………………………………………………..
I watched Harry disappear into a corner cupboard and up the stairs inside it, Luna on his heels.
I felt so useless.
Ravenclaw’s lost diadem? It’s been lost for centuries! How could Voldemort have found it and made it a Horcrux? Even if he did, how will Harry find it without us? I turned to Ron. His freckled face was thoughtful, and he was still looking at the cupboard Harry had vanished through.
“Ron,” I said quietly. I didn’t want all the highly interested students around us to hear what I had to say.
“Ron!”
Ron jumped and turned to look at me. “What?”
“This feels so pointless. Even if it is the diadem and Harry finds it, we still have to get rid of it, and without the sword we have no way to do it. And we still have this one!” I shook my beaded bag, in which I had stowed Hufflepuff’s cup just before we had apparated to Hogsmeade and this whole escapade had started.
Ron’s eyebrows drew together in concentration.
“I know,” he murmured. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
He glanced around, then back at me.
“That sword was able to destroy Horcruxes because it was covered in basilisk venom, right?”
“Yes, it was. But, Ron, we don’t have-”
“I know we don’t have it, Hermione! I was just thinking, the venom -by itself- it would still destroy the-“ he glanced around again. Several people turned to look in other directions in a hurry. Ron glared at them. Ginny, seeing his angry expression, hurried over and began shooing people away from us. On the other side of the room, Neville seemed to be rallying the students. I could hear his voice shouting over the buzz of noise around us.
Ron turned back to me, lowered his voice even more and continued, “It would still destroy the you-know-what, right?”
I still couldn’t see where he was heading. “Yes, but we-“
“We don’t have any venom, I know, Hermione! But we could go get some.”
“What-? Go get some? Ron, I don’t think they keep supplies of Basilisk venom in with the Mrs. Scower’s Mess Remover in the broom closets here! When that sword got covered in venom it was because Harry used it against the basilisk in- in the… oh.”
I understood now. My stomach did a back flip.
“In the Chamber of Secrets, yeah,” finished Ron. Most of the people in the room were gathered around Neville now. He had become a much more confident speaker since I had seen him last I noticed absently.
“You mean,” I said at last. “You mean go into Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom and down to- oh, Ron! You’re a genius! We- should we go right now do you think? Or should we wait for Harry?”
“Harry might be awhile, and we’re in a hurry, right? It’s only a matter of time ‘til- ‘til V-Voldemort gets here and-“
I stared at him. As far as I knew, as long as I could remember, Ron had never said Voldemort’s name aloud. I felt something like a golden bubble swell up inside me, and I grabbed his hand.
“Come on!”
I turned and, pulling Ron, ran to the cupboard I had watched Harry leave through minutes ago. There were shouts from the people around us, asking where we were going but I ignored them. Then Ron pulled me to a stop at the threshold of the cupboard.
“Has anyone got a broom?”he asked the room at large. At the back of the crowd Cho Chang had turned around, looking interested. After a moment she nodded and ran to one of the hammocks hanging from the ceiling. A moment later she returned holding a broomstick.
“Thanks,” Ron said to her breathlessly, taking the outstrectched handle, then turned to me. Yanking the cupboard open, I ducked inside and ran up the stairs two at a time, Ron right behind me.
After several twists and turns in the torch-lit stairway we finally arrived at what appeared to be a solid stone wall. I turned to Ron who put a finger to his lips then reached passed me and touched the wall. It disappeared at his touch. Hesitantly, I inched forward until my head was sticking out into the shadow-filled corridor beyond. I recognized a painting on the wall opposite- an old man who was usually scribbling furiously on a piece of parchment, now asleep.
“Fifth floor,” I whispered, and I heard Ron give a small sound of agreement.
Carefully, my wand out and ready, I edged forward into the corridor. Ron, his wand in one hand, Cho’s broom in the other, crept out after me. Immediately, the wall reappeared behind him, solid stone again. He put a finger to his lips once more then motioned for me to follow him. Without another sound he set off at a lope and I sprinted after him.
My heart was racing, adrenaline pumping in my veins. This was unlike any time I had ever been in the corridors after dark. This time detention and lost points are the least of our worries if we get caught. We turned right and went down a set of stairs, then left and down another set of stairs, then down another corridor.
There was a noise ahead and Ron grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into an empty classroom. Two ghosts, whispering together, went past the doorway a few moments later. I waited the space of three fast heartbeats before moving to look out the door. Ron got there first. After a moment he turned to me and nodded. We slipped back out into the dark corridor.
Five minutes later we were standing before the door to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.
Ron glanced at me than stuck his wand in his pocket, leaned forward, and turned the doorknob. Myrtle’s gurgling sobs echoed down the empty corridor and startled me. Afraid Filch or someone worse would hear I shoved Ron through the doorway and closed the door hurriedly behind me.
Leaning against the door I let out a sigh of relief. Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom- the place I had spent the majority of two months in my second year- looked exactly as it had then with its chipped and spotted mirrors, rusty faucets, dingy stalls- half of them with doors falling or already fallen off.
It was almost like returning to a childhood haven.
Myrtle’s moans bounced off the walls and reverberated around me as I walked forward to where Ron stood in front of the end sink.
“How do we get in?” I whispered.
I had not been present when Ron and Harry had gone into the Chamber before, I had been lying petrified in the infirmary and therefore had no idea about how to proceed. From the bowels of the plumbing connected to the toilet in the end stall behind us, Myrtle’s crying abruptly stopped.
Ron turned away from me for a moment to prop the broom against the wall. When he turned back his ears were pink and he was looking self conscious.
“I think I need to tell the sink to open in Parseltongue.”
I stared at Ron. Well, apparently that insignificant little detail had slipped his mind. Now we were stuck in a girl’s toilet with Moaning Myrtle.
“You don’t speak Parseltongue! How-“
“Hermione. I know I don’t speak Parseltongue. Alright? I can handle this. I’m just trying to remember what Harry said when he opened the locket.”
I closed my mouth. This was an unusual experience. I wasn’t accustomed to Ron being prepared, I didn’t know how to handle a Ron who had done his homework. I was impressed.
Ron was biting his lip, staring at the tap of the sink before him. I watched him for a moment then happened to glance at the mirror above the sink. My heart almost stopped. I had to slap my own hands over my mouth to keep from screaming as I whirled around. Ron jumped and turned to see what had startled me, one hand holding his wand in the defensive position, the other hand stretched protectively in front of me.
Moaning Myrtle was floating a few inches behind me, gazing down at us through her coke-bottle glasses, a doubtful expression on her face. I stared at her, my heart thundering in my chest. After an anxious minute Ron spoke.
“Myrtle! Bloody-“
“Oh, I do know you two,” said Myrtle, glumly. “I wasn’t sure when I first saw you. It’s been years since you’ve been here. Where is Harry? He always came with you before. I haven’t seen him in ages.“
There was a pause, then Ron spoke.
“He’s in the boy’s bathroom on the seventh floor, Myrtle, why don’t you go say hi?”
I stared at Ron in surprise. He turned slightly to look at me and winked the eye farthest from Myrtle.
“Is he really?” said Myrtle, looking slightly less glum. “Maybe I should go say hello. I haven’t seen him in ages and ages.” She stared at us for another moment then turned. “Almost no one comes in here anymore. I was starting to get lonely…” she said as she drifted back to her stall. There was a gurgling sound from the toilet and she was gone.
I ran to her stall to check, then ran back to Ron. “That was brilliant!” I whispered, and danced on the spot for a moment. “How did you think of it?”
Ron grinned and shrugged.
“She was talking about the last time she saw Harry, and I remembered it was when she turned up to watch him in the Prefect’s bathroom in the fourth year, so I thought maybe she’d be interested enough in seeing him again to leave.”
He turned determinedly back to the sink.
“I think I’ve got it.”
It took a little longer for me to return to the state of mind I had been in before Myrtle had shown up. I stared as Ron leaned toward the sink and made a strange, choked hissing, spitting sound.
Nothing happened. Ron’s face crumpled in disappointment.
“Try again, Ron,” I breathed.
He glanced at me, then, face screwed up in concentration, Ron leaned forward once more and hissed. The tap glowed white and began to spin. I gasped in amazement as the sink sank into the floor, exposing a large pipe.
“Ready?” asked Ron.
I turned to look at him. He was holding Cho’s broom and looking grim. I took a deep breath and looked at the hole in the floor before me.
“Yes.”
Ron must have seen the look on my face, because he stepped forward and said, “I’ll go first, shall I?”
I nodded gratefully. Descending into a dark slimy pipe without a clue as to what it led to was not something I was overly anxious to do. Ron wrapped his arms around Cho’s broom, sat down on the edge of the pipe, turned and grinned encouragingly at me, then pushed himself forward and disappeared down the dark pipe so quickly it was frightening.
My turn.
I stepped forward, sat down and lowered myself into the pipe. With a grimace I let go of the edge… and then I was sliding down, down, rushing into the slimy, smelly darkness, and clutching my beaded bag as tightly as I could. The pipe curved and twisted steeply downward past many other smaller pipes that seemed to connect to it. I could faintly hear Ron thudding against the curves somewhere ahead of me.
After several minutes of flying downward the pipe suddenly became level and I shot out- straight into Ron. There was a grunt, a crazy whirl of ceiling and floor in the dim light, and then we landed side by side on the wet floor of a large stone tunnel. I sat up on my elbows, gasping for breath. Squinting down at myself, I saw that I was covered in slime. Beside me Ron, who was just as slimy, shook his head dazedly.
“You seem to like doing that,” he said, chuckling. I raised my eyebrows and he elaborated, “Flying at me for no reason. Why don’t you warn me before you do it next time?”
I laughed. “I’ll try.”
Ron stood up, offered me a hand, which I took, and helped me up, then bent and picked up the broomstick. I lit my wand and together, we turned to look down the tunnel. The smile on my face slid off faster than I had slid out of the pipe as I remembered why we were here. Turning to Ron, I was surprised to see how quickly his teasing expression had disappeared. He looked sick.
“Are you alright?” I asked, concerned.
He nodded and swallowed.
“It’s just bad memories. The last time I was here, I thought Ginny was- I thought Ginny had- yeah… just bad memories.” He stared into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.
I stared at him, an exhilarating idea taking shape in my mind. My heart pounding, my mouth dry, I reached out and took hold of his hand. He looked down at our entwined fingers in surprise then up at my face. I squeezed his hand and smiled.
“We can do this,” I said. Ron took a breath, looked down at our joined hands again and nodded.
“Come on,” he said, and gave me a small smile. Still holding hands we hurried down the tunnel, our footsteps echoing loudly on the wet stone.
Then a high cold voice spoke and I screamed. Ron yelled in surprise and we both whirled around, looking for the speaker, but there was no one to be seen. I whirled again and slipped on the wet floor, landing hard on my back. I sat up hurriedly as Ron crouched by me, pointing his wand nervously into the shadows around us.
“I know you are preparing to fight,”* said the cold voice of Lord Voldemort. “Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight.”*
We sat in silence for another moment.
“Sounds like Hogwarts is going make a fight of it,” Ron said at last.
“Oh, I hope the Slytherins don’t get to Harry. You know they would love to turn him over to Voldemort.” A knot of worry formed in the pit of my stomach at the thought.
“Harry’ll be alright. He’s got all the Gryffindors, and probably most of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs on his side,” Ron said, trying to reassure me. I could tell he was trying to sound confident but I could still hear the worry in his voice and I shivered.
“You don’t suppose he would- you know- hand himself over? I mean, remember, in our fourth year, the second task, he didn’t care about his score, he had to save-?”
Ron’s eyes widened, and when he spoke it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“Nah, Harry’s not that thick. He knows it wouldn’t do any good, wouldn’t stop V-Voldemort killing people. And he knows he has to finish him off. Harry- he’s not that thick.”
That’s twice he’s used the name now, I thought, impressed. There was another moment of silence. Uncomfortably aware of the moisture under my backside I cleared my throat.
“Do you think I could, er, get up now?"
Ron, who was still half-standing over me, a protective hand on my shoulder, made a surprised noise, got to his feet and helped me to stand once more. I was surprised when he kept a firm grip on my hand once we were both standing. I turned to look at him. His blue eyes met mine unflinchingly. The expression on his face- a mixture of defiance, teasing and something that looked like nerves- set my heart racing again. After a moment I waved vaguely at the tunnel and raised my eyebrows.
“Shall we?”
Ron nodded and we started off down the tunnel again, hand in hand.
After a few steps the wand-light illuminated a rat skeleton on the floor ahead. A few steps further and I could make out several more rodent bones. A few steps after that and the small yellowed bones seemed almost to carpet the tunnel floor. I became so consumed with trying to avoid stepping on them that I would have stumbled over the first of the rocks if Ron hadn’t held me back. Looking up I saw a huge pile of broken stone, unchanged since the time Ron and Harry had been here in our second year and Lockhart had made the mistake of trying to Obliviate them with Ron’s broken wand. Up at the top of the pile, close to the ceiling, was a small opening between the rocks and the ceiling, just large enough for a person to slip through.
We climbed up the small hill of rock and once again, Ron gallantly went first into the darkness of the gap, still grasping my hand. I climbed through after him and together we slid down the pile of stone, creating a small landslide and laughing quietly. At the foot of the hill we set off down the tunnel once again. It twisted, maze-like, one way and then another, and I was just starting to wonder when we would get to the end when we turned another corner and came to a wall where two intertwined snakes with gems for eyes stood sentinel. I looked at Ron.
“I suppose I need to speak Parseltongue again,” he said, looking at the snakes.
He stared at the shining jewel-eyes of the snake statues, opened his mouth and let out a low strangled hiss like he had in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. There was a pause. Nothing happened. Come on Ron. I thought. He frowned. There was another strangled hiss. Again, nothing happened. Frustrated, Ron lowered his eyelids until his eyes were mere blue slits in his face and, his voice low and angry, he hissed once more.
There was a small rumble and the wall divided. The halves slide sideways into the walls on either side revealing a huge, dark, cavernous space. Ahead I could see the black outline of something long and coiled and mostly bone: the basilisk.
Where its eyes should have been were two dark holes. There was a putrid smell of something long dead in the air and as we walked toward it there was a skittering sound that made my skin crawl and a dozen mice and rats scampered away into the dark. I shuddered at the irony. The basilisk had once feasted on the rodent population of Hogwarts, now the rodent population feasted on it.
I was glad to see however, that the most important feature of the basilisk’s remains had stayed untouched. A dozen fangs, thin, yellow and more than a foot long each stuck out of the dried and cracked jaws of the giant serpent.
Ron dropped Cho’s broom and I dropped my beaded bag and we both rushed forward and began hurriedly yanking teeth. Like two frenzied reptilian dentists, I thought with a smile. But the smile disappeared as I thought of my parents: dentists, their memories modified, living in Australia without a clue that their only daughter was thinking of them, without a clue that they had a daughter.
Surreptitiously, I wiped the tears in my eyes on the back of my sleeve as it went by my face, my hand reaching for another fang.
I didn’t realize that Ron was no longer by my side until he spoke from behind me.
“Hermione.”
My heart thudded wildly and I spun around. Ron was kneeling next to my beaded bag. Hufflepuff’s cup was in his hands. He looked up at me with wide blue eyes, his face solemn.
“Why don’t you do this one?”
I sucked in a breath.
“Come on, Hermione. I did the last one. We might as well get rid of it now, while we can’t be interrupted. You can do it.”
My heart was pumping, my breath coming in short gasps as the adrenalin hit my veins. I wasn’t sure whether it was what Ron was asking me to do that had started it, or the look in his eyes.
I looked down at the fangs in my arms then back at the cup. Carefully, I set down the majority of the fangs I was holding on the slimy floor, saving only the one currently in my hand. I walked forward and knelt in front of Ron with the cup in between us. I thought of all the people, like my parents, who were forced into hiding by the monster who had made this Horcrux. All the people who would finally have peace in this world once no part of Voldemort remained in it.
For Mum and Dad. I thought. Then I looked up into the blue of Ron’s eyes and my heart fluttered again.
And for Ron.
I plunged the fang down through the crest of Hufflepuff into the front of the tiny golden Horcrux.
I jumped when a small shriek seemed to come from the thing I had stabbed. There was a puff of thick black smoke from under the point of the basilisk’s fang that immediately dissipated and then it was done.
“Alright!” said Ron, grinning. “Now we better get back up there if we don’t want to miss the fight!”
Together we carefully scooped up the basilisk fangs, now grimy from being on the slime-covered floor. I swung the beaded bag over my shoulder and Ron put the cup in the inner pocket of his coat and retrieved the broom. We hurried back into the entrance of the basilisk’s lair. The chamber doors slid shut behind us and then we were going through the winding tunnel again, up the pile of rocks and through the gap between ceiling and floor, down the other side and then all the way to the rim of the pipe.
Here Ron paused, looking from the fangs in his arms to the broom in his hand. He turned to me.
“D’you suppose-?”
“I’ll take them,” I said eagerly. Ron looked relieved. Carefully he handed the fangs he was holding to me. I stood quite still, very aware of the fact that there was no Fawkes around to heal me should these fangs slip. Ron mounted the broom and I moved gingerly forward until I was on it too. Ron took back a few of the fangs he had just given me and tucked them under one of his arms. I wrapped my newly freed arm around his chest and clung to him as he kicked off and we rose with a rush through the damp air of the pipe.
We flew steeply upward, the cold air whistling by, for little more a minute. Then suddenly we were emerging into the girls’ bathroom. Floating in front of the door, her usually opaque face blushing silver with anger and embarrassment, was Moaning Myrtle.
“You-!” she began, but Ron shook his head, aimed the broom toward the door behind her and leaned forward. We shot toward the door, passed, shuddering, through Myrtle, who shrieked with surprise and fear, banged the lavatory door open, and flew into the noisy and dust-filled corridor.
The battle of Hogwarts had begun.
Through Different Eyes by hogwartsbookworm
Chapter Notes: Ron and I turn into Snake Dentists. Location: Hogwarts- Room of Requirement, Chamber of Secrets, and the halls (and bathrooms) in between.
Chapter Endnotes: *Quotes are from the American version of DH, page 610.Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed my rendering of this missing moment! Be sure to review!