Prelude to the Chamber of Secrets

Oleandra and Daphne dashed through the corridors, trying to catch up with Potter and Weasley. Obviously, they had some inkling as to where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets might lie, so they followed them.

After Oleandra and her mother had left Hagrid's hut, Hagrid had told the invisible Harry and Ron to follow the spiders, whatever that meant. After a fruitless search for spiders, who had deserted the castle, they had finally found some during Herbology class. They seemed to be headed towards the Forbidden Forest.

After Ron was done with the detention he had earned for punching Malfoy in the nose, he and Harry had followed Hagrid's advice and ventured into the Forbidden Forest, where they had met with the Acromantula named Aragog, a sort of enormous magical spider. From Aragog, they learned that the female victim from fifty years ago had died in a bathroom. They immediately associated this girl with Moaning Myrtle. 

Later on, while visiting the petrified Hermione, they had discovered a torn-out page describing Basilisks in her hand. On the page, a single word had been scribbled: pipes. Harry and Ron put two and two together, and determined that the entrance was in the first floor's girl's bathroom!

And that's precisely where the four ended up after overhearing Professor Sprout's story. Before pushing open the door with the OUT OF ORDER sign, Weasley turned to the twins.

"Look," he said slowly, trying to find the correct words. "I'm sorry I doubted you. Hermione never believed for a second you were behind all of this, and we should have believed in her. I hope your mum's all right."

"It's all in the past," said Oleandra, as they entered the bathroom. "I hope your brother and Mother are both OK."

"It's because you're friends with that git Malfoy," said Weasley, who still couldn't let go. "Can't believe we used to think he had the brains to be the Heir. He's just a small-time thug."

"Draco's not so bad when you get to know him," said Daphne. "Apart from the whole blood-supremacist thing."

All three of the others stared at her.

"Wait, that came out wrong," said Daphne. "Actually, I don't even care, he's just in our club. He is a git, but he's also Draco. I don't know how else to put it."

"Sure, why not," said Potter, clearly not buying it. He called out to Moaning Myrtle's toilet. "Hello, Myrtle? Are you in there?"

The ghost in question floated through a bathroom stall.

"What are you doing with these two?" she asked, pointing at the twins.

"We wanted to apologize for the misunderstanding the last time we met," said Oleandra quickly.

"We brought them along, because they wanted to help bring your killer to justice," said Potter. "But we need to know how you died."

Ghosts just loved it when people asked them about the time when they had been alive. Ghosts were incapable of personal growth; they were frozen in the state they had been at death. Some of them were earthbound spirits, which meant they couldn't even leave the spot where they had died, especially in the case of violent deaths. Others, like Myrtle, were possessive spirits, which meant they followed a person they were obsessed with when they were alive. Some others were free to go wherever they pleased, it varied from case to case. Incidentally, the reason why Hogwarts was so full of ghosts was because the Ministry actively corralled ghosts towards magical places, just in case a particularly spiritually sensitive Muggle saw them. Or in case a particularly powerful ghost decided to play pranks on unsuspecting Muggles!

"Ooooh, it was dreadful," Myrtle said enthusiastically. "I died right here, in my stall. Olive Hornby had been teasing me about my glasses, so I locked myself in there to have a cry. Then, I heard a boy. What was a boy doing here, I asked myself. I unlocked the door to tell him off and ask him to use his own toilet, and poof! I was dead."

Myrtle seemed oddly happy recounting such a morbid story.

"That fits with the Basilisk story," said Daphne. "It kills by looking its victims in the eye."

"Mind you, it could still be a Cockatrice," said Oleandra, still sore about being wrong about the creature. "They're in the same family of dark creatures. Maybe Professor Lockhart got it wrong."

"How?" Harry pressed Myrtle. "What did you see?"

"I haven't the slightest clue," she answered. "I saw a pair of big, yellow eyes, and I felt like I was being pulled somewhere. I thought about how I wanted to mess with Olive Hornby, and the pull stopped. And then I was back, and I made her pay."

Myrtle haunted Olive Hornby even after she had graduated. When Olive had had enough, she went to the Ministry of Magic to get a restraining order, and some government workers sent Myrtle back to the castle. She didn't have to stay in the place where she died, but she had a special affinity for such bathroomy places. And that's how Moaning Myrtle made her home in the bathroom.

"The eyes, where did you see them?" asked Potter.

"Somewhere over there," said Myrtle, waving her translucent arm in the general direction of the sinks opposite to her stall.

The four of them hurried over to the sink. A tiny snake had been imprinted on its tap. Potter tentatively tried to turn it on, but no water came out of it.

"It's never worked," said Myrtle, watching on as they examined it.

"If it's anything like the Scriptorium's entrance," Daphne said while shooting the two boys a glare, "then you should use Parseltongue to make it open."

"That's what I was going to say," said Weasley weakly.

Potter focused his attention on the snake, and said very clearly, "open up."

"That was in English," said Oleandra.

"Try again," Weasley urged him.

This time, though, a hiss escaped Potter's lips. The ground started rumbling, and the sinks sank into the ground, revealing a large pipe. Oleandra looked inside; it was incredibly dark. She couldn't see where it led.

"Ladies first?" Weasley suggested. 

Now that he was actually there, he was beginning to have second thoughts, and he wasn't the only one. Was Percy actually worth it? The thought fleetingly crossed his mind. But no, Percy was his brother. He couldn't stop now!

"Eww, that looks disgusting!" said Daphne, holding her nose. "There's slime everywhere!"

"Well, here goes nothing," said Oleandra, gathering up her courage, before jumping down into the darkness.