Wish Upon A Falling Star: by Thoughts and Pondering

Disclaimer: Haven't done one in a while so here goes...I don't own Harry Potter. I'm just borrowing the characters and putting them in entirely different pelirious situations.

Chapter Twenty: Merry Christmas

"The Chamber...the Chamber of Secrets?" Lily asked, shocked. "That's a Hogwarts myth! It can't exist!" she exclaimed.

Dumbledore sighed; he looked very old and tired, in his purple nightcap. Lily felt that she had acted childishly the last time she had spoken to Dumbledore. He was the greatest wizard of the age, after all.

"I'll speak to you and Minerva in my office. The password is Lemon Drop. Wait for me there. I will awaken Gilderoy. I feel like he will want to be made aware of this." Dumbledore walked out quickly of the Hospital Wing.

Lily looked back to where Harry lay, pretending to be asleep. She nodded at McGonagall. The stern looking dark-haired woman nodded back and they too, left. They did not exchange any words on the way to Dumbledore's office. That was the way she liked it. She didn't feel like saying anything. She wanted to be left to her thoughts. Like if she was twenty-two or thirty-three. Like if she was dead or alive. Like if she was going to be alive or dead by the end of the year. You'll be next, Mudbloods!

Colin Creevy was a Muggle-born. She was a Muggle-born. Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth. Harry was a Parselmouth. Salazar Slytherin didn't like Muggle-borns. Harry was a half-blood...she was so lost in her thoughts that she walked straight instead of turning onto the staircase. However, McGonagall was paying attention to where she was going, and Lily walked right into her.

"Sorry, Pr--Minerva!" she gasped. She clutched at her side, she had winded herself.

"It's alright." They continued their walk down the staircase. The school was very quiet, for once no one was out of bed out of hours, which was lucky, with some hidden monster on the loose. Hogwarts had always had its share of monsters, but this...this was outrageous. Attacking a cat...a student. The dark castle with flickering shadows on the wall cast by the floating candles looked like something out of a horror movie. She could die...or even worse...Harry could die...Colin wasn't dead...but he had a camera...what on earth would the camera have to do with it, anyway? Harry was going to have to spend the next few days in the Hospital Wing...

"Lemon Drop," she heard McGonagall say next to her. She looked at her surroundings. They were already at the big stone Gargoyle that guarded the entrance to Dumbledore's office. The Gargoyle shifted aside when McGonagall uttered the password. It revealed the narrow winding staircase to Dumbledore's office. McGonagall took the lead and Lily followed. Aftertwenty-one steps (she had counted) they reached the Headmaster's office. McGonagall sat in one of the comfortable armchairs facing Dumbledore's chair, so Lily took the deep scarlet one next to it.

They said nothing to each other. The only sounds were coming from the whirrs of the numeroussilver instruments sitting on shelves around the walls of Dumbeldore's circular office. Lily folded her arms across her chest. Now was the wait. She suspected Dumbledore was only asking Lockhart to be polite. She thought that Lockhart wouldn't recognize a werewolf if he was trapped with on in a phone booth. She had read his book, Wandering with Werewolves, and it was the biggest load of dragon dung she had ever seen in her life.

"All werewolves are lactose intolerant, no matter the time of month."

That was the funniest sentence in the whole book, according to her. Gilderoy Lockhart had never met Remus Lupin (well, if he had he didn't know about his lycanthropy). Remus had won Hogwarts' unofficial ice-cream eating competition, but she, Lily, had come runner-up.

"'Morning, Albus. Will you please explain?" McGonagall exclaimed. She had stood up, and looked more confused then angry. The nearly seventy-year-old woman seemed to have a lot of energy. But of course, to a witch, seventy was only middle age.

"Gilderoy and I will try and come up with an explanation." There was no twinkle in the wizard's blue eyes. There was only lethargy. He sat in the chair, and looked around. "Sorry, Gilderoy," he said when he realised that Lockhart hadn't a chair. He drew his wand and non-verbally conjured a comfortable chintz armchair out of thin (or was it thick, the tension in the room certainly was high) air.

"Thank-you, Albus." Lockhart nodded gratefully and sat down on the dark blue chair.

Dumbledore took his chair behind his own desk. He stroked Fawkes' feathers. The red and gold phoenix trilled out a few happy notes. He was sitting on the edge of Dumbledore's desk, having flown down from his stand. Dumbledore smiled at his pet. His face went sober as he faced McGonagall, Lockhart and Lily. He drummed his long, aged fingers on the table. "The legend of the Chamber of Secrets...it is difficult to know where to begin..." Dumbledore started, then looked at Lily. "Would you like to tell us the legend of the Chamber? You've told to a few of your classes, haven't you?" Dumbledore asked scrutinisingly.

Lily nodded, and remembered the day last week she had told Harry's second year class about the Chamber.

Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago, by four of the greatest wizards of the age, Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff and Salazar Slytherin.

History tells us that Salazar Slytherin had a disagreement with the other three about what kind of people to take into Hogwarts. Slytherin thought that only those from all-Wizarding families should be allowed in, while the others thought anyone with magical talent had the right to be educated at Hogwarts.
These differences soon led to Slytherin leaving the school. Legend says that Slytherin built a secret chamber within the school. Inside that chamber, is a monster that will purge all those that Slytherin thought were unworthy to study magic. The monster is one that is said to be able to be controlled by Slytherin's one true heir.

She recited it off by heart. She had told it so many times over the last week, she thought that she was going to remember ituntil her dying day.

Which was eleven years prior.

"Thank-you, Lily," Dumbledore said, looking at her over his half-moon glasses. He had continued stroking Fawkes. "As I told you a few moments ago, the Chamber of Secrets has been opened before. You might remember, Minerva."

McGonagall nodded, she looked oddly saddened, her squarish glasses were threatening to fall off her face. "Myrtle Williams was one of my best friends. She was a year younger than me. We had a falling out a month before she was discovered in that... bathroom. She had worked herself up...after we had fought she went every looking sad...then two weeks after that, she had gotten news that her parents had beenkilled in the war...she used to go into bathrooms and cry...I still didn't go after her...we didn't make up. I didn't know what to say. My parents were wizards, I hadn't known anyone whose parents had been killed inthe Mugglewar before. Everyone else who had lost their reletives had lost them to Grindelwald.Olive Hornby was another student in Gryffindor. She had never liked Myrtle and I. She started her nickname of 'Moaning' Myrtle...I remember she also used to tease her about her glasses...And then...then...two weeks after that...she just...died. She was found dead on the bathroom floor. People had been attacked before...but they were just Petrified...which isn't an official name, mind you, it's just a name we students coined to describe what those students looked like. It had been going on for nine months...nearly half of the Muggle-borns in the school were in comas...and we were all scared...so horribly scared...and then, at the end of the school year the weekly attacks stopped. No-one was attacked after that. We had heard the legend of Salazar's Chamber...that's what we called it...Salazar's Chamber...at least that what the Heir called it. He used to send notes to the Headmaster, the letters were cut out from editions of the Daily Prophet.Official history books such as Hogwarts, A History, call it the Chamber of Secrets for the unknown creature dwelling inside it...all this happened fifty years ago..." Minerva trailed off, her knuckles were white, she was gripping the arm of the chair with all the strength she possessed. Unfallen tears swam in her eyes.

Lily let out a breath...to lose a friend like that...to not have the chance to say good-bye...for a friend to die...and all that was remembered was a month of despair.

Dumbledore nodded. "Miss Williams was the first and only fatility of the Chamber...for now. We don't know what might happen in the future...but I can be at leastninety twopercent sure in saying that Salazar Slytherin's creation is behind this."

"What about theeight percent, Dumbledore?" Lockhart asked. "These poor students could be in mortal peril with every step they take within this castle. It could be something else..." he trailed of dramatically.

"Like a Zimbillian Bullfrog," Lily muttered under her breath.

"Yes, they have particularly poisonous venom..."

"Oh, yes, they do, especially because they don't even exist." Lily felt like banging her head against Dumbledore's desk. Why on earth had he hired an idiot like Lockhart for a teacher was beyond her.

Lockhart smiled sleepilyand replied jerkily, "I was only humouring you, dear." His gold blonde hair was in curlers, it was one in the morning and he had been asleep when Dumbledore had awoken him.

"So what are going to do, Albus?" McGonagall asked. She also looked like she was going to nod off. It had been a long day.

"We could imput new security measures." Lily offered. "It's better to try and prevent another attack then to wait for another one too happen. Then we might catch the person whose controlling the basilisk...Salazar's heir." Lily had a new interest in the subject now. She wanted to find this person...and she didn't know...maybe ask for an answer...understand what was going on, have something to work on...

"We could walk the students to classes and push up curfew for all years to six p.m sharp," McGonagall suggested.

"That would be a good idea, Minerva. I will present the idea to the staff at the staff meeting on Wednesday." Dumbledore nodded seriously over his half-moon glasses."Is there anything more to discuss?"

Lockhart,McGonagall and Lily shook their heads.

"Then we should all trot off to bed and try to get some sleep on what has certainly been a very eventful night!"

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It was month later and Christmas Eve. Lily dozed in front of the warmth of the fire. Harry sat next to her. He had a skewer and was roasting some marshmallows. Four of his pink and whitemarshmallows had fallen off, two of them had burnt and one time Harry had flicked the skewer to fast from the fire that he accidently pushed it into the fire, causing the skewer to burst into flames. He had thrown the skewer in panic, and it had landed onLily's head.She had been reading at the time, but slowly came aware of heat on top of her hair. She had doused the flames with her wand and she was now resting peacefully again while Harry cleaned up the marshmallow bag. He had learnt a very important lesson, and that was to never roast marshmallows.

It simply didn't work.

The two of them had a Christams tree of their own, in the corner of Lily's sleeping quarters. It had been decorated in the way of the rest of Hogwarts Christmas trees, but theirs was special. Harry had unearthed a small pastastar he had made in his first year of primary school in the bottom of his trunk. How it had got there, he didn't know, but Lily had put it at the top of the Christmas tree.

They slept peacefully. Harry's snores had started to fill the room. Lily had curled upinto a ball on her black recliner with her head facing the floor. Somewhere in the room a clock chimed midnight. It was Christmas.

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A/N: I know I said that I would put Lily and Harry's talk in this chapter, but I didn't have the time. If I don't post this now, it would probably be Friday until I could start writing that chapter. Anyway, I've kept the name of the chapter. I've noticed an odd thing about the reviews per chapter. They seem to be going down by two. Is it because I'm taking ages to update? Anyway, I hope I get more than two reviews for this chapter. Try something new! Break the trend of reviews recieved going down by two!

Anyway, til next time,

Thoughts and Pondering.