A Note Before You Begin:
Thank you for clicking on my story! I hope you enjoy it!
I like to pretend that Cursed Child doesn't exist. I'm still in denial that it's considered canon. That being said, this story is based on book canon with some movie canon mixed in as I see fit. I have read all the books and seen all the movies numerous times, and things from extended canon I have researched on Pottermore and Harry Potter wikia. In places where the Harry Potter canon has gaps, I have filled in with my imagination.
I appreciate all reviews. Ask me questions, tell me about incongruencies, inform me of typos, guess what's going to happen next, complain about my portrayal of the characters - I love all reviews. You can review every chapter (much appreciated), you can review the last chapter, you can review only the exciting chapters, but please review!
PART ONE: IN VITAM
Chapter I: The Fool Upright
Even years later, I could not forget the accident. The details surrounding it have become hazy, of course. I'd had a night on the piss with my friends, and the rain had been coming down in buckets as I drove home guttered. My memory of those events was a blur of alcohol and cursing. The parts I remembered with clarity were the lorry's headlights filling my vision, my foot missing the brakes, and the seat being pulled from underneath me. The cold rain fell on my face as my fingers dug into the rough road until the skin broke. And then, I remembered it all sinking away until only a desperate voice remained:
"Take it. Take it from me."
A female voice, husky and strong, spoke to me. I couldn't see to whom the voice belonged, but I could feel the person reaching out to me. There was no need to specify what "it" was; I instinctively understood that I was being offering life. I wouldn't die lying on the side of the road, my hands scratching at the asphalt as I clung to my sorry existence. Instead, I would have a different life. A new life. Her life.
Of course, I took the offer. I grabbed hold of the extended hand and let myself be dragged away from the world I had known.
I didn't understand what happened exactly, but suddenly, I was no longer outside, bleeding on the rain-soaked road. I sat on a cold, tile floor, facing a line of porcelain sinks. Exposed pipes ran up the walls to meet the arched, stone ceiling. To my left was a row of four wooden stalls, and to my right was an old-fashioned door that was bolted shut.
Slowly, it dawned on me: I was in the lavvy.
Whoever the person had been, the one who'd dragged me here and given me a second chance at life, had dropped me in the lavvy.
Well, not that I could complain. I should just be happy that I was alive.
I had been left sitting on the floor with my legs sprawled out in front of me and my back leaning against the stone wall of the lavvy. From what I could see, I wore black loafers with white socks, a black skirt with a pleat, and a dark gray sweater. It wasn't my usual style, but I couldn't afford be picky. A new life shouldn't be taken for granted. Next to my right knee lay a dark brown stick that had been fashioned with some sort of handle, and beside that was a bookbag and a rumpled black cloth that might have been some kind of clothing. Resting on the cloth was a silver tiara.
Frowning, I picked up the tiara. A bird of some sort had been etched into the silver; its head was the center of the crown and its wings formed the sides. A blue gemstone was embedded in the bird's chest. Weird. What kind of life had the person brought me to? Was I to be some kind of princess? I sure as hell hoped not. I wasn't princess material.
"Marlene, did you succeed?"
I jumped at the sharp voice that came from somewhere to my right. When I'd looked around the lavvy earlier, I definitely hadn't seen anyone else. But now, a thin, silvery woman—her hair curling past her shoulders, her long face eternally sad, her gown like something from centuries ago—stood over me. No, not stood…hovered. Her slippers were at least ten centimeters off the ground, and now that I looked properly, I could see the porcelain sinks through the woman's dress.
A ghost. She had to be a ghost.
"Looks like I died after all," I muttered as my throat tightened and a suffocating weight settled in my chest. I wasn't ready to be dead. There was still so much I hadn't done. Things I'd said I'd do once I got myself together. Things I kept putting off… I'd be a better person if I was allowed to live. No more driving on the piss. I'd even attend church on Sundays. Well, some Sundays.
Even as I vowed to become a better person, a wave of anger passed through me. How dare the disembodied voice lie to me. I'd gotten my hopes up, thinking that I'd get a second chance, and now it turned out death had caught me anyway.
"No." The ghost lowered herself so that it appeared she was crouching on the floor. If I looked carefully, however, I could see the places where the transparent dress passed through the tiles. A shiver ran down my spine, and I had to look away.
"No, you are not dead," said the ghost. Her voice was curious rather than earnest, as if she wasn't really trying to convince me but rather wanted to see how I'd react. "You have simply traded places."
Definitely dead, I thought. I was probably a ghost as well. I hadn't been the sort to believe in ghosts when I'd been alive, but I was willing to admit when I'd been wrong. Of course, there was the slight problem of my legs not being transparent, but maybe there were rules to the afterlife that I didn't know yet. Perhaps this was simply limbo, and at any moment, I going to be plunged into eternal darkness or the fiery pits of hell. I didn't know what came next. I didn't want to know. I wasn't ready to be dead.
"Marlene said you would be confused and that I should be patient," said the ghost. "I did not agree with her decision, of course. I thought she could find a way to save them on her own, but she insisted that it had to be you. She said that you knew things she did not—which is ridiculous, because she had the diadem."
"'Traded places'?" I repeated. The ghost's words only just began to register with me. "What do you mean 'traded places'?" Last I remembered, I was dying on the side of the road. Who hated their life enough that they'd want to die in my place?
"It was a spell," said the ghost. "I don't rightly know how she found it, but I suppose the diadem helped."
"Spell?" My gaze drifted down to the stick on the lavatory floor, and something in my brain clicked. It was a wand. A wand like they had in fairy tales or Harry Potter. "Marlene is a witch."
"Yes." The ghost seemed pleased that I had managed to figure that much out. "She found a spell that would pass through the Veil and allow her to trade places with you."
"Hold on." My brain finally started to kick into gear, and I needed some time to catch up to what the ghost was saying.
The ghost sighed and folded her arms across her chest. I took that to mean she'd wait.
The first thing I realized was that I wasn't a ghost or dreaming. My body was solid, and I could feel the cold floor on my bare legs in a way that dreams didn't allow. The tightness in my throat eased a little, and I took a deep breath. Of course, it was still possible that I was dead. There was a ghost talking to me, after all. The ghost seemed to know a lot about the witch who had brought me to the lavvy. For now, it seemed best to listen to what she had to say. Finally, I looked up and said. "I'm ready. Tell me everything from the beginning."
The ghost nodded. Her gray eyes were wide as she looked over me. "I had expected you to cry. Marlene told me that you might cry."
"I'm not the crying sort," I said. The last time I had cried, I'd been seven and had broken my arm after my older brother had knocked me out a tree. Besides, I didn't think I was allowed cry over my situation. The witch had made the choice quite clear: I could die on the side of the road, or I could take the life she offered. I took the life. I had no right to complain now about what that life entailed.
"Good," said the ghost. "I dislike tears." She stood up then, towering over me. The ghost kept her feet on the ground, perhaps trying to make me feel a little more comfortable by being less ghost-like. She then ruined any chance of being thought considerate by sticking her nose in the air and, in haughty tones, saying, "I am Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower. My mother, Rowena Ravenclaw, was an exceptionally gifted witch, and one of the founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—the school whose lavatory in which you now sit."
My jaw dropped. Witches. Ravenclaw. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The words came right out of the Harry Potter books. But no, what the ghost was saying was impossible. There was no way I was sitting in a Hogwarts lavvy talking to Helena Ravenclaw after a witch saved me from death. No way. This had to be some kind of joke.
Helena, however, ignored my shock and continued speaking, "Over eight hundred years ago, my mother made a diadem with the power to give its wearer incredible intelligence. My mother wore it during her studies and became the greatest witch of her age." She glanced at me. "I was jealous of her and stole it. In the process of hiding the diadem, I was killed and the diadem was lost." She spoke quickly and curtly, making it clear that no questions were to be asked about this part of the tale. She had told the basics and that was all.
However, it didn't matter that she withheld the full story, because I had read all seven Harry Potter books, and I knew the details that had been left out. After the diadem had been stolen, Helena's mother had fallen ill and sent the Bloody Baron to bring back her daughter. The Baron, who had been in love with Helena, tracked her to Albania. When Helena resisted returning, the Baron killed her in a rage, and after seeing what he'd done to his beloved, the Baron killed himself. Now, they both walked the halls of Hogwarts as ghosts.
"I do not know how," said Helena, "but the diadem found its way back to Hogwarts. By way of a room that comes and goes as one has need of it."
"The Room of Requirement."
I hadn't thought it possible for a ghost to look surprised, but Helena certainly did. She opened her mouth once and then snapped it shut. Finally, she muttered, "Yes, Marlene told me that you would know things." Drawing herself to her full height, Helena said, "Marlene found the Room by accident last year. She walked alone through one of the corridors when a door appeared before her eyes that she had not seen before."
"What did she need?" I asked. None of this was in the books. The diadem was supposed to remain in the Room of Requirement until the Battle of Hogwarts. The ghost had gone off-script, and the story she told became less and less believable with each word. Which was saying something, because I found it to be pretty unbelievable to begin with.
"She did not know at the time," said Helena, "and if she did discover the reason, she chose not to share it with me. Though Marlene did tell me that she found in the Room what she did not then know she needed: the diadem." Helena looked down at me, eyes narrowed. "Pay attention. Marlene shared her story so that I might impart this knowledge to you."
I grimaced. "I'm listening."
"Marlene couldn't resist wearing the diadem. She needed it. She was no Ravenclaw." Helena added the last part as an afterthought. "The diadem gave her incredible intelligence and a thirst for knowledge. She spent endless hours reading, learning the history of the world and of the magic within it. She spent her sixth year at Hogwarts learning things beyond what I could comprehend. When the end of term came, she could not bear to part with my mother's diadem, so she brought it home with her. She spent the summer with her family in Aberdeenshire. During the day, she would be normal, fool Marlene, and then at night, she would put on the diadem and become brilliant, a mind beyond the headmaster himself."
"Albus Dumbledore?" I guessed.
Helena nodded. She watched me carefully, her gray eyes filled with a sort of hunger. She spoke of Marlene's desire for knowledge, but I had the feeling Marlene's desire paled in comparison to Helena's.
"During her studies, she became interested in the Veil. I did not know of it, at first, but she called it the door to death and through death, the door to others, for in death we are all united. She spoke of it fervently, telling me that the Veil is kept in the Department of Mysteries, one secret that has yet to be understood by even the brightest wizards. Even with the diadem, Marlene said, she understood only a fraction of its power. But after discovering it in her studies, Marlene wanted to see the door to death for herself. And so, she planned. One day, she accompanied her father to the Ministry of Magic, and when the opportunity arose, Marlene slipped away, put on the diadem, which she had transfigured into a hat, and ventured into the Department of Mysteries."
All of this was beyond me. None of the ghost's story had been in the Harry Potter books. Of course, I knew the terms the ghost used. I knew the Department of Mysteries where the Prophecy had been stored and the Veil where Sirius Black had died, but I knew nothing about Marlene finding Ravenclaw's diadem. I glanced down at the silver crown that rested on the floor beside my knee. So far, Helena had said nothing of the dark secret that lay within.
"She told me that she saw many wonders in the Department of Mysteries," said Helena, "but none so wonderful as the Veil. For in the depths of the doorway to death, she saw the shadows of people. She saw those who had died, those who were about to die, and those whose deaths were tied to hers." Helena paused for dramatic effect. "And as she looked deeper into the Veil, she saw the lights of the living. Not the living in her world, but in other worlds, tied to this one through the ever-growing shadow of death. Then, bound to her by threads of both light and darkness, she found you."
"Me?"
"You do not know why the Veil revealed you to Marlene," said Helena, "because you have not looked in a mirror yet."
"Why should I look in a mirror?" I asked.
Helena only gestured towards the porcelain sinks.
I didn't understand why Helena was making such a big fuss about the mirrors. However, it seemed she wouldn't continue with her story until I looked, so I got to my feet and begrudgingly made my way over to the sinks. In the spotless glass of the mirror, I saw my reflection. I was myself. The same heart-shaped face, same brown eyes, same pointed nose, same brown hair with the slightest hint of red—though currently, my hair was pulled back into a thick plait whereas I usually wore it loose. The one thing that did throw me off was the uniform. I'd seen the skirt and sweater when sitting down, but before now, I hadn't noticed the yellow and black tie.
"I'm...a Hufflepuff?"
"Oh, I know," said Helena. "Tragic house, in my opinion, but Marlene was quite fond of it. There's unfortunately nothing we can do about that, so you will have to learn to be hardworking, patient, and kind."
I had done the Pottermore sorting quiz last summer with my friends. I remembered laughing at some of the questions like "Black or white?" and "Which would you save—Merlin's book, student records, or the dragon pox cure?" Really, I'd thought, who in their right mind would save the student records? In the end, the house I'd gotten was Slytherin. I didn't know how reliable the Pottermore quiz had been, but I did know that Slytherin was supposed to be the exact opposite of Hufflepuff.
"Well?" Helena hovered behind me, her gray eyes watching expectantly.
I spared one more glance at the mirror. "It's me."
"No," said Helena with a smug smile. "That is Marlene."
The reflection in the mirror was not Marlene. The face might have been a little fuller, but it definitely belonged to me.
"Through the Veil, you were bound to Marlene in both light and shadow," said Helena. "You, she said, are another version of her from another version of this world. The same, and not the same. Forever linked in life and death."
This story had reached a whole new level of ridiculous. Now, this ghost was trying to convince me that my doppelganger had dragged me into a different world to be her replacement. As if I was fool enough to believe that.
"There were others too, Marlene told me," continued Helena. She either didn't notice my disbelief or chose to ignore it. "Some older, some younger, all in different worlds. But you stood out, she said, because you knew about Potter. By watching you, she learned that books existed in your world that foretold the future of ours. That made you her favorite. That, and you were the closest to her age."
"Closest to her age?"
"You were only a year older."
Only a year older? Then, Marlene was a seventeen-year-old witch who had managed to save me from the clutches of death. I knew Marlene supposedly had the help of a magical diadem, but the ghost could have at least come up with a more plausible story.
"She said there were some versions of her who were sixty and seventy. Some didn't speak English, and others married with children." Helena's eyes were glassy as she thought of the endless worlds Marlene had told her about. "She took a piece of the Veil with her, so she could watch you. And the others, of course, but mainly you. She watched, and she planned."
I looked up at the ghost and asked, in a sharper voice than I'd intended, "And did Marlene think it'd be fun to just drag me into this world for the hell of it?"
Helena frowned. "No. See, I do not rightly know. When Marlene came back to school for her seventh year, she was obsessed. I did not know any of this until only recently. Marlene came to find me one night, just a week into the new term, and she started rambling to me about finding my mother's diadem. I do not know how she figured out that I was Helena Ravenclaw—for here, I am known only as the Gray Lady—but she without doubt knew who I was, and she wanted my help." A shadow crossed over Helena's silvery face. She grew quiet for a moment, and I stared, waiting for her to admit that Tom Riddle had figured out the truth as well.
Surely, Helena knew. If Marlene had worn the diadem and figured out so much, surely she knew what the diadem contained and had told the ghost. But Helena admitted no such thing, and she continued talking in the same snobbish tone.
"Almost in hysterics, Marlene told me that through the Veil, not only had she discovered many worlds, but she had learned some of the future. She could not save 'them', she told me. I tried to tell her that with my mother's diadem, she could change the future, but she insisted that she was not the right person—she needed you to save 'them'. I did not know who 'them' referred to, and she did not tell me until she had calmed down. She said, 'The girl in the Veil who has read those books, she will know what to do.' She told me she knew a spell, using the piece of the Veil she had taken with her, that would allow her to trade places with you."
I didn't care how many premonitions of the future the diadem had supposedly revealed; no one in their right mind would want to trade places with me.
"She told me what to tell you," said Helena. "Then, after a few days of preparation, she brought me here to watch her cast the spell. If it worked, she said, then I should tell you this: 'You are now Marlene McKinnon, and you must save your family.'"
The ghost was off her head. That was obvious enough. I supposed it was a side-effect of being dead. Most likely, I had died and gone to some sort of afterlife, and somehow knowing that I was a Potter fan, the ghost was having a laugh pretending Hogwarts was a real place.
I caught sight of my face in the mirror again. It was more obvious now, of course, that it wasn't me. The face was fuller, and the eyebrows weren't plucked. While the tall height was the same, I had been all skin and bones, whereas this body had more muscle and seemed to belong to an athlete. The reflection was me, but also not me, and for a second, I wondered if the ghost's story was true.
No. That was impossible.
"Aye right." I turned to the ghost with a half-smile half-grimace. "Well, that must have taken a lot of time to come up with. Really creative. Hell of a good job. But seriously, where am I, and how the hell did I get here?"
The ghost sighed. "I had hoped you would believe me right away. Marlene told me to be patient with you, but patience has never been my strength." She gave a little sniff and then said, "You are now Marlene McKinnon, and if you do not believe me, pick up that wand and give it a wave."
I stared, and then slowly my eyes slid to the dark brown stick sitting on the floor beside the diadem. Marlene's wand. It had to be Marlene's wand. I didn't want to pick it up. If I did and magic actually happened then I would be forced to consider that the ghost hadn't invented the whole story.
I took a deep, shaking breath. When I'd been lying on the side of the road, I'd known that my life was ending and that death was the only thing that waited for me. Marlene had saved me from that. She'd offered me her life, and I'd accepted. In accepting, I'd agreed to endure whatever kind of life Marlene led. I hadn't cared what I'd have to do to survive, I'd only known that I hadn't wanted to die. If this new life meant being a seventeen-year-old Hufflepuff at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, well, so be it.
I leaned forward and picked the wand off the lavvy floor. I pointed it at the diadem and said the one spell that everyone who'd read Harry Potter knew off the top of their head. Swish and flick. "Wingardium leviosa."
Nothing happened.
It was a lie. It was all a lie, and I felt silly for believing it.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," snapped Helena. "You're saying it wrong. It's 'wing-gar-dee-um', not 'wing-ar-dee-um'. Good thing Marlene was not in Ravenclaw, or you would be exposed in a heartbeat."
"Well, it's not like I've ever done magic before," I muttered. Feeling even sillier, I raised the wand and tried again, copying Helena's pronunciation. "Wingardium leviosa."
The diadem lifted into the air.
I dropped the wand. The diadem fell to the ground with a clang.
"Watch it!" cried Helena. "That is my mother's diadem, you know."
I didn't care about Helena's whining. I could only stare as the wand rolled across the lavvy floor and then came to a stop. I let the feeling of despair wash over me. I'd done magic. It hadn't been faked. No trick of the light or suspended wires. I'd felt the magic flowing through me like summer's breeze. I'd willed it to lift the diadem into the air, and it had. And when I'd been surprised, I'd broken the flow of magic and the diadem had come crashing down. I'd done magic. I was a witch. What had Helena said? You are now Marlene McKinnon, and you must save your family.
I leaned back against the bathroom wall and slowly sank to the floor. I had promised to accept any life that Marlene gave to me as long as it was a life. I would've been a beggar, I would've been an accountant, I would've been an international spy—but a witch in a different world?
"The wand is black walnut and unicorn," said Helena. She didn't seem to notice or care that I was in the middle of wallowing. "I forget how many centimeters. But Marlene told me to tell you that. She also said to tell you to keep the diadem. You will need it in order to catch up to the seventh-year coursework, and you will probably need it to save her family. But I suppose it is your choice how you go about that. She did say you would know what to do."
Marlene McKinnon was barely side character in the Harry Potter series, one that I remembered almost nothing about. I only recalled the name because one of my friends had shipped Marlene with Sirius Black. What else was there to know? Marlene had been in the Order of the Phoenix, she had been friends with Lily Evans, and she had died in the First Wizarding War. Great. Just fucking great.
But if Marlene McKinnon died in the First Wizarding War, then…
I tipped my head back and stared up at the silvery ghost. Helena wore a curious expression on her long face.
"What is today's date?" I asked.
"The 18th of September, 1977. It is three o'clock in the morning, if you want to know."
Oh God, not only had I been dragged into the world of Harry Potter, I had been dragged into a time I knew next to nothing about. Had Marlene not known that the Harry Potter books took place in the 1990s? Had she not known that most of my knowledge was of events that occurred well over ten years from now? How was I supposed to save Marlene's family when all I knew about 1977 Hogwarts was that James Potter and Lily Potter were Head Boy and Head Girl, and they would fall in love and get married?
Well, I also knew that sometime after Hogwarts, Peter Pettigrew would betray the Order of the Phoenix and, with the help of Snape, set Voldemort on the Potters. Perhaps—perhaps—if Marlene had asked, I could have done something about that. But no. Marlene McKinnon, who was barely a side character, wanted me to save her family. No way. Impossible.
I supposed that I didn't have to save Marlene's family. I could pretend to be ignorant of the future like everyone else. As long as I cried and looked devastated at the news of my family's deaths, no one would be suspicious. And it wasn't like Marlene was here to hold me to my promise. Marlene had only left behind a ghost to watch over me, and it didn't seem like the ghost cared all that much if Marlene's family was saved or not. It would be easy, so easy, to just let it all go…
However, I owed Marlene for saving me. That was the deal. A life for a life. I had been called many things, but an ungrateful traitor I was not. I owed Marlene a debt, and if that debt had to be repaid by saving her family, then so be it.
"Have you truly read those books?" asked Helena softly, her thin lips pulled into a frown.
"Yes. All seven of them."
"Then you must know what is going to happen in our world?" asked Helena eagerly.
"I know some things," I murmured. "But not this. Marlene finding the diadem was never in the books."
My gaze landed on the diadem at my feet. The silver bird, which must be an eagle, was staring up at me through small, pinprick eyes. The crown was a relic of Rowena Ravenclaw, a diadem that gave the wearer incredible intelligence. It was the diadem that had brought me here; through its knowledge, Marlene had discovered the Veil and her doppelgangers, she had discovered the future, and she had discovered how to trade places. She had planned everything. It was odd, however, that Helena had not yet mentioned how the diadem contained a piece of Voldemort's soul.
Perhaps Helena didn't know. After all, she'd told me that she didn't know how the diadem had gotten from her hiding spot in Albania to the Room of Requirement. Of course, it was possible that she was lying, but at the moment, I had no choice but to take Helena's words as truth. Helena didn't know that the diadem was a horcrux, and she'd repeated to me everything Marlene had told her. Then, the question was, had Marlene lied to Helena? She was the one who'd been wearing the diadem all summer. Had she known it was a horcrux? Had the fragment of Voldemort's soul spoken to her as his diary had spoken to Ginny Weasley? I didn't know. I would probably never know, because Marlene McKinnon had traded places with me and was probably now dead in a hospital in Aberdeenshire.
So where to go from here?
I couldn't stay in the lavvy forever. I would have to go out there and act like Marlene McKinnon, seventh-year Hufflepuff…even though I couldn't use any magic beyond wingardium leviosa, I had no idea how to get around Hogwarts or where the Hufflepuff common room was, I didn't know what classes Marlene was taking or who she was friends with, and I was going to make a terrible Hufflepuff.
"Well, aye right then." I got to my feet, ignoring the slight trembling in my hands. I was going to do this. I wasn't entirely certain who I was supposed to save or how I was supposed to go about it, or why exactly Marlene chose me, but I was going to do my best. A promise was a promise, and I owed Marlene for this second chance at life.
I picked up the bookbag and slipped the diadem inside. Then, I inspected the rumpled, black cloth that lay on the floor. It was Marlene's robes, the yellow and black Hufflepuff badge gleaming on the chest. As I slipped the robes on over the uniform, something fell onto the lavvy floor with a clang. I glanced down and saw what looked to be a shard of glass, about the length of my index finger.
"The Veil," said Helena.
I didn't understand how a piece of veil could resemble glass. Curious, I crouched down next to it and picked up the shard.
Or, at least, that's what I intended to do.
The moment my skin touched the glass, hot pain seared through my hand, as if I'd grabbed fire. I dropped the shard back onto the floor. I thought a saw a flash of white on the surface of the glass, but moments later, I was certain I'd imagined it.
"What happened?" asked Helena eagerly. "Did it hurt you?"
"No." I examined my hand, but there were no markings to show what had just happened.
I stared down at the piece of the Veil. Had it burned Marlene like this too? The door way to death, she'd called the Veil. The shard had been part of the spell to switch places. Briefly, I wondered if the shard could help me create a spell to return to my old life. But no, I quickly reminded myself, there was nothing left of me in that world to go back to.
With a sigh, ignoring the burning sensation on my fingers, I picked up the shard and tossed into Marlene's bookbag. When I looked up, I saw that Helena had been watching me with an inscrutable expression.
"Do you know how to get around the castle?" asked Helena. "Was that in your books?"
"Some things were," I said, getting to my feet. "Not that." I glanced over at the ghost. "I don't suppose Marlene told you how to get into the Hufflepuff common room?"
"Of course, she did," said Helena.
I could feel the strap of the bookbag digging into my shoulder. The diadem rested inside, the edge of the crown digging into my hip. To think, a piece of the door to death and a piece of Voldemort's soul all in this bookbag. I shook my head. Nothing good would come of Ravenclaw's diadem. I knew that now as certain as I knew… Well, there wasn't much I was certain of anymore. I wasn't even certain who I was anymore.
I made my way across the lavvy, and Helena followed, her slippers drifting above the floor. Under her breath, Helena recited everything she'd been told. "She said you must tap the barrel in middle of the second row in the rhythm of 'Helga Hufflepuff'. The seventh-year girls' common room is up the left staircase and two doors down. Her bed is the one furthest from the door. Your time table is in the drawer beside her bed. Oh, she spoke with a Scottish accent as well so you won't need to change that…"
No, I knew who I was. I was Marlene McKinnon.
And with that thought, I opened the lavvy doors and stepped out into the corridor beyond.