Harry wouldn't say it was unbelievable, he knew his friends and he knew that they were the smartest idiots a person could ever meet, but he would say that it was upsetting, annoying, unfortunate. He might also say it was impractical if he wasn't so upset and a little less empathetic.

He and Ron were just eating breakfast, trying not to think about how weird it still was that Ed and Hermione weren't already there. He kind of assumed that Hermione was in the infirmary or the greenhouse again so he felt worried, but it had been a pretty consistent bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that hadn't spiked in a while. Yet. Then McGonagall had bee-lined to him and Ron, features grim and tight, and his heart had sunk. She didn't need to say anything, but she did anyway, eyes stony and mouth turned down at the corners, and before her lips could close around her final words, he and Ron were both on their feet. They left their plates of half-eaten breakfast and practically ran into the hallway and up the stairs even though Hermione definitely wasn't going anywhere.

Madame Pomfrey was tending to the petrified patients as well as one can tend to somebody petrified (mostly just obsessively reorganising the gifts and sentiments left for them) but she looked up from her busywork when they burst in, eyes wild and breathing shallow. She gave them a thin-lipped smile, soft and pitying, before gesturing her head subtly to where Hermione's bed was.

She was reclined on the sterile white hospital cot next to Ed's, the table between them entirely bare save from the scratched face of Ed's pocket watch that had clearly been moved from his pocket. There was a chair between the two beds, Colonel Mustang sitting in it, black t-shirt exposed and garishly blue jacket cast over the back of the seat, looking like he hadn't slept in days. He wasn't touching Ed's hands or anything, like families of comatose patients often did in muggle hospitals, but he was hovering closely, face tight with worry. And Ed's glove had been put back on, his sleeve rolled down. Harry really doubted Madame Pomfrey had done that, she seemed too terrified to touch the automail, scared she might mess it up.

"Hello Colonel," Harry spoke more to the air than the man himself, keeping his voice quiet because speaking up in the infirmary felt in some ways disrespectful. The man looked pale and sickly under the bright white hospital lighting but he still smiled softly at Harry, barely a change in expression but somewhat noticeable. Ron just stared at him, eyes wide and jaw slightly slack, he looked to be trying his hardest not to look at Hermione or Ed. The light glinted sharply in his eyes and washed out his already pale skin so much it began to look deathly. Harry wondered distantly if he was confused because of the whole military thing or if he just didn't know what a colonel was.

"Where's Al?" Harry asked, wanting to make conversation and not think about his friends' waxen bodies just feet away, alive but not living.

A look passed across the military man's face, like consideration and concern were being contemplated behind the man's round face. "He's in our room, writing a letter," He went with eventually, after a moment filled with only the sounds of breathing and Harry's own heartbeat. He looked down at his hands, bare skin not covered by the white gloves tucked neatly into the pocket of the discarded jacket. Ron's gaze shifted away from the man himself and instead to the intricate red rings stitched into their fabric. He couldn't really follow the conversation, didn't really know who the man was, didn't really know what "colonel" meant, and really didn't want to look at his friend's petrified faces.

After a moment Mustang looked back up at Harry and held out one of his hands, a frayed, crumpled little piece of paper sitting rather unceremoniously in the middle of his palm. But it wasn't really unceremonious. He tried not to grin because it felt wrong, but the corners of his lips twitched and his eyebrows rose against his will.

"Thank you," He breathed.

Mustang nodded curtly, "Don't tell Fullmetal, he'd kill me for touching his automail like that," Harry nodded back and unfolded the little note with quivering fingers. Then the pieces came together.

Don't look it in the eyes, find other ways to see it or else you'll surely die. Basilisk in the pipes, giant snake (typical of Slytherin, no?), but where does it live? Where is the chamber? When was it opened before?

Harry passed the other incomplete fragment of Ed's letter to Ron who had also memorised the words of the first within a day of seeing it. Ron read it sluggishly, still barely awake but gradually pushing the sleep from his consciousness. Harry sighed and sat on the empty chair on the other side of Hermione's bed, looking intently at her pale features like he was hoping for even a hint of movement. Her eyes were open too, dark brown irises almost fully occupied by her blown out pupils and her lips were ever so slightly opened. Her body was mostly stuck in a relaxed walk, a freeze frame of how Harry often saw her, but her hand was held in a tight fist like it had a reason to be.

Harry hesitantly reached across to grasp it, running his thumb across her too-cool skin in a way he hoped was comforting even though he knew she probably couldn't feel it. After a moment, he felt the scratch of a corner of paper against his skin and shook his head. History was repeating itself and Hermione really was becoming more and more like Ed. Harry hadn't decided if that was scary or funny or a mixture of both.

With Ron hovering over him, finally looking at Hermione for long enough for the body in the bed to register as one of his best friend's, Harry gently eased the paper out from Hermione's fist, having learnt from their earlier mistake with Ed's note. It was folded much more neatly than Ed's, still crumpled by the fist around it but the corner matched much more precisely. He pulled open the corners and found, written in pencil, a note. Comparably to Ed's, it disclosed the nature of the monster they'd been trying to find out for months, like Ed's clue had been the last hint she needed to put the pieces together herself, as well as one extra thing. It was a name. A name Harry and Ron had definitely heard before.

Moaning Myrtle.

Ron and Harry couldn't stay in the infirmary for long, couldn't bear to. Mustang had left shortly after they had read Hermione's note and they had followed only a moment later, feeling, amongst other things, like they were intruding on Madame Pomfrey as well as all the petrified students who couldn't object to their visitation.

That name was echoing around Ron's head like there was nothing else in there. What did Moaning Myrtle, of all people, have to do with all of this? He walked slowly through the corridors, a few paces in front of Harry who was doing very much the same thing, due to his longer limbs. With every footfall that hit the ground another question that didn't answer anything popped into his head.

Until everything clicked together just outside of the Gryffindor common room.

"Password?" The familiar voice of the portrait asked, and before Harry got the chance to answer Ron was practically shouting, "Myrtle was the student that got killed last time!" and he and Harry were running away from the common room without ever giving the portrait her response.

Their footsteps echoed on the hardwood of the Hogwarts floors, echoing in the near-empty hallways. Everytime they passed another student they just hoped they would move to the side in time and just kept running and running and running like their lives and everyone else's depended on it.

They hadn't been to Myrtle's loos since the making of the polyjuice potion but the door was almost in sight, just a couple of turns away.

But they didn't get there.

"Potter," a familiar voice called, "Weasley!" It was McGonagall, a woman whom they knew not to upset or ignore, so they spluttered to a stumbling halt, very nearly tripping over each other and their own feet as they attempted to stop before they went crashing into the brick of the wall in front of them. McGonagall didn't sound particularly angry, which was weirdly more disconcerting than it was relieving. As he skulked to her side Harry had to consider what the look on her face could mean; why there was something more important yet less anger-inducing at hand than them running in the halls with reckless abandon. |Ron was close by his side, tangling his long fingers together then pulling them apart, looking at his freckled knuckles rather than McGonagall's stern face, a clear sign of anxiety.

"Come," she told them, voice tipping into uncomfortable and apprehensive, completely out of character for the stern woman. "We need to have a conversation,"

"Why can't we have it here?" Ron asked, heart already in his stomach, If it was nothing big she could tell them in the hallway. Ron didn't really know what big thing it could be, but he could see a trend in all of the news this year: whatever it was would not be good.

"I really think it would be better to have this conversation in my office Mr, Weasley,"

And then Ron felt his heart freefall from his stomach to his feet. He could imagine it making a wet, slapping sound as it hit the ground but he couldn't really hear it over the rushing sound of blood in his ears. It was something big.

So Myrtle was forgotten for the time being and Harry and Ron followed the woman's clicking heels as they were led away from the bathroom and instead towards the corridor containing her office. The apprehension was palpable: they could feel it weighing on them, knowing already that no news was good news. The silence settled like smog, heavy and polluting and hard to breathe through, making their chests feel tight and their breath feel too shallow.

Eventually they reached the room, wide and open and warmly lit by yellow lamps and bulbs and the fireplace. The crackling and the accompanying smell of the licking flames made the room feel cozy, like efforts had been gone to in order to make it as comfortable as possible. Like it was set up for bad things to be talked about in. There were books lining shelves, worn spines making up more of the visible wall space than the cracked stone that made up most if not all of the walls in the building. There were large windows framed by oversized curtains, yellow morning light streaming through as the sun rose, painting geometric patterns on the floor that contrasted with the soft florals of the dusty pink rug in the middle of the floor, clearly worn out by years of shoes passing over it. Her desk sat in the middle of the room, comfortable chairs sitting in front of it, like they, too, were posed to receive bad news.

McGongall traipsed towards the large chair behind her desk, never for a moment losing the sombre sense of purpose that loomed over her like a shadow or a curse. Harry and Ron followed on unsure feet that were carrying their bodies, not really under their control, just following obligation. They stood next to the chairs, hovering by their wooden frames and staring at McGonagall like she was a dark omen and they were waiting for the deliverance of their grim fates. Perhaps that's exactly what was happening.

She angled her head like an instruction and the boys sat grimly, watching the shifting lines of her face as she searched for words. One might have thought she'd have spent the journey there looking for them. Eventually she settled on a grim "A student has been taken into the chamber of secrets," and they felt themselves shutting down as McGonagall made a face. She looked upset, at odds, annoyed with herself. The grim line if her mouth split her face, jaw set decisively beneath it and eyes above it illuminated with regret and pain and pity that made Ron's skin crawl. She chewed her lower lip for a moment, tasting blood before she could bring herself to elaborate any further.

She breathed deeply and sighed, watching her students as they stared at her, completely blank behind the eyes and as tense as she had ever seen the usually relaxed and reckless boys. Their knuckles were white on the arms of their chairs and their jaws were clenched. They looked like they were bracing for impact.

"Ginny Weasley has been taken into the Chamber of Secrets.

And then the impact came.

A/N

So...

I'm back from the dead... again...

I'm at the end of year 12 now and A-levels are a life-occupying nightmare. But yeah. Here's a chapter. It feels short but I think the wordcount is about standard for this fic? I also know not much happened, and especially not much to do with FMA, but it's kinda imperative that I actually progress the HP plot so I think it was kinda necessary. As always, I'm really sorry for being the absolute worst person for updating but I've been rewatching FMAB with one of my friends because she's somehow never seen it and that paired with seeing all the notifs in my email about people who are still reading and following and favouriting this fic has kind of given me some motivation back.

All the best,

~We'reAllABitOdd