SPECIOUS ARGUMENT
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
A/N: Spoilers to OotP, not HBP-compatible. Thanks to all my reviewers and my previewer, Bellegeste. (Cecelle, enjoy your holiday.)
Dear Hermione,
I've just come from the infirmary, where the child you lies covered in cat fur. Foolish, arrogant, meddlesome child! Did I not say that Polyjuice was a dangerous restricted potion?
You are – were, I suppose – I really must start differentiating the future you of my letters from the chatterbox child you who's always trying to take over my class. You were, then, well served for your folly. You got off very lightly indeed, with not even a detention or loss of a single house point, on the specious argument that your probable guilt was discovered outside of term, when punishments are customarily not given. Never mind that the crime must have occurred during term.
"Besides," Minerva said, and Dumbledore agreed, "five weeks as a cat is punishment enough."
Gryffindors! They prate of justice and fairness, but in practice they coddle their favourites like hens with one chick.
It wasn't very difficult to get the truth out of you once I explained that treatment depended on finding the cause of your condition and silence meant staying half-cat forever. You refused to implicate your co-conspirators, of course, but I imagine it can be no coincidence that two of my Slytherins were locked into a cupboard in the Entrance Hall with their shoes outside. That was the work of your two accomplices, no doubt.
Did you think you were fooling me? I know when I'm being lied to. I saw the fire of martyrdom in your eyes as you braved unknown punishments on their behalf and the guilty alarm when I taxed you with this clumsy attempt to identify the heir. Did you think me as dunderheaded as your housemates?
Tracing it back, I realised that what I had thought at the time merely a malicious prank must have been cover for breaking into my stores. You three should be expelled, not only for the theft, but for perpetrating a most dangerous sabotage. Did you never stop to think that necks may break if heads grow too heavy, that breathing, once stopped by tongue or tonsils enlarging, cannot always be restarted? That a firework landing in a fire can blow off a hand or burn out an eye?
You cried when I pointed that out, but have you learned your lesson? Or will it be you I see one day with overgrown head or hair or teeth – more than they are already, that is – you in shock, as your classmates smirk as Potter smirked? (I saw him.) Expect no sympathy from me if that day ever comes. You deserve none.
And yet...
Rash and overconfident in your abilities I know you to be – the child you, that is, though I imagine you may be still – but would a thirteen-year-old spend a month brewing Polyjuice for a lesser cause than fear of the unknown stalker that had, when you started the potion, already Petrified the Creevey boy and Filch's cat, and that has since Petrified a classmate and your House's ghost? (I imagine you must have liked him, to choose his Deathday Party over the Hallowe'en Feast and go up hungry to bed.)
You have reason to be afraid. You might not know this – either incarnation, the child you or the adult – but the last time the Chamber was opened, a student died. So the older teachers whisper among themselves, although they remember little about her, not even whether she was, in truth, a Muggle-born, as the heir's warnings seem to suggest. But whether she was or no, I cannot deny that you have especial reason to fear becoming the target.
I don't imagine it occurred to you to think that some of your teachers might have as much reason to fear. I hope you did not. Those are our concerns, not yours, nor should it be otherwise. Foolish children – to think it was your business to solve all the world's problems, without reference to the adults whose duty and care it was to relieve you of such concerns. Foolish, to think you could.
You have no idea how much harder your folly makes it to protect you, how much extra work you give me – us. I hope at the least that I have succeeded and that this letter finds you well and wiser than the yellow-eyed cat-girl lying in an infirmary bed, no doubt plotting further mischief for the first moment you escape it. I hope so, otherwise where is my reader?
Dumbledore knows more than he shares, as usual. If he has one fault more glaring than any other it is his preference for keeping information to himself. He was teaching here already then, but when I question him, he just shakes his head and says that the wrong person was blamed, but he had no proof.
I've heard a whisper accusing Hagrid, but that I could never believe. He might indeed raise a monster, thinking it harmless, and thus come to grief – it wouldn't be the first time or the last, I imagine, as you have reason to know from last year – but he would never keep silence once the monster's danger was revealed to him. If he knew anything relevant, he would say it now.
Besides, I already know who bears the title 'heir of Slytherin': none other than the Dark Lord himself. He it must have been who opened the Chamber last time, he who framed Hagrid for his crime. (I imagine it was not difficult. I have never known Hagrid not to be raising some fierce creature of one kind or another in all the years I've known him.) But how he could have infiltrated the school once more, with no turban to hide underneath; that is the question. My Slytherins know nothing and their parents have given me no hint.
If only you could speak to me across the years. Surely you must know, twenty years hence – if you've survived the intervening years, as I devoutly hope – the identity of his host or dupe and the way to end this threat. I dread discovering one of you children lying pale and stiff and cold, Petrified or worse, as I make my rounds. Another half a year to go before the school closes for the summer; I hope we've ended the danger by then, and without losing any of you. No, before you ask, not even the Weasley twins or Potter, as irritating as they are in their different ways.
Take care of yourself, when I'm not there to take care for you. Follow the rules, stay away from deserted corridors and don't go anywhere alone.
S
(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)
Dear Hermione,
Of course it would be you to become one of the next victims. Again I've just returned from the infirmary, but this time you could not answer my questions. What I wouldn't give to know what you saw in those final moments yesterday, to fathom this mystery and eject the infiltrator who threatens our charges. There is so little of the year left. Could you not have stayed safely in your tower until it was time to leave? Did you think we escorted you from one class to the next for no reason?
I have advised Poppy to close the infirmary to visitors, just in case. We cannot know if the Dark Lord's agent might return and try to finish you off, especially with Dumbledore gone. That fool Fudge took Hagrid away as well, and I don't know how I have contained myself without hexing again that absolute idiot Lockhart, for insisting the danger is past. If I could have the Duelling Club all over again, I should be strongly tempted to use a much stronger attack than Expelliarmus, but perhaps it's just as well; you could go farther and fare worse for a general all-purpose protective spell. If I have taught you nothing of Defence Against Dark Arts but this, may it be enough.
Rest securely, child – the you of my present. It will not be long, I promise. Pomona believes the Mandrakes will be ready for harvesting in two, maybe three, weeks, and we shall revive you all in time to send you safe home after the exams. (Don't panic that you had no time to study, silly girl; no one but you could imagine that you need it.)
S
(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)
Dear Hermione,
I should have guessed Lucius was the part-author of this disastrous year's events, but it seems he will bitterly rue meddling in his master's plans, whenever that master's return shall be. Perhaps he thought it would be never; he must certainly hope that now.
I know now how he introduced the Dark Lord into the school. Dumbledore assures me that Potter knows too, so I assume I have no need to explain it to you. I wonder if that was my real reason for choosing you, randomly as I thought, that your closeness to the brat who is at the centre of everything would likely render explanations unnecessary?
A diary-Horcrux, created when the Dark Lord was sixteen – by now, I imagine you know of this, if you have remained one of Potter's closest friends through the course of the coming war – and yet, perhaps, only one of several. So, at least, Dumbledore seems to think, if I have interpreted his cryptic comments correctly. It would be strange for one so afraid of dying to store his only surety of survival in a weapon, which, by its very nature, could not be used without risking its destruction; therefore it was probably not an "only". No wonder the Dark Lord looked so little human in the first war, if he had already so little soul remaining.
This may have weakened, but could not have defeated, him. Twice in two years he has almost succeeded and, however much reason urges hope, I feel a coldness in my chest that argues otherwise. It will be soon; I'm sure of it.
S
A/N To be perfectly accurate, we don't know if Polyjuice is actually "restricted", although it would make sense for a potion with predominantly criminal uses to be so classified and the recipe was in the Restricted Section of the library.