Chapter 53
“Open.”
The sink sank down and out of sight, revealing a massive pipe behind it. The carving had been discovered on the tap after Bonbon and Lyra had interviewed Myrtle halfway across the castle, only thirty minutes before.
Harry- who had been reluctant to step into this girl’s bathroom- peered into it. “... Wow.”
“Needing a Parselmouth would certainly explain why nobody found it before,” Hermione, standing next to him, muttered. For reasons she rather suspected, it had taken all of three minutes to get Harry- and only Harry, annoyingly enough- cleared to learn about the Agency and her part in it. Three minutes after she had mentioned that time the previous year when, during a casual conversation in the Gryffindor common room, Harry had mentioned talking to a snake in the zoo before he went to Hogwarts.
Lyra and Bonbon both bent down in front of the pipe to look down it.
“Climbable,” Bonbon announced. “Covered in slime, though, no trace of sewage. Slime appears to be biological in nature.”
“Pipe curves several times before passing through a ward barrier I’m having difficulty penetrating," Lyra noted. "Curves are closely spaced, but erratic, even after descending below the lowest dungeon level. No linkage to the sewage system, offshoot pipes appear to be a separate system with numerous additional ward barriers throughout. Slime spotted in only some of them.”
“Could we be dealing with a Hive?” Bonbon asked.
Lyra shook her head. “This is definitely not ‘Ling slime. Looks like it came from some local biology… One creature in particular, no other specimens involved.”
“That’s a lot of slime,” Twilight scowled, crouching behind Lyra to peek into the pipe as well, “for only one creature.”
Moondancer, crouching behind Bonbon, also scowled. “We still don’t know what the monster is, though, or otherwise what to expect when we descend.”
Silence held for two seconds.
Bonbon held out a hand. “Rope,” she ordered.
Heavy Load, an Equestrian boy that had been standing patiently behind them all, stepped forward to offer Bonbon a coil of rope that was larger than she was.
It didn’t bother Bonbon any. She didn’t even overbalance, despite still being bent over to see down the pipe, when she took it, untied the end, and flung it out towards Harry. “Spike,” she ordered.
Spike, who had been teased as being Twilight’s shadow, didn’t react.
Instead, it was Hard Stroke, a burly-looking Equestrian girl, that responded. She stabbed the footlong spike in one of her hands through the tip of the rope and into the tile, then hefted the massive sledgehammer in her other hand to drive the spike deep into the tile with a deafening bang. Finally, she turned the hammer over, fit the other side of the head over the end of the spike, and used the hammer as a massive lever to twist it ninety degrees. “Locked,” she announced, before proceeding to sit on the hammer, still engaged with the spike.
“Descending,” Bonbon announced, and stepped into the pipe, walking slowly down it while she used the rope to keep herself up. Lyra, Moondancer, and a team of other Equestrians- including both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna- immediately followed.
Finally, Hermione was the last with Equestrian hair. She took the rope in her hands, and stepped into the entrance to the pipe. “Harry?” she asked, looking back.
Harry nodded, and stepped forward, taking the rope to follow her down. Behind him, Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape all followed. Lockhart had been busy replying to his fanmail, and so wasn’t coming.
It seemed to take absolutely forever to reach the bottom. It didn’t exactly help that Bonbon stopped several times along the way.
Finally, though, the pipe let out into a dimly lit stone passageway. By the time Harry, Hermione, and the teachers emerged, the entryway had already been well lit by numerous magical lanterns bobbing up by the ceiling, no doubt cast by the Equestrians.
Bonbon waited until everyone was out of the pipe- she still had most of her coil of rope left- before she looked at Lyra, and spoke.
“Slime patterns on the corners suggested a serpent of some kind,” she stated. “Using the corners to push itself up the pipe and, at times, into the smaller pipes.”
Lyra nodded. “Identification still negative.” She looked down the passage. “Passage seems to terminate in a decorated wall imbued with barrier wards.”
They set off down the passage.
The professors exchanged silent looks, then followed. Dumbledore had explained to them what was going on- though, as Hermione had been sure to warn Harry, he was not aware of what the Agency really was, instead believing it to be a loose organization formed of a conglomeration of various experts.
It wasn’t long before they drew to a halt again. They stood, quietly, at the back for only a few seconds, before Bonbon’s yell came down from the front.
“Parseltongue!”
Harry obediently moved forwards, various Equestrians stepping aside to let him pass.
Finally, Harry led the party back up the pipe, climbing up the rope. He wordlessly stood to the side, in front of the stall Myrtle had haunted for so long, to watch the professors and Equestrians, including Hermione, emerge from the pipe, one by one. Finally, Bonbon brought up the end of the line, coiling the rope back up as she went. She stopped, one foot still in the pipe, to scan the crowd before she stepped clear of it and allowed the pipe to seal itself once again.
Once the pipe was sealed, the spike was twisted back and wrenched back out of the floor- leaving the floor completely undamaged- then everyone trickled out of the bathroom, one by one, and went on their merry way once again. They hadn’t found anything except a large, carved stone chamber with a statue of Salazar against one wall.
Finally, Harry and Hermione were the only two left.
“Well,” Harry muttered. “That was… um…”
“Educational, I think,” Hermione said, the look of concentration she’d sported since long before they headed up still unbroken. “And I think I need to go to the library. I’m missing something.”
“... Alright,” Harry answered. “In the meantime, I suppose I should leave the girl’s bathroom and… I don’t know. Grade some homework?”
Hermione looked at him. “And practice flattening your magic, remember.” Then she blinked. “Oh, and if you hear that voice in the walls again? See if you can respond to it. Order it to stop, go back to rest.” She shrugged. “Who knows, you might be able to prevent an attack.”
“Good idea.”
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Great job on the chapter! Looking forward to seeing if Harry can talk to the you-know-what in the walls
10832617
Unfortunately, this story... never got that far. It was already too far off the rails by Chap. 20, and has been slowly spinning its way to damnation.
That said, with no worry of spoilers because the scene was never written and never will be, I can say he wouldn't have been able to. Without having the Parseltongue ability himself, and instead relying on Voldemort's shard, he- as in canon- would have to see the snake, and even then trick his brain into thinking it was real, to be able to switch languages. You would get a very strange scene when Harry suddenly started yelling at the wall, though.
It's being rewritten... and I haven't actually taken this factor into account on the new outline just yet, but I don't expect too significant of a difference, since even in the new version, he hasn't been PT-ed yet at this point either. (I much prefer the slower PT schedule this one debuted...)
10832623
Ooh, nice. Don't worry about the story going off the rails, I still really enjoy it
Do any of the female characters in this story throw any punches?
I don't know snake secretes slime. I thought only slug or eel does that.
10832625
I don't.
It was too far off the rails for me to logically continue the story, though. At that point, I actually can't go on, and have to go back. Unfortunately, in order to go back far enough to continue, I'd have to rewrite... which is, naturally, what I'm doing.
10832643
Do they... punch people? No... I'm not aware that any of the male characters do either, for that matter. And I think there might have been a fight scene when Silver came to being, where there was a (female) delinquent that attacked, and three other (female) characters that got caught unwillingly in the fight but managed to hold their own. Why?
10832766
Me neither.
All I know is that the pipe was described as full of slime in canon, so it obviously had to be here as well.
10832873
Well, as the author, you know what's best for the story, so I shall support the rewrite. But both this and the original were very well done, in my opinion, even if they didn't go as planned
10832877
Just because the pipe was slimy doesn’t mean said slime came from the snake using the pipe as a highway. Especially a drainpipe, as it has to be to not be full of pressurized water! Plenty of opportunity for filth and muck washed down the drain to stick and culture some kind of slime mold.
Well, it’s a shame that’s the end of it... at least until your rewrite catches up and passes it.
see this is why the assumption that your crazy if you hear voices is bad...who knows, if you reply back you might stop a murder