The rest of September and October passed surprisingly quietly for FitzSkimmons, and neither Fitz nor either of the other two heard any more mysterious voices in the night.
And so Halloween evening at seven o'clock, the three of them walked into the Great Hall, hoping for a longer feast than they'd had the year before when Quirrellemort had let the troll into the dungeons. Like the Leaving Feast at the end of the previous year, the girls had ditched their normal robes in favor of muggle dresses — all-black, fairly tight, probably overly revealing, and possibly even scandalous in the archaic wizarding world dresses — that would have fit in great at a muggle halloween party where slutty was the name of the game for Halloween. Here they expected some pushback from their strict Head of House, and lots of stares from boys (and girls) who'd never seen that much female skin before in their lives, but what kind of Halloween would it be without all that? As for Fitz, he was in muggle clothing as well, though in an outfit more along the lines of his bounty hunter garb from the Kree future that Daisy had pushed into his hands before shoving him into their bathroom to change, instead of the cardigan and trousers Simmons had already laid out for him on their bed, making him look more rugged than slutty (not that the cardigan would have made him look slutty). But overall, they made quite the trio entering the Great Hall.
Like they expected, most of the heads that were already seated in the hall turned to look at them as they walked in, especially once whispers started hissing through the crowds from the first few people who saw them. Making their way over to the Gryffindor table, they sat down across from the twins.
"Making quite the statement there," commented George with a raised eyebrow.
"One McGonagall doesn't seem too thrilled about," added Fred, nodding subtly towards where their Head of House was descending upon them.
"As expected," replied Simmons, before turning to greet the professor pleasantly before she could say anything to them. "Hello, Professor McGonagall. Is there something we can do for you?"
"What exactly do you two think you're wearing?" McGonagall said sternly, glaring at the two girls, and by proximity Fitz since he was sitting between them.
"Halloween costumes — this is a Halloween party, isn't it?" replied Daisy innocently.
"But — they're — !"
"Slutty? Revealing? Improper? Promiscuous? Licentious?" supplied Simmons. "Isn't that what Halloween's all about? For girls to show off a bit when they normally can't? That's what muggle Halloween is like, anyway — is the magical world not the same?"
By the end she'd subtly shifted into innocent muggle who didn't know any better mode, hoping McGonagall would let them off with nothing more than a warning and a demand to wear something more appropriate next time. Another point loss wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but she'd still rather avoid it if possible, before all the Gryffindors really wanted their heads for costing them the House Cup.
But fortunately it worked, as between Professor McGonagall already liking Miss Granger for being the best student in their year, and the reminder that she was just a poor, innocent muggleborn who didn't know all the ways and customs of the wizarding world, Professor McGonagall just said, "Well, please don't do it again, or I will have to take points away," before walking back up to the head table.
Once she was gone, Fred looked over at the trio and asked in disbelief, "How do you do that? If we'd tried pulling a stunt like that we'd be down fifty points and serving a handful of detentions."
Simmons shrugged innocently. "Try batting your eyelashes — always works for me. But seriously, it helps to have a few aces up your sleeve, like being an impeccable student and having the 'poor, innocent, unknowing muggleborn' excuse — along with of course a healthy dose of being an innocent little girl — or, you know, them thinking you're an innocent girl, anyway."
"Afraid we might be missing a few or all of those requirements," replied Fred with a smirk. "Guess we'll just have to continue our strategy of sneaking around and trying to avoid too much suspicion."
~FSK~
A while later, as they finished up desert, Fitz suddenly grabbed both of his wives' thighs under the table.
"Fitz?" asked Simmons in concern, forgetting to use his Hogwarts name in her concern, both girls turning to look at him to see what was wrong.
"I think I just heard that voice again," he said quietly so no one around them would overhear. "But it sounded further away this time, so I couldn't hear anything it actually said."
"But not so far away that it could be near our dorm like last time?" asked Simmons. "Because that should be too far away from here to hear at all, especially with all this noise."
"Unless this castle bends in space-time or something you guys are talking about all the time," offered Daisy.
"It is possible — it's definitely a weird castle that doesn't obey the laws of standard physics," replied Fitz. "But it sounded more like it was coming from the Entrance Hall direction, and maybe moving upwards? I don't know, it was really faint and hard to tell."
"Why doesn't anyone else seem to have heard it though?" asked Daisy, looking around the Great Hall at everyone babbling away blissfully. "I mean, last time, Jemma and I were both asleep while you were awake, and maybe it was either too far away from any other common room or someone else did hear it and tell a teacher, and they didn't think it something that needed to be told to all the students. But this time we're surrounded by a couple hundred other students and a table full of teachers, and you seem to be the only one to have heard anything."
Fitz and Simmons both just shrugged, having no answer.
When the feast ended a few minutes later, everyone began piling out of the Great Hall towards their respective houses. In the Entrance Hall, the Slytherins descended the stairs to the dungeons and the Hufflepuffs went through a door to the right of the Grand Staircase leading down to the kitchens, leaving just the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws to head up the marble Grand Staircase towards their respective towers. FitzSkimmons followed along behind them, needing to get to the third floor to reach the secret passageway that was the quickest route to their own dorm on that day of the week.
But as they shuffled through the second floor towards the corridor with Myrtle's out-of-order bathroom to get to the stairs leading up to the third floor and the split to Gryffindor Tower and Ravenclaw Tower, there was a shrill scream from a girl at the front of the procession, and everyone in front of FitzSkimmons came to a sudden halt, blocking the corridor. Dead silence followed the initial scream, until finally hushed whispers from the people in the front began migrating around the corner to the back of the crowd where FitzSkimmons were, but they couldn't actually make out what anyone was saying, or see around the corner to see why everyone had come to a sudden stop outside of what had to approximately be Myrtle's restroom based on the amount of space the hundred and forty or so people in front of them should take up.
People in front of them started trying to push their way forward in order to see what was causing the backup, but as no one in the front apparently wanted to move forward at all, it was very slow going shifting everyone around. FitzSkimmons stayed where they were in the back, curious but not enough so to try to fight their way through a hundred people to get to whatever it was. There had only been one scream so it didn't seem like anyone was injured and in need of their help, so they'd see it when everyone finally started moving again. As they waited, a gaggle of professors soon walked up the corridor behind them, FitzSkimmons assumed to make sure everyone had gone up to their common rooms like they were supposed to, and not made any unschedule stops in any broom cupboards or abandoned classrooms along the way.
Seeing the traffic jam in front of them, Professor McGonagall looked over at the trio and asked, "What is going on?"
"No idea, Ma'am. Everyone in front of us just stopped all of a sudden," answered Simmons. "Any explanation for why hasn't made it back this far yet."
Nodding, McGonagall started pushing her way through the crowd, saying loudly, "Out of the way! Professors coming through!"
The sea parted, and the professors quickly made their way around the corner and up to the front of the crowd. And as the professors did whatever professor things they were doing around the corner, the twins made their way back to FitzSkimmons.
"Mrs Norris was frozen or stuffed or something and hung on a torch bracket," began Fred quietly.
"And a giant message was written on the wall above it in what looks like blood, saying, 'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware'," finished George.
"That's terrible!" exclaimed Simmons.
"And what's the Chamber of Secrets?" asked Fitz.
"Didn't one of our brothers tell us a story about some secret chamber?" answered Daisy, looking at the twins.
"Oh, yeah," said Fred. "I think it was Bill, some story he'd heard while he was here."
"I'm also pretty sure I've read that name in Hogwarts: A History, as well," added Simmons. "I'll look it up when we get back to our room, see if it actually says anything useful, or that it's just another legend about the castle that clearly's just a legend because no headmaster or professor has ever been able to find it, and they all think they're completely infallible and could never miss anything," she finished, rolling her eyes at the wizarding adults' inability to conceive that they could possibly ever be wrong.
But at that moment they were interrupted by a shriek that did carry all the way to where they were talking.
"My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?! She's dead! Somebody murdered my cat!"
The caretaker had apparently been alerted to the situation, or else just felt a great disturbance in the Force that there were a bunch of students not in their common rooms late at night and had to check it out, as doubtlessly at least some of them would be doing something he could give them detentions for.
Looking over at the others, Fitz commented, "You know, I'm still not sure this qualifies as being any more exciting that last year's Halloween."
Everyone chuckled, before settling into a comfortable silence to wait on something to actually occur. A few minutes later the headmaster, several professors, and Filch came pushing through the crowds by them, carrying the cat and clearly on their way to somewhere.
As the adults passed by, FitzSkimmons and the twins heard Lockhart say, "My office is nearest, Headmaster — just upstairs — please feel free —"
But as the crowds had finally started moving again, they all moved along with the crowds in the opposite direction of the teachers, and heard no more.
~FSK~
As FitzSkimmons separated from the rest of the crowd several minutes later to head to their own dorm, Fitz suddenly thought of something.
"Hey, do you think this has anything to do with that voice I've heard a couple of times now?" he asked. "The first night it sounded like it was talking of a more gruesome killing than this was, more blood and torture and guts, and less stuffing or paralyzing or whatever happened to that cat, and there was nothing about enemies, but it seems odd there'd be someone talking about killing, especially if I really did hear it again right at the end of the feast, and then this happens."
"It's definitely a possibility," replied Simmons. "I mean, it is the only thing we've heard talking about killing something. And I suppose whatever it is could live in the Chamber of Secrets, or some hidden location that's being called the Chamber of Secrets by whoever wrote the words, even if they're just calling it that based on the legend, and it's not actually the legend itself."
"But that brings up a whole other point," said Daisy. "Fitz said the voice sounded more creature than human, but not many creatures even in the wizarding world can write giant letters in blood on a stone wall."
"But the letters say a chamber was opened, implying that something — some creature — was released from it," answered Simmons. "It seems to me like some person opened some secret chamber, or else is using the legend to bolster the notoriety of their crime, and wrote the writing on the wall, and then whatever creature they're controlling, whether it actually came from a real secret chamber or not, did the actual killing or whatever happened. So the voice Fitz heard was the creature's, but there's some person behind it all as well."
"So what do we actually do now? Try to go find the professors and tell them what I heard?" asked Fitz.
"Why don't you tell MG in the morning?" suggested Daisy. "It's already after-hours and we don't want to get caught out by Snape or Filch, even if we are doing so in order to try to help them solve this crime, so we'll just be telling them at the earliest reasonable hour. Then the teachers will at least have somewhere to start looking then, near our dorm and near the Great Hall."
"But that does still require us telling them we aren't in Gryffindor Tower like we're supposed to be, and that we didn't report what we heard for two months — I just wish there was some way around that," replied Simmons.
"Do we have to tell them when we heard it the first time?" asked Daisy. "Could we just not say only that we heard it, but, say, thought it was just a ghost or something — seems like something the Bloody Barron might say, or Peeves playing a joke — and then when we saw absolutely no reason to suspect anything had actually occurred, that it was any more than a joke, we just kind of forgot about it. And then with all the babble last night as we ate, you weren't sure if you'd really heard it or were just imagining it from the wind or something what with it being Halloween and all. And you didn't think of the connection until we were already in our dorms, at which point we didn't want to risk detention, so we waited until morning."
"You're scary good at justifying this, you know that?" said Fitz in a slightly awed, slightly worried tone.
Daisy merely leaned over pecked him on the lips, before asking, "So we got ourselves a plan?"
News of the attack spread quickly at breakfast the next morning to the two Houses that hadn't been there, until soon the entire castle knew.
Not long after FitzSkimmons sat down, the twins joined them, eager to hear if Simmons had found out anything about the Chamber of Secrets from Hogwarts: A History. But unfortunately, as Simmons had been worried about, the book only mentioned that such a legend existed of a secret chamber existing in the castle, and nothing about what might actually be in it if it really did exist, mostly since the author clearly didn't believe in its existence. The five of them talked for a little while about what might be in the Chamber if it really did exist, until FitzSkimmons saw Professor McGonagall walk in and take her seat at the head table. Excusing themselves from the twins for the moment, they walked up to her.
"Good morning, Professor McGonagall," said Simmons. "We have some possible information about the attack last night we thought we ought to share with you."
"Oh?" exclaimed McGonagall in clear surprise.
Simmons turned to look at Fitz, who began his tale.
"Early September, it was a Saturday I think, we were exploring the castle, and over on one of the upper floors of the side of the castle furthest away from Gryffindor Tower, when I heard this, for lack of a better word, almost inhuman hissing voice that said, 'Come…Come to me...Let me rip you...Let me tear you...Let me kill you…'. But we weren't sure what it was, and no one seemed to be in any panic when we got back to the Great Hall to eat, so we thought it must have just been one of the ghosts being ghosts or Peeves playing some prank, so we didn't say anything about it. And then nothing more happened, and we never heard the voice again, and we just kind of forgot all about it.
"Then last night at the very end of the Feast, I thought I might have heard it again, but I wasn't positive over the noise of the Great Hall, and I didn't hear any words at all that time, so I wasn't sure whether I really heard anything or just imagined it with it being Halloween and spooky and scary and all that. Then the actual attack was found, and drove the voice from my mind for the time being, and I didn't make the connection until we were already back in our dorms, at which point we didn't know where any of the teachers were or how to find any of you, and it was after hours and we didn't want Snape or Filch giving us detention despite the fact we were trying to find a teacher to tell them what we might know about the attack, so we waited until this morning."
Professor McGonagall continued to stare at them in surprise for several more seconds after Fitz finished, before finally saying, "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will inform Dumbledore, and please let me know straight away if you hear it again."
"Yes, Ma'am," replied Simmons, before leading the other two back to their seats to finish eating and get ready for another day of school.
~FSK~
While the story about the attack was talked about almost exclusively throughout the castle for the next several days, it wasn't until the following Wednesday that any real new information came to light.
But first they had to come into close proximity with Malfoy again for the first time since Halloween night and the story of the attack had spread the following morning. They had of course seen him across the Great Hall sitting at the Slytherin table during meals, but they had been doing their best just to avoid him, and he the same after two KO's against him already that year, and so they hadn't actually been within speaking distance of him since the attack. But Wednesday morning, they had double Potions with the Slytherins again, and could avoid him no longer.
As they stood first in line outside the dungeon classroom door, Malfoy strolled up to them like he thought he owned the place, though he did come to a stop several feet away from them, outside of their immediate reach, clearly not having forgotten either of his arse-whoopings he'd already received that year at their hands.
"So — the Chamber's been opened again," he sneered. "I've been thinking about making a betting pool on how long it'll be before the first mudblood is killed, and who it'll be — I have my money on you, bookworm, and sooner rather than later."
"And what are the odds of the betting pool on me snapping your neck in half before then?" replied Daisy boredly, not even directly looking at the Snake, instead still looking at her spouses, though definitely keeping him in the corner of her eye in case he tried to do anything stupid, like he had a bad habit of doing.
Fortunately for all of them, Snape opened the door to dungeon a moment later and ushered them all in, preventing Malfoy from replying anything that might result in him becoming a Malfoy pancake.
~FSK~
After an uneventful Potions and lunch, Fitz and Daisy were sitting at a table in the library working on their Transfiguration essays that were due the following Tuesday, waiting on History of Magic class.
"Ughh...I don't believe it! I'm still eight inches short…" sighed Daisy, banging her head against the table.
"That's what she said? What he said?" said Fitz from where he was sitting in the seat across her.
"Huh?" said Daisy, looking up at her husband in confusion.
"Micheal Scott, The Office, 'That's what she said' joke about a penis being eight inches too short, but I couldn't figure out how to actually make it actually work," answered Fitz. "Sorry, that really didn't go well."
"Because you should have gone with 'Title of your sex tape' instead of 'That's what she said'," came Simmons' voice, walking up to them from where she'd been searching the nearby shelves. "That one works."
" 'I'm still eight inches short — Title of Your Sex Tape'…. Okay, yeah, that works better," replied Fitz. Then seeing that she was empty-handed, asked, "Still not finding anything on the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Nope. Apparently only Hogwarts: A History even mentions the legend," answered Simmons. "So what is Daisy eight inches short on, besides when it's just me and her, and you're not there with us?"
"And here I thought I was the only one allowed to make wildly inappropriate sex jokes," smirked Daisy, before answering, "This Transfiguration essay. Supposed to be three feet, I'm stuck at two feet four inches. Sure you two won't just finish it for me? I mean, just give me five inches of your four and half footer, and Fitz can give me three inches of his four footer, and after a several very inappropriate jokes about that, I'll have the three feet I need."
"You've got five more days before it's due — you'll come up with another eight inches somewhere," replied Simmons with a smile.
But at that moment the bell rung, and so they hurried down to the History of Magic classroom, Fitz and Daisy fully expecting another torture by boredom session. Simmons, however, had other plans, having ran out of books to look in.
Thirty minutes into class, once she was sure everyone had been lulled to sleep, she raised her hand to ask a question. Of course, it took several minutes for the ghost to look around enough to realize that a student was for the first time in his reciting career wanting to ask a question, but eventually he did.
But it wasn't until she actually asked her question — what Binns could tell them about the Chamber of Secrets — that everyone else in the class was startled out of their stupors. It took several minutes of careful manipulation and playing on her studious bookworm teachers' pet persona to finally convince the ghost to tell them everything he knew about the fabled Chamber of Secrets, but she finally did, and he told them the story behind the legend, how Salazar Slytherin had built a hidden chamber housing a deadly monster that only his own heir could open and use to purge the school on non-purebloods. Of course, as soon as he was done insisting that it was nothing more than a baseless legend, that Hogwarts headmasters were completely infallible, and went back to his reciting, everyone besides FitzSkimmons immediately fell asleep again for what remained of the class period.
~FSK~
After class, FitzSkimmons separated from the rest of the crowd to head up to their dorm to drop off their books before supper, when they turned the corner to the second floor corridor where Mrs Norris had been attacked.
"Care to do a little exploring?" asked Daisy, as they looked down the hallway at the scene that still looked mostly as it had on Halloween night, only no longer flooded and a chair sitting against the wall with the writing that Filch was more often than not seen sitting in those days — though at the moment, he wasn't there.
Quickly glancing around to make sure no one else was around either, Fitz answered, "Sure — why not?"
The first of them to notice anything was Simmons, who saw a line of spiders exiting the window in single file. As the resident biologist, she wanted to stay and watch them for a while longer, observe their unusual behavior, but Daisy drug her towards the bathroom door that had the out-of-order sign on it.
"Wasn't there water on the floor that night? Think it came from here?" she asked.
"It certainly seems the only source for a leak," replied Fitz. "There's no exposed pipe around here, or water staining on any of the walls."
They walked inside and started looking around the clearly abandoned bathroom, until Fitz suddenly screamed like a girl. The other two rushed over to where he was standing in front of the last stall, staring in at what turned out to be the ghost of a teenage girl.
"Oh yeah, sorry, completely forgot — this is Myrtle's bathroom. Hi, Myrtle," said Simmons with a smile and wave at the despondent-looking ghost. Looking back over at Fitz and Daisy she continued, "Hermione knew from talking with other girls first year, but it completely slipped my mind." Turning back to Myrtle, she said, "Mrs Norris was hung up on a torch bracket right outside this door, and a message was written in blood of some kind on the wall on Halloween night — you wouldn't happen to have seen anything, would you?"
But Myrtle was busy staring at Fitz. "This is a girls' bathroom. He's not a girl."
"Oh, believe us — we're well aware," smirked Daisy.
Rolling her eyes, Simmons replied to Myrtle, "We know, but we were just looking for clues about what might have happened, and this was the next place for us to look. So did you see anything?"
After another suspicious look at Fitz, Myrtle finally answered, "I wasn't paying attention. Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm — that I'm—"
"Right," muttered Daisy, as Myrtle began sobbing. Looking at the others, she said, "I don't think we're going to get anything from here, and I don't think it's a good place for, um, looking for clues, if you know what I mean."
Rolling her eyes at Daisy's salacious smirk, Simmons led them back to the door and back out into the corridor outside, where they immediately heard a shout.
"RONNA WEASLEY!"
They turned to find Percy Weasley striding towards them from the head of the stairs.
"What are you doing in an out-of-bounds bathroom?!" he demanded as he got up to them. "And what was Potter doing in there with you?"
Daisy opened her mouth to answer, but Simmons slapped her hand over the younger girl's mouth, hissing, "Don't! — answer what I know you're about to, Ronna!" Turning back to Percy, she said in her most innocent, bookworm, girlish tone, "I just wanted to introduce Harry to Miss Myrtle, the ghost, and I rarely ever see her out of this bathroom. And it's not like it's really a girls' restroom, it's completely abandoned, so there's never any girls in there."
"Well — get away from there!" exclaimed Percy, unable to actually come up with an answer to what Simmons had said. "Don't you care what this looks like? Coming here while everyone's at dinner!"
"What, like we're the ones who unleashed Slytherin's wee beastie?" retorted Daisy. "A Weasley, whose family's never been anywhere but Gryffindor; the Boy-Who-Lived, savior of the wizarding world himself, Harry Potter; and the perfect bookworm who's every teacher's favorite pet and more importantly, a muggleborn, Hermione 'Princess' Granger — Yeah, we're definitely Slytherin's three heiresses."
"You know, Ginny's in a right frightful state over the fate of that cat. I've never seen her so upset, crying her eyes out — you might think of her!" replied Percy fiercely. "All the first years are thoroughly overexcited by this business."
"As they should be," replied Simmons seriously. "Whatever happened here was not good. They should be appropriately concerned, as should every other year student here, and even more so all of the professors, as they're the ones responsible for figuring all of this out, and hopefully quickly."
After several seconds of just looking at her in surprise, Percy finally said pompously, "Well — just get away from here, and don't let me see you around here again."
"Don't worry, we won't — let you see us," muttered Daisy under her breath at his disappearing back.
Once he was completely gone, she turned to Simmons and said innocently, "What was that shushing me all about when he asked what we were doing with Fitz in the girls' bathroom? I was just going to say we were sucking his cock — I wasn't going to reveal that we were looking for clues."
"Yes! I know! Which is why I made you shut up," said Simmons. "You know as well as I do that three twelve year olds doing anything like that would go over even less well than looking for clues would."
"Come on — you're thirteen," answered Daisy cheekily with a smirk.
Simmons just huffed out a sigh and shook her head in exasperation, before turning and walking off towards the stairs and up to their room where they'd originally been heading, leaving Fitz and Daisy to catch up with her.
~FSK~
That evening, as the three of them relaxed in their dorm, snuggled up together on the couch in front of the roaring fire, Simmons said, "I wonder who the person is who was behind the attack, and possibly opening the Chamber of Secrets if it is real."
"If the stories are right, it has to be someone who is a direct descendent of Slytherin, right?" replied Fitz. "Of course, I imagine wizarding genealogies are either too difficult to obtain and there's no public records of, or they have been lost through the generations. Else this would be too easy to solve, and we are supposedly inside a book, which means no simple answers. Though given how much family name means to most non-muggleborns, I'm going with the first over second."
"Or it's not the Chamber at all, and someone's just using that legend because it makes their own crime sound extra-scary, because it can be traced that there's no heir of Slytherin currently enrolled here, which is why the professors aren't paying any attention to the Chamber legend," said Simmons.
"You know who might know something…" said Daisy from where she lay across their laps, her head in Fitz's lap where his hand gently carded through her flowing, reddish-brunette locks. "Malfoy."
"Really? He seems more of loud mouth than someone who actually knows anything," said Simmons.
"Normally, yes, but hear me out," replied Daisy. "He specifically said this morning that mudbloods were the target — before you got the legend out of Binns, and only a cat has been attacked so far. Which means he apparently already knew the story, that the chamber was Slytherin's man cave. Because only then does the whole 'Enemies of the heir, beware' make any sense. Which means he must know something the general public isn't aware of."
"Okay, you've got a point there," said Simmons.
"But how do we get real information out of him, and not just insults?" asked Fitz.
Simmons took a deep breath, idly kneading Daisy's breast for several seconds, before saying, "Remember last year when you wanted magic that would turn you into a girl for a short amount of time?"
"Yeah…"
When neither of them immediately realized what she was going for, Simmons said in slight exasperation, "Were seriously neither of you paying any attention to Snape in class a few weeks ago?"
"We pay attention to the potions we're brewing, but not his nonstop ridicule and verbal abuse," replied Daisy defensively. "It's not like he's ever actually said anything that would increase our knowledge between all of the insults."
"Okay, you're usually not wrong," sighed Simmons, placated. "But amongst his braggings about himself, his skill as a potioneer, and his subject of Potions in general, he mentioned a potion that would be helpful to us now both with interrogating Malfoy, and with our fun-time ideas. I didn't mention it before because when I looked in the library for the book he said the instructions were in, I couldn't find it in the potions section, which means it must be in the Restricted Section. Which just for us to fool around with, I hadn't come up with a good enough method of trying to get a professor's note to let us get it. But now that we have another reason to need polyjuice potion — that's its name — I do have a way I'm pretty sure we can get the book, it's just very underhanded and manipulative, if you will."
"And that is?" pressed Daisy. "I mean, it's not like you haven't used your feminine wiles to get us things, or get us out of trouble, before. I mean, that's basically what you did with Binns this afternoon."
"Yes, and that was for the good of the castle, or to legitimately save our arses," answered Simmons. "Which needing polyjuice potion hadn't been before now. But since we now have the excuse of using it to learn who was behind this attack, I'm willing to go that route again. And in this case, that route is Lockhart. All the professors love Hermione, but most have too many brain cells to fall for pure feminine flattery — which is kind of ironic, since I'm not entirely convinced Lockhart isn't gay. But regardless of that, he doesn't seem to have two brain cells to rub together, he definitely thinks I'm the greatest student he's ever seen, and I have a feeling combine flattery with knowing every page of his dozen books word for word, and he'll give me a note for the most dangerous book of gruesome and cruel and evil spells this library has if I bat my eyelashes the right way."
"Sounds good to me," replied Daisy.
"Let your feminine wiles fly," added Fitz.
~FSK~
So Friday at the end of Defense Against the Dark Arts class, FitzSkimmons hung back, waiting until everyone had left so they could talk to Lockhart alone.
"Oh, Professor Lockhart!" said Simmons in her most starstruck, fangirl tone once no one else was left to hear her embarrass herself. "There's this book I really want to get to help me better understand the slow-acting venoms you talk about in Gadding with Ghouls, but for some reason it's in the Restricted Section, so I need your signature to get it."
She held out the note, which Lockhart took and signed without even looking at it, as he said, "Ah, Gadding with Ghouls! Possibly my very favorite book. You enjoyed it?"
"Of course, how couldn't I?!" exclaimed Simmons, so fakely a blind man could have spotted it from the International Space Station — Lockhart remained oblivious. "It's absolutely amazing, a complete work of art, and so clever, the way you trapped that last one with the tea-strainer —"
"Well, I'm sure no one will mind me giving the best student of the year a little extra help," replied Lockhart with a gigantic and award-winning smile as he handed the signed, and still not looked at, note back to Simmons.
"Thank you so much, this will be such help," cooed Simmons as she stuck the letter in her bag, before quickly exiting the room, Fitz and Daisy hot on her heels.
A few hallways and stairs later, once they were sure they were clear of Lockhart, Simmons said, "That's was even easier than I thought it would be. I could have handed him a sheet of paper that said 'Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ronna Weasley can go into the Restricted Section and check out as many books as they want, and you also have to give them a bottle of gin to go with the books', and he would have signed the bloody thing. Unfortunately, I don't think there's an official note that says anything like that, and Madam Pince is a bit more strict on notes having to actually be legitimate."
"I was worried for a second there you were laying on the flattery a bit too thick, but he's apparently more oblivious than we thought," said Fitz.
"Yeah, that performance was faker than a stripper's tits, and he never even batted an eye," added Daisy.
"And how exactly do you know—?" began Simmons.
"It's just a saying, even if I might have made it up," quickly cut off Daisy. "Although it's completely possible that I could have at one time or another had a mission that required me going into a strip club as a customer to tail some bad guy. But honestly, everyone knows that the vast majority of strip club goers prefer giant, but still nice and round, non-sagging tits, and that's rarely realistic, which means fake boobs. It's that scientific logic stuff you two are going on about all the time."
"Whether I may or may not have ever done any scientific-ish observations involving Simmon's breasts is strictly confidential, unless you get Simmons drunk enough on gin that she can't keep her mouth shut," replied Fitz. "But what you did is just plain logic, nothing scientific about it."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever — it was still sound reasoning," waved off Daisy. "And you definitely know I've got to get Simmons drunk now. Though does that include drunk on orgasms? — asking for a friend."
"Ah, yes, for a friend, of course," replied Simmons, rolling her eyes.
But by that time they'd made it to the library, where they had to be perfectly quiet, lest they incur the wrath of Madam Pince, the underfed vulture mimicking a librarian.
"Moste Potente Potions?" asked Pince suspiciously when she took the note Simmons handed her.
It was all Simmons could do not to retort, 'Yeah, that's what it says', but she held it in, and simply gave the librarian a look that said exactly the same thing.
Pince finally relented and stalked away to find it, returning a few minutes later with a large, moldy book. Simmons eagerly took it from her, stuffing it in her bag before they quickly exited the library for somewhere a little more private.
In their dorm a few minutes later, Simmons opened the book. She wanted to look through every spell in there, but Fitz and Daisy hurried her along to the page in question, promising her that she could read through the rest of the book to her hearts content later.
As they looked over the instructions, Simmons commented, "Good thing we're used to the lab — this is one complicated potion."
"Ah, yes, totally used to lab work," snarked Daisy sarcastically, earning her a playful slap from Fitz.
"Isn't this why you married us — to do all your lab related stuff for you?"
"If that's the case, then why do you continually refuse to make my potions for me in lab class?" snarked back Daisy.
"We basically do when one of us is paired with you."
"We're going to have some trouble with a few of these ingredients," interrupted Simmons, cutting Fitz and Daisy's lovers' quarrel short. "Powdered horn of a bicorn and shredded skin of a boomslang definitely aren't in the students' cupboards or our potion kits. And then of course we have to get some DNA of each person we want to change into to add to the potion right before we drink it so the potion will know who to change us into."
"Why do I really not like the sound of that last bit?" said Daisy. "I feel like you're intentionally using science lingo to cover over something unpleasant."
"Well…I do imagine the easiest way of getting such would be a strand of each of their hairs," answered Simmons slowly.
"And I assume you're not referring to cute little bunnies when you use the word 'hare'," replied Daisy. "Not that that's exactly a whole lot better."
"Sorry, no."
"You know, when they say hair tonic, I'm pretty sure there wasn't any actual hair in the tonic," said Daisy.
"And I think you're mixing hair tonic that you don't drink, with gin and tonic, or any of its phonetically similar drinks from planets across the galaxy that had yet to meet each other before making their drinks, ranging from ordinary water served just above room temperature to a drink that kills cows at a hundred paces," said Simmons.
"That's your crazy book again, isn't it?"
"Hitchhiker's Guide, yes," answered Simmons.
"Now that you're done discussing the fact that we'll have to drink something with hair in it that isn't strands of either of your hairs that seem to end up everywhere anyway, do you think they might have those supplies anywhere in Hogsmeade, the wizarding town just outside of Hogwarts?" asked Fitz. "The potion ingredients, not jars of three Slytherin second years' hairs."
"Or even just polyjuice itself for sale somewhere there," added Daisy.
"Those are both worth a shot, but how exactly would we get there even if they do?" asked Simmons.
"Sneak off the castle grounds somehow?" offered Daisy. "We have the invisibility cloak."
"The twins," said Fitz. "If anyone knows how to get us into Hogsmeade, it would be them. Or they could just get the ingredients, or straight up get polyjuice potion for us without having to make it ourselves. Regardless, they're our best bet for whatever works out."
"You're right. We'll ask them after supper," said Simmons. "And if they can't get us pre-made polyjuice potion, we can start the potion in here tomorrow morning, since we can get everything we need to start from the student store-cupboard while everyone's at the quidditch match."
"If we do have to make it ourselves, how long is this going to take?" asked Daisy.
"Theoretically it can be done in thirty-five days — twenty-one to stew the lacewings, plus fourteen more days after you add the bicorn and boomslang to that mixture," answered Simmons. "But the potion can just sit and simmer after those twenty-one days until the two hard to find ingredients are added, so it can take longer if we have a hard time getting those ingredients. And then it will keep until we can find a good opportunity to use it."
~FSK~
As the twins left the Great Hall after supper that night, FitzSkimmons stood up as well and hurried after them.
"Fred. George. Could we have a moment of your time?" asked Simmons as they caught up with them in the Entrance Hall. "Somewhere private, preferably?"
The twins led them to an empty classroom, before asking how they could be of service.
"We need a few potions ingredients that aren't in the student store-cupboard, and you're the best we know at procuring hard to find objects without asking questions," answered Simmons. "We were hoping you might at least know where we could get said ingredients, or even that you could get them for us."
"We'll pay you well, of course," added Fitz. "Money is no objection."
"We have our sources," said Fred. "What is it you're looking for?"
"It'd be nice if you could get us straight-up polyjuice potion," said Daisy.
"But otherwise, powdered horn of a bicorn, and shredded skin of a boomslang," said Simmons.
"I've never heard of polyjuice potion being sold pre-made," replied George. "But there's a potions supply shop in Hogsmeade that should sell those ingredients, if we can convince them to sell to two fourth-year students."
"When do you need it by?" asked Fred.
"No earlier than twenty-one days, though preferably as close to then as possible," replied Simmons.
"It's Hogsmeade weekend next weekend," said George. "Get us a list of what and how much, and money, and we'll do our best to get you your supplies."
~FSK~
The following morning, as the rest of the castle made its way down to the quidditch pitch, FitzSkimmons headed the opposite direction, down to the students' potion store-cupboard.
They knew they could technically get the ingredients any time they wanted, it was the students' cupboard after all, but if a professor saw the exact ingredients they were getting, or even more so if Snape saw, there was always the possibility that they would recognize what potion those ingredients belonged to, and the last thing they wanted was for anyone to start asking questions. So they waited until most of the castle and all of the teachers and Snape had headed out onto the grounds, before slipping down the steps leading to the dungeons, to gather their ingredients. As expected, they had no trouble finding what they needed, though Fitz and Daisy both noted that Simmons was handing them a lot greater quantities of the ingredients than either of them had thought they actually needed.
"Uh, Simmons?" questioned Daisy as she took the leeches Simmons was handing her and stuffed them in her robes, positive it was about four times more than the recipe called for. "This seems like a lot."
"Well, of course," replied Simmons, looking back at both of them like they were being exceptionally thick. "We did have other plans for this besides just interrogating Malfoy, didn't we?"
"You're making several batches, so we have plenty to play with," said Fitz, it finally clicking.
"This is going to be tricky to make, and the last ingredients are hard to get. Makes more sense to make all we can use for the year now, instead of trying to brew it again later," said Simmons. "Unless you no longer want to do this?"
"Oh no, I'm still all for it!" exclaimed Daisy quickly, lest Simmons change her mind.
Simmons looked at Fitz.
"I'm still all for having boobs for an hour," he replied. "Though for our other ideas — are you going to turn into me?"
"I assumed we would keep it between us three," answered Simmons. "And as you're the only guy, we'll have to become you. But if we like it well enough, then we can all be each other in every possible combination — you can be Daisy and I, and we can each be each other when not being you. Is that okay? You look a little unhappy, Fitz."
"No, no, I'm okay — it's just going to be weird with another guy there, and I'm not sure if it's going to be better or worse that it's me," answered Fitz. "I mean, obviously better, as I wouldn't want to share either of you with anyone else, but it's going to be weird at least at the beginning seeing myself, even knowing that it's really just one of you two. It's a shame there's no way to make this where part of you stays the same, and only part changes, to keep some familiarity."
"Hey — we'll all be in this together, and we won't go any further than any of us are comfortable with," replied Simmons softly, reaching over and resting her hand gently on his arm.
"Yeah — this is probably going to be a little more awkward for you seeing another you, especially as one did exist for a while even if you never met each other, than for either of us getting fucked by two of the man we love. So we won't pressure you into doing anything you aren't comfortable with," added Daisy.
"Hadn't even thought about the other me," mumbled Fitz. "Just that it was going to be weird seeing me fuck you. Or me literally fucking me, even if I don't look like me because I'm one of you at the time."
Simmons stepped away from the store-cupboard and wrapped her arms around him tightly, burying her face in his chest. After a little bit, she turned her head sideways enough to be able to say softly, "It's not much help, but we will keep our natural mannerisms, and in the case of Daisy and I trying to be men, and you a woman, the awkwardness that will go along with that. Daisy will still act like — well, Daisy; I'll still lecture even during foreplay and sex; and you'll still be our adorably awkward husband. It's going to be a problem for our Malfoy mission, but I think it could be very good for our extracurricular activities."
Fitz sighed, before eventually moving his arms that had been wrapped around her back to her upper arms, and pushed her away from him enough to be able to look down in her face. "I'll be okay. I'll be with you two."
Simmons smiled back up at him, leaning up to give him a quick peck on the lips, before returning to the store-cupboard to gather the remaining ingredients.
Fifteen minutes later back in their dorm, Simmons had roaring fires burning under four cauldrons, and they began making the potions. Rain had begun falling quite heavily outside by this point, and they were glad they were cozy inside their dorm instead of out in the stands getting soaking wet — Simmons and Daisy already wet in a completely different way thinking about all of the uses for the polyjuice potion they could have once it was completed, and knowing that as soon as the potions were finished for the day, they had all afternoon to enjoy themselves.