Chapter 37:
The three of them darted down a side passage and hurried off toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But just as the boys were congratulating each other on their brilliant scheme —
"Potter! Rosenwald! Weasley! What are you doing?"
It was Professor McGonagall, and her mouth was the thinnest of thin lines.
"We were — we were —" Ron stammered. "We were going to — to go and see —"
Skylar glanced at him before Harry broke the obvious guilt that hovered around them.
"Hermione," he said. Ron and Professor McGonagall both looked at him and Skylar nodded in agreement. That seemed plausible.
"We haven't seen her for ages, Professor," Harry went on hurriedly, treading on Ron's foot, "and we thought we'd sneak into the hospital wing, you know, and tell her the Mandrakes are nearly ready and, er, not to worry —"
Professor McGonagall was still staring at him, and for a moment, it looked as though she was going to explode, but when she spoke, it was in a strangely croaky voice.
"Of course," she said, amazingly, she had a tear glistening in her beady eye. "Of course, I realise this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been… I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you may visit Miss Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."
Harry, Skylar and Ron walked away, hardly daring to believe that they'd avoided detention. As they turned the corner, they distinctly heard Professor McGonagall blow her nose.
"That," said Ron fervently, "was the best story you've ever come up with."
They had no choice now but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they had Professor McGonagall's permission to visit Hermione.
Madam Pomfrey let them in, but reluctantly.
"There's just no point talking to a Petrified person," she said, and they had to admit she had a point when they'd taken their seats next to Hermione. It was plain that Hermione didn't have the faintest inkling that she had visitors, and that they might just as well tell her bedside cabinet not to worry for all the good it would do.
"Wonder if she did see the attacker, though?" said Ron, looking sadly at Hermione's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one'll ever know…"
"I doubt they'd have seen the one controlling the monster anyway… give it instructions and let it be." Skylar said and Ron turned to her.
"You really think it was Ginny?"
"I think she's a Gryffindor who can get into the dormitory, saw that Harry had the diary on valentines day when Draco made a spectacle of it, as been looking pale, scared and guilty with every attack that's happened and just tried to confess to us that it was her and you're deciding not to trust a legilimens about it!" Skylar said her voice straining as she remembered to keep it down. "We need to find her so you an realise I'm right!"
"I just don't understand how…" Ron muttered
Skylar hit her forehead. She took a breath. "Look, your father bewitched a car, which came and saved us when we were kidnapped by spiders, and you don't think a diary that writes back cannot control someone?"
Ron glanced at Hermione and had no argument. Skylar ran a hand through her hair as she sighed.
Harry however hadn't been paying attention to the two, he was too busy showing more interest in Hermione's right hand. It lay clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her fist.
Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, he pointed this out to Ron and Skylar.
"Try and get it out," Ron whispered, shifting his chair so that he blocked Harry from Madam Pomfrey's view.
It was no easy task. Hermione's hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Harry was sure he was going to tear it. While Ron kept watch he tugged and twisted, and at last, after several tense minutes, the paper came free.
It was a page torn from a very old library book. Harry smoothed it out eagerly and both Skylar and Ron leaned close to read it, too.
Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more 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.
And beneath this, a single word had been written, in a hand recognisable as Hermione's. Pipes.
Skylar stared at it and a shiver went up her spine.
"Ron," Harry breathed. "This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a basilisk — a giant serpent! That's why I've been hearing that voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it. It's because I understand Parseltongue…"
Harry looked up at the beds around him.
"The basilisk kills people by looking at them. But no one's died — because no one looked it straight in the eye. Colin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside it, 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 couldn't die again… and Hermione and that Ravenclaw prefect were found with a mirror next to them. Hermione had just realised the monster was a basilisk. I 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's jaw had dropped.
"And Mrs. Norris?" he whispered eagerly.
Harry thought hard, picturing the scene on the night of Halloween.
"The water…" he said slowly. "The flood from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I bet you Mrs. Norris only saw the reflection…" He scanned the page in his hand eagerly.
"… The crowing of the rooster… is fatal to it!" he read aloud. "Hagrid's roosters were killed! The Heir of Slytherin didn't want one anywhere near the castle once the Chamber was opened!"
"Ginny found her robes covered in feathers…" Skylar mumbled looking at them both
"You saw that?" Ron asked her and Skylar nodded.
"And her hands covered in red paint, like what the message is written in on the wall." she remembered. Ron looked paler as he looked at the girl. She bit her lip too, what did this mean?
"Spiders flee before it! It all fits!" Harry continued
"But how's the basilisk been getting around the place?" said Ron. "A giant snake… Someone would've seen…"
Harry, however, pointed at the word Hermione had scribbled at the foot of the page.
"Pipes," he said. "Pipes… Ron, it's been using the plumbing. I've been hearing that voice inside the walls…"
Ron suddenly grabbed Harry's arm.
"The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!" he said hoarsely. "What if it's a bathroom? What if it's in —"
"— Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," said Harry.
They sat there, excitement coursing through them, hardly able to believe it.
"This means," said Harry, "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."
"And Ginny's not a parselmouth!" Ron said turning to Skylar, looking relieved. She pursed her lips. She knew what she saw.
"What're we going to do?" Ron asked as he turned from Skylar to Harry, his eyes were flashing. "Should we go straight to McGonagall?"
"Let's go to the staffroom," said Harry, jumping up. "She'll be there in ten minutes. It's nearly break."
They ran downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, they went straight into the deserted staffroom. It was a large, panelled room full of dark, wooden chairs. Harry and Ron paced around it, too excited to sit down while Skylar was standing there frowning unsurely. Even if Ginny was being controlled by Riddle, how could Riddle speak parseltongue? Well if he was the Heir of Slytherin that would explain it, but there was no evidence of that.
They waited, the boys pacing and Skylar watching the clock, but the bell to signal break never came. Instead, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified.
"All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staffroom. Immediately, please."
Harry wheeled around to stare at Ron as Skylar's end widened.
"Not another attack? Not now?"
"What'll we do?" said Ron, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"
"No," said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."
"If we pop out and tell them after listening in on their conversation we'll have detention for sure." Skylar believed but both boys grabbed her and pulled her into the wardrobe with them. "I'd rather find Ginny."
"She'll be in the common room later." Ron hushed her.
They hid themselves inside it, listening to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staffroom door banging open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived.
"It has happened," she told the silent staffroom. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."
Professor Flitwick let out a squeal. Professor Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth. Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard and said, "How can you be sure?"
"The Heir of Slytherin," said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, "left another message. Right underneath the first one. 'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.' "
Professor Flitwick burst into tears.
"Who is it?" said Madam Hooch, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. "Which student?"
"Ginny Weasley," said Professor McGonagall.
Skylar gasped and Harry had to place his hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. She gripped at his wrist as her heart sped up, while Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside them.
"We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow," said Professor McGonagall. "This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said…"
The staffroom door banged open again and Lockhart walked in, and he was beaming.
"So sorry — dozed off — what have I missed?"
He didn't seem to notice that the other teachers were looking at him with something remarkably like hatred. Snape stepped forward.
"Just the man," he said. "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 blanched.
"That's right, Gilderoy," chipped in Professor Sprout. "Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"
"I — well, I —" sputtered Lockhart.
"Yes, didn't you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?" piped up Professor Flitwick.
"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," said Snape. "Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?"
Lockhart stared around at his stony-faced colleagues.
"I — I really never — you may have misunderstood —"
"We'll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy," said Professor McGonagall. "Tonight will 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 gazed desperately around him, but nobody came to the rescue. He didn't look remotely handsome anymore. His lip was trembling, and in the absence of his usually toothy grin, he looked weak-chinned and feeble.
"V-very well," he said. "I'll — I'll be in my office, getting — getting ready."
And he left the room.
"Right," said Professor McGonagall, whose nostrils were flared, "that's got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and 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 no students have been left outside their dormitories."
The teachers rose and left, one by one.