22. Ruins
My idea was sufficiently odd to get Henry excited and consequently put all other projects on hold in favour of producing an adequate supply of Polyjuice. I ventured into the seedier parts of London to get Muggle samples.
It was Malfoy's cryptic diary entries in combination with my previous visit to Hogwarts that had put me on the right track. The Muggles at the gate had seemed to look right through me. Why? They had left looking mildly disappointed. Why? Wouldn't Hogwarts, its beautifully preserved medieval architecture and pleasant gardens, be a tourist's dream come true? Were they trekking through Scotland in search of Hollywood mansions?
And, most importantly, how come they were there at all? Shouldn't they have been somehow redirected by the wards protecting the school, one of the wizarding world's biggest and best kept secrets? Wasn't it, after all, unplottable?
My mind having filed this topic under Not News-Worthy, I would never have investigated it further if not for Malfoy's description of the hideout he had found for his celebrity boyfriend. Mentions of a Great Hall, curiously unmoving staircases, dungeons, and the biting Scottish winds all pointed in one direction: Hogwarts. But not as I knew it. Malfoy described a derelict castle, dust-filled and gloomy; not a school teeming with teachers and pupils.
It was surprisingly easy to find the answer. Only in revised editions of Hogwarts: A History was there no mention of the peculiar properties of Hogwarts castle. Only when a conflict with the Muggles had seemed imminent had it been decided that the duality of the castle was better kept as secret as possible. After all, should anyone decide to blow up the derelict old castle in the Muggle realm, its magical counterpart might crumble as well. No one quite knew, and it was better to be safe than sorry.
And it was reasonably easy to keep this particular secret covered up. Only Muggles with no magical abilities could see or enter the Muggle version of the Hogwarts grounds. And the castle, dark and foreboding, was not likely to attract any great floods of tourists, especially not given all the warning signs and the fact that this was very much private, partially fenced-in, property.
But should Muggles pass through the crumbling walls, they would enter only the Muggle grounds, never coming in contact with the magical realm. However, Muggleborns occasionally experienced a faint vision of the Muggle castle superimposed on the school, which explained why some of them found it rather more dreary and daunting than others did.
And I must admit, I found more than the howling winds chilling as we pushed through the squealing gates and approached the castle one afternoon in late September. Even as a first year student I had never felt the castle loom as much as it did that day, dark and foreboding. Ivy crawled across everything, as if to devour it whole. Inside, everything was dusty. The front doors and part of the hallway was cleaner than what could be seen in the grimily lit Great Hall.
Except for the dried, blackened pool of blood at the foot of the stairs.