Each day that passed after the petrification of Perdita Pepper built on the general anxiety of the school. No one came forward with any information about the attack. Charlotte wished she knew something that would have helped, as she and Tom had not been far from where Perdita was found; although, if she had been able to supply information, she would have had to admit they were breaking curfew—something which likely wouldn't happen again for a while, as the ghosts and occupants of portraits had been implored to stay on high alert until the perpetrator of the attack was caught. Not to mention the considerable uneasiness about being in danger in the castle that Charlotte felt, and assumed Tom felt also, although he did not show much concern.

"What, or who, do you think is responsible for what happened?" she asked him one day as they were walking from the Great Hall, after lunch, to Transfiguration.

"Grindelwald," he replied coolly. "It makes perfect sense." Just as the Slytherins Charlotte had overheard the day the attack was reported had said. This was the most popular theory of the student body, and likely among the teachers as well, although they didn't say it. It was, for the most part, logical. "What do you think?" Tom asked her.

"I suppose I suspect that it's Grindelwald too. I don't know what else to think."

"That's because Grindelwald is the obvious culprit. You heard what Professor Slughorn, and everyone else has been saying; petrification isn't something the average wizard can do."

Charlotte didn't reply immediately, but she eventually decided to say what was on her mind. "He often influences—uses—other people to… achieve his ends." She'd had to force the end of the sentence out of herself; her body fought the words. "He may be behind it, but he may also have a puppet somewhere."

"What makes you say that?"

"My cousin was once such a puppet." Then she added in a whisper, "And his family was the target."

"And were you…?" He wanted to know if that had included her.

"His parents," she answered. "He was tasked with killing his parents." She was trying to speak matter-of-factly. If the emotion stayed out of her voice, maybe it would stay out of her heart too.

"What happened to him?"

"He was killed." She couldn't do it, couldn't say it. There was more to it than that. Her uncle and cousin, father and son, had ended their lives in a duel. Set against his family by Grindelwald, Corbin, Charlotte's cousin—mind twisted into believing he was doing something necessary, something good—cast the killing curse on his father. That much Charlotte knew, how the boy ended up dead as well, she hadn't been told, and neither had her parents, as far as she knew. "My aunt was there," she said. "The one I mentioned, who my family went to visit last year?" Tom nodded. "It's been hard for me to accept what happened; I can't imagine what it must be like for her."

"Is that how you learned about losing magic in despair?" he asked quietly. They were standing outside the transfiguration classroom now. "I know you told me your father mentioned it and that's how you knew, but the way you said it—I felt like it wasn't the truth."

"I didn't want to tell you the whole story then," she admitted.

"You still haven't. Will you?"

She took a breath, making up her mind. "I will," she answered decidedly. "But there isn't time now."

"This evening then, perhaps?" Tom asked. She smiled, nodded, and they joined the last stragglers entering Transfiguration.

Professor Dumbledore was standing at the blackboard, orchestrating several pieces of chalk drawing diagrams. As the last students took their seats, he turned to face the class, smiling pleasantly.

"Today you will be practicing the doubling charm, which I find is particularly useful in duplicating an identical sock when its mate has gone missing, as so often happens with socks. However, you will find your replica sock worn threadbare much faster than the original, copies made using this spell degrading more quickly than their counterparts."

Beside Charlotte, Valeria was scribbling away on her parchment, until she flung her hand into the air. Professor Dumbledore nodded at her. "Does it duplicate the effects of enchantments on objects as well?"

"A very good question, Miss Lowell," he said with a smile. "It can, if the ability of the caster is great enough." She added to her notes and then looked up attentively; this lesson had now garnered her devoted interest.

Throughout the lesson, Charlotte noticed a something she hadn't previously. Tom was cordial with Professor Dumbledore, but not his usual charming self, and she wondered if he disliked the professor for some reason.

...

In Potions that day, they were set the task of brewing a Draught of Peace. Not long before the end of the class, Valeria, who had run over to the supply cupboard to get more porcupine quills, let out a shriek. Charlotte nearly tipped an excess of powdered moonstone into her cauldron at the sound. Unfortunately, several of her peers had not been so lucky, and were now glaring at Valeria for probably ruining their potions.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, a bit mortified. "I'm too excitable. Really it's nothing serious. But there are spiders all over the wall in there." She made her way back over to her cauldron. Tom's Draught of Peace was one unaffected by Valeria's ill-timed outburst, and he looked on calmly as she explained herself, a very brief smile flashing onto his face as she mentioned the spiders.

"All of you stay focused on your potions; I'll have a look at these spiders," Professor Slughorn said, a jar in his hand, presumably to catch a few of the spiders for some use they might have.

Henry Sprott followed him anyway, stopping at the doorway and looking over Slughorn's shoulder. "They're tiny!" He turned back to look at Valeria in an amused yet irritated way.

Valeria replied without looking away from her simmering potion, "I don't care what size they are when there's fifty of them."

"Mr. Sprott, your Draught of Peace will be turning green instead of white if you don't mind it," Professor Slughorn reminded him.

"It's already green, thanks to her." Henry glanced into the closet again, "And I don't see fifty spiders here, maybe half that many." Valeria composedly remained intent on the orange substance in front of her, also intent on not engaging anymore with Sprott.

"Well, that sort of thing happens, I'm afraid," Professor Slughorn said. An unkind teacher, and one who did not tend towards giving this particular student preferential treatment, might have deducted house points for Valeria's damage to her classmate's potions, but he only continued, "Disastrous effects can be produced if something unintended happens to a potion, but the world won't cease distractions and such things because of that. Let this be a learning experience." Likewise, an unkind student, or one who did not cast the occasional glance indicative of some fondness across the Great Hall towards this particular fellow student, might have held this against Valeria; however, Henry Sprott was neither of these.

...

"When I suspected you were covering something up about a loss of magic, my first thought was that it happened to you," Tom said over dinner.

"Me?" Charlotte's eyebrows arched quite high and stayed there in her shock that Tom thought her so fragile.

"It made sense that you would hide the truth from me if it had been about you, that you wouldn't want to tell me something so personal. I know you were having a difficult time when you first came here—"

Charlotte stopped him. "Not that difficult, thankfully." She didn't like the thought of him considering her in such misery as that. He might think of her as weak. What she didn't realize was that, even if that had been her true past, it shouldn't have made him view her as weak at all; it would be a testimony to her strength that she had made it to where she was now.

But in reality what did comfort her was a feeling that Tom wasn't likely to act out of pity, so she knew that he hadn't simply felt sorry for her when he first asked her out. And even if that had been the case then, it couldn't be anymore; he was drawing her closer now, not pushing her away. He had to have feelings for her, strong ones.

"So tell me what happened with your cousin," he said. "However much you want to." And he was considerate of the fact that maybe she didn't want to talk about it. This brought a smile to her face, momentarily overcoming the sadness she felt towards the events she was about to share with him.

She said what she had kept to herself earlier. Tom listened to every word, made sympathetic remarks, asked questions when Charlotte was unclear, which was sometimes due to a lack of information from the start. "So they both cast the killing curse at each other, at the same time?" he asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. But my aunt had this guilt about her, and that could be for any number of reasons,—a feeling of responsibility for the choice her son made, that she couldn't save either of them—but I also wonder if she…"

Tom understood. "Killed one of them?" he replied quietly.

"It would be hard to believe, but that's precisely what happened with Corbin, so I can't assume.

"He was seven years older than me, so I wasn't that close to him. But I at least felt like I knew him. So either Grindelwald, through magic or some other power of persuasion, changed him to the point that he was unrecognizable, or he hid his darkness for nineteen years. Both of those are… really scary. Terrifying."

Tom was surprisingly unaffected by her words. His expression was calm as he listened, except for his eyes, which almost always gave the impression that he was calculating something—studying, hypothesizing, testing, discerning. But she didn't see anything wrong with that.

"My aunt was devastated, of course, after it happened. I don't know if she'll ever recover… It was seeing her that was really awful. It seems like there's nothing you can do to help. What do you say to someone in those circumstances?"

She wasn't really asking him, but he said in a whisper, "I don't know…"

As Charlotte expressed her fears of deception, Tom had needed total control of his body language, to not show that he found this highly amusing, with all its irony. He was everything she feared.

It would have been more helpful for him to have appeared sympathetic, but he couldn't manage it, not when a smile, laughter even, was trying to take over his mouth.

He was pleased Charlotte had confided in him; certainly he would find a use for the information.

As for Perdita Pepper, while it was regrettable that she had merely been petrified and would be able to continue at the school, Mudblood that she was, there was at least the knowledge that the fear gripping Hogwarts because of this "tragedy" could be drawn out; he enjoyed inciting panic among those around him. All this—all the patrols of ghosts and nervous theorizing about who was to blame, the anxiety of the staff as they searched for an answer, articles in the Daily Prophet reporting something was disturbing the safety of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, all this was his doing—his accomplishment. He took pride in that, even if no one else could know he was responsible. One day they would, or, if not, they would know of him through greater feats. Taking on the task of the Heir of Slytherin was certainly the greatest thing to happen in his life so far, but he didn't intend for it to remain his crowning achievement—he was only sixteen, after all. Sixteen years into the life he intended to make endless.

There were still many Muggle-borns in the school, including, he suspected, Professor Runewood. If she was, Tom decided he could not allow her to continue as a professor. And how she knew so much about the Chamber of Secrets, he had no idea, but he would try to find out. He also contemplated various outcomes were he to have the basilisk attack her or leave her be. If she remained, she might inform the staff of her strange familiarity with the Chamber of Secrets, and they would catch on to his objective much sooner. This, he realized, could be helpful. More Muggle-born students than he could feasibly attack might simply leave the school of their own accord, in fear for their lives, and perhaps understanding their inferiority. However, if he attacked her, it might raise suspicion about the validity of her fears. But the idea of a muggle-born teacher… Slytherin would have been horrified to know of such a thing.

As for how he would carry out the attack, he could keep using the same plan until he and Charlotte were caught, if they were caught, so long as he could ensure she didn't wonder at the concurrence of the events. Memory was malleable, however, and he had been studying how one could manipulate another's thoughts in such a way. He also would need to take her to the Room of Requirement more often, so that there was not the strangeness of someone getting attacked every time they spent the night together.

"I've just remembered something," Charlotte suddenly said to Valeria in the common room one evening. "At our house here in Britain, I think we have mandrakes!" Grabbing a quill and piece of parchment to take with her, she said "I think I've still got time to make it to the owlery." Valeria only had time to react with "Oh!" before Charlotte was hurrying out of the room.

The Slytherin Dungeon was a long way from the top of the tower where the owls were kept, and she wished she knew more shortcuts as she made her way up numerous flights of stairs. Then, on the fifth floor, she ran unexpectedly into Tom.

"You're in a hurry," he said, noting her rapid pace. "What's so urgent?"

"I think I can help un-petrify Perdita Pepper." Rushing on ahead, she didn't notice the apprehensive look that came over his face as he heard this.

"How?"

"The place my family moved to when we came to England used to belong to a Herbologist, and I'm certain there were mandrakes he'd been growing there when we arrived. Although my mother doesn't like them,—what with the fatal cry and all; I don't blame her—so she might have gotten rid of them. I can't remember. But if she didn't, and if they're mature enough, I'm sure she'd bring them here so that we can help Perdita!"

From behind, Tom put a hand on her shoulder to bring her to a halt. "There's no reason to be in such a rush; Perdita isn't in any danger."

She turned to face him and he dropped his arm. "Yes, but what about everyone else? She might be able to tell us how she was attacked, or even who did it! Besides, why shouldn't I do something about it right away?"

"Well," he began, putting his arm around her waist and guiding her down the corridor in the opposite direction, which she hesitantly allowed him to do. "I don't think you'll make it back to the common room early enough and, as a prefect, I'd have to reprimand you for that; we aren't allowed to be out as late ever since the attack, you know."

She stepped in front of him. "I do know that—all the more reason for me to write home sooner rather than later." Then she added with a little smile, "And you wouldn't take away points, not from me."

"I can't always make exceptions for you, Charlotte."

She looked at him oddly, uncertain of whether he was teasing her or speaking seriously, but, ignoring his strange response, she said, "A compromise then. You come with me, and after I've sent my letter you can escort me back to the Slytherin Dungeon like the rule-abiding prefect that I know you're not—at least not always." She carried on the way she had initially been going, grabbing his hand as she walked by and pulling him with her. He took a couple of larger strides to walk beside her, rather than be led by her. His hand stayed clasped with hers, but only loosely. In her other hand was the roll of parchment, which moments later slipped out of her grasp and hovered in front of her as they walked.

"You weren't going to wait until you got to the freezing cold, open-aired owlery before you wrote your letter, were you?" Tom asked with a glance over at her.

"No," she replied with a small laugh, raising her quill and releasing it in front of the paper. Enchanted to copy down words dictated to it, the feather could levitate on its own as needed. "Chère maman," Charlotte began, "Nous reste-t-il encore des mandragores? C'est très important, pour préparer le philtre régénérateur à la mandragore..."

...

From one of the many open arches in the tower, she watched her owl fly off into the night for a few moments before hurriedly making her way down the stairs and back inside. Both of them lacking particularly warm clothing at the present time,—Tom, because he had not been intending to venture outside; Charlotte, because she had left in such haste and had forgotten to bring even so much as a scarf—Tom had stayed indoors while Charlotte ran up to the owlery, because it was her letter to send. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded over his chest when Charlotte returned. He wasn't startled by the large door thudding shut behind her, and calmly waited for her to approach. Once within arm's reach, he pulled her towards him.

"Cold—just as I thought," he said in her ear. "Luckily for you, I'm not. Although this isn't as effective as before." It had now gotten to the point where she could hear him say things like this without blushing—although at this moment that was less pleasing because the blood flow would have warmed her face nicely. Instead, Tom's shoulder made for a way to put some heat back into her nose and cheeks, until he leaned away from her looking into her eyes for a moment before kissing her.

"It's a shame we can't go to the seventh floor tonight," she murmured.

"I think we're already on the seventh floor."

"You know that's not what I meant."

"But it's true. And maybe… maybe we could just go down the hall… right now." He said, pausing in his speech to caress her with kisses.

"We should go before anyone comes this way," she answered. He was too irresistible.

Author's Note: "philtre régénérateur à la mandragore" is apparently what the Mandrake Restorative Draught was called in the French version of the books (thanks Harry Potter Wiki en français). I felt pretty uncertain of how to write for Dumbledore, so I just went with a sock joke to play it safe, although I'll have to figure out how to write him properly sometime soon.