Sorry about the wait you guys, Coronavirus has made life difficult. See end for AN

Chapter 3:

Albus Dumbledore was having a bad day.

It had nothing to do with his surroundings. He sitting behind the massive desk in the headmasters office at Hogwarts. It was a position that many witches and wizards would kill for in an instant. It was a position that he had craving to get back to since his removal until an hour ago when he got a panicked floo call from the head of the Board of Governors.

It had been a struggle to comprehend what the man had been saying he had been talking so fast but he got the gist:

Emergency. School under attack and being evacuated. Three students and a professor missing in a presumed attack.

Dumbledore felt his heart lodge in his throat.

The man said the next part so quietly that he had to ask him to repeat it. The wizard turned bright red and said louder: As it turned out, Lucius had been wrong about him being connected to the Chamber and attacks. Would he consider coming back and resuming his post as headmaster?

And it was that easy. After weeks of being denied even a floo connection with the Board to plead his case, he found himself reinstated as headmaster and entering his office within fifteen minutes.

He found his heads of house sitting around his desk, and instead of a friendly greeting they launched straight into the bad news.

Three students went missing last night after another message appeared on the wall near the second floor girls lavatory. And not just any students but the youngest Weasley children as well as Harry Potter.

Minerva was just finishing catching him up

"We have the students contained in their common rooms but we can't hold them there indefinitely. We have teams of professors and prefects searching the grounds but we haven't found anything yet. Not even bodies."

"Now that is odd", Dumbledore said suddenly, "the creature has left bodies every other time it has attacked. Why should this time be different?"

"So you saying that they have to be out there? Even their petrified bodies lazing about somewhere" said Severus, his tone almost smug.

Something about his tone annoyed him. Suddenly Dumbledore was in no mood for company.

"What I'm saying, is that their bodies can't just be gone. This is not how the creature operates. This means it could be something else entirely. Search the school again in pairs. Have everyone look in a different area so as not to miss anything. Send patronuses if anything happens." He barked

They jumped at his sharp words and quickly shuffled out.

Minerva hovered for a moment by the door as if to reproach him for his tone before she turned and left the office.

As soon the door shut, Dumbledore slumped as if the air had been let out of him. He buried his head in his hands.

How could it all have gone so wrong so quickly?

After the attack on Ms. Granger and Ms. Clearwater, he had thought he had control of the situation. He just had to get the students to exams and the the staff could tear the school apart looking for that blasted Chamber without putting anyone in danger.

But then that fool Lucius had to remove him and it all went to hell. When he was forced out he lost all control and information about the situation.

Now, not only was the school on the brink of collapse, Harry was missing as well.

After all the energy and work he had put into hiding him, Harry was supposed to arrive to school from his relatives in healthy and in one piece. Given his relatives background, Dumbledore had never expected him to show up completely happy or content but that was ok in the long run. Certain sacrifices had to be made for the greater good and Harry being safe was the greatest good.

That was what he had thought anyway.

He had never expected things to descend so quickly into chaos. For the second year in a row, the boy was missing, and presumably was in mortal danger. He could be anywhere on the grounds right now, probably fighting for his life…

Fawkes let out a piercing cry, startling Dumbledore out of his sorrows. The phoenix leapt off his perch, circled the ceiling a few times, and vanished in a brilliant flash of flame.

A heartbeat passed and Dumbledore was nearly thrown from his chair as the floor bucked and rocked underneath him. It was as if as the entire castle was being torn apart by an angry giant!

The floor roiled and rolled as if it was an angry sea. More quakes sent him tumbling to his office floor as he tried to get to his office door. He got to his feet and braced himself for another one.

Nothing happened. All was still.

The door to his office flew open with a sharp bang, nearly sending him off his feet again. He whirled and saw Flitwick standing in the door frame, his cheat heaving as if he had run across the entire castle.

"Albus… the ground." He panted

"I felt it to. We have to find that Chamber."

"Severus, Poppy, and the ghosts have gone to check the students in their common rooms. The rest of the staff is still searching."

"I shall come as well. We can cover more ground that way. Let's start on the seventh floor and work our way downwards."

As they descended his stairs, Dumbledore had a feeling that this night was only just starting.

Ron Weasley was having a bad day

He was hungry. He was tired. He had a headache building behind his eyes. His hands were scratched and bleeding as he shifted yet another rock out of the massive rockslide. So far he had moved dozens of large stones into a smaller pile behind him.

The obstruction let out a dangerous rumble. Ron barely managed to dodge out of the way before another cascade of rocks slide down and covered what progress he had made.

He let out a frustrated moan. He didn't even have a functioning wand to help him.

The newly obliviated Lockhart was being no help at all, babbling and drawing shapes in the dirt with Ron's wand stump.

Ron had convinced him his name was Terry and that he was an experimental potion tester in Nocturne Alley. It has been hilarious at first but now Ron was tempted to bash him over the head, just to get him to shut up so his head could stop hurting.

Suddenly the tunnel began to rumble and shake as if a mob of people were marching down the tunnel towards him. More stones began to rain down from the ceiling.

Ron tackled Lockhart to the floor and shielded them both from falling rocks. Dust choked the corridor, making it hard for him to breathe.

Slowly everything came to a stop. Ron peeked his head up to survey the damage.

Half the corridor was demolished and caved in. Pipes jutted out of the walls at haphazard angles, leaking water and sludge.

Ron cautiously moved back over to the pile and experimentally moved one of the rocks. Nothing happened. He set his shoulders and began to move rocks once again. He needed to keep going.

Ginny needed him.

Time passed, maybe half an hour, maybe more.

Ron was just shifting a large rock at the bottom of the pile when he heard footsteps.

"Hello?" a small voice sounded from the other side of the pile.

"Ginny!" Ron shouted. With a new energy, Ron began flinging rocks off the pile. He created a small opening in the stone.

Ginny's head appeared in the opening. "Ron" she squeaked out in relief.

She reached her arm out of the hole; he grasped and pulled her free.

Once he got her into the dim light of the tunnel, he realized she looked even worse than he realized. Scratches ran up and down Ginny's arms and her jumper look as if she had been mauled by a lion. Her eyes were sunken and red as if she had been crying. She was swaying violently on her feet as if she was going to collapse at any moment. Her teeth chattered violently as if she was standing in a blizzard.

She looked like she had been through a war. Ron was just happy to see her alive.

Now that he had confirmed Ginny was still alive Ron noticed something alarming: Ginny was alone.

"Ginny! Ginny where's Harry!?"

"There was only room in the tunnel for one of us. He said he would stay behind and wait for help."

Ron had questions, several in fact, but he was prevented from asking them when Ginny's legs buckled. He caught her and gently lowered her to the ground. They had to get her to Madam Pomphrey. Fast. Harry would have to handle himself for a while.

"Oi! Terry, get over here and help me."

Lockhart ambled over and stared at her blankly. Ron could have cheerfully strangled him. He scooped the feeble Fawkes off the ground and glared at the memoryless man.

"Put her on your back, you bloody ponce. We have to get her out of here."

They made a strange trio with Lockhart hunched over, Ginny on his back and Ron following behind them to make sure she didn't fall off

After 10 minutes, they managed to get back to the slide. It was a steep, but manageable, incline. Ron stuck Fawkes inside his robes so he could climb with both hands.

They reached the edge of the slide, passing Ginny overhead before climbing out themselves. The bathroom was empty, not even Myrtle in sight.

""Well done Terry mate, well done." Lockhart looked bewildered but Ron ignored him. He gathered Ginny in his arms and carried her out into the corridor, Lockhart in his wake.

"Help! Help! Somebody help us!" Ron cried as he stumbled towards the Entrance Hall.

McGonagall materialized from around a corner, ready to breathe fire at the students who dared to break curfew in these trying times.

She stopped short.

"Mister Weasley…"

"Yeah, yeah punish me later. Help Ginny now!" McGonagall focused her attention on Ginny.

"Hospital Wing! Now!"

As the three of them sprinted down the corridor, Ron only hoped they were not too late.

Later…

Dumbledore was at his wits end.

They had turned the castle upside down since the reappearance of the Weasley's and the professor formally known as Lockhart. The ghosts and staff had gone through every room and hallway in the castle looking for Harry but so far had turned up nothing. They had combed the forest and the lake looking for him.

Attempts to venture down into the Chamber had proven fruitless. After the Weasleys had emerged, the entire tunnel system had collapsed under severe structural damage. It would take a team of construction wizards weeks to excavate it safely enough for them to conduct a search in it and by then it would be too late.

Dumbledore was trapped. He could only hold back the truth of Harry's disappearance from the other students and the press for so long. Sooner or later, they would find out that he was not recovering in solitude and hell would rain down upon the school for having lost the Boy Who Lived.

He would be lucky if Fudge didn't throw the entire staff in jail for having lost "a national treasure."

He was just deciding if they should send another party to check the Forbidden Forest when a silvery cat ran into the room and stopped in front of him.

"We found him. Resting in Hospital Wing" the cat spoke in McGonagall's voice.

Finally.

Even Later...

Even before he was fully awake, Harry knew exactly where he was. Only one place had both scratchy sheets and an antiseptic smell.

With a groan he sat up, reached for his glasses, and looked around the Hospital Wing. It was completely empty, every bed but his neatly made and turned down.

The double doors opened on the far end of the room, and Dumbledore emerged. His brightly colored robes billowed behind him as he moved to sit besides Harry's bed.

"Ah Harry my boy, it is good to see you awake. Once we found the Weasley's but didn't find you, we feared the worst."

"How long was I was out?"

"Only a few hours, but that was an excellent recovery time for someone in your condition."

"My condition, sir?"

"According to Madam Pomphrey, you magical core was almost completely depleted. That can happen when a person undergoes tremendous stress and uses larges amounts of magic at once. Wherever you were all this time, you must have used all of your magic to stay alive."

Shaking off thoughts of a massive mouth with fangs bearing down on him, Harry focused on another part of the sentence.

"All this time sir? I thought you said you only found the Weasley's a few hours ago?"

Dumbledore gave him a funny look

"I said you had been unconscious for a few hours." Harry's asked hesitantly, already having guessed the answer.

"Harry, the Weasley's came back three weeks ago and you have been missing ever since. Wherever have you been?"

AN: I have already included a brief hint as to which of the Stones Harry will find first. (Other Hint: he has already seen it) I don't know when I will be able to post again with the virus spreading.