Cassia's POV
The next day, Ron, Harry, and I all went to visit Hermione. The flowers by her bedside were all wilted, so I replaced them with fresh ones.
"Wish you were here, Hermione. We need you. Now, more than ever," Harry said to her. Both of us held her left hand while Ron sat at the foot of the bed.
Suddenly, I felt something papery right by her hand. I moved my own hand and saw it was a crumpled up piece of paper. Harry grabbed it and unfolded it. I looked over his shoulder as he read the writing on the paper. I soon realized that it was a page ripped out from a textbook, on a mythical beast called a Basilisk. We both turned to Ron.
"Ron, this is why Hermione was in the library the day she was attacked," I told him.
We all examined the page as we walked out of the hospital wing. "Of the many fearsome beasts that roam our land, none is more deadly than the basilisk. Capable of living for hundreds of years, instant death awaits any who meet this giant serpent's eye. Spiders flee before it..." Harry read out loud.
"Ron, this is it. The monster in the Chamber of Secret is a Basilisk," I said.
"That's why both of us can hear it speak. It's a snake!" Harry exclaimed as we stopped near a window.
"But if it kills by looking people in the eye, why is it no one's dead?" Ron asked.
I looked at my reflection in the glass. Soon, Harry's appeared right behind me.
"Because no one did look it in the eye," he answered.
"Not directly, at least," I added. We turned back to Ron.
"Collin saw it through his camera. And Justin- Justin must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick. Nick got the full blast of it, but he's a ghost. He couldn't die again," Harry explained.
"And Hermione...she had the mirror," I jumped in, "That day in the library, she probably took that page out of the book and was using the mirror to look around corners, in case the Basilisk came along."
"What about Mrs. Norris? I'm pretty sure she didn't have a camera or a mirror," Ron objected.
Realization hit me. "The water...there was water on the floor that night. She only saw the basilisk's reflection," I said.
We took the paper over to a fire-lit column, so we could read it better.
"Spiders flee before it," Harry read, "It all fits!"
"But how's it been getting around? A dirty, great snake- someone could've seen it," Ron commented.
"Hermione's answered that, too," Harry muttered, glancing at the paper.
I looked over his shoulder. Scrawled near the bottom of the page was the word Pipes. It was Hermione's handwriting, alright.
"Pipes? It's using the plumbing!" Ron exclaimed.
"Remember what Aragog said about that girl, fifty years ago? How she died in a bathroom?" I asked.
"Moaning Myrtle," Ron muttered, realizing something. It makes sense, since Myrtle's always haunting only one particular bathroom- the same one where we'd been brewing Polyjuice Potion a couple of months ago.
"All students are to return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers, report to the second-floor corridor immediately," we heard McGonagall announce.
We hid behind another column as the sound of approaching footsteps got louder and louder. Pretty soon, the staff was crowded around one of the walls.
"As you can see, the Heir of Slytherin has left another message. Our worst fear has been realized. A student has been taken by the monster, into the chamber itself," McGonagall said in shock. Her voice lowered a bit as she added, "The students must be sent home. I'm afraid this is the end of Hogwarts."
"So sorry -- dozed off -- what have I missed?" He didn't seem to notice that the other teachers were looking at him with something remarkably like hatred. Snape stepped forward.
"A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Your moment has come at last," he replied.
Lockhart blanched. "M-My moment?"
"You've been stating all along that you knew where the entrance to the Chamber was," Snape said.
Lockhart stared around at his stony-faced colleagues. "I -- I really never -- you may have misunderstood --"
"Then it's settled. We'll leave you to deal with the monster, Gilderoy," McGonagall conceded, "Your skills, after all, are legend."
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 usual toothy grin, he looked weak-chinned and feeble.
"V-Very well. I'll -- I'll be in my office, getting -- getting ready." He left.
"Who is it that the monster has taken, Minerva?" Madam Pomfrey asked, bewildered. I wasn't ready to hear who it was. It's bad enough everyone thinks it was me or my brother that's responsible for this madness, but now another student could potentially be killed? This has gone much too far.
McGonagall sighed, her voice cracking slightly. "Ginny Weasley," she whispered, loud enough for us to hear. As the crowd of teachers parted, we saw the message: Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever.
"Ginny," Ron muttered.
<><><><><>
"Lockhart may be useless, but he's going to try and get into the chamber! At least we can tell him what we know!" Harry shouted as we raced to the DADA classroom and up the stairs to Lockhart's office. I pushed the door open.
"Professor! Professor, we have to ask you something --" Harry started to say, but cut himself off once we caught a glimpse of Lockhart's office.
His office had been 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?" I asked.
"Um...well, yes. Got to go. Urgent call, can't miss it," Lockhart stuttered, continuing to pack.
"What about my sister?" Ron asked.
"As to that, most unfortunate. No one regrets more than I," Lockhart apologized, continuing to pack in a frenzied manner.
"You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. You can't go now!" Ron protested.
"Well, I must say, when I took the job, there was nothing in the job description --" Lockhart fumbled, as he stuffed a wig into a clutch.
'You're running away?" Harry said disbelievingly. "After all the stuff you did in your books --"
"Books can be misleading," Lockhart said delicately.
"But you wrote them!" Harry objected.
"My dear boy," Lockhart said, straightening up and frowning at Harry and I. "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!"
"You're a fraud. You've just been taking credit for what other wizards have done!" I accused. I knew he was a phony!
"Is there anything you can do?" Ron asked.
"Yes, now that you mention it. I'm rather gifted with Memory charms, otherwise, you see, all those wizards would've gone blabbing, and I'd have never sold another book. As a matter of fact, I'm, uh...going to have to do the same to you," Lockhart told us, grabbing his wand.
But before he could do any damage, we all pointed our wands at him.
"Don't even think about it," I warned.
Lockhart put down his wand and we headed for the abandoned girl's lavatory, where we found Myrtle moaning, as usual.
"Oh," Myrtle gasped once she saw us, "Hello Harry...Cassia. What do you want?"
"To ask you how you died," Harry replied.
"Oh...it was dreadful. It happened right here, in this very cubicle," Myrtle told us, pointing down at the stall she was hovering over. "I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. I was crying. And then I heard somebody come in."
"Who was it, Myrtle?" Harry asked.
"I don't know," Myrtle replied, "I was distraught! But they said something funny. A kind of made-up language, and I realized it was a boy speaking, so I unlocked the door to tell him to go away, and...I died."
"Just like that?" I asked, "How?"
"I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes, over there, by that sink," Myrtle answered, pointing to the sinks beside me. Harry and I walked over to the sink. Nothing happened when I turned on the water. There was a snake on the side of the pipe.
"This is it," Harry said, turning to the others. "This is it, Ron. I think this is the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets."
"Harry, say something. Say something in Parseltongue," Ron encouraged.
Harry looked at the sink and hissed, the words unintelligible to the rest of us. The sinks pulled apart from each other, and the one closest to us slowly dropped down, revealing a gigantic pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.
"Excellent, Harry. Good work. Now, if you'll excuse me...there's no need for me to stay," Lockhart said, turning to go.
We all grabbed hold of him before he could make a run for it.
"Oh, yes there is!" Harry snapped.
We pushed him back. He now stood in front of the entrance, facing us. Ron, Harry, and I all pointed our wands at him, ready to hex him if he tried anything.
"You first," I hissed, venom dripping with every word.
Lockhart tried to reason with us. "Now, children, what good will it do?" he asked.
"Better you than us," Ron pointed out, not lowering his wand. Harry and I kept our wands pointed as well.
Our phony Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher turned to face the entrance of the chamber, but he looked back at us. "You sure you don't want to test it first?" As if to answer his question, we pushed him into the pipe. He landed with a soft THUD. "It's really quite filthy down here," he noted.
Harry and I looked at each other. "Let's go," we said at the same time.
We edged towards the pipe, but before we could make the jump, Myrtle interrupted us. "Oh, Harry, if you die down there, you and your sister are welcome to share my toilet," she offered, with a small giggle.
I wrinkled my nose. "Erm...thanks, Myrtle."
We all jumped into the pipe, first Harry, then me, and then Ron. The pipe was kind of like a roller coaster. A long, twisty, slimy roller coaster. Ron was screaming like a little girl the whole way down.
The ground we landed on was hard and spiky. Every step I took sounded like something crunching. When I looked down, I realized that the ground was covered in animal skeletons. Yuck!
"Now, remember- any sign of movement, close your eyes straightaway," Harry warned.