The Chamber of Secrets

Phoenix Tears, Chapter Twenty : The Chamber of Secrets

DISCLAIMER : The characters and many of the situations described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute. Dialogue marked with an asterisk is quoted from the original HP stories.

Please thank my betas, LAxo and WriterMerrin, who worked overtime on this one!

It wasn't until the trio was safe upstairs at the Hog's Head, and Hermione had eaten about twice as much as she normally would in one sitting, that she began to feel better. So it was Aberforth who sent Dobby? Dumbledore's brother was looking out for us! With the assistance of the bread, cheese and mead she'd consumed, Hermione's brain clicked back into action.

"Can I use the loo?" she asked their host. Aberforth merely grunted and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. The loo was grimy, but Hermione paid it no mind, doing her actual business quickly and tidying what she could see of her robes and her nest of hair in the tiny mirror set over the sink. Out of sight of the boys, she pulled the beaded bag from her pocket and cast a Silencing Charm on the door.

If there was any real chance that Harry might confront Voldemort within the next twenty-four hours, there were a couple of things she could do.

It took Hermione very little time to locate Phineas' portrait, and she balanced it on the toilet lid.

"Phineas?" she called, infusing her voice with as much politeness as she could.

He popped into sight as if he'd been waiting. "No blindfold?" he exclaimed immediately, staring around the cramped space avidly. "Where are we? HOW DARE YOU put my portrait in this filthy water closet! What in..."

"Phineas!" she interrupted. "This is important! I need you to take a message."

"Take heed, girl," he snarled back, crossing his arms over his chest and drawing himself up to his full height, "that the Blacks do not 'take messages'! I might be prevailed upon to deliver your regards, but you'd have to be far more polite than I believe you to be capable of!"

Hermione suppressed a grimace. "Please, sir," she ventured sweetly through gritted teeth. "It is terribly important."

Phineas regarded her for several seconds with pursed lips. "Very well, I'll consider it."

Hermione sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to smile at him. "Thank you," she managed. "Please tell Snape..."

"HEADMASTER SNAPE!"

"Sorry! Headmaster Snape!" Hermione berated herself for the slip. It wasn't exactly possible to explain to Phineas that her slip was indicative of her increased regard for the man, so she ploughed on. "Please tell Headmaster Snape to keep an eye out for intruders."

"That's it?" Phineas looked severely unimpressed with the content of her message.

"Yes." Hermione felt pretty confident that Snape would understand. "Oh," she added, "and ask him to have some antivenom handy."

"Well," sneered Phineas, "if he happens to drop by the office, I'll try to remember."

With that, he sauntered out of the frame. Hermione took her revenge in a very childish fashion: pulling a face and poking out her tongue. Then she pushed the portrait frame back into her bag.

"Accio antivenom," she muttered, palming the small bottle of green liquid and adjusting her sleeve so that it hung over her hand and concealed what she was holding. Though a small part of her worried about wasting it unnecessarily, Hermione comforted herself with the possibility of obtaining more from Snape.

It was with a new certainty that Hermione removed the Silencing Charm, flushed the toilet, splashed some clean water on her face and went back out into the other room.

"Tea?" she inquired innocently, fiddling with the cups on the sideboard. Everyone, including Harry, happily acquiesced to a cup, and Hermione managed to dose Harry's without him noticing. She felt a little thrill of triumph when he drank it all down.

When the empty teacups clinked back into their saucers, Aberforth began to talk about getting the trio away from Hogsmeade and back into hiding. Unlike most people, this man seemed unmoved by the new serious Harry. And unlike most people, his arguments seemed to work. He had Harry looking severely discomforted, and his assessment of his brother Albus' character was, Hermione thought, both intriguing and disturbing.

"I knew my brother, Potter,"* Aberforth concluded, staring up at the room's only ornament...a painting of a mild-looking, melancholy girl. "He learned secrecy at our mother's knee. Secrets and lies, that's how we grew up, and Albus . . . he was a natural."*

"Mr Dumbledore?"* ventured Hermione, her curiosity getting the better of her. "Is that your sister? Ariana?"*

The story her question triggered made a sad, miserable sense. It seemed far more believable than the hypothesis Rita Skeeter had cobbled together and left Hermione with tears rolling down her face. Ariana had been blocking...just like Jocelyn had been.

"I'm so . . . I'm so sorry,"* Hermione whispered. She couldn't help wondering what Ariana Dumbledore's life might have been like had the techniques Snape used been available one hundred years earlier, or what Ariana might have been like...a grown woman, a witch, perhaps with the kind of power her brother had had. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks that Jocelyn had been spared the horrible fate of Aberforth's sister.

Harry's argument with Aberforth swung back and forth until finally...and unexpectedly from Hermione's perspective...the old man suddenly capitulated. With a grunt of annoyance, he looked up at the vacant, smiling visage of Ariana Dumbledore.

"You know what to do,"* he stated in the tones of one who washes his hands of all responsibility.

Seeing Neville was a shock. From the little she'd heard from Snape, Hermione had known things at Hogwarts were problematic, but the sight of Neville's injuries brought the issue home at a physical level.

After so long on the run, the friendly crowd of students that filled the Room of Requirement was completely overwhelming. The whole thing was rather a blur. Hermione couldn't believe so many of the students had gone into hiding; it seemed impossible that the "student group" she'd forced Harry to start more than two years ago had blossomed into this. Staring round at the room, she noticed with a twinge of guilt that there were no Slytherin banners. What would Jocelyn say to that? she wondered.

Once Harry and Luna disappeared off to the Ravenclaw common room, there was nothing but chaos. More and more people kept appearing though the portrait hole, and various people were showering Hermione and Ron with questions.

Hermione's head hurt. All she wanted was a moment's peace to try and work out what to do next. She was seriously considering her chances of sneaking out to the library when Ron pulled her aside.

"All right, Hermione?" he asked.

She grimaced. "It's just that getting the Horcrux isn't going to be much help unless we can destroy it," she muttered, turning her body so that no-one would overhear their conversation.

"We'll just have to get some more basilisk venom, then," he replied calmly.

"Oh, very good, Ronald," she replied rather irritably. "But unless you think Neville can ask the Room of Requirement..."

He gave her arm a shake, interrupting her. "No, Hermione, we just have to go and get some," replied Ron, raising his eyebrows at her expectantly.

"The Chamber?" she asked incredulously. "But..."

"But what? Harry killed the basilisk, so it should be safe."

"You remember how to get in?"

"I reckon I do. Come on! We'll need a broomstick, then we need to go to the bathroom . . . "

After a muttered consultation with Neville, they snuck out into the corridor, leaving the ever-more-boisterous Dumbledore's Army behind. They didn't have the benefit of Harry's Cloak or Map, but Hermione performed two very impressive Disillusionment Charms, and that alone upped their chances of successful concealment. The Room of Requirement was also considerate enough to eject them out onto the third floor...only one staircase and a short corridor from Myrtle's bathroom; Hermione was almost disappointed not to encounter Snape on the way.

"It's over here," muttered Ron when they entered the room, tugging Hermione towards the sink at the far end of the room. In order not to lose each other while they were Disillusioned, they were holding hands; it was kind of lovely.

"Who's there?" It was Myrtle's voice, shrill and accusatory.

Hermione froze.

"I have business here tonight, Myrtle," intoned Ron unexpectedly in a passable imitation of the Bloody Baron.

With a frightened squeal, Myrtle dove into her toilet and disappeared with a gurgle.

"Brilliant, Ron!" breathed Hermione, squeezing his hand. She couldn't see Ron's face, but she would have sworn he was blushing.

He tugged on her hand again. "It's just over here, see?"

Since Hermione couldn't see where he was pointing, she sighed and reluctantly dropped the Charm. Once Ron was visible, she saw he had the tip of one finger pressed against a small snake, which was engraved on one of the copper taps.

"All we have to do," he continued, "is tell it to 'open up' in Parseltongue."

Hermione's heart sank, but she bit back the criticism that sprang to her lips. Ron had a fixed, determined look on his face.

"Spksssssmsk," he spluttered suddenly.

"Ron?"

"Just let me try, Hermione," he replied without looking at her. "I've heard Harry do this a couple of times now, and I reckon I can do it."

He tried a second time to no avail. On the third try, Hermione held her breath. Third time lucky, she thought to herself. Again Ron failed. It wasn't until the fifth time, by which time Hermione had well and truly given up, that the tap glowed brightly white and began to spin.

Hermione gripped hold of Ron's upper arm, hard. The sink itself began to move, and it slipped back into the wall and out of sight, leaving only a gaping hole and the shiny entrance to a large pipe.

"Yes!" exclaimed Ron, fisting the air in triumph.

If anything, Hermione tightened her hold on his arm. To be completely honest, she was terrified of entering that tunnel: her last encounter with a basilisk had stolen a month of her life. That in itself was not such a big issue, but she hadn't forgotten the moment when she'd spied the creature in Penelope Clearwater's compact mirror. She swallowed hard.

"I'll go first...it's a long, sliding tunnel. It smoothes out at the end, so don't worry about the landing. Okay?"

Hermione forced a smile of encouragement onto her face and waved him forward. Ron lowered his legs into the hole and, with a quick thumbs up, let go and disappeared from sight. Hermione counted to ten. Then she counted to ten again. Gryffindor? Mean anything to you? she chided herself. With a rather melodramatic sigh, she climbed into the tunnel and let go.

The trip was long and slimy. After a while, Hermione just closed her eyes and clutched tightly to Bellatrix's wand; there wasn't much else she could do. Eventually, as Ron had promised, the tunnel levelled out, and her speed slowed dramatically before she skidded to a halt. She opened her eyes to find Ron leaning over her, his wand lit and his hand extended to help her up.

They were, she realised, in a large stone tunnel that had to be located far below the normally habitable parts of the school.

"This way," directed Ron, slinging an arm around her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "If I remember rightly, the fallen rock that Lockhart caused isn't that far. We'll have to come back the same way; I'll leave the broom here."

Hermione kept close behind him, their footsteps crunching over the long-discarded remains of a number of small animals. At the rock fall, they stopped.

"Blimey," commented Ron. "Hard to believe we were ever small enough to fit through there!"

It took Hermione only moments to enlarge the tiny hole, however, and it wasn't long before Ron was able to climb through.

"Oh, yeah," he called from the other side. "I forgot there was a shed skin here. It's not a real snake, don't be alarmed!"

Heartened by his concern, Hermione followed him. They crawled over and then past the hideously large coils of discarded snake skin and followed the hallway onwards. It took a while, but eventually they stopped short once more. This time, the problem was a huge, solid wall, decorated with two carved serpents. Their eyes were jewels which flickered ominously in the thin light of their wand beams.

"What now?" asked Hermione.

"Dunno, same as before, you reckon?"

Hermione nodded, and Ron repeated his spluttering routine from earlier. This time he hit upon the right set of sounds the second time, and the wall split open. The two halves of the great door slid away into the wall.

The room inside was enormous, narrow and dimly lit by some unseen source. It was lined with pillars and decorated with an inordinate number of snakes. Though the far end was deeply in shadow, there was definitely something piled on the floor.

"Is that it?" she asked Ron, her voice echoing oddly in the cavernous space.

"I guess," he replied. "I wasn't here for this part, but I reckon it must be."

As they drew closer, Hermione's anxiety rose. Small rodents fled at their approach; their squeaks and the scrabbling of their claws against the stone floor made her twitchy. The carcass, they saw at last, had been eaten away. Nothing but the bones and skin remained. Its size was shocking: Hermione couldn't imagine actually fighting the monster...let alone Harry doing so at the tender age of twelve years old. Not for the first time, she wondered what Dumbledore had thought he was playing at. Training Harry, was the ready answer. That in itself made her shiver much the way the rats had.

At the head of the beast, Ron and Hermione paused. Most of the fangs remained attached to the skeletal mouth of the snake, though one...presumably that with which Harry had stabbed the diary...was discarded to one side. It lay in a patch of dried blood. Hermione racked her brain to remember whether it might be Harry's or someone else's.

"How many do we need?" she asked, staring at the jawbone of the basilisk. She easily could have stood up inside the space it occupied.

That thing almost killed me.

"As many as we can carry, I reckon." Ron sounded so certain that she glanced at him for clarification. He shrugged. "We don't know what we're looking for, and we don't know how many people are going to be looking. The more ways of destroying it the better."

"Right." Hermione nodded. Pull yourself together, Granger. She gave herself a mental shake. "Stand back," she ordered. Casting a Barrier Charm over the surface of each fang, she severed a dozen or so of the huge, dirty yellow teeth from the jaw in which they were embedded, cushioning each one so that it fell gently to the floor and didn't bounce around. "Let's go," she concluded, reaching out and picking up the fang closest to her.

"Wait," said Ron. "Where's the cup?"

"It's in the beaded . . . You want to destroy it now?"

"No time like the present. And I think you should do it."

"Me?"

"Yeah. Harry and me have both done one. I think it's your turn."

He was, Hermione realised, completely serious. She would have rather left as soon as possible, but she had to agree that there was no point in delaying. Anything that might negatively effect Voldemort's power was worth doing immediately.

"Fine," she agreed, snapping open the bag and reaching inside to pull out the cup. It took her a couple of moments to snag hold of the handle; the cup seemed to scurry into the crevices between her other belongings in an attempt to stay out of reach. When her hand finally closed around the cold metal, it was clammy against her skin. She could feel the Horcrux inside, throbbing like a bad bruise.

"Give it here," instructed Ron. He took the cup and placed it upside down in the centre of one of the flagstones. "Just stab it. Ignore whatever it says and just stab it."

Hermione knelt down in front of the cup and removed the Barrier Charm from the fang she was holding. Tentatively, she raised it over her head. At the apex of her swing, she noticed the dark liquid seeping from underneath the cup. She froze, her eyes fixed on the spreading stain. The cup had been empty, hadn't it?

Hermione watched in horror as the viscous liquid peeled up from the ground and began to twist upwards. A pair of red eyes blinked into view from within the resultant dark cloud.

"You think you can save them, don't you?"

The voice hissed from under the cup; it bubbled out with more of the thick, syrupy liquid. Is that blood? Hermione swallowed and, without even thinking about it, shuffled backwards.

"All you want to do," the voice continued, "is keep your boys alive. Yet you know, don't you, that I am going to kill them?"

The dark mist began to spin and morph into a recognisable figure. An odd parody of Ronald Weasley hung before her, though his chin was barely represented at all and his lower lip was trembling in a fearful expression Hermione had never seen the real Ron wear.

"Hermione!" the fake Ron called out. Though he looked no younger than seventeen, he spoke with the voice Ron had used as a young boy. "He's going to kill me, and it's all your fault!"

Hermione's breath was choked, and she could feel tears threatening to overwhelm her. Deep down, she knew this was a trick of the Horcrux. She tried to lift the basilisk fang to stab it and stop it, but her hands were sweaty and it slipped in her grip.

The figure was shifting. The colours were changing, and Hermione recognised Harry's green eyes and crooked glasses. Like with Ron, this Harry looked weak.

"Hermione," it whispered, terror struck. "He killed my parents. He killed Cedric. Now he's going to kill me, too!"

A sob escaped her. She knew it wasn't real, but it still cut her to the core. A second later, the Harry simulacrum, too, began to change. His hair was growing and his nose lengthening. True panic blossomed in Hermione's chest. She couldn't, she mustn't let Ron see.

"No!" she shouted. With all the strength she could muster, she flung up the fang and brought it down on the Horcrux; the Horcrux screamed. Before the apparition of Snape was completely recognisable, it fragmented, dispersing into puffs of insubstantial mist that withered away. Where the fang had punctured the cup, there was a smoking black hole.

Did Ron realise? she wondered, panicked. Did he recognise who it was?

As the sound of the Horcrux's scream faded, Hermione noticed that her own tears were running unchecked. Ron had knelt down behind her, and his strong arms cradled her to his him. His body was warm.

"You did it, 'Mione," he murmured comfortingly. "It's okay."

Hermione turned and buried her face in his chest. With one hand, he rubbed her between her shoulder blades.

"It feels your fears," he said, with his chin resting on the top of her head, "but it doesn't really know you."

Hermione found his words incredibly comforting. Pushing back from his chest, she looked up at him and graced him with a watery smile.

"Thanks, Ron," she said.

"You're welcome," he replied as he wiped a tear from her cheek with the ball of his thumb. "Come on, let's take the rest of these fangs and go and find Harry."

"Good idea. He's probably wondering where we are." Hermione pushed herself to her feet and gathered up several of the long, yellow teeth.

"Maybe he's found the other Horcrux already!" remarked Ron hopefully.

As Hermione gave a last glance to the looming bulk of the basilisk's skeleton and hooked up the melted remnants of the Horcrux, a rather fierce joy blossomed in her chest. Maybe they would make it out of this mess alive.

Elation sat like a hard, almost painful lump behind Hermione's ribs as they flew up and out of the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione had conjured a net, with which they strapped the fangs to the underside of the broom handle; she rode on the back, her arms wrapped tightly around Ron's upper body.

Ron, she acknowledged with a searing pride, had been magnificent: the idea had been brilliant, and he himself had managed the situation with competence and generosity. She took in a deep breath with her face pressed against his shoulder blade. Maybe, she repeated to herself, Harry has found the other Horcrux already!

As they burst out of Myrtle's bathroom and tore through corridors marked with the signs of the battle...broken windows, a crushed suit of armour pierced with daggers, a group of older students and Order members who rushed past with grim, panicked expressions...the feeling in her chest expanded. She felt bursting with it.

They found Harry quickly, and his news was good: he knew what the Horcrux was, and he knew where to find it. From his description, Hermione realised she had seen it too: when she had snuck into the Room of Requirement to steal away Snape's NEWT-level potion book, she'd seen the bust and the old, battered-looking tiara.

They were so close to their goal, and Hermione felt that knowledge bubbling through her system. She felt it expand out towards her extremities; she thought her pride in both her boys would burst out of her fingertips.

When Ron expressed his desire to warn the house-elves, she threw herself at him, dropping her armful of Basilisk fangs to crush him in a fierce hug. Before she even thought through what was happening, she was kissing him, and he, surprisingly, was kissing her back. His own load of fangs and broomstick tumbled unheeded to the floor, and his arms wrapped around her, lifting her off her feet.

His kiss was warm and it was nice. It was happy and it was desperate. Hermione knew...as Ron did...that one or both of them might die; they had both lived through the worst year of their lives, and it wasn't yet over. The kiss was a promise, and the kiss was a balm to the terror that limned Hermione's sense of determination. The time to act was now, and she wouldn't look back.

She loved him, of course. She always, kind of had. Just as she loved Harry, though she would never kiss Harry, not like that. And when she and Ron broke apart, she knew exactly what it meant: he loved her and he was there with her. Both of them were committed to the tasks they had ahead of them. Both of them would follow Harry; both of them would help to destroy Voldemort, no matter what it took.

Once inside the Room of Requirement, the trio split up. Though both Harry and Hermione had been there before, the towering aisles of detritus were confusing.

How could Voldemort seriously think no-one else could get in? Hermione wondered. There's far too much stuff here for that to be possible.

Hermione was convinced Harry had taken a wrong turn not far from the entrance. She decided to go back there and retrace their steps.

"Point me," she whispered at her wand, double checking where north was and then heading back the way she came. It didn't take long to reach the place where she thought they'd gone wrong, and it was there that she heard voices.

"Harry?"* she heard Ron call out. "Are you talking to someone?"*

It wasn't Ron and Harry, then. She heard curses, and Harry called Ron's name urgently. A huge pile of junk teetered dangerously, knocking against an adjacent stack and sending a number of objects crashing to the floor. A strangled squawk of panic escaped her, and Hermione began to run in the direction of the commotion. As she ran, the arguing continued, and she identified Vincent Crabbe and Draco Malfoy. Presumably Gregory Goyle wasn't far behind.

"Crucio!"* shouted Crabbe viciously from closer at hand.

Hermione paused at a fork, unsure of which way to go. Her chest was heaving with the effort of sprinting through the narrow passages of the maze of abandoned objects.

"STOP!"*

That other voice was definitely Malfoy, and it definitely came from the left fork. Hermione ran forwards once again.

What on earth are you up to, Malfoy? From the sounds of it, he was still trying to protect the trio, but why then had he brought his thugs along for the ride?

"The Dark Lord wants him alive..."*

"So? I'm not killing him, am I? But if I can, I will, the Dark Lord wants him dead anyway, what's the diff...?"*

Hermione rounded the final corner and sent off a non-verbal stunner at Crabbe; she missed only because Malfoy yanked him out of the way.

"It's that Mudblood!"* snarled Crabbe, anger and surprise twisting his face into an ugly sneer. "Avada Kedavra!"*

Fear shivered through Hermione's belly as she dove aside. The green splash of the curse thudded into a faded wooden rocking horse, decapitating the poor creature. Hermione heard Harry shouting and the bang of several other curses.

"Don't kill him!"* screamed Malfoy. "DON'T KILL HIM!"*

Hermione wriggled under a rickety table, emerging back in the same aisle as Harry. Both Crabbe and Goyle had their wands trained on the Boy-Who-Lived, although it seemed that Malfoy's shouting had bought Harry a second of hesitation. Harry disarmed Goyle as Hermione shot a Stunning Spell at Crabbe. Ron appeared around the far corner and fired a full Body-Bind Curse at Malfoy. Both Hermione and Ron missed.

Crabbe spun towards Ron and fired off another killing curse. Hermione saw red. She pushed up from the floor into a runner's crouch and leapt forwards. As she ran, she Stunned Goyle, who was wandless and leaping up and down on the spot in a futile attempt to regain his weapon. Hermione ignored Malfoy, intent on disabling Crabbe before he got another shot at any of her friends.

"It's somewhere here!"* shouted Harry as she sprinted past towards the corner where Ron and Crabbe had last been. "Look for it while I go and help R..."*

At the corner, Hermione came upon a terrifying sight. Crabbe looked maniacal, and he laughed horribly as he conjured a flame in a pile of discarded study notes. The flames leapt up immediately, leaving Crabbe silhouetted against their light...a dark shadow with one arm raised.

"HARRY!"* she screamed.

"You idiot!" shouted Ron, who had somehow...luckily...ended up on the close side of the flames.

The fire was spreading quickly, and Hermione could feel the wall of heat it was emitting. Hermione trained her wand on the blaze and hit it with several fire-dampening and water-producing spells. Nothing worked.

Ron and Crabbe were racing back up the path towards her, away from the flames. Crabbe was still laughing, but Ron looked terrified. He grabbed her upper arm as he passed, pulling her back with him.

"Like it hot, scum?"* squealed Crabbe.

The flames were unnatural...impossibly hot and horrifyingly fast. They formed animalistic shapes and seemed to move with a creaturely intelligence, heading unerringly towards the warm, human bodies of Hermione, her friends, and their Slytherin classmates.

"RUN!"* shouted Ron.

Crabbe had already disappeared around an upended bed frame, and Malfoy grabbed Goyle's stunned body under the arms and was lumbering after Crabbe at a quite remarkable speed. Ron, his hand firmly around Hermione's arm, pulled her along beside Harry.

Still, the flames were gaining.

"What can we do?"* shouted Hermione in desperation. "What can we do?"*

"Here!"* shouted Harry, grasping at two outdated and cumbersome broomsticks. He threw one to Ron, who caught it ably.

Ron had his leg over the handle within seconds, and Hermione was not far behind. For the second time that day, she pressed her face into his shoulder blade, yet this time, she felt panicked rather than elated. Ron kicked off, and they soared up towards the high arches of the ceiling. The heat there was no less intense, and the smoke made it difficult to breathe.

"Gods, Hermione," panted Ron, his voice edged with desperation. "I can't see the door."

"Point me!" whispered Hermione urgently. Her wand span in her hand, pointing through the undifferentiated smoke towards north. "The door has to be towards our left!" she exclaimed.

Unquestioningly, Ron followed her directions.

"Harry,"* he shouted. "Let's get out, let's get out!"*

But someone, down below in the fire, was screaming. A thin, awful sound that brought up the hairs on the back of Hermione's neck. And Harry had already turned towards it.

"It's...too...dangerous...!"* panted Ron, coughing up smoke, yet despite his words, he was no less Gryffindor than his friend, and he had already turned his broom to follow.

They followed the sound of the screams, diving down after Harry into the thick smoke. The snapping, crackling flames gave off an unbearable heat.

Malfoy had somehow dragged Goyle's body up onto the top of a mountain of broken furniture, but the flames were already lapping up the sides. The smoke billowed around him, and Hermione watched him raise one hand towards Harry in supplication.

"IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I'LL KILL YOU, HARRY!"* shrieked Ron, as Harry managed to wrestle Malfoy onto the back of his broom.

"I'll steer, you grab Goyle," ordered Hermione. There was no way she could have managed the dead weight of the boy. Ron got a grip on Goyle's robes and heaved him over the handle of the broom as an enormous Basilisk of flame lunged towards them, jaw wide and deadly fangs picked out in flame orange. The broom bucked under the extra weight, but Hermione, who had hold of the handle over Ron's thighs, wrenched it back upwards and away from the fire. Her wand was still tugging at her hand in the direction of north, and Hermione twisted them around to face the place where the door had to be.

Good God, let the door be open.

Hermione flew faster than she'd ever flown before, her terror of the fire and the choking black smoke trumping her fear of heights. After several endless seconds, with the noise of the fire pressing in from all sides, Hermione saw a rectangular patch in the grey smoke.

"There!" shouted Ron.

They swung lower, aiming for the doorway, and then suddenly, they were through. They crashed into the wall on the other side of the corridor and fell ungracefully to the floor. Hermione landed on Goyle...which can't have been comfortable for him, but saved her from the worst of the bruising. Oxygen flooded into her lungs like a drug.

Moments later, Harry and Malfoy rocketed through to safety, and the door abruptly disappeared.

"C-Crabbe,"* gasped Malfoy, in some distress, his eyes raking the empty wall that had once been the door as if that alone could make it appear. "C-Crabbe . . ."*

"He's dead,"* replied Ron, his voice harsh and raspy. Then there was silence.