Chapter 29: Basilisk Hunt. Part 1. In Front of the Front Door
September 4, 1976. Saturday. 6 a.m.
In the dim light of his room, Severus lay on his bed watching the dawn come through a small window, one hand moving slowly across the crown of Nagini's head. She was greenish-brown and perfectly still, as though waiting for something.
And then, after a few minutes, his eyes brightened, because he finally heard what he had been listening for.
"Sir, the Headmaster has left the castle."
Even so, he did not move immediately. Better to be cautious. He would wait another hour. He sat up, reached for the small wallet, and a moment later a pair of high boots, thick dark trousers, a matching sweater, a hooded cloak, and a sword were laid out on the floor.
"Nagini." He looked at her with a smile as he pulled on his trousers. "Are you coming with me?"
"Could you not have found a better moment to ask?" She narrowed her eyes, crawled toward him, and began nudging him in the side with her tail. "Why ask something so obvious? You are the only person in my long life who has accepted me for what I am, cared for me, and put up with all my moods. The only one who looks at me and sees a person, not a monster. You are the second." She paused. "No. The first person I would genuinely call a friend, even though we have only known each other three months. Even the fact that you took me in, essentially out of boredom, matters to me more than I can explain. You are trying to make me human again. If I did not come with you now, I would never respect myself again."
"That was quite a speech."
"Hey! You could at least pretend to listen properly!"
"Go on, I am listening," Severus said, pulling on his sweater.
"You have put me completely off track. Fine. I am coming with you. Someone needs to pull you out of trouble if the plan falls apart."
"Do not jinx it. Though it was still good to hear."
He threw on his cloak, extended his hand, and Nagini climbed quickly into his sleeve, then coiled around his waist and stuck her head out at his neck.
"Ready?"
"In an hour. I need to finish something first." He sat back down on the bed, laid the sword across his knees, and lit a small flame on his index finger.
"You are strange. What was the point of getting up and getting dressed? You could have just stayed in bed."
"Preparing the body and the mind for what is coming. Checking the equipment."
"You have already checked five times." But seeing his face had already gone somewhere else entirely, she sighed and rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes. "Still too strange."
For the next hour he worked runes into the blade until, all at once, they flared and the sword changed colour from silver to black.
"Time to go."
"I was not even sleeping."
He pulled up his hood, cast a Blinding Charm and a Disillusionment Spell, and seemed to dissolve into the corridor around him as he left the room.
He moved through the castle without a sound. The Marauder's Map kept him clear of Filch, the cat, and every teacher in the building, and within a few minutes he reached the girls' bathroom.
Inside, he removed all the spells, raised his palm, snapped his fingers, and a shining barrier spread across the room in the same instant.
"Who is there?!"
"It is me. Calm down." He looked toward Myrtle, who was peering out from behind a cubicle wall, and lowered his hood.
"Severus, why are you here? And dressed like that?"
She flew toward him, still unsettled.
"Treasure hunt."
"Treasure?"
"Exactly. So." He pressed one finger to his lips and crossed to the sinks.
"Open!" Nagini hissed, and under the ghost's startled stare the room shook, the enormous slab rose, the sinks slid apart, and a vertical passage opened in the floor, dropping away into darkness too deep to measure.
"You are not planning to jump in there?!" Myrtle planted herself in front of him, alarmed.
"That is exactly what I am doing."
"Are you mad?! It is a long way down, you will be killed! And even if you survive, who knows what is waiting down there? You have to tell a teacher!"
"I will be back in two hours." A gust of wind caught him, and he stepped off the edge. "And if you tell anyone about this place or that I came here, we are no longer friends." His voice grew quieter and quieter.
"SEVERUS!" She rushed to the passage and found his face looking straight up at her, grinning.
"Two hours. Do not tell anyone." And he continued his descent.
"You. you. IDIOT! I was worried about you! I am never speaking to you again! Damn you!" She would have stamped her feet if she could have. "If you are not back in two hours, I am fetching every teacher in the castle!"
"Understood."
The shaft turned out to be less a pit and more a slide, coated in a foul-smelling slime that Severus was careful not to touch directly, riding down it instead, and after several dozen seconds he shot out of the wide pipe into a pit filled with the same slime. Around him was total darkness, but only briefly: a bright light appeared beside him after a few seconds, revealing a small chamber and, crunching under his boots, the bones of various small creatures.
No relaxing from here on.
He looked up and studied the many tunnels branching off in different directions. One caught his attention immediately: the chips in its stone were unnaturally smooth, and a trail of bones led toward it.
Nagini had spent her past life as a human, which meant dampness and total darkness produced the opposite effect on her from what they would on a natural snake.
"Frightened yet?" Severus asked, noticing how she had retreated under his sweater.
"I am not frightened. I just."
"There is nothing wrong with it. No need to hide it."
"Why are you not frightened?" She poked her head out and looked into his eyes.
"I suppose I am used to it. I have seen worse, and what exactly is there to fear here? If I simply wanted the basilisk dead, I could manage that in under a minute. But I cannot damage its organs. I need them intact for two potions." He put on a pair of black gloves, settled his hand on the sword's hilt, and moved toward the tunnel.
With each turn, moving through a floor littered with bones and past walls marked by old scratch-gouges, Nagini's unease deepened. She could feel something ahead, pressing down on her: the weight of a creature far beyond her. A basilisk was no ordinary snake. It was a King of Snakes, and the instinct to flee was hardwired into any snake that sensed one nearby. The fact that she did not bolt and did not hide entirely already, in Severus's quiet estimation, said something about her.
Finally, rounding another bend, he saw it: at the far end of the passage, a smooth wall from which a massive rounded steel door protruded. Its hinges were shaped like the intertwined tails of seven snakes, welded to the door from the same material. The snakes themselves were not decoration. They served as the latch, their fangs arranged at equal intervals in a circle.
Severus approached the thick door, looked thoughtfully at the bare wall to the right, and sighed.
I have never understood people like this. Enchantments piled on the door, and the walls left completely bare. I gave Salazar's descendant too much credit. Like his ancestor, still an idiot. He touched the point where Nagini had been resting, and a moment later her head emerged from under his clothes, looking around in bewilderment until her gaze settled on him.
"All this time. you were blocking it?!" She narrowed her eyes. Severus nodded, smiling calmly, and felt a rather pointed tingling at his waist.
"You absolute sadist! Do you have any idea what I went through?! I nearly lost my mind! It was. it was." A small, strangled sound. "It was terrible!"
"You wanted to come, and if I had kept the barrier up from the start, the moment I lost concentration during the fight you would have either passed out or lost your mind entirely. So calm down." He reached out and stroked her head, though she kept trying to dodge. "I am sorry I did not warn you."
"You forgot?!" The tingling at his waist intensified.
"I forgot. Open the door. The sooner we are done, the sooner we can be back on the surface. Warm bed. Soft pillow. Do you not want that?"
"The serpent is a tempter."
"Hearing it from the snake."
"Hmm!" She turned away, stared at the door, and hissed. "Open!"
A snake crawled out from the loop running around the door's frame and moved slowly around its edge, releasing each latch in turn, until it completed the full circle and returned to its place. The door began, slowly, to open.
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