Mercy || Hermione Granger (Permanently Discontinued)

Chapter 2

Warning - Long Chapter

Harry walked along trying to find his friends. 

Your brother would never have done it. . . . Well, it was the truth, Harry thought as he ran on again; Dumbledore, who had defended Snape for so long, would never have held students ransom. . . .

And then he skidded around a final corner and with a yell of mingled relief and fury he saw them: Regulus and Hermione, both with their arms full of large, curved, dirty yellow objects, Regulus with a broomstick under his arm. 

"Where the hell have you been?" Harry shouted. 

"Chamber of Secrets," said Regulus. 

"Chamber — what?" said Harry, coming to an unsteady halt before them. 

"It was Regulus, all Regulus's idea!" said Hermione breathlessly. "Wasn't it absolutely brilliant? There we were, after you left, and I said to Regulus, even if we find the other one, how are we going to get rid of it? We still hadn't got rid of the cup! And then he thought of it! The basilisk!"

"What the — ?" 

"Something to get rid of Horcruxes," said Regulus simply. Harry's eyes dropped to the objects clutched in their arms: great curved fangs, torn, he now realized, from the skull of a dead basilisk. 

"But how did you get in there?" he asked, staring from the fangs to Regulus. 

"You need to speak Parseltongue!" 

"He did it!" whispered Hermione. 

"Show him, Regulus!" Regulus made a horrible strangled hissing noise. 

"It's what you did to open the locket," he told Harry apologetically. 

"I had to have a few goes to get it right, but," he shrugged modestly, "we got there in the end." 

"He was amazing." said Hermione. "Amazing!" 

"So . . ." Harry was struggling to keep up. "So . . ." 

"So we're another Horcrux down," said Regulus, and from under his jacket he pulled the mangled remains of Hufflepuff's cup. 

"Hermione stabbed it. Thought she should. She hasn't had the pleasure yet."

 "Genius!" yelled Harry. 

"It was nothing," said Regulus, though he looked delighted with himself. Must've boosted his already inflated balloon of ego  . "So what's new with you?" 

As he said it, there was an explosion from overhead: All three of them looked up as dust fell from the ceiling and they heard a distant scream. "I know what the diadem looks like, and I know where it is," said Harry, talking fast. "He hid it exactly where I hid my old Potions book, where everyone's been hiding stuff for centuries. He though the was the only one to find it. Come on. "As the walls trembled again, he led the other two back through the concealed entrance and down the staircase into the Room of Requirement.

It was empty except for three women: Ginny, Tonks, and an elderly witch wearing a moth-eaten hat, whom Harry recognized immediately as Neville's grandmother. 

"Ah, Potter," she said crisply as if she had been waiting for him. "You can tell us what's going on." 

"Is everyone okay?" said Ginny and Tonks together. 

" 'S far as we know," said Harry. "Are there still people in the passage to the Hog's Head?" He knew that the room would not be able to transform while there were still users inside it.