SCARLETT: THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

Chapter 11: Petrified

It was the day of the final Quidditch match of the year and we were all hyped. The intrusive thoughts that had once swarmed my brain had retreated to the back, so I was happier than ever. Unfortunately, that's when everything started to go wrong.

As we were walking outside to the pitch, Hermione whispered to me that she'd just realised something about the Chamber of Secrets. She sprinted to the library immediately to double-check. When she didn't come back after 10 minutes, I wasn't too concerned. Hermione loved libraries, it was hard to drag her away from them.

Ron, Eden, Eliza and I tried to enter the stands when all of a sudden a loudspeaker announced that the match had been cancelled due to a double attack.

Upon hearing this news, I got a strange feeling in my stomach that I couldn't get used to. Who had been petrified?

McGonagall came to find us and took us all to the hospital wing along with Harry, for some reason. She looked very grave.

That's when I saw her.

Hermione was lying on the crisp sheets of the bed as if carved out of stone, a statue. Her eyes were glassy and frozen, her brow furrowed in clear anxiety.

There was another girl too, a Ravenclaw girl.

"This was found with them." McGonagall held up a mirror. "Does this have any significance to any of you?"

We all shook our heads.

McGonagall sighed. "You may go then.."

I was very shaken up the next few days. Eliza was incredibly upset, and even I couldn't really concentrate on anything. If Hermione, the brightest witch of her age, was petrified, what hope was there for me?

-
One afternoon, I was sitting with Harry and Ron in the hospital wing while Eliza went for a walk and Eden hung out with her stoner artist friends.

"Hey, do you see that piece of paper in Mione's hand?" Harry said. I looked closely at Hermione's scrunched up fingers. Sure enough, there was a piece of old wrinkled parchment coiled in her clenched hand. Careful of Madam Pomfrey, Harry prised it for her grasp. As he read it, his eyes widened. Harry took a deep breath and handed the parchment to me.

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

Underneath, in Hermione's writing, was the word pipes.

"It's a basilisk! That's what the monster is!" said Harry.

"That doesn't make any sense," Ron said. "Look here - it says that whoever looks it in the eyes would die. No one here is dead."

"That's because no one has looked at it directly in the eyes!" Harry whispered.

"That's right!" I said. "Colin saw it through his camera, Justin saw it through Nearly-Headless Nick - he couldn't die again, so it didn't really affect him - and Hermione and that Ravenclaw girl must have seen it through a mirror!"

"What about Mrs Norris?" Ron asked.

"She must have seen it through the water that was on the floor that night!" Harry said.

We added up all of the other clues - spiders flee before it and Hagrid's roosters being killed - and it all made sense. Hermione must have figured out that the snake had been using the school's plumbing.

"We need to tell Professor McGonagall, so she can sort this out," I said seriously, standing up from my chair. I didn't want anyone else to get hurt.

Just then we heard her voice throughout the school.

"All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers go to the staff room immediately!"

"Someone must've been attacked," Harry said. My heart immediately dropped. What if it was Eliza or Eden? I would've never forgiven myself if anything happened to them if I had the information to stop it.

We ran throughout the school towards the teacher's staff room to tell them what we had figured out.
-

(edit, 26-2-19,

this chapter was so awful that i pretty much just rewrote the whole thing. it's still pretty bad, but i found it hard to make it any more compelling.

ty <3)