Harry drifted, half-awake, into a strange place.
Everything around him was pure white. Now and then strange patches of mist swirled by, shifting and shimmering, always trying to slip into his head.
He dodged one after another—his instincts screaming that nothing good lay inside those clouds.
He kept walking, kept avoiding, until he ended up in front of a huge, run-down house.
There, waiting, was a black cat whose fur was as dark as ink.
Harry had never had a dream this vivid. It wasn't until the cat appeared that he realised this wasn't reality at all.
Because that was a cat he'd only heard about in the Castle Lucky Cat Club's rumours—Harry himself had never seen it.
"Castle Lucky Cat, sir?"
Harry tried to greet it—just as a wisp of mist slipped into his head.
His vision warped… he saw a basilisk so massive it blotted out the sky swallow Ron in one bite. At its feet lay Sean, petrified, and the shattered Sword of Gryffindor… After killing Ron, the giant serpent turned its gaze on Harry. He saw those huge yellow eyes, and then—
"Wake up from the fear, Harry."
A familiar voice cut in.
"Ah—!"
Harry went white, like he'd been dragged out of deep water. Cold sweat drenched him, and he gasped for air.
Still shaken, he stared at the black cat in front of him. It reached out a paw and pushed his head aside; the mist that had wormed its way into him drifted back out and away.
"Thank you, Castle Lucky Cat, sir… You know who I am? No—that's not it, do you know just now—no, no… do you know where the basilisk came from?"
Driven by a kind of urgent need, Harry blurted the question he wanted most to ask.
"It was bred by Slytherin and has lived in the Chamber for a thousand years… The entrance to the Chamber is in the second-floor girls' bathroom."
The cat's emerald eyes locked onto him; it seemed very pleased with his question.
Harry was shaking all over with excitement. It felt like he'd stumbled into something enormous.
So the rumour was real. The Castle Lucky Cat existed, watching over the whole castle… Maybe it was Hogwarts itself.
After all, in the wizarding world, owls got offended, enchanted cars got offended, mandrakes got offended, and so did curtains, statues, and a hundred other things.
They all seemed to have minds of their own. If Hogwarts Castle had a will too, it wouldn't be strange at all.
"Can I… ask you one more thing?"
Harry hesitated, then remembered something he'd read:
[Parseltongue can lull a basilisk into a deep sleep, halting its growth and putting it into a near-death state…]
So Parseltongue had put it to sleep—but who had woken it?
And why?
Was it really Lockhart…?
"Castle Lucky Cat, sir—who woke the basilisk? My friends have been risking their lives fighting it these days. How can I help?"
Harry's face was almost pleading.
The black cat tilted its head.
Who was Harry talking about? Someone else had been in the Chamber all this time?
Surely he didn't mean him…
"Tom Riddle, Harry. You need to get Tom Riddle's diary from Ginny, and then use a basilisk fang to destroy it as fast as you can."
The cat said.
"Tom Riddle? Who's that? And the diary—what is it? Where am I supposed to get a basilisk fang?"
Harry fired back, panicked.
But the cat just lifted its head, and the mist began to rise.
This dream didn't last very long; that cloud of mist that had invaded Harry's head had clearly cut it short.
Sean didn't mind. As long as he'd pointed Harry straight at the diary, the rest would take care of itself.
…
Night draped itself over Hogwarts. Suddenly, there was a disturbance in the second-floor girls' bathroom.
It sounded like… something trying to crawl out.
In the dim light you could see it was something long and sinuous, eyes screwed tightly shut, wearing a ridiculous pair of spectacles.
Just before it shut its eyes, the chain-glasses–wearing alchemical toad was petrified, falling motionless beside the sink.
A moment later, the basilisk vanished as well.
Forbidden Forest.
Under the thick canopy, bottles and jars were lined up in the leaf-litter. With the help of potions, Sean could keep the basilisk asleep in the forest for a full week.
Now it was clearly in deep slumber. Sean flicked his wand and the earth rolled over, burying it—especially its head and eyes—under layer after layer of dirt and stone.
In its "beak," white-feathered Fawkes-turned-rooster stood proudly over the buried head, chest puffed, watching the ancient trees like a general on parade.
Sean was there too, Map in hand, waiting for Harry's name to appear in the Chamber.
His job now was to make sure nothing went wrong with the snake.
Back in Hogwarts, the castle slowly woke to birdsong.
In the Great Hall, everyone was talking about the upcoming Halloween feast. Third-years and above were extra excited—they'd be allowed to go to Hogsmeade on the Saturday before the holiday.
Only at Harry's end of the Gryffindor table was the mood completely different.
"You're saying you dreamed you met the Castle Lucky Cat, it told you the basilisk is in the Chamber and controlled by someone called 'Tom Riddle', and you have to use a basilisk fang to destroy a diary?"
Ron gulped and stared at him.
"That's… exactly what happened."
Putting it into words just made Harry realise how insane it sounded.
"I've never heard of magic like that—dream magic… First Ginny, now you…"
Hermione's curiosity was burning and so were her doubts. So the black cat in Ginny's dream wasn't Sean?
"Does anyone even know why Tom's controlling a basilisk?" Ron muttered, fingers worrying the edge of his History of Magic homework—a three-foot essay on "Medieval European Wizard Councils."
The bell rang.
In History of Magic, everything was as dull as ever.
Professor Binns droned from his notes in that dry, wheezing voice, like an ancient vacuum cleaner. Soon the whole class was half-asleep, sometimes jerking awake long enough to scribble down a name or date before drifting off again.
Half an hour into his lecture, something happened that had never occurred in his classroom before.
Hermione raised her hand.
Binns was in the middle of a deadly explanation of the International Warlock Convention of 1289. He looked up, clearly startled.
"And you are…?"
"I'm Granger, Professor. I was wondering… could you tell us what exactly the Chamber of Secrets is?"
Hermione said clearly.
"The Chamber of what?"
Dean, who'd been sitting slack-jawed and staring out the window, snapped back to life.
"Know-It-All's dug up something even older than your notes?" Ernie lifted his head from his folded arms.
Professor Binns blinked.
"This is History of Magic, Miss Granger," he wheezed, "I deal in facts, not myths and legends."