What Happened in the Chamber

The amount of people was overwhelming. Ron had forgotten what it felt like to be consumed with voices and faces and sounds. He could feel the pressure of bodies around him, feel the heat. After all those months with only Harry and Hermione, he had forgotten what it was like to be around other people. The thought was overpowering and uncomfortable at the same time.

Harry had just disappeared with Luna to the Ravenclaw Tower, to find the diadem. Ron could feel a crushing sense of dread that was building up right behind his face. They had no leads, nothing to go off of. Even if Luna showed Harry what the diadem looked like, how would it bring the three of them any closer to finding the real thing? He shuddered at the thought of how big the castle was, how many secret rooms and hiding places it could provide.

"We have to do something, we can't just stand here," Hermione said, shifting anxiously from one foot to another. She was looking around the room, as if somewhere, it would provide her an answer she so desperately needed.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking," Ron said impatiently, wringing his hands trying to think of something. They had the cup but they had lost the sword to that conniving little goblin. Ron grimaced as the image of Griphook darting away, the silver cross clutched tightly in his fist, swam through his mind. They had depended so much on that sword; it had been their one, infallible tool.

"Well I suppose we could…" Hermione said, but her voice died in her throat as she stared angrily at a spot over Ron's left shoulder. He turned around slightly to see what the object of her disdain was.

Lavender.

She was standing a few feet away from them, trying vainly through the crowd of students to catch Ron's eye. He quickly turned back around, as eager to not look at her as she was to look at him. The sight of her made him cringe a little; she brought back terrible memories.

He instead looked at Hermione, who had her arms crossed, glaring at Lavender. His heart skipped a few beats as he watched her intense gaze, her chin tilted up a little. He was very glad that she was devoting all of her energy into glaring at Lavender, because he was not being very subtle about looking at her. He couldn't help it. His mind had grown strangely blank and fuzzy, and the room seemed to become uncomfortably hot. He remembered the first time he had ever felt this way. It had been the very end of their second year, right after she had woken up from being Petrified. He remembered how his heart had stopped beating as he looked across the table at her, and he realized that he had missed her, he had missed how she…

Hang on.

Petrified. Petrified.

"Hermione!" he said loudly, his excitement causing his voice to raise several octaves. She jumped a little, startling out of her reverie. She turned a kinder eye to him, lowering her chin and uncrossing her arms.

"The bathroom!" he said excitedly, and he waited for her to understand. Her expression remained blank, so he gesticulated wildly.

"The Chamber of Secrets! It has the basilisk, and…"

"The venom will destroy the Horcrux!" Hermione cried, finishing his sentence. Her eyes widened at the newfound brilliance of this plan. She threw her arms around him for a moment, hugging him tightly.

"It's perfect! Why didn't I think of it before? Come on, let's go," she said, seizing his hand and pulling him through the several students congregated in the room. Ron could feel Lavender's eyes burning holes in his back.

"Wait," she said when they had reached the door. She paused for a moment, her fingers a few inches from the door, "When Harry gets back he won't know where we are," she said, and Ron understood. He turned to the rest of the room and cleared his throat.

"Oi!" he shouted over the din. The effect was almost instantaneous; the silence billowed over the high ceiling, almost as loud as the chatter had been. Everyone had turned to face the two of them; Ron could feel what seemed to be hundreds of eyes on him.

"We're going to the bathroom," he said, and immediately regretted it. He could have said "We're going to the Chamber of Secrets," but the nerves of having so much concentrated attention got to him. He felt his ears flame up as several people traded confused expressions, Ginny scrunched up her nose in a disgusted sort of way, and Fred and George shook with suppressed laughter.

"Just…just tell Harry where we are?" Hermione asked the room, her voice very small and quiet. And then she pulled Ron out of the Room of Requirement, possibly to save him the embarrassment.

Ron had never fully appreciated how handy the Invisibility Cloak had been until now, when they did not have it. Every shadow was an enemy and their footsteps were terribly loud, loud enough to wake the entire castle, surely. Ron thought Hermione was thinking the same thing; she was holding his hand in a vise-like grip. Not that he minded, of course.

Mercifully, they got to the second floor bathroom without detection. Ron pushed open the door, the "Out-Of-Order" sign strangely nostalgic. It was silent; the high ceilings seemed to echo with foreboding whispers. Again, Ron thought Hermione must be feeling the same way; she shivered a little and moved slightly closer to him.

"Makes you almost miss Myrtle, eh?" he said with false bravado. Something like a smile flickered across Hermione's lips, but it was gone before he could properly look at it.

"What did you do last time?" she asked, standing in the middle of the room.

Ron walked to the sinks, bending down at each one, checking for the one with the carved snakes. When he stood up, he beckoned to Hermione, who was still standing it the center of the room, her arms wrapped around herself.

"How do you open it?" she asked in a hushed whisper, leaning forward slightly to look at the sink. Ron caught a faint whiff of her hair and closed his eyes momentarily. Vanilla and summer. He opened his eyes again, forcing himself to concentrate. Now was definitely not the time.

"You use Parseltongue," Ron said, trying to ignore the fact that his voice had come out sounding a little strangled.

Hermione gave him a confused look. "But neither of us speak it, so how can we get in?" She was biting her lower lip, trying to work the problem out. Ron wished she'd stop doing that; it was making it very hard for him to focus.

"I can try it," he heard himself say. He had not planned on saying this; he wondered what on earth had possessed him to do it.

Hermione gave him a doubtful look. "I don't think Parseltongue is something you can learn, it's a gift, something inherent," she said quietly, as if she did not want to hurt his feelings for telling him this.

Ron shrugged. "No harm in trying, is there?" he said, taking a step closer to the sink. He wondered why he was doing this; Hermione was right. He could try all night, but he could not speak Parseltongue. All he would do was look like an idiot in front of her.

He closed his eyes, trying to picture the night he broke the locket with Harry. Immediately, the image of Hermione wrapped around his best friend came into focus, but he pushed them away, his heart still aching at the sight of it. He tried to remember the sounds Harry had made, the ones that had opened the locket.

He opened his mouth, his eyes still closed, and let whatever sound came to his tongue first drip off into the silent air of the Chamber. Ron's ears turned red at the odd sound of it.

He turned to Hermione, who shook her head. "English…er, I think," she said, and Ron felt his ears turn even redder. Why was he embarrassing himself in front of her?

He tried again, and then a third time. The fourth, something strange and wonderful happened. He felt the sounds roll out of his mouth, curling and hissing in front of him, lasting much longer than he could have done.

"You did it!" Hermione cried over the loud sounds of the opening chamber. "You did it, Ron!" she said, and he laughed weakly.

They stood in front of the dark opening. It seemed much smaller now, when he had been thirteen the tunnel had seemed huge and imposing. It would be a tighter fit.

"I'll go first," Ron offered, and Hermione thanked him with a smile. Sitting on the ledge, he pushed off and started to plummeted several feet. He could hear Hermione somewhere behind him, her screams muffled. Ron smiled; he knew she was covering her mouth, trying to sound braver.

The tunnel ended and Ron landed ungracefully, his legs collapsing under him. Pulling himself up, he found Hermione, who managed to stay upright. Taking her hand, he led her through the chamber, making a wide birth around the snake skin.

At the end of the Chamber, Ron needed to use Parseltongue again. It only took one go this time, and Ron wondered if it was because of the small, soft hand firmly in his.

The corpse of the basilisk was frightening, even in death. Hermione raised her wand, silently charming several of the long, yellow teeth to break free of the decaying mouth and fall at their feet. Ron bent down and took one; it was huge, twice the size of his hands.

"Now what do we do?" Hermione asked, her quiet voice still echoing in the grimy, dark chamber.

"We have to stab it," Ron said, and he handed her the fang. "You do it," he said, and she shrank back a little.

"This was your idea, you should do it," she said, her voice shaking.

"But you haven't done one yet," he told her, and she nodded in agreement.

"Okay, I'll do it. What's going to happen?" she asked him, and he could hear the fear she was trying to force out of her voice.

Ron's pulse sped up, his heart beating uncomfortably against his chest. He did not want to tell her what had happened to him when he had destroyed the locket. Back in the bathroom, the vision of what had happened still haunted him; he did not know what recounting it would do.

"I don't know," he said truthfully. "I reckon it will put up a fight though. Just don't let it…don't let it get to you," he said, and she looked into his eyes. He tried to return the gaze openly and blankly.

Hermione knelt down on the tile floor, the fang in one hand. She took out the cup from her bag and held it in the other hand. At first, he thought it was her hands that were trembling, but then he realized it was the cup itself. Like the locket, the object seemed to know the end was near.

Ron knelt down as well, trying to comfort her as much as he could. Hermione raised the fang, ready to plunge it into the center of the cup.

"Please, don't," said a voice. Ron looked at Hermione, and she looked at him, both mirroring identical confused expressions. Neither of them had issued a sound.

A boy materialized in front of them. He seemed to be made out of the shadows of the room itself, dark and half in focus. He was no older than eleven, with a dark hair that sharply contrasted deathly pale skin. He was wearing an ill-fitting sweater that was too long in the sleeves and too short in the torso, and his trousers ended three inches above his socks. His appearance would have been pathetic if it weren't for his face. There was no emotion on the startlingly handsome countenance.

"W-what?" Hermione asked the boy, and the fang dropped out of her slack hands. The cup too hit the ground with a loud clatter. Ron picked up the fang and handed it to her.

"Don't listen to him. You have to stab it, don't let him talk to you," Ron said firmly, but it did not appear as though Hermione had heard a word he had said. Her eyes were fixed on the little boy in front of her.

"If you do it, if you stab it, you'll kill me," the boy said. His voice was loud and sharp, though it too showed no emotion. It made the hairs on the back of Ron's neck stand up.

"You can't do it," the boy said, and he was speaking only to Hermione, it was as though Ron did not exist. "As soon as the fang touches that cup, I die. I'm only eleven years old…please. Please don't kill me," the boy said.

Ron looked over at Hermione. He was startled to see that tears had formed in the corners of her eyes. He tried to hand the fang to her again, but she would not take it. "Don't listen to him," he said loudly, trying to get her attention. She did not look at him, but he could see that her eyes were wide with terror.

"I can't do it. I can't kill you," she whispered, tears leaking out of her eyes. "You're only a boy, I can't kill you," she said to the image in front of her.

"Yes, that's right! Please, don't kill me," the boy said loudly, so that Ron could not answer her. "I'm eleven, I'm an orphan. Please, please don't kill me," the boy said, and Ron could hear the quiet desperation in his voice. It seemed to strongly affect Hermione; he heard her breath hitch as she began to sob.

"Don't listen to it!" Ron shouted, trying to raise his voice so that it would drown out the boy's. "That's Voldemort, you have to stab the cup to get rid of it," he shouted, trying to get her attention, but she was only looking at the emotionless boy.

Ron struggled, trying to think of something that could help her. He thought of the moment when he had stabbed the locket, he remembered the thing that had made him snap out of the trance the Horcrux had cast on him.

It had been the sound of his name.

"Hermione," he shouted, and her name echoed around the room, refracting off of the invisible corners hidden in the darkness. "Stab the cup!"

With shaking fingers, she picked up one of the fangs on the ground in front of her. The boy was shouting at her, begging her to stop, but Hermione gripped the fang in her fingers and drove it through the center.

With one long anguished scream, the boy vanished and the room was silent again. Hermione sat on the floor shaking, the cup in her hands. She pulled the fang out, and the metal around the puncture mark looked molten. Hermione was still crying, silent tears falling down her face.

Wordlessly, he put his arms around her. He felt as she tucked her head into his chest and cried, her shoulders shaking as he pressed her tightly against himself. He patted her softly on the back, making soothing circles until her uneven breathing stopped. When she was done crying, she looked up at him, her eyes glassy and fragile.

"You must think I'm so stupid, crying like this. I should have known, I shouldn't have let it get to me," she said a little breathily.

Ron took his hands off of her back and cupped her face with them. "You were so brave; don't think that you weren't for one second. You were really, really good," he told her sincerely.

Hermione smiled a little shakily. Wiping her eyes, she took a deep breath. "Let's get out of here, okay?" she asked, and Ron nodded. They took as many of the fangs as they could carry: there were still two Horcruxes left.

When they got back to the tunnel, they were faced with another challenge: how were they supposed to get back up? Last time they had had Fawkes to carry them. Ron looked uncertainly at the dark hole above them.

"If only we had brooms or something," Ron muttered, mentally kicking himself for not foreseeing this problem.

"Accio Broom!" Hermione cried, pointing her wand straight into the air. It would have been rather difficult feat for anyone else: she had Summoned a broom at random, and from an unknown distance. Luckily for the two of them, Hermione was rather good at magic.

An old school broom landed at their feet, looking rather worn in places and distinctly dirty. Ron mounted it effortlessly, and then looked back at Hermione, who was looking a bit hesitant.

"It's alright," he said kindly, and she got on after him. He could feel her shaking a little. "Don't let go," he said, and he felt her arms wrap themselves tightly around him. He could not help but smile at the feel of them.

He mounted and he heard her let out a small gasp of surprise as they rocketed upward into the dark tunnel. Ron had to bend down low to avoid hitting his head on the concrete, and he could feel Hermione press her head into his back as she bent down too.

"Hold on!" he cried, putting on a burst of speed. Part of him liked the feel of the adrenalin coursing in his veins, and another part – an overwhelming part – wanted Hermione to hold onto him tighter.

She screeched at the increased speed, and clung to him tighter, just as he had hoped. "Don't let go!" he cried again, and a small circle of light appeared at their heads, they were close to the end of the tunnel now.

Don't ever let go, he wanted to say. Don't ever let go.

Author's Note: That was just something that came to mind. I know that this has been done to death, but this is what I think personally happened. It would be interesting for the Horcrux to play on Hermione's maternal instincts, changing into Voldemort as a young boy to weaken her, just as it turned into Harry and Hermione to weaken Ron.

Reviews would be great, I know this isn't long, but I still love to read them : )