A Scoundrel's Staycation Ch. 60 (Harry Potter AU) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Battle is joined~

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The Basilisk rears back and then lunges forward, moving with the size, speed, and strength of a freight train. But Harry is already responding to its opening attack.

“Bombarda Maxima!”

An explosion of force slams into the Basilisk’s head, twisting it to the side and even breaking off a fang, sending it spinning off to clatter against a wall. See, the thing is… Basilisks were notoriously resistant to magic. And from what Harry knew, Slytherin’s Monster was the oldest Basilisk in recorded history, at least where Europe was concerned.

That he’d originally beaten the damn thing at the tender age of twelve all those lifetimes ago was something Harry fully chalked up to luck and foolhardiness… as well as the Sword of Gryffindor being sent to him at the last possible second. And even then Harry had only survived the Basilisk’s venom because of Phoenix Tears from Fawkes, another truly legendary magical creature.

He wonders briefly where Fawkes is now. The Phoenix won’t have died with Dumbledore… while Fawkes had been Dumbledore’s familiar, a familiar bond between a Phoenix and a wizard (or witch) merely meant that the Phoenix was looking after their human for the duration of that human’s lifespan.

No doubt Fawkes was off somewhere, living his best life and having a grand ole time. The important bit to this moment was that Harry couldn’t expect the Phoenix to interrupt with a Sorting Hat secretly carrying the Sword of Gryffindor this time around.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. For as magically resistant as Basilisks were, they were still plenty vulnerable to good old fashioned physical violence. Spells like Bombarda might be cast with magic, but their end result was pure physical force… meaning that the Basilisk was only as resistant to it as the toughness of its scales.

To be fair, said scales were still plenty tough… but the difference between your average wizard or witch’s Bombarda Maxima and Harry’s Bombarda Maxima was a distinct one. Pouring his power into it, he casts again and again each time the Basilisk tries to lunge at him, slamming it back and crushing parts of its body.

At the same time, Harry is looking for the right opening, eyes narrowed as he aims his wand at the Basilisk’s own eyes… but in the end, before he can find a moment by which to send a Diffindo straight into each of those deadly eyes, they’re interrupted.

The arrival of a cloaked figure in the Chamber of Secrets comes with a ballooning of darkness and shadow from a corner of the massive underground chamber. Harry notices it starting of course and is able to throw up a Protego that deflects the first of several curses coming from the shadows ahead of time with ease.

Still, as the figure stomps forward and Harry hears the Basilisk hiss out a ‘Mistress’ under its breath, he knows that things have just gotten complicated.

For a brief moment he finds himself on the backfoot, the combined physical attacks from the Basilisk and the magical attacks from one of its Mistresses leaving Harry slightly overwhelmed. But… only for a moment. He’s no fool, after all. From the moment he came down here, he was prepared for this eventuality. In fact, part of him was even hoping for it.

Besides… their overconfidence will prove to be their undoing. Or at least, the Basilisk’s will. With the arrival of its mistress, the Basilisk stops shying away from Harry’s attacks quite so much, taking more opportunities to try and utilize the fact that his attention is now split in two directions.

And that’s where Harry finally finds his opening. Letting the Basilisk get close, letting it interpose itself between him and his other opponent at a key moment that forces the cloaked figure to stop casting… Harry smirks.

His wand flicks out twice, two wordlessly cast severing charms sent forth with Harry’s maximum power. They slice through the air as the Basilisk is lunging at him with its jaw wide open and its remaining fangs poised to skewer him… and they cut right through its eyes, ruining both in a matter of milliseconds as the overpowered cutting magic simply obliterates Basilisk’s sight.

Screeching loudly in pain, the Basilisk rears back much like it did all those lifetimes ago in Harry’s first go around. The loss of its sight is a massive issue for the creature and just like when Fawkes pecked its eyes out, it begins to immediately thrash and writhe.

Given its sheer size, this is not necessarily conducive to keeping the fight from damaging the chamber, prompting the cloaked figure to hiss out in parseltongue.

“Cease your movements! I will guide you to our enemy!”

 Obedience comes rather quickly and soon enough the cloaked figure is hissing out orders, trying to direct the overly large monster to kill Harry while at the same time casting curses in his direction. But of course, the split in her focus (for Harry knows it to be a woman, possibly even a Lady Slytherin) is enough that it becomes rapidly obvious they no longer have the combined power they once did.

Put simply… Harry is winning again. Rather handedly at that. Truth be told, he’s anticipating the cloaked figure trying to escape at some point, even as he begins to fully turn the tables on her and go on the offensive. She starts to use the Basilisk as a shield, sacrificing more and more of its vitality in order to keep herself safe from Harry’s overpowered magic. Indeed, even despite the Basilisk’s magic-resistant hide, Harry is ripping into it every time it interposes itself between him and its Mistress.

Admittedly, he does want to take her alive… he just isn’t sure he’ll get the chance. And besides, if what he suspects to be true IS true… then she’s not really alive anymore to begin with.

There’s just one problem… where is the other one? The Basilisk had been clear that it had mistresses, not a mistress. And Harry knew for a fact there were at least two Lady Slytherins running around and attending Wizengamot Meetings with the ancient wards on the Wizengamot Chamber being none the wiser to the deception.

So if this was one of the two Lady Slytherins… where was the second one? And more than that, why wasn’t the first one retreating already? This battle was clearly lost for her… The Basilisk was on its last non-existent legs and Harry was growing closer and closer to securing victory. Once the Basilisk was dead, he could capture the cloaked figure at his leisure. Surely she had to know that her chances of escape diminished significantly once he was fully focused on her… right?

Unless… she had no intentions of escaping. Harry’s eyes narrow and he stops focusing quite so much on the battle before him, spreading out his awareness into his surroundings instead. Until… there. He senses it. A steady draw upon his magic, the power he’s throwing around being… drained by something.

A ritual.

Harry almost laughs at the ingenuity of it all. Clever. Very clever. And he knew full well by this point that his opponents were Master Ritualists. It would appear he’s been drawn into a magical ritual that he’s unwittingly taken part in. The first cloaked figure hadn’t arrived alone… she’d come with the second at her side. But the second had stayed quiet and unobserved so she could begin the ritual while the first distracted him.

Meanwhile, the magical ritual he found himself in the center of seemed specifically designed to drain and utilize his own immense power against him. The more magic he’d thrown into the situation, the more energy he’d given it. Frankly, it was a wonder he hadn’t felt it earlier… but that was the truly ingenious part, because the ritual used his own magic and all he was currently feeling was his own magic.

With a growl, Harry slashes down the Elder Wand, forcing back the Basilisk and the first cloaked figure once more. After creating space for himself, he throws out his hand to the side… and washes away the magic hiding the second cloaked figure from sight.

They come into view on the far side of the chamber, as far from the fighting as possible. On their knees, hands pressed to the ground where runes can be seen carved into the chamber floor, they continue casting even after he’s exposed them.

… Had the two of them known he was going to eventually come here? How? They had clearly prepared for him ahead of time but this… this was ridiculous levels of foresight. Snarling, Harry takes a step towards the kneeling figure, readying himself to stop her before this can go any further.

But before he can, the first cloaked figure and the Basilisk interpose themselves between him and the second once more. The jig is up and the subterfuge has been exposed… but that doesn’t mean they’re done yet.

Harry attacks furiously, more furiously than ever, but that just plays right into their hands. Now that he can feel it, he can see that every powerful spell he casts… a growing portion of it is drained into the ritual. The more power he uses, the more is drained away, and the more power the ritual takes from him, the portion from each spell grows.

This allows the Basilisk and the first figure to defend the second even against all of Harry’s power… because it’s not all of Harry’s power anymore. They’re getting more and more out of him and in the process they’re turning his greatest asset, his immense magical strength, against him.

They were ready for him. This was a trap, perhaps one of many that they’d prepared for him. Harry hates to admit it… but he’s walked right into their plans. And worse still, he recognizes something else rather chilling… they aren’t trying to kill him.

No, this ritual will drain him and use his own magic against him… in order to contain and imprison him. It will specifically NOT kill him.

That… is a problem. Even as Harry feels himself growing weaker, even as he finds himself being pushed back as time goes on by the defenders… he begins searching for a solution. One that doesn’t involve his own magic. One that will break him out of this trap he’s found himself in.

When he finally finds it, Harry nearly chokes on the irony. He’s found himself so on the backfoot that he’s been pushed back to one wall of the Chamber… where a seemingly innocuous Basilisk Fang had spun through the air and fallen earlier. Said Basilisk Fang is mere feet away from glowing runes that at this point are so full of his power that the only thing capable of even potentially scratching them… would be an incredibly venomous magical creature.

Letting himself be ‘cornered’, Harry moves closer and closer to the fang… until finally, he can drop down, grab it, and drive it right into the glowing rune of the ritual circle he finds himself trapped in. Power immediately explodes forth from the damaged runes, flowing back into Harry as a cry echoes across the chamber from his secondary opponent.

“NO!”

But it’s too late. Harry regains a substantial portion of his magic before she’s able to get the ritual back under control. Enough to push back the Basilisk and its first mistress once more, enough to give him some breathing room. However, even with this… he’s not out of the woods just yet. In fact, he’s going to need another hail mary because Harry can feel that he’s only bought himself time… and his own magic is still being used against him.

Instead of throwing his power foolishly at his opponents and feeding more and more of it directly into the draining ritual… Harry focuses his attention upwards. Because as much as they might have prepared this ground as a trap for him, they’d made one fatal mistake… they’d made their trap underneath one of the most powerful magical sites in all of the British Isles.

Using the magic he’s taken back, Harry grabs ahold of Hogwarts’ wards… and usurps control of them from its current Headmistress. And then he directs every bit of those wards downwards, to guard their new Master from the threat to his life and magic.

Both cloaked figures jolt as they feel the rush of new protective magic come crashing down from above. If not for the damage Harry had done with the Basilisk Fang, they might have been able to recover. And if not for Harry using the opportunity afforded to bring Hogwarts’ wards to bear, they might not have failed.

But those two things combined… Harry is unsurprised when both witches beat a hasty retreat the moment their power-stealing ritual fully collapses. As he’s distracted with both his magic surging back into him and the Basilisk trying to harass him, they run back into the shadows from whence they came and vanish from the Chamber.

Even as Harry makes short work of the Basilisk from there, he’s grimacing a bit… for multiple reasons. For one, this trap should not have worked as well as it did on him. He’d gotten cocky, to say the least. For two, he now had suspicions on just what had caused two Lady Slytherins both recognized by the Wizengamot’s wards had come about. He just didn’t understand the ‘how’ quite yet. He would need to visit Narcissa at Malfoy Manor in order to truly get to the bottom of things.

But before he could do that… Harry glances upwards, feeling the current Hogwarts Headmistress trying desperately to get back control of the wards from his iron grasp. He sighs and shakes his head.

He would need to have a conversation with his old Transfiguration Professor before doing anything else it seemed. He owed Minerva McGonagall at least that much, all things considered.

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ea09XlQc9Te1AMlNtM1XgV8VG3fzTRRpgHzhaNixg68/edit?tab=t.0