The Heir

Harry's thoughts were blurry and his vision dark. It felt like he was waking up after a long night's sleep or when his legs fell asleep after spending too much time studying and developed tunnel vision on the book in front of him. He opened his eyes slowly, expecting to see the ceiling over his bed, but instead saw just gray walls all around him. It was at the same time he noticed that he wasn't lying down either, he was propped up against a wall.

He tried to move but found his arms and legs restrained. His pouch, wand, and even his shoes were nowhere to be seen. As he struggled, he tried to flood his magic to do… something… but saw the metal clasps around his wrists and ankles light up with blue runes. They were the same cuffs he had to wear on the plane and at the funfair, but these were holding him in place not just keeping him from casting any magic.

It slowly came back to him that he had seen a flash of red, accompanied by the incantation of the stunning spell he had heard from the Aurors in the past before he blacked out and ended up here. Someone had stunned him, abducted him, and restrained him.

"Anyone there?" he called out. "I need help!"

Looking at the manacles, he remembered how he felt waking up in the washing machine box inside the container, but now he was in Lyra's position, chained to the wall. Before the memories came to him, he felt them. His occlumency training enabled him to identify an incoming emotion before he experienced it, and each one felt different, now he felt as if something was chewing its way into his head. Strengthening his shields didn't help, and filling his head with other memories didn't either, as the gnawing sensation grew stronger. Finally, it made its way to its destination, and the memory of his Uncle Vernon tying him to the chair to shave his head bubbled to the surface.

"Help! I need help!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

He tried to think of a way out of the situation, but couldn't. And where was the person that put him here? What were they waiting for? It dawned on him that they were making him wait, trying to intimidate him… and it was working. He couldn't push back or show defiance, he could only sit here against the wall and wait. He stayed silent for what felt like another half an hour as one of his worst memories kept coming to mind, trying to figure out anything he could do until there was a grinding noise as one of the walls shifted to the side and someone entered the room.

The person was wearing a black hooded robe, with long sleeves, and green trim. It had a face-concealing charm like the one Brandt gave him and the Unspeakables wore, so he couldn't identify them. However, unlike the Unspeakables, this one was pretty much the same height as him. When they spoke, they must have used the same charm as the ministry researchers to disguise their voices because he couldn't tell anything about it.

"Harry Potter, so good to meet with you at last."

"Who are you?" Harry demanded.

Harry could feel the smile from inside the hood, as they replied, "You may call me the Heir. The Heir of Salazar Slytherin."

That wasn't what Harry was expecting. He just stared at the person? Child? Heir? standing in front of him in confusion.

It seemed like the Heir wanted him to say something so he asked, "What do you want?"

"I want many things, but first a test." They drew a wand, but it was mostly concealed and the room was dark, but Harry thought the tip was brown. His assailant brandished the wand and said, "Serpensortia!"

A large green snake that Harry identified as a viper, definitely venomous, slithered out onto the floor and hissed at him. It didn't make a move to attack, retreat, or even speak. It just tasted the air around Harry and watched him.

"Tell the snake to leave," the Heir told him.

"What?" Harry tried his best to hide his shock with confusion. "Umm, can you leave me alone, Mr. Snake?" he asked.

"No, say it in Parseltongue," the Heir instructed him.

"I don't know Parseltongue," Harry objected.

"Fine then," the Heir looked down at the snake.

§Kill him.§

The viper rushed forward to attack Harry, but just before it struck, he called out,

§STOP!§
§Kill the Heir!§

The viper froze mid-strike and looked back at the one that summoned it. As it started to move back, the Heir blasted it into pieces with a spell.

§That's what I thought. You can speak.§
§Your voice is stronger than mine, how?§

Harry didn't know what to say, but tried digging for answers,

§You're the first wizard I've met that can speak.§

§How did you learn?§

He could hear the anger in the Heir's voice.

§I am the Heir of Slytherin.§

§Of course, I can speak the serpent tongue, it is in my blood.§

§How can a half-blood, son of a mudblood like you, speak?§

Harry was pretty sure it came from that spirit of Voldemort, as that was how The Giver had gained the ability as well, but he couldn't be sure, so he just replied,

§I've been able to as long as I can remember.§

§I think I first heard a snake speaking when I was five years old.§

The Heir switched back to English, "No matter, you revealed my pet's existence to the world. I will kill you tonight and when the year ends, I will take my champion and start on the path to taking over the country."

"Why haven't you left already?" Harry asked, a bit confused at the situation.

"For… reasons…" they replied, noticing they might have revealed too much. "Though before you die, I might as well have some fun first."

The Heir tucked their wand away and rolled up their sleeves to reveal pale arms. They walked up to Harry, so the two of them were face to face, though Harry could still not see any features in the darkness of the hood. He did, however, think he smelled vanilla or some kind of sweet scent, but couldn't be sure. He also didn't have time to analyze it as the Heir took a step back and punched him in the face.

It hurt but not as much as he thought it would. That thought must have shown on his face, as the Heir growled and took another swing, and another, and another. They mostly swung for his face but occasionally switched it up for hits to his stomach. They continued until Harry felt blood on his face coming from his mouth and nose, maybe other places too but he was losing consciousness again from the repeated attacks. A tooth felt loose and he spat it along with a lot of blood onto the floor.

The Heir was out of breath when they took a step back, "I think that's enough. I'm satisfied now. I'll go fetch the basilisk, and let you have a face-to-face conversation with him. Don't go anywhere."

The Heir walked back towards the wall they had come from and placed a hand on one of the stones, with the wall sliding away giving them a path to exit the room, and then it returned into place once they were gone.

As much as Harry thought he would survive a staring contest with the basilisk based on what the Usurper had told him, it was still a giant, venomous snake. Its eyes were the least of Harry's concerns.

No amount of struggling was going to get him free, so he delved into his memories to see if there was anything in there that would help him get out. He felt like he was running a race through his head to try to think of anything related to the cuffs. On every path he took through his memories, he also encountered Uncle Vernon holding ropes, or the trimmer, or even himself tied to the chair and crying. It was exhausting to keep seeing that memory but he only had two experiences with the restraint cuffs, so he got to what might help very quickly.

Before the funfair, Brandt had told him that wearing one cuff wouldn't seal his magic completely, it would just keep his accidental magic from flaring. If that were the case, one cuff would have a limit to its effect. He was wearing one on each limb but if one had a limiting effect, then four just had a larger limiting effect. He just needed to flood them with so much magic that it couldn't contain it all.

Harry focused on everything he had. Remembering when he spent hours on the giant wiggenweld for Severus, combining that with the hatred he had felt for Vincent, and now for whoever was trying to kill him, he started to channel magic into his arms and legs. He couldn't move them like stirring a potion, but a glance down and he could see the runes on the cuffs glowing blue. After five minutes of concentration, they were glowing brighter and he could feel them getting warmer. When it was close to ten minutes, the cuffs were so hot that he could feel them burning, but he pushed on; gritting his teeth in pain.

Nearly a minute after he started to smell his flesh burning, there were four small pops as the cuffs all broke off simultaneously. Harry screamed in pain as he fell off the wall and onto his knees. He looked at his wrists and saw the skin was charred and blistering and just assumed it was the same on his ankles. He tried to stand up, but his legs buckled under him, and he crawled to where the door was.

With an obscene amount of luck, just placing his hand in the same spot as the Heir opened the door, and he crawled into the darkness. Just outside the door, his luck continued and he found his pouch, wand, and shoes. He ignored the shoes and grabbed his wand, stuffed it in the pouch, and retrieved his staff. Using it for support, he pulled himself to his feet and the antler illuminated just a little of the hallway.

He had no idea where he was, this wasn't any part of the castle he had been in before. The hallway was narrow and the ceiling was short. At one end of the hall was a spiral staircase going down and the other side just seemed to stretch forever. Harry scratched at the Lamassu tooth to give him some strength, but his ankles and wrists felt even worse as he stood up straighter.

Before he could make up his mind, from down the endless hallway he heard,

§Don't worry, my pet.§

§This one, you may eat.§

Then he heard a terrifying voice,

§Thank you, master.§

Deciding that wasn't the direction to go, Harry hobbled towards the staircase, moving down it as fast as he could. When he could see a doorway ahead, he heard a scream from the Heir somewhere above him,

§Harry Potter!§

§Where have you run off to?§

The voice caused him to stumble and fall. He rolled down the stone stairs, bursting through the door at the bottom, then fell what felt like another six feet onto the stone floor. His staff was still glowing, and when he looked around, he realized that he was in the library, somewhere. Above him was a shelf containing an oversized book, with the cover open where he must have fallen out. It was dark everywhere and he needed to get to the infirmary.

Harry pounded on the floor with his fists, which didn't show him the way back to the circulation desk. Borrowing more strength from the Lamassu's magic, he painfully got to his feet and stomped his feet, sending reverberations of pain up his legs with each stamp, and revealing the path back to the center of the library. Not hearing the Heir or the basilisk, he pointed his wand at the open book to close and lock the cover, then started to trudge after the glowing footprints.

It took him nearly thirty minutes, constantly about to pass out, on the verge of physical and mental exhaustion, with his arms and legs burning until he saw the main tower of the library catalog ahead of him. It must have been very late, as no one was there, all the lights in the library were off, and the main doors leading out were shut. With no energy left, he limped towards the circulation desk, rang the bell by the checkout station, and fainted.

Lyra was woken up while it was still dark out and before Luna's alarm woke up the other girls in the room. It took her a moment to realize that Tina Scamander was gently shaking her shoulder.

When her eyes were open, Tina said quietly, "I need you to come with me, now."

Lyra saw the urgency on her face and put on some slippers before following her quickly out of the room. When entering the common room, Lyra called out quietly for Whispers who bounded down from his favorite tree to follow after them. Once they were in the hallways, Tina cast a quick sunlight charm at the rooster cages around them, and a chain of crows echoed through the castle.

As they started moving, Tina told her, "Harry's in the infirmary, he was attacked sometime in the last few hours."

Lyra started to run but Tina caught her and they just walked briskly together to the hospital wing. They entered to find Dumbledore and Newt standing near a bed while Pomfrey was running her wand over Harry and Snape was administering a salve on his ankles. He was unconscious but they could see his face was heavily beaten and bruised and there were burn marks on his wrists and ankles.

Lyra was about to cry, though she knew she shouldn't shout in the infirmary. Newt came over to the two of them to explain.

"Do you know where Harry went last night? He was found in the Library less than an hour ago." Lyra shook her head as she watched her brother being treated. "He has severe magical exhaustion, it looks like someone beat him up, and he has magical burns on his arms and legs."

"Is he going to be ok?" Lyra asked in a way that was almost begging.

"Yes, he should be fine," Madam Pomfrey spoke up. "I'm most concerned about the burns. It looks like they were caused from both inside and out simultaneously. They look familiar, but I think I'll need Harry awake to confirm my suspicions."

"He was also missing a tooth and his shoes," Snape informed her as he started to apply the salve to Harry's wrists.

Whispers had snuck around behind Harry and started to touch his face, "Hoo hurt Harry?"

"That's what we shall find out, Whispers," Dumbledore addressed the demiguise. He turned to Lyra, "The two of you are welcome to stay here for the rest of the night, though you will need to stay out of the way."

Lyra and Whispers crawled into the next bed as Madam Pomfrey called, "Elf!" a young elf popped into the room. "Give them a mild sedative." Turning to Lyra, "It will put you to sleep, but just enough so that we can wake you without issue."

The elf climbed up on the bed and pulled a small eyedropper out of its apron containing a blue liquid, and motioned to Whispers, saying, "Open, ahhh."

Whispers opened his mouth and got two drops of the potion, then Lyra had her turn. After a long yawn from both of them, they cuddled together and fell asleep.

From the position of the sun when she woke up, Lyra thought it was sometime mid-morning. The large doors to the infirmary were closed, something she hadn't seen before, they had always been open for students to come in if they needed help. Looking over to Harry, Whispers was cuddled under the blanket on the bed with him, dozing away. The swelling on his face and cuts on his lip could barely be seen now.

The smell of food drew her attention to the foot of the bed where a full English breakfast was there on a tray. However, before she was able to pick up the fork, she spotted a shimmering light in the corner. Not taking any chances, she snatched her wand from her holster and yelled, "Incendio Orbis!"

A fireball shot at the disillusioned shape, but it just stopped short, turned blue, then dissipated.

The disillusionment faded away and Alastor Moody stood there, "It's just me, lassie."

Lyra stared at Moody, then squinted, "Tonks?" she asked.

Moody let his shoulders drop and sighed, his features slowly melted away until Tonks stood there with short black hair and purple eyes.

"I guess there's no fooling you," she smiled. "Moody is outside though."

"Lyra?" Harry called out in a strained voice from behind her.

Lyra turned around and ran to his bedside as he was slowly opening his eyes. Whispers was waking up too, touching Harry's face in the places that used to be cut and bruised. Tonks rushed along as well, pulling up a chair.

"What happened Harry?" Tonks asked.

Harry seemed to have a hard time remembering, then said, "A kid stunned me, and said he wanted to get the basilisk to kill me."

"Who was it?" Lyra demanded as her hair started to catch fire.

"Calm down, Lyra," Tonks told her. "I'm going to call the others so Harry can tell it only once."

Tonks stood up and cast a Patronus spell. Her spectral jackrabbit appeared in front of her, and she instructed it, "Go to Moody, tell him Harry's awake, and to bring the others."

After a few minutes, while Lyra tried to get Harry to eat something, the doors opened and a whole procession of people came in. There was Dumbledore, Snape, the Scamanders, Moody, Yaxley, and the two aurors from his questioning after Vincent's attack; Aurors Lamb and Morrow.

Yaxley sneered at Tonks as he passed by her, "Make your eyes normal, cadet. Purple isn't professional."

Tonks muttered unhappily a bit but changed them to brown.

"Good, you're awake, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore commented. "Can you tell us what happened to you?"

Harry was about to respond when he felt pressure on his occlumency shields, when he looked around, the pressure increased as he looked at Yaxley, so he raised the strength as much as he could and deployed the spikes. The eagle-faced auror yelped in pain and covered his own eyes as he fell to the floor.

Auror Lamb drew his wand and pointed it at Harry, "What did you just do?"

Before he could respond, Yaxley yelled, "He attacked me!"

"You were trying to read my mind!" Harry yelled back.

Dumbledore stepped forward as Yaxley got back to his feet, reaching for his wand, a small trickle of blood was running out the corner of his left eye.

"There will be no legilimency here," the Headmaster said in a voice that seemed to reverberate in everyone's minds. "Let Mr. Potter tell us what happened."

Tonks was pushing Lyra's wand to the floor as she had started to raise it toward Auror Yaxley. Harry looked around at the expectant faces and stared Yaxley in the eyes, daring him to try again, though his attention was drawn to Alastor standing behind the man with his wand half-raised towards the Auror's back.

Yaxley frowned, saying, "It was just a passive scan, make sure he is telling the truth."

Tina sat down in a chair next to Harry's bed and helped him sit up straighter, "Go ahead, tell us what happened."

Harry launched into his story, that he was stunned on the way to his training room, then woke up manacled to a wall with the magic absorption cuffs he wore before on the plane flight. He gestured to his wrists and ankles that were bandaged where they had been before. He told them how he waited for his assailant to show up, and when they did, they looked like a miniature Unspeakable with their face hidden and voice changed.

"Talk to the D-oh-M," Newt told Moody. "See who has access to their spells, or who has children who do."

"Anyone can do that," Auror Morrow interjected. "The hoods you can get enchanted in a dozen places in Diagon, and the voice thing is just a simple spell."

She made a complicated wand movement near her throat and began to speak in a voice that disguised her voice completely, "It's easier to just get an enchantment put on a necklace."

"It's true," Snape added. "I learned it when I was at Hogwarts but as an adult, I found my normal voice to be much more intimidating."

"So that's a dead-end," Dumbledore mused. "Please continue, Mr. Potter."

"The person identified themselves as the Heir of Slytherin." If there was a way to quantify silence, there would have been a great deal of it from those in the room. "What?" Harry asked, breaking the silence.

Moody replied seriously, "The last person to claim they were the Heir of Slytherin, was Voldemort."

Most of the people present flinched at the name, and Yaxley admonished Moody, "Do NOT say the Dark Lord's name!"

Moody just stared back defiantly, "Why do you care so much, Corban? Afraid he might manifest himself in the middle of the room? Voldemort! Voldemort! Voldemort!" The other aurors, and Snape to a lesser degree, flinched as Moody repeated the name, with Yaxley turning his wand towards Moody. Though, just as he started to move, the wand was yanked from his hand by Moody's empty one and thrown to the other side of the room.

"I guess we can't trust you to keep a level head while I say a dead man's name. If you go fetch your wand, you can spend the rest of your time at Hogwarts unconscious," Moody smirked at the man who just growled back but did not move from his place. The reactions from the others were mixed. Snape smirked briefly before looking angrily at Moody. Lamb and Morrow were just staring in shock, while Tonks was grinning without care. Dumbledore and the Scamanders just rolled their eyes like they were watching children fight.

"So what does this mean?" Auror Lamb asked, "Did You-know-who have a son?" All eyes were drawn to him in horror at the suggestion.

"I am nearly positive that it would be impossible for Voldemort to sire children," Dumbledore said firmly.

Lyra got a strange look in her eyes at Dumbledore's comment but kept whatever she was thinking to herself.

"So what if they claimed to be the Heir of Slytherin?" Auror Morrow asked. "There's at least one claim to the Heir of Gryffindor or Ravenclaw once every few years. None of them are ever proven. The only ones we know for sure of are the Smiths and their claim to Hufflepuff."

"Oooh!" Tonks blurted out. "There is an heir to Scamander now too!"

"That's irrelevant right now," Tina said with a smile and a chuckle.

Yaxley spoke up carefully, "Did this child give you any proof of their claim?"

Harry tried hard to think of a way to phrase his answer without revealing that he had the same gift as the Heir of Slytherin.

"They conjured a snake and spoke to it, it sounded like a weird hissing," Harry replied, the looks of concern returning to the faces of the adults around him. "It looked like it was going to attack me, but stopped."

The adults were just waiting with bated breath, so Harry continued, "When it didn't attack me, the Heir said they were going to 'have some fun,' and started to punch me in the face… I think she was a girl," Harry told them.

"Why do you think that?" Auror Lamb replied.

Harry seemed to collect his memories, then replied, "I don't know… If it was a girl, it wasn't Lyra, Millicent, Megan, or Tonks." Everyone was even more confused now. "When they got close, they smelled like vanilla… maybe soap or shampoo. But also they…" he looked a little guilty and embarrassed, "... they didn't hit very hard."

Tonks just collapsed on the floor as she laughed.

Newt was trying to conceal a smirk as he asked, "Do Miss Jones and Miss Bulstrode not hit like girls?"

"Sometimes they join when I spar with Neville and Greg with the boxing gloves I gave Greg for Christmas," Harry told them, looking at his sister, "Lyra too."

"We can get back to you fighting with your classmates later," Dumbledore told him. "How did you escape?"

"I don't know how many times the Heir hit me, but when they were done, I could feel a tooth come out and my mouth was full of blood, so I spat it on the floor. The Heir said they had finished having fun and were going to get the basilisk to speak to me face to face."

"He's lying," Yaxley said. "There is no basilisk in the school and you have a full mouth of teeth."

Harry wiggled his tongue up to the spot he remembered losing a tooth and found there was a tooth there. He remembered losing that tooth, and looked to Madam Pomfrey, "Did you regrow my tooth?"

She shook her head, "You were definitely missing a tooth when you came in, I don't know how you regrew it without a potion." She turned to Yaxley, "Mr. Potter was missing a tooth when he was admitted here."

"You still have no proof of a basilisk at Hogwarts," Yaxley told them.

"I heard it!" Harry exclaimed.

"Finish your story, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore instructed.

"The Heir left the room, and I knew I needed to escape. I remembered that Steward Brandt said the cuffs absorb magic, but one wouldn't stop it completely. If one wouldn't stop it completely, then neither should four and I just needed to pour enough magic into them that they would stop working."

There were a series of nods around the room as Harry continued, "So, just like when I infuse magic into the recipes when I brew potions, I tried putting as much as I could into the cuffs. I could see them glowing and the brighter they got the hotter they were, as well. I smelled the burning skin, but I continued to do it for a long time until they all broke and I fell to the floor."

"Again, I believe the boy is lying," Yaxley said. "He is a first-year student, he doesn't have the magical reserves or the training to be able to overcome a single magical restraint, let alone four."

"Shut up, Corban," Moody told him. "Next thing you'll say is he didn't kill Voldemort when he was a baby." The stern-faced man grimaced at Moody's use of the Dark Lord's name, so as soon as the man looked back towards Harry, Moody whispered in his ear, "Voldemort," causing him to jump and try to draw his wand, forgetting it was still on the other side of the room.

Madam Pomfrey ignored the two old men acting like bickering children and approached Harry, muttering as she ran her wand over Harry's wrists, then his ankles.

After a minute she faced the group, "These burns were caused by magical restraints. Before Hogwarts, I did my apprenticeship as a healer with the DMLE and treated numerous wounds from adults that tried to overcome the restraints but stopped as soon as they burned their flesh. Mr. Potter must have pushed through that pain until they couldn't absorb any more. His skin was black and blistering when he first came in."

"I think it's better if you stayed silent and kept your opinions to yourself now," Moody said to Auror Yaxley. As the man turned to show his displeasure, Moody started to make a Vooo shape with his lips, but then just stopped and smiled.

Tina patted Harry on the shoulder and prompted him to continue, "Once I was out of the cuffs, I could barely stand, so I crawled to where the Heir exited the room and pushed on the same stone they did and the door opened. On the ground outside were my pouch and wand, which I retrieved. The hallway went on forever in one direction and had stairs going down in the other. I took my staff out of the pouch to stand up and lean on, and that's when I heard the basilisk."

"How do you know it was a basilisk?" Yaxley prompted.

"Shut up!"

All heads turned to Lyra as she yelled and those closest to her jumped back when her hair burst into flame. Whispers jumped up next to her and started growling at the man like he was about to pounce. Without his wand, he even looked a bit afraid.

"Miss Black," Dumbledore said in a voice that exuded calm to those listening. "Please calm down." Looking towards the adult of her ire, "Mr. Yaxley, one more interruption, and I will silence you myself and you will receive a detention. I don't care if you no longer go to school here, you will be mucking out the Hippogriff pasture for a week."

Lyra and Whispers continued to glare at the man as the fire in her hair went out.

"Please continue, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore prompted.

"First, from down the long hallway, I heard the Heir hissing. I guess I don't know for sure if it was the heir as I haven't heard a lot of parseltongue before, but I guess it sounded the same as when they were speaking to the snake when I was in the room. But then, I heard another voice, and it sounded more like a snake hissing than the other one. But I know I couldn't hear a regular snake from that far away, this one sounded like a monster hissing. It was loud and it made me shiver when I heard it."

Harry shivered for added effect, then continued, "I took off as fast as I could move in the other direction and down the stairs. When I was almost at the bottom, I heard the Heir call out for me, probably discovering I had escaped and I lost my footing and rolled down the remaining steps and out the door. When I went out the door, I fell even further, like the door was above the ground. When I looked around, I realized I was in the library and I had just fallen out of a large book, higher up on the shelves. I performed a locking charm on the cover of the book to close the passage and stumbled back to where I think you found me."

There was silence as the adults took in everything in Harry's story. There were glances between everyone who wasn't Yaxley, Lamb, and Morrow. Harry shared a look with his sister and leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Legilimency."

After a few moments, Lamb asked, "So what's happening now?"

Dumbledore turned to Moody, "Alastor, I need you to get Amelia and visit Minister Fudge. Headmaster Dippet's portrait can tell him that the last time there were petrifications, he suspected that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. Now we have someone claiming to be the Heir of Slytherin who assaulted Harry Potter and told him that he was going to kill him with a basilisk. That is enough proof for me, and Minister Fudge will order a team from the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures to come to Hogwarts to do their jobs, to find and kill this creature. You can tell him that if he doesn't do it, I will close Hogwarts until the creature is taken care of."

Yaxley started to open his mouth, but he was met by a glare from Dumbledore as the room started to darken and the air was vibrating around him. He closed his mouth and marched across the room to retrieve his fallen wand then motioned towards Lamb and Morrow to follow him out of the infirmary. Dumbledore gave a small nod to Madam Pomfrey and she also left the infirmary. After they were gone and the doors shut themselves again, the only people left were those that Harry and Lyra trusted. Well… those they trusted and Dumbledore who just knew their secrets but not because he had told them.

"So what else can you tell us now?" Snape asked. "I know there must be things you left out."

Harry looked around the room at everyone there. The only thing he left out was the parts he knew from his knowledge of the serpent tongue. He and Lyra had been told that Dumbledore and Tonks knew about their time on the island, but not how much. They had tried to keep everything about the Parseltongue with as few people as possible, but now the Heir knew as well.

Harry tried to be as vague as possible, and asked, "Do Tonks and the Headmaster know about that thing that I can do?"

"I do," Dumbledore smiled. "Minerva told me after she met you."

Tonks just looked confused and said, "What?"

"She knows everything else already, might as well tell her. If she causes problems, I'll deal with her myself," Moody shrugged.

Harry looked at his sister and raised an eyebrow. Lyra looked at Tonks, then gave Harry a nod. Harry looked to Whispers and asked him, "What do you think little buddy? Do we trust Tonks?"

Whispers glanced at her, then repeated, "Tonks, Tonks, Tonks."

Harry picked up his wand from the bedside table and shouted, "Serpensortia!"

A foot-long brown snake appeared on his bed, and he told it,
§Go give Tonks a light hug around her leg.§

The snake slithered off towards a very shocked metamorphmagus. When it slithered up her leg, she screamed and started to try and kick it off. Moody chuckled for ten seconds before vanishing it from his trainee's leg.

"Harry Potter is a parselmouth?" She squinched up her face, then looked around at everyone in the room. "And you all are ok with it?" After receiving nods all around, she just shrugged and said, "Ok, cool trick. So what's the rest of the story the others couldn't hear?"

"The Heir knew that I'm a parselmouth," Harry told them to their shock. "They summoned a snake in front of me and told me to send it away. When I refused to do so, they told it to kill me, so I had to command it to stop. They were really angry that I was not only able to speak to it but to override their command. That's also how I know they were with the basilisk. I heard the conversation when the Heir told the snake that it was allowed to eat me."

"Shit," Tonks cursed.

"That reminds me," Harry spoke up. "There were some conjured snakes following me, last week, around the school. They must have been from the Heir too."

"How many students know how to conjure snakes?" Tina asked.

"Nearly all of the Slytherins," Snape replied. "I teach them in their second year. Others too, as Harry knows it and I saw Miss Granger cast the spell during the Dueling Club yesterday."

"I do too," Lyra told them. "Harry taught it to me, but my snakes aren't very big yet."

"Well, then that's another dead end," Tina shrugged. "Until we hear back from Fudge, I suggest a stronger curfew with a headcount before bedtime. No extracurriculars without a teacher supervising. Newt and I will monitor the students in our house, but we may need a nighttime patrol from the other prefects to pass by our common room."

"It will be arranged," Dumbledore told her.

"I will go speak to Brandt to inform him of what has transpired," Newt told them.

"Let me first inform Arcturus," Snape added. "He will probably want to join our conversation with Brandt. We need to find a way to get the Usurper here quicker. It was only extremely urgent before, now it's worse."

"You're talking about that giant snake in the pictures, right?" Tonks asked.

"Oh, yeah, Miss Tonks," Newt addressed her. "We're about 90% sure that roosters can't kill a basilisk, it needs to be that thing."

"Oooh! Godzilla fight!" Tonks said with wide eyes and a smile.

"Hopefully it won't need to come to that," Moody said. "Come now, we're off to get Director Bones and go yell at Fudge."

Moody trudged off with Tonks following, while everyone else headed off to their destinations, leaving Harry, Lyra, and Whispers alone in the infirmary.

Review response: Mister Me - Yes, everything I write is foreshadowing… except the things that are not… like watching the TV show, Lost… polar bears…