"Hermione, did Gryffindor say anything about what this chamber is supposed to look like?" Ron asked.
Harry looked around. The library never seemed quite so big when it was full of students. Of course, when he needed to find something in here, he was usually looking for books, which were at least arranged by subject. Rows and rows of bookshelves stretched away in every direction, and the chamber could be down any of them.
"Just that it's in here somewhere. Gryffindor was afraid that someone might try to use his journal to open the chamber of secrets, so he said very little about how to find them."
"Well, we'll just have to start looking. Should we split up? It might be faster."
"We have to stay together," Harry said firmly. "If you find something and then have to come find everyone else, you might get lost and forget where it was. And we could run into some of those spiders. I know I wouldn't want to be alone and have one of them sneak up on me."
Ron shrugged. "Fine with me. You want to pick a bookcase?"
Hermione pointed to Madame Pince's desk and said, "Over there. The desk doesn't look old enough to be the entrance, so it should be easy to rule out. But we'll still need to check out the area around it."
Ron wandered over to the desk and began pulling out drawers. Harry and Hermione examined the walls as they discussed the journal.
"Are you sure it's in the library, Hermione? Maybe Gryffindor meant something else."
"I don't think so, Harry. Where else could it be? Of course it is possible that there was a different library back then, but I don't think it's likely. These bookcases have been here forever. Just look at them! They're built into the floor."
"So if the entrance is a moving bookcase, it also has to move the floor?"
"Unless it slides into the wall. Maybe we should be looking at the floor, too." Hermione dropped down to her hands and knees and crawled over the stone floor behind the desk. "No good. It's just normal stone like the floors in the rest of the castle."
Ron got up from the desk. "There's nothing over here. Let's go somewhere else."
They looked at the bookcases nearest them. "This is going to take a long time," Harry pointed out. "And what if it's in the restricted section? Should we ask one of the teachers to let us in?"
"I don't think they'll mind. It's not like we're going in there to read the books," Hermione said. "But you're right, it might take us days to find the chamber. We don't even know what it looks like! The only way this could get any worse is if Peeves shows up."
They suddenly heard laughter behind them. Ron froze and whispered, "Forget 'showing up', Hermione, I think he's been watching us all along!"
She whispered back, "What do we do now? If we scatter, do you think it will confuse him?"
The desk drawers shot open, and inkbottles began hurtling towards them. Then the chair began to rise into the air.
"Run!" Harry told them. He, Ron, and Hermione covered their heads and dashed down the aisle between the bookcases. All around them, books were flying off their shelves and dropping to the floor. One struck Ron and he stumbled, but kept running.
"We can't keep running away from him!" Hermione panted. "Sooner or later we'll get stuck in a corner." She stopped and pulled out her wand.
The bookcase beside them began to shake. "Hermione, move!" Harry shouted, and he pushed her out of the way. The bookcase crashed into the floor where she had been standing.
As though he felt that they had been sufficiently terrified, Peeves threw one final volley of books at them and then swooped out of the library.
"Are you all right?" Harry asked Hermione as he helped her up.
"Fine. Good thing you saw the bookcase move, though."
"Hey, Harry, Hemione, look at this!" Ron was standing near the wall where the bookcase had been. When Harry and Hermione walked over to him, they saw that when it had fallen, the bookcase had revealed a hole in the wall. There seemed to be a room behind it.
"You don't think this could be it, do you?" Hermione asked.
Harry shrugged. "Let's find out."
He squeezed through the gap in the wall, Ron and Hermione behind him. They were in a small room, just big enough for the three of them to move around without walking into each other. There were no windows or decorations of any kind besides a large statue built into the wall opposite the entrance. Hermione walked over to examine it.
"It's a griffin," she announced. "Half eagle and half lion. And it seems to be holding something, but I can't tell what it is."
"So this could really be Gryffindor's chamber," Harry said as he and Ron joined her at the statue. "Or at least part of it. Maybe the griffin's there to show the rest of the chamber is behind the wall."
"Yeah, but how do we get past it?" Ron asked. "Shouldn't there be some sort of password or key to get in?"
Hermione closed her eyes. "Key…I think I read something about a key. I can't remember quite how it went…"
Ron started saying possible passwords to the statue. "Gryffindor. Chamber of answers. Salazar Slytherin is a stinker. Open up, you stupid statue. Gosh, this isn't working."
Harry was puzzling over the object in the griffin's claws. It was long, straight, and hollow, and something about the way the griffin held it suggested it hadn't been carved from the same piece of stone as the rest of the statue.
"That's it!" Hermione startled Harry. "'I have hidden the key in my hat.' Gryffindor wrote that the key to the chamber is in his hat! Now we just have to find it. Oh, that won't be easy. How many hats do wizards own in a lifetime? It probably got thrown out long ago."
Harry remembered something from the beginning of the year. "Hermione, you were at the sorting this year, do you remember the sorting hat's song?"
"Yes, why? Oh!"
"Right! The sorting hat said it had belonged to Gryffindor! Now, what if we've already gotten the key, but didn't know it at the time?"
Hermione, Ron and Harry looked at the statue. The scabbard, they now realized it was holding, was just the right size for Gryffindor's sword.
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