The correct answer was provided by the ever lovely and talented JoyfulSky67:Seventy-three) Gibberish. fjfngntiIeagerlyawaitcjfjdkcgthisnextadventurelfngnt dkglydarlingslytherindj gktIpredictgreatthingstocomegltidncso many options. i choose 2 because everyone knows for severe allergies (whether literal or literary) you need at least 2 avenues in which to pursue relief.
DESPITE the failure to capitalize the 'I' in the second sentence, just gaze at that alliteration, folks! That avoidance of dangling prepositions (though technically the grammar would want a 'with which' there rather than an 'in which')!
Also correct was MelasMelos with the deadpan (and quoted!) "Gibberish ".
Greetings to all you Beings and Sentients! Welcome to "Summer" in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in Southern Hemispheric Type Places. May our inevitable deaths via Ozone destruction hold off another year!
When one lives in a country where bankruptcy is regularly achieved through the pursuit of healthcare, one would do well to avoid the pursuit of healthcare. Furthermore, if one suspects one requires an indefinite amount of healthcare, one should probably ignore that brewing shitstorm and continue to pretend everything is fine.
Hello. Everything is fine. I'm only mostly dying. But look! I published more thing!
Content: Crumb Ridden Bedsheets, Emptied Hair Potion Containers, Panic Attacks, Rude Margin Doodles, Multiple Pajama-Clad Confrontations (occasionally sans trousers), swearing, snark, idiocy, non-sexual nudity, blatant injustice from authority figures
Disclaimer: You would know if I owed Harry Potter. Trust Me. You would know.
Chapter 5 Correlation Implies... Complication
~*TNT*~
Draco hadn't smirked since storming off to Professor Snape's office after breakfast, and the tension was no longer something Tracey could just pretend to ignore.
She stole a glance over her shoulder toward the armchairs by the fireplace.
"Leave it alone," Daphne said without looking up from her Potions notes.
Tracey swallowed a retort and tried to emulate the smooth disaffection Daphne embodied so perfectly. "But he isn't saying anything," she replied without even gritting her teeth. She tried to flick her eyes back toward the armchairs without moving any other part of her body.
Daphne elbowed her in the ribs.
"Leave it alone," Daphne repeated.
Tracey wanted to scream. She wanted to stand up and demand that everyone just use actual words for once instead of coy half gestures and expressions.
Instead, she hunched over her textbook like a good little girl and forced herself to think about density and its effect on liquid ingredient interactions.
"You know..." Blaise murmured in a leading voice. Tracey tried to peer across the table at him from under her eyelashes and eyebrows. It made her very eyeballs ache, but the change was nice for her bruised ribs. "I heard he told McGonagall he was after Potter's dragon…"
Tracey couldn't help it. She flinched.
She'd been the one to bring up Harry Potter that night. Draco wouldn't have left if she'd just kept her bloody mouth shut. What if that was the reason he hadn't looked at her all day? What if that was why Daphne had been acting weird? What if Daphne stopped being her friend for this? She couldn't lose Daphne if Draco turned on her! Not that Daphne was likely to stick by her if Draco turned…
"Is this supposed to be an interesting factoid?" Tracey heard Daphne's voice drawl. She giggled once or twice, careful not to overdo it but making a point of supporting Daphne.
She glanced left for the Verdict. Daphne's hand didn't so much as hesitate in the even, rounded quill strokes.
Tracey swallowed and tried to maintain her demure calm.
"I'd be more interested in whether or not he found them." Blaise's voice invited snickering. Tracey wasn't sure how anyone could possibly laugh about Draco slowly turning into a dementor since first period, but Blaise was an entity unto himself.
"Filch caught Potter with Weasley and Longbottom," said Daphne. Tracey could hear her teeth gnashing around the words. "Keep your voice down."
Blaise lolled his head on his fist in a belligerent display of thoughtfulness. "Don't know how a midnight detention is a suitable punishment for a midnight assignation," he said, not keeping his voice down. Tracey didn't risk moving a muscle. Her eyeballs burned from watching Blaise. He straightened and made some careless gesture she'd never be able to mimic. "Then again, I'm by no means an expert," he said turning a page he hadn't read. He looked up, tawny gold eyes boring into hers, and grinned. "On discipline. I'm great at midnight assignations."
Tracey held herself so still, she was positive she'd fly into a million pieces at any second. Next to her, Daphne set her quill at a precise 45-degree angle across her parchment.
She stopped pretending to review potions all together. This was far too important, and she could not miss any cues Daphne might give. Across from her, Millie gave every indication that she'd gone temporarily deaf, while across from Daphne, Blaise wore an expression Tracey wanted to punch.
"If you don't mind," said Daphne, staring at Blaise with a coldness Tracey envied. "Some of us prefer to study in silence."
At that moment, watching Blaise's grin fade from his face, Tracey would have given anything to not be the Davis Disgrace. She would have never been able to get Blaise to back down. She would never be allowed the grace, poise, the self-assurance to say something like that, wait a few moments, and then pick up her quill again like nothing happened.
Tracey had never resented Daphne more, yet had never been so desperate to maintain their alliance.
"How often do you suppose students die in detention?" Millie asked, wrenching Tracey from her musings. "I mean, I doubt it's something they'd publicize or record, but why else hold a detention at midnight?" Millie's voice was the picture of casual innocence.
In her peripherals, Tracey saw Daphne's quill catch. Little dots of red spattered the parchment.
Tracey yearned to check Blaise's reaction but she didn't dare. Not now. Not with Daphne in such a mood.
She could hear Millie flipping through her book, which meant Millie was ignoring Daphne, which meant Tracey had to ignore Millie as hard as she possibly could. She could only hope that Blaise wouldn't take up the "dead Draco" narrative (despite Millie's open defiance) because then Daphne would have to declare some position which would open them both up to further, or at least blatant, insubordination, and Daphne would be-
"A midnight detention would shroud his disappearance in mystery..." Blaise commented. He actually rose halfway out of his seat to get a better look at the armchairs. "Though I can't imagine that the Malfoy heir could disappear even if he tried," he added with an exhaled sort of laugh.
Tracey felt the corners of her mouth twitch.
She couldn't help it.
The idea that anyone would try to kidnap Draco? On purpose?
Daphne capped her inkwell and tossed her hair. Tracey felt her stomach vanish. She tried to cover for her mistake, but Daphne's slim, pale hands had already set her quill on the cleaner. "Excuse me," she said, assembling her things in a neat stack. "I believe I'm better suited elsewhere."
Tracey immediately reached down for her own bag to follow.
"Oh no, Darling." The sweetness in Daphne's voice chilled Tracey's blood. She swallowed and slowly straightened up to meet Daphne's dispassionate eyes. "I'd hate to interrupt you."
Tracey watched, oddly numb, as Daphne rose and sashayed over to the group on the couches. Her chest felt vacuous: sucking down air she couldn't breathe. Draco was over there. Everyone was over there. She'd finally gone too far. Messed up beyond what could be tolerated, even from the Davis Disgrace. She may as well-
"Pansy or Theo?" Blaise whispered.
Tracey almost didn't trust her ears. She snapped a glance at him to check, but he wasn't looking at her.
Millie didn't miss a beat. "Theo," she said, just as quietly. She looked past Tracey, blatantly ignoring her, to watch Daphne.
Tracey, trapped in some sort of bizarre nightmare, turned fully sideways in her chair to watch Daphne too. What did she care about subtlety? The only person who'd stop her was walking away with her skirt lapping against the backs of her knees. Her golden hair was an unbound silken cape over her tailored waistcoat, and her bag didn't even presume to bounce against her hip.
Daphne breached the ring of couches and paused. There were only three places to sit. The empty armchair across the hearth from Draco was the most obvious choice to Tracey, but the Twins and Pansy both had open space on their respective couches.
"S'gotta be Pans," Blaise breathed. Tracey glanced back. They were both so calm! It wasn't fair! She'd blown her one friendship, and they were just sitting there like this was somehow the most boring amusement ever. Millie wasn't even looking up from her book!
She didn't huff, but she turned back like the answer would suddenly appear now.
The firelight flickering over Draco's face teased the possibility of movement, but the set of his jaw and the tension in his arms said he would happily atrophy in his armchair before he moved a centimeter. She could just barely see the closely shorn lawn of Crabbe's hair and his massive forehead where he leaned against Draco's chair from his seat on the carpet. The boy seemed to be levitating some sort of wrapper to himself. Goyle must have been laying on the floor because she couldn't see him at all.
Daphne glanced left towards the Notts, whose curls made the backs of their heads nearly indistinguishable, then at the two empty seats on Pansy's couch.
Tracey could have sworn she caught a flicker where Pansy's profile partially obscured Crabbe. The flicker might have been some rude face to warn Daphne to one of the seats farther away from Draco. Of course, it could have also been the normal Pansy unpleasantness… She might have imagined the flicker entirely! Why did this sort of thing have to be so complicated!?
"She might pick the armchair," Tracey heard her voice say.
"Not the point," Millie dismissed.
Tracey didn't even care. She'd already ruined her chances of ever being accepted among these people. What was the point?
Daphne tossed her hair and settled on the end of the Notts' couch.
No one seemed to move, but Tracey couldn't see Pansy's profile anymore.
"Oh, she did not-" Blaise started, but Millie cut him off.
"Pansy said her skirt was cute this morning." Tracey wanted to slam her forehead into the table.
Of freaking course.
"So?" Blaise scoffed. "It's Pansy."
She'd thought that too! 'Cute' is usually a compliment no matter who it comes from!
"She also said it was skippy," Millie replied, settling artfully into her chair. A smirk tugged on the corners of the brunette's mouth. Blaise just looked annoyed.
She found herself resenting the ease of their exchange and openly gawked at the pair of them. She'd already ruined her prospects. What more harm could a little blatant eavesdropping do?
Blaise leaned back in his chair to match Millie. His eyes skated past Tracey's stare without concern to consider the couches with pursed lips. "What'd Hermione do?" he asked.
Millie smirked harder. It wasn't fair. "Hermione said she wished her father would let her have skippy skirts. She said they'd probably be easier to move in than full length."
And Tracey had ignored both of them. She'd thought Daphne would consider herself above their opinions. So Tracey had fixed her hair and waited for Daphne like an idiot to walk to breakfast as usual. She should have said something. She should have made some cutting comment about Pansy's stupid 'waist trainer'. Maybe she could have commiserated with Hermione about full-length skirts or petticoats or something.
Blaise's quiet chuckle drew her from her foul mood. "You lot have the fun dorm." She wanted to laugh; wanted to snort; wanted to jump to her feet, to slam her hands on the table, and to yell that none of any of this was 'fun'. "All the idiots in mine ever do is grunt and hog the mirrors."
Tracey coughed as judgmentally as she could and packed up her things. She was too tired, too frustrated, too… just done with this entire disaster of a day and she still had to find a way back onto Daphne's good side before bed.
Maybe she'd just empty Millie and Pansy's hair potions down the sinks or scatter biscuit crumbs in their sheets after a nice long scalding hot shower.
Somewhere a clock struck nine.
~*TNT*~
Theo wasn't exactly sure what was happening. He knew he was supposed to be asleep but he was pretty sure he wasn't asleep, and his brain couldn't seem to grasp why. So he staggered along, debating whether or not this was some freakishly elaborate dream, while a panicked voice kept up a half- mumbled rant behind him.
"Not there," the voice said while disembodied hands grabbed a chunk of his pajamas before he managed to run into a wall. "We gotta keep going." Theo was fairly certain the disembodied hands belonged to the disembodied voice. "Can't stop. Not yet." At least, that seemed logical. "C' mon!"
Theodore Demetrius Nott had never rushed a day in his life unless Hermione was involved. He did not see why a disembodied voice, possibly attached to hands, would have the gall to not only assault the sanctity of his person, but to then also address him in that tone of-
Ice cold skin brushed his bare neck. A magical aura laced with fear and desperation caressed him like the sort of blackness that crawls over the eyeballs and munches on exposed flesh.
The jolt of it made him stumble, dislodging the hand, but the voice didn't shut up. "Ran for it. Nothing to be done." Theo, in the choking daze and confusion, did not have many charitable feelings for the voice's apparent and increasing distress. "Dog ran too. S'only natural." What was it with everyone and dogs all of a sudden? Why couldn't the voice bother Hermione with their dog rant!?
Theo was still struggling to wake up (and he hadn't really wanted to listen in the first place) so he tuned the voice out to try to get his bearings.
Stairs, his leaden legs told him. We're climbing up the stairs.
Hermione was obviously still asleep, blissfully unaware of the dog-obsessed voice, and she kept flooding his mind with mystical white lights and dreamscapes through their bond. The distraction featured a warm, floaty feeling that was throwing off his ability to climb stairs. Besides, she was wasting half their processing power and analytical skills on that stupid drivel.
He nearly tripped and had to fling out a hand to catch himself on the wall. Naturally, that patch of limestone had a chunk of coral or some other aquatic nuisance's desiccated corpse and it scraped him.
His palm stung, and his feet weren't right, so he'd probably lost a slipper, but the hands tugged him on anyway.
The voice kept panting moist, sticky air all over his personal space, annoying him further. It didn't even have the courtesy to babble about sensible or interesting topics. It was basically just talking to pant. What was so fascinating about leaving someone for a dog, his brain wondered? Dogs weren't even that useful.
He felt some sort of emergence: like the air opened up around him. His legs reported they'd run out of stairs.
To top everything else off, the voice's hands would occasionally brush his skin and send spikes of incoherent terror through him. The spikes would then conveniently obliterate his train of thought just as he was starting to figure out what in Mother's name was happening.
Theo did not appreciate this.
In fact, Theo was quite ready to thoroughly curse everything he could reach, find his left slipper, and head back to bed.
Pale hands seized his shirt, shoving him up against a hard smooth surface. Theo knew it was smooth because the hands tried to shake him. Ironically, this snapped everything into focus.
It was like he'd finally opened his eyes or his brain found his hands. Theo had his wand at Draco's throat and his fist in Draco's hair before the boy could finch. In the next heartbeat, Theo whirled him around and pinned him before the blond could retaliate. Only the dead leaf debris crushed in his fist and the panting fogging up the viewing bay window gave him pause.
Well, that, but also the fish swimming past Draco's blotchy reflection, flashing their silver scales in the murky green light. "Wait," Theo said, not easing his hold. "That's not... What?"
Draco, his expression hunted and slightly crazed, launched into another gibbering rant, seemingly unconcerned that his best friend had him at wand point. Theo didn't listen to a word of it and tried to figure out what happened.
Thinking was easier than it had been, but Draco was still frantic, and their auras were still engaged. Theo fought through Draco's panic and his own mounting annoyance:
There shouldn't be fish. They'd walked too far for fish. He distinctly remembered walls and carpet. They'd run out of stairs, for Mother's sake!
"Hermione."
Theo snapped his attention back to Draco, but the blond's eyes were locked on a third silhouette in the glass. He instantly dropped Draco, spinning to face the new combatant.
Theo then skittered out of the way just as quickly. He didn't dare make eye contact, not after pulling a wand on her. He backed a couple more steps away, just for good measure, noticing Draco had dragged them to one of the viewing alcoves between the bookcases on the main floor of the common room. In his periphery, he kept tabs on possible retribution from his sister.
As usual, her hair was the first thing he noticed. Her face could lie, but her hair gave away her most important emotions when she blocked out the bond. Dulcey tied it up with a satin scarf every night, but such flimsy fabric was not made to contain her hair. The castle seemed to dampen the sparking, so instead the curls would simply expand when angered.
Judging by the escaped floof dancing between her blazing eyes, his baby sister was extremely angered.
Theo took another step away from Draco.
"What." Her voice slapped across his face like Zabini with a wet towel. "Do you think." Her night robe had been hastily tied, but the cord was slowly losing to her strides and the thick Persian carpets. "You are doing!?"
"Draco woke me up," Theo blurted.
Hermione ignored him, shoving him into one of the velvet drapes framing their alcove. Theo decided she hadn't been addressing him in the first place, and therefore the manhandling wasn't strictly personal or malicious. Contrary to the bruises he could feel blooming.
At least it hadn't been his casting arm, he consoled himself, rubbing his shoulder and crushing the drape between his back and the bookcase as he strove to achieve some approximation of 'casual.' He might have sulked while Hermione pawed through Draco's hair and over his robes. Her fingers lingered over the bits of dead leaves and a cut on his cheekbone. Theo had a scrape on his hand that burned like Brigid's flames, but Draco rolling through a forest apparently took precedence.
Theo caught another wallop of Draco's terrified aura and he jerked his gaze up. Hermione had her hands on either side of the blond's face. It was like she'd resorted to trying to force him to calm down by overwhelming his aura.
"You could help instead of questioning me, you know," she snapped without looking at him.
"My hand hurts," he muttered in a huff, but he focused on breathing evenly and the feel of a cool library during summer rains.
Finally, she moved her hands to Draco's lapels and said, "Tell me."
Draco gulped and looked away as soon as she released his face. "I ran all the way back," he whispered. Theo had to lean forward in his casual lounge to catch it. "I don't know what happened to the dog. It might have eaten-"
"I am not concerned about the dog," said Hermione.
For once, Theo thought.
"What happened to you?"
Another shuddering gulp. "Scared Longbottom. Made him send up sparks. Thought it'd be funny."
"Why were you alone with Longbottom."
Draco twitched. His wand hand fiddled with the edge of his sleeve. "We were looking for it. There was so much blood… There was no way it'd be alive, but the oaf thought we'd…" Draco's eyes stopped focusing. Hermione stroked his face a few times, and Theo thought about the lilies by Mama's pond in the wild garden. Draco's arms wrapped around his middle and he dropped his chin. "There was no way it'd be alive. We'd lost the path."
"Why would you need a path for detention?" Hermione interrupted.
"We had to go into… into the… the forest," Draco whispered, seeming to cringe from the word itself. "They said we had to do something useful." He glanced up for approval.
"I see." Theo could see more floof poking out the top of her scarf. "So you'd lost the path with Longbottom…"
Draco shook his head and looked away. "Potter," he whispered. "Longbottom got scared, so they put me with Potter." Theo edged a step or two closer. "The blood lead away, and we lost the path. Potter saw it first." Draco's eyes drifted past them, back to the forest. "The Unicorn." Tears, actual tears, streaked down his face. "It wasn't right. Legs were wrong." He was almost hyperventilating.
"We're going to sit. Will you sit?" Hermione asked. She twined her arm through his and helped him slide down the glass wall. "We're inside and under the lake. The forest is on the other side of the castle. We're safe. You're here with us." She shot Theo a menacing glare that seemed to negate their supposed safety. "You're. Safe. And. We're. Next. To. You," she grit out.
Right.
Theo scrambled forward to sit on Draco's other side.
"Nothing else matters. Just us. Just this," Hermione cajoled.
"It moved wrong," Draco muttered. "Couldn't see the legs. Too low-"
Hermione grabbed Draco's hand. Both their knuckles were white. "You made it out. Nothing else matters. None of this is your fault."
"It was… It was…" Choked breath. "It was drinking it. Had it all over."
"You're safe. You're here with us."
"I think I screamed. Someone screamed. Looked up. Looked at us."
"Theo, for once would you just get out of your brain and help me!?"
Her voice and the hearty mental jerk shook him out of his horrified daze. Theo felt somewhat sheepish as he grabbed Draco's arm from around his stomach and laced their fingers together. The dread and horror were so strong he had to grit his teeth and force himself through Mama's lullaby.
"I ran," Draco begged. "Me and the dog, but Potter-"
"There's not a thing on this Earth that could touch precious Harry Potter," Hermione snapped, her frustration bleeding into his. "The fact that they would send the direct heirs from two Sacred Houses and The Bloody Boy Who Lived into the Forbidden Forest at night without a member of faculty…" she sputtered. "With a man who isn't even a Hogwarts graduate... It's… It's grounds for a full Inquiry!"
"I ran," Draco whispered.
"Of COURSE you ran!" Hermione practically snarled. "I'd run too! I don't even think that man's allowed a wand! You're all underage, and the only fully grown wizard wasn't even armed!?"
"He had a crossbow," Draco offered.
"Oh and that's supposed to make it alright?" Hermione demanded, but Theo's lips twitched. "They could have his job for this. And Filch! He knew. That makes him a conspirator in the attempted murder of an heir. Two heirs! Potter's an only child, right? Three heirs!"
"I think he's a halfblood," Theo murmured. Draco's hand was getting warmer. His grip relaxing.
"Oh alright fine," Hermione huffed. Theo could hear her eyes roll. "Two counts of attempted murder of Sacred Heirs and two counts of attempted murder of minors."
"There's also criminal negligence," Theo pointed out encouragingly.
"Thank you, Theodore. Criminal negligence. I bet if Father spun it right, we could pin that one on Snape too." Draco twitched. "Wait, no. Forget Snape; we could pin that one on Dumbledore. It's his school. Why is his staff running around the forest at midnight trying to murder twelve-year-olds?"
Draco huffed a breath through his nose and pulled out of Theo's grip to rub at his face. "There's no way you'd get Dumbledore." Theo caught the smirk he tried to hide behind a sneer.
"Wanna bet?" Hermione challenged. "In the morning, you write to your parents. We'll write to Papa. Between the Duchess, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, and the Notts… Well, we're bound to get someone."
"Just can't get Snape," Draco declared, pulling out of Hermione's hold too. "He's kind of my godfather."
"Really?" Theo asked, wrinkling his nose. "He doesn't act like it."
Draco shrugged, already shifting to his feet.
"Fine. We'll leave Snape," Hermione declared. "But at the very least the one who split you up to go by yourselves needs to get sacked," She clambered to her feet, half tripping on her robe and sleep gown. Theo followed.
Hermione grabbed Draco's waist in a quick hug. "They won't get away with this," she promised. Draco blundered and squirmed a bit, trying to somehow escape like a gentleman. Theo hid his grin and leaned against his bookcase.
"Er, yeah. I'll just… Right. I'm tired." He shot Theo half a nod and darted away before there could be any more affectionate displays.
"And I was sleeping so peacefully," Hermione sighed, coming up to lean against Theo.
"You think he'll make it down all the stairs?" Theo asked, not trying to suppress his amusement.
"Oh, he's fine." Hermione waved him off and sauntered away. "He fled affection. He can handle stairs."
"Are we really telling Father?" he asked, trailing after her towards an empty table.
"We have to. We can probably leave out the part where we're going to have an extinct guard dog soon, but he should factor in the stone at least."
"You know how he feels about withholding information," Theo murmured.
Hermione hummed absently, picking through the quill stand for something that wasn't totally mutilated. "I'm sure the only Philosopher's Stone in existence will mollify him."
Theo settled into one of the chairs and pulled a piece of scratch parchment from the drawer. "Maybe we'll get lucky." He snagged the stand's extra quill trimmer to cut a rude doodle off their scavenged parchment. "Maybe he'll be so busy trying to figure out how a psycho with a vampire fetish for unicorns got past him, that he won't think too deeply about how we know so much about the stone." Hermione snorted and snatched the parchment. Not discouraged, he scrambled after her. "Maybe the Duchess will fly into one of her rages again, and he'll have to help Lord Lucius with the bodies!" he said, leaning over her shoulder.
She elbowed him out of her space. "Or maybe we should be grateful there's another week of school," Hermione replied darkly.
~*TNT*~
"DIRBY!" Thoros roared, exploding into his study in a whirl of dressing gown and poorly suppressed emotion. He didn't bother acknowledging the crack in the vicinity of his bare knees as he strode across the carpet. "We missed something."
"Could it be trousers, ma laird?" the elf asked in sardonic Gaelic.
"Something important," Thoros snapped, snatching one of the heavy, leather-bound books from the wall of shelves behind his desk and shoving it at the elf before immediately reaching for more.
"Of course, ma laird. My apologies," said the obviously unapologetic elf.
Thoros shoved a fourth ledger at him. "The forest would be under 'Hogwarts', correct?" he barked, his hands pausing over The Compendium of Unaffiliated Territory.
"Aye, ma laird," Dirby replied.
Thoros grabbed the massive tome on the bottom of Dirby's stack, nearly toppling the elf; marched over to his desk chair; and unceremoniously dropped into it with a 'whuff' of too rapidly depressed upholstery. The book made a dispirited 'thunk' when Thoros flipped it open to a random page. Dirby whimpered. The sound was lost, though, amidst the symphony of whipping parchment.
Many abused pages later, Dirby cleared his throat with no grace. "Unless ma laird isn't referring to a forest on the castle's grounds or any of its associated properties…?" The voice sounded distinctly strained. Thoros grunted inquiringly, pausing mid page flip. The standard likeness of some long dead ex-headmaster cringed away from his thumb. Dirby rushed to fill the silence. "Hogwarts forests include The Founder's Forest, renamed the "Forbidden Forest" in Ministry year 1974; the unnamed kelp forest of the Black Lake; the remaining trees of the-"
"Dirby," Thoros said, pinning the stack with a glare.
"Aye, ma laird?"
"I intend to determine what, exactly, is living in The Founder's Forest. Do you intend to aid me or hinder me?" He bit out every consonant and bared his teeth more than once but overall, Thoros was quite pleased with himself for keeping an even tone.
Dirby sent his stack of ledgers back to their places and hopped onto the upper left corner of the desk. Thoros sat back in his chair, gripping the arms to ground his frustration, as the elf flipped a stack of pages nearly as thick as his palm was wide.
Thoros glanced at the heading:
Occupants of The Founder's Forest, Also Known As The "Forbidden" Forest (see Occurrences of Note: June, M.Y. 1974): Acromantula - Arboreal Yellow- Caped Spiny Rat
The list of the so-called 'Arboreal Yellow-Caped Spiny Rat's' natural predators wasted most of the bloody page. The list, he noted with increasing impatience, was alphabetized and mind-numbingly comprehensive.
"Skip to the unicorns."
Dirby turned each page like a mother with an infant. Thoros grit his teeth and glowered at the correspondence window, refusing to fidget. Several moments later, the elf gave a jerky sort of twitch and stopped. Across the top of the page:
Occupants of The Founders' Forrest, Also Known As The "Forbidden" Forrest (see Occurrences of Note: June, M.Y. 1974): Unicolored Arboreal Edible Rat cont. - Vampyr Mosp
"Reference Ledgers only record current occupants. If you wish to see the full list of occupants for the Founders Forest-"A sudden entry for a Valcore, a very lost Valcore, appeared, complete with its typical diet, habitat preferences, basic description, magical qualities, behavior, and natural predators ("none"). "- also known as the Forbidden Forest, then records extend back to Ministry Year 926." The entry disappeared shortly thereafter, but Thoros stared at the page until the neat black words swam before his eyes. "All daily populations are finalized at sundown, and-"
"Dirby," he said, his every muscle clenched. "There aren't any unicorns on this list."
"Aye, ma laird. I was just sayin'-"
He shoved himself away from the desk, nearly toppling his chair. Dirby fell silent. "Something was in that forest drinking unicorn blood less than EIGHT hours ago," Thoros ranted, striding about and running a hand through his hair.
"Aye, ma laird, if you would just-"
"NO! I want to know WHAT it was, WHERE it came from, and HOW it got so close!" Behind him, Rawlly appeared with the fireplace service but she took one look at them and vanished. This only made Thoros's mood blacken. "We have records on the way the bloody minister takes his bloody tea, yet we don't know what could be killing unicorns on the same grounds my children sleep!? Unacceptable! Get me-"
"Ma laird."
Thoros froze and turned toward the elf. It was all but impossible to kill Dirby, but Thoros was sorely tempted at that moment to test the limits of the elf's mortality. He almost reached for his wand, but Dirby hadn't finished.
"The only known unicorn predators are humans," the elf stated deadpan.
Thoros froze, his mind coming alive with possibilities and implications and avenues of possible response. He hardened his gaze and his comportment for combat, striding back to his chair. "Get me the records for the last six months of Founders Forest Occupants, specifically the unicorns," he growled.
Dirby snapped his fingers, sending the Hogwarts Ledger back to its shelf, and pulled wispy shadows of pages from the very air itself. "Progressive or Regressive timing, ma laird?"
"Progressive. I want to know when this started," he said, his eyes on the ghostly yellowed pages hovering over Dirby's right shoulder. The elf nodded, and the first page soared forward to lay itself on the dark green blotter before him: its corners perfectly square. The charcoal grey letters of the page's heading were a mere memory of the original black.
Occupants of The Founders Forrest, Also Known As The "Forbidden" Forrest, Recorded the 11th sunset after Yule (Ministry Date 2nd of January, 1992): Nazzle Mumph - Venus Fly
"Next." The page slipped to the right and evaporated while a second page took its place. Thoros nodded, and the third page laid itself out for perusal. "Odd to have so many between breeding seasons," he mused with another nod. The numbers seemed fairly consistent until Beltane (when they began steadily increasing). Thoros's brow furrowed, casting a dubious glance toward the ever decreasing chunk of ghostly yellow over Dirby's shoulder.
Then, several weeks after Beltane, during what should have been their early breeding and birthing season, virtually the entire population vanished. Thoros stared, utterly staggered, at the wispy page.
Occupants of The Founders Forrest, Also Known As The "Forbidden" Forrest, Recorded the 20th sunset before Litha (Ministry Date 1st of June, 1992): Thestral cont. - Weetimorousbeastie
Next to the word 'Unicorn', a bold little 3 stared back at him, as if daring him to object.
"Give me the next entry and bring back the previous one," he said, dazed. Was mass unicorn migration common!? He rather wished he'd taken Care of Magical Creatures now…
The June second entry only had 2 unicorns. Possibly a breeding pair; possibly totally unrelated in any way as the pages provided no context.
"Well it's a poacher or an idiot," Thoros commented grimly, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers under his chin.
"Or both," Dirby replied. "Shall I dismiss the rest, ma laird?"
Thoros grunted, his eyes still focused on the pages. "We don't happen to have a record of all humans entering the forest lying around somewhere, do we?" he asked, without looking up. He wasn't even sure if he was joking.
"Are y' meaning by name, then, ma laird?" The elf asked.
Thoros jolted upright. "WE RECORD THAT!? WHY WOULDN'T YOU-"
"Occasionally their names make it into the Occurrences of Note Section," the elf replied, totally unflappable. "If the name is of note, stands to reason their activity is as well."
Thoros reminded himself to not waste time in futile displays of violence. "Get me the Occurrences of Note Section for the month of June, Ministry Year 1992," he grit out.
"Aye, ma laird," the elf replied, pulling the Hogwarts Quick Reference Ledger out once more and resuming his perch on the top left corner of Thoros's desk. The Nott Patriarch settled back into his chair and seethed silently, glaring.
"Look for anything about the twins," he growled.
"No mention."
Thoros frowned. "The Notts then."
"Still nothin', ma laird."
Thoros pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from the pocket of his robe, fumbling slightly with the folds of wool. "They mentioned the Malfoy boy was in distress; check for him."
"No record of a named Malfoy, ma laird," Dirby replied. Thoros didn't acknowledge him, too busy scanning Hermione's letter.
"The Potter Boy then. The Boy Who Lived. He's bound to be named…"
"Tha' name is no' mentioned either, ma laird."
"You're joking!" Thoros snatched the tome away, nearly dropping it due to its unexpected weight. The Occupant pages wavered on the blotter.
The list looked to be in descending order. The first entry from earlier that morning:
10 days before Litha; M.D. 11th of June, 1992: Brief discussion of poaching ethics and castle assets between human and centaur
Below that:
10 days before Litha; M.D. 11th of June, 1992: Centaur expresses defiance of herd tradition to two fellows
Mutually voluntary, non-hostile transport of a human by a centaur
Followed by:
11 days before Litha; M.D. 10th of June, 1992: Four Students enter for service of punishment accompanied by creature and Staff Member
The next entry was from around the time of the supposed mass migration of the unicorns. He really should try to kill Dirby. Just on principle.
20 days before Litha; M.D. 1st of June, 1992: Unnatural Presence Felt
"So we have something unnatural, that could have triggered the mass exodus of nearly every unicorn in the forest," Thoros said sarcastically, setting the book on the desk and waving a hand toward it. "We have four students and a member of faculty entering the forest." He wanted to stab something. Several times. "Hermione says the Malfoy boy is traumatized because of something he saw in the forest. Yet there is no acknowledgment of any of this from Dumbledore, the Governors, or the Ministry…" he flexed his hands and imagined killing something.
"And three unicorns dead in 10 days," Dirby offered.
"WHAT!?" Thoros snapped upright in his chair. "WHY ISN'T THAT SELF- AGGRANDIZING PUPPETEER DOING ANYTHING!?" He launched himself to his feet and began to pace. Dirby edged toward the Hogwarts ledger, millimeter by millimeter, trying to be discrete. "He either isn't aware, or he isn't concerned," Thoros decided, "and much as I would prefer to think he's ignorant, the old weasel is annoyingly observant about the place… I bet he's just trying not to confront a unicorn murderer during term," he sneered. "What with all the innocent bystanders…" Dirby had a forcefully nonchalant hand on the Hogwarts Ledger. Thoros froze, then dove for the desk. Dirby immediately threw himself bodily across the ledger. Thoros nearly knocked him off the desk as he scrambled to grab Hermione's letter. Several heartbeats and swear words later, Thoros stood scrutinizing the parchment while Dirby's eyes, barely visible over the edge of the desk, scrutinized him from the carpet. The Hogwarts ledger was gone. "Or he knew he wouldn't need to confront a murderer," Thoros said, a bit out of breath, but otherwise giving no indication that he'd just taken part in a mad scramble. "He either sent Potter to deal with it or he thinks so little of the threat potential that he allowed Potter and three other students into its vicinity." He sank into his chair. Dirby scuttled backward into the cave-like space beneath the desk, hauling the ledger in after himself. "He must think it isn't a threat, then," Thoros mused to himself. "Not to students, at least. He'd have to be sure, though, so he sent high-value students in after it..." He rubbed the scruffy fringes of his usually meticulously groomed beard.
"Dumbledore must know the murderer, then. Or have power over them… Dirby!" The elf froze with the Hogwarts Ledger hovering languidly beside its shelf. Thoros's attention was elsewhere. "Bring me the Reference for the entire Hogwarts staff. Ministry Year 1991 to 1992." Dirby scowled, but the ledger floated back down. "Leave the elves, actually…" Thoros mused. "McGonagall too and Dumbledore, obviously; Binns wouldn't be capable…" His eyes lit and his posture straightened. "Wait!" Dirby froze, the ledger half open on the desk. "Which one took a hiatus and switched disciplines? Q something… Quintus, Quilton, Quiver…"
"Quirrell?" Dirby asked, voice dripping acidic sarcasm that Thoros ignored.
"Yes. That one. Bring me everything we have on that one."
Dirby jerked his chin and a much smaller ledger soared over the back of Thoros's chair and into his hands. "Quintabel, Quiverson, Quivern, what is with this family?" Thoros muttered, flipping pages. Dirby rolled his eyes, on the floor with the Hogwarts text again. "Ah! Quirinus. Here we go. Only child; frequent admittance to St. Mungo's; Ravenclaw; exceptionally high scores on his O.W.L.s, N.E.W.T.s, and R.A.T.s…" Thoros made a sound of disbelief. "For Muggle Studies and Defense." He tsked. "Taught Muggle Studies for three years then took a year-long Sabbatical only to return to the Defense post. Yes! Dirby! Do we have any record of Quirinius Quirrell's whereabouts from Litha of Ministry Year 1990 to Ostara of Ministry Year 1991?"
Dirby's face slipped into his blank 'searching' expression. It took significantly longer, and no misty pages appeared, but Thoros's smile only grew. After nearly a minute, the elf blinked and said, "I canna find any record of activities on Mother's soil during that tid. Would you like me to pause information intake for a full search of the archives, then?"
"That won't be necessary," Thoros replied. Setting his ledger down and stretching. "If he's drinking unicorn blood, he likely isn't a threat to anyone. Or won't be for much longer in any case." Thoros strode to the door.
"Sir?" Dirby called, unwilling to refile the Quirrell Ledger if he was just going to be called to retrieve it in a minute.
Thoros turned back and grinned wolfishly. "His forest supply has been exhausted. He can't be making weekend trips to Nocturne during exam week, now can he?" Thoros barked a dark, humorless laugh and ambled out the door.
Dirby shook his head and snapped his fingers for the Quirrell ledger. Somewhere in the house, he heard the Master call, "Hissy? A shave and some breakfast if you would."
"And trousers," Dirby muttered.
~*TNT*~
"OK. We're alone. Now tell me how you knew," Theo grumbled next to her in the darkness of their broom closet refuge. Hermione grinned, but only because he couldn't see it.
"Wheesht. Peeves'll hear you." Outside, Peeves rocketed around, bouncing off every possible surface on his way to castle corners unknown. He was being obnoxious, even by Peeves standards, singing some awful anthem about minding one's own business. "Besides. Notts do not pout, Theodore."
"I'm not pouting! Tell me how you knew there'd be three questions on self-stirring cauldrons and none on the Soap Blizzard of 1378! You cheated! Just admit it!" Theo insisted as the pair tumbled out into the first-floor corridor.
"I didn't cheat. I just used the resources available to me," Hermione whispered back, holding a tapestry for him.
"Well, were those resources available to everyone?" said Theo, climbing the stairs.
"Of course not," said Hermione, utterly unrepentant. "We bet on ma bairn, after all. I couldn't leave his fate to chance!"
Theo rolled his eyes but conceded the point. The pair slunk along in amiable, if slightly patronizing, silence until they were rounding the last corner to the Cerberus's door.
Hermione froze within arm's length of the wood without warning. Theo slammed into her and got a face full of curls.
"What are you…"
"Wheesht!" Hermione hissed. "D'you hear that?"
He strained his ears.
There was a faint draft fluttering against his hair, making his nose itch. The torches were all guttering and...
"There!"
A soft high pitched keening…?
"Someone's hurting him," Hermione growled. She grabbed the handle and threw it open, nearly breaking his face in the process, before darting forward.
"Hermione," he complained, barely catching the door before it swung shut and launching himself after her.
He spun around with his wand out, searching for someone to duel. There was a harp in the far corner and the trap door (at least, he assumed it was the trap door) lay in pieces. Hermione knelt, cradling the dog's massive middle head in her lap and crooning Mama's lullaby. The other two heads huddled in close around her, drool pooling on her skirt and robes. She would occasionally reward them with ear scratches.
"... Hermione….?"
"Wheesht." She kept singing.
He rolled his eyes. "They came for it after all," he said because one of them ought to be thinking. "Which one d'you suppose knows how to play the harp?"
"That hardly matters." She rose to her feet and turned to face him. Murder lit her eyes. "We have to get that stone."
He held up his hands. "Ladies first?" He nodded toward the hole. The dog fell back to whine in the corner.
She grit her teeth and nodded, gathering her skirts in her fist. Wand finally lit, Hermione picked her way toward the edge. "I can't see the bottom."
"I mean… We could both jump," he offered. "Then… I don't know… catch each-"
"I was just stating fact."
Theo fell silent and gnawed the inside of his cheek, giving her space.
He hit something with the backs of his calves and it nudged him forward hard. He caught himself and shot the dog a glare.
Unfortunately, it was rather difficult to glare effectively into the pathetic, hopeless eyes of his sister's mutant canine. Especially when it shuffled its paws under its chins and whined again.
"Oh all right," Theo said, rubbing his hand down his face. He almost patted it, but green sparks caught his eye from the hole. He pushed his hand through his hair instead. "It'll be fine. This is monumentally stupid, but we'll be fine."
The middle head surged forward to lick him. His disgusted fumblings sent him through the hole, and the warm, moist air rushing past his face crowned the whole evening rather nicely.
"What took you so long?" Hermione demanded while he clambered off the squashy shapeless lump she'd conjured.
"Your mongrel assaulted me," he replied. "Gah." Theo dragged his hand over the squashy lump a few times, but the slobber lingered in the webbing of his fingers. "What is this place?"
"I don't know," said Hermione. Her tone frigid from the 'mongrel' comment. "The floor is littered with charred bits of what look like vines, and there's a corridor over there." She gestured with her wand hand but made no move to go first.
Theo would have preferred to not have his vindictive little sister behind him in a dark, narrow space after insulting her dog, but he wasn't about to start an argument. "Let's go save your dog," he muttered, marching down the passage. The light from his wand illuminated the moisture oozing down the walls and the dirt cluttered along the edges of the floor. Their steps echoed, and he could feel their magical cores leaping higher in the tension.
Suddenly the passage opened into a chamber. Torches flared to life along the walls, causing Theo to stumble. Hermione grabbed his robe, nearly strangling him. "What on-" he coughed.
"There's a door over there, look," Hermione said, releasing him to stagger a bit more.
"I'm sorry, do you not see the flying… What even are those!?"
Hermione paused and squinted up. "Keys." She kept walking.
He stared at his sister's back. "And you are not at all perturbed by the flying keys."
"I can feel you gawking. Stop. It's Dumbledore. Are you honestly surprised it's not a normal warded vault guarded by an extinct species in the depths of a castle for children?" She tried the ancient door handle.
"Are you honestly surprised it's locked?" he snarked back.
"Guess this means we do have to fly," said Hermione.
Theo's blood ran cold. "What." Hermione gestured to the three brooms piled haphazardly a little ways from the door. "We aren't even going to try to pick the lock?" His voice had gotten much higher.
"This is Dumbledore's fun house," she said, squaring her shoulders and marching over to the brooms. "I highly doubt we could." She grabbed a broom and looked it over warily.
"Brooms are dangerous!" he hissed, scurrying over and snatching the twiggy death stick. "Father says-"
"Accomplished witches have other means of travel." She grabbed another broom and mounted it, dragging her skirts far too high on her legs. "I don't see a fireplace to the stone and neither of us can apparate. You're being stupid."
"YOU'RE BEING STUPID," he exploded. Castle or no castle, the floor around his feet frosted. "You don't even know how to fly!"
"Dull roar, brother dear." She arranged her robes to drape around the broom. "We don't know how the sound will carry down here. And of course, I know how to fly. Remember that time when Draco 'lost' one of his brooms? I stole it." She kicked off.
"You WHAT!?" Theodore Demetrius, the heir to the House of Nott and accomplished twelve-year-old boy, stomped his foot. "Hermione! Get back here! You can't just say something like that, and-"
"How much you wanna bet it's the dinky one that keeps hitting the wall?" she called from the mass of glittering wings.
He squinted, but she was hurtling toward the ground in a flurry of skirts and robes before he could even find the one she was talking about.
"You are a terrible human and a deplorable sister," Theo informed Hermione as she sauntered past, ripping the feeble wings off the ancient, tarnished key.
"You are a worry wart and a-" A wall of noise and dust hit them the second the door opened. Both Notts ducked at the sound of crashing stone.
"PAWN TO J5!" someone screamed.
"Is that…?" Hermione struggled upright, brushing at her hair and face.
"Weasley," Theo groaned.
~*TNT*~
Hermione walked down yet another grimy hall in the bowels of the school trying to imagine it was Draco escorting her through yet another Malfoy garden party, rather than The-Boy-Who-Could-Not-Have-Worse-Timing. It helped her to maintain impossibly perfect posture and to keep her teeth from clenching at the stony silence from the boy on her right.
Theo always walked on her left. Her unarmed side. Everyone did.
Unfortunately, Theo was back with the Longbottom heir trying to keep a concussed Weasley from doing anything stupid, and she had to worry about her Gryffindor.
A door- joy- materialized in the gloom of smoky torches.
"Ready?" Potter asked.
She grabbed up her skirts just in case and nodded without looking at him.
The billowing smell from the pitch black interior felt louder than the dying groan of the hinges. Hermione had to swallow her heart back into place as she crept forward.
Her boot heels scratched and clunked on the floor, echoing and multiplying off walls she couldn't see. She didn't hazard straightening or holding her lit wand aloft until she knew what was in with her. It didn't seem to matter much either way, though, because the cacophony of their pants and steps filled her ears.
"There," three different Potters seemed to yell at her. The weak beams from her wand swung through the dust motes and caught on debris as she spun to face him. His wand was trained on a long, low lump off to the right. "Troll," he whispered.
"It's not breathing," she said unnecessarily. For a moment even the oppressive stench fell away and she could stand normally to study the corpse.
Potter took a few steps closer to check, then visibly relaxed as well. He turned to her wearing some sort of grin. "Thank god we don't have to fight this one." He turned away with a careless wave forward. "C' mon. I think I see the door."
The implications were slow to wash over her, but when they did, they were almost worse than the smell.
"Though I guess technically you fought the last one," Potter continued blithely. She barely heard him over the objections of old wood and worse hinges.
"Potter-" Light poured into the chamber. She staggered, almost collapsing against the troll corpse.
"Hurry up; I can't breathe."
"Potter, wait-" she choked, clambering over the troll's legs and squinting fiercely in the glare. She rushed after his voice only to catch her boot on the threshold and go sprawling across the stone floor.
"Guess this is Snape's challenge. You ok?" he asked, coming in after her. She ignored him, swearing under her breath in Gaelic, and frantically wiped her stinging hands on her skirt. She could feel her chin bleeding while her eyes scanned the floor for her wand. "Er… Nott…?" She snapped her head up at his tone.
Purple flames blocked the door to the troll room. On the opposite wall, black flames blocked their way forward.
"Oh perfect," she snarled, shoving to her feet and stomping over to her fallen wand in the corner. "We find out someone's down here with us just in time to get trapped. Fantastic."
"I bet one of those will help." Potter marched toward the wooden table dominating the center of the room. It took her a moment to process what he meant.
"Don't you dare-" She scrambled to stop him, but it was too late.
"There's a note." He grabbed the pristine roll of parchment lying unsealed next to the seven bottles of various sizes and styles.
"POTTER!" she seethed, grabbing his arm.
He spun out of her grip and darted around the table, unrolling it anyway.
"Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind," he read. Professor Snape's cramped, spiky writing paraded down the page in perfectly spaced rows. "Trust Snape to think a troll is safe," he scoffed.
"Stop. Touching. Stuff!" She ordered, making another wild grab for the scroll.
"Why?" he said, dodging away. "It looks like a riddle. We just have to figure out which bottle takes us forward. We have to stop him! Who knows how long he's been in there already!"
"It doesn't matter how long he's been in there!" Hermione snapped, her annoyance temporarily forestalling her ability to process and integrate information. "He's going to remain in there, whoever 'he' even is!"
"It's Snape," Potter said, seeming honestly a little surprised that she asked. "He's been trying to kill me all year. He's going to steal the stone for Voldemort."
Hermione decided to let the boy believe she accepted his version of events. She did not need a frustrated, loose canon Gryffindor on top of everything else. "And how do you plan to stop him?"
Potter's face fell. "No idea," he said, but he set his jaw. "However I can."
Hermione nodded like that was reasonable and not profoundly stupid. "And how do you know he hasn't done something to the bottles?"
He had the audacity to blink in shock and look from the parchment to the table a few times. "He can't of. They seem fine."
"Oh. Yes. Naturally." She was rapidly running out of reins for her temper. "Why don't you just pick that one up and sniff it then?" She jabbed her wand at the middle bottle.
Potter's face hardened. "How would he even know we're here? Why would he do something to them if he didn't think anyone was after him?"
"Fine. Maybe he didn't." She shrugged like he'd won and came up next to him. "Let me see the note."
They read it in silence. Hermione's disbelief grew with every word. "It can't be that easy," she said, turning to the table in a daze. "There has to be… No."
"You solved it!?" Potter demanded.
"Are they warded?" She hunched over the table and squinted at the various colors of glass. "Pick up the one on the end and check." She waved distractedly.
"Why do I have to be the guinea pig? YOU pick it up!" He crossed his arms for emphasis, the riddle still clutched in his left hand.
The petulance was counterproductive.
He agreed this would be the last room before the stone. Obviously, that made it the most dangerous. This was not the time for a mutiny. "I saved you from a troll." She stood and braced her feet, crossing her arms as well.
"Because you locked my best friend in a bathroom!" Potter retorted.
Hermione supposed the circumstances did nullify that particular bit of benevolence… "I saved you from your jinxed broom," she said, tilting her chin up and arching an eyebrow in a most Narcissa-like fashion.
"I thought the stands caught fire," he said, eyeing her up and down with suspicion.
"And dismantling the flame-dampening wards took work, I assure you," Hermione sniffed.
His eyes bulged. "You set the stands on fire!?"
"I just said that," she scoffed. "Now you owe me, so pick a bottle up!"
"People could have gotten hurt!" It was unclear if his arm waving was for flight or emphasis.
"Oh honestly. We don't have time for this." She snatched the middle bottle and held it up to study the faceted crystal.
"You can tell if it's poison just by looking at it?" Potter asked with reluctant interest, edging forward.
"I can't even begin to explain why that wouldn't be possible. Besides. I don't need to. The 'riddle' is ridiculously easy." She put the bottle back with a scowl. "That's what worries me."
"You're worried because you know the answer?" Potter scoffed.
"Do you always needlessly repeat things?" she drawled.
"You're the one who's stalling! We have to get the stone!" His face was turning red.
"The real question…" She assessed him briefly, deemed him the lower priority, and turned to circle the table. "... is whether we should trust the absent riddler. He wants to know if we'll blindly put our lives in his hands on his word…"
"That one has the least amount of potion inside!" Potter said, jabbing a finger at the little bottle she'd set down. "It's gotta be that one!"
"Unless the riddle is a diversion and they're all poison and only Dumbledore and Flamel know how to get in," said Hermione.
"Snape got in!"
"We have no proof he did, though," Hermione pointed out. "There is no way of knowing how much liquid was originally in each bottle. They might even magically refill themselves. The poison may completely destroy or transport the victim's remains… There are too many possibilities."
Potter threw up his hands. "So what? We just die here?"
Hermione straightened and grabbed the seventh bottle: a round one with a fluted stopper. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm going to get help. You're going to stay here and make sure the fires stay where they are and keep anyone from leaving…" She paused and gave him a hard glance. "... or entering the chamber with the stone. I'll be right back with Theodore."
With that, she raised the round bottle in his general direction in toast, swallowed a mouthful of its contents, and strode through the purple flames.
The instant she disappeared, Harry snatched the parchment and began to furiously read. After some hasty muttering and many swallowed nerves, he seized the tiny bottle and yanked out its glass stopper.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered, turning to face the black flames.
Behind him, he heard the other door groan open. "Don't worry they're uni-directional," Hermione Nott's voice said. Harry's stomach clenched. Now or never. He tossed back the potion in one swallow. "What are you… NO DON'T!" But it was too late. Ice spread through his entire body and he began to shiver so badly he dropped the bottle.
Quick! Before it wears off! A tiny voice in his head whispered. Somehow it was louder than the shattering crystal, his own throbbing heart, and the shouting Notts. Harry plunged forward with his eyes squeezed shut. He hit wood and then he was falling.
Cold stone greeted his palms and cheek. He opened his eyes. One part of his brain recognized the back of Quirrell's turban before the Mirror of Erised; another part registered Hermione Nott's faint voice.
"I swear that boy is dead to me."
The door to the potion room swung shut with a thud.
~*TNT*~
"We could take the exit potion?" Theo offered in the ringing silence.
An eternity passed before she agreed with a brisk nod. "We could take the exit potion." She spun and grabbed the bottle he held. She bolted a dose and shoved the bottle back, stomping through the flames without a word. Theo had to rush to keep up.
"Change of plans," Hermione announced, throwing open the doors to the chess room. "Potter's gone and done the stupid thing specifically I told him not to do." She ignored Longbottom's squeak "So we are going to help you with the deadweight."
"Deadweight!?" Weasley demanded, leaning heavily on his housemate.
"Oh. It worked." Hermione tossed her twin an approving glance. "Good one, Theo." Theo gave her a demure smile. Notts do not grin and babble excitedly in the presence of inferiors, after all. Hermione turned back to Longbottom. "Very well. We are going to help you with the heavily concussed weight. Shall I levitate him for you?"
"NO ONE'S LEVITATING ME!" Weasley roared.
"It's fine," Longbottom gasped, trying to balance the swaying Weasley on his shoulder. "You go ahead."
She nodded and swept off.
"What should I do with this?" Theo panted out the side of his mouth trying to keep up and subtly brush the potion against her left hand.
"We agreed to take it," Hermione said, not breaking stride. "So, obviously, you're going to take it."
Theo tucked the bottle into a pocket without further comment.
"Grab a broom and don't break your wrist this time," Hermione ordered, holding the next door open.
The Gryffindors needed no prompting. Within moments they were gone.
It wasn't until the Notts once again breathed the free Scottish air (three-headed dog stench aside) that Theodore dared say anything. "There's no way Potter'll…"
"Get help," said Hermione, locking eyes with the lingering Longbottom.
The boy nodded, and Weasley immediately started ranting about McGonagall and armies and expulsion. They could hear him all the way down the corridor. He didn't lose steam once.
The Cerberus gave a weak woof, barely worthy of the name. Hermione finally collapsed beside it, singing Mama's lullaby in a shaky voice. Theo tried not to feel awkward and pointless. He could feel her tears despite Hogwarts muting their bond.
"We failed," she whispered.
"Not quite," said a voice by the door.
"Headmaster!?" Theo yelped, staggering away from the old man. Instinct kept his back toward Hermione.
"Harry went after him, didn't he." Dumbledore didn't wait for any reply. Seconds later he dropped through the hole in the floor.
"Buggering Bloody Bristol," Theo breathed. This was actually the absolute worst thing that could have happened. All night he'd been worried about silly stuff like dying and or mutilation. It hadn't even occurred to him to worry about getting caught. He continued to swear random gibberish under his breath. The room swam.
"Rawlly. Dulcey," Hermione's voice snapped. It may have been her voice. Theo wasn't exactly tethered to his body just then.
How were they possibly going to survive Father?
More words. Some pops. A tiny, calloused hand gripped his.
He'd just wanted to make it to thirteen. He'd just wanted to see the Mother's Glen. What a waste. Father may not even bury them there for this. Father may not even bury them at all. No one would ever know what happened to their bodies. Draco would wake up tomorrow- or would it be today?- and say something like-
Hermione slapped him across the face. Dulcey and the dog were gone.
"I'll handle it," Hermione said through clenched teeth. "Fòcasaich!"
Theo focused.
The world imploded then boiled. He felt himself get wrung out like laundry and stretched almost to breaking until the world imploded again.
Before he could scream, he landed in his father's study. Front and center, one arm's length from the carved mahogany, one shoulder width to Hermione's left.
Father's fingers were steepled before his mouth. No wand in sight.
"Papa-"
"Would either of you care to explain why I had to send a Cerberus to guard the library at a quarter past one on a Thursday?"
~*TNT*~
As Thorfinn Rowle tromped down far too many stairs for the ass crack of dawn, he tried to think of things he'd rather be doing.
Unfortunately, his brain settled rather firmly on the sharp crunch a nose makes before surrendering to the will of his fists, and it might have had an adverse effect on the door to the firstie dorm.
But it was too early to care about splintered oak.
"RISE AND SHINE YOU SORRY SONS OF TRIPLE DIPPED PSYCHOS!" he roared, storming in. The noises from the little shits thrashing awake in their beds were his reward for meticulous verification of detail. Plus they were hilarious.
"Nott's gone and died, so I want each one of you pathetic wastes of magic up against that wall while I officially clear his bunk and gather any remains."
The grin was making his face hurt.
"Move it, assholes! THE LAST ONE IN A BED IS GETTING CURSED."
He wasn't technically allowed to curse the meat, but the scrambling amused him. It's important to savor life's little joys, after all. Besides, the elves had already cleared Nott's stuff out anyway. He was here for that human touch.
"Theo's dead?" asked a groggy voice behind him.
Thorfinn whirled to rain a manticore's own wrath on the carpet stain who dared interrupt his savoring when- "YOU!" The other three jumped. "WHAT THE EVERLASTING FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!? YOU'RE JUST GONNA STAND THERE STARKERS!?"
The kid kept his back straight and his eyes forward. "Didn't want to get cursed, sir!"
Cheeky little…
He loomed and puffed out his magical aura for maximum effect. "Are you talking back to me!? I swear to Salazar I'll curse you purple, grate you like a fucking cheese, and feed you to a muggle! If I wanted an asshole's opinion, I'd fart! Get a fucking robe on, you pervert princess!"
"Sir!"
Malfoy.
"WHAT!?" A flinch. Acceptable, if slightly disappointing.
"Did you say Theo died...Sir?"
"Are the words 'I give a damn' written on my forehead, or are you just on stupid potion?" he growled, standing on the edge of the kid's personal space.
Malfoy fidgeted with the ties to his pajama pants.
"No, sir."
"That's not what I asked."
The kid screwed up his sharp little weasel face and glanced at his trollish dorm-mates.
Thorfinn let them squirm for another second before he turned to pace their line. "Listen up! I have neither the time nor the sock puppets to explain the situation to you lot, and I won't tolerate stupid questions. SO. You! Princess!"
"Zabini, sir."
Thorfinn made a mental note to punch this one.
"Go find Tuttle and tell her Nott's been cleared. YOU THREE!"
"May I put on underpants, sir?"
Thorfinn froze. "Excuse you?" he asked in the voice that tended to make people piss themselves in fright.
"Underpants, sir. I don't want to alarm Prefect Tuttle, sir."
Thorfinn eyed the scrawny boy. The purpley green robe he'd put on featured a monogrammed breast pocket. It was too early for this shit.
"Malfoy," he barked, not taking his eyes off the scrawny cheeky one. "Tell Tuttle to tell Snape Nott's been cleared."
He waited for the kid to scamper away.
"Stupids One and Two. If I find out that this one's put on underpants at any point during the rest of the school year, I will curse you both with wedgies so deep that all the healers in St. Mungo's wouldn't be able to fix your asses."
With that, he marched back up to his room for the other five hours of sleep he was owed. So much for meticulous verification of detail, he grumbled to himself. He needn't have even bothered; this was the sort of thing best left to house elves, anyway.
~*TNT*~
"Do you think it's true?" Justin asked Ernie as their clump of housemates wove through the crowds leaving the end of year feast. "Do you think Harry Potter really killed Professor Quirrell?"
"If he did, I don't see why he would have earned 75 points for it," Ernie replied sniffily.
"He got 75 points for bravery, willingness to act despite unfavorable conditions, and preservation of private property," Zacharias cut in. His voice was snide enough to curl Ernie's lip. "No one said he killed Professor Quirrell."
Behind them, Susan made a disgusted noise. "Speaking of points, who gets 50 points for 'the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has ever seen'?"
"There was willingness to lay down one's life for one's friends in there too," Hannah pointed out in an undertone.
"Ok, but does anyone else think they were a little extreme!?" Susan demanded. "Neville got fifty for putting aside differences for the good of others and leadership in the midst of strife which at least makes sense, but fifty for chess!?"
"It does seem unfair to decorate for Slytherin only to award last minute points…" Hannah conceded.
"Points technically earned a week ago," Susan seethed.
"Guys! Guess what I just heard!" Megan interrupted, breaking into the clump between Hannah and Susan. "You know the Slytherin twins? The Notts?"
"Doesn't everyone?" Zacharias drawled, casting Megan a disdainful look.
She ignored him. "I just heard it from the Slytherins. No one's heard from them or seen them for a week! Not since the last day of finals!"
"So they started their holiday early," Ernie shrugged. "Good for them."
"But that's not even the weird part!" Megan dropped her voice as they loitered near the entrance barrels, savoring the clump's undivided attention. "They went to bed with everyone else, but the morning after Professor Quirrell died? They were gone."
Justin gasped, but the other four, the purebloods, looked skeptical.
"You think Hermione and Theodore Nott killed Professor Quirrell?" Hannah asked, her face scrunched.
"I'm saying they're creepy and dark and Slytherin enough to kill a professor," Megan insisted, her nose in the air. "Their name literally means darkness, and it's not like they like anyone apart from each other."
"You're crazy," Zacharias declared. "There is no way that happened."
"I heard it from Pansy Parkinson herself," Megan retorted. "If anyone would know, she wou-"
She broke off to face the mouth of the corridor where a steady crescendo of voices echoed ever closer.
"Oh dear," Hannah whimpered.
"SUPERCALIFRAGILISTIC TOTAL FREAKING BULLSHIT!" Wayne Hopkins and Leanne Moon appeared arm in arm and skipping aggressively. "SLYTHERIN DESERVED TO WIN-"
Peeves appeared behind and above the pair, banging cymbals. "AND DUMBY-DOOR IS FULL OF IT!"
Wayne took the solo. "GIVE THE GRYFFS A TROPHY FOR THE SERVICES THEY'VE RENDERED-"
"INSTEAD OF TAUNTING SLYTHERIN WITH A GREAT HALL UN-SPLENDORED!" Leanne concluded.
"Un-splendored?" Ernie asked, grinning as Wayne, Leanne, and Peeves took flamboyant bows to the group's reluctant applause.
"I didn't exactly have a whole lot of rhyming options," Leanne replied with dignity.
Do you need a moment to fully absorb the awesomeness? I need a moment to fully absorb my awesomeness...
It's pretty awesome.
You know what else is pretty awesome?
QUIZ TIME!
*Adam West serves justice and battery to theme music*
Having endured nearly six months in the barren update-less wastes, I the reader will celebrate these awesome12k words with
gibberish) because if that was the conclusion to year ONE what glory awaits in the revision of year TWO!?
BATMAN) Holy Updates, Arrogance! A spankin' new chapter in THIS economy?
Marvel is Better than DC) This is not the correct answer. Do not pick this answer.
SCREAMS) THERE'S MORE HUFFLEPUFF! YOU GAVE US MORE HUFFLEPUFF!
5) I can't handle the number 4. I just can't.
***YOUR CHOICES FOR THE CERBERUS'S NAME ARE Cadeyrn, Vercingetorix, Votadinii and Caledonii. Most Votes by Next Update wins***
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