Chapter 9: A New Player
Selected Listening: If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?- Mayday Parade
Over the next few days, anxiety rose about the castle. Everyone grew jumpy and nervous, especially the muggle born students. Anastasia wasn't worried about the heir of Slytherin. She worried more about finding an inhaler in time for the quidditch match. She found herself spending most of her time in the library, helping Hermione find books about the chamber, but mostly because Justin Finch-Fletchley spent all his time in the library with his Hufflepuff crew. Hermione would hand Anastasia a list of books to find, and on her way, Anastasia would casually pass by the Hufflepuff second year's table to see if Justin might have abandoned his medication.
She knew this was completely immoral, but she had no idea what else to do.
On her third meandering trip back for books, during which she only found two of the five Hermione wanted, Hermione looked up at her and asked, "Okay who is it?"
"Who is what?"
"Who out of the Hufflepuff boys are you eyeing? You've been by there like five times, these books aren't even in that section." Hermione waved the piece of parchment at her.
"Sorry, I just, it's nothing. I don't have a crush…" she couldn't admit to her best friend she was trying to steal from someone else.
Hermione hardened her expression. "Then focus." she said, "all the muggleborns at school are counting on us…even you might be in danger."
"Wait?" Anastasia asked, "What do you mean?"
"We don't know that the heir of Slytherin actually knows who is pureblood and who is not. As far as your concerned, you may also be a target," Hermione said simply.
For some reason, Anastasia hadn't considered this before.
She spent the rest of the day finding the books Hermione wanted, and only stealing subtle glances at the Hufflepuff table when she could.
On that Sunday, Anastasia went to the headmaster's suite for evening dinner. She snuck down without her cloak, as she had left it in the quidditch lockers for spying, and simply looked both ways before slipping behind the knight in the wall.
She reached Albus in the dining nook and took the seat across from him, his settled countenance, tired and stern.
"Grandad, what's wrong?" she asked, although she partly already knew. The old man sighed a deep sigh. He had not the energy to cleverly avoid the truth, as he often did with her.
"Fifty years…it's been fifty years since this happened last. And here, I thought, it would all blow over like leaves from the branches in autumn. I am a fool, my dear."
She stretched out her hand and placed it on his velvet sleeve, swaddling his bony wrist.
"You aren't a fool, grandad," she said gently and then more fearfully, "you said this happened before?"
"Yes, when professor Dippet was headmaster," Albus nodded. "Please don't mention that to the other students…I shouldn't have told you…" he hid his face in his hands, "and now I'm starting to sound like our friend, Hagrid."
Anastasia stared at him, frowning. She rarely saw him so despondent. Although, there were days of the year that troubled him more than the others.
"I won't, I promise. But if it happened fifty years ago, it can't be a student who is the heir of Slytherin. Could it?"
"Who knows. When it happened the first time, the heir was never identified. It could be someone's child or grandchild…but I have my suspicions…a spirit or dark magic."
Anastasia frowned, remembering the night of the deathday party and overhearing the Friar's strange conversation with the other ghosts.
"That reminds me…I wanted to ask you about something…unrelated to the Chamber of Secrets."
"What is it, child?"
And so she relayed to him everything about that night's engagements.
"So, it's possible the ghosts have seen me around, but they also mentioned something about an obscurus problem."
Albus spat out his drink and choked, coughing rapidly.
"Grandad!" She reached out to help him, but he simply lifted his hand. She waited until he stopped before continuing.
"I was wondering, what is an obscurus? And why was it a problem? I don't remember you saying anything about it."
"An obscurus is a being that stems from a young witch or wizard whose powers are being suppressed. It usually happens when a magic young person grows up in a community that fears and despises magic." He stared off to the side, remembering many things she couldn't observe herself.
"At one point, one grew within the castle, but it was dispelled, and cannot harm anyone anymore. You have no need to worry about it. It has gone."
Anastasia nodded and wondered to herself what could have happened for an obscurus to find a host within Hogwarts's walls.
When Anastasia arrived back in the dormitory, she found Hermione sitting on her bed, scouring over four textbooks at once, hair frizzed from stress.
"It's not anywhere!" she yelled in Anastasia in greeting. "I've checked everything. It's not here. If only I hadn't left my stupid book at home—"
Hermione stuffed her face into her pillow. Anastasia came over and patted her shoulder.
"I'm sure, if it's important, one of the professors will tell us about it soon," she said, trying to sound reassuring. Hermione looked up.
"If it's important…" she trailed off.
In The History of Magic on Tuesday, during one of Professor Binns' most boring lectures, Hermione piped up with a question.
"Professor, what do you know about the Chamber of Secrets?"
After much harassment by the class, he went on to say that the Chamber of Secrets was established by Slytherin after fighting with the fellow founders of Hogwarts. Despite their urgency for the ghost to say more, he would hear none of it, dismissing the whole thing as a myth and going on with the normal program of things.
On the way back from dinner that night, the crew stopped to search around the crime scene, but found nothing of interest. They even poked around Myrtle's bathroom, although they did nothing but make her upset.
"Where were you that night?" Harry asked Anastasia as they continued poking around the bathroom. "Suddenly you were right there, with Ginny, in the middle of everything."
"Um…I found her crying in the bathroom one floor down…she was upset because the other Gryffindors were being mean to her. But she says she has a friend in another house now."
"Another house?" Ron asked as if it were a crime.
"I haven't seen her around anyone besides Gryffindors," Hermione commented.
Anastasia shrugged. "Must be someone we don't know…anyway, that's how we got caught in the Slytherin group."
They exited to find Percy Weasley, angrier than a buzzard at all of them due to their suspicious sneaking. After a house point deduction, they ran back to the common room as fast as they could and found a place at a table in a corner where they could speak amongst themselves. Anastasia looked over to see Ginny writing in her diary, speaking to no one.
"Let's think!" Ron said sarcastically. "Who do we know who hates muggleborns and uses any excuse possible to remind people he's pureblood."
Anastasia's stomach turned. She knew it was a possibility, but she hadn't wanted to consider it. Draco was once her friend, after all, and she was trying to save both their lives by finding the right medication. She certainly couldn't help the heir of Slytherin. If he was, it would explain even more why his parents wanted to hide his muggle-like ailment.
"If you're talking about, Malfoy—" Hermione started.
"Who else would it be?" Harry asked. "He's a jerk to everyone except Slytherin purebloods—"
"How can we find out if it's him?" Anastasia asked. "How can we be sure?" she asked with a serious expression.
"Well…it would be a lot easier to question him if we didn't look like ourselves…" Hermione said carefully, staring at her worriedly.
Anastasia didn't like where this was going.
"Polyjuice Potion?" she asked the next day when they gathered round the open book in the library. They had already succeeded in having Lockhart write permission for them to retrieve it from the restricted section and had found it easily. It seemed Albus's appearance that summer as a younger version of himself left a distinct impression on Hermione's perfect memory.
"Shush! What else could I have meant?"
"I knew what you were hinting at, I just didn't know you meant it!" Polyjuice potion was intensely difficult. Grandad sometimes brewed it in the headmaster's suite, and it always made the whole place smell a sickly stench. She wasn't allowed within six feet of his potions table for—
"A month."
"A month? Are you kidding us, Hermione?" Ron asked. "He could have paralyzed the whole school by then.
Hermione snapped her book closed.
"Look, for you, this may be a fun experiment, but I'm not really interested in playing a sitting duck with the rest of the muggle born students while the heir sneaks around targeting us. You're either helping or you're not. Understand?"
The three of them stared silently at her. Anastasia nodded first. She noticed Justin and his friends in their usual spot.
"Alright then…" Hermione said, "…we need to find a good workspace for all of this."
As Harry, Ron, and Hermione sped ahead of her, Anastasia lagged behind. The Hufflepuffs picked up their books in a rush to get to their next class. As they walked away, Justin moved to slip his inhaler into his pocket.
Anastasia sped to catch up, pulled out her wand, and whispered.
"Accio inhaler."
In the seconds it left his fingertips, it flew into her own hand, unnoticed.
Almost empty, but it would be enough.
The next day, she wrote a note to pass under the table to Draco in biology. While Sprout lectured about the venomous tentacula, Anastasia lifted her foot and awkwardly tapped Draco's shin with her shoe. He looked up suddenly at her and smirked as if he would tease her about it if they weren't in the middle of a lecture.
She kept her face stern, facing forward to Sprout. She lowered her wand to the piece of parchment in her lap and whispered her origami spell over it.
"Complicare vulpes," she whispered, thinking of an animal that could be as sneaky as she wanted to be right now. When she reopened her hand, a tiny fox grinned up at her.
"Mittere nuntium, Malfoy," she whispered again. The fox jumped down from her hand under the table. It slunk beneath the boards and hopped onto Draco's knee on the other side. His eyes went wide as it unfolded.
I have it. Meet me after practice.
In the evening, after the rest of the Slytherin team departed the field, Anastasia removed her cloak and tucked it in her wooden locker along with her clipboard on Slytherin team plays, and exited onto the field, chin held high. She found Draco in the center of the pitch, the setting sun gleaming off his blonde hair.
"How did you know we were finished? You haven't even been here." he demanded, arms crossed. She smiled slyly.
"I have my ways."
At this comment, Draco faltered, his stance prepared, hand near his wand pocket.
"Don't trust me?" she asked.
Draco straightened up, but still frowned. He looked like he might say something, but he wasn't sure if he should. Anastasia's fingers prickled for her own wand in response. If she were really facing the heir of Slytherin, she should be more careful.
"Give me what I came for, and we can both be on our way, no funny business."
"Right. I'll give it to you, but first you have to tell me something." she put her hand on the device in her pocket, "are you the heir of Slytherin?"
"Why are you asking me? You're the one who—"
"Me, I'm in Gryffindor! You think I'm the heir of Slytherin?" she asked in disbelief.
"You're constantly doing things that no reasonably-talented second year can do! You seem to know things about the school no one else does. You've already let slip that you're not muggleborn, but you won't tell me who your parents are. You're mysteriously connected to me, but I still haven't figured out how. So yeah, I think you're the bloody heir of Slytherin!"
Anastasia stood stunned. Based on everything he knew about her he drew the only understandable conclusion he could.
"Well, I'm not. Doesn't the heir have to be a boy anyway? Wouldn't I have to be in Slytherin to even open the Chamber of Secrets?"
"I don't know," Draco said, "but the message didn't necessarily give fine print. Never said that the heir has to be a boy or in Slytherin themselves."
"So, you're definitely not the heir then?" She asked to clarify. "You didn't answer me earlier."
"No," he said, "it's not me."
"Okay," she said quietly, certainly. Maybe she could tell Hermione later and they could call off the Polyjuice potion. "Here you go."
She stepped forward and handed the inhaler to Draco and stepped back.
"There's barely anything in there," he said, shaking it.
"I wouldn't have stolen it otherwise," Anastasia said defensively, "someone was still using it."
"You stole from someone?" he asked with an impressed eyebrow. She looked away guiltily.
"Save it for the quidditch match, okay? We'll need it then most."
Draco nodded and pocketed it. In the fading light of day, a worrying silence hung between them. Now that they confirmed that neither of them was the heir, they were as lost as everyone else in solving the mystery.
"Malfoy," she said uncertainly.
"What?" he responded cautiously.
"That comment you made about the message on the wall, about muggleborns, what did you mean by that? You'll be next?" she asked.
"My father told me once…that the heir of Slytherin wants to rid the school of all muggleborns…kill them actually," he said nervously. She nodded and swallowed, fighting back tears that threatened to brim over. All this time, she thought she had immunity.
"Do you think the heir of Slytherin knows the difference between a real muggleborn and a fake one?" she asked, voice trembling.
"Of course, he does…why wouldn't he?" Draco said defensively, "he would have to." But as he began to put the pieces together, his voice grew higher.
"If the heir is a normal student…" Anastasia continued carefully, "…they won't know about me…and if I die…"
"Shut it," Draco snapped, "you're not dying. Shut it. There's no way…I'm sure he knows…"
"You can't know that. You don't know who he or she or they are."
"Well, I'll try and find out!" he said and began to walk off but turned back over his shoulder with haunted eyes. "Until then, be careful, Anastasia."