'So where did you apparate Gabrielle back from?' Fleur asked. 'She was going on about the feel of your magic again.'
'The riverside next to the willow,' Harry replied. Fleur frowned and pressed her lips together, clearly Gabrielle only went there when she was unhappy. 'She's more cheerful now,' Harry added quietly, just in case Fleur's little sister was listening. 'Good, and thank you for helping her,' Fleur whispered, 'I worry about leaving her at Beauxbatons all alone.'
'We'll have to come and steal her away more often,' Harry suggested. Fleur shot him a grateful smile and tightened her arms around him expectantly.
Harry pictured the oversized bust of his ancestor and the serpent effigies of the main chamber, focusing on Fleur as the world swirled back past them and deposited them on the floor of the chamber.
'I think this method of apparition works well,' Fleur commented from her much more preferable position of on top of him.
She lingered over him momentarily, just long enough to tease, then got to her feet and stared around her in wonder. 'Where is this?'
'The Chamber of Secrets,' Harry grinned.
'Is it actually called that?' Fleur wrinkled her nose distastefully. 'And I don't know what that means.'
'The wizard who named it had a few issues with his ego,' Harry pointed at the giant bust of Salazar Slytherin.
'I heard that,' Salazar hissed in parseltongue from the study, and Harry chuckled. Fleur tensed at the sound, but Harry smiled reassuringly.
'The Chamber of Secrets was built by Salazar Slytherin to house a guardian to protect the school from attackers. It slumbered here until a descendant of Slytherin was able to enter the chamber, but Voldemort had his own purpose for the basilisk,' Fleur gasped, 'and set it on students instead.'
'Who puts a basilisk in a school of children?' She demanded, just as Harry had once done. 'It's not still here is it?' Fleur asked suddenly, paling.
He laughed. 'I asked the same question, and no, it's gone. In my second year Voldemort managed to unleash it on the school again, it petrified Hermione, one of my friends at the time, and dragged Ginny Weasley down here.'
'You went after it,' Fleur surmised flatly.
'I came down here and I killed it with a sword in a very dashing, heroic manner.' Behind him he caught a faint murmur about brainless Godricness from the painting.
'That explains why Ginny Weasley likes you,' Fleur muttered, scowling. 'There's not much left of the basilisk,' Harry smiled, pointing at the seventy foot shadow along the floor. 'It was starting to smell.'
'Merde,' Fleur whispered. 'You are such an idiot, anyone less lucky would not have survived.'
'He nearly didn't,' Slytherin called from within the study, 'the idiot got bitten and had to be saved by phoenix tears. Thankfully he's started acting like a member of my family should since then.'
Fleur looked up in surprise.
'My ancestor,' Harry explained, 'his painting hangs on the wall through there, presumably to perpetually irritate all of his descendants who find his Chamber of Secrets.'
'You're descended from Salazar Slytherin?' Fleur asked curiously. Harry felt rather disappointed in her her reaction. If he'd told anyone from Britain they would have been shocked.
'Yes, though I'm not exactly sure how, presumably through my father as my mother was muggleborn,' Harry smiled. 'Salazar tells me that I wouldn't be able to enter here, or speak parseltongue otherwise.' He took Fleur's hand and led her away from the outline of the basilisk and into the study.
'This is where you got the books from,' she realised, gazing around the study in wonder.
'Yes,' Harry nodded. 'My latin is pretty poor, but I know enough to get by, and some of them,' he glanced at Secrets of the Darkest Arts, 'were helpfully translated by my predecessor.'
'So this is Fleur,' Salazar spoke up from over the door, 'it's a pleasure to meet you face to face.'
Well you could hardly say you were meeting her in the flesh, Harry thought wryly.
'It's an honour,' Fleur replied. 'I can see some of the similarities between you and Harry.' She inspected the portrait curiously, glancing between it and his face.
'There aren't many,' Slytherin said softly, 'he has my wife and daughter's nose, and there is a little of me in his cheek bones and jaw, but little else.'
'It has been over a thousand years,' Harry pointed out. That portrait nodded mimicked by his serpent, and Fleur chuckled.
'So this is where you kept sneaking off to last year,' Fleur deduced, 'no wonder I could never figure out where you were going.'
'Were you following me?' Harry asked, amused.
'No,' she denied, flushing slightly, 'well, maybe occasionally, you were different. I was curious.'
'That explains where Gabrielle learnt her stalking her behaviour from then,' Harry laughed. Fleur's flush brightened. 'You wouldn't have been able to get in anyway, not without an invitation.'
'The chamber is protected by blood magic wards,' Salazar explained, sighing at Harry's lack of detail. 'You have to be a blood relation to me, or invited by one, to enter my chamber.'
'Are there any others?' Fleur asked immediately.
'Just one,' Harry responded darkly.
'Voldemort,' she remembered.
'He will not be visiting here just yet,' the painting assured them, 'and I know how you can seal him out of the chamber when the risk grows greater. There is nothing you need fear in this place unless you make a mess of my my study again.'
'So is this the last of your secrets?' She eyed him speculatively and he shook his head, grinning slightly. 'I didn't really think so,' Fleur sighed.
'You know most of them,' Harry told her, 'in fact there's only really one left to tell you, but I have to be sure that you can defend your thoughts before sharing it.'
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