As November turned into December, and no more attacks occurred, Fitz and Daisy began wondering if they really needed to interrogate Malfoy at all.

It looked to them like whoever had been behind Mrs Norris's attack was done, and had only been interested in petrifying the very annoying cat and pissing off Filch — two things they couldn't be too upset about given how much Filch hated students, and how much Mrs Norris helped him in unnecessarily antagonizing and punishing students. Now if the culprit had just gotten Filch himself and Snape as well before hanging it up, the school would have been a whole lot better.

But Simmons disagreed.

"Even if whoever did this has stopped, we still need to see what Malfoy knows," she said. "They could decide to attack again, and like Daisy said at the beginning of this, he definitely knows something."

So they continued brewing their potions, watching out for any suspicious behavior by anyone that might indicate that they were the culprit and were just biding their time before striking again.

Thanks to the twins quick procurement of the hard to find ingredients they needed, by the time they reached the end of the second week of December, a week before term was to end, their potions were done and ready for a trial run on each other. Through a complicated round of roshambo, it was decided that Fitz would become Simmons, Simmons would become Daisy, and Daisy would become Fitz. They waited until Saturday morning after breakfast to actually try it out, returning to their dorm from the Great Hall giddy about what they were about to do.

"So what about clothes? Mostly you becoming Daisy, Simmons, as you don't have the same size bra as her," asked Fitz as Simmons ladled out the correct amount of potion into three eggcup-sized glasses.

"We're not exactly going to be staying clothed very long anyway, so ditch all underwear and just go shorts and t-shirts while we transform?" offered Daisy. "And when we do it for real, we're turning into twelve year olds, so that kind of thing will be much less important."

Agreeing with Daisy's suggestion, they all quickly headed to their respective bedrooms to change before regrouping in the common area sans undergarments, just to remember that they shared a bedroom (and bed) when they all went into their one bedroom.

"Well, I guess we could have just stripped naked in our common room," chuckled Simmons as they looked at each, and began taking their clothes off since they were married and all.

"You know, we might as well just stay naked while we drink the potion — there's really no point in putting clothes on just to take them all back off again immediately," said Daisy.

So they walked back out into their common area without a stitch on, Simmons thankfully thinking to quickly dash into their bathroom to grab a pair of scissors so no one would have to yank their hair out. Three snips later, and each of them was holding their shot glass full of polyjuice potion, and a bit of hair of whoever they were going to turn into.

"According to the instructions, we just drop the hair in, the potion will change colors, and then we'll drink and have one hour before we change back into ourselves," said Simmons.

At everyone's nod, they dropped their hairs into their potions. Almost immediately, following a very short frothing and smoking, the potions changed colors. The two with FitzSimmons' hairs in them turned an identical liquid gold, which Daisy had to roll her eyes at — of course their polyjuice potions were exactly the same. But the one that surprised them all was the one with Daisy's hair, which turned into a swirling mass of color, a liquid rainbow.

So before Jemma could start overanalyzing the differences in their potions, or even just start trying to scientifically analyze them at all, Daisy held her glass up in toast for the other two to clink against, and said, "Bottoms up."

The Thursday before the end of term, FitzSkimmons noticed that a new note had been posted on the notice board in their dorm.

Reading over it, they learned that there was going to be a Dueling class that evening in the Great Hall. Hopeful that they could learn some new dueling spells, or at least practice the spells they had already learned that year and the previous year on their own in order to be able to protect themselves, shortly before eight pm they eagerly walked into the Great Hall. Most of the castle was there as well, and the three of them had just begun discussing who they thought might be teaching them, whether it would be Professor Flitwick, who'd been a prominent dueler when he was younger, or maybe even Dumbledore himself, who'd defeated Grindelwald, the wizarding tyrant before Voldemort, when two distinctly different adults walked on stage.

The peacock, and the man who hated everyone but his own House — just great.

As usual, Lockhart made a giant fool of himself to start out the evening when he tried to duel Snape as an example, and Snape looked like he wanted to murder everyone and Harry Potter twice before breakfast, but soon enough Lockhart had them all split up into pairs to begin practicing, despite the fact neither he nor Snape had actually taught them anything about dueling yet, and they'd only seen one spell cast if they were even paying close enough attention to see the one spell of Snape's.

FitzSkimmons stood there looking at each other for a second, trying to decide how they were going to split up the trio, or else take turns, when Snape swept in and did it for them.

"Time to split up the dream team, I think," he sneered. "Weasley, you can partner with Finnigan."

Fitz automatically turned to Simmons, hoping to at least keep two of their three together, but Snape of course had other plans.

"Oh, I don't think so, Potter," he sneered, smiling evilly. "Mr. Malfoy, come over here. Let's see what you make of the famous Potter. And you, Miss Granger — you can partner Miss Bulstrode."

Looking gleeful at finally being able to have his duel with Potter that he'd wanted for such a long time, mistakenly believing that while he couldn't take Fitz on in a physical fight, he stood a better chance in a wizarding duel being a pureblood and all, Malfoy strutted over, smirking far too much for someone who was about to have his arse handed to him on a silver platter.

"Face your partners!" Lockhart shouted out to the hall, back up on the platform where he would be less likely to get hit by whatever spells a bunch of students from Houses who more often than not loathed each other, and hadn't been told which spells were proper to use in a beginner's dueling class and which ones would be one-way tickets to Azkaban if they were used outside of the castle, cast at each other. "And bow!"

Fitz didn't even pretend to bow to the boy who clearly wanted to inflict maximum pain and humiliation on him, keeping his eyes locked on Malfoy's, while Malfoy inclined his head just enough not to fool anyone into thinking he'd actually bowed.

"Wands at the ready!" shouted Lockhart. "When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponents — only to disarm them — we don't want any accidents — one...two...three —"

As soon as Fitz saw Malfoy start to move on two, he dove and rolled out of the way of the Snake's early spell, rolling up against Daisy's leg beside him, before quickly pointing his wand at Malfoy from where he lay on his stomach on the stone floor, shouting, "Expelliarmus!" immediately followed by "Petrificus Totalus!"

Malfoy's wand flew out of his hand towards Fitz, before the git froze rigid and fell hard on his back with a look of shock permanently etched on his face at both the fact that Potter had dove out of the way of his spell, and that Potter had then managed to successfully disarm him from the ground.

Meanwhile, Daisy cast Expelliarmus on three, as Finnigan didn't go early, and by the time Fitz had Malfoy frozen on the ground, was standing there looking down at where Fitz lay next to her, holding both her wand and Finnigan's that she'd caught as it flew towards her. Fitz stood up and grabbed Malfoy's wand from where it had fell to the floor near him, not wanting the Snake to curse him in the back when he was inevitably revived. Then both he and Daisy looked over to see how Simmons had fared in her duel.

Simmons had easily disarmed Millicent Bulstrode just as Daisy had Finnigan, but unlike Finnigan, when Bulstrode had been disarmed, she had rushed at Simmons, thinking that because she was large and square and heavy-jawed, that she could take on Simmons in a fist fight. But Simmons was a Shield agent, trained by Quake herself off and on over the past few years, and easily dodged Bulstrode's rush of blind rage, sweeping her feet out from under her, causing the Slytherin to splat her face on the stone floor with all the moment she'd put into trying to attack Simmons.

But while the three FitzSkimmonses were in complete control of their respective situations, all around them the Great Hall looked like a war zone. The aftermath of everyone randomly casting curses looking exactly like should have been expected.

Surveying the damage, Lockhart said, "I think I'd better teach you how to block unfriendly spells."

He briefly glanced at Snape again, but quickly looked away, clearly smarter than he acted most of the time, and instead said, "Let's have a volunteer pair — Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you —"

But Snape cut him off, sneering, "A bad idea, Professor Lockhart. Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox."

Neville's round, pink face went even pinker, and Fitz and Daisy were both extremely tempted to cast the nastiest spells they knew at Snape for his blatant child abuse, but both just barely managed to hold it in — they knew better than to think Lockhart would defend them, and after a year and a half they knew none of the other professors would defend them either when they heard the story after Snape tried to give them detention and they reasonably refused. It would just be too much of a headache for the nothing it would actually gain Neville.

But Snape was speaking again, sneering with his evil, twisted smile, "How about Malfoy and Potter, instead?"

Whether Snape hadn't seen Fitz's sound thumping of Malfoy a minute earlier, or had some new, devious trick up his sleeve that he thought would give his favorite student an edge over Fitz, Fitz didn't know, nor did he care — he was more than happy to put the slap-down on Malfoy again, and in front of everyone this time.

But when Lockhart said, "Excellent idea!" and waved Fitz and Malfoy onto the platform, he and Snape, and the rest of the Hall, finally realized that Malfoy was laying petrified on the floor.

So before Snape could swoop in like the hero he pictured himself as instead of the villain he was, Fitz casually flicked the counter-charm at Malfoy to un-petrificus him, tossing the Slytherin's wand at his feet, but keeping his own wand pointed firmly in Malfoy's direction to discourage the Slytherin from trying to immediately curse him.

They both made it up onto the platform without a fight breaking out, and Snape leaned down to whisper something Fitz was sure was nasty into Malfoy's ear. Meanwhile, Lockhart was trying to say something to Fitz, but he completely tuned him out, as he already knew what he was going to do.

Once they were lined up and everyone else was mostly out of the way, Malfoy muttered under his breath at Fitz, "Scared?"

Fitz didn't even bother replying, instead getting into a defensive stance so he could dive out of the way again if Malfoy tried starting early again, and gripping his wand tightly. But that apparently wasn't Snape's nefarious scheme, as Malfoy didn't try to cheat that time, so when Lockhart got to "Go!", Fitz and Malfoy's wands both flashed, Malfoy bellowing, "Serpensortia!" as Fitz yelled, "Expelliarmus!"

A long black snake began exploding out of the end of Malfoy's wand, before being hit full force with Fitz's Disarming Charm. The blast of scarlet light from Fitz's wand caused the snake and Malfoy's wand it was still coming out of to go soaring twelve feet into the air, arching towards where Fitz was standing. Thinking quickly, Fitz hurriedly jumped off of the platform, knowing better than to try skeet shooting the snake with his wand — all the spells he knew shot like a pistol and rifle, and none like a shotgun (also unfortunately none that shot select-fire three round bursts or full auto, but neither of those would have helped in this scenario anyway, unless they were select fire or full auto shotgun spells, to turn his wand into a Saiga 12 of magic).

But as the snake landed with a loud smack near where Fitz had until very recently been standing, Fitz, Simmons, and Daisy all pointed their wands at the spot where the snake was collecting its bearings after its impromptu, parachute-less skydiving trip, and shouted in sync, "Petrificus Totalus!"

The snake had just begun to raise itself hissing furiously when the spells landed, freezing it like a stone. Everyone turned and stared at them, Lockhart, Snape, and Malfoy included.

As everyone stared at them, Daisy spotted Malfoy's wand lying near the frozen snake, and walked over and picked it up off the platform, tossing it back towards a Malfoy who looked rather like he'd got hit by a petrifying spell as well, smirking, "I think this is yours."

Then she turned back to FitzSimmons, both of whom were keeping half an eye on Malfoy to make sure he didn't try to curse Daisy in the back, and said, "I think we've learned about as much here as we can. Care to head back up to our room?"

The morning after the Dueling Club, as Herbology was canceled due to the roaring blizzard outside, FitzSkimmons returned to their dorm room to 'test out' the polyjuice potion some more before they tried using it to interrogate Malfoy.

At least, that's what Simmons called it in her mind, so she wouldn't have to admit even just to herself that they were just going back to have kinky sex since they didn't have class. But as polyjuice potion wore off after an hour, and their second class of the morning was located inside the castle, eventually they had to leave their warm, cozy dorm, and head back out into the drafty castle and to class. They had just made it past the hospital wing on their way to the Transfiguration classroom, when they saw Professor Flitwick coming their way, levitating a body in front of him, with another student walking slightly behind him holding a fan. When they got closer, they realized it was the Hufflepuff Finch-Fletchley, and Nearly Headless Nick, the first being levitated and the second being blown along with the fan the other Hufflepuff was holding.

"Professor Flitwick — what happened?" asked Simmons urgently.

Justin looked like Filch's cat had looked, and Nick was black and smokey instead of his normal ghostly transparent white.

"There's been another attack, I'm afraid," answered Flitwick gravely.

"Oh, that's terrible!" exclaimed Simmons. "And you still have no idea who or what did it?"

Flitwick looked at them carefully for a second, before saying, "I'm only telling you this because all three of you are quite brilliant, three of the best students I've had in my entire career, and you carry yourselves well beyond your age. But while petrification like what has been done to Mrs Norris and Mr Finch-Fletchley here is dark magic all on its own, to harm a ghost, a being that is already dead, is truly powerful dark magic, the likes of which no one in this castle, student or teacher, should know or be able to perform. I'm hoping Professor Dumbledore will have some answers, but if he knows anything yet, he hasn't shared it with us yet. Now I really must get these two to Madam Pomfrey." Turning to the Hufflepuff with him, he said, "Come along, Macmillan," and they moved on past FitzSkimmons down the hall towards the hospital wing.

Looking at each other, FitzSkimmons slowly started walking again towards Transfiguration class. If Malfoy knew something, they needed to find it out fast. How they were going to pass the information on to the professors without revealing how they'd procured it once they did was still a bit of a problem, but they'd cross that bridge when they came to it.

~FSK~

With renewed urgency to interrogate Malfoy as soon as they safely could, FitzSkimmons spent the first week of Christmas break tailing Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, along with Pansy Parkinson, the only second year Slytherin girl to remain at Hogwarts, to learn their Christmas break habits in order to formulate their best plan of attack.

They also made sure to overhear the password for the Slytherin common room, should they decide to confront Malfoy in there, though they were hoping to avoid that as the few other Slytherins who had stayed could be around, and the more people they had to fool, the harder their job would be and the more likely they would be questioned and potentially caught. They made extensive use of Harry's invisibility cloak for their reconnaissance, as well as their training as spies, especially Daisy, who actually did that sort of thing on a more regular basis and had trained under two of the best, May and (*gag*) Ward.

So by Sunday night, they had a plan formulated for the following day. They had originally wanted to have all three of them be there to interrogate Malfoy, FitzSimmons as Crabbe and Goyle, and Daisy as Pansy, but in the end they decided any such plan they could come up with to do so would be too risky. They wanted to keep Malfoy from ever discovering that who he'd really revealed his deepest darkest secrets to weren't actually his fellow Slytherins he thought they were, and they weren't confident they could do that with all three of them changing. So instead, they decided their best route was for Daisy to go in solo as Pansy, while FitzSimmons made sure the real Pansy didn't interrupt.

A few days before, they had timed their departure from the Great Hall at supper so they would run into Pansy coming into the Great Hall right at the doors, with all three of them walking side by side blocking the entire door, so FitzSimmons could subtly and 'accidentally' move in the same direction as Pansy when she tried to shift one direction to get past them, allowing Daisy to snip a few strands of Pansy's hair with a pair of muggle scissors they'd brought, giving them the DNA they needed to allow Daisy to turn into Pansy when the time came.

There was still always the risk that Malfoy would later mention to the real Pansy that he was surprised she'd joined him when she normally didn't, or ask her to join him again and Pansy be confused about the 'again' part, but there was nothing they could do about that, and as Malfoy and Pansy didn't seem to spend all that much time together, they hoped it wouldn't ever come up. Because while there was no conceivable way that Malfoy could prove that it had been Daisy (or Ronna to him) to impersonate Pansy, they'd still rather no one know any impersonation had occurred at all.

So Monday morning, thirty minutes before Malfoy usually went down to lunch, Daisy, who had just polyjuiced herself into Pansy in the bathroom just down the corridor from the library, joined him in the library where he was studying, as Crabbe and Goyle sat next to him as little more than thuggish bodyguards, nearly useless when it came to studying and homework.

Because as unquestionably mean and a spoiled brat as Malfoy was, he did actually put some effort into his schoolwork — the necessity of nobility, muggle or magical, being well-educated in addition to being rich undoubtedly drilled into him by his father. Of course, he didn't exactly put his best effort into his schoolwork — he wasn't that mudblood bookworm know-it-all Hermione by any stretch of the imagination, instead preferring to coast by as much as he could on his family name and Snape's absolute adoration of him to get good grades — but he knew what effort he did need to put in in order to keep his father and all the professors happy, and that happened to include an hour or so in the library each weekday over break to make sure he finished all of the homework they'd been assigned for Christmas break before the new term started.

And in the week of Christmas break so far, Pansy Parkinson had never joined him in any of these studying sessions, so with FitzSimmons focused on Pansy to make sure she didn't suddenly decide to go to the library that day for some reason, they were confident Daisy would have all the time she needed to interrogate Malfoy without the real Pansy coming by.

So Daisy walked into the Library doing her best Pansy mannerisms, and sat down in the empty seat next to Malfoy, asking, "Mind if I study with you for a while?"

While Malfoy gave her a slightly odd look that she was wanting to study with him, he didn't say anything, just nodding his head slightly in what Daisy took to be an okay. So Daisy opened their Transfiguration book she had been carrying with her, and began reading.

They studied in silence for a good quarter of an hour, Daisy wanting to lure Malfoy back into a sense of normality after her unexpected arrival, before she casually said, "Shame Slytherin's beast didn't manage to off that insufferable Hufflepuff mudblood. Or that half-headless ghost of Gryffindor's, for that matter — that's one ghost we could do without in this castle."

"I'm just hoping it goes after Potter's little pet next time, that Granger mudblood girl, and does successfully kill this time," replied Malfoy, not even looking up from the essay he was writing. "And take out that blood-traitor Weasel Potter's always hanging out with as well, with her. Blood-traitor's got to be as bad as mudblood to Slytherin's monster."

"You know, I'm surprised and disappointed that the Chamber hasn't been opened more than the two times it has," said Daisy, keeping up the appearance that she was still looking at her book, even though in reality she was watching Malfoy out of the corner of her eye for any nonverbal signs.

"Me too, Pansy, but Father says to keep my head down and let the Heir of Slytherin get on with it. He agrees that the school needs ridding of all the Mudblood filth, but insists not to get mixed up in it," replied Malfoy slightly bitterly, shoving his essay away from him with a noise of disgust. "McGonagall always assigns way too much homework — I bet she doesn't give her precious Gryffindors this much."

Daisy briefly wondered if Malfoy even realized the hypocrisy of his statement given the fact Snape very clearly did assign less homework to his own House, never assigning extra essays to any Slytherins while repeatedly demanding them from everyone else and especially Gryffindors, but she quickly pushed this to the back of her mind as it was irrelevant to her task at hand.

"Do you have any idea who the Heir is?" she asked. "Subtly drop some hints to them about who to off next? Or maybe I could, if your father won't let you."

"Sorry, no," said Malfoy, shaking his head. "Father won't tell me anything about the last time the Chamber was opened. Of course, it was fifty years ago, so it was before his time, but he knows all about it. He says that it was all kept very quiet, and that it'll look suspicious if I know too much about it. All he's told me is that the last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood did successfully die."

"It was opened before?!" gasped Daisy in genuine surprise. It seemed rather odd that it was such a secret if this wasn't even the first time it had been opened in recent history. "Did the person opening it ever get caught?"

"Oh, yeah...whoever it was was expelled," answered Malfoy. "They're probably still in Azkaban."

"Shame we don't know who that is, or we might be able to figure out who's related to them that's opening it this time," replied Daisy.

"Yeah," muttered Malfoy, but didn't say anything more.

Knowing she had squeezed as much information out of him as she was going to be able to get, Daisy carefully implemented her exit strategy.

"You know what — I forgot something in my dorm room. But thanks for letting me study with you," she said, standing up.

Malfoy merely grunted what Daisy assumed was some hitherto unknown form of goodbye, his attention back on the Transfiguration essay that Daisy really hadn't thought was all that difficult or challenging to write. So Daisy turned and casually walked out of the library, and down through the castle to where FitzSimmons were supposed to be hiding outside of the Slytherin common room under Harry's invisibility cloak, making sure the real Pansy didn't try to leave.

Walking down the damp, dark corridor the Slytherin common room was on, she subtly held her hand down by her side with just her pointer finger extended down towards the floor, their signal that she was Daisy-Pansy, and not Pansy-Pansy, so FitzSimmons would know it was her. A hand briefly appeared out of thin air and waved her into the alcove across from the stretch of bare, damp stone wall that held the concealed stone door entrance to the Slytherin common room. Ducking behind the invisibility cloak, she saw the anxious-looking faces of FitzSimmons looking back at her.

She gave them a quick thumbs-up and tight smile, before whispering, "Let's get out of here."

They kept the invisibility cloak covering as much of them as possible until they found the nearest secret passageway they could duck into, thankfully not seeing anyone in the nearly empty school. They didn't really care where the passage took them, as long as it was away from the dungeons, so FitzSimmons could freely walk without anyone questioning why they were in the dungeons when Potions class wasn't going on, while Daisy hid under the invisibility cloak, since she still looked like Pansy for a while longer.

Once they were safely in their common room and sitting on the couch together, Daisy repeated everything Malfoy had told her.

"So the Chamber was opened fifty years ago, by someone who was expelled and sent to Azkaban, and a muggleborn died," summed up Simmons once Daisy had finished. "Not exactly anything we can tell a teacher to help them, as that should all be stuff they would already know."

"Would be interesting to find out who opened it last time, and who died," said Daisy. "Any way to look that up in the library, Miss Library herself?"

"That would be Mrs Library to you, wifey dearest," smirked Simmons in reply. "But yes, we can try. The library has a collection of old Daily Prophet issues, though given the fact it was clearly hushed up and swept under the rug, as no one seemed to know anything about the Chamber before Binns told us, I have my doubts anything made it into the newspaper."