I DON'T OWN HARRY POTTER OR DRACULA! PLEASE REVIEW!
LADY OF THE NIGHT: YEAR TWO:
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
Ron glared down at his toast the next morning. "All those times we were in that bathroom, and she was just three toilets away. All the chances we had to ask her, and now..." It'd been hard enough looking for the spiders. Escaping the teachers long enough to try to get into the girls' bathroom right next to the area of the first attack would be almost impossible.
But something happened in our first lesson of the day, Transfiguration, that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of our minds for the first time in months. McGonagall informed us that our exams would take place on the first of June, one week from today. "Exams?! We're still getting exams!?"
There was a loud bang as Neville's wand slipped, vanishing one of the legs on his desk. McGonagall restored it with a wave of her wand, and turned, frowning to Seamus. "The whole point of keeping the school open at this time is for you to receive your education. The exams will therefore take place as usual, and I trust you are all studying hard."
Mutinous muttering rippled through the room, and McGonagall glared at all of us. "Professor Dumbledore's instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible. And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year." I looked down at the pair of white rabbits I was supposed to turn into slippers. What on Earth have I learned so far this year?
Ron looked like he'd just been told to go live in the Forbidden Forest. "Can you imagine me taking exams with this?" He asked me and Harry, holding up his wand, which had just started whistling loudly.
Three days before our first exam, McGonagall made another announcement at breakfast. "I have good news." Instead of falling silent, the Great Hall erupted.
"Dumbledore's coming back!"
"You've caught the Heir of Slytherin!"
I laughed when I heard Oliver Wood's voice shout out, "Quidditch matches are back on!"
Once the crowd had quieted down, McGonagall spoke again. "Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. I need hardly remind you all that one of them may be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit."
There was another explosion of cheering, and I looked over at the Slytherin table, hardly surprised to see that Draco Malfoy hadn't joined in. Ron grinned. "It won't matter that we never asked Myrtle, then! Hermione'll probably have all the answers when they wake her up! Mind you, she'll go crazy when she finds out we haven't got exams in three days, since she hasn't studied. It might be kinder to leave her where she is until they're over." I burst into laughter at this.
Just then, Ginny came over and sat down next to Ron. She looked worried and nervous, and kept twisting her hands in her lap. Ron helped himself to more porridge, looking over at her. "What's up?" She didn't say anything, but glanced up and down the Gryffindor table with a scared look on her face. "Spit it out."
"I've got to tell you something," she muttered, not looking at us. I frowned, concerned. "What is it?"
Harry looked around, then leaned forward, lowering his voice so that only Ron, Ginny and I could hear him. "Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?" She drew a deep breath, about to tell us, when Percy showed up. "If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny. I'm starving. I've only just come off patrol duty." Ginny jumped out of her seat as though she'd been electrified, gave him a frightened look, and ran off.
"Percy! She was about to tell us something important!" Percy began choking on his tea. "W-What sort of thing?"
"I just asked her if she'd seen anything odd, and she started to say-"
"Oh-that-that's nothing to do with the Chamber of Secrets." I arched an eyebrow. "How do you know?"
"Well, er, if you must know, Ginny, er, walked in on me the other day when I was-well, never mind-the point is, she spotted me doing something and I, um, I asked her not to mention it to anybody. I must say, I thought she'd keep her word. It's nothing, really, I'd just rather-" He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Ron grinned. "What were you doing, Percy? Come on, tell us, we won't laugh."
Percy didn't smile. "Pass me those rolls, Evangeline, I'm starving."
A chance to visit Myrtle came when we were being escorted to History of Magic by Lockhart. Lockhart, who'd often assured us that the danger had passed, only to be proven wrong immediately, was convinced that it was hardly worth the trouble to see us all safely down the corridors. His hair wasn't as sleek as usual, and it looked like he'd been up most of the night patrolling the fourth floor.
"Mark my words," he said as he led us around a corner. "The first words out of those poor Petrified people's mouths will be 'It was Hagrid.' Frankly, I'm astonished that Professor McGonagall thinks all these security measures are necessary."
"I agree, sir," said Harry, causing me and Ron to stare at him in shock.
"Thank you, Harry," Lockhart beamed as we waited for a long line of Hufflepuffs to pass. "I mean, we teachers have quite enough to be getting on with, without walking students to class and standing guard all night..."
Ron nodded. "That's right." I smiled up at Lockhart. "Why don't you leave us here, sir, we've only got one more corridor to go-"
"You know, what, Lestrade, I think I will. I really should go and prepare my next class." With that, he hurried off, and I snorted derisively, watching him leave. "Prepare his class," Ron sneered. "Gone to curl his hair, more like..." We let the other Gryffindors go ahead of us, and then we ran down a side passage, heading for Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. "Potter! Lestrade! Weasley! What are you doing?!"
We froze. It was Professor McGonagall, looking sterner than ever. "We-we were-we were going to see-to see-"
"Hermione," Harry said suddenly. "We haven't seen her for ages, Professor. We thought we'd try and sneak into the hospital wing, and tell her that the Mandrakes are nearly ready, and, er, not to worry-"
We bit her lip, but were surprised to see a tear in her eye. "Of course. Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been...I understand. Yes, you may go visit Miss Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you have gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey you have my permission." As she turned the corner, we heard her blow her nose.
"That was the best story you've ever come up with." Only now, we had no choice but to go up to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey we had permission to see Hermione. She let us in rather reluctantly. "There's just no point in talking to a Petrified person."
I had to admit that she had a point as we pulled up chairs beside Hermione's bed. Hermione obviously hadn't the faintest clue that she had any visitors. "Wonder if she did see her attacker, though?" Ron said to us. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, nobody will ever know..." I noticed that Harry wasn't looking at Hermione's face, though. He was studying her right hand. Following his gaze, I saw a piece of paper clenched tightly in her fist.
"Try and get it out," Ron whispered. While Ron and I kept watch, Harry tugged and twisted at the piece of paper until it finally came loose. It was a page from a very old library book.
Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land,
there is none more curious or deadly than the Basilisk,
known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may
reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born
from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of
killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and
venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who
are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death.
Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy,
and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster,
which is fatal to it.
Beneath this, a single word was written in Hermione's handwriting:
Pipes.
Harry stared at me and Ron. "This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a basilisk-a giant serpent! That's why I could hear it when nobody else could! It's because I understand Parseltongue!" Harry looked around at the other beds. "The basilisk kills people by looking at them. But nobody's died-because no one did look it in the eye. Colin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside, but Colin just got Petrified. Justin...Justin must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick! Nick got the full blast of it, but he can't die again...and Hermione and that Ravenclaw prefect had a mirror next to them. Hermione must have just realized the monster was a basilisk. I'll bet you anything she warned the first person she met to look around corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror-and-"
Ron and I were staring at him. "And Mrs. Norris?"
"...The water. The flood from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, remember? Mrs. Norris must have only seen the reflection."
Harry scanned the page. "'The basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it'! Hagrid's roosters were killed! The Heir of Slytherin didn't want one anywhere near the castle once the Chamber was opened! 'Spiders flee before the basilisk!' It all fits!" Ron frowned. "But...how's the basilisk been getting around? A giant snake...someone would've seen it..."
Harry pointed at the word Hermione had scrawled onto the page. "Pipes. It's been using the plumbing. I've been hearing that voice inside the walls." I grabbed his arm. "The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets! What if it's in-"
"Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," Harry finished. "This means that I can't be the only Parselmouth in the school. The Heir of Slytherin's one, too. That's how he's been controlling the basilisk."
"Should we go to McGonagall?" Ron asked, and Harry stood up. "Let's go to the staffroom. She'll be there in ten minutes. It's almost break." We ran downstairs to the staffroom, and began pacing, waiting for the bell for break to ring. It never did. Instead, McGonagall's voice came echoing through the corridors, magically magnified.
"All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staffroom. Immediately, please."
Harry stared at me and Ron. "Another attack? Now?"
"What'll we do? Go back to the dormitory?" I looked around, and spotted a large wardrobe full of teacher's cloaks. "In here." Harry nodded. "Good idea. We can hear what's happening, and tell them what we've found out."
We hid inside it, and listened to the sounds of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staffroom door banged open. From between the cloaks, we watched through a crack in the door. Some of them looked puzzled, others scared. McGonagall took a deep breath. "It has happened. A student has been taken by the monster into the Chamber itself." Snape gripped the arms of his chair very hard, and spoke in a quiet voice, "How can you be sure?"
"The Heir of Slytherin left another message. Right under the first one. 'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.'" Professor Flitwick burst into tears. Madam Hooch spoke. "Who is it? Which student?"
"Ginny Weasley."
I felt Ron slide down onto the floor of the wardrobe beside me.
"We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow. This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said..." The door of the staffroom banged open. For a second, I thought it was Dumbledore, but I stifled a groan when I saw Lockhart standing there, beaming around at everyone. "So sorry-dozed off-what have I missed?" Lockhart seemed to have missed the fact that all the other teachers were staring at him with pure hatred in their eyes.
Snape stepped forward. "Just the man. The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last." Lockhart turned pale. Professor Sprout nodded. "That's right, Gilderoy. Weren't you telling me just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"
"I-well, I-"
"Yes, didn't you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?" Professor Flitwick piped up.
"D-did I? I don't recall-"
"I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn't had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested," Snape said in his dry voice. "Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and you should have been given a free rein from the start?" Lockhart stared around, face pale. "I-I really never-you may have misunderstood-"
"We'll leave it to you then, Gilderoy," McGonagall said. "Tonight should be an excellent time to do it. We'll make sure everyone's out of your way. You'll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free rein at last."
Lockhart glanced from one teacher to the next. He didn't look at all handsome anymore. In fact, he looked weak-chinned and feeble. "V-very well. I'll-I'll be in my office, getting-getting ready." And he left the room.
"Right, that's got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure none of the students have left their dormitories." As one, the teachers rose and left the staffroom.
I looked over at Ron, Fred, and George who were all staring silently into the fire. Percy had sent a letter to his mother, than shut himself up in his dormitory. Never before had the common room been so crowded, but so quiet. Near sunset, Fred and George went up to their dormitory.
"She knew something," Ron said quietly. This was the first time he'd spoken since the staffroom. "That's why she was taken. It wasn't some stupid thing about Percy at all. That must be why she was-I mean, she was a pureblood. There can't be any other reason." We were quiet for a while, and he spoke again. "Do you think there's any chance that she's not-you know-"
I couldn't see how Ginny could still be alive, and judging from Harry's silence as well, he didn't think she could possibly be alive either. "D'you know what? I think we should go and see Lockhart. Tell him what we know. He's going to try to get into the Chamber. We can tell him where we think it is, and that the monster is a basilisk." Harry and I agreed. Nobody tried to stop us as we left the common room.
As we approached Lockhart's office, we could hear scrapes, thumps, and hurried footsteps. Harry knocked, and a silence fell from inside. Lockhart opened the door a tiny crack and looked out at us. "Oh-Mr. Potter-Mr. Weasley-Miss Lestrade-" he said as he opened the door a bit wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment-if you would be quick-"
"Professor, we've got some information. We think it might help you."
"Er-well-it's not terribly-" Lockhart looked incredibly uncomfortable. "I mean-well-all right-" He opened the door, and we stepped inside. His office had been almost completely stripped. Two huge trunks stood open on the floor. Robes had been hastily folded into one of them; books were crammed into the other. The various pictures on the walls were now stuffed into boxes on his desk.
"Are you going somewhere?" I asked suspiciously.
"Er, well, yes," Lockhart said, taking a life-size poster from the back of his door and rolling it up quickly. "Urgent call-unavoidable-got to go-"
"What about my sister?!"
"Well-as to that-most unfortunate-no one regrets more than I-"
"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher! You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!"
"Well-I must say-when I took the job-nothing in the job description-didn't expect-" Lockhart was now piling socks on top of his robes.
"You mean you're running away?! After all that stuff you did in your books?!" Harry yelled at him.
"Books can be misleading."
"You wrote them!"
"My dear boy, do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. Nobody wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin. I mean, come on-"
"So you've just been taking credit for what other people have done?!"
"Harry, Harry, Harry. It's not as simple as all that. There was work involved. I had to track these people down, ask them exactly how they managed to do what they had done. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so that they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my Memory Charms. No, it's been a lot of work, Harry. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. If you want fame, you have to be prepared for a long, hard slog."
He banged his trunks shut and locked them. "Let's see. Yes, I think that's everything. Only one thing left." He pulled out his wand. "Awfully sorry, you three, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you now. Can't have you babbling my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book-" Harry reached his wand just in time. Lockhart had barely raised his when Harry shouted, "Expelliarmus!"
Lockhart was thrown backwards, falling over his trunk, his wand flying out of his hand. I caught it and threw it out the window. "Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one," Harry said, kicking Lockhart's trunk aside.
"W-What do you want me to do? I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do." I glared at him as we all pointed our wands at him while he stood up. "You're in luck. We think we know where it is. And what's inside it. Let's go."
We marched Lockhart out of his office, down the nearest stairs, and along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall next to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. We sent Lockhart in first, and I smirked when I saw he was shaking. As we followed, I saw Myrtle sitting on the tank of an end toilet. "Oh, it's you," she said upon seeing me, Harry, and Ron. "What do you want this time?"
"To ask you how you died," Harry said. Myrtle grinned, looking as though she'd never been asked a more flattering question before. "Ooh, it was dreadful. It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I was hiding because Olive Hornby had been teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must've been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door to go and tell him to use his own toilet, and then I died."
"How?" I asked.
"No idea," Myrtle shrugged. "I just remember seeing a great, big, pair of yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away...and then I came back. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, I made her sorry that she ever laughed at my glasses..."
"Where exactly did you see the eyes?" Harry asked.
"Somewhere over there," Myrtle said vaguely, pointing towards the sink. Harry, Ron and I hurried over to it, while Lockhart stood well back, a look of terror on his face. Suddenly, we spotted a snake carved into one of the taps. "That sink's never worked," Myrtle said matter-of-factly. Ron and I looked at Harry, who was studying the snake. "Open up." Ron shook his head. "English."
Harry tried again, and this time, a hissing sound came from his throat. The tap began to glow with a bright light, and the next second, it sank out of sight, leaving a pipe wide enough for a man to slide down. Harry looked over at us. "I'm going down there."
"We're going with you."
"Well, you hardly seem to need me. I'll just-" Lockhart was reaching for the doorknob when we pointed our wands at him. "You first."
"W-What good will it do?" Harry jabbed him in the back with his wand, and Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe. "I really don't think-" I kicked him in the back, and he slid out of sight. Harry lowered himself into the pipe, and let go, and Ron and I followed.
The pipe seemed to go on forever. I could hear Lockhart, Harry, and Ron thudding on the curves ahead of me. Finally, the pipe leveled out, and I shot out of the pipe, landing on the stone floor of a damp tunnel large enough to stand up in. "We must be miles under the school."
"Under the lake, probably," Ron said, squinting through the darkness. We turned to stare into the darkness ahead of us. "Lumos!" Harry and I both muttered, and we began walking down the tunnel. "Remember," Harry said, "any sign of movement, close your eyes right away." But the tunnel was absolutely silent, and the first sound we heard was a loud crunch. Ron had stepped on a rat skull. Harry and I lowered our wands to see that the tunnel was littered with animal bones.
"Harry-there's something up there-" Ron said quietly, grabbing Harry's shoulder. We looked and saw something huge and curved lying on the floor of the tunnel ahead of us. It wasn't moving. "Maybe it's asleep." Harry examined it. The light showed a gigantic green snake skin. It was about twenty feet long. "Blimey," Ron said weakly.
Behind us, Lockhart's knees gave way. "Get up," Ron snapped at him, pointing his broken wand at Lockhart. He got up-then dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground. Lockhart straightened up, clutching Ron's wand. "The adventure ends here, you three! I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and how you three tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body-say goodbye to your memories!" He raised Ron's wand over his head. "Obliviate!" The wand exploded, and huge rocks tumbled down from the stone ceiling.
When I stood up, I saw that Harry wasn't with me, Ron and Lockhart. "Harry! Harry, where are you?!" His voice came from the other side of the wall of rock. "I'm over here! Are you okay?"
"Me and Evangeline are okay-This git's not, though-he got blasted by the wand-" Ron kicked Lockhart in the shins. "What now? We can't get through-it'll take ages-" Ron kicked Lockhart again.
"Wait there. Wait with Lockhart and Evangeline. I'll go on...if I'm not back in an hour..." Silence fell for a couple of minutes. "We'll try and shift some of this rock...so you can-so you can get back through. And, Harry..."
"See you in a bit." I could hear Harry's voice shaking, though he tried to hide it. As his footsteps faded away, I bit my lip. Good luck, Harry. You're gonna need it.