Chapter 30: Basilisk Hunt. Part 2. Evolution
The Chamber of Secrets opened into a dim but fairly spacious room, bathed in greenish swamp-light, with rows of snake statues standing on either side of a stone path. Severus looked around with mild interest, one hand resting on the sword's hilt.
Even with the perception-enhancing spell running, he could not pinpoint the basilisk's exact location. The feeling of being watched prickled at him, faintly.
Hidden in the snake's mouth.
The moment the words surfaced in his memory, he stopped, turned, walked back to the start of the path, and began checking the statues' mouths one by one.
Nearly ten minutes later, he stood before the last one, quiet disappointment settling in. He found himself in front of a carved stone face: a man with a long beard and matching long hair, set into a massive rock. A thin sheet of water cascaded down its surface. The mouth was unnaturally wide, which was suspicious enough that Severus stayed ten meters back.
"That is where it nests."
"Be careful."
"Oh. So you have forgiven me already?"
"If you die, who feeds me and talks to me?"
"A compelling argument." Under Nagini's puzzled look, a fireball formed in his hand.
BOOM.
Less than a second later, a furious hiss tore through the air, nearly enough to knock Nagini senseless. Severus felt nothing except a faint, rising interest. The basilisk did not make him wait: it shot from the wreckage like an arrow, jaws wide, and crossed the distance between them in a heartbeat. But he had already cast a speeding charm on himself and, with a light breeze, sidestepped effortlessly, finally getting a proper look at it.
It was fifteen meters long. It was a poisonous green, as thick as a pillar. Its yellow eyes with their vertical pupils radiated a physically crushing presence, and its fangs dripped venom that melted the stone floor where it landed. Any reasonable person would have felt genuine horror.
"Is that all?" Severus stared directly into its eyes, a trace of irritation in his voice. "Of all the creatures I have faced. Are you mocking me? And this is a basilisk? At this rate, a chicken could be called a phoenix."
Even the creature seemed thrown. It blinked at him, clearly trying to work out why he was not turning to stone and why it appeared to be insulting it. Basilisks were intelligent. It understood perfectly well when it was being disrespected, and that understanding reignited its fury. With a roar that was more hiss than anything else, it lunged again. Again he moved aside without much trouble. Then, before he had time to recover, its tail whipped toward his face.
He did not try to block it. Blocking that tail would have been idiotic: he would have been sent flying like a piece of parchment in a gale. Instead, he redirected it. He planted himself on his right leg and angled the sword so the tail would ride along the flat of the blade and smash into the stone floor, driving him back a couple of feet.
The basilisk went still. Severus seized the moment: he leapt onto its body and carved several deep wounds into the tough hide. Blood poured freely. The basilisk convulsed with fury, twisting sharply to strike him, but he was already off its back, leaving one more wound as he cleared it.
He landed on the stone and stood there, studying it.
Tough hide. It traded size for these: armor and poison instead of raw muscle. Speed went up, brute strength went down, but that venom makes up for it almost entirely. I made a mistake at the start, judging by appearance. He looked up at the enormous snake bearing down on him and smiled slightly, and the runes on the blade lit up. "All right. I have measured us both well enough. Consider this my apology for underestimating you."
The jaws snapped shut on the precise spot where he had been standing. The basilisk blinked in confusion.
Hesssss?
Then it hissed in pain as countless wounds opened across its body simultaneously, and it began to writhe and thrash while blood spread further and further across the floor.
From a distance, Severus watched the sword slowly begin to come apart.
It took me two seconds with the simplest runework. Unfortunate. I'm going to be searching for a decent sword for a long time now. He pressed one hand to his lower back with a quiet grimace. "And my back is going to be aching for a week." He watched the basilisk's movements grow slower, its hissing quieter. "I'm sorry for the pain. But I need you alive."
Ten minutes later, the creature finally stopped moving, barely clinging to life from blood loss.
"I've never enjoyed hurting animals," Severus said, reaching out to touch the basilisk's forehead and pressing a small seal there. "Stop hiding. Time for some treatment." He tapped Nagini on the head as she peered from under his collar, then withdrew his hand from the basilisk.
"You defeated something like that with just a sword." Nagini stared at him. "Are you actually human?"
"Of course I am. Unlike most wizards, who only develop their magic, I've also trained my body and learned the sword. When you're human again, I can teach you."
She had been about to agree, but then she thought about the training she had watched him go through and the sheer weight of what he endured, and her enthusiasm evaporated. Before she could answer, his next action made her freeze, and then horror came into her eyes and she buried herself under his clothes as blood ran freely down the indifferent basilisk's face.
"Why are you doing that?!"
"For you. You will have to eat them."
"I am not eating its eyes."
"You will."
"I will not."
"You will."
"I will not!"
"You will, you will," Severus sang, in a tone that was somehow far too gentle, and Nagini shuddered harder. She stared out at his smiling, blood-smeared face with genuine horror.
"NOOO."
An hour later, two snakes lay on the floor. The first had been reduced to bare bones during that hour, while the second looked like an overinflated balloon, eyes squeezed tightly shut, a star-shaped pattern gleaming on her forehead.
Rest in peace, basilisk. I will not forget what you gave. Severus clasped his hands together for a moment. Then he tossed the skeleton into his wallet and turned to Nagini. "The evolution is nearly complete. That is the good news." He stepped closer, cut his finger, and let blood fall onto the seal.
In the next moment she was swallowed by bright light, accompanied by a sound like something cracking under pressure. It lasted a minute, and when the light faded, a ten-meter snake lay before him, half the basilisk's thickness. Her coloring had changed too: the greenish-brown was gone, replaced by pale green with hints of brighter yellow and green running through it.
"You should no longer be in danger of memory loss, though your snake instincts have also intensified. I just hope I can still locate the last three ingredients." He extended his hand with a warm smile, and she lowered her head into it, which surprised him. "Congratulations. Successful evolution."
"Thank you. But I have only gotten larger, and there is this strange feeling." She paused. "Why can I sense your emotions?"
Basilisks could live several thousand years with ease, and through the absorbed bloodline, Nagini's lifespan had increased by the same order of magnitude. Her voice was gentler now, and sounded younger, as though years had been quietly returned to her.
"Do you know what a familiar is?"
"I have never heard the term."
"A familiar is a creature that forms a bond with a wizard. A connection forms between them as a result."
"A connection?"
"I can understand you without the artifact, feel your emotions, and know where you are even if you went to the other side of the world. You can do the same." Clearly, he felt her confusion through the link and smiled. "Do not worry. You can cancel it at any time."
Only then did a wave of discontent come through.
"I see. Convenient for you, naturally, since you will not have to risk carrying that artifact around." She narrowed her eyes. "But why can I not feel your emotions?"
"I closed my mind."
"So you can read mine, but I cannot read yours?!"
"It's not that I don't trust you. I simply don't let other people see my emotions. Over the past three months you should have realized I've never put on an act with you, and I'm not about to start." Before his eyes, Nagini shrank back to her usual size.
"All right." The honesty of it made her feel oddly exposed, and she slipped quickly into Severus's sleeve to hide, as though she'd forgotten about their link entirely.
"Good. Now there is only this." He looked up at the half-ruined stone face the basilisk had crawled out of and began clearing the debris.
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