Sophie Pendragon, Year Two | Half-Vampire At Hogwarts

Chapter Twenty Six: June

          Harry's POV: Since the attacks on the muggle-born students and now Sophie, the school was under intense security. A curfew was put in place, too. I couldn't believe what happened when Moaning Myrtle found her. Ron and I visited her and we overheard Cedric saying that she was going to meet a friend. But who? Even Moaning Myrtle didn't know.

          I admit that I did send a dwarf to Sophie because I thought it would make her laugh and I did fancy her. She went through so much last year just to help us and now she's asleep. Everyone thinks she was in a type of vampiric petrification because of her half-and-half status. I pleaded with the headmaster to not tell Master Pendragon because I didn't want anything to happen to her. However, with this severe of a situation, he had no choice.

          After almost four months of monitoring the security shifts, Ron and I snuck out under my invisibility cloak to see Hagrid. He had secluded himself there when he heard about Hermione and Sophie. We didn't blame him because this all happened in one day. He nearly shot us with his crossbow when we didn't reveal ourselves outside of his hut. Our meeting went nowhere when we were immediately interrupted by Mr. Malfoy, Headmaster Dumbledore, and Minister Fudge, who was Mr. Weasley's boss, and we nearly got caught. Headmaster Dumbledore was removed as headmaster and Mr. Malfoy became the school governor. Hagrid was being taken to Azkaban Prison, too. The only hint he could give us was to follow the spiders.

          That's what we did. Ron and I went to the Forbidden Forest and the spiders grew in quantity and size the deeper we went. There, we met Aragog and I remembered that name. That was the name of the spider in Tom's memory. Aragog told us that the creature who murdered the muggle-born girl was still in the castle. She was murdered in a bathroom. We barely escaped with our lives when the car rescued us and ejected us at Hagrid's hut.

          "Ron, what if that girl never left the bathroom?" I asked.

          "Moaning Myrtle!" he exclaimed.

           We snuck into the castle and there was an alarm. All of the staff were called to the infirmary. We put on my cloak and snuck in. The staff was around Sophie's bed so we hid by Hermione. That's when I noticed a paper ball in her hand. I quickly brought my hand out to grab it and brought it back in.

          It was about a creature named the basilisk and it all made sense now! Hermione was in the library and she found this in a book! She even wrote 'pipes' on it. Spiders flee from it, its eyes can kill if you make direct eye contact with it, and it is slithering through the pipes! I can understand it because it's a snake! Ron understood but we both stopped breathing when we realized what happened. Sophie's bed was empty. She was missing.

          We followed the frantic staff to the second floor corridor. Professor Sprout was nearly hysterical. Sophie was taken by the monster into the Chamber of Secrets. Now, the students must be sent home and it was the end of Hogwarts. Professor Lockhart casually sauntered towards the staff and he knew where the entrance was to rescue her. He left to go to his office to prepare. When everyone left, Ron and I dropped the cloak when we read the message.

          "Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever," I read aloud.

          "No. Sophie," Ron exhaled. {END}

          I woke up in a trance and felt the desire to go to the girls' loo where Myrtle haunted. The castle was quiet in the night and my senses warned me whenever someone was nearby. I avoided being seen and stood in front of the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Like I had done before, I opened it but this time, I jumped in.

          The cold floor curved like a slide and I landed on a floor entirely covered in skeletons. They were animal skeletons. The stench didn't phase me but I felt the urgent need to continue walking further in. All this time, the diary was in my pocket. The deeper I explored the chamber, the more lively the book became and was moving on its own, as if to leap out of my pocket.

          I took it out and held it against me. I walked past a sixty foot snake skin and it ended in front of a circular door. Snakes adorned it and I hissed for it to open. A snake emerged and slithered around the door frame to unlock it. The door creaked open and I entered a room that smelled like the Black Lake if it were rancid.

          I walked along the partially wet platform and snakeheads were along the sides facing in. At the end of the platform was a massive head of Salazar Slytherin that emerged in deep water. My soul felt weak and I was losing vision. I collapsed on my back and weakly looked up. Emerging from my shadow was a memory from the diary that I only saw once. Tom Marvolo Riddle glanced back at me with a cruel smile and walked away from my body into the shadows. In vain, I tried to reach out for him but my arm fell limp on the cold floor and I couldn't remain conscious any further. I was used again and a tear escaped when my eyelids were too heavy to keep open and closed into darkness.