'Where exactly did you see the eyes?' said Harry.

'Somewhere there,' said Myrtle, pointing vaguely towards the sink in front of her toilet.

Harry and Ron hurried over to it. Lockhart was standing well back, a look of utter terror on his face. Amelia still pointing her wand at him.

It looked like an ordinary sink. They examined every inch of it, inside and out, including the pipes below. And then Harry saw it: scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

'That tap's never worked,' said Myrtle brightly, as he tried to turn it.

'Harry,' said Ron, 'say something. Something in Parseltongue.'

'But –' Harry thought hard. The only times he'd ever managed to speak Parseltongue were when he'd been faced with a real snake. He stared hard at the tiny engraving, trying to imagine it was real.

'Open up,' he said.

He looked at Ron, who shook his head.

'English,' he said.

'Three strikes and it's my turn,' said Amelia who was holding a shaking Lockhart by the back of his coat.

Harry looked back at the snake, willing himself to believe it was alive. If he moved his head, the candlelight made it look as though it was moving.

'Open up,' he said.

Except that the words weren't what he heard; a strange hissing had escaped him, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move. The sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

Harry heard Ron gasp and looked up again. He had made up his mind what he was going to do.

'I'm going down there,' he said.

He couldn't not go, not now they had found the entrance to the Chamber, not if there was even the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.

'Me too,' said Ron.

'Me three!' said Amelia.

There was a pause.

'Well, you hardly seem to need me,' said Lockhart, with a shadow of his old smile. 'I'll just –'

He put his hand on the door knob, but Ron and Harry both pointed their wands at him.

'You can go first,' Ron snarled.