Chapter 36:
Skylar hurried down the spiral staircase the following morning, dressed and ready, trying to find the two boys. She was about to run up to the boys dormitory when they came down the stairs together.
"The girl who died," Harry said quickly as soon as he saw her, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
"It's Myrtle!" Skylar chorused with him
"You worked it out too?" Ron sighed yawning.
"Well how many ghosts are hanging around bathrooms?" Skylar questioned as she turned and they followed her to the portrait hole.
"We can talk to her about it." Harry nodded
"She would have actually seen what ever it was, she might know who was controlling it too." Skylar said "I can't believe she never bothered to speak up!"
"Probably thought we wouldn't believe her." Harry said as they walked down the marble staircase and to the Great Hall for breakfast.
"I can't believe her!" Skylar complained "If she had spoken up we'd have never had to have gone to the forest!" she lowered her voice and ground her teeth in aggravation as the three of them sat down.
"All those times we were in that bathroom, and she was just three toilets away," said Ron bitterly "and we could've asked her, and now…"
Harry and Skylar shared a look and slumped. Ron had a point. It had been hard enough trying to look for spiders. Escaping their teachers long enough to sneak into a girls' bathroom, the girls' bathroom, moreover, right next to the scene of the first attack, was going to be almost impossible.
But something happened in their first lesson, Transfiguration, that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of their minds for the first time in weeks. Ten minutes into the class, Professor McGonagall told them that their exams would start on the first of June, one week from today.
"Exams?" howled Seamus Finnigan. "We're still getting exams?"
Skylar was gapping at the teacher. How were they supposed to remember what they'd done in classes, with everything that had happened outside of the classes?
There was a loud bang behind Harry as Neville Longbottom's wand slipped, vanishing one of the legs on his desk. Professor McGonagall restored it with a wave of her own wand, and turned, frowning, to Seamus.
"The whole point of keeping the school open at this time is for you to receive your education," she said sternly. "The exams will therefore take place as usual, and I trust you are all studying hard."
Skylar turned, open mouthed to Harry and Ron on her right. Both of them looked just as surprised, and definitely in Ron's case, annoyed at this news.
There was a great deal of mutinous muttering around the room, which made Professor McGonagall scowl even more darkly.
"Professor Dumbledore's instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible," she said. "And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year."
Skylar groaned and had it not been for the white rabbits on her desk before her, she would have hit her forehead to the wooden surface. They were supposed to be turning the animals into slippers.
Ron looked as though he'd just been told he had to go and live in the Forbidden Forest.
"Can you imagine me taking exams with this?" he asked Harry, holding up his wand, which had just started whistling loudly.
"Can you imagine taking exams at all!? I mean what's happened this year is a crazy monster has been running around turning people basically to stone! How can I remember turning beetles into buttons or how to make a swelling potion amongst that?"
"Coming from the girl who just remembered our lessons." Ron said
"You mean two lessons. We're in our final weeks!" she snapped back.
Three days before their first exam, Professor McGonagall made another announcement at breakfast.
"I have good news," she said, and the Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupted.
"Dumbledore's coming back!" several people yelled joyfully.
"You've caught the Heir of Slytherin!" squealed a girl at the Ravenclaw table.
"Quidditch matches are back on!" roared Wood excitedly.
When the hubbub had subsided, Professor McGonagall said, "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 well 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 an explosion of cheering. Ron was looking happier than he'd looked in days, much to Skylar's amusement.
"It won't matter that we never asked Myrtle, then!" he said to her and Harry. "Hermione'll probably have all the answers when they wake her up! Mind you, she'll go crazy when she finds out we've got exams in three days' time. She hasn't studied. It might be kinder to leave her where she is till they're over."
Skylar couldn't help but laugh before suddenly, Ginny Weasley came over and sat down next to Ron. She looked tense and nervous, and her hands were twisting in her lap.
"What's up?" said Ron, helping himself to more porridge.
Ginny didn't say anything, but glanced up and down the Gryffindor table with a scared look on her face.
"Spit it out," said Ron, watching her. Ginny was rocking backward and forward in her chair and the nerves had Skylar looked at her confused.
"I've got to tell you something," Ginny mumbled, carefully not looking at Harry.
"What is it?" said Harry.
Ginny looked as though she couldn't find the right words.
"What?" said Ron.
Ginny opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Harry leaned forward and spoke quietly, so that only Skylar, Ginny and Ron could hear him.
"Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?"
Ginny drew a deep breath and Skylar's eyes widened.
"Oh my god…" she whispered and Ginny looked at her, her eyes tearing up slightly. Skylar opened her mouth to continue but at that precise moment, Percy Weasley appeared, looking tired and wan.
"If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny. I'm starving, I've only just come off patrol duty."
Ginny jumped up as though her chair had just been electrified, gave Percy a fleeting, frightened look, and scampered away.
"Wait! Wait, Ginny!" Skylar shouted, beginning to get out of her seat.
"Miss Rosenwald, no shouting." Professor McGonagall said as she, as usual when there was mischief, turned up out of no where.
Percy sat down and grabbed a mug from the centre of the table as Skylar looked after the red-haired girl, but she'd left the Great Hall.
"Percy!" said Ron angrily. "She was just about to tell us something important!"
Halfway through a gulp of tea, Percy choked.
"What sort of thing?" he said, coughing.
"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," said Percy at once.
"How do you know?" said Ron, his eyebrows raised.
"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 did think she'd keep her word. It's nothing, really, I'd just rather —"
Harry had never seen Percy look so uncomfortable.
"It was nothing to do with you and you're secret girlfriend Percy!" Skylar snapped before she got up from the table and hurried off after Ginny.
She looked around the Entrance Hall but Ginny had disappeared. Skylar assumed she would have gone to her first class for the day, but she didn't know where that was…
"Leon…" she muttered and she turned back into the Great Hall. She looked along the table before she noticed her brown-haired, younger brother and hurried over to him. He jumped when she put her hands on his shoulders and turned to look at her.
"God Sky, what?" he questioned
"Where's your first class?" she asked
"What?"
"You're first class what is it?"
"Transfiguration." he said and Skylar patted his shoulders before she moved back out of the Entrance hall and up to the Transfiguration classroom.
No one was there, not outside or inside.
Skylar decided to try the Gryffindor Common room but Ginny wasn't there either, not even in the dormitory.
"Where the hell did she go!?" Skylar demanded.
Time was ticking and Skylar had to hurry towards Defence Against the Dark Arts.
"Where'd you run off to?" Ron asked when she arrived.
"It's Ginny." she said quickly and quietly.
"What is?" Ron asked and she looked at him annoyed as she looked at Harry. She looked around but the Gryffindors were quiet as they talked amongst themselves.
"That's what she was trying to tell us." Skylar confessed "It's her!" she tried to explain without informing the entire corridor.
The two boys still looked confused as Lockhart came out and opened the door for them. His hair wasn't as sleek as usual; it seemed he had been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.
Skylar hurried them inside, past the professor, and to their table at the back before she turned to them.
"Ginny's the one who opened the chamber!" she snapped at the two of them, using the rustling of everyone taking their seat to cover her voice.
"What are you going on about?" Ron questioned
"Ginny opened the Chamber of Secrets!"
"Ginny's not the Heir of Slytherin." Ron snapped, getting defensive.
"She's being forced to do it by that diary!"
"How do you know?"
"Because it was all she could think about this morning. Moments in her memories where she's blacked out and ended up somewhere else, paint on her robes, feathers in her bed. She's the one who took the diary from Harry's room!"
"Ginny can't be doing it, she's never been here before, how did she even find the chamber?" Ron snapped
"Are you not listening to me?!" Skylar snapped "That diary, Riddle's diary, forced her to do it, it controlled her!"
"Skylar it's a diary." Harry confessed
"It's an object that has memories and thinks for itself! You never trust something like that!" Skylar snapped
"Well did you ask her?" Ron questioned
"I can't find her. She wasn't in the common room, or the dormitory or at her first class!"
Harry and Ron shared a look.
"Think about it, Riddle was at school fifty years ago, he blamed Hagrid for the Chamber and now his book turns up at Hogwarts and it's happening again, and it turns out the book does more than just respond when your write in it. And what object can pull you in and show you a memory on it's own accord?!" she rationalised. "We have to find Ginny!"
"How? We're still being chaperoned." Ron reminded her
"I don't know, but what if she's in trouble?!" Skylar asked, a worried look on her face.
"What was that Miss Rosenwald?" Skylar turned to glare at Gilderoy Lockhart as he interrupted them.
"Nothing of importance professor." she responded before turning back and away from the two boys beside her.
They didn't speak again for the rest of the class and when it was time for History of Magic, the class packed up and followed Lockhart from the room as he escorted them through the corridors.
Lockhart, who had so often assured them that all danger had passed, only to be proved wrong right away, was now wholeheartedly convinced that it was hardly worth the trouble to see them safely down the corridors.
"Mark my words," he said, ushering them around a corner. "The first words out of those poor Petrified people's mouths will be 'It was Hagrid.' Frankly, I'm astounded Professor McGonagall thinks all these security measures are necessary."
"I agree, sir," said Harry, making Ron drop his books in surprise. Skylar glanced at them beside her.
"Thank you, Harry," said Lockhart graciously while they 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 classes and standing guard all night…"
"That's right," said Ron, catching on. "Why don't you leave us here, sir, we've only got one more corridor to go —"
"You know, Weasley, I think I will," said Lockhart. "I really should go and prepare my next class —"
And he hurried off.
"Prepare his class," Ron sneered after him. "Gone to curl his hair, more like."
They let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of them, and the boys turned to Skylar.
"You coming?" Harry asked
She looked at them both and then around the corridor and nodded. She wasn't going to be able to find Ginny if they were always being followed by a teacher.