Eliza, George, and Katie had made it out of the stadium with me before the barrier had come down. I sat up as high as I could on my broom and looked around at what had happened. The helmeted ponies had come out of nowhere and the barrier had gone up almost as quickly as they had attacked.
"What're we meant to do, Harry?" George drew his broom up beside mine. "McGonagall told us all about what those things are capable of—we can't go down there."
"This is a distraction." Eliza got her broom up beside mine—flanking me with George. "If they'd wanted to attack properly, they would have dropped the stadium supports or just kept blasting."
"Who sends an army as a distraction?!" Katie swung up out of nowhere on George's other side. We were flying in a formation in a tight loop around the top of the castle.
It hit me so quickly I barely had time to catch the meaning of the thought. "Sombra! I haven't seen him!" I looked around at the others, and they all shook their heads. "So if he's not here, he's either in the castle or—"
"He'll be looking for the heart thing. If it can be used as a weapon against him, then it stands to reason it could be not used as a weapon against him if he controls it. What if that's the only way to defeat him?" Eliza asked.
We got nearly halfway around the castle while that fact sunk into our heads. At last Katie asked, "So where is it?"
"The heart? Who knows?" George gestured to the castle below us. "It could be anywhere in there!"
Eliza gestured toward George with her own bat, the weapon still firmly clutched in her hand. "If this is some incredibly powerful weapon or shield or whatever, and it was in the castle, someone would have found it by now. So either someone has found it or it's not in the—"
Excitement bubbled up inside me. "The Chamber of Secrets! It must be there!" Pushing my broom, I aimed it for the cairn of rocks that had partially fallen down to reveal the top of the cave-in me and Ron had barely survived.
"You're bloody crazy, 'Arry Potter!" George whooped in excitement as he reached my side. "Where are we crashing?"
Katie joined in the shout and settled in on my flank this time. "You don't shake off a Gryffindor chaser that easy!"
On George's other side, Eliza didn't say anything as she drew up to us, but she did curse when I aimed further down and and then braked hard to land on a rockface overlooking the lake. "What are you trying to do?!"
"That's the outside entrance to the Chamber," I said while pointing a hoof at where a sinkhole had opened up in the rocks. "We need to—Can you get my broom off me?"
George was quicker than the girls and pulled out a knife from his robes. Flicking the blade out, he glared at Eliza as if to dare her to call him on taking such an item into a game of quidditch. A few quick cuts of the tape and I was free from my broom. "There ya go, Harry. Now you can get the rest off yourself easy enough."
A true wizard would have immolated right there and then, but my common sense told me to avoid making myself a target. "It kinda makes me stand out when I'm on fire, and it's not advisable to touch me when I am either, so I'll put up with it for now. Let's head in."
"Wait." Eliza looked around at us all. "We might have to cast magic in there to defend each other." Drawing her wand out of her robes, she let out a sigh. "You all know what that means?"
"Yeah, yeah. But don't forget we got two wands." George held up his beater bat. "My little bruv reminded me that there's more to bein' a wizard than just magic."
It was a shame Ron wasn't here to hear that, because I was sure George wouldn't admit it to him after this. "If you want to wait out here, I understand. None of you have changed—"
Katie cleared her throat and pulled her robe aside to reveal a yellow tail.
"If you think I'm going to show you what I got, you've got another thing coming." George waggled his eyes at the two girls. "'Sides, with all this goin' on, I figure we're all going to be neigh-sayers soon." He drew his wand out, but there was two balls clutched in his fist as well—everyone present knew the shape and color of the smallest of Dr Filibuster's Fireworks.
"Do you really bring all that to your quidditch matches?" Eliza asked with a growing smile on her face.
"Let's focus on this, eh?" Katie stepped up behind me with her wand drawn. "Lead on, Harry, I've got your back."
Katie's words were both inspiring and terrifying. She had my back, which meant I was the defacto leader—again—and could rely on her to be with me every step of the way. Being with me, consequently, was usually the least safe place to be. "Thanks."
The gaps in the rock weren't hard for me to get past, though I think George had it worse since he was the largest of the four of us.
I slid down the last ten feet of wall to land in the huge chamber where Addera's castoff skin had scared us. Jumping out of the way using the power of common sense, I wasn't at the bottom of the slide when Katie came down it.
Unfortunately, Katie wasn't so quick getting out of the way of Eliza, and with both in a tangle of arms and legs, George collided with them and all three rolled away from the wall.
Nostalgia filled me at returning to the Chamber of Secrets. While I waited for the others to get themselves sorted out, I examined Addera's skin. It still smelled of her, and as I ran one hoof over it carefully I could feel the heavy scales that were her armor—and now mine.
"That's the basilisk skin?" Eliza asked.
George whistled—impressed. "She's a bit smaller now, eh? Fine friend though, right Harry?"
Katie looked at George. "What'd you mean by that? Dumbledore said Harry and Addera defeated the basilis—Oh."
"What do you mean?" Eliza asked.
We all stared at her. "Eliza, Addera was the basilisk. Salazar Slytherin used nasty magic to control her and make her stay down here for a thousand years," I said.
"Oh. But why wouldn't you just tell everyone that?" Eliza brushed down her robe and readied her wand again.
I started to walk toward the chamber itself, leading the way and casting a light spell with my horn. Despite not wanting to be a beacon for Sombra to aim at, I also didn't want any of us to trip over any of the rocks that'd fallen from the cave-in. "Because we were worried what everyone would do, what with them thinking she was trying to kill them."
"Wasn't she trying to kill everyone?" Eliza asked. "Wait. That's stupid. Why didn't I see this? How many coincidences could have resulted in her not quite looking so many in the eyes. The probability of it is staggering."
"How'd you figure it out?" I asked George before I turned the last corner and found the door to the Chamber of Secrets closed.
Could Sombra speak parseltongue? Was there another way to get in? Was he waiting somewhere for me to open the door so he could get in?
The last option was the worrying one. I was sick and tired of causing problems just by blundering my way into what I thought at the time was the right solution. "Wait, what if Sombra hasn't gotten in yet, and is waiting for us to open the door?"
"Well, if he didn't have a plan to get the door open that didn't include you, he would have made sure you were here, right?" George walked out into the open and right up to the door. "So I figure that since we only barely made it out, he didn't plan that."
I stopped at the door and thought about George's statement. "Yeah, you're right. Still doesn't tell me how you figured who Addera was." Clearing my throat, I looked at the door. —Open up you stupid piece of enchantment!—
The door began to rumble, the snake pattern of it shifting as it clanked and unlocked.
"It was mostly little things. You might not notice, but when Addera kept saying things about Slytherin, it was the nail in the coffin—so to speak. So what was it, she was fightin' whatever mind-bender ol' Slytherin put on her and made sure to only look at people so as not to kill 'em?" George asked. "Turn your light off, Harry, better you not be an easy target."
I banished my light just as the door started to open. It felt like a year ago that I'd first opened the door of the Chamber of Secrets, but it had only been a week.
The change within the chamber was almost as dramatic as the change it had made to me. The crystals no longer sat off to the sides, but were huge curtains of bright colors that were driving upward—into the ceiling. Color and light was everywhere except for where King Sombra stood.
He didn't look like the pony body he'd stolen from Ginny—he looked like the figure I'd seen in her mind. He stood over twice my height, had a gray coat that almost looked to be moving like smoke, and a huge mass of black mane that looked more fit on a lion than a pony. When he smiled, a pair of fangs showed. "You again? We keep meeting, Harry Potter, and I wonder if it's fate?"
Thoughts started to make sense, and I realized what must have happened. He got in, but couldn't get out. "Close the door!" I jumped out of the doorway, expecting George to swing the door closed, but rather than close it he was holding it open with all his strength against Katie and Eliza's efforts to pull it closed.
A bright green had subsumed George's eyes, and there was the slightest swirling pattern in them. It didn't take a brain like Dumbledore's to figure out Sombra was controlling him somehow.
Time to be a wizard, Harry.
"Close the door once I get in!" I said.
"What? Harry?! NO!" Katie was fighting to get the door closed still, and couldn't spare the moment she needed to stop me from jumping into the room.
My legs absorbed the twenty foot drop to the bottom of the ladder with ease. Being a pony had its upsides. "Close the door now!" Yup. This was the most wizard thing I'd done all day—possibly all year. Big evil bad guy, and I gotta lead the charge, but before I can win the day in true wizard style, I had to stop him doing whatever he was doing to George.
"Such bravery is on par with that of ponies, but I remember you now. The creature that helped me defeat that slimy little beast." King Sombra smiled in a way that showed off a lot of his fangs, and his tone was as deep and resonant as it had been in Ginny's mind. "Which is why I offer you a chance to join me freely."
What would a wizard say? Something awesome, like in one of the action movies Dudley liked watching. "No." My brain caught up with what I'd said. Well, better luck next time. "Never!"
"Then you will join me in chains." As soon as he spoke, I felt something bright and sticky pour into my head. It was worse than treacle, and stuck all my thoughts together into a ball and made room—made room for my king.
"Sod this!" Katie's voice seemed a million miles away, and I didn't hear what incantation she used, but blasts of fire sang through the air over my head and into Sombra. The first hit him and blew away the illusion of his grand self, but the rest all impacted a huge shard of crystal that he summoned to block them.
The last one hit me.
I spun in place, anger rising that she'd obviously aimed one of her blasts my way, and I felt the thick purple honey in my head burn away. My glasses melted before my eyes, but I could see perfectly Katie's berserk grin. She had aimed it on purpose, and now she had a bright purple mane of hair.
Turning back, I had a moment to lament for my delicate glasses before I turned all my anger and attention on Sombra. He looked little more than the weak foal that Ginny had been when he'd teleported out in her body.
"Oh? Managed to break my spell did you? I'll take apart your mind later to discover how you did that." Sombra took a few steps back, while I advanced. "Nothing to say?"
Tipping my head forward, I sent a finger-thin beam of light out of my horn directly at Sombra. Part of me was screaming that I shouldn't damage Ginny's body, but seeing how easily he was taking over people's minds, I didn't want to give him a break.
The purple-red beam of light went right through Sombra, leaving the rest of his form to dissolve into smoke.
I'd done it? It was that easy? The fire in my head was still burning hot, even as something shoved into my side and seemed like it wanted to drill through me.
Turning to look, I saw a fast-growing length of black crystal—sharpened to a point—shoving me across the Chamber toward the far wall. It was obvious he meant to impale me on it, but I trusted my scales to stop the bulk of the damage while I looked to find where Sombra was.
The crack of the crystal slamming me into the wall, and my scales resisting its efforts at piercing them, did nothing to reassure me from the pain that flared in my side. Broken ribs, or had it actually gone into me? I didn't have time to check.
Stepping out of the gap the crystal had made hurt, but pain just made me more angry, and that's when I noticed the wisps of smoke coming from one of the side passages. Like an eagle's, my eyes locked on the trail and I barely growled out the incantation for a fire spell—one that I put every bit of focus and pattern behind.
A smile creased my lips as more heat than I'd ever felt before in my life shot out of my horn and for the hallway I suspected Sombra of being in. A wall of crystal shot up to block my flame, and instantly shattered under the heat of my spell. I poured more magic into it, wanting to see the flames pour out of every crack in the wall on that side of the Chamber.
While I poured magic and anger into making a barbecue king, I kept waiting for the clang of the door closing behind me, but it never came. Laying off the flames for a second, I turned to look back at my friends, only to see all three now with the bright-eyed stare, and all three aiming wands at me.
I could barely remember the spell that Hermione had taught Addera to open and close doors, but I didn't care. I muttered what I hoped was something close enough and threw my anger at closing the door before Katie, George, and Eliza could make it through.
Finally hearing the clanging I'd hoped for earlier, I turned back to see two shafts of crystal coming right for me. Remembering that they couldn't pierce my skin, but they could still hurt me, I dodged the first, pronked over the second, and felt something hard and blunt thump into my back-left leg at a bad angle.
My leg was broken—it wasn't hard to tell, I'd had limbs broken before and fixed almost as quickly—but I had spares. What the strike served to do was make me even more angry, and I didn't fight that anger.
I didn't actually know a lot of fire spells—I knew the basic Fire-Making charm, I knew about the cloak-igniting one that Hermione had been so proud of casting, Bluebelle flames, as well as the raw fire I could conjure, but I found myself wishing I knew whatever the spell Snape talked about (I think it was fiendfire). In the moment, and with my anger boiling white-hot around me, I reached for the fire spell that I had no name for.
It couldn't have been easier. Time seemed to slow down and I watched three new shafts of crystal coming toward me, and could guess there were more coming from other angles. It didn't matter, the solution had become clear to my focused mind.
I was non-flammable, Sombra was not.
Pronking, I felt the flames pour over me and wash through my mane, tail, and fur. The tape that had left some sticky masses in my fur was burned away completely, and the flames danced outward.
When the fire connected with the crystal spikes that were coming at me, the crystal seemed to vibrate and then crack. Before the points could make contact with me they exploded into tiny shards of crystal that bounced harmlessly off my scales.
Sending my flames out, I found tunnels and pipes too small for Sombra to fit through. "Where are you?! Can't apparate with the door closed?!" The thought giggled around in my head and fueled my desire to find him. "I don't burn, King Sombra, what about you?!"
A blast of magic hit me from behind, sent me tumbling head over heels to the far end of the Chamber from the door. I laughed and raged the whole time, using my awkward impact against the far wall to maintain my fury.
"Little colt, I was breaking wild unicorn sorcerers before your ancestors were even born!" Sombra was walking toward me with his illusion of his full self in place. Each step he took, another flash of black-green magic flared and rushed toward me.
I dodged, jumping aside each time to avoid what I suspected was the same magic that had flung me from one end of the room to the other, but each step he took closer to me made it harder because the shorter distance ruined my reaction time more. When one whistled past my ear close enough to feel its heat, I turned toward his next and instinctively opened my mouth.
Dark magic—like what I'd burned out of Snape—should have hit my shoulder, but as it neared and I inhaled, it arced toward my maw.
A surge of power crackled through my body. There was so much magic in the spell he'd sent my way that I felt revitalized. My wounds seemed healed completely, and I was both angry and happy. "More! Another!"
"Open the door, boy, and I'll let you live."
His eyes burned with green-black fire that I knew—well, hoped—was fake. Nothing could have that much magic in it. I barked a laugh at him. "There's only two creatures here that can speak parseltongue: me and—"
My words were cut off by the sound I feared. The door at the other end of the hall opened.
Laughing, Sombra lifted one hoof and, as he brought it back down, disappeared in a puff of black smoke.
"NO!" I looked up at Addera, and for a moment I wanted to burn her. "Why'd you do that?! He was trapped!"
—No, Harry Potter, you were trapped.— She slithered into the chamber and let herself down the ladder easily. —From the moment you locked the door you put yourself in the greatest danger, and it was a matter of time until he expended your energy. Then, like all such manipulators, he would have taken over you.—
She didn't have her glasses on and I could see Addera's beautiful eyes. They had no power over me, but I wanted them to. Stepping closer, I stomped my hooves. "But I almost—"
Addera was much faster than I was. If she'd been in the chamber with Sombra, he wouldn't have stood a chance. As it was, I had less. She surged forward and scooped me up in her arms before I could so much as try to finish my sentence, and she hugged my burning body to her chest. —Calm down, Harry Potter, he's gone for now.—
I squirmed, struggled, and even tried to make my fire ignite Addera, but it was no good. Then it hit me—my fire didn't burn living things. Like a candle wick pinched between two fingers, my flames died out and I started to shiver. I couldn't hurt him no matter how hot I burned him. Had I actually caught him? Was that why he had been so bold at the end?
—You are brave beyond all reason, Harry Potter.— Addera squeezed me tighter still, only stopping when I gasped. —You are hurt.—
"A few ribs. Maybe a back-leg. I thought I was supposed to be indestructible?" Each time I moved in her grip, I felt a new thing that hurt.
—You're not indestructible, Harry Potter, I just wish you were.—
Addera hadn't been this furious or scared before. The former emotion had been a companion for nearly her whole life, but the latter was something new—particularly since it was aimed at a young boy. She lashed her tail and slithered along the edge of the barrier and hissed angrily like she were still just the monster Harry had rescued her from being.
When the red wall shimmered, filled with holes, and failed she raced past the burned grass that marked its former location. The teachers and students of Hogwarts were there—together—to battle the invading (helmetted) ponies, but Harry only had her.
Having watched the four brooms zoom out from under the barrier before it full coalesced, Addera knew their direction and likely destination. Dodging beams and blasts of red light, Addera drew her wand out of her backpack and replied in kind.
"Make a hole for her! She's going to protect Harry!" Albus Dumbledore's voice rang out over the crowd of students around him—students who had already cast more spells in the last several seconds than during the previous week.
Paying for spells with his humanity, Albus wordlessly sent two sheets of fire to chase after and flank Addera. The fire obscured the lamia's movement to Albus' delight, and it let him turn his attention back to the events unfolding closer.
Around her, Gemma Farley had a mix of Slytherin and Hufflepuff students and Albus Dumbledore. A beam of red light came toward them, and it was only Gemma's reflexes, practiced by dueling, that had her bring a shield up in time to block it. "Slytherin! Hufflepuff! Hogwarts! To arms! Protect Dumbledore!"
Smiling at the chant, and trying to ignore the mane of silver-gray hair that seemed to tumble down one side of his head, Albus focused on offense while his students took up shielding and point-defense. Precise blasting spells seemed the best, he discovered after a few such spells, for either knocking the helmets off the ponies' heads or simply knocking them out.
Sparing only a glance back at the castle, Albus wished he had access to the warding stone, but after Princess Cadance's entry into the grounds of Hogwarts, it had developed a rather nasty crack and his efforts to erect further defenses with it had proven useless (and had cost him a rather fetching orange sheen to his arms).
With no further concentration to spare on might-have-beens and wishes, Albus turned his focus to a group of helmeted ponies that had blasted a group of unprotected students into unconsciousness—at least he hoped it was unconsciousness.
Sparing a moment from working with the teachers and students, Keen Eyes aimed his horn directly upward and unleashed a fountain of green that shot into the sky. "Come on, lieutenant, you get to be heroes and you're missing your bat—" His thought cut short when a red beam collided with his shoulder, and Keen felt consciousness fading, and not even a stinging pain in his side could keep his eyes open.
Having dealt with the helmeted ponies guarding the strange human, Twilight Sparkle and her friends had just finished tying them all up when they saw the green flare. "What in Equestria is that?" Twilight asked.
"That," Rainbow Dash said, "Is an E.U.P. Guard distress signal. More specifically, that somepony's been ambushed."
Rarity disliked being thought of as useless, but so far she hadn't been terribly effective at all. She looked at Rainbow with admiration, however. "Wherever did you pick up such information?"
Rainbow Dash wasn't sure at first whether to reveal the one thing she really geeked out over, but like all single-topic-geeks, she couldn't hold herself back. "Well, I kinda did a little research about the Wonderbolts. They're part of the E.U.P. Guard, and while they're part of it, they also—"
"Rainbow!" Twilight rolled her eyes. "If it's a pony asking for help, we have to help!"
Snapping her right wing forward and to her brow, Rainbow sketched the best salute her research had uncovered. "Then come on! We gotta go be the heroes!"
While her friends charged off, Pinkie Pie pulled a cupcake out of her mane and set it down beside Peter Pettigrew. "I think you've probably had a worse day than I have. I hope it gets a little better for you." She booped the ugly man on his nose, giggled, and started pronking off after her friends.
For the second time in his life, Peter felt surprise at the kindness of another. Only his old friend, Remus Moony Lupin, had shown him such unfettered warmth and understanding. "Fool." Peter tried to move, but in doing so revealed how tight his bonds were. "Doubly fools!"
Focusing on his ratty form, Peter embraced the sensations and mental aspect of being a rat, then pulled the sensations over him like a cloak. It would have worked perfectly had he not been part pony already.
The rush of magic that should have turned Peter into a rat, instead twisted his legs and arms into pony legs. "No. No! Not pony, rat!" Again he tried, and again the magic rushed through him. Peter crowed in glee as he felt his body start to shrink, and his spine shift, but when it stopped he was a pony—100% pony.
Letting loose a blast of the most foul language that could ever be uttered, Peter Pettigrew squirmed and wiggled, and despite becoming the wrong creature, he realized he was still smaller than his human self. Cursing turned to giggling as—in the form of a pony—Peter slipped from the ropes.
Managing four legs was simple, dealing with the thing still wrapped around his neck was less so. Peter felt it give a pulse, and she was back. Thinking became harder, and Peter shrank inside his own mind as Ginevra Molly Weasley became the focus of his very existence. "I-I got free, Mistress!"
'Come, we still have a task to complete and I can't afford to focus half my attention on you.'
Shivering, Peter Pettigrew felt the slightest wiggle room in his mind so that he could think. The thoughts were all bent toward what Ginevra Molly Weasley commanded, but it was a start.
Shaking his dirty rags free of his green-furred body, Peter looked in the direction the six powerful ponies had headed. Normally, as a survivor par excellence, Peter would be traveling in the opposite direction, but Ginevra Molly Weasley had given him a command, and that command became the sole focus of his existence.
Addera advanced through the chamber she'd been locked in for a thousand years. She didn't so much as blink when she slithered past one of her old shriveled up skins, or the bones of little creatures she'd fed off. —Sausages are much better.—
Continuing down the passage, Addera hissed when she rounded a bend and found George Weasley, Katie Bell, and Eliza O'Leary blasting away at the door leading to the Chamber of Secrets. Each spell they cast stole more of their humanity. "Stop!"
As she slithered forward, Addera didn't notice any of the students stop their efforts. George cast another spell, but dropped his wand when his arms turned into legs—complete with hooves. When she came alongside them, and looked in their eyes, Addera got more angry. Each of the three had slightly glowing, swirling eyes.
George, now that he'd cast the last spell that finished off his change, resembled an orange-furred crystalline earth pony, and beside him sat Katie—trying to hold her wand between two white hooves while a yellow mane spilled over one side of her face.
Eliza stood apart from her two quidditch opponents. She resembled a human almost completely, except for shimmering blue crystal where her hands reached out of her robes, and a head that looked like it belonged on a pony. Her hair was still the same platinum blonde as before, though a matching tail could be seen under her robes now that it was long enough.
What really stood out, literally, was two shapes under Eliza's robes. Where her shoulders and upper back should have been a relatively straight line down to her rear, Eliza had two large wings straining under her robes.
Knowing that speaking parseltongue around the door would cause it to open, Addera instead reached up with a hoof and took her glasses off.
"Look at me," Addera said as she shifted to put herself before Eliza.
Eliza O'Leary had been following the command of her master, King Sombra, when a pair of eyes hovered into her view. Sitting back on her rump, she found the slit-pupil eyes more and more pretty by the second, and slowly forgot about what she was even trying to do.
"You are completely under my control," Addera said. "And you will act as you normally do until I give you another command. Do you understand?"
Every part of Eliza breathed a happy sigh at having been given a command. She nodded eagerly, then looked down at herself. "I'm almost a pony."
"Yes you are. Casting too many spells tends to do that. Stand back from your friends and look the other way until I tell you to look back." Addera knew what she was doing was—by the absolute rules—wrong, but she couldn't spare the time to use her talent to break her friends out of Sombra's grip completely. Turning to Katie and George together, Addera caught their eyes and their minds in her trap, and repeated her command for them. "Eliza, you can turn back now."
"What've we done?" George looked between Eliza, Katie, and then to himself. "And why do you get to keep yer hands?"
"Does it matter? Harry Potter's in there, losing." Addera turned to the door. "All three of you, back away from the door and—" she passed her glasses to Eliza, "—keep these safe." Waiting for all three of her thralls to retreat, Addera cleared her throat. —Open.—