Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to the authors, producers, and companies with whom the material in question is affiliated.

A/N: Thanks for your support, time, and love. Please let me know what you think. It's really motivating and encouraging to see what stands out to you. I hope you enjoy.

Warnings: Foul language and on-screen evidence of off-screen animal cruelty


Chapter Twelve: The Monster that Wasn't


Mrs Norris swayed away, then back, and away again in front of the glistening text, hanging stiffly by her tail from the rope tethering her to the darkened iron chandelier overhead. Harry felt someone touch his shoulder, and he turned as the rumble of a thousand feet grew louder on the main staircase. It seemed the feast had ended, and curiosity had drawn more than just Ravenclaws and Gryffindors to the second floor landing. Cries of surprise and annoyance announced their arrival on the landing as unsuspecting feet and ankles encountered the icy water still flowing sluggishly from an unknown source, refusing to pour through the spaces between the balusters despite its depth. Harry thought perhaps some wise headmaster or teacher had erected containment fields for just that purpose, or the house elves might have acted proactively to protect the floors below.

The shadow moved back and forth, smaller and larger, its shape changing and twisting against the water, the bloodied wall, and the one opposite.

Whispers laced with panic and alarm spread through the craning crowd as they began processing what their optical nerves translated.

"Move aside!"

Harry felt sick. His head ached. His heart continued its frantic tap-dance against his sternum. He felt cold and hot all at once.

"What're you all doing standing around like a flock of sheep? What's going on, here?"

Argus Filch, the balding old caretaker, demanded with his jowls quivering in barely restrained anger.

"What-" he stopped, and a horrible, strangled sort of noise ripped from his throat. "Mrs Norris! What's happened to my baby?"

He shoved through the tightly packed crowd, sending a few unfortunate students careening into the railing, and splashed through the flood to gently unknot the rope suspending her. The feline retained its rigidity, its eyes still staring blankly as her master tried to wake her. He blew air into her nose and began rhythmic compressions on her bony ribcage. Hermione's hand pulled on his elbow, and he belatedly realised he still held his lit wand aloft. He lowered it slowly, taking the wide-cast pool of luminescence with it, and allowed Filch's crouched body the privacy of the shadows. Neville's trembling grip found his shoulder and squeezed. Kilat continued her wordless tirade in a hiss too low for the other humans to hear.

The caretaker wheezed a long breath into the still animal, pressed again on her ribcage for one, two, three, four, five beats, and repeated it all over again.

"Mr Filch?" a particularly brave Gryffindor boy asked tremulously, stepping slightly away from the silent onlookers behind the quintet. "Mr Filch, should we get Madam Pomfrey?"

Everyone listened anxiously to the man's harsh, panting wheezes. Phlegm made his exhales whistle slightly with each breath. He staggered to his feet, sobbing brokenly as he clutched the furry statue to his breast.

"You-" he gasped, eyes snapping up, bulging madly beneath the harsh light. "YOU!"

The man charged forward and yanked with one arm Harry from his friends by the lapels of his dress robes. The boy's wand disappeared back into its holster as his fingers released it, and both hands clutched tight to the enraged caretaker's bony hand and wrist.

"YOU MURDERED HER!" Filch shrieked, shaking him hard, spittle flying from his trembling maw.

"STOP!" Hermione screamed, tugging on his arm and resorting to powerful stinging hexes when her strength had no effect. "LET HIM GO!"

Harry's ears rang. Draco and Daphne shouted and hissed indignant threats, trying their own releasing and stinging spells. He felt Neville's arms tugging around his middle while his own feet struggled to find the floor. His toes skid and scrabbled. His head ached. The rushing, staticky noise swelled like some horrible wave. The sting of ozone and blood burned his nose and throat.

"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL FUCKING KILL Y-"

"Put my boy down, NOW."

Rose's loud, cold command cut through the shocked students' panicked murmurs and the second years' raucous struggle, her wide eyes blazing with the unsaid threat. Filch's lower lip curled and shook, and his scruffily whiskered chin wrinkled beneath the pucker. The man stared at his captive, and Harry watched the fire die out in his dilated pupils and pale, watery irises. His grip loosened, and the Slytherin staggered away from him, half-dragged by his horrified friends. The woman cupped her son's cheek, pressed a kiss to his forehead, and turned to coax the cat from Filch's left arm.

"Argus-"

Dumbledore gently nudged his way to the front of the throng with his deputy and the other heads-of-house in his wake. He nodded gratefully to Rose, whose intense stare and pursed mouth had yet to relax.

"It is natural to feel grief and anger at such an attack; however, nothing gives you the right to lay hands on anyone inside this castle, let alone her students," the headmaster gravely intoned. "You will apologise to Mr Potter-Smith post-haste."

The man sobbed an intelligible phrase, his face in his hands, and Harry gave his indignant housemates a look to silence their furious protests. There were much more important things to deal with than a grieving man's anger.

"Now, Mr Potter-Smith-"

The headmaster turned his attention to the young Slytherin. He was vaguely aware of the Heads-of-House making brusque inquiries while shooing their charges to bed.

"I have a feeling your sudden about-face at the Great Hall has something to do with how you came to be here, of all places," he said a little wearily. "Am I right in my hunch?"

Rose watched beadily out of the corner of her eye. The hum of the Doctor's screwdriver sounded loud to her son's ears as she ran scans over Mrs Norris, the corridor, the writing, and even the ankle-deep water.

"I…" Harry tried to focus, but the buzzing in his ears hadn't faded.

It was as if he had forgotten something important, even vital, but he couldn't place it over the roar in his head.

"I thought I heard-" he said distractedly.

His forehead felt clammy under his palm as he swept his fingers through his sweat-dampened hair.

"Headmaster," Rose interrupted urgently. "You need to see this."

She held the Doctor's blue-tipped screwdriver over the cat, which she'd kept cradled to her chest since its liberation from Filch.

"Ah, excellent," Dumbledore smiled after finishing his own diagnosis. "Excellent luck, Argus. She's not dead. Merely petrified. We can set her to rights as soon as Madam Pomfrey and Professor Snape whip up a restorative draught."

He straightened to survey the exhausted, frightened children and his anxious staff. A sweep of his wand vanished the freezing water. A spiralling motion of his forefinger made steam rise from their sodden hems and shoes, and a jab restored the warmth to chilled fingers and toes.

"Children, if you will follow Professors Sinistra and Smith up to my office, I will join you shortly," he smiled wanly at them. "Septima, if you could take Argus and Mrs Norris down to the infirmary...?"

"Of course, Albus," the sober-faced woman agreed. "Come along, now, Mr Filch. We'll get her sorted."

"I'll assist, of course," a self-confident voice offered. "I've created mandrake draughts so many times I could do it in my sleep."

Snape turned to glare at Lockhart, and the blonde wisely refrained from further self-aggrandising commentary before disappearing down the stairway in Professor Vector's wake.

The second-years, meanwhile, trudged after professors Smith and Sinistra, leaving the headmaster to confer with his heads-of-house and remaining faculty. Hermione and Daphne clung to one another as they ascended the stairs, and Neville and Draco walked stoically at Harry's sides. No one, not even Kilat, spoke. Across the castle, the clock tower began its midnight toll. The hollow sound seemed an appropriate backdrop to the evening's events.

They finally arrived before a stone gargoyle with a vaguely canine face and wide, bat-like wings that protruded from the masonry behind it.

"Sherbet Lemon," Professor Sinistra enunciated carefully.

The statue leapt aside, and the stretch of wall it occupied turned, revealing a moving, spiral staircase behind it. The astronomer stepped on, and Rose ushered the children ahead of her before joining them.

Even in their varying states of panic, fear, and worry, the children could not help but admire the headmaster's office. Spindly tables and pedestals or glass-enclosed cabinets displayed a vast assortment of delicate instruments that filled the wide, circular space with cheerful but strange noises. Some puffed out multicoloured smoke with small whistles, hoots, or (in one case) sounds of flatulence. Others spun, rocked, hopped, and vibrated across their various surfaces. Bookcases, curved to stand flush against the walls, climbed to heights inaccessible by anything save magic. The spaces between these towering monuments to knowledge housed gilt frames in which ancient witches and wizards gently snored. These, too, climbed the walls and spiralled around the space almost to the domed ceiling, but a few portraits claimed pride of place behind an enormous, claw-footed desk occupying the centre of the room.

Against it leaned the one person Harry wanted to see most.

"Dad!" he nearly shouted upon noticing the duster-and-suit-clad man.

The Doctor opened his arms immediately, and the Slytherin crossed the room faster than he thought himself able. He clung to his father with all his might while the man rubbed reassuring circles between his shoulder blades.

"No worries, Jemmy," he whispered. "I know. We'll sort it."

Harry barely heard the words through the high-pitched, buzzing hum in his ears, but the Doctor's familiar smell and the feeling of his arms around his shoulders gave him more comfort than he would ever admit out loud. It was a testament to their friendship and the seriousness of the situation that Draco or Daphne didn't comment on his response to seeing the man.

"Did you get anything else on the M3?" Rose prompted while examining the kids for harm.

They gamely put up with her quick scans and once-overs while Professor Sinistra distributed hot chocolates summoned from the kitchens. Everyone crowded closer around the headmaster's desk, partly to combat the feeling of cold that had nothing to do with the weather, and partly for greater proximity to the unfailingly confident and reassuring Doctor.

"No," he frowned and scratched behind his ear with the tip of his wand. "Well, sort of. A little. It kind of depends on what you mean by 'anything else'."

"Dad?" Harry pleaded thinly. "Do you mind..?"

"Yes, sorry," the Doctor took a deep breath in preparation for his usual fast-paced explanation. "The M3's a Magical Mapper and Monitor, in case anyone was wondering, and it basically works like CCTV except there aren't any cameras involved and a whole lot more time energy translation and analysis systems built into it, but same basic principle. It alerts us and the headmaster to unusual activity not belonging to students or faculty, and also records magic and wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff throughout the castle."

He let his son go to free his own hands and so the boy could accept a mug for himself. A crystal sphere hopped obligingly out of his pocket, and a flick of his wand set it to hover over the Headmaster's neat desk. The chandeliers and floating candles throughout the space dimmed to near darkness, and the sphere glowed brightly before projecting a shimmering hologram above the desk's surface. Neville and Draco stepped closer to Harry's sides, and behind him, he registered Dumbledore and the heads-of-house coming through the door. Meanwhile, the Doctor's wand directed his device to zoom in on the image of Hogwarts, through the roof and the separate floors, until Harry finally recognised the first floor's layout.

"Let's see… at 11:00, it looks like the ghost of Miss Myrtle Warren returned to her usual haunt-"

The Doctor further zoomed in on the corridor outside the first floor girls' bathroom, and the professors who had not yet seen his favourite visual aid made sounds of appreciation as the miniature rendering of the apparition in question went through the wall beside the facility's entrance. Moments later, a girl with bright red hair fled the area, chased by a flood of water that splashed violently against the still-swinging door and rushed into the corridor. He further impressed them when he poked the image, and it spat forth a glowing gold report of numbers and words.

"That's one ghost accounted for, no other beings, creatures, or sources of magic," the Doctor explained, twisting his wand.

The recording sped, tracked by the skittish dance of tiny flames capping candles and sconces, until abruptly, darkness engulfed the corridor. The Doctor paused and reversed a bit to replay at normal speed, and everyone watched again as the northernmost lights snuffed out as if in a strong gust, quickly followed by the others all the way down to the corridor's south entrance. Mrs Norris's small body slunk around the corner shortly after. Her lamp-like eyes blinked, and she proceeded through the water and into the shadows, where a blue outline denoted her position and movements. She seemed to be staring at something with her tail raised high into the air, but the outline blinked out after a final angry twitch of her tail.

"11:30," the headmaster observed.

Harry felt his friends jump slightly, and realised they hadn't noticed the others' return. The Doctor made a wordless sound of agreement and again fast-forwarded until Harry appeared in the remaining pool of torchlight at the end of the corridor.

"And at 11:55," he concluded, while the scene played from the other second years' arrival until the professors' departure. "I've checked the rest of the floor starting from the beginning of this week, and there wasn't anything out of the norm. The only people to stay in the corridor for any length of time were first and second-year girls going in and out of the loo. Everyone else was on their way to elsewhere."

"Which brings us to you, Mr Potter," Dumbledore said not unkindly.

Harry turned and shrunk back a little from the intensity of his blue-eyed stare. He felt a hand brace his shoulder reassuringly.

"What led to your, ah…" he smiled slightly as he searched for a word. "Exclamation in front of the great hall and your subsequent departure?"

The boy glanced from the headmaster to Flitwick, and then to his parents.

"I was serving detention, Sir," he explained shortly. "I was assigned to help Sir Nick during his deathday do, but I heard-"

He frowned and rubbed his aching temples.

"I heard-"

"Hold on," the Doctor interrupted, coming around the table.

He squished Harry's cheeks between his hands, turning the boy's head one way, then another, and finally pressed an ear to the crown of his son's head.

"Er- Dad?"

"Shush," he commanded.

His wand hummed in a familiarly sonicky way as its user ran it over Harry's forehead. The boy's pinched face relaxed when finally, finally, the horrid noise and throbbing dissipated.

"Doctor?" Dumbledore lightly prompted, his face just as confused as his students' and tenured faculty's.

"Something for later, also fixing a headache," the history professor dismissed with an easy smile. "Go on, Harry. What did you hear?"

"Kilat heard it, too," he began again, lifting his wrist so the others could see the coiled, much becalmed snake. "There was this music, sort of. Like singing, but really eerie, it was sort of echo-y. It said-"

Harry glanced around, wary of the varying scepticism on his friends' and teachers' faces.

"It sounded like it was going to kill someone," he finished quietly, unable to meet their eyes. "I didn't want to lose it."

He heard his mother's unmistakable sigh – the one she used when disappointed or angry – and it was all he could do not to cringe. He practically felt Snape's eyes boring into his head. In retrospect, his reaction hadn't approached any approximation of logic, but in his defence, he could barely think through the pain lancing his brain at the time. The professors murmured anxiously behind his friends, who exchanged worried glances and subtle gestures that he pretended not to see.

"Perhaps Mr Potter should visit the infirmary," McGonagall suggested gently. "It seems to have been a very trying day."

The boy caught his parents' gazes pleadingly, but his head-of-house came to his rescue before they could voice their objections.

"I doubt the child imagined the voice, Minerva," Snape dismissed in dry, clipped tones. "Potter-Smith has an idiotically developed awareness of magical fields and effects. He likely detected what most would dismiss as a passing sensation of foreboding. One would hope, however-"

He glared at all three of his charges as his voice sharpened drastically.

"That he would learn to think before acting on those observations and that his friends might not encourage such behaviour."

"Yes, Sir," the Slytherins mumbled.

There was an awkward beat of silence broken by the Doctor clearing his throat.

"Bedtime, I think," Dumbledore gently suggested. "Since all your heads-of-house are present, I think you shall be well guarded on your way to your common rooms, so long as there's nothing left for the children to offer..?"

The headmaster directed the question to the Doctor and Rose, who shared in a wordless conversation of eyebrow twitches and subtle shrugs before turning to their son.

"I'm all right, now," he quickly assured them. "I'm fine."

"We can leave everything else until after the kids are better rested," the Doctor allowed.

The exhausted children agreed in mumbles and gratefully followed McGonagall, Sprout, and Snape past whispering portraits and dimly burning torches to the main stairwell, where McGonagall led Neville away for the seventh floor and the others continued deeper into the castle's bowels. Hermione bid her Slytherin friends a quiet goodnight before the great hall, leaving Draco, Daphne and Harry to walk silently in Snape's shadow. The twisting, changing corridors of the furthest wing in the dungeons echoed the sounds of their footsteps back at them. The gothic lanterns overhead hissed and flickered in the damp and pervasive draft. When they finally reached the wall-that-wasn't-a-wall, the Professor left them without a word, and they stepped through to face a tensely occupied common room.

It seemed everyone had waited up to hear what happened first-hand, and Harry fleetingly hoped Neville and Hermione weren't experiencing the same reception. His gut twisted, and he felt very glad he had not stopped for treacle tart before chasing after the disembodied voice.

"So?" Montague finally demanded. "Did you do it?"

The two hundred and fifty-some students, mostly upper-years, stared at them expectantly.

"Do you think Dumbledore would have let us leave if he thought we had?" Draco finally said as scathingly as he could manage. "Of course not, you idiot."

"And we don't know what happened, either," Harry added tiredly. "So don't bother asking."

Many muttered and complained, but no one stood in their way as the boys returned to their shared den and Daphne retreated to her own with Tracy at her side. Blaise helpfully hexed Nott, Crabbe and Goyle for his friends so Harry and Draco could retreat to the former's room. The door snapped shut with a satisfying sort of finality, and Harry gratefully fell across his mattress, much to Kilat's displeasure. She hissed at him and quickly slithered off to sleep under his pillow. He heard more than saw Draco collapse similarly into the armchair by the stove.

"I suppose this is what your dad's note was talking about?" Harry mumbled dully. "What does it even mean?"

"It's an old story about Salazar Slytherin," Draco said through his hands. "Supposed to be legend, but…"

Harry sat up with a groan. His hair stuck out everywhere after sweating out the Sleekeasy's, and his silk and wool dress robes had wrinkled badly. He undid his bowtie with a sigh as he watched his friend's conflicted face

"But your father apparently thinks it's true," he concluded. "How's it go?"

Draco rolled his eyes and squirmed until his head lay over one arm of the chair and his knees draped over the other.

"You know," he muttered. "Slytherin got into a fight with Hufflepuff and Gryffindor about recruiting wizless kids to Hogwarts – Probably more over the secrecy issues for anyone who didn't choose to go or stay than anything, so much as most purists would hate to admit. Anyway, at that point the castle had already withstood sieges and wars, so each founder had armed the castle with unique defences. Ravenclaw did the statues and knights, and also the ward schemes. Gryffindor started the thestral and hippogriff stables, and he also installed ballistae on all the highest towers. You know, the automatic ones that conjure their own flaming projectiles. Hufflepuff had secret passages dug all over the place for escape and mobilisation purposes. Slytherin planted the forest and brought the first giant squid to the lake. I think he may have also invited the first centaur herds to go live there, but he's rumoured to have secretly done more."

He paused and sighed heavily.

"Father told me when I was little that the Dark Lord discovered the secret, and its only purpose was to purge Hogwarts of the unworthy."

Harry continued undressing in silence and had finished buttoning his pyjama shirt before he managed a reply.

"Like an animal or a weapon?" he frowned. "Both, I suppose?"

"Yes, on all accounts," Draco said grimly. "If it's true, it went after Mrs Norris because Filch is a squib."

Kilat, who had listened to their conversation despite her upset at the evening or her human's erratic behaviour, poked her head out from her hiding place.

"We would have sssmelled a beassst," she dismissed. "Thisss is sssomething elssse."

"I know," Harry answered softly.

Draco looked between the two and shuddered.

"What did she say?"

"If it's a beast, it's something that's so magically resistant it doesn't register, or it's not a monster at all," the parselmouth answered wearily.

"What could do that?"

Harry sighed and rubbed a hand over his hair.

"I don't have a clue, Draco. We'll have to talk to the Doctor tomorrow."


1 November 2013

The morning, however, brought with it such news that even whispers of ancient chambers and speculation on Mrs Norris's attacker ceased the moment Hogwarts' students opened their copies of the morning Prophet. As sounds of surprise and disbelief swept the hall, small scuffles broke out among those unwilling to share their newspapers and those whose curiosity outweighed their impatience. Harry, who always greeted his parents with a wave and a smile in the mornings, found both his mum and dad too engaged with one another to notice his entrance. Their heads leaned together over the table. Snape, who always sat on Rose's right when Jenny could not come down for breakfast, scowled darkly at anyone who dared draw his attention. Harry took his seat between Draco, who ignored his breakfast to read his mail, and Daphne, whose eyes grew wider and wider as she read her copy of the publication.

"Daph..?" he prodded after taking several bites of sausage without anyone telling him anything about the apparently important news.

"Sweet Morgana," she huffed and slapped the boy's fork from his hand to clatter noisily against the plate below. "Stop stuffing your face and read!"

Harry wisely held his protests at her rough treatment, pushed his dark acrylic frames up on his nose, and promptly choked on his mouthful when he attempted to swallow and gasp at the same time.

Sirius Black Released:

Trial Eminent

by Wilhelmina Williams, Senior Reporter for Ministry News

November 1, 2013 – New evidence uncovered in an internal investigation of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement revealed evidence indicating a severe miscarriage of justice as defined by the Judicial Acts of 1306, in which the constitution outlines the rules by which a person may be tried, imprisoned and punished. These laws extended protection to the citizenry against false persecution. They require enforcers of the law to petition for writs of arrest before detaining someone and further guarantee trial by jury as a right inherent to any citizen accused of criminal offence. Director of Magical Law Enforcement Amelia Bones said under law, Sirius Black (35) should have been tried in accordance to the act; however, he may not have received due process.

"We were conducting our annual filing and archiving," Bones said. "I stumbled across the file by complete accident. Someone had recently requested information about his arrest, and it hadn't made its way back to the archives what with the annual filing going on. Imagine my surprise when I picked it up, and it wasn't even a quill's thickness. It was suspicious, because even files on our petty criminals generally weigh a pound or two by the time we're done amassing evidence and documenting everything."

The director said its unusual size prompted her to read through so she might gage which papers had gone missing, but she only found a couple hand-written statements taken by the arresting aurors and the presiding judge. Typically, she said, the file would have contained processing documents, a writ of detainer to extend the prisoner's time in holding, and numerous statements recording the accused party's interview, witness interviews, and auror testimonies. Some proponents held Black's irregular processing might be justified as an unfortunate by-product of the times. Senior Undersecretary Delores Umbridge further elaborated on the apparently popular interpretation of the situation.

"Mr Black was tried in absentia according to emergency acts designed to protect the public in a time of war," she said. "Since, in addition to accusations of murder and muggle-slaughter, he was charged with treason for his part supporting the organisation known as the Death Eaters. Thus, a special tribunal met and judged his case based on witness testimony and extensive evidence."

Despite the undersecretary's assurances, however, Director Bones said no such evidence was entered into Black's official records; therefore, Black's current detention contradicts the law of the land. On that basis, Bones opened her investigation and began building a case for retrial. Yesterday, Oct. 31, during the final session of the Wizengamot for the year, a vote of 13:4 in favour authorised her petition. The full body of the legislature will meet Jan. 1 to try Black, who has been moved to a secured facility to recover his health in the meantime. In a formal statement, Speaker for the Wizengamot Augusta Longbottom said significant evidence moved the Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot to action.

"Based on the information collected by Director Bones, including veritaserum-controlled interviews with Black and the new admission of Peter Pettigrew's wand into evidence, we of the Wizengamot agree a trial must be convened," she said. "In fact, there is reason to believe the so-called victim may have been the true perpetrator, himself."

.

Harry turned to the head table again, where his mum looked happy, his dad thoughtful, and Snape still appeared halfway between a migraine and an aneurism. His fellow Slytherins whispered about it regardless of parentage, debating the possibilities with growing excitement. Apparently, no one left Azkaban. The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw contingents seemed to share similar interest; however, the noise emitting from Gryffindor very nearly overwhelmed their neighbours'. Fred and George Weasley even left the table early, while behind them a few especially loud people proclaimed Gryffindor's inability to produce traitors, at all. In their mind, the person who committed the atrocious mass-murder and assisted attempted infanticide could never have been one of their number. The boy whose birth parents died before he could know them eleven years and one day ago could not quite determine how to feel. Draco, at least, seemed to share his indecision. He alone of Harry's friends and family remained stoic in the face of wild speculation.

...

The Doctor and Rose left breakfast earlier than usual in order to re-examine the writing beside the second floor girls' bathroom: he with his customary gear (plus a banana for the trip), and she with a silver case of Torchwood-developed analysis tools. After an especially strong calming draught much earlier that morning, Filch had quit the infirmary and his vigil beside the prone old cat and cordoned off the still damp-smelling area with black velvet rope. He paced, red eyed and wheezing, back and forth before the gory message and made threatening faces at the children who passed. Even in his grief and rage, however, the man knew better than to treat Rose with anything save the greatest respect after his violent display.

"Professors," he muttered as the couple approached.

She regarded him coolly and stepped through the space he made with no further acknowledgement. She wasn't sure if she could maintain civility if she spoke to him. The Doctor, who had witnessed the confrontation through his surveillance system, also restricted himself to a curt greeting.

"Filch," he nodded.

The unpleasant caretaker hooked the rope back into place and stood back to glare sulkily at their backs while the two continued their examinations from last night. The Doctor took his screwdriver in one hand and his sonically upgraded wand in the other and commenced a thorough scan over each letter. Rose, meanwhile, sprayed an aerosol over the carpet. She rummaged again in her open case for a torch, and Filch made a sound of surprise and appreciation as footprints formed across the low pile. She followed a set of small paw prints with the beam, which came to an abrupt stop a few feet from the message on the wall.

"Looks like she saw whoever did it," she mused. "Too bad cats can't talk."

The Doctor hummed a vague agreement, more focused on scratching at the writing with a fingernail. When this failed to achieve the desired effect, he sniffed and then licked the stuff. His wife sighed loudly. He grimaced.

"Chicken," he concluded. "Male chickens, to be specific. Someone had a great big bucket of Rooster blood, which they put-"

He swivelled and pointed his sonic at a round section of fluorescing carpet near his own feet.

"Right there."

Rose joined him and passed the beam carefully over the strip of carpet directly in front of the writing.

"Yeah, but there aren't any feet pointed that way."

The Doctor squatted beside the shape he assumed belonged to the bucket and mimed putting one down.

"They had two buckets, then," Filch interjected. "One to step on, and held the other to do the painting. Vile brats. I knew it was one of those filthy little mongrels!"

The professors sent him synchronised glares, and the grumbling old man returned to his spot beside the rope barrier.

"Maybe not a bucket," the Doctor groaned, fisting his hair. "A smart person with a good grasp of permanent petrifaction curses or potions could have controlled someone else to do it. Or else, directed things from further away…"

"We've got nothing, don't we?" Rose huffed.

"Yeah, just about," her husband agreed. "Just the readings surrounding Harry's noggin on his way up. They definitely got wonkier, but I don't know that it's related, really. Just a response to emotional stimuli, maybe. He's a magical pre-teen. He's got to be a mess in there, sometimes, not counting-"

"Everything else he's been put through, yeah," the mother finished. "So what, now?"

The lanky man shot to his feet and grinned widely, flicked his wand to banish the briefcase back to their rooms and clear away the fluorescing prints, and looped his arm with his wife's.

"Research, Professor Smith," he crowed as he held back the rope for her. "After which we'll examine the patient again."

"Of course, Professor Smith," Rose laughed. "We'll make it a date."

They walked together back to the main staircase, where he went one way and she went another. Rose did her best to reassure the kids who passed through her classes, and the Doctor was quick to cover the legend in class while presenting evidence against Slytherin's reputation as a budding proponent of genocide. The man had helped lead a school that taught non-magically raised children for nearly a hundred years after its founding before leaving it forever, after all, and a few personal accounts included in Hogwarts a History even expressed his views in black and white. After such convincing arguments, most students came to the conclusion someone with a grudge against Filch had pulled an especially cruel prank. Certainly, the news about Sirius Black seemed to come up more often in the conversations Rose heard throughout the day. However, after penning a subtly worded thank-you note to Amelia Bones, little else occupied her thoughts. The chamber probably existed based on the number of first and second-hand resources referencing its construction, even if they did not record its location. But most troubling of all, she wondered after the supposed weapon within. In all her time travelling with the Doctor, she had never encountered a being or power completely undetectable by Gallifreyan technology, upon which the M3 system had been based. It mapped everything by measuring time energy, the manipulation of space, and manifestations of fluctuations in both the void and vortex.

Something or someone had attacked the cat, but if the Doctor's reports were to be believed, no one could have.


A/N: Hope you enjoyed this installment. Please do review. They inspire me more than you'll ever know. This is the last chapter I have pre-written, and while the next one's in the works, I'm not sure when it's going to be posted. Meanwhile, I may be posting a little plot bunny's brain nibbles on my profile in a new FemHarry story.

Keep a look out for it if you're interested. It's going to be an AU with major deviations from J.K.'s originals, although I'm going to remain as true as I can to the characters themselves unless something in the Alternate Universe would absolutely not work with particular traits.

I hope to see you here next time.

Love,

Forensica X