31st October 1992

Another year another dreadful Halloween.

At least that's how Alex saw it. This year, it wasn't just the anniversary of her parent's death, it was also Nearly Headless Nick's birthday (deathday really) party!

...

Yay?

The four of them headed down to the party, stomachs grumbling when they realised that all the food was pungent and inedible.

In fact, it was downright rotten, like... apples with worms rotten.

Alexandra hurried away from the food table before she threw up, and headed towards the bloody baron.

"Hello Mr. Baron," she started.

He turned his head curiously towards her, his heavy chains swinging. He nodded his head.

"So, you're in Gryffindor then, little witch?" he stated in a raspy voice tilting his head to look at her.

"Indeed I am sir."

"Shame, such a lovely girl." he swung his heavy chains around.

The bloody baron's story was really strange, he was pursuing a girl and when she rejected him, he killed her and then killed himself. Bit dramatic. Apparently, he was caught before he died and put in chains however, he died of blood loss when the chains wrapped around him, leaving huge splatters of blood on his... body? Corporeal self?

Honestly, who even knows.

The baron definitely took some getting used to, Alex remembered when she was three, she'd always run in the other direction when she saw the baron. Until she got lost in the dungeons after trying to sneak out to the lake.

"Well, I don't think anyone expected it Baron." Alexandra said, shaking out of her reverie.

"I suppose not. You can take a horse to water but cannot make it drink, that is the saying is it not?"

Alexandra nodded, aware of all the stifling eyes on her. The room suddenly felt a lot smaller.

"How did your guardians react?" he asked. "You did tell them? No? You must be more foolish than I thought to think you shall be able to keep this a secret. You're hardly the first person raised in a den of Slytherins to be sorted in Gryffindor."

"I'll tell them when I'm ready,"

"Don't fool yourself child. Sooner or later the future always circles back to the past."

"What?"

But the baron had already drifted away.

Alex felt a hand tap her shoulder, black hair, green eyes and glasses motioning for them to leave. Alexandra took the hint and the four of them exited the party the same way they had entered.

They had just agreed on heading towards the great hall, when Alex heard that voice again. That strange hissing noise.

Was that a snake?

"Do you hear that?" said Harry, eyes widening and hunger forgotten.

"Rip, tear, kill? Yeah," said Alex freezing.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other confused.

"Harry- what-"

"Shut up Ron-" he shouted, pressing his ear to the wall.

It was the same voice she had heard on the way back from meeting McGonagall. The voice seemed to be moving, was this one of Peeves practical jokes?

"PEEVES, STOP IT RIGHT NOW!" yelled Alex, eyes scanning for sight of the poltergeist.

"GRANGER!" bellowed a familiar voice.

Everyone paused, looking at the blond Slytherin in front of them. He wasn't a puddle anymore. Ron looked like he was going to throw a punch when Hermione stopped his arm.

"What do you want Malfoy?" sneered Alex crossing her hands.

"Nothing from you." he said slowly. "Beaver-face, I shouldn't have called you a mudblood."

It looked like he was in pain saying the words. He took a deep breath. Everyone raised their eyebrows.

"It was out of line." he bit the inside of his cheek, "Even if you are a swotty know-it-all."

Of course he had to throw a barb in there. Wait, was that an apology?

"Whatever Malfoy." said Hermione, rolling her eyes.

He nodded and scurried off.

"Did-Did Malfoy just apologise?" stuttered Ron, jaw slack.

"Honestly Alex, you didn't have to force him to apologise," said Hermione swatting her shoulder.

Alexandra's eyes laid where the boy once stood, she was gobsmacked. Not once in her seven years of knowing him did he once say sorry voluntarily, not to her, not to anyone.

What did Snape tell him?

"Yeah, well he'd have better apologised, I wasn't going to deal with him and his tantrums over Christmas if he didn't."

"You're going over to theirs for Christmas?" Ron made a face. "Harry, you're coming to the burrow, yeah?"

"I mean if it isn't too much," said Harry as they continued walking down the corridor.

Oh no, was that Mrs. Norris?

"LOOK!" pointed Hermione.

On the wall written with red paint was;

The chamber of secrets has been opened,

Enemies of the heir beware.

Wait, red paint?

Blood.

"Should we try and help err-" Harry said, looking towards the stiff cat.

"Let's just get out of here before anyone see-" answered Alexandra starting to run the same way they had come.

"MRS NORRIS!" screeched a nasal voice.

Filch.

The feast had just ended, as seen by the crowd of people and the rumble of noise just a little ahead.

Filch ran towards them, gesturing wildly before he finally settled on Harry.

"YOU- YOU KILLED MY CAT, YOU KILLED HER!" he poked the hanging creature. "I'LL KILL YOU, I SWEAR I WI-"

"Argus!" shouted Professor McGonagall, running towards the scene, followed by the Headmaster and the rest of the faculty.

"Come with me, Argus," Dumbledore said to Filch. "You, too, Mr. Potter, Miss Evans, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger."

They headed into the defense against the dark arts classroom. Professor Dumbledore was now in possession of the dead cat. Professor McGonagall looked the most pertrubed, probably because her animagus was a cat.

"She's not dead Argus," pronounced Dumbledore, "Merely petrified, although I do not know why."

"THEY DID IT-" wailed the caretaker "-ASK THEM"

"No second year could have done this," said the Headmaster looking at Alexandra.

"He did it, he did it!" Filch spat, his pouchy face purpling. "You saw what he wrote on thewall! He found — in my office — he knows I'm a — I'm a —"

"He knows I'm a Squib!" he finished.

"I never touched Mrs. Norris!" Harry said loudly, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at him, including all the Lockharts on the walls. "And I don't even know what a Squib is."

"A squib's someone that is of wizarding descent but can't do magic Harry, usually a result of inbreeding." Alexandra whispered.

"Rubbish!" snarled Filch. "He saw my Kwikspell letter!"

Kwikspell? The sham of a spell course? How desperate can you be?

Then Professor Snape had decided to intervene. Not in a positive way.

"While this may just be a matter of chance, the circumstances are certainly suspicious. What were Mr. Potter and the rest doing out in the corridor?"

The four of them started in a noisy racket about the deathday party.

"But why not join the feast afterward?" said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. "Why go up to that corridor?"

Harry mumbled something about not being hungry, which was a horrible lie considering Ron stomach decided it was an opportune time to declare its presence.

Professor Snape let out a mean smile. Since when was he this cruel? After the flying car Harry and Ron were one step from being expelled, they could get expelled if the teachers didn't believe them.

"Professors, you have to believe us, it was bad timing and nothing else," she pleaded. Harry looked like he was going to cry when Snape suggested taking him off the quidditch team.

"Really, Severus," said Professor McGonagall sharply, "I see no reason to stop the boyplaying Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is noevidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong."

"Innocent until proven guilty." declared Dumbledore, his blue eyes probing.

Was he using legilimency?

"You may leave," the Headmaster dismissed.

The children didn't need to be told twice.

"Should I have told him about the voice?" asked Harry, jogging as fast as he could.

"No," said Ron, without hesitation. "Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a goodsign, even in the wizarding world."

"You do believe me?" said Harry, "I'm not making this up, ask Alex-"

"Of course you're not lying Harry." reassured Hermione, "It's just that- noone else really heard apart from you two, so it's..."

"Strange." finished Ron as they stood outside the portrait.

"What's the chamber? It was written on the wall,"

"Oh!" Alex smacked her forehead, "It's a legend, really, a myth or a practical joke gone wrong. Atleast I hope so."

They entered the nearly empty common room, it being nearly midnight.

"Ginny?" whispered Ron, "What're you doing awake, are you still unwell?"

Poor thing, she must be worried about Mrs. Norris, thought Alex. She did always have a thing for animals.

"Gin, love, it's just Mrs. Norris, no one likes her anyways, you should get some sleep," comforted Alex, rubbing her shoulder.

Ginny nodded, as if in a haze and headed up the stairs to the girl's dorms.

Strange indeed.

"Err- You were saying something about the chamber?" interjected Harry as soon as Ginny was out of earshot.

"Oh, yes. The chamber of secrets is like this huge... um- chamber which can only be opened by the Heir of Slytherin. You see, it was founded by Salazar Slytherin, yes, that Salazar Slytherin."

She thought carefully,

"Salazar didn't want muggles or muggleborns at Hogwarts and I don't really think he was wrong."

Hermione flinched.

"No no no, not like that Hermione. You see Hogwarts was founded in the witch-hunting days, you can't really blame him from wanting to stop muggleborns from entering the school."

"But they were only children!"

"Children learn from the environment they grew up in." Alex stated wistfully.

The trio nodded, Hermione agreeing hesitantly.

"Anyways, the other founders disagreed, thinking him biased. After a while, Gryffindor and Slytherin had a huge row, which caused Slytherin to leave."

"The rivalry's that old?" asked Harry incredulously.

Alex shook her head before continuing, "As story has it, Slytherin built a chamber which no one else knew about. Hence the name chamber of secrets. And it will only be opened when the true heir of Slytherin comes to Hogwarts."

"How do you know all this?" demanded Ron.

Alex looked at him as if he'd grown a horn.

"Oh right, Slytherins."

"That sounds like a load of hogwash." scoffed Hermione. "Why would Slytherin open a random secret room."

"Isn't it obvious?" said Ron. "There's something dangerous there."

"Let's hope it's not a three-headed dog."

Alex sighed.

"And here I was hoping for a quiet year."

Tuesday 4th November 1992

Their next History of magic class, Professor Binns all but confirmed Alexandra's statements.

"The whole thing is arrant nonsense, of course," he said. "Naturally, the school has been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist. A tale told to frighten the gullible."

The class looked uneasy, Hermione's hand shot in the air.

"Sir — what exactly do you mean by the 'horror within' the Chamber?"

"That is believed to be some sort of monster, which the Heir of Slytherin alone can control," said Professor Binns in his airy posthumous voice.

Panicked whispers broke out.

"ENOUGH!" " he said sharply. "It is a myth! It does not exist! There is not a shred of evidence that Slytherin ever built so much as a secret broom cupboard! I regret telling you such a foolish story! We will return, if you please, to history, to solid, believable, verifiable fact!"

The bell chimed and the class rushed out.

"You know Harry," started his sister, "After Halloween people have been speculating you're the heir of Slytherin. You'd tell me if that was the case righ-"

"Shut up Alex," snapped Ron, suddenly looking very tense as they started climbing the stairs. "People here'll believe anything."

"Perhaps the chamber does exist. Professor Dumbledore wasn't able to immediately cure Mrs Norris, which makes me think whatever attacked her might not be well- human."

As she spoke, they turned a corner and found themselves at the end of the very corridor where the attack had happened. They stopped and looked. The scene was just as it had been that night, except that there was no stiff cat hanging from the torch bracket, and an empty chair stood against the wall bearing the message "The Chamber of Secrets has been Opened."

They looked at each other. The corridor was deserted.

"Can't hurt to have a poke around," said Harry, dropping his bag and getting to hishands and knees so that he could crawl along, searching for clues.

"Harry!" scolded Alex, "What if Filch comes skulking-"

"Scorch marks!" he said. "Here — and here —"

"Come and look at this!" said Hermione. "This is funny... have you ever seen spiders behave like this?"

"No," said Harry, "have you, Ron? Ron?"

Alexandra had never seen spiders up close, so she ran to see the web.

Meanwhile, Ron took a couple steps back.

"What's wrong?" said Harry.

"I — don't — like — spiders," said Ron tensely.

"Come on Ron, you've used them plenty of times in potions." said Hermione.

"Yes! DEAD!"

Alexandra stifled a giggle.

"It's not funny," said Ron, fiercely. "If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my— my teddy bear into a great big filthy spider because I broke his toy broomstick... You wouldn't like them either if you'd been holding your bear and suddenly it had too many legs and..."

He shuddered and Alexandra burst out laughing, Harry sent her a glare.

"There was water here," interrupted Harry, "Where'd it come from?"

Ron set out, then quickly hurried back ears burning. "It's a girls bathroom, can't go in there."

"It must be Myrtle's! Oh come on now, it's abandoned, don't look so queasy." said Alex opening the door.

Once inside, the children were at a loss of words. The bathroom was indeed abandoned. The awkward silence was broken when a ghostly figure floated towards them, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Come to laugh at me?" she wailed. "Oh look, it's the little witch,"

"Hi Elizabeth," greeted Alex smiling.

"This is a girls' bathroom," she said, eyeing Ron and Harry suspiciously. "They're not girls."

"I'm afraid you must excuse the peculiarity of the situation 'Lizzie." Alex quickly interrupted before Ron went full on tomato. "We were wondering if you'd seen anything on Halloween? You know, when Mrs Norris was petrified?"

Harry and Ron looked confused. It was easy to forget she'd been brought up watching Professors and with governesses drilling charm into her until she couldn't finish a sentence without a sweet smile.

"I wasn't paying attention," said Myrtle dramatically. "Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm — that I'm —"

"Already dead," said Ron helpfully.

She let out another sob and dived down the sink.

"RON!" shouted Percy Weasley from the head of the stairs. "ALEXANDRA!"

"That's a girls' bathroom!" he gasped. "What were you —?"

"Just having a look around," Ron shrugged. "Clues, you know —"

"Get — away — from — there —" Perry said, striding toward them and starting to bustle them along, flapping his arms. "Don't you care what this looks like? Coming back here while everyone's at dinner —"

"We didn't do anything to that cat!" said Alex hotly.

"Yes-now-that's what I told Ginny," said Percy fiercely, "but she still seems to think you're going to be expelled, I've never seen her so upset, crying her eyes out, you might think of her, all the first years are thoroughly overexcited by this business —"

"You don't care about Ginny," said Ron, "You're just worried I'm going to mess up your chances of being Head Boy —"

"Ron-stop," tried Alexandra,

"5 points from Gryffindor. No more of this or I'll write to mum."

"Try it and I'll write to your mum about you getting detention for getting caught in a broom closet with Gabriel Truman. AND that you got the file records stolen and deleted." stated Alexandra, flinging Percy's arm off her shoulder.

"You-you wouldn't" he stuttered.

"Try and stop me," she glared.

"Fine. But no more sneaking around in female toilets. Clear?"

The second years nodded and he stalked off, the back of his neck the same colour as his hair.

"Who'd want to do this?" said Hermione.

"Let's see, now who'd want to scare all the Muggleborns of the school? Hmm, sounds difficult." said Ron sarcastically.

He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced. "If you're talking about Malfoy —"

"Of course, who else'd-"

"Ron! He apologised!"

"He was at the scene!" he hissed.

"It's not Draco." said Alex with an air of finality. "I would've know if he was, the Malfoys have little to no connection to Salazar Slytherin."

"Sorry Alex," said Ron, "-but you and Malfoy haven't exactly been close these past few-"

"Well, yes, but he'd hardly have kept this quiet over the summer." snapped Alex. "It's not him Ron."

Ron huffed but shut up. "Who else then?"

"I have a feeling we'll know by the end of the year."