Three twelve-year-olds are gathered in a bathroom, copying a diagram from a book onto the floor in chalk.
"Do you know what all this writing means?" asks the green-eyed boy.
"No," says the bushy-haired girl, "and that worries me too, but we need to find out who the Heir of Slytherin is and this ritual is the best we've got."
Eventually, one or another of them draws the last bit of the outer circle.
"Harry, I really think we have to tell a professor. We'll need help finding the basilisk and killing it, and--Cam, if if you're from another world or something, like in the Chronicles of Narnia, do you know how to get home?"
"Whichever one of you summoned me can dismiss me, but supposing this is in fact a Narnia-type situation I'd rather stay and eradicate malaria and so on first."
"We appreciate it. Alright, Hermione, we can talk to McGonagall, but if she doesn't believe us this time either we should deal with it ourselves again."
"I think I'm fairly believable on inspection, I don't have an invisibility gland."
"Harry, wait. We should look around corners with a mirror first. That way if we run into the basilisk before we find McGonagall, at least we'll only be petrified and not--worse." She turns to one of the mirrors above the sink and starts trying to take it off the wall.
"- I think you can probably improve on the Perseus trick but I don't know the parameters. Colin had a camera? Harry can hear it talking? - What does it say?"
"Colin had a camera, Justin--Justin saw it through Nearly Headless Nick, Mrs. Norris saw its reflection so we know that works. And when I heard it . . . it said it wanted to kill."
Cam issues everyone including himself shades and a hand mirror. "I'm indestructible but that's not been tested against basilisks."
They all put their shades on; now they look like tiny secret agents in robes. "Indestructible? Wicked."
The outside of the bathroom looks to Cam's eyes like it's as dilapidated as the inside. Leaning walls, floors with gaps in them, stairs that look like they'll collapse if you look at them funny, let alone try to climb them.
"Oh, that's right, muggles see the castle as a ruin--we definitely need to find you a teacher, they'll be able to counter it for you. Just follow us for now."
"That would be dicey if I were afraid of heights but fortunately I am not. Why does it look like a ruin in particular?" Follow follow.
"Something people won't want to investigate as much as a castle, I think."
"I can get papercuts. If you attack me with a sword, it'll look sorta like I got a papercut. And either way it'll take a second or two to heal unless for some reason I want a papercut. Extrapolates as you'd expect given that."
"Why, don't you know? I'm Gilderoy Lockhart! Order of Merlin, Third Class, banisher of the Bandon Banshee, and five times winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award. Also Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. Excellent wings, by the way, very imposing."
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