Author's Note:

I'm back, and I have no excuses to make, other than the fact that it's quarantine and I feel like I might die from boredom. Tell me how it is where you live. I hope this chapter will give you something to do.

I don't own Harry Potter. All credit belongs to J. K. Rowling.

She had no name to go off of. Only the potion's distinct mother of pearl sheen and scentless — to her at least — fumes that rose above the cauldron in strange swirls. It was beautiful, if a fluid can be considered that. Like liquid diamonds. Or mercury.

The copy of Moste Potente Potions was obtained through Lockhart, who was quick to turn into a malleable fool with just a little flattery. She could have snuck past the librarian like she usually did, but looking for something specific in the Restricted Section where the shelves and their contents had no order whatsoever would have been a waste of time and effort. Not to mention, the books there tended to shout, wail, and bite trespassers. No, thank you.

Moste Potente Potions proved to be a fascinating read. There were detailed illustrations of each potion as well as their effects, including a particularly gory image of some unlucky wizard being turned inside out covering two pages. It was a moving picture too. The attention put into it made her wonder if the author actually dosed someone to draw it.

She stared at the picture for too long, an odd mixture of curiosity and disgust churning in her gut. Shaking herself out of her stupor, Victoria flipped to the next page carefully, yellowed parchment brittle under her fingertips, as if it would fall apart if her touch was as anything more than featherlight. Logically she knew that there were preservation charms on it, but it was easy to forget how deceptive the wizarding world could be.

Amortentia, the world's strongest love potion is also perhaps the most dangerous one. Love cannot be mimicked; Amortentia creates obsession. It has an endless potential: it can create an army acting in one name, as long as the subjects are dosed regularly. Amortentia is clear, with a unique sheen that is often said to resemble mother-of-pearl. It's fumes are a fanciful thing, their form and smell depending entirely on one's desires. Most describe it as an alluring bouquet of their favorite scents: a lover's hair, chocolate, crisp sea breeze, etc. The fumes themselves can be addictive, and it is advised the reader uses a bubble head charm when in vicinity of this potion. Users must exercise extreme caution as it had been noted that any children conceived under the influence of Amortentia display no emotion, though this had never been officially proven. Perhaps the imprisonment of Gallius Wilder, Head of the Department of Mysteries in 1534 for illegal sales of Amortentia at an underground market in Knockturn Alley and his subsequent release one day later can shed some light on why most of Amortentia's dangers remain shrouded in mystery…

She shut the book loudly and glared at the cover. The potion was there, if its sheen was truly as unique as the author claimed, but its description only raised more questions.

"Victoria?"

She spun around at the sound of a familiar voice. "Yes, Theodore. Do you need something?" she said, snappishly, her irritation with the book bleeding into the conversation. She cleared her throat delicately, chiding herself for letting it control her.

The dark haired boy looked at her with carefully shuttered eyes, like a true Slytherin. "A muggleborn was petrified. Collin Creevy, Gryffindor first year."

"So I heard," Victoria said flatly. Let's not go there.

Theo looked around to see if any was close enough to overhear. This was a conversation best held in private. Victoria rolled her eyes at his antics like he was a particularly slow child, and cast a silencing charm with textbook-perfect wand movements, shielding them in a quiet bubble.

Theo cleared his throat, staring at her wand with a little petty jealousy, which she rolled in her fingers absent-mindedly, like a nervous tick. He was one of the best students in their year, but she was at another level entirely. "You are a muggleborn. There is a soon-to-be-murderer walking through this school, and I don't think it's a stretch to say -"

"What if I told you I know who the heir is?"

" - that they - WHAT?!"

"These charms aren't unbreakable, you know," Victoria hissed with a pointed glance at their surroundings. A Ravenclaw at a nearby table craned his neck to get a better look at what was going on, alerted by Theo's shout, and Victoria stared him down until he looked away. "I know who the heir is," she repeated in a calmer tone, turning to face the Slytherin again. "But I don't know who is responsible for the attacks."

Theo's jaw hit the floor. "They are different people?"

"Close your mouth, you look like a fish," Victoria said. "And no, they aren't necessarily different people, I think."

"I have no idea what you mean," Theo said, eyebrows inching up his forehead.

"Good thing I do," Victoria murmured sarcastically under her breath. "Hey, your father studies genealogy, right?"

Bewildered by the strange turn of the conversation, Theo could only nod.

"I assume he traced Slytherin's family?"

Theo nodded again - that particular study was a given.

"Could you ask him to send me the whole thing. I don't need the details, just names, dates, and and circumstances of birth."

"Why do you need a thousand years worth of this stuff if you already know who the heir is. It's not exactly interesting."

"I suppose I can tell you," wouldn't hurt me if you talk hung in the air between them. She didn't trust him - sometimes he wondered if she was capable of it all. She expected him to slip up. It hurt more than he would've liked to admit. "You see, there are wards on the Malfoy Manor that don't let muggleborns through - blood magic, very old. I think it's woven into the walls themselves. Well, I've been to Malfoy Manor last year and I didn't set them off."

Theo sat down next to her, looking very thoughtful. "So, either you have magical ancestry that you don't know about, and your parents are squibs, not muggles -"

"Nope. If they were squibs they would've seen the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron, and they didn't."

"Huh. I guess the only other option is that you're part harpy, or veela, or something, but I still don't see what Slytherin has to do with all this."

"That's the thing, Theo. The only way I could've gone through the wards is if they didn't see me at all, and the only way for that to happen is if I'm not fully human - thanks for calling me a harpy, by the way. I'm flattered."

"You're welcome. Slytherin?"

"About that," Victoria said, holding up her wand between the two of them. It was not-so-subtly carved into the shape of a serpent, the tail made to warp around her wrist though she had yet to grow into it, and eyes set with jade, disturbingly similar in its blue green swirls to her own. "Ollivander never told me what the core was. He did, however, mention that it came from a species that died out around Slytherin's time, and whoever made this took no pains to disguise it."

"Why do I feel like you're leaving something out?"

"I leave out a lot of things. Say I have a hunch. So are you going to get me those records?"

Theo chuckled, forcing a small smile out of the witch. "Alright. I'll ask father, but there's no guarantee he'll give me anything, he… Forget it. I'll try."

Victoria very much wanted to ask "he what?", but bit her tongue in the last moment. The Notts' business was not her own, and nosing around never did anyone favours. It was one of things people liked about her - she didn't snoop around, and when she did they were none the wiser.

"Thank you," she said istead, shoving Moste Potente Potions into her bag and leaving in a whirl of gold hair and balck robes.

...

Theo went to the Slytherin Common Room, muling over her words, oblivious to the dark saga playing out a few floors above.

Victoria didn't realize her feet were carrying her upstairs before she found herself face-to-face with an out-of-order sign. Casting a discreet look about, she unlocked the door with a quick Alohomora and slipped inside.

Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was empty. The ghost, along with her less than wanted commentary was nowhere to be seen, and so the only sound in the room came from a steadily dripping faucet.

She set her bag down on the floor, making a mental note to scourgify it later, and turned the tap. The dripping stopped. Her hand brushed across the snake on the faucet, the chipping gold leaf that covered it falling off at her touch and leaving glittering traces on her fingertips.

Suddenly, the door swung open with a loud bang.

Victoria wasted no time diving behind the row of sinks. Ginny Weasley, the stumbling little Gryffindor, stood in the doorway, looking very much like she just left a slaughterhouse. Her robes were covered with large splotches of drying blood, and there were feathers stuck to it: gold, brown, red, green.

the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of a rooster, which is fatal to it…

There was a small black journal in Ginny's hands, and it was spotlessly clean. But most incriminating of all were her eyes.

They were a vivid, bright red.

The air started to smell of thunderstorms, and turned very thin, so thin it was hard to breathe. Each inhale felt like swallowing a thousand needles, pointy tips dragging bloody lines down their aortas.

Ginny walked forward, noticing her presence, slowly and smoothly, like a ghost.

Magic replaced air. It was running along Victoria's nerves from head to toe, sending tingles through her body, and with no other exit, it seeped through her skin in powerful waves, so vast it seemed infinite.

But it was not her magic.

Oh, it felt like hers, alright, but it acted nothing like the magic she ever used. This was wild, primal, and it responded to her whims serpent-fast, faster than she could form a coherent thought.

Perhaps that was why a stunning spell left her wand on its own accord, and the next second Ginny Weasley was on the ground, lying so still she might as well have been petrified. The journal fell from her pale hands and skidded across the floor.

The next second the strange magic was gone, and the air turned breathable again.

Shuddering with aftershocks, Victoria bent down and gingerly picked up the journal with the hem of her robes before depositing it in her bag. She swung the strap over her shoulder and began to walk to the door, planning to leave it open so that a prefect, or a goody two shoes Gryffindor wouldn't resist the urge to close it and see the girl inside. And if not, stunning spells only took an hour or two to wear off.

But when she moved past Ginny, she noticed that among all the blood and feathers, there were also trails of bright red mingling with coppery hair, and they seeped between the tiles, painting the floor with freshly oxygenated blood.

Her chest was still.

She wasn't breathing.

"Time of death fifteen forty-one."

"NONSENSE! Her scull was shattered into fifty-six pieces! Fifty-six! And you're telling me she had fallen?! There were bloody cracks in the tile, you dim-witted, narcissistic, IDIOT!"

Madame Pomfrey was breathing heavily, her face red and scrunched up in anger, standing guard over a small form covered with a white sheet, her eyes half-mad with fury. Across from her an affronted Lockhart was huffing like a kettle. The rest of the staff - every single one of them, even the librarian, were torn between gawking at the body and gawking at the usually sweet-tempered Matron.

"And explain me this: why did she have rooster blood and feathers on her, when Hagrid had been saying that someone was killing his roosters for months?! The only thing that could kill a basilisk -"

"Now, Poppy, you don't mean to say that this girl, this Gryffindor, is actually the heir of Slytherin?" Lockhart interjected, looking like his person was the victim of a great injustice. "She's a Weasley."

Madame Pomfrey's hand twitched toward her wand. "I'm not saying that, you moron. I'm saying she was involved somehow - she is - was just eleven, just a child! Imagine how easily someone could've manipulated her!"

Lockhart opened his mouth again, but a quiet, haunted whisper stopped him, and all heads turned toward the sound in perfect sync.

"Her eyes were red."

They all inhaled sharply. Madame Pomfrey suddenly turned very white, and Lockhart's bravado vanished entirely. Dumbledore closed his eyes for a second as though he was steeling himself for something horrible and Snape's lips turned into a thin line as shocked gasps rang out from one peron to another like a game of telephone.

"Pardon, Miss Savorgnan - could you," Dumbledore said, looking at the girl sitting on a bed opposite to Ginny's, an untouched cup of hot chocolate in her hands. She was determinedly staring a hole in the floor. "Could you repeat that, please?"

"Her eyes were red. And the pupils were slitted, like a cat's. She looked deranged, feathers and crusted blood everywhere, but the eyes… It wasn't her. I have no idea what it was, but it wasn't her."

"Were you and Miss Weasley close, then?"

"No. No, she ran into me a few times, and I saw her at the library once, but we never really talked. She was very clumsy; my housemates complained about it all the time. Oh, and on Halloween she ran into Pansy Parkinson as we walked to the Great Hall, but that's all."

Dumbledore sighed, and his form seemed to sink on itself. Snape murmured something obscene under his breath. "She was being possessed," he said, more audibly. "And we didn't even see it."

"That still doesn't answer why her injuries tell that she was thrown into the floor with great force," Madame Pomfrey said, sobbing quietly. As if on que, everyone's faces turned to Victoria again.

"I don't know what happened. I was in the corridor when I saw her rush into the bathroom, and then the door closed behind her..."

"Did you hear anything, Miss Savorgnan?" Dumbledore asked gently.

"A thud. I was so scared, and when I came to my senses and followed her in, she -" here Victoria's hand began to creep toward her throat as if to hold herself up, and Dumbledore, bleeding heart, hastily urged her not to go on anymore.

McGonagall whispered "poor child," and sat down by Victoria's side, trying to coax her into drinking the hot chocolate she was given and rubbing soothing circles on her back. From here it became obvious that her hands were shaking, sloshing the liquid, which left a few small brown stains on her robes. When a few minutes later the drink was still untasted, and the girl completely silent, McGonagall gave up on her endeavour.

"Pomona, get a prefect to walk her to her Common Room. She needs to rest. And Poppy, I think she'll need a vial of Calming Draught."

The Matron shook her head. "I gave her two of Severus's brew, and she's still unresponsive. A third wouldn't help. She'll have to come around on her own."

With that Marcus Flint was brought in and Victoria shooed out. When she was far, far below the infirmary, away from any prying legilimences one thought slipped past her fledgling shields.

And the Oscar goes to…

I know I said there would be an encounter between Victoria and Riddle, and well, getting that diary is technically an encounter, but if I tried to fit a full conversation between them it would've been one monster of a chapter. I took a long time to update as it is.

Ginny is dead. She's not coming back. I never liked her character that much (mostly because she was so under-developed) but I feel so bad for making her go like this.

You'll have to wait to see what Victoria's reaction to Ginny's death (I can't exactly call it a murder, can I? She was hit with an unintentional stunning spell that happened to be too strong, and even that was cast in self-defense. How else would she react to seeing Ginny with red eyes, covered in gore, flying into a bathroom where the Chamber is like a bat out of hell?) But I promise she does feel terrible about this, she's just not feeling guilty per se, because she was indeed acting in self-defence. Who knows what Riddle (and it was very much him at that moment) would've done. She protected her life at a cost of another, and it hits her hard. But in her mind if Dumbledore finds out she'll be expelled at best, thrown to Azkaban at worst. And she's not irrational about that either: Dumbledore won't make excuses for her. She's not Harry.

Tell me what you think about all this,

*hides*