Chapter Text
“Where on earth are we?” Ron mumbled as he looked around in the darkness, as the sticky substance he was on squelched under him.
Harry sighed, “We are in the Chamber of Secrets. Were the Basilisk that is petrifying all the muggle-borns is. And seriously, are both of you so stupid you don’t know how to cast lumos.”
Raising his wand, Harry lit up the area around them with a wave of his wand, and it immediately became apparent what they had landed in.
“Yuck!” Lockhart shrieked in a high pitched voice, jumping up as soon as he saw, “What the hell is this place?”
“Chamber of Secrets my arse,” Ron muttered, “No, this is more like the Chamber of Faeces!”
“Ha, ha, very funny,” Harry grumbled, “But I guess, just once, you are right.”
Ron grinned, and continued, “Like yeah, we’re supposed to be in Scotland, but this looks more like India.”
Lockhart growled at him, “I’ve been to India several times visiting their… I mean I’ve been to India many times, and there isn’t that much excrement on the floor there!”
“Still,” Harry said, pulling out his wand, “This is completely and utterly disgusting. Scourgify.”
Harry’s robes were instantly cleaned by the spell, however, Ron was unable to cast the spell, having been asleep in that lesson, and Lockhart curtly informed Harry that he refused to be cleaned by anyone except the three nude Thai masseuses that he had snuck into his office. As such, Lockhart and Ron both remained covered in filth as they walked forward, guided by the light of Harry’s wand.
They treaded carefully, avoiding a section that looked like it was at a high risk of collapse any moment, and soon arrived in a large open section, with a high stone ceiling, and several drains leading into it; evidently the source of the vast quantities faeces. The floor of this section was also heavily covered in excrement. But that was not what drew Harry’s attention, for at the end of the room, he saw someone familiar…
“Ginny!” Ron screamed, as he rushed towards her, slipping and sliding on the faeces, “What are you doing here?”
The skittish ginger girl looked up just in time to see Ron fall over and land face first in a particularly grim and slimy mass of faeces, leaving his entire face brown. She grimaced, and hid something thick and black behind her back.
“I’m… uhh, what are you doing here?” she finally managed, looking rather bashful.
“I asked first,” Ron retorted, looking horrified as he wiped his face with his sleeve, although this still left a considerable amount of excrement all over him.
Finally, Ginny sighed, and spoke, “I was going to finally… do it with my… how to put it… friend?”
“Do it?” Ron went deathly pale, completely shocked, “But Ginny, you are a first year!”
“Says you,” Harry interjected, smirking, “What was that you were doing up there in the cubicle with Moaning Myrtle?”
“Shut up,” Ron whined, “It wasn’t what you think it was, I was just helping her…”
“I really don’t want to know,” Harry replied, as he turned to see Lockhart curiously scampering around the edge of the room, evidently looking for treasure.
“It’s this… diary that I have…” admitted Ginny, after another pause, “It has this guy, beautiful lovely Tom, that I speak to, every day, all day. He’s the only one that understands me, he’s like… my only friend.”
Harry held back a laugh with difficulty; he hadn’t realised Ginny was this pathetic before. Since he didn’t want to further antagonise Ron by laughing as his sister, after all, Ron looked like he was about to become a salt factory at any rate, Harry coughed loudly to mask a giggle that managed to slip out, Ron giving him a peculiar side-eye expression. But then, as Harry thought about what Ginny had just said, he remembered a book of that sort from earlier, one he had found in the very bathroom he had come in via, and it couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Ginny, did you steal from my trunk?” he asked sternly, and Ginny, unable to lie, but also unwilling to admit with words, nodded meekly, holding onto the book tighter.
This admission broke Harry, and he jumped at Ginny, and pinning her down, started to violently strangle her, as she gasped as her hair was instantly coated with the faeces that was now under her. Her eyes widened, and she looked up at Harry with a pitiful tearful and betrayed look, unable to move against him, her shock and terror at the fact that Harry Potter was doing this terrible thing to her so great. Her hands let go of the book, and it fell into the faeces to her side, forgotten.
“Harry!” Ron’s voice snapped him out of his bloodlust-fuelled rage, “What the hell are you doing to my sister?”
“Sorry about that,” Harry said, jumping up jollily, and clapping Ron on the back, hard, “No hard feelings, right? No permanent damage I’m sure.”
Ron scratched his head angrily, a shower of salt falling out of it, “So what do we do now then?” he said through gritted teeth, staring with barely concealed rage at Harry.
“Well, we just have to find the Basilisk, kill it, and then come back up as heroes,” Harry explained, looking around the chamber, “I’ll even let you take some of the credit… maybe.”
“How very kind of you,” Ron snapped, salt accumulating in his hair, as he resisted the urge to curl his hands into fists.
“Oh, look here,” suddenly Lockhart’s voice echoed from the farthest back of the room, where a massive statue of a snake head stood, “There’s a button here, I wonder what happens if I press it…”
“Wait…” Harry started, but Lockhart pressed it anyway, and the second time that day, the sound of stone moving was heard.
Ron and Ginny both also turned to watch, as the mouth of the snake parted, widening, until it revealed a long, even darker tunnel. Lockhart peered in, and called back, “Nothing there that I can see, should I look inside? There could be gold or silver, or maybe precious gems!”
But that was when Harry heard a hissing sound, that he remembered hearing in the walls of the castle, and he called out loudly and urgently, “Everyone, look away from there! Now!”
And as the hissing grew louder, it was clear that his words had come just in time.
