Chapter 90: Familiar

If you want to read more chapters ahead from here you can visit my Patre-on.

[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]

https://patreon.com/kelly_over

____________

"Yes," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct to harm humans, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never did so. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up."

Harry grinned. He finally knew where Myrtle had died! If he looked around in her bathroom enough, he was sure he could find some clue or the other to find where the entrance to the Chamber was.

"Do you know what did kill that girl?" he eagerly asked, looking for the last piece of the puzzle, but his words were drowned by loud clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting around him.

"The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others.

I remember well, how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go when I sensed the beast moving about the school. We do not speak of it. We do not name it. I never even told Hagrid the name of that creature, though he asked me, many times."

Harry could feel the spiders pressing together around him on all sides. Not wanting to use destructive force and lose any chance of finding out what the Beast really was, Harry decided to use the other approach.

"It will come for you!" he exclaimed, and the advancing spiders stopped. There was not a click to be heard.

"What do you mean?" Aragog rasped.

"Do you think that wizards will stop it this time? That you'll stay safe in this hollow of yours? Oh no you won't. The beast is protected by a charm that completely hides it from wizards' senses.

If you don't tell me what the creature is right now, then soon it will kill everything that remains in the castle. How long do you think it will take for it to kill all of your children?"

He used Gamer's mind to isolate his sense of fear from the rest of his emotions and sent it down the empathy link, making sure that every single one of the hundreds of spiders in the clearing could feel it clearly. Aragog paused, his unseeing eyes looking around as his legs shifting uneasily.

He was considering it, Harry could tell from his empathy link. And from that link, he knew the exact moment the ancient spider made up his mind.

"They call it a basilisk," Aragog said quickly and quietly, and a loud outbreak of clicking and rustling of many long legs shifting angrily broke out as large black shapes shifted all around him just as a ping went off.

Ping!

Quest Success!

Find the acromantula colony and talk to them

Rewards,

20,000 exp

New information

Ping!

A skill has leveled up due to calm use!

Blackmailing Lv- 10 (21%)

This is your ability to make another person do something you want by expressly using some sort of leverage against them. The higher the level, the more chance of success!

(25 + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the demand is.

But Harry saw none of that.

The moment he had heard the word 'basilisk', a blinding, mind-numbing headache had burst in his head.

Seeing the edges of his vision blacken, Harry held onto his head as he croaked out, "ID Create," and dropped into an ID where, safe from the gigantic spiders that could eat him at any moment, he lost consciousness.

When Harry woke up, much to his relief, his headache was fully gone.

A quick look at the watch told him that he had been unconscious for over an hour. Pushing himself up onto his feet, Harry headed back onto the Hogwarts grounds, where he popped back out into the real world.

He had to tell the Professors what he'd found.

He had barely made it past the greenhouses and into the castle corridor, when suddenly a musical trill sounded from above, making him look up at the direction the sound came from.

It was Hedwig, he happily realized, flying down at him from the direction of the Ravenclaw tower.

He hadn't spent any time with his familiar today at all, and apparently, she was happy to see him too. He held out his arm, on which his phoenix flapped down onto, before jumping onto his shoulder.

Harry gave her a smile, ruffling her back feathers before he explained all that he had done today to her.

However, it was near the end of his telling that he encountered a problem.

"And the acromantula told me that the beast of Slytherin was actually a-" Harry suddenly choked over his own spit, unable to say anything.

And it was at that moment, he remembered that the Fidelius's secret could only be spoken by its secret keeper, which he wasn't.

He hadn't broken the Fidelius charm… he had simply cheated his way into it, and was now stuck with a secret that he couldn't tell anybody.

Even if he told the teachers about the entrance, they would be walking into a suicide mission without knowing what awaited them in the chamber.

Fuck.

He didn't let the frustration cloud his senses though. This little conundrum left him with only one solution. Find the heir and stop him all by himself.

Looking at his familiar, Harry realized that there was another way that he could let Hedwig know the secret.

He quickly pulled out Fantastic Beasts and where to find them and opened it to the page where Basilisks were talked about.

He showed it to Hedwig, who he knew had learned to read English from Fawkes. Hedwig peered at the page before looking at him, her beady eyes wide.

Thankfully, Hedwig not being a human meant that the Fidelius wouldn't affect her and that she would be able to read the page clearly.

"That is the beast," Harry said, and the Fidelius allowed only that much. Hedwig was now in on the secret and could help him with finding the entrance, which would be more than invaluable since her eyesight was a hundred times better than his.

_____________

If you want to read more chapters ahead from here you can visit my Patre-on.

[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]

https://patreon.com/kelly_over