Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter…why would I be writing on FanFiction if I did?

Chapter 8

Harry and I walked towards Lockhart's office that night, dreading what was ahead. Ron had left us when we passed by the trophy room, and I silently wished that I had gotten that job instead.

When we made it to the door, we stood in front of it for a moment - trying to delay seeing Lockhart as much as possible. I knocked on the door after a few minutes and it was answered almost immediately.

"Hello children!" he smiled. "Come in, come in!"

I immediately wished that I could crawl into a hole and stay there for the rest of the night, I would rather be anywhere else than right here.

"You two will be writing the addresses on the envelopes to my wonderful fans," Lockhart said cheerfully.

We sat down in front of his desk that was filled with various letters. We took the envelopes and wrote down the names of the people that Lockhart was writing back to. Those fools.

"Isn't this exciting?" Lockhart asked us.

"I've never been happier," I said sarcastically, glaring at the teacher who remained oblivious.

A few minutes passed by before we were interrupted by someone at the door.

"Hello, Severus, my good friend!" Lockhart smiled widely at Snape.

Snape just glared at him, a look of disgust across his face.

"I believe that you borrowed a cauldron of mine," Snape muttered.

"Ah, yes!" Lockhart jumped up and walked over to a nearby table.

As Lockhart searched for the cauldron, I looked at Snape with pleading eyes, trying to silently beg him to take me from the room.

"Here you go!" Lockhart handed the cauldron over.

"Yes…" Snape muttered and his eyes flickered back to mine. "I believe that I require Miss Potter's assistance once more."

"I believe that this young lady is in detention, Severus," he said. "Do you think it could wait?"

Snape's eyes narrowed as he stepped into the room.

"I was wondering if she could assist me in grading papers, I have far too many," Snape said. "I could let her have the remainder of her detention with me, I believe that you will still have some help from Mr. Potter."

"I guess that you could borrow her Severus, but you owe me!" Lockhart beamed.

Snape just stared at Lockhart with an expression that was comparable to that of Kristen Stewart.

"Yes…" Snape muttered and waited for me to join him at the door.

When we left the room, I glanced back at my brother who looked relieved that he didn't have to go with me. I knew that Snape could be really harsh, but he beats Lockhart any day.

"Thanks," I said as we walked towards his office.

Snape nodded in response as we made our way towards the dungeons.

"I believe that Lockhart has become quite fond of the two of you," he said.

"Unfortunately," I said.

I noticed the corners of his mouth twitch as he opened up the doors to his office.

"I would have offered for your brother to come as well," Snape said. "However, I do not believe that he has the knowledge to be able to look over work that he couldn't even do himself."

I could hear the dislike in his voice when he spoke of Harry and didn't really understand it. I guess it was what Dumbledore had said the year before: Harry resembled my father, someone that had tormented Snape as a child. I guess that isn't something that you could forget easily.

"There are some essays from the first years that I need you to grade, I believe that you remember how to make an antidote to common poisons…?"

"I remember," I said as I picked up a pile of the essays.

I sat down at a table near his desk and started on the essays. I recognized some of the people that had written the papers, including Ron's sister and Colin Creevey. Most of the first years didn't do very well on the paper and I decided to write what they had messed up on.

Snape sat at his desk, looking over some of the other papers that the older students had turned in, frowning every now and then.

Then I heard a noise. It was a voice that made my blood run cold.

"Come…come to me…let me rip you…let me tear you…let me kill you…"

I looked around the room frantically, trying to find out who was talking. Snape raised an eyebrow when he saw me looking around the room.

"Did you hear that?" I asked him.

"Hear what?"

"That voice…" I said, thinking that I might be going crazy.

Snape looked at me curiously, then at the clock.

"I believe that your time is up, Miss Potter," he told me, looking a little concerned. "Perhaps you should go off to bed…"

I stood up slowly, still looking around the room. When I handed in the essays that I had graded, I noticed that Snape was still giving me that concerned look.

The next morning during breakfast I talked to Harry about what I had heard during detention the day before.

"You heard it too?" I asked him.

"Yes," Harry said. "It was creepy…it sounded demented."

I nodded and then went back to my breakfast. No one else that we had talked to had heard the voice, it was only Harry and me.

"How was your detention?" I asked Ron. "I didn't see you come in last night either."

"It was dreadful!" Ron said. "I had to clean off this one trophy a million times because I kept barfing up more slugs. It couldn't be much worse than yours though - Harry told me that Snape made you go with him."

"Yeah, what did he make you do?" Harry asked.

Hermione sat down next to Harry when she came in and only heard half of the conversation.

"I thought you had detention with Professor Lockhart," she said, reaching for a piece of toast.

"I did," I told her. "Snape came in and said that he could use my help."

"Help with what?" she asked.

"I just had to grade a few papers, that's all. He said that he knew that I knew about the potion and I would understand whether or not the first years had written their papers correctly."

Hermione nodded, but still had a look of wonder etched on her face. She wanted to know something, but wasn't asking me.

"What?" I asked her.

"Nothing…" she said, not changing her obvious wonder.

I narrowed my eyes in her direction, knowing that she was keeping something from me. I wanted to know and it almost bothered me that she wasn't saying anything.

In the common room the following week, I ran into Fred and George in the common room. They were huddled around a table, trying to hide something from view.

"What are you doing?" I asked them as I walked over to them.

They both spun around quickly, trying to conceal whatever they were working on behind them.

"Oh," Fred said with relief. "I thought you were Percy…"

"Wow," I said. "Do I really sound that much like a man?"

"No, it's not that," Fred said.

"It's just that Percy's been sneaking up on us every five minutes lately…" George said. "It's rather irritating."

I looked back over to the table to see what they had been hiding. It appeared to fireworks.

"What is this for?" I asked them, pointing to the fireworks.

"Oh," Fred said. "We're trying to get this thing to work-"

"We made it," George said proudly.

"-but it keeps exploding…" Fred finished.

"That's unfortunate," I said. "Could I look at it?"

"Be my guest," Fred ushered me over.

I looked at the contraption and several similar ones that lay beside it. They told me that they had been trying it out for a while, trying to fix it, but it never seemed to work. The fireworks always exploded before anyone could see the fireworks.

"Fireworks are kind of supposed to explode though, aren't they?" I asked.

"Well…yes…kind of…" George said.

Let us show you," Fred said as he lit the firework. "Step back!"

The fire went up the fuse and just when it hit the package, the entire thing blew up. There was smoke everywhere, but no sign of any fireworks.

"See?" Fred and George said together.

"Hmmm…" I thought. "Would you mind if I tried something?"

The motioned towards the copies of the fireworks that they had made. When I walked over there, I took out my wand and did a few spells on them. I wasn't sure if they would work, but it couldn't really hurt.

"Try it now…" I said handing it to them.

Fred lit the fuse once again and we all backed away from it. Just when we expected it to go up in some again, we saw something different. Out of the package came salamander that flew around the room. It changed colors constantly from white lights, blue lights, and purple lights. Then, when it flew over us, it opened its mouth and showered us in multicolored stars.

"Wow…" I said.

After I had helped them fix all of the other fireworks that they had, they set them all loose in the school. There wasn't a single person in the castle that hadn't seen at least one of the salamander fireworks that the twins had set off. It went on for a while until McGonagall saw Fred and George setting them up in the Great Hall during dinner one night.

"We have to go to what?" I asked Harry.

"It's a death day party," Harry explained. "Nearly Headless Nick wanted us all to come…I couldn't say no, he just helped me get out of trouble with Filch!"

It was now October and all anyone could talk about was the upcoming Halloween feast. It was supposed to be incredible this year and now Harry was saying that we would have to miss it to go to celebrate someone's death. None of us really wanted to go to this party, but Harry had already promised Nick that we would go and Hermione refused to break that promise.

So, on October 31, instead of going to the Great Hall, we made our way to the dungeons to celebrate Nick's death. When we went into the room, we were all horrified. The room was incredibly freezing and there was a loud screeching noise that filled the entire area. There were ghosts everywhere too - we were the only people there.

"Welcome to my party!" Nick floated over to us.

He showed us around the room and introduced us to several ghosts, including the Fat Friar and the Bloody Baron.

"Oh no," Hermione said. "Walk this way, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle…"

We all walked in the other direction when we saw the miserable ghost close to us.

"I think I've seen her before…" I said.

"You probably have," Hermione said. "She haunts the bathroom on the first floor."

I glanced over at her and remembered that I had only seen her for a little while earlier in the year. I had gone into the bathroom, but was dragged out and told not to use that bathroom again by Pavarti Patil. She said that there was no way to use the toilet without hearing her crying the entire time, so I had avoided that room as much as I could.

"I try to avoid that toilet as much as I can…" Hermione said. "She can get very annoying…"

We walked over to where Harry and Ron were standing. In front of them sat a table that was filled with rotting food. It smelled terrible.

"It's not like they can eat anyway," Harry said as he pinched his nose from the smell.

"Can we get away from here…I'm going to be sick," Hermione gagged.

We walked away from the table and avoided as many ghosts as we could. I was silently wishing that I had just gone to the Halloween feast instead. This was horrible.

"Hello," Peeves said as he came over to us. "I couldn't help but overhear you talking about Myrtle…pity if she heard what you had been sayin' Miss."

Hermione's face went pale.

"HEY MRTLE!" Peeves yelled.

"Please don't tell her!" Hermione begged him. "She'll be really upset!"

Then the other ghosts came over to us and had a very depressed look on her face.

"What…?" she said.

"Hello…" Hermione said. "Nice to see you again…"

"Those two girls were talkin' about you," Peeves said.

"No we weren't!" I said.

"We were just saying how lovely you look tonight," Hermione lied.

"You're lying!" Myrtle cried and she quickly flew out of the room.

"Someone's dramatic…" Ron muttered.

I never thought that the party would end, but when it finally did I couldn't have been much happier.

"If I would have stayed in there any longer, I would have died myself!" Ron announced as we walked away from the dungeons.

Then I heard the voice again.

"…rip…tear…kill…"

I stopped walking as I felt a sudden chill go through my body. Harry stood beside me and he was looking directly at the wall where the voice appeared to be coming from. Harry and I both walked over to the wall and put our ears up against it.

"What is it?" Hermione asked a few feet away from us, both her and Ron looked confused.

I held up my hand to silence them as the voice started speaking again.

"…kill…time to kill…"

The voice appeared to be moving away from us.

"Follow us!" Harry told Ron and Hermione as we ran after the cold voice.

We ran throughout the corridor and down a set of stairs towards the first floor of the castle. What was going on? Who was this voice coming from?

"What's going-" Ron started to ask.

"QUIET!" Harry said.

Then Harry and I heard the voice say something from the floor just above us.

"…I smell blood…I SMELL BLOOD!"

I started to panic.

"It's going to kill someone!" Harry and I said together as we ran up the stairs towards the voice.

Ron and Hermione followed close behind us, still confused as to what was going on. They didn't hear the voice, so we probably looked a little crazy. Maybe we were. When we made it to the second floor, there still wasn't anything.

"Seriously, what is going on?" Ron asked, sounding panicked. "I don't hear anything!"

Then Hermione let out a scream and pointed to the end of the corridor. On the wall, large words had been painted between two torches.

The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

"What is that?" Ron said pointing to something that was hanging below the message. We walked closer to the thing and I noticed that the entire area was flooded. Then I saw what was hanging there and stepped backwards.

It was Mrs. Norris.

I hope that you all liked it! Tell me what you think! :)

Who thinks they know what Hermione was thinking about in the beginning of this chapter? I want to see what you all can guess what it was.

By the way, I've decided that I might start dedicating chapters to some people. Like, if you came up with an idea that I will be using in the chapter, I'll dedicate it to you!