章節 81: Experiments on Rats
Harry was said to be something of a legend in Hogwarts.
People said that as long as he didn't want to be found no on would be able to find him and that fact was true for most of it's part.
With the Marauder's map in hand and Selena as his companion, Harry always knew if someone was coming toward him and if he didn't want to face that person, he would hide himself from them which was not hard for him to do.
Still, for someone like Hermione who was a good friend, he was not that hard to find.
She had seen most of his bases that he'd created in the abandoned rooms. And she'd said most because she knew that he probably still had a few bases that she didn't know about. He was just that secretive, even with friends.
Still, most of the time if was not in his usual lab you wanted to find him, then you just need to do one simple thing.
"Bitty." Hermione called and the house elf appeared with a pop.
"Miss Grangy be calling Bitty. What can Bitty bes doing for Miss Grangy."
"Thank you for coming Bitty. Can you tell me where Harry is?" Hermione asked gently to the house elf who had the misfortune of being Harry's house elf. Misfortune because Harry usually missed most of his meals and the poor house elf had to act like a mother and force feed the genius unless he dies of hunger and thirst without knowing about it.
Hermione wondered if Harry would someday forget how to breathe without Bitty there to remind him about it.
She chuckled inwardly at that thought.
"Master Harry bes closed in the room with the rats. He's not bes eating his meal either. Will Miss Grangy bes telling him to eat his meal?" the house elf asked hopefully and Hermione sighed.
Sure enough, that reckless boy had forgotten to eat his food, again.
"Of course Bitty. Give me his breakfast and I'll pass it to him." She said and the house elf popped away and appeared the very next second with a box.
"That will be all Bitty. Thank you." Hermione said and the house elf bowed before leaving.
She on the other hand went to the empty wall beside one of the large doors in the corridor and started cleaning the dust off one of the bricks. After she was done, the bricks in front of her moved and revealed a passageway and she entered.
After that she entered a few more passageways while wearing the invisibility cloak just to be sure that no one was following her before reaching her destination which was the abandoned girl's bathroom on the first floor.
There she raised her ring, which was given to her by Harry as a gift on last Christmas and rubbed it three times and a hiss came out of the room.
A recording of parseltongue that Harry had added to the ring.
A recoding that said 'Open' in parseltongue and allowed her to enter the chamber of secrets when he was not around.
She looked at the slide with some humor as remembered the first time they'd come here and how Harry forced her to jump along with him.
That reckless boy.
She was still not very comfortable riding this slide and she had a feeling that she would never be. But that didn't meant that the slide would stop her from meeting Harry.
With those thoughts, she jumped in the slide and tumbled out of the other end in the dark underground place.
Thankfully Harry had charmed the ground to act like cushion otherwise she would be sporting some bruises and cuts from that fall.
She cleaned her robes, a habit that had not left her either just like Harry despite the robes being charmed to always remain clean and moved forward in the direction of the main chamber.
There, she witness Besalla the Basilisk once again and remembered how afraid she had been the first time she had met the large snake.
Now that she had fed her a few times by herself, she thought of the Basilisk as more of a cow than anything else.
The ministry had banned anyone from breeding Basilisks, claiming that they were highly unstable and dangerous.
But the ministry claimed the same about werewolves and vampires and Harry had hammered into her head that such was not the case. Those werewolves and vampires were just like human and won't attack you unless you attack them first.
She bowed in greeting to Besalla and despite the cloth wrapping around her eyes, the Basilisk was able to see or perceive her movements and slight gave her a nod in return which indicated that now Hermione could do as she wanted in the chambers.
Besalla went back to sleeping and she went back to searching for Harry.
She had no idea what he was doing in the experiment lab so early in the morning.
She could only guess that he must have read something interesting in the books that they stole from the medical colleges last night.
The kiss she had received on her cheek was still vivid in her memory and it was unlikely that she would forget it anytime soon. If ever. She had not slept very well last night because of her emotional turmoil either.
She felt a tingle pass through her stomach at the thought of meeting Harry once again.
Would he act like he always did.
Or would he kiss her once again.
And what should she do if he does. Should she kiss him back or not?
At times like these, she missed the presence of her mother. She would probably talk about this with Penelope. The older girl had a boyfriend so she would know what to do.
Boyfriend. The thought flustered her more than she thought but then she remembered why she was here and focused on the task up ahead and opened the door…
And gasped in shock and terror.
The normal rats that they had brought from London were gone.
In their place were now these… abominations.
She had a feeling that Harry would not like her calling his experiments that word but she couldn't think of any other word to describe these… creatures.
Oh, what has he done…
She went forward and examined the new life forms he'd created in his madness. No, he would not like her calling it madness either. But then what else should she call it.
The first cage held a rat,
Just that it looked nothing like a rat anymore.
The rat had eight legs that were a combination of a rat's leg and a spider's leg. On top of that, the rat had another meat bag of something that was attached to it's back and led to it's tail.
Since the rat was shooting what she assumed was Acromantula silk, she could only assume that Harry had implanted the silk gland from an Acromantula into the rat.
How had he done it.
The intricacies that must have gone in such an operation boggled her mind and she was pretty sure no other muggle scientist would be able to copy such a thing.
At least not within one night and not with the ease he seemed to have done it.
She could see that the rat was still trying to regain it's balance and failing miserably.
It seemed like just adding new legs did not meant it would gain new motor functions over night.
Maybe the rat just needed some more time with the… new legs. Like how a toddler learnt how to walk.
She felt a bit sick at such a comparison.
Babies are so pure and innocent unlike… this creature that looked like the stuff of nightmares.
She averted her gaze from it and went to the next one.
This one had reinforced steel bars on it and was larger than the cage they normally used.
And she could understand why.
Inside of the cage was a rat that was two-three times larger than a normal rat and it had… three heads.
Of course, one of the head was now simply dangling from the body and she assumed that Harry must have failed in properly attaching it to the body but the other two heads were still intact.
She wondered if he had gained inspiration from a Cerberus for this.
He most likely did.
Wait! Is this how Cerberus were created as well.
The courtesy of a mad scientist who wanted to see how far he could go in his madness.
No, she refused to think of her friend as mad. He was not mad. Just… inspired.
She went to the next cage which was about five times larger than one holding a Cerberus and she could understand why.
The rat had bat wings attached to it's back after all. Just that the rat was not really using to wings and dragging them along with itself.
She could guess that Harry had probably hoped that the rat would try to fly or something but apparently the rat was too stupid to understand what to do with it's new wings.
So this was most likely a failed experiment. Still, the thought behind this one was nothing short of genius and she wondered if he attached the wings on the back of a more sentient being, then would it learn how to fly.
Wait! Is that how Pegasus were made in the first place. The thought boggled her mind and she tried to ignore that thoughts that came along with it.
Thoughts that beings like Mermaids and Centaurs were just the creation of a wizard who had gone too far with his experiments.
She went to the next cage and it held a rat with… enlarged grasshopper legs. Harry had removed it's front legs to… she didn't know, so that the rat would have no choice but to learn how to work it's new legs? Probably.
She shook her head and went to the next one. And the next. And the next.
By the time she was done with half of the cages, she was feeling strangely tired and felt no need to see the rest of them.
So she moved to the other end of the room which led to another room where the experiments actually happened.
She gritted her teeth and entered the room to find…
Harry working on another rat.
And the rat did look normal in all sense of the word except for the large mouth that should never have been there and the fangs jutting out of that large mouth. Wait? Didn't those fangs looked similar.
"Harry. What are you doing?" she asked and the genius, who was now turning into a mad genius whirled around to look at her and she balked at the crazed expression on his face.
That and the bloodshot eyes along with the pale skin.
How long had he been here. Did he even slept at all last night?
He most likely didn't
"Oh Hermione. Come. come. Join me. Let me explain what I'm doing here."
And he did.
In detail.
Supposedly, he was trying to create a new species of rats that held, wait for it… 'Basilisk Venom.'
Then he went to explain how he had spent a considerable amount of time on it's jaws and neck to make them more expandable so that it would be able to swallow large things.
He had also attached a small venom gland that he'd copied from Selena and transfigured it to hold the Basilisk's venom.
She could see through his explanation that he had put a lot of thought into this… project of his and was not merely doing this simply because he wanted to.
In fact, she could not see that there was lot of thought put into all of his experiments.
There was certain amount of genius at work here but then again, of course there was.
She however hoped that the rat wouldn't survive and that the experiment would fail because having a new rat species that could produce Basilisk venom was a terrifying thought.
He must have read her thought on her expression clearly because he suddenly started chuckling. "Oh Hermione. I know what you fear. Don't worry. I won't leave them in the forest and even if they did, they would most likely not survive because these new changes are far from perfect."
He then chuckled once again and went back to the work but she could already see that he was deeply exhausted and she not be playing around with Basilisk venom in such a mental state.
"Harry. That's enough experiments for today." She said and was herself surprised by how authoritative her voice sounded.
"Hnn… What are you talking about?" he asked while scrunching up his face and she could now see that he was clearly not all up there.
"Harry. Oh my god. Have you been drinking?" she asked worriedly as she pulled him away from the experiment and sat him down on the chair before examining his face that now held a goofy expression.
She was such a fool. How had she not noticed it when she first entered the room. Oh yes, she was too fascinated by his genius to realize how much of a fool he could be.
"What? No. I don't drink Hermione. What are you talking about?" he said clearly but now that she was searching for it, she clearly clearly hear him slurring some of his words.
"Harry. You're too tired to carry on with these experiments anymore. You need to eat something and then you need a proper sleep before you could do anything else."
"What? What are you talking about? I'm not tired." He said and tried to stand up but she pushed him back easily, realizing for the first time how truly tired he seemed.
This fool.
"No Harry. You need to rest before you do anymore of your experiments. Understand?" she asked but he remained stubborn and tried to stand up once again.
"Get off Hermione. I've too many ideas to just sit around and do nothing. There's so much for me to do. So many tests to perform. So many new things to find out. How can I sleep when there's so much for me to do?" he said and tried to get up once again but Hermione have had enough.
She sat him back down and looked at him with puppy dog eyes and pleaded "Harry. Please."
She of course didn't forget to bite her lips. She knew that her doing so had some effect on him. She didn't knew what but it did went a long way to make him agree to his demands so she now bit her lips whenever she wanted something from him.
And as she begged him this time, his face went through a multitude of emotions before at last, his shoulders shagged and he lowered his head with a sigh and that single action made him look so much more tired.
"You're right." He said in a low voice "I'm too tired to continue anymore."
With those words, he fell to the ground. Unconscious and she jumped in order to protect his head from hitting the ground before she remembered that of course, he had charmed the ground around here to act like cushion as well.
She shook her head and pushed the chair with her mind and laid him down gently on the ground.
Then she transfigured a stone kept nearby into a pillow and laid it under her head as his chest moved up and down slowly.
He looked… so peaceful when he slept.
And with those thoughts, she realized that it was the first time she had seen him sleep.
And he had forgotten him meal as well. Once again.
For a supposed genius-of-the-millennia, he sure acted foolishly most of the time.
She took another stone and transfigured it into a thin blanket and laid it on top of him.
It was not much of a sleeping arrangement but there was no bed here in the Chamber of Secrets and this would have to do.
Then she took out a book from a limitless bag, once again, a courtesy of Mister Harry Potter who always seemed to some more galleons hidden in his back pocket and sat down on the chair.
Now she would have to wait for him to wake up from his sleep.
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