Chapter 10: Skeleton

In a corner of the Slytherin common room Lyra was curled up on a couch, reading a book, when Graham Montague approached her.

"How is my lovely bird today?" he asked her as he sat down beside her and put an arm around her.

She glanced up from her book and set it aside. "Excellent, I suppose. And you?"

"Alright. Better now," he responded by nudging her with a smirk on his face but it soon dropped when he continued. "Lockhart is a totally ass though."

"What did he do now?"

"You know that extra credit I had to do to pull my marks up?"

"The one where you had to do a research paper about him?"

"Yes," Graham snarled. "Well he says my report on how he took down a family of mountain trolls by himself wasn't 'detailed enough'," he mocked. "If it was any more detailed it would be the damned book itself. So now I have to do it all over again!"

She placed a hand on his warm cheek. "I'm sorry."

"No you're not." He pouted.

Lyra sheepishly looked away knowing that he was right.

"Anyway," she continued, trying to change the subject. "What else is going on?"

"Well," he said as he made an over exaggerated thinking face to make Lyra laugh. "That mudblood Granger attempted to make a poly juice potion and ended up as a cat."

He listened to her cackle before she spoke.

"A cat?"

"Well a cat-human hybrid thing. But yes a cat. She's coughing up hairballs apparently."

Lyra scoffed. "Why did she need the potion?"

"Dunno, but she's in the hospital wing for a few more days."

"Serves her right," Lyra mumbled. "Wonder why she needed it though…"

Graham rolled his eyes. "Lyra," he placed a small kiss under her ear and kept his lips there, so he was whispering into her ear, "why don't you worry less about mudbloods and focus more on what you're doing right now?"

She looked at him. "And what exactly am I doing right now?"

"This," he whispered as he tightened his arms around her and pulled her closer. She leaned her head to the right, closing her eyes, and he tipped his the other way, almost instinctively. Deeping the kiss she felt herself leaning slightly backward and he took that as his opportunity to press her down on to the leather couch. Lyra ran her hands through his short hair and was able to make Graham moan slightly.

"Ugh. Get a room you two. There are plenty upstairs," Gemma interrupted.

Graham immediately got off Lyra and sat up, his eyes wandering aimlessly around the dungeon.

"What are you wanting, Gemma?" Lyra snapped.

"I need your help with something."

Lyra groaned but got up. She pecked Graham on the lips before walking off towards the girls' dormitories.

"You two disgust me," Gemma said, only half joking.

Lyra threw her hands up in defense. "Hey you wanted us together."

"Yeah whatever."

"What is it that you were needing help with?"

"I just had a question about the Charms assignment we have."

Lyra stopped walking and stared at her best friend for a moment. She almost wanted to strangle Gemma for grabbing her just to ask such a foolish question, but instead she continued to follow Gemma to complete their class assignment.

Days after Hermione was petrified, Celeste, Harry, and Ron all went into the forest to seek out the monster. After Ron nearly had a panic attack because of his fear of spiders, and even worse, giant spiders (something the Celeste knew would come in handy later for black mail purposes), they were able to escape back to the castle.

Right now, however, the three of the sat stumped at Hermione's bedside thinking about all the recent events.

Hagrid's little, err, friend, wasn't responsible for the all the petrifying. Muggleborns were very scared of being attacked so they would never leave their house without several other people with them. And they definitely avoided Harry as much as possible, never making eye contact.

Harry held Hermione's hand before realizing something was crumpled inside of it. He silently read the piece of parchment before he told Ron and Celeste to follow him.

They continued to read it together and put the pieces together.

"So if you look at directly in the eye, how come no one has died?" Ron questioned.

"Myrtle had flooded the floor with water the night Mrs. Norris was petrified so she must have seen the reflection," Harry said.

"And Colin must've seen it through his camera; Justin saw it through Nearly-Headless Nick, and Nick, well he's already dead he can't die again." Celeste chimed in as they approached a small fire.

"And Hermione was probably using the mirror to look around corners in case it came around a corner."

"Ron, 'spiders flee before it' – it all makes sense!" Harry said. "The monster in the Chamber of Secrets is a basilisk."

Celeste looked startled. "Then how is it able get around? Those things are huge."

"Hermione's already answered that as well," he said as he pointed to the bottom of the paper.

"Pipes?" Ron asked. Harry nodded. "It's using the pluming?" They all took a moment to soak in the information. "Alright, so now what?"

"I say we head towards Dumbledore's office. If he knows then maybe it can be stopped."

"So how are we supposed to get around without worrying about seeing it?" Ron asked on the way to Dumbledore's office.

"I don't think that's our biggest worry right now, Ron." Celeste whispered.

"What do you –" Ron was interrupted by all of the professors as they appeared several meters in front of them staring at a wall.

"As you can see there had been another attack," McGonagall started.

"Send the students home. Hogwarts is no longer safe." Dumbledore said as he turned around to walk off.

"So sorry. What have I missed?" Lockhart said as he strolled up.

"A monster has taken a student to the Chamber," McGonagall replied.

"Well you could go save her, could you not? You said just this morning you've known where the Chamber's located this whole time," Snape mumbled.

"Wait. I didn't really –"

"Well it's settled then." McGonagall said, interrupting Lockhart, who at this point was trying to come up with an excuse but could not come up with a half decent one.

"Right. I'll just be in my office, uh, getting ready." He said as he started to depart to his office.

All but two professors followed his lead and left to return to their appropriate houses.

"McGonagall? Who has the monster taken?" a professor asked.

She hesitated, "Ginny Weasley."

The three students watched the last two professors leave before they read the bloody writing on the wall.

"'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.' Ginny…" Ron croaked.