Chapter 21: Petrified

Over the next couple of weeks, Harry practised quidditch with a number of Slytherin and Gryffindor players together outside of official practices. Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle never came to any. Oliver Wood was allowed on his broom, but not to practice hard. This had made him cranky and he'd only come to one session before Angelina suggested he not turn up again if he was in a mood. It didn't help that she said it in front of Miles, the Slytherin keeper. Oliver went off in a sulk.

The twins made a one or two smart comments at the Slytherins, which earned them some very dirty looks until Harry had quietly taken them to one side and explained that a) Snape would not be pleased with him if this went very wrong and b) if it was the twins' fault Harry would quite happily tell Mrs. Weasley. He knew threatening them with their mum hadn't been nice, but neither was going over Snape's knee.

The next week was quiet if you discounted the amount of celebrating Ron did after Gryffindor beat Hufflepuff. He was, according to the twins, nearly unbearable. Fred even went so far as to say to Harry that he wished he were in Slytherin just to get away from the bragging. Harry saw less of Ron than he used to when he was in Gryffindor so didn't hear about the win quite so much of the time, but Harry also appreciated some of the saves Ron had made. The game had been close. 210 points to 200. The Hufflepuff seeker hadn't been paying attention to the score and caught the snitch before Hufflepuff had scored enough points. Their seeker had caught quite a lot of flak for that, but Harry wondered if she'd caught the snitch before the score ran away from them. The Gryffindor chasers had been scoring left, right and centre, literally, and Ron had done a good job of keeping the quaffle out of his hoops. Ron had deserved to show off a bit.

On Valentine's day Lockhart was vomit inducing as Malfoy nicely put it, he wore lurid pink robes and counted his Valentine's Day cards. It made any sensible person shudder. After they'd quickly eaten dinner that evening, Harry, Fred, George, Adrian and Terence went out to practise a few specific moves. As they crossed the entrance hall, they heard a breathless voice running after them.

"Hi, can I take some pictures of your quidditch practice? It's for my album. I've so few pictures of Slytherin and Gryffindors together. And, I took loads today of Professor Lockhart, he looked so funny in pink, it'd just finish off a roll of film then I can develop them. Please? Please?"

Colin Creevey had caught up with them. He'd tried to take pictures of them every practice. Harry hadn't realised that Colin had spent the year trying to take his picture just so Colin could have a photo of The Boy Who Lived in his album. George had explained it to him last week.

"Just think, you could have had your own personal media circus if you'd been in Gryffindor this year." he said slyly.

The quidditch players had taken to checking for the whereabouts of Colin before announcing out loud where they were going. This time Colin must have seen them leave the great hall and head towards the entrance together. At least he didn't appear to have his camera on him right now.

"Colin, can you not, please?" asked Fred, exasperated. He'd finally got fed up of having to avoid the boy and just wanted him to get lost.

Colin might have got the hint. There were a number of cold stares aimed his way. "Just one? Then I won't bother you again?" he asked, pleading with puppy dog eyes. The group looked at each other. Adrian and Terence shrugged, so Fred saw the chance to put an end to it.

"Just this once and only for five minutes and then I never want to see that camera pointed in any of our directions again, else I'll take the film out and hang you up from the rafters by it."

Colin nodded vigorously, his eyes wide. "I'll just go get my camera."

They were just at the door of the building when Harry heard it, "...soo hungry... for so long..." Harry looked round for the source of the voice, and not finding anyone there looked confused.

"What's up?"asked Adrian, noticing Harry's confusion.

"I thought I heard a voi... never mind," and shrugged it off and went to enjoy his evening.

Colin never appeared. None of them noticed.

When they got back inside well after dark, all mud-spattered and tired, they realised at once something was wrong. The place was deserted. They went to the great hall as that was the nearest place where they expected to find people. No-one was there.

"What are you all still doing here? You were told to go to your common rooms!" Professor Flitwick appeared behind them.

"Professor, we just came in from the practice pitch." said Terence.

"Ah. Then come this way, all of you." he lead them down to the dungeons and let Harry, Adrian and Terence into their common room. Professor Snape saw them enter and his expression grew stony, fortunately Professor Flitwick stayed long enough to explain.

"Professor, these boys have just come in from the practice quidditch pitch. They did not hear the instruction to return to their dorms. I will escort the Weasleys up to Gryffindor."

Snape's expression reverted to his usual detached demeanor. "Thank you, Filius." and then he beckoned to the three boys, who exchanged confused looks, "Sit, I have yet to address the house." With that, he turned to the room in general and waited for their undivided attention. He didn't have to wait long.

"During dinner there was an incident. A first year Gryffindor was found petrified on the corridor at the bottom of Gryffindor tower." A hushed whispering started up until Snape glared. "For those of you who do not know, Mrs. Norris was petrified just after the holidays. At this time we do not know the details of what happened. If any of you were anywhere near Gryffindor tower during dinner, come to my office when I've finished here. In the meantime, you will remain in here for the evening. If any of you think to disobey you will regret it." he said meaningfully. "Any questions?"

"Sir, who was petrified?" asked a voice from the back of the room.

"I believe his name is Colin Creevey." Harry, Adrian and Terence gasped. Snape turned to their direction and raised an eyebrow. "Something to share, gentlemen?"

"Colin was going to Gryffindor tower to fetch his camera, and then he was coming to the quidditch pitch." said Harry.

"When exactly?" demanded Snape.

"Maybe twenty minutes into dinner. We finished quickly as we wanted to fly. He came out with us and asked if he could have a picture of inter-house quidditch practice. Then he went to get his camera. Sir, did he have his camera when... um... when he was found?"

"Yes, he did. So he was clearly leaving Gryffindor tower. Not that that helps, but it will help when we question the portraits. Hopefully the Fat Lady can be of assistance." with that Snape turned to leave and headed to the door. He turned just as he was exiting and added, "Remember what I said about leaving." he looked directly at Harry when he spoke. Harry felt nervous, how did the man know he wasnted to go up to Gryffindor and exchange news with his friends. He certainly wasn't going to leave the common room now.

Next morning at breakfast, the Gryffindor table was very subdued. Dumbledore stood up to make an announcement and the room fell silent immediately.

"Students, you are aware that Colin Creevey was petrified yesterday evening. The cure for petrification is a Mandrake Restorative Draught. As Professor Sprout has Mandrakes in the greenhouse, when the plants are mature enough a potion can be made. This will restore both Mr. Creevey and Mrs. Norris." he sat down again.

"Well that's very informative," whispered Malfoy sarcastically to the table at large. Harry had to agree with him. They'd been no explanation, no warnings, it wasn't like last year with 'Stay off the third floor corridor unless you want to die a painful death'.

Dudley had spent a good few weeks spending time talking to Tom. The day before yesterday he'd really enjoyed their conversation. They'd discussed many ways to become a leader recently. Tom had brought it down to the three types of people you'd be leader of, the weak, the ambitious and the thuggish. They had discussed how to lead the weak. They both agreed straight away it was through dominance and a show of power. If you didn't want to directly show force, there was always the opportunity to use the thugs under your leadership to show force at your every whim.

Tom had started simple with ways to show force through magic. Dudley could tell from how Tom wrote that he'd been scathing of Dudley's lack of knowledge, but Dudley had accepted this to gain knowledge. Tom had started by explaining to Dudley simple hexes, he helped Dudley perfect his stinging hex, and quickly moved on to the body-bind curse. Tom had seemed pleased at the speed with which Dudley caught on. Dudley couldn't practise many of these spells on anyone without getting caught, but the ones he could practise like a stinging hex even against an inanimate object, he did.

Dudley realised very early on that hexes were all about meaning it. He often envisioned Potter's face when he fired off a hex. He was eminently pleased with a jelly-legs curse he shot at a first year Hufflepuff on a deserted corridor one evening. It seemed the more he used the hex to channel his anger, the better the hex was.

Tom had more recently upgraded to describing certain curses and their application. Dudley daren't test out Confringo, but Petrificus Totalus was one he'd hoped to try out as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

Yesterday's conversation had been the best though. Tom had told him about the Cruciatus curse. Tom had explained that Ginny, being only a second year she may have difficulty performing the curse.

"You need to mean them, Ginny! You need to really want to cause pain... to enjoy it..." Tom had written.

Dudley smiled to himself. For Potter, he'd mean it.

That morning Dumbledore had announced at breakfast that Creevey had been petrified. The whole school was on edge about it by the time the day had ended. Dumbledore had never said why, or what had happened. The fact that Dudley didn't know either didn't bother him, but he'd use it to his advantage. He knew he could ask Tom about Petrification, he was sure Tom would know, but he didn't. He just didn't care about who got petrified, they weren't important to him.

That evening he remembered what Tom had said to him a couple of weeks ago, to kill the roosters. That would really put people on edge, he thought! Hagrid had roosters. The great idiotic buffoon seemed to have one of every creature he could get his hands on. Comparatively speaking, the roosters were tame, so why want to kill the roosters? He thought about asking Tom, but wondered if Tom would be displeased he hadn't done it when he first asked, so he didn't ask why. But the chaos it would cause... Dudley smiled at just the thought. He would have to think of somewhere public to put the dead roosters, just for effect.

As it was February, it still got dark before curfew, so it was easy for Dudley to slip out under the cover of darkness to head down to Hagrid's cottage. There was a light on in the cottage, but he couldn't hear a noise from inside. He stood still outside and listened for ages wondering where that bloody dog was. Then he heard barking coming from the Forbidden Forest, quite some way away. Excellent, no chance of being disturbed.

Dudley made his way to where the chickens and roosters were kept. He'd looked up rooster in the library that lunchtime. So, big chicken with fancy feathers then. Dudley had grown up in a town. He didn't like the feel of mud under his feet, or the squelchiness of the chicken coop. He saw the roosters amongst the chickens. There were two. He fired a stinging hex at one of them, delighted to be able to practise on a living thing. The bird squawked. He fired a full body bind and it keeled over sideways unable to move.

He pointed his wand at the other bird, concentrated all his focus onto imagining his cousin's face and cast a Crucio. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Angry at failure he channelled his anger into a Confringo. Suddenly there was only one rooster left in the chicken coop. Damn. He'd wanted to put the carcasses somewhere. One carcass wasn't as good. Oh well, one would have to do. He went up to the bird and fired stinging hexes at its head. They were strong enough that it was dead after just he first one. He didn't want to touch it - he wasn't squeamish, it was just that he wasn't a farm animal kind of person, so he used a levitating charm on the bird to take it into the school. He checked that there was no-one about, then he dumped the dead bird on the head table. Thinking that this didn't have quite the desired effect, he used a Diffindo spell to cut the bird open so that it bled all over the staff table.

He went back to his dorm, pleased with himself. Spreading a bit more panic and unrest was fun.

Next day, everyone talked. Was there a curse at Hogwarts? Who would get petrified next? What had the message behind the staff table been written in? Rooster blood? Would someone meet the same fate as the rooster? Was there any significance to the rooster being placed where the DADA professor usually sat? Did this have anything to do with the Chamber of Secrets?

The most any of the students could get out of anyone about the Chamber of Secrets was out of Professor Binns when someone thought to liven up their lesson by asking him. But even that bit of information passed around amongst the students didn't stop anyone whispering about curses, petrification and death.

By the time the end of the week came around the staff looked relieved that there was a quidditch match to create a diversion. The match Slytherin vs Ravenclaw. The general consensus was that Ravenclaw didn't stand a chance. Fred and George had hidden away in the stands to watch their a couple of their practices, especially when they were practicing with Hufflepuff. The twins had incorporated a couple of extra moves into their training with Harry and the other Slytherins after spying of the practice, and Adrian had made sure that Lucian and Peregrine knew about them. He 'accidentally' forgot to tell Malfoy though. This meant that the Slytherin practice on the Thursday before the game was an exercise in showing Malfoy up and as a result Marcus chose Bole and Derrick as beaters for the game. Malfoy's expression was priceless, but no-one felt in the least sorry for him. Although bribery was a perfectly acceptable Slytherin option, it didn't make sense when there were better players.

So the game on Saturday was rather one sided. By the time ten minutes had passed Slytherin was 50 points up and didn't look to be tiring. They ran the Ravenclaw beaters ragged. Surprisingly the game didn't have quite so many of the standard Slytherin features - accidental elbows, the odd grab of an opponent's broom, that sort of thing. When the game was becoming embarrassing to watch at 330 plays 40 is was perhaps fortunate that the snitch was caught by the Ravenclaw seeker. Harry didn't stand a chance of catching it at the time. It was spotted by the audience at the other end of the pitch from where he was and the Ravenclaw seeker was only about 10 metres away from it. It nearly got away from him in his effort to catch it, but Madame Hooch blew her whistle for a Slytherin win 330 against Ravenclaw's 190. But perhaps the most surprising thing about the game was that the twins genuinely applauded the Slytherin chasers and beaters. Training together was one thing, but Harry never thought he'd see the day when Gryffindors clapped for a Slytherin.

By the time March came round the student body was a lot calmer. Nothing odd had happened to anyone in a couple of weeks. Dumbledore had announced that Colin Creevey and Mrs. Norris had been transferred to St. Mungo's. The Hufflepuff quidditch team had been training too hard after they'd seen what happened to Ravenclaw in their last match and half of them had come down with colds from being out in the rain too often and a couple of them had also injured themselves last session. This meant that the infirmary was getting quite full and no-one had liked sharing the place with a petrified student.

After Potions one morning, everyone was leaving the classroom and had piled into the corridor. There was the usual jostling and shoving, especially when you get Gryffindors and Slytherins in the same confined space. Harry found himself next to his cousin surrounded by his friends when suddenly he heard a voice, "...kill...time to kill..."

Harry swung round to see who'd spoken, as, he noticed, had Dudley.

"Did someone say something?" asked Harry to the people around him in general.

"Didn't hear anything." said Theo.

"Someone said k..." began Dudley, then closed his mouth. Looking at everyone's faces, no-one had heard anything. Harry looked at Dudley. He'd clearly heard what Harry had heard. Was it something really close to them? He looked around nearby, but didn't see anything there. Puzzled, Harry tried to shrug it off as and they went to their next lessons, but he was remembering the other time when they'd been out to practise quidditch and he'd heard the same voice.

Harry was sitting in the great hall that day at lunchtime when everyone's meals were interrupted by Professor Lockhart. He entered the hall at a run and stopped when everyone had seen his entrance. He was nothing if not vain enough to want to look good whatever was happening. It was a shame for him that he sounded so scared when he spoke.

"There's a..." he began, then had to take a breath due to having run all the way here from the dungeons.

"... students..." he continued between gasps, "...petrified..." he managed, "...dungeons..." The staff at the head table rose immediately, all reaching for their wands. Dumbledore told Flitwick and Sprout to remain here and for all students to stay in the hall, and every other member of staff followed the headmaster out of the room heading in the direction of the dungeons.

When the staff got to the dungeons they found a petrified student in the doorway of the Potions classroom and inside were four more.

"They're in my O.W.L. class." said Snape. "They were just cleaning down before coming for lunch. They would have only been here five minutes on their own."

"Why is it so muggy in here?" asked McGonagall.

"I've no idea." said Snape. "It was very hot when I left, they'd needed their cauldrons scalding hot for the potion they were working on."

Dumbledore reached one of the students by the sinks, her cauldron had cracked. He picked up her wand and cast Priori Incantatem. The result was that the student had used the water charm.

"They were cleaning." confirmed Snape. At least one of them cast a water spell onto a cauldron without waiting for it to cool. The whole room will have been filled with water vapour. It'd have been like looking through a ghost in here. But that doesn't help with finding out what happened to them."

"I will contact St. Mungo's," said Dumbledore sadly, "and have them transferred to there. And then decide what to tell the rest of the students." He certainly wasn't going to tell them what he and the other staff suspected though.

Back up in the great hall there was, unsurprisingly, uproar when the headmaster broke the news to the students. You could clearly hear mutters of 'Chamber' and 'Petrified'. When the initial outburst from the students had quieted down, he continued.

"For your own safety, you should not move around the school on your own. I realise that this did not help the students petrified today, but being in a group is better than being completely alone. I am also aware that there are a small number of you who think you can be out of your common rooms after curfew. Believe me when I tell you that you will not like what will happen to you if you are caught. Stay with your friends, stay in your common rooms after curfew, and stay safe." He then dismissed the students to their afternoon lessons.

Over the next week there were an increasing number of owls delivering post in the mornings. Many students had written to their parents to keep them informed of what was going on, and a copy of the Daily Prophet was a valuable commodity. Those that had a subscription were suddenly the most popular students in school. There were a number of articles writing unfavourable things about Dumbledore's ability to lead the school as well as a couple of articles referring to 'last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened.' But details were scarce and seemingly made up and none of the articles agreed with any others. It certainly didn't help with the scaremongering among the students and more than one student had been withdrawn by their parents until the issue had been resolved.