Twin Power *Cedric Diggory Love Story* (EDITING)

Into the chamber we go...

Cassia's POV

The next day, Ron, Harry, and I all went to visit Hermione. The flowers by her bedside were all wilted, so I replaced them with fresh ones.

"Wish you were here, Hermione. We need you. Now, more than ever," Harry said to her. Both of us held her left hand while Ron sat at the foot of the bed.

Suddenly, I felt something papery right by her hand. I moved my own hand and saw it was a crumpled up piece of paper. Harry grabbed it and unfolded it. I looked over his shoulder as he read the writing on the paper. I soon realized that it was a page ripped out from a textbook, on a mythical beast called a Basilisk. We both turned to Ron.

"Ron, this is why Hermione was in the library the day she was attacked," I told him.

We all examined the page as we walked out of the hospital wing. "Of the many fearsome beasts that roam our land, none is more deadly than the basilisk. Capable of living for hundreds of years, instant death awaits any who meet this giant serpent's eye. Spiders flee before it..." Harry read out loud.

"Ron, this is it. The monster in the Chamber of Secret is a Basilisk," I said.

"That's why both of us can hear it speak. It's a snake!" Harry exclaimed as we stopped near a window.

"But if it kills by looking people in the eye, why is it no one's dead?" Ron asked.

I looked at my reflection in the glass. Soon, Harry's appeared right behind me.

"Because no one did look it in the eye," he answered.

"Not directly, at least," I added. We turned back to Ron.

"Collin saw it through his camera. And Justin- Justin must've seen the basilisk through Nearly Headless Nick. Nick got the full blast of it, but he's a ghost. He couldn't die again," Harry explained.

"And Hermione...she had the mirror," I jumped in, "That day in the library, she probably took that page out of the book and was using the mirror to look around corners, in case the Basilisk came along."

"What about Mrs. Norris? I'm pretty sure she didn't have a camera or a mirror," Ron objected.

Realization hit me. "The water...there was water on the floor that night. She only saw the basilisk's reflection," I said.

We took the paper over to a fire-lit column, so we could read it better.

"Spiders flee before it," Harry read, "It all fits!"

"But how's it been getting around? A dirty, great snake- someone could've seen it," Ron commented.

"Hermione's answered that, too," Harry muttered, glancing at the paper.

I looked over his shoulder. Scrawled near the bottom of the page was the word Pipes. It was Hermione's handwriting, alright.

"Pipes? It's using the plumbing!" Ron exclaimed.

"Remember what Aragog said about that girl, fifty years ago? How she died in a bathroom?" I asked.

"Moaning Myrtle," Ron muttered, realizing something. It makes sense, since Myrtle's always haunting only one particular bathroom- the same one where we'd been brewing Polyjuice Potion a couple of months ago.

"All students are to return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers, report to the second-floor corridor immediately," we heard McGonagall announce.

We hid behind another column as the sound of approaching footsteps got louder and louder. Pretty soon, the staff was crowded around one of the walls.