"Tonks, check the sinks," he instructed, his gut telling him that he was close; his cousin waved her wand in response, casting a high-level detection charm on them.
"Nothing Harry," the witch replied, with a minor frown.
...
"That doesn't make sense," he vocally complained, his gut still telling him that he was right, as he stepped forward, casting his own detection charm over the sinks, but still found nothing.
Not willing to give up, he went over to the sinks in person to inspect them, looking for anything out of place before he did find something. It was a small silver snake imprinted on one of the taps. It was in the style of a Slytherin S, bringing back memories of the enchanted locket his godfather had found.
"Tonks, I found something," waving his cousin over, who looked over the tap herself. "See it?" he asked, pointing to the snake with his hand and noticing his cousin's confused expression.
"What? It's a plain old tap Harry," Tonks voiced, looking confused.
"Really? You can't see a snake engraved on this tap?" he asked carefully, as the serpent started to move around the tap, seemingly trying to hide itself. His mind had already come up with several reasons why Tonks couldn't see it.
"Maybe an extremely powerful notice me not charm is at work here?" he thought, before he remembered that that particular charm distorted and redirected one's line of sight but did nothing to block a physical sense such as touch. He grabbed Tonks' hand, noticing how soft and silky it was. "Close your eyes," he said quietly, as he directed her hand over to the engraved snake. "Do you feel it beneath your fingers?"
"Yeah, it's moving," she exclaimed in surprise, her eyes opening and looking at the tap and then immediately looking back at him in confusion. "Harry, what are you doing in the girls' bathroom? Why are you here and why are you holding my hand?" the puff suddenly asked, letting go of his hand before walking towards the bathroom doors to leave.
Confusion ran through his mind at Tonks' sudden remarks. 'What the fuck?' One minute she was feeling the engraved snake; now she's acting confused and walking out of the room. "Tonks, stop!" he ordered, after realizing it was the work of spells.
"Harry? What are you doing in the girls' bathroom?" her features looking confused, asking the same question like she was on a recording, like she was struggling against something. "I really need to go; I've got homework to do," before moving again towards the door.
'Slytherin, you sneaky bastard,' he mentally applauded and spat simultaneously, realizing the work of potent compulsion and memory charms he had read about during his study of the mind arts. 'I need to learn some compulsion and memory charms. Merlin do they seem awfully useful at the moment' he noted.
Reaching for her hand and pulling her chin down so that their eyes met, his hands started to run through her silky pink hair in a comforting fashion, his emerald green eyes meeting her own currently brown ones. "Tonks, a memory charm and compulsion charm have been placed on you; it's making you want to leave this room," he explained, holding her gaze, sensing her confusion.
"Fight it, look deep within your mind," his cousin's face showed her strain as she started fighting the spells. Several long minutes passed as he watched the battle unfold in her brown eyes, feeling her emotions vacillate thanks to his budding legilimency and empathic skills.
"What the fuck?!" she finally exclaimed after several intense minutes of struggle, before almost collapsing to the floor from mental exhaustion.
Catching his cousin in his arms as she fell, he softened her ungraceful fall, holding her close. "You ok?" he asked carefully, while kneeling down with her, her head in the crook of his shoulder. "Do you remember now?" he asked, noticing her substantial and exquisite chest rising and falling, before he dismissed the primal attraction, choosing to instead focus on his cousin's eyes and her mental well-being as he tried to read her emotions.
"Yeah, I'm fine Harry," she said quietly while still breathing heavily. "But I feel like an idiot after all that," she admitted, looking up at him with a half-hearted smile.
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Slytherin was known to be a cunning bastard," he reassured her with his own genuine smile. "We know the truth now; this is no normal tap. Now stay here," already having a theory that because he was a parselmouth he was purposely immune to the enchantments. Looking down at the engraved snake, it suddenly stopped moving under his gaze.
"Another speaker we have?" it hissed back in joy, its fork-like metal tongue shooting out of its mouth.
He focused on the snake to ground his gift and ensure he spoke correctly. "Indeed, I am a speaker," he hissed back, confirming his ability to the metal snake on the tap. Thinking over the snake's choice in words, he asked his own question, wanting to confirm the snake's statement and wanting to get an idea of the snake's intellect. "There is another speaker?"
"Yesss sspeaker," it confirmed, whilst nodding its metal head.
"What can you tell me of this other speaker?" he hissed, finding the magical language on his tongue to be an enjoyable experience and deciding to interrogate the little snake for more information.
"She rarely visits anymore, but she is smaller than you are speaker and has red hair," the snake hissed back. "That is all I can tell you speaker."
"That's fine," he reassured with a smile, already knowing that this information was more than enough. After all, there were only a couple of red-haired girls in the school, before asking his next question. "I seek the Chamber of Secrets."
"Then just speak 'open' and the Chamber entrance will appear," the snake hissed back, almost smiling.
He looked over at his cousin who was watching him with interest. "Get ready," he voiced before hissing at the tap. "Open." Watching with amazement, the sink folded in on itself before sinking into the floor. It revealed a dark hole in the floor, leading deep beneath the castle it seemed, as cold damp air erupted from the opening, making him gag and reflexively cast an air-refreshing charm.
"We found it Harry," Tonks expressed in awe, looking down the opening.
"We have," he quickly agreed with his own smile, bending down to examine the hole, noticing how dirty it was with mould and grime. "Close," he hissed, which sealed the chamber back up.
"We're not going to go down there?" Tonks asked in genuine surprise.
"We need an assured way to get back out first my dear. There's also a basilisk down there; so it seems a tad foolish to rush in. Besides, the snake on the tap gave us some useful information," he offered back, standing up. "We should go now and talk about this in private somewhere else," his gut telling him to leave after already spending so long in the bathroom.
"The Meeting Place?" Tonks asked back, her eyes looking at the sink.
"Sounds good," he quickly agreed, leaving the bathroom before they were detected.
Halfway to the meeting room, Tonks suddenly spoke up. "What did it say?" she asked.
"It gave me a basic physical description of the heiress," he offered back with a pleased smile, as Tonks froze mid-step, clearly trying to process this news.
"It's a girl?" Tonks pressed.
"Indeed," he confirmed with a sharp nod of his head. "And she has red hair and is shorter than me, so she's probably a young student, maybe a first or second year, maybe third year at the most. How many red-haired girls do you know in that age range?" he asked with a cunning and satisfied smile.
"Only a couple," she answered back with her own smile. "And both of them are in Gryffindor, Ginny Weasley and Sally-Anne Perks."
As soon as they entered the hidden rooms, he collapsed on the leather sofa, looking over at his cousin. "You know what I find particularly funny? We are just students and we've made more progress in finding the Chamber in less than a year than countless headmasters and headmistresses have done in centuries," he voiced with a smug smile. "This is going to look amazing on your application to join the Aurors, you know."
"Don't you have a detention tonight?" Tonks asked suddenly, out of the blue.
...
if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :
p atreon.com/loveran