We're nearly through the CoS year of the story. and I know many have been asking and worrying about when the LotR sections of the story will start to enter, and I will say first that it will begin in the early chapters of book 3, but it wont take priority until later on after that. I am pleased that people started putting forth ideas, primarily as to the identity of Faykan in the story, and it opened my mind to the idea that he could have been Maglor, the son of Fëanor, and that would be an awesome story, albeit I think it would play out vastly different from what I have put forth. at the original time of writing this story, as seen in the ANP books 1-7, I hadn't read through the entire silmarillian on my own, however I have since then, and I can quickly see the similarities, and perhaps in due time I could do something to bridge that character into the story, but I make no promises at this present time. So, no, Faykan is not an exiled Noldor, but that was a wonderful idea and I highly enjoyed it.

Special shoutout to gust reviewer EMShatzen: your comment more than made my day when I read it, and I thank you for the kindness you expressed!

~F

Chapter Ten

Truth behind the Smile

Three days before the start of exams, Minerva made another announcement at the start of breakfast. Severus Snape sat watching the reaction of the students as several yelled out guesses at what the good news could be. The Transfiguration Mistress finally settled the students down long enough to explain that the Mandrakes were ready at last, and the petrified people, animals, and ghosts would be returned to normalcy the next day.

There was an explosion of cheering. Severus looked over at the Slytherin table and noticed that Theodore Nott hadn't joined in. The lanky boy had been very pleased with all the misfortune that had happened this year, and Severus placed the blame fully upon the boy's Death Eater father. Severus' eyes were drawn to Draco as he stood and made his way over to the Gryffindor table, where he then sat among Potter, Weasley and Undol, and together the four boys started talking in subdued voices. They were joined shortly after by the youngest Weasley, and Severus noted how nervous and jittery the girl appeared to be. Potter, Undol and Draco seemed to become aware of this as well, and Severus cast a small spell that allowed him to overhear their conversation.

"I've got to tell you something," the Weasley girl had been mumbled.

"What is it?" Potter replied.

The girl looked as though she couldn't find the right words.

"What?" said her brother.

The youngest Weasley opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Undol leaned forward and spoke quietly, but Severus could still hear them perfectly fine.

"Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?" he said

The girl drew a deep breath and, but that precise moment, another red haired Weasley appeared, looking tired and worn.

"If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny. I'm starving; I've only just come off patrol duty." He said briskly, effectively shooing her away to make room for himself. The girl jumped up as though her chair had just been electrified, gave her elder brother a fleeting, frightened look, and scampered away. The Prefect sat down and grabbed a mug from the center of the table.

"Percy!" said the younger Weasley boy angrily. "She was just about to tell us something important!"

Severus cancelled the spell, knowing that it was unlikely that the girl knew anything terribly important. More likely she was just scared and seeking reassurance from her brother and his friends. At least, that was what he hoped himself, although he did notice that Undol and Draco continued to talk in hushed whispers. They apparently came to a conclusion, because Draco nodded and stood quickly, following the Weasley girl out to the entrance hall.

Severus smiled slightly, it was almost reminiscent of how Undol's father and Lucius had been when Severus was in school at Hogwarts, taking care of the young Slytherins like a team, one the eyes and the other the legs and kind words. Severus himself had been on the receiving end of their kindness quite often, and counted them as more than friends.

In addition to acting more like his father, young Undol had also saved Severus the need to go after the girl himself, as there was indeed something peculiar about her behavior, but if it was unsubtle enough that the four second years spotted, there was no doubt that Minerva would soon be notified and swoop in to care for her lions.

~~Sina tea kirma : This is a line break~~

Harry knew the whole mystery might be solved the next day after the announcement regarding the Mandrakes without their help, but he wasn't about to pass up a chance to speak to Myrtle if it turned up, and to his delight, it did around midmorning while they were being led to History of Magic by Gilderoy Lockhart.

Lockhart, who had so often assured them that all danger had passed, only to be proved wrong right away over and over, was now wholeheartedly convinced that it was hardly worth the trouble to see them safely down the corridors. His hair wasn't as sleek as usual; and it seemed he had been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.

"Mark my words," he said, ushering them around another corner. "The first words out of those poor Petrified people's mouths will be 'it was Hagrid.' Frankly, I'm astounded Professor McGonagall thinks all these security measures are still necessary."

"I agree, sir," Harry said suddenly, making Ron drop his books in surprise. Faykan only raised a questioning eyebrow, lowering it when Harry winked at him.

"Thank you, Harry," said Lockhart graciously while they waited for a long line of Hufflepuffs to pass, not paying their exchange any attention whatsoever. "I mean, we teachers have quite enough to be getting on with, without walking students to classes and standing guard all night..."

"That's right," added Faykan, catching on quickly. "Why don't you leave us here, sir, we've only got one more corridor to go…"

"You know, Mr. Undol, I think I will," said Lockhart. "I really should go and prepare for my next class..."

With that he hurried off back the way they had come.

"Prepare for his class," Ron sneered after him. "Gone to curl his hair, more like."

They let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of them, then darted down a side passage and hurried off toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But just as they were congratulating each other on their brilliant scheme…

"Potter! Undol! Weasley! What are you doing?" said a stern voice right behind them. They turned to see Professor McGonagall, her mouth the thinnest of thin lines as she approached them. Faykan momentarily looked like a deer caught in headlights. Ron started stammering, trying to make an excuse.

"Hermione!" said Harry quickly. Faykan, Ron and Professor McGonagall all looked at him.

"We haven't seen her for ages, Professor," Harry went on hurriedly, stepping on Ron's foot to keep him from saying anything else, "and we thought we'd sneak into the hospital wing, you know, and tell her the Mandrakes are nearly ready and, err, not to worry…"

Professor McGonagall was still staring at him. For a moment, Harry thought she was going to explode, but when she spoke, it was in a strangely croaky voice.

"Of course," she said, and to Harry's amazement, he saw a tear glistening in her beady eye. "Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been... I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you all may go and visit Miss Granger. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."

Harry, Faykan and Ron walked away, hardly daring to believe that they'd avoided detention. As they turned the corner, they distinctly heard Professor McGonagall blow her nose.

"That," said Ron fervently, "was the best story you've ever come up with." Faykan nodded in agreement.

Unfortunately, they had no choice now but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they had Professor McGonagall's permission to visit Hermione.

She did let them in, but only extremely reluctantly.

"There's just no point talking to a Petrified person," she said, shaking her head as she walked away and went back to monitoring the door for attempted entry. They had to admit she had a point after they'd taken their seats next to Hermione. It was plain that Hermione didn't have the faintest inkling that she had visitors, and that they might just as well tell her bedside cabinet not to worry for all the good it would do.

"Wonder if she did see the attacker, though?" said Ron, looking sadly at Hermione's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one'll ever know..."

But Harry wasn't looking at Hermione's face. He was more interested in her right hand. It lay clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her fist. Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, he pointed this out to both Faykan and Ron.

"Try and get it out," Ron whispered, shifting his chair so that he blocked Madam Pomfrey's view.

It proved no easy task. Hermione's hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Harry was sure he was going to tear it. While Ron kept watch, he and Faykan tugged and twisted, and at last, after several tense minutes, the paper came free. Unfolding it quickly, Harry found that it was a page torn from a very old library book. Harry smoothed it out eagerly and both Faykan and Ron leaned close to read it over his shoulder.

'Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, 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, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it.'

And beneath this, a single word had been written, in a hand Harry recognized as Hermione's. 'Pipes.'

It was as though somebody had flicked a light on in his brain.

"This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a basilisk; a giant serpent! That why I've been hearing that voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it. It's because I understand Parseltongue..." he said, growing excited. Harry looked up at the beds around him, each containing a different petrified individual.

"The basilisk kills people by looking at them. But no one's died, because no one looked it straight in the eye!" he said, realization flooding into him. "Colin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside it, but Colin just got Petrified. Justin... Justin must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick! Nick got the full blast of it, but he couldn't die again... and Hermione and that Ravenclaw prefect were found with a mirror next to them. Hermione had just realized the monster was a basilisk. I bet you anything she warned the first person she met to look around corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror and…"

Faykan was nodding vigorously, "It makes sense! When I peered into Justin's memories, all I could see were two giant yellow eyes. But they were all blurry; he couldn't see them clearly.

Ron's jaw just dropped at the tide of information that his two best friends were unleashing from just one note by Hermione.

"And Mrs. Norris?" he whispered eagerly.

Harry thought hard, picturing the scene on the night of Halloween. "The water..." he said slowly. "The flood from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I bet you Mrs. Norris only saw its reflection..."

Faykan scanned the page in Harry's hand again, and Harry looked over it as well. The more that he looked at it, the more it made sense.

"But how's the basilisk been getting around the place?" said Ron. "A giant snake... Someone would've seen..."

Harry, however, pointed at the word Hermione had scribbled at the foot of the page.

"Pipes," he said. "Pipes... Ron, it's been using the plumbing. I've been hearing that voice inside the walls..."

Faykan suddenly grabbed Harry's arm. "The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!" he said excitedly. "What if it's in a bathroom? What if it's in…"

"Moaning Myrtle's bathroom!" they all said at once. They sat there, excitement coursing through them, hardly able to believe it.

"This means," said Harry, "I can't be the only Parselmouth in the school. The Heir of Slytherin's one, too. That's how he's been controlling the basilisk."

"What're we going to do?" said Ron, whose eyes were flashing. "Should we go straight to McGonagall?"

"Let's go to the staff room," said Harry, jumping up. "She'll ought to be there in ten minutes. It's nearly break."

They ran out of the hospital wing and downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, they went straight into the deserted staff room. It was a large, paneled room full of dark, wooden chairs.

Harry and Ron paced around it, too excited to sit down, while Faykan watched the door for any signs of teachers. But the bell to signal break never came.

Instead, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified. "All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."

"Not another attack? Not now?" Faykan moaned.

"What'll we do?" said Ron, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"

"No," said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."

They hid themselves inside it, barely as it was cramped with three of them, and listened to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staff room door banging open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived.

"It has happened," she told the silent staff room. "A pair of students has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."

Professor Flitwick let out a squeal. Professor Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth. Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard and said, "How can you be sure?"

"The Heir of Slytherin," said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, "left another message. Right underneath the first one, `Their skeletons will lie in the Chamber forever.'"

Professor Flitwick burst into tears.

"Who?" said Madam Hooch, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. "Which students?"

"Ginny Weasley and Draco Malfoy," said Professor McGonagall.

Harry felt Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside him. Faykan had blanched whiter than Harry ever remembered seeing him go.

"We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow," said Professor McGonagall. "This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said..."

The staffroom door banged open again. For one wild moment, Harry was sure it would be Dumbledore, returning to save them all. But it was Lockhart, and he was beaming, which surprisingly lessened the idea that he had good news.

"So sorry, dozed off… what have I missed?"

"Just the man," Snape said sarcastically, stepping forward, "the very man. A pair of students has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last…"

Lockhart's smiled faded and his face paled.

"That's right, Gilderoy," chipped in Professor Sprout. "Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"

"We'll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy," said Professor McGonagall, cutting off his meager protests. "Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We'll make sure everyone's out of your way. You'll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free rein at last, just as you've always wanted."

Lockhart gazed desperately around him, but nobody came to the rescue. He didn't look remotely handsome anymore. His lip was trembling, and in the absence of his usually toothy grin, he looked weak chinned and feeble.

"V-very well," he said. "I'll… I'll be in my office, getting… getting ready." And he left the room.

"Right," said Professor McGonagall, nostrils were flaring, "that's got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories?" The teachers rose and left, one by one.

It was probably the worst day of Harry's entire life. He, Faykan, Ron, Fred, and George sat together in a corner of the Gryffindor common room, unable to say anything to each other. Percy wasn't there. He had gone to send an owl to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, then shut himself up in his dormitory.

Ron and Faykan were both very subdued. Ron was certain that Ginny had known something important for her to be taken, and Faykan blamed himself for not stopping Draco from going after her to find out what she knew.

"D'you know what?" said Ron after a long silence. "I think we should go and see Lockhart. Tell him what we know. He's going to try and get into the Chamber. We can tell him where we think it is, and tell him it's a basilisk in there."

Neither Harry nor Faykan found any reason to argue against him, even though they both knew it might be an effort in futility. The Gryffindors around them were so miserable, and felt so sorry for the Weasleys, that nobody tried to stop them as they got up, crossed the room, and left out the portrait hole.

Darkness was falling as they walked down to Lockhart's office. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on inside it. They could hear scraping, thumps, and hurried footsteps. Harry knocked and there was a sudden silence from inside. Then the door opened the tiniest crack and they saw one of Lockhart's eyes peering through it.

"Oh… Mr. Potter, Mr. Undol, Mr. Weasley…" he said, opening the door a bit wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment, if you would be quick…"

"Professor, we've got some information for you," said Harry. "We think it'll help you."

"Err, well… it's not terribly…" The side of Lockhart's face that they could see looked very uncomfortable. "I mean, well all right…"

He opened the door and they entered. His office had been almost completely stripped. Two large trunks stood open on the floor. Robes, jade green, lilac, and midnight blue, had been hastily folded into one of them; books were jumbled untidily into the other. The photographs that had covered the walls were now crammed into boxes on the desk.

"Are you going somewhere?" said Harry.

"Err, well, yes," said Lockhart, ripping a life size poster of himself from the back of the door as he spoke and starting to roll it up. "Urgent call, unavoidable… got to go…"

"What about my sister?" said Ron jerkily.

"Well, as to that… most unfortunate…" said Lockhart, avoiding their eyes as he wrenched open a drawer and started emptying the contents into a bag. "No one regrets more than I…"

"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!" Ron argued back. "You can't go now! Not with all the Dark stuff going on here!"

"Well, I must say, when I took the job…" Lockhart muttered, now piling socks on top of his robes. "Nothing in the job description, didn't expect…"

"You mean you're running away?" said Harry disbelievingly. "After all that stuff you said you did in your books…"

"Books can be misleading," said Lockhart delicately.

"You're a fraud…" Faykan said in a low voice. "You've merely taken credit for what other wizards have done over the years."

"Is there anything you can do?" Ron said in disgust.

"Yes," Lockhart said, slightly ruffled, "I'm rather adept at memory charms, or else those other wizards would have gone blabbing, and I'd've never sold another book."

He banged the lids of his trunks shut and locked them. "Let's see," he said. "I think that's everything. Yes. Only one thing left…"

He pulled out his wand and turned to find Faykan's already in his face.

"I don't think so…" Faykan said coldly as Ron relieved Lockhart of his wand and deftly tossed it out the open window.

"What d'you want me to do?" said Lockhart weakly. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."

"You're in luck," said Harry, forcing Lockhart to walk ahead of them at wand point. "We think we know where it is. And what's inside it. Let's go."

They marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

They sent Lockhart in first. Harry was pleased to see that he was shaking.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.

"Oh, it's you," she said when she saw Faykan, Harry and Ron. "What do you want this time?"

"To ask you how you died," said Harry.

Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

"Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then…"

Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining. "I died."

"How?" said Faykan.

"No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away..." She looked dreamily at Harry. "And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses."

"Where exactly did you see the eyes?" said Harry.

"Somewhere there," said Myrtle, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.

Harry and Faykan hurried over to it, while Ron watched Lockhart. He was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face.

It looked like an ordinary sink. Faykan examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. But it was Harry that saw it: Scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

"That tap's never worked," said Myrtle brightly as he tried to turn it.

"Harry," said Faykan. "Say something in Parseltongue."

"But…" Harry thought hard. The only times he'd ever managed to speak Parseltongue were when he'd been faced with a real snake. He stared hard at the tiny engraving, trying to imagine it was real.

"Open up," he said.

He looked at Faykan, who shook his head.

"English," he said.

Harry looked back at the snake, willing himself to believe it was alive. If he moved his head, the candlelight made it look as though it were moving.

"Open up," he said.

Except that the words weren't what he heard; a strange hissing had escaped him, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into. Harry heard Ron gasp behind him and looked up again. He had made up his mind what he was going to do.

"I'm going down there," he said.

He needed to go; now they had found the entrance to the Chamber; especially if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny or Draco might still be alive.

"Me too," both Faykan and Ron said in unison.

There was a pause. They all turned to look at Lockhart.

"Well, you hardly seem to need me," said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. "I'll just…"

He put his hand on the door knob, but Faykan and Ron both pointed their wands at him. "You can go first," Ron snarled.

White faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening. "Boys…" he said, his voice feeble. "Boys, what good will it do?"

"Better you than us," Faykan said snidely. Harry jabbed him in the back with his own wand. Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe.

"I really don't think…" he started to say, but Ron gave him a push, and he slid out of sight.

"Oh, fox boy," said Myrtle lazily, and Faykan turned to her. "If you die down there, you and your cute friends are welcome to share my toilet…"

Faykan shivered slightly, and jumped into the pipe without responding. Harry followed, quickly lowering himself slowly into the pipe, then letting go.

It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind him he could hear Ron, thudding slightly at the curves.

And then, just as he had begun to worry about what would happen when he hit the ground, the pipe leveled out, and he shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand up straight in. Faykan was getting to his feet a little ways away, while Lockhart stood there covered in slime and white as a ghost. Harry stood aside as Ron came whizzing out of the pipe behind him.

"I told you she was creepy…" Faykan said quietly.

"We must be miles under the school," said Harry, his voice echoing in the black tunnel.

"Under the lake, probably," said Ron, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls.

All four of them turned to stare into the darkness ahead.

"Lumos!" Harry muttered to his wand and it lit again. "C'mon," he said to Faykan, Ron and Lockhart, and off they went, their footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.

The tunnel was so dark that they could only see a little distance ahead. Their shadows on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wand light.

"Remember," Harry said quietly as they walked cautiously forward, "any sign of movement, close your eyes right away.

But the tunnel was quiet as a grave, and the first unexpected sound they heard was a loud crunch as Faykan stepped on what turned out to be a rat's skull. Harry lowered his wand to look at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones. Trying very hard not to imagine what Ginny or Draco might look like if they found them, Harry led the way forward, around a dark bend in the tunnel.

"Harry, there's something up there…" said Ron hoarsely, grabbing Harry's shoulder.

They froze, watching. Harry could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.

"Maybe it's asleep," he breathed, glancing back at the other two. Lockhart's hands were pressed over his eyes. Harry turned back to look at the thing, his heart beating so fast it hurt.

Very slowly, his eyes as narrow as he could make them and still see, Harry edged forward, his wand held high. Faykan followed right behind him.

The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

"Blimey," said Ron weakly. There was a sudden movement behind them. Gilderoy Lockhart's knees had given way. "Get up," said Ron sharply, pointing his wand at Lockhart.

Lockhart got to his feet, and then he dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground. Harry jumped forward, but too late, Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Ron's wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face.

"The adventure ends here, boys!" he said. "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school; tell them I was too late to save the students, and that you three tragically lost your minds at the sight of their mangled bodies. So… you first Mr. Potter, say goodbye to your memories!"

He raised Ron's Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled, "Obliviate!" at the same moment Faykan threw himself in front of Harry, conjuring a shining blue shield around them. Lockhart's spell was reflected back at him, directly into Ron's wand.

The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb. Harry and Faykan flung their arms over their heads and ran, slipping over the coils of snake skin, out of the way of great chunks of tunnel ceiling that was thundering to the floor. Next moment, he and Faykan were standing alone, gazing at a solid wall of broken rock.

"Ron!" he shouted. "Are you okay? Ron!"

"I'm here!" came Ron's muffled voice from behind the rock fall. "I'm okay, Lockharts gone though, I think he's been buried under the rocks…"

Harry looked up at the tunnel ceiling. Huge cracks had appeared in it. He had never tried to break apart anything as large as these rocks by magic, and now didn't seem a good moment to try; what if the whole tunnel caved in? They were wasting time. Ginny and Draco had already been in the Chamber of Secrets for hours... Harry knew there was only one thing to do.

"Wait there," he called to Ron. "I'll go on. If I'm not back in an hour…"

"Like hell you're going alone," Faykan said hotly.

"I'll try and shift some of this rock," said Ron, who seemed to be trying to keep his voice steady. "So you guys can… can get back through. And, Harry…"

"See you in a bit," said Harry, trying to inject some confidence into his shaking voice. And together he and Faykan set off past the giant snake skin.

Soon the distant noise of Ron straining to shift the rocks was gone. The tunnel turned and turned again. Every nerve in Harry's body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did. Faykan had drawn out his sword from within his robes, as he carried it everywhere since the adventure in the forest. The blue glow of the blade shined around them in the darkened cave, tossing shadows everywhere. And then, at last, as they crept around yet another bend, Harry saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.

The boys approached the snakes, and Harry's throat became very dry. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive. Harry could guess what he had to do. He cleared his throat, and the emerald eyes seemed to flicker.

"Open, "said Harry, in a low, faint hiss.

The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside, Faykan right behind him, sword light illuminating the way ahead.

Potential Spoilers Ahead, You have been Warned

Not much in the chapter itself has been changed, as it was merely a build-up to the final confrontation in the next chapter, but I did want to touch a points that I found were somewhat blurry, and will come up later. namely that of Ron wand exploding when a spell struck it directly. I always found it somewhat odd that, for all the magical properties that was part of the core of every wand, yet they could break like nothing more than a thin stick with no reaction whatsoever. when I initially wrote this, mainly it was because I needed a reason for the ceiling to collapse, but eventually it grew into an important point that will come up several times later on, namely in the end of the 4th book and beyond, that it made sense for the magical foci to have a magic within themselves that would rupture when irrevocably broken.

Still, 2 chapters left for CoS, and I need to get a move on in editing Book 3... no comment, so I will let you all go. You're all wonderful, and have a wonderful pair of weeks until we meet again with the next update!

~F