Mary Potter – First Year, Second Term
Chapter 13: Confrontations
January – February, 1992
Hogwarts
After the holidays, life quickly resumed its normal pace within the castle. One class followed the next, and there continued to be a general lack of attempts to kill Mary (or Hermione, or Lilian). Mary returned to spending most of her time with Lilian and Hermione, while Blaise and, to a lesser extent, Theo, went back to their casual association with Daphne. Aradia Carmichael and her friends took back their favored spot in the common room (and Mary still didn't know what was so special about it).
About halfway through January, Hermione found a book on Cursed Fire that someone had left on a table in the library. This provided the answer to the question of what, exactly, those black flames in the obstacle course were, and how they could be countered. Apparently there really was a potion to let you pass, something called Heart of Ice, but the book gave no more details, so the Ravenclaws shifted their focus from fires to potions in search of more information.
Imbolc, in early February, passed unmarked by the Slytherins. Mary wasn't sure if this was because most Slytherins were from dark families, and didn't celebrate it, or because it was meant to be marked independently, and after a week and a half of not-remembering to ask Theo every time she saw him outside of class, she decided it didn't matter. He did ask his father to send her a book on the Powers, though, and Hermione, as predicted, found it fascinating.
Nothing of note occurred until the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch match in mid-February. After Gryffindor's spectacular loss to Slytherin in the November match, and Hufflepuff's loss to Slytherin in January, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were competing for last place. Lilian and Hermione had debated not attending the match at all, because neither of their houses were playing, and the match wasn't likely to affect the outcome of the cup, but Mary insisted they go.
She was glad she did, though Hermione said it was stupid.
Stupid or not, it was an historic event: In what had to be the biggest display of dumb luck, ever in any sort of sporting event since the beginning of time, the snitch practically flew into the Gryffindor seeker not ten minutes into the game. The score was 150-10, and Thorpe still looked baffled as his team carried him off the field.
As the students were filing out of the stands, Theo appeared at Lilian's side, insisting that she and Mary needed to stick around for an emergency first-year Slytherin meeting. Hermione went on ahead as the Slytherins doubled back to meet the rest of their year mates.
Blaise and Daphne had cornered Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle in the Gryffindor section of the stands.
"I just don't understand why you can't get it through your thick head," the Italian boy was nearly shouting at Malfoy. "You can't just go around breaking the truce and then having your pet gorillas here beat up whatever poor sap you've been picking on!"
"What's going on?" Lilian asked quietly.
("Who're you callin' a gorilla?" Crabbe asked angrily.)
Pansy started to say something about Blaise going crazy for no reason, but Daphne talked over her. "Malfoy, apparently, decided that it would be a good idea to bring up the fate of the Longbottoms at the hands of his Auntie Bella just after the end of the war."
("You, you complete and utter moron!")
"Longbottom went berserk and punched him in the face, and then Vinnie and Greg beat the ever-loving crap out of him."
("Just because you –")
("Shut up, Malfoy, I'm not done with you!")
"The littlest weasel had to get his prefect brother to take Longbottom to the hospital wing. Poor sap couldn't even walk."
"So all this is about… what?" Mary asked. She didn't have a problem with her housemates sticking up for Neville – they probably should more often, or at least lay off him, since he was such an easy target – but it seemed a bit out of character for them.
("…prancing around with your name and your money as though that actually matters here…")
"The truce, Potter. Don't be thick."
"We're having an intervention on the fact that Malfoy can't keep his damn mouth shut?" Lilian sounded very pleased.
("…bloody slow? It's only a matter of fucking time until you do something like this, today, in public, like today, and start the next bloody war right here at Hogwarts!")
"More or less," Daphne shrugged.
"You're all being stupid," Pansy said, trying to grab Malfoy's arm and pull him away from the now-shouting Blaise.
The Italian broke off his tirade long enough to point his wand threateningly at Pansy. "Back off or I'll hex you into next week."
And then suddenly Millie and Tracy were pointing their wands at Blaise, and Theo and Daphne were covering Millie and Tracy, and Pansy took aim at Theo, who was right next to Lilian, so Lilian pointed at her as well, and Tracy switched her aim to Lilian, so Mary felt the need to target Tracy, but Theo was in the way, and Daphne already had Tracy covered, anyway.
Tracy targeted Daphne back, and Mary decided to aim for Draco, just because nobody else was. Vinnie and Greg, who had mostly just been looking confused, targeted Mary for pointing at Draco, so she switched her aim to Greg, and Lilian targeted Vinnie, which worked out because Blaise was still covering Pansy.
A long second later, Vinnie, who apparently had just realized there was a wand trained on him, belatedly switched to threatening Lilian.
Draco looked around, realized that there were six people more or less on his side, and only five on Blaise's, smirked, and was halfway to pointing his wand at Blaise when Blaise punched him in the face.
Things went downhill from there. It was a bit chaotic, between different shouted curses and Draco's nasally whinging that punching a bloke in the nose wasn't fair, and my father will hear about this, Zabini!
When the last of the sparks cleared, Mary was writhing and laughing uncontrollably on the ground, and Lilian had been hit with some kind of silencing jinx. Daphne was just standing around angrily with her arms crossed, but when she opened her mouth, they could see she was the victim of a Tongue-Lengthening Hex, and thus equally unable to speak.
Vinnie, Greg, and Pansy were all under the Full Body Bind, and Millie looked like she was dead, but Theo, who appeared to be the only one who escaped unscathed, said she was only stunned. Pansy was short a nose, so she, like Draco, was unable to pronounce any useful spells. Blaise had been hit with a Bat Bogey Hex, and therefore had a hell of a bloody nose, but was not incapacitated. When Pansy tried to kick him for taking her nose off, he put her under the Full Body Bind as well.
Theo cancelled the jinxes on Mary, Lilian and Daphne, who held Draco at wandpoint so that Theo could tend to Blaise's nose, too. Daphne silenced him, because, in her words, "I think we hear enough of his blubbering in the common room, don't you?"
Nose repaired, Blaise rounded on Draco again. "Listen to me Malfoy, and listen well," he said in his most threatening tone. "You will keep the truce, or I will personally make you regret it. I will trounce you like a bloody muggle if that is what it takes to get this through your pasty blonde skull. The truce is sacred, and you will not break it, lest the rest of the fucking school turn on all of us. You know how you know this is serious? My family wasn't even involved in your fucking war, and I'm telling you to belt up."
"You can dig at Longbottom for being a Gryffindor," Lilian said, taking over, "or for being an easy target, or a worthless excuse for a wizard, but I'm with Blaise. If you bring up his parents and the war, you're breaking the truce, and I'll see you iced out before I let the rest of the school turn on Slytherin over your bloody stupidity."
Lilian looked to Mary, and she stepped forward, only slightly reluctantly. "I don't like you, Draco Malfoy," she said slowly, in her best imitation of Professor Snape. "Even if I was willing to forgive your indiscretions on the train, your little pranks at the beginning of the year gave a bad first impression to say the least. Perhaps you've forgotten? Break the truce again, and I will send my friends to hunt you down and end you." It really didn't matter that the boy couldn't understand the last half of the threat – the sound of Parsel alone was enough to make him nearly wet himself.
Daphne stepped up with an aristocratic sniff. House Greengrass was nearly as old and rich as House Malfoy, if more neutral and slightly less politically active. "Just so we're clear, that means you, and your goons, and your girlfriend there and her hangers-on are all to mind your tongues. No going after the light idiots for being light. No going after muggleborns for being muggleborn. And if you break the first rule to get back at us for this little intervention, I'm sure we'll have no problem getting all the upper years to deny you."
"You're making Slytherin look bad," Theo quietly informed the red-faced boy. "And worse, you're making all the dark houses look bad. My father has the same reputation as yours, and I, for one, would like to avoid bringing up all that… unpleasantness, if you please. If you refuse to comply, well… I'm sure we can think of some way to punish you… appropriately. Shunning and public humiliation will be only the beginning."
Mary thought this rather paled in comparison to her Parsel death-threat, but then again, no one else knew what she'd said. "We could always write his mum," she suggested. Draco paled dramatically. Lilian snorted. "That's what Morgana Yaxley threatened him with on the train."
"Right," Daphne summarized, "Keep the truce and make sure your friends do the same, or we will bring your shiny little world down around your ears. Are we done here, Blaise?"
The taller boy looked down his nose at the still-silenced, terrified Malfoy. He looked quite fearsome, covered in blood and glaring his displeasure. "Oh, yes. We're done. Mark this, boy. It's your last warning."
The five Slytherins still standing made their way down and out of the stands, leaving the blond behind.
As soon as they left the pitch, Blaise asked, "Is he following us?"
Mary and Daphne both looked around, but Daphne was the first to say no.
Blaise groaned. "You owe me, Theo."
The smaller boy smirked. "Are you sure you don't owe me? You've been wanting to punch Malfoy in the face for months."
"You didn't get Bat-Bogeyed, so yeah, you owe me. I'll be nice though. A little favor."
Theo sighed. "Fine. But only if I get veto-power."
Blaise waved a dismissive hand at his friend. "Whatever. It won't be that bad, anyway."
"So are you saying all that was Theo's idea?" Lilian asked.
"Of course it was," Daphne explained with a smirk. "Didn't you notice? He's the only Death Eater's kid in our year that doesn't follow Malfoy around like a pet puppy. If they start drawing fire for breaking the truce, you can bet he'll be a target along with them."
"You would be, too!" the boy objected. "Unless you think the other houses are actually capable of discriminating between those of us whose parents were on the wrong side of the war and those whose families are just dark," he pointed at Blaise, "or who are just 'slimy snakes' and therefore evil."
"Oh, come off it!" Mary objected, but Lilian interrupted her.
"No, he probably has a point, actually. I mean, how much do we know about the Gryffindor or Hufflepuff first-year cliques?"
"And we make an effort to show a united front," Blaise reminded her.
"Ugh, fine. I'm just saying it's stupid," Mary said, just as Daphne pointed out, "Maybe we ought to make more of an effort to scope out the Gryffinpuffs."
"Why bother?" Lilian asked. "They're a bunch of idiots as far as I've seen."
"Oh, I don't know." Daphne's casual tone was sarcastically false. "Maybe so we know where the lines of power and influence run in the rest of the school, and not just Slytherin?"
"Besides," Theo added, "They're not all idiots. That Hufflepuff Smith would make a good ally, and Fay Dunbar is downright sly for a Gryffindor. She's sabotaged the littlest weasel's potion three weeks in a row now."
"Oh, you saw that too?" Blaise asked. "Any idea what the Weasel did to peeve her off?"
"I heard her complaining to Roper that he helped the Twins pull some kind of prank on the Gryffindor girls as soon as they came back after break," Daphne suggested.
The five Slytherins were finally nearing the castle. The sun was setting, and dinner had likely already started. They began, without any conscious decision, to hurry their steps, and were just approaching the main doors when one of the side entries cracked open. The bright torchlight beyond showed an overly-large, be-turbaned silhouette creeping out of the castle.
Lilian spotted him first. "Hey! Is that Quirrell?"
"Looks like," Blaise confirmed.
"Looks like he's headed off toward the forest," Daphne added unnecessarily.
"We should follow him!"
"Why, in all the nine hells, would we do that, Moon?" Theo asked in a positively scathing tone.
"He's up to something. Obviously."
"Lils, you and Maia are the only ones who believe that," Mary cautioned her friend.
"Well, I mean, he is the DADA professor," Daphne pointed out. "I think it's in the contract that he has to act minimally suspicious, or else get pregnant and leave."
"Daphne!" Blaise was miming clawing at his eyes. "Why would you put that picture in my head?"
"What?" Theo didn't seem to see the problem.
"PREGNANT QUIRRELL," Mary, Lilian, and Blaise chorused.
Daphne smiled sweetly, "Because I'm evil. Obviously."
Lilian looked at the figure retreating across the lawn and quickly changed the subject back to more important matters. "I'm going to follow him. Are you guys coming?"
"No," Theo said. "I'm going to get dinner, and then Blaise should probably go see Madam Pomfrey, because he lost a lot of blood," the boy in question nodded, "and if Malfoy doesn't show up soon, we'll have to send Professor Snape after him."
"I'm with Theo," Daphne said. "It's cold out, and I'm hungry."
"Liz?" Lilian had a determined look in her eye.
Mary caved. "Fine! But only to prove to you that nothing's going on." Lilian started to drag Mary away by the arm as she called back to the others, asking them to tell Hermione where they went, if she came looking for them.
"All right, I'm coming. Let go of my arm," Mary shook Lilian off, digging through her pockets for a certain Christmas present. After a moment, she found it.
"What's that?" Lilian asked, watching Mary fiddle with the small box.
"I got it for Christmas. Not sure from who. Come on, let's get out of sight."
They ducked into a deeper patch of shadows, and Mary drew the invisibility cloak out of the box. It had taken her some days after Remus' visit, but she had eventually decided that she had nothing more important to keep in a box only she could open, and it fit better in her pocket in the box.
"Is that an invisibility cloak?" Lilian's voice held a note of awe. Mary nodded. "You've been holding out on us, Potter!"
Mary just gave her a look. "It didn't come up. Do you want to follow Quirrell or not?"
Lilian nodded, still talking as Mary threw the cloak over the two of them. "Do you know how rare these things are? Who the hell would give one to a schoolgirl? And why are you carrying it around with you? Aren't you worried it will get lost or stolen or something?"
"No, I wasn't. And no, I didn't. It used to be my dad's, apparently, and I have no idea who sent it. No one else knows I have it."
They ducked into the trees on the edge of the forest, following the crunch of Quirrell's footsteps, and trying to avoid stepping on any large sticks themselves.
"Not even Hermione?"
"No. And shut up. It's not a cloak of silence."
Lilian, thankfully, did shut up, just in time for the girls to hear another, much quieter, set of footsteps behind them. Mary pulled them off the path and Professor Snape glided past. They crept a bit closer, until they could just make out the professors' silhouettes through the trees.
"D-don't know why you wanted t-t-to meet here of all p-places, Severus…" Quirrell was saying.
"Oh, I thought we'd keep this private. Students aren't supposed to know about the Philosopher's Stone, after all."
Lilian gasped, and Mary clapped a hand over her mouth, missing the next thing Quirrell said.
Professor Snape interrupted him. "Have you figured out how to get past that beast of Hagrid's yet?"
"B-b-but Severus, I –"
"You don't want me as your enemy, Quirrell." Snape stepped toward the stuttering man.
"I-I don't know what you –"
"You know perfectly well what I mean." An owl hooted loudly, and then the girls heard Professor Snape say, "…your little bit of hocus-pocus. I'm waiting."
"B-but I d-d-don't –"
"Very well," Professor Snape sounded irritated, though that could have been because of either the refusal or the stuttering. "We'll have another little chat soon, when you've had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie." And with that, he turned and strode out of the clearing, directly past the girls. Quirrell followed shortly, and the girls waited to make sure they wouldn't run into him before they turned back themselves.
"Don't say a word," Mary said, as she finally took her hand away from Lilian's face.
The taller girl smirked. "Fine. I won't. But I told you so!" She ducked out from under the cloak to avoid Mary's swat at her head, and the two Slytherins silently followed their professors back up to the Castle.
Just before they finally entered the Great Hall, Lilian said, "You know we're going to have to tell Hermione."
Mary sighed. "Yes, and I'm sure she'll be insufferable about it."
Lilian smirked again, and the two turned their attention to pudding, dodging the questions of their friendlier housemates and ignoring the glares of Malfoy's clique.
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The next day, between writing their History essays and practicing Charms, Mary and Lilian related their adventure in the forest and the conversation they had overheard. Hermione, as predicted, was insufferable about it. She managed to get in about five more I-told-you-so's before Mary was irritated enough to practice her Silencing Charm on her friend.
After that, she calmed down considerably, at least until Lilian told her that Mary had been holding out on them, and had an invisibility cloak. Then she demanded to see it, and scolded Mary for carrying it around with her. Apparently even Hermione (and Mary had no idea how), knew that they were very rare, very expensive, and not at all the sort of thing you ought to keep in your pocket, box or no box. She promised with a sigh to keep the cloak in her room from then on, if only Hermione would shut up about it.
The Ravenclaw insisted that they look up the Philosopher's Stone right away, and was most put out to find that all references to it had been removed from the card catalogue. Magical Stones and Magical Artifacts, in contrast, had so many entries that it would be impossible to read them all in any reasonable time. Defeated for the moment, she resolved in a huff to ask her older housemates if they had any idea what the mysterious Philosopher's Stone was supposed to do, and irritably returned to their regularly scheduled Sunday afternoon homework.
It was not until Thursday evening in Astronomy that Hermione finally announced she had an answer: One of the Ravenclaw prefects had told her that the Philosopher's Stone was an alchemical product that could be used to create unlimited quantities of gold from base metals like lead, and more famously, to produce something called the Elixir of Life, which conferred immortality on the drinker… as long as one kept drinking it. Hermione added that the Harcourt, her prefect, seemed to be under the impression that the Stone had been created as a bit of a joke. It was called the Philosopher's Stone because it realized an age old philosophical question – what would a man do with as much money as he could ever use, and no fear of death? Apparently the answer was go set up house in Devon with his wife and do research, because that's what Nicholas Flamel did.
The three girls held a quiet argument over the course of the class, between calculating angles and filling in their star charts. Mary had just measured the location of Venus relative to Polaris for the third time and gotten a third different answer when Hermione and Lilian reached an agreement.
"Right, so you agree we'll have to go and talk to him about it!"
"Of course!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
"Wait, what just happened?" Mary looked up from scratching out Venus again to see her two friends glaring at each other. Last she had been paying attention, Hermione had been insisting that Professor Snape's threatening Quirrell had sounded very suspicious, and perhaps he was the one after the Stone. Lilian had been defending their Head of House, and Mary, before she had turned to her sextant at Professor Sinistra's pointed look, had been arguing that they needed more information.
"We agree with you," Lilian informed her. "We'll go talk to Professor Snape during his office hours."
"That wasn't what I was suggesting at all," Mary said, banging her head lightly against one of the crenellations at the edge of the roof of the tower. She was absolutely certain that confronting Professor Snape would not turn out well. She would rather confront Quirrell, and the very thought of his garlic-infused presence was enough to give her a headache.
"Too late," Hermione said lightly. "We've decided and you're outvoted."
"Ugh," Mary groaned. "You guys are killing me!"
But nothing she said could sway them, and so, two days later, the trio stood nervously in the hall outside Professor Snape's office, waiting for the previous student to vacate it.
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After nearly twenty minutes, the student who had been talking to Professor Snape left in a rush, trying to hide the tears running down his face. He slammed the door behind him, and after a few minutes of silent poking and whispers of "you knock," and "this was your idea," Mary was pushed forward to tap tentatively on the door.
"Enter."
The girls did so, Mary poking her head around the door first, followed by Lilian and Hermione. The professor raised an eyebrow at them, but said nothing, simply conjuring a third visitor's chair in front of his desk.
All four of them sat, the girls all equally reluctant to begin speaking, their professor, as always, maintaining a mask of calm over his general irritation at having to deal with students. After thirty seconds of silence, he snapped at them: "If you have a question, ask it. If not, I have better things to do than sit here and stare at you."
Hermione jumped, and the Slytherins flinched. "We, erm, sir, that is…" the Ravenclaw began tentatively.
"Spit it out, Miss Granger. You certainly have no trouble talking in class."
Hermione took a deep breath and then said, very fast, "Sir, we were wondering about the Philosopher's Stone, and what's going on between you, sir, and Professor Quirrell."
The professor pinched the bridge of his nose and gave them a look of utter disdain. "How, pray tell, did you find out about the Stone?"
"We followed you, sir," Lilian admitted, "and heard you and Professor Quirrell talking about it."
"You… followed... me?" the man asked, dangerously slowly.
Mary thought it was about time to chime in. "Well, actually," she explained, "we were following Quirrell, sorry Professor Quirrell, because Lilian and Hermione were sure he was up to something, and it just so happened that it was you, sir, that he was meeting with."
Professor Snape sighed. "And what possessed you to bring the subject up with me?"
"Well, sir," Hermione seemed to have recovered from her initial nervousness, "we, that is, I found out from one of the older Ravenclaws what exactly the Stone is supposed to do, and we thought that the conversation Lizzie and Lili overheard sounded, possibly, like either you or Professor Quirrell might be, well… attempting to steal it."
"Miss Moon? Miss Potter? Do you agree with your friend's assessment?" The Slytherins nodded tentatively. "And what, precisely, did you hope to accomplish by this meeting?" their Head of House asked, his voice dry as ever.
Lilian spoke first. "I wanted to convince Hermione that you were trying to protect the Stone, and Liz that Quirrell is definitely up to something. Sir."
"I thought this whole meeting was a bad idea, sir, but I wanted to see what would happen," Mary defended her presence.
"And for the benefit of your friends, why was this meeting a bad idea?"
"Because, sir, either way, if you were trying to steal the stone or not, you would say Quirrell was, and if you were, you would now know that we're on to you. Um. Not that I think you are. Sir."
"Very good, Miss Potter." The professor turned to the other girls. "You would do well to listen to your friend's arguments next time."
Hermione gave a huff. "Will you at least tell us if the Stone is at the end of that stupid obstacle course?"
Professor Snape smiled coldly. "It is not. Did you honestly think that anyone in this school would protect the Stone so poorly as that? The obstacle course is merely a diversion. You will, of course, keep that information to yourselves, and, I trust, refrain from further drawing attention to yourselves."
There was a chorus of 'yes, sir,' in response to this pronouncement, and the professor nodded toward the door. "Very good. Send in the next student."
The girls slipped out of the office with polite farewells and thanks, sending in the next girl before parting ways.
All three of them were rather subdued, but even Professor Snape's warning did not seem to dent Hermione's curiosity, as she said before heading back to her tower, "I think we're going to need to keep an even closer eye on Quirrell from now on."
Lilian nodded her agreement, entirely serious, while Mary rolled her eyes before acquiescing. How many more weeks of this? She wondered as she and Lilian made their way back to their common room, because this whole mystery thing is getting old.