What up, dogs.

Taking a break from running the rat race so hard.

I've gone back and edited the previous chapters, as well.

Any questions let me know.


Four

The Story of the Chief of Police of Cairo

All things considered, the dungeons at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had a nearly cheerful atmosphere. They were cool, and dry, and the walls all had torches with tall orange flames, and there didn't seem to be any blood on the floor, or any dismembered body parts lying about where someone might see them. In fact, Harry had not found one iron maiden, a rack, or a spiked torture implement of any kind in any of the rooms they had searched thus far.

"But this is a school for children, you know, Harry," said Daisy, her voice soft but clear so close to his ear. She made a little hop to avoid bumping into him as they walked."I'm sure they would have cleared those things out a long time ago—or did you think we were going to happen across Snape secretly torturing students down here?"

"I think we're getting a little too big to be sharing one cloak," Harry muttered back. "And watch your feet." He tugged her robes, pulling her closer, then scowled down at her black trainers as they squeaked on the stone floor. Much too clean for a dungeon.

"We passed all of the potions classrooms two floors ago," said Daisy scowling right back at him. "No one is going to find us here, and besides she's been lurking after you the whole way down."

With a flourish she threw their father's invisibility cloak up over her shoulder and revealed their presence to the hallway. Then spinning, Daisy jabbed her finger at a dust colored cat that had been trailing a few footsteps behind them. The cat, for its part, managed to look extremely unperturbed by the sudden appearance of the Potter twins in the once empty passage.

"Don't be silly," said Harry, crouching, "she's a good girl, aren't you, Mrs. Norris?" He ran the back of his hand down her spine and cast a glance up at his sister when the cat began to purr and shift closer to him. "If she was going to get Filch we'd have been nicked two floors back. I was more worried about Snape standing guard at his potions cupboard. Perhaps if someone hadn't forgotten the Map..."

"Ugh," said Daisy, giving Mrs. Norris a disdainful look, and swerving right past her mistake of forgetting the Marauder's Map in her trunk. "It's only because she likes you. If it had been me alone, I'd be swinging from the rafters by my ankles."

Harry snorted. He looked around, checking to make sure that they were really truly alone, then bundled up the cloak and stuffed it under his arm. He gave Filch's cat one last pat and stood. "But you're right, I think. This is as deep as it goes. Only thing under here is the Chamber of Secrets."

Daisy shuddered. "I don't think even the most frightful ghost would go there."

"Mrow," said Mrs. Norris.

Harry thought the cat might have been agreeing with Daisy.

When the basilisk had gotten loose two years ago, poor Mrs. Norris had been the creature's first victim. She had been patrolling the hallway just outside the second floor girls' lavatory for children who were up to no good, and had been caught by Ginny Weasley and the snake as they exited the Chamber. Harry felt his lip start to curl. He didn't like to think about how Lord Voldemort had almost turned the smallest Weasley into a murderer.

"What's this dead fellow's name again?" said Daisy. She started down the hall, peering into rooms as she went. "Applemuss? Appleboots?"

Harry smiled, his mood immediately brightening as he watched the girl skip over all of the seams in the floor as she went searching for the ghost.

"Apollonius," he said, following after her. "Apollonius Carrow."

"And he was the ghost all in chains at Nick's deathday party?" Daisy paused in her hop-skip canter. "He was killed during the Triwizard Tournament?"

"That's what Sir Nicholas says," said Harry. "Says he's positively absorbed with figuring out how he died."

"Appleboots didn't mention any of that at the party," mused Daisy. "Though I can't really remember, he was mostly moaning and rattling his chains." She made a face. "And they were all so off putting, the ghosts. The only one worth knowing is Nick. And maybe the Grey Lady."

"Can't say I disagree," said Harry, drawing near her. He still kept his voice low. "Nick says it's nearly impossible to get Apollonius out of the dungeons. Said he can't bear to be far from the room where he was killed."

"I wish you would take me with you when you get up these sorts of things, you know, Harry," said Daisy. "Even Sherlock Holmes had Dr. Watson for company."

"Get up to which things?" asked Harry. "I was just speaking with Nick and I asked if he knew anything about the tournament. Who would have guessed that he knew a ghost who'd died during the thing?"

"Obviously, you," said Daisy. She stopped walking and faced him with her hands on her hips. "I'm not some nosy professor. We can't have secrets from each other. If you're to be investigating things, I should come along. Two heads are better than one and all that. And what were you talking about with Professor Moody? More secrets about the tournament?"

"Can't have secrets?" said Harry. He squinted at the girl. "Are you certain there's nothing that you haven't told me? Nothing that might be important?"

Harry knew this wasn't the time or place for this discussion, but he couldn't help himself. Despite her attitude earlier and his reticence at trying to make her understand their predicament with the Dark Lord Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew and Professor Trelawney's prophecy, he was shockingly upset that she was still managing to keep her secret from him.

"Er," said Daisy. She inspected her shoes. "Maybe there is something." She raised her eyes to his, brow crinkled. "But you haven't told me everything, either, you prat. So it's either we both do, or we both don't, and I wouldn't like to be the type of girl who keeps secrets from her brother, so don't you make me into her."

Harry made a sound of quiet exasperation. "How can you be so clever, but only manage it one time in every six months."

"Oh, don't be sour," said Daisy.

"Fine, we'll trade secrets later," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Let's finish this first."

"I knew it!" crowed Daisy. She latched herself to him by looping their arms togther. "Well, I didn't really, but I thought I did."

"Don't be so loud," hissed Harry, freezing in place. He cocked his head to listen for any reaction to his sister's shout. Nothing. He glanced down at Mrs. Norris, but the cat was placidly trailing after them as she had been before. Harry let out the breath he'd been holding in. If someone had heard them, or had been following, the cat surely would have noticed.

Daisy, for her part, looked sheepish. "Sorry?"

"Sorry won't get your brains unscrambled when Filch catches you," said Harry without any heat. "Why can't you come along with me on investigations? Ruddy girl can't even keep quiet when we're just breaking curfew to find a ghost."

"I can too be quiet," groused Daisy. "But I don't get the better of you that often, that's cause enough for a raised word or two, I think."

Harry sighed. If she only knew how often she'd got the better of him. But he should let her have this one. "Let's go."

Soon there was only one chamber left to check.

It stood to reason, Harry figured, that Apollonius should be in there. Every other room in this last branch of the dungeons had been empty of life, or afterlife. Some had been arranged as classrooms, or examination halls, with desks and tables for students to use. Others had been quite empty and scoured so clean that Harry was certain that they had been used for torture in bygone years.

Coming close to this last iron door, Harry saw Mrs. Norris's hackles rise. And then he heard the ghost. It was a tinkling, like the jewelry on jewelry sound of a high society lady wearing too many necklaces.

"That must be his chains," whispered Daisy, suddenly quiet and somber. "Poor bloke."

Harry reached for the handle of the door and found it icy cold. He yanked it open anyways. Mrs. Norris let out a hiss and pelted away down the passage.

The room beyond the door was much larger than he had anticipated. Where the other dungeon chambers had been relatively small in comparison to the spacious classrooms above ground, this one seemed to be at least as big. There were only two guttering torches, pinned high on opposite walls, and much of the space was coated in darkness. Harry could make out the semblance of what looked to be furniture, or tables, or something, but the figure at the center of the room distracted him from trying to identify them further.

The ghost of Apollonius Carrow, spectral form wracked with pain, hung high in the air, suspended by what looked to be a hundred ghostly lengths of chain.

"Noooooooooooooooo!" He moaned softly as he shook. "Stupid, stupid!"

His skin all goosepimples, Harry entered the room. His shoes scuffed on the floor, and looking down, he found himself walking through what was surely a full inch old grey dust. This room, at least, had not been scoured in some time. He stopped, shuffling the invisibility cloak under his arm and brushed Daisy's hand from his, reaching for his wand. "Lumos."

Beside him Daisy let out a quiet gasp and clutched at his sleeve.

The almost sun bright white light that radiated from Harry's wand had thrown the walls of the room into focus. And they were painted with centuries old bloodstains. Spurts, and sprays, and thin little trails. On the ceiling too, there were long, wide splashes that had gone grey where the stone had drank them in, or dripped it off, but Harry could tell by the discoloration nonetheless. There had been a massacre in here.

Hung up near the torches, and at even intervals between, old iron hooks had been driven into the stone walls. Some of them were still hung with rusted chains. Harry was certain that the moisture for the rust had come from more blood. He felt Daisy's hand tighten as she followed his gaze from one end of the room to the other.

"Still want to be Watson?" he murmured.

"Of course," breathed Daisy. She stepped forward, her fingers tangling in his robes. "Come on. He's seen us."

Ahead of them, the ghost had stopped his moaning and had fixed them with a silent, hollow stare. The chains that had moments ago suspended him from the ceiling of the dungeon now hung about him like a cloak, jangling lightly in some unseen breeze.

"Er, hello there," called Daisy, raising her free hand to wave. "How are you?"

Harry resisted the urge to groan. "How is he?" he muttered. "That's all you could think of?"

"I can hear you, you know," said the ghost of Apollonius Carrow. The voice was quiet and hoarse, but carried through the room. "And I am not well, but I thank you for enquiring."

When Harry had met him last, at Sir Nicholas's deathday party, he'd taken Apollonius to be a full grown man. Now that he could see his face, Harry realized that the ghost looked more like a teen, one just on the cusp of manhood. It was the red-black blood that coated him, and the stark scars in the flesh of his face that had made him seem older.

"Why have you come here?" Apollonius continued. "The children aren't supposed to come here." All of a sudden the ghost dropped out of the air to the ground, his chains clanging loudly. A cold fury seized his features.

"I almost had it! I had it! I had it! AND YOU'VE RUINED IT!" he bellowed. Apollonius Carrow charged towards them, chains flailing wildly. Behind them the door to the chamber swept shut, the iron ringing as it slammed into the stone doorframe.

"We're sorry!" Daisy shrieked. She pulled her wand out, but seemed to realize that she didn't know what to do with it, and just gestured wildly at the oncoming ghost. "We just wanted to talk! We didn't mean to interrupt you!"

"Oh!" said Apollonius. The ghost paused in his charge, a hair's breadth from Daisy's face. "Well—if you didn't mean it, I suppose all is right."

Harry didn't know quite what to say for a moment.

Daisy took a hesitant step back and fell in line with him. Raising her wand, she whispered, "Lumos!" and joined his light with hers. The ghost stood still, as though frozen, then fixed them with a curious stare.

"You are children, then?" said Apollonius, squinting at them through the dark blood that covered his face. "Wizards in training?"

"Er, yes," answered Harry. "We're in Fourth Year. We've met before, if you can remember, at Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington's deathday party two years ago. I'm Harry. This is Daisy." He pointed to himself, then his sister.

The ghost bowed, slightly. "Apollonius Carrow, Seventh Year, Slytherin House, the year of our lord, seventeen hundred and ninety-two."

"We're in Gryffindor House," said Daisy brightly. "The year of our lord, nineteen hundred and ninety-four. Pleased to meet you—er, meet you again."

"Oh, very good," said Apollonius, nodding. "Though, it must be late in the evening. Pray, Harry and Daisy of Gryffindor House, why have you searched me out so late in the evening? I must confess—yes confess!"

In a rattling flash the ghost leapt away from them and flew to the center of the room, his chains whipping this way and that as they reattached themselves to the hooks in the walls. After a moment, he was suspended again and writhing in pain. "I confess!" moaned the ghost, eyes squeezed shut. "Here is a record all of the dishonorable deeds that I have undertaken."

Both Harry and Daisy were dumbstruck as Apollonius suddenly started to give an account of all the dishonorable things he had done. It did not take long, for either the ghost had lived a very honorable life, or had a very high bar for deeds that he considered to be dishonorable. Though many of the things he said seemed, to Harry, mostly innocuous.

There was a lot of underhandedness when it came to cheating on examinations, and a lot of accusing other young men of being rapscallions, and it seemed that the ghost had courted and lied to three young women at the same time, promising each that they would be the one and only love of his life.

"And the final and most heinous," said Apollonius, his rough voice climbing to a fever pitch, "I submitted not my own name to the Goblet of Fire, but that of my nemesis, that unlicked cub, that slubberdgullion—Corvinus Gaunt!" And then he hung, eyes still shut, chains taut, suspended from the ceiling of the dungeon, in silence.

A few minutes passed.

Harry raised his wand higher and shifted from foot to foot. What was the ghost waiting for? And why had he confessed to all his wrongdoings? What was a Goblet of Fire? Harry peered up closely at Apollonius's seemingly limp form, inspecting the chains.

Each length was made of dozens of silvery links, wrapped and knotted like shoestrings to manacles at the ghost's wrists and ankles; even more were connected to a bloodsoaked collar around his throat. And then Harry felt incredibly foolish. At each juncture where the chains met the manacles or the collar, was a padlock. They were smallish, but large enough to discern from the links of each chain. Each of them glittered in the light of his wand; they seemed to be inscribed in some fashion—runes, perhaps? Harry took a step forward to get a better look.

Apollonius's eyes sprang open. "No!" he croaked. "Stupid!"

"Undoubtedly silly," said Daisy. "But I don't think those things you said were stupid, really. At least there's no reason to beat yourself up over them. You're already dead."

"Yes, I am," said Apollonius pitiably. "Dear girl, it was stupid of me to think that would work. It was too simple a solution." With a sigh, the ghost lowered himself to the ground once more, dislodging his chains from their hooks with a snap! Looking mournful, he sat back on his heels and put his head in his hands and sobbed.

"Solution for what?" asked Daisy. "Perhaps we can help you, if you tell us. Come now, don't cry."

"I am not crying," said Apollonius with a sniff. He looked up, dragging one manacled hand across his face to wipe away his phantom tears. "I am a man, and the champion of Hogwarts—and I do not need help; this is my task to complete."

"What task?" said Daisy gently, crouching beside the ghost.

"I think he's trying to get those chains off," said Harry. "I think that's how he was killed during the Triwizard Tournament. Look at the locks."

"Oh, this loathsome tournament!" moaned Apollonius. "Oh, that loathsome cup!"

"What cup?" Harry asked quickly, sensing an opportunity to keep the ghost's attention focused.

"That damnable Goblet of Fire!" cried Apollonius.

"What could a cup have done to you?" said Daisy. She was attempting to pat the ghost on the shoulder, but seemed to be having some difficulty gauging the distance at which her hand sank into his body.

"Why, that cup is the reason that I've ended up like this!" said Apollonius. "That blackguard Gaunt must have entered my name, as I had his, and out it came, and here I am."

"A cup chooses who is entered in the tournament?" asked Daisy.

"And someone else entered your name for you?" asked Harry, his insides suddenly going cold.

The pieces were falling together like a jigsaw puzzle. This poor fellow had been thrust into the Triwizard Tournament by someone else, someone who clearly had not had his best interests at heart. And he had been killed. What if Wormtail, or a Death Eater, was planning on entering Daisy's name into this Goblet? Mad Eye Moody's grin was back in his mind. But Professor Dumbledore must have called in him in to make sure that didn't happen. To keep his mad eye on the cup. To make certain that Daisy stayed clear of such a dangerous tournament.

"I would have entered myself, of course," said Apollonius. "One thousand galleons is nothing to turn one's nose up at, but the chance to see that cad, Gaunt, undertake the three tasks and perhaps be rent limb from limb was too sweet an opportunity to let by—he had much the same idea, as you can see." He stood, sweeping his chains to and fro. "I couldn't even make it past the second task." His face went tight with anguish. "How they laughed at me! The shame! My poor mother was distraught when the blood started flowing. And when I died... I couldn't bear it... to be such a disappointment."

"How does this Goblet choose who gets to be the champion?" Harry asked. "Is it at random? Is there a test? Is there a way to see whose names have been entered?"

"Harry!" hissed Daisy, her eyes shining emerald in the wandlight. "Knock it off, can't you see he's in pain?"

"Who knows," moaned Apollonius quietly. "It's an old thing, that cup. Older than Hogwarts even. There's no telling how it thinks, but it always chooses correctly." The ghost returned to its crouch and regarded the Potters sadly. "I would have liked to win, I think, but perhaps I deserved this. I should have entered my own name. I would have been more prepared."

"Well, I think it was quite mean for that Gaunt fellow to have entered you," said Daisy. "He does sound like a cad. You don't have anything to be ashamed of. And we could help you to get those chains off, if you'd like."

"Sweet girl," said Apollonius peering at Daisy. The sorrow in his eyes receded. "And kind. But as I've said, this is something I must do for my own." He sighed. "I thank you for listening to my bellyaching. Now what would you like to ask of me?"

"What indeed?" asked a soft, oily voice from behind them.

Harry spun.

He hadn't even heard the door to the chamber open, so absorbed had he been with the things that Apollonius Carrow had told them. But there, framed darkly in the doorway, stood Professor Snape in his dressing gown and nightcap.