The Curious Chamber

It had not been difficult for Lockhart to earn his second strike. He’d already earnt one, but he earnt the second one just as easily.

Their defence lessons now consisted of Lockhart re-enacting scenes from his books, which would have been worth a strike in itself, if he hadn’t also kept on forcing Beth to join in. The number of times that Ernie nearly jumped out of his seat to strangle the man; he had lost count of. Lockhart kept on manhandling Beth, one week he was pining her down because she was meant to be a vampire, the next week he was practically strangling her, because he was trying to ‘force the werewolf out of her’.

“If that man touches you one more time,” growled Ernie one afternoon in late October, “I’m going to kill him!”

“Don’t do that!” said Hannah.

“Calm down Hannah,” said Neville, “he’s not going to kill him.”

“On his own,” muttered Zach.

“Oh maybe we can get Gwen to help!” exclaimed Artie.

“What you guys up to?” asked Ginny.

“Planning Lockhart’s murder,” said Zach.

“Aren’t we Hufflepuffs?” asked Susan.

“Your point Susie?”

“Well aren’t Hufflepuff’s meant to be good and kind and nice?”

“That doesn’t mean we’re little angels Susan,” said Justin.

“Well I think we should forget about Lockhart for one evening,” beamed Neville, “it’s Halloween.”

“Let’s make ourselves sick,” agreed Artie.

“I don’t really feel hungry,” muttered Ginny, “I’m going to go back to the dorm.”

“You ok Gin?” asked Beth.

“Yeah,” said Ginny, “I just want an early night.”

They all went into the Great Hall which was full of dishes upon dishes of food. There was pumpkin pie and cauldron cakes, candy corn and jellybeans.

“Look at all the ice cream!” muttered Beth as she sat down next to Susan.

Beth filled her bowl with about five different types of ice cream including pumpkin.

Beth started to dive into the ice cream and devoured it.

“What is it with you and ice cream Beth?” chuckled Susan.

“I don’t know,” chuckled Beth, “it’s my favourite food!”

She was halfway through her third bowl of ice cream when she started to hear a strange voice.

“Rip, tear, kill!”

It chilled her right to the bone.

“What?” she muttered dropping her spoon.

“You ok Beth?” asked Susan

“Soo hungry for so long!”

“Can’t you hear that?” she whispered

“Hear what?” said Susan, “there’s a lot of people talking in here.”

Beth got up from the table and started trying to find the source of the voice.

Susan followed her nervously.

“What’s going on Beth, are you alright?”

“Blood, I smell blood!!”

She heard the voice from upstairs that time and ran up to the second floor.

“We need to be quick!” she yelled, “it’s going to kill someone!!”

She rushed around the second floor followed by Susan who didn’t know what to be more worried about, Beth hearing voices, or what they might be running into.

“Oh dear,” sighed Beth.

For once Susan was beyond words.

They had just reached a corridor outside the bathroom on the second floor and the walls were covered in blood.

The Chamber of Secrets Has Been Opened, Enemies of the Heir Beware.

“What’s that,” muttered Susan pointing at the object hanging underneath the message, “written under the blood.”

“That,” stammered Beth, “is Filch’s cat.”

“We should get out of here,” said Beth grabbing Susan’s hand and trying to pull her away from the scene of the crime.

But it was too late, Beth heard the surge of students coming from downstairs at the end of the feast.

They were cornered, by hundreds of students and staff.

Draco Malfoy had somehow managed to push himself towards the front of the crowd.

“Enemies of the heir beware?” he smirked, “I wonder if they’re going to go for the mudbloods or the blood traitors first?”

“Whats going on here?” asked Filch pushing himself to the front.

“My cat,” he stammered turning from Beth to Susan who everyone was staring at.

“You have murdered my cat,” he muttered glaring at Beth for some reason.

“What have you done to my cat!” he screamed shaking her.

“Get off of her,” said Susan trying to fight Filch off of Beth.

“You’ve murdered my cat!”

“Argus!” said Dumbledore firmly.

Filch seemed to calm down slightly and let go off Beth.

Susan pulled her in close and Beth burst into tears, she had been so scared.

Dumbledore looked from the cat to the writing on the wall.

“Everyone please go back to their dormitories, Miss Bones, Miss Potter, if you would please come with me.”

Beth gulped slightly as she and Susan followed the teachers to Lockharts office.

“Firstly,” said Dumbledore, “she’s not dead, she is petrified.”

“What the hell does that mean?” spluttered Filch.

“It means she can be cured, Professor Sprout has a large number of mandrakes, once they have matured, an antidote can be made.”

“What I can not figure out is how,” muttered Dumbledore.

“Ask her!” screamed Filch pointing to Beth, “she did it!”

“Argus,” said Professor Sprout calmly, “Beth is a second year, that is some very advanced dark magic, she couldn’t have done this.”

“As may be,” said Snape smirking slightly, “these are some very suspicious circumstances. I saw Miss Potter and Miss Bones running from the feast towards the end, and ten minutes later Mrs Norris had been petrified.”

“We were tired,” said Beth quickly, “we wanted to go to bed.”

There was no way that Beth was going to tell Snape that she had been hearing voices.

“The Hufflepuff Common Room is downstairs near the kitchen,” said Snape, “so why were you going upstairs?”

“We wanted to go for a walk,” said Susan.

“So you were tired,” said Snape, “but you wanted to go for a walk?”

“We had just eaten far too much sugar at the feast,” said Susan, “we were trying to walk it off.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Professor Sprout.

“My cat has been petrified!” seethed Filch, “I want to see some punishment!”

“Argus,” said Dumbledore, “Miss Potter had nothing to do with this and she can be cured. Pamona, I think you should escort Miss Potter and Miss Bones back to the Common Room.”

“Yes of course,” said Sprout, “come on girls.”

Susan and Beth were still slightly nervous that they were going to get into trouble.

“Are you alright girls?”

Beth nodded as Susan put an arm round her, when they got back to the Common Room, everyone was looking at them nervously. Everyone above second year seemed to be slightly scared of them, they clearly thought that Beth had petrified Mrs Norris, the first year boys were terrified, and Ginny seemed to have disappeared.

The second years just wanted answers.

“What’s going on Susan?” asked Ernie.

“You two ok?” asked Justin.

“Are you getting expelled?” asked Hannah who was more than slightly flustered.

“We don’t know what’s going on, Mrs Norris has been petrified though,” explained Susan. “No, we’re not getting expelled, and yes we’re fine.”

Beth had legged it up the stairs whilst Susan had been explaining all this.

“What’s up Beth?” asked Susan as she came in.

Beth was furiously flicking through her copy of Hogwarts a History.

“Beth?”

“I’m trying to find a mention of the Chamber of Secrets,” muttered Beth, “but I don’t think it’s in here.”

“Tell you what,” sighed Susan, “if you can’t find anything why don’t we ask Binns?”

“Ok,” muttered Beth going back to looking through the book.

Next Wednesday, Beth and Susan still hadn’t found anything, and they were starting to panic.

Beth and Susan were sat at the front of the class with Hermione and Ron.

Professor Binns was extremely surprised when somebody raised their hand in class.

“Do you have a question Miss?” he asked looking at Beth somewhat confused.

“Potter,” nodded Beth, “could you tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets?”

Ernie dropped his quill and Hermione spilt her ink over her parchment, the rest of the class jerked awake or took their attention away from their homework.

“I’m sorry?”

“The Chamber of Secrets,” said Susan clearly.

“This is History,” said Binns shaking his head, “I deal with the facts, not myths and legends.”

“But it cant be a legend,” said Hermione interrupting, “whatever it is, its happening again now.”

Professor Binns took in a deep breath.

“You all remember last year when I taught you about the founding of the school?”

Beth nodded.

“Well Slytherin wanted the school to be more selective in its choice of students. He believed that only students from magical backgrounds should be accepted, he didn’t think Hogwarts should accept muggleborns.”

Beth bit her lip slightly as Professor Binns looked uncertain as to whether to continue, but he noticed for the first time in years he had his class on tenterhooks.

“Gryffindor and Hufflepuff disagreed with him,” he continued.

“Friend turned on friend, Slytherin and Gryffindor had a duel within the castle, Slytherin lost and fled.”

“Coward,” muttered Zach, Ron nodding in agreement.

“There is a legend,” sighed Binns, “that Slytherin built a Chamber before he left the school. Inside the Chamber was a monster that could only be controlled by Slytherins true Heir, and it was supposed to purge the school of muggleborns for good.”

Beth took a sharp inhale of breath, she had not been expecting that, so some Slytherins had decided they were better than everyone else and wanted to get rid of people like Hermione and Justin?

“It is a legend!” called Binns over the outbreak of muttering, “now could we please get on with the lesson.”

Beth and Hermione exchanged significant looks from across the aisle.

“Library,” mouthed Hermione.

Beth nodded and at the end of class, Ernie and Ron were both very confused at being dragged off to the library.

“What the hell is the matter!” said Ernie who was annoyed at being kept away from his dinner.

“What the matter is that there is a monster in the school that wants to get rid of me,” Hermione pointed out.

“Given half a chance, the monster will probably get rid of the lot of us,” said Susan “you heard Draco, they don’t want muggleborns or blood traitors.”

“And we’re some of the biggest blood traitor families in the school,” nodded Ernie.

“So what do we do about it?” asked Ron.

“Well first off we avoid the Slytherins,” said Beth.

“Like we want to talk to them,” muttered Ron.

“That means no fights either,” said Hermione firmly, looking from Ron to Ernie.

“How are we going to figure out who it is if we’re avoiding them?” asked Ernie.

“I think are thinking shouldn’t be who it is,” said Beth, “but what it is.”

“What?” asked Ron Ernie and Susan.

“No she’s got a point,” said Hermione heading over to the monster section, “we need to figure out what the monster is.”

“And how do we do that?” asked Susan.

“Making lists of every creature we can find that can petrify people,” said Beth.

“Why cant we just kill the Slytherins,” grumbled Ron, “it could be so much faster.”