The First Attack

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. There was a spat of colds over Hogwarts and half of the students and staff were sick. Madam Pomfrey was overworking, giving everyone her pepperup potion - hers worked better than Snape's, but tasted worse - so there were lots of students, including Lily, smoking at the ears all over Hogwarts. For some reason, that seemed to make Filch furious.

Rain took Hogwarts for two weeks straight; the lake rose and the flower beds were turned into muddy streams. Malcolm Preece made the entire team have a cup of pepperup potion after every practice, which made Lily's head look like it was on fire every monday afternoon for weeks. Cedric had become great at performing drying charms on their clothes and brooms, since otherwise Filch would have them scrub the entire castle after every practice when they went inside with mud dripping down from their robes. Even putting the weather aside, the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team wasn't in a good mood, because Fred had told Lily that he and George had been spying on the Slytherins' new Nimbus Two Thousand and One brooms, given as a present by Lucius Malfoy; and they had described the Slytherins as seven greenish blurrs, shooting through the air around the field.

Hector, however, was in a great mood. He had talked to Dumbledore about his MugClub, and the headmaster had signed a form allowing the creation of the club. The Ravenclaw female prefect, Penelope Clearwater, had joined the club, and so did Amanda Brucklehurst, a second year. Hermione was still thinking about her invitation; and Colin Creevey, from Gryffindor, had taken on himself the task of being the club photographer. Their first meeting was scheduled and would happen within two weeks. Hector was searching the castle for a place where the club could set their headquarters.

It was the morning of Halloween, and Hagrid's pumpkins were as large as a doll house and had been carved into lanterns large enough for three men to sit in. The Great Hall was decorated with live bats and there were rumors that Dumbledore had booked a troupe of dancing skeletons for entertainment. As evening approached, the entire Hufflepuff common room was filled with the scent of the food in the kitchen, and Lily's stomach rumbled. She was laying in bed, writing a letter to her mother informing that her badger pendant had not bitten her anymore, and there was no reason to worry, when Hannah walked in and asked if Lily would take a bath before going up to the feast, because it was already six o'clock. In response she quickly sat up, took a pair of pants and the pink sweater Molly had knitted for her christmas present and walked into one of the two bathrooms attached to the dormitory.

She filled the bathtub with hot water - there was a list of spell instructions on the wall above the tub so the students could choose exactly how warm the water would be and how it would smell. It was advised, however, that the scent-spells were used only from third year on, since the spell could go awfully wrong. A few weeks before, a first year boy in Ravenclaw had accidentally filled his dormitory with a disgusting smell of vomit. But Lily was confident enough to make her water smell like honey every time.

Hannah, Megan and Susan were chatting on the sofa closest to the fire while waiting for Lily, but most of the Hufflepuffs had already left for the Great Hall.

The girls managed to squeeze in between their fellow Hufflepuffs and sit close to each other, chatting merrily about the beautiful food that expected them. Dumbledore rose from his seat on the front and said,

"Before we enjoy our wonderful meal, I would like to inform you that, unlike the rumors that are going around, I did not book a troupe of dancing skeletons." A loud sound of disappointment echoed through the hall. "However," Dumbledore continued "I thought it was a great idea."

So, the headmaster moved his wand and, all of a sudden, hat-wearing skeletons appeared on the tables. There were a dozen of them, shaking their arms and legs coordinately, jumping from one table to another, taking off parts of their bodies and using them as accessories to dance. They had an impossible fluidity to their movements - or at least it would be impossible if they weren't skeletons. And they danced in different styles too! There were many ballet moves included in their choreography, as well as some taken from hip hop. At some point, they started a traditional scottish dance, and pulled the students and teachers to dance along with them. They moved in circles through the hall, and the skeletons guided them to the right movements, and nobody seemed to mind that half of the students were doing most of the steps in the opposite direction. Even Snape seemed to be having a good time.

After that, they were all hot and panting and laughing, and Dumbledore made another spell to make the skeletons vanish. They all went back to their seats, and Dumbledore allowed them to eat.

Everything tasted amazing. There were shepherd's pies, roasted chickens, baked potatoes, pumpkin pies, juices and iced teas of every flavor, and there were many sweets for dessert, but Lily could only pay attention to an amazing chocolate mousse cake of which she had three slices. Then, all of a sudden…

"OUTCH!" Lily let out a high pitched scream, and grabbed her arm, she could see a small red spot on the pink sleeve of her sweater. She looked up at Dumbledore, who seemed to have heard her. And then to Snape, who had noticed it too.

"What is it?" Susan said before catching sight of Lily's stained sleeve. "Oh no!"

"Take it off!" Said Megan.

Susan was having trouble opening the clasp because her fingers were shaking a little. But then she managed to take the bracelet off Lily's wrist. The puncture wasn't as nasty as it seemed from outside, it was only a small drop of blood that had spreaded on the wool of the sweater.

Beside Dumbledore and Snape, only a few people had raised their heads to look at Lily. Of those, only the ones in the Hufflepuff quidditch team; Hector and the Weasleys came to see what had happened.

"It's alright, it is just a tiny bite," Lily tried to comfort Ginny, who looked pale as a ghost and stared at her cousin's wound.

"You should get that bracelet checked, Lily. It might be malfunctioning," said Percy.

Fred and George thought it would make a cool scar.

Then, Snape pushed everyone out of the way and told Lily to follow him and bring the bracelet. He left ahead of her, his dark cloak drifting behind him like wings. Now everyone was looking at Lily and she blushed a little.

"Let me see the wound," Snape said, and she showed him her arm. Snape took out a flask of the same healing potion madam Pomfrey had used on the previous wound. This one closed faster and there was no scar. "This bracelet contains very advanced magic, there are many layers of spells, each one on a different level of the goldsmithing. There is little chance of breaking."

"Dumbledore told me about it," said Lily. "That it was a heirloom from Helga Hufflepuff."

"Is it? I had no idea. Your mother found it hidden in her common room. Only a handful of amulets such as this one were ever made due to the difficulty of overlayering spells in each step of the goldsmithing. Otherwise it wouldn't be able to move, nor detect magic and indicate what sort of magic it is exposed to, let alone do both at the same time."

"Why didn't you tell me about it last year?"

"I thought your mother had. But apparently she left you out of many subjects."

Lily looked away from Snape. Indeed, Violet had left her out. It angered her. But it wasn't the main concern at that moment.

"So it is detecting dark magic in the castle."

"I don't see a reason to think otherwise," said Snape.

"What is it?"

"That," Snape began "is an entirely different question."

But they could not continue talking, because the feast had just ended and there was a rumbling noise from the students raising from their seats and heading to the common rooms.

"I want to see you tomorrow in my office," said Snape, going inside the Great Hall to take the Slytherins back to their common room. Lily walked in the same direction as he had, along with her roommates. Before the turn the Hufflepuffs should take to go down to the basement, however, they came to a frightening sight. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches. The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware. And there was something hanging underneath. Something furry, and still; like a stuffed animal.

It was Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat.

She seemed to be dead.

And Harry, Ron and Hermione were standing next to her.

Around Lily, the laughter and chatter of the students stopped. The trio of Gryffindors was surrounded, and the silence fell like a rock over the corridor.

Then someone shouted through the quiet.

"Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

It was Draco Malfoy. He had pushed to the front of the crowd, his cold eyes alive, his usually bloodless face flushed, as he grinned at the sight of the hanging, immobile cat.

The first adult to arrive was Filch, which made the entire situation worse.

"What's going on here? What's going on?" Then he saw and fell back, clutching his face in horror. "My cat! My cat! What happened to ?"Lily couldn't help but pity the man. Everyone hated Filch – except for – and now she was dead. Then, his eyes fell on Harry, who was closest to the hanging corpse of the poor cat.

"You!" Filch screeched. "You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll-"

Lily was preparing herself to jump on Filch's back to stop him from strangling Harry or something, but then a voice came from behind her.

"Argus!" Dumbledore arrived on the scene, followed by a number of other teachers. The headmaster swept past Harry, Hermione and Ron and detached from the torch bracket that had been holding her on the wall.

"Come with me, Argus," he said to Filch. "You, too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger."

Lockhart stepped forward eagerly.

"My office is nearest, Headmaster - just upstairs - please feel free -" "Thank you, Gilderoy," said Dumbledore.

The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and important, hurried after Dumbledore; so did Professors McGonagall and Snape. Lily tried to follow them, but Snape spotted her and told her to go to her dormitory. Instead, Lily went to Hector.

"What is this? What is the Chamber of Secrets? Who's the heir?"

"I don't know, but Malfoy is right. That message is to all the muggle borns in Hogwarts."

"And why Mrs. Norris?"

"Have you ever noticed that no one has ever seen Filch use magic? I think he is a squib," Hector said in a low voice. "I think it wasn't supposed to be a cat, though. I think the person who did this was planning to kill a muggle born."

"But who?" Lily asked. Hector gazed at her, his dark eyes subtly moving towards Malfoy. "I don't think he would go that far, he wouldn't risk his own neck doing it himself," the girl whispered. Hector stopped for a moment and nodded in agreement.

"I'm going to go looking for Plushy, see if he is not hanging from a wall around the castle."

"No!" Lily said, her heart tight in her chest. "Please, go straight to bed. Plushy will be fine."

"I don't think there will be an attack anytime soon, but okay, I'll go to bed."

"Thank you," Lily said. They gave each other a hug and left in opposite directions along with their respective housemates.

The Hufflepuff basement was crowded and loud. Each of them had a theory, and the loudest of all was Ernie Macmillan. "Mark my words: Potter did it. He wasn't even at the feast, why else would he be standing there, right in the spot where Mrs. Norris was killed?"

Justin Finch-Fletcher was sitting on a sofa at the corner of the room, looking very pale; and also very still. Hannah went to sit by his side to try and cheer him up.

Heidi, Tamsin and Cedric were standing in a circle, all of them with their arms folded and looking very concerned. Herbert, Malcolm and Anthony were next to them, but didn't say anything. Anthony waved at Lily, inviting her to come closer.

"How's your arm?" he asked.

"It 's fine."

"D'you think Potter really did it?" asked Cedric. "He never struck me as a bad person. And he's a good seeker, too. I've been looking forward to meeting him on the pitch."

"There's no way he did it," said Lily.

"That boy is right, though," said Heidi. "He wasn't at the feast."

"That is because they were at Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party. What is the Chamber of Secrets, anyway?"

Each member of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team had a different puzzled expression. None of them had to say anything, because it was obvious that they didn't know the answer to Lily's question.

"All I know is that it has something to do with Slytherin."

"Well, there it is, Harry is a Gryffindor, all three of them are."

People were still talking all over the basement, no one felt like going to their dormitories. Gabriel Truman was trying to speak louder than the chattering crowd, telling everyone to go to bed and rest, and wait for Dumbledore's judgement on who to blame for the attack. Eventually everyone complied, and the conversations ceased as each Hufflepuff went under their sheets.

But Ernie's words echoed in Lily's head all night long. And, in her dreams, she saw a tunnel, and felt that something terrible was slowly slithering in the dark, and Harry's tale of a bodiless voice haunting Hogwarts came into her mind.

In the next morning, they had their first opportunity to bring the conversation about Mrs. Norris to a polyhouse environment. Even some Slytherins were pulled into the conversation, intrigued by the correlation between the attack and their own House. It was after breakfast that Dumbledore raised from his seat and announced, his voice amplified by a spell, that Mrs. Norris was fortunately not dead, but simply petrified, and they would soon find a way to reverse the curse that had fallen upon her.

The dungeons were very quiet and cold that Sunday, and Lily found the door to Snape's office open, and the Potions Master standing next to a silvery water basin. She knocked on the already open door, not quite entering the room until Snape allowed her to.

"Come in," he said.

"Did you find out what happened?" Asked Lily, settling herself on the comfortable armchair. Snape gave no answer, which meant that no, they hadn't found out who had attacked Mrs. Norris. "Do you have a clue, at least?" She insisted.

"Nothing. As much as I would love to throw the guilt on Potter, there is absolutely no chance that the brat would ever have the skill to curse the cat like that. Not even Granger."

"What kind of curse was that?"

"We don't know either."

"And what is the Chamber of Secrets?"

The frustration was clear in Snape's gaze.

"A myth," he said at last. "A myth from Slytherin house. There were many searches, but no trace of it has ever been found in the castle."

"What if the dark magic required to open it was what triggered my bracelet?"

"That is precisely what I have been theorizing," said Snape. "It was some powerful magic, otherwise your wounds wouldn't have been so deep. But I don't know what sort of spell it could be."

"Could it be something related to some old Slytherin motto? Or the Sorting Hat's song? Some sort of password, I mean."

"I have gone deep into books and old scrolls related to the wisdom of each house, especially Slytherin. I have studied every inch of knowledge about the Four Founders. There is nothing that resembles a password. I'm afraid the only ones who know how to find the Chamber are those from Salazar Slytherin's direct bloodline, which has been extinguished."

"So it's the heir of Slytherin that the writing on the wall referred to?"

Snape nodded.

"But, as I said, those in that bloodline no longer exist. It shouldn't be possible for anyone alive to open the Chamber of Secrets at all."

A/N: I can't believe it, it was another short chapter! Explaining: this chapter was about 12 thousand words long. And as I revised, I realized that it was divided in smaller "subchapters" and it made more sense to just split it. And now I have about four new chapters to name, which I suck at doing...
Anyway, did you like it? Please, let me know what you think. Constructive critiscism is always welcome, as I am constantly trying to improve my writing skills in English.