Sept 11th, 1993

Mary Potter

Saturday morning arrived with a slight chill in the air and Mary had to dig out a warm jumper before she trekked to Professor Snape's office. With her bag slung over her right shoulder, Mary knocked lightly on the door, hoping that she wouldn't be waking up the already grumpy man.

"Enter," Snape drawled.

Mary pushed the door open and stepped into the dimly lit room. Snape stood there, not in his usual black robes, but was garbed in what looked like heavy duty dark brown work trousers, a long sleeved jacket, and heavy boots.

He looked at her attire of jeans and trainers with a sneer.

"I brought work gloves, sir," Mary blurted out under his critical look.

"We'll be going into the Chamber to salvage what we can from the beast," Snape said quickly, ignoring Mary's look of shock. "Lupin will meet us at the second floor lavatory and will be documenting the basilisk."

"Yes, sir." Mary choked out as her heart pounded hard behind her ribcage.

Snape picked up a scroll of parchment, ink, and a quill and handed them to her. "Place these in your bag. It will be your responsibility to take record of everything we harvest and what we leave behind."

Mary looked at the small scroll and quirked an eyebrow. "We'll need more parchment, sir. It was a pretty big snake."

"I doubt that, Potter." Snape sneered as he held the door open.

Mary walked as quickly as she could to keep up with Snape's long strides, all while silently wondering why he chose this for her detention instead of something else. And then she realized that he was probably hoping that taking her back to the Chamber would traumatize her enough not to go on any more adventures. That wasn't likely given her newfound task.

Professors Dumbledore and Remus both stood in the corridor when they approached and stopped their conversation. They each had a large pack in their hands and Mary assumed that they held what would be needed to harvest the basilisk parts.

"Good morning, Severus, Mary." Dumbledore nodded at them.

"Morning, Headmaster," Mary said quietly. "Professor Lupin."

Professor Lupin smiled warmly and opened the door. "Professor Dumbledore has taken the liberty of distracting our resident ghost so that this little excursion can stay a secret."

Mary looked at Dumbledore in confusion.

"Basilisk parts are used in the Darkest of potions and for very nefarious purposes." He explained calmly. "I felt it wise to not let word get out that there is such a vast amount of rare ingredients in the castle."

"And it will remain a secret." Snape ground out and glared at Mary. "No one outside of this group should know that the Chamber was ever reopened."

"Yes, sir." Mary agreed wholeheartedly. "You have my word."

What her professors didn't know was that she agreed quickly because she didn't want anyone to know that she desperately needed to get that basilisk venom to destroy the Horcruxes. She still didn't know how she would be able to steal some without them noticing.

Mary walked into the bathroom and crouched down next to the tap, pointing at it with the tip of her wand. "There is a small snake etched into the pipe."

"Fascinating," Dumbledore replied in an interested tone.

"Makes you wonder why old Slytherin put the entrance to the Chamber in a girls loo." Mary grumbled.

She could hear Snape grind his teeth in annoyance and she smirked as Professor Lupin coughed to hide his own laughter.

"Open." She hissed in Parseltongue.

The group took a step back as the sinks moved, revealing the large pipe.

"This is where it gets messy." Mary shuddered and looked back at the other three. "Who's going first?"

"What's at the bottom?" Professor Lupin asked curiously.

Mary grimaced. "Bones of dead animals. The stench of death. All kinds of nasty."

"Lovely." Dumbledore stared at the pipe.

Mary stepped forward and shrugged before she jumped into the hole. The surprised yells of her companions sounded far away as she slid down the tunnel. Her growth spurt was suddenly a curse as she was slightly taller than she had been last term and the back of her head seemed to hit every curve and bump in the pipe.

At long last her feet hit solid ground and she quickly lit her wand and moved out of the way.

She spun around, her Lumos showing that absolutely nothing had changed in this portion of the tunnel since she was last here with Ron and Lockhart. The bones still littered the ground and the air was still stale and musty smelling.

"Oomph." A man grunted from the tube.

Mary extended her hand and held it out to him when he exited the pipe and landed flat on his back. "You okay, sir?"

"Fine." Snape grasped her hand and she pulled him up just as Lupin slid out, closely followed by Dumbledore.

"You're bleeding." Professor Lupin observed, pointing to Mary's forehead.

Mary looked at her sleeves trying to find one clean enough to mop up the blood, but before she could resort to getting pipe slime in her most recent injury, Snape waved his wand and the pain vanished along with the blood.

"Nifty charm, Professor." Mary whistled appreciatively as she realized that her clothes were now clean too. "We'll be needing that again."

"There aren't any more pipes to go through, are there?" Professor Lupin asked warily.

Mary shook her head. "The ceiling caved in not far from here. We'll have to dig through to the other side."

"How did the ceiling cave in?" Snape shot her an irritated look.

"Lockhart tried Obliviating Ron and I with a broken wand." Mary smirked. "It backfired and kind of made the tunnel explode."

Snape sneered at her tone while Dumbledore shook his head, hiding his amusement. "Lead the way, child."

The tunnels widened just enough that the professors didn't have to duck as they followed Mary through the maze of slime and animal remains. By the time they reached the section where the tunnel collapsed, Mary was almost out of breath and promised herself that she would start to exercise more before Quidditch training began.

"Do you think we can dig through?" Mary asked as Dumbledore examined the wall of rock that blocked their path.

"I don't think we'll need to," he said vaguely as he pulled his wand from his sleeve. "Stand back you three."

Waving the Elder wand in a wide arch, Dumbledore chanted something in Latin and Mary watched in wonder as the boulders and rocks floated into the air before they knitted themselves back together where they were supposed to go, leaving the tunnel as though the cave-in never happened.

"That should hold for a few days at least." The Headmaster examined his work.

"Impressive, sir." Mary smiled at him while Professor Lupin snapped a few pictures. "The next door is this way."

They walked further down the path until they finally came to the serpent door. Mary wondered if it was some kind of fail-safe that the Chamber sealed itself when it was unoccupied, because she couldn't think of anyone who would have had the time or ability to close the doors behind her.

"Open." She hissed again, causing the heavy stone door to swing open slowly.

Mary stepped into the Chamber and heard the sharp intake of breath from Professor Snape. She turned and watched as his eyes widened both at the magnitude and detail in the hidden room and the size of the creature that lay dead on the stone floor.

"Merlin." Professor Lupin breathed as he lifted the camera and began taking pictures.

Professor Dumbledore placed a weathered hand on Mary's shoulder. "When I learned that you killed the basilisk, I admit that I was highly impressed, but at the time, we were far more concerned with your health. This is truly an amazing feat, child."

"I had help, sir." Mary shrugged slightly. "I would have been dead within a minute had Fawkes not showed up."

"You don't give yourself enough credit." Dumbledore patted her shoulder and moved toward the head of the great serpent, his hand hovering over the place where Gryffindor's sword went through it's mouth.

"Sirius would have a heart attack if he saw this." Mary heard Professor Lupin whisper to himself and she almost regretted her vow to keep this excursion a secret.

Mary rubbed the crook of her elbow where the fang had gone through and let out a deep breath, feeling a phantom ache in her bones.

"Five points for not bringing enough parchment, Potter." Snape drawled. "You should know to be better prepared."

"Yes, sir." Mary replied to the backwards compliment, trying her best to hide the smirk that threatened to pop up.

They worked quickly for what seemed like hours. Snape and Dumbledore started at the tail end and worked their way forward, both gathering what was useful and destroying what remained. Mary was tasked with documenting the salvaged ingredients and storing them in the shrunken crates that Dumbledore had brought.

"When a crate is filled," Dumbledore instructed, "simply place the piece of parchment on the lid that labels what ingredients are inside and tap it with your wand. It will go to a secure location where it will be safe until needed."

"Won't using magic on the crates disturb the properties of the ingredient, sir?" Mary asked, remembering the chapter in her textbook about storing potions ingredients safely.

"Ah, a good question." Dumbledore chuckled lightly. "These crates are charmed to carry such things safely. Although I think you've earned twenty points for pointing out a common mistake most make when transporting volatile ingredients."

Mary took her job very seriously and was sure to catalog everything as neatly and precisely as she could. But the closer they came to harvesting the fangs, the more nervous she became.

Professor Lupin walked forward handing her a vial of black liquid that looked like it was boiling with flecks of gold within it. "Another bottle of venom."

"I'm out of parchment, but I think I have more in my bag," she said quickly, trying to keep her heart from racing.

Mary carefully took the vial and waited for him to turn before she bent over the crate. She reached down and covertly placed the vial in her pack while seeming as though she was looking for more parchment.

She found a half a scroll in the bottom of her bag and sat back down where she continued her work.

The rest of the morning was spent in this fashion until they had gathered everything deemed useful. Mary was very glad when she sent the last crate to its unknown location and waited patiently for the others to finish looking around. She desperately needed a long shower, but more than that, she needed to get that vial of basilisk venom somewhere safer than her backpack.

At long last, some five hours after they started out, the group of four were back in the girls lavatory.

"That was fun." Mary grumbled as she looked at her slimy robes. "I think I may have to burn these. Somehow cleaning charms just don't seem like enough."

Professor Lupin looked down at his own robes in dismay. "I agree."

"Your help has been invaluable." Professor Dumbledore told them as he waved his wand and shot a high powered cleaning charm at all of them. "You're all welcome to join me in my office for a very late breakfast."

Mary looked up at him with pleading eyes. "I think I'm just going to go drown myself in a vat of soap."

Dumbledore smiled kindly as he held the door open. "Have a good day, child."

Mary walked quickly through the corridors, avoiding anybody that got in her path, and quickly made her way to Gryffindor Tower just as everyone left for lunch. She smirked when a firstie boy wrinkled his nose at the smell that wafted off of her and knew for a fact that she was burning everything she had on.

After a very long shower, Mary got ready and made her way back to the Room of Requirement where she requested a large stone room. As though it knew the purpose she had, the room had even supplied her with a small altar on which she could place the Diadem.

She opened the box that held the artifact and dumped the seemingly innocent item onto the stone table, then turned and pulled the vial of venom and the dagger out of her bag.

After donning her spare dragonhide gloves, she carefully opened the vial and dunked the small goblin blade into the thick angry liquid and watched in fascination as the sharp piece of iron seemed to soak it up. She stoppered the vial and carefully placed it in the wooden box then turned back to her task.

"Here goes nothing." Mary sighed, stabbing the Diadem as hard as she could.

A shrill shriek sounded through the room, echoing off of the stone walls as a cloud of thick gray smoke appeared and disappeared in quick succession. Mary was thrown backwards by the aftershock and barely caught herself before she landed on the stone floor.

A low chuckle caught in her throat as the air cleared around her. "Two down. Five to go."


October 9th

Summer quickly faded into autumn and the time came for Quidditch practice to begin. On a particularly cold Saturday morning, Mary was woken at five thirty by a very irritated Angelina.

"Come on, Mary." Angelina yawned widely. "Oliver is demanding the whole team be out on the pitch in five minutes."

Mary rushed to get dressed and followed the other girl down the stairs while pulling her hair up into a messy bun. Angelina handed her her broom and quickly covered her mouth as she yawned again.

"Think he's going to do this often?" Mary asked as she placed her new practice Snitch in her pocket.

"I hope not." Angelina groaned as they met up with the others in the common room. "This is my OWL year and I'd rather not fail because I can't stay awake in class."

Mary grimaced in sympathy as they shuffled out of the portrait hole and made their way onto the grounds. It was foggy as ever and even their wandlight failed to show they were on the correct path. Fred tripped on a small root and George steadied him with a sigh.

"That's it!" Alicia ground out. "On your brooms everybody! I'm going to cast a point me spell that will lead us to the pitch without all of us dying of exhaustion first."

She whipped her wand through the air and a small blue glowing orb floated just in front of them. With another wave of her wand, the orb moved forward, staying close enough that they could still see it in the heavy mist.

Mary mounted her Nimbus in a hurry, not wanting to be left behind. The cool moist air clung to her face and hands as she slowly got her bearings. The chill was working wonders on waking her up, she just hoped she wouldn't drown in the cloud that seemed to have invaded the dark grounds.

She tried to cast a drying spell on her clothes, but it failed marvelously. It took her a minute to realize she was using the wrong wand in the wrong hand. What a lovely way to start the weekend. She thought grimly, swapping wands and making sure that her Muggle hand didn't touch the broom handle. Clutching the broom between her knobby knees, Mary cast drying and heating charms on her teammates. While they, like her, were capable of casting the charms themselves, she could hear their chattering teeth and knew that they weren't awake enough to think of just how brilliant magic could be.

"That's better." Angelina grinned at her. "Thanks, Mary. Let's just hope that warming charm doesn't send Fred straight to sleep."

"There you all are!" Oliver shouted from a distance. "You were supposed to be here over three minutes ago! Three minutes in a game like Quidditch could be the difference between winning or losing! And I will not lose!"

"I'm going to stuff your head down the nearest loo and leave Myrtle as your bodyguard." Katie snapped. "You had us up at the arse-crack of dawn on the effing foggiest day this year and want to complain about three minutes!?"

"We need to practice!" Oliver argued heatedly.

"We need to sleep!" Fred and George shouted in unison.

Mary raised her hand. "I'm going to need some kind of charmed glasses to see the Snitch in this shit."

"Get up there and get into the Hawk position." Oliver sighed loudly. "We'll practice closer quarter maneuvers until the fog lets up."

"I've brought a practice Snitch." Mary handed the small golden ball over to her captain. "It's on arena settings now. It shouldn't leave the pitch."

"Nice," Oliver said appreciatively, testing the weight in his hands. "I'll release it when those five are ready."

Mary angled her broom up and hovered just above the others, keeping her eyes trained on her teammates.

Oliver whistled loudly, letting go of the Snitch, and then the weight of the world fell from Mary's shoulders while she concentrated on nothing but finding the elusive little glint of gold.

Practice lasted for close to four hours and stopped only when McGonagall shouted at them to return to the ground.

"I'm very glad that you are all taking Quidditch season seriously this year, but Oliver, you should have the sense to let your teammates eat," McGonagall said as Annie popped into view hovering several trays of food onto a table that McGonagall conjured. "I don't see how practice is possible in this weather anyway."

The fog was still as heavy as it had been hours before, clinging to anything and everyone it came across. Mary had given up on the drying charms, as they only lasted a few minutes at the most. The heating charms only made the humidity worse and she could tell that a few of her teammates had cast it a few too many times just by the smell of them.

Mary sat down at the table and sighed in relief when McGonagall cast a large bubble charm, sheltering them from the mist. "Ah. That's better."

She had just taken a swig of pumpkin juice when George stood up from the table quickly. "Ange, you reek."

Juice flowed from both of Mary's nostrils and she choked harshly on the sweet liquid trapped in her sinuses. Alicia's jaw dropped, as did Fred's, when Angelina stiffly stood up to stare George in the eyes.

"So do you!" She growled.

"Just eat." McGonagall hissed, putting a hand between the two and wrinkling her nose. "And be sure that you launder everything you're wearing."

Mary wiped her mouth on her napkin and set to heaping food onto her plate. She didn't want to know what Lavender or Parvati would say at her appearance or stench, but really, she didn't care. She wanted food, a hot shower and a good week's worth of sleep.

"Oliver?" Mary asked, watching as he grudgingly ate his breakfast while staring at the goals on the end of the pitch. "Would you be interested in training a reserve Keeper?"

Oliver looked up at her in confusion. "You? You're a textbook Seeker. Better even."

"No." Mary held up a hand to stop him before he could start ranting. "My friend Ron Weasley is wanting to try out next year, but I thought it'd be best for the team if he has a bit of a head start. Don't want to have to find a Keeper last minute when you're off playing for Puddlemere."

"Reserve Team." Oliver corrected her. "But it's a good idea to get another Keeper in the works. Have him come by next practice and we'll see how it goes."

"Just as long as it's not at five in the effing morning." Fred winked at Mary. "Ron doesn't do mornings."

And so it went. Life at Hogwarts resumed at it's normal pace, or what could be seen as normal when you lived at a magical school. The Daily Prophet showed the Hit-Wizards progress on slowly rounding up the wayward Dementors. Fudge looked more inept than ever after Sirius' trial. Everyone seemed to love Professor Lupin. And no one tried to kill Mary since the incident on the train. All in all she couldn't ask for a better time.

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