Friday evening a couple of weeks into the school year was a new moon, and it was pitch black outside the castle, albeit with clear skies. Perfect for stargazing if you could stand the cold, but there weren't astronomy classes on Fridays.
After dinner, most of Gryffindor was relaxing in the common room. I was about halfway through a novel from the pile of "muggle pulp" that the Weasley twins and I hadn't shelved around the library when Katie Bell walked into the room from outside and told me, "Harry. The headmaster needs to see you in his office." She wasn't in her quidditch gear, but for some reason she had her boom slung over a shoulder.
"Okay. Thanks, Katie," I told her, marking my place and heading out, shrugging at Percy and Mathilda that I had no idea what was going on.
I'd made it down a couple of floors before I realized I had no idea what the password was for Dumbledore's office, either. He usually sent some arbitrary candy name when he wanted to meet. Or at least he had when I'd talked to him a couple of days previously, and everyone had said that was normal.
Maybe it was still the same password? But I'd thought of it close enough to the dorm to figure I could turn around and check with Katie to see if she'd forgotten to tell me.
By the time I climbed back up the stairs, staff thudding along to assist, it was to see the backs of several Gryffindor robes rushing away from the portrait, into the hallway that was the shortest way to the astronomy tower, past the tapestry with the dancing trolls. "What's going on? I asked Neville, who was already puffing a bit trying to keep up with the crowd.
"Katie!" he gasped. "Said she was going to jump off the tower! Flew her broom out of her window!"
Damnit. Thinking back, I hadn't been paying much attention to her, but something had been off. Suffering through a bout of depression?
I raced ahead, my long legs and somewhat reasonable attempts to exercise sometimes easily letting me outpace Neville, and then overtake several of the other lower-years. By the time I crashed out onto the astronomy tower landing, pretty much half the house was gathered. It was a bit of a tight fit, for all that there was space for a couple-dozen students to stargaze at once.
Everyone was staring out over the railing, and I could barely make out Katie, mostly by lit wands reflecting off her eyes and face, floating on her broom at least twenty feet away from the tower. But she was mostly visible as a shadow against the stars. My Acceptable-level astronomy knowledge eventually coughed up that the constellation she was outlined by was Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer. That wasn't ominous or anything.
There was also what seemed like enough distance to hit terminal velocity between her and the ground, or at least fast enough that not even Madam Pomfrey could save her.
"Don't do this, Katie!" Oliver was insisting, taking the lead trying to talk her into landing.
"We tried the seize-and-pull charm," Percy told me in a whisper as he saw me clear the landing. "She shielded but she does not actually seem to want to jump."
"You'll be better off without me," Katie told him, her voice nearly monotone, though a hint of genuine pain underneath. "I'm useless. Ginny's so much better than I was as seeker. I cost the team the cup last year."
Oliver had worried that Katie had been carrying guilt for that all year, but the girl otherwise seemed happy. Teen depression was no joke, but I didn't think that was what was going on here. "Imperius?" I asked Percy. His mouth pinched as he considered it, and he nodded that he thought it was likely. Whispering, I told him, "Anything we get around her shield is likely to knock her off the broom." And I wasn't willing to rely on Dumbledore's fortune wards to somehow save her from hitting the ground starting this high up.
"The libertas charm…" he suggested.
"We still haven't gotten it to work!" I hissed.
Oliver had overheard and looked back at us, his eyes narrowing in conviction. I saw him moving his wand by his side, reminding himself of the wand gesture he'd seen in our research sessions. "Katie. Nobody cares about that. You're doin' a great job as chaser! Come back down, please!"
"You'll be better off without me," she stated again, almost like reading off a script.
"Fight it, Katie!" Oliver nearly shouted, then whipped his wand up, "Libero!"
The light of the spell spun silver and cerulean through the air, and it, like the unforgivables, punched right through her hasty shield. It splashed against her torso then flared out of her eyes. The glow was gone as fast as it had arrived, leaving her once again in the dim light from the tower, but I thought I saw her blink and shake her head. "How did I get… woah! Make a hole!"
She easily brought the broom down to the roof of the tower in the space we made for her, and stepped off shakily. Alicia and Angelina tackled the girl, sobbing, rapidly explaining how much they loved her in an indecipherable torrent of words. Several other students weren't far behind.
"Amazing!" Percy told Oliver, who was sagging in relief. "What did you feel?"
"Pride, I think," the quidditch captain told us. "I was just feelin' how much I respected her. How much I disagreed with what she'd been sayin'."
"Of course!" my other roommate exclaimed. "It is not how you are feeling, but about how you feel about the target. Forges a connection to allow their own self-confidence to overpower the curse." He looked more excited about solving the mystery of the spell than saving the girl, but I was sure he'd be concerned when the thrill of the puzzle faded. "Good job, Oliver! Penny will be so excited!"
For my own part, I was glad to finally have an answer to the spell and that Katie was safe, but something was nagging at the back of my mind. "She must have been commanded to send me away…" I thought out loud.
Mathilda, who'd extricated herself from the group hug, asked, "They knew you'd solve it? Needed you out of the way. No! They didn't try to stop any other upper-years. Any of us could have saved her eventually…"
"My blood," I told them. "This year has been all about trying to keep me alive to steal my blood. So either this was another distraction to keep you guys from interfering in another kidnap attempt, or…"
"Or they wanted to keep you out of danger!" Oliver shouted, staring down the doorway back into the castle. I whipped around and saw an immense shadow climbing up the spiral stairs, blotting out the torchlight from the stairwell. "Close the door!" Oliver yelled at those close by it.
It was the second-year crew, and they had enough run-ins with danger to not second-guess orders like that. Neville, Ron, and Seamus shouldered the heavy door closed, and Hermione yelled, "Colloportus!" to lock it.
They were almost too slow, because a moment later, there was a horrendous wet crash against the door, as if some massive beast was trying to shoulder it open. Even with the locking spell, the sturdy oak door flexed against its hinges. "Barricades!" I ordered the upper years close to me who could actually do those spells quickly.
Between Oliver, Percy, and Alexis, they quickly conjured chains and braces to hold the door as the rest of the kids backed out of the way. There were three more massive thuds against the door, but the buttressing held, and then it stopped. I held up a hand to halt the panicked talking and listened, hearing something heavy rasping against the stone steps, gradually fading away back down.
"That was not a gorgon, Harry!" Mathilda insisted.
Katie said, "But it was! The woman in the hood! That's who cursed me. I remember! I was studying in the library and she came up out of nowhere! Told me to do all those things!" Since she'd just had a near-death experience, I withheld chastising her for forgetting to travel in groups as if the problem had just been solved over the holidays. To be fair, I'd forgotten about it too, both times I'd gone to Dumbledore's office.
Hugging Mathilda with a squeeze that tried to convey "you were right," I said, "I don't think it's actually a gorgon… I think there's a monster, and a Death Eater who's a woman in a hood that likes to use the imperius."
The murmuring of the students seemed to generally imply that that made sense to everyone. I suddenly realized that I was hugging Mathilda as much out of sharing body heat as anything else, and, as the adrenaline wore off, everyone else started to shiver, realizing they were outside after dark in January in north Scotland.
Teeth chattering, Hermione asked what everyone was thinking, "Do… do you think it's safe to go back in?"
We waited another twenty minutes in the cold before the danger of freezing to death outside overcame the risk of the seemingly long-departed Slytherin's monster. We moved inside cautiously, slowly, checking around corners with our bronze mirrors.
"It basically has to be Pince," I explained, quietly, to the people at the front.
Mathilda confirmed, "Dean and Cormac were coming out of the library!"
Oliver added, "She was missin' at the Halloween feast!"
"And she came back from her librarian con this summer in a bad mood, and complaining about muggles," I finished.
Percy asked, "But where would she even get a basilisk?"
"Hopefully she can tell us when we… well, when Dumbledore confronts her," I shrugged.
"Thank Merlin!" McGonagall swore as the bulk of her house rounded the corner to the bottom of the Gryffindor stairs. "Where have you all been?"
"Long story," I told her, speaking for the group. "Basically, someone imperiused Katie to lure us up to the astronomy tower into an attack from the creature. We think it might have been Madam Pince."
"That is… unfortunate," the assistant headmistress' lips pursed. She quickly incanted a messenger patronus, sending her silver cat to say, "Albus. I've found the rest of Gryffindor. They believe Irma set the monster on them." The message away, she gestured us all up the stairs, "Everyone, back inside while we check."
Oliver, Mathilda, Percy, and I hung toward the back, dawdling on the way in, clearly hesitant to leave her to go confront the librarian alone.
McGonagall shook her head at our obstinance, but said, "Mr. Wood and Mr. Dresden are adults, and can make their own poor decisions for risk, but Mr. Weasley and Ms. Grimblehawk, please get inside."
"Be careful, Harry," Mathilda said, grudgingly, and gave me a kiss for luck. Percy gave Oliver a clap on the shoulder, before the two of them went into the Gryffindor common room.
"Now, why do you suspect Irma?" McGonagall asked, as Oliver and I flanked her and started heading toward the library.
We outlined our suppositions, and I finished with, "...and everyone kept thinking they saw a witch. I was thinking gorgon for the longest time, but it could have been a grown or nearly-grown woman leading around a basilisk. Cormac said he saw a big shadow."
"She has been acting more aloof since this summer," McGonagall admitted. "But I find it very hard to believe that she is a secret supporter of You-Know-Who!"
"Didn't you think the same thing about Quirrell?" I asked, remembering that he had been the muggle studies professor before leaving the school, becoming possessed, and returning to teach defense.
"Quirinus was too young to have had the opportunity, but it wasn't altogether shocking that he was turned," she explained. "Irma was at the school during most of the war and never showed any signs of being a traitor."
"Maybe someone convinced her at the library conference," I shrugged.
"Or put her under the imperius?" Oliver suggested.
I nodded. Apparently long-term cursed sleeper agents hadn't been unheard of, though few had the power to maintain the curse for that long, and only the truly weak-willed could be mind-controlled into casting unforgivables of their own. "Good thing we've got the libertas, now." McGonagall made a questioning noise, so I explained, "Oliver cracked it. That's how we saved Katie."
"I shall hold off on awarding points until the four of you can present your research, but very good!" she told us.
Oliver made a self-deprecating wave, "The big brains figured 't'out. I just had the opportunity."
"We'd still be stuck if it weren't for that opportunity, man," I told him.
Finally, we rounded the bend before the door into the library, and saw Dumbledore outside, having pulled off his spectacles to rub the headache from between his eyes. He noticed us arriving, and said, "Unfortunately, this has become more complicated."
Gesturing that it was safe to enter, we went inside and spied the frozen-but-still-flesh body of Madam Pince, sprawled near one of the walls, clearly having turned toward a window. Her witch's hat had fallen off her head in her flailing. I'd guessed she'd tried to look away, but caught the reflection in the glass.
Weirdly, the thing that stood out the most to me was her uncovered head. Most of the staff loved their pointy hats and wore them a lot, particularly Dumbledore, but I didn't think I'd ever seen Pince without hers. She kept her dark hair short, and it seemed to be thinning. A red line from the hatband was likely frozen into her forehead and temples.
"Can we check her arm?" I asked, pointing at the left forearm where the Death Eater tattoos were common.
Dumbledore waved his wand and her sleeve rolled up, clothing not caught in the paralyzation effect. Her pale arm was bare of any tattoos. "Alas, if Irma was behind this, the creature may have turned on her. It will be months before we can revive her and ask what happened."
I hoped we had months, because our best lead had just been yanked right from underneath us.
