HARRY POTTER AND THE SECRET ENEMY
Harry Potter and all associated characters and situations are the property of J.K. Rowling. I make no claim to ownership.
CHAPTER 40: Endgame (Part 1)
TRIGGER WARNING: Spiders
The astonishing revelations from earlier that afternoon – that Gilderoy Lockhart (a) was a dark wizard (b) who confessed before witnesses to engineering both the petrifications and the locker room prank on the Slytherins (c) before dramatically fleeing Hogwarts – sent shockwaves through the school. At the evening meal, Acting-Headmistress McGonagall made all the relevant announcements, most importantly that the school was no longer in danger of being shut down since the person responsible had been removed for good. Naturally, this led to uproarious applause from the student body and especially from the Gryffindors when it was announced that Fred Weasley would be returning the following morning.
Dinner was followed by one of Gryffindor's legendary parties. Oliver Wood was in high spirits over the news that the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match had been rescheduled for later in the month. Several of the Gryffindors who had openly accused Jim of being the Heir of Slytherin came to apologize, albeit grudgingly, and Jim thanked them politely but tersely in a way that suggested that the matter was forgiven but decidedly not forgotten. And he wasn't even that magnanimous to House-mates like Cormac McLaggen who he'd overhead saying "At least his brother Harry was out there trying to do something helpful even if he got into trouble for it. I still say they got Sorted wrong."
Unfortunately, Jim didn't even have the choice of whether to forgive Ron or not. His former friend just gave him a quick glare from across the Common Room before running upstairs without a word. And the saddest part was that after everything, Jim thought he probably would forgive Ron in an instant if only the boy would show the common decency to just apologize for the way he'd been acting.
Much later, after everyone else had gone to bed. Ron sat in his bed with the diary of Tom Marvolo Riddle clenched his hands.
"Let me go. Let me go. Let me go." He whispered over and over to himself for hours, but no one ever responded.
There had also been a rather more subdued party in the Slytherin dungeons that night. Once the twin threats of petrification and school closure had apparently been dealt with, Harry's rivals in the House turned their attention to loudly blaming him and Theo for the late term loss of fifty House points. Harry, of course, couldn't care less about the lost House points and withdrew from the Common Room to the Lair with barely a glance towards Cassius Warrington and Miranda Bonneville, who had both recently moved up the rankings on Harry's personal To-Do list.
Later, after the startling discovery that Harry had intentionally allowed Gilderoy Lockhart to block almost four-and-a-half minutes of their conversation from his memories, the three young Slytherins spent another hour in Harry's pensieve reviewing the scene to find the gap. On the fourth repetition, Blaise spotted it. Just before James Potter blasted the door off its hinges and while Lockhart was laughing maniacally, there was the very slightest hiccup in the playback. During one of Lockhart's demented laughs, his body position changed fractionally but instantaneously. Equally telling was when Theo looked out the window and noticed a bird flying by some distance away. At the exact instant of the hiccup, the bird instantly jumped a distance of what looked to be at least a mile.
Unfortunately, knowing where the gap was provided no knowledge of what took place during it. According to Blaise (who had spent most of the year studying Memory Charms in Team Recall), it was absolutely impossible to recover memories sealed with a Memory Lock unless the one who placed it somehow arranged for the recipient to receive the unlock code. Harry remembered the code he picked for Mr. X (the one about Voldemort that he hoped he'd never need to use). Presumably, Lockhart would communicate the code to him at some point, but he wasn't required to, and he might well choose to keep his secret forever. Indeed, if the aurors got to him before he sent Harry the code, the memory might be lost forever regardless of what he wanted.
Tired and annoyed, Harry and his friends left the Lair around midnight just as the party was dying down. Near the entry point for Prefect's Row, they encountered Miranda Bonneville who was waiting for them with her arms crossed and a smug expression on her face.
"Well, well, well!" she sneered. "It's the little Second Years who thought they could capture the DADA instructor! What are you three always doing back there anyway? Flint and Bulstrode just let you three have run of the place! It's pitiful!" Then, she seemed to sneer even harder.
Harry turned to his friends. "Why is it that everyone in this House is always sneering at something? It's very off-putting plus it loses its effectiveness if you do it all the time. 'You there! Pass me the salt and pepper!'" Harry gave an exaggerated sneer to accentuate that last command. "We should do something about that."
Bonneville scoffed. "Well, whatever you're doing back there, you can forget about it when I'm Seventh Year prefect. I've got a lot of changes in store for next year." She took a step forward. "And that includes putting a few people who don't know their place ... back into it."
Harry studied the girl ... and then slowly smiled. "Look around the room, Bonneville." He gestured around the nearly empty chamber. "Go on. Look. What do you see?"
She looked around carefully. "Just the Common Room."
"Right. Now, I want you to spend the next few minutes studying this room and committing it to memory."
Her eyes narrowed. "Why?" she asked warily.
"So that years from now, you can look back and remember this exact second ... as the moment when everything went horribly wrong. Good night, Bonneville."
With that, the three boys swept past the furious prefect and headed up to their rooms.
9 May 1993
8:00 a.m.
When Harry awoke early the next morning, he first made his way to the Library to look up the Colloportus Trimendium spell as it was one he never planned to be on the wrong side of again. That accomplished, he made his way down to the Great hall for breakfast where the entire room was abuzz with excitement. Harry couldn't feel any excitement himself, of course. His detention would begin after lunch: three hours of a lovely Sunday afternoon spent shoveling dragon dung into pots for the final Mandrake repotting prior to their harvest at the end of the month. While he and his peers no longer had to deal with the annoying (and dangerous) little plants directly, Harry thought that might be preferable to handling what was considered the smelliest, most disgusting form of animal waste known to wizard-kind.
As soon as Harry walked into the Great Hall, Marcus Flint called out to him. "Potter! Have you seen the Prophet yet?"
"Nope. Anything interesting?"
Flint scoffed and then handed his copy to the boy who opened it to the front page ... and immediately started coughing at the headline.
SUNDAY PROPHET: SPECIAL EDITION
INSANE GILDEROY LOCKHART CAPTURED!
CONFESSES TO BEING HEIR OF SLYTHERIN
BEFORE MAGICALLY LOBOTOMIZING SELF!
Below the headline was a picture of the man himself in a straightjacket staring vacantly at the camera with a loopy grin on his face and a bit of drool slipping down his chin. Harry sat down to read the story in all its lurid glory. Apparently, after evading a nationwide manhunt (or wizardhunt, as it were), the man showed up early that morning just before dawn at the offices of the Daily Prophet in disheveled clothes and carrying a large valise. There, he held the weekend staff members at wandpoint for nearly twenty minutes while he gave a long, rambling (but surprisingly thorough) confession to the only reporter in the building, a sports columnist who was on hand typing up his commentary on the previous day's Tutshill Tornados-Holyhead Harpies match. Lockhart claimed responsibility for the petrifications and the "Heir of Slytherin" graffiti, which he said was part of his plan to get the school closed "because those weak-minded fools didn't appreciate [his] genius!" He also took credit for a malicious prank that nearly led to the deaths of the entire Slytherin Quidditch team, and he confessed to illegally using Memory Charms to erase the memories of dozens of people so that he could take credit for their heroic exploits in what he had falsely claimed were autobiographical books. Last but not least, he also confessed to using Memory Charms to rob people or for "other purposes" which the newspaper would not reveal to protect the innocence of its young readers.
Finally, as aurors drew near to the scene, the cheerful lunatic gave one last jaunty "ha-Ha!" before placing his wand to his temple and uttering an obscure Memory Charm so powerful that it left him nearly catatonic. According to medical examination, this state was completely irreversible, as this version of the Memory Charm was the one used in certain foreign countries as a form of non-lethal capital punishment known as "death of personality." After confirming the man's permanent incapacity, the aurors reported that the valise he'd brought with him contained nothing but his last will and testament (which left everything to his longtime manservant, an elderly squib of Asian descent named Cato) as well as drafts of his final DADA exams for all seven years of Hogwarts students. The aurors transported Lockhart to the Janus Thickey Long-Term Care Ward at St. Mungo's Hospital, where he would remain until such time as the Wizengamot ruled on the legality of trying a criminal defendant completely unable to understand what he was on trial for, as well as the ethics of sending someone to Azkaban who had been reduced to the mental age of a newborn. Ironically, Lockhart himself had recently donated thousands of galleons to the Janus Thickey Ward out of proceeds from special charity reprints of several of his books. Now, it was possible he would spend the rest of his life there.
Harry sat down to the table as he absorbed the information. Between the Memory Lock (which suggested that he talked peacefully with Lockhart for over four minutes in the man's quarters) and the bizarrely over-the-top confessions that Lockhart made both before at the scene and later to the Prophet reporters, Harry was now convinced that Lockhart was innocent of the various crimes of which he'd confessed. Well, some of them, at least. Harry thought that Lockhart definitely gave a false confession to clear Fred Weasley's name and also to delay the Heir of Slytherin's efforts to close the school. Unfortunately, Harry had no proof for that theory, and if Lockhart was a permanent amnesiac, he'd never get any.
Suddenly, he was distracted from his musings by a mighty cheer that rose up from the Gryffindor table. Fred Weasley had just entered the Hall to a standing ovation from his House, followed by hugs from each of his siblings in turn. As Harry observed the Weasley children bonding together, he noticed as Ron and Ginny bumped into each other somewhat awkwardly. Then, impulsively, Ginny pulled Ron into a hug as well, and after a moment's hesitation, Ron hugged her back with a tentative affection. Harry was pleased to see Ginny and Ron getting over their differences ... after he took a few seconds to purge himself of any slight feelings of jealousy of Weasley family's relative closeness. He also spared a glance towards Jim who was watching the Weasleys reconnect with a warm smile and somewhat misty eyes. Shaking off the impulse towards mawkishness that was suddenly rising within him, Harry turned back to the Daily Prophet.
Gryffindor Tower
9:30 a.m.
Ron banged furiously on the door of the room shared by Jim and Neville, but there was no answer. He'd seen both boys leave the Great Hall at around the same time. Surely one of them would be here by now. Of course, he had something in his possession that would let him know exactly where Jim and Neville were, but he had been afraid to open his bag and check the Map.
Because the Map was right next to the Book.
There was only one book in Ron's life worthy of capital letters. He'd been calling it a notebook, but it wasn't even though Ron had used it for that purpose all year long. But now, perhaps when it was too late, Ron had finally realized that it had used him more than the other way round. An hour earlier while in the embrace of his siblings, an unexpected surge of positive emotions cut through the cobwebs that had been clogging his mind for most of the past year. He didn't know how long this clarity would last, and so, in his desperation, he seized upon an almost infantile belief that formed within him when he was a small child and which had comforted him ever since: that whenever there was evil afoot, the Boy-Who-Lived would be on hand to save the day.
Unfortunately, the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't in at the moment, and no one was there to answer the door. Ron looked up and down the corridor and saw that no one was coming. Grimacing, he dropped down to one knee and carefully opened his bag. Gently, he tried to pull the Map out without touching the black book, but despite his best efforts, his fingers grazed against its soft leather cover. Ron blinked ... and suddenly he was tightly holding the book in his hands instead of the Map he'd meant to pull out. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block out that terrible hissing that somehow was at once both inaudible and deafening. He felt something in the back of his mind that tried to dredge up the feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and anger that had festered in him for years. But for once, he could fight back. He focused on the feeling of love he felt when Fred walked into the Great Hall, and the even greater surge of it he felt when Ginny hugged him and let him know that she still cared about him even after how awful he'd been to her this year. This mind-snake hissed angrily.
Ron opened his eyes. The book was still in his hands, and he knew he couldn't resist it for long. He looked over at the door to Jim's room. There was a gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. He took a breath and shoved the notebook underneath the door and into Jim's room.
"He'll know what to do. He's the Boy-Who-Lived. He'll know what to do." Ron thought those words over and over like a mantra to drown out the now furious hissing going on in his head. Then, he heard someone coming up the stairs. Quickly, he grabbed his bag, jumped up, and scrambled further up the stairwell towards Percy's private study room. Just a few seconds behind him, Jim came up the stairs, dispelled the locking wards on his room, and entered, closing the door behind him.
Immediately upon entering his dorm room, Jim struck the black notebook with his foot, and it slid across the floor. Surprised, Jim stepped over and picked it up to examine it. He recognized it, of course. Ron had never been without the notebook into which he had faithfully scribbled everything from class notes to daily schedules to doodles of Gilderoy Lockhart with a comically giant head. But to Jim's surprise, when he flipped through the book now, its pages were blank. He turned back to the cover to inspect it and noticed for the very first time that it had a name engraved on it. "Tom Marvolo Riddle."
The name was familiar to Jim, and after a few seconds, he recalled Hagrid mentioning Tom as a good friend back during his school days, the one who mistakenly thought Hagrid was the original Heir of Slytherin and who had inadvertently gotten him expelled as a result. But how did Ron get hold of the man's diary fifty years later? His curiosity overcoming his caution, Jim sat down with the book at a writing desk and opened it again. Then, he took out a quill and an inkpot and started to write, only to pause before the quill touched the page.
"Why am I writing in the suspiciously empty journal that just appeared in my room and which obviously has something to do with the petrifications from back in 1943 and possibly something to do with why Ron's been acting like a complete prat for these last few months?"
The boy wavered for a few seconds until a single drop of ink fell from the quill onto the blank page below where it was instantly absorbed completely. Jim gasped at the sudden sensation of ... something, and before he could form a coherent thought in response, his fears and cautiousness melted away while a strong sense of curiosity about the book blossomed and took root.
"Well, it wouldn't hurt to test this thing just a little, I suppose."
Guided by that impulse, Jim set his quill against the faded paper.
My name is Jim Potter.
The ink quickly faded away to be replaced by another message in response.
Hello, Jim Potter. My name is Tom Riddle.
That message faded too, leaving a blank page. Excited (and heedless of the faint warning bells in the back of his head), Jim wrote again.
Do you know anything about the Heir of Slytherin?
The ink faded, and a single word materialized and then vanished.
Yes.
Jim's heart rate speed up in excitement.
Can you tell me?
No... but I can show you.
Jim dropped the quill in surprise as an unearthly glow erupted from the seam of the opened pages, enveloping him in its light. The next thing he knew he was standing in a different part of Hogwarts, near the main foyer ... and it was suddenly night. Whirling around in confusion, Jim suddenly noticed someone he didn't recognize approaching. It was an older boy, a Fifth Year judging by the prefect's pin on his Slytherin robes.
"Um, excuse me? Do you know how I got here?" The other boy made no sign of having heard him, and when Jim reached out as the other boy passed, his hand passed right through the boy's arm as if it were intangible. Shocked, Jim followed the boy down the darkened corridor. He paused at the edge of the stairs leading up to the second floor. Coming down from the second floor were several DMLE officials transporting a levitating stretcher. Jim shuddered. On the stretcher was a body with a sheet over it, female from the look of the hand sticking out.
"Myrtle Warren," Jim said softly. Then, he heard a voice call out "Riddle!" He followed the older boy, who was obviously Tom Riddle himself, up the stairs where he was surprised to see a much younger Dumbledore (relatively speaking – he looked to be about sixty) at the top.
"Professor Dumbledore," Tom replied before ascending the stairs with a humble expression.
"It is not wise to be wandering around this late hour, Tom," Dumbledore said. Jim was surprised by the slight coldness in the man's voice as he spoke.
"Maybe he mellowed with age," Jim thought to himself.
"Yes, Professor," Tom said respectfully. "I suppose I had to see for myself if the rumors were true."
"I'm afraid they are, Tom. They are."
"About the school as well? I don't really have a home to go to. They wouldn't really close Hogwarts, would they, Professor?"
"I understand, Tom," Dumbledore said more gently. "But I'm afraid Headmaster Dippet may have no choice."
"Sir," Tom said slowly, "if it all stopped... If the person responsible was caught...?"
Dumbledore's eyes narrowed, and to Jim's surprise, he took a step back from the boy. "Is there something you wish to tell me, Tom?" he asked with obvious suspicion.
Instantly, Tom's face registered complete innocence. "No, sir. Nothing."
Dumbledore stared at the boy for a long time before speaking. "Very good then," he said quietly. "Off you go."
"Good night, sir," Tom said with a respectful nod before leaving Dumbledore.
Jim followed, and to his surprise, the Slytherin headed off not towards the dungeons but towards Gryffindor Tower and eventually to a forgotten set of rooms several floors below it. Tom paused at a door and drew his wand. Then, he took a deep breath and threw the door open. Instantly, Jim realized that it was private room of Rubeus Hagrid, currently a Third Year student segregated from the rest of his House due to bigotry against his half-giant heritage.
Tom entered the room and pointed his wand at Hagrid just as he slammed down the lid on a heavy box.
"I'm going to have to turn you in, Hagrid," Tom said. "I don't think you meant it to kill anyone but ..."
"You can't!" exclaimed Hagrid. "You don't understand!"
"The dead girl's parents will be here tomorrow. The least Hogwarts can do is make sure the thing that killed their daughter is slaughtered!"
"It wasn't him," Hagrid pleaded. "Aragog never killed no one. Never!"
"Monsters don't make good pets, Hagrid. Now stand aside!"
"No!" the half-giant begged. Tom pointed his wand at the box.
"CISTEM APERIO!" With a flash of light, the lid of the box was blasted off, and Hagrid was flung to the ground. Instantly, a small(ish) Acromantula crawled out of the box and scuttled past Tom and out the door. As it went past, Tom cried out "ARANIA EXUMAI!" but his spell missed the creature by a wide margin. Jim's eyes narrowed.
"Aragog!" Hagrid moved to follow the creature by Tom stopped him and held his wand up threateningly.
"I can't let you go, Hagrid. They'll snap your wand for this! You'll be expelled!"
"Hey Tommy!" Jim interrupted loudly, as if certain Tom could hear him despite all evidence to the contrary. "You wanna know a secret? I know you Slytherins like to think that all Gryffindors are stupid lunkheads, but believe it or not, it just so happens that we can sometimes notice what happens right in front of us!"
Tom did not respond but continued to hold Hagrid at bay. Then, Jim moved to stand between Tom and Hagrid so that he could see the boy's face.
"I've already talked to Hagrid about these events, and he was convinced you didn't know Aragog was an Acromantula until after he'd already been expelled. Just now, though, I watched a three-foot diameter spider go right past you! You even used Arania Exumai, which is a spell specifically designed for targeting spiders! Not that it mattered much since I also saw you deliberately miss!"
Jim fixed an angry stare on the other boy who still seemed to pay him no heed.
"You knew Hagrid was innocent the whole time! You deliberately framed him!"
Finally, Tom's eyes slowly moved off of Hagrid to make contact with Jim's. He smiled cruelly. "Well, well, well. You are of clever Lion, Potter, at least by the standards of your lunkhead House." As he spoke, the memory of Hagrid faded away along with all the furniture in the room.
"What have you been doing to Ron Weasley?!" Jim asked in a cold angry voice. "Getting inside his head with lies like this?"
"Nothing so elaborate, Potter. Just basic emotional manipulation. Suppress his positive feelings for his family and friends. Heighten his natural insecurity, jealousy, and paranoia. Ironically, getting him to turn against his family was relatively easy. His love for them was no match for the feelings of low self-worth they unwittingly engendered within him with their mixture of unreasonable expectations and benign neglect. No, the hard part, Potter, was getting him to turn on you!"
Jim's eyes widened, and Tom laughed. "At first, his entire sense of self-worth was bound up in his status as 'Best Friend of the Boy-Who-Lived.' Thankfully, you did a wonderful job of instilling a paranoia of all things Slytherin, all things Voldemort, and all things ... serpentine into him. When you later revealed your Parseltongue ability as well as the fact that you'd concealed it even from him despite your claims of friendship, that finally gave me the opening I needed to finally assume total control. Ron Weasley is mine now to use as I see fit!"
Jim stared grimly at Tom. "You're awfully free with your secret information, aren't you, Tom?"
"Why shouldn't I be, Potter?" he asked with a contemptuous sneer. "My plan was to distract you by blaming Hagrid, but I've got a fallback plan as well. You see, you've been in this memory long enough for me to trap you in here indefinitely! Your body will lie comatose until I release you!" Then, he laughed maliciously.
To Riddle's surprise though, Jim's face registered neither surprise nor fear, but rather a righteous determination. He turned and walked out of the memory of Hagrid's room and down the hall. Then, he turned to stand in front of a bare patch of wall, took a deep breath, and punched the wall with his fist as hard as he could. Thunk. The boy cried out in pain and shook his hand vigorously. Then, he did it again. Thunk-ouch!.
Riddle walked up next to him, laughing. "Of course. Typical Gryffindor. You actually think you can punch your way out!"
Thunk-aah! Jim paused and turned towards Riddle while massaging his now bloody hand. "Well, yeah! I mean, it's a false memory palace, right? That's just a basic Legilimency trap."
Riddle suddenly stopped smiling, and Jim went back to punching the wall while he continued to talk.
"And the way you break out of a false palace..." Thunk-hiss! "... is to find a solid wall and start punching it as hard as you can." Thunk-shit! "Eventually, your desire to not feel your hand hurt anymore from punching the wall will be stronger than the Legilimens's will to maintain the wall's durability!"
Thunk-uuh! After that last punch, some of the plaster on the wall fell off and dropped to the ground, leaving a spider-web of cracks behind. Jim turned back to the now scowling Tom Riddle with a smile.
"And you know what's really funny, Tom? I learned all that out of a training manual written for Death Eaters!" The boy laughed and returned to punching his fist into the wall. The cracks were spreading noticeably. Riddle said nothing. Instead, he turned away and stared intently, as if looking at something some distance away.
Ron Weasley sat quietly at the table in Percy's study room fidgeting uncontrollably and occasionally sobbing. Every few minutes he stared at the clock on the wall. 9:50. Percy was supposed to be here at ten o'clock to help him go over some Astronomy homework. When he came, Ron would tell him everything he knew about the Book. He feared that he would be expelled for being so stupid as to not recognize the Book's danger, for letting it manipulate him for so long. And he honestly thought he should be expelled for the things he'd done as pranks that had been so destructive to everyone in the school (to say nothing of the things he thought he'd done but couldn't remember for sure due to what he now knew were Book-induced blackouts).
In particular, he couldn't imagine what he'd ever do to make up for getting Fred kicked out of school. He remembered crying tears of genuine dismay over Fred's expulsion. And then, suddenly, all that stopped. He remembered his sadness melting away and how suddenly happy he was over Fred's expulsion. How ... satisfied he was to have destroyed his brother by manipulating Fred into taking the blame for a prank that he had performed. How funny he thought it all was. Now he just felt sick over it. Ron put his hands up to wipe the tears from his eyes.
"I need you to let me back in, Ronald."
Ron looked up in terror. Sitting across the table from him in Percy's chair was ... another Ron Weasley. It was like Mirror-Weasley from his nightmare a few nights back, only there was no mirror now. His other self could practically reach out and touch him. Other-Ron's expression was cold and cruel, and his eyes burned red.
"N-no!" Ron said shakily. "G-go away!"
"Please don't make this difficult for us both, Ronald. We've been through so much together this year. We've ... learned so much from one another. I wouldn't say that I'm actually fond of you, but it is not my desire to ... well, to break you irrevocably unless it's absolutely necessary. Or, I suppose, unless you try to thwart me. I think I might take that personally. So just let me in now without any resistance, and soon we'll be done with this."
"We'll be done sooner than you think!" Ron said defiantly. "Jim has the Book, and he'll figure you out. Or else get it to his dad at the DMLE and they'll figure you out. And ... and in just a few minutes, Percy will be here, and I'm gonna tell him everything!"
Other-Ron was silent for a few seconds before shaking his head almost sadly. "See, Ron, that's the problem with you Gryffindors. All bully and bluster. A Slytherin would have known better to tell someone who's already under a tight schedule that his time was shorter than he'd thought."
Ron was confused by what Other-Ron was saying. Suddenly, to his surprise, Ron's body and arms suddenly became stuck to the chair as if with a Sticking Charm. He wasn't paralyzed, but he was definitely unable to move. Then, he felt a strange rumbling in his stomach. After a few seconds, the boy felt the familiar watery tickle that preceded a bout of vomiting. But this was different. No bile came pouring up Ron's windpipe. Just an unnatural feeling in his chest of something crawling inside him. Ron's eyes widened in horror as his evil twin grinned delightedly. When some tiny wriggling object climbed up his throat and into his mouth, he reflexively spat it out onto the table. It was a wolf spider that bounced once on the table before quickly crawling away.
Wild-eyed, Ron looked back at his doppelganger who was leaning back in his chair as if to watch some amusing spectacle. "YOU BASTARD!" he screamed. "YOU DAMNED BAST—!" His expletive was suddenly cut off into a crude gurgle as the rumbling returned, much stronger. His mouth was forced open by whatever foul magic the Other-Ron was using, and he could feel not one spider, but dozens or more crawling up his throat. He shook his head violently as they poured out of his mouth in waves. When he could draw breath, he just screamed hysterically. And then the next wave came, and the next, one after another and each producing more spiders than the last. Those he could spit out landed on the table or the floor. Most, however, simply crawled out of his mouth and up over his face or down into his clothes. By the fifth wave, something new was added, as tiny louse-sized spiders bypassed his mouth altogether, crawling up through his nasal passages to exit through his nostrils.
"Let me end this, Ron," said Other-Ron, his voice full of compassion. "It pains me to see you suffer like this. Just. Say. Yes."
By now, Ron was almost past the point of coherent thought. He'd been afraid of spiders since the incident with the Twins when he was a small child. But this? This was horror beyond compare. The part of Ron Weasley that was made of Gryffindor courage fought against the tide, but it was nothing compared to the crushing wave of pure terror that hit Ron every time more spiders crawled out of his screaming gagging mouth. Finally, between waves of spiders and wracking terrified sobs, Ron gave in.
"YESSS! I'LL DO IT! JUST MAKE IT STOP! PLEASSSSE! JUST MAKE IT STOP!"
Back in the false memory palace within Riddle's diary, Jim was making great progress. There were thick cracks in the wall around an indentation nearly three-feet wide and six-inches deep where the brick and mortar had collapsed. After his last punch, the entire building seemed to shake for a second. And his hand hurt less and less with each blow.
"Stop it, Potter," said Tom in a calm voice.
"Ha, not a chance, Riddle. In a few minutes, I'll be out of here. And within an hour, your little diary will be on my father's desk at the DMLE!"
"I think not," Tom said with sudden confidence.
Jim paused at that and turned towards Tom to see that he had a wand out. "Oh come on, Tom! You know that won't work! Keeping someone locked up in a false memory palace depends on making them believe the palace is real. Casting any kind of harmful spell on me while in I'm in here will just makes me wake up faster!"
Tom smirked. "That's very true, Jim. Of spells cast on you ... in here!"
Jim grew wary.
Tom just smiled even more cruelly. "Stupify," he said in a childish sing-song voice and without waving his wand at all. Despite that, everything around Jim turned bright red, and his eyes rolled up back in his head. His knees buckled, but before he could hit the ground, the boy's body vanished from the memory.
"Ron Weasley" looked down at the Boy-Who-Was-Sprawled-Unconscious-On-the-Floor with a sinister smile. With a wave of his wand, the door to Jim's dorm room closed. "Ron" knelt to pick up Tom Riddle's diary off the floor to place it inside his backpack. Then, he looked down and coldly regarded the real Ron Weasley's former best friend who had come so close just now to defeating him.
"No more defiance, Ronald. And no more playing around. Time for the endgame."
With that, "Ron Weasley" bent over Jim's unconscious body and tugged on a lock of his hair before casting the Cutting Curse.
The Hogwarts Grounds
1:30 p.m.
The morning passed uneventfully to Harry, as did lunch, although he was a bit curious when Ginny pointed out that neither Jim nor Ron came down to eat. She wondered hopefully if, after the events of the previous night, Ron had decided to approach Jim and resolve their differences. Harry nodded without comment. He had a fairly negative opinion of Ron by this point, and if he'd been in Jim's shoes, he wouldn't give Ron the time of day. But he wasn't in Jim's shoes, and he knew that the two had once had a deep friendship before the Dueling Club incident drove them thoroughly apart.
After lunch, Harry and Theo headed off to the greenhouse for their first detention. They were soon joined by Neville and the Weasley Twins. Neville was expected. He was eager to spend some quality time in the greenhouse to do some private work with his beloved plants after months spent quietly serving as Jim Potter's unofficial chaperone for most of every day. The Twins, however, were a surprise.
"So what brings you two to our detention?" Harry asked. "Can't get enough of the enticing bouquet of dragon dung?"
"Nah," said Fred. "We wanted to come along for moral support. Our way of saying thanks for helping to get me back to school."
Harry's eyebrows raised. "How did I do that?"
"Well, the way we hear it, you kept Lockhart busy long enough for your dad to break down the door and witness his confession. If it hadn't been for you suddenly finding your inner Gryffindor, he'd have likely gotten away clean, and no one would ever have known what he did to me."
Harry looked over at Fred curiously. He seemed to be taking the suggestion that he'd been under the Imperius Curse surprisingly well, and Harry said so.
"Honestly," said Fred, "I don't remember him doing anything. Just me deciding it was a good idea to confess to that prank so George wouldn't get expelled for it. But if Lockhart confessed, he must of done it, right?"
Harry nodded, but privately he wondered who Fred was trying to convince. For his part, George simply looked away, a fact that Harry also noticed. He decided to change the subject.
"Say, Neville, since you're my Herbology guru, maybe you can answer this for me," he began. "Professor Sprout has taught us a lot about how to cultivate Mandrakes and what to use them for, but she's never mentioned what exactly they are or where they come from. I gather they're not actually ... tiny plant-people, but why do they look like they are?"
Fred laughed. "This is just like you were with the garden gnomes last summer. 'Hey Percy? Are these things sentient?' Heh!" He elbowed George, who smiled but didn't laugh.
"They're not sentient, Harry. Not even close to it. Normal Muggle mandrakes are the roots of the Mandragora plant, and ancient Muggles used them for healing, though they're poisonous if you take too much. Sometime long ago, before the time of Hypatia, some wizard bred a subspecies of magical Mandragora to use as potions ingredients. All the legends about mandrakes actually come from our magical version."
"Okay," said Harry, "but why did the mysterious wizard breed them so that they would imitate the human life cycle? Sprout said a few months back that they were acting like moody teenagers and that they'd probably be throwing wild parties soon."
Neville grimaced a bit and glanced towards the Twins. Even though he'd shared a house with Fred and George for the better part of two years, he still didn't feel like he trusted them the way he did Harry ... and the way Harry obviously trusted them. He took a deep breath.
"Well, she was joking about the parties ... I think. As for the rest, no one knows for sure, but the theory is that by making them look like tiny humans and giving them the ability to mimic certain human behaviors ..." he coughed diplomatically, "you get some of the benefits of incorporating a human sacrifice into your potion without actually killing anybody."
The other boys were suitably unnerved by that theory, but before they could ask anything more, the group turned the corner to that part of the grounds where the school's greenhouses were located. Just as they did, Harry saw Jim Potter come out of Greenhouse #3, the same one to which they were headed and where the Mandrakes were housed. From a distance, the Boy-Who-Lived turned to look at them with a surprisingly hateful expression. Neville called out to Jim, but the boy turned and walked quickly away without responding.
"Huh," Neville said. "I wonder what he was doing in there. Third Years and below are supposed to stay out of Greenhouse #3 now that the Mandrakes are nearly grown. Safety reasons and all that."
"Except those of us with detention among the deadly killer plants," said Theo. "And you, for some inscrutable reason.
Neville laughed. "I've got special permission to help out with the Mandrakes. Had to get a note from my Gran due to the liability issues. My family already owns one Mandrake farm down in Australia, and Gran would like to start another somewhere closer to home after I graduate. But you have to be specially certified to get a license to run a Mandrake farm, so I wanted to start as early as possible."
By that point, the group had made it into Greenhouse #3. Immediately, the boys almost gagged from the smell. On the opposite side of the room were five twenty-pound bags of dragon dung and fifty pots to put them in. Harry frowned and cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself before heading across the room. Halfway across, there was a soft flash of light from the floor beneath his feet, and suddenly George Weasley yelled at the top of his lungs.
"HARRY, FREEZE! DON'T TAKE ANOTHER STEP!"
Startled, the others looked at him and saw that George's face had gone pale. He was staring in horror at Harry's feet which they now noticed were surrounded by softly glowing runes he'd unwittingly stepped upon.
'Don't move a muscle until I tell you to!"he continued before turning to Fred. "Get Neville and Theo away from here! At least a hundred yards! Then find the first competent teacher you can and get them out here as fast as you can! Drag them if you must!"
"George, what...?" Fred started.
"DO AS I SAY!" George bellowed in a fury. Fred, who had never been spoken to that way by his twin, looked shocked for a second. Then, he grabbed Neville and Theo by the scruff of their shirts and pulled them out of the room, both of them still calling Harry's name. George then carefully walked around the runes on the floor to the other side so he could face Harry.
"George?" Harry said, quietly but nervously. "What's going on?"
"These, um ... these are ... explosive runes, Harry," George said in a shaky voice. While he was trying to put on a brave face, it was obvious that George was terrified. "I learned about 'em from Lockhart."
Harry paled. "Exactly how explosive are we talking about?"
George studied the runes for a second and then looked round the greenhouse. "With all this reactive dragon dung in here? Easily enough to blow up this whole building and everything in it."
"Uh-huh," he said. Harry looked down at the runes and then back at George. "I don't seem to have exploded ... yet."
"They're timed." George said without looking up. "You've got just under a minute, but they'll go off instantly if you step off of them. During the Grindelwald War, his Muggle servants dropped leaflets bearing these runes out of aeroplanes over Wizarding settlements. If anyone touched the paper ... Boom."
Harry nodded. "Nice. And I don't suppose I'd be so lucky that you've actually learned how to disarm them."
"No," said George in a soft voice. "You're not that lucky."
Harry became surprisingly calm despite the news. Perhaps using Occlumency had become reflexive in dangerous situations. Or perhaps the sheer number of assassination attempts against him in the past year had just made him blasé. "Right then. You'd better get out of here and find a teacher. Preferably Snape. No offense, but I think we need Slytherin cunning in this instance rather than Gryffindor courage."
George looked up from the runes towards the greenhouse's glass ceiling before taking a deep breath. "I think you need both, mate." And then, he stepped onto the runes to stand right next to Harry.
"What are you DOING?!" Harry hissed angrily. "There's no sense in both of us dying!"
"Harry, shut up and do exactly as I say!" George said . He put his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Okay, without moving your feet at all, bend your knees and go into a crouch." Harry did so as George matched him. "Good. Now when I tell you to, start counting down from five and when you get to zero, jump as high as you can. And once you get off the ground, tuck your legs in as much as possible."
Confused but desperate, Harry nodded, and when George gave the signal, he began counting down while George continued to grip his shoulder with one hand while bearing his wand aloft with the other. Just as Harry got down to "one," George started his wand motion. And just as Harry said "zero," George yelled out "PROTEGO ORBIS!"
As the two boys jumped up, the explosive runes flared to life. Simultaneously, George slashed his wand down, and a modified Protego shield shot down beneath them before wrapping itself up and around them into the shape of a protective sphere. A millisecond later, the runes erupted. Harry could see the flames all around them even as the explosive force caused the sphere to shoot up like a cannonball through the glass ceiling. Greenhouse #3 blew sky high, raining down broken glass and the screaming mutilated remains of fifty burning Mandrakes upon the area below. Luckily, no one was nearby to be harmed by the plants' death cries.
Nearly a thousand feet above, George and Harry's protective orb reached its apogee and then fell back towards the ground. Inside, George hissed in pain from the stress of maintaining and controlling the shield despite the damage inflicted upon it. With some difficulty, he was able to slow the orb's descent and even "pilot" it so that it landed some distance away from the ruins of Greenhouse #3. Unfortunately, the two were still nearly twenty feet off the ground when his concentration finally broke. The two fell the rest of the way to Earth and landed rather hard. Harry heard a snap from somewhere in the vicinity of his left elbow. Then, everything went black.
Minutes later, students were gathered around the fallen duo. Several prefects were on hand to make sure no one touched the two unconscious boys, though Marcus was quick to perform diagnostic Charms to make sure they were not in imminent danger of death.
"Somebody go get Madam Pomfrey," he yelled to the crowd.
"And while you're at it," said Theo Nott with a murderous expression, "somebody find Jim Potter!"
But no one did, at least not at first. For at that moment, the Boy-Who-Lived was lying unconscious on the floor of a seldom-used broom closet on the top floor of Gryffindor Tower – bound, wandless, and completely oblivious to the trouble he was now in.
The next chapter will be posted sometime between April 18 and April 20, 2016. "Endgame (Part 2)" in which Harry's missing four minutes is revealed and the Secret Enemy initiates his final move.
AN 1: I generally never respond to guest reviews because I can only do so as author notes, and I hate it when I read fics and half of each chapter is taken up by responses that have no context unless I go back and read through all the reviews for the story. That said, I thought this comment by Bitzy (Guest) about Lockhart in the prior chapter was rather insightful, and I wanted to respond:
"The quote is from Much Ado About Nothing, said by Don John... What's interesting is that Lockhart says such a quote, laughs, and this is the EXACT MOMENT the time would have been taken away, because after this he laughs maniacally and then the door is busted open.
So... What does this mean? Lockhart is a villain and wants to be accepted as such, just wants to do as he pleases... So what you're saying is, he's just a villain? Not even a possessed creep but just a plain old crazy maniac?"
Well, that's one way of looking at it. Another, to take a meta-textual approach, is to recall that Much Ado About Nothing is a work of fiction and Don John is just a character within it. So when Lockhart quotes that line, is he calling himself "a plain-dealing villain"? Or is he viewing himself as an actor who is playing the part of a plain-dealing villain? The answer to that questions is coming soon.
AN 2: I'm not terribly big on trigger warnings either, but the scene with Ron and the spiders squicked me out and I wrote it, so I thought any actual arachnophobic readers deserved a heads up.