Chapter 156: Let's Go
The second-floor girls' bathroom was a miserable place. A perpetual, bone-deep dampness clung to the cracked tiles, carrying the faint stench of mildew and stagnant water. The clouded, peeling mirrors along the wall reflected a row of pale, grim faces.
"Harry! Tamara!"
The heavy wooden door of the very last cubicle banged open before the group could even catch their breath. Ron stumbled out. His freckled face was blotchy, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen from obvious, desperate tears. He gripped his battered wand so tightly his knuckles were stark white, his entire frame trembling on the razor edge of a total breakdown.
But as his frantic gaze darted past Tamara's shoulder and landed on the blond figure lingering near the doorway, Ron's raw grief ignited into explosive rage.
"Malfoy?!"
Ron whipped his wand up, leveling the trembling tip straight at Draco's nose. His voice cracked, high and wild with agitation. "You brought him too? Is this what you wanted, Malfoy? You came to watch? Letting a slimy Slytherin come to gloat over Ginny's misfortune?!"
"Shut your mouth, Weasley."
Draco slapped the tip of Ron's wand aside with the back of his hand, his lip curling in deep disgust. Surrounded by the grime, that signature, aristocratic Malfoy arrogance flared back to life. "Do you honestly believe I want to be standing in a place this filthy and foul-smelling? If it weren't for Tamara..."
"Enough."
Harry shoved himself between the two boys, cutting off the brewing duel. He placed a firm hand on Ron's shoulder, his green eyes urgent. "The more wands we have, the better, Ron. We need everyone. Now is not the time to fight each other."
Ron's jaw locked. A muscle ticked violently in his cheek. He kept his furious glare pinned on the Slytherin, but the terrifying reality of Ginny's situation forced his wand arm down. He lowered the wood with a resentful, heavy breath.
Only then did the group notice the figure hovering nervously in the shadows behind Ron.
A round-faced, pudgy boy stepped half a pace forward. Neville Longbottom.
He looked absolutely petrified. His thick fingers were clamped around his struggling toad, Trevor, holding the amphibian to his chest like a shield. His knees practically knocked together, his entire body vibrating with fear, yet he stood his ground, anchoring himself firmly by Ron's side.
"Neville?" Harry blinked, genuinely startled. "What are you doing here?"
"I... I saw Ron running this way," Neville stammered, his voice barely a squeak echoing off the damp tiles. "I thought... well, I thought... Ginny is my friend too. An extra person is always good, right?"
Tamara raised a single, elegant eyebrow.
'Well, look at that,'she mused inwardly, a dark, mocking amusement curling through her thoughts.'This blundering idiot, who routinely manages to detonate his own cauldron in Potions, actually possesses a microscopic shred of courage.'
It was almost cute. But ultimately, utterly useless.
"There is absolutely no time for a touching reunion."
Tamara sliced through the emotional atmosphere with a voice like chilled glass. She shoved Gilderoy Lockhart forward—having kept a firm, threatening grip on the fraud's expensive robes the entire journey—and swept her sharp, calculating gaze across the gloomy bathroom.
"The bloodstains end here."
She pointed a slender finger toward the startling, dark red smears streaked across the grimy floor tiles, stopping abruptly right beneath the central sink. "That means the entrance is right in front of us."
In truth, she could have handled to that specific sink blindfolded. It was her birthright. The grand gateway to Salazar Slytherin's glorious, hidden legacy. The very chamber she had commanded half a century ago.
But for now, the little saint had to play her part.
Tamara made a deliberate show of circling the freestanding sink. She let her fingertips trail lightly over the tarnished copper faucets, her brow furrowed in feigned concentration.
"This fixture... it is indeed quite strange."
She paused perfectly in front of the correct tap, acting as though a sudden detail had just caught her keen eye. She tapped the tarnished metal with her fingernail, producing a sharp clink.
"Look here, Potter."
Tamara turned her head, fixing Harry with an intense, innocent stare. "I've noticed water never actually flows from this specific faucet. And... look closely. There is a snake carved into the copper."
Harry immediately crowded in beside her.
"A snake?" He squinted at the tiny, worn scratch on the side of the tap. Sure enough, beneath the decades of grime, the faint outline of a small, coiled serpent was etched into the metal.
"If I am not mistaken," Tamara murmured, crossing her arms and adopting a perfectly thoughtful, academic posture, "this must be the hidden mechanism left behind by Salazar Slytherin himself."
She let the silence stretch for a heartbeat. "It requires Parseltongue to open."
Every pair of eyes in the damp room instantly snapped to Harry.
Back during the disastrous Duelling Club incident, Tamara had expertly planted the perfect, tragic excuse. She had convinced the entire school that Harry's ability to speak to snakes was simply a lingering soul side effect from surviving the Dark Lord's killing curse as a baby.
Because of her brilliant manipulation, the boys didn't look at Harry with fear or suspicion. Instead, they stared at him with desperate, burning expectation.
"I... I'll try."
Harry swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He leaned closer to the copper tap, staring unblinkingly at the tiny etching. He narrowed his eyes, trying his absolute hardest to imagine the cold metal was a real, living, breathing serpent.
A tense silence hung in the air.
A few seconds later, Harry opened his mouth. A strange, dry, rasping series of hisses spilled from his lips, echoing eerily against the bathroom tiles.
It was Parseltongue.
But to Tamara's refined ears, it was an absolute, unmitigated disaster.
If Salazar Slytherin's original, noble, ancient Parseltongue was the elegant, silken poetry of high society, then the garbage spilling from Harry Potter's mouth was... well.
It sounded like an uneducated bumpkin who had just crawled out of a rural mud pit, shouting at the plumbing with half a hot potato stuffed in his cheeks: 'Hey! Kick the bloody door open for me!'The corner of Tamara's mouth twitched violently. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to maintain her serene expression.'That atrocious accent sounds like a tree snake that hasn't even finished evolving,' she thought, mentally rolling her eyes and violently suppressing the urge to clap her hands over her ears. It was an insult to her heritage.
Yet, no matter how thick and butchered the accent was, the magical command ultimately took effect.
The tarnished copper faucet suddenly flared with a brilliant, blinding white light. It began to spin wildly on its own. A deep, grinding rumble shook the floorboards as the entire sink slowly sank out of sight, stone grinding against stone.
In its place gaped a massive, dark pipe, easily wide enough for a grown man to slide down. A foul, freezing wind rushed up from the black depths, carrying the heavy, suffocating stench of swamp mud and ancient decay.
"Merlin's beard..." Ron breathed, his eyes wide as saucers.
"This is it..." Draco muttered, completely forgetting to maintain his haughty pureblood poise. He leaned forward, peering cautiously into the bottomless black abyss. "The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets."
"Alright."
Tamara turned on her heel, her dark eyes locking onto Gilderoy Lockhart. The man had been quietly, desperately shuffling his expensive boots backward toward the bathroom door.
"Since the way is finally open," Tamara said, her voice dripping with sweet, lethal politeness, "let our esteemed Professor go down first to scout the path."
"Me? No, no, no..."
The dazzling, trademark smile on Lockhart's face completely crumbled into a mask of sheer panic. He waved his manicured hands frantically in the air. "Children, please! Since we've successfully located the entrance, I truly think we should go back and inform Professor Dumbledore... yes! Exactly! This is for everyone's safety! I'll go fetch him right now—"
He spun around, his golden robes flaring, and bolted for the exit.
Tamara's lips curled into a vicious sneer. She didn't even blink. She simply raised her wand, aiming directly between the coward's shoulder blades.
"Flipendo!"
A crackling bolt of red light erupted from her wand tip, striking Lockhart squarely in the back with the force of a battering ram.
"Aaaahhh!!!"
The internationally famous Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor let out an undignified, high-pitched shriek. His feet left the floor entirely. He flew backward through the air in a tangle of limbs and golden fabric, plunging headfirst into the gaping maw of the massive pipe.
A series of wet, grating friction sounds echoed up the chute, accompanied by his rapidly fading screams, until Lockhart was completely swallowed by the darkness below.
The bathroom fell dead silent.
Ron and Neville stood frozen, staring at Tamara with their mouths hanging open, utterly dumbfounded by the sheer ruthlessness of the pretty, top-scoring girl.
"He... he slid down," Harry noted dryly, breaking the heavy silence.
"Indeed," Tamara replied smoothly, brushing a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. "It seems there are no immediate traps below."
She stowed her wand back into her robes with the casual grace of someone who had just tossed out a bag of rotting trash.
Yet, after committing such a blatant act of violence against a teacher, Tamara didn't immediately move toward the pipe. Instead, she stood perfectly still in the center of the room. She tilted her head slightly, her eyes narrowing as if bracing herself for an impact.
According to her miserable, daily experience, her skull should have been ringing right now. That perky, nauseatingly cheerful electronic voice should have been screaming in her ears, followed instantly by a crippling, punitive electric shock to her nervous system, warning her that 'Harming Hogwarts staff members is strictly forbidden!'
One second passed.
Two seconds.
Her mind remained blissfully, beautifully silent. There was no spark. No pain. No annoying pop-up window in her vision.
The corner of Tamara's mouth curled into a slow, deeply satisfied sneer.
It seemed that the brutal, agonizing potion she had consumed last night had done far more than just purge the diary's remnant soul. It had effectively poisoned the Virtue System into absolute silence.
To resist the lethal toxicity of the Soul Separation Potion, the system had been forced to initiate an emergency Biological Hibernation Mode just to keep her host body alive.
Right now, the parasitic entity was entirely consumed with repairing the corrosive, soul-damaging aftereffects of the brew. It simply couldn't spare a single ounce of energy to run its nauseating, self-righteous moral supervision.
'Now, that is more like it,' Tamara thought, a dark, euphoric thrill washing over her.
Even if this reprieve was only temporary, the sensation was divine. This long-lost feeling of absolute freedom—of standing unburdened by those glowing, holy shackles—was sweeter and far more intoxicating than the darkest of Black Magic.
"Let's go."
She strode toward the edge of the dark opening. But just as she placed her hands on the rim of the sink to vault herself inside, she suddenly froze. She slowly turned her head, her gaze locking onto Neville Longbottom.
A faint, cold trace of absolute wariness flashed through her pitch-black eyes.
She remembered. She remembered it very, very clearly.
In her previous life, during the burning ruins of the Battle of Hogwarts, it was this exact, seemingly clumsy, pathetic Longbottom boy who had pulled the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat. It was him who had swung that cursed goblin silver and severed the head of her precious Nagini.
True, the creature lurking down in the Chamber right now was a Basilisk, not Nagini.
But Tamara Riddle was not a woman who took chances. She would never, under any circumstances, allow someone with a proven, historical snake-slaying attribute to get anywhere near her pets.
What if this bumbling idiot suddenly pulled a magical broadsword out of thin air and hacked her beautiful, thousand-year-old Basilisk to pieces?
That serpent was her property!
"Longbottom," Tamara commanded, her voice suddenly dropping in temperature.
"Y-yes!" Neville jumped out of his skin, his hands clamping down so hard he nearly squeezed poor Trevor to death.
"You will stay here."
"Eh?" Neville blinked, his round face falling in crestfallen confusion. "But... but I want to help Ginny..."
"We need someone to guard the entrance," Tamara interrupted smoothly, effortlessly weaving a web of vital importance around the lie.
She stepped closer, fixing him with an intense, unquestionable stare. "Think about it, Neville. If the other Professors arrive, or worse, if the culprit tries to escape back up through this pipe while we are fighting below, someone must be here to sound the alarm immediately. This task is absolutely crucial to our survival. Do you understand?"
"Cr-crucial?"
Looking at the grave, deeply serious expression on the beautiful girl's face, Neville suddenly felt the immense weight of responsibility settle onto his shoulders. It felt as heavy as a mountain, but he puffed out his chest.
"I understand! I'll guard this place, Tamara! I swear, no one is getting past me!"
"Very good."
'One hidden danger smoothly resolved,' Tamara thought, a dark smirk ghosting across her mind.
She nodded at the boy in deep, fake satisfaction, then turned her back on him. She looked at Harry, Ron, and Draco, gesturing toward the foul-smelling abyss.
"Go down."
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