Rory Potter, the Girl Who Lived

The Chamber of Secrets

Ron lets out a hiss of air and sinks to the floor next to me. I grab his hand and squeeze it as hard as I can, feeling the myself start to cry silently. Harry stiffens to my right.
Just then, the door bangs open and Lockhart bursts in. And he's smiling.
"Sorry - dozed off - what did I miss?" he asks cheerfully.
All the teachers shoot him death glares, but it doesn't effect him one bit. Snape, however, steps forward.
"Just the man," he says in a smooth voice. "The very man we need. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. She has been taken into the Chamber itself. Your moment has come at last."
Lockhart turns pale.
"That's right, Gilderoy," Professor Sprout chips in. "Weren't you telling me just last night that you'd known where the entrance to the Chamber was all along?"
"I - I - uhhh - " Lockhart stammers.
"Yes, and didn't you tell me you were sure of what the monster inside of it is?" Flitwick pipes up.
"D-did I? I don't recall - "
"I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you didn't have a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested," Snape says. "Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given free reign from the first?"
Lockhart stares around at his stony-faced collegues.
"We'll leave you to it, then, Gilderoy," McGonagall says. "Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We'll make sure everyone's out of your way. You'll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free reign at last."
Lockhart gazes desperately around him, but nobody comes to his rescue. He doesn't look remotely handsome anymore. His lip is trembling, and in the absence of his usual toothy grin, he looks weak-chinned and feeble.
"V-very well," he says. "I'll - I'll be in my office, getting - getting ready."
And he leaves the room.
"Right," says Professsor McGonagall, nostrils flaring, "that's got him out from under our feet. The Heads of Houses should go and inform their students of what has happened. Tell them the Hogwarts Express will take them home first thing tomorrow. Will the rest of you make sure no students have been left outside their dormitiories?"
The teachers rise, and, one by one, they leave the room.

~~~~~~~~~~

This is litterally the worst day of my entire life. As I sit in the corner of the common room with Harry, Ron, Fred, and George, I wonder what would have happened if Dumbledore was still here. Then again, I think as I pull a quietly crying Fred into my arms, this probably would still have happened.
"Rory," Harry says quietly.
When I don't respond, he pulls gently on my sleeve. I slowly raise my watering green eyes to meet his.
"Ron and I are going to go and tell Lockhart what we know. Do you want to come?" he asks.
I glance at Fred, then untangle my limbs from his and stand up. I kiss his cheek and say softly, "I'll be right back, okay?"
And so that's how Harry, Ron and I end up sprinting cautiously through the hallways to Lockhart's office. When we get there, there's a lot happening inside by the sounds of it. Scrapes, bumps, thuds, and loud footsteps sound as we enter the classroom and clamber up the stairs to his office.
The room is completely stripped. Portraits and books litter the floor. Papers and robes are thrown haphazardly into the open chests on the floor, which Lockhart slams shut when he notices us.
"Miss Potter, Mr Weasley, Mr Potter," he says with an unconvincing grin. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in your dormitories?"
"We have some information for you," I say. "What's in the Chamber and where the entrance is."
"Well, I'm terribly sorry, but - " Lockhart says quickly.
"Are you going somewhere?" Harry demands.
"Oh, well, yes," Lockhart says, resuming his frantic emptying of his office. "Urgent call - unavoidable - have to go."
"What about my sister!?" Ron bellows.
"Oh, yes, how unfortunate. No one regrets more than I - " Lockhart says, throwing a traveling cloak over his shoulders, and tossing more things into his trunk.
"You're running away!" I realize. "You coward! You absolute bloody coward! After all the stuff you did in your books, you're running away!?"
"Books can be misleading, Potter, " Lockhart says angrily, throwing a stack of books into his trunk with a loud crash.
"You wrote them!" I screech.
"Rory calm down!" Harry hisses.
"My dear girl," Lockhart snaps, stopping to look at me sideways, "use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. Nobody wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin! I mean, honestly, come on - "
"So you're a liar, too?" Harry asks. "A liar and a coward! You've been taking credit for work that other people have done!"
"Harry, Rory, Ron," he says, shaking his head. "There's a lot more work involved than just that! I had to track them down and ask them exactly what happened. Then I'd have to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn't go blabbing about it to the press, and so they wouldn't remember ever doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself in, it's my ability to perform a Memory Charm. No, it wasn't as simple as you think it is."
He slams his trunk shut, then bends over to pick up his wand.
"Now there's only one thing left to do," he says. "I can't have you blabbing about it either. I'm going to have to erase your memory."
When he straightens up, he finds himself face-to-face with the wands of three angry students. His face pales.
"I don't think so," I snap. "You're going to help us save Ginny, and then you're going to be turned in to the Ministry of Magic. Come on."
And so we lead him through the halls to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, where we find the girl's ghost sitting on the sink crying, yet again. She stops rather abruptly when she sees Harry.
"Oh, well, hello Harry," she says in a flirtious tone.
"Hello Myrtle," Harry says.
"What do you want this time?" she demands in a slightly less flirty tone.
"We want to ask you how you died," Harry say.
Myrtle suddenly looks flattered. Her silvery tranparent cheeks darken with what I assume is a blush. She swoops off of the sinks to get really close to Harry.
"Oooh, it was dreadful," she says, her flirty tone returning. "It happened right here, in that very stall." She points to the middle stall. "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 might have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking, so I unlocked the door to tell him to go use his own bathroom, and then - " Myrtle grins happily, " - I died!"
"But how?" I ask.
"I don't know," she says, giving me an offended look. "All I remember is seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes . . . right over there by that sink." She points to the sink farthest from the door.
Harry and I run over to check it out, leaving Ron to poke his Spellotaped wand into Lockhart's shoulders and sheepheard him over to us.
"Do you see anything?" he asks.
"No, not so far," Harry says, scrutinizing the sink.
I run my fingers over it, searching for a hidden clue. And sure enough, I find something. With a squeal, I push my face close to the faucet, running my fingers over the bump. When I see it, it's a little snake on the side of the water faucet.
"I've found something! Look! It's a snake!" I gasp, poking Harry.
He waits for me to move out of the way, then inspects the snake. He squints through his glasses, and a grin slowly breaks out on his face.
"You found it, Rory! You found the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets!"
"But how do we open it?" asks Ron.
"No clue," Harry says.
"Wait, I've got that, too!" I say excitedly. "The monster is a snake, right? This symbol is a snake, too. Harry and I can speak to snakes. Ask it to open in Parceltongue!"
"Rory, you are absolutely brilliant!" Harry says, then he turns to the sink and says, "Open!"
He looks at us hopefully, but we shake our heads: "English."
"Try to visualize that the little snake is real, big brother, like its moving," I say. "Then maybe it'll come out in Parceltongue."
"Okay," Harry says. He closes his eyes and concentrates really hard. And he opens his mouth and hisses.
The tap glows a brilliant white. I grab Harry and pull him to safety as the sink falls away, leaving a giant hole in the floor where it used to be. We all cheer.
"Oh! Oh, my Merlin, you did it! We did it, Harry!"
"Oh, yay! You've found it," Lockhart says sarcastically. "I'll just be going - "
He tries to run, but we block his way with our bodies and wands.
"I don't think so. You'll be going first!" Ron says, prodding him with his wand until Lockhart goes to stand next to the hole in the floor.
"Well, now, is this really so wise - ?" Lockhart says shakily.
"Better you than me," I say, giving him a shove. He falls down the pipe, screaming the whole way.
With a dull thud, he hits the bottom about thirty seconds later. A loud groan echoes up the pipe.
"It's really quite disgusting down here!" he yells.
"I think it's safe to jump now," Harry says. "I'll go next, then Ron, then Rory."
And he jumps. Ron follows ten seconds later, and then me. I jump into the pipe. My clothes make a loud hissing sound as I slide down the pipe, tumbling out into an underground cavern and right into Ron's legs thirty seconds later.
And then realizing I'm lying in a heap on a pile of bones; animal bones of all shapes and sizes.
"Ahhhh!" I scream and jump to my feet, whipping my wand around until I finally find Lockhart and Harry twenty feet away.
I help Ron to his feet, and we scramble over to where Harry stands with his wand pointed at Lockhart.
"Okay, so let's go. But any sign of movement, close your eyes," I say. And we set off down the tunnel, me and Harry in the lead, then Ron and Lockhart.
"Rory, stop!"
I stop dead and close my eyes, then say in a very high voice: "What!?"
"Look! I think its asleep!"
I open one of my bright green eyes and peek carefully at the giant, twisted figure on the floor that stretched to at least thirty feet long.
"No, its just the skin," I say, relaxing.
Lockhart lets out a faint moan and slumps to the floor. Harry comes over to check out the skin as Ron prods Lockhart's limp form with his wand. Which is a mistake.
With a yell from both of them, Lockhart snatches Ron's wand away, and leaps to his feet in a small scuffle. I grab onto Harry's arm to alert him.
"Don't move, any of you," he says, waving Ron's wand at us. "Ahh, what a marvelous story this will be. How we were too late to save the girl, and how the three of you tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body. Say goodbye to your memories! So, you first, Mr Potter . . . Obliviate!"
Ron's wand lets out a blast of intense blue light and sound, and Lockhart is thrown backwards. Then the cavern starts to shake, and I fall over, only to be dragged up again by Harry. We stumble away in a daze as giant boulders begin to fall from the cieling in a mini avalanche.
"RON!!" I scream when the dust settles. I sprint over to where the rock pile blocks our way to Ron from floor to cieling. "RON!! ARE YOU OKAY!?"
"RORY!? HARRY!?"
"We're on the other side!" Harry bellows.
"I'm okay! Lockhart's not, though, he got blasted by the wand!"
I hear Lockhart's voice from the other side, saying: "Oh, hello there! Uh, who are you? And, uh, who am I?"
"Lockhart's spell backfired! He hasn't got a clue who he is!" Ron yells delightedly.
"Odd sort of place this is," Lockharts voice sounds again. "Do you live here?"
"No," says Ron. A muffled thump sound tells me that Ron just knocked him out.
​​​​​​ "Rory and I are going to keep going!" Harry calls.
"What if you try and clear out some of the rock so we can get back through . . . if we can get back through. We'll save Ginny, I promise," I say.
"Good luck! Be careful!" Ron yells.
"We'll see you in an hour, Ron!" Harry calls.
And we take off down the tunnel without a second look back. The clacking of Ron trying to shift rocks quickly fades as my brother and I hurry down the tunnel, walking in fast, terrified silence. Finally, as we cautiously round another corner, we find ourselves facing a wall with two giant snakes intertwined around it.
I look at Harry, who nods, then hiss, "Open."
The serpents part as the wall splits apart to form a large entryway. The entrance to the Chamber of Secrets itself.
"You ready?" I ask in a shaking voice.
"Ready as I'll ever be," Harry says.
And so we step into the Chamber side by side.