Chapter 5 Chamber of Secrets

Harry and Damien arrived home from King's Cross and sat at the kitchen table. Iris served tea and scones with clotted cream and cloudberry jam. Harry was in heaven.

"Have you thought about what you are going to do this summer, Harry?"

"I haven't really planned anything. I do have essays due for every class and I want to keep up my training. I would also like to visit the Burrow sometime."

"All of that is going to happen this summer. I think two hours in the morning for essays, two hours in the afternoon for training. There are a few boards, a saw, and a drill out in the back garden. Use a little rope and hang targets in the trees. You have my permission to use your wand to cast color charms on them. I would appreciate it if very few of the small animals and birds in the neighborhood were other than their natural color."

It only took Harry two weeks to finish all his essays for school. He learned to cut a straight line with a saw and drill a hole with a brace and bit. He scribed each wooden square in nine parts. He hung them in the trees in ones and twos and threes. He searched all the charms books he could find until he found a charm that worked just like a muggle paint ball gun. The advantage of a charm was that with a simple wide field finite he had clean targets to work with again.

He ran and he jumped and yelled. He climbed all the trees and the house to the chimney tops. He fixed all of Iris' planting beds, digging them deep and replanting those that needed it.

He visited the Burrow and when the Weasleys came to visit, he taught them the paint charm and they had real competitions in the trees to see who could hit the most targets on a dead run or standing still or climbing through the trees. Harry won three times. Ginny won twice. Ron, Hermione, Fred, and George each won once.

By the end of the summer, Molly and Iris were fast friends, but Molly still hadn't discovered why Iris called Harry "my soldier".

Harry had a wonderful birthday party. The next day he met the Weasleys

at Diagon Alley to shop for school. Lockhart was a prat, but the fist fight between Arthur and Lucius was just brilliant. The rest of the day was wonderful, especially the double chocolate almond fudge Sunday at Fortesque's.

For the last of vacation, Harry practiced with his targets, both with his wand and his knives. He spent time at the Burrow with Ron and Hermione and Ginny. They all studied their new books, even Ron, though under protest. Harry made sure that Ginny knew that should she have any problems, she could always rely on him or other of their friends to help or listen. He even helped her study some of her first year material that he knew would be vital and that some of the other students had problems with. They were all ready for school to start when the first of September rolled around.

Damien walked Harry to the train and hugged him good bye and told him to be good and to be careful. The train ride was comfortable and the friends played exploding snap and chess and just talked about the things they wanted to talk about.

The first Saturday at breakfast, Ginny sat down next to Harry.

"Miss Weasley, what may I do for you?"

"This is serious, Harry. I'm concerned about this diary I found in my books. It keeps pulling at me and it makes me uneasy."

"Ginny, this looks like just the thing to take to our Defense teacher. Come on, I'll walk you up there."

After they turned it in to Professor Lockhart, they both felt better and the diary slipped out of their minds.

Two weeks later, Hagrid was complaining that someone or something had been killing the roosters in the castle's chicken yard. Not many days later, Harry noticed a line of spiders leaving the castle through a crack in one of the windows.

A couple of weeks later Harry started hearing a hissing voice in the walls speaking of death, killing, and blood.

Then Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny happened on the second floor hallway with water on the floor and found Mrs. Norris stiff and hanging from a bracket.

Suddenly they were surrounded by a crowd of people. It seemed like all the students were there and all the professors except Lockhart. After Dumbledore determined that Mrs. Norris was petrified, not dead, and had sent her to Mr. Filch's quarters to rest in her own basket, Lockhart came puffing up to the group still in the hallway.

"What have I missed?" he huffed. No one spoke to him at all.

Professor Dumbledore was shaking his head over the missive painted on the wall: "The Chamber has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, Beware!"

The friends could not find any record of the Chamber of Secrets in any part of the library.

Nearly Headless Nick and Colin Creevey were petrified less than a week later. Harry heard Hagrid mutter, "There'll be killin's next!"

Harry wrote home nearly every day telling Damien and Iris of his concerns and even of the voice he had heard in the walls on the second floor threatening death to the school. His parents replied with care and love. They told him to be careful and wait for help or at least the right time to act.

On Halloween, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione were at Nearly Headless Nick's 500th Deathday party, Justin Finch-Fletchley was petrified.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione started brewing polyjuice potion in the second floor girl's bathroom.

One evening it was Harry's turn to keep watch on the potion, a voice spoke from the second stall.

"Hello, Harry."

"Hello, Myrtle. How have you been?"

"Lonely, of course, but it has been better since you three have been brewing your stuff in here. Ron still won't talk to me, but Hermione has been nice."

"That's Hermione all right. She's nice as can be. Myrtle, may I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure, Harry, what do you want to know?"

"How did you die?"

"Ooh, I just love to tell this story and almost no one ever asks. I was just sitting here crying because Olive Hornsby had been teasing me again about my glasses. I heard someone come in and I got quiet. Then I realized it was a boy, because I could hear him hissing at the second sink, you know, the one that doesn't work. I was about to speak to him crossly because he shouldn't have been in the girl's loo at all, when I saw this pointy face with big yellow eyes and I just died."

"Thank you, Myrtle. You have given me a few important clues." Harry walked over to the second sink and looked carefully. He found a snake and hissed, "Open." The sink slid back and the floor opened. Then he hissed "Close," and it closed again.

"What was that, Harry?"

"I think it is the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, Myrtle."

"Are you going down there?"

"Not today, not today."

Over the Christmas holidays Harry, Ron, and Hermione managed to gain entrance to the Slytherin common room, but still didn't find out who the heir of Slytherin was.

Just after Easter, Hermione and Penelope Clearwater were petrified and Professor Dumbledore and Hagrid were removed from the school.

Harry found a scrap of paper in Hermione's hand torn from a book. It confirmed his suspicions that the monster was a basilisk and it was traveling through the pipes to get around in the school.

Harry tried to talk to Professor Lockhart, but got no satisfaction from the obvious fraud.

Then the message on the wall changed. The whole school seemed to be gathered around the wall by the girl's bathroom on the second floor. The message read: "I have taken the fraud and Potter's treasure. Their skeletons will lie in the chamber forever."

Harry turned and ran all the way to the owlery. He wrote a quick note to Damien and called Hedwig down.

"Fly like the wind, sweet one. I need this to Damien." He had never seen Hedwig disappear so fast.

Harry went back to the common room and got out his potions book. He had been looking at the same page for two hours when the door opened and Damien stepped in. Harry ran to him and collected a big hug.

"I talked to Iris, Harry. I won't be able to help you. Remember that Dumbledore always says that Hogwarts will give help to anyone who asks for it. It's up to you, my soldier."

Harry looked up and Ron was standing right by him.

"I'm coming too. It's Ginny down there, Harry."

"Come on, then. We're late already."

The two boys ran all the way to the second floor bathroom. Harry opened the entrance and they both slid down. They crunched their way through the tunnel toward the door to the chamber over the skeletons and scattered bones of small creatures. They walked quickly past the shed skin of the monster snake. Harry counted twenty five steps as he walked by it, and it was not even laid out straight. They arrived at the door to the chamber itself and Harry commanded it to open in parseltongue. They ran toward the other end of the chamber. Ginny was lying there beside Lockhart. She was bound in ropes and gagged with a lilac handkerchief. Ginny's eyes were wide with fear. Lockhart wasn't moving at all. Six feet away stood a black-haired student with a prefect's badge on his Slytherin cloak.

The Slytherin cried out, "Incarcerous!" Ron fell bound to the floor.

Harry replied, "Expeliarmus!" and Lockhart's wand flew over his head and rolled into the darkness between the columns of the chamber.

"I don't need a wand," the Slytherin said and then spoke in parseltongue, "Slave of the Master come to your feast."

Harry heard a noise like a large metal object being dragged across stone. He shut his eyes and spoke out loud, "Hogwarts, your sons need your help right now." His heart started to fall as he heard the great snake coming closer. Just then a clear tone like a bell rang in his heart and something soft with a hard center fell on his head. Fawkes was busy destroying the basilisk's eyes. Harry reached into the sorting hat and pulled out a sword. He threw the sword belt over his head and one shoulder so he could carry it on his back and then ran for the giant snake pulling his daggers out to use as climbing tools. He pulled himself right up to the head as the snake reared higher and higher in the chamber. Just as the snake was about to smash him against the ceiling, he let go of his knives and using them as foot rests, drew the sword and with both hands, stabbed it down through the snake's brain.

The snake crashed down and Harry did a tumbling roll dismount and landed on the still form of Lockhart. The diary fell out of his pocket and a drop of the snake's blood landed on it. The Slytherin cried out in pain. Harry grabbed the book and ran back over to the snake's body. He pulled out one of his daggers and stabbed through the book, pinning it to the basilisk. A trickle of ink ran from the corner. The prefect screamed louder. He stabbed it with the second knife and the trickle increased to a stream. He grabbed the sword and thrust it through the book and it smoked from the snake's blood and the ink gushed out and the Slytherin vanished in a puff of dirty smoke and a fading wail.

Fawkes landed on his shoulder and shed tears on his hands. The burns from the basilisk's blood vanished like they had never been there. He pulled his survival knife and cut Ginny loose and threw away the lilac handkerchief. She hurled herself at him and hung around his neck. Harry just sat down on the floor and hugged her back. Ron came crawling forward out of the shadows with his wand and Lockhart's as well.

"A lot of help I was, laying back there in the dark watching you do all the work."

"Ron, do you want to be a soldier?"

"If it means standing by you and doing something useful, then yes, I do want to be a soldier."

"Then I'll write up your training for the summer before we leave on the train, fair enough?"

"Fair enough, Harry."

Ron gathered Harry's weapons into his cloak, careful not to get any of the caustic blood on himself. Fawkes shuttled each of them to the Hospital wing.

The three young people were released for dinner that day. Lockhart remained in a coma. After dinner, the three met with the headmaster and told their stories. They were rather vocal in their opinions that Lockhart was a fraud. The House elves cleaned Harry's weapons and returned them to him in the headmaster's office. Harry said that the headmaster should keep Gryffindor's

Sword in his office.

Ron got his training schedule which surprised him. Harry and Ginny studied a lot together. Lockhart was transferred to St. Mungo's since he was still in a coma. Everybody got to go home on the train. Everybody promised to visit one another over the summer.