[A/N: Another long chapter, 2 parts]
Chapter 15: Meetings and Misdirections
Monday, 12 April 1993
Hermione
If asked what she considered her role in her group of friends, Hermione Granger would answer without hesitation that Lilian was their leader and motivator, Elizabeth was their cool head in a crisis, and she herself was their problem solver. Aerin was more of a consultant than a core member of their little group, and the Twins were reliable – albeit somewhat quirky and irregular – allies. The fourth-year Slytherins were allies only so long as their goals aligned. And Luna, the newest member of their little conspiracy, was simply infuriating. If she was feeling especially kind, Hermione might say that Luna's role was the unconventional, but she rarely felt that kindly toward the girl.
The first-year Ravenclaw was, so far as Hermione could tell, absolutely mad, though as Aerin pointed out, there did seem to be some semblance of method to her madness. It was only thanks to the elder Moon's insistence that Hermione had tolerated the addition of Luna to their end-of-term revising group.
On Monday morning, the three Ravenclaws convened in their Common Room to work on Charms, which was a cumulative exam for the older years, which meant that Hermione and Aerin would get some benefit out of helping Luna revise. Instead of revising, however, the youngest girl was distracting her older companions with speculation about the Chamber of Secrets. While Hermione was all for trying to figure out that particular mystery, she did think that there were more appropriate times than during a study session.
It truly didn't help that their marvelous plan to find the Heir of Slytherin had failed. Yes, the Weasleys still had to question their first-years, but nobody really thought the Heir of Slytherin was a first-year Gryffindor. She considered it a failure already. Despite months of work collecting ingredients, brewing and distilling the potion, and drugging three-quarters of the school, they were no closer to knowing what was going on. Hermione couldn't help the traitorous little thought that perhaps Professor Snape had missed someone. After all, she could hardly find any information on legilimency in the library, and it sounded like a rather imprecise science, this mind-reading. The Slytherins all trusted him, of course, but… what if he was wrong?
After a thoroughly disappointing Charms review, Hermione headed to the main library, where she was due to meet Lilian and Elizabeth to go over their "break essay" for Potions. She made her way downstairs, checking, as most Ravenclaws did anymore, around corners with her hand-mirror, to find Lilian waiting outside.
"Bad news, Jeanie," she said as soon as Hermione was close enough to talk. "Liz got herself kicked out of the library hours ago."
"Well what happened? Where is she?" asked the irritated Ravenclaw. Some people just didn't take their schoolwork seriously enough, in her opinion. There were only ten weeks left until exams!
"One of the twins came in yelling for her, and Pince kicked her out because of him." Lilian made a face, and Hermione mirrored it back at her. Even the Ravenclaws didn't particularly like the librarian.
"So did she go back to Slytherin or what?"
"I have no idea. I was outside with Blaise and Daphne working on… a thing."
"A thing? Wait, never mind," Hermione grabbed Lilian's arm and towed her into the nearest classroom. "So either Fred or George was so agitated that he shouted in the library – and he was alone – and he just dragged Elizabeth away?"
Lilian shrugged. "Yeah, that's what it sounded like from what Theo said."
The Slytherin obviously wasn't getting it. "Lilian, why would he do that? There's only one reason that one Weasley twin would be running through the castle looking for a Slytherin."
"You don't think…"
"They caught the heir? Well, I admit I thought it was unlikely that they would, but can you think of a better explanation?"
"We should go see Snape," Lilian declared. "If that's what happened, that's where they would have gone."
Snape
Severus Snape could not think of a single instance when he had encountered Lilian Moon and Hermione Granger together, without Mary Potter. That was his first sign that something was amiss on the Monday of the Easter Holiday. Or perhaps the first sign was that the two of them had appeared at his office outside of his usual office hours. In any case, he was not surprised that they had something more dire on their minds than the content of their holiday essays. He would admit some slight surprise that the more dire situation involved a Weasley twin, Mary Potter, and the Chamber of Secrets, but after the Dragon Incident, he wasn't that surprised. Besides, despite the Heir of Slytherin nonsense, he hadn't had to discipline their little group all year – they were overdue for a meeting.
"Miss Moon," he had greeted the girls as they crept into his office, "Miss Granger. No Miss Potter?"
"Ah, no, sir," Hermione said, twisting her fingers together. Lilian was biting her lower lip nervously. "We were wondering if she hadn't been by this afternoon, possibly with a Weasley?"
Severus had raised an eyebrow at this ill-phrased request for information. "Should she have been?"
"She's missing, sir," Lilian blurted out.
Severus felt his eyes narrow of their own accord. "How long has she been 'missing'?" he asked, injecting as much sarcasm as he could muster into the word. "And why did you expect that she would have been here?"
His gaze flicked between the two girls. Predictably, the Ravenclaw cracked first. "Since this morning. She was kicked out of the library because one of the Weasley twins came in shouting for her – did you get a time, Lili?"
"Just after ten," Lilian said quickly.
Severus suppressed a sigh and performed a quick tempus charm. "It's been less than four hours. You are aware that Hogwarts is a rather large castle, are you not?"
Lilian looked as though she would like to latch onto this conciliatory statement, in the hopes that her friend was simply planning a prank in an alcove somewhere, but Hermione wasn't having it. "It's not really so much how long she's been gone that's concerning, Professor," she said, "But the circumstances under which she disappeared."
Severus waved a hand for the Ravenclaw to proceed.
"We, that is, the Weasleys and ourselves, have been trying to solve the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets and its monster. If any of us found anything, we were supposed to bring it to you immediately, except, well, we didn't think you would take it well if the Weasley twins burst in claiming to have caught the Heir of Slytherin, or with some knowledge of where the Chamber is or the like, so they were to get one of the Slytherins first. It's the only reason we can think of that only one of the Weasley twins would have gone to fetch Lizzie – because the other was guarding something, or incapacitated. So we thought they might have come by."
A loud sigh greeted this explanation. "I suppose you lot are behind the persistent rumors of a basilisk?"
The girls nodded. "It's the only thing that makes sense," the bushy-haired girl elaborated. "A gorgon wouldn't have stuck around, and a temorral would have needed real food, so it would have been caught by now. Basilisks normally kill with their gaze, but Luna pointed out none of the victims have actually met its gaze directly."
"Thus, I suppose, the sudden fascination with pocket-mirrors among the student body?"
"Yes, sir," Lilian admitted.
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose, warding off the oncoming headache which would doubtless be associated with this entire situation. The worst part was how terribly earnest the two girls looked, even Moon. "Very well," he snapped, "if Miss Potter has not turned up by dinner, I will handle the matter. It would not do to create a panic over nothing, after all. If that is all, you may leave."
His dismissal was rather abrupt and not a little rude, but knowing Potter's magnetic attraction for trouble and the Weasleys' penchant for mischief, he suspected he had better not wait for dinner. That meant he had a rather complex Dark tracking charm to perform, and he could not do that with students present. It was one of the few terms of his 'employment' that he actually agreed with and therefore abided by, that the students ought not to be directly exposed to Class 3 or higher Dark spells. He took no notice of the girls' fumbled thanks and farewells as they stumbled out into the dungeons proper.
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"Minerva," Severus said sharply, robes billowing behind him as he swept into her office two hours later.
"Severus? What…?" The old woman was clearly taken aback by his unannounced arrival.
"It has been brought to my attention that one of my students is missing," he began, but the acting Headmistress interrupted.
"Severus," she said repressively, "it's a holiday. They're probably just skulking about the abandoned sectors and hiding from their essays. It's a big castle, and I'm afraid I haven't the time –"
"Mary Potter," he said, cutting off the impending tirade about how overworked Minerva was. It truly wasn't fair to have heaped the few Head duties she hadn't already been performing onto her when Dumbledore had been evicted, but that was neither here nor there.
"What?" Shocked. Taken aback. Good.
"Potter is the missing student. I have it on good account that the girl has been poking around after the Chamber of Secrets, and my tracking spell indicates–"
"Tracking charms don't work inside the school," Minerva objected reflexively.
Severus raised an eyebrow at her and let his aura flare around him. She would feel it as a cold breeze, a reminder of his darkness. "You forget to whom you speak, Minerva. This one does."
She shivered, and Severus pulled his magic back, hiding a smirk. He did enjoy intimidating his old professors, on the rare occasions when they forgot that they were now colleagues. "Very well, Severus, but–"
"As I was saying, my tracking spell indicates that the girl is somewhere below the school, at least two levels below the lowest even I have been able to access. Unfortunately this suggests that the girl has, in fact, found and entered the Chamber. I highly doubt that she would have done so alone, and as this was brought to my attention by the two students most likely to have accompanied her, I fear we must assume something more… sinister has occurred."
Minerva now looked very, very pale. "But – the monster? There isn't really an Heir?" Severus sneered at her.
"Didn't Albus tell you it's the same Heir as last time? The Dark Lord, then. He always was one to brag. Probably possessing a student, somehow, now that Quirrell's dead, and before you say it, it's not any of the Slytherins, I questioned all of them using legilimency. Don't give me that look, I warned them, which is better than Albus did."
"You Know Who – in the school – two years in a row?"
Why, Severus asked himself for the fifth time since Valentine's Day, had the Governors chosen to promote Minerva to the office of the Head? He would be the last to insult her courage, but her leadership skills in a crisis left much to be desired.
"Pull it together, Minerva. You need to place the school on lockdown, find out who else is missing. If we're exceedingly lucky, we can do this quickly enough that he won't know he's been found out, and we will be able to figure out the primary victim."
"Y-yes, of course, I'll… right away."
Severus rolled his eyes and tried again to prod her in the right direction. "Merlin, McGonagall, where's the harridan who rode into battle on a hippogriff and once transfigured an entire wing of Death Eaters into mice? Pull. It. Together."
Minerva glared at him. "That was different – the students–"
There was nothing else for it: he would have to be nice. "It's no different," he interrupted softly. "Just another battle in this never-ending war. What was it that terror Kerr used to say? 'Kilt up, lads, there's death ter be wrought?'" The woman couldn't help but smile a bit at his terrible impression of the old Order field commander. He had died before Severus had switched sides, but he used to shout it across the battlefields as a rallying cry. "You were only ever fighting to protect them. It's no different. Lock down the wards, activate the compulsion for students to return to their dorms. I'll call the other Heads of House, and we'll find out who's missing."
The woman nodded sharply. "Yes, of course." Severus turned to go, but before he could reach the door, she spoke again, and he turned to look at her. "Severus? Thank you."
"Don't mention it," he said, his workaday sneer fixed firmly in place.
The woman had the bloody cheek to wink at him as he left. Gryffindors, he thought disparagingly. No sense of subtlety at all.
Wednesday, 14 April 1993 Slytherin
Mary could hear the common room up ahead. The passages, now, were lit – it must be before curfew, but she had no idea what day it was. The Weasleys must be able to hear it as well, but all of them were too tired and thirsty to say anything. They hauled themselves forward, one step at a time, pulling themselves out of the nightmare they stumbled into. Footsteps approached rapidly, and then an older boy appeared from around a bend. Sean. Prefect Moon. Thank the Powers. Mary finally let herself collapse, slipping into unconsciousness as the sixth-year raised the alarm.
Thursday, 15 April 1993 Hospital Wing
There were voices above her as she drifted back to consciousness.
"Sean said she hissed something, and then just fainted. She was covered in ink, and had a pretty bad cut on one arm. The prefects brought them here, and I guess fetched Professors Snape and McGonagall. I only got in to see her a minute before you got here. They kept me out while they did their tests and things."
"And no one's told you anything? No idea where they were? How she's doing? The Weasleys? What were all the Weasleys doing in Slytherin?"
"No, nothing. I mean, obviously they were in the Chamber, but no one's said anything about how they got there, and they've not said anything about how anyone's doing where I can hear. Merlin's arse, I've only been here a minute longer than you!"
A hand grasped one of Mary's and squeezed it gently.
"You're going to be alright, Lizzie," one of the voices whispered in her ear.
"Mai'? Lils?" Mary tried to say, but her tongue felt too thick, as though it wasn't working right.
"Parseltongue." Lilian sounded a bit worried.
Mary managed to pry one eye open, then the other. "Maia? Lils?" she tried again.
"Oh, thank God you're all right!" Hermione let go of her hand, and immediately threw herself on the smaller girl in an awkward, horizontal hug.
Lilian looked incredibly relieved, and pulled Hermione back when she noticed the overwhelmed expression on Mary's face, for which Mary suspected she would always be grateful.
"How long was I out?"
"It's Thursday lunch. You've been missing since Monday, and showed up last night in Slytherin," Lilian said, claiming Mary's other hand. "Sean found you in one of the tunnels with the twins and Ginny Weasley. You were covered in ink and had a nasty cut on one arm." She turned Mary's wrist over, as though to check that the healing had gone well. To everyone's surprise, there was a short, silvery scar on her wrist. "He said you hissed something and then passed out. The prefects brought you here, and brought in Professor Snape and McGonagall. They searched the tunnels all night trying to figure out where you'd been, but no luck."
"'Course not. It's the Chamber of Secrets."
"Elizabeth," Hermione said in a cajoling tone, "What happened?"
"It was Ginny," Mary said. "She was being possessed by some diary-memory-thing, and the twins figured it out. One of them came to find me, but she escaped before we got back. We followed her to Myrtle's loo, and the twins fucking kidnapped me. They killed the basilisk with a rooster. A lot of roosters, actually," she smiled weakly, "and then I stabbed the diary with a fang and killed it. But we were stuck. Magic wouldn't work down there for ages. I don't know why. We were just wandering around in the dark forever. I don't know how we got out, but we did, and then our wands worked again, but we were lost in the tunnels, and we were all so thirsty…" She trailed off for a moment before picking up the story again. "Eventually we found one of the markers for a tunnel to the Common Room, and I followed that back. The last thing I remember is seeing your brother, Lils, and thinking, thank the Powers, we're out."
"Oh, Lizzie," Hermione said, clearly torn between relief and horror that her friend had been wandering in the dark for two days.
"It'll be alright, now," Lilian added comfortingly.
"Indeed," an old man's voice concurred from the doorway. Dumbledore stepped forward into the ward, his phoenix swooping gracefully behind him, resplendent with red and gold plumage. It landed on the back of Hermione's abandoned chair. "A most enlightening tale."
"What are you doing here, sir?" Mary asked. Last she knew, he had been sent away from the school.
"Well, my dear, I was worried about you."
"'S not what I meant," she said, trying hard not to roll her eyes at the obviously-reinstated Headmaster.
The man's smile did not reach his eyes. "When the governors got word that four students had gone missing under the school, presumably into the Chamber of Secrets, they… reinstated my position as Headmaster."
Mary nodded. It wasn't as though it would have made a difference. The basilisk was dead and the diary, too, with no help from him. But that, she supposed, was how adults thought – bring back the Headmaster as a symbol, attacks stop, all is well, raise the man ever higher in public esteem… Oh, he's still talking, she thought, pulling herself away from her musings.
"Well, my dear?"
"Sorry, sir, my mind was wandering. I did just wake up."
"I was asking, Mary, if you would consent to recount your story again, in as much detail as you can, while I use legilimency to help you recall anything you might have forgotten."
"No." She shook her head violently, which made her a bit dizzy. "Maia, can you pass me that water?"
Hermione, bless her soul, did. The phoenix trilled when she got too close to it. Mary winced. The sound wasn't helping her Headmaster-induced headache.
"No, Miss Potter? But it could be exceedingly helpful – any information on Voldemort–"
"Riddle."
"Miss Potter?"
"He was like, sixteen. Call him Riddle. Everyone here knows," she added.
"Very well then," the Headmaster's customary twinkle was back. Mary finished her water, closed her eyes, and laid her head back on her pillow. "My girl, this is important."
"I'm still listening," she said. If he wanted to talk to her so badly that he ambushed her in the Hospital Wing, he could deal with the fact that the lights were making her head hurt.
Dumbledore sounded a bit irritated as he continued. "Mary, my dear… Any information on Mr. Riddle that you could provide from this encounter could be the key to his ultimate defeat. Surely you see…"
"Yes, sir. But I thought I made my position clear at Christmas. With all due respect, I don't want you in my head."
"Use of legilimency in circumstances such as these is a longstanding and well-proven technique." Definitely irritated. "And the sooner it is done, the more detail you are likely to recover."
Mary sighed. "Shouldn't you be talking to my guardian about this? I don't have a problem with the legilimency. I have a problem with you, Headmaster. I don't want you, specifically, in my head."
"Miss Potter!" For the first time, Dumbledore sounded outright angry at her. Ah, well, she supposed she had been more tactful at Christmas. But then, she hadn't just watched a basilisk die, killed a teenaged impression of the Dark Lord, spent two days wandering in the dark thinking she was going to die, and woken up in the hospital wing less than an hour before at Christmas.
And then Lilian, angel that she was, offered a compromise. "Professor Snape could do it," she suggested. "He used legilimency on us when he questioned us about the Heir. And you trust him, right Liz?"
"Yeah. Let Professor Snape do it and I'll cooperate," Mary agreed, squinting through her lashes at the Headmaster.
The old man sighed. "Very well. I will send him up this evening after classes have concluded."
"Thank you, sir," Mary said, echoed by her friends.
The old man took his leave, and shortly thereafter, Madam Pomfrey bustled over to deliver Mary's lunch and chase Hermione and Lilian back to class.
Headmaster's Office
Severus Snape was in a well-concealed rage.
He had just come from inspecting Mary Potter's recollection of the previous days' events, and he could not decide which aspect of the affair troubled him the most. He had found traces of compulsions to trust Tom Riddle in her mind. He had discovered several holes in her story and her mind which suggested that her memories were expertly and voluntarily altered. The children had come face-to-face with a basilisk in the school. The Weasley twins had blatantly kidnapped one of his Slytherins to go fight a basilisk. And of course one mustn't forget that all of this had only come to light in the first place because a group of vigilante students had been questioning every other student in the castle about their involvement using highly controlled substances, which had supposedly been brewed by a second-year and two fourth-years in an undisclosed, unauthorized and unsupervised laboratory somewhere in the castle. He couldn't even imagine where they had gotten the ingredients.
No. That was a lie. He was actually quite certain that the most troubling, infuriating aspect of the whole affair, was that Molly Weasley had interrupted him, demanding to know why he had requested to enter her children's minds.
Not only had he been distracted before he could trace down more details about the brewing of the illegal Veritaserum, the red-headed matriarch had made it clear that, despite the fact that she was well aware of his affiliations and actions at the end of the previous war, she did not trust him as far as she could throw him. If anyone was to go fishing around in the ickle kidnappers' minds, it would be Dumbledore, and hadn't poor little Ginevra suffered enough, without the indignity of reliving her memories of that evil bastard?
He had been forced to deal with the wretched woman – one of his three least favorite Order of the Phoenix members, which was saying a good deal – and while he was doing that, Potter had turned to Minerva crying about how she didn't want to go through it all again either – hadn't he already seen everything he needed to see? So of course Minerva had shut him down when he was finally able to return his attention to the girl. He would not, unfortunately, be able to gain any further knowledge of the Veritaserum situation without performing very, very unethical legilimency on one of his own students. And he liked to think he was better than Dumbledore, so that was out of the question. "Five points to Slytherin," he grumbled, admitting to himself that the chit had outmaneuvered him. He was certain she had done it intentionally.
And of course, now that he had come to make his report to Dumbledore, the Headmaster was out of his office. Severus tossed the diary, the supposed cause of all this mayhem, onto one of Dumbledore's spindly little tables, and threw himself into an armchair, mulling over the events he had observed in the Potter girl's mind.
He had to hand it to whomever had arranged for the Weasley girl's possession: turning a first-year Gryffindor into the Heir of Slytherin was completely unexpected. He knew none of the other Heads of House had attempted to systematically question their students – why would they? Why would the Heir be placed anywhere but his house? Stupid. They should have questioned everyone.
He would, of course, demand the expulsion of the Weasley twins for kidnapping Miss Potter and dragging her into danger. He highly doubted that Dumbledore would agree, as the boys had, unquestionably, managed to kill a basilisk and rescue their sister. That sort of Gryffindor foolishness was the sort of thing the old man was sure to wish to reward. He would probably have to settle for a loss of one-hundred points each, and detentions every day for the remainder of the year.
He wished he could take the old man to task over the fact of the basilisk's existence, or the fact that the ministry had accepted such a half-hearted explanation as an acromantula back in the 1940s, but he could not justify it. He had not put it together himself, and Dumbledore had not been in charge of the school at that time. He knew Dippet had ordered the entire Castle inspected over the summer after the attacks, and they had found no sign of another monster. And then it had lain dormant for over ten years by the time Dumbledore was advanced to the Head position.
Severus sighed, shifting away from that train of thought.
He would also have to try to figure out another way to get at those details of the Veritaserum plot. The Granger girl was out. The Ministry would never authorize an unnecessary and unwanted legilimizing for a ward of the magical state, and in loco parentis was not good enough when your inquiring official was an ex-Death Eater. The Moons, perhaps, would give their permission. It was widely known that they didn't give a bloody fuck what their children got mixed up in. According to his contacts at St. Mungo's, the Moon girls were brought in for minor magical and creature injuries nearly as often as the Weasley children, and always by their older brother. He added owling them about permission to a mental to-do list.
Finally, unable to put it off any longer, Severus turned to the girl's memories of the Chamber, replaying them in his mind. He skimmed over the infuriating circumstances of their entry into the Chamber, skipping to the great ceremonial doors. They had walked through an enormous, ostentatious hall, reminiscent of the Parthenon, but with a statue of Salazar Slytherin at the end instead of Athena. The Weasley girl and the diary had been lying at its feet, while the intangible impression – Severus could not call it a ghost, and it was not precisely a shade – lurked out of sight.
"Who dares to trespass in the Hall of the Great Lord Slytherin?" he had asked. It must have been Parseltongue, because the boys spun around in terror, wands raised, while Mary failed to suppress a laugh.
"Who really talks like that?" she had asked, and the young man had strolled out of the shadows. Severus would have guessed his age around sixteen. He wore an antiquated prefect's badge on his Slytherin robes, and had the swagger Severus associated with post-OWL fifth-years – they who thought themselves adults, without realizing yet how difficult it would be to join in the real world outside of Hogwarts. NEWT students tended to look either more grounded, or more nervous.
This part of the memory was apparently unaltered. Mary's thoughts had flowed around him, taking into account Riddle's looks, the fact that he didn't quite look like a ghost, his manner and the fact that it was not consistent with a pureblood heir.
She did not see that they stood the same way, hid their expressions similarly, unconsciously (or perhaps consciously, on Riddle's part) mirrored each other's gestures as they spoke. Severus would have been willing to bet that they were on similar ground, socially – raised by neglectful muggles, having to study as much as they could of pureblood society from the outside – though of course Minerva had given the girl the advantage there, fostering her with the Urquharts. The two children even looked somewhat alike – more similar than Sean and Lilian Moon. Only their eyes were different. It was even more unnerving than when the girl had reminded him of Bellatrix.
Riddle looked down his nose at Potter. "Little Speaker? You must learn how to properly address your betters." Mary, Severus noted, was slightly impressed by the fact that the boy had managed to make Parseltongue sound mocking, and gathered that it didn't normally. Severus, on the other hand, was impressed by the compulsion Riddle had so carefully slipped in along with his words. It was little more than a suggestion toward open-mindedness. Severus would not have seen it, had he not spent so many years with the Dark Lord, fending off such incursions.
"You are not my better," the girl scowled at him, resisting the suggestion. "And it is rude to speak a language others cannot in their presence."
"Not 'better,' 'senior.'" He emphasized the second word slightly differently, placing himself in a role as a teacher, superior, before changing tactics. "I am older than you, and if you speak the snake-tongue, you are most likely my offspring. I am better than you too, that just goes without saying."
Mary ignored his last statement, amused and baffled by his interpretation of her ability to speak Parseltongue. "I'm not your daughter!" she said, stifling a laugh at the looks the twins gave her. I couldn't possibly be, she thought, quashing a tiny hope that bloomed at the thought of having any living family to speak of with a vicious reminder to herself that he is the Dark Lord.
Another hook was set on that hope, and Riddle proceeded to drive it home, calmly and rationally pushing the family angle. "No, I must have been fifty, at least, by the time you were born. You are more likely my granddaughter."
"Do you know who I am?" she asked tentatively.
"Of course I do. You are Mary Potter, the Girl Who Lived." Severus was surprised to feel how much she hated that sobriquet. It did explain her next statement well, though.
Mary scowled. "And you are presumably Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, aka, the Dark Lord Who Died." Severus was almost certain the girl had felt his amusement at that.
"No, I'm not." Riddle appeared to think about this for a moment. "Okay, yes, I am Tom Riddle, and yes, I had plans to be Lord Voldemort, but I never actually did that, and he's not actually dead." That statement was curious. Severus wondered if it was true, that the Riddle before them did not consider himself the same as the Riddle wraith out in the world. A third suggestion, another nudge as they continued to converse amiably, simply to continue to do so. Oh, he was good.
"Whatever. He's not actually alive, either. He's like some kind of wraith thing. The point I was going for, there, was that my parents were Lily Evans and James Potter. No Riddles."
"My working theory is that your mother was actually hidden with a muggle family for her protection. It makes sense with the political climate at the time to keep her out of harm's way, and I hear she was formidable on the battlefield – not exactly what you'd expect from a real muggleborn."
Severus had nearly thrown himself out of Mary's mind in surprise at that. He was fairly certain that Lily had been a real muggleborn – as sure as he could be without checking Mr. and Mrs. Evans for memory charms – which was out of the question, since both had died in 1980 – or making Mary undergo a lineage tracing spell. But he did seem to recall the Evanses had moved to Cokeworth not long after Lily was born…
He wrenched his mind away from that train of thought. He did not want to think of his Lily as the Dark Lord's illegitimate daughter… though they did share a penchant for rituals that violated all sane rules of magic… no.
Mary didn't believe it either, he was relieved to see, though it did help cement the impression of the young Dark Lord as a reasonable person – it made sense, given the evidence she thought he knew. And evidence neither of them know about, Severus thought traitorously. "I lived with her older sister for ten years. Definitely muggles."
The older boy waved away her argument. "Nonsense. Blood will out. I'd bet she was nothing like this muggle 'sister' of hers."
For the most part, that was true. The Evans girls shared their arrogance, and their belief that they were better than upper lower class, and would make it out someday. But Lily bore only a passing resemblance to her parents and sister. She looked much more like the photos of her late aunt Matilde, her mother's sister… could she have? No. Severus shoved the thought behind an Occlumency barrier, hiding it from himself.
Thankfully, and Severus had never thought he would be thankful to the Weasley twins, it was at that moment that they were interrupted. "Mary," one of the boys hissed in her ear, "Why are we just standing around?"
"Does he look like he's getting brighter to you?" the other asked, crowding around her other side. Severus was only slightly more comfortable with human contact than Mary, and wished they would back off. Even as a memory, this was awkward.
Mary squinted at the phantom boy in front of her. "You're stalling, you sneaky bastard!" she accused him, sending a stunner in his direction. It passed right through him.
He grinned. Severus cursed him for being such a charming snake. He could see, now, how the young man had gained followers in the early days. "Yes. I suppose I am a bit… transparent… at the moment." Another nudge – humanizing the boy in front of them. Underestimate me, it said, insidiously.
"Sweet" "Bobby" "Robin-" "-son!" "Lord Voldemort," "Just made a pun."
"A really bad pun." Severus silently agreed, and wondered how long it would take for them to realize that he was stalling again.
"I will have you know," the boy said, in a tone faintly reminiscent of Percy, "that puns are the most advanced form of humour. They have a long and honourable history, and –"
"And you're stalling again. What are you waiting for?"
This grin was intimidating, testing. "To become solid enough that I can take the little ginger's wand and kill you all, before I finish sucking the life out of her and continue on my merry way to track down that stupid bastard I grew up to become." Ah, yes, that was the Dark Lord Severus remembered from school – threaten you to your face and make you shiver in your boots, make you beg for his mercy, but long for his attention and a demonstration of his power.
Severus watched, torn between suspense and exasperation as the children tried to leave, and then horror and amusement as the Weasleys slew the basilisk. The sight of the teenaged Dark Lord sprinting around the Chamber of Secrets wandlessly banishing roosters would be, he thought, his new answer to boggarts, and damn the consequences.
He knew what had happened when the beast finally died – the magic stored within it was released, flooding the chamber, muting the effectiveness of wands. That was the first very odd thing about the memory, though this part of it still was not altered: they should have felt such a flood of magic even here, as it leeched out of the Chamber.
Thereafter, the memory became less intense, either because the girl was in shock – which he rather doubted (if it was shock, it would likely have set in as soon as the serpent appeared) – or because everything after had been removed, and her mind coaxed into producing post-hoc memories around an agreed-upon story. It was very well done, but there were traces of compulsions floating free of memories, and the quality-shift to give it away – a rush-job. Most damning, of course, was the solid, permanent block on five minutes just before the children found their way out of the Chamber. It was disguised among the fuzzy, dark, repetitive memories of the tunnels, tied firmly to other memories of darkness, including, it seemed, half the girl's childhood, and he could not unravel it without risking serious harm to her. Moreover, he could not break the final compulsion, seated in the block, to avoid the Chamber of Secrets. He suspected that it had been placed that way intentionally. All of this, of course, suggested that the Dark Lord had not perished, as the false memories suggested, and had managed to attain the children's permission to alter their memories. Why hadn't he just killed them? It would have been much more efficient, and powers below knew, the Weasley twins were irritating enough most days to warrant it. Could he really believe that Mary Potter was his heir?
And, of course, there was the matter of the cut on Mary Elizabeth's wrist. There had been no point in the memories he had seen where such a wound could have occurred, and it had left a scar. Unless he was very much mistaken, it was caused by a particular wandless, wordless, Dark severing charm. He had several similar scars from the old days. They never did heal properly, unless the person who made the wound took it away. What had Riddle wanted with Mary Potter's blood? Was he sending a message, or had he just overlooked the detail?
More precisely, what had he wanted, that seemed harmless enough that the girl would assist him, but carried sufficient stigma or punishment that she had allowed him into her mind to take her memories afterward? The number of compulsions was damning, but even their combined influence would not have been sufficient to push her into anything if he had not acted the part he was pushing her to see. Easy cooperation, yes, they would have gained him that, but it was not as though the girl would have entirely taken leave of her senses.
Severus could think of nothing the boy would have wanted, that could be so easily granted. It might, perhaps, be easier if he knew what the apparition was in the first place. He stared at the destroyed journal, lying so harmless-looking on the table. He performed one diagnostic charm on it, then another. Both registered off the scale for dark magic. The third diagnostic was for residual traces of Black rituals, and it registered at least two instances – one half a century prior, and one only days ago. Interesting.
He considered his options for a long moment then threw caution to the winds, calling on the darkest raw power he could muster and pouring it into the book, seeking out the purpose of the rituals in which it had been used. It was a process not unlike legilimency, the scrying of objects, but he found it required far more concentration and power. He was so entirely focused on teasing apart the remnants of magic in the book that he failed to notice the Headmaster's return until that damnable phoenix trilled in his ear.
It took every bit of self-control in his body to not Avada the wretched creature when he noticed Dumbledore's amusement. He settled for chasing it away with the same magic he had used to scry the diary.
"Sadistic bastard," he grumbled, tossing the book onto the Headmaster's desk. "That," he announced, in a much louder voice, "is a horcrux. Or was, I suppose. It's been unmade by the Destructive power, but the traces are clear."
"A horcrux?" the old man asked. Of course he wouldn't know of them. Bloody lily-white Albus would probably kill himself with the Mercy Spell before he would consider creating such a thing. It wasn't even that difficult, theoretically, though apparently it was very painful.
Horcruxes were much like muggle ghost stories, among certain Dark families. A tale to frighten children, that no one in their right mind would attempt, though everyone would swear that their great-grandfather knew a dark wizard who had done it. The Blacks, Lestranges, Rosiers, and Rowles came to mind. And Malfoy, of course.
Lucius Malfoy had told Severus about horcruxes when Severus was a second-year, skulking around the upperclassmen with their air of cool unapproachability. If Malfoy had thought it would scare the boy away, he must have been sorely disappointed. Young Severus had loved Dark Arts, and thought the horcrux was just about the neatest thing he had heard of in all his twelve years. He had told Lily, and she had done an arithmantic breakdown of the ritual for him as a Yule gift during their fifth year, though she had made him swear on his magic to find a power-source other than human sacrifice if he really wanted to use it. He had never pursued it. Still, he would bet that half his NEWT students had heard of the ritual, at home or from their friends.
"Ritual magic. Black. Creates a soul anchor called the horcrux," Severus pointed at the book, "which can later be used to revive the animus after the body has been killed. Risky, painful, one of the cruder and more effective ways to reach pseudo-immortality." The old man blanched. Severus couldn't help but smirk at him. "The process involves splitting the soul in half via invocation of the Destructive Power, tying one half to an object via invocation of the Binding Power, and investing the object-bound soul with a part of one's magic, in order to allow it to possess anyone who comes across it and siphon their magic to construct a replacement body. This one," he nodded at the book again, "did not function as intended. They are meant to remain inert until they have drawn in the remainder of the individual's soul or anima, magic, and life-spark or animus after the body has died. If that had happened in this case, I daresay the projection would have been of a sixty-year-old madman, not a charming sixteen-year-old boy."
"Why did it not work?"
"Perhaps I can tell you when I've had more than ten minutes to think it over and don't have a phoenix-induced migraine," Severus said scathingly.
The Headmaster sighed, looking, for once, as old as Severus often felt. "Mary Potter flinched at Fawkes' song today."
"You are certain it had nothing to do with dealing with you not half an hour after she woke up from her ordeal?"
"Positive, Severus." There was an edge to Dumbledore's tone which added an unspoken 'don't push me.'
He sighed. It was hardly his fault the girl was not the paragon of virtue Dumbledore wanted. Lily's daughter (Riddle's granddaughter?) never could have been. "Well, that may go some distance toward explaining the cut on her wrist and the second ritual performed on the book. Though how she would have known that ritual and what she was dealing with, or why she would have stabbed it with a basilisk fang after all was said and done, I have no idea. I shall have to give the issue more thought."
"And the girl's memories?" Dumbledore was quite adept at skimming memories for information, a competent legilimens and occlumens both. He could tell when someone was lying to him or read surface thoughts unnoticed, and he had the power and control to perform legilimency silently, but he had nothing on Severus when it came to interrogation and the mental arts, or properly delving into memory. In fact, Severus rather doubted he had spotted the embedded compulsions at all, given that he had little personal interaction with post-Hogwarts Riddle, and he probably hadn't realized that half the memories were false.
"Clear, accurate, and untouched until the death of the basilisk. Presumably the Weasleys' were the same. Everything after that is a story-based substitution. The true memories have been entirely removed, and are therefore non-recoverable. There were traces of compulsions lingering – mostly harmless, even in the aggregate, pushing for cooperation. Whatever he wanted from her, I would suspect he got it. I disarmed them, though I suspect most of them would have faded soon enough on their own, given that the memories they were tethered to were removed. Then there is a brief block which I cannot unravel without causing severe damage to her mind – likely the period of time wherein the modifications took place, with a compulsion to avoid the Chamber. That I left intact. From the point that they find their way out of the tunnels, the memories are originals again."
"And these modifications, they were done by force?" the old man sounded almost hopeful.
Severus took a small bit of pleasure in shaking his head slowly. "Story-based substitution," he repeated. "She helped coordinate her memories with the others. It was voluntary." He relented, then, adding, "Though arguably her choices could have been influenced by the compulsions," which caused the Headmaster to perk up.
"Then there is still hope," he remarked. Severus rolled his eyes, and the thrice-cursed bird trilled again. He winced and sent a tiny ball of hoarfrost at it. It vanished in a flare of fire.
"I hate that bird," he grumbled, and Dumbledore gave him a terribly pitying look. In his world, no one should hate a phoenix.
"I suppose that is all for the moment, my dear boy," Dumbledore said softly, apparently accommodating his headache.
Severus almost found himself agreeing before he recalled the events leading to the Chamber, and resettled himself in his seat. "I'm afraid not, Albus."
"No?" Dumbledore raised a white eyebrow.
"No. As the Head of Slytherin House, I must demand the expulsion of the Weasley twins on behalf of one of the students of my House, who was kidnapped and dragged into danger by those Gryffindor hooligans."
"No." Dumbledore's pronouncement had an air of finality about it. "They destroyed a basilisk and put an end to the Heir of Slytherin's reign of terror. They will not be expelled for their actions."
Severus narrowed his eyes. So far, as expected. "Then they will serve detention with me every night from now until they graduate. There is no excuse. The girl was on her way out the door to find qualified assistance, and they disarmed her from behind."
"Severus… I know you feel strongly about Lily's child…"
"It's not because she's Lily's daughter, you old goat! I would do as much for any of my students! She was disarmed, forcibly restrained, silenced when she attempted to close the passageway, then dropped down a pipe from which there was no egress, still silenced and restrained, so that she could open doors for them. Doors which I at least would have been fully capable of opening! There was no reason for the child to be placed in that situation."
"You speak Parseltongue?"
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. "One cannot spend any length of time around Bellatrix and the Dark Lord without learning some Parseltongue. I know the word 'open.' It's not even that difficult to pronounce, though I have it on good authority that my accent is terrible."
Dumbledore's eyes grew wide. "Bellatrix Lestrange speaks Parseltongue?"
Of course that's the part of all this he chooses to focus on. "Of course she does. She also knows High Mermish, Siren and Gobbledygook, two different dialects of House Elf, three of Giant, whatever the hell Dementors speak, and Welsh." The old goat looked rather taken aback by this. "That's not important!" Severus snapped. "Those hellions will be punished for kidnapping Miss Potter."
"You cannot assign them three years of detention, Severus. Be reasonable."
"Every day until the end of the year then. And one hundred points from Gryffindor. Each." He glared at the Headmaster, who glared back.
"Fine."
"Fine. That leaves us only with their punishment, and that of Miss Granger, for brewing an illegal batch of Veritaserum."
Dumbledore looked amused at this. "Do you really think that the children managed such a feat?"
"Miss Potter seemed well and truly convinced. She herself dosed at least six different Hufflepuffs, along with several other Slytherins, all of whom will also be punished. The Weasleys were obviously in on it, and I would bet my right arm that the elder Miss Moon was involved as well."
Dumbledore was chortling now.
"What? Why are you laughing? This is a serious matter, Albus. Improperly brewed Veritaserum can have fatal effects, and their plan appears to have been to dose every non-Slytherin student in the Castle."
"It was a ruse, dear boy!"
"Explain," Severus spat.
"I came across a memory in young Fred Weasley's mind, while I was inspecting the circumstances under which they discovered Tom's presence. He tried to hide it, but I managed to winkle it out. The Twins and Miss Granger were considering brewing the potion. They were working out the logistics of acquiring some of the more dangerous and controlled ingredients, and had reached an impasse. And then Miss Granger had the idea to simply give their co-conspirators water, or, even better, a highly concentrated Suggestivity Solution, and tell them it was Veritaserum. They would, perhaps, enlist each of the others in fetching one or two Veritaserum ingredients to add verisimilitude to the charade, ensuring that they could pass on to those they questioned their certainty that the potion would force them to tell the truth. She called it, oh, it was a muggle thing…"
"A placebo?"
"Yes! Apparently muggle doctors use it all the time, tricking their patients into getting better."
"Hmmm…" Severus turned this idea over in his mind. It was certainly more reasonable to assume that the Weasleys had brewed an OWL-standard Suggestivity Solution, or even the NEWT-standard concentrated variation, than that they had managed the exceedingly tricky and exacting Veritaserum. Quite aside from the brewing, Veritaserum required both unicorn and thestral blood, a skein of stolen demiguise silk, and three powdered drams by weight of bone from a miscarried human fetus. Even he didn't keep powdered miscarry-bone in stock, and he certainly hadn't misplaced any demiguise silk lately. Suggestivity Solution did not call for anything they could not have acquired at Pasterel's in Hogsmeade. In that case, the plan was ingenious, and worthy of a Slytherin, though he would still have to punish all of the co-conspirators who thought they were using Veritaserum on their victims, and did it anyway. "Very well. Five points to Ravenclaw," he ground out. Twice in one day – these second-year girls were going to be the death of him.
Albus just smiled knowingly. Bastard. "If that is all, my boy?"
"Yes, yes. Goodnight, Albus."
"Goodnight, Severus."
Severus swept down the Headmaster's spiral stair, thinking that good was not an adjective he would have chosen to associate with the night's discussion. Between wondering what he had done with that copy of the Horcrux ritual Lily had annotated and whether he could convince Mary Elizabeth to take a lineage-revealing potion and not tell the Headmaster about it, he doubted he would get any sleep at all.