meant to be (2)

53

We marched Lockhart out of his office and down the nearest stairs, along the dark corridor where the messages shone on the wall, to the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. We sent Lockhart in first. I was pleased to see that he was shaking.

Moaning Myrtle was sitting on the cistern of the end toilet.

"Oh, it's you." she said, when she saw Harry. "What do you want this time?"

''To ask you how you died." said Harry.

Myrtles whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

''Ooooh, it was dreadful." she said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very cubicle. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then-" Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining "I died!"

''How?'' Harry asked.

"No idea." said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great big yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away..." She looked dreamily at Harry. "And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses!"

"Where exactly did you see the eyes?" I asked.

''Somewhere there" said Myrtle, pointing vaguely towards the sink in front of her toilet.

Harry, Ron and I hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face.

It looked like an ordinary sink. We examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then I saw it scratched on the side of one of the copper taps, was a tiny snake.

"That tap's never worked." said Myrte brightly, as Harry tried to turn it.

"Harry!" I said excitedly. "Say something. Something in Parseltongue!"

"But I can only speak Parseltongue when I see an actual snake." Harry pointed out. "I don't th-"

"Just try it!" I urged

"Open up." he said, looking at the tap. Then he looked back at Ron and me, shaking our heads.

"English" we shrugged.

Harry looked back at the snake, A strange hissing had escaped him, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move. The sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into. I heard Ron gasp and looked up again. I had made up my mind what I was going to do.

''I'm going down there" I said. I couldn't not go, not now we had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.

"Me too" Harry and Ron said, determined. There was a pause.

"Well, you hardly seem to need me." said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. "I'll just-"

He put his hand on the door knob, but Ron, Harry and I pointed our wands at him.

''You can go first!" Ron snarled. White-faced and wandless, Lockhart approached the opening.

"Guys, he said, his voice feeble "guys, what good will it do?"

"Better you than us" I snapped at him while Harry jabbed him in the back with his wand. Lockhart slid his legs into the pipe.

"I really don't think-" he started to say, but Ron gave him a push, and he slid out of sight.

"See you in the Chamber of Secrets!" I said while lowering myself down and letting go.

It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. I could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as ours, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downwards, and I knew that we were falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons. Behind me he could hear Harry and Ron, thudding slightly at the curves.

And then, just as I had begun to worry about what would happen when I hit the ground, the pipe levelled out, and I shot out of the end with a wet thud, landing on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel, large enough to stand in. Lockhart was getting to his feet a little way away, covered in slime and white as a ghost.

Just when I was about to get up, someone fell on top of me.

"We end up in these positions a lot." said the smirking Harry. Ignoring my racing heart I freed myself from him and stood next to Ron.

"We must be miles under the school." Ron said, his voice choing in the black tunnel.

"Under the lake, probably" I said, squinting around at the dark, slimy walls. All four of us turned to stare into the darkness ahead.

"Lumos" Harry and I muttered to our wands and they lit again.

"C'mon" Harry said to Ron, Lockhart and me and off we went, our footsteps slapping loudly on the wet floor.

The tunnel was so dark that we could only see a little distance ahead. Our shadows on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wandlight.

"Remember." Harry said quietly, as we walked cautiously forward "any sign of movement, close your eyes straight away..."

But the tunnel was quiet as the grave, and the first unexpected sound we heard was a loud crunch as Ron stepped on what turned out to be a rats skull. I lowered my wand to look at the floor and saw that it was littered with small animal bones.

Trying very hard not to imagine what Ginny might look like if we found her, I followed Harry, round a dark bend in the tunnel.

"There's something up there..." I said hoarsely, grabbing Harry's shoulder. We froze, watching. I could just see the outline of something huge and curved, lying right across the tunnel. It wasn't moving.

"Maybe it's asleep." Harry breathed, glancing back at us. Lockhart's hands were pressed over his eyes. I turned back to look at the thing, my heart beating so fast it hurt.

Very slowly, my eyes as narrow as I could make them and still see, I edged forward, my wand held high.

The light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

"Blimey." said Ron weakly.

There was a sudden movement behind us.
Lockhart's knees had given way.

"Get up" said Ron sharply, pointing his wand at Lockhart. Lockhart got to his feet - then he dived at Ron, knocking him to the ground.

Harry and I jumped forward, but too late. Lockhart was straightening up, panting, Ron's wand in his hand and a gleaming smile back on his face.

"The adventure ends here, guys!" he said. "I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you three tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body. Say goodbye to your memories! You're first, Clarke." He raised Ron's Spellotaped wand high over his head and yelled. "Obliviate!"

The wand exploded with the force of a small bomb. Harry flung one of his arm over my head and pulled me with him as we ran, out of the way of great chunks of tunnel ceiling which were thundering to the floor.

Next moment, we were standing alone, gazing at a solid wall of broken rocks.