[Marauders: Active] Harry Potter: Because we just ran into her, and she's got green on her hands and face. If you didn't tag her…

George Weasley replies: But. Wait. No way.

Fred Weasley replies: We're slipping out.

As they walked warily down the stairs, it was Ron who thought to fill the portentous silence with, "When do you think they got you?"

Ginny shrugged, "The orange is all over my clothes, so I guess it was when they were 'greeting' everyone on the way into lunch. But I don't know when they got me with the green. Seems a little old."

"Must have gotten friends and family a few days ago," Harry suggested.

DECEPTION CHECK SUCCEEDED

"Right. Speak of the devils," Hermione covered, pointing as Fred, George, and Lee met them at the base of the stairs. They all also sported green as well as some orange, including themselves in the prank.

"Don't go in there!" George said.

"Colin is taking pictures," Fred explained.

"We brought some snacks, though," Lee held up a napkin that clearly had food in it.

"Oh, good, I think there's a free classroom over this way," Ron announced, barely selling the lie that nothing was wrong. But if there was going to be a confrontation, it was better in private they all seemed to figure.

Internally, each of them was trying to square the situation. Had Ginny just gotten into the green ink by accident somehow? There was no way that Mrs. Weasley and Lord Voldemort had… had they?

Hermione Granger replies: I read about a potion that lets you change your appearance… maybe if he looked like Mr. Weasley?

"This better not be prank part two," Ginny insisted as she was ushered into the empty room. "You already got me. Once is fair, but twice and payback is coming!"

"No, we're done with pranks tonight," Fred assured her.

"This is totally serious," George agreed.

Lee quietly put a locking spell on the door behind them as they dragged table and chairs down for an impromptu dinner/intervention.

"Did Dumbledore make the dancing skeletons?" Ginny checked.

"No," Fred allowed.

"But Hagrid's giant jack-o'-lanterns were pretty impressive," George added.

Ginny was digging into the spare food without noticing that they'd spread out to cover her in a semicircle and bar the door, though she was about to wonder why nobody was joining her. Harry gave everyone a nod and led off, "So… Ginny." She almost choked on a pumpkin pasty at having his full attention. He let her cough it out, visualized a snake in his head, and finished, "Can you understand this?"

The last had, of course, been in Parseltongue. It was Ron's plan.

"Understand what?" she asked, in English, but got a confused look in her eye like she wasn't totally sure what she'd heard.

"You're the Heir!" Fred couldn't contain himself anymore.

"How are you the Heir?" George asked.

Wands weren't being drawn yet, but hands were definitely on them.

Having abandoned the food, Ginny looked around mystified. "What is going on? You swore this wasn't a prank! I'm not the air. That doesn't even make sense. How would I be air? Oh no, is this food going to make me burp a lot?"

"The Heir… of Slytherin," George elaborated.

"But that would be a good prank," Fred noted.

"Then I have no idea what you're talking about!" she insisted.

"You-Know-Who had a baby. We think," Ron elaborated. "You were out the night Harry heard the Basilisk and wouldn't tell us why!" he realized. "You have green on you. You're a Parselmouth. Why, Ginny?"

"I. Don't. Know. What you're talking about!" she yelled, standing up from the table. She was surprised that everyone else took a step back of their own and had wands drawn on her. "You're scaring me!"

"You were going to loose a Basilisk on the school!" Ron yelled back. "You're sending letters to Slytherins and doing favors for them! We're onto you."

"That doesn't make any sense! Maybe someone got into my bag? I am missing some parchment," she admitted.

"Maybe she's just been framed," Hermione tried to play peacekeeper. "Only… Ginny, you did just understand Harry speaking Parseltongue."

"I didn't hear any Parseltongue?" she said, clearly confused.

"It sounds like English, if you speak it," Harry said. Again, he visualized a snake and said, "I'm speaking it right now, I think." Everyone pointed at him, having heard hissing.

"This isn't funny at all," Ginny said, nearly breaking down into tears. "I don't understand why you're doing this to me! He's just speaking English!" She had a thought and argued, "How could I be the Heir? That was basically Hagrid, anyway. Tom showed me!"

"Tom… Tom Riddle?" Harry asked.

"Yes!" she explained. "He was a prefect back when Hagrid was in school. He caught Hagrid's spider. It killed Myrtle!"

"No," Harry said, letting the word stand for a moment before elaborating, "Tom Riddle blamed Hagrid, but it was him. He's Lord Voldemort. How have you been talking to him?"

"That's crazy! He's my friend. Or, at least, the little bit of himself he left in his diary is!" she tried to explain. "Dad got it for me at the Alley. He's been my pen pal."

"Dad bought you a talking diary?" George asked.

"With You-Know-Who in it?" Fred shook his head.

"Fine! I'll show you! He'll explain and you'll realize you're after me for no reason and then I'm telling mum!" she stomped her foot. "It's in my room."

"Ginny," Ron said, "what did mum always tell us?" He mimicked Mrs. Weasley while recounting, "Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."

"It's just like a portrait, though! Just let me show you!" she insisted.

The Marauders shared a look and nodded. Harry suggested, "Let's go before the feast lets out."

Seven floors up was extremely tense, wands at the ready and a nearly-sobbing girl being marched to her room through the empty castle. With the map up, they were able to deftly route around the few of the staff that were still out and about: it was a wonder Filch hadn't caught Ginny on the way down, with how he and Mrs. Norris were patrolling the middle floors.

They finally got to the Gryffindor dorms and Hermione said, "I'll escort her upstairs."

"Not alone," Fred shook his head.

"Time to prove we can get up there, I guess," George nodded.

Sure enough, the twins were shockingly adept at stairwell parkour, the stairway turning into a slide having no effect as they linked arms and basically walked up the walls, bracing against each other. It only took them a minute to get into the first-year girls' dorm.

"Clear," Fred shouted down.

"You two come up," George said, as the stairs snapped into place, their defense defeated.

Another minute later, Ginny came back down, Hermione right behind her, and deposited the black diary she was always writing in on a study table in the common room. Fred and George slid down the stair slide as soon as they reached the main floor. "See, it's just a book. It has his name on the back," she pointed. "I just need to. I need to." Her eyes got a glazed look, and she started reaching out to hold the book.

In the combat log, a line had appeared.

Black Diary begins Possession on Ginny Weasley: Success

"It's possessing her! It must have realized what's happening!" Harry announced, and dived forward to grab the book before she could lay her hands back on it. The slowly-moving girl was no match for Harry's reflexes, but as soon as he touched it, it felt strangely warm, more like a live electrical socket than anything.

MENTAL FORTRESS ACTIVATED

He glanced back at the log.

Black Diary uses Suggestion on Harry Potter: Failure (Mental Fortress)

"Hah, you can't get into my mind," he told the book in his hands.

"He's actually in a book? How could he be in a book?" Hermione asked, her faith in literature shaken.

QUEST COMPLETE
50 XP Earned
Quest Reward: Tom Riddle's Diary

While Harry was absently thrilled at the Happy Holi-ween quest completing, he was a little distracted.

"No," Ginny said, the glazed look in her eyes replaced with one of need. "Give it back! I need it back. Let me hold it."

"If you start calling it your precious, I'm calling Tolkien's lawyers," Lee told her, moving to block her from Harry. Hermione laughed, the only one to get the joke.

"Should we take it to the headmaster?" Ron asked.

"I think we basically have to," Harry shrugged. "He'll recognize the name, at least, and maybe he can get it to… talk? Write?"

With that, Ginny stiffened and collapsed to the floor. A spectral figure that looked very familiar to Harry from half-remembered dreams appeared above her body. "I didn't want to play this card so early, but when I've been so thoroughly outplayed…" the dark-haired apparition announced. "Tell me how you found out? Perhaps we can work out a scenario where your sister need not die."

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (MAIN QUEST)

Dark conspiracies are afoot at Hogwarts.

* Get to Hogwarts
* Overhear a Strange Whispering
* Attend a Deathday Party
X N/A
X N/A
X N/A
X N/A
X N/A
* Don't get obliviated
* Slay Slytherin's Monster
O Defeat the Heir of Slytherin

* (Optional) Prove Hagrid wasn't responsible
for the last time the Chamber opened
O (Optional) Save Ginny Weasley

"What are you doing to our sister!?" Ron yelled.

"Nothing she won't recover from, if we come to an agreement," the spectral boy monologued, moving unhurriedly around the common room as Ginny writhed in pain on the stone. "I had not intended to manifest this early. She will probably go quickly, and I won't get as much from the transference, but needs must. All I require is that you give that book to a Slytherin student. I'll do the rest."

"Or…" Harry rolled his eyes, and flung the book into the brightly-burning fireplace.

"Oh no! Not the fire!" Tom fake-cowered, then laughed. "You didn't think that an artifact made by my hands would not be proof against anything you could do to it, did you?" The book remained untouched in the fireplace.

"Fires of Mordor!" Lee realized, picking up on the parallel to the Lord of the Rings that he and Hermione had just been joking about.

Hermione nodded affirmatively at Lee, and knocked the book onto the hearth with a poker, yelling, "Harry! If it can hurt a ghost, it can hurt a book!"

"What can hurt a ghost?" Tom asked, suddenly concerned.

"The weapon you called up," Fred announced, trying to block the apparition for all the good it would do.

"That's irony, right? I think that's irony," George joked, hoping this would work.

Harry had, meanwhile, popped on his gloves and grabbed the basilisk fang, "Here goes, everyone stand back!"

"No!" the specter of the diary shouted, too intangible to even hope to interfere due to his early manifestation. As the fang stabbed into the book on the hearth he began to wail in pain, writhing and twisting even more than Ginny as gouts of black ink sprayed from the punctured diary all over the common room.

And, in moments, it was over. The ghost was gone. Ginny was sitting up holding her head. They were all positively drenched in black ink, as was most of the common room. "I think we got him," Harry smiled.

QUEST COMPLETE
800 XP Earned + 200 Optional XP

And with that quest reward, blasts of leveling light erupted around the older boys, as they finally hit level 4. Before anyone could cheer, the front door of the room opened up to the Gryffindors returning from the feast, who crashed to a halt as the kids at the head of the pack pulled up short of the literary carnage. Dozens of students still covered in orange ink looked at the tableau before them in shock. It looked like a bomb of black ink had gone off near the fireplace.

It was Angelina who broke the silence. Faux-consolingly, she asked, "Oh. Did the follow-up prank go off too early?"

That broke the tension, and all of Gryffindor looked on as the Marauders started laughing like maniacs at their victory, getting drying black ink even more all over them.