Jane Fizzle and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter 18

    For a moment there is silence as Jane, Scarlett, Irine, and Lockhart stand in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and (in Jane's case) blood. Then there is a scream.

    "Irine!"

    It is Mrs. Miller, who has been sitting crying in front of the fire. She leaps to her feet, closely followed by Mr. Miller, and both of them fling themselves on their daughter. 

    Jane, however, is looking past them. Professor Harrington is standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor Evans, who is taking great, steadying gasps, clutching her chest. Fawkes goes whooshing past Jane's ear and settles on Harrington's shoulder, just as Jane finds herself and Scarlett being swept into Mrs. Miller's tight embrace.

    "You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?"

    "I think we'd all like to know that," Professor Evans asks weakly.

    Mrs. Miller lets go of Jane, who hesitates for a moment, then walks over to the desk and lays upon it the Sorting Hat, the ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of O'Holly's diary. Then she starts telling them everything. For nearly a quarter of an hour she speaks into the rapt silence: She tells them about hearing the disembodied voice, how Rachel has finally realized that she was hearing a basilisk in the pipes; how she and Scarlett have followed the spiders into the forest, that Aragog has told them where the last victim of the basilisk has died; how she has guessed that Moaning Morgan has been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might be in his bathroom...

    "Very well," Professor Evans prompts her as she pauses, "so you found out where the entrance was — breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add — but how on earth did you all get out of there alive, Fizzle?"

    So Jane, her voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, tells them about Fawkes's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat giving her the sword. But then she falters. She has so far avoided mentioning O'Holly's diary — or Irine. She is standing with her head against Mrs. Miller's shoulder, and tears are still coursing silently down her cheeks. 'What if they expel her?' Jane panics. 'Samantha's diary doesn't work anymore... How could they prove it has been her who'd made her do it all?

    Instinctively, Jane looks at Harrington, who smiles faintly, the firelight glancing off his half moon spectacles. "What interests me most," Harrington says gently, "is how Lady Shego managed to enchant Irine, when my sources tell me she is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

    Relief — warm, sweeping, glorious relief – sweeps over Jane. "W-what's that?" Mr. Miller asks in a stunned voice. "You-Know-Who? En-enchant Irine? But Irine's not... Irine hasn't been... has she?"

    "It was this diary," Jane says quickly, picking it up and showing it to Harrington. "O'Holly wrote it when she was sixteen..."

    Harrington takes the diary from Jane and peers keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages. "Brilliant," she says softly. "Of course, she was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen." He turns around to the Millers, who are looking utterly bewildered.

    "Very few people know that Lady Shego was once called Samantha O'Holly. I taught her myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. She disappeared after leaving the school... traveled far and wide... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when she resurfaced as Lady Shego, she was barely recognizable with her new power. Hardly anyone connected Lady Shego with the clever, handsome girl who was once Head Girl here."

    "But, Irine," Mrs. Miller starts. "What's our Irine got to do with — with — her?"

    "His d-diary" Irine sobs. "I've b-been writing in it, and she's been w-writing back all year —"