"What are you looking at, Harry?" Theo asks, and Harry glances at him before looking back to the catalogue. "Tents?"

"I thought I'd maybe go camping during the summer," Harry lies in a light, easy tone, "They're not as expensive as I thought they'd be." Actually, the modest tent with a small, working kitchen and bathroom is the one Harry has his eye on, and it's 400 Galleons. It is expensive, but he's already earned about two hundred Galleons for his few hours of work on Saturdays, and it's a luxury Harry is quite willing to sacrifice some extra reading material for.

It's midway through April, and he can hear the rain pattering on the lake surface outside as he leaves the common room and makes his way up to the library, his catalogue stuffed into his bag. "Hey, Harry," Ginny says, catching him in the hall.

"Oh, hello, Ginny," Harry says, offering her a slightly awkward smile. The Valentine he'd got in February had been anonymous, but he has a sneaking suspicion he's quite aware who sent it to him: Ginny, to her credit, betrays no inkling of this.

"I just wanted to let you know, I just saw a snake."

"Oh, really? Where?"

"In Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, on the second floor. It's on one of the sinks. You haven't checked there yet, have you?"

"Uh, no," Harry admits, but he nods his head. "Cheers, Ginny, I'll mention it to Celia." He eats his breakfast quickly, and he only bothers to give the Daily Prophet a cursory scan: there's not much in it this morning but celebrity gossip and foreign Quidditch scores.

"Good morning, Harry," Sartorius says smoothly as he and Hayworth come down from the staff table. "Good night's sleep?"

"Yeah," Harry agrees. "It was duelling club last night, so I stayed up practising this new spell I saw Roger Davies cast on some Hufflepuff - a knee-reversal hex?" Cecilia winces, so Harry quickly changes the subject, "Ginny Weasley just said there's a snake in the bathroom on the second floor, Moaning Myrtle's?"

"Really?" Celia asks,and she hums thoughtfully, "Let's go check it out then. I don't remember anything being in there, but no one likes to use that bathroom."

"Myrtle Warren? The girl that was murdered back in the forties?" Lindon asks, perking up somewhat, "I never realized she haunted a bathroom." Celia nods her head, and they walk up the stairs together. Harry hasn't seen a snake on a sink, so he has to wonder what sort of broom cupboard or tiny hole this particular passage way could possibly lead to.

They make their way into the bathroom, and Celia makes her way to talk to Myrtle, who pops up out of a toilet in a disconcertingly casual manner. Harry begins to examine the sinks, and then he sees the serpent Ginny must have been talking about: it's carved into the side of one of the pipes, and Harry stares at it carefully. Over the past few months, using Parseltongue has become easier and easier, and he's gaining more of a proficiency in its use: he wants to experiment, in the next few weeks, with casting in Parseltongue and seeing if it makes any difference to spells, but he's not quite at that level yet.

"Open," Harry hisses, and he steps back as the sink begins to sink slowly into the pipes below, disappearing out of sight. Harry leans forwards, peering down the tunnel that dives deep into the darkness, and he feels Lindon's hand coming forwards, but it's too late: Harry jumps, tucking in his elbows as he slides down the dark tunnel and lands... Somewhere.

"Stairs," Harry orders. "Ladder?" There's the sound of metal rungs clunking out of the main part of the pipe behind him, and he calls up, "Come down! It's safe at the bottom!" He turns, looking around him, and even as he turns his head torches light at the edges of the room. He's standing in a high-ceilinged hall, marble friezes carved into the walls around him: the floor is wet and slightly gritty, and he can see there's moisture dripping from some of the walls.

"That was idiotic of you!" Cecilia snaps at him as she comes away from the ladder, and Harry shrugs.

"You'd have made me stay up there if I hadn't gone first," Harry points out, and Cecilia lets out a noise of frustration that echoes through the hall.

"He makes a fair point, Celia," Lindon murmurs, beginning to walk down the centre pathway of the hall. Although the firelight coming from the torches seems completely normal, their flickering light is tinged green by the water around them: Harry suspects at least some of the light is coming from the lake, just as it does in the Slytherin common room, but he can't be sure. The hall continues into a small corridor, and Celia pushes both him and Lindon behind her as she makes her way slowly down the much narrower passageway. After twenty feet or so, though, the corridor opens up again, and Harry wonders if it was originally built like this, or if they had to make some changes to it. After all, if Slytherin built this place, that would have been way before there were sinks and modern plumbing materials in the bathrooms.

Ahead of them, Celia gasps, and Lindon runs forwards to see what's wrong with her. The silence that follows is ominous, and so Harry walks slowly down the little corridor until he reaches green-tinged light and a high ceiling again, but he's struck with the same sudden muteness as the other two.

Lindon Sartorius is on his knees, not caring that the damp, mossy water staining the chamber's floor is soaking into the fabric of his pressed, expensive robes: he's staring up with almost religious awe at the statue that dominates the room. It shows an old man in robes with a thick beard and long hair that each come down to his chest, but the sheer scale of it is what's shocking: the statue, carved of grey stone, must be sixty or seventy feet tall.

"Is that-"

"That's Salazar Slytherin," Lindon whispers, his voice full of fervour and almost religious passion. "Do you know what your little friend has lead us to, Harry?" Lindon looks at Harry with a look of rapture on his face, and Harry wishes someone were here who'd tell the historian to calm down. "This is Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets. This- this place is positively mythical." Lindon scrambles to his feet, and he and Celia grab at each other's hands and forearms, arguing with such rapid talk that Harry can barely understand the two of them, so he doesn't bother. He takes a few steps forwards, looking up at the gigantic statue of Salazar Slytherin, and wonders why anyone would ever want a statue of themselves that bloody big.

Salazar Slytherin, it would seem, was an even bigger pillock than Gilderoy Lockhart. Harry sees an odd shadow flicker wall across the room, and he frowns, turning to ask about it, but then he freezes. Lockhart, in all his orange-robed glory, stands in the corridor they'd just passed through, his wand in hand and a mad glint in his blue eyes.

"Stupefy!" Lockhart yells, and Cecila is thrown back by the force of the spell, dropping unconscious to the damp stone with a wet thunk. Lindon pulls out his wand, placing himself between Lockhart and Harry.

"Go!" he orders, and all Harry can think of is Lindon telling him he's no good with defensive magic, but he scrambles back all the same, grasping for his own wand as he runs to the other end of big, cavernous chamber and towards the feet of Salazar Slytherin. He doesn't know what Lockhart is doing, but he knows that the man looks dangerous, and he looks desperately around for another door, an exit, something to lead him away from the dead end of the chamber at Slytherin's feet, but there isn't one.

"Oh, Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry..." Lockhart calls across the room, making his way slowly forwards. Both Sartorius and Hayworth are lying on their sides on the wet floor, unmoving, and Harry brandishes his own wand as he looks at Lockhart. "I might have let you keep your memories, you know, but you've just been so selfish this year, so ridiculous."

"My memories?" Harry demands, stumbling back against the wall, and he starts desperately trying to think of any word that comes to mind in Parseltongue, "Open, exit, secret door, open up, open sesame, please-"

"Oh, yes," Lockhart says sweetly, running a hand through his hair and striding forwards with the arrogant confidence Harry hasn't seen out of him for months now. "You see, Memory Charms are rather a speciality of mine, and I'll be certain you don't remember a thing. I can see the headlines now: historians and beloved hero, Harry Potter, found mad in mythical Chamber of Secrets. Gilderoy Lockhart, five times winner of-

"Help," Harry hisses out, and this time, there's- something.

He stares up at the statue of Salazar Slytherin, and he listens to the grinding of stone as Slytherin's mouth begins to slowly, slowly, open up.