They went into the forest, and soon, they were deep into it with no sense of direction. All they had was a line of small spiders. Ron kept asking to turn back and Rosalyn always said no, because there was still a trail to follow. Soon, they came to a hollow where a tree had been knocked over, forming a tunnel.

"Harry, Rosie, I don't like this, I don't like this at all..."

"Shut up, Ron," Harry advised, because his sister was about to hit him if he kept complaining.

The spiders were all over the fallen tree, Rosalyn knew this was where they needed to be.

"Can we go back now?"

"If you say that one more time, I'm going to-"

"Never mind that!" Harry said warily. "What is this..."

"Come on!"

They walked down the tunnel, and it was spiders galore, Rosalyn, at this moment, cursed Fred for turning Ron's teddy into a spider. She sighed as they reached a big pit in a clearing, and Rosalyn saw a massive web, covering a creature, because something spoke.

"Who is it?" Said a deep voice.

"Don't panic," Rosalyn said to Ron under her breath.

"Hagrid, is that you?"

"We're friends of Hagrid's," Rosalyn said, she hoped the thing liked Hagrid, because if it didn't, then they were as good as dead.

The web began to crack and Rosalyn was so sorry for Ron because it was massive! Black, hairy body, and beady eyes, no matter how many, because she couldn't count, and of course, she couldn't forget the eight flexible legs.

"You- you're Aragog aren't you?" Rosalyn asked, but she knew already that this was the creature that was, fifty years ago, blamed for killing a muggleborn.

"Yes," the spider said. "Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before-"

"Excuse me, woman here!" Rosalyn said waving her hand in the air.

The spider looked outraged but simply corrected himself. "Humans," he said.

"Anyway, Hagrid's in trouble, up at the school, there's been attacks, they think he's the one that's opened the chamber of secrets, just like last ti-"

"That is a lie! Hagrid never opened the chamber of secrets!"

"So then you're not the monster?" Rosalyn hadn't really suspected Hagrid, but at the same time, deep down, she half had.

"No. The monster was born in the castle," Ron gave a low cry as he saw more spiders, "I came to Hagrid from a distant land, in the pocket of a traveler."

Ron was half crying. "Harry," he mouthed.

"Shush," Rosalyn said. "But if you're not the monster, then who petrified those people? What did kill that girl fifty years ago?"

Aragog gave a hiss. "We do not speak of it! It is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others."

"But have you seen it?"

"I never saw any part of the castle, but the box in which Hagrid kept me. The girl was discovered in a bathroom. When I was accused, Hagrid brought me here."

"Rosalyn!" Ron wailed.

"What?" Rosalyn asked, annoyed.

He pointed upwards, to where loads of spiders were floating down on webs. Rosalyn bit her lip and turned to Aragog, voice shaky.

"Well, thank you, we'll just-" she swallowed the lump in her throat -"Just go."

"Go?" Aragog asked, as if the idea was preposterous. "I think not. My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid on my command, but I cannot deny them fresh meat when it stumbles so willingly upon us. Goodbye, friends of Hagrid."

Thousands of spiders surrounded them, and Rosalyn didn't know how to get around them. "Can we panic now?" Ron asked unhelpfully.

Rosalyn hit some of the nearer spiders with the lantern, but one took it. So she and Harry and Ron stood, backs to each other, worried to death.

"Do you know any spells?" Ron asked Harry and Rosalyn, Harry shrugged, but Rosalyn answered.

"Just one, but it's not strong enough for all these," Rosalyn said.

"Where's Hermione when you need her?" Ron demanded.

But just then something (that wasn't Hermione by the way) came to their rescue, and Rosalyn realised just in time that it was the blue Ford Anglia. All the spiders raced away and it opened its doors for them to climb in. Harry jumped in the back and Ron took the driver seat, Rosalyn the passenger.

The spiders climbed on the car's bonnet, boot, roof, windscreen and doors. Rosalyn decided to try the spell.

"Arania Examae!"

The bright light appeared and drove a spider away. Rosalyn yelled. "GO!" To Ron. The car backed out the hollow and lost many of the black, hairy additions at the fallen tree, but not all, and they still persisted, following them out the clearing.

"Glad we got out of there," Ron said, Harry frantically nodded.

But then a spider jumped up from the side of the car, throttling Ron. Rosalyn gasped and had to yell, "Move out the way!" To him, so that she didn't hit him, and eventually got a clear shot at the spider's face.

"Arania- Examae!" She said with difficulty, the bright light blasted the spider back.

"Thanks for that," Ron said, and whilst Harry was sniggering, Rosalyn said. "Don't mention it."

Harry was now scrutinizing the horizon. "Hang on... what's that?"

Rosalyn swore under her breath. Thousands of spiders were coming towards them, and they all wanted to eat them.

"Get us out of here," Rosalyn said to Ron, but he seemed paralysed. "NOW!" She and Harry bellowed in unison and Ron accelerated. Backwards.

"You're going the bloody wrong wa-"Rosalyn yelled, but stopped when Ron turned and sped forward, the spiders hot on their trail.

"Get us in the air!" Harry yelled in mad desperation.

Ron pulled the lever but-

"The flying gear's jammed!"

"Come on!"

"Get a move on!"

Rosalyn looked at Ron pushing and pulling the lever and leant over. She then have the lever a good shove and got it loose, Ron then pulled it so they went up in the air, he celebrated. "Yes Rosie!"

They flew up and away, Ron trying to fly the car that didn't want flown, and gave them a jumpy and bumpy ride.

They landed outside Hagrid's cabin, Ron was seething.

"Follow the spiders! Follow the spiders! It Hagrid ever gets out of Azkaban, I'll kill him!"

But just then, one Fang was out, the car shut it's doors, and drove off into the forest. Rosalyn wondered if they would ever see it again, but then again, she had thought that the last time it had drove in there, the time when they had flew to Hogwarts and crashed into the Whomping Willow.

They watched it go, then Rosalyn turned to Harry and Ron and said, "At least we know one thing; Hagrid never opened the chamber of secrets, he's innocent!"

***

The day after that, Rosalyn was in the hospital with Hermione, Harry and Ron couldn't come because they had homework that Rosalyn had done, like, a week ago, but never mind that.

Anyway, Rosalyn had been talking to Hermione, telling her what was happening now, she knew that her best friend couldn't hear her, but she didn't care.

She told Hermione everything and finished with. "And we need you here! We need you to figure this out! You could do it, what does this mean? I'm useless now... useless..."

Tears started to fall down her cheeks. Rosalyn seldom cried, and when she did, it was for something important, something that really mattered to her. This situation ticked all the boxes.

She held Hermione's outstretched hand and cried. She was right. She couldn't figure it out, she needed Hermione. Hermione would reassure her, she would tell her that it was just a puzzle that they had to figure out...

"Rosie? Rosie, just calm down, it's okay!"

Harry and Ron had rushed into the hospital wing, obviously they had rushed all this way to see Hermione, not reassure Rosalyn.

"Rosie, Rosalyn, stop crying," Harry held his sister's hand as he took it away from Hermione's. "It's okay, she'll be revived," he referred to Hermione. "I know that she'd be the best for this situation, but we will figure this out, we will catch whoever's behind this."

That made Rosalyn feel, for some reason, a great gratitude to her brother and her adoptive one. Harry and Ron were there for her, and she really appreciated that. Rosalyn stopped sobbing and wiped her eyes. They had to figure this out. They would figure this out.

She sighed and held Hermione's hand beside her body, one she never had. She said. "Wish you were here, Hermione, we- we really need you."

But then she felt something, something clasped in Hermione's petrified hand. She pulled, and out came a piece of parchment. Harry and Ron frowned.

"What's that?" Ron asked.

"It was in her hand," Rosalyn answered, but then she realised something. "Hermione said she needed- Ron, Harry, this is why she was in the library the day she was attacked! Come on!"

She pocketed the bit of parchment and ran out of the hospital with Harry and Ron at her side. Rosalyn read the parchment's message on the way.

"Listen! Of the many fearsome beasts that Rome our land, none is more feared than the basilisk, capable of living for thousands of years, instant death awaits any who stare at this giant serpent's eye... Spiders flee before it... it all fits! Ron, Harry, the monster in the Chamber of secrets is a basilisk, that's why I can hear it speak, it's a snake!"

"But if it kills by looking in the eye?" Ron asked uncertainly. "How is it that no one's dead?"

Rosalyn took a few moments to answer this. While she could crack the parchment riddle, this conundrum was slightly harder, but only slightly, for she got it eventually, after she saw their reflection in a dark window, and spoke in a low voice. "Because no one did look it in the eye."

"What?" Harry asked.

"Well, not directly anyway, look, Colin saw it through his camera. Justin... Justin saw it through Nearly-Headless Nick! Nick got full blast of it, but he's a ghost he couldn't die again. And Hermione..." Rosalyn stopped, her best friend, how was she petrified. "...Had the mirror! I bet you anything she was using it to look round corners, in case it came along!"

"And Mrs Norris?" Harry questioned.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure she didn't have a camera or a mirror, Rosalyn," Added Ron.

Rosalyn looked down. "The water. There was water on the floor that night; she only saw the basilisk's reflection!" Rosalyn tried to read more, but she had to go to a fire torch to get it, she pointed at a section and put another part of the puzzle together.

"The basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it! Hagrid's roosters were killed, it all fits!" She repeated, looking down at the paper.

"But how's the basilisk been getting around?" Ron scrunched his face up. "A dirty great snake, someone must've seen it!"

Rosalyn sighed, but then she looked at the parchment, and at the bottom, in Hermione's unmistakably neatly joined handwriting, was a single word. Pipes. She showed it to Ron and Harry.

"Looks like Hermione's answered that too."

"Pipes?" Harry asked. "It's using the plumbing?"

Rosalyn suddenly had another idea. It was one different to the monster, but also one that she had unconsciously thought about this whole time.

"Do you guys remember what Aragog said? About that girl fifty years ago? She died in a bathroom? What if she never left?"

Comprehension dawned on Ron and Harry's faces, it made so much sense.

"Not- Moaning Myrtle?" Ron asked, he and Harry gasped as Rosalyn nodded. But their further conversation got cut short as they heard McGonagall's voice projected, as they knew, around the school.

"All students return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers to the second floor corridor immediately."

"What should we do?" Ron asked, once they had had enough time to process the news.

"Are you kidding?" Rosalyn asked, as if her brother was mad. "Let's go to the second floor! Let's see what they're on about!"

"Do we ever follow the rules?" Harry asked his sister as they ran to where the teachers were meeting.

"Rarely," was Rosalyn's sly answer.