Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

I was looking for someone to take the note about Hagrid’s birds when a bell began ringing in the corridor. Pince reached the door before any of us had stood up, spoke to a passing teacher and told us to gather our things.

An amplified voice ordered every student back to their common room. Teachers were to report to the second-floor passage. We joined the others moving towards the stairs, with my notebook still open in one hand.

There was smoke in the stairwell, faint and already thinning. I recognised the smell of burnt cloth before the group from the hospital wing appeared, with two beds moving at the centre of a ring of teachers. Pomfrey walked beside one, holding its rail, and I saw Hermione’s still face above the blanket.

Ron left our line. ‘Where’s Ginny?’ he asked, trying to see past the people surrounding the beds.

Pomfrey turned towards him, but McGonagall stepped forward before she answered. She took Ron into an empty classroom and told Harry and me to follow, closing the door once we were inside.

‘There was a fire behind the screens in your sister’s room,’ she said. ‘Professor Sprout went to put it out. Ginny disappeared during the evacuation.’

Ron stared at her. ‘She was being watched. You said somebody would be with her.’

‘Yes, I did.’ McGonagall held his gaze. ‘The screen gave her privacy, but it also hid what she was doing until there was smoke. We are establishing how she got past the people at the door.’

Harry asked whether Ginny had started the fire. McGonagall said they did not yet know who had, then told us there was something else we needed to see.

Two teachers stood at the far end of the passage, keeping people back from the wall near Myrtle’s bathroom. The new writing was large enough to read without approaching: Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber for ever.

Ron moved towards it. I caught his arm, and he pulled so hard that I nearly lost my grip before McGonagall spoke again.

‘Ginny has not been found. Those words are a threat, and we are treating them as one.’ She remained between us and the guarded stretch of corridor.

‘The book had her,’ Ron said. ‘It had her all this time.’ His eyes stayed on the wall, and I kept hold of his sleeve.

‘Possibly. That doesn’t tell us she’s dead.’ I waited until he turned towards me, with an expression that made the rest of my sentence disappear.

‘Don’t tell me she’s fine,’ he said. I promised I would not, and his arm finally stopped straining against mine.

McGonagall brought us to the staff-room door, where she could see us while issuing instructions. Teachers were searching the drain routes Harry had helped identify; others were checking the grounds and counting students again. A message had gone to Dumbledore. Names and places passed back and forth over the plan on the table, each one attached to somebody who was meant to act on it.

Lockhart arrived late, his robes immaculate. He began with none of his usual greetings, perhaps because McGonagall addressed him before he could choose one.

‘Gilderoy, you claimed to know where the entrance was. Write down the location, your evidence and anything required to open it.’ She indicated a clear space on the table. ‘Bring it here immediately.’

He said he had made certain deductions and would need his notes. McGonagall told him to fetch them; there was a child missing, and the information was needed now.

He passed us with his eyes fixed ahead. Snape watched him leave before turning back to the plan. Nobody had offered Lockhart command of a rescue; all they had asked him to do was explain something he claimed to know, and he had looked frightened enough of that.

We were to return to the tower with the next escort. McGonagall promised to send word as soon as there was news, and Ron nodded without looking at her. When the teacher gathering our group moved towards the younger pupils, Harry leaned close.

‘If Lockhart knows something, we could at least get it out of him,’ he whispered. Ron said he was not going upstairs to wait, and I looked along the passage towards Myrtle’s door.

We had the creature and a possible route. The girl who had died might be able to tell us exactly where it had appeared, while Hagrid’s surviving cockerels could give us something more useful than a theory when we reached it. I wanted both, and wanting them quickly made it much easier to stop listening to the instructions we had just received.

‘Find out what Lockhart has,’ I said. ‘I’ll get something we may need. Meet me outside Myrtle’s bathroom, and if a teacher is there, tell them exactly why we’ve come.’

Ron looked at me, his face white and set. ‘We find her,’ he said, and I answered that first we had to find a way to reach her. That was a promise about the next step, which was as much as I could honestly give him.

I returned to the dormitory before going down to Hagrid’s hut. The empty folds in my pouch were exchanged for charged strips from our workshop box; there was no time to make new preparations. Whatever I took would have to last, and I left the frayed pieces I had rejected the night before where they were.

Two cockerels remained in the covered pen behind the hut. One watched me with a suspicious eye while the other fled beneath the perch as soon as I opened the gate. I found a wicker carrier beside the feed bin and began discovering how much a bird could object to being rescued.

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‘I know,’ I muttered when one scratched my wrist. ‘I wouldn’t trust me either.’ The other made an attempt on my thumb, but I got them inside without trapping a wing and fastened the lid.

I checked that they had room to move and breathe, then covered part of the weave with a cloth to settle them. Fang watched from the doorway until I told him to stay in the hut. He went inside with an enthusiasm which suggested that last night had settled his opinion of my outings.

I took a lantern and its matchbox, a coil of rope and a short piece of chalk from Hagrid’s supplies. On the climb back, the carrier knocked against my knee while voices came through an open castle window: orders, names being counted, a first-year answering when somebody called for him. Every ordinary reply seemed unbearably fortunate.

Harry and Ron were waiting near Myrtle’s bathroom with Lockhart between them. Harry held two wands, and Lockhart’s smile had narrowed into a thin, fixed line.

‘He was packing,’ Ron said. Lockhart began explaining that he had been making arrangements, but Harry spoke over him long enough to tell me what had happened.

Trunks stood open in the office and books had vanished from the shelves. When challenged, Lockhart had admitted that his adventures belonged to other witches and wizards. He took their stories, then removed their memories of telling them.

‘He tried to do it to us,’ Harry finished. He tightened his grip on the unfamiliar wand. ‘I got this first.’

Lockhart watched his wand as he complained that Harry was making the account sound crude. I set the carrier down carefully, giving myself a moment before I looked at him.

‘Ginny’s missing.’ I could hear a cockerel shifting against the wicker beside my shoe. ‘That was what you thought you needed to deal with? Two boys knowing what you’d done?’

He began with sympathy and reached the words ‘you can’t expect’ before I told him to be quiet. For once he stopped, leaving Harry to say that someone needed to take charge of him.

The teacher who had guarded the writing was no longer in the passage. A notice directed students towards the supervised staircase, and through the far window I could see staff moving towards one of the drain openings outside. I looked into the bathroom before turning back to find someone, and saw Myrtle sitting on a cistern, wringing water from a transparent plait.

‘There you are,’ she said. ‘People keep coming in, and nobody’s here when I get back.’

I told her they had been looking for her. She said they might have waited, and I stepped inside with the carrier still beside the door.

‘Myrtle, I need to ask about the day you died.’ Her hands stopped moving through her hair. For a moment she looked pleased to have been asked; then her expression changed and she glanced towards the cubicles.

Olive Hornby had been horrible about her glasses, she said, so she had hidden where Olive could not see her crying. She pointed out the cubicle as Harry and Ron reached the doorway. Lockhart followed them, still watching Harry’s hand.

I asked whether she had heard anything. A boy had been talking, Myrtle said, making an odd noise she could not understand. She had opened the door to tell him to leave.

‘What did you see?’ I asked. Harry looked towards me, but I kept my attention on Myrtle while she touched the frame of her glasses.

‘Eyes. Big yellow eyes, just there by the sinks.’ She pointed across the room. ‘Then I died. Olive came to find out whether I was still sulking.’

One of the cockerels moved in the carrier, its claws ticking against the wicker. I thanked Myrtle before turning towards the sinks, because I had asked her to remember dying and she had answered me.

One tap had never worked. I remembered moving on to the next basin after getting only a dry squeak from it, and crouched to inspect the metal beneath its spout. A tiny snake was scratched there, complete with a head and forked tongue.

Harry knelt beside me. I asked him to tell it to open, and he did, in perfectly ordinary English. The tap remained a tap.

‘I can’t just decide to—’ He stopped, looking closely at the engraving. I moved back, and after a moment his lips parted around a sound that tightened the skin along my arms.

The metal glowed. Stone ground against stone as the central basin began turning, drawing the others with it and uncovering a dark circular opening. Lockhart stumbled against a cubicle while cold, damp air rose from below.

Ron caught my sleeve. I turned to Myrtle before he could pull me towards the shaft. ‘Find Professor McGonagall or Flitwick. Tell them the marked tap opens to Parseltongue, Harry has opened it and Ginny may be below. Please, now.’

She looked startled at the last words, then sank through the wall. I tore a page from my notebook, wrote the same message and added Lockhart’s name with a warning about his attempt to take the boys’ memories. I put it beneath the carrier strap while I examined the opening.

The lantern showed a sloping surface, polished by water, curving out of sight. There was no ladder. Harry said we should wait for the teachers, although he was looking down into the dark while he said it.

A faint hiss came from below, and he became rigid. Ron demanded to know what he had heard.

‘It said she’s nearly gone.’ Harry leaned towards the shaft as if there might be another word to change that meaning. Ron moved, and I caught him round the chest before he reached the edge.

‘You don’t jump blind,’ I said. He struggled against my arms, then demanded that I let him see, his voice cracking on the final word.

I lowered the lantern on the rope. It swung against the wall and revealed the start of the bend: steep, but continuous, with water dripping somewhere beyond it. We had sent for help. Waiting beside the open shaft meant hoping the voice was a lie, and I could feel Ron preparing to move again.

‘I’ll go first. Lower the carrier after me and keep the note here.’ I passed him the strap before turning towards the outer basin. ‘If the teachers arrive, tell them what we heard.’

I secured the rope around a sound support beneath the basin and tested it with my weight. Then I climbed over the lip, keeping my boots against the sloping wall and the lantern below me. Behind me, Lockhart began protesting about what we intended to do.

‘You can wait for the professors,’ Harry told him. ‘You’re still not getting your wand.’ I kept climbing until the pipe curved and narrowed into a smoother chute, where the smell of stagnant water was stronger.

I called for the carrier. Harry told me the note was under the dry tap, then the basket came down slowly enough for me to catch it between my knees. I untied it and took the lantern off the rope, feeling my boots shift on the wet surface.

‘It’s a slide after this,’ I called. ‘Feet first if you come.’ I could tell them what I had found; I could not tell them that following me was safe.

Harry appeared at the bend next, moving carefully down the rope. Ron followed, with his broken wand still put away. Harry retained his own wand and Lockhart’s, and above them I heard another pair of shoes scraping against the wall.

Lockhart said he was not staying alone upstairs. I looked at the wandless man lowering himself towards us and thought about the memories he had taken. There was no time to make him trustworthy; I could only keep him where I could see him.

‘Hands in view,’ I told him. The opening behind him remained light, and distant voices carried from the corridor. Myrtle might already have reached somebody.

Then my boot lost its purchase. The carrier pulled against my arm, and I hugged it to my chest, holding the lantern clear of the wicker as I slid into the dark. Harry’s startled shout followed me round the bend.