No one was allowed to leave the common rooms for the rest of the day. When the group went to eat lunch in the extended common room, Rebekah grabbed Blaise and pulled him into her room. The group gave them a suspicious look but waved it off when they said that Sprout gave them an extra essay to do especially for them.
"Look, Blaise, I trust you with this information I'm about to tell you," Rebekah said and gained a serious tone as his eyes also hardened. "Can I trust you?"
"Of course, Rebekah. What kind of friend would I be if you couldn't?" He scoffed and waved for her to tell him.
"Do you know who Tom Riddle is?"
"Not a clue,"
"He's Voldemort when he attended Hogwarts in the forties. He had this, this diary type of thing. I found it a few months ago when the girls' bathroom where Myrtle is was flooded. Remember when you spilt ink on my bag?"
"Yeah, everyone won't let that down," He said.
"Well, the book was on top of everything, you would think it would have been covered in the ink but it wasn't," Rebekah sat next to him, her eyes flickering as she explained. "The book absorbed the ink. I wrote in it that night and it replied. Blaise, the book replied. I wrote my name and it wrote back, saying that it was Tom Riddle. Eventually, we got onto the topic of the Chamber and it explained that it had been opened in his time. I asked what happened and it showed me…."
Rebekah began to explain everything she saw within the diary. Blaise sat there, taking it all in. She said that she needed to see Hagrid and listen to his part of the story and Blaise butted in, saying he wouldn't allow her to leave alone. Both of them got under the Invisibility Cloak and made the trek to Hagrid's hut.
Hagrid opened the door with a crossbow in hand and with Fang, the boarhound barking. They had taken the Cloak off of their head right before they knocked.
"Oh, Rebekah and, er…"
"Blaise Zabini," Blaise offered his name. The two had never met before properly.
"Right," Hagrid said sharply and lowered the weapon. "What're you two doin' here?"
"What's that for?" Rebekah asked, glancing down at the crossbow.
"Nothin', nothin'," Hagrid muttered. "I've bin expecting… That doesn't matter. Sit down, I'll make tea fer yeh two."
The two Slytherins gave each other a worried look. Hagrid wasn't in his right mind. His hands twitched nervously and he spilled water into the fire by accident. His own eyebrows were furrowed deeply and he kept mumbling to himself, though they couldn't make out what was being said.
"How are you doing?" Rebekah tried to soften the tense atmosphere and failed. "Have you heard about Hermione and Daphne?"
"Yeah, I heard," His lip twitched as he glanced at the windows.
They both had large mugs of boiled water because Hagrid was too nervous to notice that he forgot to add the tea bags.
He poured them both large mugs of boiling water (he had forgotten to add tea bags) and was just putting a slab of fruitcake on a plate when there was a loud knock on the door. The knock at the door made Hagrid drop the fruitcake and the students throw the Cloak over them.
"Good evening, Hagrid." Dumbledore entered without the glint in his eyes.
Blaise whispered to Rebekah at her confused expression, "Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic."
The Minister of Magic had a strange sense of style with a pinstriped suit and a scarlet tie, with pointed purple boots and lime-green bowler.
Hagrid was extremely nervous, wringing his hands as he sat in a chair.
The two Slytherin listened in on their conversation, processing everything with no break in attention until Mr Lucius Malfoy came in with a roll of parchment. He had a satisfied sneer and an approving look at Fudge.
"Already here, Fudge," Mr Malfoy hummed. "Good, good . . ."
"What're you doin' here?" Hagrid forgot his nerves and yelled, "Get outta my house!"
"My dear man, please, believe me, I have no pleasure at all in being inside your … d'you call this a house?" Mr Malfoy gave the hut a disproving sneer and dropped it. "I simply called at the school and was told that the headmaster was here."
"And what exactly did you want with me, Lucius?" Dumbledore turned to the man, perfectly polite.
"Dreadful thing, Dumbledore," Mr Malfoy unrolled the parchment with a flick of his wrist. "but the governours feel it's time for you to step aside. This is an Order of Suspension. You'll find all twelve signatures on it. I'm afraid we feel you're losing your touch. How many attacks have there been now? Two more this afternoon, wasn't it? At this rate, there'll be no MuggleBorns left at Hogwarts, and we all know what an awful loss that would be to the school."
"Oh, now, see here, Lucius," Fudge looked alarmed and tried to reason with the Wizard. "Dumbledore suspended, no, no, last thing we want just now.
"The appointment, or suspension, of the headmaster is a matter for the governors, Fudge. And as Dumbledore has failed to stop these attacks —"
"See here, Malfoy, if Dumbledore can't stop them. I mean to say, who can?"
"That remains to be seen, But as all twelve of us have voted —"
"An' how many did yeh have ter threaten an' blackmail before they agreed, Malfoy, eh?"
Mr Malfoy looked shocked at Hagrid's outburst but recovered with a cool tone, "Dear, dear, you know, that temper of yours will lead you into trouble one of these days, Hagrid. I would advise you not to shout at the Azkaban guards like that. They won't like it at all."
"Yeh can' take Dumbledore! Take him away, an' the Muggle-borns won' stand a chance! There'll be killin' next!"
"Calm yourself, Hagrid," Dumbledore looked at Lucius Malfoy. "If the governors want my removal, Lucius, I shall, of course, step aside —"
"But…" Fudge stuttered.
"No!"
"However," Dumbledore kept his eyes on Mr Malfoy's, making sure that he didn't resist. "you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."
Rebekah sucked her teeth in amusement when Dumbledore's eyes travelled to the corner they hid in. Rebekah had a sneaking suspicion that he knew they were there.
"Admirable sentiments," Mr Malfoy bowed mockingly, "We shall all miss your — er — highly individual way of running things, Albus, and only hope that your successor will manage to prevent any — ah — killins."
Mr Malfoy and Dumbledore left first.
"If anyone wanted ter find out some stuff, all they'd have ter do would be ter follow the spiders. That'd lead 'em right! That's all I'm sayin'." Hagrid said, getting his moleskin coat.
Fudge gestured to the door.
"All right, I'm comin'," Hagrid said but stopped outside the door. "Get Rebekah Potter ter feed Fang while I'm away, he loves 'er."
They waited for a good ten minutes until they knew that they were alone. Rebekah gestured for Fang to follow her when they left the cabin. The cloak was suddenly torn off them and Rebekah drew her wand at the person. Finding long black hair and a black cloak wasn't what Rebekah wanted to see.
Snape stood there with a nasty look in his eyes but it dropped as he sighed and gestured for them to follow. They went down to the dungeons and then into his empty office.
"What is it with you and getting in trouble, Miss Potter?" Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. "And now you've brought Mr Zabini into this too. From the look on your face, you have learnt something important. Spit it out."
And they did. They told him everything that they knew, also about the diary. Snape flinched at Voldemort's name but Rebekah ignored that and continued to explain what she had seen and done. They both got detentions that would actually be extra Potions lessons, and were sent off to bed with a warning.
"Don't go after the spiders in the Forbidden Forest,"
But even Snape knew Rebekah wasn't going to listen, warning her to get him if she decided to do anything dangerous.
"I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of Dumbledore," Draco said in a Potions lesson to the group."I told you he thinks Dumbledore's the worst headmaster the school's ever had.."
Snape swept past Hermione's empty seat, taking note to give Rebekah work to give the two girls. They both didn't need to lose progress in Potions, not under his supervision.
"Sir, why don't you apply for the headmaster's job?"
Snape had a thin-lipped smile, "Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I daresay he'll be back with us soon enough."
"Yeah, right," Draco snorted.
"Careful, Draco," Rebekah said, looking at him from the corner of her eyes as she jotted down the new instructions into her book. "Remember the creature isn't targeting just MuggleBorns anymore. Remember Daphne?"
He swallowed and gave her a dirty look but turned back to Snape. "I expect you'd have Father's vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job."
"I suspect Dumbledore will be back soon, after the Chamber has been closed and everything," Rebekah said as she added an ingredient and watched the potion turn lilac.
"What would you know?"
"More than you,"
Magic of History was quiet as everyone fell asleep in the lessons, stress, nerves and overall boredom got to them as soon as Binns opened his mouth and began talking.
Every day, Rebekah went down to her dorm and fed Fang who was staying with her for the time being. The hound missed Hagrid and would whimper when she left. She couldn't take him everywhere with her, Emperor was bad enough as a shadow. And almost every day, Rebekah saw several dozen small spiders make their way into the forest in an unnatural line each time.
Late one night, Rebekah donned her cloak and walked to Blaise's room as she recalled the memories of spiders making their way to the Forbidden Forest. Fang and Tercet followed the two, Emperor was in Rebekah's shadow as she used a spell to create light.
Rebekah forgot to tell Blaise that she hated spiders, like she was revolted by them. She had enough trouble touching the body when they were dead but when a pair of extremely large, almost human-sized spiders captured them, Rebekah was ready to faint. She willed herself to stay calm as the spider dragged her, she refused to look at it because she would start squirming and then she would start attacking it with all her might.
She really didn't like looking at them at all.
"Aragog!" The spider dropped Rebekah before a tree "Aragog!"
Rebekah flinched and grabbed Blaise's hand, squeezing it tightly as she grimaced in disgust and shivered. She wanted Emperor to get Snape. She didn't like being here and she wanted to cry.
The spider named Aragog was large, slightly bigger than a large van and had several patches of grey within his black hair. Rebekah looked at it quickly and saw that each eye was milky white. The spider had gone blinded with his old age.
"What is it?" The voice was smooth but firm with age.
"Men,"
"Is it Hagrid?" Aragog's eight eyes looked around but never focused.
"No, we're friends of Hagrid," Rebekah quickly said and kept a hand on Blaise's arm, Tercet sat in front of her, almost guarding silently.
The whole colony of spiders, Rebekah refused to look around so she didn't know how many there were, clicked their pincers and it caused an echo in the forest.
"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before."
"Hagrid wouldn't unless he couldn't come himself," Blaise said. "He wouldn't want to place us in unnecessary danger but he's in trouble."
"In trouble?" Aragog said, clicking slightly with his words. "But why has he sent you?"
"I am Rebekah Potter," She said and released Blaise. She summoned all of her confidence and bravery and pushed her fear down. "I've been visiting Hagrid and helping out in the forest every so often."
"Ah," He said, finally realising who the Witch before him was. "Hagrid spoke fondly of you. He said how the Thestrals liked you very much."
"Yes, well," Rebekah gulped and looked into teh blind eyes of the aged spider. "People at Hogwarts believe Hagrid had released something. He's been taken to Azkaban."
"But that was years ago!" Aragog said mostly to himself. "Years and years ago. I remember it well. That's why they made him leave the school. They believed that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."
"I've seen memories of the night you fled the castle," Rebekah gulped. "I know for a fact that you did not hurt anyone but I have to know what is."
"The thing that lives in the castle," Aragog said, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others. Well, do I remember how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go, when I sensed the beast moving about the school."
"What is the beast?" Rebekah said firmly, gaining a sour tone. The spiders clicked and seemed to be closing in on them, Tercet growled and sent some of them back. "Call the colony off. I'm trying to save my school, not get you all killed!"
"We do not speak of it!" Aragog moved a leg forward and made Rebekah step back. "We do not name it! I never even told Hagrid the name of that dread creature, though he asked me, many times."
"We have an idea of what it is," Blaise said when he realised Rebekah's throat closed up in her fear. "Is the creature your mortal enemy and can it be killed by a rooster's crow?"
"Yes…" The aged spider said slowly, drawing his pinchers in. the other spiders inched forward and got closer. "My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid, on my command. But I cannot deny them fresh meat when it wanders so willingly into our midst. Good-bye, friend of Hagrid."
Rebekah screamed louder than she thought was possible, and crouched down with Blaise as spiders jumped. They waited, shivering but they felt nothing but the warm underbelly of the growling HellHound.
Haos and Harmoni took the students by the scruff and pulled them to his necks. Zastiti looked after them as the other two heads bit at the oncoming spiders.
"Aragog, release them!" A light suddenly appeared in the form of a doe, a Patronus. Snape's angry face was revealed with Emperor by his side and an unknown crow on his shoulder. "She is the only thing that will keep the creature at bay. Hurt any of them, and the creature will be released fully and it will come for you."
"Severus Snape. You just had to interrupt our meal,"
"The beast will have you as a meal instead," Snape snarled and clenched his hand, gesturing for Tercet to follow. "Come."
"Fine," Aragog said and called his colony back. They watched as the Hellhound, boarhound, large feline and Wizard walk back into the depth of the forest.
Rebekah turned her head to face the spiders. "Call this a warning."
After walking a few minutes, Snape gestured for the two students to get down. They were far enough away that they would be safe but Rebekah outright refused to get down.
"Potter, get down,"
"No."
"Come on, Rebekah. They're far enough away now,"
"I'm still not gettin' down," Rebekah hugged Zastiti's neck. "Not leaving until we are far, far, far away from them."
"Why?"
"I hate spiders."