The Hogwarts rumour mill was indeed impressive; almost the entire castle knew about the mismatched dates in Lockheart's textbooks by the end of the day. It was the talk of the students at dinner. And the idiot still didn't realize the situation he was in.

Hermione took a seat at the table with another one of the books and a piece of parchment; I was impressed to see it was already half-full. She must be noting down all the discrepancies in the books.

The first week passed by quickly after that but the rumours only grew. Lockheart was in a very poor position now and most of the students only thought of him as a joke. I hadn’t attended a single class since the first. But the brazen fool stuck through it and it didn’t seem he would be improving anytime soon. So, I decided to call in the cavalry.

I called in master pranksters Gred and Forge to rid the school of the menace. They were only too happy to help and along with Lee, the four of us set our sights on Lockheart.

Somewhere else in the castle, where Lockheart was strutting around, he got shivers down his back and a very strong sense of trouble coming his way despite not being a seer.

That evening we took the corner seats in the common room to discuss our methods. The twins were looking forward to testing as many of the products as possible. Lee had the most amusing schemes with magical creatures. And I offered to charm everything I could to embarrass him.

We decided to start off tame. The next morning, we went down to the great hall early. Lee came over with the required goods.

“Hey Lee! Got the item?”

He rolled his eyes as he replied in a mock conspiratorial tone, “Got the goods right here.”

I grinned as said, “Let’s start the prank war. We will prank the arse as many times as required to make him toe the line and not be a prat while teaching.”

I did the necessary preparations and we were ready for show time. The rest of the students quickly filed in and the teachers also began taking their places. Some while later Lockheart strode in those garish robes and went over to his seat. The man seemed to love making an entrance, he even made his entries late every time just so he had an audience. Anyways, we waited with bated breath, didn’t really need to, what with his pathetic level of skill but this was the first of many and we wanted a successful prank,

PBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPBPB!

The whole hall fell silent. It was amazing, you could have literally dropped a pin and heard it. We could see Lockheart’s face changing colours. A pale bloodless one, to a rather sickly shade of green before turning a rather bright red; maybe the man had a bit of metamorphmagus blood somewhere if he could do that. He stood up with as much dignity as he could muster, which admittedly wasn’t much and strode out of the hall towards his classroom.

The silence finally broke and the hall was suddenly full of people who were laughing their guts out. Amazing what such a simple trick can do.

I first took the whoopee cushion Lee got me, disillusioned it and cast a sonorus on it before levitating it to his seat. The result was turning the simplest and most juvenile prank into an amazing tale for Hogwarts breakfast legends. And this was just the beginning.

Over the next few weeks it became a method of unwinding from our coursework to plot our next prank on Lockheart. We went at it every couple of days.

Lee brought ahead his niffler trick against Umbridge and got Lockheart’s office trashed. The nifflers must have been delighted with the number of fancy gilt frames, precious quills and other shiny stuff in his office.

The twins didn’t let him complete his lessons in peace. They got his hand stuck to the door with sticking charms and watched as he was stuck there for the entire period. They bewitched him to look morbidly obese to everyone else; he must have had a tough day getting disgusted expressions from nearly the entire school staff and children and so on and so forth. And I turned the very castle against him. Random suits of armour would cling to him and give the most embarrassing proposals in a sickeningly sweet voice. Sudden parts of the castle became extremely slippery when he walked there, leading to a fracture and quite a few bruises. Seats developed the annoying habit of biting him on his arse and so on. It was hilarious!!

Eventually he got the hint and kept to his classroom as far as possible. He stopped strutting around and taught his parody of a class. He did need a refresher course of pranks about every 10 days when he started slipping into his old ways and we were happy to provide them whenever required.

The month passed by soon and it was Halloween. I knew that the deathday party was supposed to be today. There is a good chance the first strike of the basilisk happens today. I had initially planned to waylay Ginny but then realized I couldn’t stand near the girl’s toilet all day. She could go there at any time the entire day, or even the previous day. So, I just warded the corridor from people entering it by accident. Anybody sufficiently determined or controlled like Ginny would have no problems but whoever went there by accident would veer away and avoid the route. It should prevent Harry from being first on the scene and subsequently labelled as Slytherin’s heir.

We had a hearty Halloween meal and started heading back to our common rooms. I was expecting the news to get out anytime now but there was no disturbance at all? Maybe the timeline changed somehow? Just as I was starting to feel relieved and we reached the second floor the shouting was audible. I could hear Filch’s nasal tones amongst the other voices and sighed. It seemed time had a certain momentum to it.

The castle was all abuzz with the news the next day. There were rumours flying all around about the heir, the chamber of secrets and the monster within it. The entire table had students talking about it.

For a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs. Norris. He had to suppress a grin at Hermione when she spent even more time in the library looking up information on how the attack occurred.

"All the copies of Hogwarts, A History have been taken out," Hermione said, sitting down next to Harry and him sitting on the other side.

I raised my eye brows at her and looked over the battle transfiguration book and smiled at her frustration.

"And there's a two-week waiting list. I wish I hadn't left my copy at home, but I couldn't fit it in my trunk with all of Lockhart books."

"Why do you want it?" I asked Harry, already knowing the answer.

"The same reason everyone else wants it," said Lee as he sat next to me, "to read up on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets."

I rolled his eyes and said to them both, "You want to know about the Chamber of Secrets?"

Lee and Hermione looked at each other like, "Duh?"

"Hmm."

Hermione's eyes widened. "You know, don't you? You know about the Chamber of Secrets?" She asked him in disbelief her eyes wide.

The whole table was silent as they stared at me dumbfounded. I just looked at the bushy-haired girl half-interestedly before snapping my book closed and getting up from their table. Put the strap that held his messenger bag over his head and grinned at her.

"You're smart Hermione. You'll figure it out sooner or later."

"Aren’t you going to tell us about the chamber?" she asked.

"It's a secret. I don't want to be labelled a snitch for letting the secret out."

I said much to Hermione's frustration and left.

"Arrr! Sometimes he just gets on my nerves." She said in frustration.

The next class was History of Magic and Professor Binns started out with his normal boring information on the Goblin War of 1528 when Hermione raised her hand.

"Yes, Miss Greener?" Professor Binns asked confused. In his life or afterlife never had he been interrupted by a student.

"Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets," said Hermione in a clear voice.

You could hear a pin drop in the silence. Professor Binns blinked. Suddenly all the students were paying full attention to him.

"Oh, very well," he said slowly. "Let me see ... the Chamber of Secrets." He had a thoughtful look on his transparent face. "You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago- by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. Now three of the founders coexisted quite harmoniously. One did not." He paused. "Salazar Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magical families. In other words, pure-bloods. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, because he believed them to be untrustworthy. Unable to sway the others, he decided to leave the school. Now according to the legend, he sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unleash the horror within and use it to purge the school of all those who in Slytherin's view, were unworthy to study magic."

Professor Binns adjusted his glasses. "The school has been searched dozens of times. No such chamber has been found." He turned to the chalkboard. Hermione's hand shot back in the air. "Professor? What exactly does legend tell, lies in the Chamber?"

"The Chamber is said to home to something that only the Heir of Slytherin can control. It is said to be the home of a monster." Binns shook his head and said, "I tell you, the chamber does not exist. There is no Chamber and no there is no monster. And we are done with this discussion." There was no room for arguing.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Hermione asked me after the class, at dinner.

I just shrugged at her. "I thought you would figure it out." I said honestly.

"Do you really think there is a Chamber of Secrets?" she asked Harry.

"Yes." I said clearly.

Hermione started, "All of the teachers are worried. The Heir of Slytherin has returned to Hogwarts. The question is who it is?"

Ron, who was sitting nearby snorted and said, "Let's think. Who do we know who thinks Muggle-borns are scum? It's obviously Mal-"

I interrupted him, "If you're talking about Malfoy you're wrong. Malfoy isn't the heir. He isn't qualified to be the heir of Slytherin. He may have been sorted to Slytherin house but he acts more like a Gryffindor than us most of the times. Always jumping in without planning or any iota of cunning.”

The information about the chamber spread through the students through various sources and it didn’t help the mood of the students. That was when the duelling club commencement was announced. Last year’s club had been amazing and the students were eager to join again this year, especially considering the circumstances! I was also looking forward to it.

Duelling skill depends on a variety of reasons. I was in excellent physical health, so dodging and moving around was easy for me. According to the book Duelling for Novices, dodging properly was a very highly rated skill. It is much better than trying to shield against spells; they might be unblockable like the Unforgivables or simply powerful enough to tear through them. I have a wide array of basic spells at the schooling level but not much beyond that. But true duellists can make use of the entire field of battle. Charming the surroundings, transfiguring the ground, conjuring objects, spell deflection and so on. I will be able to take out almost any of the students in school, maybe even a few normal magicians. But anyone with any formal training like Aurors or Unspeakables are far beyond me. I may have magical power almost at par with them but my knowledge of how to use it is far from sufficient. I have to find a way to get much better at it and fast.

The duelling club was scheduled to be about 10 days after the Halloween incident and the entire school’s students were looking forward to it but it was a different scene in the staff room.

“Why is that git teaching the students, Filius? The students are looking forward to this and he will ruin the club for them if he tries to teach them.”

“I don’t know, Minerva. It seems that he went to the headmaster and cited his position as DADA professor better suited to teach the students duelling. And in the normal course of things, he would be right. But he isn’t exactly up to the standards of a normal DADA professor, is he?”

Professors Flitwick and McGonagall weren’t happy about Lockheart butting into the Duelling club managed by them. They had had an interesting time handling the club and didn’t want to see it go to waste.

The problem was that the headmaster wasn’t truly aware of just how poor Lockheart’s skills were. The man was the headmaster of Hogwarts, premier school of magic in Magical Britain; Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the judicial body of the country and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, the magical equivalent of the United Nations. All three of them were full-time positions and thus he had to delegate a lot of tasks to others. He may be a powerful wizard but managing the three positions was no mean task.

“Will you be going with him, Minerva?”

“No thanks. I will not be able to stand aside as he ruins the club if I’m there. It will be better if I don’t go. And you, Filius?”

“After hearing what you have to say, I don’t think I’ll be going either. Let’s see what he can do first.”

Of course, I didn’t know about what was happening and quite looked forward to the club. Maybe I could convince McGonagall to teach me further applications of battle transfiguration. Reading the books and practising in the Room of Requirement only gets you so far, Learning the practical from a sorcerer like her will be amazing.

A Sorcerer is a very high level of attainment in your chosen field. Students often study till NEWTs and take up jobs. But anyone with any modicum of ability will choose to apprentice themselves to a mentor who will teach them further. Apprentices can take the next step of becoming a Master by clearing a review by a panel of masters in the respective subjects. Apprenticeship is not necessary to become masters, but it is highly recommended. People even take multiple apprenticeships if they are good enough. Masters in a field can be granted the title of Sorcerers for reaching the pinnacle of their fields. They are judged by an international panel and there are less than a score of Sorcerers in the entirety of Magical Britain. And finally, there are Grand Sorcerers, people who have pushed the boundaries of their respective fields beyond the norms. They are judged by a panel of Sorcerers and Grand Sorcerers. Dumbledore is one of them for his discovery of the 12 uses of Dragon’s blood. There are less than a dozen of them across the world.

McGonagall and Flitwick as well as Snape are Sorcerers in their fields and masters in a few others. Dumbledore is a Grand Sorcerer in Alchemy and a Sorcerer in the fields of Transfiguration, DADA and Charms.

One day, I’ll gain these titles and carry them proudly!!