Darwinism | hp

022: Abduction

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It wasn't until an entire month later that anything happened.

Harry and Ron had done a lot - they had gone to see Hagrid, discovered he hadn't opened the Chamber, but the Ministry of Magic had, and arrested him, while Lucius Malfoy had had Dumbledore step down as Headmaster.

They also found Hagrid's spider in the Forbidden Forest, who was the monster originally accused of the attacks fifty years ago. Who tried to kill them, but they got away, so it didn't matter much.

They worked out that the girl killed fifty years ago was Moaning Myrtle, and managed to sneak off on the morning it was announced that Mandrakes were mature enough to be blended into a potion to heal the petrified students, to go talk to her - but McGonagall caught them, meaning they were now in the Hospital Wing, having pretended that they wanted to tell Hermione and Marilyn that they would be healed that day.

And so, they made their way to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey let them in, but didn't really see the point.

"There's just no reason to speak to a Petrified person," She said, as she led them over to Hermione and Marilyn's bed. 

They sat beside the beds, and from Harry's spot beside Marilyn, with his back to the doorway, he could see Mrs Riddle sitting on a chair beside her son's bed, as the curtain had been pulled back slightly. Her legs were pulled up under her, as she bit the nail of her thumb, reading a notebook that was sitting on her knees, her other hand turning the page. Her face looked frustrated - eyebrows furrowed, tense.

"I wonder if they even saw their attacker, though," Ron looked sadly at Marilyn and Hermione's faces. " I mean, if they were snuck up on . . . "

Harry was holding Hermione's stiff hand, and noticed something in her hand. It was a scrunched up page, and so he gestured to Ron, and took it out of Hermione's hand, softly, so that it didn't tear. When he got the scrunched up page out, he smoothed it out, and read it quietly to Ron.

'Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our
land, there is none more curious or dangerous as the
Basilisk, known also as the kind of Serpents. This snake,
which may reach a gigantic size, and live many hundreds of
years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad.
It's methods of killing is most wonderous, for aside from it's
deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous
stare, and all those who are fixed with the beam of it's eye
shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it
is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the

crow of a roster, which is fatal to it.'                             
                                                                        pipes

"Ron," Harry looked up from the page, and to Ron. "This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a basilisk - a giant serpent! That's why I've been hearing the voice all over the place, while no one else is hearing it. It's because I understand Parseltongue. . . "

He looked around at the beds, everything making sense.

"The basilisk kills people by looking at them, but no one's died - because no one's looked at it straight in the eye. Colin saw it through his camera, the basilisk burnt up all the film inside of it, but Colin was only petrified. Riddle . . . Riddle must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick! Nick got the full blast of it, but he couldn't die again. And the girls, they were found with a mirror. They'd just found out the monster was a basilisk, they were prepared for it!"