"Drucilla, wake up… please wake up…"

Drucy opened her eyes sleepily. It couldn't possibly be morning. She could barely see. The fire in her fireplace had been banked to dull coals. The voice calling her was another child's voice.

"I know Slytherins trap their doors, Drucilla, I'm afraid to open it. Please wake up?"

There was only one person who refused to use her nickname. Drucy groaned and rolled out of bed, settling her feet into her slippers before the warmth of the blankets left them. She shrugged on her robe. It didn't seem quite warm enough. "Yeah. I'm coming, hold on." A few murmured words with her wand held at the ready, and she pulled the door open. "Matt… how'd you get here?"

"I hope you won't be mad," he murmured, slipping inside. "Well, it's just a little bit warmer in here than out there. I… well, I've heard you talking to your wand, during our dueling practices over the past few weeks. I've noticed one word that you use with it often, so I tried to memorize it. I think Parseltongue is fascinating. I know it can be learned… and… well, I tried the word on the Common Room door, and it worked, it opened up for me."

Drucy paused, intrigued, even though she was sure that there was actually an important reason for Matt to actually enter the Slytherin dungeon in the middle of the night. "What word did you use?"

Matt shrugged. "I have no idea." He spoke it in hisses, and Drucy recognized it, past an atrocious accent, as Oh no you don't. She sighed slightly. "But I didn't break in here in the middle of the night to tell you how I did it," Matt continued, putting the conversation back on track. "I found out what the secret group is about. You're right, your sister Esme is in it, and so are a lot of other students, and Brian the Slytherin Prefect isn't just in it, he's the ringleader."

As much as Drucy had been eager to learn about this mysterious society, she couldn't help holding back a yawn. "You couldn't have told me in the morning?" she asked, wandering over to her wardrobe and pulling on a nice, thick pair of socks. She didn't really want to wake Topsy, wherever the house-elf slept these days. "When did you find out?"

"Just now, that's why!" Matt walked over to the fireplace and knelt down next to it. "They got careless, a couple of the Gryffindor students. One of them accidentally woke me up when he got up to leave our tower room. I heard them whispering together in the Common Room, so I followed them as quietly as I could. Drucilla, it's bad, it's really bad, and there's no time, because they're going to do it tonight. Like, now."

"What are they going to do?" Drucy was quite awake now. She bent down and let Jade slither off her arm and near the warmer coals.

"They're going to destroy the Sorting Hat."

Of everything Drucy had ever heard or thought, this was completely new to her. "What? How?" She thought about this for a moment. "Why?"

"I don't know," Matt admitted. "I just know they're going to do it. Hurry."

The two children worked their way through the silent castle. Drucy could see the bright stars out each window. The moon had not risen. The castle seemed damp and chilly from the mid-spring weather, leaving her to wonder why on earth anybody could walk these corridors and still consider the dungeons to be a nasty place. At least it tended to be warmer down there. "I swear, if there's nothing going on after all…" she murmured grumpily. "I think I'll start with a nice cup of tea."

Around the next corner, though, she came to a stop as she saw the passage to the Headmistress's office open and empty. "You see?" Matt hissed. "They're probably through already. We'd better be quiet…" The two children wandered very quietly up the stairs and into the office, which seemed just as quiet and empty as the rest of the castle. Something bothered Drucy about the room, though, and she realized that her basilisk wand was trembling slightly. She held it with one hand and ran her hand down the length of it in what she hoped was a soothing manner. Then she saw movement. One student stepped into view, then another, then another. She and Matt drew together in the middle of the room, backs against each other, as an entire group stepped out from behind bookshelves and dark corners of the room, holding up their own wands, emitting light from the ends.

Brian stepped forward, holding up his wand so that they could see his face clearly. "It's alright, Drucy," he told her, his voice steady and firm. "It's alright, we're all friends. Nobody is going to hurt you."

"Matt said that you came here to destroy the Sorting Hat," Drucy told him directly, her voice wavering with fear. Part of her marveled at the way she spoke so plainly to him, even when she was nervous.

"I know," Brian told her. "I needed him to bring you here, and he did an excellent job."

Drucy turned on her supposed ally, who backed a couple of steps away from her, looking honestly astonished. "He didn't tell me to, honest! I heard the whispering and I followed, just like I told you. I don't know anything more about these guys than you do!"

She was inclined to believe him, so she turned her gaze back to Brian. "No, he's right. I let him in on the secret, but as far as he knows, our Gryffindor members were careless by accident. I knew he would go to get you. I manipulated him. But I don't mean you or him any harm. We need your help."

"If you're telling the truth," Drucy stated boldly, "then do it in the light. Not in the darkness."

"Since when do Slytherins hate darkness?" Brian asked wryly, but he also waved his wand, lighting the various lanterns and lamps throughout the room. Looking around, Drucy realized that she did recognize nearly everybody, whether she knew their names or not. Esme stood not far from Brian, offering an encouraging smile. She saw Gryffindors, Slytherins, even Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, just four or five people from each House, ranged all around the edge of the circular room with Matt and her in the middle.

"Why are you trying to destroy the Sorting Hat?" Drucy asked, mollified slightly by Brian's willingness to accommodate her.

"It asked me to," Brian told her. "No, really, I'm telling you the truth. I put it on, and it told me immediately that I was fit for Slytherin. That was okay with me. I didn't really know the House system yet. I think it knew that about me. It told me that it had been cursed to separate us, and the separation needed to be ended somehow. It asked me to put an end to it… somehow. Then it shouted 'Slytherin' to the entire hall, and I found out later that everyone thought I was quite the Hatstall. When I started getting to know people, some said I must have been a Hatstall with Hufflepuff. When I got good at my classes, they thought Ravenclaw. When I was willing to speak up for students in other Houses, they said Gryffindor. Nobody ever seemed to think that I was just being myself. I began to see what the Hat meant.

"You should know, Drucy. You've dealt with it yourself. You made a friend before you even arrived here, and you were instantly separated from him. You wound up with your sister, but what if you had been separated from her, too? What if the Hat had put you in Hufflepuff? It had that power."

Drucy had to admit to herself that Brian was making some very good points, but she also knew that he was wrong. She didn't know why he was wrong. She just felt it inside. She looked around the office for a moment. There was the base for Headmistress McGonagall's Butterfly Maker. There was the elaborate case with a gorgeous jeweled sword in it. There was the Hat itself, sitting silently on a shelf next to some artfully dribbled candles. "Why me?" she finally asked. "What do you need me for? You seem to have everything figured out."

"Ah, that took a while to figure out," Brian told her. The others remained silent, apparently content to let him talk for them. "I've been trying to figure out for five years how to destroy the Sorting Hat. I've looked up any information on it that I could find. Nobody really knows what it is. Most enchanted items wear thin after a few years. I found some vague accounts that had something to do with a piece of soul, and wondered if the Hat had a piece of the souls of the four Founders. But… that was strange and dark information, and not one bit of it had anything to do with the Sorting Hat of Hogwarts. In addition, it's stayed the way it is for a long time. It was already battered when it was… made what it is… and it hasn't deteriorated since. I gathered other students around me, letting them into the secret bit by bit. They helped me research. We went looking for anything that might work. Poison, destructive spells…"

"You were in Knockturn Alley!" Drucy turned to her sister in astonishment. "When I thought you lied to me, you actually did! You were looking for something that could destroy the Sorting Hat. Weren't you?"

Esme spoke for the first time. "Yes, I was. But, you see, I wasn't doing anything wrong. I know our parents don't like us going in there. But they didn't like you speaking Parseltongue in school, either, or wielding a basilisk wand, and you can see they were wrong. Loving, careful, but misguided."

"Yes," Brian offered, taking up the tale. "The basilisk wand. That strange dark thing that can be made with a piece of a soul… I don't know if that's what the Hat is, but it's the most powerful way of enchanting an object that I could find. There are only a few ways of destroying an object like that. Basilisk venom is one of them. Drucy, you can destroy objects with your wand. I'm sure you can."

This seemed to be a good time for the next question. "How?"

"I don't know," Brian admitted. "I just know the wand can do it. Maybe it's a spell. Or maybe… maybe you just need to tell it what it needs to do. I'll help you any way that I can."

He and a few other students moved aside, giving Drucy a clear view of the Hat. It remained still and quiet. She couldn't quite tell from its folds whether it was sleeping or watching. She held up her wand and looked at it as if for the first time, at its intricate carvings, the snake-like curves. "What are you?" she asked it softly, and it trembled in her hand. "Just a wand? Or something more? What did you do to Matt Briar, when he took you from me? And what else can you do?"

Drucilla Bulstrode took one step forward, widening her stance. She held the wand out, ready to use.

She took a deep breath.