Ch: 6 ginny weasley
Harry looked closely at the black book he and Ron and picked up. It looked harmless. Lyra thought it was dangerous. Harry didn't think so, and something pulled him to pick it up. He opened it.
Harry saw at once that it was a diary, and the faded year on the cover told him it was fifty years old. He opened it eagerly. On the first page he could just make out the name "T M. Riddle" in smudged ink.
"T M Riddle has to be somewhere in the library." Lyra decided, before dragging him down to the library.
Finally they found him: he had won an award for special services to the school. Hermione left the hospital wing, de-whiskered, tail-less, and fur-free, at the beginning of February. He hadn't told Ron or Hermione about the diary yet, instead ignoring it and concentrating on learning more spells. He had gone through many light spells, and had started on Grey Spells.
He had also moved away from Latin spells. He found that there were spells in other languages too, and one of his favorites were Dutch spells. They generally used less power and were more destructive, but they also had longer incantations and couldn't be used wandlessly.
The sun had now begun to shine weakly on Hogwarts again. Inside the castle, the mood had grown more hopeful. There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood.
"The moment their acne clears up, they'll be ready for repotting again," Harry heard her telling Filch kindly one afternoon. "And after that, it won't be long until we're cutting them up and stewing them. You'll have Mrs. Norris back in no time."
Perhaps the Heir of Slytherin had lost his or her nerve, thought Harry. It must be getting riskier and riskier to open the Chamber of Secrets, with the school so alert and suspicious. Perhaps the monster, whatever it was, was even now settling itself down to hibernate for another fifty years...
Lyra, on the other hand, didn't think so. She thought the heir was laying low, waiting for the right moment to strike. Harry's Quidditch days were never better. The Windstorm had the admiration of the entire team, though Ron didn't like it since Lyra gave it to him. Harry loved the broom though, and kept it in a safe spot in his dorm near the window.
Gilderoy Lockhart seemed to think he himself had made the attacks stop. Harry overheard him telling Professor McGonagall while the Gryffindors were lining up for Transfiguration. "I don't think there'll be any more trouble, Minerva," he said, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. "I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him.
"You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won't say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing..."
He tapped his nose again and strode off. Harry had snorted.
Lockhart's idea of a morale-booster became clear at breakfast time on February fourteenth. Harry hadn't had much sleep because of a late-running Quidditch practice the night before, and he hurried down to the Great Hall, slightly late. He thought, for a moment, that he'd walked through the wrong doors.
The walls were all covered with large, lurid pink flowers. Worse still, heart-shaped confetti was falling from the pale blue ceiling. Harry went over to the Gryffindor table, where Ron was sitting looking sickened, and Hermione seemed to have been overcome with giggles.
"What's going on?" Harry asked them, sitting down and wiping confetti off his bacon.
Ron pointed to the teacher's table, apparently too disgusted to speak. Lockhart, wearing lurid pink robes to match the decorations, was waving for silence. The teachers on either side of him were looking stony-faced. From where he sat, Harry could see a muscle twitching in Professor McGonagall's cheek. Snape looked as though someone had just fed him a large beaker of Skele-Gro.
"Happy Valentine's Day!" Lockhart shouted. "And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all - and it doesn't end here!"
Lockhart clapped his hands and through the doors to the entrance hall marched a dozen surly-looking dwarfs. Not just any dwarfs, however. Lockhart had them all wearing golden wings and carrying harps.
"My friendly, card-carrying cupids!" beamed Lockhart. "They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn't stop here! I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!"
Professor Flitwick buried his face in his hands. Snape was looking as though the first person to ask him for a Love Potion would be force-fed poison. Harry decided that Lockhart belonged in a mental asylum.
"Please, Hermione, tell me you weren't one of the forty-six," said Ron as they left the Great Hall for their first lesson. Hermione suddenly became very interested in searching her bag for her schedule and didn't answer.
All day long, the dwarfs kept barging into their classes to deliver valentines, to the annoyance of the teachers, and late that afternoon as the Gryffindors were walking upstairs for Charms, one of the dwarfs caught up with Harry.
"Oy, you! 'Arry Potter!" shouted a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry.
Hot all over at the thought of being given a valentine in front of a line of first years, Harry tried to escape. The dwarf, however, cut his way through the crowd by kicking people's shins, and reached him before he'd gone two paces.
"I've got a musical message to deliver to 'Arry Potter in person," he said, twanging his harp in a threatening sort of way.
"Not here," Harry hissed, trying to escape.
"Stay still!" grunted the dwarf, grabbing hold of Harry's bag and pulling him back.
"Let me go!" Harry snarled, tugging.
With a loud ripping noise, his bag split in two. His books, wand, parchment, and quill spilled onto the floor and his ink bottle smashed over everything.
Harry scrambled around, trying to pick it all up before the dwarf started singing, causing something of a holdup in the corridor.
Losing his head, Harry tried to make a run for it, but the dwarf seized him around the knees and brought him crashing to the floor.
"Right," he said, sitting on Harry's ankles. "Here is your singing valentine:
His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,
His hair is as dark as a blackboard,
I wish he was mine,
he's really divine,
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord
Harry would have given all the gold in Gringotts to evaporate on the spot. Trying valiantly to laugh along with everyone else, he got up, his feet numb from the weight of the dwarf, as Percy Weasley did his best to disperse the crowd, some of whom were crying with mirth.
Harry rolled his eyes, picked up his stuff, and stuffed them in his bag.
"Hey, look!" came a voice. "It's Potter's diary!"
Harry looked up to see Theodore Nott grinning meanly at him, holding up a black book.
"Give that back," said Harry quietly.
"Wonder what Potter's written in this?" said Nott, who obviously hadn't noticed the year on the cover and thought he had Harry's own diary. A hush fell over the onlookers. Ginny Weasley was staring from the diary to Harry, looking terrified.
Harry lost his temper. "Accio Book!" he said, using a fourth year charm Lyra told him to learn.
The book shot out of Nott's hand into his. With a satisfied smirk, he turned around and went to Charms.
It wasn't until they had reached Professor Flitwick's class that Harry noticed something rather odd about Riddle's diary. All his other books were drenched in scarlet ink. The diary, however, was as clean as it had been before the ink bottle had smashed all over it. He tried to point this out to Ron, but Ron was having trouble with his wand again; large purple bubbles were blossoming out of the end, and he wasn't much interested in anything else. It was still malfunctioning after it broke.
That evening at dinner Harry received another valentine from a dwarf. This one however, had nothing to do with love.
Harry James Potter, HOW DARE YOU NOT GIVE ME A TURN ON THAT WINDSTORM YET? I bloody bought it for you, and you haven't let me try it out yet. For Merlin's sake, you let my brother try it out! If I don't get a flight in the next week I will hex you two ways to Sunday! Oh, Happy Valentines Day.
Harry just laughed at Lyra and her audacity. He would have to give her a ride on the Windstorm though. Harry went to bed before anyone else in his dormitory that night. This was partly because he didn't think he could stand Fred and George singing, "His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad" one more time, and partly because he wanted to examine Riddle's diary again.
Harry sat on his four-poster and flicked through the blank pages, not one of which had a trace of scarlet ink on it. Then he pulled a new bottle out of his bedside cabinet, dipped his quill into it, and dropped a blot onto the first page of the diary.
The ink shone brightly on the paper for a second and then, as though it was being sucked into the page, vanished. Excited, Harry loaded up his quill a second time, ready to write his name, when he paused. Lyra always told him not to trust a thing if you couldn't see where it's brain was. But he wanted to know more.
"My name is Neville Longbottom." he wrote.
The words shone momentarily on the page and they, too, sank without trace. Then, at last, something happened.
Oozing back out of the page, in his very own ink, came words Harry had never written.
"Hello, Neville Longbottom. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?"
These words, too, faded away, but not before Harry had started to scribble back.
"Someone tried to flush it down a toilet."
He waited eagerly for Riddle's reply.
"Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read."
"What do you mean?" Harry scrawled, blotting the page in his excitement.
`I mean that this diary holds memories of terrible things. Things that were covered up. Things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"That's where I am now," Harry wrote quickly. "I'm at Hogwarts, and horrible stuff's been happening. Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets?"
His heart was hammering. Riddle's reply came quickly, his writing becoming untidier, as though he was hurrying to tell all he knew.
"Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist. But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned."
Harry nearly upset his ink bottle in his hurry to write back.
"It's happening again now. There have been three attacks and no one seems to know who's behind them. Who was it last time?"
"I can show you, if you like," came Riddle's reply. "You don't have to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night when I caught him."
Harry hesitated, his quill suspended over the diary. What did Riddle mean? How could he be taken inside somebody else's memory? He glanced nervously at the door to the dormitory, which was growing dark. When he looked back at the diary, he saw fresh words forming.
"Let me show you."
Harry paused for a fraction of a second and then wrote two letters.
OK
The pages of the diary began to blow as though caught in a high wind, stopping halfway through the month of June. Mouth hanging open, Harry saw that the little square for June thirteenth seemed to have turned into a miniscule television screen. His hands trembling slightly, he raised the book to press his eye against the little window, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forward; the window was widening, he felt his body leave his bed, and he was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of color and shadow.
When Harry came back from the memory he was trembling. Hagrid had opened the Chamber of Secrets. Trembling, the next morning, Harry rushed to the classroom that they always used to meet, and met up with Lyra, Malfoy, Luna, Susan, and Hannah.
After he told them the story, he was met with silence.
"There is no way Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets," Susan broke the silence.
"I know, but the diary said so," Harry said guiltily.
"Harry, what if the diary was the dark object my father was talking about?" Lyra asked quietly. "Even if he didn't hurt you, he could be gaining your trust and waiting for the right moment."
Harry thought about it and realized that Lyra was most likely correct.
"But it's still in my dormitory!" Harry realized.
"Then what are you waiting for?" Malfoy asked, staring at him like he was an idiot.
"It's no use," Luna said calmly. "The Nargles told me that it was taken away by the possessed one in fear."
Harry groaned. Luna was proven right like always: a Gryffindor had ransacked the dorm and taken the diary. He didn't know who, but it cemented the knowledge Dobby had gave them: that Lucius Malfoy had planted the diary on a Gryffindor, and that Gryffindor had ransacked the dorms for the diary.
The second years were given something new to think about during their Easter holidays. The time had come to choose their subjects for the third year, a matter that Lyra, at least, took very seriously.
"...it could affect our whole future," she told Harry, Malfoy, Susan, and Hannah as they pored over lists of new subjects, marking them with checks.
"Definitely Care of Magical Creatures," Harry checked. "It looks so interesting in the books!"
"I reckon Divination won't be too bad," Malfoy stated thoughtfully. "Easy O."
"You're not getting an easy O in that class," Lyra scoffed at her brother.
Harry hid his grin as the two siblings started bickering again.
"Ancient Runes seems pretty cool," Hannah said, as she looked at an Ancient Runes book.
"In third year you're allowed to take three electives and narrow it down to two by fourth year."
"Nah," Harry shook his head. "I'm thinking of taking Ancient Runes. The last time I looked at an Arithmancy book I got a headache from all the numbers and symbols and predictions. I would flunk."
"So Ancient Runes and Care of Magical Creatures for you," Lyra decided, having won her argument with Malfoy, who would now take Ancient Runes with Harry.
Eventually Susan chose Muggle Studies and Arithmancy. Hannah chose Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, because she had a little seer blood in her, though Luna said it wasn't enough after reading her aura though Nargles. Lyra picked Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, wanting to take the hardest courses Hogwarts had to offer.
Neville Longbottom had been sent letters from all the witches and wizards in his family, all giving him different advice on what to choose. Confused and worried, he sat reading the subject lists with his tongue poking out, asking people whether they thought. Arithmancy sounded more difficult than the study of Ancient Runes. Dean Thomas, who, like Harry, had grown up with Muggles, ended up closing his eyes and jabbing his wand at the list, then picking the subjects it landed on. Hermione took nobody's advice but signed up for everything.
Gryffindor's next Quidditch match would be against Hufflepuff. Wood was insisting on team practices every night after dinner, so that Harry barely had time for anything but Quidditch and homework. However, the training sessions were getting better, or at least drier, and the evening before Saturday's match he went up to his dormitory to drop off his broomstick feeling Gryffindor's chances for the Quidditch cup had never been better.
They woke the next day to brilliant sunshine and a light, refreshing breeze.
"Perfect Quidditch conditions!" said Wood enthusiastically at the Gryffindor table, loading the team's plates with scrambled eggs. "Harry, buck up there, you need a decent breakfast."
When Harry still made no move to eat at the table, Lyra had stalked over from the Slytherin table, piled food onto his plate, stuffed a fork in his hand, and after he ate, stalked out with him. Susan and Luna joined them. As they walked along to corridor to collect his Quidditch things Harry heard the voice of Slytherin's Monster.
"Kill this time... let me rip... tear..."
He froze. "It's there again!" he shouted.
Luna's eyes widened. "I think I know what it is!" she shouted, uncharacteristically loud for the small girl. "Come on Susan!"
Both girls raced off to the library, leaving a very confused Harry and Lyra behind. Harry raced up to Gryffindor Tower, collected his Winstorm Fifty, and joined the large crowd swarming across the grounds, but his mind was still in the castle along with the bodiless voice, and as he pulled on his scarlet robes in the locker room, his only comfort was that everyone was now outside to watch the game.
The teams walked onto the field to tumultuous applause. Oliver Wood took off for a warm-up flight around the goal posts; Madam Hooch released the balls. The Hufflepuffs, who played in canary yellow, were standing in a huddle, having a last-minute discussion of tactics.
Harry was just mounting his broom when Professor McGonagall came half marching, half running across the pitch, carrying an enormous purple megaphone.
Harry's heart dropped like a stone.
"This match has been cancelled," Professor McGonagall called through the megaphone, addressing the packed stadium. There were boos and shouts. Oliver Wood, looking devastated, landed and ran toward Professor McGonagall without getting off his broomstick.
"But, Professor!" he shouted. "We've got to play - the cup - Gryffindor-"
Professor McGonagall ignored him and continued to shout through her megaphone:
"All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!"
Harry went back to the common room, unaware of what was going on. The next day he was greeted in the halls by a tearful Hannah, whose blonde hair was dishevelled and was dragging Lyra and Malfoy with her. She brought them all to the infirmary, and there Harry saw them. Luna and Susan, their eyes open in fear, petrified on the beds.
"No," Lyra whispered, her voice desolate.
Harry spoke nothing, only stared at their bodies. In that year he had come to regard Susan and Luna as his sisters, and now they were petrified. He reached a hand out and smoothed Luna's curly hair back from her pale face. With a small sob, Lyra launched herself at Malfoy, who just held her.
Hagrid was arrested a day later. Harry and Ron took over the duty of taking care of Fang for him, but Harry knew why Hagrid was arrested. Because they thought he opened the Chamber of Secrets. That's why he was expelled. Dumbledore left a few days later.
Summer was creeping over the grounds around the castle; sky and lake alike turned periwinkle blue and flowers large as cabbages burst into bloom in the greenhouses. But with no Hagrid visible from the castle windows, striding the grounds with Fang at his heels, the scene didn't look right to Harry; no better, in fact, than the inside of the castle, where things were so horribly wrong.
Harry and Lyra had tried visiting Luna and Susan in the hospital wing, but visitors were now barred entry.
"We're taking no more chances," Madam Pomfrey told them severely through a crack in the infirmary door. "No, I'm sorry, there's every chance the attacker might come back to finish these people off..."
With Dumbledore gone, fear had spread as never before, so that the sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school that didn't look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled.
The Herbology class was very subdued; there were now two missing from their number, Justin and Susan.
Professor Sprout set them all to work pruning the Abyssinian Shrivelfigs. Harry went to tip an armful of withered stalks onto the compost heap and found himself face-to-face with Ernie Macmillan. Ernie took a deep breath and said, very formally, "I just want to say, Harry, that I'm sorry I ever suspected you. I know you'd never attack Luna Lovegood and I apologize for all the stuff I said. We're all in the same boat now, and, well-"
He held out a pudgy hand, and Harry shook it.
Ernie and his friend Hannah came to work at the same Shrivelfig as Harry and Ron.
That night Harry spend his time sitting with Lyra and Malfoy in the classroom thinking of what they have missed.
"There has to be something," Harry groaned, rubbing his eyes.
"I checked everything," Lyra groaned. "All that happened last time were a few petrifications and a girl named Myrtle was killed in a girls bathroom."
"Wait," Harry said, sitting up suddenly. "A girl's bathroom."
Lyra caught on. "You don't think-" she gasped.
"What am I missing?" Malfoy asked, looking between them.
"Moaning Myrtle," they chorused.
The three of them made a pact to visit the girls bathroom as soon as possible, but something happened in their first lesson, Transfiguration, that drove the Chamber of Secrets out of their minds for the first time in weeks. Ten minutes into the class, Professor McGonagall told them that their exams would start on the first of June, one week from today.
"Exams?" howled Seamus Finnigan. "We're still getting exams?"
There was a loud bang behind Harry as Neville Longbottom's wand slipped, vanishing one of the legs on his desk. Professor McGonagall restored it with a wave of her own wand, and turned, frowning, to 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 studying hard."
Studying hard! It had never occurred to Harry that there would be exams with the castle in this state. There was a great deal of mutinous muttering around the room, which made Professor McGonagall scowl even more darkly.
"Professor Dumbledore's instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible," she said. "And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year."
Harry wasn't as worried about exams as he had been in previous years. He had studied a lot this year, and he was confident he could do well on the exams.
Three days before their first exam, Professor McGonagall made another announcement at breakfast.
"I have good news," she said, and the Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupted.
"Dumbledore's coming back!" several people yelled joyfully.
"You've caught the Heir of Slytherin!" squealed a girl at the Ravenclaw table.
"Quidditch matches are back on!" roared Wood excitedly.
When the hubbub had subsided, Professor McGonagall said, "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."
Harry clapped his hands loudly and cheered. Luna and Susan were coming back! Harry knew the whole mystery might be solved tomorrow without their help, but he wasn't about to pass up a chance to speak to Myrtle if it turned up - and to his delight it did, midmorning, when they were being led to History of Magic by Gilderoy Lockhart.
Lockhart, who had so often assured them that all danger had passed, only to be proved wrong right away, was now wholeheartedly convinced that it was hardly worth the trouble to see them safely down the corridors. His hair wasn't as sleek as usual; it seemed he had been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.
"Mark my words," he said, ushering 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."
"I agree, sir," said Harry, making Lyra drop her books in surprise.
"Thank you, Harry," said Lockhart graciously while 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," said Lyra, catching on. "Why don't you leave us here, sir, we've only got one more corridor to go-"
"You know, Malfoy, I think I will," said Lockhart. "I really should go and prepare my next class-"
And he hurried off.
"Prepare his class," Lyra sneered after him. "Gone to curl his hair, more like."
They let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of them, then darted down a side passage and hurried off toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Harry pulled his Invisibility Cloak out of his bag since he had started carrying it everywhere and just as he was getting into the cloak McGonagall walked by. He immediately dropped the fabric onto Lyra.
"What are you doing here Potter?" McGonagall asked severely.
"I- just- well, I wanted to see Luna!" he made up.
Professor McGonagall was still staring at him, and for a moment, Harry thought she was going to explode, but when she spoke, it was in a strangely croaky voice.
"Of course," she said, and Harry, amazed, saw a tear glistening in her beady eye. "Of course, I realize this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been... I quite understand. Yes, Potter, of course you may visit Miss Lovegood. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."
Harry let out a sigh and hurried off in the direction of the Hospital Wing, hoping that Lyra was following him.
"That was amazing storytelling," she grinned. "But now we really will go to the Hospital Wing."
"I've wanted to see them anyway," Harry shrugged.
They had no choice now but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that they had Professor McGonagall's permission to visit Luna and Susan.
Madam Pomfrey let them in, but reluctantly.
"There's just no point talking to a Petrified person," she said, and they had to admit she had a point when they'd taken their seats next to Susan and Luna. It was plain that they didn't have the faintest inkling that she had visitors, and that they might just as well tell her bedside cabinet not to worry for all the good it would do.
"Wonder if she did see the attacker, though?" said Lyra, looking sadly at Susan's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one'll ever know..."
But Harry wasn't looking at Susan's face. He was more interested in her right hand. It lay clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her fist.
Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, he pointed this out to Lyra.
"Go on and get it out," Lyra whispered, shifting her chair so that she blocked Harry from Madam Pomfrey's view.
It was no easy task. After several tense minutes Harry managed to pull the paper from Susan's hands.
It was a page torn from a very old library book. Harry smoothed it out eagerly and Lyra leaned close to read it, too.
"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."
And beneath this, a single word had been written, in a hand Harry recognized as Susan's. It was large messy.
Pipes.
It was as though somebody had just flicked a light on in his brain.
"Lyra," he breathed. "This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a basilisk - a giant serpent! That's why I've been hearing that voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it. It's because I understand Parseltongue..."
Harry looked up at the beds around him.
"The basilisk kills people by looking at them. But no one's died - because no one looked it straight in the eye. Colin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside it, but Colin just got Petrified. Justin... Justin must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick! Nick got the full blast of it, but he couldn't die again. and Susan and Luna were found with a mirror next to them. Hermione had just realized the monster was a basilisk. I bet you anything she warned the first person she met to look around corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror - and-"
Lyra's jaw had dropped. "And Mrs. Norris only saw the reflection because Moaning Myrtle flooded the bathroom," she whispered.
He scanned the page in his hand eagerly. The more he looked at it, the more it made sense.
"...The crowing of the rooster... is fatal to it"! he read aloud. "Hagrid's roosters were killed! The Heir of Slytherin didn't want one anywhere near the castle once the Chamber was opened! Spiders flee before it! It all fits! I've been seeing spiders scuttling away and out of the castle!"
"Pipes," Lyra breathed, pointing at the word Susan had scribbled. "The basilisk is travelling through the plumbing."
"The entrance!" Harry realized. "What if it's in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom?"
Lyra gazed at him in horror "That's it," she whispered.
They sat there, excitement coursing through them, hardly able to believe it.
"This means," said Harry, "I can't be the only Parselmouth in the school. The Heir of Slytherin's one, too. That's how he's been controlling the basilisk."
"What will we do?" Lyra asked.
"We'll wait," Harry said grimly. "Let's go to the staff room and get any information we can on the petrifications and then we'll search the bathroom."
They ran downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, they went straight into the deserted staff room. It was a large, paneled room full of dark, wooden chairs. Harry and Lyra paced around it, too excited to sit down.
But the bell to signal break never came.
Instead, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified.
"All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."
Harry wheeled around to stare at Lyra. "Not another attack? Not now?"
"What'll we do?" said Lyra, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"
"No," said Harry, glancing around. There was an ugly sort of wardrobe to his left, full of the teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."
They hid themselves inside it, listening to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staff room door banging open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, they watched the teachers filtering into the room. Some of them were looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrived.
"It has happened," she told the silent staff room. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."
Professor Flitwick let out a squeal. Professor Sprout clapped her hands over her mouth. Snape gripped the back of a chair very hard and said, "How can you be sure?"
"The Heir of Slytherin," said Professor McGonagall, who was very white, "left another message. Right underneath the first one. Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.
Professor Flitwick burst into tears.
"Who is it?" said Madam Hooch, who had sunk, weak-kneed, into a chair. "Which student?"
"Ginevra Weasley," said Professor McGonagall.
Harry heard nothing else. He heard nothing. It felt like his head had been submerged in waters. The teacher's voices were fuzzy. Ginny had been taken. Ginny. Ron's little sister, just a first year. She was innocent, and this would tear the innocence from her.
"Come on," Lyra muttered, pulling Harry from his thoughts.
He noticed that the teachers were gone, and that they were alone.
"She was taken," Harry said hoarsely.
"Innocents are always the first to suffer in war," Lyra said grimly.
"Come on," Harry sighed, getting up and pushing everything else out of his mind. "To the Girl's 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?"
"To ask you how you died," said Harry.
Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.
"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 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 -" 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. "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 vaguely toward the sink in front of her toilet.
Harry and Lyra hurried to that area, looking around the sinks. It looked like an ordinary sink. They 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 brightly as he tried to turn it.
"Open," Harry hissed in Parseltongue.
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 in," Harry decided.
"Harry, you can't!" Lyra cried out.
"I have to," Harry said grimly. "Lyra, you stay here. If I don't come back in an hour contact the teachers."
And before she could protest more he jumped down. It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and he knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. And then, just as he had begun to worry about what would happen when he hit the ground, the pipe leveled out, and he shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in.
With a groan of disgust at the slop covering him Harry muttered, "Scourgify" to clean himself and then, "Lumos" to light his way.
The tunnel he walked through was quiet as a grave, the only sound being Harry's footsteps as he stepped on animal bones. He saw a long and narrow thing up ahead and froze, sneaking up, only to see a basilisk skin that was about 40 feet. This meant that the basilisk now would be a good 60 feet. The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor.
Harry swallowed and kept on walking, trying not to think about Lyra or Susan or Ginny or Ron or anyone. Every nerve in Harry's body was tingling unpleasantly. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did. And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.
Harry approached, 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 serpent's parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry, shaking from head to foot, walked inside.
He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. His heart beating very fast, Harry stood listening to the chill silence. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Ginny?
He pulled out his wand and moved forward between the serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls. He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir.
Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.
Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, face down, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming-red hair.
"Ginny!" Harry shouted, rushing to her. "Don't be dead, please don't be dead," he muttered.
"Ginny, please wake up," Harry muttered desperately, shaking her. Ginny's head lolled hopelessly from side to side.
"She won't wake," said a soft voice.
Harry jumped and spun around on his knees.
A tall, black-haired boy was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching. He was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Harry were looking at him through a misted window. But there was no mistaking him.
"Tom - Tom Riddle?"
Riddle nodded.
"You opened the Chamber!" Harry accused. "You work for Voldemort!"
He knew that the diary belonged to the Dark Lord, so it only made sense that the boy in the book was the real person to open the chamber. Lyra had explained it to him.
"Lord Voldemort is my past, present, and future," Riddle hissed.
And using fire letters he wrote his name in the air, rearranging them to spell Lord Voldemort. Harry's heart dropped. He was facing Lord Voldemort.
"You see?" he whispered. "It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry - I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"
"What did you do to her?" Harry demanded, palming his wand into his hands.
"The diary," said Riddle. `My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes - how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how -" Riddle's eyes glinted "- how she didn't think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her..."
All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in them.
"It's very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl," he went on. "But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. 'No one's ever understood me like you, Tom... I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in... It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket ...'"
Riddle laughed, a high, cold laugh that didn't suit him. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Harry's neck.
"If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted... I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her..."
"What d'you mean?" said Harry, whose mouth had gone very dry.
"Haven't you guessed yet, Harry Potter?" said Riddle softly. "Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on two mudbloods and two blood traitors, and the Squib's cat."
"No," Harry whispered.
"Yes," said Riddle, calmly. "Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries... far more interesting, they became... 'Dear Tom'," he recited, watching Harry's horrified face, "'I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and 1 don't know how they got there. Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I've got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and I'm not myself. I think he suspects me... There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad... I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!'"
Harry's fists were clenched, the nails digging deep into his palms.
"It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary," said Riddle. "But she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. And that's where you came in, Harry. You found it, and I couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the very person I was most anxious to meet..."
"And why did you want to meet me?" said Harry. Anger was coursing through him, and it was an effort to keep his voice steady.
"Well, you see, Ginny told me all about you, Harry," said Riddle. "Your whole fascinating history." His eyes roved over the lightning scar on Harry's forehead, and their expression grew hungrier. "I knew I must find out more about you, talk to you, meet you if I could. So I decided to show you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust-"
"Hagrid's my friend," said Harry, his voice now shaking. "And you framed him, didn't you? I thought you made a mistake, but-"
Riddle laughed his high laugh again.
"It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student... on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls... but I admit, even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance... as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power!
"Only the Transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed... Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did ..."
"I bet Dumbledore saw right through you," said Harry, his teeth gritted.
"Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled," said Riddle carelessly. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. But I wasn't going to waste those long years I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."
"Well, you haven't finished it," said Harry triumphantly. "No one's died this time, not even the cat. In a few hours the Mandrake Draught will be ready and everyone who was Petrified will be all right again-"
"Haven't I already told you," said Riddle quietly, "that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been - you."
Harry stared at him.
"Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery - particularly if one of your best friends was attacked. And Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak Parseltongue ...
"So I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring. But there isn't much life left in her... She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last... I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived here. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter."
"Like what?" Harry spat, fists still clenched.
"Well," said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, "how is it that you - a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical talent - managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"
"As if I'd tell you," Harry sneered. "Then I would just give you more ammo to defeat me."
"So you aren't a fool," Riddle sneered back.
Harry opened his mouth to retort, but froze. Music was coming from somewhere. Riddle whirled around to stare down the empty Chamber. The music was growing louder. It was eerie, spine-tingling, unearthly; it lifted the hair on Harry's scalp and made his heart feel as though it was swelling to twice its normal size. Then, as the music reached such a pitch that Harry felt it vibrating inside his own ribs, flames erupted at the top of the nearest pillar.
A crimson bird the size of a swan had appeared, piping its weird music to the vaulted ceiling. It had a glittering golden tail as long as a peacock's and gleaming golden talons, which were gripping a ragged bundle.
A second later, the bird was flying straight at Harry. It dropped the ragged thing it was carrying at his feet, then landed heavily on his shoulder. As it folded its great wings, Harry looked up and saw it had a long, sharp golden beak and a beady black eye.
The bird stopped singing. It sat still and warm next to Harry's cheek, gazing steadily at Riddle.
"That's a phoenix," said Riddle, staring shrewdly back at it.
"Fawkes," Harry whispered. He had read about him. Fawkes was a phoenix connected to Hogwarts, and could only be called by someone with extreme loyalty to the school.
"Now, Harry, I'm going to teach you a little lesson. Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against famous Harry Potter, and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him..."
He cast an amused eye over Fawkes, then walked away. Harry, fear spreading up his numb legs, watched Riddle stop between the high pillars and look up into the stone face of Slytherin, high above him in the half-darkness. Riddle opened his mouth wide and hissed - but Harry understood what he was saying ...
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four."
Harry wheeled around to look up at the statue, Fawkes swaying on his shoulder. Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving. Horrorstruck, Harry saw his mouth opening, wider and wider, to make a huge black hole.
And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths. Harry knew that his best chance to defeat a basilisk was to blind it, so he scrambled onto the statue of Slytherin and pointed his wand at the entrance before closing his eyes.
He heard the thud of the snake landing on the ground and shouted, "Caecus!"
He heard a small shriek in Parseltongue, but he knew that his spell hadn't connected. Relying completely on his hearing he started shooting off cutting curses of the darker nature.
"Besnoeiing!" he shouted. "Gaudete! Verbreken! Llosgi!"
None of them had any effect. Harry decided to try projectiles, but before he could do more he heard a screech of agony from the basilisk. Harry opened his eyes to squint at what was going on.
The enormous serpent, bright, poisonous green, thick as an oak trunk, had raised itself high in the air and it's great blunt head was weaving drunkenly between the pillars. As Harry trembled, ready to close his eyes if it turned, he saw what had distracted the snake.
Fawkes was soaring around its head, and the basilisk was snapping furiously at him with fangs long and thin as sabers Fawkes dived. His long golden beak sank out of sight and a sudden shower of dark blood spattered the floor. The snake's tail thrashed, narrowly missing Harry, and before Harry could shut his eyes, it turned - Harry looked straight into its face and saw that its eyes, both its great, bulbous yellow eyes, had been punctured by the phoenix; blood was streaming to the floor, and the snake was spitting in agony.
"NO!" Harry heard Riddle screaming. "LEAVE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU. YOU CAN STILL SMELL HIM. KILL HIM!"
Encouraged, Harry used the summoning charm to break big pointy pieces of rock from the ground, and he banished them at the snake. One of them knocked two of it's fangs out, and the other jammed into its shoulder, but it didn't work.
Harry jumped off the statue as the basilisk bit where he was, zig zagging away and thinking of what to do.
The crow of a rooster is fatal to the basilisk.
A rooster! But how was Harry going to get a rooster? He hadn't learned conjuring yet. Letting off another projectile to distract the deadly serpent he wracked his brain for the incantation. Then he found it.
"Ayam konjure!" he bellowed, pushing his magic and envisioning a rooster in his mind.
It didn't work. Harry scrambled away, tripping on a puddle of water. He looked up at the green snake ready to strike above him, and thought about Ginny.
Ginny. Luna. Susan. They need me. I can do this!
"AYAM KONJURE!" he bellowed, and a rooster came out of his wand.
One look at the basilisk and the rooster crowed "COCK A DOODLE DOO!"
With a shriek of agony the basilisk swayed and fell to the ground with a resounding thud. Harry wobbled to his feet, still staring at the carcass of the basilisk. Without a second thought he picked up the diary and jammed it onto one of the basilisk's fangs.
There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Harry's hands, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then-
He had gone. Harry's wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady drip drip of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it.
Bloody hell. He had just killed a basilisk. Harry decided then and there that the best thing to do would be to pass out.
"Harry! Harry!" he heard a girl's voice shrieking above him.
Groggily he opened his eyes, and all he saw was fire. Wait, scratch that, it was hair. Ginny was leaning over him, her fire red hair enveloping her face as she shook him.
"You're alive!" she shrieked, launching herself at him with a sob. "I thought you were dead! I'm sorry sorry Harry!" she started crying. "It was Tom, he was controlling me and-"
"Shh," Harry soothed. "It's not your fault. You won't get in trouble."
"Come on," Harry soothed her. "Let's get out of here."
Without a backwards glance at the tunnel, Harry walked off with his wand and Ginny. After a few minutes' progress up the dark tunnel, the two of them reached the end of the tunnel.
"How will we get out?" Ginny asked quietly.
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. Harry looked uncertainly at him.
"He looks like he wants you to grab hold..." said Ginny, looking perplexed. "But you're much too heavy for a bird to pull up there-"
"Fawkes," said Harry, "isn't an ordinary bird." He turned quickly to the her. "Ginny take my hand."
An extraordinary lightness seemed to spread through his whole body and the next second, in a rush of wings, they were flying upward through the pipe. The chill air was whipping through Harry's hair, and before he'd stopped enjoying the ride, it was over - the two of them were hitting the wet floor of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
"Harry!" he heard the voice of Lyra shrieked before he was tackled by a hug.
Harry got out of her embrace to see Ginny backing away. With a grin he grabbed her and pulled her into the hug, much to her surprise.
Ginny was surprised to see Lyra Malfoy hugging Harry, and realized what had happened. She had opened the Chamber. She started backing away, but Harry pulled her into the hug. Ginny gave a small sob before hugging him back.
They drew away, and Ginny realized that it had been a Malfoy who saved her. Maybe they weren't as bad as Ron always put them.
"Thanks for saving me," Ginny smiled shyly.
"Now we go to McGonagall's office," Harry said.
They reached it, and Harry opened the door.