It was incredible how much one days' events could change life at Hogwarts. There were teachers prowling the halls at all hours, and everyone had to be escorted to class. With Hagrid gone, Filch took over the duties of gamekeeper as well as his own job of caretaker; consequently he went from irritating to insufferable, clomping around griping about his extra workload and screaming at students for crimes like sneezing.
"Bitter old geezer," grumbled Melissa, after he yelled at her for talking too loudly in the halls.
"Be nice, you know why he's so upset," said Beth. They were going through the corridors single-file behind Professor Flitwick, on their way to Charms. It was always bad luck to be led by Professor Flitwick; his legs were so short that they never made very good time.
Kettleburn met them at the door of his classroom. "Thanks, Flitwick, I've got 'em now," he barked.
Flitwick, half the height of Kettleburn, looked up and gave a sharp nod before toddling away to his own classroom.
The Gryffindors were already in class. The low buzz of cheerful chatter took on a familiar ominous sound as the Slytherins came in and went to their seats. Kettleburn stalked to the front.
"Hippogriffs!" he barked. "Half horse, half eagle, lots of ego, plenty of brains. You don't mess with a hippogriff. Just ask the wizard Id Fracturus, whose pet hippogriff left him at the top of a tree for four days after old Id called him a birdbrain. Come on now, quills out."
They started taking notes on hippogriffs. Beth had thought that they would be interesting to study -- Mr. Scamander had one in his backyard -- but it turned out that she was wrong.
Mervin was doodling winged horses in the margins of his notes. Suddenly he sat upright. There was some new intelligence blazing in his eyes. Beth could practically see the light bulb go on over his head.
"Fletcher!"
Mervin shook his head abruptly. "Huh?"
"You know the answer, Fletcher?" Kettleburn barked again.
"Sir, I don't even know the question," Mervin answered truthfully. "Just -- remembered something, that's all."
The Gryffindors snickered.
"All right, maybe someone else can tell me the best way to approach a hippogriff," growled Kettleburn. "Spinnet?"
"You have to bow to them," said Alicia Spinnet, giving Mervin a superior look.
"Well done, a point for Gryffindor," boomed Kettleburn. "Got to show a hippogriff some respect, you do. He'll only let you near if you look like you're part afraid of him an' part in love with 'im. Hippogriffs originated ..."
Beth meant to ask Mervin what he had thought of, but when they lined up to be escorted out of class, Mervin hung back at the very end of the line. Now his expression was one of deep brooding. Halfway down the hall, he peeled off from the group and headed in the direction of the library.
That's where Beth, Bruce and Melissa found him an hour later: sitting in the library, surrounded by thick books that lay scattered and open on the table around him. Melissa approached him tentatively.
"Mervin? What did you find?"
Mervin looked up at them. His eyes were a little bit fevered. "I don't believe it -- didn't think of it before this -- all that time wasted --"
"What?" demanded Beth.
"My family breeds winged horses. I should have been the first one to realize that just having feathers doesn't make it a bird."
Bruce looked puzzled. Then his face cleared into astonishment. "The monster! The feather --"
"Has to be from something else that has feathers, not just a bird!" Melissa chirped excitedly.
"No wonder Mr. Scamander didn't know what it was from -- it's not a bird, it's a -- hippogriff, or something else --" Beth stammered.
Mervin buried his nose back in the book. "Now we've got to find out what it is, especially after these last two attacks ... come on, help me with this." He thrust a copy of Mechanics of Modern Cryptozoology into Beth's hands. "What are you waiting for?"
They sat in the library all afternoon, going through book after book looking for creatures with both the power to Petrify and feathers. Some, like the Gorgon, could turn people to stone but were featherless; others, like winged horses, had feathers but no special powers. At seven o'clock Melissa gave up and went to go take a walk with Galen Melhorn. (Beth hadn't been keeping track of their relationship, but she assumed they were on good terms again.) An hour after that, Mervin fell asleep inside The Monster Book of Monsters, awoke when the textbook tried to eat his face, and went back to the common room in disgust. Beth and Bruce stayed, picking through old bestiaries.
"I've seen this one before," said Bruce, rubbing his eyes. "When we were looking for the magical properties of chickens. This has a great section about the cockatrice." He flipped through the pages.
"Does it have feathers and freeze people?" asked Beth tiredly. "'Cause if it doesn't, I don't care."
"It's got feathers," yawned Bruce. "Red ones, actually. The male's got them on its head. But it kills people with its gaze. No simple Petrification here." He flipped the page. "Want to hear a story?"
Beth yawned too. "Okay."
"'An ancient wizard went to battle a basilisk, to save a maiden from its coils'," Bruce read. "Basilisk, that's the same as a cockatrice. 'With him he took his sword and shield. The shield was polished brightly so that the basilisk would die if it saw itself. He wore a glass helmet on his head, so that if he saw the the basilisk through it, he would not die, he would simply --'"
Bruce stopped reading. His jaw dropped.
"What?" Beth demanded lazily.
Bruce swallowed. "He would simply turn to stone," he whispered.
For a second Beth didn't realize what he had said. Then she gradually sat up and stared at him.
"That firstie ... saw it through a camera lens," she said slowly.
Bruce stood up suddenly. "This is it. We've got it. We've -- got to tell somebody!"
Beth stood up alongside him. "Dumbledore's gone, who else would believe us?"
"Not McGonagall, that's for bloody sure." Bruce thought hard. "The one teacher who would know how to handle a basilisk: we've got to get to Kettleburn."
They burst out of the library and took off down the hall. What this discovery would mean for Hogwarts ... for the students ... for Slytherin ... Beth's heart pounded. The mystery was solved --
Right at the door of Kettleburn's office, Bruce drew to a halt suddenly. He laid a finger to his lips and cocked his head towards the door. Inside, someone was having a conversation. Silently, they sank back against the wall, out of sight, but just able to hear.
"You don't understand, I've gotta lay low here," a gravelly voice growled. "Security's up."
Kettleburn, mouthed Bruce. Beth nodded silently.
"That has not been a problem all year," another voice said quietly. It was ominously soft, and slightly indistinct.
"Things are different," said Kettleburn. He sounded anxious. "Everyone's prowlin' around. I can't get caught again."
"I thought you said you were too ... how did you put it? ... "slick" to get caught," the soft voice said.
Kettleburn grumbled something indistinguishable.
The soft voice laughed. "But of course. Yes, losing a hand would be a deterrent, wouldn't it?" It took on an edge that it didn't have before. "Listen to me, Kettleburn. You've come too far in this to let me down now. You'll carry this through to the end. Otherwise, someday you may find yourself in Knockturn Alley, having your other hand served to you on a silver tray ..."
Beth's jaw dropped open in horror.
Kettleburn said something else under his breath, and the stranger laughed again. "Just one more time, you can handle that, can't you?"
Kettleburn's voice rose angrily. "... are difficult enough, but with a beast like that --"
"A beast, he means the basilisk!" whispered Bruce fearfully.
There was a long silence. Then: "Did you hear that?" There came a scraping noise, and footsteps. Kettleburn was coming to the door.
Beth looked around wildly. There was nowhere to hide. In that case, there was only one thing to do ...
"I can't believe she took him back!" Beth babbled loudly, grabbing Bruce and dragging him into the middle of the hall. "After all that."
"Uh -- uh, yeah," said Bruce, matching her volume. There was a faint terror in his face. "After that, and all. Yeah."
"And he's not even that good-looking ..." Beth went on. She turned to the doorway, where Kettleburn had suddenly appeared. "Oh hi, Professor. We had a question for class. Mind if we come in?"
Kettleburn's eyes were narrowed in suspicion. "Shouldn't you two have a chaperone?" he barked. "Dangerous to be goin' around the halls alone."
"Oh ... well ..." started Beth.
Bruce jumped in. "Since we were coming to see a teacher, Professor Snape reckoned we could make it on our own. There are two of us, and it's not too far from our common room to here."
A little of the suspicion left Kettleburn's face, but not much. "Hmm. All right then, come on in, but make it quick -- I was having a conversation."
Both of them tried very hard to look surprised.
They followed Kettleburn into his classroom. There was no one else there. "I -- thought you were having a conversation," said Beth, throwing caution to the wind.
"Through the fire," said Kettleburn gruffly, and indeed, there was a pile of blue ash in the fireplace. "What d'you need?"
"Oh." Beth opened her mouth. "Uh -- on the final essay."
"Right," said Bruce, giving her a glance. "I'm doing it on werewolves. I read that you could tell a werewolf because their index finger is longer than their middle finger."
"Muggle myth," said Kettleburn immediately. "Don't know how they came up with that one myself. Don't put it in your essay, it's not true."
Bruce nodded curtly. "All right. Thanks."
"That all?"
They nodded.
Kettleburn got his suspicious look again. "Well ..." he said slowly. "Guess that's it then. You best be getting back to your dorms. Dangerous these days." His eyes glinted a little.
"Uh -- okay," said Beth. "Thanks."
She and Bruce left as casually as they could, and then took off down the hall to the common room.
They darted into the common room and slammed the door behind them, panting for breath.
"I don't believe it," said Beth, as soon as she caught her breath. "It's him. Kettleburn's the Heir of Slytherin."
"We even knew he's been sneaking around all semester!" cursed Bruce. They went to sit down at one of the small tables. "First Hogsmeade, then the Quidditch match. And how he was meeting with Quirrell in secret last year. I bet they were in it together then, and now he's the only one left."
"We've got to go tell Dumble -- oh," said Beth. Her face fell. "McGonagall's in charge now."
Bruce let out a groan of frustration. "Dumbledore would have believed us. Why isn't he ever here when this kind of thing happens?"
"Well," said Beth staunchly, "if we can't tell Dumbledore, we can at least do the next best thing."
"Kettleburn?" Richard's face was alight with excitement.
"We heard him," said Bruce. "I always knew there was something tricky about him." They were in the library; the rows of books loomed over them oppressively. Beth felt a little claustrophobic.
Riggs was there too, with enormous books spread out in all directions on the table. He didn't look nearly as thrilled as Richard. "What exactly did you hear?"
Quickly, Bruce described the conversation they'd witnessed. Then he mentioned how he, Beth, and Mervin had heard Kettleburn and Quirrell meeting in the Shrieking Shack the year before. As he talked, Riggs' expression went from disbelief to -- almost -- hope.
"We've got to tail him," Riggs said, as soon as Bruce was finished talking. "All of us. We have to watch him every minute."
"You're that sure?" asked Richard.
Riggs looked up at him. "The stakes are too high now for anything but the most drastic action."
Tailing Kettleburn turned out to be a lot harder than anyone thought. For one thing, being led all over the halls by teachers made it hard to go anywhere, let alone in secret. For another, he was never doing anything suspicious. Either he was outside tending the hippogriffs he had brought in for demonstration, or he was among the teachers, talking intently and acting perfectly normal.
"He knows we're on to him," said Beth, as she came to dinner after an hour of watching Kettleburn flirt with Madame Hooch. "He hasn't done a single wrong thing since we started watching him. You know what I think, I think it's a red herring --"
Melissa had been reading a letter; now she crumpled it in her hand.
"Are you all right?"
Melissa's lip curled. "What's it matter, I'm just a girl."
Beth looked at the letter in Melissa's hand. She looked back up at her friend. "Come on, this has gone on all year. Something's really wrong."
"Nothing," she grumbled. "Nothing at all. It's just --"
Beth waited silently. When the food appeared, she helped herself to pickled cod and started eating. Suddenly Melissa exploded angrily.
"It's not nothing, it's just not fair -- I mean, how could they think that way, so -- archaic and insulting --" She pounded the table and covered her face with their hands. "How could they?"
"They?" Beth asked tentatively.
Melissa put her hands down and took a breath. "My parents. They -- well, let me start like this. Ollivanders has been making wands for almost twenty-four hundred years. That's a long time. And it's a very well-known name. The name is everything. The name's the most important part of the business --"
"Uh ... right," said Beth, chewing her cod slowly.
"But it's not!" Melissa slammed both fists down onto the table again. "My parents think it is, but they're wrong! And it makes me so mad --"
Beth bit her lip. "I don't understand," she said quietly.
"The important thing is to keep the Ollivander name, you see? And I'm a girl -- weak female -- probably going to get married -- and I'm not going to keep the name, so I don't get to inherit the company. I always thought I might by default, I'm the only one in my generation, or at least I always have been." She took a breath. "Then my parents go and spoil it."
"How?"
"They had a baby boy."
Beth's jaw dropped. "You never said your mother was even pregnant!"
"I didn't want her to be," Melissa said miserably. "You should have heard them. 'Oh, if it's a boy, it's going to be so wonderful, we can pass on the family business to our son!' Never mind their daughter." She looked bitterly disappointed, and Beth suddenly realized what had driven her all year -- being denied her ambition because of her gender must have been enormously frustrating, even more for a Slytherin.
"So ... what's the letter say?"
Melissa sighed and looked down at the crumpled note. "Just that my brother's doing fine and starting to talk. I don't know, I just don't want to hear about it."
There was a pause. Then Beth looked up and gave her friend a tentative smile.
"It's going to be neat having a brother," she said carefully. "Heaven knows I wish I had mine. And just because he gets to own the wandmaker's, doesn't mean that he's anything important. He'll need his big sister to do all the work. Just look at how much your Mom does for the business, and she's not even an Ollivander except by marriage."
"I know." Melissa let out a long sigh again. "I know. Thanks. That helps."
Richard came up to them; his face was aglow. "Guess what I just heard," he gushed.
They looked up at him expectantly.
"McGonagall was talking to Snape in the halls," he said, beaming. "I guess Dumbledore was so impressed at how Riggs is handling this whole attack thing that he wanted to make him Head Boy -- isn't that fantastic?"
"Awesome!" squealed Beth. "He's got the grades, and his O.W.L.s were like off the chart!"
Melissa frowned. "Is he still going to get it, now that McGonagall's in charge?"
Richard looked a little nonplussed. "She can't overturn that kind of decision. Besides, he'll be back by next year -- wait and see."
"I sure hope so," said Beth fervently, looking over her shoulder at the Head Table and the place where Dumbledore should be.
They tracked Kettleburn constantly as summer drew near. On the day that Professor McGonagall announced that the mandrakes were finally mature enough to revive the Petrified students, he cheered as hard as anyone else in the hall -- harder than Draco Malfoy, in fact, who looked highly put out. Beth knew full well that he had been enjoying class without Granger and had been hoping it would continue through exams.
That day the sun seemed to shine brightly again; classmates of the frozen students were eager to see them back, and the halls almost seemed like normal -- except for the way they still had to follow the teachers around. Even they seemed to be a little more lax, because Professor Flitwick let them go one hallway early, and Professor Lockhart never showed up for his duty at all. The Slytherins all went in a group anyway, but it was nice to go through the halls without listening to Lockhart's blather.
On the way to Alchemy, Beth felt a tap on her shoulder. It was Herne.
"Guess what I found out about Kettleburn," he whispered excitedly, once Beth had gotten away from the group. "He's not the Heir at all."
Beth stared at him. "Are you sure? After all we heard ..."
"Sure." Herne looked thrilled. "I finally caught him last night. I've told almost everyone else. Rich is going to tell McGonagall about it first thing tomorrow. He's really --"
"Hush," said Beth. Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified, echoed through the corridors.
"All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."
They joined the sudden rush of students to return to their common rooms. Soon they were in a group of only Slytherins, bustling toward their underground dormitory. Draco Malfoy looked desperately excited.
The common room was already full, with the clamor that had come to be commonplace. Beth pushed her way through the mob. She had completely lost Herne, and it was hard to see very far in the thick crowd. She was looking around for her friends when Richard slunk to her side and bent down to her ear.
"What happened?" she whispered.
"A girl got taken into the Chamber of Secrets. Right in. There's a note, it says her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever." His voice shook. "We should have told McGonagall weeks ago. Can't believe how stupid I was --"
"Who is it?"
"Not one of us. Gryffindor. Go to the Vase Room." His voice was low, and there was something like panic in it. "We'll group there and then split up. Dell's got to take a group into the Chamber and someone else has to warn the teachers that it's a basilisk."
"McGonagall's never going to believe us!" Beth whispered back.
"Then the blood's on her hands." Richard looked fierce, or fiercely worried. "We're leaving one by one. You go in a few minutes. Be discreet." He moved away, and Beth felt her heartbeat speed up again.
They were going into the Chamber of Secrets? To take on a basilisk? Beth's heart suddenly plummeted. Eleven students against one unknown Heir was one thing -- but trying to fight a basilisk was quite another. She had visions of them all standing around in the Chamber of Secrets with the statue of Ulysses Donner, frozen into eleven more dead stone statues, faces gaping in horror.
Someone brushed past her and she nearly jumped out of her shoes.
It was just a random student trying to get to her friends. "It was a Gryffindor," she told them in a hushed voice. "A first-year ..."
A few minutes had to have passed by now. Beth slunk to the doorway and lingered near it before darting into the corridor, praying that no one had seen her go.
She bolted down the corridor toward the Vase Room. Any moment now, someone was certain to step out and ask where she was going, order her back. Miraculously, no one did: the teachers must have been securing their own students before they went to search for the lost one. She screeched to a halt in front of the blank wall that hid the S.S.A. headquarters and gasped out the password. A door appeared in the solid stone.
She darted into the Vase Room and shut the door behind her. She started forward. Then she stopped dead where she was; her jaw dropped open; she stared into the room.
Vivian was on the ground, struggling against a rope knotted around her chest and legs. There was a swath of cloth around her mouth.
Melissa was trussed up the same way, her eyes wide and afraid.
Beside her lay Mervin, caught in a Full-Body Bind.
And Evan Wilkes was tying a red-haired girl to a chair.