Ginny had refused to admit she'd been wandering the halls rather than in bed. And it turned out, when Ginevra Weasley wanted to be stubborn about something, no force on the planet would move her. "I don't know what you're talking about! I was asleep!" was her final word on the subject.

Given that Ron had heard similar denials from her his whole life about things like the state of his belongings, who'd been in the broom shed, and what happened to the last slice of pie, he didn't believe her but knew there would be no way to get her to confess. And, honestly, there was every likelihood she was just out exploring and didn't want to get into trouble. The most Ron figured they could do was keep an eye on the map and catch her in the act the next time.

Harry and Hermione weren't quite as sold, and came up with a plan to see if she'd mentioned anything to her friend, and that's how they had their first encounter with Luna Lovegood, the only first year with a quest marker. That the quest marker was silver rather than gold was somewhat confusing.

LUNA LOVEGOOD
Mage, Level 1
[RAVENCLAW,
THE QUIBBLER]

The girl had been easy enough to find and talk to, since she was spending Sunday afternoon wandering the grounds on her own. It was generally much harder to get a private word in with students from other houses, since they tended to travel with their friends. No one seemed to want to accompany the girl with nearly-white hair as she was strolling along the shore of the lake, skipping to imaginary music, and periodically stopping to squat down and turn over stones on the shore.

"Oh, hello Ron," Luna nodded dreamily as the trio approached, recognizing her friend's brother.

"Hey, Luna," Ron acknowledged, "This is Hermione and Harry."

"Pleased to meet you," she nodded, as if she was already aware of who they were. "Are you here to help me search the lake for gulping plimpies? I've already found signs of regular plimpies, and I'm trying to prove that they can share the same habitat."

FEY PERK REQUIRED TO ACCEPT QUEST

"I'm sorry, but I don't think we'd be able to see them," Harry apologized. "We don't have the right kind of fey sight. Yet."

"A very significant 'yet,'" Luna observed. "So why did you come out here?"

"We were wondering if you knew why Ginny was out of the dorms last night. We thought she might have been visiting you in the Ravenclaw dorms?" Harry suggested.

"If she did, she must have been very stealthy, as I didn't see her," Luna considered. "Sadly, I haven't really been able to talk to her outside of transfiguration and charms classes. This school doesn't seem to support mingling between houses very well."

"You aren't wrong," Hermione sighed.

"Did she mention anything unusual when she rode with you on the train?" Harry probed.

"I don't understand the question," Luna cocked her head. "I don't find it helpful to think of anything as particularly usual. You get complacent."

Nonplussed by the unintentionally-evasive answer, Hermione blurted out, "Maybe something about a snake or a chamber of secrets?"

"No, but that sounds interesting," Luna said. "I could ask Daddy about it. He writes a newspaper and might know something."

The trio shared a shrug, the information already out there, and Harry just said, "Yes, please. It may be nothing."

"I don't think you'd have come and found me about nothing," Luna nodded. "And now I'm keeping you from the library," she stated blithely, suddenly ignoring them and wandering off along the lake shore.

"She's… not wrong," Hermione agreed again, clearly a little frustrated at the rude dismissal, but not upset about being sent to the library instead of looking for magical fish.

"That's what she's like," Ron shrugged as they walked back to the building.

"It said I couldn't accept the quest because I don't have the Fey perk," Harry recounted. "So it seems likely she's got it."

Hermione said, "I hadn't realized until she mentioned it that the quest name might actually be a term we could look up. I think Ron and I should look for this Chamber of Secrets while you look for skill books today, Harry."

"Hogwarts: a History?" Ron groaned.

"For a start," Hermione nodded.

They got another few hours in the library over the afternoon and evening. Harry found that Hermione had been right: without them unshelving books and handing them to him, he really did slow down to about a shelf an hour. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione had started with her favorite reference book and moved on to books about magical snakes.

Harry, a few skill points richer, finally got the briefing shortly before curfew.

"I knew that 'Chamber of Secrets' sounded familiar," Hermione explained. "There's a legend that Salazar Slytherin had a secret room in the castle where he kept a monster. After he was driven away, he had threatened that one day his heir would return to unleash the monster and purge the muggleborn from the school."

"Harsh," Harry said. "But it would explain why the Malfoys are behind it."

"I should have made him vomit up something worse than slugs," Ron agreed, with a dark look. "Tell him about the snakes."

Hermione nodded, producing a parchment where she'd made a list. Several entries had been scratched out, and she summarized, "It makes sense that the monster is a snake of some kind, since Salazar Slytherin was probably also a–," she looked around and confirmed nobody was lurking in the stacks nearby, "–parselmouth. My first thought was that the monster might be a dragon, but you couldn't talk to Norbert last year, right?"

Harry shook his head, "No. None of the sounds he made ever sounded like words."

"So from what we can find out about magical snakes, the main options are: ashwinders, basilisks, boomslangs, horned serpents, occamies, and runespoors." She pointed out each on her list as she explained it, and every entry included some short notes on powers. "Of course, unless there's a breeding colony somewhere in the school, we're looking at something that could live here for hundreds of years…"

"Basilisk," Ron couldn't wait for her to get to the point. "Which is really bad."

Harry looked over to where she was pointing at her entry for the basilisk. In her impeccable handwriting, she'd listed: King of serpents. Gigantic. Deadly venom. Murderous stare (instant death)! Spiders flee. Crowing of rooster fatal!

"There's something loose in the school that can kill you just by looking at you?" Harry boggled.

Hermione nodded sadly, "It's possible you also have to see it, like the old Medusa myth, but… yes, I don't know how we'll fight a giant snake that kills you if you even look its way."

"Maybe just the rooster thing," Ron suggested. "If we could somehow get one to crow before we saw the snake…"

"That shouldn't be hard," Harry shrugged. As his friends stared at him in disbelief, he explained, "I'll just grab one of Hagrid's right before it's about to crow in the morning, and put it in my menagerie. Hedwig doesn't seem to notice that time has passed while she's in there. Bet if I timed it right, it would finish crowing before it realized it had been moved."

"That… could work," Ron agreed, after working it through his chessmaster brain.

"We should get one as soon as possible," Hermione nodded. "It's too late to ask Hagrid now, but maybe we can ask him tomorrow and then you can get up early on Tuesday to slip out and get one?"

"Seems like a plan," Harry said. "Oh, hey, I got basic entries for all those snakes in my codex."

Hermione smiled at that, but took a moment to broach the subject, "I think we may also need to tell an adult. Not about the game!" she quickly negated. "But I think if we just tell the headmaster about Dobby and you hearing it speaking, we can explain how we worked it out without mentioning everything else."

Harry considered for a long moment before admitting, "I guess we'd better, yeah. If it sneaks out at mealtime, it could kill everyone before we could do anything. Or at whatever a deathday party is." The quest log still hadn't changed, even with their new revelations.

"Oh! I found that out," Hermione remembered. "Sir Nicholas died 500 years ago. He's likely going to throw a party for his day of death on Halloween this year."

"Deathday, got it," Harry nodded. "So we've probably got weeks before it's actually going to attack anyone. I wonder why it's waiting that long."

Ron guessed, "Maybe Malfoy let it out last night just to make sure he could, but it's going to take him that long to find a group of muggleborn to sic it on."

Hermione pursed her lips, annoyed, "Right. It's likely being controlled by Draco, not just loose in the school. I guess that does give us some time…"

Harry mused, "Maybe we can just go down to this chamber and kill it before Draco can release it again. I wonder why it's not on the map."

"If anyone would know, it would be the Marauders," Ron suggested.

"No more putting it off, I guess," Harry nodded.

"So we're not telling the headmaster yet?" Hermione checked, knowing the answer.

"I think he likes us to solve problems ourselves," Harry nodded. "Plus… it's my quest, and I bet it will be worth a lot less XP if we just let Dumbledore solve it."

Hermione wasn't totally sure that logic was sound, but figured she'd have more luck working on the boys gradually than insisting they tell an adult right away. She had learned something in the last year beyond school subjects, after all. And maybe Hagrid would be suspicious enough to ask the right questions, tell the headmaster, and leave her hands clean of being a tattletale.

"Why d'yeh want a rooster?" Hagrid asked, when they went to visit him between classes on Monday afternoon.

Harry's eyes widened, not having anticipated the simple question, and Hermione nodded to herself. But she hadn't counted on Harry's Basic Deception skill. "Prank on Fred and George," he shrugged. "They like to sleep in. We've figured out a magical way to keep the rooster healthy but hidden. They're going to go crazy wondering where the crowing is coming from."

Hagrid hummed for a moment, then said, "As long as he won' be harmed, I guess tha's alright. I think somethin' from the woods went after 'im the other night, how he was hidin'." Hermione blinked at that statement, which seemed a little too coincidental. "Maybe he's safer inside fer a while. How long'd yeh need 'im for?"

"Hopefully only a week or two," Harry shrugged.

"Fair 'nough. Should teach yeh all about carin' fer a chicken. But bring 'im back if he starts t'have any problems."

"Of course," Harry nodded, noting that he'd accrued enough XP that his skill had ranked up. "I'll get him tomorrow morning. That way they won't suspect anything."

The rooster capture went off as well as he'd hoped, Harry invisibly sneaking up on the poor bird and shoving him into the menagerie moments before he could begin crowing for the sunrise. And that was as much time as they had for the Chamber of Secrets for the rest of the week: between mounting homework and Oliver Wood's quidditch schedule, his evenings were booked solid. He barely got to squeeze in a couple more shelves between classes. Madam Pince seemed impressed by his newfound interest in the library.

During the classes themselves that week, Harry was feeling pretty awesome about himself. He'd gotten several points from McGonagall and Flitwick for being the first to succeed at spells in their classes, as well as a kind word from Sprout about his deft potting. And, in potions class, between his improved OWL Potions skill and the spellbook to give him the exact steps and stirring motions, he'd managed to complete his assignment so well even Snape couldn't find fault with it (though the dour potioneer was suspicious that he was cheating somehow).

It, of course, mattered much less in history, defense, or astronomy, which were purely information rather than practical (for all that defense was supposed to be practical). At least he had determined that if he was attempting to pay attention, the information about goblin wars and constellations his teachers were talking about were entered into his codex.

There wasn't much useful about Lockhart's teaching, however. Rather than unlocking any codex entries, getting new spells, or improving his OWL Combat Magic skill, Harry had actually gained a rank of Basic Acting from being forced to help the foppish professor act out scenes from his novels. Nearly all the boys in their class were so over it only two weeks in, but all the girls other than Hermione still seemed smitten. Well, Hermione was still smitten, but she was at least annoyed that she wasn't getting a practical education from the class.

Finally, though, after quidditch practice on Friday evening brought a chance to work on their bigger problem. Fred, George, and Lee banned any other visitors from the fourth-year boys' dorm room as Harry, Ron, and Hermione slipped in. With the light of September's full moon streaming into the tower room, Harry focused on his intention and tried to contact the elder Marauders…