Estella felt like she was falling through the sky, plummeting closer and closer to the ground.
She felt Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside him.
Oh no, her unspoken pity filling the enclosed space like a blown-up balloon, his sister. My friend. This is like me and Hermione but so, so, so much worse. Hermione will get better but Ginny-
"We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow," said Professor McGonagall. "This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said..."
The staff room door banged open again. It was Lockhart, and he was beaming. "So sorry- dozed off- what have I missed?"
Estella clenched her fist. How dare he look so happy, be so cheerful when right this instant, Ginny could be lying still in the darkness. Alone.
Lockhart didn't seem to notice that the other teachers were looking at him with something remarkably like hatred. Snape stepped forward.
"Just the man," he said. "The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last."
Lockhart blanched.
"That's right, Gilderoy," chipped in Professor Sprout. "Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"
"I- well, I-" spluttered Lockhart.
"Yes, didn't you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?" piped up Professor Flitwick.
"D- did I? I don't recall..."
"I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn't had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested," said Snape. "Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?"
Estella didn't think she'd ever appreciated Snape as much as at that moment.
Lockhart stared around at his stony-faced colleagues. "I... I really never... You may have misunderstood..."
"We'll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy," said Professor McGonagall. "Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We'll make sure everyone's out of your way. You'll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free rein at last."
Lockhart gazed desperately around him, but nobody came to the rescue. He didn't look remotely handsome anymore. His lip was trembling and in the absence of his usually toothy grin he looked weak-chinned and weedy.
"V- very well," he said. "I'll- I'll be in my office, getting- getting ready."
And he left the room.
"Right," said Professor McGonagall, whose nostrils were flared, "that's got him out from under our feet. The Head of Houses should go and inform their students what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you please make sure no students have been left outside their dormitories."
The teachers rose and left one by one.
✰♪
It was probably the worst day of Estella's entire life; test marks and missed opportunities could not compare to this. This void.
She, Harry, Ron, Fred and George sat together in a corner of the Gryffindor room, unable to say anything to each other.
Percy wasn't there. He had gone to send an owl to Mr and Mrs Weasley, then shut himself up in his dormitory.
No afternoon ever lasted as long as that one, nor had the Gryffindor Tower ever been so crowded, yet so quiet.
Her friends had long gone up to their dormitory, nodding silently when Estella expressed her wish to stay with Harry and Ron.
Near sunset, Fred and George went up to bed, unable to sit there any longer.
Estella wished she could've said something to comfort them, but she was speechless.
"She knew something," said Ron, speaking for the first time since they had entered the wardrobe in the staff room. "That's why she was taken. It wasn't some stupid thing about Percy at all. She'd found out something about the Chamber of Secrets. That must be why she was-" Ron rubbed his eyes frantically. "I mean, she was a pureblood. There can't be any other reason."
Estella could see the sun sinking, blood red, below the skyline. This was the worst she had ever felt. If only there was something they could do. Anything.
Again, the white glinted in her mind and she grabbed her head with her hands, covering her eyes.
"Harry, Stella," said Ron, "d'you think there's any chance at all she's not- you know-"
Estella didn't know what to say. She couldn't see how Ginny could still be alive but she knew that if she voiced that thought, Ron would break, lose all hope.
"D'you know what?" said Ron, "I think we should go and see Lockhart. Tell him what we know. He's going to try and get into the Chamber. We can tell him where we think it is, and tell him it's a Basilisk in there."
Because she couldn't think of anything else to do and because she wanted to feel like she was at least doing something, Estella agreed.
The Gryffindors around them were so miserable, and felt so sorry for the Weasleys, that nobody tried to stop them as they got up, crossed the room, and left through the portrait hole.
Darkness was falling as they walked down to Lockhart's office. There seemed to be a lot of activity going on inside it.
They could hear scraping, thumps and hurried footsteps.
Harry knocked and there was a sudden silence from inside.
Then the door opened the tiniest crack and they saw one of Lockhart's eyes peering through it.
"Oh... Mr Potter... Mr Weasley... Miss Granger..." he said, opening the door a mite wider. "I'm rather busy at the moment. If you would be quick..."
"Professor, we've got some information for you," said Harry. "We think it'll help you."
"Er- well- it's not terribly-" The side of Lockhart's face that they could see looked very uncomfortable. "I mean- well- all right."
He opened the door and they entered.
His office had been almost completely stripped. Two large trunks stood open on the floor. Robes, jade green, lilac, midnight blue, had been hastily folded into one of them; books were jumbled untidily into the other. The photographs that had covered the walls were now crammed into boxes on the desk.
"Are you going somewhere?" said Harry.
"To find the monster?" Estella added hopefully.
"Er, well, yes- no I mean-" said Lockhart, ripping a life-size poster of himself from the back of the door as he spoke, and starting to roll it up. "Urgent call... unavoidable... got to go..."
"What about my sister?" said Ron jerkily.
"Well, as to that- most unfortunate," said Lockhart, avoiding their eyes as he wrenched open a drawer and started emptying the contents into a bag. "No one regrets more than I-"
Estella stepped forward and slammed the drawer shut, glaring at him.
He jumped.
"You're the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher!" said Harry. "You can't go now! Not with all the dark stuff going on here!"
"Well, I must say... when I took the job..." Lockhart muttered, now piling socks on top of his robes, "Nothing in the job description... didn't expect..."
"You mean you're running away?" said Harry disbelievingly.
"You coward," Estella seethed in outrage.
"After all that stuff you did in your books?" Harry said in shock.
"Books can be misleading," said Lockhart delicately.
"You wrote them!" Harry shouted.
"My dear boy," said Lockhart, straightening up and frowning at Harry. "Do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin. I mean, come on..."
"He's a fraud," Estella declared, "just like I've always thought!"
"So you've just been taking credit for what a load of other people have done?" said Harry incredulously.
"Harry, Harry," said Lockhart, shaking his head impatiently, "it's not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved."
"Dirty, rotten, underhanded work," Estella muttered mutinously. "Did you even compensate those people for their stories? Why, for Godric's sake do wizards not have copyright or something? If someone did this in the Muggle world, they would've been sued."
Lockhart ignored her, looking at Harry. "I had to track these people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my Memory Charms. No, it's been a lot of work, Harry. It's not all book-signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long hard slog."
Estella stared at him in disgust.
He banged the lids of his trunks shut and locked them.
"Let's see," he said. "I think that's everything. Yes. Only one thing left."
He pulled out his wand and turned to them.
"Awfully sorry, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you three now. Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book..."
Estella stood motionless, pathetically still as Lockhart raised his wand.
But Harry was there, and he bellowed just in time, "Expelliarmus!"
Lockhart was blasted backwards, falling over his trunk. HIs wand flew high into the air; Ron caught it and flung it out of the open window.
Estella grinned. "Nice one Harry!"
"Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one," said Harry furiously, kicking Lockhart's trunk aside. Lockhart was looking up at him, weedy once more. Harry was still pointing his wand at him.
"What d'you want me to do?" said Lockhart weakly. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."
"You're in luck," said Estella as Harry forced Lockhart to his feet at wandpoint. "We think we know where it is, and what's inside. Let's go."
They 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.
They sent Lockhart in first. Estella felt a sense of vindictive pleasure to see him shaking.
Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the cistern 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 cubicle. 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 Estella.
"No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing pair of great big yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away..." She looked dreamily at Harry.
Estella scrunched up her nose, stepping closer to him.
"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 towards the sink in front of her toilet.
Harry, Ron and Estella hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face.
It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below.
It was Harry who found 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.
"Harry," said Ron, "say something. Something in Parseltongue."
"But-"
"You can do it," Estella encouraged.
Harry stared hard at the tiny engraving. Estella craned her neck to see the tap more clearly.
"Open up," he said.
He looked up at them.
Estella shook her head.
"English," Ron said.
Harry looked back at the snake. Estella held her breath.
Harry opened his mouth and a strange hissing escaped his lips. Estella gasped. At once, the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin.
She stumbled back hurriedly and watched as the sink began to sink, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for someone to slide into.
"I'm going down there," Harry said.
Estella wanted to say no, to try and convince him otherwise, but she knew there was no hope. Looking at him, she knew he'd made up his mind.
He couldn't walk away, not now that they had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest chance that Ginny might be alive.
And neither will I, Estella thought determinedly.
"I'm coming with you," she declared, stepping forward.
"Me too," said Ron valiantly.
There was a pause.
"Well, you hardly seem to need me," said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. "I'll just-"
He put his hand on the door knob, but all three of them pointed their wands at him.
"You can go first," Ron snarled.
White-faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening.
"Boys, Miss Granger," he said, his voice feeble, "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 Estella and Ron both shoved him at the same time and he slid out of sight.
Harry followed quickly.
Ron went after him in silence.
Then, it was just Estella, staring down into the vague emptiness.
Be brave. Don't think about it.
She knelt down beside the hole and pushed herself in.