Rebekah stormed straight to Madam Pomfrey, yelling about how incompetent Lockhart was. She got into the Hospital Ward and plumped her bottom onto a bed and brooded for what seemed like hours but was only ten minutes.
"I swear…. Did he not allow you to go to me straight away?"
"No, he decided that he was more capable of fixing a broken bone than a trained professional," Rebekah said, gesturing to her rubbery arm. "Now, there aren't any bones!"
"Growing bones is a nasty business, Miss Potter, and very painful," Madam Pomfrey said, passing her a pair of pyjamas. "You'll have to stay the night, however."
"Come on," Daphne said, closing the curtains. "Stupid man. Let's get you changed."
"Next time, don't let him have his wand near me," Rebekah mumbled, watching Daphne levitate the pyjama top and help her into it. "I swear all that he said he has done is false and he just took credit for it."
Rebekah had to down Skele-Gro and then she swore she would get back at Lockhart. The potion was disgusting and the sensation it caused was even worse. Some of the Slytherin team came down with food from the Great Hall. Derrick pointed to a small brass jug and winked, saying that it was Butterbeer and it would help her feel a bit better.
Madam Pomfrey shooed everyone out, including her friends, and left her nothing to do while her bones grew back. Luckily, she never took off her bracelet. She crossed her legs on the bed, opened a book called The Healer's Helpmate and began to read up on Skele-Gro and its properties.
Trying to get some sleep before the actual pain began, Rebekah found out that Dobby had sent the Bludger after her.
"What do you mean you made the Bludger follow me?" Rebekah wanted to scream but she couldn't, it was getting very late and if she was too loud, Madam Pomfrey would investigate. "It broke my arm!"
"Dobby is ever so sorry, ma'am," He said, not looking as sorry as he should have. "Dobby needed Rebekah Potter to be safe, and then Dobby heard Mistress make a Howler for Young Master and he heard Rebekah Potter's name. She was being threatened and Dobby just knew he had to intervene."
"Dobby," Rebekah said and calmed the shaking House-Elf. "I had an argument with Draco Malfoy, a rather big one but I wasn't being threatened. I was threatening him. I could have been seriously injured, I am but luckily my Quidditch practises kicked in. I told you I don't need protection, Dobby. I'm not helpless."
"Ah, if Rebekah Potter only knew!" Dobby cried, his tears dripped down to his pillowcase outfit. "Rebekah Potter is only a child. Dobby remembers how it was when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was at the height of his powers, ma'am! We house-elves were treated like vermin, ma'am! Of course, Dobby is still treated like that, but mostly, ma'am, life has improved for my kind since you triumphed over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Rebekah Potter survived, and the Dark Lord's power was broken, and it was a new dawn, ma'am! Rebekah Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the Dark days would never end, ma'am.
"Dobby has heard of how Rebekah Potter treats Dobby's kind here, it cannot change! And now, at Hogwarts, terrible things are to happen, are perhaps happening already, and Dobby cannot let Rebekah Potter stay here now that history is to repeat itself, now that the Chamber of Secrets is open once more —"
"So it is real!" Rebekah said, quickly grabbing Dobby by his shoulders when he went to punish himself. He stopped when he realised she hissed in pain, her right arm had severe pins and needles but they were the size of inch nails. "Go, Dobby! Don't tell me anymore. Your masters will be pleased but don't tell them this."
"Oh, oh, oh" He glanced around but popped away when footsteps echoed from outside the door.
Rebekah sagged back into her bed but kept her eyes on the door, watching Dumbledore in his woolly dressing gown and nightcap come in. He dragged a large figurine with McGonagall at its feet, carrying it together. They placed it on a bed and summoned Pomfrey, who then leaned over the statue and inspected it.
"What happened?" Madam Pomfrey said in a hushed tone, believing Rebekah was asleep.
"An attack. Young Creevey was found by Minerva on the stairs," Dumbledore said. "We believe he was going to try and visit Miss Potter and get some pictures.
Her stomach lurched suddenly, she raised her head slightly and saw that it was indeed Colin Creevey. He had been pestering her for an autograph for the first week of term but quickly gave up when she threatened to hex him. She wasn't surprised that he didn't stop trying to get pictures of certain scenes with her.
"Petrified?" Pomfrey asked, a hand on her chest in fear.
"Yes," McGonagall said, all three glanced down to the frozen boy. "If Albus hadn't been on the way downstairs for hot chocolate….
Dumbledore wrenched the camera out of Creevey's tight hands and opened the back, a jet of steam came out and Rebekah could smell burnt plastic as he pulled the film out. It was horribly deformed and looked like it had been through an oven and then thrown into acid for good luck.
McGonagall turned to Dumbledore, a grave expression on her moonlit face. "What does this mean, Albus?"
"It means that the Chamber of Secrets is open," He said. "Again."
There was a pause as they processed this and then McGonagall said, "But, Albus, who?"
"The question is not who," Dumbledore said and quickly glanced at Rebekah's eyes, a cheerless and grim look in his own eyes matched hers. He shook his head very slightly, hopefully, signifying that he knew Rebekah wasn't the one behind this."The question is how…"
The next morning, Madam Pomfrey placed a simple tray of breakfast on her bed. She asked Rebekah to hold her hand out as she flexed each finger and did small movements to show that everything grew back as it should have.
"After you're done, you're free to leave," She said after Rebekah successfully levitated her bowl of cereal with her wand. "Your wand hand is fine now. I suggest you not let anyone without credentials try and heal you."
"I'll keep in mind that when Lockhart comes near me when injured," Rebekah said and the two Witches chuckled for a moment before she began eating.
Rebekah pulled out jeans and a top out of her pouch and dressed behind the closed curtains. She said goodbye to Madam Pomfrey and said her thanks. Quickly making it down to the dungeons, she found her group and everyone went to Pansy's room as it had the most seating.
"The older years overheard McGonagall talking to Flitwick this morning, right outside the Great Hall doors," Blaise said. "I didn't like the boy but he didn't deserve that."
"Do you any clue who could have petrified him?" Daphne said. "It's a very high-level spell to be able to do that, especially if they need Mandrakes to cure it."
"What if it wasn't a person?" Rebekah suggested, thinking before she said it. "Accio Most Macabre Monstrosities!" The book zoomed from her dorm room, through the corridor and into her open hand. She began flipping through pages of it until she went to the right page. "When the second warning came, Hermione, Ron and I — don't give me that look, Pansy — we saw about two dozen spiders try to get away from the school as soon as they could. Add in Creevey being petrified and the Chamber of Secrets being Sazalar Slytherin's, we can quite easily deduce that the 'monster' would be a snake because Slytherin was a Parselmouth and only his descendant, who would be a Parselmouth too, would be able to open it. It's probably a….." She found the page and showed them it. "Basilisk."
"Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents….and live many hundreds of years….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."
"It's not a bad theory," Theodore said, shrugging. "But it didn't kill him or Norris, did it?"
"Because both of them didn't look at it in the eyes," Rebekah said, gesturing to her own. "The bathroom near the first warning was flooded, Norris could have seen it then through the reflection. Creevey was looking through his camera, he still had it in his grip when he was petrified."
"But what can we do about it?" Pansy stated. "No one's gonna believe a group of Second years, especially Slytherins. You know how it is with our school."
"Argh!" Rebekah said and flopped onto the wide couch. "Now you understand by I hate this stupid PureBloods being better than MuggleBorns and Muggles. It just shrouds your view of the other group."
"The only reason my parents followed You-Know-Who was because our traditions were vanishing," Daphne sat up as did everyone else. "A couple of hundred years ago, Hogwarts celebrated Lupercalia instead of Valentine's day, Ostara instead of Easter, Samhain instead of Halloween, and Yule instead of Christmas. The MuggleBorns, forcefully being put into our world, made us change our tradition as the United Kingdom has been Christian for almost a millennium."
"So the true Wizarding traditions have been purged from the society because a group new to the society didn't like it?" Rebekah asked, then mumbled. "Reminds me of how some cultures are destroyed. It's sick! It's because some people like the MuggleBorns aren't introduced properly, just thrown in and have at it."
"I plan to take Muggle Studies next year," Blaise said. "It should be an easy O but I don't know. I don't think they would teach it properly here, especially when a lot of us PureBloods and HalfBloods take it. We don't get educated on that stuff."
"There should be Wizarding Studies, too," Rebekah chuffed. "I had no clue what to expect when I came into Hogwarts. I didn't know I had Magic until a month before school started."
"How come you get better marks than we do then?"
"I'm constantly learning. I have never heard of any of these creatures, they were just legends to me," She slouched. "I never heard of Skele-Gro so I was reading about it while my bones grew back. You take for granted what you have around you, we MuggleBorns or those who have been raised Muggle are at a big disadvantage."
They knew it, sure but they never truly understood it. How did the Ministry expect a child to adapt to a whole new world, away from their parents and everything they knew, and be forced to stay in that world for seven whole years?
They never realised how much Rebekah didn't know about their society but she had quickly adapted, she had to if she was going to be in Slytherin. It was the House of traditions and old ways, blood and Dark Magic that kept the Wizarding kind alive.