"Are you guys okay?" Harry asked, turning to face his three companions.
"I believe so," Luna answered him, eyeing Ginny and Lockhart carefully. "But Norbert isn't." She bent down to pick up the Crumple-Horned Snorkack creature Harry had gotten her for Christmas and showed the stiff little pig-like creature to him.
"Is it okay?" Harry asked, concerned. He didn't even want to think about how difficult replacing Norbert might be.
Luna poked it experimentally. "I think it's just petrified. Do you have any Mandrake Draught with you?"
"How did it get petrified?" Harry asked, reaching into his cloak and pull out a vial to hand to Luna.
"I would guess that it looked into the mirror Ginny put on the floor," Luna said.
"Why in the world did you put a mirror on the floor?" Harry questioned.
Ginny flushed. "Oh, well, I was worried I might be tempted to watch the heroic fight and I didn't want to get myself killed so I put my mirror down so if I accidentally saw the basilisk's eyes I'd be fine."
"You know, it's a sad day when getting petrified is widely regarded to be 'fine'…" Harry mused.
"Speaking of, Norbert was fine and now he's even better," Luna exclaimed brightly, watching Norbert wake up.
"I've got to tell you, Luna, I was pretty surprised when you continued to print things about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in the Quibbler now that everyone knows that they exist," Harry said conversationally, waiting for the Draught to take effect.
"Well, Daddy and I had a long conversation about that and we eventually came to the conclusion that even though we no longer need to fight for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack's right for people to know it exists, it is still a very recently discovered species that little is known about, so there's still a story there. Besides, Norbert's adorable and so we've made him our official mascot. A regular Quibbler success story about the power of the press overcoming wide-spread ignorance, if you will," Luna explained proudly.
"Good for you, Luna," Harry said, genuinely happy for her.
"Of course," Ginny continued, completely ignoring the discussion about Norbert. "That was before I knew that the 'heroic fight' would basically just consist of you guys cheating and using a rooster."
"Hey," Lockhart began heatedly. "To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any 'rules' for killing basilisks. And even if there were, you should just be grateful that we saved you and not disappointed that we didn't fulfill your preteen fantasies of heroic behavior."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Of course Harry saved us; Harry always saves everyone."
Lockhart looked over at Harry approvingly. "That whole being personally called upon every time anyone was petrified all year thing really worked out well for you, didn't it?"
"When that guy kidnapped us, I thought 'well this sucks, but at least now I'll have a great story to tell people after Harry rescues me' but nooooooo. My story will have to be 'Harry heroically let the basilisk get within 200 feet of him and then sicked a rooster on it, killing it instantly,'" Ginny huffed, clearly very put out that nothing good was coming out of her kidnapping.
Harry and Lockhart exchanged glances.
"You do know that that's not what we're going to tell people, right?" Harry asked hesitantly.
Ginny blinked at him. "But…that's what happened," she said, as if that had anything to do with it.
"For now," Lockhart agreed. "But really, stories like that just don't sell books. We'll need to come up with something else."
"You're going to be writing a book on this?" Ginny asked, disbelief evident in her voice. "But…nothing happened!"
"On the contrary, we killed a basilisk," Harry corrected. "We just didn't do it in a very exciting way. You know what would be exciting, though? Professor Lockhart managing to gouge out the basilisk's eyes before it bit him in the shoulder and I took advantage of the distraction to heroically slay the basilisk with the sword of Gryffindor."
"But that's not what happened!" Ginny really seemed stuck on this one point.
"But there's really no proof one way or another," Lockhart pointed out. "We'll have to stab the eyes of the basilisk so that it lines up with Harry's version, but that would only marginally diminish the value and it would make handling it safer anyway, so I think we should stick with Harry's version as it portrays us both in a good light. Granted, I would rather be the one slaying the basilisk, but letting a minor and a student of mine get bitten by a basilisk and serve as a distraction would be highly irresponsible and hurt my reputation accordingly."
"If either one of you got bitten by the basilisk, then why are you still alive? They are highly poisonous after all. And there's no mark whatsoever!" Ginny pointed out.
Harry rolled his eyes. "Obviously, we healed him with the vial of phoenix tears I've always kept with me ever since learning of the basilisk's existence." He paused, considering. "She does have a point about that lack of a mark, though. Diffindo!"
"Hey!" Lockhart protested as his left sleeve fell off. "These are good robes!"
"They've also been exposed to all of the grime from a millennia of no one cleaning anything down here, remember?" Harry asked, waving his wand and vanishing the sleeve.
"I suppose…" Lockhart sighed. "The sacrifices I make, I swear…"
"Sacrifices?" Ginny sputtered. "It's a sleeve! And you don't have even have the Sword of Gryffindor, so how are you going to explain that?"
"You know," Harry told her, annoyed. "You sound a lot like Hermione right now. And don't worry; I filched the Sword from Dumbledore's office months ago." He pulled the miniature Sword out of his pocket, unshrunk it, and then cut through the basilisk's mouth to both infuse the sword with basilisk venom and to make it look like that caused the death in case it should ever come up.
"But how are you going to explain how you got the Sword in the first place?" Ginny demanded. "Unless you're admitting to robbery?"
Harry looked shocked. "Of course not; that'd be bad for my image. I'm going to say the Sorting Hat gave it to me in my time of need. Things like that have happened before with the Sorting Hat providing what people need in a time of crisis, so Dumbledore should buy that." Harry held up his hand to forestall her next question. "And before you ask, I gave Peeves three cases of Dungbombs earlier this year with the understanding that he would get six more if he would take the Sorting Hat the minute he heard that there would be a lockdown and get it to me as soon as possible."
Ginny paled. "Are you really sure it's a good idea to enable him like that?"
Harry shrugged. "Eh, what do I care? He likes me. Calls me a 'good force of chaos' and whatnot. Besides, it's the only way I could possibly get the Sorting Hat without its absence being noticed too far in advance or its presence being noticed while I'm supposed to have it down here."
"How are you going to explain how you got the Hat, then?" Ginny was running out of questions and for that Harry was grateful. He had already worked out all the details weeks ago and was starting to regret (just a little, of course) that he had refused Lockhart's suggestion of simply Obliviating her and claiming that she had been unconscious the whole time.
"Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix that he can't possibly have kept an eye on this entire time, brought it to me for showing great loyalty to Dumbledore down here," Harry said smoothly.
"…What?"
"It's the kind of thing that he'd eat up," Harry explained. "So how about it?"
Ginny looked torn. It was a much better story, but the Weasley's had raised her to be reasonably honest so she wasn't sure.
Lockhart put his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Let me handle this. Five percent."
Ginny looked startled. "Pardon?"
"We'll give you five percent of the profit we're making for selling the basilisk parts," Lockhart elaborated. He glanced over at Luna. "That goes for you, too, of course."
"Oh goody," Luna said. "Just think of the funding for future rare creature hunting expeditions!"
"Well, er, right then," Lockhart looked a little thrown. "So what do you think, Miss Weasley?"
"Are you sure Professor Dumbledore would let you sell the basilisk? It is technically Hogwarts property, after all," she pointed out.
"Since Voldemort and I are the only two British Parselmouths right now, he won't be able to get into the Chamber and if he tries to use me to get in so he can use the Basilisk, I'll refuse, citing trauma. Besides, Professor Lockhart already made arrangements for this to be taken care of, so all we need to do is send the dead basilisk to his preserver, as such," and Harry waved his wand and the basilisk body disappeared accordingly, "and there, completely out of Hogwarts grounds and good luck proving where we got it from."
"All right…" Ginny agreed reluctantly. "But only if you don't tell my parents."
"Why not?" Lockhart asked. "There's nothing technically illegal about giving you a share of the profits, even though we're basically bribing you, because we can claim it's because you were here when we got rid of it."
"If my parents know, they'll make me put it in the bank and won't let me touch it until I'm seventeen," Ginny explained. "I'm not saying I want to spend all of it now, but a little spending money would be nice."
"We agree to your terms," Harry said quickly, before she could change her mind or ask for a bigger cut. "Luna?"
"Hm?" she looked up from where she was playing with Norbert on the floor. "Oh, that should be fine. It doesn't really matter if my father finds out, however. He's always believed in the Chamber of Secrets, you know."
"I can imagine," Harry grinned. "Aren't you glad we're going with a much more heroic version of events, Ginny?" Not to mention a version that was almost identical to what had originally happened, so it wasn't even really lying all that much. Except for Lockhart's involvement, but that was kind of a giving where Lockhart was involved.
"How are we getting back up?" Luna asked.
Harry frowned. "You know, I didn't really think of that. I GUESS we could walk back to where the entrance is and I could take turns flying people up with me."
"If you could do that then why did you push me down there instead of doing that in the first place?" Lockhart looked annoyed again.
"Nostalgia," Harry said simply and refused to elaborate.
They were about to go when they heard moaning coming from near the statue. Harry could have kicked himself. He'd forgotten about Pettigrew! Again! God, Sirius was going to kill him.
Harry quickly sprinted towards Pettigrew and drew his wand, aiming to stun him. Pettigrew was faster, however, and turned into his animagus form. Harry narrowed his eyes. There was no way in hell he'd let Pettigrew get away now. After all, what was the point in coming back in time if you let Pettigrew get away to go revive Voldemort in the exact same way?
Harry dropped his wand and transformed into his own animagus form, ignoring the gasps from Lockhart and Ginny. He lunged at Pettigrew (thanking God that the rat hadn't gotten very far because there were a LOT of rats down here. Although how Pettigrew thought he'd be able to get out of the Chamber was beyond him. Maybe Lockhart had a point about the whole stairs thing. Either way, Pettigrew was no longer a Parselmouth and so he couldn't possibly be able to utilize any of that) and caught him in his mouth. He slithered over to towards his companions (for, of course, his animagus form was a snake) and observed their reactions. Ginny and Lockhart looked shell-shocked while Luna, naturally, appeared to be completely unfazed. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was when she took out a jar, plucked Pettigrew from Harry's mouth, and placed in the jar before screwing the lid on.
"Are you sure that's going to hold him?" Harry asked once he'd transformed back.
"Other than the fact that if he tried to transform he'd cut himself on all the glass and very possibly kill himself, yes, my father made this jar animagus-proof in case I ever ran into one I didn't want to get away," Luna explained.
"And…you carry that around with you everywhere?" Lockhart asked her.
"Of course," she said serenely. "One never knows when one will run into an animagus one doesn't wish to escape."
"Well…that's convenient," Harry said, still a little confused.
"Almost as convenient as you suddenly having a snake animagus form," Ginny countered.
Harry waved her suspicion off. "Oh, please, I've been an animagus for years now."
"You're only a second-year, though," she protested.
"What can I say? I'm very talented," Harry said modestly.
Ginny snorted. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"
"Because it's illegal to be an animagus when you're not of age, yet," Harry explained as if it were obvious. Which it was. Especially for someone whose dad worked in the Ministry. "Now, if that's all…" He looked to Ginny, clearly expecting her to find some other problem with what was going on.
She just sighed, however. "Let's go, then."
Myrtle was a little depressed when they got back. Not only were they all still alive (although she was grateful once Harry pointed out that if he had become a ghost and hung out with her, she'd never get any peace from anyone ever due to Harry's mild attention-seeking tendencies) but Peeves had been tormenting her as he waited for Harry to get back to give him the Sorting Hat. When Harry handed over the promised six cases of Dungbombs, Ginny looked like the next few days were going to be more terrifying than her entire experience as Diary!Riddle's hostage.
Eventually, Harry, Lockhart, Ginny, Luna, and the captured Pettigrew made their way up to Dumbledore's office where they found Dumbledore, Arthur and Molly Weasley, Xenophilius Lovegood, Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape, Rita Skeeter, and a man that Harry could only assume was his godfather.
"We're alive," Harry announced cheerfully.
"Oh Ginny!" Molly exclaimed tearfully, pulling her daughter into a hug. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm fine, mom," Ginny assured. "As to what happened…well, maybe I should let Harry and Professor Lockhart explain that."
"Did you have fun, Luna?" Xenophilius asked, after examining her for hidden wounds and finding none.
"Oh yes," Luna said. "I didn't much like getting kidnapped or Norbert getting petrified, but other than that the rescue was quite interesting."
"Is there a reason you felt the need to go running off on a suicidal rescue mission without informing a responsible adult, first?" Snape asked Harry in between sneering at Probably!Sirius, who he seemed to have taken an instant dislike to. Harry was sure Probably!Sirius was completely innocent in the matter.
"I did get a responsible adult," Harry said innocently. "Professor Lockhart is a Hogwarts Professor and surely Professor Dumbledore wouldn't have hired him if he didn't have complete faith in him."
McGonagall coughed delicately but didn't say anything to contradict him.
"So, Mr. Malfoy, is it true that-" Rita Skeeter began.
"I'm afraid you have me confused with someone else," Harry said apologetically. "I'm Harry Potter." He paused. "And yes, I did go down to the Chamber of Secrets."
----
It took twenty minutes before the room was quiet enough for Harry to tell the story of what went down (sticking to the version they had agreed upon and embellishing quite a bit) and Harry was pleased to note that Rita was using her Quick-Quote Quill so as to make everything even more over-the-top. And since Rita was, for some ungodly reason, a well-respected journalist, everyone would take her word that things went down like Harry claimed they did.
"What about Peter?" was the first thing Probably!Sirius wanted to know.
Harry winced. "I…well, I kind of forgot about him."
"What do you mean you 'kind of' forgot about him?" Definitely!Sirius looked downright murderous.
"Fortunately, he woke up before we could leave and then we caught him," Harry hastened to reassure him.
"So you only caught him because of chance?" Sirius wasn't very happy about that.
"Just be glad we caught him at all," Harry advised.
"What do you mean by you caught Peter?" Dumbledore asked. "Who is this 'Peter'?"
Luna answered before Harry could. "Peter Pettigrew, illegal rat animagus and secret Death Eater extraordinaire," she said, sounding quite like an auctioneer as she pulled out the jar.
"Oh, good thinking, Luna," Xenophilius beamed with pride as he recognized the jar.
Luna took off the lid and placed Pettigrew gingerly on the floor. Before he could make a break for it, Sirius had his wand out a shot a spell at him to force him to revert back to human form.
"Peter Pettigrew?" McGonagall gasped, firmly identifying him for the somewhat skeptical Ginny. "But…you…and Black, he…"
"You said you wanted to see me, Dumbledore?" Fudge asked, flinging open the door to Dumbledore's office and followed – for whatever reason – by Lucius Malfoy. "Peter Pettigrew? Didn't you blow up?"
"As it happens, I did not call for you, Cornelius," Dumbledore said genially, taking this all in stride. "But it's a good thing you're here. We were just about to question Mr. Pettigrew about his…survival, shall we say? Severus? Would you?"
Snape nodded jerkily and moved towards the panicked Pettigrew to administer some Veritaserum.
"I…I wanted to tell you," Pettigrew said desperately. "About my being alive. But I was afraid. Sirius wanted me dead and I was, uh, very depressed after what happened with Lily and James that I just wanted to, er, lose myself."
"So you chose to be a rat?" Lucius asked incredulously. "Dear God, you really are an idiot, aren't you?"
Pettigrew opened his mouth to respond and Snape took that opportunity to force the drops of Veritaserum down his throat.
"I'll handle this, if you don't mind, Cornelius?" Dumbledore asked politely. Seeing no objection, he continued, "What is your name?"
"Peter Pettigrew."
"Why didn't you tell anyone you were alive?" Dumbledore began.
"I was afraid," Pettigrew repeated.
Harry decided this would probably take too long if the extraordinarily patient Dumbledore was left in charge of the interrogation and he just wanted to get clearing Sirius over with before his Polyjuice Potion ran out. "Did you kill those Muggles that died after Sirius confronted you about my parents' deaths?"
"Yes."
Everyone looked rather shocked at that. Well, except for Luna and her father who were never really shocked at anything and Lucius, who probably knew it all along.
"Are you a Death Eater?" Harry quickly followed up.
"Yes."
"Is Sirius a Death Eater?" Harry finished his questions.
"No."
"Well, there you go," Harry said, crossing his arms. "So when will the pardon be done with?"
"I…Pardon?" Fudge asked, confused.
"Well, naturally," Harry nodded. "And I'd hurry up with that. Otherwise, when Rita writes that article and everyone hears how you refused to let a clearly innocent-" Snape snorted at this "- man go, the court of public opinion will string you up."
"I…" Fudge looked lost.
"Will he hurry this up?" Sirius asked. "I am SO not in the mood."
"As the actress said to the bishop," Harry said immediately.
Sirius looked confused. "Um…okay…"
"Just reminding you that we're British," Harry said cheerfully. "Seeing as how you've apparently forgotten."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Dear God, Harry, I went to Las Vegas, I didn't apply for citizenship." He smirked. "Although 'that's what she said' rolls off the tongue SO much better."
"Alright, I'll do it," Fudge decided before Harry had the chance to hex his errant godfather.
Harry looked up. Dumbledore had apparently spent the last five minutes appealing to Fudge's public approval rating and even though Lucius looked furious, he seemed to have succeeded.
"I just need to draw up the paperwork and-" Fudge began.
"Way ahead of you," Harry interrupted, pulling out an official pardon for Sirius he'd bribed several people to obtain. "Sign here, please. Oh, and you too, Professor."
Looking slightly bemused, Fudge did so. Looking incredibly amused and not at all concerned about how Harry had gotten ahold of the pardon in the first place, Dumbledore followed.
"Freedom! At last!" Sirius cheered right as the Polyjuice Potion wore off.
"Does everything always work out this conveniently for you?" Ginny asked incredulously as Fudge clutched his heart in shock and tried (and failed) not to look terrified.
"Pretty much, yeah," Harry affirmed.
Lucius just looked disgusted before storming to the door, no doubt resolving to go look for a minion to support for Minister of Magic who was less influenced by Dumbledore. Harry thought he saw Dobby lurking outside the door and decided to take a chance and hope this worked.
"Hey, Mr. Malfoy," he called out.
Lucius spun to face him. "What?" he snapped.
"Catch," he said, pulling the dragon-hide gloves out of his pocket and throwing them at him.
Lucius caught them an inch from his face and tossed them aside, wordlessly sneering at Harry.
Harry watched in amusement as Dobby dived halfway across the hallway to catch the gloves.
"Let's go, Dobby," Lucius commanded, continuing to stalk down the hallway without checking to see that Dobby was following him. Eventually, when Lucius tried to hit Dobby over the head with his cane to make himself feel better about how spectacularly poorly everything in the office went, he noticed Dobby hadn't moved. He was holding up Harry's probably-poisonous gloves like they were priceless treasures.
"Master has given Dobby gloves," Dobby said in wonderment. "Master gave them to Dobby."
"What's that?" spat Lucius. "What did you say?"
"Dobby has got a pair of gloves," said Dobby in disbelief. "Master threw them, and Dobby caught them, and Dobby- Dobby is free."
Lucius Malfoy stood frozen, staring at the elf. Then he lunged at Harry.
"You've lost me my servant, boy!"
But Dobby shouted, "You shall not harm Harry Potter!"
There was a loud bang, and Mr. Malfoy was thrown backwards. He crashed down the stairs, three at a time, landing in a crumpled heap on the landing below.
He got up, his face livid, and pulled out his wand, but Dobby raised a long threatening finger.
"You shall go now," he said fiercely, pointing down at Mr. Malfoy. "You shall not touch Harry Potter. You shall go now. And Dobby thought you should know that the reason people laugh when they think you're not looking is because they think that Bad Master Draco is not your son."
Lucius Malfoy eyes burned with outrage, but Dobby gave him no choice. With a last, incensed stare at the pair of them, he swung his cloak around him and hurried out of sight, probably to ask Narcissa some very awkward questions.
Harry couldn't believe that after everything, Lucius finally managed to hear the rumors or that it was Dobby that finally told him. He would have done it ages ago, but he had promised Draco he wouldn't. Well, sort of promised. And besides, Harry knew it would mean more coming from Dobby.
He headed back to Dumbledore's office where he heard Snape and Sirius arguing loudly.
"You tried to kill me!" Sirius was yelling.
"We were at war!" Snape defended himself.
"It looked pretty personal to me," Sirius countered.
"You proved you're a bloodthirsty killer when you were sixteen!" Snape snapped.
Molly and Arthur looked disturbed at that and Sirius quickly said, "It wasn't that bad, really. And besides, you have GOT to learn to let these things go. Carrying around a decade's worth of resentment cannot possibly be good for you."
Harry snorted. Hypocrite.