"No need." Madara pressed down Lockhart's wand. "Your loyalty to the Shadow Society is more reliable than any memory charm."
He patted Lockhart on the shoulder and had him wait to the side.
"All right, Dumbledore's little scheme has been dealt with. Let's see the main course! Carmichael, where is that snake?"
The Parselmouth Carmichael stepped forward slowly. Over his school robes, he wore a dark gray long coat with a high standing collar, its fastening buttoned all the way to the top. The sounds he made were fine and shrill, like someone slowly walking over crushed glass. His eyes were closed, but his head tilted slightly, as if sensing something.
Then he bent at the waist and bowed to Madara. "My lord, that piece of trash is hiding behind Lord Slytherin's statue. It seems to have sensed your arrival long ago and has no intention of coming out."
"Oh? It won't come out?" Madara made no move. He merely crossed his arms over his chest and stood with his legs apart.
Then his magic gave its answer. An immense, suffocating azure surge of magic erupted from his body, forming a trembling pillar of energy that shot skyward and slammed straight into the Chamber of Secrets' vaulted ceiling. The stones that had stood there for a thousand years began to crack under the sustained impact, fissures spreading outward from the point of collision.
Rubble showered down from the ceiling. Some struck the ground, leaving small pits; some hit the statue's shoulders and bounced into the air. The gray-white fungal threads growing from the cracks in the stone snapped apart and crumbled into dust.
The entire hall seemed to be shaking. Not the side-to-side tremor of an earthquake, but a crushing vibration pressing down from above, as though an invisible giant