Unedited
Chapter Twenty Eight - "Were you fucking in a classroom?"
"All those times we were in that bathroom, and she was just three toilets away," says Ron bitterly at breakfast next day, "and we could've asked her, and now ..."
It was hard enough trying to look for spiders. Escaping the teachers long enough to sneak into an abandoned girls' bathroom, the bathroom right next to the scene of the first attach, is going to be almost impossible.
But something happens in our first lesson, Transfiguration, which drives the Chamber of Secrets out of our minds for the first time in weeks. Ten minutes into the class, Professor McGonagall tells us that our exams will start on the first of June, one week from today.
"Exams?" howls Seamus. "We're still getting exams?"
There's a loud bang behind me as Neville's wand slips, vanishing one of the legs on his desk. Professor McGonagall restores it with a wave of her own wand, and turns, frowning, to Seamus.
"The whole point of keeping the school open at this time is for you to receive your education," she says sternly. "The exams will therefore take place as usual, and I trust you are all revising hard."
Revising hard! Pfttt, yeah, of course ..... not at all.
There's a great deal of mutinous muttering around the room, which makes Professor McGonagall scowl more darkly.
"Professor Dumbledore's instructions were to keep the school running as normally as possible," she says. "And that, I need hardly point out, means finding out how much you have learned this year."
I look down at the pair of slippers I've just turned my rabbits into. I least I'm not too fucked.
Ron looks as though he's just been told he has to go and live in the Forbidden Forest.
"Can you imagine me taking exams with this?" he asks holding up his wand, which has just started whistling loudly.
"Hermione is going to be so pissed," I mutter. "She's been revising for these exams for the last two months. What's the chance that the first thing she's gonna ask is if she can still talk them?"
"High," Harry says, staring at his rabbits. "Very high."
*
Three days before our first exam, Professor McGonagall makes another announcement at breakfast.
"I have good news," she says, and the Great Hall, instead of falling silent, erupts.
"Dumbledore's coming back!" several people yell joyfully.
"You've caught the heir of Slytherin!" squeals a girl on the Ravenclaw table.
"Quidditch matches are back on!" roars Wood excitedly.
Wow, priorities right there.
When the hubbub subsides, Professor McGonagall says, "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 year will end with our catching the culprit."
There's an explosion of cheering. I look over at the Slytherin table and I'm not surprised to see that Malfoy hasn't joined in. Ron, however, is looking happier than he's looked in days.
"It won't matter that we never asked Myrtle, then!" he says to Harry and I. "Hermione'll probably have all the answers when they wake her up! Mind you, she'll go mad when she finds out we've only have three more days to revise. It might be kinder to leave her where she is till they're over."
"Maya's gonna complain about the exams as well," I moan, banging my head on the table.
Not looking forward to that.
Just then, Ginny comes over and sits down next to Ron. She looks tense and nervous, and her hands are twisting in her lap.
"What's up?" says Ron, helping himself to more porridge.
Ginny doesn't say anything, but glances up and down the Gryffindor table with a scared look on her face.
"Spit it out," says Ron, watching her.
"I've got to tell you something," Ginny mumbles, carefully not looking at Harry or I.
"What is it?" says Harry.
Ginny looks as though she can't find the right words.
"What?" says Ron.
Ginny opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. I lean forward and speak quietly, so that only Ginny, Harry and Ron can hear.
"Is it something about the Chamber of Secrets? Have you seen something? Someone acting oddly?"
Ginny draws a a deep breath and, at that precise moment, Percy Weasley appears, looking tired and wan.
"If you've finished eating, I'll take that seat, Ginny. I'm starving, I've only just come off patrol duty."
Ginny jumps up as though her chair has just been electrified, gives Percy a fleeting, frightened look, and scrapers away. Percy sits down and grabs a mug from the centre of the table.
"Percy!" says Ron angrily. "She was just about to tell us something important!"
Halfway through a gulp of tea, Percy chokes.
"What sort of thing?" he says, coughing.
"I just asked her if she'd seen anything odd, and she started to say -"
"Oh - that - that's nothing to do with the Chamber of Secrets," says Percy at once.
"How do you know?" says Ron, his eyebrows raised.
"Well, er, if you must know, Ginny, er, wakes in on me the other day when I was - well, never mind - the point is, she spotted me doing something and I, um, I asked her not to mention it to anybody. I must say, I did think she'd keep her word. It's nothing, really, I'd just rather -"
I've never seen Percy look so uncomfortable.
"What were you doing, Percy?" says Ron, grinning. "Go on, tell us, we won't laugh."
Percy doesn't smile back.
"Pass me those rolls, Harry, I'm starving."
"Were you fucking in a classroom?"
"Five points from Gryffindor!"
"That's not a no!" I sing, and laugh at Percy's red face.
*
I know the whole mystery might be solved tomorrow without our help, but I'm not gonna pass up a chance to speak to Myrtle if it turns up - and to my delight it does, mid-morning, when we're being led to History of Magic but Lockhart.
Lockhart, who has so often assured us that all danger has passed, only to be proved wrong straight away, is now whole-heartedly convinced that it's hardly worth the trouble to see us safety down the corridors. His hair isn't as sleek as usual; it seems he's been up most of the night, patrolling the fourth floor.
"Mark my words," he says, ushering us around a corner, "the first words out of those poor Petrified people's mouths with be, "It was Hagrid." Frankly, I'm astounded Professor McGonagall thinks all these security measures are necessary."
"I agree, sir," I say, making Ron drop his books in surprise.
"Thank you, Emily," says Lockhart graciously, while we wait 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," says Harry, catching on. "Why don't you leave us here, sir, we've only got one more corridor to go."
"You know, Harry, I think I will," says Lockhart. "I really should go and prepare my next class."
And he hurries off.
"Prepare his class," Ron sneers after him. "Gone to curl his hair, more like."
We let the rest of the Gryffindors draw ahead of us, then dart down a side passage and hurry off towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But just as Harry and Ron are congratulating me on my brilliant scheme ...
"Potter! Weasley! Swift! What are you doing?"
It's Professor McGonagall, and her mouth is the thinnest of thin lines.
"We were - we were -" Ron stammers, "we were going to - to go and see -"
"Hermione," I say. "And Maya and Elinor." Ron, Harry and Professor McGonagall look at me.
"We haven't seen them for ages, Professor," I go on, feeing myself tear up. "We miss them. We thought we'd sneak into the hospital wing, you know, and tell them the Mandrakes are nearly ready and tell them not to worry." I sniff and wipe my eyes.
Professor McGonagall is staring at me, and for a moment, I think she's going to explode, but when she speaks, it's in a strangely croaky voice.
"Of course," she says, and I see a tear glisten in her beady eye. "Of course, I realise this has all been hardest on the friends of those who have been ... I quite understand. Yes, Swift, of course you may visit them. I will inform Professor Binns where you've gone. Tell Madam Pomfrey I have given my permission."
Harry, Ron and I walk away, hardly daring to believe that we've avoided detention. As we turn the corner, I distinctly hear Professor McGonagall blow her nose.
"That," says Ron fervently, "was the best story you've ever come up with."
"Thank you, I'm on a roll today," I laugh, wiping my eyes. "I can't believe I made her cry."
"You were pretty convincing," Harry says.
We have no choice but to go to the hospital wing and tell Madam Pomfrey that we have Professor McGonagall's permission to visit Hermione.
Madam Pomfrey lets us in, but reluctantly.
"There's just no point talking to a Petrified person," she says, and I have to admit she's right when we take a seat next to our three friends. It's obvious that none of them have the faintest inkling that they have visitors, and we might as well be talking to the bedside cabinet for all the good it will do.
"Wonder if they did see the attacker, though?" Ron says, looking sadly at Hermione's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one'll ever know ..."
But I'm not looking at Hermione's face. I'm more interested in her right hand. It lies clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, I see that a piece of paper is scrunched inside her fist.
Making sure that Madam Pomfrey is nowhere near, I point this out to Ron and Harry.
"Try and get it out," Harry whispers, shifting his chair so that he blocks me from Madam Pomfrey's view.
It's no easy task. Hermione's hand is clamped so tightly around the paper that I'm sure in going to tear it. While Ron and Harry keep watch I tug and twist, and at last, after several tense minutes, the paper comes free.
It's a page torn from a very old library book. I smooth it out eagerly and the other two lean closer to read it as well.
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 has been written, in a hand I recognise as Maya's. Pipes.
It's as though somebody has flicked a light on in my brain.
"Ron, Harry," I breath, "this is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a Basilisk - a giant serpent! That's why Harry and I have been hearing that voice all over the place and nobody else has heard it. It's because we understand Parseltongue ..."
I look up at the beds around me.
"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 Hermione, Maya, Elinor and that Ravenclaw Prefect were found with a mirror next to them. Hermione had just realised the monster was a Basilisk. I bet you anything they warned the first person she met to look round the corners with a mirror first! And that girl pulled out her mirror - and -"
Ron and Harry's jaws drop.
"And Mrs Norris?" Harry asks eagerly.
I think hard, picturing the scene on the night of Halloween.
"The water ..." I say slowly, "the flood from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I bet you Mrs Norris only saw the reflection ..."
I scan the page in my hand. The more I look at it, the more it makes sense.
"The Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it!" I 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 the Basilisk! It all fits!"
"But how's the Basilisk been getting around the place?" says Ron. "A dirty great snake ... Someone would've seen ..."
I, however, point at the word Maya had scribbled at the foot of the page.
"Pipes," I say. "Pipes ... Ron, it's been using the plumbing. We've been hearing that voice inside the walls ..."
Ron suddenly grabs my arm.
"The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!" he says hoarsely. "What if it's a bathroom? What if it's in -"
"- Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," both Harry and I say.
"This means," says Harry, "we can't be the only Parselmouths in the school. The heir of Slytherin's one, too. That's how they've been controlling the Basilisk."
"What're we going to do?" says Ron, whose eyes are flashing. "Shall we go straight to McGonagall?"
"Let's go to the staff room," I say, jumping up. "She'll be there in ten minutes, it's nearly break."
We run downstairs. Not wanting to be discovered hanging around in another corridor, we go straight into the deserted staff room. It's a large, panelled room full of dark wooden chairs.
But the bell to signal break never comes.
Instead, echoing through the corridors comes 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 wheels around to stare at Ron and I.
"Not another attack? Not now?"
"What'll we do?" says Ron, aghast. "Go back to the dormitory?"
"No," I say, glancing around. There's an ugly sort of wardrobe to my left, full of teachers' cloaks. "In here. Let's hear what it's all about. Then we can tell them what we've found out."
We hide ourselves inside it, listening to the rumbling of hundreds of people moving overhead, and the staff-room door bangs open. From between the musty folds of the cloaks, I watch the teacher filtering into the room. Some of them are looking puzzled, others downright scared. Then Professor McGonagall arrives.
"It has happened," she tells the silent staff room. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."
Professor Flitwick lets out a squeal. Professor Sprout claps her hands over her mouth. Snape grips the back of a chair very hard and says, "How can you be sure?"
"The heir of Slytherin," says Professor McGonagall, who's very white, "left another message. Right underneath the first one. Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber for ever."
Professor Flitwick bursts into tears.
"Who is it?" says Madam Hooch, who's sunk, weak-kneed into a chair. "Which student?"
"Ginny Weasley," says Professor McGonagall.
I feel Ron slide silently down onto the wardrobe floor beside me.
Oh fuck....