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"What?"
"We know where the Chamber of Secrets is," repeated Harry. "Will you let us show you?"
Professor Lupin looked extremely caught off-guard. "Are you...are you sure?"
Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged glances.
"Well, no," Harry admitted. "Not until we can talk to Moaning Myrtle."
"Moaning Myrtle...why would you..." muttered Lupin, obviously thinking. "Wait, the pipes! You think the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is in the second floor girl's bathroom?"
"Yes!" said Harry, excited. "Come on, we'll show you."
"Wait," said Lupin carefully. "I can't bring you. Thank you three very much for telling me, but I'll have to check it out on my own. Bringing the three of you with me would be a mistake on my part. I can't let you-"
"You can't go without Harry," piped up Hermione.
"Er-what?" said Lupin.
"What?" said Harry.
"Without Harry, you won't be able to get in. He's a Parseltongue, and I suspect you'll need to be one in order to open the entrance."
"You're a Parseltongue?" said Lupin in disbelief.
"Yeah," said Harry, slightly defensively. "That's why I could hear the basilisk."
"But James wasn't...but it does make sense."
"Please," said Hermione. "You have to bring Harry, and Harry doesn't go anywhere without us, right, Harry?"
"Right," he said firmly.
"Plus," said Ron, his voice choked. "She's my sister."
Lupin gave them all long, hard looks before saying, with a tone of great resignation, "I am going to regret this later. I can feel it. Now, let's go to the girl's bathroom, shall we?"
When they reached the bathroom, Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.
"Oh, it's you," she said when she saw Harry. "What do you want this time?"
Then something unexpected happened. Her eyes landed on Lupin and her mouth dropped open.
"Remus?" she gasped. "You came back for me!"
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at Professor Lupin incredulously. Professor Lupin, on the other hand, just looked uncomfortable.
"No, Myrtle," he said carefully. "I'm a teacher here now. It is nice to, er, see you again."
Myrtle actually winked at Lupin. "I know how it really is. No one saves a girl from bullies so much if they don't like her."
"Those bullies were my friends," replied Lupin wearily. "I just stopped them from throwing things through you, that's all. Myrtle, we've got to talk to you about something, so can you put that aside for now?"
"Of course, Moony," said Myrtle dreamily.
Professor Lupin actually blushed.
"So what do you want?" she repeated.
"To ask you how you died," said Harry.
Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked a more flattering subject.
"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 I then heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got to me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go use his own toilet, and then-" Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining. "I died."
"How?" said Harry.
"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, glancing sideways at Professor Lupin. "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?" pressed Lupin, before Harry could say it.
"Somewhere over there," said Myrtle, pointing vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.
The four of them hurried over to it.
It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. Professor Lupin took out his wand and began muttering spells, trying to get something to happen. And then Harry saw it; scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.
"That tap's never worked," said Myrtle and Professor Lupin in unison. Myrtle laughed as Professor Lupin turned red and the other three shelved the moment for a later date when they could freely laugh at it.
"Harry," said Ron. "Say something. Say something in Parseltongue."
Harry, who hadn't known until then that he could say something in Parseltongue, thought back to the only time he had, in memory, talked to a snake. He thought back on the conversation with the snake he'd had at the zoo last year...what had it felt like...
He stared hard at the engraving, trying to imagine it was real.
"Open up," he said.
He looked at Ron and Hermione, who shook their heads.
"English," Ron 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.
"I'm going down there," said Harry.
"No," said Lupin faintly. "You can't, it's too..."
He trailed off, staring at the pipe.
"Oh hell," he grumbled. "I might as well lose my job if we can save Ginny. Who wants to go first?"
They all looked at each other.
"I will," said Lupin. "To make sure it's safe. Is that okay with you three?"
He looked fairly aware of the absurdity of asking his own students for permission to climb into a giant pipe, but to his credit, when they nodded he jumped straight in and whipped out of sight. A long moment later a silvery wolf jumped out of the pipe and said, in Lupin's voice, 'It's safe.'
"What the bloody hell is that?" said Ron, jumping back.
"A Patronus," said Hermione in awe. "That's really high level magic. A wolf...I'll bet I was right."
"I don't think now's the time for whatever you're talking about," said Harry, following Lupin into the tube. Ron and Hermione followed him barely moments later, and after a long, dark, slimy ride down, they all shot out of the end and landed with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in. In front of him, Lupin was standing up and brushing off his robes.
"We must be miles under the school," said Harry, his voices 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 at the darkness ahead.
Almost simultaneously, Harry, Hermione, and Professor Lupin lit their wands.
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," said Harry quietly as they walked cautiously forward, "any sign of moment, close your eyes right away..."
"I can't believe I let you come with me..." muttered Professor Lupin. Then; "I can't believe I let myself come."
Eventually, after stepping on the bones of dead animals and passing a giant snake skin, they made it to a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.
"Before we move on," said Professor Lupin heavily. "I would like to send my Patronus to find Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore. And, please forgive me of asking this of you, Ron and Hermione, but I would like to stop you here."
"But-" said Hermione angrily.
"That not fair!" said Ron, interrupting her loudly. The shout echoed off the walls and made the students flinch.
"I insist," said Lupin firmly. "I mean it. There could be terrible things beyond this door. I would love, and I mean dearly love, to make all three of you go back, but only Harry can open this door, and it feels as though...as though this is meant for him. But you two...I cannot, as a teacher at Hogwarts, let two of my students walk into unneeded danger. We do not need another Penelope Clearwater on our hands. If I have to, I will stop you by force. Do you understand?"
Ron and Hermione looked at each, a heavy pause between them. Finally, Hermione nodded.
Professor Lupin visibly relaxed. "Please, don't begrudge me for this...I am only doing what I have to."
"You're still my favorite teacher," said Hermione quietly.
"We'll wait here," said Ron.
Professor Lupin smiled and turned to Harry. "I hate to say it, but it's up to you now."
Harry approached the snakes, his throat very dry. There was no need to pretend these stone snakes were real; their eyes looked strangely alive.
He 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 with the comforting hand of Professor Lupin on his shoulder.
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