Chapter Four: In Which Grass Smells, People are Petrified, Duels are Done in an Amusing Way, and Family Lines are Researched

"Why are we out here? It's horrible! And I can smell grass again."

By this point, seven weeks into the term, Ianto had learned to completely ignore Owen. Why he hadn't learned this from years of working with him, he didn't know. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was too focused on hiding his robotic girlfriend in the basement, or maybe Owen just wasn't such an asshole before. Ianto was pretty sure it was the former reason.

In any case, this bout of whining was brought on by the fact that Gwen had drug them all outside, into the rain, to watch Gryffindor's team practice playing Quidditch. (Eleven year old Gwen was just as insistent about 'team-building exercises' as older Gwen had been. She had never gotten the opportunity to take Jack to a rugby game, so somewhere in its dark depths her mind had decided this was the next best thing.)

Owen, it turned out, was a little bit afraid of heights. Also, he didn't like rain. And, it seemed he could smell grass again, which was hell on Earth for a city boy like Owen. Once the practice began in earnest, however, Owen shut up and nearly fell out of the stands trying to see through the pouring rain.

"So that black haired kid, the one with the glasses, he just has to catch the shiny gold ball, and the game's over? That seems pretty stupid to me, I mean, to win the game entirely on skills you developed reading Where's Waldo."

Then, of course, a Bludger got a little out of control, and decided that decapitating Owen was a good idea. Not that anyone could blame it. It did give Ianto an excuse to ditch the Quidditch practice – someone had to take Owen's stupid body to the hospital wing, after all.

Weeks and weeks went by. Things weren't exactly calm – Jack became the only first year in the history of Hogwarts to be feared by Slytherin upperclassmen (mostly because of his penchant for flirting with them), Owen and Gwen both got a near record number of detentions (mostly for fighting each other, although Owen also got a large number for mocking professors), and Ianto was developing a slightly crazed gleam in his eyes that scared the teachers who'd known him his first time through.

But finally it was Halloween, an occasion that everybody looked forward to, even if there was no dressing up involved. It did, however, give Owen the opportunity to make fun of a few people, informing that they really didn't need to dress up as a hag/troll, when of course no one had.

Owen was sent to the hospital again eventually, this time to have donkey ears and a tail removed. He wined to Madame Pomfrey about how he'd totally missed the entire Halloween feast, but Pomfrey was as unsympathetic as Ianto (who had come to collect him) was, telling him that if he had wanted to attend the feast, he shouldn't have been implying such things about Mr. Smith's looks. Of course he understood the logic in that, but he still pouted and whined, until Ianto finally growled at him that if they left soon, the feast might not have quite ended.

Owen immediately sped out the door, Ianto tailing him to make sure Owen wouldn't run into a Slytherin seventh year and yell, "Get out of the way, you big dumb freak!", like he had two weeks ago. Owen, however, pulled up short of the Great Hall, causing Ianto to nearly crash into him. "Whoa," he said.

"Whoa what?" Ianto snapped in annoyance.

"Whoa, dead cat and a vaguely poetic sentence written in blood, that's what," Owen snapped back at him, pointing.

"What are you-" Ianto started, pushing the doctor out of the way and stopping. "Oh."

The Chamber has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

With Filch's cat attacked and strung up, and ominous words written in blood, the school went completely paranoid and terrified. And Owen began to mutter about releasing a Weevil in the middle of Hogwarts. It would, he insisted, at least be a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Ianto attempted to point out that the Weevils were not Dark creatures, but were, in fact, aliens, but Owen was never one to let logic stand in his way.

"Anyway," Owen argued, "They also wouldn't write something as stupid as, 'enemies of the heir, beware!' on the walls. I mean, come on. We don't even know who the heir is, so how can we know if we're their enemy and should 'beware'? It's stupid!"

People were still whispering about the legend of the Chamber, as learned from Binns, when the first Quidditch match of the season rolled around. Gwen and Jack were of course going to the game, given that it was their houses involved; Tosh had decided to go, but brought a book along in case it dragged on; and Owen and Ianto didn't so much decide to go as they were carried out in a wave of hyperactive Hufflepuff firsties.

Owen had to admit, however, that he was glad he'd been caught in the stream. Quidditch was awesome, although the near misses of the Bludgers made him wince as he thought of the severe bone and tissue damage one of those could cause. They got a view of that, too, when one caught Harry Potter in the arm.

The other advantage of attending the match was to watch the few people (read: girls) who still thought Lockhart was great lose all faith in him as he completely removed the bones of Potter's arm. Owen was laughing about that the rest of the day, or at least until Ianto cast a silencing charm on him.

Hufflepuff tradition, the two boys soon learned, was to party after every Quidditch match, even ones they hadn't played in or had lost. Ianto had heard of the legendary Gryffindor parties, and the Ravenclaws and Slytherins weren't exactly shabby either, but Hufflepuff definitely had the best ones. And, since it was a weekend night, it went on until Sunday morning. It would have gone on longer, but when Owen came back from the latest snack run, he was pale and trembling, and pissed off as well.

Ianto raised an eyebrow at his friend (still weird to call him that), and Owen said in a flat voice, "Colin's been petrified."

Spirits were lifted at the announcement of a Dueling Club, however, even if Lockhart was in charge. Spirits soon fell when they realized that Lockhart being in charge meant the club was nothing but pure chaos – even the best duelers in the world would have a hard time hitting their specific target in the crushing mass of bodies, and Hogwarts students definitely didn't qualify as 'the best duelers in the world' (or, some might argue, even as 'the best duelers in your average Muggle nursery school').

The professors then decided they needed to perform a practical demonstration – using students, of course, Lockhart hastily explained. He quickly called Harry Potter up to the stage, beaming and prattling on and on about Potter this, Potter that. Owen, quite sick of anything to do with Potter after putting up with Colin's sycophantic babblings since the start of term (and the fact that Colin had been petrified despite Potter being a 'hero'), instantly decided he was rooting for whoever Potter was up against.

Snape picked out the second combatant – everyone expected him to pick Draco Malfoy, his favorite second-year. Which is why there was a number of strangled noises when Snape instead snapped, "Mr. Jones, up here."

Because, of course, for a good portion of Ianto's original years at Hogwarts, and in Slytherin, were spent with Snape as his head of house. And being a Slytherin – and furthermore, being a Muggleborn Slytherin – Ianto had learned a vast number of curses. All of which he still remembered. Even though he was now a Hufflepuff, Snape's main concern was humiliating Potter, not glorifying Slytherin (although that would be a bonus).

And what better way to completely humiliate the savior of the wizarding world than to have him soundly defeated by a Hufflepuff a year younger then him?

The one thing Snape had forgotten about his former-and-now-current student was that of all the spells and curses Ianto had learned, he'd never been able to master Expelliarmus. So a duel where that was all they were supposed to do? Bad idea.

However, Ianto was ace at dodging. So when Potter fired off the disarming spell, Ianto neatly dodged it, and continued to dodge nimbly around the stage. This got boring after a short while, so Ianto glanced at Snape. "Permission to move the duel past the disarming charm?"

Snape smirked. "Permission granted."

Ianto landed from another jumping dodge and spun around elegantly, wand at the ready. "Petrificus totalus!" he cried. Potter, although he had been observing (and being annoyed by) Ianto's dodging, hadn't actually picked up any spells in that area himself, so he went stiff as a board and fell over... and off the stage. "That was not on purpose," Ianto commented calmly, leaning over to look at the boy who was now on the floor.

Snape was gleeful at this turn of events, and for once the entire school was in agreement over something: Snape grinning was the scariest sight in the universe.

Thus, history diverged from its predicted path: Harry Potter was not revealed as a Parseltongue to the school at large, and no one thought the Boy-Who-Lived was the Heir of Slytherin. Justin Finch-Fletchley was still petrified the next day, however, leading to a house half-full of terrified, weepy types, and half-full of the extremely pissed off. Owen was showing that he did, indeed, have Hufflepuff qualities, as the combination of both his friend Colin and one of his housemates being attacked made him into a vengeance-seeking machine. (Well, not machine, definitely not machine; he was still terrified of Cybermen, as was anyone sane.)

He called a meeting of all the former Torchwood members. "We need to find out what's doing this," he ordered immediately.

Jack just shrugged. "Not our jurisdiction." With that, the Slytherin left their little alcove, and Owen made some choice comments about Jack's parentage. Tosh had looked at him apologetically, and said she'd try to do some research, but without her computer... she shrugged helplessly. Owen glared at her, and then included Ianto in the glower when Ianto pointed out that even with a computer, research would be difficult, given that the wizarding world didn't co-exist peacefully with technology.

Gwen hadn't actually been paying attention, instead blowing bubbles with Droobles. She had managed to create something that looked sort of looked like a snowman, if you were half-blind and ingesting numbers hallucinogens. Quite the artist, that Gwen Cooper.

Owen looked completely crushed as the girls followed Jack's lead and left, which had to be the reason Ianto patted him on the shoulder and pledged himself to the cause. Because Ianto was still Slytherin at heart (or so he told himself).

"The first step," Owen proclaimed, slamming a stack of books down on the table in a cloud of dust, "Is to trace the lineage of Salazar Slytherin." There was an obsessive gleam in his eyes, and Ianto was totally regretting his decision to help. After all, the part of his mind that still cared about its previous life argued, what had Owen ever done for him? He was constantly feeding the pterodactyl things that he knew made it sick, had the audacity to turn his nose up at Ianto's coffee that one time, and left his box full of rat goo for Ianto to clean up. The Hub was hard enough to keep clean without Owen blowing up rats.

So why he was opening one of the ancient tomes, fully intent on researching, was beyond him. Maybe it was because Owen was the only other one who ever thought to use non-technological means to solve problems, and they'd subconsciously bonded through the myriad of 'oh, duh' looks they'd received. Or maybe it was just that they were the only two guys on the team, excluding Jack, who wasn't really a person as such.

Or maybe Ianto was a lot nicer than he'd always thought. Ew, niceness.

Now, if you've ever attempted to trace your family tree further than five generations back, you know how difficult it is. When you have to follow through ten centuries? Yeah, complete pain in the ass. Ianto and Owen worked diligently throughout the holiday weeks, and had managed to get to the twentieth century partially because of stubbornness, but mostly because the various Slytherin branches tended to die off rather quickly, leading down to just one family line in recent times, the Gaunts.

(They also made a point to visit Hermione Granger in the hospital wing – not for any research purpose, but because seeing the half-cat girl was kind of hilarious.)

"That's it, I give." Owen groaned, throwing A Most Accurit Historie of Magyk Lynag (published in the days where spelling was optional, the 1970s) onto the table with a thump, drawing an irate look from Madame Pince. "The Gaunt line looks like it ends with Merope and Morfin Gaunt, and who the hell named those kids, anyway?" he started to rant.

Ianto frowned and grabbed the book. "Look, here, it mentions something about Merope Gaunt... She was in a relationship with some Muggle guy, and it implies that she was pregnant when she disappeared..." he pointed out, sketching a finger under a particular passage.

"So what do we think? Muggle found out she was a witch, dumped her, and she went into obscurity?" Owen asked, still looking fed up.

Ianto shook his head. "The book says that the Gaunts, by this point, were inbred to the point of rampant insanity and disease. I bet that, without magical help, she would've died from childbirth, especially since she wouldn't have turned to Muggles for help."

Head lifting off of the table, Owen began to look hopeful. "So... orphan?" he said. And then quickly dampened. "Do you know how hard it'll be to find one specific orphan in this time span?"

Ianto wasn't listening, the Ravenclaw part of his brain kicking into overdrive as he began to sketch out a plan of action on some parchment. "Okay, first we'll need to gather the Hogwarts yearbooks for the general range that the Gaunt child would have been in. Then we can narrow down the list to Slytherins present in those years, since Slytherin's heir isn't likely to be in another house, and then we can eliminate any whose bloodlines we can trace, and-or any who are no longer alive and have no children. Shouldn't take longer than... a few weeks."

Owen groaned again, and thumped his head onto the table.