I neither own nor profit from the world of Harry Potter.
AN - I have noted a few inconsistencies in early chapters. I do want to go back and edit, but for now I'm more interested in continuing to write, although I'm aware that since I haven't finished this there are likely to be more errors appearing. Apologies - hopefully I'll return and fully edit after I'm done! For those wanting some information re where this is going : it's not very near the end at the moment, though I do have an idea of how it's going to play out. And I'm not committing to a posting schedule. Life is too hectic. Sorry!
When Severus arrived at the high table for breakfast, he found himself waved over to talk to Alastor, Minerva, and the wolf.
"Severus." Alastor grunted. "I've got a lead on that bit of corridor."
"Indeed?" Despite himself, Severus was impressed. He'd returned to the wall himself and, though he'd stared at it, even going so far as to offer the stones his blood, nothing had materialised. He helped himself to eggs.
"Can't take all the credit." The auror said. "Potter and his little friends took off last night during the feast-"
"Yes Minerva, quite a display from your favourite-"
"Severus! Can you blame Harry for being upset? Everyone was staring at him, again, because of that bloody paper!"
"Oh I'm sure Potter is used to the-"
Alastor banged down on the table with his fist, and two small Ravenclaws jumped. Severus hastily erected a privacy ward.
"As I was saying." He growled. "Potter and his friends took off and failed to notice me following them. They entered the room, and I think we should be able to replicate it."
Severus nodded stiffly. He'd had plans for today. Poppy still wanted his potions in the infirmary, he needed to arrange catch up meetings with certain students, the first years would need introductory meetings... But he supposed none of that was anyone else's priority.
"Minerva have you spoken to Harry yet?"
"Not yet Remus." She glanced at Alastor. "I thought I might speak with him today, once we've had a look at this corridor with Alastor. I hoped you might join me?"
He nodded. "Of course. I haven't seen Harry since-" he broke off. "I haven't even written to him this summer... Albus sent me underground, and there wouldn't be anything of substance that it would be safe to say..."
Severus tuned them out in disgust. However much he defeated the Marauders, even Severus could recognise that Potter had idolised his father's friends. Did Lupin really think that Potter hadn't needed the support of one after the other was murdered in front of him? Potter would surely forgive him though, and far too quickly.
He read the Prophet for the remainder of his meal. Nothing particularly dramatic had happened overnight. Rita Skeeter's scathing commentary on the clothing choices on show at Platform 9 3/4 was juxtaposed with a short paragraph noting a fourfold increase in reported muggle-baiting over the last six months, and an auror had been admitted to St Mungo's after an obliviation. He duplicated that article with his wand and tucked it into his pocket book.
"I don't see why you need all of us." He said to Alastor. "I daresay Minerva and Lupin will be sufficiently competent to watch you attempt to penetrate a wall."
"Severus we'd all appreciate your expertise." Said Lupin quietly. "From what Alastor says that room could be dangerous."
"It's at least somewhat sentient." Alastor grunted. The four of them left the table, and Severus cast a silent muffliato as they walked. Lupin gave him a sharp look, but Minerva was used to it, and encouraged Alastor to continue. "Potter asked it to provide something for him and it did."
"In exchange for what?" Minerva's tone was incredulous. "Surely Miss Granger wouldn't-"
"Yes, she would." said Lupin. "Hermione is intelligent and logical, and in many ways a brilliant student, but none of them are well versed in old magic. Even I only know a fraction of the knowledge Sirius inherited from his family. Hermione, for all her magical prowess, still thinks with the logic of a Muggle."
Alastor huffed, his false leg rhythmic as they climbed. "You'd better improve this Defence course Snape, and you Lupin, else Merlin help us."
"You said it was sentient."
"It provided for Potter, but there's something else too, something shielded by the magic. It's dark, Snape, darker than anything I've ever seen." Moody stopped by the tapestry of the trolls. "I checked again this morning. I don't know if it's the room itself, but there's something corrupted here."
Lupin moved forward and placed a hand against the stones. Everybody was silent for a moment.
"He's right." The werewolf looked unusually grave.
"How can you tell?" Severus spat.
"I can feel it, Severus. Or at least the wolf can." He looked rather ashamed. "He's inside me all the time, you know. Some of his instincts bleed through, if I let them - and werewolves are fundamentally dark creatures. His - my - hackles are raised, as it were." His hand balled itself on the wall. "There's something inside there that isn't right, Alastor. It's got me on edge. Thinking about it, we might not have looked too closely when making the map at school for that reason. I never did like this corridor."
Severus grimaced in disgust. The wolf was a part of him at all times? And Dumbledore chose to let him teach at a school? Lupin seemed to sense what he was thinking.
"Most of the time I simply have rather enhanced senses and good instincts. I would only become more dangerous if I let myself become something like Greyback."
There was no mistaking the horror on Lupin's face.
Minerva gave him a strained smile. "I don't doubt that the abilities can be useful Remus. Though I must admit that I am rather glad that it was this Potter who discovered this particular room!" She approached the wall. "How did Harry request entrance?"
Alastor gestured. "He walked thrice before the door, and asked it out loud for what he was looking for. A door materialised, and disappeared once the children were inside."
"Pacing and requesting entrance..." Severus mused. "That seems benign at least. I can think of very few methods of selling one's soul to the proverbial devil that involve quite so little."
Minerva approached the wall and laid both palms flat against the stones. "I, Professor McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, request entrance." The wall remained stubbornly bare. She sighed. "The old fashioned way then, I suppose. Standing back, she paced in front of the door. "We want to enter the room. We want to enter the room. We want to enter the room."
In front of Severus, an innocuous wooden door appeared. He checked for traps or hexes, and saw Alastor doing the same, but found nothing.
Minerva pushed the door open cautiously, and then wider.
"It's empty." She said. Her voice echoed slightly, and the others followed her in. "There's nothing here, nothing at all..." Severus saw that she was right. It was an empty room, large and entirely nondescript. The floor was flagstones, as in the rest of the castle, and the walls a broad expanse of white.
"I overheard the twins talking about where they practised defence." Said Lupin. "I don't think it was this room, they said it was always full of useful books and cushions and-"
He stopped, and Severus saw why. Just beside the door sat a bookshelf lined with standard basic Defence volumes.
"That wasn't there before." He said quietly, though he couldn't be certain that he'd looked directly at that spot before. Lupin shook his head more decisively.
"I think we should be more specific about what we ask for." He said. They exited the room in silence, and this time the wolf paced.
"We want to see the things you're hiding. We want to see the things you're hiding. We want to see the things you're hiding."
The same door materialised, and this time Lupin was the first through.
"Oh my-" They all pushed in behind him, and stared in shock. They seemed to have found their way into an enormous warehouse, stacked with precarious piles of junk and contraband.
"You couldn't have been more specific?" Severus sneered, but even he was in awe. On the shelf beside him he could see what looked like the skin of a basilisk, a mummified cat, and an assortment of rather outdated pornographic muggle magazines. Minerva and Alastor were silent.
"We still don't know what the room wants." Lupin's voice was a little nervous.
Minerva snorted. "It isn't obvious?" The men looked at her in confusion. She smiled. "The doorway, both in this room and the last, they had runes around the entrance. She pointed them out, and it took Severus a moment to connect the lines into familiar symbols, they were so worn. Minerva took out her wand and started chanting, wand meandering along the walls, and flashes of more runes, more complicated than anything Severus had ever seen, started to appear. "It must be her life's work."
"Whose?" Moody asked.
"Rowena Ravenclaw." she said. "I recognise the handwriting. My undergraduate dissertation, you know." She sounded a little wistful. "I imagine that the room collects and accumulates, and tries to communicate, knowledge." Her fingers traced the spine of a book, and it curled into her hand.
"Can you read it?" Asked Lupin. Severus recalled that the boy had been in Runes with him, and had probably been better at them than Severus. Clearly neither were as good as Minerva though. She took a broomstick from the shelf and, after casting a couple of diagnostic charms on it, hovered above the doorway, her wand still illuminating patches of runes.
"Nowhere near all of it." She said. "This is incredibly complex, and warded to be largely incomprehensible and all but indestructible." The light of her wand focused around the doorway. "This part however... it's a welcome. The room invites us inside, asking only knowledge in return - knowledge to grow the room." Her voice trailed off.
"What kind of knowledge are we talking, lass?"
She glared at Alastor and he rolled her eyes. "Minerva."
"The room looks at what we want through our requesting entrance and our use of the room." She said slowly. Her hand pressed the stone. "And it must use everything accumulated in here - all the things hidden here - to provide for the next user. The room actually learns."
Severus tried not to show his trepidation - or his admiration. That the room knew so much about the human psyche... at least it wasn't Salazar Slytherin who had created it. He supposed that he should be glad that an intellect such as Rowena's hadn't been quite so geared toward ambition or power.
Minerva suddenly dipped, more brooms in hand. She pushed a Nimbus '98 toward Severus, and then rose, starting down the central pathway.
"Let's get started then."
Four hours later they had made minimal progress. Lupin and Alastor were somewhere to the left of Severus and Minerva. Alastor had refused to use a broomstick and the thunk of his wooden leg echoed oddly in the cavernous room.
They'd passed so many unusual items that Severus had stopped being surprised. A number of framed portraits were piled, canvas face down, on the shelf near him, beneath a cloudy crystal ball. To his right was a wardrobe that they'd found to be full of fur coats and - unexpectedly - a dusting of snowflakes. He'd pushed that door shut with a shiver. Probably a mislaid or tampered with vanishing device. Near the shelf before had been a large mirror in which he'd sworn he'd seen a flash of red hair out of the corner of his eye.
Minerva had just offered Severus his fourth biscuit - "No, thank you Minerva but I wouldn't want to spoil my appetite for lunch" - and the pair of them were examining a collection of keys at wandpoint when there was a shout. The keys dropped to the floor and started scuttling away as Minerva and Severus moved toward the noise. The tranfiguration professor levitated two more books from shelves as they passed, and Severus grabbed a skein of unicorn hair as they rounded the last shelf.
Before them, Remus and Alastor stood, wands out as they stared at a bust of an old warlock.
"The lost diadem of Ravenclaw." Minerva breathed, and Severus saw that she was looking at a small tiara, tarnished with age. Could it really be the diadem? Severus supposed that this was Rowena Ravenclaw's room. Where else would it be? The diadem looked so small but, so innocuous, and Severus felt a flash of contempt for Minerva's admiration for the room. Why keep all wisdom in one immovable fixed location, and at the discretion of an object rather than a human mind? This diadem was surely far more useful, far more-"
"Stop." Lupin was suddenly in front of him, his arms outstretched before Severus and Minerva. Severus' lip curled.
"Move, wolf."
"There's something not right." There was an edge to Lupin's voice that made Severus pause, and he suddenly realised how close he was to the diadem. Only Lupin stood between them, and the other wizard's body was vibrating slightly. Severus took a cautious step back.
"It isn't the full moon today." He said warily.
"The wolf can sense something." Lupin said. "It's like your mark or Harry's scar... Dark magic leaves traces."
"You can sense Potter's scar?"
The wolf looked miserable. "Voldemort attacked us personally once, you know." Severus had known. Lily had been there. "All of us. We were nineteen and trying to protect Lily's parents, and he wanted to recruit us. Her's dad stepped in front of a curse meant for her, possibly even by accident, but everyone else was unhurt except me." He looked away. "Voldemort crucioed me, and and I think the wolf recognises his magic now... he knows that that magic hurt us. So if he's pretty attuned to dark magic, he's very attuned to Voldemort, and Greyback too. Magic always leaves a trace."
It was a depressing story. Lily's father had been a kind man, and his heart ached unwillingly. It had however successfully cleared Severus' mind of the diadem's draw. Minerva too was stood back, looking slightly ashamed.
"I can't sense more than danger." Remus said apologetically. Alastor stepped forward, and started to mutter incantations. After a moment Severus joined in.
"He's right." Said Alastor. "It's not clean, not..." His voice trailed off, and he repeated his last incantation.
Severus lowered his wand, cheeks very pale, and met the auror's gaze.
"We should take it to Albus." Said Alastor. "He might know..."
"What is it?" Asked Minerva.
Severus didn't know what to say. The readings he'd got off it had been disturbing. He didn't know exactly how to interpret them, but he didn't want to touch the diadem anymore.
"It's Voldemort." He said. "Or... Something like him. We need to show Dumbledore, or even a trusted unspeakable."
Minerva nodded. "Okay. Is it safe to touch?"
Severus shook. "I can't find any curse, as such, but this the object itself clearly experts a draw, and I personally don't want to allow even indirect contact between myself and that thing." He turned away slightly. Even now he could feel the lure of centuries of wisdom.
Minerva and Alastor worked together for a moment, the witch transfiguring a small box on the shelf beside her into a more substantial container. He watched her asses her surroundings before transforming a variety of the objects around her back to their base constituents and lining the box with a number of metals, carving containment runes into each layer. Alastor added his own spells to it, before levitating the diadem into the box and securely locking it.
Lupin's shoulders seemed to relax as soon as the lid closed, and even Severus realised a slightly loss of tension.
"I suggest we go to Albus immediately." Severus said. "For one-" but he was cut off. The shelf closest to Minerva let out and ominous creak, and that was the only warning any of them had before the shelving exploded.
Severus was blasted backward, and hastily cast a cushioning bubble around himself. It wasn't particularly effective. His arm hit something hard and he gasped with pain. There was a lull in which he grabbed his broom and rose quickly through the dust. Then another small explosion rocked below, Minerva and Alastor shot up on a bucking flying carpet, and Severus had to close his eyes, clutching the handle of his broom for dear life.
"Where's Remus?" Asked Minerva. Severus looked around and felt dawning horror as he realised that the wolf had not emerged. There was no sign of movement below them.
"Homenum revelio!" gasped Minerva.
They waited for a moment.
"No, no!" Minerva sounded anguished. "Remus!" She leaned down and the carpet jerked alarmingly, Alastor grabbing her cloak as she slid a few inches.
"He's not human, you fool!" Snapped Severus. "That spell won't work, and we don't have anything to detect for wolves. They're very resistant to a lot of magic."
Minerva stilled, then drew herself up, face calming. "Don't you dare call me a fool ever again, Master Snape." Her tone was icy, but Severus could detect the relief beneath the surface.
"I apologise." Said Severus stiffly.
"Noted." Said Minerva. She was still scanning the settling mayhem below them. It was starting to settle. At her command, the carpet began to drift downward.
"Stop." Said Severus curtly.
"Severus we all know you don't like him but-"
"If you go poking around right now we'll probably just hurt him further." he said. She stilled. "We can watch and look and shout, but realistically we're going to need more help."
When they emerged from the room, the normality of the corridor was a shock. It was a Saturday, and the students were taking advantage of the good weather to celebrate being reunited with their friends. Shouts of laughter rose through open windows and the dust that surrounded the three adults shimmered slightly in the bright sunlight. Severus glared at a small child, probably a first year, who had seen them emerge. She stood with her mouth open in shock as the door disappeared. Meeting his narrowed eyes, she turned white and fled.
"Stop scaring the children!" McGonagall admonished him. "Come on."
They almost ran down the corridor toward the headmaster's office, the carpet floating behind them and causing suits of armour to rattle as it brushed their visors.
"Aren't they illegal professor?" Lavender Brown was staring at it in awe. "I thought they were banned in the '70s?"
"Five points from Gryffindor, Miss Brown, for an unadmirable impression of Professor Binns." He pretended to ignore Miss Patil's snort of laughter as well as Minerva's admonishments.
"You mustn't take your temper out on the students Severus! That will be ten points to Gryffindor Miss Brown, for practical knowledge. We're all worried about Remus but-"
He broke "I am not worried about-!"
"You needn't like him to not want him dead, Severus." She said quietly. "And I hope you'd realise by now that, while he has his flaws, they are by as large neither as malicious nor as numerous as you pretend." He tried to speak but she cut him off. "And even if none of that were true, some of us are worried."
He shut up.
The office was empty when they entered, though Professor Dippet slipped out of his frame as they entered, and it was only a short wait until Albus sat before them, listening to Alastor's succinct retelling with an increasingly grave visage.
"May I see the diadem?" He asked.
"Remus is missing!"
"Oh fuck."
Minerva and Alastor spoke at the same time, but attention focused on Alastor, much to Minerva's displeasure.
"I don't have it." He said. "Lost it in the explosion, and then we were concerned with Remus-"
"The box can't be summoned." said Minerva in horror. "I put every protection-"
Dumbledore stood up. "I think we have dallied long enough." He looked at them gravely. "I need to stress how important it is that you keep what you found in that room to yourselves." For a moment Severus thought the headmaster's hand was about to grab his wand, and he wandered if he was about to be obliviated. "If Voldemort gets wind of this..." He trailed off, and Severus' apprehension deepened. What exactly had they found?
Albus looked directly at Minerva. "You will be in charge of the school as Alastor and I endeavour to find Mister Lupin and the diadem." He glanced at the sword hanging above the fireplace, then back toward Severus. "Severus, if you could take over Head of Gryffindor until Remus is recovered."
Severus sighed. He already had his own Head duties, and was hours behind.
"You think the two of you will suffice?" He sneered, thinking of the size of the room. "We wouldn't want Lupin to expire from starvation while he's trapped."
Albus' eyes twinkled slightly. "It won't just be the two of us, but I'll pass on your concern my boy!"
Severus almost snarled, and Minerva moved to question Albus further.
"Send a patronus if you need me for anything particularly urgent." he snapped, and left the office.
It was the next morning before Severus was to learn anything more about the repercussions of their excursion into the room of secrets. A house elf had popped in as he prepared for bed to deliver a note that said only that Lupin was in the hospital wing and that they would convene there for breakfast the next morning.
Severus had been too tired to enquire of the headmaster further. It had been a long day. His own students had occupied his afternoon, and then the Gryffindors, in high spirits and typically bratty at the sight of the potions master, had resisted all attempts at a curfew.
"Professor McGonagall never-"
"I do not care." He said finally, voice almost a whisper in the now silent common room. "I do not care whether you stayed up all night every night last year." Sullen faces looked up at him. "You are teenagers who require sleep, and I am an adult who also requires sleep. Therefore we will all use the night to sleep, mister Creevey, rather than to explore Miss Robbins' waist, or whatever it is your hand is now doing."
The boy flushed furiously and the girl glared at him. He felt a rush of vindictive power. There was silence.
"Bed."
This time, at last, they obeyed.
He waited a moment, looking around the common room. He'd been here infrequently of late. It held bitter memories for him. There had been a few years, a few glorious years, when he and Lily had been more or less carefree. He'd visited her here (carefree did not included the Slytherin common room) and they'd sat in the window seat with Marline and Regulus and watched the Thestrals.
He idly pointed his wand at each seat in turn, charming them to be uncomfortable before he left.
Now, as he walked briskly toward the hospital wing, several older Gryffindors glared at him, though he assumed that they were merely angry at the bedtime and had yet to realise his tampering. Well, they could consider it homework.
Albus locked the door as it closed behind him, Poppy looking disgruntled from her office.
Lupin was sat up in bed looking rather grey, though otherwise not visibly injured.
"Where are Minerva and Alastor?" Severus' voice was acerbic. He didn't particularly want to wait.
"Ah." Dumbledore sat down in a conjured armchair and motioned for Severus to do the same. "I think it best that we keep this between us." He said. "This is quite sensitive information."
Severus frowned, but kept silent. With a tap of Albus' wand, a tray of food appeared before each of them, and the older man took a sip of pumpkin juice before he began to speak.
"Firstly, to mister Lupin." He inclined his head to the werewolf, who was at that moment eating a crumpet. Lupin raised a single eyebrow. "I have been informed by Madame Pomfrey that you will require a day of sleep but should be well enough to start classes tomorrow. I should like both of you to attend the first Defence classes of the term - show a united front - and then you can work out how to divide the work." Severus winced at the idea of showing respect to the werewolf in front of a class, but he couldn't deny that the children were unlikely to learn to defend themselves adequately with only his time available.
"What exactly detained him?" He sneered. "I would prefer the children not to arrive several hours late to class."
Albus gave him a faintly disapproving look. "Remus was trapped, Severus, under some quite sensitive enchanted objects and quite close to the diadem, freed from its box in the chaos, that you located yesterday. If Remus' strength, reduced though it was by his proximity to this object, had not allowed him to hold his position without allowing an erumpant horn to explode beside him whilst the Hogwarts elves and I cleared the room, he would likely be dead."
Severus kept his face blank as he considered this, though his own shoulders wanted to roll back in sympathy. It sounded as though he'd kept the tension up with his werewolf strength alone.
"The diadem weakened his magic?"
"Indeed." Albus' voice was grave. He leaned forward, pushing his food to one side, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "I expect that you are both wondering exactly why the diadem is so important."
The story of Tom Riddle's rise to power had been objectively fascinating - and horrifying, Severus thought. That Voldemort had made himself a single Horcrux was bad enough, but the idea of seven made his stomach roil.
"I don't agree." Said Lupin quietly.
"With what, my boy?" Albus' voice sounded surprised.
"Alastor and Minerva at a minimum should know about this." Remus said quietly. "There are others, too, but particularly them."
It took Severus a moment to realise what Remus was getting at, and to his surprise he found that he agreed.
"At the risk of repeating our conversation the other day, Headmaster, I must remind you that you did agree to share your information."
For a moment he felt rather than saw a flare of magic from Albus, and Severus' fingers closed around his wand.
"My occlumency will resist any memory charm." He said quietly. "You would break my mind."
"My mind is protected too." put in Lupin. "The wolf guards it - one of the benefits of lycanthropy."
Severus had not known that, and almost turned to ask the wolf more about it. The tension in Albus stopped him.
"We are trustworthy." He ground out. "Alastor is one of your oldest allies. Minerva too. And you still have several of these heinous objects to disable. Why not tell those who might assist us in identifying them, or at the very least guard the school from them?"
"I'm also concerned." Lupin was calmer. "Your strategy - forgive me headmaster - has not worked particularly well so far. Voldemort was without a body for, what, thirteen years, and the only horcrux that was destroyed was by chance." He grimaced. "Voldemort's soul was in the school in first year, lured by yourself. Harry faced it. A horcrux possessed an eleven year old the following year. A third has been sheltered by the school the entire time." He rubbed a hand over his face. "You do us, and particularly Harry, a disservice Albus, by not letting us weaken Voldemort more quickly."
Albus' eyes had dimmed. "I don't want Tom finding out."
"We can keep it quiet." Lupin was persuasive. "But Minerva and Alastor deserve to know at the very least. I would suggest that Bill Weasley might be another." Severus sneered slightly. "Severus I suggest you speak with him. He's a curse breaker, and very skilled. I imagine he'd be very helpful."
Lupin's voice had begun to fade and this seemed to bring Albus down slightly.
"Rest, my boy." He murmured. He fussed for a moment with the covers before looking at Severus. "You are both right." He said quietly. "I have endangered us long enough." Some of the tension in Severus' shoulders disappeared, though not a lot. "I will convene a meeting as quickly as possible, though I fear you will be asleep mister Lupin." The wolf nodded, glancing at Madame Pomfrey's office, where the mediwitch was visible, arms crossed and a tray of potions vials levitated beside her. Severus had rarely seen her look so disgruntled.
"I expect to see you up for class tomorrow Lupin." He said by way of farewell. "I had hoped that you would have time to familiarise yourself with my lesson plans this weekend, but such competence is not to be."
It was, he thought, a troubling sign that he was not particularly incensed by the eye roll that the marauder sent his way.