to open the entrance took a couple of tries but it ultimately proved to be possible for a non-speaker—it was just very difficult. Ron was still basking in the afterglow of his success, a warm feeling of satisfaction curling in his stomach, even when he slid down the big pipe and had to walk through the dark, possibly spider-infested tunnel, past the collapsed point and to the door covered in snake designs.
It was a good thing that all parsel-related things they’d encountered so far had been very unoriginal with their passwords. Slytherin must’ve felt so secure with being the only parselmouth that he got lazy. Ron couldn’t understand that mindset, especially with the talent supposed to be a heredity trait—who could say there wouldn’t be a rival family line that had it also, or that there wouldn’t be a descendant that did not subscribe to the family ideals?
Well, one man’s loss is another man’s gain, as Hermione had once told him the muggle saying goes. It had made Ron’s job much easier because he hadn’t needed to pull Harry from his own search to open the way.
Speaking of his best friend, the bloke had been rather odd lately, odder than he would usually be when holding a secret. Ron had noticed the suspicious looks Hermione had been giving their mutual friend every once in a while when she thought neither Ron nor Harry were looking. But Ron did watch, and he did notice, because it was his job to notice what the others missed and anticipate stuff before it could become a problem.
Harry was on guard for danger, Hermione looked for the facts behind everything and Ron watched their backs to catch the rest—those were their roles.
He had wondered what hidden thing was out to make life complicated this time, but there was little point in asking. Harry would insist that everything was fine out of some sort of misplaced guilt that he was being ‘a bother’, and nobody would get anywhere once that routine got started.
The Chamber looked just as wet, dark and dangerous as Harry had described those four and a bit years ago. Ron could easily spot the evidence of the fight between the basilisk controlled by Riddle’s diary and his best friend armed with Gryffindor’s sword—crumbling walls, broken pillars, debris covering parts of the floor and the ginormous skeleton of the deadly king of snakes. Just looking at the scene and trying to imagine what it must have been like when all the events took place gave him shivers worse than the majority of his darkest nightmares did.
At his side, Hermione was also shivering, but she had better control of herself, which Ron very much envied. They stepped further into the Chamber to spend a bit of time to investigate, separately, before meeting right next to the snake skeleton with its upside-down skull full of fangs. The teen wizard remembered that Hermione had once explained some time ago that Basilisks have more than one set of fangs, unlike practically every other snake with their rows upon rows of small non-venomous teeth aside from the one or two sets of fangs in the front.
When they approached the skeleton, Ron decided that now was as good a time as any to ask his friend something he’d been wondering about for a while.
"Say, 'Mione, do you know what's been eating at Harry?"
The look of surprise she threw him was actually quite insulting. Ron was well aware that he wasn't the fastest broom in the shed, but come on, he wasn't that bad. Despite the many words welling up in him, begging to be spoken, Ron let the silence fall and stretch between them.
They climbed onto the giant snake skull to pull out the highly dangerous poisonous fangs there in focused silence, and it was only when the last of the things had disappeared into the bag that Hermione had prepared beforehand that she spoke.
“So you noticed,” were the words she chose to use. “I had been wondering if you did.”
He again had to fight the urge not to snap something not at all nice at her. It was not Hermione's fault that the changes in Ron, as compared to last year, still blindsided her—it was just annoying.
“That doesn't matter,” he told her, “what's up with Harry though?” At the side, the redhead saw the witch bite her lip hard enough to bleed, as she was wont to do when very frustrated.
“I asked, but I can't get a straight answer out of him,” was the answer. “He keeps dancing around the subject whenever I bring it up. But I did get a promise out of him to stop obstructing me, though he made me promise in return that I stick to the information he bit by bit gives me.”
What a strange promise , Ron thought but didn’t verbalize. Their mutual friend definitely had something amazingly dangerous to keep safe—again. It was getting ridiculous how many of Great Britain’s, and sometimes just the Wizarding world’s, most lethal things kept ending up crossing Harry’s path, not to mention that a decent number appeared to chase the green-eyed teen instead of falling passively into his lap.
“Can you tell me what you find out?” the male Gryffindor asked his friend and classmate in the privacy of Slytherin’s hidden Chamber of Secrets. “When I have a bit of background information to point me in the right direction, I’ll look into it too. He may have made you promise, but that doesn’t extend to me.”
“Well…” Hermione answered quasi-seriously with a thoughtful smile. “I only promised not to go looking somewhere else. Harry didn’t think to warn me that I couldn’t tell you, and neither did he say that I wasn’t allowed to ‘hypothetically’ discuss it with anyone else. He just made sure that I knew it’s a big secret and should stay that way, so as long as it stays between the two of us he won’t be able to protest.”
“Because we’ve dealt with every other secret perfectly well while also keeping it to ourselves,” Ron said in reaction, unable to suppress an answering conspiratorial smile. “Why would this one be any different?”
The skull now emptied of fangs, both students now slid down to land on the stone floor while carefully holding up the magical bag between them by hand. Though it was yet another of Hermione’s enchanted bags they’d been making use of throughout the year that could hold much more than it appeared to, and was also imbued with all sorts of specific protective magic warding against mishaps with basilisk venom, neither of them was willing to take any sort of risk when it came to handling the extremely corrosive substance.
It was perhaps overly paranoid of them, but even with having warded the bag to hell and back, plus all the checking and double-checking they had already done on said bag’s protections, there was still no guarantee that something as simple as a levitation charm couldn’t damage any part of the enchantments.
Yet, if they had learned anything during all those years associating with Harry Potter, it was that being over-prepared never hurt while being caught unprepared always did.
The journey back to the exit of the pipe was nothing special, and they managed to easily fly up through the slimy pipe’s passage on the back of the broom Ron had brought along for just that purpose. Once outside the bathroom, they made their way to one of the courtyards of the castle, the location the Trio had decided on for today to meet up again.
At the agreed-upon meeting spot, Harry came running several minutes late, while he waved some metallic object around in obvious uncharacteristic excitement.
"I found it! This is the next artefact."
Out of concern for possible eavesdroppers the Trio was in the habit not to use the words horcrux, soul container or Voldemort if they could help it. Ron therefore perfectly understood that Harry meant he'd found the diadem, instead of the useless superficial confirmation that it was the artefact they had been searching for.
"Let me see," Hermione demanded immediately, stretching her hands out for the tainted headpiece.
When the diadem, including the piece of cloth it was wrapped up in, was handed over to their resident raven in lion skin Ron’s only thought was that something felt off about it.
He did not know what about it made him come to that conclusion, or why he felt that way, but the longer he observed the more he was certain of the sensation. The terrible soul magic was somehow not dense enough, if that made any sense. Ron mentally pulled up the memory of the locket to compare, and even then he still found it wanting. He was loathe to trust in something so elusive and uncertain as a hunch—he wasn't Harry; Ron's instincts were not nearly as reliable—but every once in a while he could do it, when required.
During the entire process of stabbing the diadem horcrux to destruction with the sword (while holding the fangs at the ready, just in case) Ron still couldn’t shake off the strange feeling that there was something more going on with this particular horcrux. He had all the time to observe during the proceedings because it was ‘Mione’s turn this time to deal with a soul container.
Harry, he decided, was too self-assured about the outcome, did not show the alertness of being uncertain about the result—and wasn’t that so very… suspicious?
While Ron couldn’t confront his best mate right then, he would bring it up at the next opportunity and demand his answers. In the meantime, the three friends rejoiced in having dealt another blow to Tom Riddle’s stash of horcruxes and went to bed early that evening.
“We need to lure Riddle out,” Hermione said at the mini-DA meeting they held two days later. Only the original members were present—the elite of the Defense Association. “He’s just a few steps away from going down, and I intend to make it happen.”
People were quiet at that, only beginning to murmur amongst themselves after a long pause. Regardless of house, age or opinion, they were all quite eager to get on with planning the downfall of their greatest enemy.
The planning took most of the day, and a portion of the next as well. Other parties were consulted or informed as necessary, including the Order, the professors, the ghosts of the castle, the aurors that had come to Hogwarts and the school’s own army of house-elves.
Dumbledore the Trio had already spoken with beforehand, primarily on the status of the horcrux hunt, which had led to deciding that the only way to get at the last parts would be to provoke an all-or-nothing battle that would decide all. Anything less, and Voldemort would not be bringing all his metaphorical trump cards to the imaginary table.
The aged headmaster had seemed quite tired when he promised to set the stage at Hogwarts’ grounds, but he wouldn’t hear of staying out of the upcoming final showdown entirely—something that the nearby Madame Pomfrey had clearly despaired over despite knowing that the old transfiguration master would never stay in bed when a war needed to be fought and won.
So, while the adults mobilized, the DA was preparing too.
All throughout the various sessions of planning, with various member formations, it became clear that in order to secure the most advantageous positions they couldn’t afford to focus on Tom Riddle alone. Grayback, Bellatrix and the army Voldemort would undoubtedly be bringing could not be allowed to run rampant—not to mention that many of them wouldn’t just stop once their leader was defeated.
Harry was specifically left out of any planned formations in order to give him the freedom of movement to chase after Riddle by himself once the battle was underway. Not having to worry about disrupting pre-planned strikes due to being absent at critical moments was the main benefit of this arrangement, but it also gave the opposing fraction less leeway to obstruct Harry’s progress.
However, they concluded that Harry did need a wingwizard or -witch to back him up.
Hermione could not come because she had to lead the DA into battle. Ron was needed to keep an eye on the movements of the enemy and to direct the counterattacks. Ginny was one of their top fighters, which meant that her absence—in addition to Harry’s—would be sorely missed on the front line if she were to come along. Luna was just not meant for fighting and could do more good in the castle. All the other people were either not close enough to Harry to be reliable, or occupied crucial positions in the coming battle.
That left Neville.
“I’ll come with you,” Neville said determinedly, even stepping forward to underscore the seriousness of the claim. Harry knew that the other boy would not let himself be sent away—it was either take Neville along or he would follow on his own.
“I might not be the best, but what I don’t have in talent I will make up for in effort,” promised Neville then, an oath spoken not just to Harry but also to himself. “Take me with you.”
Harry felt a part of his awareness sink down, and a wash of shadow coming up momentarily to take its place. His eyes became darker, accompanied by the power that was channelled from far beyond through his human form into this world. “I have no doubt that you will help. I never have and I never will doubt your skill.”
And so, the actual preparations began.
For all that the headmaster had said he’d take care of luring his former student to Hogwarts they had never discussed how the professor had planned to do it, Harry reflected later. It was only scant hours before Voldy was scheduled to invade in all his murderous tainted glory that the Trio found out exactly how events were laid out towards the end goal.
The movements of Voldemort after arrival on the grounds of the school had been too erratic on the Marauders’ Map for the three seventh-years to rest easily. For one, the dreaded wizard moved alone despite being still in the midst of gathering his forces on the edge of the lands of Hogwarts’ boundaries. Also, he did not tread in a way that fit with the movement patterns of reconnaissance, or even what a short walk to clear one’s head looked like.
No, this was a purposeful and unhesitant penetration straight into the territory under control of The Resistance (Hogwarts Location) that smacked of machinations brought into practice at the moment they would bring the most advantageous benefits.
And of course Severus Snape, the double—possibly triple—spy whom nobody could bring themselves to trust turned out to be the crucial pivot that would topple Riddle towards taking the bait and sealing the crazed Dark Lord’s fate. The three students—safely hidden under the cloak plus a great number of additional precautionary spells—found Voldemort and Snape mid-conversation in the Shrieking Shack mere moments before Nagini tore into the potions master’s neck, leaving the spy badly poisoned and bleeding to death on the neglected wooden floor.
What followed was Riddle and his snake-shaped horcrux leaving, and the Gryffindors rushing in to keep Slytherin’s Head of House alive longer in order to buy time to get help. Even as both Ron and Hermione ran back to the castle like all the monstrosities they’d ever faced over the years were on their heels as one mob of lethality and nightmare fuel, Harry—who’d stayed behind to build further on their collective efforts to stabilise the professor— knew that it wouldn’t be enough.
It saddened him greatly that he could do nothing to prevent it from happening. The die was cast, the situation had reached and passed its critical point, the professor’s fate had been decided—and from this point on Harry was unable to save the potions master from the consequences.