Secrets in the Dark

Magic shifted and seethed, ancient, as cold and heavy as the foundation-stones that bore the castle's weight. But this was not the magic of Hogwarts. Similar, true. Very similar. Salazar Slytherin helped build the castle, after all, it and the Chamber had that in common. Conceptually, also, the Chamber was not a fully separate building. Few people would consciously register the difference, going from one to the other, as anything more than perhaps an elevated sense of unease, a whispering doubt that one belonged here. Which would likely be dismissed as no more than the natural hesitance upon entering a tomblike cavern out of myth rumored to house a lethal monster.

It had been more hostile before, in the first visits the Vipers made down here, back before they were really the Vipers: suspicious, sullen, still waking up. Those days were gone, for which Daphne could only be glad. Harry had spent so much time down here—heir to the Slytherin family magic, which ran through the Chamber like lifeblood, like electricity in a Muggle home—claimant of the legacy that lived here. Over time, if you were paying attention—and naturally Daphne did—you would have noticed it shifting, aligning more with what Harry's purpose, his personality.

Daphne stood in the center of the echoing stone room. Strangely empty now, and largely silent. The air never quite lost that particular chill dampness of underground caverns no matter how long they spent here or how many braziers burned along the room's edges to warm it. Nor had the room's magic, more potent now with everyone gone, ever quite let you in.

That said a lot about Harry. Daphne made a sound that her mother would have called a snort and also unladylike.

She really needed to leave. They stopped using the Chamber for a reason. And, standing here alone, with her mind open to the magic around her… Daphne had a feeling it had been the right call. It moved in ways she didn't recognize. Ripples cast by unknown movement out there in the dark.

Voldemort was the Lord of Slytherin, and the family magic, Gaunt or Slytherin or whatever you wanted to call it, would wake to him, and grow only more powerful as he himself gained in power and his Heir did the same. If Harry had never claimed his place in that family, Daphne was pretty sure nothing would've happened; one person did not a family make, especially not a person as, frankly, insane as the Dark Lord… but two people, both believing in that family as something that mattered, something important to them…

The Chamber still felt mostly like Harry. But it was no longer only his.