XI

Time passed. The dance ended and the halls grew quieter. It grew colder and colder, until it began to snow. Grega grew gigglier and sillier, much to Hether's dismay. She found this to be rather poor timing, since the exams were officially starting the next day. It was one thing that she had to deal with her constantly happy nature, but now that that nature had somehow grown, it was another thing to deal with. Hether accredited it to the fact that her and the Reighan boy had gotten together and that was causing her oxytocin levels to spike.

She looked at the girl. She hadn't really changed much from when they first met, in the common room that Thursday. She'd grown her hair out, which now fell over her shoulders like the singer John Lennon's, and there was something else that was new – she carried herself now with a nonchalant but alert attitude, one often attributed to people-pleasers.

Hether turned back to her books. The blocky typewriter letters were beginning to blur into one another so much that the pages appeared to be a pulsating mass of black ink. She gave a small sigh and shut the book, tossing it unto the floor. It wouldn't be the end of the world if she didn't pass the papers; besides, there were far more important things to think about.

The next day broke with a silent and grey dawn. The lone sound of the bell resonated through the castle, echoing off the walls and travelling into the tiniest of crevices. Even the sound of muffled footsteps couldn't be heard unless you pressed your ear to the ground and waited for about six-and-half minutes. It felt as if the whole school was under a silencio charm.

Hether marched past room after room filled with students spaced out and bent over desks as far as the eye could see, quills hobbling in an awkward shimmy. She marched on with quick steps, until she was the only one left in the hallways; a lone force crossing the corridors as if all life depended on it. In a way, all life did, but for now, her grades depended on her reaching her quiet place under the shortest time possible; the logic being that one was more likely to forget someone who made excellent results than the one who failed miserably.

She rounded the corner and stormed into the girl's bathroom, straight up to the window ledge. There she set her bag and lifted her robes to seat, when she stopped. There was a strange smell in the air, and it wrapped around her head, as if pulling her to turn around. New leather and burnt jasmine. She whipped around, and brown eyes met grey ones.

He swore they flashed silver, just then, but maybe it was the light reflecting off them. They stood there for a bit, silent, waiting for the other to speak but not knowing what to say themselves. Hether could feel the start of an annoyed tic building up.

"You're ready?" she gave in and spoke first.

"Ready for what?" Draco blinked, caught off guard.

Hether resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Why are you here, Draco?"

Draco pursed his lips and looked away in a scowl, as if in reluctant reflection. "I came to talk."

"About?" she prompted.

"You know what." His eyes snapped back to hers. "I want to know the Truth."

"Draco, I already told you the Truth."

"No, you gave me a history." He turned with a flourish of his robe and shut the door, cutting them off from the rest of the school and placing them into a quieter silence. "That's not enough. If you're going to drag me into something, then I deserve to know what it is."

"I'm not dragging you into anything. Sooner or later, you'll have to pick a choice."

"Hether."

She looked up. His head was hung lower than it usually was, so that his eyes peeked through the white side-partings that were beginning to overgrow. There was something slightly off about him, and she felt as if she were partly to blame for that. She snorted internally. Of course, she was. She'd come in unannounced, spun him around in a whirlwind she didn't even fully understand, and had given him a big red button that looked attractive and told him not to touch it. Sometimes she had a recurring thought: why couldn't she just, end everyone in that timeline so it would cease to exist and there would be no trouble at all?

"Fine." She huffed and walked past him to the sinks. "Follow me."

"To wash your hands?" he scoffed.

"No, you idiot." She finally let the eyes roll. "The Chamber of Secrets."

"The what?" he scrunched his face in confusion. He expression reminded her of a plastic spoon that she'd once left on a hot lid and had gone all wrinkly.

She took the faucet with the engraved serpent in her grasp, and, speaking silently in words so slippery they fell through Draco's grasp, gently twisted it. There was a great gravelling noise, and a great heave, and the sink slid aside, and the floor dropped below into a black chasm.

"I'm not going down there." Draco grabbed the hem of her robe. "This shirt is quality cotton."

Hether eyed him as if he were a baby. She'd heard of the times where his seemingly manly ego would reduce to nothing but boyish fear, but she'd never actually seen it happen.

"Did you actually think I was going to slide down that?" Hether huffed. "You underestimate me."

She took his hand firmly, wrapping hers round it. Draco was beginning to relish the sudden but weirdly familiar feeling when the world he knew shrunk and spun into a sickening vortex, causing him to release a strange yelping sound. His ears popped, and his brain seemed to simmer at the edges. He shut his eyes and tucked his head into the nook of his elbow, wishing for it all to end.

"You can open your eyes now." Hether sounded so far away.

He did, and marveled at the sight. The Chamber was indeed what Potter had made it out to be – a wide and regal room draped in huge slabs of grey stone. It was actually more of a walkway, that ran from one end to the other, surrounded on either side by black water. At one end, the statue of Salazar Slytherin towered, with a gaping hole where his mouth was supposed to be.

There were great stone serpent heads, poised in mid-strike, that seemed to glare at him and would probably spring too if they were charmed to move. They hung in intervals, as if parting to make way for an important person in almost sinister sarcasm.

"Oh..." he sighed as he took in the room. "oh." The latter, was directed towards a huge skeleton of a serpent with a mangled skull that had an enormous fang driven halfway through it. "The basilisk," he whispered.

"The one and same."

He spun around, and there was Hether, sat backwards in a chair facing him, wand dangling precariously from her fingertips.

"This place is..." he paused so to check himself. "It has potential."

"This is where we'll meet until you learn to swim."

"You're joking, aren't you?" silence. "Hether, I can't swim. Especially not in that podgy thing."

"Sink or swim, Draco."