ALIUS EGO ALIUS RUDIMENTUM
CHAPTER IX
I don't own it, I never will, and I'm okay with that.
/S/
"Welcome back. I trust you ran into no complications?" McGonagall asked as Briara, Harry, Ron and Hermione trooped back into the hospital.
"It was . . . uneventful, Professor." Hermione said, with a sideways glance at the others.
"Well, Ms. Granger, what exactly is your definition of 'uneventful?' It must not coincide with mine. Judging from your look, something must have happened. I only nope that it was nothing serious."
Ron looked at McGonagall with a disgusted look on his face. "We ran into Malfoy." He all but spit the name out. "The git said he was coming back next year with all is little buddies before he disappeared."
"Sadly, Mr. Weasley, Malfoy has as much a right to come back next year as you do." McGonagall said, ignoring Ron's language. "Despite his transactions this year, there is little we can do. This school has always been open to all students who wish to learn. Even if we did kick him out for allowing the Death Eaters on-campus, we could not get rid of the rest of the Slytherins who would undoubtedly take his place as their ringleader. The enemy you know is often better than an unknown one. Mr. Malfoy's presence could present us with an opportunity. If we watch him closely we could gain hints as to what the other side is up to."
"He said he wanted to control the school with a majority of students, namely the other Slytherins, all loyal to Voldemort." Harry said.
"Yes, I figured as much. But what does he plan to do with the majority? We shall just have to wait and see. Now, I had thought we would move to Dumbledore's office for our conversation. Poppy is already up there preparing a couch for Briara so she can lay down if Poppy tells her to; I'm sure you all know how Madame Pomfrey works by now so I wont bother explaining her reasoning." McGonagall stood up and rearranged her robes. "Follow me."
The four teenager followed McGonagall as she walked to the back of the hospital wing and into Madame Pomfrey's office. With a sideways glance at the students, she walked directly through a grandfather clock sitting in the corner, the other four closely behind. After three or four paces through complete darkness they found themselves suddenly walking up the stairs towards the Headmaster/mistresses office. A glance behind them showed no trace of where they had come from.
"Each staff member has a passage that links directly to this stairway for expedient travel to the headmaster's office. They are always open unless the current headmaster wishes them to be closed for some reason or other. If that is the case, then the staff must go by way of the gargoyle. As acting headmistress, I decided it would be best if you all knew this. If it is ever imperative that you reach me and another professor's office is closer than this one, simply tell them I gave permission to use the passage."
"I just think you were being lazy, Professor. You didn't want to walk." Briara said with a small smile.
McGonagall smiled back at the girl over her shoulder. "There is that."
Pomfrey opened the door to McGonagall's new office as Headmistress. "There you are! I thought I heard you on the stairwell. Come in, come in, I've prepared a spot for you, Briara, so you'll be comfortable if things become too stressful."
Briara allowed herself to be ushered through the doors and onto a plump sofa covered in pillows that changed colors every ten seconds. She plopped herself down and grabbed the nearest pillow to hold in front of her. Pomfrey sat on the other side of the same couch as Briara. McGonagall took a seat directly across from them while Harry Ron and Hermione each sat in overstuffed chairs completing a circle.
This place looks different every time I'm up here. Briara thought. It must be charmed somehow to react to how it's being used, like the Room of Requirement. Or it could be due to the whole alternate universe thing again.
"Are you ready, Ms. Potter?" McGonagall asked.
"Sure, where do you wanna start?"
"As much as I would like to discover how Albus survived in your world, I think it would be best to begin at the beginning, the night Voldemort first attacked you and gave you the scar."
"Well, I don't really remember it, because I was only a year old, but I'm told it goes like this: My family had gone into hiding because it was known that Voldemort could possibly be out to get me. Mum and Dad thought it would be best for us to split up before the charm was performed with the secret keepers. They sent me to my father's parent's house while they stayed at Godric's Hollow. Sirius was to be there secret keeper because he was the obvious choice; they figured Voldemort would go after him once he couldn't find any of us. Even if Sirius had been caught and forced to divulge the secret, it would only lead to Mum and Dad and not all three of us. They chose Pettigrew to be the secret keeper for me and my grandparents. They thought Peter was safe because he was easily overlooked. Of course, that's not how it worked out."
"Wormtail was working for Voldemort, wasn't he? That's what happened here." Harry said.
" Yeah, he skipped right up to the big bad snake and told him where to find me. Voldemort came with his groupies, killed my grandparents and tried to kill me. The killing curse bounced back and hit him instead. I guess my Grandma performed some ancient spell by sacrificing herself for me which served as protection thingy against Voldemort. My parents had heard of what happened and came rushing in just as the last of the Death Eaters apparated away following Voldemort's disappearance. And that was pretty much that."
"So, James and Lily are still alive?" Pomfrey asked.
"They aren't here? Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry! What happened?"
"We only had one secret keeper; Wormtail. I was with my parents at Godric's Hollow when it was attacked and Mum sacrificed herself for me, not my grandmother."
"I don't know what to say except that I'm sorry for you."
"It's alright; I don't even really remember them. I guess we hit the first big difference between realities. So what happened next?"
"Well, I grew up mostly a normal girl. People knew me everywhere I went and I couldn't stand it, but it was to be expected I guess. I went to primary school. Became friends with Draco, and that's pretty much it until I got to Hogwarts. As I said before, I met with Hermione on the train. I had gotten in a fight with Draco over which house was the best and was looking for a different place to sit. Hermione invited me to sit with her and later we helped Neville find his poor toad, Trevor, together. We bumped into Ron while we were looking for the toad, but he was being really rude and stuck up; he seemed to think he was cooler than the rest of the first years because he knew a lot of the older students already there through his brothers.
"I got sorted into Gryffindor with Ron and Hermione while Draco went to Slytherin. Draco and I finally realized we could still be fiends and be in different houses, so he, Hermione and I stated hanging out a lot and doing homework together. Halloween came and Ron joined the group too after Hermione and I saved him from the troll in Snape's classroom.
"During first year the Philosopher's Stone was being guarded at Hogwarts. We all thought that Snape was trying to get it but it was . . ."
"Quirrel, the defense against the dark arts professor. The same thing happened here. Ron almost got killed by McGonagall's chess pieces while Harry disintegrated Quirrel and passes out." Hermione said. "It seems like our first years were pretty much the same. So what about second year?"
"Nothing exciting happened second year, unless you count the new defense professor getting carried out the window by some Cornish pixies and never returning at the end of the year. I was really moody that year, my parents had told me about the prophecy over the summer and I was not happy."
"You were told of the prophecy when you were eleven?" Harry exclaimed "Dumbledore didn't think I should know until Voldemort came after me for the fifth time when I was fifteen."
"That was stupid of him. Oh, and we found a cool hideout that we used kind of as Marauder HQ in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. The door could only be opened by parseltounge, which I happen to speak, thanks to Voldemort."
Harry looked at her like she was crazy "You used the Chamber of Secrets as your headquarters? What about the basilisk?"
"The Chamber of Secrets is just a myth." Bri said.
"It's no myth," Ron told her. "Ginny was possessed by Voldemort during our second year. She got trapped down in that room and Harry saved her. That was when he used the sword from the sorting hat to slay the basilisk."
"Do you mean to tell me that when my friends and I thought we were alone down there, there was actually a giant snake down there too? Wow, that's kind of creepy. I kind of wish you hadn't told me. Why didn't the snake attack us?"
"The snake has to be summoned. I think it hibernates until it is called, so as long as you didn't summon it you would have been alright." Harry explained.
"I'm really glad my second year wasn't nearly as exciting as yours. I'll bet I'll have you beat out during third year though."
"What happened?" McGonagall prodded. She had a notebook out and her quill was moving rapidly, taking notes on Bri's tale.
"Well, it started out simple enough. Uncle Remus was the defense professor that year and I don't know about here, but back home Remus is a werewolf." The five others in the room nodded. "Well, that has nothing to do with the excitement of the year except maybe as a side show. About halfway through the year Hermione confronted me about his condition, see, I was supposed to keep it a secret but since Hermione figured it out I told the rest of the group as well, with Remus's permission, of course. It was about this time that we started seriously attempting to, uh . . . follow in the Marauder's foot prints, as it were."
"Do you mean by playing pranks on poor unsuspecting students? Or by becoming animagi?" McGonagall asked, recognizing Briara's attempt not to tell the whole truth in her previous statement.
"You knew they were animagi? My McGonagall had no clue until Dad told her during the second war. Of course, he also told her about the rest of us."
"It was only recently that I discovered Sirius and James's abilities, when it became necessary knowledge to ensure Sirius's safety. So you and your friends also attempted animagi transformations and succeeded?" McGonagall was moving the conversation along, outwardly appearing unimpressed by the girl's statement.
"Yes, all four of us made the transformation the following summer. But anyway, back to the exciting time that was my third year. When threstral drawn carriages were bringing the students up to the castle from the train station everyone noticed that the Forbidden Forest seemed to be a lot closer to Hogwarts than it had been previously. It had gotten so close that Hagrid's, you do know Hagrid, right? Well, his hut was no longer on the edge of the forest but was now within its borders. No one knew what was going on except for possibly Dumbledore and he wouldn't say anything.
"As the year went on the forest got closer and closer to Hogwarts Castle. It eventually reached the front doors and you couldn't go outside without entering the forest. They cancelled quiditch that year because the pitch couldn't be kept clear, which was a pity because Draco, Ron and I had all been planning on trying out for our house teams.
"I'm sure you all know Hermione's insatiable curiosity, she had the four of us researching things that could possibly be going on with the forest. We couldn't find anything in the library that would help us so, I guess it was in February, we talked her into actually exploring deep into the forest instead of just the fringes as we had been doing. We took my fathers invisibility cloak and snuck out one night.
"The forest was different than any of the times we had snuck into it on previous years. It was quiet. No animals were running around at all. Not even the centaurs challenged us for entering their territory. We kinda walked around aimlessly for awhile until we found a, well a trail. The trees had all been uprooted in a perfectly straight line, about ten feet wide, leading further into the forest. We decided to come back later that weekend during the day so it would be light out.
"We didn't get a chance to come back for over a month; Professor Snape caught us sneaking back into the castle and gave us detentions. When we did go back, sometime in March, we followed the trail to a clearing where we found a giant nest with a bunch of large egg fragments. We freaked at that point. Judging from the size of the eggs and the nest, the parents must be huge. Hermione and Ron each grabbed pieces of the shell so we could look at them closer when we returned and figure out what had hatched from them.
"We asked Hagrid first, as he is the most knowledgeable on dangerous creatures, but he refused to tell us. It was kind of obvious that he knew though. So, we hit the library again instead. Still nothing; it seemed that all the books that could possibly be helpful had been removed. So back into the forest we went. Hermione stayed at the castle to cover for us, and I think she didn't want to get into trouble again.
"Back at the nest site we hid in some trees to see if whatever had been there would come back. It did. It was a griffon with three cubs. Long story short, it sniffed us out, chased us out of the forest and we went straight to Dumbledore, who knew about the whole thing ahead of time. He walked us back into the forest, (we picked up Hermione on the way,) and introduced us to the thing. Apparently he had invited the griffon to the forest to give birth to her cubs like she had every hundred years since Gryffindor himself had invited her. The Forbidden Forest growing in size was just a side effect to the griffon's presence.
"And that's where the excitement ends, well except for Wormtail being found hiding as one of the first year's pet rat. Some poor kid in Ravenclaw. He escaped and ran back to his master. I didn't see him again until the end of fourth year. Did anything similar happen here?"
"Here we had an escaped convict from Azkaban supposedly chasing after Mr. Potter." McGonagall explained. "It turned out, however, that Sirius was hunting down Pettigrew, who was posing as Mr. Weasley's rat, Scabbers."
"Sirius was in Azkaban? What for? Did he prank the Minister of Magic again?" Briara asked.
"No, Mr. Black was framed for murdering the Potter's by Peter. Everyone thought that it was Sirius that had turned the Potters over to Voldemort. He spent eleven years in Azkaban before he escaped."
"But they know he's innocent now, right? He's alright, isn't he?"
There were uncomfortable looks throughout the room. "I'm afraid, Briara, that Sirius was killed at the end Harry's fifth year. His name has been cleared, but it was too late." McGonagall looked sad, as did everyone else in the room.
There was an awkward silence in the room as Briara silently grieved for the counterpart of the uncle she had known all her life. The silence was broken shortly after by a soft knock on the door.
A familiar head poked through the open doors. "Did I come at a bad time? You said you needed to see me immediately, Minerva?"
"Yes, thank you for coming Remus. I have a favor to ask of you."
/E/
Yay, the chapter is done. Now I can sleep. Tell me what you think.