Hello all! So a quick note before this chapter. This is where we get into the actual plot of the second book. I don't actually remember much being written about how Slytherin house was treated from any perspective during the entirety of the series, just how much actual characters hated Slytherins, so I'm taking my own liberties with this. Given the amount of bad-mouthing Slytherin characters tended to get in the books, I'm running with it. There's nothing too serious in this chapter, but that leaves no guarantees for ones to come.
Thank you, and I hope you enjoy!
It didn't go well. My father was angry, extremely angry, that we'd been learning occlumency on our own. He almost didn't help when we explained the problem we'd discovered with my head. Reluctantly, he took a look when I begged. And then he was angry I'd let it get so bad, but to be fair, I had no clue. That was just as upsetting to him.
He did agree to help, eventually. We started with rebuilding my mindscape, finding me a new foundation was hard, but we did it. The foundation I chose to use was the goal to grow into a witch my father would be proud of. I didn't tell him that part exactly, but I felt it was worth my time. It took almost a month of nightly visits to rebuild my mindscape into a world of floating islands. I tried not to leave any rhyme or reason to the islands, leaving my memories to drift between them all. It was easier to defend in an attack on my mind, and far more healthy to cope with bad memories.
Tonight was a Friday night, and this was the first night we were going to start sifting through the bad memories. I'd left one island to hold them all, and the size of the island was just as daunting as the wasteland was. Graham and Adrian were with me for moral support, and to help hold back the surge of memories in case I lost control reliving them. All three of them entered my mind at once, and this time my father caught Adrian before he could accidentally chip at my mind. While he would be mute, my father and Graham were skilled enough to communicate with me.
We made our way over to the dead island, stopping just on the edge of it. There wasn't much growing on it, most of the memories being from when I was Amelia meant that we'd be digging at root memories after we took care of the surface. My father picked at a stray nettle, cringing at the flash of that memory. It was the first night I was with him. I'd been panicked, and in pain, screaming my head off for the whole night. I couldn't tell him what was wrong, I didn't even trust him in that moment. To me, he was trusted by the big scary man, and that meant I couldn't trust him. I'd forgotten that night – I likely threw it out when I started trusting my father, so I would never be reminded that I didn't at first. A child has the strangest logic.
That only grew more clear as we looked through the surface memories. It was more frequent to see them from when I was younger, over the smallest of things. Things that would have made me sad then, but really wouldn't affect me today. The older I got, the less often they showed up, until they didn't at all. I'd stopped throwing things in the wasteland once I started at Hogwarts. My father was pleased with that at least. When we got to digging up the rooted memories I had to brace myself. Any of those roots could be tied in with others.
My father took my hand to help me pull, while Adrian and Graham stood ready to cut the root off if they needed to. For the first one, they didn't. The root ripped clean out, but it didn't make the memory feel any less like a hippogriff kicking me in the face. I was young, probably less than two years old. Remus Lupin – God I'd forgotten him – was feeding me, smiling as I babbled at him. I could talk then, not very well, but I could. He was always my favorite to come and visit, as rare as it was during the war. James and Sirius sat just a ways away at the table, joking and laughing with each other. At some point Remus accidentally knocked over my food, distracted by something James said. I started crying loudly, slapping my hands on the table in my outburst.
I couldn't imagine what was wrong with this memory, why I would hate it so much. But then Lily came into the kitchen to see what was happening. James and Sirius kept trying to stop my crying while Remus cleaned up, and at some point the sound of my mother's voice made me open my eyes. The memory of me whose eyes were definitely not their normal hazel. Hers and James' attitudes changed immediately, and they hurried to get Remus and Sirius out of the house. As soon as their two friends were gone, Lily started using magic to clean the place up while James took me to my room. Or, it was my room. It was clearly being converted into a nursery, and my little bed was the only thing that made it apparent there was someone else living in that room.
Lily's baby bump became very obvious to me then, now that I wasn't distracted by my own crying in the memory. This was before Harry was born. The horror set in as soon as little memory me opened her mouth "'m hungwy."
Lily only gave me a stern look, and James just looked sick as he spoke "You should have thought about that before you did that to your eyes. You won't be eating any more for the day. If you can behave tomorrow then you'll eat."
The wails started again, and Lily seemed to snap "Oh shut up! If you would stop acting like a monster we wouldn't have to punish you!"
The shock of the memory was enough to knock me off my manifested feet. The whole thing was cruel. I wanted to go to bed. I didn't want to see these things. I didn't want to relive everything Lily and James Potter did to me. But I had to. If I didn't I would never be free. Adrian and Graham gave me a nudge together, reminding me that I had three people who cared deeply enough to delve into this with me. Who I trusted enough to pull me out of the dark of my own mind. One more memory, at least. I had to get through at least one more memory tonight.
This one was worse. Adrian had to catch the root before it could keep pulling the second one out, and Graham had to untangle them as quickly as he could. That was the sign, and my father clutched me tightly for this one. I was sitting on the couch between Remus and Peter, giggling away as they both gave me their attention. Peter's arm sported scratch marks, identical to the ones on Remus' face. I knew immediately they'd been my fault – that must have been the tangled memory. Neither one of them seemed disturbed by the fact that I'd attacked them, in fact they were grinning at me. Not a sign of anger or spite in sight.
My smiling face fell when I heard the front door open – and wasn't that just an awful sign of what I'd grown to expect? James and Sirius came gallivanting through the door, Lily just behind them with little baby Harry in her arms. Remus asked her if Harry was alright, and she gave him a happy answer as she looked up at him briefly. The double take made little me cringe, and immediately climb off the couch. Lily practically screeched, handing baby Harry off to Sirius and taking me by the arm, shouting for James to join us in my room.
The room I was taken to didn't look like much of a bedroom. There was a small mattress on the floor in the corner, and a little wardrobe for my clothes, but that was all. James closed the door behind him, and Lily conjured a chair just right for me to sit in. I seemed to sit in it like I knew what it was for, like it was going to cause me pain. Of course, the pain was something that wouldn't set in instantly. It was lucky the memory didn't play in real time. Lily and James had left me tied to the chair in a very uncomfortable position, for a very long time. Dinner was skipped completely that day, and the sun was high in the sky before they let me out. I could barely stand when they had – not that a three year old had much strength standing in the first place.
I was given lunch with a very curt command not to do monstrous things or face the punishment, and that's where the memory ended. I was still in shock from it, but this time I was able to see the memory morph and leave the island to float among the rest of my free memories. The heartbreak from those memories was enough to stagger me, and we all quickly left my mindscape. My father had a bucket for me to vomit in in record time. We all agreed that was enough for tonight. But it did give me an idea of what to look for. The worse the memory, the bigger the plant that represented it in my head was. Which meant the trees were the worst of my memories.
Despite my eagerness to find the memory that would show me what Dumbledore did to me, I also knew it was likely to be one of the worst memories for me to deal with. Adrian and Graham caught on to that fairly quick on their own too. To get to that memory, I had to build my way up. If we didn't uproot all the little ones first then we could accidentally drag everything else up with it, and that would be absolutely disastrous. So we spent each night going through a few memories at a time. My father grew angrier and angrier each night, ranting about James Potter and Sirius Black and how they never changed. I didn't quite understand why his anger ran so deep.
At one point he started to get angry with Harry, as if he were James. I had no choice but to interfere on that end. He was quite upset that I spent a few days working through my memories without him, but it drove my point across. Harry was not James. Harry was my little brother, a Slytherin, and he never bullied anyone. I would be damned if I let my father treat him like he was James bloody Potter. It got my point across. He didn't apologize, but he did stop acting like a git.
Some nights we made it through more memories than we could count. They were always small. A lot of those ones were also from when I was a baby. Many of those were fading due to their age, but they still showed how things changed for me. Lily and James loved baby Amelia. They adored her, really. They never raised their voices, she was fed every meal time, and they played with her as much as they could. Sirius Black was her godfather, and he always made her laugh. But she was ill. Amelia Potter spent a little over half of her first year of life in St. Mungo's.
The mediwitches couldn't help her. It wasn't something a simple potion could fix, and healing spells were only temporary. Whatever was wrong with her, she was going to die from it very early in life. She would be lucky to see the age of three. Lily and James were clearly growing desperate near the end of the happy memories, and I understood why they were all thrown into the wasteland then. I was watching the path that led to Amelia Potter dying in spirit. So much of it was out of order, but it was easy to piece together.
Amelia Potter became very sick around two months old, and nothing they could do would help her. In their desperation, Lily and James turned to ancient healing spells and potions. They had to translate one book they'd stumbled upon, a book I didn't recognize but was clearly similar to the one in Lily's things that Dumbledore gave me. Whatever they translated, they understood it as something that could cure any ailment. We couldn't find the memory that showed them giving it to me, not yet, but it had to have happened around my first birthday. That was around the time the memories all started being sad.
Getting through the smallest of the bad memories took all of about another month. The emotional turmoil it caused me was enough to make me irritable every day, but my housemates were kind enough to not mention it. I think Adrian and Graham had something to do with that. We made it through to the night before Halloween like that. Sifting through awful memories every night after dinner, until all that was left were the ones where I would only be getting through two each night at best. Even my father looked exhausted, watching Lily and James abuse his daughter can't have been easy.
So we all agreed to take a break for a week. It would do no good to me if we kept going at the pace we were. I was frustrated and impatient, but even I could tell I was close to snapping. A week of relaxing and spending time with my friends outside of my head would be good. That night I slept rough, as I had yet to brew another batch of dreamless sleep potions. The day of Halloween was one I was ready for, however. I suffered through Charms silently, and even managed to pull off the scouring charm on my third try this time. Flitwick seemed relieved it hadn't blown up in my face, I was just happy I made it work with my disadvantage.
At the feast I took an absent note of Harry and Nott's lack of appearance, but spent my time laughing with Myra and Alexandra for the first time in a while. Most of our house mates seemed pleasantly surprised, and I wasn't going to ruin the mood by pointing it out. When the feast was over the houses all left as one big group, ready to finish our days in our common rooms. I almost tripped over the second year girls in front of me when they stopped suddenly.
Adrian gripped my arm to keep me steady, and I almost yelled at the girls until I noticed where they were staring. My mouth dropped in shock at the sight. In big, red writing that looked suspiciously like blood were the words 'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware.' Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris, was stiff on the ground under the words, and Harry and his little friends were caught dead center of it, looking like they were responsible.
Malfoy's voice rang out in a condescending tone "Enemies of the Heir, beware? You'll be next mudbloods."
Harry looked ready to pounce on him, but any retort he had was silenced by my hand clipping Malfoy over the head. He turned to look angrily at me, but my glare cowed him in a second "Watch your tongue, Malfoy."
Most of the students didn't seem quite aware of the implications of what was written on the walls, but the older Slytherins knew. It was a legend you couldn't avoid hearing in our house, especially when Slytherin's legacy had so much to do with how outsiders saw our house. We tried to keep it out of the ears of the younger ones, they didn't need to hear something like that. But now, they were going to be told and they were going to have to get used to the prejudice our house suffered in the worst ways.
The professors ushered us to our common rooms quickly, hoping to keep us from thinking about it too much. It was too late though. We all knew. The first and second years, and even a few of the third years, went off to their dormitories. They likely weren't thinking about the repercussions for our house just yet. Those of us who were though, we stayed in the common room to discuss things. We knew what was coming.
Marcus Flint decided to start things off "How quickly do you all think the school will start talking?"
To my surprise, it was Lucian Bole who jumped in right away "Who knows? We've no way of telling if anyone in the other houses knows the legend, or what teacher will crack and tell first."
A deep frown set on my face when Lillian Bucket, another girl from my year, brought up a point none of us liked "It doesn't matter when the school starts talking, we have to assume it started the second we all saw the wall."
Flint nodded his agreement "Unfortunately, she has a point. So how do we want to do this?"
I grimaced as they all looked to me. I was only a fourth year, sure, but my father being our Head of House made everyone consider me more of an authority when it came to Slytherin house. Adrian nudged me forward, making me sigh and stand from the arm of the couch "There's no easy way to do this. The first through third years are all going to need help, maybe even us fourth years. Priority goes to our younger house mates, no matter what." I paused, taking a breath of relief when none of the fourth years protested at my comment. We didn't have a good history for Defense professors "Never leave the common room alone, try a group of three or more if we can." My hand ran through my hair as I processed what I was about to say, and as if knowing, Graham placed a hand on my shoulder "Fight dirty if we have to, whatever it takes to stay safe. Madame Pomfrey won't be happy to be healing so many Slytherins, so I'll start brewing some potions for everyone. If you can avoid the hospital wing, come to me."
Flint seemed satisfied, but Bole certainly wasn't "And the first and second years? What do we tell them? They're not just going to accept a bunch of us escorting them everywhere."
I gave him a stern look, cringing internally at the truth in his words "Then we tell them the truth. We tell them the legend of the Chamber, and then we tell them just how easily people turn on our house. We tell them that we are there to protect them when a seventh year Gryffindor decides to pull a cheap shot and hit them with a severing charm just because they were sorted into Slytherin. We tell them that we are keeping them safe because they are not yet capable of casting a shield charm, let alone keeping one up to watch their backs for them."
Everyone's faces were grim. None of us liked this, none of us wanted to have to do this, but we had to. It was only a moment later when the common room door opened, and Harry, Nott, and my father all stepped inside. Harry and Nott seemed confused by how serious we all looked, but my father caught on quick. He looked over to me for confirmation of what we were doing, but spoke anyway "You all have a plan?" Everyone gave him vigorous nods, and I could swear I saw a small smile grace his face "Good, I expect everyone to watch out for each other. Vanessa, are you-"
"I'll be starting a few batches of various healing potions tomorrow."
He nodded, looking around the common room briefly. If I didn't know any better I'd say he didn't care, but I did. He was almost radiating with pride in us all. This was why he was Head of House. Because it was moments like this that he wanted nothing more than to protect us all. And it showed as he spoke again "If anyone needs any care my daughter can't provide, my office is open. Do look out for each other, this will be a difficult year."
He swept out of the room, likely to start his own potions. The common room dissolved into chatter, plenty of older students discussing which of the younger years they could protect with ease. Harry and Nott immediately came over to me, Adrian, and Graham to ask what was happening. We explained everything, and the both of them understood just fine. They promised to explain it to their year mates before going off to bed. The rest of us stayed up to discuss things a little longer. Tomorrow was Saturday, and I was going to make Adrian and Graham my assistants while I brewed potions all day. They were happy to oblige, as long as we worked on homework while we brewed. I agreed, and with our plan made up, we made our ways to bed. It was going to be a grueling term.
