AN: Thanks for the new reviews! ^_^ And thanks to MajinSakuko for correcting the German sentence. Ach, my German's getting rusty. Been a while since I've used it. Eh, on with the story...

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"Who are you? Show yourself!" Snape snapped, an angry wand prodding towards the chamber's center.

No answer. The figure just roosted on the stool without a stir, almost unnaturally immovable. In addition, the whole vista swam in enigmas. Whoever sat there, why had he or she previously stayed in complete darkness, for the sole source of light had only just entered? What the incomers could see over the chair's backrest, were a few tufts of yellowish, filthy, matted hair standing on end and a ragged, fraying cloak dangling over the arm supports. From behind, the person definitely did not look the slightest like any of the present-time Hogwarts professors, nor bore resemblance to anyone the couple might recognize.

Severus' eyes narrowed. For him, this was a serious matter of intrusion. After all, he was the High Supreme Commander of the Slytherin House and puppeteered these quarters according to his own mighty Bat Order. Even though occasionally a certain bumblebee came humming down to remind him that he could not snatch a thousand points from Gryffindor just because the color of Potter's socks had been ugly in his opinion. Nonetheless, this was a whole different case: an illicit, and conceivably dangerous stranger was lurking in premises that were not, in the first place, even supposed to exist.

"Answer me! I, Professor Severus Snape, Master of this school, command you to yield th--"

But here, Tonks had taken initiative to bring in some action and freed herself from his tweezer-like hold. Striding forwards, wand out, she approached the chair. Still no reaction. Was the bloke asleep? Or just as deaf as a moldy beetroot? The table came into a better view with every gait: every single item on it seemed covered with thick, gray dust, even the burnt-out candle ends. As though they had not been fingered in eons...

"Oy, can you hear us?" she inquired, placing a hand on the chair's backrest in order to attempt turning it about. Surprisingly lightly, the rickety old piece of furniture swayed under her yank.

What was sitting in it, lost its weak equilibrium and fell against her with a thud, its stiff limbs getting tangled to her robes.

A shrill scream escaped gurgling from her throat. Inches from her visage, the countenance of a wizened mummy was grimacing at her. Its eyes, now only hollow black sockets, had dried off innumerable years ago. The once lively, ruddy skin had turned brown, crinkled and parchment-like, and crumpled in places so that the graying scull underneath was partly visible, especially at the place of its lopsided gap of a mouth showing several missing teeth. This withered monstrosity had apparently once been a short middle-aged man, and judging by the formerly lustrously embroidered robes -now tattered and bleached-, an individual of certain kind of authority.

A wannabe-toughie Miss Independent or not, the corpse made Tonks go into utter hysterics. For Bill Weasley it was perhaps just another yawningly boring day to meet three-headed mutant skeletons in the bowels of the Egyptian pyramids. But not for this urban lassie, whose experiences on that field were limited to the ketchup-stain plastic puppets seen in cheap Muggle movies. Horrified gaze fixed into the dead blank stare, shivers abruptly rocking her slender form, she endeavored shaking the disgust off. But its chapped arms, which had stiffened into crooked hook-like protrusions as they had lain perhaps centuries on the stool's armrests, became more and more snarled together with her robes, drawing her into a grotesque embrace. As though the deceased had wanted to drain Nymphadora's soft youth, and transform her into something alike, decaying and blemished.

Nevertheless, a jet of red sparks zoomed through the air, hitting the carcass and sending it flying across the cabinet. The dead man crashed against the bookshelf, dust and rolls of parchment showering down upon it. There it remained, immovable, grimacing toothily at its attacker with that twisted aperture of a mouth. Scowling, Snape pocketed his wand and swept to the Auror. No mutinous mummy was to bully his fair maiden, or they would suffer his vehement wrath. Shocked, she was furthermore quivering from head to toe, as though she had been trapped on Antarctica, wearing only a lei.

This time the girl voluntarily sought her way into the shelter of his voluminous cape, and nuzzled herself against his side. Her manically pounding heart gradually stopped hammering against her ribs, yet the shivers did not wear off that fast. Though Severus' palm was fondling her back, his gaunt face remained stern, the words plopping out in petulant tones.

"I am not giving out warnings gratuitously, child. When I state there may be unidentified threats awaiting, my proclamations ought to be taken seriously. Now, regarding the present situation, nothing too grave fortunately occurred. About which I am thankful since I do not wish to see you ending up again at St. Mungo's."

"R-right... Constant vigilance. Blimey..." When finally calm again, Tonks hated to admit that she had just so uber-cornily become the stereotypical frail damsel in distress. Only the pink frilly princess dress and the singing animal friends were missing, the dragon being replaced by this extra-senile dust-scull. Now that it sprawled in the corner as a crumpled heap, it did not look like even fifty percent as scary, moreover like some surplus stocks of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. And still she was cowering under the arm of the 'valiant' mummyslayer. The Girl Power needed to be acquired back and swiftly.

Grinning uneasily, she gave an aflutter blurt, trying to direct the conversation away from the embarrassing incident. "Right, yeah-- Reckon this bloke is responsible of the secret door? Or at least he seems to have been the last one that, uh-- used this room."

"Indeed, it would seem so..." The curious glint was back in Snape's pupils. "I wonder..." He let go of his lambkin, and soared to examine the table. Undoubtedly, when the chamber's resident had been still alive, he had been in the middle of deep studies. Under the lake of dust, a fraying quill rested on a ragged parchment, blotches of ink partly smearing the incomplete sentence under it. A heap of leather-bound books cluttered the rest of the desk, a myriad of bookmarks peeking out from between the partly loose sheets. One of these brick-thick volumes was open at the chair: the male had clearly been taking notes. So, why had he become the eternal prisoner of his study, why had the chair been transformed into his tomb-throne? All was very unclear. Perhaps a heart-attack or a fatal stroke had dammed the rivulet of life, and the victim had plopped dead without even having time to shriek for help. Or something relevant. Yet, why had nobody come to remove the body from this shady booklair?

Only one conclusion could be drawn: he alone had possessed the savvy of this hole's existence. Thence, obviously nobody had even guessed to search for him over here. Doubtlessly the dehumidification charm had hindered the rotting process and mummified the remains, just like it had secured the scripts from mold and damp.

Severus scrutinized the aforementioned open book down his violently curving honker, turning over the dust-exhaling pages to reach the beginning.

"I wonder, whether... ah, here ought to be something..." He had reached the few leaves just after the heavy, buckled leather cover. Still a few centuries ago, when books were expensive and rare, their owners carefully claimed their possessions, commonly marking down even the precise date of when the volume had been added to collection. Snape's long thin finger slid over several inscriptions scribbled in differently colored inks: this item had plainly belonged to numerous individuals. In place of the very last line, his overgrown fingernail ceased its journey, his lips mumbling,

"Herre Brokk Hrafn Spøkelse, A.D. 1682."   

The date could only give out suggestions, since it implicitly referred to the year of purchase or analogous acquisition. Yet, the name seemed to switch on the professor's endocranial steam engine. Snape's memory definitely was no second-handed sieve: what he heard or studied once, became the undeviating subtenant of his mind.

"Curious... if I recall right, I daresay we have just come across one of Professor Binns' predecessors..."

"Eh...?" She raised a bamboozled brow.

"Ah, I see. The name has no meaning for you, has it?" As Tonks shook her head, he croaked on, "It has been years, but there was this obscure rumor I once heard when having some idle conversations in the staff room... I do not usually interest myself in such trivial twittering nonsense, like Professors Pomfrey and Sprout having a foolish fit of giggles about Miss Wizarding World 1993's ex-boyfriend's love life... Nevertheless, this was slightly different. I ought to say it was Professor Flitwick who discoursed about the near history of the Hogwarts staff, and at some point, the story dived deeper. Turned out that the current History of Magic post had been administered by a series of substitute teachers in the 1700's... though, I must hereby correct that the subject presently carrying the name History of Magic had not yet been fully established those days... It merely consisted of introductory stories about the deeds of some famous witches and wizards: Merlin, the founders of Hogwarts, and so on and so forth."

"Um, what about the substitutes?" Nymphadora barged in. Nitpicky detail-comb as he was, he was prone to start rambling about some thoroughly out-of-topic particular if it was poorly defined in his opinion.

"Indeed... Well, Professor Flitwick mentioned that in the early 1700's, a man called something like 'Broke Ravine' -Professor Flitwick had forgotten the surname, and undoubtedly spelt the rest of it rather wrong, as we seem to be dealing with a Scandinavian name here- taught the elementary version of History of Magic. And then, one day, he suddenly disappeared, never returning to his teaching post. You see, these dungeons have not always been devoted to the delicate arts of potionmaking. This vanished one lived in the very same premises as I do nowadays. After the uncanny disappearance, searches of course were made, but in vain. Thus, as months and months went past, a new teacher was needed to fill the void caused by his nonexistent presence. It is told that nobody quite missed this 'Brokk'; ill-natured and rather untalented as a teacher as he apparently was, with no records of living family..." his lip curled half-sneeringly, as he en passant proclaimed the superiority of his own skills, "Shady fellow... I daresay the rest of the staff cared just as much about his personal life as if he had been a rotten Horklump... So, the case was tossed aside and forgotten, and permanent educators were sought after to apply for the post already in the mid-1700's."

"Heh, and I always thought Mr. Binns had been here since the Goblin rebellions. Honestly, don't remember hearing anything about this whole dodgy substitute stuff. And believe me, I've actually READ Hogwarts, A History." Tonks had also stepped at the desk and was semi-interested glancing over the Latin titles of some of the books. But most of the hand-drawn letters in the rubrics were so worn-out, that it was rather hard to figure out on a brief peer what these were all about. She picked up a random volume, one of the thinner ones that did not weigh a round twenty pounds, and mimicking the batcaped mage master, began leafing through it. The dust puffs oozing from between the pages made her eyes prickle, but she wanted to do something else than just stagnate beside the mummy and appear like a featherbrained princess that was only suited to bat lashes and admire her savior.

"No, ancient as he may seem, his teaching work belongs solely to the present century... And I doubt Hogwarts, A History would conceal such frivolous information as this. It is merely an abridged collection of the most important events, even though it claims to be so very accurate...  mayhap a footnote somewhere..." Severus' drawl had turned indifferent, and he was again tracing his lower lip with a bony index, as he so often did when pondering something. Snape's gaze was wandering along the shelves: his inner bookworm was ostensibly jumping up and down with ecstasy. And soon, he brushed closer to a cluster of volumes whose titles had not yet been gnawed illegible by the ravenous time.

"Appears that the Dark Arts have been our dear mummy's little hobby... Small, but impressive library, I must say. I do not astonish why an individual would want to keep this hidden..."

A short quietude descended upon the archaic study. Nymphadora was still crouching over the one and the same book, admiring the complex talent with which it had been constructed. The leaves, decorated with itty bitty drawings so complicated that its illustrator had probably possessed microscopes in the place of his eyes, were quite brittle, so that they had to be carefully turned over, one by one. She had always liked looking at such medieval jewels of art, where every line and mark had been created by a skilful hand, and not by any mass-production printing machine. Of course, the best in these, compared to the same-era Muggle works, was that the pictures did not squat boringly still, but were ablaze with action. In one corner, a horde of minuscule grubs was teeming along a large letter Z. An emerald green serpent was squirming and chasing its tail around the page number DCLXVI. Fascinated, she went on. The Potions Master was rustling something behind her. One page more, two more...

"Merlin's macaroni...!" she suddenly interjected, remaining to goggle at a flourished illustration beneath her pointy nose. A bearded man wearing a bearskin cloak and a horned helmet was lifting up a round object, which was partly covered in carvings. It was not the male's buff anatomy that had caught her attention; the drawing was rather disproportioned and made the pal look more like a bald gorilla than a droolworthy adonis. No, it was the item he kept in his hands...

She yanked Severus' cloak corner, pointing at the picture. Brow abruptly furrowed, he bent down rapidly, resembling a strutting crow that had spotted an especially juicy worm wriggling on the ground, the massive hookbeak darting towards the page as though it was going to pierce it. Half a minute, in utter stillness, he leafed the frail sheets of parchment, observing the minuscule Latin writing that swarmed in-between the images.

"I think we ought to consult the Headmaster", he finally mused, an austere cling in his voice.

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TBC. Comments?