Chapter Eleven: Halloween Mystery
It was now Halloween and the Slytherins were in a very good mood. They had utterly thrashed Hufflepuff at Quidditch thanks to their brooms and the skill of the second year quartet as Raiden had confused the Hufflepuff Seeker enough that she'd flown into the stands and while she was recovering Raiden had lazily spiraled down to the ground with the Snitch in his fist. The Chasers, led by Draco had got a total of three hundred points on their own by the time that Raiden caught the Snitch, and Flint had stopped any and all attempts on goal so the final score was four hundred and fifty to nil with Slytherin the winners.
They had had a good day, and Raiden especially was somewhat more animated and excited than usual as Voldemort would be showing up later that week. He couldn't make it for Halloween itself but he was on his way. Professor Snape had worked out a way of protecting the quartet's minds from leaking the information about the nature of the relationship between Voldemort and Raiden and this made Raiden very happy as he was getting tired of hiding his true identity from his friends. With the protection Professor Snape devised, he could tell them the truth and not have to worry about the information getting back to Dumbledore.
Dinner was loud and noisy with the whole school enjoying the decorations and food. Even the teachers loosened up a bit and allowed various pranks to be played with nothing more than raised eyebrows as comments on the hilarity. Although, Raiden was sure that he saw Professor McGonagall fight back a grin when Lockhart was transformed into a giant peacock and stayed that way for half an hour. The rest of the staff didn't even bother hiding their amusement at the vain git's predicament. Snape even pulled a few tail feathers out, commenting that he was sure he could find a use for them in some obscure potion.
When the meal was over the hall started to empty. Raiden and his friends who had started to be known as the Slytherin quartet, made their way along one of the halls next to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. They came up against a traffic jam as students from all houses blocked the way.
"What's the hold up?" Daphne muttered. Suddenly a scream from the front alerted them to the fact that something was very wrong. Raiden, Draco, Blaise and Daphne wormed their way to the front, and stopped dead at the sight in front of them.
"No," Raiden whispered. Mrs Norris, Filch's cat, was hanging from a wall sconce, stiff as a board, her eyes open and staring. Hesitantly, Raiden reached forward and touched the cat's fur, finding it stiff but the body was still warm.
He stepped back, only to be slammed backwards into the wall as an enraged cry overloaded his senses. Shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears, Raiden realized two things, first, he was pinned against the wall with Filch's hands round his throat, and two, he was being accused of the cat's murder while slowly being murdered himself via strangulation.
Then relief appeared in the form of Professor Snape. The Potions Master pried the caretaker off of Raiden and pushed him back, stepping in between Filch and his target. McGonagall aided in further defence by calming Filch and telling him that Raiden couldn't have killed his cat.
"Why not," the man demanded, "he hates her. She's dead, my poor Norrie."
"She's not dead Argus," came a soft voice from behind McGonagall. All activity stopped as Dumbledore came into view. Sweeping the hall with his gaze, the headmaster then said, "Everyone is to go back to their dormitories immediately. We will figure out what happened here, there is no cause for alarm. Please go now."
The students turned to go and Raiden started to move with them when a hand caught his sleeve. Turning he saw Dumbledore looking at him. "Mr Potter, you will stay here please."
Raiden frowned and looked at Professor Snape. The man stared back at him, his expression unreadable. Sighing, Raiden obeyed, but took care to stand with his back towards his head of house. He didn't trust anyone else in this group.
Then the only thing that could make this situation worse decided to stroll up the hall. "Hello everyone did I miss, oh dear. What have we here?" Lockhart exclaimed. Raiden rolled his eyes, and snorted when he noticed Professor McGonagall doing the same. She winked at him and he smiled back.
"She's not dead, but what happened then?" Raiden asked, tired of not knowing why he was there. Dumbledore looked at him with a piercing look. "She's been Petrified, Mr Potter" he replied. Raiden looked puzzled.
"Petrified sir? But, there's no spell that will do that, even the Petrificus Totalus spell won't give this level of stiffness, as the eyes will still move. This is, it looks like she's dead while still being alive."
Suddenly having an idea he turned to Snape and asked, "Professor, could someone have fed Mrs Norris a bit of Draught of Living Death potion?"
Filch choked and snarled but made no move to harm Raiden again, given that there were two House Heads and the Headmaster present. Snape smirked at his student before replying, "Possible I suppose, but the potion would induce sleep, Mr Potter, not this wide eyed stillness. The eyes would be closed if the potion had been given to the cat. This is something else entirely."
Raiden growled. "OK then what happened?"
Puzzled looks met his question and then Dumbledore said, "There is a potion that is able to cure Petrification, Harry, we will make it and then give it to her once the ingredients are ready."
"What do you mean by that sir?" Raiden asked.
Snape answered from behind him. "The main ingredient is mature mandrakes Potter, and the mandrakes that are in the greenhouses right now are only babies."
Raiden shrugged. "I don't see what the problem is then. May I be excused sir, I'm tired." Receiving nods from all the teachers, Raiden walked quickly to the Slytherin common room his brain working overtime. There was something more going on here, something that the teachers were worried about but didn't want becoming public knowledge.
Sitting on his bed later that night Raiden thought hard. He hadn't told anyone of the odd hissing he'd heard in the walls earlier that day, but he couldn't ignore the possibility that the two events might be connected. Shrugging again, he got under the covers and went to sleep, tossing and turning uneasily as his dreams were filled with snakes and petrified people.
Later that week, the incident with Mrs Norris seemed largely forgotten and the school was back to normal, or as normal as a magical school could ever be. Raiden had continued to hear odd hissing noises in the walls at random intervals but didn't tell anyone, preferring to work out what it might mean on his own.
Suddenly he remembered what had been on the wall, up above the cat. There had been speculation on the sentence but nothing had been said about it further so it had died off. Raiden and his friends were still interested though.
"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware," Raiden muttered as he sat in the common room one night while doing his Potions homework which was the last of his subjects that he had homework in. Putting it aside he joined Draco in a game of chess, which ended as a closely fought draw. After the game ended he sat back on the couch, deep in thought.
"What are you thinking about, Harry?" Blaise asked, leaning over the back of the couch. Raiden shrugged, and then yelped as Daphne came bouncing over to them and tripped, landing squarely on his lap. Raiden's arms came up automatically to steady her while she regained her balance, and he was startled when her arms wrapped round his shoulders in an effort to do the same thing.
They looked at each other for a few minutes before they both blushed and looked away. Daphne coughed and then carefully got off Raiden, not looking at him as she sat next to him which was where she'd been originally aiming for. Neither looked at each other for a few minutes until Draco and Blaise distracted them with homework questions.
They discussed homework and other things for quarter of an hour before they turned to the mystery of the writing on the wall.
"What do you think it could mean?" Daphne asked.
Draco and Blaise shrugged but Raiden looked thoughtful. "I've been doing some thinking, and some research on this. Supposedly it's got to do with our House Founder, Salazar Slytherin. He was supposed to have built a secret chamber somewhere in Hogwarts that housed some type of monster that only his heir could control."
"OK so a secret chamber, a vicious monster that only one person can control, this is sounding better and better all the time," Blaise commented sarcastically. "Any info on exactly WHAT this monster is? And what does the second line mean?"
"Enemies of the Heir beware. Well, that could mean enemies of the Heir of Slytherin. I don't think it would be us though," Draco mused. The rest of the quartet nodded in agreement.
"I agree. Think of the times that Slytherin lived in. Who would he have viewed as enemies?" Daphne said, her brain putting two and two together like lightning.
"Muggles, and Muggleborn witches and wizards. They were a threat to wizarding safety," Draco answered. The four friends sat there for a few minutes before the same thought struck all of them like lightning.
"Muggleborns. The monster and whoever's controlling it is after muggleborns," they exclaimed.
"OK fine, so the muggleborns are in danger, why should we care?" Draco said, with a smirk. Raiden glared at him.
"We should care because the monster has been unleashed in a time where Muggles and Muggleborns are not the huge threat that Slytherin thought they were. Had you considered that if the monster continues from attacking cats to attacking people the school might well be closed? Our education would be down the toilet. I don't want that happening," he snapped.
Draco paled and held his hands up in surrender. "OK no need to jump down my throat, Harry. Anyone know who the Heir of Slytherin is?"
Raiden smirked. "I do," he answered. When his friends stared at him he smirked and said, "Voldemort."
"Oh right. That makes sense. Problem is, he's been dead, or at least not around for the past few years so who opened the chamber?" Blaise asked after a few minutes.
Raiden shrugged. "I don't know. Voldemort and myself are the only two Parselmouths in Britain I believe, and I'm only a Parselmouth because of the failed Killing Curse that Voldemort hit me with."
Draco chuckled and then said innocently, "So, you haven't been sneaking around and opening secret chambers without us have you, Harry?" Raiden's response was to throw a pillow at him.
The discussion was dropped until Daphne said, "Have you noticed the spiders are leaving the school at a rate of knots? I've never seen so many of them before."
Blaise grinned. "Yeah I have, we dropped a few down the Weasel's shirt the other day. You should have heard him scream. We thought he was a girl for a minute."
The quartet broke down in laughter, imagining the look on Ron's face as the spiders crawled around in his shirt. Raiden thought about revealing what he'd been hearing around the school to his friends, and then decided that it was harmless information which might help them decipher the mystery sooner.
"Hey guys. I've got another bit of information that might help. For the past week, starting a few days before Halloween, I've been hearing random hissing in the walls." Seeing the looks directed at him Raiden rolled his eyes and said, "I'm not crazy OK, it sounds like a snake's got into the plumbing somehow, given the hissing is inside the walls."
Puzzled looks from Draco and Blaise killed Raiden's hope that the information would be useful, until Daphne asked, "How large would this snake be do you think, Harry?"
The Dark Apprentice thought briefly. The hissing had sounded like an adult snake, an old one, and fairly large. He shrugged and said, "Fairly large I suppose, Daphne, why do you ask?"
"Because," she answered impatiently, "we should consider that these events are connected. The hissing in the walls, Mrs Norris Petrified, the way the teachers are being more watchful now, the spiders leaving."
Seeing the blank looks she sighed and said, "Honestly, sometimes I wonder how you lot are at the top of the year. We should look for a snake that can petrify things, and has some effect on spiders. It's a reasonable assumption that the spiders are afraid of whatever this snake is."
"You're right but we can't do anything about it now, we've got that Transfiguration test tomorrow and Potions class after that. Tomorrow night I've got something to tell you, something very important which may also help us with this mystery as well, but I can't tell you now. It has to be tomorrow OK."
The other three quarters of the quartet nodded and they got back to studying, not willing to let themselves be outdone by Hermione, with whom they had a friendly rivalry and Raiden was also fast friends with her now. Draco was sort of friends with her, as he was still struggling to overcome the pureblood-is-best mantra his father had taught him since he was young. Blaise and Daphne had accepted her fully, following Raiden's lead on the matter.
The next night, the Slytherin quartet met in the Potions classroom, with Professor Snape present as well. The classroom was then warded and locked so no one could hear what was happening inside. Snape put a piece of parchment on the table round which the five of them were sitting and the students looked at him inquiringly.
"This parchment, when you sign it, will protect the information you are told tonight from anyone trying to get into your heads. You won't be able to speak of it to anyone except each other or myself and anyone that tries to get into your heads will not find it either. You have to sign the parchment in order to hear the information so it's your choice"
Raiden signed immediately, and his friends followed after thinking it through. Snape signed it after them. Once the parchment was signed Snape tapped it, and then tapped each of the students on their heads, followed by himself and spoke a long phrase in Latin, of which the only thing recognizable to the students was the word Fidelis.
Once that was finished, Draco, Blaise and Daphne turned to Raiden expectantly. "Well, what's the big secret?" Draco asked. Raiden grinned and looked over his friends' shoulders seeing his master sitting on the desk with a smirk on his face.
Smirking back, Raiden held out one hand and said, "Guys, turn round." Once they had done so, and gasped at the semi-solid, ghostly form of Voldemort, Raiden grinned at them and said, "May I present Tom Marvolo Riddle, more commonly known as Lord Voldemort, the Heir of Slytherin." Then he shocked his friends even more as he smoothly knelt on one knee in front of the Dark Lord, bowed his head for a second before he looked up and said, "Hello, Master."
Voldemort smirked at the shocked looks on the faces of the students before he said, "Hello, Raiden. Get up, you know you don't have to do that."
Raiden grinned and rose from the floor, replying "I know but it served to emphasise my point."
"Which was?" Voldemort asked sarcastically.
Raiden smirked. "That you're my Master."
"I think we got that, Harry, but what the hell are you doing calling him Master, and why is he calling you Raiden?" Draco asked, trying to wrap his brain round Harry Potter calling his worst enemy by that particular title.
Raiden grinned. "I'm his apprentice and have been since I was eight years old. That's why I call him Master, because he is. Raiden is my chosen name for when I openly side with him as a Dark Lord."
"So, you're not on the Light side then?" Daphne asked.
Raiden shook his head. "I'm more grey than Dark or Light."
"How do your views on muggleborns mesh with Lord Voldmort's?" Blaise asked, interested. This time, it was Voldemort who answered.
"My agenda during the first war was to get rid of muggleborns altogether. Raiden here has a different view. He thinks that keeping the strong muggleborns in the wizarding community will keep the magic strong while stopping the inevitable problem of inbreeding."
"What about the weaker ones?" Daphne asked.
Raiden shrugged. "Bind their magic somehow, reduce them to the equivalent of Squibs, remove all memory of magic etc etc. As for the secrecy with the muggleborns allowed to stay, well, how about some sort of charm on their immediate family that doesn't allow the existence of magic to be discussed apart from between those family members, and the witch or wizard themselves of course. Kind of like what was on that parchment we signed before."
Murmurs of interest in this idea had Voldemort and Snape exchanging looks. This quartet might well be instrumental in bringing about this change if the debate going on now was any indication.
The debate was stopped when Daphne turned to Voldemort and said rather nervously, "Uh, Lord Voldemort." She squeaked when Voldemort focused his gaze on her, but managed to say, "Um, we were discussing a problem last night that Harry thought you might know something about. Harry thought you might be able to help?"
Voldemort smirked. "You've chosen your friends well, Raiden," he commented before saying, "What is the problem?"
As the story was told, Voldemort didn't have any discernable reaction. Finally he growled and said, "History appears to be repeating itself."
"What the hell is going on, Master?" Raiden said, exasperated. "You sound like you know what's going on but we don't know what it is."
Voldemort glared at him. "I am the Heir of Slytherin. When I was in my sixth year I found the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and what lay within it. The monster is a Basilisk; I never knew what its name was. I set it loose on the school, petrifying people as they only saw the basilisk indirectly, as a reflection. Then someone died and the school was going to be closed. I shut the basilisk back up and made a diary with a bit of myself in it, so that one day I could help someone else continue what I then believed in, purging the wizarding world of all muggleborns. I don't believe in the complete extermination of them anymore of course, thanks to Raiden but I don't understand how this could be happening."
"Could this diary possess someone and temporarily give them the gift of Parseltongue while the possession occurred?" Raiden asked after a period of silence following Voldemort's revelation.
Voldemort still looked annoyed. "Yes it might but how did whoever has the diary get hold of it in the first place?" Shrugs greeted his question and Voldemort looked about ready to curse someone if only he could. Raiden, seeing this, tried to divert Voldemort's attention with another question.
"Um, Master, isn't this the perfect opportunity to gain your body back? I mean the body of your sixteen year old self."
Voldemort smirked. "No, Raiden, although it's a good thought. The problem would be my personality and that of my sixteen year old self wouldn't be able to coexist peacefully. I, quite literally, wouldn't be able to live with myself."
Smothered chuckles greeted this statement, and then Draco said, "OK so we have to find out who has the diary and either get rid of it or give it back to you for safekeeping, my Lord. Apart from that, there's not much we can do. Unless, where's the entrance to the Chamber? You or Harry could find out who is controlling the Basilisk and get them to stop before the school is closed."
Raiden snorted. "Can we take Lockhart down with us and get the Basilisk to kill and eat him first? The man's a first class idiot."
"Who would teach Defence then?" Snape queried, having stayed silent since the beginning of the meeting.
The students shrugged. "Anyone's better than Lockhart" Blaise muttered, followed by similar statements from the quartet.
Voldemort floated up off the table, appearing to stand in mid air. "I'll go back to my research now, but I'll stay in England." Fixing Raiden with a stern look he said, "Don't go looking for the Chamber, or the Basilisk. If you do encounter it, it is likely that it won't listen to you. Find the person responsible and get my diary away from them. I want it back."
Before he could go, Raiden asked, "Master?" Seeing Voldemort nod he asked, "Um, why are you being so, well, so nice to everyone?"
Voldemort chuckled. "Really, Raiden, these are your friends, and should they choose to join us later on, they will probably comprise your inner circle. As such, they will have contact with me fairly regularly and it wouldn't do if they were too scared of me to talk freely round you."
Facing the other members of the quartet he added, "As long as you show me the proper respect I won't have a problem with you being your normal selves. If you are respectful you won't have any reason to fear me. Should you be disrespectful, well, I'll leave it to Severus to explain what I do to people that annoy me. Suffice it to say that it's very painful and sometimes lethal. Understood?"
The quartet nodded, shivering slightly and said, "Understood sir."
Voldemort nodded and then floated off the table. Facing the whole group, Voldemort said, "Do try to keep them out of trouble Severus. Goodnight everyone"
He faded out of view and Raiden found himself fending off dozens of questions from his friends until Snape rose and announced that it was near curfew and they should be getting back to the common room. After one more reminder not to talk about Voldemort or Raiden's relationship with him outside of themselves and only in a secure, warded location, Snape escorted them back so they didn't run into Filch.
Raiden's last thought before going to sleep was that somehow, some way, he was going to find the Chamber of Secrets.