Chapter 40: Into The Chamber

We marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

We sent Lockhart in first. I was pleased to see that he was shaking. Asshole.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the tank of the end toilet.

"Oh, it's you," she said when she saw Harry and I. "What do you want this time?"

"To ask you how you died," said Harry.

Myrtle looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

"Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said dramatically. "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 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...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. 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?" said Harry.

"Somewhere there." said Myrtle, pointing toward the sink in front of her toilet.

Harry and I hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face.

It looked like an ordinary sink. We examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. 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 as he tried to turn it.

"Harry, say something. Something in Parseltongue." I said, eagerly.

"But -" Harry.

"Just try it, Harry, you can do it."

"Open up," he said.

"English." I said.

Harry looked back at the snake. His glare intensified and he seemed to have zoned out

A nasty hiss came out of his mouth, 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." he said.

"Me too"

There was a pause.

"Well, you hardly seem to need me," said Lockhart, smiling. "I'll just-"

He put his hand on the doorknob, but Harry and I both pointed our wands at him.

"You can go first." I snarled.

"Boys," he said, frantically. "Boys, what good will it do?"

Harry jabbed him in the back with his wand. Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe.

"I really don't think -" he started to say, but I gave him a push, and he slid out of sight. Harry followed quickly. He lowered himself slowly into the pipe, then let go.

I looked down into the dark. My knees were shaking, but I had to focus on my sister. I say down and slid down into the pipe.

It would have been a fun slide, if it wasn't for the impending doom. The pipe curved and slanted this way and that. After what seemed like almost forever, I shot out of it and landed on a damp stone floor. Lockhart was brushing himself off while Harry was getting up.

"We must be miles under the school," said Harry, his voice echoing in the black tunnel.

"Under the lake, probably." I observed, looking at water dripping down the walls.

"Lumos! " Harry muttered to his wand and it lit again, casting a small light so we could see. "C'mon," he said to Lockhart and I.

The tunnel was so dark that we could only see a little distance ahead. Their shadows on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wandlight.

"Remember," Harry said quietly as we walked cautiously forward, "any sign of movement, close your eyes right away."

We kept walking down the tunnel. Bones of rats and other animals covered the path. It was positively gross and I wanted to go home.

"Harry - there's something up there -" I said hoarsely, grabbing Harry's shoulder.

We could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.

"Maybe it's asleep." whispered Harry, glancing back at Lockhart, whose hands were pressed over his eyes. Harry edged forward, his wand held high.

The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

"Blimey." I whispered.

There was a sudden movement behind us. Lockhart's knees had given way.

Bitch.

"Get up." I said harshly, pointing my wand at the git. Suddenly, the bastard dived at me, knocking me to the ground and snatching my wand out of my hands.

"The adventure ends here, boys!" he 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 my wand high over his head and yelled, "Obliviate! "

The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb. Great chunks of tunnel ceiling fell to the floor, creating a huge wall.

"Ron!" I heard Harry shouting, almost in the distance. "Are you okay? Ron!"

"I'm here!" I yelled back.

"Alright there, Ron?"

"Im okay. This git's not, though. He got blasted by the wand!" I said, kicking Lockhart in the knee. "What now? We can't get through - it'll take ages..."

"Wait there." Harry called to me "Wait with Lockhart. I'll go on... If I'm not back in an hour..."

"I'll try and shift some of this rock so you can - can get back through." I said, trying to keep my wits about me And, Harry-"

"See you in a bit." he said. I heard his feet running away from the wall. Then it was quiet.

"Right." I said out loud. "Let's get to it."

I started moving rocks as quickly as I could. After about fifteen minutes, I was finally able to see some progress.

I heard a groan from behind me. I turned and looked at a bewildered Lockhart.

"Is...is this a cave?" he asked.

"Yeah? We are in the Chamber, remember?" I said.

"Chamber? Do you live here? Who are you?" he asked as he got up and looked at me as if he hasn't been teaching me shit the whole year.

"Ron Weasley, sir?"

"Ah yes, Ron Weasley. And...who am I?"

I held in a laugh. The git had obliviated himself. For the first time this school year, I was proud of my broken wand.

"You're Gilderoy Lockhart. You teach at Hogwarts." I said, walking towards him with a rock in my hand.

"Ah. Splendid name I've got, haven't I?" he asked with the enthusiasm of a six year old.

"Yeah. Hey, who don't you just sit over there while I finish here, okay?" I said, pointing to the wall. Lockhart nodded and sat down, humming random tunes.

I went back and started to pull more rocks. After what seemed to be another thirty minutes, I had finally made a sizeable hole.

"Ron!" I heard my name being yelled in the distance. It was Harry! "Ron! Ginny's okay! I've got her!"

I gave a loud whoop as I saw Harry push Ginny in front of the hole. I

"Ginny!" I cried out, thrusting an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through first. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened?" How - what - where did that bird come from?"

Some huge and fire red bird had swooped swooped through the gap after Ginny.

"He's Dumbledore's." said Harry, squeezing through himself.

"How come you've got a sword?" I asked, gaping at the glittering weapon in Harry's hand.

"I'll explain when we get out of here," said Harry with a sideways glance at Ginny, who was crying harder than ever as I squeezed her as close to my body as I could get her.

"But-"

"Later." Harry said shortly. "Where's Lockhart?"

"Back there." I said jerking his head up the tunnel toward the pipe. "He's in a bad way. Come and see."

Ginny held tightly to my hand, something she hasn't done since she was 8, but I didn't care. We walked all the way back to the mouth of the pipe. Lockhart was still sitting where I left him, humming to himself.

"His memory's gone." I said, trying to hold back a laugh. "The Memory Charm backfired. Hit him instead of us. Hasn't got a clue who he is, or where he is, or who we are. I told him to come and wait here. He's a danger to himself."

Lockhart peered good-naturedly up at us.

"Hello," he said. "Odd sort of place, this, isn't it? Do you live here?"

"No." I said, raising my eyebrows at Harry.

"Have you thought how we're going to get back up this?" asked Harry.

I shook my head, but Fawkes the phoenix had swooped past Harry and was now fluttering in front of him, his beady eyes bright in the dark. He was waving his long golden tail feathers.

"He looks like he wants you to grab hold..." I said, looking perplexed. "But you're much too heavy for a bird to pull up there."

"Fawkes isn't an ordinary bird." said Harry. "We've got to hold on to each other. Ginny, grab Ron's hand. Professor Lockhart-"

"He means you." I said sharply to Lockhart.

"You hold Ginny's other hand-"

Harry tucked the sword and the Sorting Hat into his belt, I took hold of the back of Harry's robes, and Harry reached out and took hold of Fawkes's tail feathers.

I started to feel as light as the bird's feathers, and the next second, we were flying upward through the pipe. Lockhart sounded like an idiot saying, "Amazing! Amazing! This is just like magic!"

We flew out of the pipe and landed on the wet floor of Myrtle's bathroom, and as Lockhart straightened his hat, the sink that hid the pipe was sliding back into place.

Myrtle looked positively put out.

"You're alive." she said blankly to Harry.

"There's no need to sound so disappointed." he said, wiping flecks of blood and slime off his glasses.

"Oh, well... I'd just been thinking... if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," said Myrtle, blushing silver.

"Urgh!" I said as we left the bathroom for the dark, deserted corridor outside. "Harry! I think Myrtle's taken a fancy to you! You've got competition, Ginny!"

I looked over at my sister. She was still crying. Something had to be wrong.

"Where now?" I asked.

Fawkes was leading the way, glowing gold along the corridor. Wr strode after him, and moments later, found ourselves outside Professor McGonagall's office.

Harry knocked and pushed the door open.

For a moment there was silence as Harry, Ginny, Lockhart and I stood in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and (in Harry's case) blood. Then there was a scream.

"Ginny!"

It was Mum, who had been sitting crying in front of the fire. She leapt to her feet, closely followed by Dad, and both of them flung themselves onto her.

Soon, Harry and I found ourselves being swept into Mum's tight embrace.

"You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?" she sobbed.

"I think we'd all like to know that." said Professor McGonagall weakly.

Mum let go of Harry, who walked over to the desk and laid upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of Riddle's diary.

Then he started telling them everything. For almost an hour he told them about hearing the voice, how Hermione had finally realized that he was hearing a basilisk in the pipes, how he and I had followed the spiders into the forest, that Aragog had told us where the last victim of the basilisk had died, how he had guessed that Moaning Myrtle had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in her bathroom, and how we went about going in with Lockhart.

"What interests me most," said Dumbledore gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

"W-what's that?" said Mum in a stunned voice. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Ginny? But Ginny's not... Ginny hasn't been... has she?"

"It was this diary," said Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen..."

Dumbledore took the diary from Harry and glared at it. "Brilliant," he said softly. "Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school... traveled far and wide... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here."

"But, Ginny." said Mum. "What's our Ginny got to do with - with - him?"

"His d-diary." Ginny sobbed. "I've b-been writing in it, and he's been w-writing back all year."

My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe it.

"Ginny!" said Dad, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you anything. What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain? Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly full of Dark Magic!

"I d-didn't know!" sobbed Ginny. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it-"

"Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away," Dumbledore interrupted in a firm voice. "This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort." He strode over to the door and opened it. "Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," he added, smiling down at her. "You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out Mandrake juice - I daresay the basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment."

"So Hermione's okay!" I said brightly.

"There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny." said Dumbledore.

Mum led Ginny out, and Dad followed, still looking deeply shaken.

"You know, Minerva," Professor Dumbledore said thoughtfully to Professor McGonagall, "I think all this merits a good feast. Might I ask you to go and alert the kitchens?"

"Right," said Professor McGonagall also moving to the door. "I'll leave you to deal with Potter and Weasley, shall I?"

"Certainly," said Dumbledore.

Harry and I gulped. We thought that we would be in trouble. However, not only did Dumbledore award us Special Awards for Services to the School, but he also gave Harry and I two hundred points apiece for Gryffindor, clenching the cup.

"Would you mind taking Professor Lockhart up to the infirmary, too?" Dumbledore said to me. "I'd like a few more words with Harry."

As much as I didn't want to, I didn't complain. I nodded and helped Lockhart to the hospital wing.