Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I do not own

A/N 50 chapters! That's some sort of milestone, isn't it? We're almost done with 2nd year now (about four/five chapters left, I think, if that). I'm currently working on Prisoner of Azkaban and I'm attempting to make the chapters more interesting and deviate more from the canon material, as people have pointed out that I stick too close to the original chapters. Thank you to everyone who has continued to read even when the chapters weren't that interesting. I hope you continue to read moving forward.


All those times they had been in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and the answer had been just three stalls away... It had been hard enough trying to look for spiders. Escaping their teachers long enough to sneak into the bathroom right next to the scene of the first attack looked be almost impossible.

Exams were coming up as well. It surprised all the students, who would've figured the exams would be canceled in light of everything that had happened. But, as Professor McGonagall sternly reminded them all, the whole point of keeping Hogwarts open was so that the students could receive their education.

Three days before their first exam, Professor McGonagall made another announcement at breakfast:

"I have good news." The Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupted.

"Dumbledore's coming back!" Several people yelled joyfully.

"You've caught the Heir of Slytherin!" A girl at the Ravenclaw table squealed.

"Quidditch matches are back on!" The captain of the Gryffindor quidditch team shouted.

When the hubbub had subsided, Professor McGonagall continued:

"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.

Hermes would be back and, knowing Hermes, would have the answer to all their problems. Although, he might just go insane knowing he'd missed so many classes with exams so close. It might be kinder to leave him petrified until the end of the school year...


Hope knew the whole mystery might be solved by Hermes tomorrow with or without their help, but she wasn't about to pass up a chance to speak to Myrtle if it turned up. To her delight it did, mid-morning, when they were being led to the Gryffindor-Slytherin History of Magic by Gilderoy Lockhart.

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. His hair wasn't as sleek as usual; it seemed he had been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.

"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." Hope told him, batting her eyelashes at him. Regina dropped her books in surprise and she and Cassie had to scramble to pick them up before they were trampled on.

"Thank you, Hope." Lockhart said 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." Regina agreed, 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. I really should go and prepare my next class..." He hurried off.

"Prepare his class." Regina sneered after him. "Gone to curl his hair, more like."

"I think his hair looks lovely."

"You would."

They let the rest of the Gryffindors and Slytherins walk ahead of them, then darted down a side passage and hurried off toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But just as they were congratulating each other on their brilliant scheme...

"Potter! Weasley! Malfoy! What are you doing?" It was Professor McGonagall and her mouth was the thinnest of thin lines. While Regina was stammering, trying to get out an answer and Cassie was looking like a deer in the headlights, Hope quickly lied:

"We wanted to see Hermes. We haven't seen him for ages, Professor, and we thought we'd sneak into the hospital wing, you know, and tell her the Mandrakes are nearly ready and not to worry..." She tried to squeeze out a few fake tears for effect, but it didn't seem necessary.

"Of course." She said in a strangely croaky voice. Hope, amazed, saw there was a tear glistening in her beady eye. "Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been... I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you may visit Mrs. Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."

The trio walked away, hardly daring to believe that they'd avoided detention. As they turned the corner, they distinctly heard Professor McGonagall blow her nose. Although they had wanted to go Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, they had no choice but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they had Professor McGonagall's permission to visit Hermes. It wasn't a bad idea anyway; they did miss him, even though Regina wouldn't admit and Cassie refused to speak of it.

At the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey let them in, but reluctantly.

"There's just no point talking to a Petrified person." She told them and they had to admit she had a point when they'd taken their seats next to Hermes. It was plain that Hermes didn't have the faintest inkling that he had visitors and that they might just as well tell his bedside cabinet not to worry for all the good it would do.

"Wonder if he did see the attacker, though?" Regina said, looking sadly at Hermes's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one'll ever know..."

But Hope wasn't looking at Hermes's face. She was more interested in his right hand. It lay clenched on top of his blankets, and bending closer, she saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside his fist. Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, she pointed it out to Regina and Cassie.

"Try and get it out." Regina whispered, shifting her chair so that she blocked Hope from Madam Pomfrey's view.

It was no easy task. Hermes's hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Hope was sure she was going to tear it or break Hermes's fingers getting it. While Cassie and Regina kept watch she 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. Hope smoothed it out eagerly on her knee and her friends 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 that, a single word had been written, in a hand Hope recognized as Hermes's:

Pipes.

It was as though somebody had just flicked a light on in Hope's brain.

"This is it!" She cried and was immediately hushed by her friends. She continued, quietly. "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." She looked around at the beds of people around them. "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 Hermes and that Ravenclaw girl were found with a mirror next to them. Hermes had just realized the monster was a basilisk. I bet you anything he warned the first person he met to look around corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror and..."

Her friends' jaws had dropped.

"It makes sense! Salazar Slytherin made the house emblem a serpent..." Cassie murmured thoughtfully.

"But what about Mrs. Norris?" Regina whispered eagerly. Hope thought hard, picturing the scene on the night of Halloween.

"The water..." She said slowly. "The flood from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I bet you Mrs. Norris only saw the reflection."

She scanned the page in his hand eagerly. The more he looked at it, the more it made sense. Hermes had it all figured out... and they had let it sit, in plain sight, for weeks on end.

"The crowing of the rooster is fatal to it!" She read aloud. "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 it! It all fits!"

"But how's the basilisk been getting around the place? A giant snake? Someone would've seen-." Regina began in protest. Hope, however, pointed at the word Hermes had scribbled at the foot of the page.

"Pipes. It's been using the plumbing. I've been hearing that voice inside the walls-." Hope wondered how big the plumping of Hogwarts was. Before she could get too far into that train of thought, Cassie suddenly grabbed her arm.

"The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets! Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. That's why she was killed there, that's how it's using the plumping. The Chamber of Secrets is in that bathroom, or least the entrance is."

The three sat there, excitement coursing through them, hardly able to believe it. Hermes had had it all figured out and now they knew it all as well.

"This means..." Hope began slowly. "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."

"What're we going to do? Should we go straight to McGonagall?" Regina asked.

"Let's go to the staffroom. She'll be there in ten minutes. It's nearly break."

The trio ran downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, they went straight into the deserted staffroom. It was a large, paneled room full of dark, wooden chairs. The three of them paced around it, too excited to sit down. 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."

Hope wheeled around to stare at Regina and Cassie.

"Not another attack? Not now?"

"What'll we do?"

"Go back to our dormitories?"

"No." Hope told them, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to her 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."

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 left another message. Right underneath the first one." Professor McGonagall told them, looking very white. 'His skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever'." Professor Flitwick burst into tears.

"Who is it?" Madam Hooch asked, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. "Which student?"

"Gavin Weasley."

Hope felt Regina slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside her, suddenly trembling; Cassie clamped a hand over her mouth and looked over at Hope, wide-eyed. Hope just shook her head; it didn't make any sense to her. Why would the Heir of Slytherin take Gavin? Young, shy, innocent Gavin Weasley?

"We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow." Professor McGonagall continued. "This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said.." The staffroom door banged open again. For one wild moment, Hope was sure it would be Dumbledore. But it was Lockhart 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... The very man. A boy 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." Professor Sprout chipped in. "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..." Lockhart sputtered.

"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 put in. "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." Professor McGonagall told him. "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... I'll... I'll be in my office, getting... getting ready." And he left the room.

"Right." Professor McGonagall said, nostrils 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.


Hope and Cassie walked Regina back up to Gryffindor tower. Although they were Slytherins, no one batted an eye when they came into the Gryffindor common room and sat with the rest of the Weasley's in a corner.

Percy had gone to send an owl to their parents and had then disappeared to his dormitory. Fred and George weren't all smiles and jokes as usual, but looked as though they were going to be sick. It was the first time Hope had seen either of them hug Regina without teasing her about something before or after. Near sunset, they both went up to their dormitory as well, leaving the girls alone in the common room.

"He was a pureblood. Why would it take him?" Regina moaned, speaking for the first time since they had gone to the staffroom.

Hope could see the sun sinking, blood-red, below the skyline. This was the worst she had ever felt.

"Hope, Cassie... D'you think there's any chance at all he's not... you know..." Hope didn't know what to say. She couldn't see how Gavin could still be alive.

"We need to go to Lockhart." Cassie said suddenly. They both looked over at her.

"Your future boyfriend isn't going to help us." Regina sneered.

"He's going to be searching for the Chamber of Secrets. We know where it is, to a point, and what's inside. We need to tell him." Neither Hope nor Regina had any better ideas, so they agreed. The Gryffindors around them were so miserable, and felt so sorry for the Weasleys, that nobody tried to stop them as they got up, crossed the room and left through the portrait hole.

Darkness was falling as they walked down to Lockhart's office. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on inside it. They could hear scraping, thumps, and hurried footsteps. Hope knocked and there was a sudden silence from inside. Then the door opened the tiniest crack and they saw one of Lockhart's eyes peering through it.

"Oh, Ms. Potter, Ms. Weasley, Ms. Malfoy." He said, opening the door a bit wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment. If you would be quick-."

"Professor, we've got some information for you. We think it'll help you."

"Er... well... it's not terribly..." The side of Lockhart's face that they could see looked very uncomfortable. "I mean, well... all right-." He opened the door and they entered. His office had been almost completely stripped. Two large trunks stood open on the floor. Robes, jade-green, lilac, midnight blue, had been hastily folded into one of them; books were jumbled untidily into the other. The photographs that had covered the walls were now crammed into boxes on the desk.

"Going somewhere?" Hope asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh, yes, well... Urgent call. Unavoidable. Got to go-."

"What about my brother?" Regina snarled, looking ready to pounce and tear Lockhart limb from limb.

"Well, as to that... most unfortunate-." Lockhart stammered, avoiding their eyes as he wrenched open a drawer and started emptying the contents into a bag. "No one regrets more than I-."

"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!" Hope told him. "You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!"

"Well... I must say, when I took the job..." Lockhart muttered, now piling socks on top of his robes. "Nothing in the job description... Didn't expect-."

"You mean you're running away. Like a coward." Hope hissed.

"But, Professor, after all that stuff you did in your books-." Cassie began.

"Books can be misleading." Lockhart responded delicately.

"You wrote them!" Cassie looked as though her best friend had stabbed her in the back.

"My dear girls." Lockhart started, straightening up and frowning at them. "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. No one 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 a load of other people have done?" Hope looked at him incredulously. She had been right, from that first comment during the class with the pixies. He hadn't done any of the things in his books. He was a fraud. A cowardly fraud, at that.

"It's not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved. I had to track these people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so 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, Hope. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long hard slog." He banged the lids of his trunks shut and locked them. "Let's see. I think that's everything. Yes. Only one thing left." He pulled out his wand and turned to them. "Awfully sorry, boys, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you now. Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book-."

Hope reached her wand just in time. Lockhart had barely raised his, when Hope bellowed:

"Expelliarmus!" Lockhart was blasted backward, falling over his trunk; his wand flew high into the air. Regina caught it and promptly flung it out of the open window.

"Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one." Hope mocked, kicking Lockhart's trunk aside.

Lockhart was looking up at her, feeble once more. Hope was still pointing her wand at him and Cassie had joined her with her own wand, looking furious.

"What d'you want me to do? I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do." Hope just smirked and grabbed him by the collar, hauling him to his feet.

"You're in luck. We know where it is. And what's inside it. Let's go."