The Chamber was exactly as he had left it in June.
The basilisk remains after the butchering that had no value still occupied most of it, — some of the bones and the damaged parts of desiccated skin of something that had been sixty-three feet long and nine hundred years old, parts of the skeleton settled into the shallow water with the particular permanence of something that had always been there and had simply stopped pretending otherwise.
He moved through it carefully, with a light source in his left hand and his wand in his right and the Goblin knife at his belt. The smell was different from June — less immediate, the specific smell of the basilisk's death replaced by the smell of stone and standing water and great age. The Chamber itself was unchanged: the serpentine columns, the carved faces of serpents, the quality of somewhere that had been built to last and had.
He searched it thoroughly.
He found nothing.
Not nothing literally — the Chamber contained the bones, and the shed skin he had noted in June and which was worth collecting now that he had a better understanding of its value, and in the alcoves behind the statue's base he found the accumulated evidence of Tom Riddle's occupations of this space over two school years: a notebook in a leather cover, water-damaged but legible; a set of runic notations on the stone wall above one alcove, worked in chalk that had survived the damp through an enchantment; and three small objects in a carved wooden box that appeared to be personal effects of some kind.
He examined all of these with careful attention.
The notebook was Riddle's — his handwriting, his specific voice, the voice from the diary. It covered the academic year before the diary had been activated, the observations of a student who had been simultaneously brilliant and moving toward something dark with the focused intention of someone who had decided and was implementing. Ron read it in the Chamber, standing at the statue's base, and felt the unsettling clarity of reading someone's private thoughts.
He photographed every page. Then he put the notebook in his bag.
The runic notations were interesting — a working he didn't fully recognize, related to concealment but not the standard forms. He photographed those too and spent twenty minutes attempting to read them, getting approximately sixty percent of it before deciding the rest needed the Runes texts he had at school.
The three objects in the box were not Horcruxes. He could tell this immediately — they had no wrongness, no hollowness, no magnetic push. They were personal items: a pocket watch that had stopped; a ring with no stone, plain silver, too small for an adult finger; a folded letter he did not read because it was not his to read and whatever it had meant to whoever had written it had nothing to do with what he was doing here.
He left the letter. He took the pocket watch and the ring — not because they were significant but because leaving personal items in the Chamber seemed wrong in a way he could not fully articulate.
He photographed the Chamber before he left. The bones, the columns, the carved faces. The alcove where Riddle had worked. The writing on the wall.
Then he went back up through the pipes, sealed the entrance behind him with the Parseltongue phrase Harry had given him for close, and walked back to his dormitory with his bag full of things and with the satisfaction of someone who had closed a door properly.
He had been in the Chamber twice now and both times it had given him more than he had expected. In June it had given him the basilisk, which had given him the venom and the hide and the financial foundation for everything that had followed. Now it had given him the notebook and the notations and the three personal effects and the Parseltongue confirmation that the sealed sections of wall were genuine sealed sections and not simply irregular stonework.
He had found three of them. Door-shaped indentations, as he had suspected from the June visit — set into the serpentine walls at intervals, unmarked except that the stone had been placed there rather than formed there. He had stood in front of each one and said, in the best approximation he could manage of the Parseltongue open, which was to say he had said it in his own mouth which could not produce the sounds the way Harry's could and which therefore produced something that was more like an attempt at the sounds than the sounds themselves.
None of them had opened.
This was expected. Parseltongue was not a language that could be approximated — the magical element of it was in the speaker's inherited ability, not in the phonology of the sounds. What he had was the ability to recognise it, not to use it. If these doors needed a Parselmouth, he would need Harry.
He had made notes on each door's location and the quality of the magical signature. He would come back with Harry when the time was right.
The shed basilisk skin had filled most of the bag's secondary compartment and had required the Featherlight Charm to make the weight manageable. He had collected approximately twelve feet of it — the densest sections, from the middle of the body where the scales were largest, the material that would be most useful for enchantment substrates. Bill had said, in Egypt, that shed basilisk skin had properties different from the fresh hide: less protective but more receptive, the magical signature subtler, easier to work with for purposes that required finesse rather than resistance.
He was looking forward to working with it. He did not know yet exactly what he would make, but the material had been waiting in the Chamber since June and he had been accumulating the knowledge to use it properly, and the two things coming together had the quality of a preparation meeting its moment.
He stopped in the corridor outside the second-floor bathroom and looked at the door.
The entrance was here, behind the sinks, a hundred and twenty feet below the floor he was standing on. The basilisk bones were down there. The notebook was in his bag. The notations were photographed. The personal effects were in his trunk.
He had taken what needed taking and left what needed leaving and sealed the door behind him.
There was, he reflected, a particular discipline in knowing which things to take and which things to leave. He had not read Riddle's letter because it was not his to read. He had taken the notebook because it contained information about how Voldemort thought and moved toward darkness, and that information had operational value. The pocket watch and the plain ring he had taken because leaving personal effects in the Chamber felt like a small abandonment, and he was not the kind of person who abandoned small things even when no one was watching.
These were the same principles he had been operating on since June. They were still the right ones.
He went back to the dormitory. Harry was asleep. Neville was asleep. The room had the quality of a Sunday morning not yet begun.
He put the bag in the trunk, locked it, and climbed into bed.