I want to thank Animevampfreak10 for noticing a flaw in the previous chapter - Nearly-Headless Nick was actually petrified, but I had him escort the class out of Potions…I'm an idiot. lol

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 18

Later that day we had Defense Against the Dark Arts with Lockhart…I would rather have been anywhere else. As usual, Lockhart was going on about how much of an amazing wizard that he is and that he's fought off so many things in his lifetime. I have to say, it was getting rather old.

"And I ran through the forest and took out every single ghoul without a single scratch on me!" Lockhart told us, practically jumping up and down.

Everyone in the room looked extraordinarily bored with the entire class. No one wanted to learn when there was a large possibility of being attacked at any minute.

"Oh come on!" Lockhart said. "The culprit has been taken, you all have nothing to worry about!"

"Hagrid isn't the heir of Slytherin!" Dean said. "They have no evidence against him!"

"The Minister of Magic wouldn't have just taken away an innocent man, now would he?" Lockhart smiled. "Not that it really made a difference. I had the entire situation under control, it-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I stood up. "You didn't have anything under control!"

"Miss Potter, no need to use such foul language-"

"You haven't heard foul yet, Lockhart," I snarled.

"Oh, my dear Emily, I understand that you have a bit of a rough time dealing with me," Lockhart nodded. "It's understandable! I intimidate you because I am so famous and-"

"Famous for what?" I said. "Writing a bunch of phony books and dressing like a complete and utter idiot?"

Lockhart went red in the face and I heard a few people start to laugh.

"You've crossed the line Miss Potter…"

"I honestly don't care."

"Emily, that was brilliant!" Ron said at dinner that night.

"You told off Lockhart?" Fred asked.

"You're my hero!" George said throwing his arm around me.

"He gets on my nerves," I said. "He always goes on about how he is a wonderful wizard, but he's not!"

We went on eating dinner and Harry told me something that Ron and he had noticed during class earlier that day. They had seen spiders crawling towards the Forbidden Forest and apparently Hagrid had told them to follow the spiders if they saw them.

"So we're going to go tonight?" I asked.

"Yeah, when everyone goes to sleep, we're going to follow the spiders."

Later that night we had to wait until all of the others went to bed before we could make it out of the castle. This time we all managed to make it towards Hagrid's hut.

When we got there, we burst through the door to find Fang sitting on the ground near the fire. He ran over to us just as we saw something else.

"Look!" Ron said, pointing to the wall.

Going down the wall and out of the window were several small spiders. We left the invisibility cloak in the hut as we took Fang into the forest with us. We followed them for a while inside of the dark forest, Ron flinching at every noise that was in there.

"Why are we following the spiders into the forest?" Ron asked. "It's forbidden for a reason - there could be werewolves or something in here."

"Stop being a baby," I muttered. "Hagrid told us to follow the spiders, remember?"

We all took out our wands and continued following the spiders for a good ways until we reached what looked like a giant cave.

When we got into the cave, it appeared to be what I would imagine to be Ron's worst nightmare coming to life. The entire cave was filled wall to wall with giant spiders. The biggest one crawled to us, Ron stepped back a few feet and tripped on the ground.

"You aren't Hagrid," the spider said as I helped Ron stand up.

"Um, no," Harry said.

"Kill them…" the large spider muttered.

"Wait!" Harry said. "We were sent by Hagrid."

"Why would Hagrid send strangers here?"

Harry's face went pale as he looked around the cave further and I jumped into the conversation.

"He's in trouble," I told the spider.

"Aragog!" the other spiders chanted behind the large spider. "Let us eat them!"

"That's not creepy…" I whispered sarcastically.

The large spider, who I assumed was Aragog, moved closer toward us and I noticed the many eyes that were on his face. He looked to be about ten times the size of the average spider.

"They think that he's been setting something on the students," Harry said.

"That's impossible - that happened years ago!" Aragog said. "Why else would I be forced to live out in this forest? They sent me away when that happened because they thought that I was the monster within the Chamber of Secrets."

"So, you've never harmed anyone at Hogwarts?" I asked. "And you aren't the monster?"

"No," he said. "I've never harmed anyone inside of Hogwarts. Hagrid would not allow me to roam the castle, so I couldn't. The only thing I ever heard about was the girl that was killed in the bathroom."

"Do you know what killed the girl?" Harry asked.

I looked around the cave and saw Ron's face that was filled with fear. He had told us before that his greatest fear was spiders, so that explained why he was so quiet.

"It's a creature that we spiders have feared for a long time…"

"Well, what is it?" I asked.

"We don't speak of it!" the spider said irritably.

"Fine then…" I muttered.

I felt Ron tugging on my shirt and I turned around to see him pointing ahead. When I looked at the spiders, I noticed how close they were getting to us. They were starting to surround us.

"Well…" I said. "Aragog…it's been real, it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun - I think we better be off…"

"Off to where?" Aragog asked. "You all don't think that I will be letting you leave, do you?"

We all looked at each other in disbelief, half-hoping that he was joking, but we knew that he wasn't. We started to back away slowly as the spiders moved closer towards us.

"Goodbye friends of Hagrid!" Aragog said.

I reached for the wand that I had in my pocket, but the spiders were faster. Harry, Ron, and I all ran out of the cave, hoping to move quickly enough to escape the spiders.

"What do we do?" Ron yelled.

Suddenly there was a blinding light in front of us and a loud noise that sounding like a car horn. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that it was Mr. Weasley's flying car, driving itself around the forest.

The spiders cleared away from it and we all ran and jumped into the car, avoiding spiders in the process. Once we were inside, the car took off and it drove itself through the trees and out towards the castle. The large spiders behind us were keeping up though.

I took out my wand and started throwing every spell that I knew at them, hitting many of them by doing so. Harry joined me in sending curses towards the spiders, but many of them stuck with us.

By the time I saw the light from the moon coming in through the trees, I knew we were almost at the castle and away from the spiders at last. When we made it outside of the forest and we were in front of Hagrid's house, the car threw us out of it.

Fang, who was cowering in the back seat of the car, ran out of it and immediately to the door that led into Hagrid's house. When we got through the door, we saw the cloak sitting in the middle of the floor and grabbed it and headed back to the castle.

"Did you hear what Aragog said?" I asked them.

"I was too busy worrying about my life, so no," Ron said.

I rolled my eyes at him and went on.

"He mentioned a girl that was killed the last time the chamber was opened…"

"We already knew someone was killed Emily," Harry said. "That isn't exactly new information."

"Yes, but he said that she was killed in a bathroom."

"So?" Harry and Ron said together.

"You two are complete idiots!" I muttered. "Moaning Myrtle!"

Their mouths dropped open and they stopped walking. I had to stop too because I had to stay under the cloak.

"No way," Ron said.

"She does haunt the bathroom," I said. "Do you know of anyone else that was killed in a bathroom at Hogwarts?

We were all waiting around in the common room once again for news from McGonagall. She had told us earlier that she needed to talk with all of us.

"Do you think that Dumbledore is coming back?" Seamus asked.

"I doubt it," Dean said. "They haven't actually caught the Heir of Slytherin."

"That's true…"

"Maybe they decided to cancel our exams…" Neville said hopefully.

"I wish…" I muttered.

After a few minutes, McGonagall came through the door and announced that the Mandrakes were fully grown and were going to be ready to bring back the people that were petrified tonight. Everyone cheered.

After the news, we all went down to the Great Hall to eat. Everyone was extremely happy that the Mandrakes were finished and everyone was going to be coming back from being petrified. That is, except for the Slytherins who remained quiet the entire time.

"Look at Malfoy!" George pointed over to the Slytherin table.

"He has a black eye!" Neville laughed.

"You must have hit him good!" Fred laughed.\

I still felt a little bit guilty that I had hit him - don't get me wrong, it felt great to punch him in his face, but Snape made me feel terrible for doing it.

I looked up and saw Lockhart talking animatedly to Snape who didn't even appear to be listening, but staring around the room. When he saw me looking at him, he held up his hand to Lockhart and stepped down from the table.

Snape walked around for a little while, but ended up next to the Gryffindor table. When I saw him standing behind me, I turned to him.

"Is it true that you said something to Professor Lockhart?" Snape asked me.

"What have you heard?" I asked him.

"Well, I've heard from several people that you called him a fake in front of the entire class, but Lockhart tells me otherwise."

"What is he telling you?"

"He mentioned something about you being jealous of his fame and storming out of the classroom."

"That is definitely a lie," I said.

"Just making sure…"

Snape walked away slowly, observing the tables around us as if he was interested in what was going on, though I knew that he wasn't.

"What was that about?" Ron asked me.

I looked around for a minute, wondering if he was actually talking to me.

"What?"

"Oh, I don't know," Ron said sarcastically. "Snape just strolls over here and has a decent conversation with you. What's his deal?"

"We've had 'decent conversations' before Ronald," I muttered. "Just because he doesn't talk to you, doesn't mean that he doesn't talk to anyone else."

"I just think that it's weird that he hates Harry so much, but he obviously likes you," Ron said.

"Maybe it's because I actually care about his class, unlike some people."

"It doesn't really make that much sense Emily," Harry said. "He hates me because he hated our dad…why wouldn't he hate you just as much for being his daughter?"

I looked over at my Potions teacher wondering why it was that he treated me so differently.

Thanks for reading - I hope that you liked it! So, I'm still a little confused as to who everyone want Emily's godfather to be, so I decided to make a poll for it. If you want to vote on who Emily's godfather is going to be - please do - then just go to my profile page and it'll be there. I'm not going to keep it there all that long, so please vote quickly! As always, tell me any suggestions that you have and tell me what you think of the chapter and the story in general! PLEASE REVIEW!