Transcript: (hide)(show)

PRESENT DUMBLEDORE: And in his seventh year... the petrifications, the death of poor Myrtle... The ominous message on the wall...

Two grey-faced, immobile students flank a place where a message is written messily in bright, runny paint. It says "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Dumbledore, your world will crumble around you."

PRESENT DUMBLEDORE: Hagrid's roosters had been killed beforehand, so we professors deduced that someone was setting a Basilisk on the school. We quickly devised a solution.

Past Dumbledore is carrying a rooster and pointing zir wand at it.

PAST DUMBLEDORE: The rooster's crow is fatal to it... Therefore... Sonorus. { The incantation for a spell that makes someone's voice very loud. }

ROOSTER {in gigantic, glowing letters}: Cock-a-doodle-doo!

PRESENT DUMBLEDORE: We searched the castle and found first the expired Basilisk and then the Chamber entrance. Riddle had left it open for us.

Past Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall approach the tunnel to the Chamber, next to a sink. They step carefully past the giant Basilisk, which is upside-down and dead. Off to the side, the ghost of Myrtle floats, with zir arms crossed.

MYRTLE {quietly}: Bah! I die, and still everyone ignores me.

PRESENT DUMBLEDORE: When we found him inside, he made no move to defend himself. He just stood there and laughed...

Tom Riddle stands on a low platform under the giant statue of the head of Salazar Slytherin. Dumbledore and McGonagall are pointing their wands at zem. Ze isn't wearing the Time-Twister.

TOM {in the Voldemort voice}: Ha. Ha.

PRESENT DUMBLEDORE: We apprehended him and turned him over to the courts, thinking that would be the end of this tragic story.

(hide transcript)

“The crow of the rooster is fatal to it” is a rather silly rule. I wouldn't have used it if the Basilisk was a major character. Here, it provides a anticlimactic solution to one of the books' major conflicts, just like when Voldemort was eliminated after zir attack on Harry's family.

As I was designing Voldemort's Children, one of my principles was that the characters should be forced to make decisions without having a convenient Dark Lord to oppose or seemingly wise adult authority figure to look to for guidance. Compared to the other choices the characters make, the choice of how to dispose of the Basilisk is an easy choice. That's why I'm willing to cover it in a quick and even silly way.

As a side note, the statue in the Chamber of Secrets is supposed to be a full-body statue and not just the head. I would have drawn it that way, too, if I was going to use it on more than one page. I was even thinking of drawing it from a dramatic angle, as if the reader was looking upwards at it. But since it only appears briefly, I decided to use an image that some people would recognize from the films.

Approximate readability: 8.72 (874 characters, 209 words, 10 sentences, 4.18 characters per word, 20.90 words per sentence)