Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognise; you know the drill by now

Feedback: Of course

AN: A bit uncertain about some parts of this chapter, but I think the overall plan works (It's funny how some things were spaced out in the books when you look at them again; you'd think that the teachers would have the second years pick new subjects after the second Quidditch game, among other things...)

Harry Potter/Granger and the Chamber of Secrets

"OK," Harry said, as he, Ron and Hermione sat around a table in the library at lunchtime the following Monday, staring grimly at each other as they thought over the deductions they had tried to carry out since gathering their last pieces of evidence; Harry had been occupied with quidditch practice after getting back from Hagrid's hut, Wood requesting his presence for most of the weekend, which had left Ron and Hermione to try and help him work on whatever homework he had left- albeit reluctantly in Ron's case- so that it was finished in time, limiting their earlier opportunities to find somewhere for them to discuss their discoveries without anyone noticing them. "We know what we're looking for, and we know how long it's been here; we just don't know where it is, how to get there, or who's been letting it out on the last two occasions, and the only clue we've got that we didn't have before is the fact that the last victim was found in a bathroom..."

"Not a lot, in other words," Ron said, groaning in frustration. "Why can't things be easy for once...?"

"Actually," Hermione said, looking slightly uncertainly at her brother, "I did have a thought about that; I was just... well..."

"You wanted to research it?" Harry asked with a slight smile; in a world where this monster could attack them, it was nice to know that some things remained constant.

"I just had an issue or two that I wanted clarification on before I told you about them in case I was wrong," Hermione said, shrugging apologetically.

"Hermione," Harry said, shaking his head as he looked at his sister, "how often do I have to tell you, I have Kirk's Spock-faith in you."

"Huh?" Ron asked, looking at Harry in confusion.

"Ron," Hermione said, looking at their friend in exasperation, "tell your father that his research into muggles should include research into their popular culture; that's not the first quote you've missed, even if this one was... slightly difficult to place."

"Hey, I liked what that line said about their relationship; it's not my fault I remember some of the fine details," Harry said, looking at Hermione with a slightly teasing sulk before he looked back at Ron. "My point is that Hermione's got this need to over-examine things more than she needs to, regardless of the fact that I'd take her guesses over most people's hard facts; she might want to back up her hunches, but I'll take them over anything anyone else showed me most days of the week, no matter what evidence they have to support them."

"Ah," Ron said, in slightly confused understanding as Harry turned back to Hermione.

"So, what's this theory?" he asked casually.

"Well... Hagrid said that the girl was found in a bathroom," Hermione explained. "And... look, we already know that one of the modern victims was found outside a bathroom..."

"Who- oh, Mrs Norris, right?" Ron said.

"Exactly," Hermione said, nodding thankfully at Ron before she turned back to Harry. "Anyway, two things occurred to me; firstly, what if the reason for two attacks taking place near a bathroom was because they had some kind of connection to the creature beyond sheer chance, and secondly, what if the girl who was murdered in the bathroom never actually left the bathroom?"

Harry's eyes widened in surprise.

It was such a simple deduction that he was amazed he hadn't thought of it earlier.

"Moaning Myrtle?" he said, looking at his sister with a smile. "You think she was the victim?"

"Well... it does make sense," Ron said, nodding thoughtfully as he processed his friends' train of thought. "I mean, why else would a ghost spend a lot of time in a toilet unless it had some kind of significance to them?"

"And it being the place where she died certainly fits most ghost-related stereotypes," Harry said, nodding in agreement at Ron before he looked back at Hermione. "It gives us something to think about, anyway; too bad we can't do anything right now..."

"What?" Hermione said, looking sharply at him. "We have a witness and we have evidence-!"

"We have a possible witness and a theory that fits the facts we've discovered so far; nothing we've found couldn't be explained away as coincidence if we tried to take this to official investigators, and I think that getting past Filch to get another chance to talk with her given the way things have been recently is unlikely at best," Harry countered, looking pointedly at his sister; she might be the more rounded intellectual, but she really needed to think about things more practically at times. "Look, we've got a Quidditch game coming up in the next couple of weeks, to say nothing of our subjects; I get that this takes priority in the long term, but we don't have enough information to plan our next move, and the Heir doesn't seem to have been doing anything since that attack on Justin and Nick a few months ago, so we can probably afford to wait for a bit. Just let me get through this game, and then I should be able to devote more time to this investigation; Wood alone would draw too much attention to my absence, and if the Heir has taken 'time out', we don't want to do anything that would give the impression we think we're on to them."

"Point..." Hermione said, nodding in frustrated resignation before she smiled slightly. "Anyway, I can still do a bit of additional research here; it's not like me spending time in the library is going to stand out."

"Just be careful and be sure to keep something reflective on you," Harry said, looking solemnly at his friends. "And... try to let other people know that, without making it too obvious that we know what's responsible for all this; maybe we could try and get in touch with whoever set up that old protective amulet trade and get them to start selling something again?"

"Something reflective?" Hermione suggested with a slight smile.

"It's the best chance we've got without revealing anything we don't want anyone else to know," Harry said, nodding at his sister.

"Besides," Ron added hopefully, "the Mandrakes seem to be doing fairly well, from what Professor Sprout said; maybe they'll be ready to de-Petrify everybody soon and we won't have to worry about this because Colin, Nick or Justin can tell us who did it instead?"

Even if Harry and Hermione knew that the Mandrakes would need a few more months before they were ready to do anything like that, they weren't willing to deny Ron that small hope; maybe if they just kept their fingers crossed, the best-case scenario would happen anyway?

The next few days were relatively busy for all three of them. With Harry having to focus on his quidditch training as the next match drew closer, Hermione spent what spare time she could trying to figure out anything new about the Chamber based on the information they already possessed, leaving Ron to do what he could with his conventional homework. With Ron doing most of the work, he was happy to provide Harry and Hermione with his answers so that they could provide input on his work and get some ideas down for their own answers; Ron might not be as capable as they were, but he did all right when he applied himself to the task at hand, and Harry and Hermione were always able to use what research he'd done to assist them in putting their own homework together.

Hermione was fairly sure that the basilisk was using the pipes to get around the school based on some notes she'd found about wizarding architecture being potentially 'dimensionally transcendental' (The 'Doctor Who' term was easier to remember than the name that the wizards had given it which Harry could barely pronounce anyway), which at least accounted for why Harry had been hearing the basilisk in the corridors without seeing it, but that still left them with only the toilets as a possible clue to the Chamber's entrance and no idea what they'd do if that turned out to be a dead end.

As well as the brief re-ignition of the protective amulet trade thanks to Ron and the twins dropping the appropriate words in the right ears to pass the message along, further demands on their time were made when they had to choose the subjects that they'd take going into their third year. While Hermione was initially in favour of taking everything, Harry was quick to stop her from signing up for the Muggle Studies course as it would have been too easy for her, and a casual discussion on the topic was enough to dissuade them from going for Divination as neither of them felt that inclined to explore the future; they'd read enough stories about self-fulfilling prophecies- whether through time-travel or magical visions- to know that seeing it could often cause what you were trying to stop. Hermione had expressed an interest in Arithmancy, but Harry's own lack of confidence with numbers had been enough to dissuade him from exploring that particular subject even if Hermione had still signed up for it, although Ancient Runes had been mutually agreed to be rather interesting. Care of Magical Creatures had been a subject of some debate, but eventually the two of them had decided to go for it, concluding that the subject might be an interesting change of pace. Ron, although agreeing with the decision to sign up for Care of Magical Creatures, had decided to sign up for Divination mainly because none of the others really grabbed his attention or had sounded far too complicated; he was learning enough about muggles from his father and friends to satisfy him, Arthimancy was too complicated for his taste, and he just didn't think that any of his future career plans would benefit from him selecting Ancient Runes as an option.

Personally, Harry just hoped that whoever was teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts next year- assuming that 'jinx' he'd heard rumours about was still the case; the fact that Quirrell had apparently only taught the class last year didn't exactly mean that there was a definite pattern- was competent enough to make up for Lockhart's continued idiocy; once you ignored the parts about his favourite colour or ideal birthday present, the man's books were a better source of information than the man himself, as far as Harry could tell.

If the Chamber crisis hadn't been more of an obvious threat, Harry might have decided to investigate how a man who had written these books could be such an incompetent wizard- even if he had his doubts about Lockhart having done everything that was recounted in his books, he still had to have gathered the information in the first place-, but this wasn't the time to worry about minor things like that in the face of the current problems facing them.

With everything else bothering them at this point, Quidditch sessions were almost a relief; Harry might not be able to completely relax during practise sessions, but at least he didn't have to stress about his long-term future when his immediate goal was simply to worry about where the snitch was located. With the weather becoming drier as time went on, he began to enjoy the time he spent flying once again, leaving him with a welcome opportunity to get away from it all.

Unfortunately, his good mood was ruined by an event that took place the evening before Saturday's match. As he was heading up to the dormitory to drop off his broomstick after a particularly satisfying practise, he found Neville at the top of the stairs, looking frantically at him.

"Harry," he said, shaking almost as much as he did in Potions classes, "I don't know who did it- I just found-"

As Neville opened the door to the dorm, Harry quickly realised what the other boy meant; someone had apparently completely ransacked Harry's trunk, throwing the contents everywhere, ripping his conventional cloak- fortunately the invisibility cloak was with Hermione at the moment-, pulling the bedclothes off his bed, and scattering the contents of the drawers of his bedside cabinet over the mattress.

"Bloody Hell..." Dean Thomas said, prompting Harry to glance back as Ron, Dean and Seamus walked into the room. "What happened, Harry?"

"No idea..." Harry muttered, quickly scanning through his scattered property to see if anything was missing, his blood running cold as he realised what item was missing. Shooting a stern glance at Ron to prompt his friend to follow him without saying anything, Harry hurried down the stairs, quickly spotting Hermione sitting in a corner of the common-room reading a book about Ancient Runes.

"What-?" she began, looking curiously up at Harry as he and Ron hurried over to join her.

"Riddle's diary's gone," Harry said, looking grimly between his friend and his sister. "Someone just ransacked my stuff and it's the only thing missing; I think we know what that means."

"Hold on; a Gryffindor stole it?" Hermione said, looking incredulously at her brother. "But-!"

"I know it's unlikely, but who else knows our password?" Harry said, briefly glancing up at the passage leading to his dorm before he looked back at his friends. "The only thing that doesn't make sense is how anyone would find it; nobody else apart from the three of us even knew that I had that diary..."

"Well, at least working out why they did it now was simple enough," Hermione said, indicating the nearest window with a slight shrug, Harry and Ron glancing out at the brilliantly-illuminated grounds spread out before them. "This is the best weather we've had for ages; almost everyone would have been outside to relax after the stress of picking next year's subjects or whatever other work we've had lately, which would make it the perfect opportunity to sneak up there without anyone noticing."

"Point," Harry said, smiling briefly at his sister before he slumped back into his seat with a groan. "Too bad that doesn't help us work out who did it; it's not like we can be expected to ask around the entire house to find out who wasn't with anyone for the right amount of time..."

"Add in the fact that we can't exactly report it stolen because it would raise too many questions about how we got something like that in the first place, and... well, 'complicated' isn't exactly the right word," Hermione added, shaking her head as she shared an exasperated glance with her friends. "There are definitely times when working in secret like this can be annoying."

"But it's still fun, right?" Ron said, smiling slightly over at Hermione. "I mean, how many students can say they have this kind of fun at school?"

In a strange way, Harry had to agree with Ron's point; no matter how difficult things might be at Hogwarts, you couldn't ever complain that things were boring.

Right now, however, he'd gladly trade away the excitement for some answers; who, or what, were they actually dealing with here...?

The next morning, Harry tried to take his mind off the mystery of the diary and focus his mind back on the game that he was about to play. The weather at least retained the high quality of the previous day, with brilliant sunshine and a calm breeze, but a part of Harry's mind was still focused on analysing the fellow students around him, wondering which of them now possessed the mysterious diary even as the rest of him knew that speculation like that was pointless.

Whoever had stolen that diary knew what they were after and knew how to access the tower, but otherwise they had nothing to go on, particularly since the only people who knew about the diary were the three of them; even the person who'd disposed of it originally couldn't know that it had ended up in their possession afterwards...

As he headed for the pitch, Harry wondered if he should feel relieved or frustrated at the lack of pain from his scar; at least the lack of discomfort suggested that whoever was responsible for this whole mess wasn't the same as the person who'd been responsible for everything going wrong last year, but that didn't exactly leave them with a long list of suspects. Even as he headed down to the changing rooms and pulled on his scarlet robes, he couldn't take his mind off this whole situation, and even the applause that they were met with after getting onto the field couldn't totally cheer him up. Harry was just about to mount his broom when Professor McGonagall came half-marching, half-running across the pitch, raising her wand to her throat as she spoke.

"This match is cancelled," she said, her voice echoing around the stadium even as Wood hurried over to her and tried to protest. "All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!"

As the crowd began to split up and the teams went their separate ways, Harry quickly handed his Nimbus over to Fred and George- they might be pranksters, but he knew that he could trust them to take it back to the house for safe keeping- and ran over to Ron and Hermione as stealthily as he could, the two of them already standing at one edge of the pitch.

"You brought it, right?" he asked, looking urgently at his friends.

"Of course," Hermione said, reaching into her bag and pulling the silver form of the invisibility cloak that she and Harry essentially shared. Ever since Harry's impulsive visit to Hagrid, he and Hermione had taken care to ensure that at least one of them always brought the invisibility cloak out with them whenever they had to go anywhere, depending on which one of them could get away with carrying something of sufficient size to conceal the cloak in question; they might have to be careful, but it was worth it in case of situations like this.

"Come on," Harry said, indicating the stream of students heading into the castle as the three of them retreated to a position behind one of the stands. "Just wait here for a moment, and then we're off."

As they threw the cloak over themselves, they waited for a couple of moments to let more of the students into the castle, and then hurried in after them, the corridor now empty enough that the three invisible people could walk through the building without risking anyone bumping into or tripping over something that they couldn't see.

"Where to?" Ron asked.

"The staff room," Harry said firmly. "Professor McGonagall will want to let the rest of the teachers know what's wrong first; where else would they go?"

"Shouldn't we tell-?" Hermione began.

"Lack of proof, remember?" Harry pointed out to her. "Without the diary, we've just got a bunch of theories; let's just hear what's happened and then we'll decide what to do next."

After a few minutes of hurried walking, they finally found themselves outside the staff room, currently deserted with the door slightly ajar. Quickly nipping inside the room, the three of them waited silently in the corner until the teachers began to filter into the room, their expressions varying between scared and confused (Lockhart was noticeably absent, Harry reflected, but quickly concluded that he didn't care about that).

"It has happened," Professor Dumbledore said, looking solemnly at the teachers assembled around him. "A student has been taken by the monster, right into the Chamber itself."

Harry automatically clapped a hand over Hermione's mouth to stop her gasp of shock at this news; giving away their presence right now wouldn't help anything.

"How can you be sure?" Snape asked, maintaining a tight grip on his chair as he looked at the headmaster.

"The Heir of Slytherin has left another message underneath the original," Dumbledore replied, his expression still grim as he looked around the room. "'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever'."

"Who is it?" Madam Hooch asked, sinking into a chair as Professor Flitwick burst into tears. "Which student?"

"Ginny Weasley," Dumbledore said.

Harry and Hermione were suddenly simultaneously cursing and grateful for the fact that Ron was the tallest of the three of them; since it meant that he tended to be in the middle when all three of them were under the cloak, it made it easier for them to catch him when he began to fall towards the floor.

Ginny...

His mind racing, Harry tried to recall when he had last seen Ginny, but was ashamed to admit to himself that he couldn't even recall if she'd been present at breakfast; it had all been so chaotic that it had been hard to keep track of everybody, and he'd had so much on his mind...

The Chamber.

As the teachers talked about contacting the aurors and making arrangements to try and search the school, Harry hauled Ron back to his feet and jerked his head towards the still-partly-open door, leaving Ron and Hermione to quickly follow him as he left the staffroom as quietly as possible.

"Come on," he said, looking resolutely at his friends. "Let's go-"

"Go?" Ron repeated, looking incredulously at him. "Harry, my sister-"

"If the Heir wanted her dead, she'd probably be dead and someone would have found the body already, Ron; nobody would bother taking someone into a secret chamber in a place like this unless there was something they wanted to get out of it," Harry said, walking as quickly as possible while trying to avoid tripping over the cloak and giving their presence away to anyone who might be passing; if he focused on those issues, he could stop himself thinking about the fact that Ginny Weasley, who he'd kept meaning to spend time with but always had something more 'important' come up, was currently being held prisoner in the Chamber of Secrets by someone who controlled one of the most dangerous creatures to ever exist. "We don't know how long it'll be until the aurors get here and we don't have any evidence that could convince them to listen to us when they do; we've got one lead, so we need to try and follow it if there's any chance that... we'll pull this off."

He didn't want to think about the consequences of failure; the thought that he could have maybe noticed that Ginny was missing earlier if he'd just paid more attention to her...

God, what was wrong with him? He'd spent his entire life pre-Hermione being the outsider, and he went and did it to someone who'd done nothing but be slightly embarrassed and awkward around him because he was busy?

Even if it was only to make up for his past mistakes, he had to save Ginny...

AN 2: Well, hope you liked that; coming up, my own version of the Chamber confrontation, with a few additional forces...