Harry and Hermione shrugged off the invisibility cloak in the hallway where Ron was waiting for them. He had looked very scared, terrified would not have been too strong a word, and his gestures were frantic as he waved them to follow him from the hospital wing doorway. Now he was pacing back and forth in a fit of nervous tension, literally unable to remain still. As they appeared, he looked in their direction with panic on his face.
"Guys, she's gone, she never came back to the dorms, no-one's seen her since breakfast and I can't find her anywhere!" The feline couple were certain Ron hadn't paused for breath once.
"Slow down, mate," Harry said. "Who are you talking about?" He had a sinking feeling that he knew, and the look on Hermione's face showed she had identical suspicions.
"Ginny, of course!" Ron confirmed. "I know she's been possessed by that Riddle's diary, but she's my sister, I can't just leave her like that."
Amber eyes met emerald as the feline friends conferred. He's right, mewled Harry.No-one deserves that... thing in their heads. We have to do something. If we get one of the teachers to help us...
If we set foot in the hospital wing right now, that Malfoy man would probably curse us to keep the 'dangerous creatures' from wreaking havoc, Hermione yowled with bitterness deep in every word. So we need a teacher who isn't in there... Oh, no. Turning to her mate, she murmured apologetically. I'm sorry, Harry. We're going to need the stinky-man, urgh.
Harry winced. He loathed Lockhart's 'cologne', and the man under it. Seeing Ron watching their conversation with an odd look, he waved their red-haired friend over. "Don't worry, we're going to save her, and we have to plan this out. We're going to need you to keep an eye on the Professor Stenchmeister, since we can't get close..."
As Ron started running possible plans through his head, he felt a throbbing begin in his right temple. "There's too many unknowns, Harry. I can't play a game I don't know the rules for."
"There aren't any, Ron." Hermione's voice was a soft growl. "Daddy spent some time in the SAS, and he said that one thing that you knew was that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
Harry's green eyes narrowed to slits. "As far as Riddle's concerned, aren't we the enemy?"
Looking at the feral grins on his feline friends' faces, making them more closely resemble hunting panthers than domestic cats, Ron was very happy he wasn't Riddle.
Gilderoy Lockhart opened his eyes to the sight of a wand aimed directly at the tip of his nose by a determined looking red-haired boy. Carefully looking around, he saw the two feline students inspecting the scene of the basilisk's wounding. He began to stand, smiling condescendingly at the boy in front of him.
"I wouldn't make a sudden move if I were you," Ron said, as if discussing the weather. There wasn't a hint of the fear and panic and worry that coursed through him in his voice. He gestured to one side of the corridor with his badly repaired wand. "I'm not entirely sure what would happen to you."
"Are you really threatening a teacher, young man?" Lockhart attempted to turn on the charm. "That's just not on, you know. Tell you what, if you hand over your wand, you can get out of this with just a detention. Can't say fairer than that, what?"
"You passed out at the merest mention of a basilisk," Ron replied, "and the other teachers left you here. I don't think they have the highest opinion of you right now. Now, we need a teacher to help us here, and you just got volunteered. Since you are the DADA professor, I'd think it well within your job description to help stop this basilisk, don't you."
"Ahh... yes... regrettable, you see, I recently received a summons to..." Lockhart hurriedly searched his mind for somewhere far from Hogwarts, "Upper Antarctica, some snow wurm marauding among a village of ..."
"Of what?" Hermione's voice cut into Lockhart's speech. "Penguins? You are a coward, sir. There is a girl's life and soul at stake, and you wish to run and hide? Pathetic."
Harry grinned, both at his mate's taunting of the 'cologne' doused git, and for a more practical reason. "I found the trail, guys," he called out. "It goes into the bathroom up ahead."
The female feline flattened her ears in disbelief. "You mean the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom."
"Ha! I knew it!" exclaimed Lockhart.
Ron glanced at his friends. "Do we really need him?"
Hermione pulled a piece of parchment with spell instructions on it from her pocket. "Yes, Ron. Now let me see, wand motion thus... " Her voice trailed off into a soft murmur as she practised the gesture. Together, the friends prodded the reluctant professor into the abandoned bathroom.
"Oh, it's you again," said Myrtle, "are you still a cat? Oh, hello Harry, you're a cat, too, now? It must be a new fashion." The ghostly teenager giggled. As Harry began searching the room, Hermione turned to her.
"Myrtle," she asked. "How did you die? If that's not rude or something, of course."
"Oh, no," Myrtle answered, "it's just that you're the first person to ask. I was sitting in my stall, crying because of something Olive Hornby said, when I heard a boy. I opened the door to give him a piece of my mind, and I saw these two big yellow lights, and I died."
"Where did you see them?" called Harry.
Myrtle pointed, and the catboy hurried over to the indicated sink. Sure enough, engraved into the tap was a hidden serpent.
"Did you hear what the boy said?" Hermione asked. The ghost shook her head.
"I heard him, but all he was doing was hissing."
"Hang on a second," Harry said. {Open up} he hissed at the tap.
The sink started to move forwards, revealing a tunnel that lead down into the very bowels of the school. The shaft was slick and slimy, and descended at a most precipitous angle.
Lockhart turned for the door with a hurried "Well, since you don't need me anymore..." His voice trailed off as Ron's wand pointed unwaveringly at certain parts of the 'teacher' that he would be hard put to replace.
"My sister is down there somewhere. We're going to save her. You're going first. And look at the bright side: now you can be famous for something you actually did." Ron gave the panicked professor a hard shove, and Lockhart stumbled across the floor and fell down the shaft.
His high-pitched scream on the way down was most satisfying.
As Ron picked himself up at the end of his slide down the pipe, he glared at his feline friends, who had reached the bottom of the shaft both pristine and upright.
Harry chuckled. "Sorry, mate, but we're cats. Always land on our feet and not a hair out of place, either." He cautiously moved forwards, Hermione right behind him. Lockhart, they simply stepped over, as the man had apparently fainted. Again. The floor here was littered with dirt and water, as well as numerous animal bones, mostly small ones, such as from rats. The whole area smelled strongly enough of snake that the cat children were unable to scent Lockhart, which they counted a good thing. Against the far wall, they saw it. At first glance they thought it was the king serpent itself, but the vivid, poisonous green belonged to a shed skin... one that bore out their estimate of the basilisk's size.
I knew it was big, Harry mewled quietly, but it didn't hit me until now just how big the thing is.
Hermione nodded, and turned her attention to the wall itself, where two stone snakes of vast size were set. The carvings were disturbingly life-like, and it didn't take much to imagine them slithering from the wall.
As Ron prodded the reluctant Lockhart into wakefulness, the feline couple turned to the statues and hissed as one. {Open.}
With a grinding of stone and metal, the wall between the snakes retreated to reveal the passage into the Chamber of Secrets.
As it did, Lockhart moved. While the three children were distracted by the door, he grabbed Ron's wand. "These brats aren't worth a monologue," he thought, bringing the wand to bear as he yelled "Obliviate". He missed Ron completely, as the redhead stumbled to one side after losing his wand, and the feline couple dived into the passage behind the snakeskin. The same snakeskin Lockhart's spell bounced off. Then the spellotape gave way, and the energies within the wand cascaded outwards... all over Lockhart. The explosion had the secondary effect of bringing down a large chunk of ceiling, blocking Harry and Hermione inside the chamber.
Ron struggled to his feet, and looked at the pile of rock where the chamber entrance was. He hurried over to it, heedless of the bones that were crunching underfoot. "Harry! Hermione! Are you guys alright?!" he yelled.
The reply was muffled, but it was definitely Hermione who answered him. "We're fine, Ron. Harry's a bit busy swearing in Felinarum, right now. I don't think we're moving this any time soon. Mongrel Lockhart ruined my plan. I was going to transfigure him into a rooster, but we're going to have to improvise, now."
The aforementioned mongrel sat up, causing Ron to spin around, a rock raised in his hand. "Ah. Hello. Who might you be?"
"I'm Ron," the red-haired boy replied, warily. The rock may not be a wand, but it was inarguably better than nothing.
"How wonderful," Lockhart said. "Now for the tricky one. Who am I?"
For a few moments, Ron was flabbergasted. Then he brought the rock around to meet the side of the man's face hard as a bludger. Lockhart went down without a whimper.
"Guys!" the redhead yelled through the rock pile. "Lockhart just brain-wiped himself. Useless git. I'm going to try and clear these rocks. You two go ahead, and please," he almost choked on the sob in his voice, "save Ginny. She's my only sister."
"We will," Harry swore. With that the two cat children hurried through the tunnel, into the Chamber of Secrets.