Chapter Twenty-Two: Hogsmeade

On the morning of the next Hogsmeade trip, Beth got a letter at breakfast from a very familiar owl.

Dear Beth:
I hope you are all right.
I want you to know that the Ministry of Magic has put spells around the
property in case Chris comes back. Our house is safe from him.
Because of everything that happened since this summer, I want you to get
to know your cousin Louisa. She is in Hufflepuff in her third year and
the daughter of my brother Bob. If something happens to me he has
promised to take care of you.
Love, Da

Beth scowled down at the letter. How dare he commit to writing something like that? He hadn't said it straight up, but his implied meaning was very clear, and they both knew it. He was older than they cared to admit. And with the banshee coming around again...

She jammed the letter into her pocket, furious that he was so accepting of the truth.

Melissa turned from her oatmeal and spotted the envelope. "Who's the letter from?" she gasped, eyes alight. "Is it from you-know-who?"

She meant Richard. "It's from my dad," said Beth dully.

Melissa's face fell. "Oh." She cheered up immediately. The knowledge that Richard was alive had really gone to her head. "Are you going to be meeting any certain someones in Hogsmeade? Should I stay with Bruce ooh, wait, can I come see him too?"

"I'm not meeting anyone," Beth told her. "I'm not even going to Hogsmeade until lunch."

"What? Why not?"

"I'm going to be grading some potions for Snape." At Melissa's aghast expression, she dropped her voice and added, "And digging up everything I can about Evan's Alchemy project."

Melissa's expression turned crafty. "Good thinking. He'll be in the village picking up school supplies I heard Herne asking him about it. You're safe until noon, I think. Do you want me to stall him from coming back?"

It always amused Beth when her friends suggested shady dealings with such a straight face. "I don't think I'll need that long," she said. "If it's not easy to access, Evan will have made it impossible. I'll just meet you in the Three Broomsticks around noon, all right?"

"Don't be late!" Melissa sang, as she joined the flow of students headed for the Entrance Hall.

Beth fought through the crowd and came out in the dungeon, bleak and empty and cold from the February rain leaching into the ground all around the stone halls. She had left behind a batch of Draught of Peace Potions in Dungeon Six, graded for contents but not for execution. Lighting up a small blue flame on the counter, she put some water on to boil and started drawing up pipettes full of potion for the temperature test.

She chucked some rock salt into the water to make it boil more quickly and then sat back, waiting for it to boil, staring idly at the walls and wishing there were windows. If she ever managed to get a job, she hoped it would be in a large, clean laboratory instead of a dim, cold dungeon.

She had sent out two of the three applications, with letters of recommendation, résumés, and everything; hopefully she would be hearing from them in a month or two. She had filled out the application for the Department of Mysteries but was holding on to it, still uncertain of whether she wanted to take her life in that direction.

It would be very good for the Society to have an insider, she thought often.

But what if I forget what I see every day? she answered just as often.

She fiddled absently with the ring from Richard's mother, the black opal set in silver that she still wore around her neck. She remembered what Richard had given up in favor of the Society, and loved him all the more for it; but she wasn't sure if she would be able to do the same.

The hiss of angry steam told her that the water had begun to simmer. She gave it a few stirs and within moments it had risen to a full boil, steaming bubbles brushing the top edge of the cauldron. Carefully hanging the test tubes of potion from a wire-mesh apparatus, she lowered them into the boiling water and let the wire frame rest on the cauldron.

It would take a few minutes for the potion samples to heat thoroughly. Until then, Beth thought, sliding off the edge of her stool, let's see what Evan's got in storage.

Cabinets for the advanced Alchemy class lined half of the back wall of Dungeon Six. Searching in her pocket for the spare key that Snape had given her (and counting herself lucky that he had not suspected that she would misuse it), she unlocked the first cabinet and pulled it open. A gushing of purple smoke hit her in the face and she stepped back coughing. She peeked back inside: the handwritten labels on the shelf told her that "E. Charmichael" was responsible. His potion marinated on the top shelf. Below that, "V. Frobisher" was cultivating a terrarium (CAUTION: CHIZPURFLES. DO NOT OPEN). A quick scan of the other shelves told her that they were assigned in alphabetical order. Beth closed the cupboard, careful to relock it, and went to the last cabinet in the row.

The doors unlocked easily, to Beth's surprise; she had expected Evan to have hexed it up a little. She stood off to the side just in case and swung open the doors.

The cabinet was nearly empty.

Beth peeked inside, then came closer and peered into the cabinet. The shelves were dusty, except for a few round clean spaces like crop circles that showed the whereabouts of recently-removed flasks. A few jars stood on the top shelf. Beth sifted through them quickly: a bottle of bat's ears, a preserved liver, a long rack bearing a variety of snakeskins.

The shelf below it bore more of the same. Eye of newt, toe of frog ... this was elementary stuff, filler material. Apart from the snakeskins, none of it was enough to carry a potion on its own especially one powerful enough to pass Alchemy with. Beth poked through the jars with growing unrest. This was not what she had expected to find

Wait. At the very corner of the bottom shelf stood a mortar and pestle, the long, smooth grinding stone still propped within the bowl. Beth withdrew it carefully. The substance inside glittered as it hit the light. A strange, winking sand lay at the bottom, along with several larger pieces of crystal that Evan had clearly been grinding before he put away his work for the day.

Beth put the mortar and pestle on one of the laboratory tables and leaned over it. They had done very little work with minerals, but the glinting sand seemed familiar nonetheless. Snatching some tweezers from a nearby bench, she picked out one of the larger pieces. She raised it to the light and was astonished to see, through the scratched and uneven surfaces, a rainbow of light break and scatter inside, bouncing among the facets and twinkling at every odd angle.

She lifted the mortar from its place and took a good look at the end of it. It, too, was the same clear crystal, though a little cloudy and well-scarred. Beth had an unsettling idea. On a whim, she took the large shard and ran it across the desk. The hard stone parted like butter.

There was no doubt. The sand in the stone bowl was being ground from a solid diamond.

Unnerved suddenly, Beth put back the shard and the mortar and set them both back in the cabinet, being sure to match it up with the dustless ring where it had previously sat. The mortar and pestle must have both been heavily charmed, to allow the grinding of a diamond. She locked up and went back to check on her temperature test, without really paying attention to it. What on earth was Evan doing that would require him to pulverize a diamond? And why on earth would Snape let him?

She went on with her work for Snape, all the while running through the ingredients in her head and trying to remember if she had ever even heard of a potion involving precious gems. The more she found out about Evan's project, the stranger it became.

By noon she had completed her work and put it away, starving for lunch and still lacking an explanation for Evan's unusual choice of ingredient. She cleaned up the dungeon, grabbed her cloak, and headed upstairs for the long walk to Hogsmeade, anxious to share her findings with Melissa.

She now knew something more about Evan's final Alchemy project. It was valuable; and someone, whether Evan, Professor Snape, or Hogwarts school itself, was willing to invest a great deal to get it to work.

-'-'-

It was raining, to Beth's great surprise; the dungeons allowed neither a view of the sky nor the sound of pattering rain. Although there were a handful of carriages nearby, she put up her hood and began to walk down the long road to Hogsmeade. The chilly rain and breeze felt good on her skin, after long hours in the cloistered dungeons; besides, the thought of the thestrals left her a little unsettled about using the coaches.

Don't be silly, Parson, you've been using them for years, she chided herself, as she approached the edges of town and began strolling down the main street. She knew that nothing had changed, and it was stupid to suddenly be wary of them now that she knew they existed, but that didn't change the creeping way her skin felt when she thought about the leathery, invisible beasts.

She was almost to the Three Broomsticks when a voice called out from amid the raindrops and stopped her in her tracks.

"What do you know. We seem destined to meet."

Beth gritted her teeth at the sound of the voice. "Riggs." She whirled around.

"Pleasure to see you too."

"What do you want?"

"Health, wealth and power," Riggs riffed good-humoredly. "But you knew all that. Things going well? Keeping out of our master's eye?"

Beth bit her tongue. It wouldn't help to quarrel it was exactly what he wanted.

"Say," said Riggs, giving her the once-over, "I don't suppose you know where Nagini has got to?"

"Want to know where you should get to?" All right, to be honest, she wanted to quarrel too.

Riggs laughed heartily. "Do I detect a temper? You know, your brother Chris is the same way. Impulsive. Still a bit unbalanced, but he's coming round..."

Beth was speechless. Riggs went on mercilessly.

"So sorry your other brother had to be left behind. That was your brother, wasn't it? Not enough room in the boats, you know... I'm afraid ten was all we could manage at the moment... Ah, well. We'll finish the job soon enough."

"Somebody's going to kill you someday," said Beth, meaning it. The wave of hate that ran through her was frighteningly strong.

"But not you," Riggs said smugly. "And not today. Anyway, I've got just loads to do business to attend to dreadfully large place, Hogsmeade, isn't it? I don't suppose I'll bump into you again. That's a shame, you know." He fixed Beth with a meaningful look. "We all ought to be working together."

"You're right," said Beth evenly, "we should be. Too bad you're on the wrong side."

Riggs took two swift strides forward until they were nose to nose. "You will see," he said fiercely, "which side is wrong when it cowers in subservience!"

"I can't wait to watch you crawl," Beth snarled.

A fierce and deep ugliness twisted Riggs' face. For a moment, Beth's gut twisted in real fear. Then Riggs relaxed; his features changed, and he stood back calmly.

"You will see," he said again. Once again he was in possession of himself, cool and confident that he had chosen the correct master. "Tell Melissa thanks for the wands."

Realization struck. "You gave them to the escapees!"

"See you at the next meeting," Riggs smiled.

He vanished into the Three Broomsticks.

Beth darted after him, but she couldn't find him amid the bustle of butterbeers and chatting students.

She heaved a sigh and put her hands on her hips, shaking her head. He'd probably Disapparated, if not snuck straight out the back. Well, here she was ... she tried to put him from her mind as she ran her eyes across the crowded tavern, seeking out her friends.

It was Bruce she finally spotted, at a table in the corner. He was sitting with Melissa, his girlfriend Kiesha, and Cho Chang.

Beth came up and slid into the seat by Melissa. No one greeted her; the table seemed focused on Cho, who had her head down on the table. The Ravenclaw groaned and raised her head, only to drop it back into her cupped hands miserably.

Kiesha spoke up. "You really screwed that up."

"I know perfectly well that I screwed it up," said Cho, face in her hands.

Kiesha put her arm around Cho's shoulders. "If it's any comfort, he really screwed it up too," she said practically. "Not even holding your hand. Honestly. He should have just leaned over and snogged you one."

Beth glanced over at Melissa for an explanation, but her friend only met her glance and mouthed a silent Later.

"He's never going to want to snog me one," said Cho, her voice muffled between her fingers. "He probably thinks I'm c-crazy."

"Darling," said Kiesha, pulling away and looking Cho straight in the face, "I think you're crazy. Doesn't mean you're not a lovely girl."

"But I don't want to date you," said Cho. The side of her mouth twitched upward nonetheless.

"Likewise," Kiesha agreed, "I have my own charming gent in green. Point is, it's not too late. And Potter's half crazy himself. You're a perfect pair."

Cho's face changed again; she seemed to lose her strength. She gazed back at Kiesha, with eyes that were hollower and a marginal, sad smile.

"That's just what you said about Cedric."

The table grew very silent.

"Excuse me," Cho whispered. She got up and left the Three Broomsticks at a very measured, careful pace.

Even Kiesha dared not follow her.

-'-'-

Beth didn't see Cho at all during the following week since the Guild and the Society had split, she rarely saw the Ravenclaws at all but Bruce reported that she had gotten hold of herself again and was doing all right.

"Considering," he added, with a meaningful glance at Beth.

Beth and Melissa exchanged a meaningful glance themselves and decided wordlessly that it was time to let Bruce in on the secret about Richard. Their friend gaped in relief and swore himself to secrecy, in between astonished gasping: "I can't believe that you all this time I thought I just can't believe..."

Beth thought that she could trust them both, but she also knew that having two confidantes was pushing her luck a little. She reminded them both of the consequences of being found out, and especially stressed that neither the Guild nor the Society should be included yet.

"And especially," she added, thinking of the diamond dust she had found in the Alchemy cabinets, "don't tell Evan."

As her friends listened, she told them about the strange ingredient hidden among Evan's things. Melissa, who had neither the potions experience nor the awe of expensive things that Beth had, was less concerned. Bruce agreed with Beth.

"Mel, I'm begging you," he said, leaning in seriously toward Melissa. "Just once before I die. Please let me beat an answer out of him. I'll give you anything you want."

For a moment Melissa looked like she was considering this; then she shook her head abruptly, with a sigh. "I can't let you do that, Bruce. He's done nothing wrong. This year," she amended, as Beth and Bruce spoke up at once. "Besides, I'm sure Dumbledore knows what all of the Alchemy projects are for. He would step in if anything were awry."

"He didn't step in about Diggory's potion," Beth noted grimly. "And that killed him."

"Diggory's Transcongus Brew was extracurricular," Melissa argued. "This is the focal point of Evan's entire school year. He's not going to be able to get away with anything. We have to have a little faith in the professors and in Dumbledore."

But after all that had happened in the past few years, Beth had very little faith left.

-'-'-

"I liked the first. You could tell right then, it was going to be good."

"But the fourteenth was the funniest."

"Yeah but did you see the Beater scream and fall backwards off his broom?"

"Are you kidding, I got a nosebleed I laughed so hard..."

It was the Monday after the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff game, and the Slytherins had never been more delighted with a Hufflepuff victory.

"Twenty-two minutes, I wish it had been an hour..."

Not only had the Gryffindor Keeper turned in the worst performance of his career, but the Beaters who had replaced the Weasley twins were hilariously inept. Even some of the other houses had taken up the "Weasley is Our King" song in between the riotous bouts of laughter, that is.

Better yet, the scores were nearly tied; as Gryffindor had ultimately edged within ten points of winning, the Hufflepuff lead was so insignificant that neither team had moved into a place that would threaten the Slytherin standings.

"This weekend was almost perfect," Aaron sighed. "If only we didn't have to go back to class."

Mervin snorted. "I'm not going to risk skiving off Umbridge. She's been on the warpath all term. She'll be sacking someone before long."

"It'll be Hagrid," said Aaron confidently.

"Are you kidding?" said Mervin, pitch rising in disbelief. "She's had it out for Trelawney for months now."

"Umbridge won't sack a witch before a half-breed," Aaron argued. "Bet you five Sickles."

Mervin eyed him contemptuously. "She'll sack a fraud before an incompetent. Eight Sickles."

"Hagrid's friends with Potter," Aaron retorted, as if he were laying out a winning hand of poker. "Ten Sickles. Shake."

They shook hands solemnly.

A hooting and fluttering heralded the mail. A couple dozen owls swooped in through the high windows, depositing packages and newspapers; then, with barely a warning, almost a hundred owls burst in, circled in a synchronized feathery mass, and made for the Gryffindor table.

One by one, they began to shower letters onto Harry Potter.

"Would have guessed," muttered Mervin.

"What on earth has he done now?" Melissa wondered aloud, craning her neck to see across the Great Hall.

Beth caught the Daily Prophet out of the air before it even hit her plate and the group of them tore it apart to see if there had been anything provocative. Apart from a snide comment about some Free-the-House-Elves protestors being "as barmy as Potter," nothing looked like it would invite dozens of items of fan mail or even hate mail.

Just at the bell, they saw Professor Umbridge stalking toward the Gryffindor table, smiling in her worst way, but they were gone too soon to see what, if anything, occurred.

"It just makes me really nervous," Beth told Melissa on the way to Charms. "Every time something happens to Potter, it turns out to affect the whole school."

Professor Flitwick seemed oddly distracted during class, to the point where he mispronounced the incantation he was teaching and forgot Mervin's name, and finally he let them spend the rest of the period as a study hall and disappeared behind the piles of books on his desk. They whispered quietly over their N.E.W.T.s primers, dying of curiosity. When the bell finally rang, they snatched up their books and dashed out the door only to bunch up in a stunned crowd as Mervin and Bruce stopped dead, right outside of the door.

The wall opposite the classroom bore a large, official-looking document.

-' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '' ' ' '-BY ORDER OF-' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '-
-' ' ' ' ' ' ' '-The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts-' ' ' ' ' ' ' '-
Any student found to be in possession of the magazine The
Quibbler
will be expelled.

The above is in accordance with
Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.

Signed:
Dolores Jane Umbridge
HIGH INQUISITOR

"Well, at least we know what all the fuss was about," said Bruce.

"There's something really important in that magazine," said Melissa, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully.

Mervin reached out and prodded the Minister's signature. "Unreal," he breathed, staring at his fingertips. "The bloody ink's still wet."

Melissa glanced from side to side, and then lowered her voice. "It may be tricky," she said, almost inaudibly, "and I don't know what all this is about, but we have to get hold of a copy."

That, however, proved easier said than done. The four of them trawled the hallways before class, but although everybody seemed to be whispering together, there wasn't a magazine in sight. When Beth and Mervin entered Arithmancy, they passed Professors Vector and Sinistra also whispering and settled down near a group of Ravenclaws who were suspiciously interested in a page in their textbook. Beth tried to catch a glimpse but it looked no different than her own. She wished for a moment that the Society was still working with the Guild; she was sure that some of the Ravenclaws would know what was going on.

"Come now, ye lot," said Professor Vector, taking the helm of the Arithmancy class with a line of worry on her brow. "Put all that away until after class. That's it..."

Beth couldn't help noticing that she had said the words "all that" as if she knew exactly what was distracting her students.

By dinner time, none of them had had any luck at finding the article in any form, although the entire school seemed to have access to it; everywhere they turned, students grouped around discarded scraps of parchment or loose pages of the Daily Prophet. But none of them yielded to the Society the Quibbler article that they were certain lay beneath the innocent words.

"Get out there," hissed Melissa, as dessert faded away, "and don't come back to the common room until you've got the Quibbler in your hands."

"What if we have to" Mervin began.

"Use the loos in the hallways."

Mervin looked disappointed at having been so easily beaten down.

They scattered at the Entrance Hall, each of them taking a different path in search of the remarkable article. Beth, after some hesitation, strolled past the library and up toward the Ravenclaw tower. They hadn't all been as antagonistic as Deirdre, she figured; maybe someone would be willing to give their old partners a hand.

She turned the corner and bumped directly into a first-year bearing what looked like the inventory of an entire comic-book store in her arms.

The girl staggered back and sat down hard on the stone floor. A few comic books drifted from her teetering stack.

It was Cova Lynn. Beth bent down and collected the loose comics while the tiny girl got to her feet, still clutching her collection.

"Sorry about that."

"It's all right," said Cova Lynn, perky as ever. "Hello, Beth. Have a Martin Miggs comic?"

Beth eyed her suspiciously. "Why would I want one?"

"Special insert section," said Cova Lynn, without batting an eye. "It's quite popular. It recently appeared in a national tabloid."

Beth's jaw dropped. "You're hustling the Quibbler article?" she hissed, bending down for a closer look at the comics in the girl's arms.

Cova Lynn was all offended dignity. "That would be illegal!" She huffed for a while, then went on calmly, "Charmed for your eyes only."

Beth considered. "I'll take one."

"That will be nine Sickles, please."

"Nine Sickles, are you serious?" At Cova Lynn's warning glare, Beth bit her lip. Sighing, she rummaged in her knapsack and came up with some change. "This had better be one heck of a comic."

"The best," said Cova Lynn seriously. "Martin goes parasailing. He's quite mad."

"He's not the only one around here," said Beth. She took her comic book and went back to the common room.

Melissa had also procured a copy, disguised as the sports section of last Thursday's Daily Prophet, and they grouped together on one of the long leather sofas, hunched over their respective prizes. As soon as Beth got through the first pages (in which Martin Miggs arranged his parasailing trip, a strangely fascinating exercise in Muggle Studies), she came to the forbidden article and the glaring headline:

HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST:
THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED
AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN

Of course. Beth hadn't expected this, necessarily, but it explained Umbridge's reaction perfectly. She dove into the article.

It gave her a chill to read about that first Death Eater meeting, the strange magic of the graveyard, the masked strangers, the torture and murder. She remembered the prickling mask around her face and the cool grass at her ankles. The hurt ... she had been betrayed by her family and by Rothbard, the former Society president. Above all, she remembered the fear. She might have been killed, tortured, kidnapped ... she had been certain that she would be forced to watch Harry Potter die.

She shuddered without knowing it.

Melissa finished the article and glanced up at her. "Well? Is it accurate?"

"As far as I know." Beth scanned it over again. "At least up to this point. We were sort of running away after that."

"So you didn't see the Fraternis effect?"

"The what now?"

"Priori Incantatum. The big golden globe." Melissa gestured excitedly to her magazine, which showed to Beth's eyes a half-page photograph of the Ballycastle Bats scoring against Montrose. "I mean, I've seen it, we do simulations at the workshop to see how certain pairs match up, but we've never gotten anything quite like this. Actually," she added, looking back at the article, "we've never gotten anything remotely like this."

"We saw the big golden globe," Beth confirmed. "Nothing afterward. And we didn't see anything before we were summoned, either here," she added, pointing to her article.

Melissa peered at it. "The part where Martin Miggs jumps off the cliff?"

"The part where the Death Eaters start showing up." Working with disguised materials was starting to be annoying.

"Poor Draco," Melissa sighed unexpectedly. "The fifth-years really got it bad, didn't they?"

Beth glanced again through the list of Death Eaters. Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott. It was over a third of their class. They could have formed a self-contained Children of Death Eaters Support Group.

"Nott," said Beth suddenly.

"Did too," said Melissa, looking slightly offended.

"No, Nott, the Secretary! Potter got his name somehow. I wonder is that going to be good for the Society, do you think, or bad?"

"I don't know," said Melissa slowly. "If anyone takes this seriously then Nott might find it harder to get things done. On the other hand, if he's caught..."

"Won't the lockjaw curse kick in if he tries to talk about us?"

Melissa frowned. "I don't know if it works after the first year. But there are a dozen ways to get information, even if he refuses to talk; there are truth meters, secrecy sensors, the Recurrus charm, there's even Veritasalve that forces you to write the truth. Of course," she added thoughtfully, "we also have that hand-cramp curse..."

"Either way," said Beth, "it's going to be bad if Nott gets pulled in."

"Oh, I think we're all right for now," said Melissa. "People still think Potter's raving mad. They're not going to arrest Mr. Malfoy or anybody just because he accuses them."

But Beth thought that a mere accusation was enough to get the ball rolling in a direction she didn't want anyone to go.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Author's Notes: First, I heart Lyta Padfoot and her regular commenting. :) She's pro-Slytherin and prolific, so everybody go and read her stuff. Mirria is a lovely funny commenter too, but couldn't find her profile to recommend.
netrat: I also heart nitpicks. I ... suppose that it was just a given that Bruce wouldn't try out for the Harpies. (shifty eyes) I also suspect that he would only use his cousin's contacts as a last resort.
LKH511: Way back in chapter 14 you asked why Oren was studying alone, and Evan was playing chess with Mervin, instead of the other way around. It would definitely work both ways, but in this case it's Oren's fascination with learning practical-application oriented magic, and Evan's deep love of showing off at chess.
Thanks everyone for reading...we're on the downhill stretch now, I promise.