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Seeing Ginny lying limp on the Chamber floor had changed something in Harry. For long moments he had thought she was dead, and even now — as she was no doubt talking and laughing on the train back home — some part of him still seemed to believe that she had died. Staring at the spot where she had lain, he thought he could still hear weak, shallow breaths echoing through the darkness, as if she had never been saved at all, but only dragged further into the depths…
Harry shook his head sharply. She was safe. She was on the train with Ron and Hermione… who, incidentally, had not wanted Harry to return to the Chamber, where he was absolutely not supposed to be. Harry could still hear Hermione’s worried voice:
“It could be dangerous. What if they haven’t searched the place — what if there’s still something down there?”
But Harry would not be dissuaded. Even if Hermione had told him that for sure a hundred Acromantulas had taken up residence in the Chamber, Harry thought his feet would have taken him there anyway…
Turning from the spot where Ginny had lain, Harry fixed his attention on his prize. A great hulking mass wound its way through the pillars, twisted in the echoes of its death throes: the Basilisk, its punctured eyes black and oozing, its mouth gaping in its final murderous lunge. From the roof of its mouth, slimy fluid leaked out of the stab wound that had pierced its brain and ended its life.
Harry approached, his breath hitching in the cool air. He slid a hand down the Basilisk’s smooth, cold scale and saw his reflection staring back out from it, warped by rings of keratin. With his eye sockets blurred and the bottom of his face lost to shadow, he looked like some sort of ghoul.
All this was Hermione’s fault, technically, for indulging in Harry’s question about how much the Basilisk’s parts were worth. An hour later, she’d emerged from the library with a full catalogue: 110 galleons per pound for the liver; 1130 for the venom sac; 780 for each fang.
“Of course,” Hermione had said, “these are in 1870s prices, since that’s the last time a Basilisk was ever sold publicly. So for today’s values, you multiply these numbers by ten —”
Harry had already been impressed at the numbers before he’d heard that. Accounting for inflation had had his jaw dropping to the ground. If Harry could get away with even a sliver of these parts, he’d be rich: rich enough to ditch the Dursleys for good, to buy the best armor and training money could buy, to layer a million enchantments over the houses of each of his friends.
Rich enough, in other words, to ensure no one would ever lay dying on his account ever again.
Harry dropped his bag to the floor and drew out the two steak knives he’d stolen from yesterday’s dinner. They were maybe six inches long, blunt at the tip, and blunt even along the serrated edge. They were made for rowdy eleven-year-olds chopping bits of already-cooked meat, not for butchering a corpse with scales as big as dinner plates and a body as high as Harry was tall.
… Well, at least Harry had all day.
He got to work. He had studied Hermione’s snake anatomy diagrams and concluded that the easiest way would be to climb on top of it and slice it open from above. If he cut deep enough, the wrapping of muscle should come undone like a zipper, exposing the innards to access. Harry had never dissected a snake before, not even a small one, and now he wished he’d had… but he’d figure it out.
First he had to climb. The scales were too slippery to grip, and the skin beneath was not much better. But perhaps he could use the knives.... He jammed them deep into the flesh like ice-picks and tried to haul himself up. Only a few feet more…
He lost his grip and dropped to the floor. Breathing heavily, Harry yanked out the knives and was rewarded with a spurt of dark blood to the face. Wiping his glasses awkwardly, he looked around. He could try walking up from the Basilisk’s tail, perhaps…
Behind him, someone cleared his throat.
Harry nearly shrieked. He whirled around, knives at the ready, fully expecting to see Tom Riddle standing behind him, glowing with ghostly light.
It was not. It was Snape, looking as corporeal as ever, shadows etched into the sneering depths of his face.
“Well, well, Potter.” Snape sounded pleased. “Trespassing and defacing school property?”
There was something darkly absurd about the line, delivered as if Harry had been caught after curfew painting lewd images on the walls, rather than down in the Chamber of Secrets trying to butcher a Basilisk. Harry stared, trying to wrench his brain from thoughts of defeating Voldemort and onto thoughts of avoiding detention.
“... I’m not trespassing,” said Harry finally. “There was no sign that said to stay out —”
Snape smiled. “All school property is out of bounds after term has ended.”
“But is this actually part of school property?”
Snape stared at him. Harry stared back.
“What are you doing here?” said Harry suddenly. He had the sneaking suspicion that perhaps Snape himself was not supposed to be there…. If anyone would know the value of a Basilisk’s corpse, it would be Snape. If anyone would sneak around to steal at the expense of the school, it would be Snape.
Snape raised an imperious eyebrow. “I’m here to clean up your mess” — Snape glanced at the corpse — “on Dumbledore’s orders.”
Was he?
“Alright, then. I’ll leave.” Realizing he was still holding the knives, Harry dropped them back into his bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder. “I’ll send a note to Dumbledore saying I’m sorry for trespassing — and that I’m very glad you were down here to correct me.”
Harry watched Snape’s face very carefully. There was no reaction — perhaps Snape really was supposed to be there…
And then Snape said, very evenly, “Write the note now and leave it with me. I’ll give it to him once I’m done.”
And then Harry was sure. Snape was trespassing too.
But even if Snape wasn’t supposed to be here — and it was clear he was not — what was Harry going to do about it? He couldn’t fight Snape…. He could leave and report Snape’s trespass to Dumbledore, but then Dumbledore would remember the corpse was here and claim it as school property, and then neither of them would get the money.
Harry could try to split the loot with Snape… but would it work?
The silence had stretched on. Snape raised an eyebrow, clearly wondering why Harry wasn’t leaving.
“How about this,” said Harry slowly. “I’ll ‘leave the note with you’ if you give me a quarter of the organs you harvest.”
Snape’s eyebrows shot up. He understood what Harry meant, and for one precious moment Harry could see him considering it.
Then he sneered. “No.”
Fuck.
“You are correct,” said Snape smoothly, “that Dumbledore did not explicitly tell me to harvest this corpse. But I am just showing initiative, Potter. I’m cleaning up this mess without even needing to be asked, and then turning in all of the proceeds to the school coffers.”
It was the way Snape had said “all” — with a delicate arch of his brow, a sly twitch of his lips — that told Harry that it would certainly not be all.
But what did it matter? Harry couldn’t prove it. If he went to Dumbledore and said, “I don’t think Snape actually handed it all in,” the accusation would probably reflect just as badly on him as it did on Snape.
And just like that, Harry had lost. He stood in front of the Basilisk he had risked his life to kill, and felt a surge of anger as he realized he’d have to yield it to Snape.
But — but wait.
Harry had one more card to play.
“I understand,” said Harry calmly. “I’ll leave.” Without even glancing back, Harry grabbed his bag and left, heading straight for the door — the door of solid stone which moved only at the command of a Parselmouth. He could feel Snape’s eyes on the back of his head. He fought the urge to sprint — sprinting would give it away…
He reached the door and slipped through. In the darkness, Snape was still standing by the corpse, watching him. Harry looked up at the snakes engraved in the stone, their emerald eyes gleaming with life…
“Close,” Harry hissed.
The floor gave a jolt. The gap in the wall began to grind shut. Snape gave a shout — he began to run — but by the time he reached the door, it was too late.
“Stop,” Harry hissed, and the stone ground to a halt, leaving a gap in the wall just big enough for a finger.
Snape was pressed against the other side, snarling, his big hooked nose sticking into the gap. “Potter — let me out —”
His wand flashed into the gap, and Harry leapt to the side as a bolt of red shot into the corridor behind him. His heart hammered and he pressed himself to the wall. To his relief, Snape didn’t seem to be able to angle his wand towards the sides; the gap was too narrow, too deep.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Harry’s voice was high-pitched but steady. “You’re going to give me my quarter of the organs — you’re going to slice them up real thin and push them through the gap. And then once I’ve gone and sold them, I’ll come back and let you go, and you get to keep the rest. None of us is going to tell Dumbledore. Got it?”
Snape’s breathing echoed through the gap, heavy and ragged. There was no way he would refuse, right? Snape had only planned to turn some of the profit over to Dumbledore because Harry had threatened to report him. Now there would be no reporting; the profits would be split solely between the two. This arrangement was better for them both.
So why wasn’t Snape agreeing… why was he so silent?
And then Snape said slyly:
“The thought of getting you expelled appeals far more to me than riches ever could. Expecto Patronum. Go to Dumbledore and tell him to come to the Chamber of Secrets right away.”
Silvery light flashed through the gap, and Harry thought he saw the pale ghost of a deer bound through the gap, look around, and then vanish into the solid rock wall. His stomach plummeted. Through half a mile of bedrock and stone, Snape had managed to send out a message. Harry hadn’t known he could. He’d never heard of that spell before.
It wasn’t fair.
“What’s wrong with you?” Harry’s voice shook with anger. “Three quarters of the loot from a Basilisk, and you’d turn it down just to get at me?”
He didn’t understand why Snape hated him so much. He didn’t understand why Snape couldn’t just let him save his friends. Twice now, Voldemort had come to murder them. Twice now, Harry had been the only thing stopping him. Perhaps this very summer, Voldemort would try again. And if Harry was at the Dursleys when that happened, cut off from all communication, his wand and trunk locked in the cupboard downstairs…
Harry’s breathing echoed through the tunnel, quick and desperate. A room at the Leaky Cauldron wouldn’t even have cost that much. Harry had just needed a little bit of coin.
Through the gap, Snape was chuckling. “I’m giving up more than just the money. Surely you’ll tell Dumbledore all about what I intended to do down here, and to be honest, it will ring true to him. He will know I meant to steal from the school, just as you knew two seconds into our conversation.
“But Potter, I would suffer anything in order to see you expelled. I don’t think you understand how much I hate you… the lengths to which I’d go…”
“I just want to save my friends,” Harry whispered.
Snape fell silent. He said nothing for the next ten minutes, though Harry could hear him breathing into the gap. Then, out of the darkness, Dumbledore was there, a swirl of blue, a hatchling Fawkes croaking from his shoulder. Coldly, sternly, he told Harry to open the gap, which Harry did; and then he and Snape were escorted out of the Chamber, up the tunnel, and towards the Headmaster’s office.
As they were passing through the girls’ bathroom, Severus turned to Potter and sneered, “There’s blood on your face. You look like a savage.”
Potter’s green eyes met his — and Severus dove in. He met a jumble of impulses and images — Quirrell lunging forward, arms outstretched; Ginny Weasley lying motionless on the floor; a list of Basilisk prices, and then the impulse that even if Hermione said there were a hundred Acromantulas in the Chamber, his feet would have taken him there anyway.
So Potter hadn’t been lying about his motives.
Severus withdrew. Potter was staring, making no move to wipe the blood on his face, his expression coldly hateful in a way that Severus had never seen from him before. He could never respect Severus ever again, that gaze seemed to say, not when he had been trying to save lives and Severus had gotten in his way for the pettiest of reasons.
Severus found himself sneering. Let him feel that way while I’m grinding him into the mud under the heel of my boot. He visualized it. He liked it. The thought was soothing.
It was very difficult, therefore, for Severus to come to terms with the fact that that would not be happening — that he would, in fact, be taking Potter’s side in the upcoming discussion.
“Headmaster, a word?” said Severus, when they arrived in the office.
Dumbledore nodded. “Harry, if you would wait outside?”
Potter stalked from the room, anger flashing in his eyes. No doubt he thought Severus was going to use this time to turn Dumbledore against him. But when the door swung shut, Severus wasted no time in saying:
“He tried to extort me because he felt he needed to, because he thinks he’s the only one in the world who can stop Voldemort. And Professor, as much as I hate to say this, can we blame him? First — from his perspective — he retrieves the Philosopher’s Stone and saves the world at the last hour, when no one else could; and then, when the Chamber opens, he does it all again. And all this in a school full of world-renowned teachers…. It would make an impression on anyone.”
Dumbledore was listening calmly, fingers steepled, eyebrows raised. Severus slunk into a chair.
“Headmaster,” said Severus quietly. “I know you have engineered all of these encounters: designed the obstacle course, lured Quirrell in, opened the Chamber, planted the Diary —”
“Not the second two,” said Dumbledore quietly.
Severus’s eyebrows shot up. “No?”
“No.”
The silence twisted and soured. “You astound me,” said Severus coldly. “You actually got sacked because of some half-baked remnant the Dark Lord accidentally left as a teenager? My god, if this is what brings us to our knees, we are in dire straits indeed.”
A flicker of pain crossed Dumbledore’s face.
“I would have suggested telling Potter that you’ve engineered all of his victories,” said Severus, “but it seems that’s not the case…”
When Potter was called in, he looked like he was walking to his execution. But Severus couldn’t even be bothered to sneer at him. Severus stretched out in on his chair, stared out the window, and thought about the hopelessness of their cause. Dumbledore had promised that he had learned from the near-defeat of the last war. And what did that learning look like? Getting near-defeated in peacetime, apparently.
Potter’s indignant voice broke through Severus’s thoughts. “But he was there to steal too —”
“Professor Snape has my full confidence,” said Dumbledore simply.
Severus had barely investigated the Chamber because he had assumed it was all part of the plan. It was an additional failure for Dumbledore not to have realized what Severus was thinking and corrected the misconception.
“... But I understand you were concerned for your friends, Harry. You wanted the money in order to protect them…”
Potter gave a jerky nod.
“Your concern is admirable,” said Dumbledore gently, “and I will do what I can to protect them: explain the danger to their parents and, if necessary, strengthen the enchantments around their homes. And if your relatives are keeping you from accessing your wand…”
“They are,” said Potter shortly.
“Then I will see if they may be persuaded otherwise. But my disappointment, Harry… my great sadness… is that rather than come to me with these concerns, you tried to solve the problem through force and deceit.”
“I’m sorry, Professor…”
Potter looked guilty, but still, there was something reserved about his apology. Severus thought he understood. In his place, Severus wouldn’t be feeling particularly guilty, either.
When Potter was dismissed, Severus followed him out.
“Potter!”
Potter turned, his posture already stiffening with anger. That, too, was understandable. Potter approached slowly, his expression flat, as if he was telling himself ahead of time not to lose his cool.
“What?” Potter muttered.
“Dumbledore missed the mark, didn’t he?”
Potter frowned. “...What?”
“It was never his intentions that you doubted, but his ability — his ability to protect your friends, his ability to keep the Dark Lord at bay.”
Potter’s eyes darted cautiously across Severus’s face. “I suppose.”
“He is astronomically cleverer than you are. For all his faults, you could do no better.”
Potter scowled. “You —”
“But I see no reason not to let you try.” Severus pulled out a cheque, already filled out: Bank of Gringotts, June 30, 1992; Pay to Harry Potter, 1000 Galleons, with Severus’s signature scrawled across the bottom. He handed it over.
Potter stared at it as if it were a vial of poison.
“Sink or swim, Potter.” Severus smiled coldly. “Use this wisely and you will be able to position yourself very well for the conflict to come. Use it poorly and you will never have any right to criticize Dumbledore’s decision-making ever again. Personally, I’m hoping for the latter —”
“What?” Potter cried. His brain seemed to finally have turned back on. “You — you were down there trying to steal —”
“And? … I told you that I would go to any lengths to bring you down. If that means giving you exactly what you want, then so be it.”
Severus pushed the cheque into Potter’s hand. It crumpled limply into his sweaty palm.
“I’ll be watching.”
And as Severus strode off, he was already wondering: Supplies or Nimbuses? Textbooks or golden cauldrons? A few hours ago, he’d have bet on the latter, but now, he wasn’t sure. Potter might still fail, in which case Severus would happily advocate for every restriction of Potter’s freedom, just as he had always planned to do.
But if Potter passed… if he spent the money well… if he used it to further their cause…
… Then perhaps they’d have more hope than Severus had realized.