It was a dead end. They went back to the library and slumped around a table. For the first time since Daedalus had been un-Petrified, Beth felt totally defeated. Salazar's goal was fulfilled: only his true Heir could come up with the password, and no matter how long they hissed and spat, no one else would ever guess it.
"We've had it, haven't we?" Bruce said dejectedly. "I mean, we could kidnap Potter and make him let us in ... summon the ghost of Salazar Slytherin ..."
Melissa shrugged and laid her head on her arms.
"Tom Riddle could have done it ..." Mervin mentioned, staring idly at the wall.
Without a Parselmouth, they couldn't go any farther. Beth sat with her head on her fist, staring at the floor. She'd only heard of four Parselmouths in her life: Salazar Slytherin, who was long dead; Tom Riddle, dead and missing for years; Lord Voldemort, who by all accounts was hiding, bodiless, in Albania; and Harry Potter. Potter would no sooner consent to help them than hand the Snitch to Draco Malfoy. She started to wonder if kidnapping him wasn't such a bad idea. They could use the Imperius Curse to make him open the chamber, then wipe his mind ...
She sat up suddenly. "We haven't got a Parselmouth," she said breathlessly, "but what about a real live snake?"
"Well sure," said Bruce morosely. Then he sat up. Understanding dawned.
"I'll go get him and meet you in the bathroom."
Daedalus bent over the faucet and examined the engraved snake. He scratched his head. "Sure this isn't just old Slytherin graffiti?"
"Positive," insisted Melissa.
"The tapestry led us straight here," agreed Beth. "It's got to be." She explained what they had decided about the Heir of Slytherin being a Parselmouth. "So go on. Open it up."
He gave her a skeptical look, but took out his wand anyway. In a few seconds his form shimmered and faded; he shrank into the floor and slithered around, a long green serpent.
Mervin let out a whistle. "It's been a while since we've seen that snake."
"I've seen him like that about as much as I can stand," said Beth. She picked him up and put him on the sink, so that he was on level with the pipe. "All right, Dell."
Daedalus slunk up to the engraved snake and nuzzled it a bit with his snout. He stuck out his tongue repeatedly. Then he opened his jaws wide, displaying a pair of vicious fangs, and started to hiss vehemently.
Melissa shivered. "He's so eerie." Beth silently agreed.
In the solid bathroom wall, a mass of brick began to grind and shift away until the sink slid away to reveal a massive pipe at least a yard in diameter. It gaped absurdly, pitch black just a few feet in.
Daedalus fell off the sink and wriggled around before morphing back into a human. He scrambled to his feet. "I don't believe it!" he breathed. "That's it! You found it!"
"It's actually here," said Beth slowly. She could hardly believe that they had followed the clues far enough to find a chamber that had lain hidden for centuries before them. She felt a glow of pride.
"Excellent!" Bruce said. He lit up the end of his wand and stepped into the passage. He paused and turned around. "Are you all coming, or what?"
Then he sat down and slid away through the pipe, like a boy in a water slide.
One by one they followed, slipping around the curves as the pipe spun madly down into the deepest part of the castle. At the very end, the pipe shot out into a stone passage, just as slimy and black as the pipe had been. Beth got unsteadily to her feet.
Inside the passage it was all dark stone and faint dripping. They could hardly see by the light of their wands -- just as well, Beth thought, because she didn't want to know what she was walking in. The tunnel twisted and curved like the coils of a snake, but there were no forks; at least they would not get lost. They walked in silence for nearly five minutes, huddling close to each other at the eerie rushing noises or the crunch of small bones beneath their feet.
At the front of the group, Bruce stumbled a little. He raised his wand and looked around. "Careful, stones are loose here," he whispered. "One good hard jolt and we'd have a landslide."
Melissa gave a little whimper.
"Good, we need one of those," mumbled Mervin, his voice trembling despite the sarcasm.
They crept along. Beth was suddenly struck by the thought of the tons of stone and wood above them -- they were in the very bowels of the castle, this very ceiling bore the weight of the entire building, and a quick rill of fear ran through her like a shudder.
"Nox," said Bruce suddenly, and his wand went out. "There's light up here."
One by one they dimmed their wands until the only light was a pale greenish glow a few hundred feet away. As they got closer, they could see that it came from around the edges of a large door with entwined snakes on it. Bruce reached out and gave it a shove.
"No handle," he said quietly. "It's you again, Dell."
Beth felt a whooshing of air behind her, and then Daedalus -- once again a snake -- slithered past and went up to the door. With a few brief flickers of his tongue, the door creaked open. The blaze of light grew brighter until the five of them stood staring into a cavernous room with low, greenish lighting and high columns.
They were staring into the Chamber of Secrets!
The green snake on the floor slithered inside and gazed around. He looked back and cocked his head at them.
"He says it's all right," muttered Bruce, and he stepped inside.
The Chamber was wide and stone, with tall pillars rising up to a high vaulted ceiling. At the far end of the hall, Beth could make out the feet and legs of a giant statue. Getting closer, she looked up and recognized the stern, thin face and the twisted beard: Salazar Slytherin, the fourth founder. The dim green light came from chandeliers that hung low and cast a strange glow on the stone floor.
"It looks ... kind of like the common room," Melissa said tentatively.
"Salazar probably built that too," said Bruce.
A weird shadow flickered on the left. Mervin leapt a foot in the air and shrieked, "Petrificus totalus!" A streak of light rocketed from his wand, bounced off the far wall and ricocheted past them. There was a thud as a small brown bat fell to the floor.
"What are you doing?" barked Bruce.
Beth let out a nervous giggle. "Mervin tried to Petrify a statue," she said, pointing to where Mervin had (badly) aimed. There stood a stone statue of a teenage boy, with his arms thrust out and eyes that stared straight ahead in fear.
Mervin scowled. "It looks like a person," he grumbled.
"Who would carve that?" asked Melissa with a shudder.
Beth and Bruce went up to the stone boy. He held a wand in one hand. There was a ring on his other -- a ring with a broad crest of entwined snakes. It was a Society ring.
"I don't think it was carved," said Beth slowly.
"Look at this!" called Daedalus from across the room. Gratefully, Beth left the statue and went to where Daedalus stood, once more in his human form.
"Wish you'd pick a species and stay with it," she told him offhandedly, but Daedalus was pointing at a collection of cauldrons and flasks on the floor.
A vast variety of archaic potions equipment, from loopy glass tubing to thick lead vials, stood crammed together in a corner. There was one large empty spot with a piece of paper right in the middle. Daedalus reached down and picked up the paper; it crackled as he touched it.
"Old," he muttered.
"What's it say?"
Daedalus carried the paper over to one of the low chandeliers so that he could make out the writing. He skimmed it over quickly and his eyes grew wide. "'In this spot stood the cauldron of Salazar Slytherin. It has been removed for the purposes of advancing the Slytherin house. Found by Tom Riddle." The last part was signed in a tight, quick handwriting.
Bruce appeared at Daedalus's side and leaned eagerly over the note. "That's where it came from!" he said excitedly. "The cauldron!" He looked up at them. "We melt down the cauldron to get metal for the rings. Uther and I have been working on them all year, we've got the cauldron in the vase room now! I never wondered how Riddle got hold of it. He must have come down and taken it before he closed the Chamber that last time. Brilliant!"
"He must have figured that only S.S.A. members would ever come down here," said Daedalus slowly. "Why else would he leave a message?"
Beth remembered of the statue and shuddered. "One other member did come down," she said quietly, "but he didn't come out." She pointed to the statue of the boy and Daedalus hurried to look at it, taking the note with him.
Melissa and Mervin were bent over the floor at the feet of the huge statue of Salazar. Each of them held something in their hands. Beth hurried to them.
"Found this," said Mervin. He brandished a huge, scarlet feather at Beth. "Two of them, just laying here."
Melissa was running her feather through her fingers, a strange expression on her face. "They say Salazar's avenger is a monster," she said softly. "It's a monster bird."
"Phoenix?" asked Mervin, but Melissa shook her head disdainfully.
"No, it's not a phoenix, believe me, I've seen plenty of phoenix feathers. I never saw anything like this." She scowled suddenly. "I'd know if it was a phoenix."
Bruce and Daedalus came over to them. "He's frozen even more solid than the stiffs upstairs," said Daedalus. "Stone all the way through. We've got to find out who he is. The president, whatsisname, Rothbard will know."
"Could we revive him once the mandrakes are full-grown?" asked Beth.
Daedalus shook his head. "I don't know ... he's been here a long time." He bit his lip. "I'm going to put this note back where it was. We'd better not disturb anything. If the Heir finds out who's been in here, messing with his stuff --"
"Or her stuff," said Melissa viciously. "Anyway I'm taking the feathers. That monster's sure to have plenty to spare."
Daedalus stood up from where he had been returning Riddle's note to its original place. "Let's get out of here. I keep feeling like I'm going to turn around and be turned to stone before I can scream."
"There's my happy thought for the day," said Mervin.
It was a subdued trek back through the winding tunnel and up the slippery pipe to the girls' bathroom. Although Beth looked over her shoulder at least ten times a minute, nothing -- not a monstrous scarlet bird, not a vengeful Heir -- came to kill them. Still, it was a relief to finally stumble out into the bright lighting of the main castle. The passageway slid shut, and one by one they slipped into the hallway.
Bruce broke the silence. "Well," he grinned, "that was fun."
"About as fun as a picnic in the Forbidden Forest," grumbled Melissa. But privately, Beth thought that Bruce was more right.
Now that they narrowed down Salazar's monster -- it was a scarlet bird that could Petrify things -- it was time to find out exactly what it was. Beth could think of only one person who would be able to answer the riddle: Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and her next-door neighbor.
She folded up the letter. She knew that it was wrong to lie about the question being for class, but somehow it seemed like the kind of situation that would be worse if she told the truth.
Beth took the letter up to the owlery. Daedalus was there, tying a letter to the leg of a big snowy owl.
"What are you doing?" she asked casually. She whistled to a barn owl and it flapped over and stretched out a leg to allow her to attach her letter.
"Writing to Rothbard," he said solemnly, "to see who that statue might be. You?"
"Checking out that feather with someone I know." They let the owls go at the same time, and they soared up and out of the open eaves of the tower. Beth looked up at Daedalus. "Maybe now we can get some real answers."
Daedalus watched the owls flap away. "I don't know if I want to hear them."
They had intended to report what they'd seen at the next meeting, but by the time Thursday came around, everyone already knew.
"It must have been spectacular," said Herne wistfully.
"It was," said Beth.
Richard waved his hands for their attention. "All right, chaps, gear up for an expedition, because we're all going back in there to check it out."
"No we're not!" From behind the Ledger, Riggs had spoken up vehemently. Richard twisted around to see him.
"What?"
Riggs looked less stuffy than usual -- in fact, there was a twinge of fright in his expression. "Absolutely not. I'm putting my foot down. I let you all sneak around -- dangerous enough -- but going into the place where the monster lives is out of the question. You got lucky this time, but that creature could be out any day -- and there's a statue in there to prove it. I swear I'll report anyone who goes in again."
Richard gave him an odd look. "Well ... all right. You're the prefect." He looked deeply disappointed.
Daedalus had gotten a reply to his letter, and he brought it out at the meeting. "The statue we found was a real person, all right -- a former student," he said grimly. He clutched Rothbard's letter with both hands. "Back in 1974, an S.S.A. member named Ulysses Donner went missing, right in the middle of the school year. Nobody ever figured out what happened to him. The school figured he'd just run away, but Rothbard says the members all knew better. We've solved the mystery of his disappearance." He didn't look especially pleased by that.
"Can he be restored?" asked Vivian in concern.
"We can try once the mandrakes are grown," said Daedalus heavily, "but I'm not optimistic. Until then, I say we just leave him there. It won't hurt him to sit around for a few months after thirteen years of it."
"He won't even notice it," said Vivian hollowly, and while she said it she looked at the place on the shelf where Daedalus had laid.