firecracker ???

The day unraveled with grim inevitability. The professors paced the corridors with clipped movements and thinner patience. Whispers flitted behind hands. The sky outside remained a stubborn slate grey, casting a dim, flickering light across stone floors that seemed colder than usual. The castle was shifting again—but this time it wasn't bracing. It was braced. As though it had known this would come.

Elestara sat with her books unopened before her, eyes fixed on a single point across the library. She had not spoken to anyone since morning. She had received no new letters. There was nothing more to plan.

The game was in motion.

And she, for once, was not holding the next piece.

It was Potter's move.

She could feel it.

When the news came, it was in whispers—disjointed at first, then clear.

Potter had gone missing. No one had seen him since midday. Lockhart, for reasons no one could explain, had been summoned to accompany the search. And somewhere beneath it all, behind the questions and the silence and the dread, the name Weasley was passed from tongue to tongue.

Ginny.

Elestara stood.

She walked calmly to the girl's lavatory on the second floor. Waited outside it in silence. Waited longer than necessary. Then, when the echoes had stilled and the clock had ticked forward a single, sharp chime—she followed.

The entrance to the Chamber had already been opened. The sink basin was ajar, revealing the black, dripping pipe descending into the dark.

She stepped to the edge.

And without hesitation—slid down.

The fall was long. Cold. She landed silently, wand already drawn, eyes adjusted to the dark by instinct.

The pipe curled like intestines, vast and smooth and reeking of rot. She walked without pause. Each footfall echoed. The air was stale with secrets.

Far ahead, faint voices. A scream.

She moved faster.

The corridor split. The snake skin lay where it had in the memory Potter described. Massive. Dry. Sloughed off like armor. She passed it, unimpressed.

She found the stone wall open.

She entered.

The Chamber of Secrets was vast. Grand. Carved with arrogance.

Columns lined the path, each one etched with the head of a serpent. Their mouths gaped into snarls. Between them, water pooled dark and still. At the far end, a massive statue loomed—an ancient wizard with a long beard and an expression carved in disdain.

And there—

Potter knelt beside Ginny Weasley's small, pale body.

He looked up sharply at the sound of movement, but she had already melted back into shadow.

She didn't speak.

She watched.

From the darkness.

Because this was his fight. And he didn't know she was here. Not yet.

He called her name.

Ginny didn't respond.

The boy standing behind him did.

Tall, pale, with eyes too sharp and smile too smooth.

Tom Riddle.

Elestara stepped forward.

His head turned at once.

"You must be the diary," she said.

Riddle blinked. Tilted his head.

"I'm impressed," he said softly.

"I'm not," she replied.

He watched her carefully. His expression was one of fascination—not admiration, not even interest, but that same calculated delight a predator takes when something unexpected wanders into the trap.

"And who are you?"

"Elestara Black."

Riddle smiled. "Ah. Yes. I've heard of you."

"I'm sure you have."

Potter rose slowly to his feet. His eyes moved from her to Riddle and back again.

"Elestara?" he said, stunned. "What are you—"

"I'm watching," she said.

Riddle chuckled. "So civilised."

Then the basilisk came.

The air changed.

The statue's mouth gaped.

And from within the dark, a soundless force moved—huge, scaly, ancient. The basilisk emerged, eyes shuttered, teeth bared, its body thick enough to crack stone.

Potter moved.

Fawkes descended.

Chaos erupted.

Elestara did not speak.

She didn't interfere. She moved through shadow like part of the wall, observing every breath, every sweep of the snake's tail, every cry from the boy with the sword in his hand and rage in his heart.

He was fighting.

Truly fighting.

And he was going to lose.

The basilisk coiled, its tail arcing back—

She moved.

A single spell, wordless and clean.

The tail slammed sideways instead of down, splintering stone.

Potter didn't notice.

He didn't know.

He fought on.

And when he drove the fang through the diary—

Elestara stood still.

Watching.

Only watching.

As Tom Riddle vanished.

As Ginny Weasley gasped awake.

As Dumbledore's phoenix healed Harry.

As the chamber exhaled for the first time in fifty years. She let out a sigh of relief knowing she hadn't failed her father.