Chapter Nine: Investigating Petrification
Fallen and Yoko begin an investigation into the Chamber of Secrets as Draco shares some family knowledge with clueless classmates.
"We need to go," Draco said urgently. "We can't be found here."
"But Mrs. Norris-"
"You and I can't be found here, Blaise." Draco snapped; already pale face even worse as all blood seemed to have fled it. "Of all Gryffindors, you and I can't be found here."
"Son of a bitch," Fallen growled from behind them, red eyes burning as he read over the message on the wall.
"Too late, Draco," Yoko said, head turned back the way they'd come. "The feast is over."
Draco's hands were shaking.
"Draco, are you alright?" Harry asked.
"This looks so, so bad," the blond muttered under his breath, before straightening and his mask came back up, blocking almost all his terror from his face.
Behind them, the sound of footsteps.
Of students leaving the feast.
Blaise quivered beside Harry and, still seriously confused as to what was happening, Harry pressed his shoulder into the dark-skinned Gryffindor at his side.
"Fallen? What's wrong with them?"
'With Blaise? He's reacting to Draco,' Fallen told him, voice grim. 'With Draco, he's heard exactly what the Chamber is supposed to do. And he's absolutely right. This looks very bad for him and Blaise. Now, more than before, do not say anything about that voice you heard, Harry. Do you understand?'
Harry swallowed nervously, but he nodded.
Fallen returned the gesture.
'Tell the truth when they ask you why you weren't at the feast tonight. Tell them you were stressed after the party and Draco and Blaise were taking you back to the Tower, and you had candy from a care package from Mrs. Weasley to tie you over for the night.' Yoko added.
The care package part wouldn't be a total lie, Mrs. Weasley had been sending Harry 'care packages', which Harry was, in turn, sharing with the others because it was 'supposed to be' for the whole lot of them.
'They'll fill in the blanks on their own and assume that it was because of what happened over the summer. Don't contradict them. Don't tell them any more than necessary to answer their questions.'
"Yoko, what's happening?"
The fox shook his head, looking up at Fallen, whose gaze hadn't strayed from the message on the wall. 'I don't know yet,' he told the child. 'But I think he and Draco do.'
XX
No sooner had Harry pulled Blaise's cloak back on, mostly to hide his terrified shaking as something else, did what felt like half the school suddenly step into the corridor.
"'Enemies of the Heir, beware!'" came the unmistakable voice of the only person in the whole damn school who would know what this message meant and have the sheer stupidity to out themselves as knowing it.
Katelyn snickered, pushing herself to the forefront of the group of students. "You'll be next, mudbloods."
Draco grit his teeth. "Planning to start a spree, cousin?" he asked sharply.
"Do you?" Katelyn asked with poisoned sweetness in return. "You're the one in the hallway, Draco."
"In the hallway with a neutral family heir and the Lord of one of the most prominent Light families," Fallen drawled, casual as you please. "Besides, there's no blood link to your family, so I assume it would be a little difficult to link this to either of you. Remember where you are."
Katelyn's smile abruptly vanished.
"What's going on here?"
Yoko grimaced, hunching down beside his charge.
He may not particularly like Mrs. Norris but Filch doted on her.
This wasn't going to go well.
Sure enough, as soon as Filch had pushed his way through the crowd, probably drawn to it by Katelyn's shout in the first place, his eyes fell on the cat.
"My cat!" he cried, hands clutching his face in horror. "What's happened to Mrs. Norris?" his eyes tracked through the assembled students until his eyes fell on Harry, Draco, Blaise, and the Valerians. "You," he hissed. "You've murdered my cat! You've killed her!"
Fallen rumbled warningly, bracing himself as Filch stalked toward them with purpose, fangs bared.
Filch saw none of it, blinded by rage and grief at the thought of his cat dead at the hands of either the Valerians or their charges.
"Argus!" Dumbledore shouted, his power unfurling, brief though it was, like a particularly powerful cloud of burning ash, there and gone before anyone really had a chance to question where it had come from unless you'd felt it before.
The Headmaster swept past the Valerians and their charges, putting himself between Filch and Fallen as he moved to detach Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket.
"All of you, come with me," Dumbledore said, voice grim.
Harry exchanged worried looks with Ron and Hermione in the crowd, but other members of the staff were already ushering the students on toward their dorms, leaving the three heirs with no chance to talk to their other friends as they were urged down the corridor after Dumbledore and Filch by McGonagall and Severus.
Lockhart stepped out of the crowd, which had parted easily for Dumbledore and the others.
"My office is nearest, Headmaster-just upstairs," he said. "Please, feel free-"
"Thank you, Gilderoy," Dumbledore said, though there was little gratefulness in his tone or expression.
XX
"Sit," Severus muttered, flicking his wrist to summon an additional chair, leaving all three boys to sit in near darkness as Dumbledore, nose practically in her fur, and the two House Heads examined Mrs. Norris.
Oblivious to the tenseness of the moment, or to the feelings of the sobbing Filch in the corner, Lockhart hovered around the trio of professors, making 'suggestions'.
After a particularly foolish one ("Probably the Transmogrifian Torture, I've seen it done many times, so unlucky I wasn't there, I know the very counter-curse that would have saved her."), Fallen finally gave him a fanged, far-from-friendly grin.
"Do you know the counter-curse to me tearing your throat out in front of all these witnesses, Lockhart?"
Lockhart's voice stuttered to a stop and Severus raised his head just so, looking at the two of them over Dumbledore's bent head.
"Erm…."
"There's a good boy," Fallen rumbled, putting a paw down sharply on the ground as though he'd planned to get up and was now changing his mind. "I'd like to know sometime this century what the hell happened to the cat, so if you could keep shutting up and let someone with an ounce of knowledge think?"
Despite the tension, Draco could feel his lips curling and it was only made worse by Severus' own attempts to keep his amusement hidden.
There was now total silence in the room, with the obvious exception of the grieving Filch, who couldn't even look at the desk with his cat on it.
Dumbledore occasionally muttered this phrase or that under his breath, tapping Mrs. Norris with his wand, but there was no response.
She remained on the desk, totally still, as though she'd been recently stuffed and left for Filch as a rather unpleasant gift.
"She's not dead, Argus," Dumbledore finally said, straightening and pushing his glasses back up on his nose.
"Not dead?" the caretaker repeated. "But why's she all-all stiff and frozen?"
"She's been petrified," Dumbledore said, ignoring Lockhart as he muttered how he'd known it all along, and the subsequent snapping of fangs as Fallen retaliated for the verbal outburst. "But how, I cannot say…."
"Ask them!" Filch shrieked, pointing at Fallen, though obviously encompassing Yoko, who was perched on Blaise's lap.
Fallen curled a lip. "Really? I would resort to what is obviously dark magic and petrify her when I could far more easily simply pin her beneath my paw and tear out her entrails? You'll have to do better than that, Filch."
Yoko picked his head up off his paws. "That's rather uncalled for, Fallen," he said sharply. "Argus is already hurting. There's no need to draw such a picture for him."
Fallen rolled his eyes. 'Weakling,' he muttered darkly to the fox.
'Heartless bastard,' Yoko sneered in return without missing a beat. 'He's an asshole, but he loves that cat. Cut him some slack.'
"So, if it wasn't us, and it obviously wasn't the Gryffindors, what else is on the list of things capable of this?" Fallen asked. "I can't say I got the greatest look at her in the corridor, but it certainly seemed like she was scared stiff."
"There's a spell I've seen used before-"
"He was speaking to the adults in the room, Lockhart. You've made it pretty clear thus far that you don't know what happened to the cat, seeing as you've spent the last half hour telling Filch in rather troubling detail, the many ways his beloved pet could have been killed." Yoko said, voice terribly cold. "Stay in your corner."
"And if it was a spell, I rather feel that it must be rare indeed if you have come across it yet the Valerians, centuries-old, haven't even heard whisper of it." Severus drawled quietly, having slipped back into the shadows, and was now watching them all with glittering, unpleasant eyes.
"Argus," Dumbledore said, tone sharp to get the caretaker's attention, but likely also to curb the not-so-subtle bullying being done by the Valerians and his potions master. "Pomona has received a shipment of mandrakes for several of her classes. As soon as they've matured, we'll be able to brew a potion to restore Mrs. Norris."
"I'd be happy to do it. Can't tell you how many times-"
"Excuse me," Severus interrupted, voice promising a million different painful outcomes if Lockhart didn't mind his place. "I do believe I am the potions master at this school."
There were various choked off noises from the Gryffindors.
Unfortunately, their quiet outbursts did draw the attention of the rest of the staff in the room.
"I must ask boys, what were you three doing in that corridor?" Dumbledore asked, tone grave.
Yoko curled a lip. "I thought we'd just established that this was a little too complex for a student, let alone a Second Year."
"Indeed," Severus drawled. "Perhaps they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?"
McGonagall glanced at him suspiciously.
"Although," he added, "I don't recall seeing any of them at the feast, either."
Harry swallowed and, remembering Yoko's instructions, told them about Nick and his invite to his Deathday party.
"And afterward?" Severus asked, eyes narrowed on him. "Why not join the feast afterward? I don't recall the dead often providing food fit for the living."
Harry swallowed. "They don't," he said, hesitating and looking at Draco, who was scowling at his godfather.
"Not that it's any of your businesses, but Harry wasn't doing well. We left the party in the dungeons early and were bringing him to the Tower." Draco snarled; hackles raised.
As Yoko had predicted, McGonagall averted her eyes and Dumbledore's lost their twinkle.
Severus', however, were still steadily boring into Draco. "And did you see or hear anything on your…trip?"
"No," Blaise whispered. "She was already," his voice caught, "already like that."
"We probably wouldn't have even noticed if it wasn't for the water all over the floor," Draco added. "We weren't really paying attention to anything else…."
"And you?" Severus asked, looking at Yoko. "Did the two of you notice anything?"
Fallen's lip curled. "Are you interrogating me, Severus?"
Severus waved a hand. "You must admit, this is a rather…unusual circumstance."
McGonagall and Dumbledore exchanged a glance.
Yoko's lip curled. "Seems like we should be asking you questions, Headmaster. Let me begin with this one: will the Chamber of Secrets be a threat to my charge?"
Dumbledore blinked, startled. "I don't believe there is any such Chamber to be found at Hogwarts, Lord Yoko."
Fallen huffed but made no comment.
"You're free to go," Dumbledore told the boys, turning back to look at Mrs. Norris.
Yoko leapt down from Blaise's lap and watched the Headmaster and McGonagall until Fallen called his name from down the corridor.
What do they all know that we don't? The fox wondered as the door closed on Filch's raging about punishment.
XX
Fallen, predictably, didn't take them to the Tower, he took them down to Severus' office.
"Do you think he knows that I heard it again?" Harry asked nervously.
"I think it's on his mind," Fallen told him.
"What voice?" Draco demanded to know, crossing his arms and tapping one shoe on the ground. "And why didn't you tell us about it?"
Harry glanced at Fallen, who tilted his head in allowance.
Immediately, Harry launched into the story of his detention with Lockhart, the voice he'd heard that night, and without mentioning the panic attack he'd had, the mad dash through the school that had ended with him literally running into Severus.
"But that doesn't explain why you didn't mention it to us," Draco said, frowning.
He remembered that blue-white doe coming with a message from Severus and the Valerians leaving, and later, Harry coming back to the Tower more shaken than normal, but when Harry and the Valerians hadn't shared what the problem was, he'd put it down to something having happened with Lockhart.
"Because Mr. Potter does actually listens when he's told to do things, apparently," Severus said, closing the door behind him.
Much like when he'd had Harry and Ron in his office that first day of school, he had a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of juice on a tray.
Draco's stomach rumbled and his ears turned red.
Severus shook his head. "I imagine you had planned to starve? Given that you had no intention of joining the feast."
"Fallen said he'd get us something," Draco told him, reaching for one of the sandwiches.
"So, what actually happened to bring you from the dungeons to that corridor?" Severus asked, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers, watching the boys as they ate.
Harry didn't hesitate to begin the story from where he'd heard the voice on the stairs, right up to the moment where they'd been trying to get back to the Tower without the Valerians and found Mrs. Norris hanging from the bracket.
"You're certain it was the same voice?" Severus asked him.
Harry nodded, looking down at his sandwich, only half-eaten. "I don't think I could mistake it for someone else…."
"Is this the first time you've heard it since the other night?"
Harry nodded. "Yes, sir."
Severus stared at him, tapping a finger thoughtfully.
"We've already told Harry, but I expect the two of you to keep this as secret as he has," Severus told Draco and Blaise. "Not even to your other friends. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir," the boys chorused.
Severus nodded.
"Keep the three of us informed, Harry, if you hear that voice again."
Harry nodded.
Severus leaned forward, drilling his gaze into each of the three boys. "Under no circumstances, are you to investigate this on your own," he told them. "Your last investigation ended with each of you nearly dying for a Stone none of you should have even known about."
Paling, all three of them quickly assure him they had no intention of doing so.
XX
Even without the knowledge of the mystery voice Harry was hearing, Hermione still managed to find something to research in her free time.
It had taken nearly a week of rarely seeing their resident know-it-all before they found out that she was investigating the Chamber of Secrets.
"You're an idiot," Draco told her bluntly.
"We don't know anything about it," Hermione told him hotly. "How are we supposed to know if it's dangerous or not? Ooh," she scowled at the shelf in front of her. "They still have all the copies of Hogwarts, A History out!"
Draco rolled his eyes. "Granger, of course, the Chamber of Secrets is dangerous."
"Why else would someone write a message about it in chicken blood?" Blaise asked her, not looking up from his book.
And that had been a trial, getting that information out of Yoko and Fallen, when the substance had proven impossible, by spell or physical labor, to remove from the wall.
Draco frowned down at his head. "Seriously? You don't know about it either?"
"The Zabini family is neutral," Yoko reminded him. "The house one's family is sorted into doesn't always tell you what their blood purity stance is, as you should know best of all, considering your mother's heritage."
Draco weaved his head. "Mother doesn't mention him," he told the fox. "Considers him a blood-traitor. Also," he said, looking down at Blaise, "not the point. You've never even heard of the Chamber of Secrets? Wasn't your mom a Slytherin?"
Blaise looked up at him, shaking his head. "My mom was a Slytherin, but she was one of the few. My family was usually sorted into either Ravenclaw or Slytherin."
"Ah," Draco said, leaning back in his chair.
"Are you saying you know what the Chamber of Secrets is?" Hermione asked skeptically.
Draco eyed her curiously. "Didn't you get that from what Katelyn said that night?"
"Come to think of it, you, Katelyn, and Fallen all said weird stuff that night," Ron said, cheerfully abandoning his quill and closing his Transfiguration textbook. "Come on, mate, spill. What do you know?"
"The Chamber of Secrets was built by Salazar Slytherin," Draco told them, "before he was supposedly chased out by the other Founders."
"The story is," Fallen said, not bothering to raise his head from where he was watching the rest of the studying students from beneath the table. "That Slytherin used the Chamber to hide a 'monster' or 'beast' and planned to use both to purge the school of what he considered 'undesirables'. Before he could do so, the others forced him to leave the school and it's remained hidden and closed for centuries."
Hermione's quill was moving quickly over her parchment but paused when Fallen didn't continue. "That's it?"
"What else is there?" Draco asked her, shrugging one shoulder and tapping his quill on the table. "Salazar was never allowed to return to Hogwarts, so it was never actually opened before. No one knows what the monster of the Chamber is, it's probably dead by this point anyway. It's been almost nine hundred years since the Founders' time after all."
"But no one's even tried to search for it? I mean, the history alone-"
"I don't know if you've met this castle, Hermione, but it guards its secrets almost jealously," Yoko pointed out. "Even if someone was searching for the Chamber, odds are high that without more information than 'it's Slytherin's secret chamber' there are thousands of potential places for it to be."
"And it's supposedly only supposed to be able to be opened by the Heir of Slytherin, and there's no family left with a direct line to his blood," Draco added. "Not counting the fact that information on the Chamber would have to have been left to said Heir and that Heir alone. Like with a lot of the rest of the Founders, it's lost."
Hermione frowned, staring down at the notes she'd taken of their brief story.
Exhaling sharply through her nose, she pushed herself to her feet and disappeared back into the stacks.
The boys sighed.
XX
"Oi, Ron!"
Ron groaned but stopped walking so George could catch up.
"No," Ron said immediately.
George looked at him suspiciously, though he was grinning. "You don't even know what I'm gonna ask."
"I'm not trying another one of your experiments," Ron said, eyeing his brother in return.
"Come on, it was only for a couple of seconds and you changed right back!" George said, laughing.
"I've learned better," Ron told him. "Because you 'n Fred've said that to me six times."
George didn't even look abashed, still grinning widely. "Spoilsport," he told him.
He suddenly lost his grin, looking serious. "'ve you seen Ginny recently?" he asked.
Ron blinked, startled by the question. "Should I've?" he asked.
George stared at him for a long minute before shaking his head and grinning. "Nah, guess not. Don't worry about it Ronnikins," he said, pulling on his cheek as he turned and went back the way he'd come, leaving Ron to scowl after him.
XX
The Chamber of Secrets was brought up again the following day in History of Magic.
Binns, arguably the most boring professor at the school, given that he was dead, was startled by the interruption and would likely have ignored the question entirely if Hermione hadn't convinced him to share the story anyway.
Nothing he mentioned, however, was much different than what Fallen and Draco had said in the library, much to her frustration.
"Come on, Hermione," Blaise said, shaking his head. "It wouldn't be a secret chamber if just anyone could find it, right?"
"But we don't even know what is, or was, in it!" Hermione insisted, turning on Draco. "Don't your stories tell you anything? Like who these 'undesirables' were or how it was going to purge the school of them?"
Draco stared at her. "Fallen was being polite, Hermione," he told her. "It was Salazar Slytherin. His version of undesirable students has been obvious. Muggle-borns. You."
Hermione blanched, then flushed red at having missed the obvious.
"And no, the only thing we know is that the Heir was going to be the only one capable of controlling it. Which again, is a moot point because the line is dead."
Fallen stopped.
'Shit,' Brandon muttered.
'Yoko-'
'I plan on going to investigate tonight. I don't know what I'll find, over a week later, but….'
'Be careful,' Fallen insisted. 'Dark and/or Arcana could show up at any time.'
'I'd gathered,' Yoko said grimly.
'And keep Severus and I informed. We'll do what we can to help.'
Yoko snorted, snapping half-heartedly at him. 'Idiot. You're my encyclopedia. Who else would I come and find?'
XX
That night, Yoko doses Filch with a sleeping agent in his tea, because the idiot had taken to not sleeping and patrolling the corridor Mrs. Norris had been attacked, sure that the culprit was going to come back.
Personally, only an idiot was going to return so long as Filch was literally camped out in front of, what Yoko could now recognize, Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
The corridor reeked, after a week of Filch permeating it, of anger, pain, and grief, so there was next to no chance of Yoko getting a hit of anything that shouldn't be in the corridor, even if it hadn't been a full week since the attack.
After twenty minutes, Yoko was forced to give up the chance of finding any evidence, as even the puddle of water had been mopped up.
Sitting in the corridor, the Scout gave it another look over, shaking his head when all he saw were a couple of spiders on the nearest windowsill.
Sighing, the fox got to his paws and padded toward the only other place he might get answers, though he didn't much like those odds either.
XX
While Yoko was investigating their crime scene, Fallen was waging a battle that he wished he could have handed off to the more persuasive fox.
"No," he said before the idea had even fully left Hermione's mouth.
"But-"
"First of all, you'd need a professor's signature to even get the book with that potion in it, because if I remember correctly, Most Potente Potions is a restricted book, used for specific classes geared toward specific careers. Second, the Polyjuice Potion is a restricted substance, considered borderline dark magic because it uses biological matter from humans to brew it. And finally, I dare you to walk into Severus' office and tell him the ingredients you need are in his stash. Or better yet, try and steal them."
Hermione shifted, flushing.
"No offense, Hermione, but we probably wouldn't even need the potion," Harry said, glancing apologetically at Draco. "Draco could just walk in; say he's looking for Katelyn or something."
"But how else are we supposed to know-"
"I think you're overestimating how much Slytherin talks, Granger," Fallen interrupted. "They don't gossip the way you seem to think they do."
"We'll weigh every piece of information we share against what it'll get us," Draco told her. "Unless you can truly trust the source, every word given to you is researched and given a grain of salt. I'd trust information given to me by Theo over anything my cousin told me, and no upper-year Slytherin would ever share something this juicy with a lower year. For one, it might get someone expelled."
"And I can assure you that there are no direct descendants of Salazar at Hogwarts," Fallen told them.
"But you're not in Slytherin this year!" Hermione hissed. "How can you possibly be sure of that?!"
"Because Dark is not in this school right now." Fallen told her bluntly.
Hermione fell silent and the Gryffindors gapped at him.
"Though he didn't serve Salazar Slytherin, Dark bound himself to the Gaunt family, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight that could accurately trace their lineage back to him. That family line ends with Voldemort, making him the latest, and likely last, Heir of Slytherin. Dark has remained loyal, for all that he can be, to Voldemort even through the end of last year. That tells me that he has no choice. There wasn't another of the Slytherin line that he could tether himself to."
Blaise and Draco winced, exchanging glances.
Fallen's theory was sound, but incomplete.
The Valerians were handed down through the family lines to the eldest male of the next generation, for the Malfoys that was when the heir turned ten, a year before they went to Hogwarts.
But that didn't mean that the Bonded were necessarily the only descendants.
Lucius had received Fallen as the eldest male, but he had a brother who had children. Blood didn't simply stop being passed down simply because they weren't tethered to a Valerian, and Katelyn and Nathaniel both were descendants of the Malfoys, even though they weren't of the bonded, or main, line.
Using that logic, there could be a descendant of Slytherin at Hogwarts, one that wasn't of the main line of the family and thus, not bonded to the Traitor.
'Fallen….'
Fallen winced, glancing at Draco, who was watching him with knowing, slightly terrified, eyes. He sighed. 'If all other avenues fail, you and I will take a trip to see Theodore. He may hear a rumor that doesn't make it to Severus' ears.'
Draco grinned.
XX
"Nothing?"
Yoko shook his head. "A couple of spiders, but that's not really evidence of much. They were a little high off the ground, considering that area is pretty well kept because of the bathroom there, but it's not proof or evidence of anything. Certainly, nothing any of us can run with."
"And Myrtle didn't see anything?" Severus asked.
"She was the reason the area was flooded," Yoko said, shrugging. "Which I'm fairly sure, given her flair for the dramatic, isn't the first time. Between Draco and Peeves at the Deathday party, she had apparently felt like they were picking on her, which I can say for certain Peeves was, and was hiding in the u-bend of the toilet apparently. She didn't see or hear a thing."
Fallen growled, frustrated. "So, we've still got nothing to go on?"
"And if that message was the warning it was meant to be, this is only the beginning," Severus said grimly.
"I actually have a theory," Yoko said.
The other two turned to him.
"Well, not necessarily a theory so much as a hunch," Yoko corrected. "Some of the expressions in the office the day of the attack confused me. Dumbledore and McGonagall both know something about this Chamber, but the odds are high that neither of them will talk to Fallen or myself."
Fallen and Yoko looked up at Severus.
The potions master rolled his eyes.
"I'll see what I can do but make no promises. Albus keeps things close to his chest, usually for a reason." Severus told them.
"Remind him that it wasn't him who ended up in the Mirror's chamber last year, protecting a student that he greatly disliked," Yoko told him, smiling ferally. "On that ground alone, I'm pretty sure he owes you."
