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Out on a deserted moor somewhere unplottable in England stood a ramshackle house.Squat and wide, two stories high and in desperate need of a new coat of paint (or five), the house was once owned by a wizarding family known as Smith.No, not the famed pureblood Smiths, direct descendants of Helga Hufflepuff (or whatever they’d have you believe); these Smiths were a simple family of muggleborn descent.Liam Smith and his wife Agatha had inherited the house and its surrounding farmland from Liam’s muggle grandpa, and had set to warding it to the teeth upon the advent of the war with You-Know-Who.…they both died screaming in Diagon Alley, caught up in a Death Eater raid that killed fifteen others.The house then passed to a distant wizard friend of theirs called Lyall Lupin; seeing as none of the more immediate intended muggle recipients of the house in the Smith’s will could actually bypass the multi-layered wards their wizarding kin had laid upon it.Lyall came to see the house only once, attempting to dismantle some of the numerous inherited wards so he might be able to sell it… and upon failing miserably at that task, he left it behind to gather dust.…he died shortly after the war was over, grief for his murdered wife and his absent son consuming him.Lyall, for the most part, had completely ignored the house during his relatively brief period of ownership of it (leading to its current ramshackle state) and upon his untimely death the property passed into the possession of his son, Remus Lupin.And seeing as Remus had a certain ‘condition’ that was best managed within thorough warding and as far away from other people as possible, the isolated house soon came back into monthly use.…then at some point in November, 1991, the occupancy of that house became notably more… permanent.-------
November 1991-Remus Lupin
The full moon had been the night before Sirius Black’s several-times-rescheduled trial.Remus Lupin had already known he was unlikely to be able to make it, as tired and injured as he usually was after a full moon without a dose of wolfsbane potion-(-and he sure as hell couldn’t afford such a luxury right now-)-but he’d felt irredeemably guilty none the less as he’d locked himself up in the basement that night.His routine for this time of the month was as thorough as it was depressing. Wards up to the fullest. Multiple locks secured, one by one, on the front door, the basement door, the door of the heavy iron cage he’d repaired and lugged home years ago from a muggle scrapyard…He’d hid his wand in its usual place under the floorboards in the kitchen, ate as much of the porridge he’d made for dinner as his queasy stomach could handle, folded his discarded clothes far out of reach in the corner of the basement and settled himself in for a rough night of self-doubt and remorse.And the transformation, of course. That in itself was hard to disregard.…The morning had been painful, as per usual.The sunlight streaming through the little windows set high up in the walls seemed too bright and obnoxiously cheery. His very bones ached with the pain of forced growth and warping, his muscles screamed at him for every inch he moved… but, Remus noticed with a kind of dulled surprise, nothing else hurt.Usually he sported at LEAST an extra scratch or two upon waking from his transformation, if not a nasty bite or a deep claw mark that could leave him limping for days.Sitting up as quickly as he dared, Remus examined his naked body with bleary eyes, cataloguing each and every one of the old scars on his otherwise unblemished skin with a growing sense of bewilderment. The wolf had NEVER been this quiet on nights like this- when Remus was plagued with negative emotions, with no potion and no company to ease it’s savage nature-Someone shuffled their feet, awkward in their attempt to remain silent.Remus’s eyes flashed up, all his moon-addled senses suddenly on high alert.“Er… hello Moony,” Peter Pettigrew, aged and balding, greeted him with an awkward wave from the other side of the bars.Remus blinked, slowly, trying to process just what he was seeing with a growing sense of horror.After all, it was hard to miss the ring of keys to the multiple locks keeping Remus confined hanging innocently in Peter’s other hand.-------
November 1991-March 1992 -Remus Lupin
The ramshackle house, heavily warded and isolated from all others on that lonely stretch of moor, only accepted a very specific selection of people within its bounds.The owner of the house (naturally), visitors that had been officially keyed into the wards by the said owner (of course) and the necessary ministry-mandated exceptions for aurors with a warrant and certified healers called in for emergencies.Upon Remus Lupin’s inheritance of the house, the list of people on the official ward list consisted solely of himself, James Potter, and Peter Pettigrew. After all, he hadn’t wanted anyone incapable of escaping into an animagus form within reach of his wolf… and the bloody rat had managed to persuade him not to allow Sirius access, citing the constant suspicion the man had seemed to show him in the closing years of the war…(Oh, how he should have realised that such a denial of permission had made the suspicion worse-!)Like the grieving fool he was, Remus had never updated the list in the decade he’d been alone, not even when Sirius’s trial had been announced… not even when the rumours of Peter’s treachery and survival had started to make their rounds…And by late November 1991, of course, it had been too late.Remus had secured himself far too well within his basement prison to attempt any kind of escape- not now that the keys were in the hands of his once friend and present warden. Any loopholes in the limited wards he could remotely access from his prison had been sealed up long ago, any weaknesses in the locks and bars ripped out by his wolf many moons beforehand and then dutifully reinforced.Wormtail- no, Peter- had been ‘kind’ enough to bring him his threadbare clothes and an old chamber pot to use; a regularly refilled jug of water from the upstairs tap and at least one meal a day… but despite these little ‘kindnesses’, as the days, weeks and months dragged on trapped in his cage, Remus was slowly but surely going stir crazy.He was alone for the better part of most days, limited to pacing back and forth endlessly or carefully stretching his muscles on the bars. His meals were bland, not entirely nutritious and occasionally skipped entirely when his captor was out of the house. His only entertainment was the occasional newspaper, magazine or old textbook that Wormt-Peter saw fit to leave behind for his use… and the scarce conversation they sometimes engaged in wasn’t all that much better.(“Please Moony, you’re the only friend I have left, don’t make me keep you locked up like this forever-,”“DON’T CALL ME THAT!”)It was almost funny how very little Peter Pettigrew had changed over the years Remus had thought him dead. Desperate for positive attention, eternally anxious that the slightest misstep might damage his relationship with his friends, ensuring every little word that came out of his mouth into something meant to evoke either sympathy or laughter… although the sycophantic, awe-terror-filled devotion to the ‘deceased’ Dark Lord and his cause that underlay every one of these recent conversations was new.As were the none-too-subtle attempts to sway Remus to feel the same way about you-know-who; a transparent gamble that converting him to the other side was even possible.(And no, even on his worst days, it wasn’t. Remus had lost too much to the Death Eaters and their ilk to do so much as even consider it)Some days, Remus would rage and yell at Wor-PETER, making the balding man flinch and almost making him feel guilty for shouting… almost. Other days, Remus would simply sit facing the wall and ignore the insipid words that continuously poured from his traitorous mouth.Occasionally, when the boredom got too much and Remus felt like banging his head against the bricks until it bled-(-there was only so many times he could pace his cage before he could feel madness clawing at the back of his mind-)-he would make an effort to be fair and listen to whatever Peter tried to sell to him… or at least, until the idiot would inevitably bring up James, Lily or Sirius, and Remus would actively have to keep himself from throwing himself against the bars in an attempt to strangle the treacherous bastard with his bare hands.It was a subtle form of torture, the boredom and isolation… one that Remus wasn’t sure if Peter had intended to force on him or not. On bad days, Remus almost wished that Peter would crow over and throw harmful spells at him like any other Death Eater would, if just to break up the monotony.(And yet, he did not. The traitorous rat even kept Remus company on the full moons that fell during his captivity, just like in their old days at school, distracting the wolf and preventing it from maiming him even further. It was clear that Peter felt at least slightly guilty over the treatment of his fellow marauder… but never so much as to actually release him, the coward)The days blurred into one another, Remus’s only reliable method of judging the date being the endless cycles of the moon. He was sullen, bored out of his mind, and growing increasingly worried about what might be happening in the outside world……And then one miserable March day, Peter somehow got his hands on a wand-(-not Remus’s wand, his was still safely hidden under the kitchen floorboards, never to be seen again-)-and one weak Imperius later Remus was outside for the first time in months… at the wardstone of the property, adding a similarly enchanted Bartemius Crouch Senior, a terrified weeping house elf named Winky, and a somehow-not-dead-in-Azkaban Barty Crouch Junior to the house’s ward list.Later, having shaken off the enthrallment in the solitude of his cage, Remus incredulously pondered just how bizarre his life had become.-------
March 1992 -Bartemius (‘Barty’) Crouch Junior
The usual fuzzy haze of his father’s Imperius curse had been fluctuating all day with emotion, allowing Barty Crouch Junior a few relatively peaceful hours of clear thought as the clearly irritated caster’s concentration came and went.It wasn’t nearly enough for him to break free- oh no, his dear father kept him dosed up on mind-numbing potions and occasionally muggle drugs that weakened his ability to resist the spell- but it was still far preferable to the usual suffocating weight of the control, manipulating his every move.“I think father will be in a bad mood tonight Winky,” Barty said absently, as usual, to the house elf at his side as she passed him another plate to dry. “I’ve been feeling rather freer than the norm all day,”The young man and the brown eyed house elf on the stool beside him were currently engaged in a regular post-lunch activity, washing and drying their used plates by hand. Of course, Winky could easily do it all by herself with a snap of her fingers, but Barty enjoyed the repetitive motions of wiping moisture from the dishes……it reminded him of back when he used to help his mother with the same chore when he was younger, and the Crouch’s were too poor to afford a house elf. Dear, sympathetic Winky had easily caved to Barty’s innocent request to help with the dishes (clearly fighting her house elf instincts to do so) shortly after he’d first been brought back from Azkaban, and it had become a regular ritual for them in the years since.Of course, they could never do it at breakfast or dinner, when his father was around…“Is the news in the papers today Master Barty,” Winky squeaked with a sigh. “He was being very cross this morning before you wakes up. Very cross indeed! Bad peoples is saying nasty things about him,”“Nasty, but true, I expect,” Barty muttered to himself as he ran his dishtowel over an elegant plate with a posy of flowers painted onto it. It had been one of his mother’s favourites; she had used it for her morning toast and marmalade every day. Having wilfully bad thoughts about his father was always easier whenever Barty thought of his mother, he found.Winky tsked at his words, but did not reprimand him, and Barty felt himself smile. This was why he liked the little house elf. She was just as much his jailor as his father was… but in a way she too was a prisoner to his father’s whims. And at least SHE was sympathetic to Barty’s plight.She never reported the little shows of defiance that Barty occasionally could force past the haze of the Imperius. She subtly wheedled his father again and again into little changes in his schedule that made life infinitely easier to bear. She was even daring enough to suggest the occasional outing (under his father’s invisibility cloak of course) for Barty- to the local park in Spring to see the flowers, to the family graveyard where his ‘mother’s grave’ was located, even to the muggle library nearby if it wasn’t tourist season…Were house elves able to be sorted at Hogwarts, Barty had no doubt that sweet, clever Winky would have made it straight into Slytherin.She could be a manipulative little thing when she wanted to be, and not just towards his father- and while it irked him to admit it, by manipulating Barty himself into his father’s version of ‘good behaviour’ in the past, she’d probably made his caged life much easier to bear.Being allowed out in the house (invisibility cloak close at hand of course, in case unexpected company came to call) instead of locked away in the attic, being allowed to read and write and study like he used to rather than wholly confined to the blissful/numb/torturous shroud of the Imperius 24/7… it could be better, of course.If he had the choice, Barty would much prefer to be out on the road looking for his master than cooped up in here, subject to his father’s will--!-Barty dropped the plate with the posy, a haze of forceful blankness clouding his mind and drowning out the rebellious thought. The smash of the crockery on the ground and Winky’s squeak of alarm was barely audible in his ears as the sickly sweet miasma of the Imperius reasserted itself with a vengeance.His father was home.…(Neither of them immediately noticed the small brown rat, missing a single toe, that had followed him inside)-------
March 1992 -Peter Pettigrew
Peter Pettigrew had developed a habit of regularly nabbing the newspapers Remus was too poor to subscribe to from wizarding villages all over Britain.Apparating from place to place as far as his (admittedly, limited) wandless skills allowed, he would spy on gossips as a rat, grab tattered old publications from their bins, steal some much needed groceries when their backs were turned and return to Remus’s house with none of them the wiser.They were simple, easy trips, with no more danger in store for him than the occasional hunting cat or dog; even after Sirius’s trial had concluded with his innocence, nobody was seriously out there looking for a rat with one missing toe.Peter had spotted the newly disgraced Crouch Sr. returning home from the ministry on one of these newspaper trips, and on a whim he had followed him back to his house- originally, with a simple, no-fuss plot in mind to steal the man’s wand. After all, distracted and angry as he was, surely the soon-to-be-ex-ministry official wouldn’t be taken seriously over a simple complaint of a missing wand?The Daily Prophet’s recent report of the former head of the DMLE’s numerous crimes during the war had not surprised Peter-(-too many suspected Death Eaters had gone ‘missing’ in the ministry holding cells under his jurisdiction NOT to be suspicious. Peter could remember the furious Dark Lord putting a bounty of several hundred galleons on the head of the DMLE near the end of the war-)-but……what he’d seen upon entering the house……well, suffice to say the fact that Crouch had apparently broken his own SON out of Azkaban only to keep him imprisoned in his own home had been rather a surprise.And after he’d gotten over the initial shock of seeing one of his supposedly long deceased fellow Death Eaters standing clearly Imperiused in his own father’s kitchen, Peter (ever a Gryffindor) had impulsively decided to… correct the situation.Silently transforming back, plucking Crouch Sr.’s wand from his pocket and stunning him while the man ranted angrily at his enchanted son and trembling house elf had been all too easy.Barty Crouch Junior had been weak and confused when the near-decade long Imperius curse was abruptly lifted from his mind… but none the less, he’d been quick to snatch his father’s stolen wand from Pettigrew’s hand to cast the very same curse upon his fool of a parent lying stunned on the floor.After everything he’d just learnt, Peter had been slightly surprised that Barty hadn’t cast something, er, significantly more lethal… but he supposed that even disgraced by that scandalous internal investigation or not, Bartemius Crouch Senior was still a ministry official- and the formally bonded master of a loyal house elf to boot.He would be more useful to them alive than dead.……although Peter also had the sneaking suspicion, as he watched a cackling Barty making the newly Imperiused man stoop to pick up the cutting shards of his mother’s broken crockery with his bare hands; that maybe, just MAYBE, Barty’s initial motivation was simply to give his awful excuse for a father a taste of his own medicine.(At that moment, Peter had briefly wondered if freeing Barty had been a mistake)-------
March 1992-June 1992 -Bartemius (‘Barty’) Crouch Junior
The safe house Pettigrew-(-and Pettigrew! It was Pettigrew of all people that had been the mysterious ‘guest’ their master had entertained in his inner circle so often at the close of the war! How had he not realised?-)-took the two Crouches and Winky to was slightly (VERY) run down, isolated from wizarding AND muggle civilization for miles around, and was owned by an angry werewolf that was clearly capable of shaking off an Imperius in a matter of minutes.…But at least, Barty had consoled himself, it was still leagues better than his stuffy imprisonment in his father’s house, and infinitely more comfortable than his brief tenure in Azkaban.That first day of freedom had been oddly surreal.Pettigrew had situated Barty safely in a mouldering bed upstairs, telling him to rest and take it easy… before immediately going down to re-secure his Imperiused werewolf prisoner in the basement before the flimsy enchantment wore off, leaving Barty all on his own for a precious few hours.He’d obediently stayed in bed of course, as the fretful Pettigrew had asked him to do… but that hadn’t stopped Barty from taking up his father’s wand and starting his own hostage on some ‘clean up’, of the mouldering old house.Oh, and how he’d enjoyed that! Watching his prim and pompous father wielding a feather duster or a muggle mop shouldn’t have been as funny as it was, but it had made Barty practically howl with laughter.(Even poor, nervous Winky seemed to find his father cleaning the toilets by hand reluctantly funny, by the stifled chuckles and subsequent attempts to bang her head against a wall when she’d caught sight of it)Of course, Barty had ordered his father to instruct Winky to perform the more strenuous of the chores and repairs, and by the time Pettigrew emerged from the basement to check on him the house was already a hundred times cleaner than it had likely been in years.(Pettigrew had then promptly snatched the wand off of him and scolded him for potentially over-exerting his magical core so soon after being released from a long-term curse. Spoilsport ex-medi-wizard-in-training *grumble*…)And so began Barty’s months of convalescence, restricted to bed rest and light exercise only under the watchful eye of his rescuer. He’d resisted at first, of course, feeling the need for ACTION running deep in his veins after so long with no free will… but as the weeks went by and he began to seriously examine the damage the long-term Imperius had done to his mind, Barty begrudgingly admitted that having some time to rest would likely do him some good.So instead of immediately running off to go looking for their master as he’d first desired, Barty instead spent his bed-rest catching up on his decades neglected occlumency exercises… and catching up on current events that he had until recently only knew of in passing from his father’s angry rants.Such as the Potter boy’s long delayed discovery and release from Azkaban-(-he could still so clearly remember the day he’d seen the screaming child dragged past his cell by dementors, pleading uselessly for aid… he’d made his father climb up on the roof to clean the filthy gutters after being reminded by that particular old newspaper-)-Sirius Black’s trial and innocence-(-it was a small miracle that Pettigrew had managed to incapacitate Lupin when he had, or else the werewolf would probably be firmly glued to the newly-freed man’s side by now-)-the extremely suspect disappearance of yet another Hogwarts Defence teacher-(-honestly, they really hadn’t managed to break the curse yet? It had been decades!-)-the ministry investigation and his father’s convenient so-called disgrace fuelled ‘medical leave’-(-oh, he’d taken great pleasure in making Crouch Sr write out that simpering request for extended leave himself…-)-but above all else, he kept his eyes wide open for even the slightest hint on the whereabouts of the Dark Lord. There wasn’t much really, the vast majority of the wizarding world still firmly believed that his master was dead and gone after all, but every once and a while Barty would find something… suspect.By the time June came rolling around and his convalescence was nearly at an end, Barty felt unmistakably restless. Long term bed rest, the occasional allowances for potions brewing and light wand practice aside, was chafing and restrictive, especially for a man like Barty.He’d never been much of a sitting-around-and-thinking-seriously Ravenclaw, much more a lets-try-this-experiment-to-see-what-happens-and-hope-it-doesn’t-blow-up-in-our-faces kind of Ravenclaw. (A Gryffin-Claw, as some of his more studious roommates had once nicknamed him in school)Even his master had recognised this during the height of his reign, granting him assignments and areas of research that allowed him to stretch his talents to the fullest, never wheedling him into ‘necessary rest and recuperation, honestly Barty!’ like bloody-ex-medi-wizard-in-training-Pettigrew kept doing.The rest and rebuilding of his mind had been needed to an extent, he wouldn’t contest that, but Barty needed to ACT. He needed to- hell, they BOTH needed to get going and come up with a plan to find their master before they lost the trail.After all the most recent rumours he’d found in the news, ones of a particularly violent ghost possessing snakes in Albania, had been months ago…-------
June 1992- The end of the Hogwarts school year…

“…And you think, despite ALL of these disadvantages, that we can actually find and resurrect the Dark Lord?”

“Yes,” Barty Crouch Junior stated undeterred over on the other side of the table, looking the other man dead in the eye. “Now are you in, or out?”

Peter let out a frustrated groan and put his head in his hands.

“Sure, why not?” he mumbled into his palms. “It’s not like I had any other plans for this weekend,”
Barty frowned and huffed out an irritated breath.“You could at least TRY to sound a little more enthusiastic,” he muttered as Peter Pettigrew looked up at him through his fingers.“Look, Barty, it’s not that I’m disagreeing with this… course of action,” the smaller man said nervously, twisting his hands in a manner reminiscent of his animagus form. “But you have to admit we aren’t in a very advantageous position. Even if we could somehow get Moon- Remus on our side…,”Peter trailed off hopelessly with a deep sigh, as he often did when speaking of the werewolf in the basement. Barty supressed his urge to laugh. Trying to convert the noble, honest Remus Lupin to their side was a hopeless endeavour, that much was clear… but it hadn’t stopped Peter’s regular, futile, trips to the basement to try and bargain again and again with their restless prisoner.The werewolf’s natural resistance to the Imperius curse was… irritating, to say the least-(-and Peter had outright refused to dose Remus with the same dangerous wit-dampening potions they were using to keep his father firmly under the curse’s sway; the same potions the cruel man had often threatened Barty himself with if he didn’t ‘behave’ under his usual sedatives-)-however, even Barty knew that a long (and likely, ultimately fruitless) campaign to sway Lupin’s allegiance to the Dark Lord was also the wrong way to go about managing their captive.But Peter was nothing if not stubborn.Gryffindors. As stubborn as mules. Both of them, for that matter.“Think of it this way Pettigrew,” Barty sighed. “We have to at least TRY to find him. One day the Dark Lord will inevitably return, with or without our help. And when he does, what do you think his first actions will be towards his followers that have denounced him and done NOTHING to try and aid him over this past decade?”This statement clearly gave the nerve-wracked, balding man pause, and Peter’s face went an alarming shade of white.“I see your point,” the older man gulped nervously, pushing his chair back from the letter piled table and standing. “So what’s the plan? Apparate across the channel and then continue on to Albania, hoping none of us are spotted along the way?”This statement now gave Barty some pause. Honestly, he hadn’t thought that far ahead, having anticipated it taking a lot more effort to convince the ever cautious Pettigrew of this course of action.Peter wrinkled his beady little eyes and frowned at Barty.“You don’t have a plan,” he stated dryly.“I’ll come up with something!” Barty exclaimed defensively, raising his hands in a placating fashion. “I just figured I should bring it up with you first before starting in on the corkboards and maps!”“Ah the short-sightedness of youth…,” Peter lamented, tilting his head back to gaze hopelessly at the dusty ceiling.“You’re only three years older than me!” Barty protested, standing quickly and almost knocking over his chair in the process.“Alas, it falls to me to be the adult in this situation-,” Peter continued to melodramatically postulate, but was interrupted by Barty throwing an old, balled up copy of the Daily Prophet at his head, making him squawk.“Come on, enough fooling about,” Barty drawled, trying and failing to hide his smile. “We have some planning to do,”-------Down in the basement, Remus Lupin could barely make out the subject of the muffled squabbling over his head.“What on EARTH are they arguing about up there?” he murmured to the ceiling, knowing from experience that he wouldn’t get a response from the dishevelled, Imperiused form of Crouch Sr. watching him sullenly from the corner.From what Remus remembered of Crouch’s politics, the man had never liked werewolves even when he had free will; it was no surprise that the orders for him to ‘guard’ Remus were some of those he least visibly resisted.Crouch Jr., at least, seemed to bear Remus no ill will himself-(-although the few times he’d been in the basement to issue his cursed father orders, he’d seemed endlessly amused by Lupin’s unfortunate predicament-)-and Peter, of course, was still remarkably friendly towards his erstwhile prisoner… if also still as hopelessly transparent with his attempts to persuade Remus’s allegiances closer to his own.Odd to think that his own fellow hostage was the one most likely in this house to murder him in cold blood should he get the chance, Remus thought wryly.Things had gotten… slightly more bearable for him over the past few months, with more people than Pettigrew in the house- the fact they were more Death Eaters and hostages aside. The little house elf Winky in particular had been a blessing for Remus- for one, she could cook far better than Peter ever could, and wasn’t in the habit of forgetting to feed the prisoners.She would also talk to him every once and a while if prompted, and she was honestly much better conversation than anyone else available… not that either of the Crouch’s had really tried talking to Remus on their own yet. Winky was jumpy and unsure of her situation in this complex web of Imperiused masters, prisoners and Death Eaters to say the least, but as most house elves were, she was happy to perform chores at the behest of the wizards around her so long as they left her alone.The poor dear seemed almost relieved at times that Crouch Sr. could no longer issue her independent orders; Remus got the feeling that the ex-ministry official hadn’t been all that kind to his house elf.A muted pop echoed in the near-empty basement, and as if summoned by Remus’s own musings, the trembling little form of Winky appeared out of thin air with his daily ration of bread.“Say Winky, do you know what they’re bickering about up there?” Remus asked the cowed little creature kindly. Winky, whom had silently approached and was currently passing Remus his food through the bars of his cage, shrugged nervously in response.“Winky is having no idea,” the poor creature muttered quietly. “But Winky having the feeling it will not ends well,”“On that, I think we can both agree,” Remus sighed. “Thank you Winky,”The brown eyed house elf gave him a watery smile, and popped away almost silently.Leaving Remus all but alone in his dungeon once more.-------
July 1992 -Sirius Black
‘Dear Moony,
I’m not sure if you’re even receiving these letters anymore. Maybe you’ve moved into a place with fancy owl-wards? Maybe you still blame me for everything and aren’t even willing to accept my mail.

I don’t know.

And that’s what I find the hardest to bear.

I don’t KNOW if this is just a matter of a muddled ward or lost post, or if you’re just genuinely ignoring me.

Or… something else.

I’m worried Moony. Nobody I’ve talked to has seen you in months. I apologise for the breach of privacy, but I even talked to your most recent known employer- you know, that muggle news-agency?- and the manager said that you just left work one day and never returned.

On the night of a full moon, no less.

I will admit I don’t know how you might’ve changed in the years I’ve been locked away… but the Moony I know would never simply leave a job without some kind of notice! You’re too conscientious and diligent and wonderful for that!

(All right, all right, I’ll stop brown nosing)

But seriously, please, if you get this letter, even if you hate me, even if you never want to see me again, at least send me back a short note to tell me you’re all right?

Yours worriedly,

Padfoot

P.S. If not for me, then please reply for Harry’s sake. He’s living with me now, and he’s also worried about his Uncle Moony. Please?’

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In the suburbs of London sat a rather dreary and depressing square known to the locals as ‘Grimmauld Place’.It consisted of a tiny, grey patch of perpetually dying grass (once upon a time a prim little flower garden), surrounded by a neat rectangle of road and pavement. Once stately and statuesque houses lined the outer rim of the square, now largely given over to decay and the woes of encroaching gentrification. Piles of rubbish lay unattended by most of the rusting gates, long neglected by any garbage service, and most any plant life that took root in the area either quickly wilted from sheer apathy… or else twisted itself into very disturbing and hard to kill shapes.The only mildly interesting thing about this mouldering, lifeless place was a simple mistake in the numbering of the houses. Where in many more superstitious places around London the number thirteen was omitted from apartment blocks, restaurant seating and even the floors of tall buildings, here it was the number twelve that was conspicuously absent.Numbers eleven and thirteen on Grimmauld Place instead sat cosily side by side… or so the muggle locals had long thought.In reality, at some point in the nineteenth century the Ancient Wizarding House of Black had purchased the house at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place (which had been at the time a highly fashionable and desirable area of London in which to live) and had promptly covered it in so many wards and charms it had all but disappeared to the naked muggle eye.And after the loss of the ancestral Black castle later that century-(-there were several cannons and a very illegal ritual of unspecified purpose involved, followed by some immense fines for violations of the Statute of Secrecy and several accusations of murder-)-the high class townhouse in London became the formal magical ‘seat’ of the ancient family, shrouding it even further in secrecy and frankly excessive spellcraft.In its heyday, it had been truly a grand sight to behold.……nowadays, not so much.For those who could actually still see Number Twelve in between its muggle neighbours, the once beautiful house now appeared just as dreary and decaying as the rest of the square.Paint peeling, windows cracked and/or shuttered, rampant evil-looking plant growth climbing the filthy walls… it wasn’t a pretty picture, and wouldn’t look out of place on a brochure for a haunted house attraction.And believe it or not, several short months beforehand, the interior of the house had been even worse. Dust and grime everywhere, cursed heirlooms salvaged from the Black castle spreading their poisoned magic unchecked, magical pests of any and every sort crawling through the walls and furnishings…It had been so bad that the first team of private cursebreakers Sirius Black had hired to clean up the house had taken one long look at the place… and then promptly returned his deposit, before getting as far away from his childhood home as possible.Thankfully, the next cursebreaker team Sirius had acquired the services of (this time, through the far more reputable intermediary of Gringotts) had been made of stronger stuff.It had taken a frantic few months of work in between his release from St Mungo’s and Harry’s return from Hogwarts for the summer holidays to restore the old manor- filled with finicky ritual cleansing, hasty storage/destruction/refurbishment of cursed artefacts, mundane cleaning, some slight design changes... and er, some emergency 'gardening' for both the back yard and the greenhouse on the roof. Merlin, Sirius considered himself lucky he hadn’t had to insure for potential funeral costs considering some of the nasty stuff that had been growing up there. Thankfully all of the cursebreakers had survived the experience, if not entirely unscathed.While the hired help had been battling through the disaster zone of hostile malevolence that was Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Sirius had been occupied with traditionally bullying the old house’s ancient magics into accepting his legitimacy as the new Lord Black… a task that had taken weeks on its own to finally accomplish. But it had all been worth it for the look on little Harry’s face when he brought his godson home from King’s Cross for the first time.That wide jawed, gaping expression of sheer awe at the massive house-(-not to mention the staggering ward network that was now under the newly dubbed 'Lord' Sirius Black's command-)-had been PRICELESS, and Sirius had gleefully penned a detailed three paragraph description of it in his next letter back to his old cell-mates in Azkaban.(Bellatrix had written back a very smug ‘I told you it would be worth it’ in the following reply, having been one of the few people still alive whom had ever been inside the house while it still resembled some of its former glory. Raleigh Gibbon and Rabastan Lestrange had added in a cartoonish picture of the expression he’d described)And while perhaps it wasn’t exactly the flawlessly magically expanded, glittering manor house it had been in its glory days, the restored Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was still infinitely preferable to Sirius and Harry’s former lodgings in Azkaban; where Sirius had been confined for a decade and Harry had resided for almost all of his young life.It wasn’t the house Sirius would have chosen for himself in his youth-(-indeed, the old flat he’d shared with Remus in his early twenties was still in his name at Gringotts, but he just couldn’t bear to return without knowing…-)-and admittedly it was far too big for just Harry and himself-(-thank goodness he’d managed to get Kreacher to eventually come around, or else the cleaning alone would be a nightmare. If he didn’t already know they’d likely be ‘confiscated’ by the Azkaban guards, he would have sent Bellatrix a box of her favourite chocolates for her advice on the matter of the mad house elf. It really was a pity how restricted the amount of food or other amenities they could send their old cell mates was-)-but it remained the formal family seat of the Ancient House of Black. So long as Sirius, the rightful Lord Black by blood, called Number Twelve Grimmauld Place home… then Harry would be safe there.And knowing what might come in the near future, his godson needed all the safety he could get.-------Harry Potter awoke on the morning of the 31st of July feeling unmistakably excited.Well, at least once he got past his usual morning confusion, waking up underneath a canopy of green and gold rather than blue and bronze.His room in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was easily the size of the entire first-year Ravenclaw boy’s dorm, and he had it all to himself. Done up in the silky Slytherin green that the Black family seemed to favour, but with gold accents rather than silver-(-Harry had a feeling his eternally-Gryffindor godfather may have had something to do with that-)-this particular bedroom was on the first floor. Or at least, it had been the previous night.(Like in Hogwarts, the rooms and hallways of the old Black house seemed to move themselves around wherever they fancied; lesser used rooms migrating towards the upper floors with more occupied ones moving closer to the ground. The only exceptions seemed to be the basement levels; the expansive kitchen in the upper basement and the cells in the lower basement generally stayed put)Harry’s room was fairly empty for now, most of his meagre physical belongings remaining safely tucked away in his school trunk at the end of his large four poster bed. The wardrobe, singular bookshelf and chest of drawers that were the expansive room’s only other furniture were for the most part bare… though he had the suspicion that if Uncle Padfoot had anything to say about it on a day like today, they wouldn’t remain empty for very long.For today was Harry’s twelfth birthday, and the first ‘official’ birthday he was counting since he’d first left Azkaban.(His eleventh birthday, upon which he’d been barely a week out of the prison and had been exposed to the overwhelming sensory horrors of Diagon Alley for the first time, didn’t really count in his mind)Grinning, Harry scooted out of bed and ducked into the small bathroom attached to his room, combing his shoulder length, silver streaked hair into a neat-ish ponytail in front of the mirror-(-it was odd realising that the encroaching silver through the black hadn’t actually spread this past year. Less exposure to dementors clearly helped with the issue-)-cleaning his glasses, washing his face-(-the dark, Azkaban typical circles under his eyes were all but gone now, and his face looked much less gaunt. While he still hated the taste of nutritional potions, he had to admit they’d done him some good-)-and changing out of his soft cotton pyjamas into some comfy muggle tracksuit pants and a hoody that would likely scandalise Kreacher once he saw them.(His ribs were no longer visible, his shorter stature finally starting to grow. His ‘hopefully final’ follow-up appointment at St Mungo’s had been over a week before, when the healers had at last proclaimed him to be back at a healthy weight for his age and formally ended his year-long potions regime.Unfortunately, soon after that they’d started making invasive, pushy inquiries about Harry’s sensory sensitivity and his odd ability to ‘feel’ magic… and then Sirius had gone into what Harry had dubbed ‘Lord Black mode’ in response. Suffice to say that had been the end of that!)Quietly, noting the grandfather clock outside his door said it was only just past seven AM, Harry crept into the (thankfully, still first floor) corridor, and briefly closed his eyes to examine the wards around him as he did every morning.The opinions of irritating, nosy busybodies at St Mungo’s aside, Harry had recently come to admit that his seemingly unique ability to ‘feel’ magic could be very useful if he learned how to exercise it properly… especially after the incident with Professor Quirrell and Lord Voldemort back in February.Hence, here he was ‘training’ with the baseline of the Black family’s extensive wards, in an attempt to make his sensory sensitivity more of an asset to himself rather than an irritating, and occasionally painful, drawback.Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was much smaller than Hogwarts, but it had a similar depth of complex magics saturated into it, constantly humming away at the back of Harry’s mind. When Harry didn’t ‘focus’ on feeling magic, the impressions he got of the surrounding wards, enchantments and spells were usually limited to this dull sort of ‘buzz’, one that grew stronger and more headache inducing the more magic that surrounded him.Unfortunately, despite his recent practice, Harry hadn’t yet found a way to prevent this constant ‘presence of nearby magic’ hum in his head. That is, if it were even possible. It appeared to be much like how he couldn’t exactly turn off his own ears or his sense of smell; if there was strong magic nearby, he was ALWAYS aware.But on the other hand, after a month of daily ‘training’ by analysing the ambient magic of the Black family seat, Harry now found that if he concentrated, he could pick up real and useful details about the magic around him, such as what kind of magic it was-(-ie. a wizard or witch actively casting a spell nearby, a house elf ‘popping’ about, a static enchantment on an object, the shroud of a ward network or even the subtle glow of an animagus prowling around in beast form… Harry had gotten very good at identifying that last one, what with Sirius ambushing him around corners with slobbery, fuzzy, overgrown puppy hugs whenever he got the chance-)-and its general location/area of effect.As a practical example, Harry could now usually pinpoint his godfather’s location in the house via the connection of the numerous ward-alarms to the current Lord Black- animagus form or no. Finding him every morning had become a regular exercise for Harry, and a good ‘control test’ seeing as his Uncle Padfoot was almost always in the same place (in bed) at the time of his ‘training’.…but not this morning apparently, Harry thought with a hum, detecting the pulsing, twisted knot of ward-foci that usually surrounded his godfather in the upper-basement kitchen, rather than in his bedroom upstairs as per usual. Kreacher (whom was also thoroughly tied into the wards as the head/only house elf, and as such was also fairly easy for Harry to detect) appeared to be with him.Harry pondered this new information with a small frown.Kreacher and Sirius had an… odd kind of relationship.His godfather had clearly taken great pains to get on the crotchety old house elf’s good side, but there was a long standing animosity between them that had never quite faded- not entirely helped by the influence of the nasty portrait of Sirius’s mother that hung in the attic.(After hearing her muffled ranting for the first time through the trapdoor, Harry got the distinct feeling that she hadn’t been completely removed from the house by the cursebreakers solely as some kind of appeasement for Kreacher. At least she was no longer right next to the front door…)Kreacher was decent enough to Harry-(-if you disregarded the prejudiced muttering he constantly spouted under his breath-)-and he obeyed Sirius with a kind of respectful reluctance as the current Lord Black, but most of the time the house elf was content with simply following their direct orders, maintaining the cleanliness of the house to the barest minimum he could get away with, and otherwise completely ignoring them.Harry sometimes wondered if maybe he should actively attempt to spend some more time around the clearly unstable house elf, if for no other reason than to actively test the effects of his recently discovered ‘aura of reason’ on a previously uninfluenced subject… but in the end he decided just to let the situation lie.If his ‘aura’ really was as potent as the books in Salazar’s library had proclaimed, then hopefully he was already having an effect on Kreacher merely by living in his chosen dwelling- and besides that particular point, Harry really didn’t want to have to listen to any more barely-under-his-breath mutters about ‘filthy half-bloods that should have stayed in Azkaban instead of sullying the Ancient House of Black’ than he already had to.Having stood and examined the warding of the house for approximately ten minutes, as he’d accustomed himself to doing every morning, Harry finally gave into his curiosity and opened his eyes once more, cheerfully darting down the stairs in the direction of the basement.He could already hear the voices as soon as his feet hit the polished floor of the ground level.“…it be the would-be letter thief again, has been trying to breach the elf-wards all night but Kreacher is not letting it, nasty disloyal-,” Kreacher’s sour mutterings came echoing up the hallway as Harry’s footsteps slowed, creeping silently towards the basement stairs.“I’m aware of that Kreacher,” Uncle Padfoot’s voice testily interrupted the house elf, sounding like his patience was wearing VERY thin. “I’ve already contacted Narcissa by owl. All we can do is wait for her to respond to me. IF she responds to me. I appreciate you keeping the intruder out, but constantly reminding me that they’re still trying to get IN is not exactly helping,”“Kreacher understands this, yes, but Kreacher is just saying…,” Kreacher grumbled in reply, but trailed off instead of voicing any further complaints.Ah, Sirius must have activated ‘Lord Black mode’ by the sound of it.“I don’t want to hear it Kreacher, unless you have something constructive to add that I don’t already know,” Sirius’s voice came frostily from under the kitchen door. “If whoever it is breaks through the house wards or finds some loophole to get inside, then let me know. If Narcissa tries to contact me by owl or floo, then by all means alert me. But if ALL you want to do is keep muttering this inflammatory stream of fear mongering tripe once Harry comes down then I WILL be sending you back to the boiler room for the rest of the day. Understood?”Kreacher muttered something incomprehensible.“I said, UNDERSTOOD?” Sirius repeated, voice dangerously low.“Kreacher understands, Lord Black,” the house elf replied grudgingly.“Good,” Sirius said shortly.Harry was standing on the landing before the upper basement kitchen door by the end of this exchange, and he frowned contemplatively. Someone had been trying to breach the wards of the house? He hadn’t felt anything beyond the ordinary when he’d done his customary ten minute examination this morning (besides Sirius and Kreacher being out of their usual places of course), so whatever their crotchety house elf had done to keep ‘the intruder’ out had clearly worked… for now, at least.He made up his mind not to ask. If Sirius thought he needed to know, then he would tell him, and from what he’d overheard Harry suspected that the situation was already in the process of being dealt with. Everything would be FINE.(Or so he hoped)Taking a deep breath (and hoping that his godfather hadn’t realised he’d been eavesdropping) Harry hesitantly knocked on the kitchen door before slowly pushing it open.-------The basement kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, as many magically-appropriated/muggle built houses did, contained cooking equipment largely sized for human use rather than house elf. Coincidentally, it also contained a rather judicious number of step-ladders, stools and easy vantage points for levitation.In addition to the expansive main kitchen area there were two other connected rooms in the upper basement, one that contained a frankly massive temperature controlled pantry, and the other the house’s primary boiler room (which doubled as Kreacher’s chosen bedroom).A small table with two sturdy chairs sat in the middle of the floor of the main area, well out of the way of the numerous old-fashioned counters, ovens and other cooking appliances, and sitting in one of them, looking over a number of parchment scrolls and still dressed in his pyjamas, was Harry’s Uncle Padfoot, Sirius Black.“Harry! Happy Birthday!” Sirius beamed, all traces of his formerly tense mood draining from his face the instant Harry entered the room. “How’s it feel being twelve?”Kreacher, whom was standing upon a stool at one of the stoves over a large frying pan, turned as if to start muttering at Harry as per usual, but managed to bite his lip and turn back to his sizzling creation at the last minute. Ignoring the prejudiced house elf with skill honed by several weeks in his presence, Harry managed to summon back some of his worry-dampened birthday cheer and smiled at his godfather.“Much the same as being eleven so far,” Harry quipped, strolling over to give Sirius a seated hug. “What are you doing with so much paperwork this early in the morning?”“Ministry stuff,” Uncle Padfoot sighed with exaggerated moroseness, picking up one of the scrolls before him with two fingers. “The formal seat of the Black family itself may have accepted me as the new Lord Black, but now I have to prove it to the Wizengamot if I ever want to formally support or fund any legislation. That lot back in Azkaban had better be grateful for all this paperwork they’re putting me through,”“Still planning to bring an act forward to evict the dementors from the prison?” Harry asked wryly, hopping up into his own seat at a pointed look from Kreacher.“Along with some other reform stuff,” Sirius shrugged easily, rolling up each of the scrolls with a practiced ease and putting them aside. “But it’ll probably take a while to get the ball rolling- especially with all this paperwork. As a magically recognised ‘Lord of an Ancient Magical House’-,”Harry bit his lip to supress giggle at Sirius’s air quotes and clear eye roll at the title.“-I can sadly never be nominated for a Wizengamot seat myself, but if my family title is recognised by them then I CAN put forward legislation drafts for them to review,” Sirius huffed pompously. “And legally bribe- sorry, ‘financially support’ those who do have seats into considering codifying it into law. Plus, I can formally go have tea with the other Lords if I’m ever that desperate for conversation. Oh joy,”At this, Harry couldn’t help but snort with laughter, which was clearly what his Uncle Padfoot had been going for all along by the cheesy grin that spread across his face.It was fairly obvious that his godfather took the whole ‘Lordship’ business with a large grain of salt, and with good reason. Some additional obscure family magics aside, the only real powers that a Lord or Lady of an ‘Ancient Magical House’ had these days was limited stewardship over the other members of their house (of which, in the Black family at least, there were very few left), alongside some minor political powers and legal privileges left over from the times when such houses controlled major wizarding estates and boasted unique magical abilities.But relatively limited power compared to the past or not, it was still power that Sirius wouldn’t turn up his nose at if he could use it to do some good in the world. Harry was proud of him.Two plates with a stack of three fluffy pancakes apiece (a birthday treat that Harry had requested the day before) floated over onto the table as soon as Sirius banished his stack of scrolls with a flick of his wand, and a large jar of homemade cherry conserve, a glass bottle of maple syrup and a bowl of whipped cream followed them over from the pantry.“Thank you Kreacher!” Harry said brightly to the house elf now floating his heavy cast iron frying pan over to the sink, whom seemed to be avoiding muttering darkly back at him with some difficulty.“It looks good Kreach’. Keep up the good work,” Sirius added politely, seeming to revel in the house elf’s conflicted expression at the praise, before leaning over to take a large spoonful of cream and smearing it on his topmost pancake.Harry commandeered the jar of jam while Sirius poured liberal amounts of maple syrup over his pancakes, and they both tucked into their (thankfully, completely poison-free) breakfasts. Kreacher, after cleaning his cooking utensils, popped away to presumably do something else in the house, leaving Harry alone with his godfather.“So pup, have you changed you mind about staying home for your birthday?” Sirius asked between bites of mostly cream and syrup, and not much pancake. “It’s not too late to go out for a movie in muggle London, or take a trip to Diagon,”(Sirius had definitely developed a sweet tooth coming out of Azkaban, where hopelessly bland mush was the usual daily fare… but then again so had Harry, so he couldn’t really judge)“Nah, staying home is fine,” Harry smiled with a shake of his head. “And I’m trying to limit my number of trips to Diagon Alley to ONE this year,”“Six senses still acting up?” Sirius commiserated with a grimace.“Less so than last year,” Harry shrugged, cutting another bite of pancake. “It’s the… magic, more than any of my mundane senses that I still need to work on. Colour and light are still a bit irritating, but they’re much easier for me to manage now,”“I’m glad to hear it,” Sirius said with a soft, sad smile. “But let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay? It was hard enough for me the first few months out of Azkaban, and I didn’t have the extra sense to deal with. Heck, I even had previous experience with just how… full-on the wizarding world can be and it was still difficult,”Full earlier than he’d expected to be, Harry pushed aside his remaining one-and-a-quarter pancakes (Harry and Sirius both still had relatively smaller stomachs from their time in Azkaban, something Kreacher seemed weirdly determined to fix) and stood up to get them both some water from the tap.“I appreciate it Uncle Padfoot,” Harry thanked his godfather as he returned to the table with two glasses. “I’ll let you know, but really I just think it will take time,”“Understood,” Sirius accepted with a sage nod. “Now then, presents?”Harry snorted again into his water at his godfather’s suspiciously bright tone, and was about to reply with a wry affirmative when Kreacher suddenly popped back into the room with a startling CRACK, looking oddly nervous and almost excited.“Miss Cissy’s head is being in the drawing room’s fire,” the house elf promptly, if squeakily, informed Sirius. “She be wishing to come through to speak to Lord Black,”The formerly bright mood of the room instantly deflated, and Sirius immediately straightened in his seat.“Regarding the… matter I owled her about?” Sirius asked cautiously, eyes flicking briefly over to Harry.“Yes. She is insisting…,” Kreacher trailed off, tugging on one of his hairy ears.Lips set in a firm, worried line, Sirius turned to Harry.“Harry, could you go up to your room for a bit?” he asked slightly hesitantly. “I have a guest that might not…,”“Say no more,” Harry cut Sirius off understandingly, giving him the best smile he could muster through the sudden turning of his stomach. “I’ll just read until you’re done. Come and get me once everything’s resolved?”Sirius looked immensely relieved at Harry’s acquiescence, nodding at him with a brief flash of a smile before his ‘Lord Black mode’ mask fell into place over his features. Harry quickly got up and hurried over to the kitchen door“Good. Let her through Kreacher, I’ll be there in a moment,” he heard Sirius say gravely as he darted back up the stairs. “Let’s see what my cousin has to say about this mess,”-------For a brief moment, Harry considered sneaking over to the drawing room to eavesdrop on the conversation that was to come-(-which he was almost certain was to do with the earlier ‘intruder’ business he’d overheard-)-but he ultimately decided against it. Given Sirius’s wording about his… guest, Harry suspected they were likely someone not all that sympathetic to the boy-who-lived. Anyone who wanted to see ‘Lord Black’ rather than simply ‘Sirius’ was usually of a… darker persuasion than the average witch or wizard; people who were uncertain (or in some notable unfortunate cases, all TOO certain) of his true allegiance in the last war.It was weird to think that there were still ‘ex’-Death Eaters out there who thought Harry’s goofy Uncle Padfoot was actually one of their comrades in disguise, refusing point blank to believe that Peter Pettigrew had been capable of doing what he did.Even their old cellmates in Azkaban hadn’t been THAT far in denial.Harry returned to the first floor and went to enter his room, planning on extracting one of his compilations of Shakespeare to browse through while he waited, or perhaps review one of his first year school books-(-he’d already finished all of his homework quite early in the summer; all of the Quiet Ones had worked together to get a significant head start on it before the break after all-)-and he briefly ‘felt’ in the back of his mind that the complex warding of the house was admitting a temporary visitor somewhere downstairs.Well, at least this ‘Miss Cissy’ was prompt. Hopefully he could be back with his godfather soon enough-That train of thought was abruptly cut off as Harry froze, the door to his room half opened before him. He barely even managed to keep himself from shouting aloud in alarm.Because sitting on his bed, dressed in a tattered old pillowcase completely unlike the neatly draped tea towel that Kreacher wore, was a house elf.The intruder had gotten inside.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

At first, Harry Potter and the unknown house elf just stared at each other, green eyes to green.With an awful sinking feeling in his stomach, Harry realised that the wards of number twelve Grimmauld place must have admitted one more ‘visitor’ than they were meant to. This house elf must have snuck past Kreacher’s safeguards in the temporary flux of the wards during ‘Miss Cissy’s arrival.“Harry Pott-!” the little creature began to exclaim, but before it could finish Harry slammed the door shut, turned around and began SPRINTING back towards the stairs.This was bad. This was bad. This was bad. This was bad. House elves were NOT to be trifled with, and there was an unknown one sitting in his bedroom, having bypassed the wards of the house through an unauthorised loophole and with completely unknown intentions.
-‘Take care with house elves,’ Augustus Rookwood, one of Harry’s numerous teachers in Azkaban, had once cautioned him. ‘They live and die by the orders of their masters, and that can make them either very weak… or incredibly strong. Wizards these days tend to forget that in the past house elves were prized as assassins by politicians and plotters- why else would house elf specific wards be so popular on older wizarding homes?’

Seven year old Harry, having never so much as seen a house elf and therefore not knowing the typical house elf was usually between one and three feet tall, had been terrified by the idea of a creature that could apparate through all but the most specialised of wards and by nature of their professions were proficient with a number of knives.

Raleigh Gibbon, the go-to household expert of the northern tower-

(-and easily the least experienced with house elves after Harry himself due to his family’s poverty-)

-had teased him mercilessly later in life over his brief period of house-elf phobia, but at the time poor Harry had been so frightened he could hardly sleep, regardless of multiple reassurances that house elves had been completely magically barred from Azkaban after a rash of ‘elf-rescues’ back in the 1700’s. It had been the withdrawn stargazer Rodolphus Lestrange, of all people, that had eventually been able to calm his fears.

‘House elves are usually passive, friendly creatures, eager to please ANY wizard or witch that comes their way. It takes a lot of effort to turn one as murderous as ‘Gus seems to think they can get,’ Rodolphus had comforted a trembling Harry after yet another house-elf themed nightmare that Sirius had been at a loss to handle. ‘If they are mistreated, yes they can become slightly… deranged, but the simple answer to that dilemma is to treat any house elf you come across politely and with respect, no matter how damaged they may act. They in turn will respect that behaviour… or at the very least move you below their abusers on their personal grudge lists,’

‘In the unlikely event that someone deliberately sends a house elf to murder you- which I might add, is very unlikely considering the way new house elf ritual contracts have been worded by the ministry for the last century-,’ Rodolphus had concluded with a reassuring smile. ‘All you need to do is find another house elf to protect you. Even when done on the orders of their masters, killing a witch or wizard is considered a grave crime by the house elf community, and any sane elf will easily oppose their more violent kin,’-
Harry’s irrational phobia of house elves may have vanished over time, but the lessons both men had taught him about the creatures (alongside Aunt Bella’s more mundane etiquette lessons about general house elf management) had remained. He knew he had to find Kreacher, and fast. The older house elf was on his own turf, and could probably evict the intruder once Harry alerted him it had gotten inside, but he had to do that before-There was an abrupt sound of snapping fingers.“AHHH!” Harry screeched as he sprawled to the floor, having tripped over a suddenly appearing footstool in his path. Before he could even try to get up there was another loud CRACK, and a vaguely house-elf sized lump appeared on his back.(Dear Merlin, some of his old house-elf themed nightmares had started like this)“Harry Potter must not be running away from Dobby before hearing what Dobby must say!” the creature on his back squeaked in alarm, somehow sounding even more terrified than Harry felt at that moment. “Harry Potter is in grave danger!”Yeah, no kidding, Harry thought in a slight haze of panic as he tried to sit up and throw the house elf off of him… but with another snap of the creature’s fingers, he found he was completely unable to move, his arms, legs and forehead stuck to the carpeted floor.He opened his mouth to try and call Kreacher (why hadn’t he done that in the first place rather than running?! Stupid, stupid, stupid-!) but no sound came out as the oppressive weight of a silencing charm wrapped itself snugly around his throat.“Dobby is sorry for alarming Harry Potter, but Dobby is only here to protect him!” Dobby continued to babble anxiously as it (he?) slid off of his back. “Even if Dobby has to throw himself down the stairs later…,”The magic sticking Harry’s forehead to the floor let up, allowing him to raise his head (if no other part of his body) to look up at the intruding house elf whom was now nervously wringing his hands and pacing in front of his prone form.(To his irritation, Harry noticed a hairline crack through the left lens of his rectangular glasses from his faceplant into the floor. He was lucky they hadn’t shattered outright)“Harry Potter must not misunderstand Dobby, for Dobby truly thinks Harry Potter is a great and wonderful wizard,” Dobby rambled on, looking tenser and tenser with every word he spoke. “But Harry Potter is in grave danger, and Dobby has to warn him, even if Dobby has to put his hands in boiling water, that… that… Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts!”A deafening silence followed this last, whisper-shrieked warning from the terrified creature before him. Harry blinked mutely as Dobby peered at him desperately with his bulbous green eyes. This was… not what he’d been expecting. A house elf he’d never met before, coming to warn him about not returning to Hogwarts because of some unknown danger? And against his own master’s orders by the sounds of those… painful self-inflicted punishments.“Does Harry Potter understand Dobby?” Dobby asked pleadingly after another minute of baffled silence. “Will Harry Potter promise not to return to Hogwarts?”Harry opened his mouth and, seeing as Dobby’s silencing charm was still in place, no sound came out. The house elf visibly flushed, and with a snap of his fingers Harry felt the oppressive silence finally lift from his throat.He took a nervous breath, opened his mouth once more and-“KREACHER, HELP!” Harry yelled.There was another great CRACK as without warning, Kreacher popped into the hallway just to the right of Harry’s prone body, looking irritated and more than ready to scold him for drawing him away from Sirius’s ‘guest’… and then he spotted Dobby.“YOU!” Kreacher shrieked. “YOU’S BE THE ONE TRYING STEALING LORD BLACK’S MAIL! YOU’S NOT WELCOME HERE!”Dobby squeaked in horror and raised his hand to snap his fingers, but Kreacher was faster, bounding forwards with speed Harry was unaware the old house elf possessed and physically TACKLING Dobby into a nearby hat stand.The remaining sticking charms holding Harry to the floor evaporated with a snap and he scrambled to his feet against the wall, torn between vague fascination and horror at the quickly developing house elf wresting match taking place before him.Kreacher was downright vicious with his elbows and knees, and Dobby kept trying to snap his fingers to call on his house elf magic with limited success, leading to a small hole being blown through a nearby wall and several streams of cooking fire scorching the carpet.If the two of them hadn’t happened to be blocking the stairway with their antics (and with the now broken-in-three-separate-places hat stand), Harry would have been well on his way to getting Sirius by now, questionable guest or no.But judging by the sheer racket the two house elves were making with their fight (and the telling sound of hurried footsteps coming up the stairs below) Harry needn’t have worried about having to fetch the adults himself.“IMPEDIMENTA!” Sirius’s voice roared from out of sight down the staircase, followed by a more feminine voice calling out “STUPEFY!”Two flashes of light hit the two house elves within moments of each other, respectively freezing Kreacher in place and knocking Dobby out cold onto the floor.Moments later Sirius, still dressed in his pyjamas under his somewhat more formal over-robe and looking mildly wild eyed, came dashing onto the landing closely followed by a respectable looking witch in fine robes with long blonde hair. Both had their wands drawn and were looking upon the scene of the elf-fight with oddly similar aghast expressions.“What the hell…?” Sirius muttered in amazement, looking in turn from the scorched carpet to the hole in the wall to the thoroughly destroyed hat stand. When his wild eyes set upon Harry, obviously shaken and with his glasses cracked, he seemed to deflate a little and immediately strode over to him through the wreckage.“Harry! Are you okay?!” he asked in a frantic whisper, gripping him by his forearms and sweeping his eyes up and down his body in a long practiced manner, looking for damage.“I- I’m fine Uncle Padfoot,” Harry stammered out, taking off his glasses at his godfather’s prompting for a whispered reparo. “Maybe a few bruises, but nothing more,”“Oh for Merlin’s sake, again Dobby?” the blond haired woman groaned from back over near the stairwell, where she was examining the two incapacitated house elves. Both Sirius and Harry looked over at her as she tutted critically and straightened up, sheathing her wand back into a finely tailored holster on her forearm.“I apologise for not taking your complaints by owl more seriously cousin, I never thought a Malfoy elf would try to breach the Black-,” the woman began to explain as she turned in their direction, but she paused abruptly upon sighting Harry. Sirius straightened again, before clasping Harry’s shoulder in a vaguely formal manner.“Ah, I don’t think the two of you have been introduced,” Sirius said with forced brightness, a strained grin plastered on his face. “Harry, this is my cousin Narcissa Malfoy. ‘Cissa, this is my godson Harry Potter,”-------The drawing room of number twelve Grimmauld place had once contained several great display cabinets filled with some of the most dangerous cursed objects in the house, according to Harry’s godfather.Seeing as the vast majority of them had been Black family heirlooms (not to mention Kreacher would have thrown a fit if they’d been damaged in any way), instead of having the cursebreakers sell off or destroy the items they’d instead been moved to a VERY heavily warded room close to the top of the house.(Harry had learned very quickly not to focus his magic senses too closely on that room; just being NEAR it sometimes gave him a throbbing headache)As such, the drawing room now had a great deal of free space, containing little more than the repaired ancestral Black family tapestry hanging on one wall, the floo-connected fire place and several plush arm chairs around a tea table.And, at that current moment, two bedraggled house elves (one kneeling on the floor and the other standing guard with a heavy frying pan in hand), two irate adult magicians (one coldly angry at her family’s house elf and the other more exasperated than anything else) and one very confused Harry Potter.“-and you thought that breaking into the house that stands as the ancient family seat of the Blacks and attempting to steal all of its incoming and outgoing mail was the BEST solution to this problem?” Narcissa Malfoy stated coldly, standing over the understandably terrified Dobby. “Did you not think that INFORMING one of your masters of your concerns might have been a better option?”The poor, fight-battered house elf was wringing his hands and tugging at his ears neurotically, tears brimming in his bulbous eyes as he simultaneously attempted to resist the urge to brain himself on the nearest wall and tried to come up with an acceptable answer for his mistress.Kreacher, sporting a black eye from the impromptu wresting match himself and threateningly hefting his frying pan onto his bony shoulder, looked entirely unsympathetic to his fellow elf’s plight. He seemed only to be able to restrain himself from his typical muttering on Sirius’s direct order not to interrupt Narcissa. Sirius himself was pinching the bridge of his nose in a long suffering manner at the whole situation.“No matter WHAT Lucius or Draco may or may not be planning Dobby, it is NOT your place to go around attempting to keep Harry Potter out of school!” Narcissa exclaimed in exasperation, throwing up her arms in a manner very reminiscent of Aunt Bella whenever she had to deal with common idiocy. “Especially if you feel compelled to harm yourself for such actions! I don’t care if you cannot tell me what exactly my husband or son are supposedly plotting or not; breaking into houses and assaulting children is not the way to go about preventing it!”Sitting on one of the couches a ways back from the house elf interrogation, Harry nervously sipped at the cup of tea Kreacher had forced into his hands at the advent of this little ‘meeting’ fifteen minutes beforehand. With three sugars and just the right amount of milk that Harry had never told Kreacher he preferred. And without having been asked to prepare it beforehand.It was undeniably strange behaviour for the usually standoffish and prejudiced against non-purebloods Kreacher, but Harry wasn’t complaining. It appeared that another house elf invading his own rightful territory had er… made him revaluate his own behaviour towards his lord’s godson, perhaps? Harry couldn’t say for sure, but he appreciated the tea none the less.“You said this has happened before?” Sirius asked dryly as Dobby continued to be unable to answer his mistress, rubbing his eyes in exasperation. “What kind of ‘dangers’ usually push him to this sort of behaviour?”“It varies,” Narcissa sighed with a shake of her head. “I think the whole thing started with a prank by Draco back when he was six- he made up some fictional scheme against his friend Vincent and convinced Dobby that the only way to protect him was to frighten the boy into never leaving the Crabbe house again. Ever since, Dobby’s never really been able to break out of that kind of mind-set; anything he overhears that he can even vaguely construe as a plot he attempts to go out and warn the supposed victim about,”“Knowing your husband, I get the feeling this happens fairly frequently then,” Sirius wryly stated, earning him a flicked stinging hex to his thigh which made him yelp like an injured dog, which in turn made Narcissa reluctantly snort.“Oh, with the way he talks with his compatriots during dinner parties? You have no idea,” Narcissa murmured with a roll of her eyes. “I usually try to keep this one away from Lucius; he’s at the end of his rope about Dobby already, and I’d rather he not start cursing our servants in frustration. And Draco… well, I’ve already told you about his mean streak towards our elves,”Dobby was still sniffling incomprehensibly, so Narcissa turned her attention towards Harry, sitting on the lounge behind her.“Since Dobby seems unable to tell me any more, might you be able to elaborate on what exactly he was trying to warn you about Mr Potter?” Narcissa asked warmly, an abrupt turn of face from how excessively formal she’d been upon first being introduced to him. Harry got the distinct feeling that Sirius’s cousin, Draco’s mother, might be plotting something.“He wasn’t very specific,” Harry answered politely, placing his near empty teacup down on the table before him. “Just that I ‘must not return to Hogwarts’…,”Both Dobby and Narcissa noticeably flinched (although the witch was able to hide it far better than the nervous house elf) at Harry’s eternally raspy voice, making him hesitate slightly. Huh, now he thought about it, it had been a while since he’d spoken to anyone who wasn’t already aware that he was a practiced parselmouth… and thus had a somewhat sibilant, unnerving rasp to his ordinary speaking voice from long years of talking to snakes more than he did humans in Azkaban.(A rasp that bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain other feared wizard’s voice…)Harry shook off the hesitation fairly quickly, but in his moment of indecision an idea crossed his mind.“Although, considering what you just told Uncle Pad- Sirius,” Harry quickly corrected himself in order to sound more formal. “It’s possible that Dobby may have just overheard your son plotting some simple prank upon my group of friends once we return to school, and overreacted. Draco was… not the friendliest to us last year, and to my friend Neville especially,”Narcissa narrowed her eyes at that.“Neville? As in Neville Longbottom?” she asked, and Harry nodded to confirm, not letting his eyes leave hers. Sirius was giving him an odd look, but it faded into sudden understanding as Narcissa continued with:“I see,” the witch said frostily. “It seems I should have a little… talk with my son before the school term begins, if he feels like ‘unfriendly’ behaviour towards another heir of an Ancient House like himself is acceptable. Perhaps out of his father’s earshot,”“Come to think of it, isn’t young Theodore Nott one of your friends too Harry?” Sirius added casually, sending a sly look in Narcissa’s direction as the witch’s expression grew even icier. “The one who Draco wouldn’t leave alone for the better part of a year, no matter what he said?”Narcissa let out a controlled, irritated huff through her nose that nevertheless made Dobby squeak in alarm.“Goodness, that boy… just can’t help but making powerful enemies, just like… oh well,” Narcissa muttered under her breath, pinching her nose in much the same way Sirius had been doing earlier. She eventually cleared her throat and turned back to Dobby.“Dobby? I order you not to bother, harass, contact or otherwise interfere with Mr Potter’s life in ANY way,” Narcissa commanded, making Dobby freeze where he knelt, fingers still embedded in his ears. “Nor will you bother, harass, contact or otherwise interfere with Lord Black’s life. And that includes interfering with the lives of any of their close friends or acquaintances. And for the LAST TIME, you are NOT to punish yourself without direct instruction from either me or Lucius- NOT Draco- and only in the manners we detail- NOT by harming yourself. Understood?”Dobby was rapidly nodding before Narcissa was even finished speaking, seeming both greatly relieved by the relatively light punishment and still terribly worried about Harry’s safety by the looks he kept flashing him. Kreacher, on the other hand, seemed quite smug at the outcome.Turning back to face Harry with a disarmingly sudden sweet smile on her face, Narcissa gave a short curtsy of farewell.“I will speak to my son about his behaviour Mr Potter,” Narcissa said lightly, a knowing smirk ticking up at the corners of her mouth. “It is quite clear you are concerned about his actions towards your friends; concerns I find myself sharing,”“Thank you for listening to my concerns,” Harry replied formally, managing to smile back mostly sincerely at the coded ‘I know what you’re up to but I’ll play along anyway’. “It was nice to meet you,”She then turned similarly to Sirius, who straightened up immediately as her gaze fell upon his still-pyjama-clad form.“Cousin Sirius, it was nice to see you again, and my belated congratulations on becoming the new Lord Black,” Narcissa continued exceedingly politely, stepping forward to plant a brief kiss on his cheek that made him freeze in wide-eyed shock. “Don’t be shy to contact me again without this house elf drama hanging over us; I may no longer be a Black in name, but I would not say no to rekindling a familial connection,”With that, and some silent signal to Dobby, Narcissa stepped over to the empty fireplace and lit it with a flick of her wand, drawing a pouch of floo powder from one of her robe pockets. The nervous house elf followed her, continuing to glance back at Harry every few seconds… at least, until Kreacher visibly snarled at him, which made Dobby audibly squeak once more and return his attention to his mistress.With a final cheery wave, Narcissa threw her floo powder into the fireplace and stepped through with Dobby at her side, calling out ‘Malfoy Manor!’ as she did so. Within moments, the house wards fell back into place, the temporary visiting permissions gone. Sirius, Harry noted with a small degree of amusement, was still standing frozen in place, a hand lightly pressed to the cheek Narcissa had kissed.“Miss Cissy is being a good witch, and a good Black,” Kreacher stated proudly into the silence of the drawing room as the fire returned from green to a natural orange, before vanishing entirely from the grate. “You’s ought to be taking notes,”-------“So that was Aunt Bella’s sister?” Harry asked as he and Sirius climbed their way up to the library on the second floor.The room had originally been closer to the attic, but it had notably begun migrating downwards once Harry had realised it existed earlier that month and begun to browse its copious shelves.Thankfully, the more dangerous tomes had been relegated to the locked room full of heritage cursed objects long before Harry had even known the Blacks had had a library of their own. While the content of some of the books could still occasionally be a little… questionable, none of them were very likely to cause him actual damage anymore.“Yes, and Andromeda’s,” Sirius confirmed distractedly, hand still occasionally lifting to his kissed cheek every few seconds. “You know, I’d been half-prepared for her to start cursing my name the moment she came through the floo, not to…,”“…behave so friendly towards you?” Harry finished for him, as his godfather seemed lost for words. “Do you think she might be one of the ones who thinks you’re still a Death Eater?”At this, Sirius snorted, and finally managed to drop his hand from his cheek.“I doubt that. Lord Malfoy pleaded Imperius during his trial at the end of the war; if Narcissa thought I was genuinely one of the Dark Lord’s followers who chose Azkaban I doubt she would have come within a mile of me,” Sirius shrugged. “We were never all that close, even before I broke off from the rest of the family. Maybe she’s trying to get on my good side because I’m Lord Black now?”“Who knows,” Harry shrugged similarly in reply. “So long as no more unidentified house elves try to break into my room I’ll be happy,”“Next time, if Kreacher tells me one is trying to breach the wards, you’ll be the first to know,” Sirius solemnly promised, the effect slightly ruined by his wide grin. “It seems trying to keep the situation under wraps backfired on us a little,”They stepped off the stairs on the second floor landing and down the hallway leading to the library. Another grandfather clock by the landing-(-this one rather more evil looking than the one that sat outside Harry’s door. Sirius had said it used to be armed with a charmed crossbow before the cursebreakers had been through-)-displayed the time as being slightly past eight-thirty. Goodness, Harry had only been up for an hour and a half, and already so much had happened! Breakfast, the house elf attack, meeting Narcissa…“I can see how Narcissa and Aunt Bella are related though,” Harry mused as they approached the large double doors at the end of the hall. “She was able to see right through my hint about Draco… but she took it seriously anyway. With any luck he’ll be a bit more tolerable next term,”“If you think ‘Cissa and Bella are alike, just wait until you meet Andy,” Sirius chuckled. “She and Bella were often mistaken for identical twins before they hit puberty. Completely opposite world-views of course…,”He trailed off as they reached the entrance to the library, starting to bounce a little on the balls of his feet in childish excitement. Harry couldn’t help but smile; his godfather had been very unsubtle about keeping him out of this room the previous evening, all but waving a brightly flashing sign above his head pointing to where his birthday presents were hidden.“You ready pup?” Sirius asked brightly, and at Harry’s nod of reply, flung open the double doors. “Happy Birthday!”Even having expected what laid beyond those doors, Harry couldn’t quite help the gasp of amazement that escaped his lips at the sight before him.The Black family library was completely unrecognisable as the dark, secretive labyrinth of looming bookshelves it had been the previous few times Harry had visited.Now the room was bright with the morning sunshine, several large, stately windows- that had definitely not existed the previous day- allowing large amounts of natural light inside.The looming bookshelves had been heavily dusted, realigned in a more linear manner with clearly printed labels marking each subject section, and in several cases shortened to allow the flow of more sunlight.Perhaps the most notable change to the room however, was the small sitting area right by the doors. It had originally been cramped and poky, containing only a writing desk that had clearly once housed a violent boggart and a stiff, uncomfortable chair.Now, with the shelves rearranged for maximum space, the sitting area was larger and covered with a thick sapphire blue rug. Three lushly upholstered armchairs and a small loveseat occupied the area instead of the damaged writing desk, arranged around a large, low table that could easily hold up to fifty stacked reference books- but was currently piled up with a modest number of brightly wrapped gifts.Harry promptly gave a delighted squeal and tackled his laughing godfather with a hug.-------Despite its hectic beginnings, Harry’s twelfth birthday ended up being quite enjoyable indeed.The redecorated library aside, Harry had received a fair number of other gifts- though nothing compared to the intimidating stacks of anonymous presents that had practically been shoved down his throat last year at St Mungo’s.(Thank Merlin for owl wards. Harry knew there was going to be a huge list of returned-to-sender gifts he’d need to sort through later on in case he’d missed anything important, but it was better than drowning in a sea of unexpected and potentially dangerous presents)The vast majority of his gifts this year had been from Sirius. New clothes to top up his rather scant wardrobe in both muggle and wizarding styles, a colourful little basket of assorted confectionary that would probably keep Harry’s ‘sweet stash’ in his school trunk well stocked until Christmas, an enchanted, palm-sized mirror that he and Sirius could use to communicate with once he was back at Hogwarts (apparently it had once belonged to Harry’s father), and a number of hand-written ‘gift cards’ reminiscent of the promissory notes often exchanged back in Azkaban (only these promised things like a bonus fifteen galleon allowance for Flourish and Blotts, rather than more abstract promises like extra lessons in mind-magic or a larger share of the next cherry harvest).Speaking of which, there was another woven basket filled with this season’s cherries (fresh this time, rather than dried) wrapped in an old grey blanket from their old cell-mates among Harry’s presents; his share of the summer bounty from the tree he’d planted in the northern tower’s courtyard as a child.(It was hard to believe it had really been a year since he’d seen them all last… Harry briefly wondered if he might be able to finagle a visit at some point in the future. Visits to Azkaban were rare enough, visits that weren’t from family or from guards were practically impossible to authorise and visits from former inmates… well, they were all but non-existent)There was also a gift apiece from each of the Quiet Ones, Neville Longbottom, Theodore Nott and Sophie Roper… and they had all happened to have sent him suspiciously connected books.From Theo, a book titled ‘The Muggleborn Myth’ that hypothesised that all muggleborn witches and wizards were in fact descended from squibs, from Neville, a thick tome with a gilded front cover stating ‘The Fable of the Four Founders: A Historical Perspective on the building of Hogwarts’, and from Sophie, an entry level muggle biology textbook on genetics- specifically dominant and recessive traits.……had they done this on purpose? Harry snorted in amusement.“I wasn’t sure we’d get your friends presents here in time,” Sirius had said as Harry had put the books aside, his godfather oblivious to the meaning behind them. “That Dobby was doing his best to steal all of our mail from the delivery owls- I had to end up bribing Kreacher to go raid the place he’d been hiding it all once we realised what was happening. He held off taking our letters for a while after that, but I wasn’t sure if he’d let packages slide so easily,”“I get trying to warn me about some plot at Hogwarts, but why would Dobby steal our mail?” Harry had asked in return as he neatly stacked up his unwrapped gifts for transport back to his room.“I’m not sure,” Sirius had honestly answered, shrugging. “I originally thought it was someone trying to go through my correspondence as Lord Black, but now we know that Dobby was targeting you specifically… maybe he thought that if you weren’t able to communicate with your friends that you wouldn’t want to return to school?”They’d left their hypothesising at that, and hadn’t spoken one more word about Dobby or his misguided attempts at aid for the rest of the day. Harry couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the clearly unstable house elf, having to deal with the likes of Draco and his father 24/7- but he knew that dwelling on a situation he had no real power to change would only make him miserable.(He had learnt that lesson many times over in the chilled darkness of the northern tower)Harry carefully packed away all of his presents into new homes in his room, and then had taken some time to enjoy the refurbished library while Sirius went back to doing some more stuffy ‘Lord Black related’ paperwork for the ministry.After lunch-(-which comprised of some just-the-right-amount-of-greasy fish and chips from a local muggle shop Sirius had discovered earlier that year. It wasn’t the healthiest of meals, but hey, it was his birthday… and by Merlin, it had been delicious-)-Harry had taken some time to write out thank you letters to his friends, alongside further confirming the date they were planning to meet up and do their school shopping in Diagon Alley. Apparently there was going to be a book signing by one ‘Gilderoy Lockhart’ on their chosen day, so they’d recently moved the time they were originally going to meet a few hours earlier in order to better handle the crowds.…Harry also briefly debated with himself on using some of that extra time to get an owl of his own, seeing as Sirius’s new tawny owl Romulus was once again absent from his perch when he went to go send the letters. His godfather sent a LOT of letters after all; it was probably time Harry stop relying on a borrowed owl that might not always be available.(And it was getting harder and harder for him to pretend not to notice how downcast his Uncle Padfoot seemed to get whenever Romulus returned from a certain recipient once again with no replies)Kreacher had made them a chicken pie topped with crispy mashed potato for dinner (again, on Harry’s request for his birthday), and Sirius made a point of singing an over-the-top ‘Happy Birthday to You’ as the black forest cake both of them were too full to eat that day was brought out. Kreacher begrudgingly put it back into the pantry for tomorrow once the song was done.(Harry couldn’t help but imagine extra voices in the chorus- voices he wondered whether were also singing somewhere across the North Sea)He went back to his (slightly fuller) room that night feeling relaxed and happy for his… mostly peaceful twelfth birthday.Maybe next year, if he felt ready, he could have a small party with his friends. But then again, he could always just stay home and read all day if he wished, Sirius’s inevitable pouting at being denied planning a party two years in a row notwithstanding.It was… still a little odd, the idea that he could do most anything he wanted while he lived here in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. It wasn’t like St Mungo’s, with its nosy healers and endless unauthorised ‘visitors’. It wasn’t like Hogwarts with its strict schedule and crowded hallways. And it definitely wasn’t anything like the distant northern tower of Azkaban.Harry slipped into bed and stared up at the green canopy, performing his usual occlumency exercises that Florian Mulciber had trained into him before he fell asleep………never the less, he found himself dreaming of a violent storm across the sea, a cherry tree felled and dead under the stars, and a frantic house elf screaming ‘Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts!’-------“WHY, in MERLIN’S name, did you hide it here?!” Barty hissed in disgust as he crept along behind Peter Pettigrew in the winding tunnels. “In a muggle sewer?!”“I didn’t exactly have many options available at the time,” Peter hissed back defensively. “There are spells that can track wands, and if I’d kept it with me while hiding as a rat it could have given me away! Besides, I had to make it seem like a place Sirius could have put it if it ever WAS tracked down,”“…okay, that makes sense,” Barty reluctantly agreed, wrinkling his nose. “But still, a SEWER?”“We can always wash it?” Peter suggested uncertainly.“Not the point!” Barty groaned, holding his father’s stolen wand higher to give them some more light.They were currently creeping through a long empty section of London’s extensive sewer system, hunting for an object that Peter had hidden on the night of the Dark Lord’s defeat almost eleven whole years before. They’d left both Winky and the heavily drugged/Imperiused Crouch Sr behind at the safe house to guard Remus Lupin- not that it was really necessary.It seemed that the werewolf had long since resigned himself to waiting and conserving his strength for the right opportunity to make an escape attempt, rather than futilely trying to break through the copious protections on his prison… not that either of his captors would ever allow such an opportunity to occur if they could avoid it.(After all, Barty thought smugly to himself, there was hardly a better prison to keep a wizard in than one they’d built themselves. Lupin’s fear of his own wolf had worked out marvellously in their favour)“Stay here,” Peter suddenly commanded, stopping just before a large crack in the stone wall of the tunnel. “I’ll go get it,”With a soft flash of light the body of the balding, whiskery man shrunk into the form of a small brown rat, and he darted into the hole beyond the light of Barty’s lumos.Nervously, he licked his lips and waited, holding the light steady. After weeks of planning, argument, more planning and a final hammering out of a safe schedule, this was the very first physical step he and Pettigrew had taken on their new mission to find the Dark Lord… or at least, what was left of him.Of course, it would be weeks and weeks again until they even left England- there were supplies to acquire when the time was right, enchantments to weave, subterfuge to perform and one very risky full moon in September they’d need to wait for- but the very fact that they HAD a plan, and it was FINALLY in motion, made Barty feel almost giddy with delight.And this was only the very first part. But that was okay, now that he was actually DOING something, Barty could be as patient as a hag waiting for an infant to grow nice and plump for her dinner pot.A soft dragging sound came from within the crack in the wall after a few minutes of silence, and the rat slowly came back into the light, clutching a familiar bone white length of wood between its teeth.Barty felt himself grin at the sight.They’d retrieved the Dark Lord’s wand.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“So… we meet again, my old enemy,” Harry muttered as he stood before the innocuous muggle entrance to the Leaky Cauldron.Even now, he could already feel the chaotic pulse of magic stemming from the hidden alley behind its walls, bright and fierce and loud. Layers upon layers of wards stretched over Diagon, both those protecting the alley itself from prying muggle eyes and the countless individual protections on its many shops.The flash and hum of many individual wands casting thousands of inconsequential spells to wrap packages, levitate shopping and other mundane undertakings buzzed beneath the initial layer of wards. The discreet pops of house elves picking up various supplies mixed with the louder human cracks of apparition and the continual whooshing of at least four separate floo-connected fireplaces.A quieter, but no less invasive, cloud of perpetual enchantment in who knew how many magical items for sale hung over Harry like a fog beneath the more vibrant flashes of active magic use, and the thick shroud of goblin-made wards around Gringotts stood out against the more wizardly magics surrounding it like a beacon.It was both better and worse than his first few visits to Diagon last year- better in the way that Harry could now easily separate out the magical stimulation and control (to a limited degree) how it affected him, and worse in the way that he could feel so. Much. More. Detail. And Merlin, he wasn’t even INSIDE the alley yet!(Harry felt suddenly very grateful Sirius had opted to side-along apparate him to the muggle street outside rather than straight to the Leaky Cauldron or Diagon itself. He’d likely need some time to… properly adjust to the magical stimulus)“Feeling alright pup?” Sirius asked in concern, probably having noticed either Harry’s muttering or his pinched expression. Or both.Harry took a deep breath to steel himself, and let it out slowly.“I’m… okay,” Harry hesitantly replied. “At the very least, I don’t think I’ll pass out. I may need a headache draught or a long nap once we get home though… or both, both would be good,”“If it gets too much, let me know,” Sirius said firmly, squeezing his shoulder comfortingly. “We can always come back another day,”“I’d really rather not,” Harry grimaced.“Well, the supplies list isn’t too long this year,” Sirius consoled him as they both took the final few steps down the footpath towards the Leaky Cauldron’s door. “We should be in and out in no time, once all your friends get here,”The wizarding pub was as poorly lit and oddly welcoming as Harry remembered it being, with numerous witches and wizards of all ages sitting around the bar room chatting with their various acquaintances, drinking odd concoctions and eating late breakfasts. A few of these people gave Sirius some wary looks as the door opened, but nobody so much as glanced as Harry.With the scar on his forehead artfully hidden by some carefully combed hair and the scars on his limbs hidden by his long sleeved clothes, Harry was rarely ever recognised in public as the boy-who-lived anymore- a fact he was very, VERY glad for. It helped that he’d so far managed to avoid being photographed by the press; very few wizards and witches knew what he actually looked like beyond the tells of his scars… probably helped by the no doubt inaccurate descriptions they likely got from their school aged children.No sooner had Harry and Sirius crossed the threshold of the Leaky Cauldron they found their eyes drawn to a largely empty corner table, where an intimidating old lady wearing a stuffed vulture on her hat and a blond boy with his now-shoulder length hair in countless small braids sat.“Harry!” Neville Longbottom stood and greeted them happily as he spotted Harry and Sirius making their way over to the table. “It’s good to see you again! Thank you for the birthday present- I’ve already got all the seedlings settled into the greenhouses!”“And thank YOU for the book Neville,” Harry answered with a smile as his godfather moved to formally greet Augusta Longbottom- as the acting Lady Longbottom she therefore required a proper address. “Its interesting reading about the actual historical evidence of the lives of the founders; and in combination with the books Theo and Sophie sent…,”Neville had the good grace to blush as Harry trailed off knowingly and he smiled as his friend slid into the seat next to him, the adults on the other side of the table becoming engrossed in their own overly formal greetings.(“Dowager Longbottom, good fortune upon your house,”“And upon yours, Lord Black. Congratulations upon the title… and may you wear it better than your forebears,”)Harry noted that despite clearly feeling awkward about all the facetious ceremony, Sirius was none the less following polite society protocol perfectly and Augusta seemed reluctantly tolerant of his presence. Satisfied, he turned his full attention onto his bashful friend.“In my defence, I didn’t know what they’d sent until AFTER your birthday,” Neville defended himself sheepishly. “I guess the Chamber of Secrets was still on all our minds… did your godfather say anything?”His voice dropped to a whisper for this last question, eyes furtively sliding to the figures of his grandmother and Sirius, whom had finished being excessively polite and were now casually chatting about their charges like normal people.(“Neville has spent most of the summer in the greenhouses so far… and then tracking half of his fertiliser into the manor once he’s done,”“Yes, I heard that he topped his entire year in herbology from Harry. I’m sure those greenhouses would be a wonder to see in the spring. You must be proud of your grandson’s green thumb!”“…proud, yes, but you must admit there are more useful and less dirty subjects than gardening that children could easily take a more active interest in,”“Oh, like the Dark Arts? That’s what my mother would always tell my cousins whenever they tried to take an interest in anything not-,”“Need I remind you that the Dark Arts are largely banned by the ministry, Lord Black?”“And yet the study herbology remains delightfully legal! How wonderfully convenient that your grandson already has an interest in it!”“I… *sigh* So how is your godson doing in HIS studies?”)“He didn’t have enough context to be suspicious,” Harry answered with a shake of his head, trying to tune out the increasing levels of passive aggression wafting across the table. “Besides, I doubt he’d believe… well, about my mum, even if I told him outright,”After the Quirrell/Voldemort incident the previous school year, Harry and his friends had gone back down into the Chamber of Secrets several times to meet with its basilisk protector Guardian-of-Hogwarts. It had been an… enlightening experience for them all; not least their discovery on Salazar Slytherin’s enchanted family tree that Harry’s own Slytherin blood came from his ‘muggleborn’ mother, who (along with perhaps even more surprisingly, her fully muggle sister) had apparently secretly been a parselmouth herself.“When do you think Sophie and Theo will arrive?” Harry changed the subject lightly.“I overheard Grandmum dictating a howler to Lord Nott a few days ago,” Neville relayed with a wince, once again nervously eyeing the blithely chatting adults across from them. “I’m not even sure if Theo’s going to be allowed to come anymore,”(“I hear in the ministry that you still remain in contact with some of your old… associates,”“*sigh* Well, I’m trying to be. Remus still hasn’t responded to any of my owls,”“…that’s not who I meant,”“I know, but for the sake of keeping this conversation civil in front of the children, I’m going to pretend it was. My mail is nobody’s business but mine and my intended recipients,”“Fair enough. But… you are aware that continuing such contact will only fuel the rumours about you?”“Oh for the love of- If those parchment pushers are still talking about the incident with the opera dress and the singing bees back in ‘78, I SWEAR-,”“Not THOSE rumours!”)“Ouch,” Harry winced in sympathy, both for Theo and Neville. “Do you know what it was about?”“Mostly creative threats of bodily harm if he tries anything with you or me, as far as I heard,” Neville shrugged wearily, clearly long resigned to this kind of behaviour from Augusta. “Grandmum is a little paranoid about the people in… the Nott social circles. It’s a small wonder she didn’t send a threat to your godfather too, considering-,”Whatever Neville was going to say cut off as the London door to the Leaky Cauldron opened once again, and a clearly muggle family of five came trailing through, led by a familiar girl with wavy russet-gold hair only held back from her eyes by a strong headband.Both Harry and Neville stood as one to catch Sophie Roper’s attention. She waved enthusiastically as she caught sight of them, and murmured something excitedly to (presumably) her parents behind her.Augusta and Sirius also paused in their conversation as the Roper family wove their way through the Leaky Cauldron crowd towards their table. As they drew closer Harry noted that Sophie’s mother and father appeared to be in their early forties, with her elder brother and sister being somewhere in their mid-to-late teens.The entire family had the same sort of eye-shielding wavy hair that Sophie did, although her mother and her older brother were more blonde than red-headed, and they were all dressed in expensive looking muggle clothes that looked rather alien on their friend’s usually casual and reptile branded form.“Hi guys! It’s good to see you again!” Sophie said in an excited whisper once she got within earshot, all three of them promptly ignoring the new formalities between Sophie’s parents and their own guardians. “Have you seen the book list this year? Whoever the new defence teacher is must really look up to this Gilderoy person!”(“Albert Roper, it’s such a pleasure to meet the parents of Sophie’s friends!”“Er- well, technically I’m Harry’s godfather but-,”“Neville is my GRANDSON, young man,”“Yikes, wizards sure are uptight…,”“I heard that Nathan. We are guests here, be polite. I am Marie Roper, by the way. I apologise for my husband’s assumption, but there is SUCH a sweet family resemblance…!”)“Actually, Gilderoy Lockhart is doing that book signing in Flourish and Blotts today, right?” Neville pondered with a thoughtful frown. “Just in time for the Hogwarts rush. I wonder if he knew in advance that his books had been assigned to the curriculum…?”“Somehow, I doubt it,” Harry sighed, pulling out his own book list from his pocket and scanning the largely Lockhart authored titles. “He’s clearly a fiction writer- whoever is teaching defence this year is probably going to use them as examples of misleading creature information. Not very flattering to the author,”“Fiction you say?” Sophie asked curiously, darting over to Harry’s other shoulder to glance at the parchment. “…but those are all real creatures in the magical world. I thought the books would be autobiographical,”“Ordinarily I would agree with that assumption, but I already have one of Lockhart’s books,” Harry agreed, pointing to the book Voyages with Vampires halfway down the list. “I read it last year. It’s an interesting story, reasonably well written, but none of the practical facts match up to what’s in other defence texts, or to what we learnt in class last year. Even that tiny entry in Fantastic Beasts on sentient creatures versus beasts mentions things about vampires that directly contradict Lockhart’s narrative. I’d assume his other books would be of the same genre,”“Well rats,” Sophie sighed dejectedly. “We’re supposed to be learning about how to handle all of these dangerous magical things and yet there’s so few modern real life examples of people who make it their career! And here I was hoping that Gilderoy was some sort of magical hero writing his own biographies…,”“…to be fair Sophie, that IS how Lockhart’s stuff is usually marketed…,” Neville said, his frown deepening. “Harry, could you point me to some of the books that contradict Lockhart’s vampire stuff once we get back to school? If the new defence teacher starts teaching us incorrect information from his stories, then by the time our OWL’s arrive…,”“Sure, I’ll find them for you,” Harry agreed with a slow nod. “But… the new professor WILL just be using Lockhart’s texts as ‘bad examples’, right? If anyone facing an angry vampire actually tried using the techniques in his book… oh, I shudder to even think,”“And he doesn’t have a single title on handling any sort of reptilian creatures either,” Sophie added brightly. “So I guess he can’t be THAT good,”They all giggled a little at that. Sophie’s predilection for herpetology, the study primarily of amphibians and reptiles, was well known amongst the Quiet Ones. Not least because it had led to Sophie, consummate muggleborn and about as far from a Slytherin persona as one could get, engaging in a greatly determined (if, so far, fruitless) study of parseltongue.It was at this moment in the conversation that they all abruptly realised that the adults had stopped talking, and were all looking in their direction. Sirius had that unbearably smug expression on his face he got when proven right about something, Augusta was wide eyed and staring, both of Sophie’s parents looked vaguely teary with joy and her two siblings were openly gaping at them all.“…what?” Harry was the first to break the silence.Sophie’s older brother gathered his dropped jaw with a sharp click of his teeth.“I don’t think I’ve EVER seen Sophie talking for so long with something that isn’t cold blooded,” her sister said faintly, which earned her a chastising thwack on the head from her brother, in turn making her squawk in displeasure and their parents immediately turn from tearily proud to ready to break up an imminent sibling fight--and then the large fireplace in the opposite corner of the room flared green once again and three figures in traditional robes came striding through, one after the other. The first of which was a boy with dark brown hair and a sharp face, holding the hand of a much younger girl with similar features whom was presumably the sister he’d mentioned once or twice last year.“HI THEO!” Sophie called out shrilly in a clear attempt to halt her own siblings’ aggression before it could escalate.Visibly startling at the call, Theodore Nott glanced around the Leaky Cauldron warily until his eyes landed on them. He gave a hesitant wave of greeting in their direction as the last figure- a tall, elderly looking man with closely cropped hair the colour of pitch- came elegantly strolling out of the fire behind them. This man, presumably the infamous Lord Quentin Nott, bore hardly any resemblance to the two children before him but for the similar sharp lines of their faces and the near identical pureblood rigidity of their postures.It was like one of those old muggle western movies that Rabastan and Raleigh used to act out on particularly boring days in Azkaban; as Lord Nott entered the Leaky Cauldron everyone went eerily silent and look in his direction.Ignoring the stares with the ease of someone long used to attracting them, Quentin quietly herded his two children over to the gathering in their corner of the bar.“Good morning to you all. Lord Black, Dowager Longbottom,” Lord Nott said smoothly as he approached the table, holding out a polite hand to shake which Sirius took with surprisingly little hesitation and Augusta eyed like something infested with maggots before he moved on. “Mr and Mrs Roper,”Again, the atmosphere of the bar seemed to freeze.Sophie’s parents, shooting Augusta odd looks for her clear hostility, also in turn shook Lord Nott’s offered hand… oblivious to the wide eyed looks they were getting from around the room for the action. And Theo, Theo that smug bastard, was clearly supressing a satisfied smirk behind his usual impeccably polite mask.Harry tried not to stare, he really did, but the sight of Theo’s ex-Death Eater father shaking hands unconcernedly with a pair of muggles was one he’d never truly expected to see.(At least Neville and his grandmother seemed to be having similar difficulties keeping the gobsmacked expressions from their faces)-------The party that eventually went out into Diagon Alley was not quite as large as the group that had gathered in the Leaky Cauldron.Augusta Longbottom had business to attend to that day and would return to pick up Neville from Sirius’s care later in the afternoon. Similarly, Quentin Nott also had tasks of his own to attend to and formally left his son and daughter in the care of Sophie’s parents for the rest of the afternoon- an arrangement that, much to the rest of the group’s surprise, had apparently been planned well in advance by owl with Albert and Marie Roper.Quentin was still a bit of an unknown to Harry. His ex-history teacher in Azkaban, Phineas Travers, had given him a number of dire warnings about the current Lord Nott… but then again he hadn’t had any idea of the existence of Theo’s younger sister, nor had given any hint about this kind of oddly muggle-neutral behaviour from his fellow Death Eater. Of course, Harry reasoned, he had to keep in mind that anything Phineas had told him would be roughly a decade out of date by now considering the isolation of their imprisonment……but on the other hand, it was hard not to notice how both Theo and his eight year old sister, belatedly introduced as Odette Nott, instantly relaxed out of their impeccably trained pureblood postures the moment their father was back through the floo. Outwardly muggle-neutral or not, Quentin was clearly still as strict a traditionalist as Phineas had warned, if nothing else.In addition to Augusta and Quentin’s absences, Sophie’s older non-magical siblings, seventeen year old Nathan and fourteen year old Joanne, had apparently only come into the Leaky Cauldron in the first place apparently to see if their little sister’s claims of having actual human friends was true-(-clearly, it was-)-and had cars waiting outside to take them to friends’ houses for the rest of the day once the necessary introductions were made. They left before they could be roped into the rest of the school shopping trip, a task that even sweetened by magic was still mightily distasteful to the two jaded teenagers.According to Sophie, trading the quiet and polite Theo and Odette for the boorish and flighty Nathan and Joanne was more than a fair deal, a sentiment that had made little Odette giggle quietly, Theo smile and both of her parents frown disapprovingly… if resignedly.Theo’s almost entirely silent little sister seemed remarkably curious about the two muggles and their muggleborn daughter, and took to trailing after them like a duckling as their group made their way out into the back courtyard of the Leaky Cauldron.“She told me she’s been lonely since I went to Hogwarts,” Theo admitted to them quietly while Sirius went to open up the gate to Diagon, his sister swivelling her head back and forth like a curious owl to examine the area. “Odette doesn’t get out very much; I hope you don’t mind she’s coming along,”Of course, there had been absolutely no objections to the little girl’s presence. She wasn’t exactly an annoyance or a burden. It was rare to find someone even less inclined to speak than Theo, yet somehow Odette was managing it, the only noises she had made so far being the occasional giggle or huff of displeasure.And just now, a quiet gasp of awe as the bricks of the wall gave way under Sirius’s wand and the archway into Diagon Alley bloomed into existence.Harry took a deep, deliberate breath, and purposefully compartmentalised the massive load of magical stimuli his senses were suddenly struggling to process into a distant corner of his mind, doing his best not to think about it.True, it was a comparable act to attempting to ignore the roaring of an angry dragon directly in his ear, but at least Harry wasn’t being overwhelmed and on the verge of fainting.Yet.A soft tug on his hand drew Harry out of his inner preparations for entering the alley, and he looked down directly into Odette’s wide, blue eyes. The little girl could almost be Theo’s younger, female doppelganger but for the colour of those eyes; her brother’s was a muted hazel shade, and were often narrowed critically rather than wide and trusting like this.Harry valiantly resisted the urge to coo at the adorable little eight year old, before abruptly realising the reason WHY she was tugging on his hand was because the rest of the group was moving off without him, largely unaware of his necessary adjustments to the magical input of the alley.With a yelp of alarm, Harry darted forward with the once again giggling Odette dangling off his arm, before the group could vanish into the bustling crowd ahead.-------Seeing as all of the children actively involved in the school shopping excursion were entering the same year, the entire Diagon Alley trip was remarkably streamlined and simple.First up was Gringotts to withdraw some physical coin; most shops didn’t accept the bank’s large-sum promissory notes for purchases below fifty galleons, a sum that this simple school supply trip was unlikely to exceed even for all four students combined.Theo and Odette went down to their family vault together… Harry distinctly thought he saw Odette throwing up her arms and whooping with delight as their mine cart slid out of sight down the steep tracks, Theo clinging fretfully onto the sleeve of her robes.Neville ended up having to make the trip down to his trust vault alone… ‘Gringotts policy, key holders and legal guardians only,’ the goblin at the desk had sneered at Neville’s nervous, futile request to have one of the adults come with him on the dizzying cart ride down.Sirius and Harry had to make two stops down in the tunnels, lengthening their journey; once at the enormous trust vault the Potters had left for Harry’s schooling-(-unlike last year, Harry only took a modest 40 galleons rather than 100. He still had fifteen galleons from left from his last visit after all, and that was after Christmas and several birthday presents besides! Edward Selwyn, his self-proclaimed financial tutor in Azkaban and the former Lord Selwyn, would be proud of his restraint-)-and once at the primary Black vault to withdraw funds for his godfather’s own use. And oh Merlin, there had been SO many obviously cursed items in that vault. SO MANY.Meanwhile, Sophie and her parents had stayed up in the foyer of Gringotts to make a large exchange of muggle pounds to a respectable pile of galleons. The two muggles and their muggleborn daughter were holding back amused smiles at their markedly dizzier companions returning from the depths of the bank-(-except for Odette, Odette was practically vibrating with excitement. She even seemed to want to go again if the way she was glancing longingly back over her shoulder at the mine-cart entrances was anything to go by-)-and once everyone was accounted for, with their coin pouches heavier and shopping lists at the ready, they headed back out into the alley.……just in time to witness a brawl occur right in the crowded front doorway of Flourish and Blotts, between a man who was unmistakably a Weasley, another man who was unmistakably a Malfoy (if not THE Lord Malfoy, Narcissa’s husband and Draco’s father) and which was in the process of being broken up by none other than Hagrid, the gigantic groundskeeper of Hogwarts who could easily hold each man several feet apart from the other by the collars of their robes.Blinking at the unsightly scuffle, Harry turned to look at Theo in bewilderment. He shrugged and looked towards Neville. Neville shook his head wearily and looked at Sophie. Sophie’s eyebrows raised and she looked towards her parents.“Did two fully grown men really just start a fist fight in the middle of a shop?” Marie finally asked the question they were all thinking, directing the query to Sirius.Sirius grimaced at the question. Back over at Flourish and Blotts the Weasley man was turning an interesting shade of red at something scathing the Malfoy man was saying, a whole crowd of red headed children Harry vaguely recognised from Hogwarts looking on from the shop window. The twins in particular were making rude gestures at the Malfoy man just out of his line of sight.“Yes, yes they did,” Sirius sighed wearily. “Malfoys and Weasleys. They’re like cats and dogs if you put them into too close a proximity. There’s been a feud going between the two families for a while,”“Something about the Weasleys lending the Malfoy family money back in the thirteenth century to be precise,” Theo commented as the Malfoy man, followed by a smaller Malfoy Harry belatedly realised was Draco, detached himself from Hagrid and swept imperiously out of the shop. “The Malfoys refused to repay it- even when the Weasleys first went bankrupt during the War of the Roses, and they’ve been sworn enemies ever since,”Everyone turned to stare at Theo, who squirmed uncomfortably under the attention.“I may have looked it up when the junior Malfoy started ranting about blood traitors in the common room last year…,” Theo admitted in an embarrassed mumble. “With interest, I’d estimate the House of Malfoy would officially owe the House of Weasley over thirty-thousand galleons by now if the debt were ever recognised,”Sirius gave a low, impressed whistle as they watched the extensive Weasley brood slowly exit the shop and vanish into the crowd, the man who had been in the fight being chastised by a similarly aged red-haired woman- probably his wife.They collectively decided to leave Flourish and Blotts for last after that spectacle, with any luck allowing some time for the crowds gathered by the brawl to disperse.(Lockhart’s book signing wouldn’t be over until 4.30pm according to the banner in the window, so there’d still be plenty of time to get their new texts scribbled on by a famous hand if they so wished)-------Smaller shopping list than first year aside, there were still quite a few stops to be made in Diagon Alley that day if they wanted to complete all their purchases in one trip.Their little group of shoppers stopped by Madam Malkin’s first, in order to get some hoods professionally added to both Harry’s school and casual robes (having a hood to hide in from excessive noise, light and unwanted social interaction had been something he’d dearly missed in his non-muggle clothing over the past school year) and for Sophie to buy some casual wizarding clothing of her own so she wouldn’t be relegated to wearing muggle dress in all of her downtime.They visited an apothecary next to stock up on their potion supplies for the next term and for Neville to purchase a new reinforced cauldron of his own- he'd been using borrowed school cauldrons for most of the previous year once his first one (in addition to several of the following borrowed ones) had melted in a potions accident.They ventured into a magical toy shop that Harry had never been in before on Theo’s insistence, filled with childish fancies that whirred and bounced and made entertaining noises, where Odette picked out a tiny mine cart that zoomed around on a thin track of hovering rails that twisted into improbable shapes (Theo paid for that with a wistful smile) and Sophie bought a mechanical, silver ‘bracelet-snake’ that artfully wrapped itself around any vaguely wrist shaped object it touched.They briefly browsed through Quality Quidditch Supplies (or rather, Sirius, Harry and Sophie did while the rest of the group watched in bemusement) for uniform owl-order forms should either of them make it onto their respective house teams that year, and they made a brief side stop at the junk store next door where an old telescope in the window caught the eye of Sophie’s dad.They stopped by the Magical Menagerie so Neville could pick up another ‘escape proof’ tank for his pet Trevor (the last one had apparently been quickly conquered by the exploring toad), while Theo browsed for owl treats that might meet the standards of his father’s picky parliament… and Harry did his best to ignore the irritated hissing of several dozen bored snakes in the reptile corner while struggling to keep a straight face in front of the shopkeeper.(The snakes in pet shops apparently picked up on some very creative swear words, who knew? Thankfully, Sophie’s purchase of the mechanical bracelet-snake had seemingly dissuaded her from buying a live one, much to both her parent’s and Theo’s clear relief)Harry was starting to feel very weary by the time they all trooped into their second last destination for the day, Eeylops Owl Emporium. A sensory headache was painfully building behind his eyes, each flash of light, array of bright colours or overt enchantment making his head pound just a little worse as his hours in Diagon accumulated, but thankfully it eased a little as he entered the darkened, magic-low shop. Hundreds of glittering, predatory eyes followed their every move as Theo made a beeline for the store’s own owl treat display and Harry started to browse for a bird of his own.“Any preferences pup?” Sirius asked quietly as both Neville and the Ropers split off from them to explore the shadowy shop on their own. “Different owls can do different things- we can always ask the shopkeeper if you want certain traits,”“So long as they can make the journey from Grimmauld to Hogwarts and back regularly I’ll be happy,” Harry shrugged, looking over a perch where several near identical tawny owls watched him back critically. “And ideally to the North Sea as well, but I can always forward my mail to them… to you… instead…,”He felt himself trailing off as his eyes caught a glimmer of silvery white in the darkness of the shop.(Flecks of black amidst the white, a mirror of the colour of his own hair…)Harry had taken a single step towards the odd flash of colour, when a sudden rustle of feathers and a rush of swooping air over his head made him startle and raise his arms protectively over his eyes.A clawed weight suddenly rested upon his head, mussing up his long hair and almost pulling it out of the ponytail he’d tied it into that morning. A curious ‘prek?’ sort of sound came from the feathery weight as Harry warily lowered his hands, coming face to face with the upside down head of a snowy owl peering directly into his eyes.“Er…?” Harry gaped.“Prek?” the owl cooed, snapping its beak at him with an inquiring click.There was an abrupt, poorly stifled snort of laughter from the direction of Harry’s godfather.-------The as-yet-unnamed snowy owl would not leave Harry, or perhaps more accurately Harry’s hair, alone, not even at the shopkeeper’s futile attempts to coax her into a cage.The owl had clearly and decisively chosen Harry as her wizard, and despite the poorly hidden amusement of his traitorous friends, Harry was inclined to keep her.(It was NOT that funny Theo! Just because his father’s owls didn’t happen to sit on HIS head in introduction, grumble mumble…)After Sirius made the purchase for Harry of the owl and the various owl-care supplies he’d need for her-(-Harry would have done so himself, but he was still rather occupied with the owl sitting on his head and primly ‘grooming’ his increasingly unruly hair-)-they made their way as a group back to the much less busy Flourish and Blotts, where both the crowds generated by the Weasley/Malfoy brawl and the long line of fans waiting to get books signed by Gilderoy Lockhart had largely dispersed.The owl, which Odette had temporarily named ‘Wig’ in her very first audibly discernible word of the day much to the ever increasing hilarity of his treacherous so-called friends-(-seriously, you too Neville? It’s not THAT funny!-)-had tucked her head under her wing upon coming out into the afternoon sunlight, and had promptly fell asleep upon Harry’s scalp… without untangling her claws first, and thus remaining firmly rooted upright in his hair.By this point Harry had resigned himself to ‘Wig’ acting like an actual wig until further notice lest he want to lose large chunks of hair to her talons, and could only hope the owl was intelligent enough to vacate his head beforehand if she wanted to vacate her bowels.(He certainly got a few odd looks from passers-by on the street, but nobody openly questioned him for seemingly wearing a living owl as a hat)Flourish and Blotts was as tantalisingly stacked high with books as ever, and there was a large banner advertising the book-signing hanging from the upper level balcony above an empty table with a dwindling line of bored looking witches standing in front of it. Gilderoy Lockhart was nowhere to be seen, despite it only being 1:30pm- a whole three hours before the signing was due to end.And he did not reappear during the entire time Harry and his friends trawled through the bookshelves for both their required texts and their… extra-curricular reading.(He had an extra 15 galleon allowance after all from his birthday, Harry thought as he peered hungrily at the neatly sorted shelves, why not use it?)“Lockhart’s officially on a ‘lunch break’,” the assistant manning the register scathingly grumbled as he sorted through the Quiet Ones’ ominously large stack of purchases after almost an entire hour of Lockhart-free browsing. “But personally? I think he’s off with that Daily Prophet reporter somewhere giving a ‘special interview’. Again,”The Quiet Ones all exchanged looks at this, their opinions of the author of their new schoolbooks collectively taking a turn for the worse. Sophie’s parents looked a little scandalised at such a breach of professionalism, and Sirius, perhaps knowing something about Lockhart that Harry didn’t, looked vaguely ill.A large stack of crisp new books in a magically expanded shopping bag in tow and a sleeping snowy owl on his head, Harry left Flourish and Blotts feeling……odd.A niggling feeling had nagged at the back of his mind just beneath the ever present hum of the MAGIC of Diagon Alley during their exploration through the shop, one that only he could feel judging by the carefree expressions and chatter of his three friends around him.It felt… familiar somehow……but as they exited the bookshop it quickly faded away, leaving Harry’s mind to turn to other, more immediate concerns.Like preventing the passive-aggressiveness between Sirius and Augusta Longbottom from reaching critical mass when they returned Neville to her care back at the Leaky Cauldron.Or watching the adorable awed expression on little Odette’s face (and the oddly endearing mirroring expression on Theo’s) when they were introduced to one of the Roper’s cars on their way to stay with Sophie’s family for the rest of the afternoon.Or pondering, yet again, over Kreacher’s suddenly much less prejudiced and far more helpful behaviour towards him ‘post-Dobby’ when Sirius had apparated the both of them back home.(“Kreacher has hot chocolate and shortbread waiting in the drawing room for Lord Black and young master Potter nows they being home. Kreacher will put away their shopping so theys can relax,”CRACK“Our bags…! …did that really just happen?”“I was about to ask you the same question…,”)But all in all, as Harry set up a perch for ‘Wig’ in his room that evening (finally coaxing the sleepy owl off of his head in doing so) and lined up his numerous new books in the library compartment of his trunk, one thought was stronger in his mind above all.After a year of adjustment, after growing used to the magic of Hogwarts and then training himself with the wards of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, after largely overcoming his sensitivities to light and sound and starting to manage his sensitivity to magic itself……he’d made it through a whole, uninterrupted shopping trip in Diagon Alley with his friends, unscathed for all but a lingering headache.Harry flopped back on his bed, a wide, satisfied grin stretched upon his face.He’d won.-------(That night, in a house affectionately nicknamed ‘the Burrow’, an eleven year old girl opens the embossed black diary she found amidst her expensive text books. It’s blank on the inside…But not for long)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The rest of the summer of 1992 passed by very quickly for Harry after his triumph over Diagon Alley.In between sorting out which of his books would remain in his room and which would be coming with him to school, spending some bonding time with ‘Wig’-(-honestly? He HAD attempted to name her something else, but she’d refused to respond to any name without ‘Wig’ already in it. Harry knew when to pick his battles, and if the owl liked the name little Odette had chosen, he wasn’t going to force her to adapt to a new one-)-trawling through the Black library for non-standard reading material he could feasibly take to Hogwarts without risking theft and/or expulsion, writing more letters to his friends both in Azkaban and out-(-Raleigh Gibbon had found the ‘Wig’ conundrum hilarious. Phineas Travers had seemed baffled by the existence of a second Nott child, only mildly assured by the fact she’d been born after his incarceration. Antonin Dolohov had simply asked Harry how his long-complete summer homework had gone-)-reviewing his first-year textbooks in preparation for the new school year, meeting Sirius’s cousin Andromeda Tonks and her family over a lavish dinner prepared by Kreacher-(-he’d accidentally called the familiar looking woman ‘Aunt Bella’ more than once, much to his own embarrassment, Andy’s alarm, her husband Ted’s horror and her metamorphmagus daughter Nymphadora’s guffawing delight. Sirius had also found his faux-pas highly amusing… or at least until he’d also accidentally addressed the newly graduated Nymphadora ‘call-me-Tonks-or-else’ Tonks as Bellatrix over dessert-)-and having a last minute ‘pity-party’ with Sirius on August 31st when they received, once again, another denial from the Ministry on their petition to visit Azkaban during the upcoming Christmas holidays.It made sense that the Ministry wouldn’t allow two ex-prisoners access within less than a decade of their own release-(-or, as the scribbled note from one Rufus Scrimgeour on the denial letter put it, ‘have you COMPLETELY lost your minds?! Letting either of you within a mile of a dementor so soon after releasing you would be the height of foolishness! Do you have any idea what the media could DO with such a story?!’ and so on so forth-)-but Harry still couldn’t help but feel a little downcast that he wouldn’t be able to see any of their ex-cellmates in person any time soon.From the letters both he and Sirius continued to receive from the inmates of the northern tower (or as it was informally known, the ‘Death Eater block’), they could gather that their friends were all doing well; or at least, as well as they feasibly could while stuck in Azkaban with no hope of ever being released……and it got Harry wondering.After the revelations Lord Voldemort had monologued to him back in February (and Harry himself had later confirmed by trawling through Salazar’s own library), he was now all but certain that the relative sanity of the Death Eaters of Azkaban and their seeming immunity to the effects of the dementors was due to his so-called ‘aura of reason’.But Harry wasn’t in Azkaban anymore. He hadn’t been there for over a year. And yet their questionably aligned friends (thankfully) still hadn’t started to regress to their former, wretched states.Were the effects of Harry’s passive aura truly so permanent even without its immediate presence? He wondered that night, his trunk packed at the end of his bed and Wig sleeping deeply in preparation for her long flight the next day. Or was there some other kernel of truth about passive wizarding auras that he hadn’t yet discovered?It was a question his inquisitive, Ravenclaw mind refused to let go of, and Harry resigned himself to a lot more research in the library of Salazar Slytherin this upcoming year… and perhaps, finally informing the other Quiet Ones of this ability of his he’d so far kept secret.Groaning, Harry flopped over and buried his face in his pillow.The more mysteries he solved, the more that seemed to come to light in their place.-------
A cherry tree, heavy with dark green leaves and sparse with occasional crimson dots of mostly harvested fruit, sways in the cold wind that sweeps the empty tower courtyard.

It is pale, sunlight starved, and its almost unhealthy seeming bark seems to glow silver under the moon…

The scene changes, and in a greenish-dark chamber lined with snakes of stone, a similarly silvery sapling reaches towards the cavernous ceiling even as its roots burrow into the ancient floor…
-------The boy looked lost.Perhaps it was the helpless, wide eyed and almost tearful looking expression on his face behind his thick, round glasses.Perhaps it was the fact he was wearing dull black robes edged with grey amidst a crowd of judgemental looking muggles in the middle of King’s Cross station.Or perhaps it was because he was dragging a battered looking trunk in one hand and confusedly looking down at a small slip of paper in the other, mouthing the words ‘nine-and-three-quarters?’ every few seconds.…Now perhaps Harry might have come to the logical conclusion a few moments earlier had he been slightly more awake, having not wasted his previous night’s rest with thinking, worrying and odd dreams about cherry trees.After all, it would have been a simple conundrum if the lost looking boy had been eleven years old and flanked by two muggle parents… but no, the perhaps-fifteen-or-so year old teenager was standing bewilderedly between platforms 9 and 10 entirely alone.“Transfer student,” Sirius said out of nowhere, suddenly at Harry’s side with the trolley he’d borrowed for his godson’s trunk and making him jump in surprise.“Padfoot! Don’t scare me like that!” Harry hissed an admonishment, lightly elbowing his smugly grinning godfather in the ribs. “And what do you mean transfer student?”“That kid you were staring at, he’s probably a transfer student to Hogwarts from another wizarding school,” Sirius clarified with a nod towards the increasingly frantic looking boy unknowingly pacing right outside the muggle entrance to Platform 9¾. “Grey edged robes are for unsorted students of any age, not just first years. Poor kid probably didn’t get any instructions on how to get onto the platform in his transfer package,”Harry looked appraisingly at the boy once again, narrowing his eyes. His large glasses and feathery mouse-brown hair gave him the appearance of a perpetually startled owl, but beneath those features there was the familiar sharp edged bone structure of a pure-blood wizard around his narrow face. Harry couldn’t quite place exactly what family he might be from, but he couldn’t deny he looked vaguely familiar…“Come on Harry, let’s help him onto the platform,” Sirius nudged his godson gently. “Changing schools is probably stressful enough without getting lost along the way,”And with that, both Harry and Sirius started forward towards both the lost boy and the magical platform’s hidden entrance.Massively uncomfortable with the sheer numbers of people jostling around them, Harry still couldn’t quite understand why they hadn’t simply flooed or apparated directly to the Hogwarts Express this year, but Sirius had insisted on having him use the muggle entrance from King’s Cross station ‘at LEAST once- just in case!’.And- at least for the poor lost boy they were about to aid- it seemed making the crowded detour had been worth it.“Hello there!” Sirius said brightly as they got within earshot, startling the poor boy so badly he let go of the handle of his trunk, dropping it to the floor with a BANG and only just missing the battered looking cat carrier sitting next to it. “Hogwarts too?”Harry resisted the urge to hide behind his godfather at the even stranger looks they were now getting from the muggles around them. Thank Merlin he’d let Wig fly ahead to Hogwarts rather than taking her along in a cage. The lost boy’s robes and their large, old-fashioned trunks were drawing enough attention as it is without having a snowy owl in tow.(Not to mention the fact that Wig would have more than likely refused her cage altogether and decided to perch on Harry’s head for the whole journey)The boy, his comically wide eyed expression doing nothing to dismiss the comparison to a perpetually startled owl, was staring at Sirius as if looking at a long-dead ghost, his gaze sweeping from the top of Harry’s godfather’s neatly combed hair to the soles of his boots. He seemed to recognise him with a familiar kind of wariness; as many wizards did these days after the news of Sirius’s innocence had hit the papers.But the question was, Harry thought worriedly as he took in the boy’s reaction to his godfather, which version of the story did this person believe…?After a further moment of nervous gawking, the boy straightened up almost imperceptibly, swallowed hard and stuck out a clearly trembling hand to an increasingly bemused Sirius.“Eamon,” the boy squeaked, faint traces of a somewhat slavic accent around his words. “Eamon Selwyn, sir. It’s… nice to meet you?”And now it was Harry’s turn for his eyes to bug out at the newly introduced boy.He knew that name. They BOTH knew that name!
-‘I have a son just a few years older than you Harry,’ Edward Selwyn had once said, a fond, nostalgic smile on his face. ‘Little Eamon will one day take my family’s lordship in my place…,’

His smile had faded into a worried frown as he trailed off.

‘That is, if his guardians allow it,’ Edward had muttered, more to himself than to the curious boy beside him. ‘His mother’s parents got custody last I heard and they’re not exactly…,’-
Seemingly either unfazed by or entirely ignorant of this revelation, Sirius grasped Eamon’s hand with an enthusiastic shake and beamed at him.“Ah! I thought your face looked familiar!” Sirius said cheerily, ignoring the now extremely odd looks the muggles around them were giving. “I’m Sirius Black, but it looks like you already know that; and none of this ‘sir’ business, it makes me feel old!”“You ARE old Uncle Padfoot,” Harry said as dryly as possible in an attempt to hide his sudden nerves, earning a devastated gasp from his godfather that he primly ignored and finally drawing the somewhat shell-shocked Eamon’s eyes to him.Eamon did an almost comical double take as he noticed Harry’s presence at Sirius’s side, mouth falling open once again. Harry tried his best reassuring smile.“My name’s Harry,” he introduced himself gently, offering his hand to Eamon himself. The older boy, as many of the adults Harry met, seemed to flinch a little at the sound of his eternally raspy voice, but he gingerly extracted his fingers from Sirius’s grip none the less and hesitantly shook Harry’s own, eyes darting about at the muggles around them in a significant manner.He opened his mouth as if to ask something, and then closed it again as if thinking better of it, and then reluctantly opened it once more…“Would you like some help finding the platform?” Sirius offered warmly before Eamon could even begin to stammer out his request.(The way Eamon’s entire body seemed to deflate and the look of sheer relief that came over his face answered that question even before the boy’s nod of agreement)-------Walking through the illusionary wall that separated the muggle King’s Cross station from the magical platform 9¾ felt like passing through a cloud.The wards here were meant to obscure, to protect, to separate out those who were allowed to pass through from those who weren’t… The feeling of their critical analysis on their little party made Harry shiver and desperately want to sneeze. It wasn’t unlike the feeling that had washed over him upon leaving through the heavily warded tunnel out of the northern tower that final time……no, now was not the time to be thinking about such things.It had only just gone ten am as Sirius Black, Harry Potter and Eamon Selwyn stepped out of the wall and onto the platform, the merry red cars and engine of the Hogwarts Express ready and waiting on the tracks before them. There were several families milling about already, but it wasn’t nearly as busy as Harry knew it would get by the time the train was due to leave.However, regardless of how comparatively empty the platform was… they were already drawing a rather large number of conspicuous looks from the wizards and witches around them.Sirius, cheerfully ignoring all of the stares they were collectively attracting as he pushed forward their luggage trolley-(-now piled up with both Harry’s and Eamon’s trunks plus Eamon’s battered old cat carrier, which upon closer inspection contained a mangy, napping calico furball that he’d shyly introduced as Selene-)-strode purposefully over to the closest open door of the express, followed somewhat more hesitantly by his two charges. Eamon almost seemed to be (ineffectively) trying to hide from the inquisitive looks they were getting behind the much shorter Harry, and Harry himself was already beginning to regret not having worn one of his muggle hoodies so he could hide his face. The long sleeved cardigan and jeans he was wearing to cover his scarred arms and legs suddenly seemed… inadequate to truly conceal his identity.“So, any preference kids?” Sirius asked as he started to lift the feather-light trunks one by one into the hallway of the train car. “Front or back compartment?”“Whatever’s empty I suppose,” Harry answered with a shrug that Eamon almost perfectly mirrored at the same moment, making them both start abruptly and narrow their eyes at the other.Sirius snickered at them both and started hauling their luggage into the closest open compartment. Eamon cautiously picked up Selene’s carrier and followed after him, Harry bringing up the rear as they passed into the train proper and finally out of the sight of the vast majority of their curious onlookers.Harry’s trunk was already shelved and his godfather had Eamon’s trunk halfway into the rack beside it by the time the two boys had entered the room, Eamon having slowed considerably to gape at the lavish decoration and upholstery of the magical train. The compartment that Sirius had chosen was reasonably large, yet cosy feeling- there would easily be enough room for all four of the Quiet Ones and their trunks, plus maybe three or even four other visitors if the train was crowded.Eamon looked considerably less tense than he had back out on the platform, but Harry noted he stiffened slightly again once Sirius had finished putting up his trunk and turned his attention back to them.“Alright pup, it’s-,” Sirius briefly paused to check his muggle wristwatch. “Quarter-past ten, so you’ve got forty five minutes or so before the train will leave. I’ve got to go out there soon and… socialise,”Sirius punctuated this last word with an exaggerated shudder and a look of disgust that Harry was hard pressed not to openly giggle at. His godfather opened his arms invitingly and, disregarding their audience for the moment, Harry stepped forward and hugged him tightly.(Engrossed in their embrace, both of them completely missed the look of sheer bewilderment Eamon wore at the sight)“You’ll be okay pup?” Sirius murmured in Harry’s ear as they pulled back.“I’ll wave goodbye to you out the window when the train leaves,” Harry answered with a slightly watery smile, feeling suddenly choked up. “I’ll write, and I’ll use the mirror, and I’ll be back home for Christmas…,”Sirius’s eyes were starting to glisten a little too by this stage, but he covered it up with an only slightly forced sounding guffaw.“Hey, who’s meant to be comforting who here?” he jested, and pulled Harry in for another brief hug. “Don’t go getting kidnapped this year, you hear me?”“I’ll do my best, but in previous experience most of my kidnappers don’t tend to take my opinions into account,” Harry dryly replied, quickly wiping his moist eyes with his sleeve.“Kidnapped?!” Eamon’s quivering voice interjected in alarm, drawing both Sirius and Harry’s attention back to their guest.Godfather and godson exchanged a look.“I’ll leave it to you to explain. Toodles!” Sirius quipped brightly, before transforming into a large black dog without any further ado and bolting from the room.“What-? Uncle Padfoot, HEY!” Harry exclaimed as his canine dogfather sprinted out the door and out of sight. By the time Harry made it to the doorway the hall of the train car was empty, Sirius having made his escape.What the hell? They were right in the middle of a perfectly good emotional goodbye, and then Sirius just-Harry’s increasingly confused thoughts were interrupted by a subtle, almost pained wheezing sound from behind him.Suddenly remembering Eamon’s presence, Harry turned back around with an apology on his lips for his godfather’s exceedingly odd behaviour……only to realise that, doubled over and shaking, his face red and glasses foggy, Eamon was desperately trying to hold back laughter.-------“Malfoy is being insufferable,”The dry, neutral tone of this oft-repeated complaint from Theodore Nott was the only warning Harry got before the Slytherin boy sagged through the compartment door and dropped down onto the seat beside him, head lolling back on the cushioned wall.On the other side of the compartment, until recently engrossed in a fourth-year arithmancy text and unnoticed by the two second years, Eamon Selwyn froze like a rabbit before an oncoming train.“Normal Malfoy insufferable, or extra insufferable?” Harry asked without looking up from his own book on advanced household charms he’d picked up from his most recent trip to Diagon.“Define ‘extra’,” Theo sighed wearily, eyes sliding shut and a hand coming up to rub at his temples. “He’s… for a lack of a better word, ‘excited’ about something. Something that he clearly wants his acquaintances to question him about but he will inevitably refuse to describe,”“Any bets on him spilling this extremely important secret he’s probably been entrusted with to your whole common room by October?” Harry wryly questioned, turning the page of his book.“No bet,” Theo snorted, his eyes opening again… and finally landing upon the other occupant of the room.The effect was immediate. Theo’s slouched posture immediately went ramrod straight and he smoothed a hurried hand through his somewhat mussed hair from his earlier dramatics. Curiously, Harry looked up at his friend and noticed two bright red spots of embarrassment on his cheeks. Within moments, Theo appeared a near mirror to Eamon’s stiff stance opposite him.“…Eamon, this is Theo. Theo, this is Eamon,” Harry said slowly as neither one of the boys seemed inclined to move or speak. “Eamon’s a transfer student into fourth year from Durmstrang. Sirius and I found him while he was looking for the platform, and we agreed he could stick with me until we got to school,”Neither boy seemed any more inclined to move for the introductions. Harry wondered where the red-faced, uproariously laughing Eamon from not ten minutes before had gone, the one that had (once he’d gotten his breath back) easily, if still somewhat shyly, briefly explained his situation (which honestly wasn’t much more than what Harry had just told Theo) and asked if he could tag along with his group until they reached Hogsmeade so he wouldn’t get lost again.Harry had, of course, gladly agreed, and they’d quickly settled into a peaceful silence with their chosen books while awaiting the arrival of Harry’s friends. In hindsight, maybe Harry should have clarified to Eamon just who some of his friends were…Just as Harry was wracking his brains for something useful to say that might break this tense silence, the compartment door that Theo had only recently shut behind him slammed open once more, revealing the VERY unwelcome faces of Draco Malfoy and his two young bodyguards that Harry couldn’t for the life of him remember the names of.He had his typical sneer on his face and seemed to be about to say something biting to Theo (most likely for trying to escape his attentions earlier if Harry went by previous experiences) when he noticed Harry and Eamon.Somehow, Eamon went even MORE rigid at the sight of the Malfoy heir, doing an uncanny impression of a terrified gargoyle.“Selwyn! So this is where you were,” Malfoy smirked, taking an unwanted step into their compartment that made Harry involuntarily bristle. “My father was getting desperate looking for you on the platform…,”At this Eamon went pale.“…thought you might have gotten hopelessly lost or something! We were going to leave you behind!” Malfoy cackled like a demented hyena, his bulky bookends giving their own low chuckles. “But no, looks like you were picked up by the Azkaban charity case on the way in. Honestly Nott, you should be ashamed of your company,”Theo prickled with barely concealed anger at the jab, but Eamon seemed to shrink in on himself ashamedly at the taunting words. And Harry……oh, that was a step too far. That was. Out. Of. Line.He’d had a lovely summer. He’d had a wonderful birthday, and many long days in his godfather’s company. He was about to be separated for Sirius for another long school term, he was barely keeping his usual composure as it was and Harry was NOT IN THE MOOD FOR THIS.The temperature of the entire compartment seemed to drop a few degrees.Slowly, like a snake uncoiling from rest and rising to strike, Harry got to his feet, unblinkingly keeping eye contact with the Malfoy heir.His gaze narrowed, a displeased frown marring his expression, and the smirk on Draco’s lips faltered.“Get out,” Harry said quietly, his usually raspy voice even quieter and more sibilant than before.Draco blinked, one of his feet involuntarily shifting before he could stop himself. He forced a confident, arrogant sneer back onto his face.“Or what, potty Potter?” he crowed, unheeding of the way his two bodyguards had already shuffled all the way back out into the corridor, faces pale and eyes wide. Due to their proximity to Malfoy, they’d been on the receiving end of this ‘method’ of Harry’s to scare off unwanted attention far too many times to stick around for long once he got started.In this way, it was clear they were actually wiser than the second highest ranked student in their year that they followed around, when Draco continued with:“You’ll tell your mother on me? Oh wait, you don’t have one so you had to tell MY moth-,” Draco cut off with a choke as his words failed him.Anger simmered deep in Harry’s gut as he almost saw the choking cloud of magic around Draco’s throat SQUEEZE. It had been a while since he’d displayed any truly accidental magic. After leaving Azkaban, he’d rarely had a reason to, in between the safety of St Mungo’s and the acquiring of his wand.But silencing a prejudiced, ranting fool in his anger like this was something that still came far too easily to him.Harry tilted his head crookedly as Draco silently spluttered, trying to force out more ugly words that would never be heard as his already pale face grew paler.“You have… absolutely… NO idea, what I could do to you,” Harry began softly, taking a single step towards Draco that had the boy scrambling backwards in alarm. “Now, GET. OUT,”Just as Draco backpedalled wildly over the threshold, the door slammed shut without any input from either of them. Harry blankly watched the shaded doorframe, taking deep, calming breaths as he heard hurried footsteps fleeing outside.That had been… different. Even through all of his irreverent bullying of the non-Slytherin members of their year group in the previous school term, Draco Malfoy had NEVER actively prodded at Harry like THAT before. ‘Azkaban charity case’? Theo ‘should be ashamed of his company’? Eamon ‘had gotten hopelessly lost’?All childish insults, but laced with unmistakable hostility.It appeared, at the very least, that the promised ‘talk’ that Narcissa had said would give her son about bothering heirs of ancient houses (like Theo and Eamon BOTH were) had either wildly backfired… or something else was afoot.However, at that moment, still silently seething at Draco’s arrogance and slowly toning down his ‘scare off overly interested purebloods’ demeanour that Aunt Bella had taught him, Harry was simply too angry to properly think about the strangeness of the situation.All was utterly silent in the compartment for a few moments.……broken shortly by an awed sounding round of applause from Eamon.-------It was barely five minutes until the train was due to leave (according to the clock outside on the platform at least) by the time anyone else came by the compartment.Sophie Roper did a brief double take as she noticed Eamon sitting by the window, Theo leaning over his arithmancy text beside him with a look of intense concentration on his face as the older boy quietly explained the concept of algebra to him.(The earlier confrontation with Malfoy, to say the least, had definitively broken the ice between the two)But, beyond blinking slightly in confusion, she simply shrugged off his presence and hauled in her trunk beside Harry, whom was lying back across the entire length of the opposite seat broodily.“Something happen?” she asked him quietly as she lifted her lightened trunk up into the racks.Harry grimaced a little at the question, before sitting up and moving over to give her room to sit down.“Sort of,” Harry shrugged in reply as she got herself comfy by the window. “Just had a bit of an unwanted epiphany, is all,”
-‘Awe, Harry Potter. My aura radiates awe,’ Lord Voldemort had explained, just before attempting to set the basilisk of Hogwarts on his helpless captive. ‘And it means that whether I am followed or hated… looked upon with fondness or suspicion… feared or even despised… it means no man or woman alive can ever dismiss me,’-
Sophie went pale.“Did we forget to cover some of our summer homework?!” she gasped in alarm, causing Theo and Eamon to briefly look up at her in confusion and startling an unexpected laugh out of Harry.“No, nothing like that,” Harry reassured her with a smile, although he could almost see the gears turning in his friend’s head as she mentally went over each of their subjects. “Just… Malfoy was here earlier,”“Ah, I see,” Sophie nodded understandingly, all explained.“Harry scared him off using… that,” Theo elaborated, casting a subtle side-eye at Eamon who wasn’t in the know about the events of last February at Hogwarts. “He got all pensive and broody afterwards- probably thinking about the nature of good and evil or something equally depressing and philosophical,”Theo said this lightly, but Sophie frowned none the less at the connotations he was implying. Harry grimaced again, this time internally, knowing there’d likely be a stern lecture from his Hufflepuff friend about how he was ‘nothing like you-know-who, honestly if just a bit of play acting scares those prats serves them right’ etcetera, etcetera once they were alone.Honestly? Harry was almost looking forward to it, if for no other reason than the fact that it would give him a great opening to finally explain his ‘aura of reason’ to the rest of the Quiet Ones.He’d kept that particular secret from them- from everyone, really, including his godfather- for far too long already, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to find a good reason to bring it up in casual conversation. Even after having informed them of arguably more grisly facts he’d discovered that night… like the small detail that his patented ‘method to scare off overly interested purebloods’ was in fact a scarily accurate impersonation of Lord Voldemort and that he understood if they didn’t want him to ever use it again.(Back then, Theo’s answer had been word for word, ‘Are you kidding? It’s the PERFECT way to chase off Malfoy’. Both Sophie and Neville had generally agreed with the sentiment, but nevertheless Harry grown reluctant to use it now knowing of its origins… excepting situations like today)“My grandfather said that one of my father’s old friends would come to the station to show me the way,” Eamon added quietly, shifting nervously in his seat as the three second years all turned to look at him. “Lord Black helped me out, but I guess it was the Malfoys that were actually…,”Eamon trailed off and shrugged uneasily at the concerned looks he was getting around the compartment.“Eh, good riddance,” Theo said easily with a matching shrug, making Eamon visibly start. “Sirius Black is a much better option than Lucius Malfoy any day, trust me. Just compare how their kids turned out,”Harry felt his face flush red at the smirk and nod Theo sent in his direction at this quip, and Sophie giggled. Eamon still looked a little unsure, but at that moment the final face they’d been waiting for appeared at the door to the compartment, puffing heavily as if he’d just run a race.“*huff* Sorry… *huff* late… *huff* trouble with…,” Neville Longbottom wheezed out as he leaned heavily against the doorframe, the handle of his floating trunk gripped tightly in one hand and a secure basket most likely containing Trevor the toad in the other. His hair, while still done up in the multiple braids he’d favoured since the beginning of the last school year, was clearly in disarray and his robes were on crookedly.“Let me guess, your gran tagged along with the Weasley’s this year like she threatened to do in that howler to father?” Theo drawled dryly, nevertheless standing to help Neville and his trunk limp into the compartment.“They’ve got a floo connection- why do they even need a car?!” Neville moaned dejectedly as he slumped heavily into the nearest available seat, gladly letting Theo and Harry manhandle his trunk into the racks and situate Trevor’s basket next to Selene’s carrier. “The twins kept ‘forgetting’ things and that made them late to pick us up… And the barrier almost shut on us…! Ron and Ginny were stuck on the other side for a good ten minutes before Gran got a conductor in to fix it…,”There was a sharp whistle from outside, and a great rumble as the gears of the train began to grind to life. As one, every occupant of the compartment got to their feet-(-even the still out of breath and swaying Neville, and a slightly bewildered Eamon who was likely just following their lead-)-and crowded over to the window to gaze out onto the swarming platform.The easily recognisable stuffed vulture on Neville’s grandmother’s favourite hat was clearly visible through the mass of people. A small pool of red and gold hair that was Sophie’s muggle family waved from the far end of the platform, her older siblings looking markedly less interested than her parents even from this distance. Theo’s father, accompanied by the tiny bouncing figure of little Odette, stood out in a precisely empty circle amidst the otherwise packed crowd.And Sirius.The large black dog sitting on the platform with a wilding wagging tail-(-and being given numerous odd looks by various bystanders, Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to know just how far his godfather had gone as Padfoot to avoid social interaction-)-gazed up at Harry’s compartment with a lolling-tongued smile as the train shuddered and began to pull away from the station. He transformed smoothly back into a man, smile just as wide (minus the tongue) and waved wildly as the Hogwarts Express began its journey north.Out the small gap in the top of the window, Harry waved back until his arm was sore, and the platform had all but vanished from sight.(If there were some tears involved on either side, his companions were polite enough not to mention it)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Lovegood, Luna!”“RAVENCLAW!”Harry clapped dutifully, peering from beneath his hooded school robes as a girl with flyaway greyish-blonde hair and oddly protruding eyes plucked the sorting hat delicately off her head and wandered absently over to end of his house table.Ravenclaw had not been doing well so far this year for new students, Harry noted as ‘Orson, Killian!’ was sorted into Gryffindor after the Lovegood girl. Out of the small pool of roughly thirty first years, nearly half had been placed into their houses already… and Ravenclaw had so far only netted three of them, all girls.At this current moment, in fact, Slytherin was far, FAR ahead of the rest of the houses in terms of new firsties.“Proudmoore, Annabeth!”“SLYTHERIN!”Case in point. Honestly, the odd trend wasn’t that much of a surprise to Harry.All of the new students this year would have been born in between 1980 and 1981- a period of time in which the power and influence of the Dark Lord had arguably reached its peak before his untimely defeat and disappearance. Was it really any wonder that out of the admittedly tiny pool of first years, the majority of them came from longstanding ‘dark’ families with tendencies towards Slytherin?Even the customary contingent of muggleborns amongst their magically raised peers seemed lower than usual in this year group… likely also for reasons related to the peak of the last wizarding war, and the anti-muggle sentiment that had accompanied it.Maybe in future years the number of new students would enlarge a bit- who knew?“Prune, Angus!”“RAVENCLAW!”Harry clapped again as the first boy of the Ravenclaw first years joined their table, absent-mindedly glancing about at his largely disinterested and hungry looking house-mates as he did so. He was pretty sure he’d completely forgotten most of their names over the summer, and there were a few people openly staring at him, as always.He sighed, hoping he wouldn’t have to scare off any intrusive questioners over the opening feast. The Quiet Ones, unfortunately, had had to separate over to their individual house tables ‘as so not to confuse the new first years’ with their clashing house robes, as Professor McGonagall had sternly (if apologetically) put it when she’d met them in the entrance hall.Their preference for disregarding the house table separation was apparently so well known that she’d come specifically to warn them off for this one special occasion… or perhaps she simply had just taken the opportunity to inform them early while on her way to pick up Eamon Selwyn out of their midst.Speaking of Eamon, Harry could see the older boy standing awkwardly back near the doors while the first years all had their turn at the sorting hat; and presumably being left for last rather than being crammed in alphabetically with the much younger students, Harry noted as a ‘Smith, Zacharias’ was called up and promptly sorted into Hufflepuff.He wondered which house Eamon might end up in.Catching a glimpse of Malfoy’s platinum blond hair and smugly smirking face across the room as a ‘Veritas, Juniper’ was sorted into Slytherin, Harry suddenly found himself hoping that the older boy wouldn’t be joining the snakes. He would have enough troubles going along with his family name alone, never mind if he was sorted into his father’s house as well.After all, even if Harry largely remembered Edward Selwyn as a rational, intelligent and kind man with a good head for numbers and finance… he ALSO remembered what the man had been like in Azkaban in his earliest memories, likely before Harry’s ‘aura of reason’ had fully kicked in. Not to mention the fact that the former Lord Selwyn had been initially incarcerated on the conviction of skinning a muggleborn wizard alive, BEFORE the Dark Mark had been discovered on his forearm.If that didn’t end up being some sort of stigma towards Eamon, then Harry would eat the pointy school hat lying disused at the bottom of his trunk.“Weasley, Ginerva!”“GRYFFINDOR!”The very last first year ambled over to the hollering and cheering Gryffindor table looking slightly queasy, and Professor McGonagall rolled up her long scroll of names as Eamon gingerly made his way forward in between the largely oblivious Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables.(Ravenclaw only had five new students in total: two boys and three girls, compared to Hufflepuff’s seven. From what Harry could count, Slytherin had at least thirteen, and Gryffindor, their table too far away from Ravenclaw’s for Harry to accurately count, had netted the rest)“And now, for our older new students,” Professor McGonagall loudly announced before the rest of the great hall could get too rowdy in anticipation of dinner. “Joining the fourth years, Selwyn, Eamon!”A hush swept over the hall as Eamon nervously made his way up to the stool and sorting hat, although whether it was because his family name had been recognised or merely because transfer students were a relative rarity at Hogwarts was unclear.He looked a little silly sitting down on the tiny stool meant for first years, and the sorting hat fit his head rather more properly than it did an eleven year old, leaving his wide and vaguely startled eyes clear to gaze out over the rest of the hall.The hat was silent for a long moment, and Harry found himself crossing his fingers and holding his breath.“HUFFLEPUFF!” the hat shouted out, and the breath Harry had been holding rushed out in a relieved sigh.Sophie immediately began clapping over at the black and yellow table with a broad grin on her face, quickly followed by the rest of her gregarious housemates as a somewhat relieved looking Eamon made his way over. Another fourth year boy-(-Diggory or something? Sophie had pointed him out last year as one of the infamous ‘Hufflepuff mentorship buddies’… argh! Why could Harry remember something as inconsequential as that yet still not remember if the boy sitting next to him was called Michael or Oliver?!-)-with an attractive smile and fair hair immediately stood and corralled Eamon into a seat next to him rather than leaving him to sit awkwardly with the first years.Yes, Hufflepuff was probably the best house the older boy could have been sorted into, the not-so-subtle scowls of certain Slytherins (*cough*Malfoy again*cough*) two tables over firmly confirming that notion.With a few words of jovial nonsense from the headmaster that Harry largely ignored, the tables were suddenly filled with food and most any gossip related to the sorting was pushed firmly aside in favour of satisfying hungry bellies.As per usual, the house elves had gone overboard with the feast, and Harry quickly filled his plates with a variety of small titbits that he hadn’t yet had a chance to taste over the past year. A spoonful of fried rice with peas here, a thin slice of spinach frittata there, a half-ladleful of a spicy beef curry dish that had appeared down near er- Padma Patil he thought her name was?- one or two of his favourite crispy potatoes before their entire tray was emptied, a small roll of paprika and cheese encrusted bread…He could stomach significantly more food now than he could at the beginning of the previous school year, but he was still well aware he couldn’t put away NEARLY as much as some of his growing housemates. If he wanted to sample everything, he needed to do just that; sample, not take entire serves and hope for the best… no matter that his er, ‘cosmopolitan’ plate was drawing some entirely strange looks on its own.Harry was just reaching for an interesting looking roasting dish filled with what appeared to be sausages baked in some kind of savoury batter, when said dish was abruptly slid right into his waiting hands by a set of delicate fingers almost as pale as his own.“Toad in the hole,” the soft, absent sounding voice of the owner of said fingers stated dreamily as she placed the serving spoon into Harry’s other hand, making him look up in surprise.Sitting right beside him, in the place where Harry was almost certain Michael (or maybe Oliver?) had been sitting mere minutes before, was one of the new Ravenclaw first years- the greyish-blonde haired girl with slightly bugged out eyes.She had a large helping of the sausage-pudding (‘toad in the hole’ she’d said?) on her own plate, and was nibbling on a forkful of it absently without paying even the slightest bit of attention to the odd looks she was attracting from her neighbours, least of all the bewildered Harry.He blinked, and gingerly scooped a small portion onto his own plate before beginning to slowly eat, shooting the first year inquisitive looks every now and then. When had she changed seats? Harry was sure he’d seen her sit down at the end of the table with the other first years after her sorting… sure enough, at a glance he could see the other four new Ravenclaws gratuitously chattering away some distance apart from them.…chattering quite loudly, in fact.“…of course Loony there had to be sorted into Ravenclaw,” one of the other girls -Mary something or other?- moaned and pouted, looking a moment away from throwing an elegant tantrum or something of the like. “Mother said I’d be rid of her come Hogwarts but nooo!”“I thought for sure she’d be a duffer-puff,” the girl beside her agreed snidely, stabbing something on her plate with her fork. “It’s bad enough she keeps coming to daddy’s ministry functions with her sorry excuse for a father…,”Harry promptly tuned out of the sniping conversation-(-much like it appeared the two very uncomfortable looking first year boys across form the gossips had done-)-and worriedly turned his attention back to the girl sitting beside him. For the moment, she seemed entirely unaffected by the nasty words that were most likely directed at her… that, or she simply hadn’t even registered them in the first place.The girl seemed rather… up in the clouds actually. Or perhaps off with the fairies. Her bulbous eyes were glazed over and fixed upon the sparkling stars shining through the ceiling, her mouth politely closed and chewing slowly at her dinner. She appeared… absent. Like her spirit had left her mortal shell behind to eat their dinner while she flittered away to do other, more important things beyond this facet of reality.Whatever the case, her mind was clearly wandering, and Harry was suddenly concerned that it might not come back. There was something oddly unsettling about the blankness behind those eyes. As though if a legilimens at that very moment tried to invade her surface memories, they’d only get grey, uniform static.She appeared happy enough, for now, despite her dazed state- so Harry decided to leave the girl be and instead focused upon his own varied dinner. The main courses were devoured without any further ado, and while they garnered some odd looks from those around them, there were thankfully no intrusive questions. Or really, much conversation directed their way at all.It was quiet around their spot at the table, or at least as quiet as it could possibly get in the busy and buzzing great hall, and Harry honestly felt rather relieved at this fact. He’d gotten so used to dining together with all the Quiet Ones at school that he’d been somewhat nervous at the prospect of being separated from them during one of the busiest feasts of the year.Perhaps the hood was helping in that regard, Harry contemplated as he cleared the last bite of fried rice from his plate. He’d flipped up the new hood on his school robes almost as soon as he’d put them on upon the train and hadn’t bothered to lower it since- it felt warm and comforting, shielding his face from inquiring gazes… and if nothing else, it definitely fielded a sentiment of ‘don’t bother me’ to those around him.(Minus, obviously, his new first year neighbour… who happened to be clearing the toad in the hole from her plate in small, precise bites that left an almost artistic spiral pattern in her leftovers, now that he looked. If it weren’t for the perpetual, dreamy smile that graced her expression, Harry would have been slightly worried about how long she’d been zoned out against her surroundings by now)The picked over remains of the main course vanished from the tables without fanfare, and were quickly replaced by a veritable cornucopia of sweet dishes. As per usual, the desserts were astonishingly varied as per the frankly overcompensating house elves’ whims, and Harry once again took little samples of anything that looked or smelled interesting. A scoop of green sorbet that smelt vaguely of apples, a few iced biscuits dotted with jam, a scoop of hot chocolate pudding with a pool of rich sauce in the bottom of the dish…The first year girl beside him, on the other hand, had abruptly come back down to earth with a little hum of disappointment when the remaining spiral marked toad in the hole had vanished from her plate. She was currently gazing about at the multi-coloured riot of desserts with a distinct air of indecision as Harry made his own selections.A moment’s contemplation, and Harry placed the serving dish of chocolately goodness he’d just served himself from beside her plate.“Chocolate self-saucing pudding,” Harry mumbled slightly awkwardly as the girl’s permanently wide eyes glanced over at him curiously. “I think it’s good with whipped cream,”The girl hummed again, inquisitive this time, and took a decent sized scoop of cakey pudding and sauce to place on her own plate.Harry had to hide a smile when she made a happy noise upon her first bite.-------“Well then, now that we are all fed and watered, your attention please!” Professor Dumbledore called out from where he stood beside his seat, the desserts having faded away from the house tables mere moments before. “I have a few start of term notices to relay to you all,”The headmaster rattled off a vaguely familiar sounding list of reminders and rules that Harry was fairly certain were identical to those he’d relayed the year before; back when he’d been distracted by his first troubles with his scar stinging in Quirrell’s (and by extension, Voldemort’s) presence.At this reminder of the now deceased DADA teacher, Harry let his gaze wander over the staff table properly for the first time, wondering just who was replacing him and letting Dumbledore’s speech for the most part go in one ear and out the other.(He registered enough, however, to realise that apparently whatever would cause horribly painful deaths in the formerly forbidden third floor corridor had been either removed or fixed in some way over the summer. Huh)Most of the familiar faces sitting at the table were completely unchanged, if maybe a little less stressed looking than they had been during the exam season at the end of the previous school year. His head of house, Professor Flitwick, was smiling radiantly out over the Ravenclaw table, and Professor McGonagall (his second favourite teacher behind Flitwick) was giving a similar look to her Gryffindors (interspersed with the occasional stern frown of warning that was almost certainly aimed at the Weasley twins).All of the other core and elective teachers seemed equally content, or at least carefully neutral in their demeanour… except for one.Professor Snape, the grouchy potions master of the school, looked somewhere in between murderous rage and committing ritual suicide to end his suffering, the butter knife clasped in his white knuckled fist likely meant as the instrument of death in either case.And the cause of such a mood was ghastly plain to see.Harry’s eyes widened. Dressed in expertly tailored pastel pink robes and sitting in the traditional defence professor’s seat to the potion’s professor’s right, was a man that Harry recognised all too well from the winking and grinning covers of his multiple new defence textbooks.“…and may I introduce our newest teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor Lockhart!” Dumbledore concluded, confirming Harry’s identification. He gestured to the handsome, pink-clad wizard, whom stood up with a winning smile and a practiced casual wave that had practically the entire female population of Hogwarts emit a dreamy sigh as one… along with a not insignificant number of the boys.There was a round of customary applause for the new teacher (Quirrell, likely as the former muggle studies teacher, hadn’t received such an introduction the previous year), and Harry briefly wondered as he clapped if the author would end up being a decent teacher or not.On one hand, Gilderoy Lockhart clearly wrote fiction with largely inaccurate details about the creatures he supposedly faced. On the other hand, surely he must have done significant research on the beasts for his novels? Research that he could extrapolate into informative and concise lessons for impressionable young students…?Okay, so maybe Harry was a little worried…The newly minted Professor Lockhart winked charmingly, drawing a few delighted squeals from his audience, before taking his seat gracefully once again as Dumbledore continued on with his announcements.Professor Snape, Harry noted with a mixture of amusement and fear for their newest teacher’s life, looked distinctly like he wanted to dig his obnoxiously pink neighbour’s baby blue eyes out with his dessert spoon. Slowly. The famous author seemed entirely oblivious of this fact, and immediately began attempting to strike up (probably not for the first time) another conversation with him as Dumbledore rounded up his speech.(Good Merlin, it was almost as if Lockhart had a death wish. Clearly, his air of social charm only functioned at a respectable distance. Couldn’t he SEE the way Professor Snape was already eyeing the sharper instruments of cutlery before them?!)“…and now, the school song!” Professor Dumbledore proclaimed, a devious twinkle in his eyes and a supressed groan in the throats of most every other professor at the table. “Choose a favourite tune, or even a less favoured melody, and sing along!”The familiar ribbon of lyrics shot out of the headmaster’s wand, and the great hall promptly descended into a vaguely tuneful cacophony. At a loss for what else to choose, Harry hummed along slowly to the tune of Scarborough Fair, as he’d done last year. The first year girl still sitting beside him-(-and really, he needed to find out her name at some point. He couldn’t just keep referring to her mentally as ‘first year girl with protruding eyes’!-)- on the other hand, was singing aloud… in what Harry suspected was either some form of obscure Gaelic or entirely nonsense verse. Whether or not it was a hastily translated version of the Hogwarts song at all was unclear……but, Harry noted, she did have a rather beautiful singing voice.-------“You’re Harry Potter,”Harry did his best not to jump in alarm.It was the first thing the girl had said to him besides introducing him to the serving dish of (admittedly, delicious) toad in the hole, and she had said it while they were halfway up the stairs leading to the Ravenclaw common room.The prefects that had guided the rest of the Ravenclaw first years out of the feast and away from the great hall seemed to have entirely forgotten the absent minded straggler that had attached herself to Harry. Probably due in part to the influence of those two nasty girls whom had been badmouthing ‘Looney’ so loudly from the other end of the table, neither of whom Harry suspected would have raised the alarm for their missing classmate.(He honestly felt a little apprehensive at the idea of the three girls having to share a dorm)“Yes. I am,” Harry replied, fidgeting with the sleeve of his robe as their words drew curious looks from the older Ravenclaws climbing the stairs around them. It was no real surprise that the first year knew who he was- most children raised in the wizarding world seemed to know his name, and simply listening to the whispers that inevitably seemed to follow him about at Hogwarts was enough to discern his identity.But the way she’d said it with such certainty…“And you’re… Luna?” Harry asked in what he hoped was a casual manner, having wracked his brain for memories of the sorting during their mostly silent walk from the great hall and had come up with only one name that might feasibly been spoonerism-ed into ‘Looney’.“Luna Lovegood,” Luna (thank Merlin) confirmed with a dreamy smile. “Some people call me Looney,”Harry wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, but at that moment they reached the top of the stairs where the door to the Ravenclaw common room awaited… along with its infuriating, riddle spinning doorknocker.“What gets wetter the more it dries?” the bronze eagle asked neutrally as they approached.Harry blinked, pausing before the closed portal. He glanced around for a senior student, or a prefect.Or, honestly, anybody who wasn’t him. He was TERRIBLE at riddles.Alas, it appeared the rest of the Ravenclaw student body was either already ahead of them in the common room, or far behind dawdling on the stairs.He could feel his palms growing sweaty under the scrutiny of the doorknocker’s metallic gaze…“Hmm, a cloud perhaps?” Luna’s dreamy voice interrupted Harry’s imminent internal panic. “As water dries on the ground, it rises into the skies to make the clouds larger and wetter,”Both Harry and the doorknocker turned to stare at the small first year girl.“Or, failing that, maybe a tea-towel?” Luna continued absently, her gaze steadily rising towards the ceiling and becoming foggy once again. “As it dries the dishes, it becomes increasingly damp… Then again, a wilting knorflilly would also fit the description; as it sucks up swamp water and turns the ground to sand, it grows increasingly bulbous and jelly-like, therefore-,”“Er- well reasoned?” the doorknocker hastily interrupted as Luna seemed primed to spin off into another tangent, allowing the common room entrance to swing open before them without any further ado.Luna seemed to almost float over the doorframe, carefree and absent as always as she headed towards the lecturing prefects laying down the law for her fellow first years, and Harry followed her ever so-slightly in awe of the deft way she’d handled the doorknocker.If for no other reason, he now had an excuse to keep tabs on the girl; a good riddler he could feasibly follow into the common room regularly was not a resource to be wasted.(Even if there was something oddly… unsettling about the way Luna Lovegood’s eyes immediately seemed to glaze over once again as she unobtrusively joined her peers.Wherever her mind was currently wandering, Harry suspected it was far, FAR away from the halls of Hogwarts)-------(“…Wig, aren’t you meant to be up in the owlery?”“Prek,”“I know I didn’t pack that owl-perch in my luggage- did the house elves set that up?”“Prek? Krek!”“I do realise that the cats and toads are allowed to stay in the dorms, but I’ve never seen an owl-,”“Prek!”“*chuckle* Well, if the house elves so clearly approve, then I’ll just need the permission of my dorm mates. You’ll need to be quiet while we’re sleeping alright?”“Gahw…,”“Let me just find that mirror… ah-ha! Sirius!”“Prek?”“Sirius, you wouldn’t believe who found their way into my dorm tonight…!”)-------Diagon Alley was dark.Unsurprising, seeing as it was the middle of the night and every establishment bar the Leaky Cauldron and Gringotts had shut down hours before, but there was something undeniably eerie about traversing the usually bustling street while it was still and dim.At this time of the day, Knockturn Alley was the focal point of the magical shopping district of London, where drunken revellers and predatory creatures roamed about the seedy off-shoot of the more respectable Diagon without a care, sampling debatably legal wares from pop-up stalls that could vanish at a moment’s notice if necessary under the ghastly hue of summoned witch-light.A figure hidden in a heavy brown cloak stood at the relatively bright entrance-way to Knockturn with an almost wistful expression as he watched the crowded chaos from a distance… and turned away, heading back into the silence and emptiness of Diagon.In his thin and knobbly hands sat a surprisingly agreeable rat, little nose twitching and beady eyes scanning the darkened street almost neurotically.Man and rat passed by Gringotts and its solitary goblin sentinel without a second glance, heading out of sight of its curious gaze into a narrow shopkeeper’s access lane in between ‘Larrimer’s Luggage and Travelling Equipment’ and ‘The Ominous Oracle: Professional Divination Supplies and Tarot readings’.In silence, the rat squirmed out of the man’s hands and dropped to the cobblestones, darting out of sight under a small gap in the back doorway to the luggage shop.A few minutes later, there was a soft click as the lock disengaged and a near-imperceptible hum as the alarm wards were deactivated, and the door opened to reveal Peter Pettigrew standing on the other side.“Took you long enough,” Barty Crouch Junior muttered jokingly as he hurried into the small anteroom beyond, pulling off his heavy, concealing cloak the moment his accomplice closed the door behind him.“I’m an animagus, not a cursebreaker,” Peter said dryly with a roll of his eyes. “YOU try deactivating multiple security wards wandlessly while pretending to be a common house pest,”“You did it in Slughorn’s office once; I’m sure that a simple shopkeeper’s alarms would have been no match for the stuff he had on his liquor cabinet,” Barty shrugged with an absent grin. “One of the few times I regretted turning down Gryffindor with the hat when I heard you’d shared around his stash with your housemates,”“One: that was Sirius’s idea- I was all for selling it bootleg to the seventh years,” Peter remarked as they both strolled out into the storeroom at the back of the shop. “Two: FOCUS. We can reminisce later, right now we need to concentrate on getting through our shopping list by dawn,”Tonight was a night Peter and Barty had been waiting for, for weeks. On the first of September- the day on which the Hogwarts term began- practically all of Diagon Alley went up in a massive sale to rid themselves of their surplus school supplies. It was one of the busiest days of the year for the merchants here, and both shoplifting and ‘lost’ merchandise was common.Thus, it was an ideal opportunity to mask their own activities. So long as they could avoid tripping any wards, anything the two Death Eaters stole from Diagon tonight would most likely be written off as such losses presumably taken earlier in the day; after all, the last thing they needed was a DMLE investigation on their burglary while they were trying to get out of the country.“How many shops can we hit again?” Barty asked casually as he strode over to the stacked shelves marked ‘Camping Equipment’.“Four. Maybe five if we can get through the first four quickly enough,” Peter repeated for what felt like the tenth time, repressing an urge to sigh as he examined some backpacks. “But ideally, we should get through our list with as few stops as possible. Let’s see, we need… a small tent, camping utilities, potions ingredients, long-life food, tracking reagents, a decent portkey focus, first aid supplies…,”“Only for you, Mr medi-wizard,” Barty quipped fondly as he selected an unembellished tent-bag and read the specifications on the tag. “How about some more wands too?”“Absolutely not,” Peter denied instantly with a vehement shake of his head, plucking two large leather hiking bags off a rack. “Ollivander’s is warded to the teeth, plus I’m pretty sure the old wandmaker sleeps in his workshop. We’d be there all night just trying to get through the front door without being detected,”“Noted. How about some proper restraints for our werewolf?” Barty continued as he opened the bag to examine the folded tent inside. “We’ve only got another week or so until the full moon we’ve been waiting for, and it’s not like we’ll be able to lug his whole cage along with us,”“Barty, Knockturn is off-limits, you know that. But if you can think of anywhere in Diagon that actually sells that kind of thing, be my guest to point me in its direction…,” Peter sighed wearily, going through some of the other bags on the shelf. “…as it stands, I know we can’t just leave him behind, but I don’t like the idea of trussing him up like some sort of-,”“Beast?” Barty interjected, completing his inspection of the tent and passing it over to his accomplice.“Prisoner. I was going to say prisoner,” Peter corrected defensively, shoving one of the empty hiking bags into the other and taking the tent from Barty to do the same. “It would be so much easier if he would actually just cooperate with us,”Barty raised a sceptical eyebrow at this, and Peter glared at him in response.“You and I know both know the likelihood of that happening,” Barty said flatly, making Peter huff disgruntledly. “Look, Pete, I know you have this sentimental attachment to him and all, and there’s the safe house to think about for when we bring our lord back to England but… well, there’s always other buildings we can ward and-,”“We are NOT killing Remus,” Peter interrupted with a growl, making Barty take a step back and raise his hands defensively.“I’m not suggesting we do,” Barty said carefully. “We’ve already got our plan for him laid out and set either way. What I’m trying to say is, once we find Him, what would you do if the Dark Lord suggests otherwise?”Biting his lip, Peter said nothing. Barty sighed.“Okay, okay, we’ll deal with that if and when we come to it,” Barty acquiesced, picking up the magically expanded hiking sack containing their looted supplies. “If it’s any consolation, I’d rather not kill Lupin either,”This time, it was Peter who raised an incredulous eyebrow at a suspiciously grinning Barty.“Winky likes talking to him; they’re pretty much the only things keeping each other from going completely stir crazy,” Barty quipped playfully. “Now come on, transform back. I’ve got a good idea for our next stop,”-------Words are written. Words vanish into the paper. Words reappear and reply…‘…and he had this hood on his robes that he had up for the ENTIRE feast, and it made him look so mysterious and wise, and I think I saw Luna sitting next to him and-’‘If I may interrupt Ginny, might I ask just why this Harry Potter is so famous?’‘OH! You must have been made before it happened then! Do you know about the Wizarding War?’‘With Grindelwald? Certainly, I lived through parts of it’‘Not THAT war silly! You see, there was this evil wizard who everyone was too scared to say the name of so they called him you-know-who, but was really called V-V-Voldemort…’‘…interesting. Do go on Ginny…’Words continue to be exchanged, silent but for the occasional scribbling of a quill, all through the night.(A red headed first year girl has deep circles under her eyes at breakfast on the second day of school, and it is naturally chalked up to homesickness) ---- ***BONUS SCENE***(“Barty…,”“Yes? Come on, these ones could probably hold a transformed werewolf. Silver inlay and all that. Let me look at the enchantments tag,”“Barty, this place…,”“Oh! And we’ll need a muzzle too probably, just for safety,”“Barty… is this a… sex shop?”“…maybe?”“Don’t ‘maybe’ me! WHY are we robbing an adult store?!”“YOU were the one who asked if I knew anywhere in Diagon Alley that sold restraints!”)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

10am
“…that’s a tree. Why is there a tree?”Theo’s dry, bewildered exclamation echoed emptily throughout the Chamber of Secrets, easily echoing the thoughts of the other two uninformed, bewildered Quiet Ones next to him. Harry chuckled somewhat nervously in the doorway behind them.They’d finally returned for a group visit on the first Sunday of the new school year, and Harry hadn’t exactly… told them what he’d left behind after their last time down in the Salazar’s ancient halls.“Ah… hah hah? Surprise?” Harry said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head over the hood of his robe.The small, inert cherry pit that Harry had planted between the paving stones of the forbidding Chamber late last June had clearly flourished over the intervening two months.The delicate masonry of the main hall’s floor, already cracked in places and eroded by water damage, had split apart beneath the fledgling roots of the pale cherry sapling. Amazingly, it had already grown to Harry’s shoulder height, and it sported a healthy coating of pale-to-deep green ovoid leaves over its flexible braches, some of the outer layers already starting to go orange around the edges due to the approaching Autumnal weather.In the sparse, greenish light that radiated magically from the enchanted ceiling of the Chamber, the tree appeared to almost glow with a pale reflection off its sun-starved bark. So far, at least to Harry’s eyes, the new sapling appeared almost identical to the tree that had borne its seed all the way back in Azkaban.“A… cherry, I think?” Neville muttered to himself as he narrowed his eyes at the unexpected greenery before them. “Prunus avium or cerasus, by the looks of it, but the odd colouring and being a mundane plant I can’t really be sure…,”“Oh, er, it’s a sweet cherry tree, if that helps Neville?” Harry replied with a surprised blink. He really hadn’t been expecting botanical questions so soon, but that was Neville- herbology genius- for you.“Avium then,” Neville declared with a succinct nod. “But it’s so tall already… if you only planted it back in June… especially with the unnatural light levels…,”Sophie cut his musings off with a vague wave of her hands.“Magic, that’s what it is probably,” Sophie shrugged with another hand-wave. “If we can turn mice into teacups and back, who’s to say we can’t make trees grow faster than normal in magical spaces? Just look at the Hogwarts greenhouses,”She turned to Harry then, a slightly worried expression on her face.“Did Sasha agree to this?” she murmured her worried question. “It looks like it’s damaging the floor of the Chamber…,”“Don’t worry, I asked Guardian-of-Hogwarts for permission before starting my illicit gardening,” Harry reassured, pointing to the faint outline of the coloured circle around the base of the cherry sapling’s trunk. “See? I even marked out the spot for her so she wouldn’t run it over before it was big enough to be seen,”“Where IS Sasha anyway?” Theo suddenly asked, tearing his bewildered eyes away from the tree for the first time since entering the Chamber. “I didn’t see her on our way through the catacombs; usually she’d be here to greet us by now,”Indeed, the lofty Chamber was empty of all reptilian life- let alone the massive basilisk that usually kept the Quiet Ones company whenever they ventured into its depths. The large, inanimate serpentine carvings that crawled up the columns lining the hall and decorated the engraved walls were the only snakes in sight.“She’s probably out hunting,” Harry answered Theo with a shrug. “Or patrolling her tunnels above- or asleep in her den, mind you. The wards will let her know that we’ve arrived once she returns, and we can say hi to her then,”“One of these days, I’m going to map that rats’ nest…,” Neville muttered determinedly, gazing up at the darkened entrance to the tunnels riddling the school above.“Perhaps wait until Sasha’s around to guide you Nev,” Theo sighed, placing a placating hand on the Gryffindor’s shoulder. “Do you really want a repeat of last time?”Neville flushed at the reminder of the time they’d all gotten lost looking for the basilisk in the tunnels at the end of last May, foolishly believing they knew enough of the labyrinth by that stage to get around safely… They’d all been stuck wandering around aimlessly in the filthy pipe network for upwards of an hour before Guardian-of-Hogwarts had finally gone looking for them and guided them out.“Either way, Sasha’s not here now,” Sophie shrugged. “We’ll just have to keep our queries to ourselves until she returns. To the library?”And without any further ado, at that suggestion they set off again.(Harry breathed a quiet sigh of relief that his little gardening project had been received well by his friends… and he finally felt some of the lingering tension from his ‘interesting’ first week back at Hogwarts lift at last.One revelation down, Harry thought with a nervous swallow as they approached the library- and a certain book it contained…, one more to go)------
10:15am
A collective sigh of contentment issued from all four of the Quiet Ones at once as they entered the secluded little library off the main hall of the Chamber of Secrets.The room was sparse, as always. Besides the book lined walls, all the furniture that remained in the room were a few ancient looking armchairs upholstered with tanned animal hide, some choice silken rugs scattered over the floor and two small upright writing desks, like those once used by Saxon-era monks, that were pushed up against one corner.Sophie and Theo each took a dusty armchair, while Harry and Neville made themselves comfortable on the rug lined floor.“So- how has your first week back been?” Sophie asked brightly as they all got settled in the now-familiar room. “It feels like I haven’t had the chance to properly talk to you guys in ages, what with all the new…,”Sophie trailed off uncomfortably, her expression twisting abruptly from happily sunny to a pained grimace.“Fans?” Harry dryly suggested, tugging the hood down off his head voluntarily for what felt like the first time all week. He’d never been so glad he’d had the alterations made in time for this year…“Yeah,” Sophie confirmed with a wince. “Is it just me, or are the stalkers somehow WORSE than last year?”“Trust me, it’s not just you,” Neville sighed exasperatedly. “I swear, that Creevy kid has my timetable memorised! And don’t get me started on Ginny, even if all she does is lurk…,”“I find myself with similar complaints about Malfoy and his two bookends,” Theo grumbled sympathetically. “He may not come up to us all while we’re together any more, but in the common room it’s a non-stop barrage of ‘blood-traitor’ this and ‘my father’ that. He’s got a little posse of first years hanging off his every word, and I’m fairly certain he’s been sending them to bother us in his place now he’s trying to provoke Harry rather than befriend him…,”“For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry about all of this,” Harry apologised, immediately garnering offended squawks of disapproval from all three of the others. “I mean it! Most of these people are only following us around because of me!”“MOST,” Theo emphasised with a pointed glare. “Not all. Malfoy’s only got himself to blame for his attitude towards you, and you’ve done all you can to discourage everyone else’s attentions- don’t blame yourself for THEIR awful behaviour, no matter what idiocy that prat Lockhart might imply about ‘fans’,”All four of them shared an in-sync shudder at the thought of Lockhart.By now, a week into the new school year, it was clear that Harry’s worst fears about the new professor had come to pass.How such a handsome, charismatic and otherwise charming man could become so utterly MORONIC when confronted with:a) the subject of Defence Against the Dark Arts,b) opportunities to grandstand about his own wildly unrealistic publications,And c) the individuals ‘Severus Snape’ and ‘Harry Potter’,-was a frustrating, incomprehensible mystery. Lockhart was a skilled charmer, popular with an overwhelming majority of the younger student body despite his clear faults as a teacher, and self-assured to a point bordering on narcissistic… but he could just be so STUPID sometimes!Suffice to say his overall intelligence was showcased by his continued determination to try and make friends with/become sponsor of and/or seduce their famously strict and anti-social potions professor. Despite repeated, and increasingly vitriolic, rebuffs on Professor Snape’s part.(At least the ever-increasing betting pool the Weasley twins had started over when and how Professor Snape would snap and violently end Lockhart was fun. The Quiet Ones had collectively put down four sickles on ‘by October’ and ‘force fed shrinking solution, trapped in a cardboard box and owl-posted to an amoral taxidermist’, if only because it was one of the most entertaining options to imagine)“Did you guys get the pixies?” Neville asked with a grimace, making Sophie shudder again at their shared memory of Lockhart’s debut Gryffindor/Hufflepuff second year DADA class.“NO, and thank MERLIN for that!” Harry exclaimed, pulling an exaggerated face of horror. “I’m pretty sure Professor McGonagall had laid into him about child endangerment by that point. We did still get the quiz though,”“Oh the QUIZ!” Theo cackled somewhat despairingly. “And I thought that Binns was bad!”“How can such a pretty face hide a brain so- so-!” Sophie lamented in frustration, putting her face in her hands.“Dumb?” Theo offered, wiping mirth induced tears from his eyes.“Self-absorbed?” Harry suggested with a groan.“Incompetent?” Neville proposed, letting his head loll back to gaze hopelessly at the ceiling.They all dissolved into slightly hysterical laughter for a minute or so, frequently interspersed with groans of frustration or wistful sighs.The Quiet Ones had unanimously developed a special enmity for the new DADA professor over the past week; Professor Gilderoy Lockhart had already firmly established himself as a menace to society in their eyes… or at the VERY least, a menace to the peace and quiet that they were accustomed to experiencing in their downtime at school.Because BESIDES his incompetent ‘teaching’ style-(-a word the Quiet Ones used very loosely in Lockhart’s case-)-the famous author also had some kind of weird fixation on Harry. Or perhaps more accurately, Harry’s ‘fame’, and the clear misconceptions he had about Harry’s fondness for it.Of all Harry’s new stalkers this year, Lockhart was one of the boldest and worst offenders.He kept stopping Harry in the hallways for inane chatter, and often leapt out of nowhere to pull down his hood while chastising him for ‘hiding your face from your fans!’He’d already shown a predilection for calling upon Harry in DADA for embarrassing ‘demonstrations’, and constantly gave unsolicited ‘advice’ on how to pander correctly to his ‘admirers’.He’d even interrupted the Quiet Ones during meals in the Great Hall, and while they were studying at their usually sacredly quiet table in the library!(Madam Pince had not been impressed, and after the third time it had happened, Lockhart had left the library in a panic with his usual blonde coif the precise muddy brown shade of swamp water… complete with the smell. The librarian had even beaten Professor Snape to the punch as the first staff member to hex the idiot!)Gilderoy Lockhart’s behaviour (and the lack of real consequences for it) had only encouraged the other stalkers… ahem ‘fans’, as the buffoon kept calling them… and there was nothing Harry could do about it save for retreating where he could not follow, like the privacy of his dormitory or the Chamber of Secrets. It wasn’t like Harry could use his usual ‘scare off’ technique- Lockhart was a bloody teacher!He’d contemplated once- and only once- perhaps attempting to spend more time with the new DADA professor, to see if his ‘aura of reason’ might take some effect… but no. Harry was not willing to risk his own sanity for the mere chance Lockhart might see reason on his own, landing the idiot professor in the same category of ‘avoid at all costs’ as Draco Malfoy, Colin Creevy and the violent Whomping Willow out on the grounds.“I am so, SO glad we can still meet down here where no one can find us,” Theo sighed utterly sincerely as the hysterical laughter wound down. “Though my brain may be still half convinced that Lockhart will jump out behind the door at any second now…,”“Oh, don’t even joke about that,” Sophie shuddered again.“He’s just so… so… LOUD,” Neville groaned. “ALL of them are. They either lurk and giggle or whisper amongst themselves, or they just barrel in out of nowhere and start yelling questions- do they all yell? Is yelling a requisite tactic in the ‘amateur ambush journalist’ skillset now?”“I want Professor Quirrell back,” Harry blandly admitted. “Even with his extra passenger, I really preferred him to THIS alternative,”“I’d chastise you for being insensitive Harry, but unfortunately I agree with you there,” Theo sighed again. “I’d take the Dark Lord teaching us through a stuttering proxy over THIS any day,”“You know, I WAS going to suggest that we could try to solve the DADA curse again this year in our spare time,” Neville nervously piped up, raising his hand. “But I vote we leave it until Lockhart’s either met his untimely demise or has been otherwise banned from the school,”“Agreed,” the other three chorused as one.-------
11am
Salazar’s small personal library was nowhere even close to the size of the main school library; it barely even had enough tomes to rival Ravenclaw’s common room bookshelves.But what it lacked in volume, it made up for in sheer rarity and value… even if most of the ancient grimoires required diligent use of translation charms for any of the Quiet Ones to actually decipher them.And there was one book in particular that Harry had been both eager and dreading to show his friends for a long, long time…“So… what you’re saying is you think you… generate, something like this?” Theo asked evenly, tracing a finger over the opening paragraphs of ‘Wizard-Kin Auras of Thee Passeve Nature’.After the relative light-heartedness of their earlier conversation-(-and numerous complaints about Lockhart and Assorted Stalkers Incorporated-)-Sophie had finally brought up the ‘you’re-nothing-like-you-know-who’ argument that she’d clearly been saving ever since the incident with Malfoy on the train. Harry had grabbed the opening with both hands, just like he’d promised himself he would, and finally brought up his… aura.Having decided that ripping off the scab in one go would probably be better than teasing out an explanation over a couple of hours, Harry had dug out the book he’d found last May on passive auras in the old library and practically shoved it in his friend’s faces before he lost his nerve.He was currently doing his absolute best not to regret that decision, as all three of his friends were now crowded around the ancient tome with translation charms activated and varyingly bemused expressions on their faces.“Back in February… HE mentioned something about passive auras,” Harry nervously explained. “Namely that I had one, similar to His own. I did some research of my own after we got access to this library, and… it seems legitimate. I just wasn’t sure how to tell you all at first- I mean, if I’ve been influencing you this whole time without your knowledge then…,”He trailed off, resisting the urge to start biting his nails or pulling at his plait as the other Quiet Ones processed this news in silence, continuing to examine the text before them.“Guys…?” Harry prompted anxiously, becoming increasingly apprehensive of what their reactions might be.The room was completely still for a long, long moment…“Okay,” Neville said with a careless shrug.Harry blinked once.“So you have one of these auras?” Neville asked easily, turning away from the book on the stand to peer at Harry curiously. “The book says they tend to represent an abstract concept; do you know what yours is?”“And if not, is there a way to find out?” Sophie added almost excitedly, a familiar hunger visible in her eyes as she gazed on the book usually only present when she talked about reptiles. “Hang on, is there a list of known auras in here?”Sophie grabbed the book away from Theo’s tracing hand to start searching, earning a startled squawk from Theo in the process, and all Harry could do was stare.“You don’t… mind?” Harry asked dumbly.Giving up on the book relegated to Sophie’s searching fingers, Theo turned to Harry with an easy amusement on his face.“Why would we?” Theo quipped with a smirk, before his expression softened at the combined worry and disbelief Harry’s expression was twisted with. “Harry, the very second paragraph of the book likens these passive auras to the auras around enchanted objects; they’re not exactly something that can be turned on or off. They just ARE. Why would we care about something you can’t control?”“If it’s any consolation, I for one haven’t noticed any negative effects,” Sophie commented from where she was still flipping through the ancient book. “It looks like there isn’t a definite list in here… knowing Harry, I guess silence?”“Nah. Guessing from what I’ve seen…Stability? Happiness?” Neville guessed curiously.“Confidence? Compassion?” Theo drawled with a raised eyebrow, the clear curiosity in his expression belying his dry tone. “I’d guess cunning too, but seeing as Harry sorted Ravenclaw…,”“Rationality?  Snakes?” Sophie added probingly, causing all three boys to shoot her confused looks. “What? It’s definitely abstract, and it would explain the parseltongue!”This explanation finally managed to startle a laugh out of Harry, making them all turn to him expectantly. Sophie had been close, but not quite… and snakes? Seriously?(They seemed so… at ease. Flippant, almost, about this knowledge that had been weighing him down for months. Had he really been so worried all this time for nothing…?)“Er- you were closer the first time Sophie. Its ‘reason’… I think,” Harry shrugged with an awkward smile, somewhat taken aback by the sheer amount of positivity he was getting from his friends. “At least, that’s what He thought it was. It made sense at the time, so…,”“‘Reason’ does make a lot of sense,” Theo agreed, wryly side-eyeing the book. “As much as I’d want to distrust any information the Dark Lord would openly give the boy-who-lived, it’s not an impossible option,”“Do you think that any of us might have auras too?” Neville queried animatedly, handily dragging the conversation firmly away from the uneasy topic of the Dark Lord in one sentence. “They sound so useful!”“Maybe, I mean if Harry didn’t notice he had one for a whole year or more…,” Sophie pondered, turning her attention back to the book.“I still think ‘snakes’ is still slightly too abstract of a concept to be the subject of a passive aura, just for the record,” Theo smirked, making Sophie stick out her tongue at him. “Let’s have a closer look at the book; there must be some objective method of detecting an aura like this, perhaps a spell…,”As the other Quiet Ones continued to good-naturedly squabble over passive auras and whether or not Harry was the only one among them to possess one, Harry felt the last remaining strains of tension leave him.They didn’t mind. They truly did not care about Harry’s aura of reason.As Theo began insistently flipping through the tome again looking for some kind of aura detection spell, egged on by an enthusiastic Neville and Sophie, Harry felt himself smile.He really had been worried over nothing.(Now he just had to somehow inform his Uncle Padfoot about it, Harry realised with a cringe… although maybe not over the mirror)-------
1pm
The familiar silvery, pearl like glow that surrounded Harry ebbed and flowed like the tides upon Azkaban’s rocky shores.It flickered, brightened, dimmed, expanded and contracted aimlessly as he moved and breathed, sometimes growing large enough to easily fill the whole room and at others shrinking so close against him it looked like a second skin.Occasionally, it extended a curious tendril of light towards certain objects or living creatures within its reach, sometimes grasping onto them for minutes at a time and other times recoiling at random. It changed and fluctuated continuously; the only true constant was that it remained centred around Harry at all times.It was… odd, to see passive magic so clearly at work without the aid of his usual magic sense. When Harry focused on it, he could feel an ‘echo’ of the visible aura around him with said sense, but it was clearly something he’d been subconsciously tuning out from for almost his entire life. The visual interpretation of his aura of reason was strange, but… relaxing, almost beautiful, in a way………less relaxing was the way it had been visible and illuminated like this for well over an hour.After some enthusiastic searching, the Quiet Ones had eventually found the spell that Lord Voldemort had once used to visibly reveal the passive aura around Harry, tucked away in the back of ‘Wizard-Kin Auras of Thee Passeve Nature’.Sophie had of course immediately had to test the charm… and the beautifully silvery aura surrounding Harry had immediately lit up just as it had when the Dark Lord had cast the spell- only this time, it had so far showed no signs of dimming or fading back into its usual state of invisibility.His Hufflepuff friend had clearly poured a whole lot more power into the spell than Lord Voldemort had. Unfortunately, that could easily mean there’d be several more hours of this light show to go before Harry could leave the Chamber of Secrets without attracting undue attention in the corridors.Oh well, at least it had only just gone lunch. He was unlikely to miss curfew unless the aura visibility spell kept up overnight, and Neville, Sophie and Theo-(-none of whom, to their collective disappointment, had displayed any passive auras of their own under the overpowered charm-)-had already gone and returned with some light foodstuffs from the great hall to share with him. Thankfully all three of the other Quiet Ones had long since learnt to imitate Harry’s parseltongue words for open and close accurately enough to control the Chamber entrance-(-Sophie was the best at it, often getting the pronunciation right on her first try, while Theo was the worst-)-because he couldn’t exactly go to do it himself with such a… eye-catching spell affecting him. Guardian-of-Hogwarts still wasn’t back, but since the sink concealing the entrance only responded to human voices she wouldn’t have been much help in that regard anyway.“I saw Eamon sitting together with Cedric at the Hufflepuff table while we were picking up our sandwiches,” Sophie said as she finished chewing her current bite of lettuce, cheese and tomato. “Cedric was doing introductions with some of the senior students by the looks of it. Poor Eamon looked a little overwhelmed with all the attention he was getting,”“Cedric Diggory?” Theo clarified around a mouthful of egg and bacon, getting a nod in reply from Sophie. “Figures- he’s a bit of a socialite from what I hear. Hufflepuff’s star seeker and all that. It’s nice of him to take Selwyn under his wing though,”“Nice… but maybe a little misguided,” Neville murmured worriedly, tearing his peanut butter sandwich into little pieces before eating each piece. “I think Eamon’s a little like us. He’s not exactly one for hanging out with large crowds,”“I’ve seen him in the halls once or twice over the past week,” Harry admitted a little awkwardly, the silvery light of his aura seeming to pulse a little as he picked up the second half of his chicken and mayonnaise roll. “Surrounded by extremely friendly Hufflepuffs. I keep feeling like I should rescue him or something,”“I think they think they’re protecting him,” Sophie sighed, leaving her crusts on the little tray on the floor in between them. “He already keeps his cat confined to his dorm because he’s worried about some kind of retaliation for his family name. And some of the Slytherins and Gryffindors in particular have some… nasty rumours going around about Eamon,”Both Neville and Theo grimaced in sync, all but confirming they’d heard some of these ‘rumours’ themselves from their housemates. Harry sighed to himself. He’d heard some of them too, and suffice to say they were bad enough that he wasn’t going to be eating his pointy school hat any time soon.“Speaking of rumours, what’s this I heard about Luna Lovegood planning to sacrifice you to an elder deity?” Theo suddenly asked Harry, making him promptly choke on his current bite of roll.After a few panicked minutes of a blocked airway, Sophie performing what she called the Heimlich manoeuvre on him and cleaning up the half-chewed sandwich mush he’d spat onto the rug, Harry was finally composed enough to reply:“WHAT?!”“I suppose there’s no accuracy to that rumour then?” Theo, the bastard, surmised with a smug grin.“I haven’t even HEARD that rumour Theo,” Harry retorted, narrowing his eyes as his silvery aura abruptly constricted itself back around him. “But I can almost guarantee who it came from…,”“Mary Brocklehurst or her elder sister Mandy?” Neville suggested, garnering a surprised raised eyebrow from Harry at the accuracy of his guess. “They’re both gossips, and both in Ravenclaw- Mary would sleep in the same dorm as Luna. Trust me, I know a lot of kids from the ministry functions gran used to drag me to. And trust me when I say I really, really preferred Luna’s company to that of either of the Brocklehurst sisters,”“Mary and Mandy sound like nasty girls,” Sophie shuddered, a frown making its way onto her face. “There were some ‘little misses’ like that at my primary school- spreading horrible rumours about anyone they disliked and playing innocent to the teachers when confronted about it,”“Both of Luna’s dorm mates seem like that. Neither of them like her at all,” Harry said wearily, rubbing his forehead as the silvery light around him distorted slightly. “And I’m not sure why. I mean, Luna’s a little… distracted a lot of the time, but she seems nice enough. She’s helped me get past the doorknocker to the common room more often than not this past week,”“That’s probably part of the problem Harry,” Sophie said uneasily. “You’re nice to her, so your crazy stalkers get jealous at the attention. I mean, it’s not in any way your fault, it’s theirs, but-,”“I know,” Harry sighed before Sophie could get any more flustered. “Honestly? I think Luna’s a bit like us as well, and I’d like to get to know her better. But I’m afraid that if I get any closer to her than simply waiting for her help with the doorknocker, her roommates might retaliate worse than just spreading nasty rumours… What do the rest of you think?”“Luna’s a little weird, but like you said; she’s nice,” Neville pointed out. “She’s one of the kids that usually played with me while Mandy and the other girls were gossiping. If the rest of us want to include her, I don’t have a problem with it,”The Quiet Ones were silent for a few moments, finishing up the last of their sandwiches as they thought on this proposition.“We could try to bring Selwyn- Eamon- closer to us too while we’re at it,” Theo pondered thoughtfully after they’d put the last of their leftovers on the tray. “Though that might be a bit harder with the Hufflepuffs closing ranks around him- and he’s older than us, so unless we can lure him under the pretence of tutoring then inviting him to study won’t work…,”“We COULD say we’re offering tutoring to Luna though,” Neville mused. “Or, better still, we could try to pair Eamon to tutor her, and just happen to study at the same table…,”“Madam Pince could help,” Sophie offered. “I mean, she likes us all, and generally tolerates quiet students more- I’m sure she’d love Luna and Eamon if they’re anything like we are with books. Maybe a librarian recommended study group or something to lure them in…,”“Don’t forget, we’ve got the rumour-mongers to deal with on Luna’s side, and both over-protective Hufflepuffs AND rumour-mongers on Eamon’s side,” Harry warned. “We need some place private we can talk to them both to see if they’d actually WANT to join us first, without having to give away the Chamber in case they say no. And because they’re in different years from us, we’ll probably need to get creative in order to fend off further attempts at retaliation against them,”“Well, there’s always memory charms if we-,’ Theo began to suggest.Their plotting session abruptly cut off as the silvery haze surrounding Harry suddenly vanished into thin air. Hurriedly casting a quick tempus, Sophie sighed with relief.“That was just under three hours,” she proclaimed, dismissing the small, insubstantial timepiece her spell had summoned. “Next time I cast that spell? Much less power,”“…hatchlingsss? Little Harry? Are you in the library?” a familiar, sibilant voice suddenly hissed from just outside the room, making them all jump slightly in their seats.“It’s Guardian-of-Hogwarts!” Harry quickly exclaimed to his startled companions, before replying: “Yes, we’re in here! Would you like us to come out or would you like to come in?”“I do not mind either way, little Harry,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s hissing voice carried through the doorway. “But your other guessst may prefer to meet with you in the main hall. I was delayed in greeting you becaussse they were… difficult, to herd back towardsss you,”Harry stood up, quirking a confused eyebrow at the words ‘other guest’-(-and for one horrifying moment thinking that perhaps Lockhart or one of their other new stalkers HAD somehow followed them into the Chamber-)-when abruptly another familiar voice echoed from just outside.“Harry is that you?!” the high pitched, frightened sounding voice of the spirit of Myrtle Warren called. “The giant snake found me, and it’s REFUSED to leave me alone! I don’t know what it wants! What do I do?!”-------
1:30pm
Guardian-of-Hogwarts had obviously been revelling in her newfound freedom over the forbidden forest during the summer holidays.While the gigantic basilisk hadn’t gotten any bigger-(-in fact, judging by her age she’d probably reached the upper limits of basilisk size-)-she’d clearly been eating decently for the first time in perhaps decades.The lustrous shine of her emerald scales was more pronounced than ever and her lid-shielded eyes were the precise shade of fresh honey. Her numerous massive fangs were now polished white and straightened from regular use, rather than crooked with overgrowth, yellowed and dripping venom from cracked or broken incisors like they had been a few months previous. Even the sharp ridges of her spine along her back had filled out a little and smoothed- making her look far less emaciated and ravenously hungry than before.Truly, she was a magnificent, beautiful and intelligent creature… but nonetheless, it took some gratuitous reassurance and bargaining with Myrtle Warren in order to actually convince the nigh-hysterical ghost of that fact.Harry had almost forgotten that he’d invited the lonely spirit down into the Chamber just before the summer holidays, intending to let her wander and explore to her bloodless heart’s content. And by the looks of things, that was what had occurred… at least until, from what Harry could gather from their explanations thus far, a week or two ago when Myrtle and Guardian-of-Hogwarts had first crossed paths in the scouting tunnels lacing the school above.It appeared they’d been inadvertently playing a lengthy game of cat and mouse ever since.“I knew you mussst have invited the guessst, little Harry,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts explained a little sheepishly. “Ssspiritsss cannot passss through the chamber wardsss without an heir’sss permissssion. Ssso I thought I’d greet her… but it didn’t go very well. Ssshe kept running away,”“It- I mean, she- she just kept following me and hissing!” Myrtle exclaimed defensively, throwing her ghostly arms up in the air in a gesture that made all the water in the Chamber ripple ominously. “What was I supposed to think?!”Harry sighed, resigning himself to playing translator between an anxious ghost and a guilty looking basilisk for the foreseeable future, while his three treacherous friends didn’t even try to hide their amusement in the background.The small cherry tree standing witness at the other end of the Chamber swayed slightly in an invisible breeze, and continued to grow.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Clouds, roiling and dark, heavy with icy rain and hail, filled every visible corner of the sky.Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled in the shadows left behind, the wind howling and moaning in a shuddering gale that ripped across the tiny island in the North Sea in a vengeful rampage.Azkaban was slowly drowning, the heavy wards carved into the seabed around its island host the only things keeping the waves from crashing into the prison buildings and flooding them entirely.Even the dementors- who usually revelled in this sort of violent and miserable weather- seemed to be constantly fighting the wind in order to stay put, their shadowy robes whipping about them constantly like laundry pinned to a washing line in a hurricane.“This really shouldn’t be so entertaining,” Raleigh Gibbon, a grin stubbornly twitching its way onto his face, muttered as he peered between the gaps in the woven cherry branch lattice protecting the barred window of cell 8.“Nah. Watching dementors try to act all spooky and intimidating while they’re being knocked around by a thunderstorm?” Rabastan Lestrange countered with a matching smirk. “That’s quality comedy for the first morning of October- or any other morning, for that matter,”“Would you two PLEASE get away from the window?” Augustus Rookwood asked exasperatedly from over his scrolls in the corner, for what felt like the twentieth time that day. “The lattice won’t hold if you keep poking at it, and then WE’LL be the ones fighting the storm,”Rabastan and Raleigh both let out exaggerated sighs of disappointment, but obediently shuffled away from the window none the less.The residents of the northern tower of Azkaban (also known as the ‘Death Eater block’) were currently in what their former resident Sirius Black had called ‘Storm Mode’. Violent gales like this were not uncommon in both the Autumn and Spring, and seeing as their particular building was poised right on the edge of a seaward cliff, it was highly prone to floods.The lower cells were especially prone to half-filling with icy water during particularly angry tempests when the courtyard was too slow to drain it away, and the upper cells were the most vulnerable to the howling winds and bullet-like hail. The middle cells on the other hand- namely cells 8, 9 and 10- tended to be the best protected of the lot, so that was where the inmates of the northern tower gathered in such miserable weather.Over the years their anti-storm precautions had improved. Using the straightest and most flexible branches they could harvest from the cherry tree, they’d woven tight covers for the open barred windows and doors to keep out the worst of the wet and wind. For long term bad weather, they kept stores of dry tinder, flint stones and wood (both driftwood gathered by Harry’s snakes and scrap cherry wood) within easy reach for both heat and light.(Funnily enough, the ever present gaps in the masonry walls that continually permitted the icy wind even on warmer days were also fantastic at ventilating the smoke from such little campfires)During tempests like these, the middle cells were also where the inmates usually stored their most vulnerable possessions to protect them from water damage… possessions like the increasingly large archive of letters that both Harry Potter and Sirius Black had written to them over the course of the previous year.“I wonder if they’re getting this rain all the way up in Scotland?” Raleigh pondered as he sat himself down on the raised sleeping pallet and picked up the neglected blanket he’d been darning.“It wouldn’t surprise me- Hogwarts always seemed prone to storms around this time of year from what I can remember,” Augustus replied evenly, casting a suspicious look in Rabastan’s direction as the man fiddled with something in the corner where the little ersatz bookshelf resided. “…so help me ‘Bastan, if you pull some kind of prank on me in THIS weather-!”“Relax, ‘Gus,” Rabastan chuckled, raising his hands defensively to reveal the two yellowed envelopes he’d retrieved from the shelf. “We aren’t so suicidal as to make you mad when we’re all trapped in the same room for the foreseeable future. I was just picking up some reading material of my own!”“Bellatrix and Rodolphus have the most recent letters up with them in cell 9, right?” Raleigh mused, deftly stitching a worn hole shut in the faded yellow cloth on his lap. The colourful blankets Harry had sent them the previous Christmas had all been very well used over the intervening months- even when worn down to holes, they were still far softer and warm than the standard thin, grey Azkaban sheets.“Yeah. Florian and Edward are in there with them this time I think,” Rabastan confirmed, plopping himself down right next to the glowing embers of the fire lighting the cell. “Going over the most recent one from Harry. Again,”“Edward’s entitled to feel a bit conflicted over it, ‘Bastan,” Augustus chided the other man’s insensitive tone. “Just because most of us don’t have any family left on the outside-,”“That hasn’t either disowned us or been wiped out,” Raleigh helpfully added.“-doesn’t make his struggle any less valid,” Augustus finished, ignoring Raleigh. “I mean, if I had a child I thought lost somewhere in Scandinavia suddenly show up at Hogwarts just after we get news the Dark Lord is growing stronger…,”Rabastan winced and glared as Augustus trailed off leadingly.“Right, I see your point,” he admitted grudgingly, slipping a letter from last January out of its envelope to read. “I guess because I still have my brother and sister in law here with me my perspective on the situation is a bit skewed. And Barty-,”The man abruptly bit his lip, cutting himself off. Raleigh and Augustus looked at each other for a moment, before turning back to Rabastan who was currently failing not to look like he was sulking at his place next to the fire.“Rabastan?” Augustus said gently, but he seemed to be pretending to ignore him. “None of us were particularly stable back then, least of all young Crouch. You can’t keep blaming yourself for his actions,”“And for his death?” Rabastan muttered bitingly, tight hands crinkling the edges of the letter he was holding.None of them said a word. It was still a sore subject, rarely brought up even when Rabastan’s usual playfulness soured and he became solemn. After all, Bartemius Crouch Junior was the only one of the Dark Lord’s imprisoned Death Eaters that had perished within the walls of Azkaban- the younger Lestrange brother had long blamed himself for getting the boy involved with the whole Longbottom mess in the first place.“So… charades?” Raleigh brightly suggested, hastily placing his darning work to one side in a transparent effort to lighten the darkening mood of the room.Predictably, Augustus’s face soured in contempt and Rabastan huffed a reluctant laugh at his fellow jokester’s antics, a small smile cracking across his solemn face.(He tried not to think about the straw haired young man that had once laughed himself hysterical at their side, years ago when they had first clad themselves in black robes and white masks. Of what might have been if Barty had survived long enough to see the cherry tree blossom in the courtyard below)-------Out on a deserted moor many miles away from Azkaban prison, where threatening storm clouds hovered overhead but not a drop of rain had yet to fall, a ramshackle house stood empty. Recently cleaned, recently repaired… yet abandoned for several weeks, at least.Untouched letters and parcels still lined the kitchen table, but they were slowly collecting dust. If one were to open the most recent on top of the stack, the date would read sometime almost a month beforehand, back in September.Other evidence of relatively recent habitation littered the house. Preserved foodstuffs in the kitchen cabinets. A small cupboard where a house elf had made its temporary home. Unmade sheets in the dusty main bedroom upstairs. A muggle corkboard covered in pins, scraps of paper clinging to points where plans were hastily torn down and packed away.And if one were to search very carefully, they might find one such missive that slipped and fell under the empty crockery cabinet.‘Successful application for long distance portkey permit. England-Italy and return (365 day limit- separate single use portkeys). We hope you feel better soon boss, enjoy your holiday! Don’t worry, we’ll keep Mme Bones off your back about the investigation until you return, we KNOW you did the right thing! –From the DIMC staff’In the basement, where new angry claw marks in the plaster had joined the old and blasts left by spell-fire littered the walls, an iron cage was open… and empty.-------A loud boom of thunder startled Phineas Travers out of sleep, causing him to topple off the raised stone pallet in the corner of the cell, his sheets wrapped around him in a maddening vice.It really didn’t help that Antonin Dolohov snorted, promptly lost an internal battle to keep in his giggles, and then began to laugh at Phineas’ plight the instant the man’s shock wore off and began cursing like a sailor.“Language Phineas!” Donnell Jugson chastised him from over where he was also being no help at all, stewing another batch of cherries over their small fire in the middle of cell 10.“Oh fu- piss off,” Phineas snarled, still habitually correcting himself mid-swear at the rebuke as he wriggled his way out of the straightjacket of blankets. “It’s only us adults here now, I should be allowed to keep as filthy a mouth as I wish!”“Well EXCUSE you, but some of us have noble reputations to uphold,” Donnell said haughtily. “Just because you were seemingly raised in a two-knut port-town pub doesn’t mean the rest of us- oh for Merlin’s sake Antonin!”Antonin, the bastard, was still laughing, doubled over at his place seated next to the fire and clutching at his stomach. He was only just starting to calm down under Donnell’s critical glare, when another great rumble of thunder made Phineas start and nearly trip over his pile of discarded blankets face first into the fire-(-Donnell had to dive to keep his tin of stewing cherries from tipping over-)-setting Antonin off all over again.“It’s- ha ha- really a- *wheeze*- loud one out- he he- there, isn’t it Phin?” Antonin finally managed to chuckle out, managing to earn himself another dire look from the scowling man still attempting to untangle his blankets AWAY from the hot coals.“You’re dead to me,” Phineas said flatly, which sent Antonin yet again into another round of hooting laughter.Donnell sighed in a long suffering fashion and raised his eyes to the slowly dripping corner of the ceiling above, wondering how long it would take before there was a breather in the storm and he could petition to switch rooms with some of his saner, less childish cell-mates.Although, in between the choice of cell 8- where the incorrigible pranksters of the tower Rabastan and Raleigh were undoubtedly winding up Augustus- and cell 9- where Edward was likely still bottled up with feelings over Harry’s most recent letter- neither seemed all that more appealing than his current situation.Antonin and Phineas were usually better than this! Five hours trapped in a room with a storm going on outside certainly had done a number on their maturity…Oh what Donnell wouldn’t give for a nice, distant greenhouse or vegetable patch to work on… Sometimes he almost missed being confined to his own cell 24/7, if only for the fact he didn’t have to deal with other people as often. Although, he did have to admit that his assigned cell 3 was probably slowly filling up with icy cold water at the moment, judging by the ongoing storm outside. At least here he didn’t have to fear death by drowning if he fell asleep.Wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, Antonin thankfully managed to calm down before Phineas could jump at another peal of thunder overhead.“All right all right, laugh it up Antonin,” Phineas drawled with a scowl, bending down to fold up his discarded blankets. “I’ll have you know I have one great big scar down my side that PROVES why lightning shouldn’t be underestimated,"“Sorry, just… your reaction was just so…,” Antonin was doing his best to sound serious, but he was having trouble keeping an amused smile off his face.Donnell sighed again, weighing whether or not he should step in before his cell mates started to bicker noisily again. He was losing focus, getting a headache, and he didn’t want to burn and ruin this entire can of cherry paste. This called for… drastic measures. Focusing his gaze back on the stewed cherries, he decided to speak plainly.“Alistair McKinnon just so happened to specialise in weather magic, didn’t he?” Donnell dryly commented, making both of the other men immediately tense up. “Judging by the scarcity of any other time you might have been hit by lightning…,”Antonin’s grin abruptly faltered. Phineas turned his glare on Donnell for a moment, before letting out a soft huff and dropping his refolded blankets neatly back on the stone pallet.“Blood-traitor or not, he was one scary wizard,” he could briefly hear Phineas mutter under his breath, before the man lay down and wrapped himself back up in blankets once more. Antonin turned to shoot Donnell a look of disapproval.“Donnell, that was a bit far,” Antonin chastised him quietly, trying not to disturb Phineas. “We haven’t talked about the McKinnons’ in years or-,”“Fabian and Gideon Prewett?” Donnell interrupted equally quietly. “From what I recall Gideon nearly took your whole face off with the same curse I once got Moody’s nose with. Still broke your mask in half if I remember rightly. ‘Twas how the auror was able to identify you out of the other four on your team later on- saw you leaving the murder scene, bleeding. You get nervous when any stick is pointed at your face these days…,”“Donnell, what’s gotten into you?!” Antonin hissed irritably.Donnell wasn’t entirely surprised at his sudden snappishness. By some unspoken agreement, the inmates of the northern tower rarely- if ever- brought up their past… exploits. There were reminders, of course, to those who knew where to look for them.Phineas Travers’s nerves around thunder, the stiffness in Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand arm, Raleigh Gibbon’s habit of reflexively stabbing people who startled him with his sewing needles, the way Florian Mulciber couldn’t go more than three days without a good stretch of meditation before he got that twitch around his eyes… but usually they were able to tease and laugh off such things without heading too far down memory lane.If they’d wanted to avoid Sirius’s glares, they had to. And even now he was gone from the tower… honestly, openly breaching the subject raised more guilt- even remorse- than the pride, grandstanding and boasting that it had inspired back in the Dark Lord’s glory days.“I just want to finish this paste in peace, and the two of you behaving like teenagers is really not helping,” Donnell said bluntly. “I simply thought about what topic might shut the two of you up the fastest,”Taken aback, Antonin just blinked at him for a few moments.“Goodness, you could have just asked,” Antonin sighed out, leaning dangerously close to the stewing can over the fire. “Look, I don’t mind talking about that… kind of thing, but you need to give us some warning first. And don’t just bring it up out of nowhere to shut people up!”“Don’t make me bring up the disaster with that madman Fenwick,” Donnell warned him with a glare, having to rescue the tin from tipping once more. “We never did completely find either his or Proudmoore’s corpses…,”He paused thoughtfully, touching on his own memory of that time.“Although, it was lovely trap work for a mud- muggleborn, I must admit,” he confessed, settling the can of bubbling cherries more firmly against the coals. “Wonderful use of carnivorous ambush flowers. Barely any mess to clean up,”“You see, sometimes I wonder why an anti-social gardener like you joined up in the first place, and then you say something like that that removes all doubt,” Antonin stated flatly.“If the two of you don’t shut up and let me go back to sleep,” Phineas drawled irritably from his cocoon of blankets. “I’ll ‘remove’ both of you outside into the storm,”Grievances quickly forgotten, Antonin grinned and mimed spelling himself silent. Donnell allowed himself a sad little smile of his own as the quiet he had hoped for enveloped the cell at last.(They all had memories they now regretted, quirks that had persisted even as they’d become more stable over the years)(But it was best not to forget)-------Far away from the shores of Britain, in an isolated forest in northern Italy, a discarded, useless dog whistle on a lanyard lay abandoned under the shade of the trees, empty of the magic that had powered its journey.It had been raining here when the portkey had arrived, evidenced by deep footprints in the mud scattered all over the well-trodden ground. Two- three?- sets of boot prints were intermingled with a wild pattern of wolf’s spore… although the paw prints were far too large to belong to any normal wolf.Now, it is raining again, and soon the marks in the mud will vanish entirely, washed away into nearby streams and gone forever.The ones who left these marks on the countryside are weeks long gone.-------“We didn’t marry for love, but I grew to love Anne none the less,” Edward Selwyn said quietly over the dying remnants of the fire heating cell 9.Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange sat cuddled up against each other opposite from him, while Florian Mulciber- the northern tower’s best occlumens and legilimens, and thus the best substitute for a real mind healer they had- was seated next to the former Lord Selwyn, listening patiently as he reluctantly spilled out his story.A story they all knew, but had not discussed even in passing in the years since their madness had receded. The story of Edward’s lost wife… and their child.“I was fifth in line to the Lordship as a child, but an outbreak of dragonpox removed most of my cousins and siblings from the succession- Anne was a foreigner of a minor line and never meant to become the next Lady Selwyn when we were first betrothed,” Edward continued, haunted eyes staring into the fire. “But the people who disapproved of her had a nasty habit of… disappearing, if they became too vocal. At the time, I didn’t care- it only brought me closer to headship of the family,”Bellatrix nodded along understandingly to this part of the tale. The Blacks had been plagued by a similar kind of aggressive ambition in the past, willing to wipe out whole branches of their own family to get what they wanted. It was partly why there had been so much close intermarriage in the last century… and why there was now so few of them left.Just as there were so few left of the Selwyn line.“Anne and I pledged ourselves to the Dark Lord at the same time; while I was assigned to more administrative matters, He gave her permission to spread terror to muggleborns as she wished,” Edward went on. “You know how she detested ‘mixing blood’. She’d go after muggleborn wizards and witches who dared to love purebloods, and slowly… mutilate them until there was nothing left. She kept doing it even while she was pregnant with Eamon,”Edward sighed heavily.“I think her parents knew, and disapproved heavily,” he murmured. “They blamed me of course; they were partially right, I did nothing to dissuade my wife’s love of bloodshed. At the time, I believed she was doing the right thing… even when she went after my estranged cousin Robert and his muggleborn wife. They, and their halfblood children, had been the only other bearers of the Selwyn name left by that time,”Rodolphus closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. It was an unfortunately common tale amidst the end of the wizarding war. Pureblood Death Eaters, drunk on power and the approval of their lord, would zealously ‘prune’ even their own family trees if it meant eradicating even the slightest taint of muggle interference.As a result, many lines were now doomed to end. Some just in the male line, others entirely. The Lestranges were one of them, their final two scions bound to Azkaban. And if Bellatrix somehow bore him a child now… no, the dementors would not be kind to it, just as they had not been kind to Harry. The toddler had barely survived as it was; what chance would an infant have?“But after Eamon was born, she became sloppy with her technique,” Edward murmured, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “Her identity was discovered by the aurors, and I had to publically denounce her even while hiding her in my home. Still, she wouldn’t stop. And then… she went after Lily Potter,”Florian couldn’t help but grimace slightly at that extreme understatement, but he understood why Edward mightn’t want to say more.It had been a gruesome event.The muggleborn Lily Evans’s marriage to pureblood James Potter had outraged Anne in the manner all cross-blood weddings usually had. She'd planned out her ambush, meticulous as usual... but that time… that time... things had been different.For Lily Potter had been pregnant at the time of Anne’s attack. And she had fought back.Viciously.In the end, the muggleborn witch herself had been rushed to St Mungo’s with Anne’s trademark knife between her ribs, and Anne… Anne’s body had been missing an eye, an arm and had veins flooded with an unknown toxin by the time aurors had arrived in the London back-alley where the ambush had taken place.Lily, for all her blood status had made them sneer, was as dangerous as dueller when pressed as any of the Dark Lord’s inner circle.At the time, despite the shared rage of the Death Eaters over the killing of one of their own, Florian could remember being reluctantly impressed by Lily’s sheer tenacity. He had a feeling it might have been the reason the Dark Lord had decided to take on her family himself at the end- if for no other reason than to avoid losing any more of his followers to Lily’s rage.…clearly, she had gotten the upper hand in that encounter too, despite her death.“Forgetting myself in grief, I took up my wife’s mission,” Edward mumbled, barely audible over the crackle of the fire and the beat of the rain on the masonry outside. “And you all know how that ended, only two years later. I was never as careful as she was, even in her wildest moments… and once I was detained, Eamon was sent to his only remaining living relatives. I was never even told which country he was in, only that it was somewhere in the north,”Edward took a deep breath, and held up the page of letter he almost certainly hadn’t let go of since it had arrived a few days prior.“And now I hear he’s returned to Britain- to Hogwarts even,” he sighed shakily. “I… I’m not sure what to think. Should I try to contact him through Harry? Would I even be allowed?”Am I worthy to even do so? The unspoken question hung heavily in the air.Sighing himself, Rodolphus reached over to the stack of carefully dried driftwood and warped cherry branches in the corner, placing another ‘log’ on their dying fire.“I’m not much one for philosophy,” Florian began in the ensuing silence. “We’re all murderers here, and many of us torturers besides. I have no right to judge you. Looking back, it’s clear that much of what we did in the war was excessive at least, if not entirely unnecessary. Madness plagued us all near the end… even, I fear, our lord,”Bellatrix sucked in a sharp breath, and forced down the instinctive reaction to censure Florian for his borderline traitorous words. Indeed, looking back herself she intimately knew the truth in them.While the Dark Lord’s goals had remained all but immutable for decades, His methods and orders had become increasingly erratic as the years went by… and wrapped up in His will as they were, the Death Eaters had done nothing to correct him. Perhaps they feared His anger might turn on them. In Bellatrix’s case at least, she knew she’d been too enraptured with Him at the time to even care about the wisdom of His actions.What had originally been the occasional kidnapping or demonstration killing became the slaughter of dozens. What had originally been targeted attacks on key ministry and Order of the Phoenix strongholds became indiscriminate raids on the wizarding and muggle public alike. The phrase ‘blood-traitor’ hadn’t even been widespread in the ranks of the Death Eaters when Bellatrix had first joined up as a teenager- pureblooded witches and wizards, no matter how rebellious, had been seen as a necessary bastion against muggle influence.Hell, if Bellatrix dove even further back into her memories, to petitions for aid she’d overheard in between her grandfather and her uncle’s old school acquaintance then known simply as ‘Voldemort’, even mudbloo- muggleborns hadn’t been slated for widespread execution in the beginning. Merely meant to be severed from their birth world as early and completely as possible.When had that all changed? WHY had that all changed?“All philosophy aside, personally I believe you should leave the decision up to Harry,” Rodolphus rumbled thoughtfully. “He is the conduit between you and your son after all- and if he initiates contact on your behalf without any request from you, it is far less likely the… third parties to our letters will feel the need to censor or modify such interactions,”“True enough,” Edward dryly agreed. “And I suppose there’s no guarantee Eamon would even want contact with me. Merlin knows what kind of tales his grandparents had told him about his mother and I. Last I heard they were planning on betrothing him matrilineally to some French heiress, so the Selwyn name would die out entirely and our remaining wealth would be absorbed elsewhere- if they haven’t spent it all already out of spite, that is,”Nobody was surprised by the bitterness in Edward’s voice when he talked about his family finances. The Selwyns had been struggling badly when he’d taken up the lordship, and he’d refilled their vaults from a shallow pittance to a respectable fortune over years of work and good investment. Having vengeful in-laws take stewardship of (and likely doing their best to squander) his son’s inheritance clearly still stung.“Well, at least it sounds like Eamon will always have friends at Hogwarts,” Bellatrix commented with a smirk. “Though I must admit, I would have never pinned any son of yours as a Hufflepuff,”“Their house loyalty will serve him well,” Edward stubbornly proclaimed, and not for the first time. For all that he’d gladly fielded the bets they’d made last year on Harry’s sorting without bias to any house, he’d genuinely looked flabbergasted at his own son’s placement at first- something most of them had teased him about to no end while he kept obstinately trying to appear as supportive as possible.“All jokes aside, he may not be the same boy he would have been growing up with you in his life, but he’s still your flesh and blood,” Bellatrix reassured him through her teasing smile. “I know Harry for one won’t give up on him short of a murder attempt on his part, and that hasn’t always stopped him before- look at all of us!”“That isn’t as reassuring as you think it sounds Bella,” Edward said flatly.“Maybe not,” Bellatrix carelessly admitted, leaning further into her husband’s side. “But isn’t this better than how it was before? Even if there’s no opportunity to contact him, even if the guards that read our letters won’t allow it… that still doesn’t change the fact that you now know he’s alive. That he’s-,”Bellatrix hesitated at saying ‘safe’, and all four figures around the fire immediately knew what she was thinking. After all, judging by what had happened to Harry back in February, Hogwarts clearly wasn’t the bastion of security it was touted to be. Rodolphus narrowed his eyes, gears visibly turning his in mind.“That’s it, isn’t it?” Rodolphus murmured knowingly. “It’s not so much that you cannot contact him; it’s that you can’t warn him about the Dark Lord’s coming return,”Edward bit his lip and bowed his head, staring into the quickening flames.“To be completely honest, if He returns in a state like he was in ’81, I’d be a little worried too,” Florian confessed, folding his hands under his chin. “The way we were going back then, we would have annihilated every witch and wizard in Britain- each for smaller and smaller ‘betrayals’, for thread-thin connections to the muggle world… until there was no one left to turn on but each other,”They all shuddered at the thought.“The Dark Lord did have a worthwhile goal- in a way, he still does,” Edward argued half-heartedly. “But I agree that if He returns and picks up his plans exactly where they left off…,”He trailed off, the silent conclusion ‘it would be disastrous’ hanging in the air around them.“Joining Dumbledore’s little Order isn’t an option,” Bellatrix stated firmly, straightening up against her husband’s side as all three men turned to look at her. “Regardless of the fact that our pasts would make such a move impossible, I for one still believe that muggles are a threat to be monitored and controlled- NOT wonderful creatures we should respect and embody like he and his followers keep spouting,”There were noises of disgust and wholehearted agreement from all around the fire, but Bellatrix wasn’t finished.“It’s not a question of changing sides, or dismissing our beliefs for any other reason,” Bellatrix said wholeheartedly.“The real question is… what can we do to ensure the Dark Lord returns sane?”-------Wherever they were, it was raining.It was a deeply forested area, filled with twisted, stumpy trees and copious amounts of underbrush. Caves and sinkholes riddled the hills and slopes, and it was in one of these caves they were currently resting, the soaked tent spread out in one corner to dry overnight.……when Remus Lupin had wished to someday be free from his cage in the basement of his house, suffice to say this was not exactly what he had in mind.Currently Remus was chained hand and foot to the closest flat surface, in this case the cave wall, as he had been pretty much every night since the previous full moon three weeks ago.He wasn’t even sure where Peter and Barty had even FOUND silver inlaid manacles, but they were tougher than anything Remus had ever used to restrain himself with and were locked entirely by magic- there was no keyhole to pick on any of the inch thick bands, and the chains seemed to be able to attach themselves firmly to most any surface with the flick of a wand.(A cave wall, a sturdy tree, the thick central supporting pole of the magically expanded tent, a convenient boulder… While understandably frustrated by his plight, Remus also found himself oddly intrigued by the complex spellwork that must have gone into his manacles’ creation)It had been a rather nasty surprise waking up after the September full moon to find himself not in the cage that had been his prison for the last ten or so months, but instead somewhere in Italy locked in irons and muzzled.(At least, Peter had SAID they were somewhere in Italy when he’d gently removed the muzzle and helped Remus into some clothes. Dear Merlin had that been embarrassing)Even though Remus had been able to garner bits and pieces of his captors’ plans from Winky over the last few months, he’d been completely blindsided by the full moon move. They’d probably gotten the chains and muzzle on him while he’d been in mid-transformation and vulnerable, and how they’d managed it without being scratched or bitten was admittedly mildly impressive.Ever since then, they’d been trekking on foot towards Albania- Barty, Peter, Remus (though the chains were a little hard to move in), Winky and the still-Imperiused Crouch Sr- through whatever forest or wilderness they could. The Death Eaters avoided all human civilisation like the plague, and they often made lengthy detours through wizard-space-compressed creature reserves in order to avoid muggle towns.(Remus supposed that neither of them had ever been to Albania in person before, making apparition risky. Blind apparition, especially over such distances, almost always resulted in some degree of painful splinching. Although that still didn’t explain why they’d purposely dragged their hostages along with them on the journey…)Adjusting uncomfortably against his position on the floor, the loose chains binding him making a faint clinking sound as he shifted, Remus sleeplessly watched the small camp spread out before him.Barty was snoring softly in a sleeping bag to one side of the crackling campfire, Peter similarly rugged up on the other. Out just beyond the cave entrance, drenched by the pouring rain, he could faintly see Crouch Sr. ‘keeping watch’ for any intruders. Winky was quietly pottering about near the large hiking bags they’d left in a dry corner of their shelter, ‘re-organising’ their packs as she did every night.As he laid eyes on the little house elf, her floppy ears suddenly perked up happily, and she retrieved something small from one of the packs before darting over to him.“Winky has found a nasty little scrap of paper, no good for anythings!” she whispered to Remus excitedly, opening her little hand to reveal her prize- the torn off corner of a poorly handled textbook. “Winky must be disposing of it to be keeping Master Barty’s pack clean. But there is no waste paper baskets like there is being at the house…,”“I would gladly take it off your hands Winky,” Remus slyly replied in an equally quiet whisper, palming the piece of paper and slipping it into the pocket of his dirty, ragged tunic.There it joined an unobtrusive stick of charcoal, a sharp knife tip that had broken off one of the utility blades belonging to Peter, and a single feather from the tawny owl that had kept delivering letters to their little group, week after week……Peter had ignored the letters with a clear air of discomfort, but Barty had a bad habit of using them as firelighters. And on one particular night, early on in their trek through Italy, Remus had caught finally a glimpse of the name ‘Moony’ curling up and crumbling to ash in the campfire, and he’d immediately known who the letters had been coming from.It had caused such a spark of hope in his heart Remus was surprised he hadn’t spontaneously combusted. Sirius was still trying to contact him. After almost a whole year locked in the basement-(-and Merlin, had it already been that long? The days had started to blur together after a while, but counting the cycles of the moon it was unmistakable-)-with no sign of outside attention, no sign that anyone had even noticed his abrupt disappearance from the world at large, Remus had finally seen evidence that there was still somebody looking for him.Someone still regularly sending the same owl after him, even. At least twice a week.Winky gave Remus another one of her watery smiles and quickly darted back to the packs to continue her work, pointedly not looking in his direction. She was a sentimental, friendly creature, and while she would never turn against her beloved Master Barty completely, she was still extremely apprehensive of his plans.The resurrection of Voldemort was an event that could not be allowed to pass, in both Remus and Winky’s eyes.(Remus could still vividly remember having to calm the hysterical house elf down once she’d appeared in the basement hyperventilating after overhearing THAT particular part of her master’s scheme)Even though Winky was still firmly barred from actually helping Remus in any meaningful way, she’d seen the tawny owl he’d been so longingly gazing after a few days ago and put two and two together. She’d been smuggling him ersatz writing tools and other little items, piece by piece, ever since… and now Remus could finally write Sirius a reply.Double checking both of his captors were firmly asleep, he turned to the cave wall and spread out the tiny piece of paper across it, pulling out the stick of charcoal as he did so.‘Peter is back. Crouch x2 is with him. Looking for V. Albania’There was so much more Remus wanted to write, but there was no other room whatsoever on the scrap of parchment. He wasn’t holding out hope for a rescue; hell, Remus wasn’t even sure where in Italy he was right now.(If this even still was Italy, they’d certainly been travelling long enough)But if Remus could delay, or even foil, Peter and Barty’s plans… then that would be more than enough for him.Sighing, Remus rolled up the little letter as small as he could and hid it back in his pocket. Now all he had to do was somehow get it to Sirius’s owl before the next full moon, or he’d probably have to start all over again.-------‘…he seems to be getting awfully close to Looney, and I don’t know why. I mean, she’s somehow gotten even WEIRDER since starting at Hogwarts! I’m glad you suggested I put some distance between us Tom, but if she’s cosying up to Harry…’‘I doubt it is anything serious Ginny. Just focus your efforts on your school work for now- it is better if you keep yourself above any unnecessary socialisation at this critical point in your education. You are doing so well after all! Harry Potter is a Ravenclaw, is he not? He will surely appreciate your studiousness one day’‘…ok Tom. But my roommates keep looking at me oddly when I keep saying I don’t want to hang out. Shouldn’t I talk to them at least a few times to keep them friendly?’‘So long as they do not interfere with your personal life, they do not matter. Besides, what if they turn out to be like that Lovegood girl? You were right to end that friendship before it caused irreparable damage…’A quill scratches all through the night. When a red-haired first year girl now known for studying at odd hours and avoiding all social interaction goes to class with ever deeper circles under her eyes and a slow drag to her steps, it is entirely dismissed.(Soon, the boy in the book thinks to himself. Soon, I will be free)    
Bonus Scene follow up :):
“Should we tell him where we got the chains from?”“Wha-? MERLIN Barty, why on earth would we tell him that?!”“Well, he looks so curious about their workmanship, and I’m sure the shade of red he’d turn would be quite-,”“Batemius Crouch Junior, we are not telling Remus we stole those manacles from a sex shop! He’d be mortified! I’M mortified enough as it is!”“*grumble mumble* Spoil sport medi-wizard in training…,”“I heard that!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It sometimes felt as though Harry had gone to sleep in the Ravenclaw second year boy’s dormitory on the first of September and abruptly woken up on the thirtieth of October.The first two months of his second year had simply gone by so quickly!In between the increased workload in all of his classes, dealing with Lockhart and assorted other stalkers, catching up with Guardian-of-Hogwarts in the Chamber of Secrets and plotting increasingly elaborate schemes to encourage Eamon Selwyn and Luna Lovegood into the Quiet Ones’ social circle…Well, the time had just flown away.Quidditch try-outs in the second week of term had been… disappointing. Harry was quick and extremely agile in the air, and could hit a bludger with accuracy beyond any other person on the field wielding a beater’s bat… but the captain of the Ravenclaw team had dismissed his bid for a team position in clear favour of the two veteran beaters in sixth and seventh year already on the team.Begrudgingly, Harry didn’t complain about it to his friends TOO much- the older beaters could smash the bludgers far farther across the stadium than he could after all, and had the advantage of having all the captain’s many strategies already firmly drummed into their heads- but it was still somewhat disappointing.(More so that the attractive, smug new third year Ravenclaw seeker that had succeeded in the try-outs on the same day was a member of the increasingly large group of girls spreading rumours about Luna. Why would anyone even believe that Luna washed her hair in vinegar and goat’s blood!?)Sophie had had a bit more luck with the Hufflepuff team try-outs, landing the reserve keeper position with relative ease. She was out practicing with her new teammates two mornings a week now (Thursdays and Saturdays), and bemoaned the loss of her sleeping in time to the rest of the Quiet Ones. Harry was honestly a little envious of her position, but did his best to put his feelings aside to be happy for her.Besides, as Theo had pointed out, with only one member of their group participating on a quidditch team they didn’t have to split their loyalties when it came to cheering at school matches. And in addition, Sophie had reminded Harry (on an occasion he hadn’t quite managed to hide his grumpiness well enough) that now they were all second year students, they were technically allowed to fly around the grounds casually… without teacher supervision.That had cheered Harry up substantially, and every once in a while he’d started getting up early to join Sophie for some informal practice once her team training was done… and by a happy coincidence, it was also really the only time of the day he could be sure of avoiding the attention of late-riser Lockhart while he flew.Speaking of their increasingly desperate attempts to avoid Lockhart and co, the Quiet Ones had taken to spending most of their free time over the last two months in the Chamber rather than their usual haunt in the school library.They did their homework and studied in Salazar’s little library instead, practiced their spells around the fast growing cherry sapling in the main hall and, when they had no more schoolwork to complete, followed Guardian-of-Hogwarts on her usual rounds through the so-called ‘scouting tunnels’ that honeycombed the school above.Neville in particular, whom had spent a large portion of the previous year dragging the rest of the Quiet Ones around Hogwarts in a so far futile attempt to find every secret passage the school had to offer-(-sadly, it appeared a large number of these passages had either reset, closed up or relocated over the summer holidays as the ever-changing castle layout was want to do-)-accompanied Guardian-of-Hogwarts on these patrols more often than any of the rest of them did, discovering all kinds of hidden windows, entrances and exits into the vast majority of the castle… that were frustratingly all designed for the use of the flexible basilisk rather than any human.Harry had been slightly apprehensive letting Neville go on these independent trips without him to translate for the basilisk in an emergency, but the Gryffindor had reassured him he’d be fine. And so far, it appeared that Harry’s fears had been unfounded. All of these solo tours had gone by without incident. Although there had been that one odd occurrence Neville had reported back in September…“Sasha just stopped for a moment, right in the middle of the passage,” Neville had shrugged, scratching his head in confusion. “Like she was listening to something. But she snapped out of it a second later when Myrtle came and joined us from the tunnel ahead. It didn’t seem like she remembered even stopping. Oh! And by the way, I wrote down the questions Myrtle gave me for you to translate…,”…and that was the other new aspect of the Chamber of Secrets Harry had come to adjust to. Ever a Ravenclaw, and far more talkative than all four of the Quiet Ones combined, the ghost of Myrtle Warren was infinitely curious about the entire Chamber complex and seemingly spent most of her free time coming up with questions to ask Harry to ask Guardian-of-Hogwarts on his next visit.It was patently obvious that the basilisk adored the attention she was getting, and she would willingly answer each and every question Harry translated with very few exceptions.(There were a few sworn secrets that Salazar himself had forbidden her from ever mentioning, she detested Harry’s mystery immediate predecessor as Heir to the point she would usually refuse outright to speak about them, and she was understandably highly uncomfortable discussing her own anatomy and its use in potions… but any other topic was generally fair game)Now, it wasn’t as though Myrtle’s questions were unintelligent or frivolous- as the designated parseltongue translator, Harry was finding out some fascinating information from Myrtle and Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s long Q&A sessions by proxy- but it was very time consuming. After the third time in a row Myrtle had accosted him with more questions for the basilisk, Harry had gently but firmly put his foot down at a four question/fifteen minute discussion limit per visit, whichever came first.Both Myrtle and Guardian-of-Hogwarts had pouted at this restriction-(-have you ever seen a basilisk pout? It’s somehow scary and adorable all at once-)-and Myrtle had splashed up some water from the flooded pools in the main hall at him initially-(-Harry was beginning to suspect that Myrtle had more poltergeist in her than the average magical ghost did, but her affinity to water was still nothing compared to the chaos causing efforts of the troublesome Peeves-)-but they’d both eventually acquiesced. Harry did have a life of his own beyond acting as their translator after all.Besides the Quidditch try-outs and that small disagreement with Myrtle, the first two months of school had ended up passing by almost entirely uneventfully.Sure, Harry had needed to plead with Professor Flitwick to confiscate Gryffindor first year Colin Creevy’s camera in only the third week of the new term. The excitable little boy had gotten lucky snapping a snot of the ‘boy-who-lived’ without his hood up, and had immediately started rambling excitedly about how Lockhart had offered to bloody PAY him for proper pictures of Harry ‘for publicity purposes’.(Harry was not going to lose his blessed photo anonymity to the Daily Prophet so soon, he was NOT! Thankfully, his head of house had taken his complaints seriously, and had dragged little Creevy into his office- camera and all- for a stern lecture about privacy and asking for permission, at the conclusion of which the offending photo-film had been incinerated. Professor Flitwick was awesome)Sure, Theo had figured out that if he attached Harry’s hood to the top of his head with either spellotape or a sticking charm it would eventually stop a frustrated Lockhart from leaping out of the walls trying to constantly pull it down ‘for the fans!’(Although Harry did have to deal with his hair being pulled rather painfully several times before Lockhart had finally given up… admittedly, under a death glare from Professor McGonagall whom had witnessed his latest assault. ‘Alas, a tragic loss for your fans who want to gaze unimpeded upon your face, but I will desist… My smile, as unhindered as ever, will just have to shine brighter in recompense!’ Bloody moron…)Sure, Neville’s toad Trevor had performed his first great escape of the school year. He’d just hopped out into the halls when the Gryffindor portrait had been held open just a split second longer than necessary, and had proceeded to vanish for almost a whole week- even the summoning charms of the prefects hadn’t been able to recover the amphibian.(The traumatised toad had eventually shown up in Wig’s claws after she’d been out hunting one evening, and he had gladly returned to Neville’s side once Harry had negotiated the owl’s prize away from her. On an unrelated note, Sophie had discovered a whole nest of similarly coloured toads down by the black lake in the intervening week- thankfully Trevor’s markings were fairly unique)But to Harry, none of those little events felt… notable.Perhaps it was because their campaign to draw Eamon Selwyn and Luna Lovegood closer to them hadn’t made all that much progress yet. Sophie had done her best to reach out to Eamon in the Hufflepuff common room-(-where she reported he often seemed to be drowning in friendly fourth years-)-while Harry kept an eye out on Luna whenever they crossed paths-(-they ended up next to each other at meals and in front of the Ravenclaw doorknocker at exactly the same time strangely often considering their differing timetables-)-but otherwise it was rare for any of them to meet.Eamon and Luna were in completely different years from the core four Quiet Ones after all, and had their own house divides to deal with on top of that. On the rare occasions they did manage to corner their two targets at once in the great hall or in the library, conversation tended to be rushed and over all too quickly before Eamon was pulled away by Cedric Diggory or some other well-meaning Hufflepuff, and Luna simply vanished… seemingly into thin air.It was frustrating, but even when they’d first started plotting to expand their little group, the Quiet Ones had been prepared for it to take a while to get through to their two targets. They could handle a little delayed progress.More irritating was their complete LACK of progress on finding a way to permanently discourage Harry’s many stalkers from hounding his (and by extension, the rest of the Quiet Ones) every move.Harry could no longer use his usual technique to ‘scare off overly interested purebloods’ because of Lockhart’s teacher involvement-(-by this stage, Harry was certain the infuriating professor would try any excuse to get him into an hours long phoney ‘detention’ as an excuse to chat, so he didn’t want to risk using it on ANYONE that might report back to him-)-and no matter HOW often the Quiet Ones moved around the public areas of the castle, they always seemed to be found and accosted eventually by persistent, insipid questioners that REFUSED to take no for an answer.(‘Harry, do you remember the night you killed you-know-who?’ ‘Harry, what was Azkaban like? Did you get strung up by your ankles like Filch keeps threatening to do to us?’ ‘Harry, can I have your autograph? Lockhart said it was okay!’ ‘Harry, why are you so antisocial?’ ‘Harry, is your godfather really a Death Eater?’ ‘Harry, why don’t you dye your hair? Those silver streaks are unsightly!’ ‘Harry come on, put that hood down! I can’t see your face!’ ‘Harry why are you hanging out with these losers? Come with us!’ ‘Harry-?’ ‘Harry-!’ ‘Harryharryharryharryharry-’)Even if they somehow escaped the aggressive questioners for a while, there always seemed to be ‘watchers’ around instead- people like the youngest Weasley, Ginny, who lurked around corners and let her eyes burn holes into Harry’s back… or people like Draco Malfoy, who sneered and snickered and whispered from afar, deliberately spreading the word on their location to those bold enough to start the insipid questioning again.Eventually, even the Ravenclaw common room didn’t feel safe anymore- only the privacy of his curtained four poster bed or the Chamber of Secrets were free from his persistent stalkers, and Harry felt……well, it rather felt like Harry was holding his breath for those first two months of school, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For one of his stalkers to cross some unknown line. Or for one of the Quiet Ones’ plans to finally come to fruition so they could finally get some peace. Or perhaps for some other great occurrence to come about and really kick start the school year.With Halloween fast approaching Harry was aware it was probably tempting fate to think that way, but he couldn’t help it.All he could hope for was that whatever this great event he felt he was waiting for ended up being, it would be a benign. Or at least, not as painful or potentially dangerous as last Halloween had ended up being for him.……in hindsight, he really should have been wishing a LOT harder.-------Halloween morning dawned with a similar feeling of dread to last year’s.Only this time, since Harry had actually paid attention to the calendar this year, he’d been aware far enough in advance to pre-emptively shore up his occlumency shields in preparation for the stressful date.Over the previous week, Harry had put aside his usual evening reading in favour of longer meditation sessions and extended drills of the mental exercises Florian had taught him back in Azkaban.He sorted out his thoughts, reorganised his memories, acknowledged but ignored the whispering and re-forged his emergency barriers into something resembling more a thick wall of opaque glass as opposed to a few obscuring, yet fragile, sheets of tissue paper.(For all his practice, Harry was still only twelve years old. It would be a while yet until his brain had matured enough to safely put up truly effective mental countermeasures without affecting his intellectual or emotional development. These brutish forge-glass emotional shields would just have to suffice for now… besides, there were no dementors at Hogwarts)This year the thirty-first of October fell on a weekend, so Harry was able to sleep in as much as the Ravenclaw dorm’s collective alarm allowed him to.His dorm mates were chattering excitedly about the Halloween feast almost as soon as they were out of bed, and as Harry groggily went through his morning routine he wondered if this year he might actually make it through the day intact.He dressed in his school robes (they were required for the feast that evening, and he wasn’t likely to be returning to his dorm before then), pulled up his hood, packed Sirius’s mirror (in case of a memory-emergency like last year) and a few half-finished books into his satchel and made his way down the dormitory stairs.(Steel yourself, he repeated internally, there are no dementors at Hogwarts)He waved half-heartedly to Luna on his way out of the common room-(-had her ears always been pierced? Harry certainly hadn’t seen her wearing those dangly autumn-leaf creations ever before-)-battled through the crowded, fragrant smelling corridors to the great hall for breakfast-(-roast pumpkin and caramelised sugar and melting chocolate and toasted cinnamon-)-overheard a conversation between two Gryffindor girls about being invited to a… death day party?-(-Granger and Brown he was pretty certain, but most of the names of his year mates had thoroughly escaped him during the summer and he honestly hadn’t made all that much of an effort to recall them-)-grabbed some toast and boiled eggs from the closest platter in the great hall, and then practically bolted up to the second floor girls bathroom as soon as he’d eaten his fill……belatedly followed by the rest of the somewhat concerned Quiet Ones.Only once Harry had climbed down the silken ladder into the catacombs of the Chamber of Secrets did he finally feel some of the lingering tension in his shoulders give way. Occlumency or not, Halloween had still never been a good day for him.(There are no dementors at Hogwarts, he reminded himself once again… and far, FAR from the last time he would need to)-------‘The Halloween feast at Hogwarts is meant to be amazing! There are these massive pumpkins all over the great hall already, and I heard that there’s going to be dancing skeletons!’‘That sounds lovely Ginny!’‘I know, right?! But it’d be even better if you could come along. You’re my best friend Tom, and I hate having to leave you behind in the dorm… actually, how was Halloween done when you were a student?’‘Oh, fairly similar to how you described Ginny, although there were often separate private celebrations run concurrently for traditionalists observing Samhain. They had rather decreased in popularity by the time this diary was made I must say; something about the Halloween feast having the best sweets’‘…did you celebrate Samhain?’‘Never entirely formally- the traditions for that celebration tend to vary from family to family and…’‘Oh, because you never had-? Oh, that’s so sad Tom!’‘Do not worry about me Ginny, go to your feast tonight and I will observe my personal traditions while you are gone. Well, as much as I can in this parchment form’‘Could I help? A lot of the nicer herbs and flowers grow openly on the grounds, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to get them physically into the book but-’‘That is not necessary Ginny, but thank you for the thought. Although…’‘Yes?’‘Well, there is one thing you could do for me…’-------“The day upon which the veil between worldsss grows thin. A day of lossss, and remembrance. The marker of the lassst hunt and harvessst before the long cold arrivesss. That isss what thisss ‘Halloween’ represssentsss, correct?” Guardian-of-Hogwarts clarified curiously.“Essentially, yes,” Myrtle answered imperiously after Harry’s hasty translation. “There are lots of different mid-autumn festivals all over the world, but most of them do centre around one or more of those concepts. Halloween and Samhain are usually the two celebrated here at school though,”The basilisk of the Chamber of Secrets and the ghost of Myrtle Warren had once again commandeered Harry’s skills as translator to have an in depth discussion, far overshooting his self-imposed fifteen minute limit… but for once, he didn’t entirely mind.Anything to keep his thoughts away from the impeding Halloween eve.(There are no dementors at Hogwarts)“Excuse me, Harry!” Theo’s voice suddenly called out, and all three conversationalists turned in sync to the concealed library door to see Harry’s Slytherin friend waving him over. “It’s not long until the feast is due to start- Sophie and I are packing up now, would you like to come with us?”“Sure!” Harry called back with only a slightly forced grin on his face. “I’ll be over in a minute!”All four of the Quiet Ones had been down in the Chamber of Secrets for pretty much the entire day. Though none of them had said anything, it was pretty obvious they’d all noticed how tense Harry had been in the week leading up to Halloween and had collectively decided to keep him company… while at the same time, trying to give him some space.Hence why Harry had been out here beside the cherry sapling in the main hall of the Chamber-(-and Merlin, had it grown since school had begun. The pale-barked tree had shot up to over a foot taller than Harry was now, and it looked almost ethereal with its skeletal winter-stripped branches stretching up towards the Chamber ceiling-)-playing interpreter for Guardian-of-Hogwarts and Myrtle, while the rest of his friends instead continued their usual studies in the little library… or in Neville’s case, went off attempting once again to map out a viable human navigable route through the scouting tunnels, this time without the basilisk’s aid.(It would probably still be a little while before he came back, although he’d entreated the other Quiet Ones not to wait up for him. Guardian-of-Hogwarts had agreed to track him down if he hadn’t shown up half an hour into the Halloween feast or so. Sigh, Gryffindors…)“Sorry, I have to go Guardian-of Hogwarts,” Harry apologised to the basilisk, who inclined her head understandingly. “Could you please send Neville out after us once he finds his way out of the tunnels? Myrtle, I’m afraid you’ll have to finish up this conversation later- I’d rather not miss the Halloween feast for a second year in a row if I can avoid it,”“Oh, I suppose…,” Myrtle huffed, her insubstantial body perched neatly on one of the cherry sapling’s longer branches. “It IS a nice feast for those who can actually eat it,”The basilisk, who had curled her massive bulk loosely around the sapling’s trunk during their earlier conversation, gradually unwound and began to head in the direction of the scouting tunnel entrance.“From the sssmell of it, your Godric-friend is fairly deep into the network,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts hissed dryly. “I will have to ssset out now in order to retrieve him in time for the deadline you ssset… he will clearly need sssome more practice before he can navigate the tunnelsss effectively,”Harry tried, and failed, not to snort in amusement, despite his lingering worry. Neville’s dedication to becoming an efficient scout in the complex array of covert tunnels Salazar Slytherin had woven through the school was comparable to Sophie’s determination to learn fluent parseltongue.Their endeavours were both admirable… but neither were progressing very quickly to say the least.“Sasha’s going to retrieve Neville?” Sophie asked right on cue, she and Theo exiting the library just as the tip of Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s tail vanished into the inky blackness of the entrance to the scouting tunnels.“He DID say not to wait up for him,” Harry murmured, feeling somewhat worried despite his faith in the basilisk’s ability to locate the missing Quiet One. “But the Halloween feast goes for several hours, I’m sure we can stay a little longer…,”“Harry, Neville would just feel guilty for keeping us behind on his account,” Theo reassured him. “Come- he’ll be with us within an hour at most anyway,”Nodding reluctantly, Harry accompanied his two friends back towards the catacombs, waving goodbye to a somewhat sulky Myrtle as he went. She pouted from her position perched on the cherry sapling’s branches, but waved back none the less.-------In the dormitory room assigned to the Gryffindor first year girls, a bloody, second-hand potions knife sat hastily shoved back into its battered kit in an unpacked trunk.A quill stained with the same blood lay abandoned on the small work desk by the bed.The dorm was empty, and had been for some time.-------(There are no dementors at--!)All thoughts of Azkaban, dementors and Halloweens long in the past were brutally, and efficiently, banished in entirety from Harry’s mind upon entering the great hall.The Halloween feast was, in a word, BUSY.And while Harry could usually deal with even the busiest of meal-times at Hogwarts now his sensory sensitivity had been somewhat tamed… this… this was a whole other level of MAGIC.The gigantic carved pumpkins that had been positioned around the hall at breakfast time were now filled with multi-coloured witch-lights, live bats laden with a bevy of charms to prevent them from biting, messing the food or escaping flitted around the hall constantly, and a whole host of benign undead of various sorts were performing what appeared to be a lively harvest song on a stage that hovered a dozen feet above the staff table.Harry blinked his eyes rapidly, and had to manually remind himself to continue breathing as both his mundane and magical senses drank in the sight before him.The great hall was easily just as decorated and festive as it had been the previous Christmas, but there were SO MANY MORE PEOPLE…“Er, Harry? You’re blocking the doorway,” Theo carefully nudged his shoulder, making him jump and quickly skirt to one side to get out of the way of the students entering behind them.“Where should we sit?” Sophie asked, grabbing Harry’s arm just in time to prevent him from drifting into an ornamental carved pumpkin by the door. “Normally I’d say Gryffindor for a feast like this, but they might not be so welcoming if Neville isn’t with us yet…,”“Not Hufflepuff, Hufflepuff gets LOUD during festivities like this,” Theo gave his ultimatum with a shudder. “No offense Sophie,”A glance over at the yellow and black clad table and- yes, there was Eamon, hunched over looking borderline petrified by the exultant jubilation and chattering going on all around him. Not for the first time, Harry felt a rush of sympathy and a great urge to go rescue the poor fourth year… not that Cedric Diggory, who was sitting beside the reluctant Eamon and clearly urging him to more actively take part in the festivities, would likely allow such a rescue.“None taken,” Sophie shrugged easily. “I guess Slytherin is out too, by what I can see over there?”Harry managed to tear his overwhelmed gaze away from poor Eamon’s plight to follow where Sophie was pointing on the green and silver clad table.Ah, it appeared that Draco Malfoy was holding court over some unknown outrage with a combined audience of most of his house mates, although the subject of his rant was inaudible over the general chatter of the hall. Knowing the date, Harry suspected his complaints were heavily related to the absence of whatever his own family’s Samhain/Halloween traditions were.“Ravenclaw it is then,” Theo decided with a nod, and they began to make their way over to Harry’s house table, Sophie still subtly guiding him along the way so he didn’t trip over.Despite how crowded the hall seemed already, they fairly easily found a place at the end of the Ravenclaw table near the doors. Sophie plonked her bag down on the bench next to her to save a seat for Neville, and as Harry took the weight off his feet he finally examined the food laden table before him.And goodness, the house elves had certainly been working all day!Besides the expected displays of common wizarding sweets and lollies likely donated by local shops in Hogsmeade for the occasion, there was a massive variety of home cooked sweet and savoury foodstuff weighing down the decorated tablecloth.(Wait, tablecloth? Now that Harry was paying attention, he noticed specially embroidered cloths covering all of the house tables, decorated with autumn and harvest motifs. Another tradition he supposed, though he sure didn’t envy the house elves who needed to wash the massive stretches of fabric at the end of the night)Unlike a normal meal or feast, both the desserts and main course dishes were crowded onto the long tables all at once. There were actual wicker cornucopia horns scattered about filled with seasonal fruit and nuts, at least one whole roasted pumpkin per table in the process of being carved up into fragrant pieces by animated knives, loaves of bread stamped with elaborate designs and studded with whole preserved herbs, pastries and pies both savoury and sugary, homemade spun-sugar sweets and crystallised flowers, creamy chocolates and cellophane wrapped toffees, animal shaped meringues and multi coloured fudge, syrup-streaked ice creams and many other dishes besides…To the house elves’ credit, none of the savoury dishes on the table clashed either in scent or appearance with the numerous sweets. Although, considering the average age range of the diners at each table, most of the healthier dishes had been all but abandoned as afterthoughts in favour of pre-emptive dessert.Defiant in this regard, Harry’s first selection of the night was a crisp red apple from the closest cornucopia… never mind that the sheer noise, colour and magic layering the hall was making him feel slightly queasy.Besides, he could always take some of the wrapped lollies away for later- Merlin knew that it wasn’t actively expected for even the combined student population of Hogwarts to COMPLETELY finish off an extravagantly sweet feast like this in one go.Letting his mind drift as he chewed on the apple, Harry recalled back in first year when he’d wondered just where all the bountiful leftovers of Hogwarts food went-(-perhaps considering, at one point, if there was a way he could smuggle some of it to Azkaban without being caught. Unfortunately, with the heavy house elf wards and the constant mail checks over the island, he’d quickly hit a dead end in his planning-)-and how eventually, Sophie had figured out the house elves’ system through diligent observation, note taking and questions via Huflepuff’s own private connection to the kitchens.The way she’d explained it to the rest of them was deceptively simple. Anything that remained entirely untouched by the students one night was often magically preserved and served again at a later meal that week. Anything that had had a few serves taken from it was either used in something else (like beef sandwiches from the remains of a carved roast), given to Hufflepuffs visiting the kitchens, or eaten by the house elves themselves.(There was apparently another secret entrance to the kitchens for the rest of the non-Hufflepuff student body, so anyone could technically go and ask for leftovers or special requests… but none of the Quiet Ones had managed to find it yet)Leftovers that had actively been nibbled at and left behind on plates either went into the herbology department’s compost or the care of magical creatures department’s animal food- and any surplus from THAT was offered to farmers in the Hogsmeade area for their own crops and livestock. Thanks to the wonders of magical preservation, very little was actually wasted or thrown out.A gust of cold air came through the great double doors as a few more students arrived at the feast, and Harry couldn’t help but jump slightly, shivering as his thoughts were derailed.(There are no dementors at Hogwarts)Distracting himself by chewing the last of the crisp flesh away from the core of his apple, Harry wondered when Neville would be up to join them for the feast. Just because it wasn’t quite to Harry’s tastes didn’t mean he wanted his other friends to miss out…-------The girls’ bathroom on the second floor was silent.There was no wailing ghost present, as the rumours had proclaimed……and for that, Ginny Weasley’s body breathed a sigh of relief.(The fewer potential witnesses, the better)Three roosters lay dead on one of the sinks, beheaded with their blood oozing slowly into the potion’s vial jammed into the drain.Somewhat impatiently, once the vial was half full Ginny’s fingers quickly corked the bottle and her wand vanished the corpses that remained.Jerky and awkward, her red splattered hands were quickly washed, and her feet moved her back from the sink in preparation.Pocketing the vial of blood for later use, right next to the currently inert diary, Tom Riddle opened Ginny’s mouth and hissed.“Open,”The sink slid away cleanly to reveal a familiar darkened passage below… with a distinctly UN-familiar silken rope ladder firmly stuck to one side.For a moment, the steady composure of the first year girl’s malign passenger… faltered… a trickle of alarm filtering through.The ladder was not an item Tom recalled from his last journey to the Chamber of Secrets- before the… split.Ginny’s eyes blinked, her face contorting in confusion briefly before smoothing out once more.No, there was nothing unusual about this.His older self must have simply left the ladder here during his most recent trip to the school back in the fifties- during his failed bid for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position.The basilisk’s curse to keep them from entering the Chamber must have worn off earlier than the beast had planned, and so…An evil looking smirk quite out of place on Ginny’s freckled face widened her lips.Perhaps Lord Voldemort had taken their rightful vengeance on the treacherous basilisk already then, for shutting them out of their birth right so long ago.And if not, it was no matter. His older self had left behind some very… interesting spells with him when they’d last ‘spoken’, formulating this plan. Spells that could easily bend the beast back to their will.With agility she didn’t normally possess, Ginny swung herself over the edge of the pipe and began to climb down the sturdy rope ladder.In his arrogance, Tom Riddle didn’t even bother to close the tunnel behind him.After all, everyone even remotely worth worrying about was at the Halloween feast anyway.He had all the time in the world.-------(“Oh, hello Sasha! Is it time for the feast already?”“…exactly like Godric. You do realissse I cannot underssstand your wordsss little Godric-friend?”“I’m well thank you! Better now you can prevent me from getting lost on the way back, heh heh…*sheepish chuckling*,”)-------“…why is there a tree growing in the middle of the Chamber?”The bewildered words fell from Ginny’s lips without any conscious input from the being currently in control of them.Her heart beat loud in her ears.Her palms began to sweat.Her breathing quickened- and that was QUITE enough! Tom had to make a deliberate effort to slow her breaths again before her body could start hyperventilating, and futilely tried to call on some of his long neglected occlumency exercises to calm himself down.(It didn’t work. He was years out of practice. What use had a diary for occlumency?)This… this wasn’t right.This wasn’t going according to the plan.The ladder, he’d been able to explain away.The clean walls of the catacombs and the lack of bones had been a little trickier, but reasonable.But… but the open doors that should have been shut, but the wide gaping mouth of the statue of Salazar Slytherin, but the bloody TREE-!Deep, slow breaths Ginny…Tom growled with her girlish voice, desperately trying to convert some of this anxiety to useful thought, to rage, to anything but blind fear.Facts, Tom, facts.Someone else had been here.Recently, by the looks of the inexplicable plant’s youth.Ginny’s throat worked, and gulped (nervously) irritably.Okay. Okay, he could work with this.If there was (SOMEHOW!) another heir of Slytherin attending Hogwarts that he could pin the coming attacks on, then all the better… ri-?“…see the main hall ahead!”Ginny’s borrowed blood ran cold as Tom’s revised plotting was interrupted by voices. CLOSE voices.Fighting down his growing panic and trying his best to convert it to anger instead-(-anger was useful, anger was SAFE-)-Tom snarled with Ginny’s lips and drew her wand as turned towards the approaching intruders……THERE! Her body whirled to face the darkened exit to the scouting tunnels up in the school above.(This was bad. Another heir was bad enough. That they were actually HERE while he was trying to implement the first stage of his plan-!)“…know that you can’t exactly understand what I’m saying, but thank you for coming to get me anyway,” a young, distinctly male voice echoed up alongside the sounds of slithering. “Those tunnels are a nightmare to navigate! I’m not sure how you do it Sasha!”“Whatever you are sssaying, Godric-friend, I hope it is not too important,” the familiar hiss of the basilisk’s voice replied. “No matter, we are almossst out…,”Tom faltered.English.Parseltongue.Separate.Wrong.This intruder… they weren’t a parselmouth.This was not an heir of Slytherin.The last dregs of his panic flared, consuming themselves in a white hot rage he gladly let guide Ginny’s shaking hands. They would pay. This imposter and the traitor basilisk both would PAY for this trespass…(Too late, he did not notice the ghost hiding in the branches of the cherry tree, whose eyes widened in horror as Ginny Weasley uttered the first syllables of a dreadful curse)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Halloween feast was in full swing.The assortment of skeletons, ghosts, ghouls and the vampire lead singer performing up on the floating stage had finished yet another seasonal song and dance, garnering a lively round of applause from the students who had actually been watching them rather than absorbed in their meals.Harry was one of those students, clapping half-heartedly as the undead band counted in for their next song. He was feeling too queasy to really eat anything more than the single apple he’d finished almost half an hour beforehand- the hall was just too… too… intense! There was already a burgeoning headache building behind his eyes, and if it weren’t for his shielding hood he was fairly certain he would have given up and left some time ago.At least Sophie and Theo seemed to be enjoying themselves. Theo had predictably gone for the most chocoholic confection on the table immediately-(-he was still in the process of eating the bowl of dark, rich mousse he’d served himself half an hour earlier, savouring one tiny bite at a time-)-Sophie appeared to have made friends with one of the bats that had been summoned in to decorate the hall-(-it had perched on her shoulder and she was cooing at it, petting its furry head-)-and Luna was offering Harry a delicate meringue piped into the shape of a spider.…wait, back up. When had Luna gotten here? Harry thought bewilderedly, politely taking the sweet from the offered hand of the girl sitting right next to him. She’d neatly slotted herself in between Harry and Theo somehow without either of them noticing- indeed, as absorbed in his dessert as he was, Theo still hadn’t seemed to have noticed their sudden divider.Luna’s mouth was moving, but it was too loud in the hall to hear what she was saying. Harry shuffled a little closer to her and leaned in, gesturing to her to repeat what she’d said…That was when the heavy doors to the great hall, which had been perched slightly ajar to allow latecomers to the feast entrance, suddenly slammed open with a great BANG.In a rush of freezing cold air that made a good half of the gathered students shriek, a silvery, hovering figure swooped through the open doors with an awful wail.…an awful, familiar, wail.“Myrtle?!” Harry exclaimed, jumping to his feet in the suddenly silent great hall.The ghost’s terrified, watering eyes honed in on him and she swept down to Ravenclaw table with a howl that made every single liquid rattle in it is containers.“Sasha’s been possessed! There’s a girl in the Chamber and she’s ATTACKING NEVILLE!” Myrtle shrieked.Right on cue, the ground quaked.-------Meanwhile, roughly a mile directly below the great hall of Hogwarts…“GINNY IT’S ME!” Longbottom shouted out desperately, diving behind a piece of fallen masonry just as the tiny first year girl let off another bombarda.Another elaborate column took the hit instead of the irritatingly agile boy, blasting the top right off and sending it crashing into the floor.The basilisk writhed on floor of the Chamber, its hissing voice letting out a stream of screams and curses as it fought the enchantment Tom had wrought with all it had.But it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough…Ginny snarled as her wand flicked again, sending off another blasting curse towards the Gryffindor boy zig-zagging all over the chamber- and missing yet AGAIN, Tom noted with increasing irritation, yet ANOTHER crater added to the walls beyond.Ginny Weasley had written many things to Tom about Neville Longbottom- perhaps not as much as about one Harry Potter (ugh), but as perhaps the closest friend of his vessel’s little obsession, Tom had learnt more than enough about the boy he was now fighting.Neville was a second year Gryffindor, one of the four ‘Quiet Ones’ that made up Harry Potter’s social circle, and was easily recognisable by how he braided his hair into countless plaits every morning.Herbology genius (Tom supposed that explained the tree), reluctant friend of the Weasley family (Ginny had complained several times how by having to pick him up on September first, he’d almost made them miss the Express), shy, nervous, clumsy (although said clumsiness seemed infuriatingly absent for once as Neville ducked and dived around his spells), but above all-Expendable.Tom could already feel the exhilaration of violent spellcasting singing through Ginny’s veins, clearing the last of his unwarranted panic and settling his thoughts.Yes, all he needed to do was kill the boy and lock down the curse he was using to crush the basilisk’s will, and everything would be back on track according to his plan.(If only Longbottom would bloody STOP MOVING…!)It was a shame about the damage he was doing to the Chamber, Ginny’s expression grimaced briefly as yet another column came crashing down under her wand as his quarry dodged AGAIN, but it could all be easily fixed later.(Unfortunately, Tom’s young host hadn’t the required strength of will to cast unforgivables, or even some of the less nasty dark curses he knew. Bombarda was the strongest spell he’d been able to force from her wand, but at least it was easy enough to chain-cast… rationing Ginny’s dwindling pools of magical energy)The brief thought that maybe, just maybe, Tom should have tried to play the innocent stalker-schoolgirl to deceive Neville instead of (in his moment of anger) immediately going in for the kill, crossed his mind… but he dismissed it.He allowed Ginny to smile. Things were working out just fine this way after all.…and of course, the moment after that thought, he suddenly felt something cross the boundaries of the Chamber wards he’d attuned to himself at the entrance to the catacombs he’d foolishly left open.Ginny swore.-------Harry Potter was halfway out the doors of the great hall before Myrtle Warren had even finished speaking, his friends Sophie and Theodore right on his heels.Dumbledore frowned as the house tables surged to their feet almost as one, panicked exclamations and cries of alarm mixing together with the continued wailing of the ghost sunk to her knees at the end of the Ravenclaw table.Several students were migrating towards the doors after the ‘Quiet Ones’, and some of the teachers had also gotten to their feet in an attempt to maintain order… but far, far too late to catch their three wayward students doubtlessly already on their way to the Chamber of Secrets.The headmaster covertly waved his wand under the table, sending a mental familiar message to Fawkes. If Harry had lost control over Salazar’s basilisk somehow, he’d need help to defeat it and none of the teachers would be capable of aiding him due to the school’s accord with the founders. Hufflepuff’s guardian phoenix on the other hand, even if exhausted by the very edge of old age before his next burning day…Message sent, Dumbledore stood and raised his wand, sending several great purple firework lights into the air with a CRACK that finally silenced the panicking hall.“Students,” he announced calmly. “There is no cause for alar-,”The ground shuddered and quaked again.-------“What- MERLIN’S BALLS- the hell is going on?!” Theo swore as the ground shook again under their feet as they raced up the surprisingly cooperative stairs to the second floor.“I don’t know,” Harry answered shortly, almost out of breath, reaching the landing and immediately sprinting in the direction of the out of order bathroom.“Neville must have stumbled upon something in the scouting tunnels,” Sophie surmised anxiously, easily keeping pace with the two boys due to her quidditch training. “Harry, we can’t just dive in there unprepared- if Sasha’s really against us then-,”“Here,” Harry cut her off hastily, shoving his hand into his book satchel and tossing her Sirius’s mirror as they ran. “That should work if she opens her eyes, right? Or at least stop her gaze from killing you outright. Share it with Theo,”“What about YOU?!” Theo squawked as they approached the bathroom door.“All parselmouths are immune to her gaze, I’ve looked-,” Harry himself cut off with a sharp breath as they came to a halt before the entrance to the Chamber… the OPEN entrance.Well shit.An ethereal, musical birdsong suddenly filled the air, and through the open bathroom door they’d left behind them came swooping a gnarled, magnificent bird with ashen red and gold plumage, carrying… something, it its claws. It ignored them completely, diving down the open pipe below.Bewildered, Harry turned to look at an equally confused Sophie and Theo.Clearly, this was worse than they thought.-------In the great hall of Hogwarts, as the teachers struggled to maintain order, the undead performers ran for cover and Myrtle continued to wail, making drinks rattle alarmingly in their glasses and the very pipes of the plumbing in the walls groan……a first year girl with greyish-blonde hair and a fourth year boy with glasses locked eyes across the sea of their classmates.And moved as one towards the flailing ghost.-------Neville Longbottom was not having a good day.He’d never run this fast, or this far, in his entire life, and his lungs and legs were already aching.Avoiding Ginny’s explosive curses had been bad enough, but in the last minute or so Sasha had stopped thrashing and writhing on the ground in pain.Neville had been relieved at first, grateful for the seeming recovery of his only ally in this accursed, bewildering confrontation… only Sasha hadn’t moved to help him… instead she’d waveringly slithered up to her full height… and she’d OPENED her EYES.Neville had barely been able to slam his own eyes shut in time to avoid her deadly gaze.There was no way out of the chamber now. All of the auxiliary doors had automatically sealed shut under the first blasting curse’s assault, Sasha’s hostile bulk was blocking the route back into the labyrinthine scouting tunnels, and the trigger happy first year Neville thought he had known was squarely in his way towards the catacomb exit.And Merlin’s beard, GINNY! What on earth was going on?! How had she even gotten into the chamber to start with?! WHY was she trying to mash him into a fine paste against the walls all of a sudden?!Now, Neville only knew Ginny Weasley peripherally- his gran had encouraged him to make friends with her brother Ronald when they were younger (that brief, jealous friendship had likely only contributed to Neville’s later shyness)- but he knew enough about her to know that something was CLEARLY wrong here.Bloody hell, bombarda wasn’t even CLOSE to the first year curriculum, and distant Slytherin blood or not-(-if he survived this, Neville was definitely going through that Slytherin family tree on the Chamber wall with a fine toothed comb to see if either the Prewetts or Weasleys had a connection like Harry’s or not-)-Ginny had never shown any signs of being a parselmouth before. It was clear that she had to be possessed or Imperiused or- or- SOMETHING!Neville dived and rolled behind one of the few remaining whole columns as another blast of spellfire whizzed past his ear and slammed into the statue of Salazar Slytherin on the far wall, leaving a smoking crater where the left hand used to be and shaking the very ground from the force.Sasha’s enraged hissing filled the air, and Neville made a blind break for it towards the opposite wall, catching glimpses of emerald scales in his peripheral vison FAR too close for comfort as he dived behind another piece of fallen masonry.He’d given up trying to reason with Ginny- or whatever it was that was using her appearance- roughly five bombarda’s ago.Higher than average spell knowledge or not, the Ginny-thing seemed disinclined to speak beyond spellcasting, snarling incoherently and swearing in a manner that would have had Mrs Weasley wash her daughter’s mouth out with scouring charm or three… but Neville could tell she- it- was tiring.Using one spell like that over and over- it was a classic technique to keep up firepower for longer than one’s energy could allow.Chain-casting.Neville could remember that much from his gran’s many reminiscences of his dad’s auror days. And Ginny was a first year after all; no matter how strong whatever was using her was they still only had the combined magical strength of an eleven year old.If Neville could just outlast it- her- it- until her magical reserves drained sufficiently, he could make a break for the cherry tree and then the Chamber exit.It was his best- and only- shot at survival as far as he could tell. He was way out of his depth as it was, and it wasn’t as if he could hurt Ginny or Sasha- even if he COULD think of the right spells to do so through the adrenaline staggering his thoughts and flooding his veins.Damn it all, he needed help!As if summoned by this thought, an unearthly, spine tingling melody filled the air.Gasping for breath, Neville dared to peek over the rubble he was sheltering behind in order to gaze upon a most bizarre scene.Ginny-(-or whatever it was-)-had turned towards the Chamber exit and backed up towards the cherry tree, observing in alarm as a magnificently plumed, aged PHOENIX of all creatures swooped through the doorway carrying… something, in its claws.Instead of diving down to attack the Ginny-thing (as Neville had hoped) or Sasha (as Neville had feared), the creature made a bee-line for Neville’s own hiding spot, dropping the bundle it was carrying right over his outstretched hands.…It was the sorting hat.What.No time to think, no time to panic, no time to plan, Neville shoved aside his mildly hysterical confusion as the phoenix wheeled about above his head and dived at Sasha’s towering shadow, and did what any person normally did with a hat.He jammed it onto his head.…and was very nearly concussed as something heavy fell slammed into his scalp from the inside.-------Never before had the journey through the catacombs between the exit pipe and the main hall of the Chamber of Secrets seemed so long.Harry, with Theo and Sophie on his heels, were sprinting with all they had towards their missing friend and his mystery foe. They’d left their book bags behind in the bathroom, carrying nothing their wands in their wrist holsters and whatever could fit in their robe pockets for speed. Already they could hear blasts of spellfire and enraged hissing.“Kill- kill- KILL!” Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s tortured voice echoed down the pipes and Harry pushed his already burning legs to go faster. Myrtle had said the basilisk had been possessed- and as much as he’d hoped she’d been mistaken, it appeared what the ghost had said had been true.“Shield your eyes!” Harry shouted back to his friends as they approached the final doorway up ahead. “She’s not on our side anymore!”“Does anyone know any spells that can cause large flashes of light?!” Sophie asked frantically at his side. “Basilisks are sensitive to it! We might be able to get her to close her eyes again without hurting her!”“Would lumos or lumos maxima work?!” Theo asked in turn from his other side.“Something longer lasting than that- Ah!” Sophie cut off, whipping out the mirror Harry had given her as they came to a screeching halt at the entrance to the main chamber.The once magnificent Chamber of Secrets was in shambles. Massive chunks of stonework had been blasted out of the walls and ceiling, probably what had caused the shaking in the castle above. Several of the ornate snake carved columns had been tipped over or broken in half.Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s was clearly enchanted- enraged- snarling and hissing mindlessly as she struck at a small figure evading her in the middle of the hall, eyes wide open, brilliant gold orbs casting death upon whatever met them.The small figure- Neville!- was barely in sight, darting from shelter to shelter with a familiar ratty old wizard’s hat pulled down over his eyes- wait, was that a SWORD?!- and in his hands, yes, a silver plated longsword studded with rubies that he was using with some difficulty to parry Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s deadly strikes whenever they got too close.The bird- the PHOENIX- that had gone ahead of them into the catacombs was whirling around the basilisk’s head, trying to strike at her luminous eyes without catching her gaze directly, but its faltering, aged wingbeats always carried it forward slightly too slowly to connect.And standing by the somehow untouched cherry sapling was…“GINNY?!” Sophie was the first to exclaim.“GUARDIAN-OF-HOGWARTS!” Harry was the next to shout, looking on in horror at the vomitus mass of evil spellwork he could immediately feel pulsing around the basilisk’s body.Both girl and snake jerked at the new voices. Little Ginny Weasley turned around, her deeply shadowed eyes catching upon Harry at the forefront of their little group, drawing back in shock for a moment before her eyes clouded with hate.“POTTER!” she snarled.“NEVILLE!” Theo cried out as the other boy dived blindly out of the way of Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s fangs, turning at the sound of his voice.“THEO?!” Neville shouted in alarm. “SOPHIE?!”“Harry?” an extremely confused voice asked relatively calmly from the direction of the mirror Sophie was currently using to redirect hers and Theo’s gazes. She startled badly enough to fumble the small square looking glass, and it clattered to the floor unharmed.Harry blanched.“SIRIUS! NOW IS NOT A GOOD TIME!” Harry shrieked almost as shrilly as Myrtle was capable of. “CUT THE CONNECTION!”As though in slow motion, Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s head began to turn towards them at the entrance. Ginny was facing away from her. Sophie and Theo had immediately dived for cover once she’d inadvertently dropped the mirror, squeezing their eyes shut. As a parselmouth, Harry knew he was safe, but as for the figure he could just glimpse staring confusedly out of the mirror tilted crookedly on the floor-!Harry saw the exact moment his godfather in the mirror caught sight of the room reflected in his own looking glass.And froze, the mirror on his end slipping from his fingers. As though he was turned to stone.Petrified.“I should have known, Potter,” Ginny spat out his name like a curse. “A parselmouth… How did you find my ancestor’s secret Chamber?! Answer me!”Harry was still staring aghast at the fallen mirror reflecting number twelve Grimmauld Place’s drawing room lying innocently on the Chamber floor, the corner of Sirius’s unmoving boot just in view. He almost felt petrified himself.Why had Sirius called? He thought frantically. It had always been Harry who called him in the evenings, so his godfather would be certain he wasn’t interrupting any meals or social activities. What had been so important that he’d called Harry first, on Halloween of all days? So important that he’d indirectly met eyes with a basilisk…“ANSWER ME!” Ginny repeated, her usually soft and squeaky little fangirl voice raised in anger and echoing with unnamed malice.Stiffly, blankly, Harry turned towards her.Neville was still locked in a fighting stance before the writhing basilisk, the ripped mouth of the sorting hat on his head moving silently…(The talking headwear was directing his movements, he belatedly realised. A hat had no eyes, after all)Guardian-of-Hogwarts was still wildly striking and hissing an unending mantra of violence, possessed or controlled or worse…(Was the friendly, eager serpent that had guided him through the Chamber for the first time even still in there?)The unknown phoenix was still doing its best to harry the basilisk, claws raking across the ridge of her brow again and again in an attempt to gouge out her eyes…(Where had it come from? Why was it doing this?)And Ginny- the little first year Gryffindor that Harry could only remember the name of solely due to her persistent attempts at stalking his every footstep- was glaring at him with such hatred in her eyes that he was immediately certain the obsessed little girl he was familiar with was not the one behind them.Occlumency Harry, a distant voice inside his head that sounded vaguely like Florian reminded him, bring up your shields before its too late…“Influentiam revelare!” Sophie suddenly shouted and--the Chamber of Secrets exploded with silver.-------Harry’s aura of reason made visible, while at rest, had behaved like an ebbing and flowing tide, slow and serene.While he was agitated on the other hand, it raged around him like a storm, shooting tendrils of silvery light out to strike the nearest surfaces like bolts of lightning, flashing and pulsing with emotion. It felt like there should be a howling wind whipped up around his feet, manipulating the pearly glow that darted fiercely about him, but there was only the violent silvery light and silence……and around the shocked form of Ginny Weasley before him, an all too familiar wavering outline of deep blue light. Awe. And THAT was finally enough to snap Harry out of his dazed state.“Voldemort,” Harry gasped.Guardian-of-Hogwarts hissed in pain, reeling back as her semi-permeable lids came down over the gold to protect them from the sudden flashing lights- and by coincidence, also protecting them from the efforts of the persistent phoenix still hovering around her skull.Neville rolled away from the basilisk while he could at the brief standstill in his fight, darting back behind cover again as he raised the brim of the sorting hat, peering out wonderingly at the light show filling the Chamber.“How- how did you know that name- that spell-?” Ginny/Voldemort asked falteringly, backing up against the cherry sapling with her wand outstretched and arms trembling.“Harry? Is it safe to look? Did it work?” Sophie asked in a very high pitched and frightened voice.“Did you just say VOLDEMORT?!” Theo hissed in alarm.“Yes, it worked Sophie- and it’s either him or Ginny happens to have an extremely similar colour of aura to what he had,” Harry said through gritted teeth, trying hard not to panic. “Bloody hell, not AGAIN!”“…again?” Ginny/Voldemort murmured confusedly to themselves, frowning.“I glimpsed the girl stalking us up to the second floor just this morning- she looked normal then. This must have happened really recently,” Theo murmured shakily, one of his eyes just peeking open over Harry’s shoulder. “If the possession is so new, we might be able to force Him out of her without hurting her,”“How?!” Harry hissed back incredulously.“My father taught me a simple exorcism that works on most invading spirits,” Theo said with a gulp, steeling himself and drawing his wand with a flick of his wrist. “If He follows the same rules as an indwelling ghost or the like then it will probably work, but the aftereffects to me might… Never mind. Look I’ll stay back here out of the way and prepare it; just keep Him- her- oh whatever- keep THEM occupied,”“Uh… Harry, do you have a plan by any chance!?” Neville called uncertainly from his hiding place, loud enough that Ginny/Voldemort’s attention briefly turned his way, before yelping as Guardian-of-Hogwarts darted towards him once again.“Distraction, right,” Harry panted, slamming down his occlumency shields over his burgeoning panic attack and horror at his godfather’s state. “I can do that. Help me Sophie?”“On it,” the girl at his side gave a tremulous, firm nod, before shouting as loud as she could in garbled parseltongue: “Open! Open, open, open, open, open!”Uncreative, but it got both the hostile basilisk and Ginny/Voldemort’s attention off Neville long enough for Harry to also draw his wand and sprint over to his other friend’s hiding place. Behind him, he briefly heard Theo start to softly chant in latin, but he had his own task to focus on.“Wha-? There are TWO of you?!” Ginny/Voldemort raised their voice in alarm, raising her/his wand at Sophie aggressively, but had to dodge Harry’s quickly murmured tickling charm (hey, it was all he could think of on short notice, okay?) before he could even try to cast.“Neville, you okay?” Harry huffed as he slid in beside Neville in his new hiding place.“I’ve been better,” Neville laughed shakily, trembling badly as he held up the glittering sword. “Getting a bloody critical crash course in swordsmanship from the sorting hat, but otherwise good. Turns out the soft shielding spells we learnt in first year aren’t so good against basilisk fangs, so I had to improvise,”“I have so many questions,” Harry groaned.“Ditto,” Neville agreed with a hysterical chuckle, before shouting. “Left!”Without thinking, Harry obeyed and leapt to his left as Neville rolled to the right, just in time to avoid a devastating strike from Guardian-of-Hogwarts that smashed the rubble they’d been cowering behind into pieces. Ooooh, her poor fangs were going to feel that…Shooting off a distracting stinging hex towards Ginny/Voldemort again just as Sophie started up another mantra of ‘open,open,open’, Harry ran over to the closest antechamber door… which had apparently shut and locked itself to restrict the structural damage to the main chamber. Typical. Well, that explained why Neville hadn’t thought to hide in one of the outer rooms. And there wasn’t exactly time for Harry to manually reopen any of them, he thought as he ran back to the closest whole column to hide.Looking out from behind his new hiding place to assess the situation, Harry felt himself mentally freeze for a moment despite his shields. For the cherry tree was… glowing.Much like the silvery aura filling the Chamber that was centred on Harry, there was a similar pearly glow that was emanating directly from the bare sapling- from its trunk right up to its thinnest branch.Ginny/Voldemort, who had once again backed up right against the tree to field further bombarda’s against the dodging Quiet Ones, didn’t appear to have noticed- perhaps because its fainter glow blended in quite nicely with Harry’s brighter, more aggressive aura.Was that… him, who had done that? Harry thought faintly. How? Why?The naked branches of the young tree swayed then in an invisible breeze, almost as if in response…“Bombarda!” Ginny/Voldemort snarled again, and Harry had to scramble out of the way before the blast struck his column and knocked it right into the wall behind him.That left, let’s see… only three undamaged out of the original fourteen great columns that had once lined the hall. Thank goodness they appeared to have been mostly ornamental, or he would have feared the ceiling coming down on them by now.(Focus Harry!)Neville, Sophie and the phoenix were still distracting Guardian-of-Hogwarts in tandem with sword, hiss and unearthly song, and Ginny/Voldemort seemed mostly focused on Harry. Theo on the other hand, still standing by the door, had been overlooked.He’d slightly raised both his voice and his wand, pointing it in the direction of the girl by the cherry tree and wavering slightly as he tried to get a lock on her shifting and darting form. He was visibly trembling, his entire body starting to crackle with an ominous black energy, the substance of the exorcism that would (hopefully) force Voldemort out of Ginny’s body.If Theo missed, he’d need to start that lengthy chant all over again, Harry realised frantically- and it was doubtful Voldemort would be unobservant enough to let him try a second time.And who KNEW what would happen if Theo’s blast of spiritual energy hit the glowing cherry tree behind Ginny instead…Harry had to do something, he needed a way to keep her still…!-------Ginny’s little body was starting to feel the strain of Tom’s emotions, and he was struggling to keep himself in control. The frantic heartbeat of a panic attack, the quick breaths of hyperventilation… he was barely holding onto her consciousness by a thread.He hadn’t been ready for an eventuality like this. For the possibility that someone other than himself knew about the Chamber of Secrets, his safe haven. He’d hastily planned out countermeasures to deal with Neville Longbottom, of course, and for a time he’d thought himself safe… but he hadn’t realised that help had already been on the way. And now, he was LOSING to four insurgent twelve year olds and Dumbledore’s pet bird!His plans were coming down around his ears, and Tom (was terrified) HATED IT.The basilisk, however little, was STILL fighting against his control, closing its eyes against the sudden light of Harry Potter’s aura-(-and what the actual hell?! WHY did the boy have an aura?! And perhaps more importantly, HOW had he known what Tom’s own aura looked like well enough to identify him so easily…!?-)-and hesitating just enough before each commanded strike to give the dodging children time to evade. His spells kept missing, and Ginny’s reserves of energy were almost entirely depleted, chain-casting or not.Tom was running out of time to come up with a new plan, and his mind was racing so fast with images of defeat and death it was hard for him to even think. His connection with his vessel wasn’t strong enough to even try leeching her life force for his own use yet, so there was no escape that way. If he retreated perhaps- desperately hoping his enemies wouldn’t locate his diary secreted in Ginny’s robe pocket-Ginny’s voice yelped suddenly, breaking Tom’s train of thought as something BEHIND HIM abruptly snagged on her robes.And then another. And another.Tom twisted Ginny’s body around to try and blast whoever was casting such an odd spell but-It was the tree.The bloody TREE had reached out with its naked branches towards her, wrapping limbs that shouldn’t have naturally been so sinuous around her arms and legs, twisting her wrist almost gently until her wand fell uselessly from her hand.Tom snarled using her voice, struggling to get free, when a sudden bolt of black, crackling light came flying at him from out of nowhere.Quentin…? He found himself thinking as he caught a glimpse of a familiar sharp angled face that had escaped his notice by the doorway……and then the blackness hit him.-------Ginny’s body went limp against the cherry tree.Guardian-of-Hogwarts froze, mid-strike.“…did…did that work?” Sophie huffed anxiously from her place at Neville’s side, muscles primed to leap away once more if necessary as all three of the Quiet Ones slowly turned towards Harry…Who was simply standing out in the open, a hazy smile on his face as his silvery aura wrapped itself around him like a blanket. His vivid green eyes were glowing…-Harry barely registered their words.
He felt far away.

Far, far away.
On a little island in the North Sea in fact, inside a tall tower surrounded by familiar, flabbergasted faces that he’d hadn’t quite yet managed to disassociate from HOME…-The cherry sapling in the Chamber of Secrets twitched, making all three aware Quiet Ones jump, and its restraining limbs delicately dipped into Ginny Weasley’s robe pockets, searching for the source of the dark blue aura that had retreated from the rest of her form as the hasty exorcism had taken effect.Retrieving their prize, a simple black diary of all things that was swathed with a thick layer of sapphire light--Harry felt a quiet little surge of triumph.Task complete, the odd light shining through his eyes faded.And then he promptly collapsed flat on his face, exhausted.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“…they seem to be in similar states- magical exhaustion or the like,” Theo’s clinically cold yet anxious voice filtered through slowly to Harry’s ears.“Neville, you’re the herbology genius- do magical cherry trees… usually do that?” Sophie’s voice asked in a worryingly quiet, pained rasp.“No,” Neville’s shaken voice answered simply.“Er, have you ever heard abo-*cuhff*?” Sophie began to ask, her hoarse cough cutting her off.“Nope,” Neville repeated, clearly having grasped the gist of her question none the less. “Absolutely not,”“The treacherousss heir’sss ssscent is bound here now…,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s familiar hiss reached him, and a relieved smile crossed Harry’s face. “May you rot for a hundred yearsss there, you unfaithful bird fodder!”Harry’s eyelids flickered, drawing a sudden round of gasps and relieved sighs from just above him, and he slowly opened them fully to gaze up upon the worried faces of the other three Quiet Ones. They were covered in dust, debris and bloody scratches-(-and in Theo’s case, a rather concerning web of static-like sparks of black light, racing over his shaking limbs-)-but alive. All alive, and safe. They’d won.“Hey…,” Harry murmured.“Hey yourself!” Sophie huffed irritably, coughing painfully again-(-all of that parseltongue in such a short period of time must have hurt her throat something awful…-)-as she lightly whacked him on the head. “You gave us quite a *cuhff* fright. Just what did you DO?”Harry’s brow furrowed in thought as he hazily recollected his final few, drifting memories of the fight. The blasting curses flying, Neville and Sophie distracting Guardian-of-Hogwarts, Theo readying his wavering exorcism, the surprising reflection of his aura around the cherry tree… It was a good question. Just what HAD he done?Gingerly, Harry put his surprisingly weak feeling arms under him and pushed himself into a sitting position, supported by Neville’s hand on his back. (His Gryffindor friend, Harry noted wryly, still hadn’t removed the silent sorting hat from atop his braided head)The Chamber around him was still a mess, rubble scattering the ground and powdered stone filling the air. His aura was still visible, casting a vibrant silvery light over his surroundings that drowned out the usual green glow from the ceiling. Little Ginny Weasley was still unconscious, laid out beside him where the other Quiet Ones could easily reach her.Guardian-of-Hogwarts, a little battered but with the sick miasma of controlling magic finally gone from her body, was gazing at him in her own concerned way from over near the cherry sapling, the mystery phoenix perched peacefully on her head and… and held tightly against the trunk of the tree by a dozen tough woody tendrils, was a vaguely familiar diary, glowing malevolently with dark blue light barely obscured by the silvery glow of the sapling itself.“…I needed to hold her still for Theo,” Harry muttered thoughtfully, more to himself than to the anxious Quiet Ones around him. “So I did. Just… not in the way I thought I would,”“Seriously?” Theo asked blandly, crossing his trembling arms over his chest and shooting him a flat look. “Because a full body bind would have worked just as well- and probably would have used up far less of your magic than- than… whatever the hell it was that you did,”Harry blushed, chastened. Theo had a point, but in his defence- at the time he hadn’t exactly been thinking straight. The desperate realisation had simply crossed his mind, and before he knew it a connection he hadn’t even been aware existed had suddenly opened. A connection that had allowed his cherry sapling to move as if it had a mind of its own… as if it were sentient…He grimaced at that somewhat unsettling thought. It looked like he had some more research to do if he wanted to figure out just exactly what had happened. Whatever its nature, that had been an undeniably WEIRD experience. Useful in the end, no doubt about that, but WEIRD. And he had a nasty feeling it most likely had something to do with his aura of reason… the aura he apparently had somehow shared with sapling standing innocently across the room.(And perhaps… just maybe… the tree that stood back in the northern tower as well…)“We clearly need to reread that aura book again,” Neville said bluntly, echoing Harry’s own thoughts as he gestured wearily at the clearly glowing cherry tree and its odd prisoner.“Agreed,” Harry, Theo and Sophie all chorused.“There was a brief passage in there about auras sometimes passing from parent to child from what I recall,” Theo mused, tapping his chin thoughtfully and causing more of those black sparks to fly off his skin. “Perhaps because Harry was the one who planted the tree…,”“Later *cuhff* Theo, later,” Sophie rasped, coughing a little. “I don’t know about you guys, but I think I could do with a trip to the hospital wing to get patched up a little,”Indeed, all four of the Quiet Ones were in various states of injury. Although none of Ginny/Voldemort’s bombarda’s had managed to directly connect with them-(-Merlin, if any had they would have needed scraping off the walls-)-the flying debris that had resulted from said spells hadn’t been as easy to avoid. Their robes, already filthy with grey powdered stone, were ripped and stained with blood. Deep, oozing scratches covered their exposed hands and faces. Bruises were already blooming underneath their uniforms where heavy shards of masonry had impacted them. Adrenaline was most likely still pumping wildly in their veins, but Harry knew it wouldn’t be long before that faded and the pain set in.Taking into account the odd way Neville’s ankle was twisted, Sophie’s wrecked voice, Theo’s involuntary tremors alongside the black static over his skin; not to mention how both the unconscious Ginny and Harry himself were most likely suffering from some level of magical exhaustion…“Hospital wing for all of us I suppose,” Neville agreed, pushing himself to his feet with a wince, leaning heavily on the gilded sword he hadn’t let go of since the battle’s end. “But what should we do with the creepy book? Should we leave it here, or risk detaching it from the tree to take to the prof…essors…?”Neville paled suddenly.“Oh Merlin, we’re in the same room as a creepy book containing you-know-who’s ghost,” he muttered in horrified realisation, suddenly backing further away from the tree.“Not necessarily,” Theo disagreed calmly, making Neville immediately relax a tad. “That exorcism I used would have worked on a variety of creatures and malign undead. It’s possible whatever retreated back into the book just had identity issues from running into one of the Dark Lord’s schemes in the past- He was a dabbling necromancer after all. It might also explain the fact why it didn’t remember coming after Harry last year and… er, maybe the similar passive aura too…?”The longer Theo spoke, the less certain he sounded- but, Harry realised, there was something else that backed up his friend’s reluctant theory.“Come to think of it, my curse scar wasn’t hurting around Ginny like it did last year around Quirrell…,” Harry realised with widening eyes, reaching up to gently touch the dormant lightning-bolt mark on his forehead. “…and there was no book involved back then either. So I suppose that’s another two marks in the ‘not-Dark-Lord’ column. But if this spirit-thing wasn’t Him, that begs the question… what actually WAS it?”“Whatever it was, your tree seems to *cuhff* have it well in hand- er, branch- for now,” Sophie remarked, casting a side eye at said tree. “Actually, does Guardian-of-sha have any idea what the book is? She’s probably seen a lot more cursed items and evil spirits over her lifetime than we have!”Blinking in momentary surprise at Sophie’s almost correct pronunciation of Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s name-(-it seemed a sore throat helped with the elocution of parseltongue, who knew?-)-Harry turned towards the downcast looking basilisk and her perching phoenix friend.“Guardian-of-Hogwarts, are you alright?” he decided to ask first. “Is he out of your head?”“Yesss, little Harry. Never to return, with any luck,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts said bitingly with a rapid nod of her head that almost dislodged the stubborn phoenix. “I will not be taken by sssurprissse ssso easssily again,”“Do you know what that book is?” Harry inquired curiously. “Just- you seem to recognise it,”The basilisk gave the snake equivalent of a shrug, tilting her head and giving a wordless, low hiss of discontent.“The previousss heir before you carried a tome much like it… before he deceived me and lossst my trussst,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts answered apologetically. “But it did not smell so putrid- so alive- the lassst time I sssaw it,”“Previous heir?” Harry raised an eyebrow. “You mean the one you hate talking about?”The genial basilisk was usually all too happy to answer questions about previous members of Slytherin’s line whom had found the Chamber in the past, but as for Harry’s immediate predecessor… Even Myrtle’s numerous questions on the matter had never managed to entirely breach that particular topic. Harry had never pushed her to answer despite the ghost’s pouting, rightly judging that it was a sensitive subject for the basilisk.But if this particular heir had had something to do with the malevolent spirit in the diary… that may or may not have something to do with Voldemort…“Yesss,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts spat bitterly. “He turned me againssst my purpossse for hisss own ssselfisssh endsss. It painsss me to ssspeak of him but… Tom Riddle wasss hisss name- although he later called himssself Voldemort,”Harry blinked, once, twice- startled by this new information. Well. That both explained some things while simultaneously raising a whole lot of new questions.“Thank you for telling me anyway,” Harry replied promptly once he’d shaken off his stunned surprise. “I’d ask for more details, but in the state we’re in now…,”“Indeed. We can continue thisss dissscussssion once you are lessss weary from battle,” the basilisk acquiesced with a short bob of her head. “I will watch over the cursssed book in the meantime,”Politely acknowledging the gigantic snake with a respectful nod, Harry turned back to his curious friends.“Guardian-of-Hogwarts doesn’t know what the diary is,” Harry sighed in English for the benefit of the non-parselmouths. “But she says that when the Dark Lord was at school here he had a book similar to it. He was apparently my immediate predecessor as heir- you know, the one Guardian-of-Hogwarts doesn’t like talking about? I guess that’s more evidence for Theo’s creepy necromancy experiment theory…,”“You know, its weird how you can call Him His name to His face but still use a moniker in casual conversation,” Theo pointed out, before sighing self-deprecatingly. “Though I guess none of us are any better…you-know-who, the Dark Lord, He-who-must-not-be-named…,”“It’s like the Bloody Mary game I guess?” Sophie shrugged hoarsely. “We’re afraid they’ll show up if we use their names behind their back, except there’s no mirror in you-know-who’s case- OH GOD THE MIRROR!”Sophie leapt to her feet in alarm and sprinted over to the entrance of the Chamber, leaving the boys to look after her in confusion… until she came sprinting back with Sirius’s communication mirror in hand.Harry blanched, the memories of his godfather’s petrified face that he’d shelved during the fight for the sake of his own sanity quickly coming back to him. He took the communication mirror from Sophie with shaking hands, hoping beyond hope that the distance had taken the sting out of Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s gaze, made the petrifaction temporary… Nope, the view was still the uninspiring Black house drawing room and the edge of his godfather’s unmoving boot.“It’s possible to reverse an indirect basilisk petrification right?” Harry asked weakly.“Er- well, there’s a draught made from fresh-dug mandrake root that can cure most stone or stone-like paralysis and suspended animation cases…,” Neville gingerly reassured him, leaning on the sword again as he reached over to awkwardly pat Harry’s shoulder. “Although… fresh mature mandrake won’t be in season until next June at the earliest… but if it’s a suspended animation type petrification he’ll be fine until then! Just like he was asleep the whole time!”“Either way we probably should alert someone to get Lord Black to St Mungo’s,” Theo grimaced, looking over Harry’s shoulder at the discouraging scene reflected in the mirror. “What I want to know is why on earth did he have to call THEN of all times?”“I don’t KNOW!” Harry moaned.-------Just out of range of the small mirror lying discarded by the petrified feet of Sirius Black, there lay a small note written on the torn off edge of a textbook page, one that had only been owl-delivered moments before the fateful mirror call. It had drifted underneath one of the drawing room’s squashy chairs when the Lord Black had fallen petrified, still legible… but completely out of sight.‘Peter is back. Crouch x2 is with him. Looking for V. Albania’-------“Does Lord Black *cuhff* have house elves like your father does?” Sophie asked Theo worriedly, nervously picking at her nails. “Could one of them take him to the hospital?”“He does, good idea Sophie,” Harry answered before Theo got the chance, clutching tightly at the mirror and hoping beyond hope that the crotchety old elf was in hearing distance of the drawing room. “KREACHER!”All of the other Quiet Ones flinched at Harry’s sudden yell into the mirror, but that was nothing compared to how they jumped when a loud CRACK echoed through the Chamber.“What could young Master Harry Potter possibly be wanting from Kreacher at school of all- AHHHHH!” Kreacher screamed in terror the moment he caught sight of the massive basilisk looming curiously over the little gathering of children he’d elf-apparated into, leaping into Harry’s arms and clutching onto him with a death grip.“Ack-! Kreacher, it’s okay, she’s friendly!” Harry spluttered, trying to rearrange the suddenly clingy house elf before he knocked them both over. “Sorry, but I thought you’d be going to the mirror, not directly to me…!”It took a long, long five minutes of constant reassurance and coaxing to detach Kreacher from Harry-(-during which his three traitorous friends were of no help at ALL, barely stifling near-hysterical giggles the whole time-)-after which he could finally explain the situation.“Lord Black is being petrified?!” Kreacher shrieked. “I’s taken his tea to him not an hour ago in the drawing room! How is this being possible?!”As one, all four Quiet Ones looked towards an incredibly sheepish looking Guardian-of-Hogwarts. Kreacher followed their gazes and visibly shrank back.“Kreacher is now seeing how this is being possible,” the house elf gulped nervously.“I promisssed Sssalazar long ago I wouldn’t eat the house elvesss,” the basilisk self-consciously hissed, making Kreacher squeak. “Pleassse reassssure your elf I mean no harm? He isss too sssmall for a proper meal anyway…,”“It was an accident Kreacher, and once the right potions ingredients are available in summer Sirius will easily be restored,” Harry reassured the house elf as best he could, deciding against relaying Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s own debatable reassurances. “Could you please just take him to St Mungo’s for me and keep an eye on his affairs while he’s… indisposed?”Kreacher puffed up importantly.“Kreacher is a good house elf- Kreacher will not be shirking Kreacher’s duties while Lord Black needs him,” Kreacher answered with a decisive nod. “Any appointments will be waiting’s until Lord Black is better, Kreacher will be telling them so!”“Good,” Harry breathed a sigh of relief. “Feel free to pop in on me if you er- want my input on anything on my godfather’s behalf. Take care Kreacher,”“Kreacher will do as young master Harry is saying,” the house elf agreed firmly, before disappearing again with an equally loud CRACK.The echo of an answering CRACK sounded dimly through the communication mirror, and Harry briefly saw Kreacher’s knobbly legs walk past before both he, and Sirius’s barely in view boot, vanished with yet another CRACK.The image in Harry’s mirror faded back to a normal reflective surface at last once the drawing room was empty, showing only his own pale, dust-streaked and worried face. Harry let out another sigh. He hoped his Uncle Padfoot would be okay…“Well, that’s your godfather taken care of,” Neville said, holding out his hand to help Harry stand up on his still incredibly weak feeling legs. “Assuming we’re leaving the creepy book behind for now, all we’ve got left to do is get ourselves to the hospital wing,”“If you and Harry can lean on each other, Sophie and I can take Ginny,” Theo said concisely as he and Sophie also got to their feet, looking down at the still unconscious first year. “…I’m not sure how we’re going to get her up the ladder though,”With a musical trill, at those words the phoenix launched itself off Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s head and flew down towards them.“I believe Helga’s fire-bird isss offering hissss asssissstance in removing you from the Chamber,” Guardian-of-Hogwarts hissed amusedly as the phoenix landed neatly on a surprised Sophie’s outstretched arm. “If you all touch him, he can transssport you back to the top of the exit pipe,”“Huh. Well that’s convenient,” Harry murmured, gazing somewhat suspiciously at the phoenix. Then he started as the rest of the basilisk’s sentence caught up with him. HELGA’s bird?! As in Helga Hufflepuff?!“Er, Harry, what did Sas-gwarts say?” Sophie asked awkwardly, holding the sharp-taloned phoenix as far away from her face as she physically could even as the bird slowly walked its way up her arm and onto her shoulder.Temporarily pushing the issue of the phoenix’s former allegiance aside, Harry limped over to Sophie with Neville’s help.“She said the phoenix is going to give us a shortcut,” he explained shortly, laying a nervous hand on the bird’s bright plumage. “Pick up Ginny, and find a free place to touch it,”-------Both the general evacuation and headcount were complete. After some false alarms-(-which included a number of Gryffindor second year girls whom had been attending their house ghost’s death day party in the dungeons, and the usual dating suspects who had been out snogging in the halls-)-it had eventually been surmised by both the teachers and the student body that only five people in total were missing.The four second year ‘Quiet Ones’, and Ginny Weasley, one of the students well known for following the Quiet Ones around.And now, torn between keeping several hundred curious, rowdy teenagers whom had only half-finished their dinners confined to their common rooms for even longer while they searched for their missing pupils; and simply letting them quietly go back down to the great hall to finish the Halloween feast in peace… the supervising professors had eventually decided to make the latter decision.……this, in hindsight, had been an error, leading to the current state of multiple disorganised search parties roaming the halls.The vast majority of the searching teachers did their best to ignore their curious students and went about solving the mystery of the Quiet Ones’ (plus one) disappearance as best they could… while in the meantime, the four heads of houses and the headmaster- who all seemed to know something the rest of the school did not- had headed straight for the out of order girls’ bathroom on the second floor.(Predictably, as soon as Dumbledore had set foot in the room the open entrance to the Chamber of Secrets had immediately, petulantly, shut in order to bar the headmaster access- leaving no trace as to its existence to any unaware onlooker)And shortly afterwards, they had been followed by Moaning Myrtle, with her two unlikely ‘escorts’ in tow… Luna Lovegood and Eamon Selwyn.Nobody was quite certain how the dreamy Ravenclaw first year and the anxious Hufflepuff fourth year had ended up finding each other in the crowd that had all but stampeded out of the great hall at the advent of the quaking, but thankfully for the ears and beverages of all present, they had… and had banded together to calm down the panicking spirit of Myrtle Warren before she could burst every water pipe in the castle.(No one else had been brave or stupid enough to go near the surprisingly powerful ghost after that, not even Cedric Diggory- whom had simply given them a nervous thumbs up from a distance before leaving to calm down some of the frightened first years)As such, Eamon and Luna been given special leave from the evacuation in order to escort the still-anxious ghost back up to her usual haunting grounds… but seeing as the professors were still investigating the bathroom, they’d instead been stuck just outside the door, ‘guarding’ her ever since. Neither student knew exactly what was going on, but from what they could gather from the hiccupped whines of Myrtle and the whispers they could pick up on from inside the bathroom, they probably had a better idea than most others in the school combined.…on the downside, due to their guard positions, they had become the subject of many more stares and whispers once the large herds of students playing Lockhart’s ‘game’ converged on the ‘suspicious activity’ taking place up in the second floor bathroom.For you see, many of the students’ curiosity about the fate of the missing Quiet Ones had significantly outweighed their desires to finish their meals, and several had begun treating the whole situation like an entertaining Halloween ‘murder mystery’ (as some of the muggleborn students had put it).And an increasingly large percentage of them were absolutely certain that the whole thing was a game put on by Professor Lockhart for the spooky occasion. Lockhart himself had been of absolutely no help AT ALL in righting this misconception, instead immediately taking full credit for planning the non-existent ‘game’ the moment he’d heard the rumour going about.Despite the chaos of the ‘game’ at hand, there were still a few notable students that were clearly taking the search far more seriously than others… the Weasley twins hunched together with their younger brother, unnervingly solemn, fruitlessly examining a tattered parchment in dark corners… young Malfoy and his bodyguards methodically casing each floor one by one, jumping at shadows…(The Halloween feast, and indeed the evening curfew, had been all but forgotten by almost everyone in the castle by this point)“I’m not sure what the professors were thinking coming here,” Moaning Myrtle lamented from her position near the door to the bathroom, shaking her ethereal head morosely. “It’s not like they’re not going to be able to get in. Once the entrance is shut, even ghosts are prevented from passing,”“Do you think they’re okay… wherever they are?” Eamon Selwyn nervously asked Myrtle from where he was pacing back and forth as far as the surrounding crowd would allow- even the most curious and pushy students were giving the volatile ghost and her two escorts a wide berth.“They know better than to die at this stage,” Luna Lovegood absently reassured him at his side. “The Quiet Ones are the good kind of fools,”Eamon didn’t even try to unpack that cryptic statement, having heard many like it from Luna’s lips in the past twenty minutes alone. Why was he doing this again? He barely even knew the Lovegood girl beyond their shared occasional association with the Quiet Ones. Why had he automatically sought her out in the crowds? Why had Moaning Myrtle even LISTENED to their combined, rambling attempts to calm her above even the words of the teachers?Whatever the reason, he was stuck here now with a curious crowd building around them, Cedric and his crowd of friendly- (-overbearing-) -Hufflepuffs out of arm’s reach for the first time in… in who knew how long.Eamon ceased pacing and leaned back against the wall opposite the bathroom door with a deep, anxious sigh, watching Professor Lockhart interacting with the four murderous looking heads of house as an exasperated Headmaster Dumbledore looked on.The man had shown up about five minutes ago, following the wave of ‘detectives’ that were playing his ‘game’, and was now in the process of being filled in on the actually quite dire TRUE situation at hand. Lockhart had been dismissive at first, and then had tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation, and was now alternating offering his own skills for the search and lamenting the presumably grisly fate of the missing students.(It was kind of funny to watch, in a despairing sort of way)Professor Snape in particular was clearly very, very close to discarding his last vestiges of composure and outright strangling the obnoxious DADA teacher before he could spout any more useless platitudes like ‘if only they had waited for me to go investigate instead’ or ‘I know just the spell to open secret passages such as these, if only I was there to see where it connects in the room’ and ‘never fear, the brave sacrifice of these students for their friend’s sake will be memorialised forever in the forward of my next book!’Honestly from their equally lethal expressions, it appeared that Professors Flitwick, McGonagall and Sprout were unlikely to keep the Slytherin head of house from his attempted murder if- and when- it came down to it.It was then that the headmaster did something he probably should have done the moment Lockhart had entered the room- which was subtly shoot a silencing charm at him, leaving the man to babble on soundlessly for another few seconds before he realised something was wrong. There was no great leap of intellect needed to see all the other teachers present approved of the change.A small hand on his arm drew Eamon’s attention away from the gathering of professors ahead.“You should do something about those burrowing earworms before they’re too ingrained,” Luna said calmly, patting his arm gently. “An hour or two of solitary confinement a day should do it,”She looked off vaguely into the distance at the large crowd of worried Hufflepuffs gathered a short distance down the hall amidst the other ‘investigators’- who seemed torn between concern for their housemate and fear of the ‘recently screeching loud enough to break glass’ Myrtle. Cedric stood anxiously amongst them, and Eamon abruptly realised it was probably the furthest he’d been from him for several months…“Or, failing that, earmuffs of sufficient fluffiness,” Luna finished succinctly. Eamon had to cover his mouth, trying to supress the hysterical snort that was trying to escape as his face went red. Earmuffs. Yes, earmuffs would be a blessing. Cedric and company were wonderful of course, don’t get him wrong! But sometimes they were just… just…“Hey… you two are the ones that Harry and his friends talk about all the time, aren’t you?” Myrtle asked softly as Eamon slowly regained his composure.“They talk about us?” Eamon asked confusedly, at the same time that Luna went: “Probably, I get talked about a lot,”Myrtle tilted her head and squinted at them critically, before nodding decisively.“Yes. You’ll both do just fine,” she proclaimed.Before either of them could ask what the ghost had meant, there was a sudden commotion from over at the bathroom, and the gathered students surged forward at once to see what was going on.Without any warning, a great halo of golden fire exploded out from the tiled floor, making all witnesses close enough to see it shriek in alarm. Appearing in the vortex of flame, five indistinct figures appeared, accompanied by a sixth that took the shape of a large bird-No, not just any bird. A phoenix. Elderly, but strong.Every teacher except Dumbledore had their wands out in an instant, but the fire dispersed harmlessly as a great flux of silvery light filled the room, leaving the missing students standing smack bang in the middle of the floor.Harry Potter was leaning heavily on Neville Longbottom, who in turn was leaning on the ceremonial sword(?!) at his side in order to stay upright. Sophie Roper and Theodore Nott were supporting the unconscious body of Ginny Weasley just behind them.It was at this moment that the vast majority of the gathered students realised that this might not be a product of the ‘fun game’ Professor Lockhart had claimed to have created.For the four older students were covered in dust and rubble, bruises blooming on their skin, tears in their robes and jagged scratches all over their bodies. Harry was clearly RADIATING the pearlescent aura that was filling the bathroom and escaping out into the hallway, his face pale and exhausted under the shadows of his hood. Neville, ruby encrusted sword aside, was also wearing the sorting hat(?!!!!) slightly askew over his mussed braids. The phoenix that had transported them was sitting calmly on Sophie’s shoulder of all places, and Theodore had what looked like electrical sparks of black light dancing all over his skin.In short, the four Quiet Ones all looked approximately like they’d just made it out the other side of a warzone- whereas Ginny’s only visible complaint was her unconsciousness, free of injury and even the greyish dust that coated her… rescuers?Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The phoenix took off from Sophie’s shoulder to land on Dumbledore’s, cooing softly, but even the headmaster seemed to be in a degree of frozen shock.Even Luna and Eamon could do little more than stare themselves at the dramatic tableau, although Myrtle beside them seemed to visibly deflate with relief upon seeing them safe.The Quiet Ones appeared to be unfazed by their audience. That, or they were simply too exhausted to care about the numerous incredulous stares and the soft shuffling as the crowd just outside the door jostled to get a better look.Eventually, as the silence grew too heavy, the rip on the brim of the sorting hat worn by Neville finally opened.“Could someone help these poor kids to the hospital wing, PLEASE?!”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

As a personal rule, Severus Snape never imbibed alcohol if he would be within the vicinity of an actively brewing potion within the next twenty-four hours.It wasn’t just a matter of safety, but also a matter of class- professional potions brewers got a bad enough reputation as it was as serial abusers of both stimulants and depressants, and Severus felt he should set a reasonable (if not good) example for his students.There were times of course, during his tenure as the potions professor of Hogwarts School, that he’d dearly wished to bend or break this rule, but for the last decade or so he’d managed to remain firmly on the wagon during the school term.…the previous February, he’d been sorely, SORELY tempted for the first time in years, but he’d held out- mostly by ingesting a frankly absurd amount of coffee pushed upon him by concerned house elves and immediately going to bed once his duty brewing for the injured Mr Potter was done.But now, not even twelve months since that event, that temptation was back stronger than ever.“Full body bruising, multiple lacerations, scrapes embedded with rubble, MAGICAL EXHAUSTION-!” Poppy Pomfrey fumed, throwing down the lengthy scroll she’d scribed on the subject of her five newest patients on Albus Dumbledore’s desk. “On top of that, Mr Longbottom had a fracture in his right ankle and Mr Nott was suffering the aftereffects of performing an INDWELLING EXORCISM! Miss Roper could hardly SPEAK! And don’t even get me started on Mr Potter- RRGGHH! I swear, it’s like the four of them were trying to fill some kind of twisted injury bingo sheet!”Pomona Sprout laid a calming hand on the frustrated medi-witch’s shoulder, halting her from pacing a hole into the carpet of the headmaster’s office. Minerva McGonagall’s eyes were narrowed like a particularly upset cat at the thick roll of parchment that made up Poppy’s medical report- if she were in her animagus form, her tail would surely be lashing fiercely. Filius Flitwick looked equally displeased, and his passing resemblance to the goblin side of his family was growing more pronounced by the second.Behind his desk, Albus unrolled the scroll and sighed, rubbing his face under his glasses.“We have no jurisdiction here,” he muttered wearily, raising up a halting hand before the squawks of indignant protest could start from his senior staff. “PLEASE let me finish. I told you all about the accord that prevents us from interfering with the Chamber of Secrets last February- unfortunately it still applies in this situation,”Severus felt his teeth grinding together, and physically had to force his jaw to relax. Oh yes, he remembered THAT conversation very well indeed. The headmaster had been very cagey at first on the reasons why he would not further investigate the Chamber independently back in February; if Severus and the other three heads of house hadn’t persisted for so long in their questioning, they may have never even found out about the accord of the founders at all.It still made Severus uneasy to think that BESIDES the highly dangerous Chamber of Secrets, there were apparently THREE(!) other concealed areas in the castle just like it, protected by the same agreement of non-interference the founders had made with the first independent administrators of the school.Now, to a point, he understood the reasons behind the accord- Hogwarts had been the home of the four founders, and of course they would want a safe space for their families within it… regardless of the opinions and actions of potentially biased future headmasters and mistresses.But when it led to situations like THIS…“Perhaps if you’d just let us SEE the actual accord,” Severus silkily suggested, his voice dripping with venom. “Then perhaps we may be able to find a LOOPHOLE in it that might allow us some… supervision of the Chamber below, at the very least. Events such as this will undoubtedly occur again if we don’t intervene- especially considering this particular band of students,”“He has a point headmaster,” the sorting hat suddenly piped up from its shelf across the room, drawing all six adults’ eyes to it. “I haven’t had to play sword instructor in centuries- much less while under attack- and I’d rather it not happen again any time soon. Albus, you of all people should know that if you don’t even TRY to look for a solution to a problem like this, then of course you aren’t going to find one!”“It’s not that simple-,” Albus began to reason.“Of COURSE it’s not simple Albus!” Minerva exploded, leaping up from her seat and slamming her hands on his desk, making the old man jump. “Like it or not, we have a student in our custody who will always have violent, dangerous enemies, and he has access to a place none of us can follow if he’s in trouble- yet V-V-Voldemort of all people still can!”“It’s already clear we can’t simply bar them from the Chamber,” Pomona sighed wearily, dragging a tense Poppy down into Minerva’s vacated seat. “Locking down or modifying the bathroom will just lead to the exit moving again according to what you’ve told us, and simply forbidding them from going will only lead to more subterfuge on their part- I for one would prefer to still be aware of their location in case of emergency, even if I can’t follow them to it,”“And they WILL hide elsewhere if they lose the Chamber,” Filius stated harshly. “In the last two months, Lockhart has been reversing every single inch of progress we’ve made on the matter of the student body leaving Mr Potter alone. Soon I doubt even his own dormitory will be safe from his rabid ‘admirers’, and after the dramatics of Halloween I suspect the other three Quiet Ones will start to have troubles of their own. Fantastic rumours are already spreading, and Gilderoy is all but- no, he actively IS encouraging them!”Severus barely managed to repress a scoff at the mention of Gilderoy Lockhart. The new DADA professor was more trouble than he was worth- practically the entire staff was convinced of that now. Unfortunately, his popularity amongst the vast majority of younger students made it hard to take action against him…. of course a class in which they didn’t have to actually LEARN anything for a whole year would appeal to the ungrateful blighters.Lockhart was an insipid, vain and persistent glory-hound, and had utterly no concept of the idea that other people might not think as highly of him as he did himself. He’d tried (-was STILL trying-) to attach himself to Severus in order to leech off his reputation as one of the youngest qualified potion-masters of the century, and was attempting to do the same to Harry Potter in order to similarly leech off ‘the-boy-who-lived’.(And worse, Lockhart had been transparently trying to ‘boost’ both of their popularity by actively encouraging the efforts of Potter’s stalkers, AND a particularly stupid group of ‘potions fans’ that Severus hadn’t even known he had. There were only so many detentions he could give when it was another bloody TEACHER encouraging their dunderheaded behaviour!)Unfortunately, Lockhart was both charming and stupid, making it hard to tell if his unhelpful behaviour towards them both was actively malicious or merely misunderstood… and also making it nigh impossible to convince him to stop. Either way, it was irritating to the extreme, and getting increasingly worse as time went on.“This is already old news to me,” Poppy grumbled from her new seat. “I’ve already needed to put up enough wards around the hospital wing to keep Lockhart and company out that it could practically qualify as a Gringotts vault,”“Poppy, is that wise? If one of those children are legitimately injured or sick…,” Albus softly chastised.“Then they can come directly to my OFFICE rather than dawdling over to the bloody warded and curtained BEDS on the other side of the room!” Poppy snarled in exasperation.“Fair enough,” Albus smoothly acquiesced. “Putting the Chamber supervision issue aside for now- and yes Minerva, I will see if it is possible make a copy of the official accord for the heads of houses’ later perusal-,”Minerva, not entirely satisfied by this, tersely nodded and transfigured another chair for herself from one of Albus’s less mobile trinkets, since Poppy had snagged her former seat.“-I feel there is another issue underlying this situation,” Albus gravely continued. “This… diary that Fawkes and the sorting hat both described to me- which is arguably the cause of all this mess. It appears, for now at least, that its dark magic has been contained, but a question remains. How did it end up in Miss Weasley’s possession in the first place? And how did it manage to bypass the school’s wards specifically against objects of such a malign nature?”The elderly phoenix on his perch behind Dumbledore trilled then, as if in agreement with the questions posed. Severus sighed long-sufferingly, wondering if the school house elves might spike a bottle of butterbeer with something stronger for him later that evening. Not enough to take his edge off for tomorrow’s classes, but enough to relax him after this painful, tedious conversation… No. He must stay strong.“The wards question is an easy one,” Severus said dismissively. “The Dark Lord has long since had his ways of bypassing certain measures in the network over the school. He likely located one of the minor wardstones- perhaps even a major one- during either his own schooling here or one of his subsequent visits, and encoded into the wards an exception to dark magic cast personally by HIM,”Severus pointedly tapped his covered forearm with these last words, and Albus inclined his head in agreement.“That is likely correct- although I never said that the diary was related to Voldemort,” Albus admitted slyly.“Please, it was written all over you face,” Severus scoffed dismissively, politely ignoring the universal flinches the Dark Lord’s name had inspired all around the room. “And who else would have plotted something as specific as this? Heirs to the Slytherin line- and parselmouths in general- aren’t exactly… common, these days,”“Touché,” Albus smiled with another nod, before changing the subject. “How is Miss Weasley currently, Poppy?”“Better than my other four patients, but not by much,” Poppy sighed, leaning forward to tap Ginny Weasley’s entry on the scroll laid out on the desk. “It’s all in the record- she remembers nothing of the events in the Chamber. Other than that, she was forced to expend the vast majority of her magical reserves over an extremely short period of time, and there were signs that the diary was starting to feed on her vital energy as well,”“She was chain casting blasting curses- bombarda to be precise- for at least twenty minutes non-stop,” the sorting hat added gravely. “That would be enough for even an adult witch or wizard to stop and catch their breath for a bit, let alone an eleven year old,”“Although I… disapprove of such a young student using such costly spells, it was a good thing that Mr Nott was able to separate Miss Weasley from the diary when he did,” Poppy continued wearily. “As it is, the moment she woke up in the hospital wing yesterday she was already panicking about having lost it. If it had a few more months to get its hooks into her, I’m sure the poor girl would have gladly killed to get that blasted book back in her hands, no matter what it was doing to her,”The six teachers were all silent for a few moments then, imagining just what might have happened if the cursed diary hadn’t been discovered so early. Severus could only shudder at the thought of what such an evil object might have done with the might of an ancient basilisk at its disposal.“If a cursed object like that was deliberately given to her, it would be a clear case of attempted murder,” Filius postulated darkly, crossing his arms over his chest and gazing off into the distance. “The hard part would be proving it was deliberate… not to mention having to retrieve the object from the Chamber in order to hand it to the aurors for examination, which could easily lead to it ensnaring someone else,”“We’ll probably have to forego legal action entirely Filius,” Pomona cautioned him. “As you said- the proof we’d need is far too dangerous to collect, and we still don’t know for sure who the diary belonged to before Miss Weasley picked it up… or how they might retaliate if we try to identify them. Merlin knows how some families collect all kinds of artefacts like these- if they had one like this they were willing to give away for some petty scheme, they certainly have half a dozen more backup,”“As much as I hate to admit it, it is still entirely possible the book made its way to Miss Weasley innocently,” Minerva dejectedly pointed out. “It could have been given to her as an honest gift by a friend or a parent; she may have even bought or found it herself, unaware of the risk it posed. I’ll need to talk to her after this meeting anyway, but I’ll try to find out where she acquired it then,”“Thank you Minerva,” Albus acknowledged tiredly, leaning forward to roll up the medical scroll once more. “I think that is all we needed to discuss immediately- I will call you all back in a few days once I have discerned how to copy the accord… it is a highly enchanted object, you must understand, and dislikes any eyes but that of its signatories resting upon it,”“You’re meant to be the greatest wizard of our age Albus,” Minerva said flatly. “Deal with it,”“If and when a copy is made, should we involve the rest of the staff?” Poppy asked cautiously. “It is certainly relevant to the heads of houses- students from all four are involved- and to me as the one who has to deal with the inevitable fallout, but the others…,”“We are not breathing a SINGLE word of this to Lockhart,” Filius ground out immediately. “Knowing him he’d start claiming to have blood from all four founders and start gallivanting about claiming he’s found all their secret rooms- never mind that he’s muggleborn through and through. That or he’d cast Mr Potter as some sort of stereotypical Slytherin villain and start trying to raise a mob against him,”“…that is an oddly specific scenario Filius,” Severus murmured suspiciously, raising an eyebrow at the small professor.“I was his head of house for seven years Severus,” Filius blandly replied. “The only reason his antics seem new to the rest of you is because I was spending the better part of my free time back then trying to keep them confined to the Ravenclaw common room. I dread to think what might have happened if the Marauders had caught wind of him…,”“The teenage capers of our defence professor aside, I really must insist on cutting this conversation short,” Albus wryly interrupted Filius’s incoming rant with a twinkle in his eye. “A few members of the school board will be flooing in shortly for their own discussion on this matter. So unless any of you would like to stay and greet them…?”There was an immediate chorus of passingly polite refusals from all four of the heads of house, and Severus had to repress another shudder. Any topic on which Lucius Malfoy and Augusta Longbottom were in agreement on was certainly a topic to be avoided; he did not envy Albus for his upcoming battle of wills.Even his passing curiosity over his ‘old friend’ Lucius’s apparent sudden concern over the Nott heir’s safety at school could persuade him to stay… although, Severus frowned as the heads of house all rose to leave the room, it was a rather odd coincidence…-------The hospital wing was a still and peaceful oasis amidst the usual chatter and bustle of Hogwarts School.Done up in white, grey and pastel blues and greens, the wing contained elements of both the sterile environment of St Mungo’s and the cosy clutter of a general practice healer’s office. Madam Pomfrey’s office and personal rooms were off-set close to the front of the ward, and rows of individual hospital beds that could be easily sectioned off from each other with curtains lined the rest of the room. A small brewing station, a medical potions cabinet, a linen closet and a small set of both girls’ and boys’ bathrooms completed the furnishings of the wing.In an emergency, the Hogwarts hospital wing could easily hold up to fifty patients at once-(-although barring a catastrophic qudditch accident involving one of the spectator stands or a particularly violent potions mishap, the wing was rarely ever so full-)-and there was a private floo connection in the fireplace of the medi-witch’s office that linked directly to St Mungo’s in case of truly appalling injuries.Severus briefly contemplated how close to using that connection Poppy must have been on Halloween eve when her newest patients had been brought to her.He’d been there after all, when the Quiet Ones (plus one) had appeared in a dramatic burst of phoenix fire, all in various states of injury and with an undoubtedly long and complex story behind them.That had been two days ago.The potions professor stood once again at the open doors of the hospital wing and peered at the scene within. Poppy had split off from them to take care of paperwork in her office a few minutes before, and Ginny Weasley was still bedridden in her own isolated cot on one side of the wing, currently being talked to by Minerva under a privacy charm.The four Quiet Ones had beds all grouped together further towards the back of the room, concealed by curtains heavily warded against intrusion by curious students. Once Minerva was done with Miss Weasley, that was where all four heads of house would be going.According to the lengthy report Poppy had compiled, the Quiet Ones had gotten off relatively easy considering the danger of the situation they’d found themselves in. Cuts, scrapes and even breaks in bone could be easily healed with magic in a matter of minutes- but magical exhaustion, backlash from exorcisms, acute laryngitis and the mess Longbottom had made of his broken ankle by running on it were slightly more time consuming to repair.(And then there had been that silvery halo of light that had followed Potter around for several hours after the incident in the Chamber… all that Poppy had been able to say for certain about THAT was that it probably hadn’t been injury related. Severus, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so sure)It was only now, days after the incident, that Poppy had finally given them clearance to get the full story about what had happened down in the Chamber from the students themselves… and hopefully fill in some of the gaps the testimony of Fawkes (via Albus’s ability to speak mentally with his familiar) and the sorting hat they’d been working off thus far.Severus would have personally preferred if the guardians of the students in question were present for said testimony as well, but Madame Longbottom was meeting with headmaster already, the Ropers were muggles, Lord Nott had long since been magically barred from the Hogwarts grounds (one of the few ‘ex-Death Eaters’ that the ministry had ever managed to stick such a restriction to) and Sirius bloody Black still wasn’t answering either his OR Filius’s owls.Considering how fast the mongrel had fallen upon Hogwarts the last time Potter was in trouble, Severus couldn’t help but admit Black’s continued silence was getting… somewhat concerning. He pushed that thought aside and focused back on his peers’ conversation.“It’s rare that we’re ALL called for simultaneously in a situation like this,” Pomona commented with a sigh, looking out over the rows of unoccupied beds. “It always seems our students manage either to get in trouble in independent house groups, or in pairs. Gryffindor and Slytherin come to mind…,”“Well, at least this time it isn’t a case of the students fighting each other,” Filius murmured. “…although I must admit, getting into a full scale battle with an evil spirit and a basilisk is not exactly the kind of inter-house bonding activity I would have expected from such a laid back group as the Quiet Ones. Even considering what happened in February to Mr Potter,”“Heroics aside,” Severus drawled with a pointed roll of his eyes. “Inspiring display of house unity or not, you must remember that these students are an exception- not the rule. Were it any other four students from differing houses in this kind of situation, I can almost guarantee they all would have attempted to feed the three others to the snake and then ran to save their own skins while it was digesting,”Pomona hit him squarely on the arm, expression sour with disapproval, and Filius laughed.“House unity has to start somewhere Severus,” the Ravenclaw head chuckled. “The Quiet Ones will be seen as an inspiration to their peers someday. Don’t be so pessimistic,”“I’m being realistic, not pessimistic,” Severus deadpanned.It was then that the privacy charm warding Ginny Weasley’s bedside faded, and Minerva made her way back over to them by the door.“She’s sleeping again, so stay quiet,” the Gryffindor head whispered as she approached. “Or else Poppy will have our heads for disturbing her patients,”“Anything new Minerva?” Pomona asked anxiously as they all started out together towards the Quiet Ones’ beds. “Did Miss Weasley say where she found the diary?”“She apparently found it slipped inside one of her new schoolbooks after a trip to Diagon Alley,” Minerva murmured in response. “She was carrying them in an open cauldron; almost anyone passing by on the street could have added it to her things with enough finesse. She said that both Malfoy father and son were present in the bookshop however, and the Weasley’s passed by both the Flints and the Crabbes on their way to the Leaky Cauldron floo,”“All Slytherin typical families. Why am I not surprised,” Severus said dryly.“They ARE likely suspects Severus, but you do have a point,” Pomona pointed out. “The Weasleys are famously wary of a lot of Slytherin oriented folk- it would have been much easier for an unrelated culprit to get close enough to Miss Weasley to slip her the diary without being detected,”“This investigation would be so much easier if we could just identify what the diary IS,” Filius huffed. “That and from what Fawkes and the hat told us, it appeared to be sentient- no doubt it would know exactly who its previous owners were…,”The charms professor trailed off as they reached the first of the warded curtains. Using the special passphrase Poppy had set to prevent unauthorised access-(-the simple ‘teacher’s only’ provision the medi-witch usually used in situations like these wouldn’t have kept out Lockhart-)-Minerva tapped her wand to temporarily dismiss the shields and pulled the drapes aside.…The first bed was empty. The four professors all shared a long suffering look.“Whose bed do you think they decided to congregate on?” Filius asked wryly.“Probably Mr Longbottom’s- he’s the least mobile of them at the moment,” Minerva exhaled irritably. “Come along,”They all made their way down to the curtained bed furthest from the door, and sure enough as they got close they started to hear muffled voices from within.“…is going to be extremely upset by the state of the place, I reckon,” Potter’s voice could be heard sighing. “I can almost hear her exact words. ‘Hundreds of years of history, ruined!’ I’m kind of glad she has an affinity for water, not fire, or else she’d probably set the whole tree alight just to ash that bloody diary,”“I think Myrtle is going to be more upset about Sasha’s free will being compromised, no matter how briefly,” Nott replied. “Yes Sophie…? Well, she’s definitely going to ask about it at some point- what else would we tell her?”“If we’re going to modify the story anyway, is it possible we could leave out the bit with the sword as well?” Longbottom’s voice nervously asked. “We all know she’d want to see it, but Professor Dumbledore took it away already. I’d rather not get in trouble for her snooping into his office to have a look,”Minerva softly muttered the passphrase and pushed back the curtain around Neville Longbottom’s bed just far enough for the four heads of house to peek through. As expected, all four Quiet Ones, dressed in their pyjamas, were congregated on the same mattress. The three boys were talking softly while Sophie Roper scribbled down her own words with a pencil on a thick pad of muggle notepaper.(Poppy had forbidden the injured girl from even TRYING to speak for at least another twenty four hours)The Quiet Ones already looked much better than Severus had seen them two evenings before- the dust and grime was gone, as were all but the deepest of the scrapes and scratches. By the next day, Poppy had assured them all earlier, they’d all be ready to re-join the student body at large.At that moment, Roper had just finished scratching out another phrase on her notebook and held it up for the boys to read.‘But you were so cool with the sword!’ she’d earnestly written. ‘It’s easily the best part of the story!’“Th-thank you Sophie,” Longbottom stuttered out, blushing heavily at the praise. “But my point stands- Myrtle’s definitely going to be more interested in the ancient artefact than my fight itself. Most of it was the sorting hat telling me how to move anyway,”“Hat or not, do you think you’d want to continue practicing with a sword?” Potter asked curiously. “I mean, it’s not unprecedented- Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were both known for wielding enchanted weapons alongside their wands according to legend, as were their children,”A blind person could have seen the look of longing that passed over Longbottom’s face at the suggestion, but he shook his head none the less.“If this is about the sword, you DO technically have finders’ rights to it Nev,” Nott imperiously declared. “Or failing that, Harry does, since it appeared in his ancestor’s Chamber. If we bug the headmaster enough, I’m sure we can get him to fold and return it,”“It’s not about the sword!” Longbottom squawked indignantly. “Besides, it was far too ostentatious for use in a real fight- I’d need something plainer and more practical to…train… with…,”‘Neville, if you want to learn to sword fight, then learn to sword fight!’ Roper all but shoved her next page of scribble in Longbottom’s clearly wistful face. ‘You can do whatever you want!’“I can’t!” Longbottom groaned. “Gran would never allow me to learn something so muggle!”“Mr Longbottom, your grandmother has absolutely no say in which extracurricular activities you may or may not want to pursue,” Minerva suddenly declared, sweeping back the curtain fully in one swoop to fully reveal the four eavesdropping heads of house.The Quiet Ones all jumped, and Nott actually let out an involuntary squeak of alarm, but Pomona was already striding forth to soothe their surprise.“Charging into battle with a sword might be unorthodox these days, but there’s nothing stopping you from practicing skills you’d like to improve here at Hogwarts,” Pomona said with an easy smile. “I’m sorry for the eavesdropping, but when there are patients of Pomfrey’s missing from their beds, it’s always good to check before opening the curtains…,”Severus rolled his eyes at the blushing and stammered denials this teasing drew from all four of the students. Twelve year olds…“If all of you are feeling up to more talking, there’s a few questions we’d like to ask…,” Filius started genially as Minerva conjured up a few chairs around the bed for them to sit on, and Severus bit back a sigh.They were probably going to be here for a while.-------Severus was dangerously close to breaking out that bottle of premium firewhisky he’d been saving since last Christmas.Scowling at any student unfortunate to cross his path on his way back down to his quarters in the dungeons- barely refraining from ordering more detentions for the ones bold enough to try and ask him inane questions as he swept past- Severus seethed internally at the sheer stupidity of the situation he’d found himself in.The tale the sorting hat had spun to them had been bad enough. The story Albus had relayed on behalf of his phoenix hadn’t been much better.But what the four students themselves had to say about the fiasco in the Chamber of Secrets?Dear Merlin, what kind of IDIOTS did their charges have to be to not only realise the danger their friend was in, but then go ahead on their little solo rescue mission ANYWAY?!Severus had expected better of Mr Nott, the token Slytherin of their little band, at LEAST. Charging off headfirst into danger was perhaps the most stereotypically stupid Gryffindor thing to do!(He steadfastly ignored the little voice in his head that whispered the true loyalty of a Hufflepuff, the strategic insight of a Ravenclaw and the instinctive cunning of a Slytherin may have also independently produced such results… What use were wise elders and valued teachers who could do nothing except hinder the Quiet Ones’ own plans of rescue? Sure, they could have stopped the three second years from going after Mr Longbottom, kept them safe, but for the two children already in the Chamber…?)And then, after all the hair-raising recollections of their clash with the basilisk had been relayed, after all the pertinent notes had been recorded and Severus had been right about ready to go drink himself into a stupor, reputation or no… THEN there had been the news Potter had timidly relayed about the continued silence of Sirius Black.Sirius Black, the utter MORON, had SOMEHOW met the gaze of the basilisk through a long range communication mirror, and had apparently been lying petrified in St Mungo’s the entire time Severus and co had been trying to get in contact with him. What bloody use was Dumbledore’s famed information network if he hadn’t been able to at least inform his staff of that pertinent little fact?!Reaching the door to the traditional Slytherin head of house’s quarters, Severus all but slammed open the door and stomped inside, fuming incoherently all the way.“My my Severus, I haven’t seen you in such a dark mood since the summer of 1980,” a familiar voice drawled from the corner of the sitting room as he kicked the door shut, making him immediately freeze. “What’s gotten you so riled up, old friend?”Slowly, keeping a cautious hand over his wand, Severus turned to the two chairs by the unlit fireplace. Sitting casually in the one closest to the door was a man with impeccably aristocratic airs around his person, finely tailored robes and long platinum blond hair.“Lucius,” Severus greeted the Lord Malfoy more stiffly than he would have liked. “I didn’t think you’d be dropping by after the board meeting,”Lucius smiled at him, nodding towards the opposite seat invitingly, as though this was HIS sitting room and Severus was the guest. Refraining from grinding his teeth through sheer force of will, Severus strode purposefully over to the offered chair.“Do I need a reason to visit the godfather of my son? I had more time to spare than I expected, so I thought I’d chance a quick conversation,” Lucius graciously explained as Severus rigidly sat down. “It has been such a long time since we’ve been able to speak at length. I read your letters about Draco’s change in behaviour…?”“‘Change’ was the politest way I could put it,” Severus muttered, casting a suspicious gaze over at the still genially smiling wizard. “He’s become markedly more… aggressive towards his peers since the start of the school term. However, since it appears you are unconcerned, would I be correct in assuming this ‘change’ is one that you encouraged?”“I found that Draco had been far too forgiving of his inferiors over the last school year,” Lucius waved off Severus’s dark tone carelessly. “His mother had been giving him advice conflicting with my own- I merely reassured him whose opinion in the family should hold greater weight in his mind,”“Narcissa will not be happy with you,” Severus needlessly pointed out, making Lucius chuckle. “And I should not be the one reminding YOU that there is a fine line between asserting ones superiority and needlessly making enemies,”Infuriatingly, Lucius lightly waved off Severus’s words again, and the potion’s professor had to actively prevent himself from summoning whatever alcohol was nearest to their seats. He already had a feeling this conversation was going to be tiring and trying of his patience… the perfect way to end an already stressful day. Oh joy.“Now then old friend,” Lucius began, leaning forwards in his seat with the airs of someone expecting a favour. “The headmaster was quite vague on some of the details of what occurred on Halloween night. Perhaps if you could elaborate for me…?”Resisting the urge to groan aloud, Severus drew up his occlumency shields and prepared for a long evening of dancing around the truth in a manner that would satisfy both the pushy inquiries of Lord Malfoy and the meaningful secrecy that Albus needed.On the bright side, Severus sighed internally, it looked he was going to be too exhausted to even consider alcohol by the end of the night.-------(Somewhere indeterminable between Italy and Albania, a tawny owl no longer makes its regular journey with lengthy letters in claw.An animagus and a werewolf stare worriedly at the sky night after night at its abrupt absence- though for markedly different reasons.Two Crouches, one stumbling and growing weaker by the day- the other watching the first’s decline with unmistakable relish- push the group on through wilderness and deserted country lands, approaching their destination slowly, but surely.Full moons come and go, escaped unscathed by the little group solely by the strength of silver-infused chains and a high stakes game of distracting tag between rat and wolf.The miles fall behind them.The goal of their journey grows closer and closer.And the house elf with them, dreading what might come at the end of said journey, starts plotting her own plans)-------(And in the meantime, deep underneath Hogwarts, buried within a guarded cocoon of living wood… someone slowly begins to wake up)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Awareness returned slowly.Fizzing, crackling beads of black static filled the air, filled his eyes and ears and tongue and nose.Ozone and ink and dry, old paper. Faux leather and the iron tang of blood.
I’ve made a terrible mistake.
His own voice, hoarse from screaming and heaving for breath- terrified and awed and angry. Merlin, how young he sounded! Old enough to have pared away the telling hissing undertone of a practiced parselmouth, sculpted his vowels into cut crystal and intone his words in a manner that made his female year mates swoon… yet young, far too young to keep the tremor of weakness out of his voice.
I’ve made a terrible mistake.
It was the first thing that Tom had ever heard after waking up outside of his body, and at that moment he hadn’t understood.(Later, as the memory returned again and again in the all too frequent moments of silence and stillness, Tom couldn’t help but agree. A mistake indeed)-------It took a while for the lingering effects of the exorcism to fade, even after he’d regained a measure of self-awareness.
I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Tom did his best to ignore the echo of his first independent memory as it repeated in what passed for his ears on this plane of ink and silence- he’d had decades worth of practice at it, what was another few days-?-weeks?-years?Time ran differently when there was no sun and moon, no day and night, no tick-tick-tick of a pocket watch or the foreboding toll of the Hogwarts bells.Tom would have liked to say he was used to it, but the exorcism had taken more from him than he’d thought.Once, this sepia, featureless plane of paper had been filled with creations of his.Beloved memories made interactive through careful illustrations of ink. Books he’d painstakingly copied down to read over and over again. Buildings, landscapes, puppet like simulacrum of people he had once known. Works of many hours- great arts he’d slaved over to stave off the boredom- the threat of stasis, or worse, nonexistence……and now, it was all gone.Nothing remained but the blankness of a parchment sky… and a deep, void like well of multi-hued ink below that was all that remained of his decades long efforts.
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…!
Ah… the echo lengthened.Tom dryly supposed this was a sign he was recovering at last.-------Professor Merrythought had once siphoned off a whole jar of spilt ink from some unfortunate student’s assignment in front of the class.Dry and splattered as it was, Tom had been fascinated by how the blackened parchment had crinkled and warped, giving up a flowing trail of once again liquid ink into a bubble at the end of the professor’s wand. She’d redirected it back into an inkwell for future use, and taken the rest of the lesson to teach them all the spell she’d used to avoid further inky mishaps on their homework.Tom supposed a similar thing had happened to his diary upon the exorcism- every single stored word and image slipping off his internal, invisible pages into a single lake of multi-coloured, useless ink.He’d approached the well, eventually, wading into it to see if anything had survived- if there was any of his work at all that he could salvage.(There had been nothing but shapeless ink. Tom was lucky to be alive at all, he refused to think)Floating on his back on top of the oversized puddle, Tom passed his hands though a trail of red alongside him that the teachers had marked his errors with.A swirl of indigo blue that he’d once borrowed from Abraxas- a signature colour above the dull inks the masses used.A tea stain sepia he’d once attempted to sketch with.A fanciful, poisonous green that had caught his childish eyes back in Hogsmeade on his first ever trip in third year.And of course, black. So much black. The colour of his many assignments and tests and missives and journal entries.All of his records- every single word that had ever been written on his pages, once filed away neatly and ready for recall… nothing remained of them but a sea of amalgamated ink.
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…!
He supposed he should be angry.(He felt far too tired to be angry)-------External awareness took far longer to return to him than internal awareness did.Understandable, as the diary didn’t exactly have ears or eyes of its own to work with- its usual ‘senses’  were almost entirely comprised of whatever Tom could glean from whoever he’d managed to snare into writing. Occasionally, if he had enough magical power syphoned off, he could open a limited ‘window’ of sorts of his own… but he had nowhere near that kind of energy right now.He had long resigned himself to another lengthy, boring period of solitude trapped in his broken world of ink and paper. Wallowing in his failure and defeat.
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…!
So it was no wonder that Tom startled when… voices began to reach his inky prison. Voices that were far more real than the lingering echoes of his memories.“WHAT THE HELL DID SHE DO?!”“Er, Myrtle, please calm down, the water…!”“THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF HISTORY, RUINED! *sob* PLEASE tell me Sasha’s okay?!”“What’sss all this noissse abou-? Oh, you have returned little Harry!”“SASHA! YOU’RE ALIVE!”“…?”“Sorry about the delay Guardian-of-Hogwarts. We’ve only just been released from the hospital wing ourselves. How are you?”Tom listened amazedly as the voices bounced around the sepia toned void he’d become accustomed to over the last eternity.There was English and parseltongue. Male and female. Living and dead. He immediately recognised some of the voices- the tones of the infuriating Potter boy and the traitorous basilisk were all too easy to remember- but while the others all bore some form of familiarity to him, he couldn’t quite place them.At least one of the girls was a ghost, of that much he could be sure by the vaguely ethereal, echoing undertone to her outraged screeching about the state of the Chamber of Secrets, but beyond that…Tom sighed to himself, and tried not to downplay his sudden luck. It was irritating not being able to actually SEE the events accompanying the voices but… being able to hear the outside world like this, without having to expend any of his own energy, was more than he’d ever hoped for.(The how’s and why’s of this fortunate addition to his limited senses could wait- no matter how suspicious the timing)As hissed goodbyes and promises of rebuilding and redecorating faded, Tom finally sat up from his self-pitying sulking in the lake of ink.He had work to do.-------
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…! You’re not supposed to be able to think!
“I really hope that Malfoy senior pulls through on his promise to replace the school quidditch equipment before your first game Sophie,”“Psh, on a Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff game? Him? No, he’ll delay right up until his precious son’s next game in order to give Slytherin the best chance at getting ahead with the point scores,”“Do you think he might have been behind that mess with the bludgers? The Weasley twins still aren’t out of the hospital wing thanks to Lockhart…,”Tom was becoming uncomfortably familiar with the disgusted tone that name was often spat out with, and worse, was almost starting to agree with it.‘Lockhart’, far from the idol of hero worship that Ginny had made out the most recent professor of DADA to be, appeared to be some kind of dim-witted menace from the conversations he continued to overhear.Another pillar of ink rose from the lake under Tom’s watchful eye as he listened to the voices with half an ear- the outline of a small, respectable house slowly appearing under his will. It wasn’t one of the detailed constructions he’d once had, but any kind of recognisable edifice would do until he could ensnare somebody else into ‘donating’ some of their magic to him.(Unravelling the puddle of ink back into useable shapes was harder than it looked, but he REFUSED to just lie about and wallow in his misery any more than he already had)“How much would seven new Nimbus 2001’s even COST? Let alone a whole new set of professional grade quidditch balls afterwards…,”“Not as much as you’d think with the Malfoy family connections. Trust me, Malfoy- Malfoy junior, that is- brags about his father’s connections so much in the common room that practically any Slytherin student would be able to put together his whole ‘legal’ business portfolio from memory,”“He doesn’t exactly act like a typical cunning Slytherin, does he? Er, no offence meant Theo,”“None taken Sophie. I’d rather remain as far distant behaviourally-wise from that BRAT as I can,”“I haven’t been imagining it have I? He’s gotten worse these last few months?”The less familiar voices had names assigned to them every now and again, but Tom still couldn’t quite differentiate them all- after all he heard far more names than there were voices. Lockhart, Sophie, Creevy, Theo, Draco, Luna, Neville, Eamon… He blamed lingering disorientation from the exorcism.The question also remained of just WHERE his diary was currently located, in order to be able to overhear such snatches of conversation. In the Chamber of Secrets still, most likely… but somehow, in a place where its attraction charms weren’t able to draw another hapless writer into its well-crafted snare.
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…! You’re not supposed to be able to think!
Another round of goodbyes sounded, and Tom resigned himself to another long period of silence. He returned to his building.-------“I am going to bloody MURDER Creevy!” the voice Tom was fairly confident belonged to the girl named Sophie shrieked out into the Chamber of Secrets.It startled Tom badly enough that the ink-door he was trying to hang from its frame went crashing back into a puddle at his feet. He still wasn’t entirely used to hearing voices come out of nowhere into his papery prison every so often.“Sophie, if you want someone dead, it is considered good form not to announce as such,” a vaguely serious voice Tom believed belonged to a boy called Theo replied. “Makes building an alibi so much easier,”“Er, I don’t really think death is the answer here…,” Potter- Harry’s- easily recognisable raspy voice tried to dissuade the impending violence, but even Tom could hear the reluctance in his tone.“Harry, Creevy STOLE your book bag!” the infuriated voice which by process of elimination must belong to the Neville boy growled out. “He gave it to LOCKHART! And HE tried to give you DETENTION for ‘leaving it lying about’!”“And if those quills that vanished from your bag by the time Professor Flitwick recovered it don’t end up on some school black market, I will be very much surprised,” Theo exasperatedly added. “Look- if Lord Black weren’t still in St Mungo’s, I would be highly recommending contacting him to build up some kind of lawsuit against Lockhart by now. This is getting out of hand,”“Getting out of hand?! Out of HAND?!” Sophie exclaimed, and Tom could almost picture her arms waving about in anger as she spoke. “It’s been out of hand for months! If this was a muggle school, Lockhart would have been fired for harassment weeks ago! Dumbledore is being USELESS!”Tom caught himself sagely nodding to himself in agreement with that statement and had to actively stop.“Look guys, don’t blame the headmaster,” Harry sighed despondently. “While he is at fault for hiring the idiot in the first place, everything since then has all been on Lockhart. There’s actually a school board bylaw that prevents him from firing DADA teachers within the first six months of their tenure,”“W-wait, seriously?” Neville stammered out in shock. “THAT’s why Professor Dumbledore hasn’t done anything? Why would such a bylaw even EXIST?!”“Trust me, it’s one of the first things I looked up when Lockhart first started being a problem- Madam Pince even pointed me straight to the right book,” Harry grumbled. “It’s something they introduced in the seventies to try and stop the school from going through more than one defence professor per school year- no matter how terrible they may be,”Tom was torn between a sense of misplaced pride and guilty horror at this new information. His older self’s curse on the defence professorship had obviously caused far more chaos than he’d imagined.“We never had that problem with Professor Merrythought,” the ghost, who’s name Tom still hadn’t managed to place, suddenly interjected herself into the living’s conversation. “She’d taught for a good twenty five years at least by the time I died!”This made Tom frown… so the ghost was a contemporary of his, judging by the mentioned tenure of Professor Merrythought- the professor his older self had once sought to succeed. Well, that made sense in a way- Tom had either befriended or alienated most of the castle ghosts by the end of his schooling, yet he did not know this one. If she had risen after he’d left Hogwarts, it would explain why he didn’t quite recognise her voice……although, Tom did admit her voice twigged at some unknown memory of his. Perhaps she had been a classmate?
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…! You’re not supposed to be able to think! The ritual- I was too hasty, something must not be right…
-------Tom tried, and failed, to create some kind of reliable calendar for himself.The idle muttering of the ghost and the basilisk came and went without reason, but the regularly conversing voices of the Quiet Ones were fairly consistent by comparison; regular enough that Tom thought he might be able to discern the passing days by their presence.The bulk of their- the Quiet Ones- chatter seemed to take place in one of the anterooms, Tom guessed, seeing as he only got snippets of it as they passed by… wherever… his diary was currently held captive. So that made two snatches of voices at least per trip, on their way in and on their way out.…unfortunately, there were inevitably far more than two such snatches a day. All four students were transparently coming down to the Chamber of Secrets very, very often… apparently to avoid their many misguided ‘fans’.From what Tom had gathered from their conversations, something had happened on Halloween after their battle with him that had suddenly boosted their collective popularity even further throughout the school.Or at the very least, the amount of unwanted attention they were getting.Tom’s lips curled in a sneer whenever he thought about it. They should revel in the attention! Use it to their advantage! Take hold of the spotlight and make it their own!
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…! You’re not supposed to be able to think! The ritual- I was too hasty, something must not be right…
But then again, that’s what Tom had done when faced with that kind of scrutiny… and where had it gotten him?Places, certainly. But good places? That was debatable.Exhibit A: his diary. Enough said.Tom occasionally wondered if his older self was able to fix the error in the horcrux ritual that had split his mind as well as his soul, or if the ring and following others also had his unusual problem with unwanted sentience… he shuddered at the thought. One existence like this was bad enough, immortality or no!He eventually completed his house of ink. He furnished it, sparing not even the slightest detail. And when that was done, he settled in and… listened as the voices came and went, plotting and thinking.And waiting.And waiting.And waiting……some kind of opportunity for possession- for ESCAPE- would eventually come his way, surely?Right?-------A few weeks--months?--after the completion of his house, time in which he’d tirelessly spent listening and planning… Tom gave up on waiting and went back to his pool of ink, tired and miserable.The pool had not been drained overly much by his construction of the cosy little building after all, and he itched with the need to do SOMETHING while he waited.Tom needed a new routine. His old one had been thoroughly uprooted by his little adventure with Ginny Weasley, and he’d almost forgotten the monotony of sitting on a warded shelf with nothing to do- nobody to write with- no purpose to be had.So he began to raise inky plants. Trees, bushes, flowers, grass, vines… He made rocks out of ink. He made fallen logs out of ink. He made a little river of ink that flowed away from the lake, and raised a whimsical inky forest around it because why the hell not?
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…! You’re not supposed to be able to think! The ritual- I was too hasty, something must not be right…
Every once and a while, he’d hear the voices come by and he’d stop and listen, half-heartedly documenting what he learnt about the world outside through their conversations for later use.Another quidditch match, Sophie’s first play with the Hufflepuff team… Lessons where they learnt new potions and spells, save DADA of course… The coming approach of Christmas, whispered hints about gifts… The first snowfall of the season, laughing about a near-schoolwide snowball fight…And today, the creation of a duelling club.“I guess one of the other teachers must have finally gotten fed up with Lockhart’s incompetence,” Theo said almost hopefully. “I’ve certainly heard enough of the OWL and NEWT students complaining about his ‘lessons’,”“I know that Eamon’s going- he said that Cedric was really excited about actually learning something about DADA for once,” Sophie chimed in.“What about Luna?” Neville asked.“I’m not sure, she didn’t really indicate either way- something about neon wiggler flies?” Harry answered, and Tom could practically hear the confused shrug in his voice. “*sigh* I just wish we could shelter them down here as well… we can never speak as freely as we want in Madam Pince’s office…,”“Harry, we need to deal with the Lockhart and company situation before we even think of introducing them to the Chamber,” Theo flatly interjected. “You know that. He’s watching us all FAR too closely,”“Cedric and his band of merry Hufflepuffs, as loud as they are, can protect Eamon enough for now,” Neville said encouragingly. “He’s already looking so much better now he can retreat for some quiet time with us every now and then- er, pun not intended…,”“And Luna’s… well, I hesitate to call them roommates, but I’ve seen how they react whenever they notice her eating with us,” Sophie nervously added. “If she starts disappearing with us all the time as well, then…,”“Yes, I know,” Harry murmured dejectedly. “But I can say this: thank Merlin for Madam Pince and her generous loan of her office,”“Thank Merlin for Madam Pince!” the other three voices cheered at once in what appeared to be a practiced manner, before fading away into whatever anteroom they happened to be using for the bulk of their conversations.…so, it appeared that the Quiet Ones were progressing in what appeared to be an ongoing plan to gain more members… er, at least Tom thought that was what the conversation was about?Tom wondered if his internal avatar looked as bewildered as he currently felt.-------
I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s- you’re not supposed to be…! You’re not supposed to be able to think! The ritual- I was too hasty, something must not be right… Will it even still work? I don’t want to die!
The echoing memory was complete.His first… independent memory.So clear, and so painful, that Tom could never find himself forgetting.For after those words had echoed across the limited senses of the diary in the dark, heavily warded corner of the dungeons that had been his birthplace, Riddle had fled- leaving Tom behind to wonder what on Earth had happened to them both.(Tom, the diary. Riddle, the now less-than-man)To ponder the true magnitude of what they’d done to themselves.(Tom, the bloodied shard. Riddle, the cracked mirror)It had been… difficult, adjusting to the diary alone. To being… less than a whole individual.(Does a soul have limbs? Fingers and toes? Had he sliced one away? Or had he cut out something far more vital?)Of course, Riddle had been expecting, even preparing for such an outcome of the ritual long before the creation of his first horcrux… but never with the perspective of being the one without a human body.(Tom, the discarded mask. Riddle, the fledgling Dark Lord)Tom had had some of their previously shared magical energy to work off at first, enough to sustain his consciousness with relative ease and to first learn to manipulate the ink in his pages into different forms. But as that had dwindled and Riddle had not returned, Tom had begun to grow… concerned.(He was NOT scared)They were the same person, were they not?(He was NOT envious)Why had Riddle been so hysterically afraid by the results of the botched ritual?(He was NOT lonely)Why had Riddle- his older self… left him behind?(He remembered bombs dropping over London)Back when they were one and the same, Tom Riddle had known he would need to place his horcrux somewhere safe, somewhere far away from him if he didn’t want to risk the death of them both at once. Tom had KNOWN that.But the school term had still been in full swing at that time. The threat of London was still far away. So why then…? Why had he been left alone in the dark?Riddle had, of course, eventually returned… two months later.(He was NOT thankful… at least, not after he’d seen…)It had been distinctly odd, feeling himself approaching the diary in the little hidden room the ritual had taken place in.(Had he always appeared so aloof? So untouchable?)The fear and hysterics that had followed his creation had been all but absent.(Was Tom still a mistake to be fixed, or some serendipitous mutation?)Riddle had written in the diary with an elegant, steady hand, detailing how he would be passing him to his friend Abraxas for the summer. The Malfoy heir of their time lived in a lavish mansion in the country that was warded to the teeth and safe from even the strongest of muggle bombs. His horcrux would be safe there- Tom would be safe there.(Had Riddle spoken aloud that day, would Tom have heard the first returns of their frightening childhood rasp to his older self’s voice? Had Tom the foresight to siphon off the tiniest amount of magic from him, would he have looked out to see the first flecks of red in his older self’s eyes?)It was only later- years later- that his older self had finally deigned to return to him, another four perfect horcruxes split from his soul. And after planting the last resort plan to reopen the Chamber of Secrets firmly within the diary’s pages, he had left.Tom had never seen him again.(He was surprised, thinking back, that he now felt truly relieved of that fact)-------Awareness returned slowly.So slowly that Tom had thought himself as cured as he could be in his current state for a good few weeks before realising……before realising………-------The Christmas holidays at Hogwarts felt… solemn, this year.After the disastrous fiasco that had been the opening meeting of the long anticipated duelling club the night before-(-and seriously, whose idea had it been to let LOCKHART of all people to run such a club?! The night had ended with almost half the attendees in the hospital wing after being hit by wild flying hexes, and the other half being thoroughly dressed down by an angry Professor Snape while Lockhart made a ‘tactical retreat’-)- Harry had needed to say goodbye to all three of his closest friends that very morning.Family obligations, complicated Yule rites, Sophie’s twice-removed cousin’s wife’s brother’s seasonal themed wedding on new year’s eve… they’d all been called home for the holidays this year, leaving Harry behind, all on his own.Granted, Harry had originally had plans to return to London- to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place- during the Christmas holidays himself but… well. His Uncle Padfoot, as Kreacher had gravely informed him only that morning, was still stuck in St Mungo’s doing a masterful impression of surprised wizard statue.Harry sighed wanly to himself, trudging through the catacombs on his way to the Chamber of Secrets, hoping for some quality moping time with Myrtle and Guardian-of-Hogwarts.They could reminisce together over how the season had been celebrated back in the old days- Harry could tell his dramatic rendition of Lockhart being blasted clear across the room by a massively smug Professor Snape during their one and only ‘demonstration duel’ the night before- Myrtle might finally acquiesce to actually practicing her seemingly innate telekinetic control over water- perhaps they could even plan a guided holiday tour down to the Chamber for Luna and Eamon…Sighing more deeply, Harry tried and failed to muster any true joy that Luna and Eamon were still around for the Christmas holidays to keep him company. After all, Eamon was only staying because his grandparents weren’t about to welcome him back any time soon, and Luna’s father was delayed on his return to England, lost out on some expedition in Peru looking for couatls.After the ‘Halloween incident’, both Eamon and Luna had been more regular additions to the Quiet Ones’ study groups in the library and at meal times… but Harry still needed to introduce them to the Chamber at some point if they truly wanted them to really become part of the group.This otherwise empty and lonely Christmas holidays would be the perfect time for such a venture and yet… and yet…The door leading into the main Chamber was open right ahead, just as the Quiet Ones had left it the previous evening, and Harry dragged his feet through on autopilot, keeping his eyes on the dusty floor as he meandered over to the comfort of his fledgling cherry tree.He didn’t want to look at the destruction Voldemort had wrought upon the Chamber today.……but keeping his eyes down also meant he didn’t notice the figure already leaning against the cherry tree until he was practically on top of them.He caught the vaguely bluish, silvery glow out of the corner of his eyes and at first dismissed it as Myrtle’s usual ghostly radiance- she enjoyed sitting up in the skeletal branches of the winter stripped sapling for some reason after all.Giving a careless wave of greeting without raising his eyes, Harry turned and slumped back against the slender trunk on the tree with another heavy sigh, letting himself slide down into a sitting position against its base while avoiding the notable lump where the possessed diary was imprisoned.Closing his eyes, Harry leaned on the tree and let himself get lost in the soft, ambient noises of the Chamber for a while.The soft whistling of the wind through the pipes above. The gentle trickle of water over Salazar’s statue. The distant slide of Guardian-of-Hogwarts’s scales as she curled up further in her heated nest, safe from the winter cold.……and after a few more minutes of bewildered silence, the immensely confused and highly alarmed shade of Tom Riddle that was standing aghast beside him finally gathered the courage to speak.“What did you DO?!”