The Chamber of Secrets
It was unbearable, but he did it.
During breakfast, Arthur gathered all of the Merlon brothers and told them all separate from everyone else on the Gryffindor table during breakfast about Mary and the diary.
At first, they were all shocked into pure silence, not even touching their breakfasts as they stared downwards. But then Jack broke the unbearable silence.
"It makes sense. It explains why she's been unlike herself ever since coming to Hogwarts." He said with a frown.
"She didn't even have a cold when I told her to have some Pepperup Potion, she was just dealing with being possessed by Riddle." Sam groaned.
"That look of terror on her face when she saw you had the diary makes much more sense now. She then took it back." David pointed out.
"And she must've tried getting rid of the diary by flushing it down the toilet. Yet she got it back." Kevin said.
"And this just confirms that Lucius Malfoy is nothing but scum." Arthur reminded them of his involvement and they all growled.
Despite knowing that Myrtle could tell Arthur and David about what killed her, it proved to be impossible to escape the teachers long enough to sneak off to the girls' bathroom next to the scene of the first attack.
Something then happened in their Transfiguration lesson that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of their heads for the first time in weeks. McGonagall, within ten minutes of the class, told them that their exams would start on the first of June, which was one week from today.
"Exams?" Seamus howled at her. "We're still getting exams?"
Neville's wand slipped out from his hand, causing a loud bang behind Arthur and vanishing one of the legs on his desk.
Arthur couldn't blame the reactions because with all of the attacks that have happened, exams would be the last thing the students would care about.
McGonagall restored it with one wave of her wand before turning and frowning at Seamus.
"The whole point of keeping the school open at this time is for you to receive your education." She said sternly. "The exams will therefore take place as usual, and I trust you are all revising hard."
It had never occurred to Arthur that exams would still go on considering the state of the castle. Of course, this led to mutinous muttering from the class, making McGonagall's scowl grow darker
"Professor Dumbledore's instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible. And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year."
Arthur then looked down at the pair of rabbits that he was supposed to turn into slippers. He learned a lot, naturally, but he just didn't know what could be useful in an exam.
And there's David, who looked as though he was told to live next to a house full of spiders and acromantulas.
"How can I take exams with this?" He said, holding up his wand, which now whistled loudly.
Three days before the first exam, McGonagall made another announcement during breakfast.
"I have good news." She said, making the Great Hall erupt instead of falling silent.
"Dumbledore's coming back!" Several people yelled in joy.
"You've caught the heir of Slytherin!" A girl from the Ravenclaw table squealed.
"Quidditch mates are back on!" Wood roared with excitement to no one's surprise.
Once the chatter subsided McGonagall continued on "Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. I need hardly remind you all that one of them may well be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit."
This caused a loud cheering in the Hall. Of course, at the Slytherin table, Draco didn't join in, which wasn't surprising to Arthur.
But Arthur and David looked at each other, knowing that the culprit was an unwilling one.
And speaking of that culprit, Mary came over and sat down next to David. She looked tense and nervous and her hands were twisting in her lap.
"Yes?" He asked her, not wanting to give away that he knew.
She didn't say anything, looking up and down the Gryffindor table with a look of fear on her face.
"Come on, it's alright." David tried easing her.
She now rocked back and forth, which reminded Arthur of Dobby as she seemed to be on the edge of revealing huge information, like the house elf.
"I've got to tell you something." She mumbled very carefully, avoiding eye contact with the two boys.
"What is it you want to tell us?" Arthur asked. She now looked like she was trying to find the right words.
"It's okay, Mary. Just tell us." David coaxed her.
She opened her mouth yet no sound came out. They then leaned forward so that no one could hear them.
"Does it have anything to do with the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen anything?" David asked, sounding like anyone else who is trying to figure it all out.
Mary drew a deep breath but then at that precise moment, Sam appeared in her field of vision, making her jump, give him a frightened look and ran off, leaving Arthur, David and Sam concerned.
"What was that about?" Sam asked as he joined the two.
"She seemed like she was about to tell us something important but she ran off upon spotting you." Arthur explained.
"Yeah, any reason for that, Sam?" David raised an eyebrow.
"Well… uh… she walked in on me once. I was… doing something and I asked her to not say anything about it." He said, his cheeks blushing pink.
Even if the mystery could be solved tomorrow without much help, Arthur still felt it was important to speak to Myrtle when he had the chance, which came finally at mid morning when Lockhart was leading the class to History of Magic.
Lockhart had often assured them all that any danger had passed, only to be proven wrong straight away was now truly convinced that it was now foolhardy to lead them safely through the corridors. His hair also wasn't as sleek as it always was as he had been up for most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.
"Mark my words…" He said, leading them around a 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 necessary."
Arthur rolled his eyes as he had to play into Lockhart's fragile ego.
"I think the same, sir." He said, shocking the whole class, even David, who dropped his books in surprise.
"Thank you, Arthur." Lockhart replied graciously as they waited for a long line of Hufflepuffs to pass. "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." David said, finally catching on with what Arthur's thinking. "You can just leave us here, sir. There's only just one more corridor."
"You know, Merlon, I think I will. I really should go and prepare my next class." And so he hurried off.
The two boys let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of them before darting their way down a side passage and hurried towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
Yet as they praised each other about that scheme of theirs….
"Pendergast! Merlon! What are you doing?"
McGonagall was there and her mouth was now the thinnest they have ever been.
Thankfully, Arthur was a quick thinker.
"We haven't seen Chrys for ages, Professor. We just want to go see her, telling her that the Mandrakes are nearly ready, even if she can't hear us." He told her, sounding saddened, feeling bad for lying like this, as he felt like he was manipulating her, just like Riddle did in that memory.
McGonagall stared at him and when Arthur thought she was going to explode on them, she ended up speaking in a croaky voice and even shed a tear, shocking Arthur to his core.
"Of course. Of course, I realise this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been… I quite understand. Yes, Pendergast, of course you may visit Miss Ranger. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."
Arthur and David walk off, amazed that they've missed detention and when they've reached and turned the corner, they heard McGonagall blow her nose.
They also knew that they had no choice but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they have McGonagall's permission to see Chrys.
She had let them in, though reluctantly.
"There's just no point talking to a Petrified person." She told them, though they didn't care as they took their seats next to Chrys. She wouldn't have an inkling that she had visitors.
"Could it be possible she saw what attacked her?" David asked, looking sadly at her rigid face. "Because if it snuck up on them all, no one would know."
"But how would you explain the expressions on their faces? It's clear they saw what attacked them." Arthur reminded him with that one detail.
He looked away from her face and laid eyes on her right hand where it lay clenched on top of her blankets. He noticed something so he bent closer, squinting his eyes and saw that it was a piece of paper scrunched up in her fist.
Arthur looked over his shoulder to make sure Madam Pomfrey was far away before pointing it out to David.
"See if you can get it out, it must be what she was looking for when she went to the library." He whispered, shifting the chair to block Arthur from Madam Pomfrey's view.
It wasn't easy as her hand was clamped so tight around the paper that Arthur had to make sure he didn't tear it. David kept watching as he tugged and twisted until finally, the paper was free from Chrys' grasp.
It turned out to be a page from an old library book. Arthur smoothed it out and then he and David read it:
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.
Beneath this was a single written word from Chrys: Pipes.
Everything had now finally come together.
"This is it! Slytherin's monster is a Basilisk! It's why I've been hearing that voice and no one else heard it because I can understand Parseltongue."
"But then why are the victims all Petrified if gazing into its eyes kills?" David questioned.
"Because… no one looked into its eyes directly. Think about it, Colin saw it through his camera. The Basilisk burned all the film up and he got Petrified. With Justin, he must've seen it go through Nearly Headless Nick, who got full blast of it, though he couldn't die again. With Chrys and Clearwater, that mirror was found alongside them, remember? Chrys must've grabbed it after realising that the monster's a Basilisk and warned whoever she met to look around corners with a mirror, which Clearwater pulled out and… well…." Arthur's mind went into rapid fire, finally connecting the dots.
David's jaw dropped and he too connected a dot.
"And Mrs Norris, there was all that water coming from Myrtle's bathroom. She must've seen its reflection."
Arthur then remembered what the page said about the roosters and his jaw dropped.
"Hagrid told me that something or someone killed the roosters. Mary must've been possessed and killed them so that none would be anywhere near the castle once the Chamber was opened."
"And let's not forget the spiders. The page says that they flee as it's their mortal enemy." David reminded him.
"And Chrys wrote down 'pipes', meaning that it used the plumbing inside the walls, which explains why I heard the voice move around the castle."
"Then… the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!" David gasped, holding Arthur's shoulders. "It must be in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom!"
The two sat there in silence, amazed at all of this new information.
"Mary must've controlled the Basilisk because Riddle possessed her… speaking in Parseltongue. He's the heir of Slytherin!" Arthur gasped in realisation.
"That's it, we have to tell the teachers about this." David snapped his fingers.
"Then let's go to the staff room. It's break time in ten minutes." Arthur said, jumping up to his feet.
They both ran downstairs, being able to avoid being discovered as they entered the empty staff room. It was a large and panelled room full of dark wooden chairs.
The two boys paced back and forth, too excited to sit down, as they waited for the bell to signal break.
However, instead of the bell, McGonagall's magically amplified voice echoed through the corridors.
"All students to return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."
Arthur spun to face David, both with looks of horror.
"Another attack, it has to be."
"What do we do?" David said, aghast.
Arthur looked around, knowing that they can't go to the Gryffindor common room as they'd most likely get caught leaving the staff room. His eyes finally landed on an ugly looking wardrobe to his left, full of what must be the teachers' cloaks.
"In there! We'll hear what they'll say and then we can tell them what we've just found out."
They instantly shot inside, leaving a crack open. They heard the rumbling of hundreds of people overhead and then the door banged open.
From between musty folds from the cloaks, they watched all the teachers file in. Some looked puzzled, others scared and then McGonagall arrived.
"It has happened." She said to the silent staff room. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."
Flitwick let out a squeal, Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth and Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard.
"How can you be sure?" He asked her.
"The heir of Slytherin…" She said, now very white. "...left another message. Right underneath the first one. Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever."
Flitwick burst into tears as both Arthur David hoped beyond hope that it wasn't who they thought it was.
"Who is it?" Madam Hooch said, having sunk into a chair, weak kneed. "Which student?"
"Mary Merlon."
Arthur felt David slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor as he himself felt like the ability to speak or move was lost.
"We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow." McGonagall said. "This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said -"
The door banged open once more and Lockhart entered, beaming.
"So sorry, dozed off, what have I missed?"
He didn't even notice that all the teachers looked at him with utter hatred. Snape then stepped forward.
"Just the man. The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last."
This made Lockhart blanch.
"That's right, Gilderoy." Sprout chipped in. "Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"
"I - well, I -" He spluttered, so unlike his usual bragging, charming ways.
"Yes, didn't you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?" Flitwick added in.
"D-did I? I don't recall…."
"I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn't had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested." Snape said. "Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?"
Lockhart then stared at all of his stone faced colleagues, all of whom looked like this was a chance to get rid of him.
"I… I really never…. You may have misunderstood…." He struggled, trying to snake his way out of what they're suggesting for him to do.
"We'll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy." McGonagall cut him off. "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."
Lockhart's gaze was one of desperation, as though he was looking for someone to rescue him, but no one did. He no longer looked handsome as his lip was trembling and he looked weak chinned and weedy taking over from his usual toothy grin.
"V-very well. I'll - I'll be in my office getting… gettin ready."
He then left the room.
"Right…" McGonagall said, nostrils flaring. "...that's got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go 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."
They all rose and left one by one.
This was truly the worst day of Arthur's life so far. He, David and the twins all sat together in a corner of the Gryffindor common room in complete silence. Sam wasn't with them because he went to send an owl to their parents and then shut himself in his dormitory.
This afternoon felt so long as Gryffindor Tower was also at its most crowded yet quietest.
When it was near sunset, Jack and Kevin both went up to bed, not able to sit there any longer.
"Riddle's using her." David finally spoke for the first time since they were in the wardrobe in the staff room. "He's using her for something other than possessing her. It's all that makes sense to me."
Arthur didn't want to know what would happen to her, it was just too horrible to think about.
He then saw the sun sinking into the horizon, blood red.
There is no way Arthur will let Riddle get away with this. He is not gonna let him close the school indefinitely and kill his best friend's sister.
"We must go see Lockhart. We'll tell him what we know, about the Basilisk, where the entrance is, everything, even if he's a weakling. We'll join him if we have to."
David looked at him and his face grew stone faced and determined before he nodded in agreement.
Because the Gryffindors around them were so miserable and felt so sorry for the Merlons, none of them stopped them as they got up and left through the portrait hole.
Darkness fell as they walked to Lockhart's office. There were noises coming from inside, making them frown. The sounds were that of scraping, thumps and hurried footsteps.
Arthur knocked, making a sudden silence come from inside.
The door then slid open with the tiniest crack and saw one of Lockhart's eyes peering through it.
"Oh… Mr Pendergast… Mr Merlon…." He said, opening the door a bit wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment. If you would be quick…."
"Professor, we have information that can help you." Arthur told him.
"Er, well, it's not terribly…." What they saw of his face looked very uncomfortable. "I mean… well, alright."
He opened the door and the two entered.
His office was almost entirely bare. There were two large trunks that were open. Robes of various colours were hastily folded into one of the trunks and books were jumbled into the other. All of the photographs that covered the walls were crammed into boxes on the desk
"Are you going somewhere?" Arthur snarled at the coward.
"Er, well, yes." Lockhartt said, ripping his life sized poster of himself from the back of the door as he spoke and started rolling it up. "Urgent call… unavoidable… got to go…."
"BUT WHAT ABOUT MY SISTER?" David yelled furiously at him.
"Well, as to that, most unfortunate." Lockhart said, avoiding eye contact as he opened a drawer and emptied its contents into a bag. "No one regrets more than I -"
"But you're supposed to be the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher! You can't just leave with what's going on here!" Arthur snapped at him.
"Well, I must say… when I took the job…" Lockhart muttered as he now piled socks on top of his robes. "...nothing in the job description… didn't expect…."
"So you're just running away like a coward? After all that you've done in your books?" Arthur questioned him.
"Books can be misleading." Lockhart replied delicately.
"But you wrote them!" Arthur shouted.
"My dear boy." Lockhart said as he straightened up with a frown. "Do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin. I mean, come on…."
Both of the boys had their eyes widened and their jaws drop to his confession.
"We knew it! You're just a narcissistic fraud! You took credit for what other people have done!" Arthur spat in utter disgust at the man in front of him.
"Arthur, Arthur…" Lockhart shook his head impatiently. "...it's not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved. I had to track these people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my Memory Charms. No, it's been a lot of work, Arthur. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long hard slog."
He then shut his trunks and locked them with a bang.
"Let's see. I think that's everything. Yes. Only one thing left." Lockhart pulled his wand out and turned to them.
"Awfully sorry, boys, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you now. Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book…."
Arthur was fast as he reached for his wand in time. Lockhart wasn't able to raise his wand when Arthur bellowed "Expelliarmus!"
Lockhart got blasted backwards, falling over one of his trunks. His wand also flew in the air before David caught it and shot it out of the open window.
"It's your fault Snape taught us that one." Arthur spat with fury, kicking away Lockhart's trunk. Lockhart looked up at him, once more weedy as Arthur pointed his wand right at him.
"What d'you want me to do?" He said like a weakling. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."
"Yeah, well, unlike you, we actually know where the entrance to the Chamber is and what's inside it. Now move." David got right up to his face, eyes full of contempt as Arthur got him up to his feet at wandpoint.
They forced him out of his office and out of the DADA classroom to the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
They had Lockhart enter first, both pleased to see him shaking.
Myrtle was sitting on the cistern of the end toilet.
"Oh, it's you." She said upon seeing Arthur. "What do you want this time?"
"To know how you died." He got straight to the point.
Myrtle now seemed like a completely different person when he said that. It was as though he said something flattering.
"Ooooh, it was dreadful." She relished. "It happened right in here. I died in this very cubicle. 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 -" She swelled importantly, her face shining. "I died."
"How exactly?" Arthur asked.
"No idea." Myrtle said 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 then looked dreamily. "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 did you see these eyes?"
"Over there." She pointed to the sinks.
Arthur and David walked up to them with Lockhart standing well back with utter terror on his face.
The two boys looked closely at each of the sinks, inside and out. That's when Arthur saw it. On one of the taps was the design of a snake.
"That tap's never worked." Myrtle brightly said as he turned it and no water came out.
"Say something in Parseltongue." David told him.
Arthur focused on the snake, forcing himself to believe that it was a living, breathing creature. He moved his head and in the candlelight, it looked like it was moving.
"Open." He said, hearing a strange hissing leave his mouth.
A loud thunk was heard before some rumbling from the structure the sinks were built on. The three watched as the top of the structure lifted off and hovered higher. Then they backed up as the sinks all splintered apart and opened outward until they stopped. The sink with the snake on the tap then lowered itself into a grate, which closed over it.
They looked down and saw a large pipe exposed. It was large enough for a man to fall down.
"I'm going down there." Arthur said. He just had to go. Even if there's the slimmest of chances that Mary was still alive, he'd still go down there.
"And so will I." David sided with him.
"Well, you hardly seem to need me." Lockhart said, with a shadow of his old smile. "I'll just -"
Right as he placed his hand on the door knob, both boys drew their wands out and pointed them at him.
"You're going first." David growled.
Being wandless, Lockhart was white faced and approached the opening.
"Boys…" His voice sounded feeble. "...boys, what good will it do?"
Arthur jabbed his back with his wand, making him fall down into the pipe until he was out of sight. Arthur took a deep breath before he jumped down.
He ended up sliding down dark and slimy tunnels with pipes branching off into different directions, though none of them were as large as the one he slid down, which twisted and turned, sloping downwards steeply, going deep below the school deeper than the dungeons. He could hear David behind him grunting from thudding against the curves.
Eventually, the pipe levelled out and he shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on a damp floor of a dark stoned tunnel, which was large enough to stand in.
Lockhart already stood a bit away from Arthur, covered in slime and as white as a ghost.
Arthur moved in time as David whizzed out of the pipe.
"We have to be miles underneath the school." Arthur said, hearing his voice echo in the black tunnel.
"Maybe even under the lake." David added as he noticed how slimy the walls were.
The three then turned to stare at the darkness ahead of them.
"Lumos!" Arthur muttered and his wand lit up. "Let's move."
Off they went, their footsteps smacking the wet floor loudly.
The tunnel ended up being so dark that they could only see a bit ahead of them. And their shadows can be described as monstrous in the wandlight.
"Now remember…" Arthur said quietly as they now cautiously moved forward. "...if you see any sign of movement, close your eyes immediately."
The tunnel was too quiet for Arthur's liking, dreading that something was going to pop out at them from the blackness. Eventually they heard their first unexpected sound with a loud crunch when David stepped on what looked like a rat's skull.
This made Arthur lower his wand to the floor and saw that small animal bones were littered all over the ground. The sight made him try hard to not imagine what Mary might look like if they found her.
They continued on, Arthur leading the way forward around a dark bend in the tunnel.
David suddenly grabbed his shoulder to stop him.
"There's something up ahead." He whispered, holding back his fear.
Arthur then saw the outline of something large and curved, lying across the tunnel. But it wasn't moving.
"Stay here." He said, looking back at the other two. Lockhart had his eyes covered by his hands.
Arthur slowly edged forward with his wand held high and in front of him.
With the light, he could see that it was a huge snake skin, looking poisonous green, lying curled and empty on the floor. The Basilisk must've shed this and had to be sixty feet long.
"Jeez…." David said, sounding horrified.
Then there was a sudden movement behind them. Lockhart's knee gave way.
"Oi, get up!" David said sharply, pointing his wand at him.
Lockhart then suddenly got to his feet and dived at David, knocking him to the ground.
Arthur moved forward but was too late because Lockhart straightened up, panting, as he had David's wand with a gleaming smile on his face.
Because he had David's wand, which was broken, the boys really had nothing to worry about.
"The adventure ends here, boys!" Lockhart said. "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you two tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body. Say goodbye to your memories!"
He raised David's wand over his head and yelled "Obliviate!"
The wand ended up exploding with the force of a small bomb. Arthur had his arms over his head and ran, running over the snake skin and out of the way of chunks of tunnel ceiling which thundered to the floor.
After the chaos, he found himself alone, gazing at a wall of broken rock.
"DAVID? ARE YOU OKAY?" He bellowed out.
"I'm alright!" David's muffled voice replied from the other side of the rockfall. "This git got what he deserved. Didn't know my wand backfires!"
Arthur then heard a dull thud, followed by a loud 'ow!'. It seemed Lockhart got kicked in the shins.
"What do I do? It'll take ages to move these rocks…." David then asked, sounding desperate.
Arthur looked up at the ceiling and saw huge cracks appear in it. He was worried that the whole tunnel might cave in.
Arthur then heard another thud and another 'ow!' from the other side of the rocks. He was wasting time and Mary has already been in the Chamber for hours by now. There was no choice right now.
"Just wait here with Lockhart! I'll keep going." He called out to David.
"I'll see if I can shift some of these rocks so you can get back through. Good luck!" David replied, trying to keep his voice steady.
After pumping himself up for whatever he'll face, he set off past the giant snake skin.
The distant sound of David straining to shift the rocks were gone shortly as he went deeper and deeper. The tunnel turned and turned again.
Arthur's nerves were on fire as he continued on. He just wanted this tunnel to end.
Then finally, he went around another bend for the umpteenth time and found himself facing a solid wall with a large circular metal door with a hinge that had seven snakes on the edge like locks. And the snakes had glinting emerald eyes.
Arthur approached the door, his throat feeling dry. He didn't need to pretend that these snakes were living as their eyes looked alive.
"Open." he said in a low faint hiss. A snake emerged from the bottom of the hinge and slithered around the edge, making the snake locks move in. Once the slithering snake went back in the hinge, the door loudly creaked open.
Remembering that he may have to face the Basilisk and Riddle perhaps, he walked inside.
Finally, Lockhart gets what he deserves. Trust me guys, I'm looking forward to writing the next two chapters, A LOT happens in more ways than one.
