Chapter Text

The Other Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter — May 2004

The pillar’s shadow elongated across wet grass, the dew turned to frost within its domain. Its darkness defied the afternoon sun, all its brethren pointing in the opposite direction. Harry descended into the earth. Lichen patterned the threshold in grey-green fractals, damp under his palm where he steadied himself. The cavern pulled the heat from his skin.

His boots scraped against stone polished smooth. Each step rang flat then died. There was no echo. A bit odd, that. The world was muffled, the ground unsteady.

Then his ears popped.

Much better.

It was twenty metres in when the smell struck him. Decomposing peat and centuries of accumulated guano. His stomach twisted and eyes watered. Bloody grim down here.

He drew his holly wand. The thing was a literal death stick, and here he was pointing it straight at his own face. A bubble formed, then sealed around his nose and mouth, like cling film against his cheeks. His next breath came through recycled air that tasted of nothing.

That’s the ticket.

The cavern opened ahead. His wandlight revealed rough walls that predated recorded history. The place had been uncovered back in the 70s. Naturally, it had since been thoroughly picked clean by three decades of researchers looking to make their names. That lot had found precisely nothing. Just empty stone and academic careers starved by its stubborn refusal to provide a single morsel.

That was, until some unlucky bastard's foot had gone straight through solid ground not three weeks ago.

Harry's light exposed the chalk marks where Ministry workers had cordoned off the discovery site. Boot-scuffs in the disturbed earth. Handprints where the muggle had saved himself from face-planting into unforgiving flagstone. They'd obliviated him with enthusiasm, of course. Kingsley's report used the phrase "appropriate thoroughness," which likely meant the poor sod was doomed to some rather awkward anniversaries and birthdays from here on.

Harry crouched over the exposed ward array. His knees protested the cold through his trousers. The illusion that had concealed these runes had collapsed on contact. Keying to physical touch rather than magical signature meant any random pedestrian could stumble through. Sloppy.

He traced fingers through air a centimetre above the first glyph. Elder Futhark, an archaic variant that predated standardization. Dagaz, breakthrough. Oriented wrong for threshold work. Gebo, partnership. Carved with the kind of obsessive precision that suggested ceremonial application. Beneath those, half-obscured by mineral deposits, hatched patterns that could be Tartessian or something similar. Why that would be here, he couldn’t really say.

Harry drew in a deep breath, then sighed it out. Best get to it. He withdrew a stick of chalk from his coat and began marking the visible perimeter. Two metres by three, was it? Glyphs looked densest at what read as the focal point.

Alright, by the numbers:
Map the boundaries.
Identify the control mechanism.
Work inward.

His lower back whinged. S’okay, just a tidy bit of mechanical survey work and then back to his…

Hmm.

Well, then done with this spot of bother, anyway.

Kingsley’d insisted he take point on this one. Good PR for the administration, and all that. The Boy-Who-Lived-And-Won't-The-Prophet-Ever-Shut-Up-About-It solving an ancient mystery. Celebrity heroism as political capital. Never mind that half a dozen other Fellows were more deserving and specialized for the task. It wasn’t like merit really mattered. After all, the cameras loved him.

Probably the hair.

He shifted his weight. It wasn’t the curses or travel. No, the cramps were by far the worst part of the job. He muttered a diagnostic charm. The words were swallowed by the cavern. That’s not how acoustics work.

But that’s not my business.

His breathing had gone shallow. He hadn’t noticed when the air had grown thick.

The temperature near the walls registered warmer than in open space. Heat rose. Everyone knew that. But here, the stone was drinking in the heat.

Harry pulled his notebook and jotted observations:
Anomalous thermal patterns.
Unexplained pressure gradient.
Pain in the arse runic system.

He tucked the book back into his breast pocket and returned his attention to the runes. Withdrawing a soft-bristled brush from his mokeskin pouch, he got to work on some mineral deposits obscuring a portion of the array. They came away under gentle pressure, revealing more of the underlying pattern. His eye twitched. This thing was bloody complex. Far more than a concealment array had any right to be.

Probably not just for concealment, then.

Suppose it was controlling something else as well.

His brush stilled. A spiral configuration at the heart, feeding into three radiating lines that terminated in glyphs he'd need days in the library to translate. The whole structure thrummed. A metallic and slightly sweet flavour like oxidized copper filled his mouth.

Ah, he was tasting magic.

Well, that’s new.

Harry sat back, stretching until his shoulders cracked. His left knee was acting up again. He glanced at his watch, the old Weasley piece Molly had pressed into his hands all those years ago. Back when the Burrow had been home.

Just past eleven.

Wands at dawn, Harry! That's the spirit!

We’ll make a duelist out of you yet, Ickle Harry.

We turn on three. One—

—Two—

Dishonourable? That’s just using your head, Harry!

Just so, brother mine. Tis’ but strategy.

We guarantee the bad guys won’t be playing fair.

Indubitably.

Irrefutably

Undeniably

Without—Oh, fine. Once more, then, on three.

One

Two

Harry blinked. The cavern was still there. The watch showed 11:17. Seconds or minutes had folded away while his mind went elsewhere.

He rolled his shoulders and returned to the array. The spiral at centre was the obvious starting point. The Keystone. Had to be.

Harry pressed his wandtip to the central glyph and sent out an activation pulse.

Something awakened.

Blue light traced outward along carved lines, filling the grooves. The illumination stayed constrained within the runes themselves, rather than spilling across the stone. Glyphs that had been buried beneath grime now glowed steady and bright, silver-blue.

The pattern extended further than he'd mapped. Five metres. Six. Spreading across the cavern floor in nonsensical configurations that made his eyes ache.

Still, he could tell this was a lock. A massive, multi-layered, stupidly complex lock. Someone had poured obscene power into maintaining this. He found the binding nodes, then withdrew a thaumic gauge from his mokeskin pouch. The brass instrument was standard issue for dating enchantments. Nice and reliable. He passed it over the nodes, watching the needle spin. Jotting down the reading, he started in on the calculations.

That couldn’t be right.

He did it again.

Hmm. He was a dab hand with numbers. Couldn’t be off by that much.

Wards degraded over time. Always. Power slowly bled away into entropy. That was fundamental. Inescapable.

This looked as though it had been created yesterday.

Stone shifted beneath his boots.

The floor began moving. Grinding that should have been deafening happened in complete silence. The stones moved like pieces of a puzzle, solving itself.

Harry straightened, tracking the movement spreading outward from the central spiral. The glyphs pulsed brighter. Blue deepened to violet. The temperature spiked, the warmth that had been contained in the walls now radiating outward.

Violet light spread to sections of wall he hadn't examined. The stone there was covered in more runes, so densely layered they seemed to writhe.

He rubbed his eyes. No, not just seemed.

They were writhing.

The glyphs danced across the stone surface. Their movement, undulating in waves, slithered across the still façade. His eyes tried to track individual characters. They blurred, shifting position faster than he could follow. He squinted, trying to isolate one specific rune. Wait. What was he doing?

His skull ached.

Something unseen caressed his jawline, its touch feather-light.

Light enough to be imagined, except he could feel the specific points of contact. Fingertips that trailed his brow. His cheekbone. His throat.

Hair stood on the back of his neck. His breathing came quick and shallow. Fingers tightened around his wand.

And the gentle pressure lifted.

This is fine.

No problem at all.

Ancient, logic-defying chambers were old hat by now. He'd encountered variations at least a dozen times over five years. Well. Not exactly like this, but at least this one wasn't actively trying to kill him. He didn’t think so, anyway.

Whatever was happening had started the moment he'd touched that glyph. And running now would require so much paperwork.

Besides. If something went wrong and he died here—

Well.

Should have happened years ago, really.

The wall opened.

Stone rippled. The surface moved like water, concentric rings spreading outward from a central point. The wards submerged into the rock. Glowing lines dissipating into the depths of the exposed void. The barrier simply wasn't anymore.

Beyond lay darkness.

Harry's wandlight pushed forward. The illumination stopped at the threshold, then bled slowly into the space beyond, like liquid soaking into fabric. The temperature inside registered neutral against his skin. The air sat completely motionless.

The space was pristine. It rather gave off the feeling of a sanitarium.

Seems as though I’m expected. Suppose it'd be rude not to turn up.

In the end, he walked willingly into the darkness.

· · ·

And out into the light, ready to begin.

As he arrived, the pressure that had built up on the other side released.

That gradient pushing against his skull, the weight pressing his eardrums—gone. Harry floated forward. His boots touched flagstone, but he could feel no contact, like walking on air.

The aching in his lower back from an hour spent hunched over, absent. The persistent complaint from his knee, quieted. Even the cramping in his hands from earlier had dissolved.

Everything felt lighter.

His wandlight had spread while he crossed the threshold, but it was no longer necessary—the room was already illuminated. Lovely. He tucked his wand away.

The space was three metres by four. Ceiling just high enough to be comforting rather than claustrophobic. A plinth stood at the centre. A small bookshelf against the far wall. A chest beside it.

He surveyed the room, all the walls a smooth, spotless white. The floors were polished ivory. He tapped his foot against it. Right, no sound. Turning to the entry wall, he looked at it. It was no stone he recognized. And he prided himself on knowing just about every type of stone on the continent.

He reached out, brushing his hand against the plain white wall. His fingers could pick up what his eyes couldn’t. Texture. He tapped the side of his spectacles, the lenses zooming in on the wall. Bloody hell. It was absolutely covered with thousands upon thousands of miniature runes.

But that was the normal part. The abnormal part was that he could see and feel them moving. Just like the ones that had disappeared when the chamber opened, but so, so many more.

Zooming in further, he could make out symbols from every system he knew, and many more he didn’t, all intermingled in a dizzying pattern.

That’ll put a spot of starch in the philologists’ trousers.

Turning around, the central plinth rose from the floor. It seemed a bit off.

Walking closer, he bent low. The plinth was the same unknown stone as the room. No. It was a part of the room, not a separate piece, but carved straight from the earth.

My, how elegant these Neolithic wizards were.

Harry stood back up, taking a step—

Wait…

He looked back down at the plinth. The bright white floor around it. All around it. On every side. And beneath it.

It had gone and lost its shadow.

He looked around the illuminated room again, more critically. Where was the light coming from? There were no ceiling lights. No sconces, either.

For fuck’s sake.

A slow breath in. Hold it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And out. Once more.

And we're right as rain.

Stepping up to the plinth, he looked down to see a shabby black volume lying flat against its unblemished surface. He withdrew a set of cotton gloves from his mokeskin, donning them before carefully picking up the book. The spine was a wreck. A good chunk of the pages had been torn out. The binding was clearly dragon hide. Likely Hebridean Black. The only other black dragon that came to mind was the breed he was most intimately familiar with. He somehow doubted that dragons were imported from Hungary with any regularity 12,000 years ago.

He turned it to show the cover. It was well-worn, age having eroded most of the embossment. Still, enough of the faded gold leaf remained—

A vertical line.
|
Within a circle.
○
Within a Triangle.
△

Well, hello there.

His pouch suddenly felt heavier, the weight of the Hallows apparent. That’s not how magically expanded bags work. It hung from his waist like a stone.

He opened the first page. Old Ogham greeted him. Had always looked like chicken scratch to him, Ogham. Best pawn this off on one of the swots on desk duty at the Institute.

Pulling out a bolt of muslin, the tome was quickly wrapped, secured, and in his bag.

That done, Harry glanced at his watch.

The second hand sat frozen at the twelve. The minute hand crept forward. The hour hand spun backward, moving faster than the minute hand advanced.

He stared into its face.

It stared back—it was a watch.

He tapped the crystal. The hour hand continued whirling like a dervish. The minute crawling forward. The second frozen.

Right.

The familiar rhythm in his chest picked up a bit. Not to worry, though. Things break, that’s why there’s watchmakers, innit?

He cleared his throat.

Now then. Harry’s gaze was pulled to the small bookshelf. A few steps and he was before it. Picking up the first volume, he saw that it was freshly made. He was sensing a trend with this prehistoric chamber.

The cover was bare. Unfortunately, the text within was no more help. It was pure gobbledygook, and not the Goblin variety. He could’ve read that. A quick charm confirmed, it had been encrypted by some cipher spell. The key would need to be worked out if they wanted access to what it contained.

The same was true for the other books and bound records.

He stored it all and turned to the wooden chest. The recently crafted wooden chest. The one that smelled strongly of cedar and linseed oil.

Harry’s eye twitched.

He kicked the thing open, revealing it full of galleons. Right. Obviously, it would be.

And of course, once again, the loud bang from his careful excavation was swallowed up. Once again, there was no echo in the small stone room. He was getting sick of this shit.

Quick as he could, he tagged and bagged the galleons, then shot a dirty look at the chest.

The bloody menace.

Harry closed his eyes. Deep breath in. Then out. That’s the way. He slowly opened his eyes.

It was time to go.

Stepping back through the threshold into the outer cavern, the darkness ahead resolved as his eyes adjusted—

No. Wait.

The inner chamber still glowed behind him, that sourceless white light illuminating the cavern before him.

He turned back to consider it. Probably should reseal it, wouldn’t want—

The chamber shimmered like a heat mirage.

Like wind disturbing a haze, bands blurred and distorted. The white walls streaked horizontally, reality unraveling in swift bands. Dirty glass wiped clean in invisible strokes. The walls dissolved, bleeding into transparency. The plinth, the bookshelf, the chest—all of it streaming away before his eyes.

The light went, too. Yanked backward, dragged by unseen currents, leaving trails that dissipated like smoke.

Then there was nothing.

The cavern plunged into absolute darkness.

Harry stood in the black, blinking at where the chamber had been. His breath echoed in the sudden void.

Right.

S’pose he hadn’t been sleeping well.

He drew his wand. The wandlight pushed back the dark, revealing rough stone where the sterile white had been moments before. The threshold was just… Gone. Solid rock. The mineral-rich smell of ancient earth hit him properly now, damp and old and real in a way the sanitized chamber hadn't been.

He turned toward the exit, light sweeping across the disturbed floor. The chalk marks from his earlier work, the—

Chalk marks… Where had they gone? And the exit. It was gone, in its place was natural rock, rubble that hadn't been there before.

This is getting to be a bit much.

Harry moved closer, examining the obstruction. Some sites did this, right? Triggered mechanisms, ancient fail-safes, perfectly reasonable—

He bit his cheek.

Perfectly.

Reasonable.

He stepped back, raised his wand. A swish and flick, and the largest boulder lifted cleanly. He set it aside, then the next, and the next. Simple transfiguration on the smaller pieces, reshaping them into sand that poured harmlessly away.

His body went through the motions, an automaton mining the earth.

He needed to get out. Get back to his house. End this bloody day.

Soon enough, the passage was clear. Harry climbed toward daylight.

He emerged into grey afternoon. The Ring of Brodgar stood around him, towering monoliths arranged as they'd stood for millennia. The wind whipped off the sea, buffeting his hair. Salt on his tongue. An overcast sky with heavy clouds promised rain.

This was the Orkney. Remote, windswept, exactly as it should be.

Except.

Something felt wrong.

Harry scanned the landscape. The stones were positioned correctly. The grass, the distant water, the rocky terrain—all present and accounted for. But something about the light quality, or the air, or the way the wind moved through the space—

He couldn't place it.

Bah.

He was done. Completely done. Whatever mysteries this site held could bloody well wait until tomorrow, when his head would hopefully be back on straight.

The air twisted. Reality compressed, folding him through a too-small space as Harry turned on his heel.

Crack.

· · ·

Crack.

Landing on the ball of his foot, space unfolded around him. The air settled.

And something was wrong.

Grimmauld Place was warded as thoroughly as any of Gringotts’ vaults. It should have been exactly as he'd left it.

It wasn't.

His wand was in his fingers. He scanned the room, cataloguing discrepancies.

The shape of the place was the same, but the details were all wrong.

Gone were his things.

The painting of Avalon's Lake he'd picked up in Tintagel. His blackthorn shillelagh from a job at Blarney Castle, leaning in the corner. The Viking drinking horn on the side table. His loaded bone dice from that dig in the highlands. The stack of books that never seemed to find their way to a shelf.

All of it. Gone.

He turned slowly, fingers drumming once against his wand.

Gilded moulding curled along the ceiling now, serpents coiled in endless knots. The wallpaper was nearly black, dense acanthus leaves arranged in baroque spirals. Where his coat stand had been, an ebony table stood on clawed feet. Silver bowl filled with polished river stones.

Did George bribe the house elves again?

Honestly, this is a bit much.

This wasn't the place he’d rebuilt. Years of restoration, stubborn refusal to let the past define the space. All of it wiped away. Replaced with the original Black family pageantry.

It was like the house had erased his entire history.

He took a breath, squared his shoulders.

Nothing for it, then.

He stepped into the corridor and stopped.

The Black family tapestry stretched across the far wall. Immense. Brocaded with serpentine vines. Silver-threaded names gleaming under dim chandelier light.

That can't—

Flames eating up the tapestry. Sirius laughing, wild and free.

Dance Harry, Dance!

Fire roaring. Heat on his face. Sirius spinning him around the entry hall.

Laughter bursting from him, unable to be contained.

Harry blinked.

The tapestry hung before him. Unburnt.

He moved closer, squinting at the silver threads. Names that shouldn't be there.

Sirius Black was still listed.

Andromeda Black hadn’t been burned off.

No marriages recorded for their generation, either. No children listed for his own. This was the tapestry from before. From when they were still part of the family. Before Sirius ran away. Before Andromeda married Ted.

Someone must’ve found an older version. Recreated it, somehow. Then changed the whole place and hung it here.

His pulse ticked faster in his throat.

“This isn’t funny. George? Trundle?”

His voice echoed through the hall. No one answered.

Harry stepped into the parlour. A folded newspaper rested on the dining table. He flipped it open with two fingers.

‘Jenkins Under Fire: Is the Ministry Doing Enough to Counter the Dark Lord's Rise?’

Eugenia Jenkins. Minister for Magic in the early 70s. Ousted in '75 for her failure to check Voldemort's rise.

His thumb brushed the parchment. Crisp. Fresh ink.

He looked to the corner, then stared. The date stared back.

1972.

Harry blinked slowly.

1972.

Then again.

1972.

One more time.

1972.

Sure.

Why not.

His wand moved in sharp, precise patterns. Diagnostic charms layered over himself, one after another. His skin tingled with the sweep of magic.

Compulsions? None.
Magical interference? No.
External influences? Nothing.

He flicked his wand again, checking for displacement markers. Rerouting. False location enchantments.

Nope.

This was Grimmauld Place. This was 1972.

Which meant he was Goldilocks, and—

The wards pulsed.

The Floo roared to life

The Invisibility Cloak settled over his shoulders. Silencing charm on his boots. He backed into a shadowed corner, wand raised.

Breathing steady. He waited.

Here come the three bears.