The Darkening of Your Soul

Chapter 44

"Basilisk?" Dorus asked, looking between Harry, Theo and Tom with a foreboding frown. "What basilisk?"

Tom ignored his friend and instead glared at Harry. "We're not killing Salazar Slytherin's basilisk. She's hibernating. That's all she does."

"Salazar Slytherin's basilisk?" Barty asked, visibly perking up at that revelation, while Dorus narrowed his eyes and said, "And where is Salazar Slytherin's basilisk currently?"

"Hogwarts," Harry said when it became apparent Tom wasn't quite so eager to answer that question.

"Hogwarts!" Dorus all but yelled, while Barty turned to look at Tom with an utterly betrayed look on his face.

"You mean to tell me there's been a basilisk at Hogwarts since Slytherin's time and you never even bothered to document this? Or to officially study it?" Barty demanded while Tom briefly looked down and rubbed a hand across his face in obvious frustration.

"Tom," Dorus said with all the menace of a mother dragon whose offspring was just threatened. "Tell me there isn't currently a basilisk at Hogwarts."

"She's hidden in the Chamber of Secrets," Tom said, both hands raised to ward off his friend's obvious fury. "She's asleep. She's old, Dorus, she's not interested in hunting or killing anyone."

"Tell that to Myrtle Warren," Harry felt compelled to point out because he knew from his previous life that the basilisk was more than willing to hunt and kill with the right person pulling her strings.

"That mudblood you killed?" Dorus said, eyes widening while he looked at Tom in utter disbelief. "You used a Merlin-be-damned basilisk to kill that mudblood? And it's still at Hogwarts even now?"

"And you never studied it?" Barty added in just as much disbelief.

"No one can enter the Chamber of Secrets," Tom valiantly tried to defend himself. "Unless they're a parselmouth."

"But she can get out of it," Harry said because he couldn't believe Tom wasn't taking this seriously. Now that he'd seen the memory of his 12-year-old self fighting the murder serpent, Harry himself wasn't as eager to return to Hogwarts knowing that thing was in the castle somewhere. "If she wanted to, she can leave that area through the pipes and explore the whole fucking castle."

"That thing needs to go," Dorus said with a calmness that seemed entirely unnatural.

"I'm not killing Salazar Slytherin's basilisk and that's that," Tom replied with a mulish look while he crossed his arms.

"Look at the memory!" Theo yelled all of a sudden. He'd been completely silent up until that point but now he was waving his hand frantically in the direction of the pensieve. "Just look at it!"

"Whose memory is this?" Barty asked as he eagerly stepped up to the pensieve.

"Mine," Harry said while leaning back in the couch. "You can all watch it as much as you like but I won't be joining you. Once was enough. Enjoy."

While they both glared at the other, Dorus and Tom shuffled up to the pensieve as well until they all surrounded the bowl and they lowered their faces until their bodies turned limp.

"Don't worry," Harry told Theo, who was trembling a bit again. "If Tom refused to take care of the problem, I will." Saying it like that made Harry seem far braver than he was, because in reality he really, really did not want to face the basilisk ever again. Why he'd ever done it as a 12-year-old was a mystery, though perhaps what had helped him along back then was the fact that he had no idea what a basilisk really was, except for a large snake. But 'large snake' did nothing to describe the true size, strength and ferocity of a basilisk.