Harry Potter: Raised By Roses

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Basilisk

"A bathroom," Harry was really weirded-out. "Why on Demeter's green earth are we in a bathroom?" 

"Don't look at me," Melody said. "I was only following you."

"Who's there," a girl's voice said.

Out of a stall floated a female ghost. She was young, probably about their age, and was dressed in Ravenclaw robes with her dark hair in pigtails.

"Moaning Myrtle," Melody had heard about the ghost haunting a bathroom.

"What do you want," she was one grumpy ghost. "Coming to hiss at me?"

"Hiss," Harry asked. "Someone was hissing in here?"

"Someone's been coming in all year and hissing at me," Myrtle snapped. "Always doing it near that sink."

She pointed to a sink before splashing back into a toilet.

"She haunts a toilet," Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Some ghosts are just weird," Melody says, going to the sink. "So someone was hissing at this sink to open the Chamber?"

"Apparently," Harry shrugged. "It does make sense for only someone that can speak to snakes to be able to open the Chamber."

"Slytherin was said to be a parseltongue," Melody says. "Good thing you can talk like any animal, bro."

"Gotta love being a mystic soul," Harry grinned.

He went over to the sink as his eyes became a snake's once again. He hissed at the sink to open and the sink obeyed his command. The top rose into the air as the ring of sinks sunk into the ground. It revealed a dark hole in the middle of them.

"Shall we, sis," Harry asked.

"We shall," Melody answered.

They jumped into the hole.

It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind him he could hear Melody, thudding slightly at the curves.

"We must be miles under the school," said Harry, his voice echoing in the black tunnel.

"Under the lake, probably," Melody said, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls.

But the tunnel was quiet as the grave, and the first unexpected sound they heard was a loud crunch as Melody stepped on what turned out to be a rat's skull. Harry looked at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones. Trying very hard not to imagine what Ginny might look like if they found her, Harry led the way forward, around a dark bend in the tunnel.

The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Harry's body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did. And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.

"Open, " Harry hissed in the language of a snake again.

The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside.

He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. His heart beating very fast, Harry stood listening to the chill silence.