Chapter 7: Chamber!

The girl had died there, he did not know how but he was having a challenging time telling the difference between dream and reality. 

Cassiopeia placed a reassuring hand on him, steadying him before he lost his balance. 

It was at this time that Aries really thought he was losing it, because now the very girl of his dreams was before him, and he was sure he could see right through her. 

They're eyes met, and it was like a lantern lit in his mind.

"Myrtle!" he exclaimed as the name finally came to him. The ghost gave him a rather quizzical look, floating around him as if to get a better angle.

"Do I know you little boy?"

"Well no," Aries admitted with an embarrassed look and then flushed with anger at being called little. 

"Well actually I killed you. In my dreams. I was hoping you could tell me how you died."

"How rude!"

"Wait!" Aries nearly screamed, and Myrtle floated to a halt. He paused for a moment fighting over what to say before turning to the sink. 

"I came from there. I don't know how, but you were crying in the last stall. I came straight to the door and next thing I know you were dead. Please Myrtle, I need to know what happened."

"Ooooh, it was dreadful," she said with relish. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked, and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in."

"They said something funny. A different language, I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then -" Myrtle swelled importantly, her face shining. 

"I died."

"How?" asked Aries.

"No idea," said Myrtle in hushed tones. "I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes. My whole-body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away."1

Aries turned back to the bathroom sink. It was all connected to that spot, the nightmares that so often involved Hogwarts. 

His feet felt heavy as he got closer but there was one that seemed to call to him. He moved with an almost assured pace, like he had done this a thousand times, and that was when he stopped. 

Goosebumps erupted along his arms and he could not shake the chill he suddenly felt. He had done this before. 

There was no mistaking it. Every detail came to him in vivid fashion and it was like stepping into one of his Aunt's memories. 

But it was impossible wasn't it? 

He had never been to Hogwarts before. The only place off the continent he had visited had been London and that was nowhere near here. 

Yet he could not shake the dreading sense of déjà vu.

"What is it Aries?" Cassiopeia's voice felt distant to him, as if he could not tell the difference between dream and reality again.

"I've been here before," he replied with much more confidence than he felt. "I don't know how, but I have. Auntie I can feel this place calling to me."

"You said you've dreamed of this place before? Perhaps that is what you feel." She took a glance over at the ghost who was now staring at Aries with open curiosity.

"No Auntie, it's not like that." Aries shook his slightly and reached out toward the faucet. 

Just as he was about to turn on the cold water he felt it: the small engraved snake on the handle. 

Another wave of memories assaulted him and he violently shook his head to clear it, but he knew what he needed to do now.

"Open." Parseltongue hissed from his lips and the tap glowed with a brilliant white lit and began to spin. 

Next second, the sink began to move, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

More memories this time of a long tube, something like a slide. He gave his aunt a wicked grin before jumping right in. 

Aunt Cassi's scream reached him, but nothing could stop the exhilarated laughter that escaped him until he reached the bottom with a loud yippee. 

As expected Cassiopeia followed a few moments later, but there was no laughter on her face this time.

"Aries Orion Black!" He braced himself for the worst, Aunt Cassi really knew how to lay into someone. 

But the yelling never came, and he opened his eyes to see a rather stern expressions before she gave a long sigh. 

"We of the House of Black do not yippee." Aries felt a rush of bravery to fix a smirk on his face.

"Well they do now."

They found themselves. standing at the end of a long, dimly lit chamber. 

Towering stone pillars entwined with more serpents, rose to a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. 

Aries' pace quickened until he stood before a giant statue. It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin, beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes where two enormous gray stone feet sat on the smooth floor of the chamber.

A name whispered to him, and again it was as if he was remembering something from long ago.

"The Chamber of Secrets!" Cassiopeia exclaimed with glee. "Oh, dear Salazar it's true!" But Aries wasn't listening to her. 

He stood transfixed with the statue, memories flashed by too quickly for him to register before his arm moved mechanically and words hissed from his lip from far his control.

"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four." A chill went up Cassiopeia's spine, as it did every time Aries spoke Parseltongue and watched as Slytherin's gigantic stone face moved, opening wider and wider to make a huge black hole. 

And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth.