Hello again.

*dodges thrown bottles, rotten fruit, and various other objects*

So a lot of you dislike the fact that Ginny is no longer among the living. In hindsight, that was probably obviously going to happen. The whole thing's entirely Llhurgoyf's fault, for putting the entire plot idea in my head. I had the whole chapter planned out and he had to go and give me the idea of-well, you'll see shortly. All I can promise is that this story just got like 20 potential chapters longer.

Happy New Year, and

ON WITH THE STORY

RECAP

Ed interacts with some students. Fermier engages in gleeful destruction of property. The Unspeakables plus Lockhart fight a Basilisk, and the Basilisk loses. Explosions are to be had all around, more property is destroyed. The Basilisk dies, Lockhart does something incredibly stupid then dies, and Ginny was dead the whole time.

John returned to consciousness slowly. The first thing he noticed was the lack of throbbing pain in his ribs and skull. The second thing he noticed was the Homunculus perched on a chair directly across from him, staring directly into his eyes.

"Holyshitohgodohgod-"

John lunged backwards off the bed in a mad scramble to get away from his sworn nemesis, got tangled in the hospital sheets, and ended up slamming into the tiled floor.

Elric peeked over the edge of his bed, staring down in bemusement at his groaning form.

"You know, the medics said they fixed everything, but you don't look like you're doing too good. Should I go ask Fermier to check you out?"

John's brain accelerated back to full awareness and the dizziness from his fall disappeared at the suggestion.

"No, no Fermier, I think I'm good, you just startled me."

"Good, cause even though he woke up yesterday, I'm not too sure that he still isn't suffering from some brain damage."

It was telling how unconcerned John felt at that prospect. Of what exactly, he couldn't say.

"And how long were you out?"

The monster in front of him quirked an eyebrow.

"I never went 'out'. I don't need sleep, much less medical comas to heal from silly little things like massive internal trauma. I'm the one who had carry you both when you two collapsed halfway out of the castle."

He didn't know if it made him feel better or worse, that he owed his continued safety to Elric. Weighing the options carefully in his head, John decided to simply forget the whole ordeal and move on.

"So, I hope that you're feeling up to writing, because Fermier and I voted and you're doing the mission report."

John frowned. Maybe his head wasn't quite fixed yet, because he was having a hard time working that one out.

"Give me a second here. You," he waved a hand at the Homunculus, who was still perched on his hospital bed, "Were fully conscious and healed the moment we arrived back at the Department, and Fermier," he waved a hand in what he thought was the general direction of the Research Department, "was awake since yesterday."

Elric nodded slowly.

"And neither of you," he said, enunciating very carefully, "bothered to write the report, opting to wait for me to wake up from a medical coma so I could write it instead."

Elric nodded, looking for all the world like there was absolutely nothing wrong with what he'd just said.

John felt like crying.

"Why?"

"Well, Croaker banned me from ever writing reports ever again after the whole Russian incident and so Fermier said that the only fair way to decide whether it was him or you to write the report was to vote on it. Shouldn't be hard. All you have to write is 'We went there, we killed a Basilisk, minor collateral in the form of a Professor. Mission success.' Easy."

The door slammed open.

"Putting aside that you have once again proven the reason why Croaker banned you from 'ever writing reports ever again' Elric, you're missing the part where you three clowns utterly failed to accomplish the actual point of your mission."

Oh. There was somebody in the doorway. They sounded pissed.

The medic—he assumed, John didn't know many other people who hung out around the Department's medical wing besides Elric apparently—started tapping his foot.

"Croaker wants you two to meet with Fermier in his office. Now."

"Let me get this straight." Croaker steepled his fingers in front of his shrouded face. Though his expression was hidden from view, his voice held a tone of barely restrained frustration.

"You three managed to successfully infiltrate Hogwarts. You spent a week and a half investigating the student and professor body, but only managed to locate the perpetrator of the attacks as one was happening."

Fermier nodded, Elric and Doe shifting behind him uncomfortably.

"Unspeakable Operative John Doe brought Professor Lockhart down into the Chamber with you in order to keep him for questioning about Operative Carter's sudden case of memory loss, but failed to restrain him beyond a basic Body-Bind."

Doe looked like he wanted to say something, then thought better of it. Smart man.

"You then proceeded to enter into direct combat with a one-thousand-year-old Basilisk, which succeeded in putting Doe on medical leave for the next week and gave all three of you enough injuries that two of you had to spend two days in the med bay before you were deemed fit to report to me."

Fermier nodded again, looking proud.

"And let me say, the railgun performed exactly to specifications. I didn't get much time to study the specific impact damage, but it seems that-"

"AND THEN," Croaker interrupted, "After successfully killing one of the oldest and most dangerous beasts left in the country, you turned around and killed Professor Lockhart, without interrogation."

Doe had the decency to look guilty about that, at least.

"And to top it all off, you all somehow managed to forget to investigate the rest of the Chamber, which means that we have no clue whatsoever of how Ginevra Weasley died, much less of the true nature behind whatever was causing these attacks, which, might I add, was the whole point of your mission in the first place."

Fermier looked extremely embarrassed. As well he should be.

"Well." Croaker placed his hands flat on his desk and regarded the three Unspeakables in front of him.

"I just want to let you know that you three have fucked up in the second most colossal manner possible. You failed to achieve the primary purpose of the mission, as well as your secondary mission. The only thing you got right in this entire clusterfuck of a failure is that you managed to kill the Basilisk without blowing your covers, and even then I've received some extremely unsubtle inquiries from both Dumbledore and the Hogsmeade Aurors. Congratulations."

Fermier cleared his throat.

"To be fair, sir, I was suffering from some major concussive head trauma and Doe had lost a great deal of blood to internal bleeding, and Elric can't really be expected to remember what he's supposed to do beyond 'go there and kill that'-"

"Hey!"

"-So really it isn't so surprising that we didn't manage much after slaying the Basilisk. We were exhausted and injured, and Dumbledore was on his way back to the school. We needed to leave, and I would argue that managing to get out before Dumbledore located and identified us was more important than discovering the person behind the attacks."

Croaker sighed.

"Just go," he said, waving a hand tiredly. "We can talk about what to do from here later, but I read your medical charts, and you're right about priorities. This was a disaster, but it could have been worse. Just…go back to your lab, and blow something up."

"Is that permission?"

"Do not. Test. My. Patience."

The three filed out, and Nicolas Flamel stood from where he had been sitting in the corner of the office.

"The lack of leads is concerning."

The Head of the Department of Mysteries rested his head on one hand.

"There is the one. As soon as we manage to grab that diary from Evidence we should be able to prove what it was—or, hopefully, wasn't—fairly quickly. Her whole family agreed that it wasn't hers, so to be holding it down in the Chamber means that it was a link to the attacker."

The alchemist nodded slowly.

"This is the second incident of this magnitude to occur in two years. Last year with that debacle about my Stone, and now this…"

Croaker nodded.

"I'm concerned about the frequency as well. Once is a coincidence, twice is a line. Three times is a pattern."

"So what do you plan on doing about it?"

Croaker narrowed his eyes, pulling out several incident reports.

"For now? We do what we always do. Stay in the dark. Ask questions. And most importantly," he opened the rather large profile on T. Riddle, "We find the common thread, and follow it to the source."

Albus Dumbledore collapsed into his office chair, feeling very old. He had, in the span of a single month, been evicted from his post on the flimsiest of excuses, lost a student, lost a Professor, and had at least one unknown party venture into his school while he was powerless to stop them. He was no further into discovering who the mysterious infiltrators were—though he had his guesses—and his attempts to look further into anything that had happened while he was gone were blocked by a rather rude group of Auror investigators. Never mind the fact that thanks to a certain somebody he hadn't even been in the castle, the great Albus Dumbledore must know everything. They had refused to believe that he was as clueless as they were, and it was days like these he regretted the whole 'omniscient grandfather' act. How did anybody believe he kept track of every…single…detail…

And then, dragged from the depths of his memory, the book he had handed over to the Aurors for examination flashed before his vision. It had reeked of Dark Magic, even though every diagnostic revealed no spells except for the rapidly decaying remains of some kind of powerful binding. All in all, a plain, unordinary diary, exceptional in that it was the only possession Miss Weasley had, including her wand.

A plain, unordinary diary which had the name T. M. Riddle written inside the front cover.

Oh dear.

It was time to contact some colleagues again.

Dive. Roll. Sidestep. Clap, slam, deconstruct. The massive snake in front of Ed roared in agony as its organs liquefied, its bone powdered and its skin blistered and burst. The illusionary simulation dissipated as it died, leaving the alchemist alone in the simulation room.

"You know, those training simulations aren't much good for actual combat practice. More to desensitize the newbies to the big bad monsters."

Fermier walked into the room, hands casually shoved in robe pockets. He rolled his eyes.

"I know that. The Basilisk didn't roar, for one."

"So why do you keep fighting it? You're not likely to meet another one that old."

"Because it's therapeutic to kill it over and over again and pretend like we didn't just fail."

"I prefer not to think of it as fail so much as succeed creatively. We killed a one-thousand-year-old snake. And so maybe we didn't find out what woke it up. I hear that Croaker already had a very good hunch he'll be confirming this afternoon."

Ed frowned.

"I thought the whole reason why Croaker was angry was because we let a little girl die."

Inside his mind, Pride snorted.

"Even you, Mr. Traumatized-by-Nina, can't bring yourself to care about that. Why should the soulless head of an espionage agency?"

'I do care-'

"No, you're upset because you personally failed at something, which rather negatively impacts your ego. I basically AM your ego, and I recognize that, so you're hip-deep in denial there. You haven't been emotionally crippled by empathy for your fellow man for years now. You're welcome for that, by the way."

'I'm fairly certain this is one of those things I shouldn't thank you for.'

Fermier rolled his eyes at his subordinate's obvious inner crisis, getting close enough to put a hand on the alchemist's shoulder.

"Listen. Elric. We were three Unspeakables going up against an incredibly old and powerful Basilisk, with minimal time to prepare or plan. Something was bound to happen, and we're lucky to have gotten out in one piece ourselves. If you want to make sure something like this never happens again, there's a few improvements I wouldn't mind trying out on your arm."

Ed stared at his boss for a long while. He opened his mouth, thought for a bit, closed it again, then spoke.

"Did…were you actually a sincere, empathetic human being just now, or is this a ploy to get me in for more testing?"

Instead of responding, Fermier grabbed Ed's arm and started dragging him out of the room.

"Quiet. We've got science to do, and some improvements to make. I have a few other things that I think you'd enjoy killing things with, if you don't mind being the guinea pig. Not to mention that the project you asked me about after that mission with Doe is nearly finished…"

Albus Dumbledore looked out over the closest members of the Order of the Phoenix. These were the ones he trusted the most, the ones who he could tell nearly anything. And once again, he had called upon their aid.

"My friends, I regret to inform you that I have discovered a probable cause for Miss Weasley's untimely demise."

Startled murmurs echoed through the room. Moody was the first to speak up.

"And what would that be, Albus?"

Dumbledore folded his hands in his lap.

"The only thing found in Miss Weasley's possession at the scene of her death was a book. This is important because I have very good cause to believe that this book had been, at one time, a personal possession of Voldemort."

Shocked gasps. Moody rolled his eyes. Well, the one that wasn't always rolling rolled.

The Headmaster cleared his throat.

"As some of you know, I have spent much time researching Voldemort's forays into the realms of immortality. At first I had thought he was unsuccessful, though his reappearance last year proves without a doubt that something he has done has worked. I fear the worst, my friends. I fear that Voldemort has created a Horcrux."

Mostly blank gazes. Moody and a few of the older ex-Aurors swore, and a witch sitting in the corner went very pale.

"So what you mean to tell us is that the littlest Weasley got her hands on a Horcrux somehow, and then it killed her?"

Dumbledore nodded gravely.

"Indeed. It also would explain the attacks by the so-called 'Heir of Slytherin'. I am not sure of the full extents of a Horcrux's abilities, but if it truly is a part of Voldemort's soul then I find no reason to believe it could not have possessed Ginevra, and wound up killing her."

Kingsley Shacklebolt, sitting near the back of the room, spoke above the sudden chatter that erupted.

"Problem with that theory, Headmaster. All the tests Forensics ran on the diary gave no results. No spellwork on that thing at all, not even a preservation charm, much less a fragment of a Dark Lord's soul."

Dumbledore's lips thinned as he resigned himself to breaking the news.

"Yes. That would be because of the second piece of bad news I have for you all. The diary no longer contains a soul because it has freed itself."

Croaker looked up as a robed and hooded figure entered his office.

'Entered' was putting it mildly. The Unspeakable in front of him had burst through his office door, completely ruining the ambience of a calm, collected workspace where things got done with minimal panic or fuss. He decided to deal with this disturbance quickly, before it could spread.

"You're assigned to the Order of the Phoenix, correct?"

The Unspeakable nodded.

"Another meeting was called. Dumbledore thinks he knows how the Weasley girl died, and you're not going to like it."

Croaker gestured for his subordinate to continue.

"He thinks the diary was a Horcrux."

"We suspected as much. What else?"

"He thinks the Horcrux...escaped."

With impeccable calm, Head Unspeakable Croaker nodded once, then dismissed the man in front of him. As he left, Croaker began quietly packing away various papers, writing instruments, and reports safely into the bottomless subspace-drawers of his desk. As the door closed quietly and he was left alone in the office, he stood up slowly, pushing back his chair and gripping the edges of the desk. He activated the communication charms built into his hood.

"Heads of Departments, Flamel, please report up here at the earliest convenience. We may have a bit of a situation on our hands."

And then he flipped the desk.

Lucius Malfoy regarded his morning newspaper with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the daughter of a prominent blood-traitor family had been killed. On the other hand, she had not been killed in such a way that incriminated her for the reign of terror the Heir had held over the past school year. On the other other hand, the death of his young daughter had shattered Arthur Weasley's will to push through the Muggle Rights Act, so the political victory remained. But as if to spoil his victory, the thousand-year-old Basilisk had been brutally slaughtered by Gilderoy Lockhart, accompanied by a group of Aurors whose identities remained unknown. That was the most concerning, because he had no clue whether the DMLE had traced the diary back to himself, though it would be nigh impossible to prove anything concrete.

It had been, he decided, a partial victory. One he might want to be careful about taking credit for until he saw his master's reaction to the Basilisk's death, and the diary's destruction. He froze in place as he turned that last thought over in his head again.

No, he most certainly would not be telling his master about this particular scheme.

This mix of pride and stark terror was still running circles in his head when he felt the wards pulse as something powerful was acknowledged and allowed to enter. He frowned. He didn't recall any scheduled appointments with anybody strong enough to cause that sort of reaction.

"We meet again, Lucius."

Lord Malfoy spun around to face the intruder, wand drawn and heart racing. There had been no warning from the house elves, not even a twitch from his proximity alerts. Then he caught sight of his guest and his blood ran cold. The figure in front of him might have been a foot or two too short. He might have been dressed in Hogwarts robes, with a face decades too young. But Lucius Malfoy recognized the speaker immediately.

"I must thank you for your services in obtaining me this new body. It's quite refreshing to be out of the diary again."

Tom Marvolo Riddle, the boy who would be Voldemort, took a moment to carefully examine himself, as if he wasn't quite used to the novelty of physically existing yet.

"First, though, I think I need some more suitable robes."

It's kind of amusing. With the amount of shock, sadness, disbelief, etc. I've been seeing, you'd think I just decided one day, 'Yeah, let's kill Ginny'. You would be right, of course, but it was a planned move. As it turns out, she's going to be having the biggest impact on this story since Ed leaving the mirror, simply by dying.

And I just created like five billion times the work for myself. Yay.

Kind of a subdued chapter, but then again I had to do the aftermath. I also think I might go back and edit the last couple scenes of 17, just to make it flow better. I'm cringing when I read that last paragraph-really poor word choice. Next chapter will be a timeskip and more fun. Stay tuned!