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HERMIONE and penelope (a ravenclaw girl that's dating percy weasley) were the next to go.
that morning ginny was on the verge of confiding in harry and ron, however, was interrupted, as percy had intruded in their conversation.
poor percy was struggling to keep himself together as he wondered what had happened and who was the culprit.
hermione had hinted that she had an idea of what lied in the chamber of secrets as soon as harry had said that he heard voices in his head, not the mental kind though.
thus, hermione had set off to the library leaving harry and ron confused. but as soon as she left, the news had spread that her and a ravenclaw girl was petrified in the library.
"what are you two doing sneaking out past curfew?!", professor mcgonagall interrogated, making ron and harry jump out of their skin.
the two had snuck out to try and see hermione and evelyn. harry strongly felt that there might be some clues that the two have figured out, causing the reason for their petrification.
"I-w-we...u-umm...we were trying to visit hermione and evelyn ma'am", harry honestly replied.
harry had thought that professor mcgonagall's expression softened a bit. even though the woman was always strict, she had a heart too.
and just like professor sprout, one of her most studious gryffindor students—hermione—has fallen victim to the slytherin heir.
"I understand", professor mcgonagall muttered, shocking ron and harry. both had assumed that the woman would've taken house points away, but she did not.
"just this once mr. potter and mr. weasley. don't expect me to be so lenient next time", mcgonagall whispered as she left.
harry swore he saw mcgonagall almost shed a tear, but he was too occupied with the task at hand to care.
once ron and harry reached the hospital wing, they viewed the facial expressions on hermione and evelyn's face.
"ron, check to see if evelyn's left any clues", harry whispered as he started searching the area around hermione.
to his luck, hermione's fist was clenched. harry had a bit difficulty threading the paper through hermione's palm, but ended with success as he read what was written on it.
"pipes??", harry mumbled to himself.
"harry! I found this in evelyn's bag", ron excitedly whispered, taking the secret admirer notes and evelyn's notebook out.
"tom marvolo riddle...", harry breathed out. for some reason, saying that name alone had sent shivers down both boy's spine.
"ron. I've got it", harry said. his eyes lit up in realization as he and ron ran out, sneaking back into their room.
harry's instinctual thought was to inform dumbledore of him and ron's findings, however he then remembered that that was quite impossible at the moment.
both dumbledore and hagrid were removed from hogwarts, as the ministry of magic—cornelius fudge—believed that hagrid was the main cause of the attacks.
lucius malfoy—a school governor—had dumbledore suspended, as he was always a rival against him and his previous master.
when hagrid had left, the last thing he told the boys was to follow the spiders. ron had a fear of spiders, but when reaching the forbidden forest, the head leader of all spiders became his worst fear of all.
not only did he have 8 legs and over thousands of eyes, he was quite larger than the average ones, causing ron to shake in fear.
the spider that hagrid had saved, was named aragog. he had told the boys that he's never killed anyone, thus claiming that he was indeed not the creature in the chamber of secrets.
escaping a near death experience, both ron and harry wondered why hagrid would send them into the forbidden forest to almost end up being dinner for the spiders.
however, they had suddenly remembered that moaning myrtle was killed in the girl's bathroom on the second floor. no one knew how, as the ghost itself didn't either. or perhaps she did, but every time someone asked, she would just start sobbing.
"ron!! I know what it is!", harry whispered as he handed the slip of paper that hermione was tightly grasping to ron.
"pipes?? are you saying that the monster is a bunch of pipes? because that's quite—"
"no, think! the reason I hear those noises in my head is because—"
"you're crazy", ron finished, making harry glare at the boy before continuing.
"no. the reason I hear voices in my head is because it's the animal that's talking about killing everyone. and the only animal—well reptile I suppose—that I can talk to is snakes! and hermione said pipes, so it must be thin enough to travel through the pipes and attack people like that!", harry deduced.
"s-so you're saying that a snake's been slithering around here and petrifying kids?? how though? do snakes have enough brainpower to think about who they want to attack?", ron questioned, staring at the plain white ceiling that definitely didn't give him any answers.
harry didn't have an answer to that either, but all he knew was that that snake was a basilik; the king of serpents.
—✼—
evelyn was starving.
she felt like it had been months since she's eaten and years since she's seen the sun.
the girl looked down at her body, surprised that she was not a statue anymore. she slowly sat up, touching her head that was aching.
the flowers that were next to her bedside were slowly withering, if not, already dead. she smiled, thinking that her friends had visited her.
for some reason, the girl didn't realize that she was holding a stalk of chrysanthemum. the yellow had started to filter into brown, although she thought that it was still pretty.
why the flower was in her hand was beyond her knowledge, but there were too many things that needed catching up on, especially since she's been snoozing for weeks.
"oh evelyn!!", hermione smiled, rushing over to go hug the girl.
"hermione, you're okay", evelyn weakly said. her lips was croaky and she needed water, to which hermione gladly handed her a glass.
"thank you. where's harry and ron?", evelyn asked, assuming that both boys would be with her.
"oh they're—"
"I'M HERE!!", ron loudly announced, making hermione glare at the boy.
"where's harry?", evelyn asked again.
"oh, he's resting in another hospital room", ron casually said.
"w-what why? is he okay??", evelyn worried.
"oh yeah! he just fought a giant snake that was controlled by vold—he-who-shall-not-be-named, in the chamber of secrets", ron again casually explained.
evelyn's mouth was wide open, big enough to stick a whole bludger in her mouth.
"quite hilarious if you ask me. but lockhart had tagged along with us. he snatched my wand and planned on erasing my memory. but since my wand's quite...well...rubbish, the spell backfired and hit him instead", ron smiled.
"so professor lockhart won't be teaching us anymore?", hermione asked, quite sad about it.
"thank god", ron muttered.
"so how did harry defeat the snake? and how did we get back to normal?", evelyn questioned.
"I'm not entirely sure since I wasn't there to witness it. but I suppose harry had a chicken—"
"it's a phoenix!", hermione interrupted.
"right. a phoenix that belonged to dumbledore came and scratched the basilik's eyes so that it couldn't see. and what's even weirder is that harry had managed to pull the sword that belonged to godric gryffindor out of the sorting hat!!", ron said amazed.
"so harry sliced off the snake?", evelyn asked.
"sort of...harry got rid of tom riddle—"
"wait tom riddle?!" evelyn was shocked. her secret admirer had something to do with this?
"tom marvolo riddle actually", ron said. "if you rearrange all the letters in his name, you get...", ron hesitated.
"you get 'I am voldemort'", a voice said, making all three children look towards the door.
"harry! what are you doing out of bed?", hermione worried.
"it's fine. I wasn't even really hurt anyways", harry laughed. harry nearly almost died. he was hurt by the basilisk's poison, but because of the chicke—I mean phoenix's tears, it had healed him.
"sure. anyways, ginny was also somehow pulled into this. I suppose since she poured her heart and soul into the enchanted diary, riddle had poured part of his soul into her", ron further explained.
"so ginny was the one that wrote the bloody words on the wall?"
"yes but she wasn't aware. so please don't blame her", ron said, making evelyn smile and nod.
"no worries. she was just controlled by a terrible force. it's good that she's safe now".
"by the way, who brought you the chrysanthemum?", hermione asked.
"you guys...didn't bring it to me??", evelyn asked, confused.
"I brought the daisies. hermione brought the petunias and ron brought the poppies", harry said.
evelyn had worried that it might've actually been tom riddle, or perhaps ginny, when she was possessed.
as if sensing her discomfort, harry then reassured her by saying, "it's alright evelyn. I got rid of the book by sticking the basilisk's poisonous fang into the diary. there was no way he or ginny had given it to you".
at that, evelyn has relaxed. she smiled as she wondered who would sneak into the hospital wing and bring her a flower.
but then, she had remembered something dreadful.
"final exams", she muttered with her face turning paler than ever.
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