"I think Professor Flitwick's friends approve of you," said Penny brightly as she settled on the bench next to Percy, leaning slightly on his shoulder and smiling at him. She was talking, of course, about the wizards from the Auror Office who'd turned up to watch the duelling tournament, who apparently were old friends of Flitwick's. "Did you notice? They were looking at you almost as much as Diggory."

Percy tried valiantly not to be offended, and ended up sighing. "I don't want to be a duellist," he objected.

"I know, I know," she waved his disgruntled expression off cheerfully, "but you looked good, and it never hurts to have good recommendations."

"From MLE?" said Percy, a little despairingly. He wanted to work for International Relations, and rather suspected that they were not interested in the same sort of people that Law Enforcement were. "They'll just think I'm crazy."

Penny frowned. "Hmm. Good point. Sorry." She deliberately changed the subject, picking something essentially at random. "Speaking of suspicious, you know that first-year girl I was telling you about, Lovegood, the one that's friends with your little sister?"

"Sure?" Percy had honestly not been paying that much attention to Ginny's social life. He just intermittently made sure she ate enough, and gave her Pepper-Up when she got sick. The fine details of who she sat with in classes or whatever were sort of lost on him.

His girlfriend gave him an amused look. "Anyway, she got detention again for being in the library past curfew, and she will not shut up about the stupid Chamber of Secrets. Ginny - you should be proud of her - she's started telling the girl to stop being silly, I saw them arguing about it just yesterday."

"Oh, good for her," said Percy. "I hope she doesn't lose a friend over it, but I suppose if this first-year of yours really thinks this silly myth is a plausible alternative hypothesis to the Slytherins are being awful again, maybe it's good riddance."

"Oh, probably," said Penny, "none of the other first-years seem to like her very much, anyway, I imagine your sister was just trying to be nice."


The Gryffindor second-years normally blocked out a three-hour period on Monday evenings after dinner, to meet and practice duelling. They were always extremely scrupulous about getting back to the common room before curfew afterwards; no one really wanted to test McGonagall's patience further by treading on the rules even more obviously than they currently were. It wasn't actually against any specific rules to hang out in a classroom and throw hexes at each other, but it wasn't exactly the sort of behavior that professors normally encouraged. Neville had observed at one point that he thought their Head of House wasn't precisely being accommodating so much as she was sort of resigned.

This was, mind you, a conversation that took place before she all but handed them an extremely illegal Animagus manual.

At that point it was sort of obvious to the entire group, even notoriously unobservant Ron Weasley, that Professor McGonagall was actually trying to help.

"I mean, unless she's trying to set us up," said Parvati, frowning at the book on the table. None of them had touched it yet. At the incredulous looks, she said somewhat apologetically, "Um, Padma gave me a lecture the other day about how sometimes things look like a good idea and they aren't - because of the thing at the duelling club - and it occurred to me that getting us to do something horribly illegal would be a really good way to get us all in huge trouble - sorry." She glanced a little nervously at the tabby cat curled up in the corner. The tabby cat completely ignored her.

"Wait, hold on, that's a good point," said Neville. Several incredulous looks, Parvati inclusive, turned on him. The spectacled cat in the corner gave him a rather severe look. He winced. "No, I mean, not Professor McGonagall setting us up, that'd be silly, I mean, someone else. Trying to get us to do something horribly illegal that McGonagall would almost definitely get blamed for."

"Ohhh," said Lavender, speaking for everyone, "yeah, that would be bad."

"Uh ... " said Dean, after a moment's alarmed silence, "should we report this to Dumbledore, then?"

The cat helpfully turned into Professor McGonagall. They all jumped about a foot; Seamus actually yelped. The dramatic transformation mid-class-period was generally scheduled for the beginning of third-year Transfiguration class; none of them had actually seen her do that before. They'd just been assuming the cat was a spy or something. "It would be highly irresponsible of me to provide my underage students with any illegal study material," said Professor McGonagall airily, as if this were a completely normal conversation to be having, "and I'm sure that Headmaster Dumbledore would agree that the idea is ridiculous."

Translated: Yes, I did actually give you that book on purpose. Don't worry, you will not get in trouble and neither will I.

" ... okay ... " said Ron, "so ... do we ... " he gestured vaguely at the book.

Professor McGonagall studiously pretended it was not there. "You should do your homework, Mr. Weasley," she said, and turned back into a cat.

"Is anyone else getting that feeling again that Hogwarts is just unbearably strange?" said Dean, somewhat helplessly.

"Oh, yeah, I get that all the time," said Lavender vaguely. She'd produced a Witch Weekly magazine from somewhere and was flipping through it with a somewhat disgruntled expression. "Ugh, the first step is meditation, this is going to suck."

Everyone looked quizzically at her.

Seamus was the first to realize the Animagus book was no longer on the desk. "That's - is that the book, you've got it in your hand?"

"Uh, yeah?" said Lavender, looking up, confused.

"You look like you've got a Witch Weekly," explained Seamus. Lavender put the book down. It continued to look like a magazine. The six children all stared somewhat uneasily at it. Seamus suggested somewhat hesitantly, "Someone else want to pick it up?", and eventually Neville reached out and picked the 'magazine' off the table. It did not noticeably change shape.

Neville opened it up and said, "This is ... actually a Witch Weekly magazine?", tilting his head at it.

Ron said, "Give it back to Lavender," so Neville did.

Lavender reported that it was, so far as she could tell, still a book. "It doesn't even look like a magazine to me," she said. "It just still looks like a paperback book with a weird Latin title."

"Um ... that's weird," said Ron.

"Is it?" asked Dean curiously. "Honestly, I assumed it was less weird than people turning into animals."

"No, yeah, that's really weird," agreed Neville. "Although, in retrospect, we should have assumed immediately that the cat was McGonagall. Ron, any other ideas?"

"Lavender, can you make it change shape if you try?" offered Ron.

Lavender gave the book/magazine a stern look and said, "Be a book!", and when they all failed to react as if it had obeyed this instruction, she shrugged helplessly. "I dunno, probably not?"

"Okay ... um ... you know, I've heard people say Hogwarts is shy, maybe the book is too, maybe it doesn't want to change if we're looking at it," suggested Ron. "Everybody turn around." They did. "Anything different, Lavender?"

"It ... still looks like a book to me?" said Lavender. "I don't think I can tell if it changes for you."

"Good point," admitted Ron. There was a pause for thought. "You try looking away too?"

Lavender said, "Okay," and after a beat, "I'm not looking at it anymore."

Ron turned around. "Okay, still looks like a magazine," he reported, "lemme pick it up - aha," he said triumphantly. "It's a book now."

Everyone else turned to look, without being told. "Looks like a copy of Staple Spells for Duellists, volume three," observed Neville. "I think it's changing into - what it thinks we're most likely to be reading?"

"It thinks I'm a bimbo," pouted Lavender.

"No, I don't think that's right," said Ron slowly, thoughtfully, "I think it's picking what other people are likely to think isn't strange. I've already read the whole Staple Spells series, I wouldn't actually be reading it again, but it's the kind of thing that a random person looking at me will think is totally normal and they won't question it."

"I guess that's a little better," allowed Lavender. "Still, though."

"Lav, I love you, but nobody who doesn't know you really well thinks you aren't a total airhead," said Parvati, patting her friend affectionately on the shoulder.

"It's not a fatal personality flaw or anything," said Seamus cheerfully. "I don't actually understand Witch Weekly, but you can like it if you want, it's not my job to judge you." He shrugged, and Lavender smiled brilliantly at him. "Anyway, this is actually pretty good security, isn't it? If it won't change if more than one person is looking at it?"

"A little inconvenient," said Ron, frowning at the book, "because it probably means only one of us can see it at a time."

"True. But still," Seamus said, "I think it's worth it not to get caught with a book that changes shape, right?"

"Sure, so long as we don't leave it unattended long enough for someone else to get hold of it," said Ron thoughtfully. "I think we're going to have to take turns carrying it around."

The question of how to not get instantly arrested settled, they spent the rest of their three hours sitting in a circle as far away from the door as possible, taking turns reading aloud. This was supposedly so dangerous that people their age were banned from even trying it; they did not want to try anything until they were sure they weren't going to do something incredibly stupid. At first Parvati went to get parchment to take notes, but Ron pointed out that the notes wouldn't be protected from being read by other people. Dean then pulled out his parchment and started making up pictorial mnemonics, which were not so transparent to observation, although they had the flaw that they were also meaningless to everyone else in the room.

That was solvable, though; getting arrested, less so.

The first step was going to be meditation, but the zeroth: studying.


They actually got as far as the handshaking step, at the Ravenclaw/Gryffindor Quidditch game.

Roger Davies, now Ravenclaw's Quidditch Captain since Keith MacDougal had graduated, looked extremely relieved to see that the entire Gryffindor team seemed to be awake and not showing signs of reality warping. Still: "I promise not to gloat if we win because you're missing your real Beaters," he said apologetically. Oliver had produced substitutes, having had at least some notice. He'd come up with Cormac McLaggen and Geoff Hooper, who were both basically competent if annoying, but it was nothing like actually replacing the twins, which would have been nigh unto impossible. So Gryffindor was were at a substantial disadvantage, even given that the new Ravenclaw Seeker, Cho Chang, was inexperienced; she was reasonably talented. "I mean, not that I won't still be proud," added Roger, "I mean, you guys are good, but I'll try not to - "

Roger stopped abruptly. He, along with everyone else, had just turned sharply at the sound of a horn, to see Professor McGonagall striding grimly onto the field, Lee Jordan's microphone in her hand. She announced, loudly and clearly, that the game was cancelled, and so was the rest of the Quidditch Cup, until further notice. There had been, she said, another attack. She completely and utterly disregarded Oliver and Roger's indignant yelling, and walked right up to Percy Weasley, and said, her sharp steely voice rather toneless, "Can I ask you to come with me, Mr. Weasley?"

"Um," said Percy. He glanced, helpless, into the stands. Ron - bless the Weasley hair - was easy to find, on his feet already. He looked like he was counting his friends. "Yeah, I - sure?"

"You don't seriously think Prefect Weasley did it?" said Cho Chang incredulously. "His brothers - "

"No, of course they don't - "

Oliver's voice, explaining to the others that the faculty probably wanted Percy for some boring crowd-control reason, trailed away as Percy followed McGonagall at a brisk walk up towards the castle. It was immediately obvious to Percy that although Oliver's guess had been reasonable, they were walking away from most of the student body and so McGonagall probably wanted him for something unrelated to crowd control. He trailed his Head of House for several silent, confused minutes, and then when they were about halfway across the first floor, he said finally, "Um, professor, not that I'm not glad to help, but where are we - "

"Hospital wing," said Professor McGonagall.

"Hos - oh, no," said Percy, feeling his heart sinking. "Oh, no, don't - don't say you're about to tell me - "

"No one is dead," interrupted Professor McGonagall gently, as they crossed through the doors into the pristine white of the Hogwarts Hospital, "but - "

"Penelope," groaned Percy. His realization had been correct. He was here for emotional reasons, not practical ones. He didn't bother asking how Professor McGonagall had known before his brothers that Percy had a girlfriend; the Transfiguration professor was extremely observant and he and Penelope had NEWT Transfiguration together. Flitwick probably knew, too, although he couldn't imagine Snape or Lockhart cared enough to have bothered noticing. "Why wasn't she - she should have been at the game - who's that?" He nodded at the tiny girl on the bed next to Penelope's, absently. Most of his attention was on his Petrified girlfriend, on her frozen expression of shocked, disbelieving terror, but he was still at least approximately aware of other things. "Some first-year?"

"First-year Ravenclaw," agreed McGonagall. "Luna Lovegood. They were found by the library. This was on the floor nearby," she added, holding up a familiar-looking hand mirror.

"That's Penny's, yeah," said Percy. He frowned, something in his memory lighting up to remind him he'd heard that name before. "She doesn't like Luna Lovegood."

McGonagall made a frustrated face. "I was hoping you'd be able to shed some light on this."

"Sorry," sighed Percy. "No. I have no - well. I suppose I do have some idea. Penny's Muggleborn, and she's been near as vocal as I have about not thinking that Slytherin's Monster is real. She's an obvious target." He made a face. "So like our Slytherins, isn't it, not realizing that shutting down a dissenting voice is as good as admitting she had a point."

"I see," said Professor McGonagall, her face much too neutral. "Quite so, Mr. Weasley."


"I don't suppose," said Narcissa Malfoy to her husband over dinner one evening, quite acidly, "that you've learned anything interesting today?"

Lucius Malfoy, who had spent all day in the library, sighed. He didn't really have the energy to be properly upset that his beloved wife was mad at him, and besides, she sort of had a point. He'd gone and tried to frame Arthur Weasley for a murder, and all that had happened is that Weasley's incompetent daughter had apparently lost the stupid magic book so thoroughly that her brothers had been the first, Petrified, targets. Followed by Lucius' own son, who was going to need a great deal of tutoring over the summer given how much school he was missing. If he tried to point at Ginevra Weasley now, he'd be laughed out of the Auror Office before anyone bothered to actually put her under Veritaserum and see that she actually had had the thing; they'd assume he was (a) holding a grudge and (b) crazy. And that was assuming the Auror Office would even believe him that anything was going on at Hogwarts, nevermind that it had been caused by a magic blank diary. It wasn't like he could admit that he thought this because his father had told him the diary would kill Muggleborns if given to an impressionable young Hogwarts student. That would just get him in trouble.

There was a long, expectant pause.

"Well," he said, after gathering his thoughts, "I learned that someone has put an Immolation Curse on Old Nott's son. I learned that Augusta Longbottom also knows about the attacks at Hogwarts and thinks that Arcturus Black is responsible despite the fact that he's dead, since she doesn't know about the book. I learned that there is considerable scholarly disagreement about whether Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets actually exists - that is to say, there are people who think it actually does exist, even if they don't have much in the way of proof. I learned that Jared Nott either did not know about the attacks or has reason to pretend he didn't. I learned that Xenophilius Lovegood's daughter was among the most recent victims, the other of which was some Mudblood prefect."

"And from this information you have concluded?" prompted Narcissa, eyebrows slightly elevated.

"Theodore Nott and Ginevra Weasley are fighting over possession of the magic book, which either actually gives access to the Chamber of Secrets or simply contains some great power which permits young children to cast Petrifaction Curses," said Lucius. "It's the only thing I can think of that explains all the victims so far. Although I'm not sure why either of them might have strong motivation to attack a Lovegood, knowing Xeno, she could just be extraordinarily annoying. And if the book does impart high-level knowledge of curses, that would explain how an eleven-year-old Weasley might have been able to lay such a curse on Theodore."

"But of course," said Narcissa, "you haven't shared this conclusion with your uncle."

"Of course not, I'm not an idiot," said Lucius. "He would assassinate the little Weasley in her sleep and I would get blamed instantly."

Narcissa nodded approvingly. "Has it occurred to you, however," she inquired, "that this chaos might be precisely what the Dark Lord intended when he gave that artifact to your father?"

This had, in fact, not occurred to Lucius. He'd just been assuming that the intended effect was for a bunch of Mudbloods to die and that he'd mucked it up somehow. But that would assume that the Dark Lord acted reasonably, with well-thought-out purpose. As opposed to, for instance, in whatever way he thought would cause the most pain for the most people. The Dark Lord liked to torture people for fun. It had been entirely naive of him to assume that any plan Voldemort had made would include provisions like 'don't hurt Draco,' as much as he wished it would have. "You have a point," he admitted. He glanced, almost involuntarily, at his left arm. "Bloody good thing it is that he's gone, isn't it?"

"Quite," said Narcissa, patting his hand. "So, in summary, what have you learned today?"

He sighed. "Don't try to use Dark artifacts if you don't know what they do."

"Very good, dear."


Neville got a letter in the mail.

Dear Neville,

It may be of interest to you to know that Lord Malfoy seems to be the only person outside the walls of Hogwarts, save myself, who has heard about the Petrifactions. (Notice that this implies that he has an alternative source of information than whatever the administration has been telling parents, since Xenophilius Lovegood and Molly Weasley do not know.) His library has been of little other use to me, however; if Arcturus Black and Abraxas Malfoy laid a curse upon Hogwarts on their deathbeds, it was a curse I cannot break without going to Hogwarts myself.

If you have Muggleborn friends, keep on your guard.

A. M. Longbottom


The duelling club met again, largely run by Cedric Diggory, who had been the strongest voice encouraging people to show up. Percy Weasley did appear, to stalk about and give everyone baleful looks, but he had to do considerably less work. Without Professor Flitwick's Auror friends making everyone inclined to show off, Cedric was able to keep order with only occasional assistance from the remaining NEWT Defense students who deigned to attend. There were fewer people, as well, without the draw of Professor Lockhart (who had failed to appear for the last meeting). Professor Flitwick was there, but largely to supervise, not to lead; Cedric was doing a remarkable job of getting everyone working productively, and the charms professor had the sense not to intervene.

The second-year Gryffindors showed up, and mostly did the drills Cedric had pulled from books and practiced against each other and the few other students from their class year who had turned up. Padma and Parvati started trying to work together against various permutations of their classmates, which usually worked reasonably well.

Ron Weasley drew some attention for his desire to duel anyone who was willing, regardless of how many years they had on him.

He lost, of course, every time, varying degrees of spectacularly. Most of the students here were fourth years and above, and Ron, for all his reading over the past months, had had very little actual, practical experience with duelling.

"Why are you still trying, Weasley?" said Adrian Pucey, almost curiously, as Flitwick ennervated him for roughly the twelfth time.

"Losing's how you learn," said Ron.

Cedric said brightly, "That's the spirit."