A week later, there was another attack, with Vera found Petrified by Penelope Clearwater a few hallways over from the Ravenclaw common room, probably during on her rounds as a prefect. Her open compact mirror was in her hand. Her brother, cousins, and two closest friends were called in to Professor Flitwick's office after breakfast the following morning and informed of it. Her family all started talking at once, wondering how this could have happened. Crystal Dunbar, her best female friend, burst into tears and ran out the office. Percy looked shocked as he whispered, "No! Vera can't have been!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weasley," said Professor Flitwick. "Professor Dumbledore and all the Heads are investigating how it could have happened. At any rate, Miss Petrov does not seem to have suffered anything other than being Petrified, and Madam Pomfrey will be able to revive her once the Mandrakes are mature and Professor Snape brews the restorative potion."

"That's not much comfort!" snapped Percy. "It's not your best friend that got Petrified! Or sister, or cousin! Vera and I have been friends ever since we were practically babies and she understands me the best! She keeps me grounded and helps me be less of a 'stick-in-the-mud', as Fred and George once put it, and I help her with any schoolwork she doesn't get and keep her level-headed. We can talk to each other about pretty much anything and support each other in all things. The only other people outside my family I'm that close to are Crystal and Penelope, and even they don't know or get me the way Vera does."

"Mr. Weasley, I realize you are distraught, but snapping at me isn't going to solve anything," said Professor Flitwick.

"I'm sorry for my outburst," said Percy, but he didn't sound very apologetic. "Can I go to the Hospital Wing and see Vera, Professor?"

"Yes, you may." Percy rushed out the office and Professor Flitwick looked at the rest of the students. "Professor Dumbledore notified the adult members of your family. They should be arriving shortly, if they haven't already. You all can go down to the Hospital Wing and see your cousin, or sister in your case, Mr. Petrov."

Ivan nodded and gestured for his cousins to follow him. In the Hospital Wing, they found Percy collapsed in a chair next to Vera's bed, silently crying. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Niko burst in two minutes later, Grandmum Lise right behind them, with her wand drawn. She cast a diagnostic spell as soon as she reached the bed. "Definitely Petrified," she murmured, "but how or why is still unknown. And she's not going to be able to be revived without the mandrake restorative potion."

Granny Ilsa strode in with Professor Dumbledore, an annoyed look on her face. "I don't care if there are currently mandrakes being grown in the Hogwarts greenhouses, Headmaster. They're not going to be mature for several months, and it's not your granddaughter that's lying there Petrified. I have mature mandrakes in my ingredient supplies, and even if I didn't, I can always order more from the Apothecary. I am perfectly capable of brewing a restorative draught, and I can give Severus some mandrakes so that he could brew the draught if he wanted to as well. Vera can and will be revived tomorrow, and so can Mr. Filch's cat."

"If you insist, Mrs. Petrov," said Professor Dumbledore, looking somewhat taken aback.

"I bloody well insist," Granny Ilsa retorted. "And you might want to see if there's a basilisk running around the school. There's only so many creatures that can Petrify someone, and considering Salazar Slytherin's affinity for snakes, it would be logical that a basilisk would be the monster he supposedly hid in his Chamber of Secrets."

"You might be right about that," said Dumbledore thoughtfully. "But I can't imagine how a basilisk would be getting around the school."

"Well, it must be getting around the school somehow," said Grandmum Lise. "Alex, have you heard anything that only you can hear or understand?"

"On my way to the Halloween feast I thought I heard a voice say something about 'rip' and 'kill'," Alex responded. "But I couldn't find the source of the voice when I looked around, and none of my friends heard anything."

"There you have it," said Grandmum Lise. "It's most likely a basilisk then, and probably traveling through the walls somehow."

"Have I missed something?" asked Professor Dumbledore, now looking confused.

"Alex is a Parselmouth," Aunt Sarah explained. "He found out when he was eight and spoke to a snake during an outing to the zoo. He was confused about having the ability at the time, but he now knows the family theory that Voldemort must have transferred the ability to him the night he gained his scar."

"Ah," Professor Dumbledore said, his face clearing. "The theory does make sense. If a basilisk is traveling through the walls, it must be via the plumbing. I believe the pipes would be big enough to hold one. I'll look into it. Meanwhile, I would like this information not to leave this room. Alex and Beth, you may tell your friends, but they are not to tell anyone else, is that clear? The same goes for you, Ivan, Cara, and David."

They promised and then Beth and Alex left to tell their friends about it in the privacy of the Room of Requirement.

That afternoon, the quintet came across Percy and Penelope having an argument out in the courtyard. "I'm sorry Penny, but Vera is my best friend and I've just realized today that I would like it to be more than that!"

"But we're dating!" protested Penelope. "You said that I understood you better than most people you know and that we're compatible together!"

"Not as compatible as I am with Vera! She knows me better than anyone outside of my family, and we balance each other out. It may have taken her being Petrified for me to realize it, but I want to be with her, possibly for the rest of my life. I am really sorry about this, Penelope, but I am breaking up with you. Once Vera's grandmother brews the restorative potion and Vera is revived tomorrow, I'm going to ask if she wants to be my girlfriend."

Penelope stared at him, open-mouthed, and then burst into tears. "I really am sorry about this, Penelope! I never meant to hurt your feelings. It's just that being with you when I'm in love with another girl wouldn't be fair to you, and you deserve better."

Penelope wiped her eyes and admitted, "That's true. I suppose I'll get over this in time and find someone else. But for right now, I hate your guts, Percy Weasley!" She slapped him, hard, on the cheek, and then ran off.

"Poor Penelope," said Beth. "Being dumped like that must hurt. At least Vera will be happy that Percy realized his feelings for her. No, Alex, don't you dare say anything to Percy. It's the brother's job to threaten his sister's boyfriend, and you know Percy would never do anything to hurt Vera. And if he did, Vera is perfectly capable of hexing him herself."

At dinnertime, Adam and Leah came up to the Gryffindor quintet, a book in the former's hands. He looked around to make sure nobody else was paying attention and then said in a low voice, "Leah found this blank diary in one of her schoolbooks. We started writing in it, and what we wrote disappeared and the diary wrote back. The front cover says it belonged to someone named T. M. Riddle and according to what's being written back to us, it's this Tom Riddle that's doing the writing. He claims that he did magic on the diary so that his memory is preserved in it and allows him to write back. The things is, me and Leah just told the rest of our quintet about the diary, and David said that you guys found out that the Dark Lord's original name was Tom Riddle. Obviously we're not going to write in the diary anymore, but we would like some advice on deposing of it."

Leah added, "I'm starting to wonder if it has something to do with what happened last night and at Halloween, since I have no memory of how or why I found myself in my dorm with red stuff on my robes during the Halloween feast. By the time I had washed up and changed my robes, the feast was over and I told Ginny and Luna that I had felt sick to my stomach to explain my absence."

"And I don't know how or why I was wandering outside the common room just after curfew last night," said Adam. "If the diary has something to do with it, then I apologize for what it made me do to your cousin."

The Gryffindor quintet exchanged worried looks, recalling the prophecy that Beth and Alex's mother had made during the summer. Well, Ron and Neville hadn't been present at the dinner, but they had been told about it that evening via their mirrors. "Maybe you could try tearing it up," suggested Hermione. "Or I could light it on fire for you in a bucket or something so that the fire's contained."

Leah shook her head. "Adam and I tried ripping it up earlier, but for some reason it's not tearing. There must be a spell on it to keep it from tearing or breaking. And Luna already tried burning it, since she knows how to conjure fire. When we doused the fire, the diary was unharmed, other than being damp from the water. And none of us want to just throw it out, since someone else could pick it up, decide to write in it, and possibly be controlled into doing stuff. David told us about the prophecy his aunt made."

Beth got up and went to the staff table, where she spoke with Professor Dumbledore. When she returned, she said, "I asked Professor Dumbledore if we could talk to him after dinner and he said yes. You can tell him about the diary, Adam and Leah, and he'll examine it and see about destroying it."

The following afternoon, Vera and Mrs. Norris were revived, and Professor Dumbledore told Adam and Leah that from what he had gathered so far in his study of the diary, the spells on it enabled the spirit of Riddle to possess the two into opening the Chamber. He assured them that they weren't to blame, for greater witches and wizards than them had been taken in by Voldemort, and that now he was working out how to destroy the diary, nobody else would be possessed.

Despite the diary being handed over to Dumbledore, rumors still abounded about the Chamber of Secrets and who the Heir of Slytherin might be. While the Gryffindor quintet knew that it was Voldemort/Tom Riddle and that he had done something to his diary that would allow the Chamber to be open once more, setting loose a basilisk, they couldn't exactly tell the other students about it, even if they hadn't already promised to keep it a secret. Others would want to know how they knew that, and fingers would get pointed at Leah and Adam since they were last in possession of the diary before turning it in to Dumbledore.

Neville wrote to his grandmother, since she had been a student at Hogwarts when the Chamber of Secrets supposedly had been opened about fifty years ago. She wrote back explaining that it had happened during her third year, that another student had died and her body found in a bathroom, and that a sixth-year named Tom Riddle had been given an award for discovering the culprit, who had been expelled.

"I bet that Riddle was the one that opened the Chamber and caused the girl's death, but framed another student for it," said Ron darkly.

"But who could he have framed?" asked Alex. "It's too bad that your gran didn't remember who was the student that was expelled, Nev."

Neville looked thoughtful. "I think I have an idea as to who it was. We all know that Hagrid got expelled but Dumbledore allowed him to stay on and train to become the next gamekeeper. And he's old enough to have attended Hogwarts fifty years ago. Plus he has a fondness for large and dangerous creatures, which would make it easy for someone to frame him as opening the Chamber and setting loose Slytherin's monster."

Ron cursed, ignoring Hermione's exclamation of "Language, Ronald!" "I hope Riddle burns in Hell," he concluded. "And considering what happened last school year with Norbert, what if Hagrid happened to get his hands on some creature he wanted to raise as a pet and it was blamed as the monster?"

"That's a likely possibility," said Beth. "Tomorrow's Saturday, so why don't we go visit Hagrid after the Quidditch match and ask him about it?"

The Quidditch match was fairly uneventful, other than Alex narrowly missed being knocked off his broom or breaking a limb by a Bludger when going after the Snitch. Due to Alex dodging the Bludger, Draco ended up being hit by it instead, as the Snitch was fluttering above his head and he was too busy taunting Alex to notice. As a result, Alex caught the Snitch, winning the match for Gryffindor, and Marcus Flint, the Slytherin captain, yelled at Draco for not noticing that Snitch was right above him, showing no sympathy at all for the broken arm the Bludger had caused. Professor Snape had to step in and tell Flint to leave Malfoy alone until Madam Pomfrey had seen to healing the arm.

After lunch, the quintet went to Hagrid's house and asked him about the last time the Chamber had been opened, telling him what they had guessed or figured out. "You five are too smart fer yeh own good," he said, shaking his head. "Yes, Riddle framed me as th' one that opened th' Chamber. He blamed Myrtle's death on Aragog."

"Who or what is Aragog?" asked Hermione, while Beth demanded at the same time, "You don't mean Moaning Myrtle is the one that was killed?"

"Who's Moaning Myrtle?" Ron asked.

"A ghost that haunts one of the girls' toilets," Beth answered. "She probably died when she was about twelve or thirteen, and she's really miserable. Her bathroom is constantly out-of-order because she keeps flooding it, and nobody wants to use it when it is working, because of her crying and carrying on. Would you want to be going to the bathroom when there's a ghost crying and wailing in the stall next to yours?"

The boys winced or made faces and then Hagrid explained that Aragog was an Acromantula he had hatched when he was a third-year student at Hogwarts. Tom Riddle had framed Aragog as the monster that killed Mrytle, and Armando Dippet, the Headmaster at the time, had believed Riddle, since he was a prefect and model student, while Hagrid had a history of getting into trouble over his love of 'interesting creatures'. Professor Dumbledore was the only one that believed Hagrid was innocent, and convinced Professor Dippet to let him become the gameskeeper-in-training. Meanwhile, Hagrid had enabled Aragog to escape into the Forbidden Forest, and the Acromantula still lived there, with his mate Mosag and their descendants.

Ron shuddered and muttered that he had even less desire to set foot in the Forbidden Forest now that he knew a colony of giant spiders lived there. Alex patted him comfortingly on his arm and when the quintet went up to the castle for dinner, they speculated as to where in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom would the Chamber of Secrets was hidden.