There was a group of people who didn't even get to read the warning painted on the corridor wall; ironically, by the time the message began to spread, they were already on their way to the depths.
That very afternoon, while tension could be felt in the atmosphere of the common rooms, the girls received an identical notification: a system [Message] revealing the exact coordinates they had to head to. Each and every one of them, with serious faces and determination etched in their gaze, adjusted the special brooches that had been given to them on their robes and marched in absolute silence.
After strategically splitting up so as not to travel in a conspicuous block and alert the professors, they ended up congregating in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Upon arrival, the atmosphere turned heavy; some were trembling slightly from nerves, others showed a palpable insecurity, but the majority remained firm and resolute.
"Is it here?" Cho asked, sweeping her gaze across the desolate place.
"Where is Red?" Susan inquired, looking around for the leader.
All the girls were extremely tense, not only from the natural fear of the unknown, but due to the magnitude of the feat they were about to perpetrate. They found it highly unusual that I was not there waiting for them, as they had assumed the bathroom was simply the prior meeting point before marching into the Chamber of Secrets, which, logically, had to be nearby.
"Red already beat you to it," Myrtle announced, emerging from one of the toilets with a look of clear worry. Immediately afterward, she pointed her finger toward the main pipes. "He went in through there... in a very, very strange way."
"This is the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!?" Tracey exclaimed, and a murmur of unanimous astonishment rippled through the group.
"Does that mean Slytherin's heir is a girl!?" Lavender blurted out with a start of pure excitement, materializing her notebook in a blink to begin writing frantically.
"No, it isn't..." Hermione intervened, clutching her wand with a force that betrayed her own rigidity.
All eyes locked onto her. Hermione was the only one in the group who had actually had direct contact with the threat, and though she refrained from revealing the exact identity under superior orders, the solemnity of her tone was enough for them to believe her. Despite the gravity of the situation, many of those present couldn't help but process the information in their own way.
"So the heir is a pervert who sneaks into women's bathrooms?" Millicent deduced, wrinkling her nose.
"Yes!" Lavender exclaimed, making her quill fly over the paper at full speed.
"No. The heir wasn't the one who designed the layout of the chamber; he didn't choose the girls' bathroom as the main access," Penelope corrected her, trying to provide a bit of historical accuracy.
"Well, then Salazar Slytherin was the pervert," Parvati sentenced with total conviction, as if she had just unearthed the greatest secret in the history of magic.
"These bathrooms didn't even exist in the time of the four founders, Parvati," her twin Padma corrected her with a sigh of resignation. That didn't stop Pansy from delivering a loud smack to the back of Parvati's head for daring to insult the memory of her house's founder.
"Auch! Fine... then one of his later descendants was the pervert," Parvati grumbled, rubbing her head reluctantly.
"And why are we assuming it was a man? Couldn't one of the heirs have been a girl?" Tracey questioned. "Maybe she altered the mechanism to match the girls' bathroom..."
"True, it could have been a perverted girl..." Lavender murmured, pausing for a moment before resuming the writing of her scandalous new fanfic with renewed fervor.
"Who on earth cares if it was a boy or a girl!?" Pansy snapped, losing her patience.
"Yes, besides, it might not have been just one person. Back then, the Gaunt family had several descendants before falling into decline; they might have colluded to hide the entrance here," Susan suggested in her usual peaceful tone, trying to mediate.
"Could we stop debating about who is a pervert or who did what and focus on the current heir?" Hermione interrupted. She was visibly shaken; the mere prospect of facing the entity that had made her experience the coldness of death again made her skin crawl.
"She's right," Daphne seconded, earning unanimous nods from the rest of the group, who regained their composure.
"But how are we supposed to get in?" Tracey asked, analyzing the solid stone structure. "Do we have to demolish the sinks with a Reductor Curse?"
"I... I managed to hear the heir pronounce something very strange before it opened," Myrtle contributed, wanting to be useful. "It was like a sharp hiss, almost inaudible... A very weird password."
The girls fell into a brief, reflective silence until those who possessed a firmer grasp on the castle's lore put the pieces of the puzzle together.
"PARSELTONGUE!" several exclaimed at the same time.
"Exactly, the language of snakes. It's the hereditary trait of the Slytherin line," Daphne nodded.
"All his direct descendants possessed that ability," Pansy added with pride.
"For that reason, no one has been able to locate the entrance in centuries; the mechanism strictly requires a Parselmouth to activate!" Hermione concluded.
"Magnificent. But... how do we get in?" Cho brought up, dragging them back to harsh reality.
The students looked at one another.
"So... are we going to have to dynamite the sink after all?" Parvati insisted.
"We're all going to get expelled," her twin Padma sentenced.
The group's eyes soon turned with obvious anticipation to the members of Slytherin House; however, the reality was that none of them possessed such an inherited talent.
Only Daphne stepped forward, and with everyone watching her, she used her Animagus form, transforming into a snake, to look at the carving and begin to hiss.
Instantly, the stone mechanisms began to move magically, revealing the secret entrance.
Then, from the rear of the group, right in that small subgroup of three who until then had only been whispering amongst themselves, Ginny stepped forward. With perfect composure, she slipped a peculiar artifact into her pocket: a snake's head forged from solid silver with two gleaming red stone eyes.
"What's that?" Astoria asked, and at her words, all three looked at Ginny.
"Red gave me this so we could gain access..." Ginny explained matter-of-factly. "He asked me to let you work out a solution on your own, and if you didn't find one quickly, to intervene," she replied with a shrug.
The girls felt a certain sense of satisfaction at having solved the puzzle on their own.
Finally, the passage lay exposed, revealing the massive, dark mouth of the main pipe. The blackness of the abyss inside made more than one swallow hard, but having reached this point of no return, and spurred on by collective adrenaline, they knew it was time to jump.
"I'll go first," Penelope volunteered. Being the oldest in the group, she took charge. She approached the edge and threw herself into the void with her wand held high, illuminating the descent.
Thus, the girls began to slide down the pipe one by one. The last ones remaining on the surface turned to the spectral figure floating beside them.
"Myrtle? Aren't you coming with us?" Lavender asked.
"I... I don't know... my killer is down there..." the ghost admitted, visibly self-conscious, though she eventually gave in slightly. "I'll follow you from the rear and watch from a safe distance. I know perfectly well what that creature can do even to ghosts, so I'll keep my margin... but I'll cheer you on from afar!"
...
After a few minutes, the entire contingent of girls had completed the descent. Keeping their wands lit to pierce the heavy gloom of the underground, they began to move forward in what looked like a procession... though executed with the rigorous discipline of a special forces mission.
Thanks to the grueling hours of prior training and the strong bond they had forged under my tutelage, they automatically moved in a highly effective tactical formation, covering every flank symmetrically as they ventured deeper into the depths... until they burst into an immense cavern.
"AAAAHHHH!!!"
A sharp shriek shattered the silence, causing a domino effect that startled several of those present. Despite the scare, the conditioned reflexes of the last few days kicked in in unison: everyone aimed their wands forward, and some even went so far as to fire hexes instinctively to defend themselves... though the magical flashes simply bounced off the surface of the target.
An active enemy did not stand before them, but what they beheld froze their blood.
"A giant snake!" Susan exclaimed, taking a step back.
"No... it's just... its skin..." Cho clarified, swallowing hard as she tried to catch her breath.
With the less brave girls visibly shaking, the group surrounded the basilisk's humongous shed skin. That served as a brutal reality check regarding the scale of the monster that awaited further ahead. The colossal scaly husk was nothing short of a terrifying warning of the dimensions of the beast they intended to face.
"It's... it's enormous..." Hermione whispered, flabbergasted.
"That's what she said," Lavender murmured under her breath. It was a joke she had picked up directly from me. True to form, she pulled out her notebook once more to make a quick sketch of the scaly skin, noting down a couple of dramatic ideas for the literary epic she planned to write about their adventure.
"We... we won't stand a chance against a thing like that..." Astoria warned, her teeth chattering from the cold and fear.
"It's a basilisk... and of such a scale..."
"If Slytherin raised it personally, it must be nearly a thousand years old."
"A basilisk of that age is highly likely to have developed immunity to a rooster's crow..."
"Its gaze strikes you dead instantly, and its venom is so lethal there is no known cure... not to mention it could swallow any of us in a single bite..."
Every technical fact and pessimistic comment chipped away at the willpower of the girls, who now had physical, irrefutable proof of the danger right before their eyes.
"Do not fear..." Penelope intervened, maintaining her stance as one of the group's pillars of calm. "Red was perfectly aware of all this from the beginning. If he didn't have absolute certainty that we would return safely, he never would have allowed us to set foot down here."
"She's right..." Pansy agreed. Despite the nerves making her legs give way, her faith in me was blind and unshakable.
"Yes... we must... we must defeat it," sentenced Hermione, who was perhaps the most emotionally affected, since she herself had already experienced the paralysis brought on by the creature's deathly gaze. "Did everyone check their magical contact lenses?" she asked, aware that that small system gadget represented the line between life and death.
"Yes."
"I have them on."
"Confirmed."
One by one they nodded, while checking for the presence of the special brooches I had provided them with. They noticed with some relief that the badges remained firmly attached to their robes; in fact, the very fabric of their clothes felt magically reinforced, impossible to be torn or removed by external forces. Recognizing it as another of my strict protection and contingency measures, the group relaxed notably.
"Maybe... it won't even be necessary to fight the basilisk," Luna's subtle voice was heard from the back of the line. "Perhaps there's a chance we can become its friends."
Everyone turned to look at little Lovegood, who seemed to completely lack the concept of fear. In fact, her eyes shone with a spark of genuine excitement at the prospect of meeting a creature of mythological proportions.
"Friends? Lovegood, are you serious?" Pansy questioned her, arching an eyebrow.
"We can't be sure," Luna shrugged, unperturbed. "Red beat us to it; maybe he's already making peace with the basilisk right this moment..."
"That's true! Red is ahead!" Cho agreed, discarding the idea of fraternizing with the monster but clinging to the urgency of the situation. "He must be facing the heir right now!"
"Yes, we have to keep going, we have to go help him!"
The realization struck the group of heroines in unison: they couldn't afford to waste a single second. Although they were unaware of my true situation and the fact that I had already solved the snake problem, the mere thought of leaving me alone dissolved any trace of doubt. This was their battle too.
Rallying every ounce of available courage, the contingent pressed forward with a renewed collective will, finally standing before the main entrance of the chamber, whose stone gates were guarded by carved serpents with emerald eyes. Once again, Daphne stepped forward, ready to activate the mechanism and allow those girls to cross the threshold toward their destiny.