More Important Than Any Broomstick [Harmione]

26. The Dark Lord Will Have Your Blood

Later that night, Harry and Hermione were sitting together in the common room after charming a bunch of muggle devices when Harry said, "Mine,"

Hermione smiled and said, "Yes, Hero?"

"There's something that's been bugging me a bit since we left the chamber."

She turned her head toward Harry and said, "What's that, Love?"

"That book said that we could only make four outfits, but it looked like over half of the basilisk's skin was still there after we were done. I know we're not fully grown yet, but honestly, I think more could be made. Do you think the book could be wrong about that?"

"Hm," said Hermione, "Maybe that Basilisk is bigger than most. I'll check that out." Almost instantaneously her laptop came floating down to them from her dorm. After she caught it, she turned it on and it loaded up, she looked up the book that contained the spell and decided to read the book's description of a basilisk. "Oh my. I really should have read this before we went down there. It says that the only basilisk known to exist during the lifetime of the author was only thirty feet long, so it called that the average size. The one inside the chamber is at least sixty feet. If you average it out to four outfits for every thirty feet, it comes to each outfit taking seven and a half feet of skin. At that rate, the one in the chamber could handle eight outfits!"

"We should tell Lupin and Sirius tomorrow morning and get down there as soon as we can to make them outfits. By the way, is there any spell to just remove the skin so we don't have to keep going back down there again and again?"

"I'll find out." After a few minutes of scrolling down, Hermione said, "I was too excited about finding the spell yesterday. I should have read the whole book. There is a spell that takes all the skin off the creature and folds it up neatly so it can be taken away. The same spell I used earlier can be used on that. I'm sorry I didn't read this before."

"Don't worry about it, Mine. There's no harm done. Besides, if it weren't for you, we wouldn't even know about the armor." He then kissed her deeply.

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The next day after training, which was after dinner since it was a Monday, Harry explained that there was in fact enough skin to make outfits for the two of them, along with two more outfits as well. They knew Harry would have to go down there with them because he's the only one who could speak snake-language (unless they found Voldemort and got him to help) and Hermione insisted that she join them too. They decided to go down to the chamber immediately after dinner the next day. When they got back, they'd see how much time they had left to train. And so it wasn't long until they found themselves back inside the Chamber of Secrets. The Marauders had their own brooms (Sirius' firebolt and one of the cleansweeps Sirius had bought) and they were looking over the chamber very enthusiastically. It was difficult to get them to stay still long enough to have the spell performed on them.

When Hermione complained, Sirius said, "But this is a legendary place! I know you two have been here before, but we haven't! This may very well be the only thing that's not in the Marauder's Map. We'll have to change that! This would make a great secret base! Only Voldemort himself could penetrate it! The fact that only Harry can open it would be an inconvenience, but I think we could live with it."

"Actually," said Hermione thoughtfully, "We could try recording Harry when he opens the door. Maybe playing it back would work."

Harry smiled, "That's a great idea! I'll call your parents tonight and have them pick up something for that."

"We'll have to be careful about making sure no one knows about the recording," said Lupin.

"That shouldn't be a problem," said Hermione. "If anyone sees us with them, they'll just assume it's music."