Author's Note:
Happy New Year Everyone!
I hope your holidays were all safe and enjoyable and 2021 brings only good things to us all.
Here's my first post of the new year,
Harry Potter, the Valerians, and the Chamber of Secrets'
Chapter Fourteen: The Lion and the Fox
Fallen receives information from a source outside Hogwarts, Hermione finds yet another thing to research, and the most vicious attack yet is made at Hogwarts, threatening its future.
Easter approached Hogwarts as it always did.
The students were swamped with work, despite the holiday, as their professors prepared them for exams, which would begin when they returned to school.
The professors had, though they'd been warned not to, begun to relax.
It had been almost three weeks since the last time any of them had encountered Dark in their evening wanderings.
It made Fallen a restless wreck, given that if Dark wasn't at the school, he had found whatever it was that had pressed him to repeatedly infiltrate it.
Fallen's nerves had gotten to the point where Yoko had spent three days layering a Net of his strongest wards and spells on the three-way intersection that led to the portrait of the Fat Lady, which would trigger a rather violent reaction if Dark tried to cross it.
Given that Dark very rarely passed through the corridors during the day, Yoko informed the students of the Tower that the Net would allow them to pass unhindered, regardless of the time of day, but the damage that would be done by the reaction of the breached wards would not differentiate.
He highly suggested that they not be caught out after curfew, just in case they got caught in the crossfire.
Fallen had mentioned the ward to Severus, as a matter of course, and to McGonagall, because Gryffindor was her responsibility but had refused to be sorry for such blatant disregard for the rest of the students or for putting it up without Dumbledore's express permission, and likewise hadn't mentioned it to said Headmaster, though it was likely that McGonagall herself had mentioned it to him, in an attempt to get Dumbledore to make Fallen see reason.
For the Heirs and Yoko, the Easter holiday had a different kind of tension.
Without the classes and the protection required to go to and from them, Fallen had little to distract himself from the idea that Arcana was somewhere out in the world, free of Dark's control, and suffering from the Heartbreak that would have been triggered by his broken mate bond to Tarana.
By the time classes started again, Yoko had physically forced Fallen out of the common room, because he couldn't get anything productive done on the Net around the diary.
The sight of the tiny-in-comparison fox, bodily and verbally shoving the wolf out the portrait door and ordering the Fat Lady to shut on him, had been a rare source of amusement for the Tower.
Having found that it worked in his favor, Fallen had thus forth been banned by Yoko from the Tower entirely after curfew.
Rumor had it that Fallen bled off the frustration of being unable to do anything and the irritation that he couldn't even be around Yoko because of it, by running through the corridors, but no one was brave enough to whisper if they'd actually seen the wolf moving at night in his earshot, which meant that the Heirs couldn't get any good gossip on it.
XX
Even the Heirs, however, were not exempt from the release of the other tension.
Now going on almost three months without another attack by the beast of Slytherin and his Heir, the school was breathing a real sigh of relief.
The chance to choose their elective courses for the following year also helped.
Draco had been in communication with his father since the beginning of February, as Lucius had wanted Draco to 'understand what classes were to be expected'.
Fallen had told the blond to forgo one, any one, of the classes that his father had chosen for him, in favor of one that he would enjoy.
Draco had been reluctant but Fallen equally as insistent.
'Your father has his reasons,' Fallen told him. 'And I understand them almost as well as you do. However, you are not your father. I want you to find at least one class in this school that you enjoy taking, not simply take because it will help you with what comes after school.' The wolf shrugged. 'You can always change the class back at the end of next year or find something else you think you might enjoy if that one doesn't pan out the way you think it will.'
"I just don't understand why you're pushing this so hard," Draco told him, though he was eagerly looking over the list a third time. "It's not like I'm going to need to get a job after school ends."
'Never say that,' Fallen reprimanded lightly. 'There have been plenty of families that didn't need to work, at least, not until something unforeseen happened. The Weasleys weren't always dirt poor, after all.'
Draco grimaced, but the very idea that his family might lose their vast fortune was unbelievable to him, and he dismissed Fallen's warning, though he did choose the Study of Ancient Runes, as it sounded interesting and not like anything that he'd likely learn at his father, or his godfather's, knee.
Since Draco was done with his class selection in a matter of a couple of hours, it allowed him to people watch for the first time all year, and he frowned when he found Neville, not nearby like he had been at the beginning of the school year, practically a member of the group, but on the other side of the common room entirely, sitting in an armchair and using a book to support his class list.
"Hey, Blaise, what's up with Neville?" he asked, nodding in the brunette's direction.
Even distracted, Draco noticed that Blaise managed to rather spectacularly shut down, face getting more distant and his eyes drifting as far off to the side, away from Draco, as they could without losing sight of the paper before him.
The dark-skinned heir shrugged.
"He just hasn't been around as much. Probably been busy." He said.
Draco's eyes narrowed and spun back to the other Gryffindor with a scowl.
'Leave it be,' Yoko said quietly.
Draco turned his scowl on the fox. "But-"
Yoko shook his head. 'Blaise doesn't wish to force Neville to remain friends with him if doing so makes him uncomfortable.'
"You can't be okay with it though," Draco hissed, looking between the fox and Neville. "Blaise put more trust in him than he did in us."
Yoko tilted his head, acknowledging the point. 'I didn't say I was,' he assured the blond. 'I'm disappointed. I'd like to know, the same as you, what suddenly caused him to change his mind, but I'll abide by Blaise's wishes on the matter until an opportunity presents itself for me to push it.'
Draco leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, tapping his upper arm with a finger as he thought about the best way to 'push it'.
XX
Though Draco's current focus was on Neville, he wasn't the only one of their group of friends that had distanced himself while he chose his classes.
Harry had lasted all of ten minutes at the table with the others before he had retreated to his seat in the window, but even that wasn't far enough away.
Fallen and Yoko were active participants in choosing which classes their charges should take, helping to weigh the pros and cons of each elective course with them.
It opened the panther shaped wound over his heart to know what he was missing out on.
He had intended to go to the library, where he could be swallowed up by all the other non-bonded students at Hogwarts as he figured out what he wanted to take for himself.
He was surprised, then, when he lifted his head from his feet to find himself outside Severus' office door and not the double doors of the library.
Clenching the booklet and selection sheet to his chest, Harry weighed the odds of Severus allowing him to do this here, before bolstering his courage and knocking on the door.
Severus took one look at him and his things and stepped aside.
Neither of them said a word for over an hour, with Harry staring uselessly at the course paperwork and Severus working his way through what was likely something to do with their upcoming exams.
"I don't know how to deal with what I'm feeling," Harry said, breaking their silence.
Severus put down his quill and gave the boy his attention but didn't say a word.
"I'm jealous of Blaise and Draco because Yoko and Fallen are still here…but then I feel guilty because I feel jealous, and then angry at myself because this feeling - the one I have from losing Her - I wouldn't wish that on anyone."
"It's human to feel that conflicted about loss, Harry," Severus told him. "I myself often do about someone I've lost. The grief, it never truly goes away, though, even now, you're aware that it can fade into the background for much of the day until something brings it to the surface, often with enough surprise to take your breath away."
Harry swallowed, tears welling in his eyes.
"My guilt is entirely different to yours, of that I'm sure," Severus continued, not commenting on the boy's apparent weakness, half lost in his thoughts of the woman he'd lost not once, but thrice. "But…I feel like I make amends to that person every day." The professor pinned Harry beneath his dark eyes. "It's perfectly natural to feel those emotions, even the jealousy of Draco and Blaise, in so long as you don't blame them for still having what you've lost."
"I don't," Harry assured him thickly, before swallowing.
Severus raised his chin slightly, aware that he was likely one of the few who saw the real emotion beneath Harry's façade as he healed the emotional blow that was Tarana's death.
The rage and hate.
"I blame Dark. I blame Arcana. But I don't blame them." Harry turned his gaze back to the papers on the table before him, but he wasn't seeing them. "When…when I saw Dark in the corridor. The night that he attacked Filch…I was scared. But then…then I wasn't. I would have drawn my wand if Yoko hadn't made me move. I wanted Dark to hurt. To hurt for what he'd done. For what he took. I wanted him to pay for it." Harry looked up at Severus. "I couldn't. Not because Yoko made me go, but because I realized that I didn't know anything powerful or potent enough to hurt a Valerian."
Severus exhaled through his nose before getting to his feet and moving around his desk. "Do you know what the Imperius Curse is, Harry?"
Harry blinked, startled by the apparent change of topic, but predictably shook his head.
"There are three spells in our world, that are entirely unforgivable to use on another living thing, carrying a lifetime sentence in Azkaban for it. One of them is the Imperius Curse. It is essentially our version of what Dark's Talent is, the ability of one person to control the mind and actions of another. There is a major difference between the two, however, and that is the ease of escape.
"If one has the force of will, they can rather easily throw off the Imperius Curse. The same cannot be said of Dark's Mind Manipulation. My understanding is that once the Talent truly takes hold, it cannot be thrown off so simply. Very few, in the centuries that we have allied with the Valerians, have ever managed to break free of it. Do you understand so far?"
Harry nodded slowly, understanding the topic, but not sure where it was going.
"Admittedly, I've never known anyone who has been on the receiving end of Dark's Talent, and thus this is entirely speculation and what I've learned through Fallen and the others. The Imperius Curse is often described as an absence of worry and negativity, leaving only happiness and what it takes to maintain it, usually in doing whatever one is told to do. It keeps your conscious mind in a sort of limbo, while the spell forces you to do whatever the castor has commanded you to. Your mind is fully capable of throwing off that fog and returning you to normal if you have the willpower to do so.
"Dark's Talent, however, is more like being forced into a small, unbreakable glass room and feeling everything that your body does, whether you want it to do those things or not, and being unable to stop. Unlike the Imperius, where you don't know you're doing what you're doing, you are very aware of it as a Thrall. Knowing that, however, doesn't mean that you can prevent yourself from doing so. You can throw yourself against that glass wall for decades and never crack it."
Harry swallowed.
"Knowing that, I would prefer not to see what the mind of anyone who had been Dark's Thrall looks like after even a handful of years, let alone a decade. It's a form of torture where the wounds are not visible to the casual observer."
Harry clenched his fists and looked down at them. "Is that why Yoko and Fallen don't care that Arcana was the one who killed her?"
"From conversations that I've had with Fallen, I can say with certainty that they do care, though not in the manner that you or I would. The Valerians have a very different view of Thralls than we do. I bring up the Curse because it is the closest that we have to a comparison. Someone under the Imperius Curse has no control over what they do, and are simply an extension of the castor. I imagine that the Valerians are simply better at remembering that when it comes to the Thralls under the Mind Manipulation Talent."
"So, you're saying that Arcana isn't Arcana to them anymore," Harry said slowly, looking up at the professor.
"Exactly. The moment he became a Thrall, he ceased being a King, he ceased being a tiger. In their eyes, he likely even ceased being a Valerian. He was a tool, a weapon in the hands of Dark."
"I want to be mad at him though," Harry whispered, looking down at the papers on the table before him. "He took her away. Last year, when I got my books from Diagon Alley, Tarana told me about them. She told me about the teachers and about the subjects and she helped me to understand what each one was because I'd never heard of any of them before." He sniffled, angrily shoving the book to the other end of the table. "I don't know what any of this means." He hissed. "Fallen and Yoko are up there, explaining everything to their bonded but I don't want to ask because they're already doing so much for me! Arcana or Dark or whoever took this away from me and I want to be mad at him!"
"Then be mad," Severus told him simply. "But that anger isn't going to help you understand what's in that book."
Harry glared at it, hands still clenched into fists, and made no move to drag it back over to him.
Severus, in turn, didn't coddle him.
If the boy was going to throw a fit, admittedly a well-deserved one given the reason behind his anger, he was certainly not going to hug him and tell him everything was going to be fine.
They were both already aware that the world didn't work that way.
Instead, he turned back to his desk, ignoring the tears that were sliding down the boy's cheeks, though he wasn't entirely sure that they were entirely anger related.
"Bring it here, boy," he told him, clearing a space for the book and paper amongst his own things. "But pay attention. I don't have time to go over this more than once. Act like a competent student, if you please."
Harry wiped his eyes on his sleeve and quickly gathered his things together, not wanting Severus to change his mind.
XX
To an extent, Harry's conversation with Severus had helped.
It was the first time that he'd voiced the fact that while he was upset that Tarana wasn't there with him, he was also angry that she had been taken from him in the first place.
He'd tried, at first, to adopt the same mentality the Valerians did to Arcana, but like his meditation, it was harder than he thought.
Sometimes, he found it really easy to remember that Arcana had been just as much a victim the night Tarana died, especially if he loved Tarana the way that she had loved him.
Other times, he could only think that Arcana still got to walk around.
Tarana had probably been burned by Animal Control and he wouldn't even have her ashes to remember her by.
His lessons with Fallen on meditation had likewise begun to suffer.
As the staff and the Valerians lightened up on the restrictions around the school, Oliver had taken advantage as soon as he was able and began to buckle down with many evening quidditch practices.
In some ways, it worked, because practice was after dinner, and after practice, he barely had enough time to do some of his homework before he was dropping, exhausted, into bed.
Most nights, he was so exhausted that he didn't dream, which he was thankful for.
Because if he didn't dream, he couldn't have nightmares.
And if he wasn't having nightmares, he wasn't waking up.
XX
The night before the quidditch match between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, the team - and Fallen by default - arrived back at the Tower to a crowd of people standing outside the open portrait hole, but no one trying to go inside.
"Out of the way," Fallen snapped as they approached, a mild case of panic causing him to pick up his pace.
The Gryffindors quickly scrambled to the side and Fallen leapt through the hole and came to as abrupt a stop as the rest of the House had.
Yoko was fine.
Standing in the middle of a disaster, but otherwise unharmed.
He also had his ugly hedges up and was refusing entry until Fallen snapped his name, irritably.
"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, looking down over the pillows, cushions, and books strewn across the floor.
The armchairs and couch were out of place, shoved haphazardly around the room.
Even the bookcases had been pulled away from the wall, though whoever had tried hadn't managed to get them out very far.
Yoko met his gaze evenly, before flicking his gaze toward the portrait hole.
Fallen's lip curled, but, rolling his eyes, he turned and asked the Fat Lady to close the door until he and Yoko were through ensuring there was no further threat.
Obediently, the two were closed in the Tower.
"I just got here myself," Yoko said, though he turned and, putting both paws on an armchair, began the painstaking process of shoving it back to where it belonged. "The Nets are all still intact, obviously, so this wasn't Dark."
Fallen nosed at one of the books lying on the floor, not in any particular rush to put the room to rights, but sure that if Yoko was trying then there was no threat in the Tower and he simply wished to talk. "Who else could get in here that would want to do this kind of damage? I could almost see it as a prank. Nothing appears to be broken, just a fucking mess."
"This was a Gryffindor," Yoko told him.
Fallen looked up at the fox. "What purpose would they have for this? There's nothing here that one of them couldn't simply take at any time."
"Well," Yoko sighed, sitting down. "I wish now that I had put a little more effort into investigating who threw the diary at Myrtle now."
Fallen turned and darted up the stairs.
Sure enough, the Second-Year dorms had been tossed.
'I'm relatively sure that the search started up there,' Yoko told him. 'And when they didn't find it, they searched the only area they'd seen it in. Here in the common room.'
'Did they find it?' Fallen asked, returning to the common room.
"Yes," Yoko told him. "Like I said, I wish I had dug a little deeper into figuring out who it had belonged to before it became a potential clog in the Hogwarts' septic system."
"I don't understand," Fallen said, frowning. "We didn't even open it. Surely no one would be desperate enough to toss an entire dormitory and the common room when they could simply have asked for their diary back."
"Unless they knew that it was an artifact and it was unlikely to be returned," Yoko pointed out.
Fallen swore under his breath. "I'm not sure if it's because of the nature of the artifact, but I have a bad feeling about this, Yoko."
"You and me both," Yoko sighed, before gesturing to the portrait. "I suppose we might as well let them in. Have them inventory their things. I doubt anything else went missing, but it can't hurt to be thorough. If it were me, I would have taken a couple of things simply as camouflage."
Fallen snorted, turning to nudge the portrait open. 'Not everyone's a master thief,' he pointed out. "Whoever is responsible for this is gone," he told the students gathered outside the portrait, the crowd even greater as curfew approached. "The Second-Year dorms are the only ones that look tossed like this, but everyone should check your belongings and make sure nothing's missing. Report it to McGonagall because I don't have the time or inclination to go hunting for your missing shit."
"Do you think someone was looking for something in particular?" Draco asked, slipping a hand between Fallen's ears.
'Unfortunately,' Fallen sighed, pressing subtly up into his charge's flexing fingers, 'I'm rather certain that they've already found it.'
XX
Fallen received a missive from one of Grubbly-Plank's assistants the following morning and he leaves Draco and Harry to go down to breakfast on their own in order to meet with the woman.
"I'm afraid what news I have isn't the greatest or most informative," she told him, digging through her desk for the letter.
Despite her age, she hadn't missed a single Hufflepuff game that wasn't already canceled in her entire tenure at the school, and she wasn't about to start now, so she was eager to get the meeting over with so she could put her multitude of Hufflepuff paraphernalia on.
"At this point, any information I don't already have can only be a help," Fallen pointed out.
"The lab I sent it to has cast every spell they can think of and used every test safely available. By all appearances, it is simply a basilisk scale, though the size of it is unprecedented."
Fallen frowned. "A basilisk?"
Grubbly-Plank nodded, finally finding the letter in one of her lower drawers. "They admitted that without a blood, flesh, or tissue sample there wasn't much else they can tell me; thus, they aren't one hundred percent certain on it, but they're sure enough to send it back." Her hand was shaking as she laid the letter out of Fallen to read. "They've asked where we found such a massive specimen."
The wolf glanced over it quickly, but there wasn't much additional information to be found. "You can tell them what you feel is best," he said. "I will trust your judgment on the matter."
Grubbly-Plank's lip curled in satisfied amusement. "Such a smooth-tongue, General," she said, moving to open the door for him.
"Your help has been appreciated, Professor," Fallen told her,
Grubbly-Plank smiled. "Any time, General. We can't rely on you Valerians to solve all our problems, after all."
Fallen snorted, but left the woman to finish 'dressing', nearly running into Hermione only a step or two away from the door.
"Shouldn't you be joining the others at breakfast?" he asked her.
The sound of his voice appeared to jolt her out of whatever thought process she appeared to be having.
"I have to go to the library," she breathed, before turning on her heel and running toward said room.
Fallen rolled his eyes. 'Foolish girl,' he muttered to Brandon.
'I get that quidditch isn't everyone's favorite thing, but some fresh air will do that girl some good,' Brandon agreed. 'Do you think she heard you and the professor?'
'Of that, there's no doubt,' Fallen told him. 'There isn't going to be much in any of the library books on basilisks however that I don't already know. Let her follow the rabbit hole and see where it leads her.'
XX
It was normal for the teams of a match to head down to the pitch before breakfast was over, to have a last-minute planning session and change into their quidditch gear.
As Draco and Harry were leaving the Great Hall, however, Harry came to an abrupt stop.
Draco turned to look at his friend, frowning. "Harry?"
Harry looked up at him, pale and terrified.
"I can hear it," he whispered.
Draco blinked at him, confused for a moment given the length of time between this conversation and the last one they'd had about the voice Harry had been hearing all last term.
"Hear it?"
If nothing else, Draco's confusion over Harry's fear helped the other Gryffindor get past it, because he scowled at the blond.
"The voice, Draco," he hissed, glancing around the empty Entrance Hall to make sure they were truly alone. "The snake."
Draco jerked, also looking around, but the closest professors were still at breakfast and that wasn't a scene that they should be making.
"Fallen?" he called, hoping the wolf was done with whatever meeting he'd had that morning.
'I'll be down shortly,' Fallen replied, sounding far away.
"Harry's hearing that voice again," Draco told him quickly, felling the wolf 'pull away', turning his attention away from Draco and to whatever else he was doing at the moment.
The revelation brought Fallen's full attention back to his charge. 'Where are you?'
"The Entrance Hall," Draco told him. "We were on our way out the door for the match," he glanced at Harry, who stared at him, worriedly, then at the Great Hall. "Should we tell a professor?"
'Only if one steps out of the Great Hall in the time it takes you to walk out the doors,' Fallen answered. 'There are still almost two or three hundred students in that room. To reveal that there's another potential attack in such conditions could cause pandemonium or, worse, a riot. Go down to the pitch. Yoko and I will investigate and inform the appropriate people.'
Draco swallowed, before grabbing Harry by the arm and dragging him out of the castle.
"Draco!" Harry hissed, digging his heels in for a moment. "We need to warn them!"
"Fallen said he and Yoko would take care of it," Draco told him. "We can't just walk into the Great Hall and scream about an attack, especially not with their thoughts on you."
Harry clenched a fist in frustration but sagged and allowed Draco to pull him down to the pitch.
XX
Harry was still a wreck as they finished changing into their quidditch gear.
"Relax, Harry," Draco told him quietly. "Nearly the whole school is going to be on the pitch to watch the game and there's no way that everyone can miss a snake attempting to hurt a student in the stands. Focus on the match," he insisted, glancing up at Oliver as he gathered the team. "The sooner we end it, the sooner we can find Fallen and Yoko and find out what happened."
Harry took a steadying breath and nodded.
By the time the team passed through the doors, Harry's head was back in the game, intending to end the game as quickly as possible, just as Draco had suggested.
XX
Unfortunately, the whistle had barely been blown when Harry saw Draco sway so hard that he nearly fell off his broom.
He was diving for the ground before Draco had even regained his balance to do the same.
If McGonagall, who was stalking onto the field, a giant purple megaphone in one hand, was surprised to see the two of them practically land on top of her, she didn't show it.
"This match has been canceled," she said into the megaphone, ignoring the two Heirs. Harry looked worriedly at Draco, who was paler than normal and, uncharacteristically, wringing his hands together fretfully. "All students are to make their way to their common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!"
"Professor, is Fallen-"
McGonagall's lip quivered before she got herself under control. "Fallen is fine, Mr. Malfoy," she assured him, before lifting her gaze over his shoulder and scanning the departing crowd of grumbling and complaining students.
Over McGonagall's shoulder, he could see Oliver, still straddling his broom, arguing with Madam Hooch and gesturing to McGonagall.
The quidditch referee was having none of it, however, and though Harry could only see her back, he had no trouble imagining the look on her face as she firmly pointed toward the castle.
"Oh no," Draco breathed.
Harry spun around, following Draco's gaze.
Ron and Seamus had detached themselves from the crowd and headed toward McGonagall, Harry, and Draco.
Hung between them, head hung low and feet tripping every other step or so, Blaise was only upright because of his year-mates' assistance.
Harry looked at Draco, a queasy feeling in his gut.
Fallen was fine, but the pain written in the lines of Draco's face was still the wolf's own.
"Yoko," they breathed together.
XX
Given Blaise's catatonic state, McGonagall wouldn't tell the boys anything, but her expression didn't look any less grim or heartbroken as she gestured for them all to follow her.
As soon as they walked through the door of the infirmary, Pomfrey, who must have been waiting for them, was on the boy, urging him to sit down and her wand flicking so quickly she looked like she was trying to conduct an orchestra.
"Thank you, Mr. Finnegan. Please return to the Tower, I'll be there momentarily."
"'Course Professor," Seamus said, though he was obviously trying to see further into the infirmary until the moment the door closed behind him.
"Professor," Draco pressed, but McGonagall held up a hand, watching Pomfrey closely.
The medi-witch sighed, and Harry's mouth dropped slightly as he registered the sound as relief. "He's simply in shock," she told McGonagall. "A rather severe case. I'll have him stay the night, though I doubt he'll want to return to the Tower regardless, given…."
"Professor," Draco pressed, more urgently this time, lips quivering.
McGonagall took a deep, steadying breath before turning to the group of Gryffindors before her. "There was another attack," she told them, though Harry and Draco had rather expected that Harry'd heard the voice of Salazar's snake barely forty-five minutes ago. "Another double attack."
"Is Yoko okay?" Harry asked, looking around the room as though expecting the fox to pop up.
It had happened before, after all.
The year before, Arcana had attacked Harry and his friends and Yoko had defended them all at devastating cost. The following morning, Yoko had been practically back to normal, such was the Valerian Trance, the ability to 'hibernate' and regenerate almost any wound that didn't immediately kill the target.
McGonagall shook her head, however, and the Second Years were surprised to see the sheen of tears in her eyes.
Behind her, the door slammed open and Severus stormed through them, not sparing any of them so much as a glance, as he disappeared behind a curtain.
It must have been the one hiding Yoko because he took great care not to open it wide enough that any of them could see what was going on within it, despite his rush.
Their attention was drawn back to McGonagall as she continued speaking.
"Ms. Granger was found near the library, petrified."
Ron made a noise, not unlike a rat being stepped on, and sank down onto the bed beside Blaise.
Harry wheezed through his teeth, fists clenched and tears in his eyes.
It was the first of the attacks that had so directly affected them.
By all appearances, however, Draco didn't care.
"And Yoko?"
"He was found several corridors away, seriously injured."
"He's gonna be okay though, right?" Ron asked. "That Trance thing kicked in and he's healing?"
McGonagall exchanged a look with Pomfrey.
"He's not healing," Draco whispered. "Is he?"
"I believe he's been poisoned," Pomfrey said. "His healing isn't kicking in and we're having trouble stemming the bleeding. His inherent resistance to most spells is making our attempts to kickstart it ineffective."
Draco swore, ignoring McGonagall's weak reprimand, and turned to push his way through the curtained area his godfather had just disappeared to.
"Mr. Malfoy, come back here!"
Draco dropped to his knees beside Fallen, going as ignored by the two professors within it as he was ignoring them, his focus entirely on his guardian as he wrapped his arms around the wolf's neck.
Fallen was vibrating beneath his touch and even with the 'door' between them closed Draco could still feel the maelstrom of emotions that had nearly taken him out of the air twenty minutes earlier.
"Whatever this thing is," the General growled, causing the hairs up and down Draco's arms to stand on end and the hair at the nape of his neck to do the same, a primal reaction to the predator beside him. "Has just signed its death warrant."
XX
McGonagall brought the boys back up to the Tower with her.
Well, most of them.
Blaise was, as Pomfrey predicted, remaining in the infirmary.
Five minutes before they had left, Grubbly-Plank and Severus had been forced to admit temporary defeat until they could identify what Yoko had been poisoned by/with, and Fallen had half-suggested, half-ordered that Blaise be moved as close to Yoko's sickbed as possible.
It had gone rather unspoken that Fallen was planning to keep vigil over them both and wouldn't be returning to the Tower until he was good and fucking ready.
Harry, Draco, and Ron had secluded themselves into a corner of the common room and were soaking up the remaining presence of one another, feeling remarkably more vulnerable with every passing second, without one or the other of the Valerians nearby and with no indication just yet when either would be returning to them.
"All students are to return to their common rooms by six o'clock in the evening." McGonagall was saying, a piece of parchment in her shaking hands. "No student is to leave their dormitories after that time. You will be escorted to each lesson by a teacher. No student is to use the bathroom unaccompanied by a teacher. All further quidditch training and matches are to be postponed. There will be no more evening activities."
The entire common room was deathly silent as she rolled the parchment back up.
Her voice was strained, and she was obviously not unaffected by the words she uttered after several beats of silence.
"I need hardly add that I have rarely been so distressed," she told them. "It is highly likely that the school will be closed if the culprit behind these attacks isn't caught. If any of you have information regarding them, I urge you to come forward."
She waited for only a second, certain that none of her students would have information on the attacks, before she, rather awkwardly, climbed out the portrait hole.
The silence only lasted another half-second before the common room was abuzz with conversation.
Lee Jordan, a friend of the twins' and the quidditch commentator, was holding some sort of court across the common room, but none of the Heirs were paying much attention.
Their thoughts were still down in the infirmary with Yoko, Fallen, Blaise, and Hermione, their absence glaring.
"You guys alright?"
Harry jumped and looked up, startled to find George crouched before them, a grave look on his face.
Harry could feel his eyes watering and quickly looked back down.
The Weasleys had seen enough of his tears already.
"Blaise, Yoko, and Hermione are in the hospital wing," Ron told his brother glumly.
George's brow furrowed. "Are Blaise and Yoko-"
Draco shook his head, drained of almost all energy as he was pummeled with Fallen's ever-increasing negativity. "Yoko was hurt, Pomfrey says he was probably poisoned, but we don't know what happened beyond that," he said. "Blaise is in shock, but I'm pretty sure she wanted to have him close so she could make sure that whatever was happening to Yoko didn't affect him too badly, given how tightly they've bonded, since…."
George nodded.
None of the Weasleys were unaware of what their father had taken Blaise from over the summer, though their parents hadn't said, and likely didn't realize, that they knew about it.
"Fallen's down with them," Harry added.
George forced them all to meet his gaze. "Yoko's strong," he reminded them. "He'll be back to normal before we know it."
Harry's lip quivered and he rubbed his eyes with his palms until he saw black spots even with his eyes closed.
What right did he have to cry?
It was Fallen's lover in the hospital wing.
Hermione was petrified.
Blaise had probably lost all contact with Yoko as soon as he'd been attacked and who knew if the boy would recover any time soon.
When he raised his head again, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, but he was in control again and he wrapped an arm around Draco's shoulders.
They shook in his grip.
XX
When Fallen didn't return to the common room by that evening, Draco and Harry exchanged a look and, without a word to one another, prepared to go down to the wolf.
Fallen had supported Harry almost through the entirety of his grieving process, the least he could do to return the favor is to support Fallen while Yoko recovered.
Once everyone was in bed, Harry threw back the covers and, as quietly as he could, dug through his trunk.
At the very bottom, buried and mostly forgotten about, given his lack of interest in getting into trouble, was the only thing that Harry had inherited from his father.
A long, silvery piece of fabric with a very rare ability.
An Invisibility Cloak.
Harry had been warned, multiple times, against using the Cloak without someone - particularly a Valerian - knowing that he was doing so because, in addition to preventing him from being seen, it likewise muffled scent and sound.
The Cloak had come in very handy the year before, with Harry and Draco using in an ill-fated midnight Christmas walk - where they had been nearly caught by Dark and nearly killed by Tarana and Fallen when they'd found them out of bed; Hermione and Blaise had used it to help smuggle a dragon out of Hogwarts, and it had been one of several mediums that had gotten the group to the corridor Dumbledore had hidden the Philosopher's Stone at the end of the school year.
This would be the first time that it had seen the light of day since the night they had gone up against Quirrell with the Valerians, but both Harry and Draco were sure, given their good intentions, Fallen would forgive their using it.
The trip was one of their most harrowing.
Never before had they seen the corridors as full as they were that night.
Professors, prefects, and ghosts were all patrolling the school in pairs, tense and twitchy in turns as they searched for 'suspicious' activity.
They did, eventually, make it to the infirmary but when they got there, it was to find Fallen leaving it, grim determination in his loping stride.
With a glance at one another, the two boys decided to follow him.
The wolf was unmolested by the staff, so the Gryffindors simply needed to move quickly enough to keep up with him, but quiet enough not to make any real noise that would catch the wolf's more sensitive hearing.
It was a tricky endeavor, given they'd never tested how loud was too loud.
Fallen unwittingly led them out of the school and down to Hagrid's cabin.
"Open the door, Hagrid," Fallen ordered him, the tension in his body mirrored in his tone.
The door obediently creaked open, and even from the distance they kept between them, Harry and Draco could see the impatience in Fallen's curled lip.
A swift and brutal shove with his Element and the door swung inward, nearly hitting Hagrid in the process.
Another wave of blood-red wind and the crossbow held in Hagrid's large hands went flying across the room.
"Sorry, General," Hagrid said gruffly.
"You've heard about Yoko and Granger then?"
Hagrid nodded.
"You know what I want to know."
"'ow long 've yeh known?"
"Yoko and I were told months ago," Fallen told him. "We didn't believe then, nor do I believe now, that you are the Heir of Slytherin. You are, however, the only one who was here the last time the Chamber was opened. You have information I need, and I'm no longer inclined to be kind enough to find another way."
Hagrid swallowed, but stepped back, further into his cabin, wordlessly inviting the wolf inside.
Harry and Draco darted forward, knowing their window was narrow if they wanted to be inside and listening when Fallen questioned Hagrid, but needn't have bothered.
In an uncharacteristic stint of suspiciousness, Hagrid stepped out, off his porch entirely, to look as far up to the castle as he could, and then as far out across the grounds, toward the gates of the property.
They settled into a corner and held their collective breath because Fallen had tilted his head and one ear was twitching.
Whatever had caught his attention didn't appear, however, and he settled beside Fang, Hagrid's enormous boarhound, and waited for Hagrid to make himself a pot of tea - tea bags excluded - and sit at the table.
"Wha' d'ya need t' know?"
XX
Tarana and Fallen had interrogated Hagrid the year before, regarding the connection between the dragon egg he'd managed to receive and the man that had been attempting to steal the Philosopher's Stone from Hogwarts, but the students had been forbidden from being present on the grounds of their age.
Yoko had relayed, supposedly, every answer.
This time, there would be no need for the middleman, and Harry and Draco pressed close together and wrapped the cloak tightly around themselves, settling in to watch.
"Start with when the Chamber was opened fifty years ago."
"Felt like it lasted forever," Hagrid admitted. "Know the last attack was the 13th o' June, cuz it was the day I got expelled. First attack…I think it was b'fore Christmas. November, maybe October."
"I was told that a student died, I assume that was the attack in June?"
Hagrid nodded grimly. "Yeah. A Fourth Year. Rumor was the poor girl was lyin' there fer hours."
"She was the only death?" Fallen asked.
Hagrid looked down at his cup. "Lotsa petrifications, more 'n there are now. Only death though."
"Given your own blood status, what made them think you were attacking muggle-borns?"
Hagrid flushed. "I was-"
His answer was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Hagrid's flush abruptly vanished, and he was as pale as he'd been when he answered the door. He stood so quickly that his chair wobbled, and he blindly reached for the crossbow that wasn't at his side but still across the cabin where Fallen had thrown it.
"Are they the reason for the weapon?" Fallen asked, looking at the door.
If Hagrid had been nervous during Fallen's questioning, he was terrified now.
Fallen exhaled slowly, straightened his spine, and ordered the half-giant to open the door.
XX
"Hagrid," Dumbledore greeted grimly, stepping into Hagrid's cabin.
The Headmaster met Fallen's gaze, unsurprised to see the wolf there before they all turned their attention to the man that had come in with him.
Draco inhaled sharply, before slapping a hand over his mouth to prevent any more sounds from escaping and alerting his guardian.
Though standing next to Dumbledore, who wore deep blue robes with pale pink diagonal stripes through them, it was often difficult to find someone who dressed weirder than the Headmaster, this man managed to pull it off in a pinstriped suit, a scarlet tie, and black cloak. The image was made worse by the hat and bright pointed, purple boots he wore, just barely visible beneath his cloak.
Shorter than Dumbledore and Hagrid both, the stocky man stepped into the cabin and took off the most ridiculous part of his wardrobe - and that said a lot - a lime-green bowler hat, and tucked it under his arm, revealing a mess of gray hair that could have been because the man was constantly running his hands through it, or simply because, like Harry's, it refused to be tamed.
"General Fallen," the man said, as surprised to find the wolf there as Dumbledore wasn't. "What are you doing here?"
Fallen's lip curled away from his fang in a vicious looking sneer.
The man awkwardly averted his gaze, though he was obviously trying to avoid appearing to do so.
"I don't recall my kind answering to the Ministry, Minister," Fallen rumbled.
Harry glanced, horrified, at Draco.
What was the Minister of Magic doing at Hogwarts? In Hagrid's cabin?
"I'm sure the General is merely here because of the attack on Lord Yoko," Dumbledore said.
"I'm here for a similar reason to you, I would imagine," Fallen said, ignoring the Headmaster to give the apparent Minister of Magic his full attention. "I'm given to understand that Hagrid was attending Hogwarts at the time the Chamber of Secrets was last opened. He has information that I require."
Fudge shifted nervously, which given that Hagrid looked ready to have a heart attack at any moment, said a great deal about the dynamics of those in the cabin.
"General, surely you understand. Given his history - and with four attacks on muggle-borns already-" Harry mouthed 'already' angrily to himself, "I had to come. The Ministry has to act."
Hagrid looked from Fallen, who was watching Fudge with half-lidded, almost bored, eyes and Dumbledore, who looked not best pleased that Fudge was here at all.
"I never-" Hagrid said weakly. "Yeh know I'd never-"
"I want it understood, Cornelius," Dumbledore said, frowning at the man beside him. "That Hagrid has my full confidence."
Fudge looked uncomfortable at being put in the position, glancing at Fallen as though waiting for the wolf to speak again, before dismissing him to give Dumbledore his attention as, for the moment anyway, it appeared the Valerian was letting the Headmaster lead the conversation.
"Look, Albus," he said, "The school governors have been in touch and-"
Dumbledore's lip twisted for a half a second, which told Fallen that those letters were not news to the Headmaster, and they had likely been as much in touch with Dumbledore as they had Fudge.
"The Ministry's got to act-"
Fallen's lip peeled away from his fang again. "I'm no politician, but perhaps you could have been seen actually investigating the school, as opposed to finding someone to blame," he drawled.
Fudge twitched. "Hagrid's record is against him. He's already been accused once-"
"Yet again, I tell you, Cornelius, that taking Hagrid away will not help in the slightest," Dumbledore said, a fire in his eyes as he watched the Minister.
"Look at it from my point of view," Fudge insisted. "I'm under a lot of pressure and I've got to be seen acting. If it turns out Hagrid isn't the culprit, he'll be released with a full apology."
Fallen's eyes became far less 'lazy-narrow' and more 'suspicious-narrow', red eyes shining in the firelight beside him.
"Not Azkaban-" Hagrid wheezed.
"For a short stretch only," Fudge assured him. "Not as punishment, more as a precaution-"
"Let me make several things perfectly clear to you, Minister," Fallen said. "First and least important, there is no stretch at Azkaban that can be considered not a punishment, given the guards your kind has chosen for it.
"Second, in absentia of the Crown, if you take Hagrid off these grounds, I will consider it an act of war."
Dumbledore raised his head, looking at the wolf with the most serious regard the two boys had ever seen him give anyone, even Fudge over the last few minutes.
Fudge's mouth opened and closed like a fish as he sputtered, "I-wha-An explanation. This is not a matter that involves the Collective-"
"This matter involved the Collective long before you put your foot in it," Fallen sneered. "My charge, Draco Malfoy, and Yoko's charge, Blaise Zabini, both attend school here. These attacks put their education, and safety, at great risk and we have been more directly involved in investigating it even than Dumbledore.
"As of this morning, the Valerian Scout is up at the castle, attacked by the creature you fear so much, poisoned and only alive because of the collective actions of a group of professors and staff at this school. A group that includes Rubeus Hagrid."
Hagrid had tears in his eyes as he twisted his hands around the crossbow he still, awkwardly, held.
"Taking Hagrid off these grounds could potentially condemn Yoko to his death, which would in turn pit the remains of the Collective against the Ministry in retaliation."
Draco frowned and glanced over at Harry.
Of the multitude of staff members that had come and gone from the Hospital Wing while they were there, Hagrid hadn't been among them.
Dumbledore's eyes were glittering again, and he was watching Fallen with an unreadable expression on his face.
Fudge looked like he'd been hit with a rather sour fish, mouth still working despite no sound coming out, as he struggled to come up with a counterargument.
Before he could, there was another knock on the door.
As the closest to it, Dumbledore answered, stepping aside with a polite smile when he saw the person on the other side of it, but there was no warmth to be found.
Any sense, subtle or otherwise, of a win, vanished from the air of the cabin, when Nathaniel Malfoy stepped into the cabin, dressed in a long black traveling cloak and a satisfied twist to his lips and a roll of parchment in one hand. His other held a less decorated cane compared to his brother's, but no less rich for it despite its simplicity.
Despite the satisfaction in his smile, his blue eyes, so similar to Draco's own, were cold and unfeeling, colder than they'd been when Harry had first met him in Diagon Alley.
Draco grabbed Harry's hand hard enough to bruise.
If his uncle was actually on the grounds, he had won something.
And that something could be nothing good.
XX
Any fear Hagrid may have had was gone in the face of the youngest Malfoy brother.
"You," he growled. "What're you doin' here. Get outta my house!"
Nathaniel's lip curled. "Please, believe me, I have no pleasure at all in being inside your-" he gave the cabin a disdainful once over, "do you call this a house?" he asked skeptically, before turning to Dumbledore and ignoring the other occupants, including Fallen and the Minister. "No matter, I had simply called at the school and was told the Headmaster and his guest were here. I'm sure I'll be out of your…house momentarily."
That banked fire had returned in full force to Dumbledore's eyes, though with his hands folded politely before him and his polite smile still firmly fixed on his face, one wouldn't know that he was displeased.
Of all the tense magic floating in the room from the previous conversation, Dumbledore's wasn't among it, his iron control remaining completely intact.
"And what, exactly, did you need with me, Nathaniel?" Dumbledore asked.
Nathaniel's lip twisted, for just a moment, at the familiarity that Dumbledore spoke to him with, before his expression smoothed out and it was gone.
"Dreadful thing, Dumbledore," Nathaniel said lazily, tapping the parchment against his cane arm, "but the governors feel it's time for you to step aside. This is an Order of Suspension," he said, holding it up for them all to see before handing it over to the Headmaster. "You'll find all twelve signatures on it. I'm afraid we feel you're losing your touch. How many attacks have there been now? Two more this afternoon, wasn't it?" His cold blue eyes glittered with malicious amusement. "At this rate, there'll be no Muggle-borns left at Hogwarts, and we all know what an awful loss that would be to the school."
"See here, Nathaniel," Fudge said, almost as alarmed as when Fallen had declared potential war on the wizarding world. "Dumbledore suspended-" he shook his head. "No, no, the last thing we want just now-"
"Minister," Nathaniel interrupted smoothly, causing Fudge's mouth to shut with a clack of teeth. "The appointment, or suspension, of the headmaster is a matter for the school governors. We feel that as Dumbledore has failed to stop these attacks-"
"And if Dumbledore can't stop them," Fudge cried, sweat beading on his upper lip and forehead, and a strange twitch forming in one hand. Fallen wrinkled his nose at the potent stench of his nerves and fear permeated the hut. "I mean to say, who can?"
"That remains to be seen," Nathaniel agreed, though his smile was far from kind or conciliatory. "But all twelve have voted, thus it is time for Dumbledore to step down."
Hagrid's presence seemed to multiply, and he took a threatening step toward Nathaniel.
"An' how many did yeh and yer brother have ter threaten an' blackmail before they agreed, Malfoy, eh?" he growled.
Nathaniel was outwardly unmoved, wiping the front of his cloak as though some of Hagrid's vitriol might have been actual spit. "Temper, temper, Hagrid. I advise you not to scream at the guards of Azkaban like that."
"Whether Hagrid is leaving for Azkaban remains to be seen," Fallen finally said, drawing Nathaniel's attention. "But let's address something else, shall we? What does Lucius think of this maneuver?"
"I'll remind you, General, that I, not my brother, sit on the Board of Governors," Nathaniel said coolly.
Fallen's chuckle was anything but agreeable, but he didn't say another word on the matter.
Nathaniel, taking this as the win it wasn't, turned back to the door and gestured for Dumbledore, who had been quietly reading over the Order of Suspension, to precede him out the door.
As Dumbledore turned to look at Fallen, Draco's heart stopped.
For the briefest of seconds, even with the Invisibility Cloak covering him and Harry, he was certain the Headmaster had met his gaze.
Fallen, apparently oblivious to the interaction between his charge and the Headmaster met the man's blazing blue eyes with his own cool red ones.
Sighing, he tilted his head. "A call will be made," he told the old man.
Nathaniel, waiting with false patience at the door, gestured again when he had Dumbledore's attention.
Dumbledore, however, wouldn't leave until he was good and ready.
Hagrid made a strange noise, filled with rage and despair, and took two steps forward to lift Nathaniel off the ground, pinning him against the doorframe.
"If you take Dumbledore away, the muggle-borns won' stand a chance!" he yelled, actually spraying Nathaniel with spit this time. "There'll be killin' next!"
"Hagrid!" Dumbledore yelled.
"Put him down!" Fallen snarled, watching his chance of keeping Hagrid at Hogwarts for the immediate future swirl down the proverbial drain.
Hagrid immediately dropped the man and stepped back, but the cabin seemed to pulse with his anger and his already massive size felt like it had been doubled.
Nathaniel may not have the influence to put Hagrid in Azkaban for the assault of his person, but he could certainly have him remanded to Ministry custody as a 'dangerous creature'.
"Nathaniel," Dumbledore said in a slow, measured tone. "You will find that I have only truly left Hogwarts when there are none left here who are loyal to me." He gestured to Hagrid as evidence.
Nathaniel sneered as he followed Dumbledore out the door.
Fudge shifted uncomfortably. "We all know that he's going to want you remanded, Hagrid. Do I have to bring down the Aurors?"
"Let it be known to you both," Fallen growled, low and threatening. "You best get a hold on that temper of yours, Hagrid, because my warning still stands. The moment Yoko dies, I will rain unholy hell on the Wizarding World. And if you are not on this property to potentially help save him, I will begin with the two of you."
Hagrid went a mix of flushed and pale and swallowed nervously.
If the stench of Fudge's fear had been potent to the wolf before, it must have been overwhelming now, because Draco was pretty sure he could smell it, and he and Harry were on the other side of the cabin.
"You er, those question you was askin', Fallen," Hagrid said, glancing at Fudge. "You should follow the spiders. They can give 'em to yeh." He glanced down at Fang. "And er, if yeh could get someone t' feed Fang…."
Fallen curled a lip as the door closed behind them all, before spinning in a tight circle, his Element following in his wake, and slammed a blunted blade of wind through the cabin, breaking everything in its path and narrowly missing the two boys hidden only a matter of inches beneath it, hands pressed over their mouths to muffle their surprised and terrified cries.
Not that Fallen would have heard them.
He was too busy howling his fury to the sky.
