Second Heir

Tom had told me to meet him outside the girls' bathroom on the second floor. I wasn't entirely sure why, but it was beginning to get late. He was one of the prefects patrolling the halls tonight, so he was bound to offer to take this hallway, but there was still a slight apprehension that I might get caught here, and they would either think I was off my rocker or into voyeurism, which would be a completely out of context assumption. Then again, I had just thought of it, so that meant it couldn't be entirely out of context. That was interesting. I probably should have borrowed the invisibility cloak; then this sort of worry could have been avoided. I did have a reputation for this sort of thing (not watching girls in the bathroom, just being out late).

I gave a glance at the watch on my wrist to see it was half-past eleven. If Tom didn't show up soon, I would probably head back to the common room. I wasn't about to wait for long enough to be found. I hated detentions. That bloody squib Filch hung people by their toes in the dungeons half the night. It wasn't humane, and I honestly couldn't even see how it was within the legal rights of Hogwarts to use such punishment.

"You probably should've borrowed that cloak from Annabelle again," I heard a voice say. I turned to face Tom. "Would have made you much less susceptible to discovery." He then handed me a broomstick, eliciting a rather confused look on my part.

"You don't play Quidditch..." I said slowly, taking a broom.

"Oh, you think?"

"I'm only saying." I shrugged. "What're they for?"

"You'll find out soon enough, I'm not going to talk about it here where anyone could hear us. Now come on, we haven't got all night."

Tom walked around me and into the girls' bathroom. I raised an eyebrow after him. Tom was generally reasonable enough, so the idea of having to bring broomsticks into a girls' bathroom for a reason that he couldn't speak of out loud was absolutely absurd. Even so, it piqued my interest, and I followed after a moment. I entered to see him turning on the copper taps in each of the sinks until he reached one that wouldn't work. He set his broomstick against it and proceeded to turn off the water on the rest of the sinks. I walked over to the sink where he had set his broomstick, wondering if the recent discoveries he had made about his herritage had driven him completely mad. I looked the tap over, trying to discover exactly what he was doing. Then, I spotted it: a tiny engraving of a snake on one the side of the spout.

"Is there something there?" said Tom from behind me, picking up his broomstick and looking as well. "Ah, this is definitely it, then. Would have been quite a bit easier to find if I had known that was there."

"What is it? Other than a snake, obviously," I said, backing away from the sink. Tom stood in front of it.

"Open." I understood it, but I heard it in Parseltongue. I was confused for a moment - until the tap began glowing. There was a mechanical sound from underneath the basin, and it was sinking into the floor a moment later, revealing a large pipe. The only thing this did was perplex me even further. Tom turned around to look at me.

"Would you prefer to go first or shall I?"

"Depends on where it leads to," I said reproachfully.

"Then I will."

I watched, more befuddled than ever, as Tom took a jump into the chasm. This startled me. He obviously knew something that I didn't, and I wasn't going to find out until I headed down myself. He definitely hadn't lost his mind; this scheme was as cunning as any of his others. He knew that my curiosity would be more than enough to make me take the leap (quite literally) into the unknown. And indeed I did only a moment later.

The pipe was long and twisting, branching off into hundreds of other pipes on the way down. I had no idea where it was leading me, but it was definitely well under the school, well under even the dungeons that the Slytherin common room existed in. I knew this when I finally landed with a crunch! on a pile of... something. I set my broomstick down as I stood up, brushing dust off of my robes. I then pulled out my wand to light it, as it was rather dark wherever we were.

"Lumos."

A light came to the tip of my wand, and I used it to show me where I had landed. A chill ran down my spine as I looked at the thousands of bones scattered around on the ground. I looked up to see Tom observing the grotesque scene as well. He didn't look remotely revolted - if anything, he looked impressed by this strange place.

"Seems about right," he was saying, more to himself than me. I picked up my broomstick. "I didn't imagine this many bones, but I suppose that's normal with as long as Hogwarts has been around."

"Er... Tom?"

"Yes?"

"Where the bloody hell are we?"

"The snake on the side of the tap didn't clue you in at all?" he asked, examining something on the wall. I gave a blank stare in response. "The Parseltongue?" he continued in a superior voice. "We're in the Chamber of Secrets, obviously. Any heir of Slytherin should have known that."

I was inclined to roll my eyes at his tone, but I managed not to. I didn't have any right to be angry if anyone was acting in an arrogant manner, as it was my general attitude at most times. It wasn't at the moment. I was too alarmed to be much of anything else.

"I just didn't expect Slytherin would have built the chamber underneath the girls' toilets," I said. "I'm guessing he decided against installing any sort of lighting," I added, looking around for some sort of lantern or chandelier.

"There are candles up and down the corridor," said Tom. I realized at this that the object he was looking at upon the wall was a candle and its holder. "The holders are snakes." He looked at me. "Any ideas?"

Snakes? As the snake on the side of the tap in the girls' bathroom meant having to speak Parseltongue to open it, I supposed this probably meant the same thing. The snakes could have just been for decoration, but I doubted Salazar Slytherin would have put much of anything in his Chamber of Secrets that didn't have some sort of meaning to it. The snake, the mascot for Slytherin, was also his own mascot for his ability to talk to snakes, so it was likely that the snake statues and engravings within this chamber would have something to do with Parseltongue.

I walked to one candle holder on the wall near where I stood, flinching with every sickening crunch of bones, human or otherwise (I wasn't about to examine the bones very closely to find out), breaking under my feet. A silver snake with emerald eyes was wrapped around a candle with long-dried wax dripping over the sides of the stick. The eyes glowing in the light from my wand made it seem almost real, as though it were keeping it eyes on me, wondering what I might do next. I chose to make an attempt at my initial idea.

"Light."

I was surprised as not only the candle I had spoken to, but every candle down the corridor, began to light. Slytherin had outdone himself here. There had been no doubt in my mind that, as a founder of a Hogwarts house, he had been a brilliant wizard, but this reinforced the idea. All the great and brave Godric Gryffindor had to his name was a sword. Rowena Ravenclaw had a diadem, hidden away somewhere and probably never to be found. And Helga Hufflepuff? All she had were a few teacups. Salazar Slytherin, however, had left a legacy of absolute brilliance inside the castle itself, unduplicated by any of the other founders.

"Impressive..." I came back to reality as Tom spoke, looking around at the now well lit chamber with its arched stone roof. "All this beneath the school. It's hard to believe it was designed by one man. Absolutely brilliant."

"Little messy..." I said, lifting my foot and nearly gagging at the sight of a bone stuck between the grooves in the bottom of my shoe.

"That's expected," said Tom. "It's doubtful anyone's been around to clean in a while, considering very few have ever even seen the place. There's still question as to whether or not it exists. If I'm not mistaken," he added, now looking down the hallway, "we're not even in the actual chamber yet." He began walking at this, and beckoned me to follow. After a moment of looking down the hall, I decided to pursue the same course.

I sprinted to catch up, but found Tom stopped again a little ways away, lifting something with the end of his broomstick. It looked like...

"Snake skin?"

"The legend says the chamber has a monster, doesn't it?" I wouldn't have said so, but I thought Tom sounded just a bit too happy about this. "Maybe whatever this belongs to -" He dropped the skin from the end of the broomstick, "is that monster. I'd say a Basilisk. They don't kill Parselmouths, but rather obey them. It would have been perfect for Slytherin's heirs to rid the castle of Mudbloods. After this many years, I imagine it can recognize Muggle-born students in some way."

"Smell, probably," I said, crouching down to look at the skin. "Merlin's beard, the thing's got to be fifty feet long.... I reckon it's probably a fully grown one."

"Considering they can live nine hundred years, fully grown probably doesn't even mean anything," said Tom. "I actually considered the idea that Slytherin might have used one. They're easy enough to breed in secret, and no one would have ever suspected it. I imagine it most likely moves through the plumbing, hence why the Chamber is accessible through pipes."

"That makes sense," I said, standing back up from the scaly pile of skin. "Seems it's the only way something that large could move through here secretly." I looked forward along the dimly lit corridor. The candle light ahead didn't seem to light to the end, and it looked as though the hall twisted and turned up ahead. "How much further d'you think the end is?"

"Could be miles," he said, without so much as glancing up from the green snake skin on the ground. "I picked now to come here as it's the Friday before the first Hogsmede trip. If we haven't returned by then, we can say we were in Hogsmede when we do return. It won't be necessary to continue onward if we meet this snake beforehand, however. There won't be any point in it."

Or we'll be dead... I pushed this thought out of my mind as Tom walked past me. I followed him, now finding it hard not to think negatively. What reason was there for me to think so negatively? It was a proven fact that Basilisks took orders from Parselmouths, and this one particularly from Slytherin's heirs. For me to be afraid of this place was as silly as an heir of Hufflepuff afraid to drink from Helga Hufflepuff's teacups for fear of being poisoned. Fear was absolutely pointless. Still, though, it seemed to be present.

Perhaps I could pass it off as anticipation. This couldn't be the Chamber of Secrets, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was ahead in this tunnel. How far ahead was beyond me, but I didn't want to turn back regardless.

So lost I was in my own thoughts that I nearly walked into the wall after ten minutes, as the hallway made an abrupt left turn here. I managed to swerve around it and into another turn - right this time - a few moments later. At the end of the curve in the hall, I came within a centimeter of walking into Tom, who had stopped. I could see why immediately.

Directly ahead of us was a stone wall. It wasn't a plain wall, however, and it seemed that everything Slytherin made here had symbolism. There were two serpent statues on the wall entwined together, taking up the wall's entire height. Their heads dipped down from the ceiling so they were level with our own heights, and their eyes were large, shimmering emeralds. As I looked at one of the candles on the wall, I saw how similar they were in structure, which meant that they were quite obviously -

"Open."

Before I could even finish my own thoughts, Tom had stepped forward and commanded the wall to reveal whatever was on the other side. The snakes seemed to slither away over to the sides of the wall, and a crack developed in the middle. The halves slowly parted until both had slid out of sight into the corners of the wall, revealing an arched doorway. Tom was the first through, eager to see what treasure his research had brought to him. At the sound of a triumphant (yet still shrill and unnerving) laugh, I knew what the room ahead of me was.

I also entered and looked around. The room seemed to glow in an eerie, dim, greenish light. It was a cold atmosphere, but the damp air from the tunnel that led here didn't seem to penetrate the dry air filling this room that made the cold nearly unbearable. The architecture was simply amazing, even so. The pillars that held up the tall ceiling that seemed to be concealed in permanent darkness were made of the same stone as the chamber walls, and had snake statuettes curling around them everywhere, emerald eyes glowing in dim light. There were five of these pillars on either side of the hall with a stretch of stone floor in the middle. At the end of this hall stood a larger-than-life statue of the man responsible for this place, Salazar Slytherin, the statue seemingly erected here to keep a permanent watch upon this secret of his.

"This is it." I looked over to see Tom looking happier than he had for the past five years at this school, but it wasn't a normal sort of happy. With Tom, it never was. There was always something wrong, something deranged hidden behind the happiness. I already knew what it was regarding this chamber. He had plans to wipe out half of Hogwarts's population and leave behind only Purebloods. He had been planning that for ages, he just hadn't known when or how it would happen until now. "The Chamber of Secrets. I've found it."

He began to walk swiftly toward the statue of Slytherin at the end of the chamber. I was reluctant to follow, but I managed to. Though I did, I stopped at one of the last pillars, not quite directly in front of the statue. Tom stared up at the statue, mumbling something to himself. After a few minutes of this, I decided to speak up.

"Where's the Basilisk supposed to be in all of this?"

Tom looked over at me, then next to the statue of Slytherin. I also looked there, and saw a pipe, definitely wide enough for a snake even the size of a Basilisk to fit easily through. "I imagine it will only come when called. Remember not to look it in the eye."

Finally wrenching his focus away from the statue of Slytherin, Tom moved over in front of the pillar I was leaned sideways against, as it was directly adjacent to the pipe. What amazed me more than anything was that he didn't seem in the least bit nervous about calling an extremely deadly giant snake into his prescence. I kept my eyes to the floor as he addressed the Basilisk, wherever it might have been.

"King of Serpents: I, Slytherin's heir, call you before me to the Chamber of Secrets."

"That should work," I said.

"It will. Was in a few of the books regarding the Chamber stating how to call the monster, the books just never said what it was."

"Master Slytherin? You have returned?"

"I'm guessing it's probably a snake," I said upon hearing the low, hissing voice coming from the pipes. "And not a very small one."

The sound of slithering echoed through the chamber, growing louder and louder with every passing second now. Needless to say, I was completely unnerved. All right, I suppose that would be a bit of an understatement - the sort of fear that could consume one's entire being had consumed me and was growing with every moment that passed by so slowly. Tom only seemed to become more eager, as far from afraid as any one being could be.

It was obvious who the true heir of Slytherin was here. I was a disgrace to my own house, to be afraid of Slytherin's monster, a disgrace to my family name. We Gaunts took the utmost pride in being able to trace our herritage straight back to Slytherin. Had it been my father in this situation, would he have feared this monster? That was a bit of an offhand question, considering my father wasn't really in his right mind and hadn't been for as long as I could remember. It was hard to ask myself if I was worthy of my family name when the only member of my family I had ever met was my father, who had more issues communicating with other humans than I could count.

Most anyone that was normal would fear the Basilisk. I knew that in the back of my mind. Tom wasn't normal, however, he never was. He was a megalomaniac; he craved power like no other I had ever met. However, that made him perfect for Slytherin, and it also made him the best contestant as Slytherin's heir. Therefore, I was sure the Basilisk would be quicker to obey him than it would me.

Another thought came to my mind. This serpent had most likely been living on rodents for the past fifty years - what if it was hungry enough to not care that I was an heir of Slytherin? I decided to push that from my mind immediately. I was frightened enough of accidently looking this snake in the eye without thoughts of becoming its dinner. There was no need for that.

I saw a flash of bright green from the direction of the tunnel. I quickly averted my eyes to the floor upon hearing that hiss again.

"Master Slytherin, you have returned to your chamber after fifty years."

I glanced up to see a smirk on Tom's face. "As promised. You are free to roam the castle again."