A/N: Hey, look who's back! It's me! Hi! Sorry for the long wait ugh school.
Renee POV
I met up with Harry and Ron before breakfast the next morning. "Renee, of course it was Myrtle. But you need to be the one to go and talk to her," Ron informed me.
"Me? Why?" I was startled. "I barely even know her!"
"Isn't it obvious? You're a girl! It's a girl's bathroom. And you have-" Harry lowered his voice as some Ravenclaws passed us "-Charmspeak."
"Right. But when?"
"Whenever you can. Sneak away from a teacher, I don't know."
I thought about it all morning until Potions, when something drove the Chamber of Secrets from my mind.
"Sanderson," Snape barked. "Tell me, what would I get if I added these ingredients together?"
I stared at him. I could barely even tell what he was holding. "I….I don't know, sir."
Gill and Sandra watched nervously. Kaylee giggled.
"This, Miss Sanderson, is why you must pay attention! Exams are one week from today!"
"Exams?!" Nolan Avery yelped.
"But-but…." Joel Ruddernot, Tomasz's Gryffindor cousin, said loudly.
"Silence! Why do you think we are keeping the school open, Mister Ruddernot and Mister Avery? It is solely for your education."
I stared ahead, shocked. How could we have exams considering this?!
Sandra seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Excuse me, Professor, but why be so hard on Renee? She's had a terrible week, you know, with her best friend being petrified and all!"
"Yeah," Gill piped up. "Lay off her!"
Then, to my surprise, a Gryffindor stood up. "L-lay-lay off her, Professor!" It took a lot of courage for the small redhead girl to say that, I could tell. But Ginny Weasley had forgotten her anger at me, if just for the moment. My heart soared.
The bell rang then, and it had never been more welcome.
Three days before exams, Professor McGonagall made a different announcement at breakfast.
"I have good news," she said as the hall quieted down.
There was a roar of cheers as people from all houses speculated what could be going on.
"Dumbledore's coming back!" Many people yelled.
"You've caught the heir!"
"Quidditch trials are back on!" Oliver Wood roared from the Gryffindor table. McGonagall coughed loudly to show she wanted to continue to speak.
"Professor Sprout has announced that the mandrakes are nearly ready. By tonight, we should have our students back!"
Sandra, Gill, Tomasz, Harry, Ron, Ginny, and I were among the loudest cheers. Harry beckoned me over and I happily left the Slytherin table.
"What's up?"
"We get Hermione and Clara back! And it won't matter that we never asked Myrtle!"
I hugged them. "You guys are the best."
Someone made to sit down across from us. "Hey, Ginny."
"Renee….Renee, I'm so, so sorry! I've been an idiot to you and-"
"Forget it, Ginny. I'm just glad you're safe." But the shy girl looked worried. "Harry….I need to tell you something. Harry…."
"I'll take that seat if you're finished, Ginny, I'm famished." Percy had appeared behind us. Ginny got up without a word.
"Hey! She was just about to tell us something!"
Percy went white. "Oh….um….that's nothing….nothing to do with the, ah, the Chamber or anything….it's just….well, she saw something and promised not to tell. I did expect her to keep her word. And what are you doing here, Slytherin?"
"My name's Sanderson, not Slytherin!"
Harry and Ron guffawed.
All morning, something had been bothering me, and it wasn't until we were headed to Defense Against the Dark Arts from Transfiguration that I realized what it was. Ron had said it didn't matter that we didn't ask Myrtle, but we still wouldn't have caught the culprit….Hagrid would still be rotting in a jail cell this time tomorrow. McGonagall dropped us off at the door with a worried glance after taking the Hufflepuffs to charms. She started walking back, but I remained at the door.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"We were just going to, um, visit Hermione and Clara. Tell them the potion is almost ready, you know? We wanted to grab Renee as well, because we know the stress is hard on her too."
I suspected I knew what Harry and Ron were really trying to do, but to my surprise, the Gryffindor head said with a much softer tone, "Oh. Alright. I realize it has been hardest on the friends of those who were….come on. I'll write a pass to get you three out of class."
Her footsteps were coming toward me and I was relieved. Harry really could be a quick thinker, and he was a great friend too.
"Would you like to go up and see Bradley and Granger with Potter and Weasley?" She had a soft smile on her face.
I nodded. "Of course. Thank you, professor."
"Of course. She is, after all, your best friend."
Madam Pomfrey scoffed when we got to the hospital wing. "Talking to a petrified person, honestly, I don't know what good it will do."
We ignored her and walked up to Hermione and Clara's beds. Clara's glassy eyes stared up at me and her feeding tube poked out of the sheets covering her. A tear rolled down my cheek. Ron was rubbing Hermione's hand and moaning about how cold she was.
Suddenly, I noticed a piece of paper in Clara's hand. "Harry, Ron, come here a sec."
I pointed out the paper, and Harry and I tried to coax it from her hand. I noticed that her golden-blonde Apollo-Malfoy hair had grown too long, and remembered what David Bradley had said.
We finally tugged it out without ripping it. "Would you look at this," Harry mumbled.
"Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, also known as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live for hundreds of years, is born from a chicken 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," I whispered.
Underneath the paragraph, there was a single word in cramped, tiny handwriting I didn't recognize. "Pipes. Harry, oh my gods! We have to tell McGonagall!"
"It makes total sense," said Ron, nodding.
"That's why Clara, you, and I were able to hear it! The creature in the chamber! It's a basilisk, it's a snake, and we could hear it because we were the only Parselmouths!"
"But, Harry," I brought up, "If it's eyes are fatal, how come nobody has died yet?"
Harry, Ron, and I thought about that for a minute. "Well, let's see. Colin had his camera, for one, so he didn't directly see it. Justin….Justin must've seen it through Nick. Nick got the full blast of it, but he couldn't die again. And the girls….Hermione had the mirror, she and Clara must have pulled it in front of them and Penelope Clearwater when they sensed it coming!" Harry explained triumphantly.
"But….what about the cat?" Ron asked. "Surely she didn't have a mirror, or a camera. Why didn't she die?"
"The water! Remember, Myrtle had flooded the bathroom that night! She saw it through the water! Come on, it's almost break, let's go to the staffroom, the bell should be ringing any moment!"
We ran up the stairs, luckily not running into Peeves on our way. "Alohomora," I mumbled, just in case.
"Now all we have to do is wait for the bell."
But the bell never came. "All students to return to their House dormitories at once! All teachers return to the staffroom! Immediately, please," McGonagall's voice boomed through the corridors.
"What now? There can't have been another attack?" The worry I felt echoed on Ron and Harry's faces.
"Should we go back? You can come with us, of course, Renee," Ron asked.
"No." Harry motioned to an ugly closet that looked just big enough for the three of us. "Let's hide in there. We can hear what this is about, and then we can tell them what we know."
We watched the teachers file in. Some looked puzzled, others terrified. One thing was for sure, nobody was happy. Then, Professor McGonagall arrived, looking very grim.
"It has happened," she addressed the staff. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the chamber itself."
Professor Flitwick squeaked, and Professor Sprout gasped. Snape gripped the back of his chair. "How can we be sure?" he asked.
"The Heir of Slytherin has left another message. 'Their skeletons will lie in the chamber forever.'"
"Who is the student?" Professor Sprout asked.
"There are two. Ginerva Weasley, from Gryffindor-" at this, Ron winced-"and one stolen from our very hospital wing, Clarissa Bradley, of Hufflepuff."
I buried my face in my hands. McGonagall continued speaking. "We shall have to send the students home tomorrow. This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said…."
The staff door banged open, cutting her off mid-sentence. I looked up, expecting to see Dumbledore, but quietly cursed when I saw it was actually Lockhart.
"Sorry, dozed off. What have I missed?" He said brightly. The other teachers were glaring at him, and Snape looked ready to kill.
"Just the man. The very man."
"Severus?"
"Two girls have been taken into the chamber itself. Your moment has come at last."
"I-I don't know what you mean, sir."
"That's right, Gilderoy," added a teacher I didn't know. "Weren't you saying just yesterday that you knew where the entrance to the chamber was?"
"I-well-I…."
"Yes, weren't you saying you could easily say what was in it?" asked Flitwick.
"And didn't you say you'd really wished you'd figured out the whole thing before Hagrid was arrested?" Snape added.
"Did I? I mean-I must've-you must have misunderstood."
"We'll leave you to it, then, Gilderoy." McGonagall's smile turned to a grimace as he turned his back to prepare.
"Now that that's gotten him away...the Heads of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students are outside of their dormitories?"
They filed out, and when we were sure the coast was clear, Harry spoke. "Renee, I don't trust that you'll be safe in Slytherin. I have the invisibility cloak, I can walk us back, and then….can you stay under it?"
"Yeah, I guess. But they're just going to….let that….that man 'save' our sisters?"
"It's the only hope we have, isn't it?"
The common room was quieter than it had ever been before. Fred and George knew I was there, and so did Neville, but nobody else. The six of us sat around. Percy had gone to send a letter to his parents, and I had Iris-messaged Clara's parents as well. Both were likely to come tonight.
Finally, Neville, Fred, and George couldn't stand it and went to bed, and then it was just us.
"Harry, they had a diary. Tom Riddle's diary. I think they knew something, Harry. And Ginny was there that night, when Mrs. Norris was petrified. I mean, it's the only reason, Ginny's pureblood and Clara's half."
"They had Tom Riddle's diary?" Harry said sharply. "And you never told us?"
"It wasn't relevant, was it? I mean-" I stopped talking with the expression on Harry's face. "Why? Who is Riddle?"
"We need to talk to Lockhart! Come on! The entrance is probably in Myrtle's bathroom!"
A/N: Well, so sorry for my extended absence. I have been really busy with school. I went to the Louder than a Bomb poetry competition, and if you know anything about slam poetry, it's a really big deal. We didn't win as a team, but one girl had an amazing poem, you can look her up, Deja Bluntson, Louder than a Bomb, and she went forward and could easily win the Indy (individual poets) competition. So that's taken a lot of my time and all of my writing capacity recently.
Anyway, I was hoping to add more to the chapter but I figured this was going to use too much of my time, and I just wanted to get it done so sorry it was a bit of a filler.
I have Spring Break in two weeks and I'll probably be able to get a chapter or two then, but don't expect anything before. I hope I still have my three loyal readers, and if I do, you all will get a shout-out in 25 (I think this is 24, I don't even know anymore, LOL)
Anyway, please review and know that I am back!
Huffflepufferfish
