Chapter 9: History Lesson
Rose found out about Remus. Everyone was worried that she'd tell Lily or someone else about it, but she didn't. The next time she saw Remy, she ran up and hugged him. I don't think I've ever liked a person more than I did at that moment.
For a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs. Norris. During that time, Leo was finding that he was able to sleep somewhat better at night. His father and Sirius had both been right – keeping what happened locked up inside was doing him no good. The knowledge that someone other than Dumbledore – that someone he actually trusted and held in high regard – had heard his story and had not rejected him or treated him any differently was an added bonus.
Leo had been worried that McGonagall would act differently towards him after that night in her office, but she interacted with him the same as she had before she knew. She scolded him when he misbehaved, gave him stern looks when he was about to, and assigned him the same amount of homework as everyone else. Leo was disappointed at the last part.
The attack on Mrs. Norris had an effect on Hermione. It was quite usual for Hermione to spend a lot of time reading, but she was now doing almost nothing else. Nor could Harry, Leo, and Ron get much response from her when they asked what she was up to. Leo just assumed she was trying to find out more about the Chamber. He had already sent out letters to Remus and Sirius regarding that very thing and was expecting a letter from the former any day now.
It turned out he needn't have bothered. On one of the rare, few occasions he actually attended History of Magic class, he surprisingly learned something informative.
The class started out boring as ever. Binns opened his notes and began to read in a flat drone like an old vacuum cleaner until nearly everyone in the class was in a deep stupor, occasionally coming to long enough to copy down a name or date, then falling asleep again. He had been speaking for half an hour when something happened that had never happened before. Hermione put up her hand.
Binns, glancing up in the middle of a deadly dull lecture on the International Warlock Convention of 1289, looked amazed.
"Miss — er —?"
"Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets," said Hermione in a clear voice.
Dean Thomas, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance; Lavender Brown's head came up off her arms and Neville Longbottom's elbow slipped off his desk. Leo looked up from where he was doodling Lockhart getting chased by a werewolf, raising an eyebrow in interest.
Binns blinked.
"My subject is History of Magic," he said in his dry, wheezy voice. "I deal with facts, Miss Granger, not myths and legends." He cleared his throat with a small noise like chalk slipping and continued, "In September of that year, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers —"
He stuttered to a halt.
Hermione's hand was waving in the air again.
"Miss Grant?"
"Please, sir, don't legends always have a basis in fact?"
"Well," said Binns slowly, "yes, one could argue that I suppose." He peered at Hermione as though he had never seen a student properly before. "However, the legend of which you speak is such a very sensational, even ludicrous tale —"
"So was the Soap Blizzard of 1378, but you still told us about it," Leo reminded him.
Binns was silent at this for a moment before he heaved a heavy sigh. Leo wondered how he did this, considering he didn't have lungs.
"Oh, very well," he said slowly. "Let me see...the Chamber of Secrets...
"You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago — the precise date is uncertain — by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution."
He paused, gazed blearily around the room, and continued.
"For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated. But then disagreements sprang up between them. A rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school."
Binns paused again, pursing his lips, looking like a wrinkled old tortoise. Leo almost snorted with laughter as his brain made this comparison.
"Reliable historical sources tell us this much," he said. "But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing.
"Slytherin, according to the legend, sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the Chamber of Secrets, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic."
There was silence as he finished telling the story, but it wasn't the usual, sleepy silence that filled Binns's classes. There was unease in the air as everyone continued to watch him, hoping for more. Binns looked faintly annoyed.
"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."
Hermione's hand was back 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 Binns in his dry, reedy voice.
The class exchanged nervous looks.
"I tell you, the thing does not exist," said Binns, shuffling his notes. "There is no Chamber and no monster."
"That you know of," Leo corrected his statement in a bored tone. "There're loads of secret passages and chambers that most people don't know about – who's to say the Chamber's not one of them?"
"Mr. Block -"
Leo made a face.
"The school has been searched top to bottom since it was built, and such a thing has yet to be found," Binns sniffed. "One must, therefore, conclude that neither the Chamber or the supposed monster exists."
"So, your basis for your argument hinges on the fact that no one has seen it, therefore it does not exist?" Leo clarified. "No one can see oxygen, but we all know it exists otherwise we'd be dead."
"That will do, Mr. Blink," he said sharply, and Leo made another face. "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!"
And within five minutes, the class had sunk back into its usual torpor.
"I always knew Salazar Slytherin was a twisted old loony," Ron told Harry, Leo, and Hermione as they fought their way through the teeming corridors at the end of the lesson to drop off their bags before dinner. "But I never knew he started all this pure-blood stuff. I wouldn't be in his house if you paid me. Honestly, if the Sorting Hat had tried to put me in Slytherin, I'd've got the train straight back home..."
As Hermione nodded fervently, Leo said, "Almost all my family's been in Slytherin – and one of my best mates is there now. Being in Slytherin doesn't make you evil – being a prejudiced git does."
He pushed past the trio and made his way to the common room where he began working on the essay Binns had set. He finished later that night around the time Harry, Ron, and Hermione showed up. They all stared at each other awkwardly before Ron mumbled an apology. Leo gave a jerk of his head in response and the three relaxed, taking seats around him as they worked on their own assignments.
Ron kept blotting his Charms homework. When he reached absently for his wand to remove the smudges, it ignited the parchment. Leo gave an absent wave of his wand, dispersing the flames. Ron mumbled out a small 'thank you' and continued working on his assignment, but Hermione had stopped.
"Who can it be, though?" she said in a quiet voice, as though continuing a conversation they had just been having. "Who'd want to frighten all the Squibs and Muggleborns out of Hogwarts?"
"Let's think," said Ron in mock puzzlement. "Who do we know who thinks Muggleborns are scum?"
He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced. Leo narrowed his eyes at what he was insinuating.
"If you're talking about Draco —"
"Of course I am!" said Ron. "Come on, you've only got to look at his foul rat face to know it's him —"
"And I've only got to look at yours to know you're a speckle-faced git -"
"Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?" said Hermione skeptically, cutting across Leo in an attempt to prevent an argument.
"Look at his family," said Harry, closing his books. "The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin; he's always boasting about it. They could easily be Slytherin's descendants. His father's definitely evil enough."
Leo snorted, and the three turned to look at him.
"Lucius may be the world's most pompous arse, but there's no way he's Slytherin's heir," Leo informed them. "The whole world would know if he was. The power and prestige that would come with that name – well, let's just say he wouldn't pass up an opportunity to use it to his advantage."
"Alright, who do you think it is if you're so smart?" Ron demanded.
Leo was silent for a moment before shrugging and saying, "Slytherin's reserve Seeker."
"Zabini?"
"Yeah, him," Leo said in a somewhat dismissive tone. "No one knows who his father is – other than the fact that he was a pure-blood and presumably in Slytherin, given how pure-blood families operate. He could very well have been a descendant of Slytherin."
"Well," said Hermione cautiously, "I suppose it's possible..."
"But how do we prove it?" said Harry darkly.
"There might be a way," said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. "Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We'd be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect —"
"If you're trying to convince me to join in, you can stop now. You had me at 'dangerous'," Leo grinned, leaning forward slightly.
"Alright," said Hermione. "What we'd need to do is to get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Zabini a few questions without him realizing it's us."
"But that's impossible," Harry said as Ron laughed.
"No, it's not," said Hermione. "All we'd need would be some Polyjuice Potion."
"What's that?" said Ron and Harry together.
"Snape mentioned it in class a few weeks ago —"
"D'you think we've got nothing better to do in Potions than listen to Snape?" muttered Ron.
"It's a potion that temporarily turns you into someone else," Leo rolled his eyes before noticing everyone staring at him. "Draco makes me pay attention and take notes. It's very annoying."
"Right... anyway, we could change into four of the Slytherins. No one would know it was us. Zabini would probably tell us anything. He's probably boasting about it in the Slytherin common room right now, if only we could hear him," Hermione stated.
"That does sound like Linguini," Leo sighed.
"This Polyjuice stuff sounds a bit dodgy to me," said Ron, frowning. "What if we were stuck looking like four of the Slytherins forever?"
"As Leo said, it wears off after a while," said Hermione, waving her hand impatiently. "But getting hold of the recipe will be very difficult. Snape said it was in a book called Moste Potente Potions and it's bound to be in the Restricted Section of the library."
There was only one way to get out a book from the Restricted Section: You needed a signed note of permission from a teacher.
"Hard to see why we'd want the book, really," said Ron, "if we weren't going to try and make one of the potions."
"I think," said Hermione, "that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance...
"Oh, come on, no teacher's going to fall for that," said Ron. "They'd have to be really thick..."
"Or a coward susceptible to blackmail and threats," Leo grinned evilly.
The other three seemed perturbed by this.