The corridors were almost silent.
Every few seconds, the roosters crowed somewhere far away — harsh and echoing through the stone like an alarm that couldn't quite stop ringing.
Shya, Talora, Cassian, and Roman moved quickly, their footsteps muffled by the thick rugs and the hum of the wards. Each of them carried a sealed parchment stamped with the Ravenclaw and Slytherin crests — Prefect Authorization: Out After Hours for Faculty Correspondence.
It wasn't strictly true, but Dumbledore's last conversation with them had opened a narrow door of trust.
They were going to use it.
The Headmaster's office glowed with firelight when they entered.
Fawkes turned his head toward them, the faint shimmer of gold around him brighter than usual, as if the phoenix could already sense what was coming.
Dumbledore sat at his desk, looking older than they had ever seen him. Stacks of open books surrounded him — thick tomes about ancient beasts, basilisk venom, and the founders' enchantments.
He looked up and smiled faintly. "Miss Gill. Miss Livanthos. Mr. Black. Mr. Nott. I suspected you might arrive sooner or later."
Cassian inclined his head. "You always say that, sir."
"And I am rarely wrong."
Shya didn't waste time. "You know where the entrance is. You know it can't be opened except by a Parselmouth. You also know exactly who that is."
Dumbledore's eyes flickered, just once, toward the window where the storm was gathering. "I do."
"Then use him," Shya said simply.
McGonagall, who had been standing near the hearth, turned sharply. "Miss Gill, you cannot possibly mean—"
"I mean exactly that," Shya interrupted. "You don't have to send him down there. Just use him to open it. Let the professors go in when the creature is cornered."
Talora stepped forward, her voice soft but firm. "He'll do it anyway, Professor. You know he will. He's Gryffindor's chosen hero. Better to have him do it under your supervision than behind your back."
A flicker of reluctant agreement crossed McGonagall's face. "They do have a point, Albus."
Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. "It is a dangerous path. To expose a child — even briefly — to that magic…"
Cassian's tone was precise, logical. "Then contain it. Wards. Reinforcements. If he opens it, and you're ready, the advantage is yours."
Roman gave a half-smile. "Better than watching Potter go charging in alone with Weasley."
McGonagall made a small sound halfway between a sigh and a snort.
Dumbledore's eyes glimmered, not with amusement but with thought. "Very well. I will… consider it. Thank you for your candor — and for the reminder that cleverness and courage are not always opposites."
Shya gave a small, wry smile. "Glad to help. Now, if you'll excuse us—"
"Stay in the castle," McGonagall warned, voice sharp again. "And if you see those Gryffindor boys before we do, send them to me."
---
They met them by accident.
The group had barely made it down the spiral staircase when the sound of hurried, stumbling footsteps echoed through the hall below.
"Tell me that's not—" Roman began.
"Potter and Weasley," Shya finished, her voice flat with disbelief. "And is that… Lockhart?"
Sure enough, the two Gryffindors appeared, half-dragging, half-shoving a petrified Gilderoy Lockhart between them. The professor's robes were askew, his famous smile replaced by a rictus of pure terror.
"Out of the way!" Harry barked, his face pale but his eyes burning with a frantic, wild intensity.
"Potter, stop!" Cassian commanded, stepping into their path. "What do you think you're doing?"
"We're saving my sister!" Ron shouted, his voice cracking with panic and fury. "She's in the Chamber! Now move!"
"With him as your secret weapon?" Shya retorted, gesturing contemptuously at the trembling professor. "This isn't a rescue, it's a funeral procession."
"We don't have a choice!" Harry yelled, trying to push past. "There's no time! She's going to die!"
Talora moved to block him, her hands raised placatingly. "Harry, listen! The professors know. They have a plan. If you just go to them—"
"NO!" Ron roared, actually shoving Talora back a step. Roman instantly stepped forward, his wand half-raised, a low growl in his throat.
"Touch her again, Weasley, and you'll be petrified before you hit the floor," Roman snarled.
"We don't have time for your meetings and your plans!" Harry spat, his own wand now pointed shakily at their group. "Get out of our way or I'll hex you! I swear I will!"
Cassian didn't flinch, his gaze cold and assessing. "Potter, you're a Parselmouth. That's the key. You don't need to fight the monster, you just need to open the door for the people who can. Be smart about this."
"SHE'S MY SISTER!" Ron screamed, the sound raw and desperate in the stone corridor. Tears of frustration were welling in his eyes. "You don't get it! You're just standing there talking while she's down there with— with it!"
The logic was lost, utterly drowned in a tidal wave of brotherly fear and Gryffindor impulsivity. Harry's expression hardened into something stubborn and fierce.
"Last chance," Harry said, his voice trembling but determined. "Let us pass."
He and Ron tried to brush past them.
It was a mistake.
They didn't even have to coordinate. It was a simultaneous, calculated decision born of shared pragmatism.
"Stupefy!"
"Petrificus Totalus!"
The two jets of red light—one from Shya, one from Cassian—shot across the corridor. Harry and Ron crumpled mid-stride, their bodies locking up and hitting the stone floor with heavy thuds. Lockhart shrieked and threw his hands over his head, sinking to his knees.
"Don't hurt me! I'll—I'll do anything!"
"Oh, shut up," Roman said, stepping over Harry's paralyzed form to loom over the trembling professor. He plucked the wand from Lockhart's limp fingers. "You're not helping."
Talora was already casting a swift Mobilicorpus charm. Harry's body rose stiffly into the air. "We need to get them to the Headmaster. Now."
"This is going to be a fun conversation," Shya muttered, using her own charm to levitate Ron.
Cassian's gaze was cold as he looked down at the two petrified heroes. "It's better than the conversation about their corpses. Roman, bring the fraud."
As a weeping Lockhart was hauled to his feet by a thoroughly unimpressed Roman Nott, the group turned and began moving back the way they came, floating their unconscious classmates ahead of them like macabre parade balloons.
The castle was holding its breath.
Wards hummed along the corridors like a low, metallic heartbeat. Every portrait had gone still. Somewhere deep below, the ground pulsed faintly, as though the castle itself were remembering what slept beneath it.
The doors to the Headmaster's office guarded — yet the instant they approached, the statue leapt aside of its own accord.
The office was unrecognizable.
Every wall shimmered with runes and layered sigils; floating diagrams of the castle's foundation turned slowly in mid-air, each vein of light pulsing with the rhythm of the leylines. Professors stood in a semicircle around Dumbledore's desk — but they weren't alone.
Minister Fudge was there, his green bowler clutched in trembling hands. Behind him, several Hogwarts governors whispered nervously, their faces pale. And flanking the far wall were three figures in long, hooded robes — Unspeakables, their presence quiet and cold. The air around them seemed to ripple with contained force.
McGonagall's eyes snapped to the doorway as the four students entered — and as the two Gryffindor boys and their trembling professor floated behind them, every head turned.
Dumbledore straightened slowly. "Miss Gill," he said, voice soft but grave. "You have brought guests."
"Unwilling ones," Cassian replied.
The students lowered the levitating figures. Harry and Ron stumbled to the floor, wide-eyed. Lockhart collapsed near the hearth, muttering half-formed apologies.
No one moved.
Then McGonagall's voice sliced through the air. "Explain yourselves."
Shya's tone was measured. "We caught them on the way to the second floor. They were armed, determined, and refused to listen. We told them you were already preparing to face the creature. They ignored us. Potter drew his wand."
Cassian added, cool and precise, "We subdued them before they reached the warded corridor. It was that or watch them die."
Talora folded her arms. "They planned to take him with them," she said, nodding toward Lockhart. "They thought he could help."
Roman's laugh was short and scornful. "Help? He can barely tie his own robes."
Lockhart's protest died when Snape's glare fell on him.
Fudge blinked rapidly. "Is that true, Albus? They were actually—? My word—children!"
Dumbledore didn't look at him. His gaze stayed fixed on the two boys. "Mr. Potter. Mr. Weasley. Do you have anything to say before we begin?"
Harry swallowed. "We just wanted to save her."
Ron nodded miserably. "Ginny's my sister—"
"Enough." McGonagall's voice cracked like a whip. "You wanted to save her, and in doing so, you nearly doomed this entire castle."
Fudge turned sharply. "The entire castle?"
"Yes, Minister. The basilisk is bound to six leyline anchors beneath Hogwarts. Within the castle proper, the Founders' protective network weakens its reach. But in its chamber—" she gestured toward the floating map—"it feeds directly. There, it is sovereign. It does not slither. It reigns."
One of the Unspeakables stepped forward. His voice was distorted by the enchantments of his hood, mechanical and low. "The resonance signature confirms it. The creature has absorbed centuries of death-magic. Within the chamber, the walls themselves obey it. No living wizard can survive unshielded entry."
Another Unspeakable's tone was clinical. "It has achieved ascension—predatory symbiosis with the leyline's death aspect. It is, for all intents, king of its domain."
The governors shifted uneasily. One of them — an elderly witch with trembling hands — whispered, "And the children would have gone down there?"
Snape's mouth curled. "Yes. To their deaths."
McGonagall rounded on the boys. "If you can barely handle a classroom duel, what madness made you think you could face a creature that feeds on magic itself? You'd have lasted seconds! Seconds, Mr. Potter! What possessed you?"
Harry opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a gesture that could have silenced thunder. "No, don't answer. You didn't think. That's the entire problem."
Flitwick's small voice rose from beside her, trembling with fury. "You would have opened the very door we've spent hours preparing to contain. Do you even understand that you might have undone every ward keeping that monster from walking through the castle?"
Sprout crossed her arms, her usually kind face hard. "You didn't just risk your lives — you risked every student in this school. All for a stunt that no adult in their right mind would attempt."
McGonagall turned to Lockhart, whose shoulders hunched under the scrutiny. "And as for you—"
But Dumbledore lifted a hand. "That matter is already being handled."
A silvery lynx Patronus burst through the air. The voice of an Auror captain echoed:
"Headmaster Dumbledore, request permission to access your Floo to retrieve the suspect Lockhart."
"Granted," Dumbledore said.
The fireplace erupted in green. Two Aurors stepped out, their faces grim. They seized Lockhart without ceremony; his cries vanished into the fire. The flames died, leaving only silence and the faint smell of ash.
McGonagall exhaled sharply. "We never imagined any student would think that fool capable of anything useful," she said. "You two truly thought he could save you? Another embarrassment."
Snape's voice was like acid. "Idiocy does not become courage simply because it's loud."
The Minister of Magic looked pale. "This… this is catastrophic," he stammered. "A basilisk feeding on leyline energy? If word of this reaches the Prophet—"
Dumbledore's tone was glacial. "Then I suggest, Minister, that you prevent it from doing so."
The room froze. Fudge said nothing more.
Dumbledore turned back to the boys. His eyes, usually bright with humor, were now shards of ice.
"You have defied every instruction, endangered your peers, and placed your faith in vanity and rumor. I have been patient with your recklessness. I have even admired your nerve. But tonight you were not brave. You were arrogant."
He stepped closer, his presence heavy as the air before a storm.
"I am not merely angry," he said softly. "I am disappointed. Profoundly so. The sort of disappointment that cannot be undone by apology."
Harry's vision blurred. Ron's face was blotchy, eyes bright with tears.
McGonagall advanced until she stood eye-to-eye with them.
"Twelve years old," she said in a voice that trembled with fury. "Twelve. And you thought you could succeed where trained wizards and scholars tread carefully. You threatened your classmates, defied direct orders, and ran toward death with your eyes shut. You have humiliated yourselves and every professor who ever believed in you."
One of the governors murmured, "I should think expulsion would be justified."
Dumbledore's voice remained calm. "If they had reached the chamber, it would be."
He turned to the group. "But as they did not, we will punish them with purpose, not vengeance."
Director Wilmot from the Department of Magical Education stepped forward, parchment already in hand.
"Effective immediately," he announced, "their wands will be confiscated and held by Professor McGonagall. They will be permitted to use them only during supervised instruction. They are hereby placed on full academic probation. All Hogsmeade and extracurricular privileges revoked. Mr. Potter is suspended from Quidditch indefinitely. They will serve a full year of detentions under Ministry oversight, and a disciplinary mark will be entered into their permanent records."
He signed the parchment with a flourish and handed it to McGonagall.
"Parents will be notified by dawn."
Ron made a choked sound. Harry's tears finally spilled over. McGonagall's expression softened only enough to keep her voice steady.
"You are not being confined tonight," she said. "You are still needed to open the Chamber when the professors descend. Once that is done, you will be escorted to the disciplinary dorms in the lower dungeons, where you will remain until the end of term."
Snape added, voice like venom. "And may that solitude give you time to think."
Fudge swallowed audibly. "This… this is beyond anything I ever imagined." He turned to Dumbledore, lowering his voice. "You mean to send teachers and Unspeakables into that chamber?"
"Yes," Dumbledore said simply. "We will go tonight."
An Unspeakable approached the desk, gesturing to the leyline map. "Our readings confirm that within the chamber, the creature commands the death-current itself. Its breath carries entropy. Its gaze does not petrify — it erases. The castle's protections weaken at that depth; its architecture was never meant to contain what lies there."
Fudge's face went chalk-white. "So you're saying—"
"That in its chamber," the Unspeakable finished, "it is the ruler. Above, it is caged. Below, it reigns."
No one spoke for a long time.
Then Dumbledore reached for his wand. Fawkes unfurled his wings, light spilling across the room like dawn.
"The council is adjourned," Dumbledore said. "We descend within the hour."
He looked once more at Harry and Ron — two small, trembling figures at the edge of a war they'd never truly understood.
"Heroism without wisdom," he said quietly, "is just self-destruction wearing a smile."
The phoenix's cry rose, fierce and mournful. The firelight flared, painting every face gold — from the terrified Minister to the silent Unspeakables — and then dimmed again into waiting shadow.
Outside, the castle pulsed with life.
Below, something ancient stirred in its throne of stone.
And Hogwarts — half fortress, half tomb — prepared to meet its king.