The three Gryffindors made their way through the castle's corridors, as they headed toward the Great Hall. The lingering taste of disappointment from the deathday party still hung in their mouths, and all they could think about was the promise of real, edible food waiting above.

But then Harry stopped so abruptly that Ron nearly collided with him.

"What's wrong?" Ron asked, his voice carrying a note of irritation as he turned back to face his friend. His stomach was growling audibly, and the delay was testing his already limited patience. "Is something the matter? We're so close to actual food, Harry—please don't tell me you're having second thoughts about going back to that nightmare of a party."

Harry stood perfectly still in the middle of the corridor, his head tilted at an odd angle like a hunting dog catching a vague scent. His green eyes had taken on an intense, almost spooky quality that Ron and Hermione had learned to associate with trouble.

"Did you hear that? Those sounds?" he asked in a low voice like a whisper, as if speaking too loudly might drive away whatever he was trying to detect.

Ron and Hermione exchanged the kind of meaningful glance that came from months of friendship with Harry Potter.

The corridor around them was tomb-quiet. The only sounds were the distant, muffled echoes of celebration drifting down from the Great Hall.

"I don't hear anything at all, Harry," Hermione said gently, her voice carrying the careful tone one might use with someone who had just suffered a traumatic experience. Her bushy hair caught the torchlight as she shook her head with concern obvious in her brown eyes.

Ron shrugged with the casual dismissiveness of someone whose main concern was his empty stomach. "Same here—nothing but silence and the sound of my stomach protesting. Maybe when those ghosts passed through your head back there, they scrambled something inside and gave you auditory hallucinations. Ghost passing can have all sorts of weird side effects, you know."

"Maybe you're right," Harry murmured, though his expression remained troubled.

He casted one last suspicious glance back down the corridor they had just crossed, his eyes searching the shadows for any sign of movement or explanation for the sounds that had seemed so real.

Perhaps that was just his imagination running wild after an evening spent among the restless dead.

Just as Harry was about to dismiss his concerns and continue toward the promise of the Halloween feast, a new sound drifted through the castle from the direction of the courtyard.

"Tear you apart..." the voice murmured. "Hungry... so very hungry for so long..."

Harry froze as if he'd been turned to stone himself.

The voice continued, growing slightly stronger but no less chilling: "Kill... murder you... no... don't... danger... don't like... here—"

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the voice cut off mid-sentence, leaving behind a silence that seemed even more oppressive than before.

But it had been enough. Harry's ability to pinpoint sounds—the same skill that he had used so well on the Quidditch pitch—had locked onto the source of that terrible whisper.

His head turned toward the castle's outer walls, toward the courtyards that lay beyond layers of stone and shadow.

"Quick," he said, spinning to face his friends with an urgency that made both Ron and Hermione straighten instinctively. "Follow me, and stay close. Something's happening—something bad."

Without waiting for questions or protests, Harry took off at a run, his feet carrying him through corridors he navigated more by instinct than conscious thought.

Behind him, he could hear Ron and Hermione's footsteps as they struggled to keep pace.

"Harry, wait!" Hermione called out, but her voice seemed to come from very far away, muffled by the thunder of his own heartbeat in his ears.

They raced through a maze of passages, past tapestries, corridors from the direction of the courtyard. The castle seemed to blur around them, becoming a river of stone and torchlight through which they swam toward some unknown destination.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of running, Harry came to an abrupt stop in a corridor beside one of Hogwarts' courtyards. His chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Harry, what in Merlin's name is going on?" Hermione gasped, her appearance now disheveled from their mad dash through the castle.

Ron bent over with his hands on his knees, looking as though he might be sick. "Could you... give us some warning... next time you decide... to go completely mental?" he panted between breaths.

"The voice I heard," Harry explained, his own breathing still irregular as he scanned their surroundings. "It was coming from this direction—from the courtyard."

The night had grown darker since they'd left the deathday party, and thick clouds now obscured the moon. The usual silver light that would have lit the courtyard was absent, leaving only the weak, flickering glow of a few torches burning in their wall.

"There's nobody here at all," Ron muttered, peering out into the gloom with obvious skepticism. "Just empty space and shadows. Are you sure you didn't just hear the wind, or maybe some animal?"

At that moment, Hermione seemed to notice something amiss.

"Wait!" she said sharply. "Something's not right here."

Without hesitation, she strode past them and out into the courtyard roper, her wand already in her hand before she'd taken three steps.

"Lumos!"

A bright sphere of white light erupted from her wand tip, illuminating the depths of the courtyard.

And there, caught in the glow of wandlight, they saw a massive gray-white sculpture.

As they drew closer, they could make out the sculpture's full form.

It was a Thunderbird sculpture about as tall as they were, but its appearance was bizarre. Its wings were half-spread, its head stretched out at an angle, and its eyes were slightly bulging.

"Hey," Ron pointed at it with a laugh, "When did they put up a new Thunderbird statue here? It's... it's quite detailed, isn't it? Looks just like Professor Westeros's Ray, actually. Almost too much like..."

His voice trailed off, and the smile that had been on his lips disappeared.

Harry and Hermione couldn't even attempt to share in Ron's desperate attempt at normalcy. Their eyes had already found what lay beside the petrified Thunderbird—a message that turned their blood to ice water in their veins.

Scribbled across the stones in what could only be blood, the letters were gleaming wet and dark in the wandlight:

"The Chamber has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware!"

Harry approached the statue. When he reached out and placed his palm against the Thunderbird's stone wing, he gasped at what he felt.

Warmth.

Not the cold, dead chill of carved marble, but actual body heat still radiating from within the stone—what had happened here was now perfectly clear.

"It is Ray," Harry said with a grave expression. "This isn't a statue—it's really him. He's been turned to stone."

Ron's face went through a rapid series of expressions—disbelief, horror, and finally a kind of sick understanding. "But... but how? What could do something like this?"

Hermione's wand hand began to tremble violently, causing the sphere of light to dance and waver, creating a effect that made Ray's frozen body seem to shift and move in the inconsistent light.

"My God, what turned it into this?"

Harry's hand remained on Ray's feathers, feeling the remaining warmth slowly dissipating, which meant the petrification had occurred not long ago.

He was certain this incident was absolutely connected to those faint voices he had heard earlier.

"What should we do?" Ron said in panic.

Before Harry could voice an answer, a new voice cut through the night air sounding cultured, confident, and completely inappropriate to the horror of the moment.

"Well, well, well! What brings my favorite students to the courtyards on such a festive evening?"

They turned as one to see Professor Lockhart approaching with his trademark brilliant smile, his golden hair perfectly maintained despite the late hour.

Meanwhile, in the Great Hall, the Halloween celebration was coming down with the satisfied contentment that came from a successful evening of entertainment and excellent food. Most of the students had already left for their dormitories. Several professors had also taken their leave, leaving to their private quarters to digest both food and the memory of the Skeleton Dance Troupe's spectacular performance.

Dumbledore was sitting in in his usual place at the head table eating a skull-shaped small cake. Nearby, Professor McGonagall was engaged in the somewhat less pleasant task of dealing with the live bats that had been part of the evening's decorations, using her wand to guide the confused creatures back outside.

Adrian had just finished the task of seeing off the members of the Skeleton Dance Troupe. The lead performer, Bill, had presented him with a small token of appreciation—a small skull carved from what appeared to be ivory, with elegant words etched into its surface reading: "Looking forward to the next invitation. What a peaceful Halloween."

'Peaceful' Adrian thought as he settled back into his chair and reached for his goblet of pumpkin juice.

The irony wasn't lost on him—last Halloween, he hadn't even had time to enjoy the feast before Quirrell's dramatic revelation had turned the entire evening into chaos.

Actually, when he really thought about it, according to the original story something dramatic seemed to happen at Hogwarts almost every Halloween, as if the holiday itself was cursed to attract disaster.

And this year, because the diary had already been destroyed by him, he believed nothing should happen... right?

That was when the Great Hall's massive doors burst open with a bang that echoed like thunder.

Lockhart stumbled into the hall as if he'd been pushed by invisible hands, his usually perfect appearance was disheveled and a leaf clung to the top of his head.

"Something terrible has happened!" Lockhart said to the nearly empty hall, his arms windmilling dramatically as he sought to capture everyone's attention. "Someone has turned Professor Westeros's bird to stone!"

"Bang!"

The goblet slipped from Adrian's suddenly fingers, striking the table with a sharp bang that seemed to echo like a gunshot in the suddenly silent hall. Pumpkin juice splashed across the white tablecloth.

Adrian shot to his feet with such violent force that his chair scraped against the stone floor slate.

The temperature in the Great Hall seemed to plummet by several degrees.

For a moment, not a single sound disturbed the oppressive silence.

"Where?" Adrian's voice was terrifyingly low.

Lockhart was so intimidated by this sudden temperament that he stepped back: "East... east courtyard, and there are three students as well..."

Before he could finish, Adrian had already rushed out of the Great Hall.

Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, Dumbledore rose from his own seat. Professor McGonagall also abandoned her bat-wrangling duties immediately, and both of them began following in Adrian's trail.

When Adrian reached the courtyard, he found Harry, Ron, and Hermione gathered around what had once Ray's stone statue.

The three students looked up at his approach, their expressions a mixture of sympathy, fear, and uncertainty. They had never seen their usually gentle professor wearing such an expression of barely controlled rage, and none of them knew quite what to say in the face of such obvious grief and fury.

Within moments, Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and Lockhart had all arrived at the scene, creating a semicircle around the petrified Thunderbird.

Adrian stared at Ray's frozen body with ice cold eyes. Even without much investigation, he knew exactly what had done this. Only one creature in the magical world possessed the power to petrify with a glance, and that creature should have been within the Chamber of Secrets, controlled by a Horcrux that no longer existed.

The basilisk was active.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione watched Adrian's face with growing unease, seeing emotions that they had never witnessed before.

Lockhart, oblivious to the dangerous undercurrents swirling around the group, had been chattering non-stop since his arrival, his voice was carrying the forced cheer of someone trying to lighten a mood that could not be lightened.

"Now, now, Professor Westeros, this really isn't as serious as it appears!" He said with his practiced smile, gesturing at Ray's stone form as if it were just an interesting case. "I happen to know several spells that can reverse this sort of thing. Why, in my third year, I once restored an entire greenhouse full of petrified plants using nothing more than a simple counter-charm and a few well-chosen incantations. Your pet will be back to normal in no time!"

"Shut up, Professor Lockhart."

The words were spoken quietly, without heat or obvious anger, but they carried such absolute coldness that Lockhart's smile froze on his face and he awkwardly stepped back half a pace.

Harry had never seen Professor Westeros look so distressed. Those usually warm kind eyes seemed to have become chips of ice.

Dumbledore knelt beside Ray's statue, his fingers moving carefully as he examined the stone creature with his wand. The tip glowed with a soft blue light as he used various diagnostic spells.

"This seems to be an extremely powerful petrification effect, but the magical signature is... unusual."

It was then that his eyes fell upon the bloody message scribbled across the stones beside Ray.

"The heir..." He murmured softly.

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