[A/N: I am in the process of moving. I already had to return my wireless router and next Monday I expect to be on the road with a truck-load of things I'm not entirely convinced I need (no idea why I have so much stuff, honestly...). But in any case, I will likely be unable to update easily from now until the move is completed, so this week you all get a double-post. Regularly scheduled updates will resume after Christmas.]

Saturday, 27 November 1993

Dungeon Classroom

On Saturday the twenty-seventh of November, in the one-thousand, nine hundred and ninety-third year of the Common Era, at five minutes before one in the afternoon, ten very excited students filed into a dungeon classroom. For some, this excitement was tempered by fear. Others felt only the slightest hint of trepidation. This was, they had been informed by their ruthless task-master, the last of their seemingly endless detentions. Those who had been paying attention had noted (very, very quietly, and never within his hearing) that this would make it just one-hundred hours even, rather than, as he had once threatened, one hour for every student they had subjected to their questioning, but they were not inclined to argue the fact. They were more than certain that he was every bit as exhausted with this entire process as they were.

They sat anxiously, attentively, wondering what fresh horror was in store for them. There were no revolting ingredients or tedious potions laid out to prepare, nothing to clean, and no hint of aerosolized mind-altering drugs in the air. The room looked perfectly normal, unlike the time when they were all put under the Isolation Hex, or the time they had been given a devil's choice, re-living one of the previous tortures or obliviation, or as it had been the week prior, when they were all forced to sit in a circle and spill their most embarrassing secrets for hours on end, to a dicta-quill and an endless scroll, behind a one-way sound ward, with the professor drawling a new question every half-hour or so. They had watched him skim their responses briefly, and waited on tenterhooks to see what he would do with them. There was not one of them who had not breathed a sigh of relief when he burned the entire basket of parchment to ash.

The professor arrived exactly on time, stalking to the front of the room in a flurry of black, as was his wont. His voice, as it had been in their very first class, was low and quiet, even and solemn. They unconsciously leaned forward in order to catch every word.

"Miss Yaxley, Mr. Wilkes, Mr. Lestrange. Miss Potter, Misses Moon. Miss Granger, Miss Lovegood. Messers Weasley. You are here today to complete the last of your detentions in regards to the covert dosing of over three-hundred Hogwarts students, over two-hundred of whom were underage, with what you believed to be an illegal and dangerous potion, regardless of its true nature," he said baldly, pacing before them.

"Each of you has served at least ninety-two hours to date, completing a number of tasks designed to drive home several lessons: The rights of others are not less important than your own. Privacy, free will, and the sanctity of the mind are not to be tampered with lightly. You are not to rush forward with a plan before examining it from all possible angles, and determining whether the risks truly are justified, given the ends you seek. And perhaps most important: there is no absolution in ignorance, nor in self-righteousness. All actions have consequences, even if they are neither immediately felt nor recognized.

"The Headmaster would say that all is well that ends well – if no lasting harm was done, and the masses do not know that the transgression occurred, then for all intents it did not… I, on the other hand, hold that even those activities which occur unseen, in the darkest of shadows… the decisions made in silence and concealed from all those who might judge… have an impact, if only on oneself, and as such cannot be left unaddressed. And," he smirked, "as is often the case, you were not as successful at concealing your activities as you believed – had you been, I would not, indeed, have been able to claim your punishment necessary.

"That said… the nature of punishment is that of redress." The pacing stopped. "After today, we shall not speak of your little conspiracy, nor of the punishment you have endured for it. The slate shall be wiped clean between us… until, as will assuredly be the case, you once again fail to think and another black mark is made against your name." His eyes raked the classroom, lingering on the Weasleys, before he began pacing again.

"Doubtless, by now, many of you have realized that these detentions are unofficial. There has been nothing holding you here, enduring the tasks I have set for you, aside from the fear that your misdeeds might be revealed to the public, and perhaps some small measure of guilt – a need to atone for that which you knew was wrong, even as you did it." His black gaze swept the room at this, and Mary shivered, feeling momentarily as though he might have been reading her mind.

"Officially, the school, the Headmaster, does not care about your misdeeds. It is one of the great failings of the law in our illustrious nation that you, as students, cannot not be punished for otherwise illegal actions committed on Hogwarts grounds if he does not see fit to recognize them – but make no mistake, willful ignorance can be taken only so far. At a certain point, public opinion may outweigh even Dumbledore's good will. For this reason above all others, it is vital that you learn the consequences of such actions in the real world. If you are allowed to grow into adulthood with the same privileged mindset, fostered here, that you are above the law, that the rules do not apply to you, that your ends, without fail, justify any means, and that your needs are more important than everyone else's, then you will never understand the impact, the import, of your decisions. You will never become, truly, adults, with a mature understanding of the world we live in, and the role you play in it, alongside other people. At worst, you will, perhaps, fail even to recognize other people as such, caught in the habit of easy dismissal of those you consider less than yourselves.

"You may leave now, if you like. If you do, I, personally, will consider you a failure. You will not be my first failure, nor, certainly, my last. But if you do not have the capacity to see through what we have, between us, agreed upon as recompense for your misdeeds, to which you have given your tacit consent by your un-coerced participation, by your lack of contest of these unofficial, unenforceable detentions… if you fail to see through to the end the lessons set before you this term, I shall consider you incapable of even the meanest effort necessary to reach your full potential, and as such, as utter wastes of my own efforts henceforth to educate you, rather than simply break you, and save the world the effort of doing so once you have graduated and moved on.

"So you may leave now, if you like. If any of this comes as an unwelcome surprise. If you are suddenly overcome with rage at myself and what doubtless seems the utter unfairness of an unwonted punishment.

"Or you may stay. You may complete the final task set before you today. You may decide to make a show of willingness to put forth the effort to better yourselves and grow into competent adults, rather than dunderheaded children. If you would go, go. I will not stop you. The door is open…" The Head of Slytherin paused dramatically, his arm extended toward the door, which slowly creaked forward. Not one student moved, and after a moment that seemed to last for hours, he flicked his fingers, and it slammed shut again with a loud bang.

They jumped, and Snape smirked in evident satisfaction. Mary didn't know about the rest of them, but his words about guilt and atonement had struck home for her. She would stick around and see the punishment through to the end, even if, as Remus had pointed out weeks ago, she didn't really need to do so. It wasn't like Snape could have them expelled if they refused to show up for detentions that didn't officially exist in the first place. But she agreed that they deserved to pay for what they had done to the rest of the school. Even if the rest of the school didn't know, they, she did. She would feel better knowing that she had done what was demanded of her, and that Snape had forgiven her.

"Very well, then," the Potions Master said silkily, passing out a roll of parchment to each of them, and seating himself at the teacher's desk. "For the remainder of your detention, you will write me an essay. You will either attempt to justify your actions given the perspective you now have on the situation, or if you find your actions now to be indefensible, you will explain exactly what you did wrong, why it was wrong, and how you ought to have handled the situation instead." The assignment appeared on the slate as he spoke, much like the instructions for potions labs. "There are no length requirements. Use as much or as little space as necessary to say what you believe you have to say. Think through everything you did, and the tasks I have set for you over the term. Dwell on the lessons you are meant to have been learning, and prove to me that you have done so. You may leave when you believe that you have adequately addressed the topic. Begin."

And with that, all ten of them began rummaging in their bags for quills and ink, before bending their heads over the task at hand. Mary stared at the notes on the board for a long moment before she set ink to parchment, but once she started, it was difficult to stop.

I knew it was wrong, she wrote, to force people to answer our questions. Or maybe it's more correct to say I knew we were going to be in trouble for it. I didn't see a better way to deal with the problem, at the time, and doing something, anything at all, was better than doing nothing and just sitting around waiting for the next attack to happen, especially since everyone thought I was the Heir.

Actually, I'm still not sure I can think of a better way to deal with it. It's not like we wanted to hurt people. We didn't. We just had to be sure that they weren't responsible.

But it's true I didn't really think about what the kids we questioned would go through. I mean, we tested the potions on ourselves, but I guess it's one thing to do something by your own choice, and another to have it forced on you. I should have known better, because I hate having things forced on me, but I guess you're right – we were putting our own fear of the mystery attacker above their right to choose to answer our questions or not.

I know why we did it that way, and I still think it made sense: if the Heir knew we were questioning people, he could have taken steps to avoid detection (which we now know he easily could have). If we hadn't used what is basically an unbeatable truth serum, and it turned out that he was an occlumens (which we now know he was) he could have lied under almost any charm or potion. It might have been overkill, but taking the most extreme route meant we were more likely to find him if we just asked the right questions.

But I also knew that we were probably going to be punished, because it's not okay to use illegal potions on other students. And if someone hadn't been petrifying students, and the rest of the school didn't think it was me, I probably wouldn't have. But since they were, and they did, and the Headmaster and the other professors, and even you, sir, didn't do anything to clear my name – even verify that I was in Hospital when Creevey was attacked – so I ignored the fact that it was probably going to end badly, so that we could figure out who the real attacker was before things ended up being even worse.

After all, they sent Hagrid to Azkaban the first time the Chamber was opened, and when sending him back didn't stop the attacks, who was to say I wouldn't have been next?

But that was later. At first, I was just worried that the whole school would go back to hexing me in the corridors and stuff, like Slytherin did before I admitted I was a Parselmouth. So I decided to do what I thought was in my best interests, and worry about the consequences later. And they weren't as bad as I thought they would be. I mean, they were still pretty bad – your detentions are really harsh, sir. But we didn't get expelled, or actually sent to gaol, or have everyone told about what we did, so I know it could have been way worse. And I did learn things. More than just the lessons you listed off earlier.

In the first detention, for example, I learned that I shouldn't trust anyone completely, even you. I would never have suspected that you would poison me, and having everyone try to convince me that you had was awful, but not as bad as actually realizing you had – not just me, but everyone. Alongside 'see how it feels, having someone dose you in secret?' The answer is just bad. I hated it.

It took me a while to figure out why you were trying to teach us ethics, and at the same time slipping us potions, or letting us off with just detentions, when copying out law books made it clear that we had done something worthy of Azkaban. I couldn't think how it was different than us slipping potions to our classmates. But then I think I got it. You told us the Isolation Hex was a learning opportunity, right? Was it because you're a professor, and you were teaching us a lesson, that made it okay? Kind of like the way Professor Flitwick makes everything a lesson, even games, except your way is that everything is a lesson, even punishments.

She wrote for hours, pausing occasionally to re-read what she had written, and make sure she was hitting all of the points that had been required. It was a little surprising how quickly the time seemed to pass. When Snape finally let them go (none of them had finished and left early) she felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her. Though that might have been the prospect of an extra eight hours of free time in her week.

Being a delinquent was exhausting.

Severus Snape's Quarters

Severus

Severus smirked as he settled down read through the essays the Conspirators had written, pleased that none of them had elected to leave without doing so. That, if nothing else, suggested that they had taken his lessons to heart. He did not doubt that the Weasley twins of the year prior would have been out the door before the echoes of the words 'you may leave' ceased to reverberate from the dungeon walls. It was undoubtedly unsubtle of him to have directly addressed the purpose of their tasks and the lessons he wished them to have learned, but then, half the group were not Slytherins, and it was better to be safe than sorry when it came to even his own students' comprehension of the nuances of their interactions.

Besides, having completed the final task with the explicit knowledge that he considered them to have consented to their punishments drastically decreased the likelihood that one of them would reveal the details of any of the tasks he had set them, and would act in his favor should word of his actions in this matter eventually make its way to Dumbledore or the public. With that happy thought in mind, he turned to the scrolls before him.

He anticipated that Granger and the Weasleys would be typically bull-headed, and there were bound to be one or two who would have an inverse reaction to the Trust Tincture with which he had infused the rolls of parchment, but between that, a gentle but insistent compulsion to write, and the Curse of the Honest Author, he expected that most of them would have put down their true beliefs and feelings on their little plot, and whether they had changed over the course of the term. What he would do with those who had not learned the lessons he had set, he was not yet certain, but the first step, as always, was to evaluate their progress.

He dipped a quill in red ink and unfurled the first scroll in his basket. Miss Lovegood's… letter. He groaned. Of course the strange little too-wise-for-her-years Ravenclaw wrote a letter. He didn't know why he had thought she might become any less odd as the Antidote to Suggestivity Solution worked its way out of her system. It was going to be a long night.

(Excerpt - Luna Lovegood)

Dear Professor Snape, King of Nightmares and Prince of Spies, Potions Master First Class, etc., etc.,

I hope this letter finds you well. I myself have been rather under the weather lately, but then, you will know all about that. I am still not happy that you yelled at Daddy, but as we discussed after the Time Out detention, I understand why you did. Thank you for worrying about me.

'Think through everything you did, and the tasks I have set for you over the term. Dwell on the lessons you are meant to have been learning, and prove to me that you have done so.'

My part in the Conspiracy, as I suspect Miss Yaxley informed you, was rather small. I was not involved from the start, but only after I was questioned. Aerin Mae and Hermione Jean decided that I would be a help to them because I knew the creature was most likely to have been a Basilisk. I helped question all of the other Ravenclaws, and for that I am not sorry.

I am sorry to have intruded upon their privacy, but knowing what we knew then, it was necessary to determine that none of the Nargles was responsible for the attacks, nor any unwilling eaglet led astray by Wrackspurts or the Deceptive Flittering. He is a tricksy fey creature, that one. Knowing what we know now, perhaps there was a better way – a truth spell, or compulsion, rather than Veritaserum, but we did not have the resources at hand to explore the options, and all of the professors, yourself included, made it clear that they felt the responsibility for finding the Heir lay in someone else's hands.

As "responsibilities untended fall to the one who suffers by necessity," I believe we students were right to act. Perhaps we could have done better, but then, it was our first attempt. Surely you cannot expect us to have gotten it right on the first try?

As for the Lessons you have given us to learn, I think the most important is that we should treat others as we would like to be treated, or not treat others as we would not be treated. Anapa will judge us less harshly than you, for we were all questioned by the same method, the difference being only consent. I know you think that this is important, as you dwelt upon it considerably when we discussed Ethics, but the necessity of keeping the fact of our progress in questioning the students from the Heir and of addressing all possible suspects rather negated the point of consent: should we have asked first, and only forced those who did not wish to comply, while risking word of our activities reaching the Heir?

As an aside, for consideration, it seems hypocritical for the Spy Prince to object to this expediency. What else is the role of the Spy if not to determine who ought to be allowed what knowledge?

Doubtless you will object that you are an adult, and we merely children, but have you not been trying, over the course of the term, to teach us to hold ourselves to the standard of adults? Perhaps it is that by taking on what ought to have been an adult's responsibility, as the ones who suffered the threat of attack, we proved ourselves worthy of recognition as such?

I must say, I am rather pleased to have been Recognized almost a whole year early.

My favorite detention was Time Out, though I believe the first one was the most effective on the group as a whole, at least insofar as expressing the dangers of what-might-have-been. Though I assure you, there is no universe in which Hermione Jean would not have tested the potion on herself before anyone else: it is simply not in her nature to use others in such a way. Had it been, I suppose she would have been a Slytherin from the start.

My least favorite detention was the Queasejelly. […]

(Excerpt - Perry Wilkes)

[…]

The worst detention for me was the one where you gave us a choice, and I chose to be obliviated. I didn't realize, before, how horrible it is to know that something happened, and not know what. This, along with the one with the truth serum, probably made the greatest impact on me, at least in making me realize the true extent of what we had done to everyone. I think the most important one, though, was the ethics discussion.

For the record, I knew that these detentions were 'voluntary' in the second week. Father is a solicitor – I know how the Hogwarts Treaty works. But I didn't say anything. I never doubted your ability to make us regret it if we didn't show up. I didn't think you'd go so far with us as you did with Damian Stryke, but we Slytherins know not to underestimate you. And if I'm honest, it didn't ever really sit quite right, this whole conspiracy thing.

It started small, with Little Moon asking us to help get a few of the rarer ingredients for the potion, and that was kind of fun – we almost got caught by the acromantualae, and that put me off a bit, but for the most part, it seemed mostly harmless. We weren't really doing anything, after all, just… facilitating. And then they told us exactly what they were doing, and we saw that you were questioning the Slytherins, and it wasn't any of us, and we were scared. It was clear, you see, that you, sir, were concerned – enough to use legilimency on students – and we trusted that there was something to be concerned about.

Maybe it sounds silly, following a bunch of second-years into some mad escapade because we were afraid, but... I've never been scared at Hogwarts before, and doing something seemed better than not doing anything. And it seemed like the Slytherin thing to do, dealing with the problem ourselves, by any means necessary.

We told ourselves – I told myself – that no one would get hurt.

But I'm not sure that's true. That's why the ethics discussion was the most important. Because it made me wonder if we didn't hurt people without knowing it. Of a certainty, we – I – never meant to. We did everything we could to make it safe, testing both the Veritaserum and the memory muddling process on ourselves, and only asked questions related to the Heir mystery. We didn't try to violate their minds any more than absolutely necessary. But I'm not sure, now, that it was enough.

I guess the question I have now is 'does it count as harming someone, if they don't think of it as harmful?' Because I'm pretty sure that most of them don't think anything happened at all, let alone a violation of their privacy. I'm a pretty good occlumens, and Morgana is better, and even for us, when we tested the memory muddler, it was just like feeling unusually tired, after having a strange dream. We wouldn't have been able to put together what happened, if, for example, we had been questioned in the Library, and thought we had just drifted off over a particularly boring passage.

The real difference between the detentions with the truth serum and the obliviation, you see, are that I remember what happened. (And the truth serum was embarrassing – we didn't try to embarrass anyone.) And I feel slightly traumatized because I know that there are things that I did, without knowing what they are. And because I know that I told you about my secret fantasies and hopes and dreams and my first crush and every time I ever cheated in my life, going back to when I was four and stole candy from my mother's study. (Thank you for burning that scroll, by the way. I know you're probably not interested in any of that shite anyway, but I still feel better not having it floating around. I don't suppose you'd be kind enough to burn this one as well?)

But the point is, if I didn't know that I had admitted those things, if I thought I had spent the afternoon and evening of the sixth of October in the Hospital Wing sleeping off food poisoning or something, I don't think I would feel as though anything was wrong. And I guess my question is, does it still count as hurting someone if you think you did, but they don't?

And I don't have an answer.

I've done more reading on it, you know.

Ethics.

I even got Father to send me some of his legal texts on the subject.

They call crimes like ours 'obscure' – they're not victimless, but the victim is unaware of the crime perpetrated against them. There are laws on the books to deal with them. They all seem to take the line that an obscure crime is a crime against the state, against order and society, rather than against an individual, which is why obliviating muggles to preserve the Statute of Secrecy is not illegal. I tried telling myself that what we did should be in that category, 'excepted obscure crimes,' but it still feels wrong.

[…]

(Excerpt - Lilian Moon)

We won't do it again.

That's what your lessons really mean, isn't it, sir?

All the ways you pointed out that it could have gone wrong, and all the ways you tried to put us in the place of the people we questioned, and your place, and make us realize that we had done something seriously wrong, in a moral way – what you were really saying was 'don't do it again,' right?

Well, we won't.

Well… I won't.

This was a special case. I don't know about the others, but I didn't do it for the glory of having caught the monster or the adventure of solving the mystery. It sounds a bit Hufflepuff, but I did it because one of my best friends is muggleborn, and one was accused of being the one attacking students. Even after the first petrification – Creevey – when she was in Hospital, they were saying that Liz had to be the Heir. It seemed like it was only a matter of time until they decided to make a scapegoat of the only Parselmouth in the school.

What else?

Attempt to justify your actions.

I don't really have any defense for my actions, except that I felt like I had to do something. And Hermione and the twins thought we could do it, and it turns out they were right.

Explain exactly what you did wrong (and why it was wrong).

Forcing people to answer our questions was wrong, because we hadn't the authority or the right.

Confusing them and making them forget that we had was also wrong, for the same reason. Plus it was a violation of privacy and stuff.

Making a potion like that was wrong because it could have turned into poison, or we could have over-dosed people by accident, or we could have been hurt trying to get the ingredients or something.

Explain what you ought to have done instead.

Maybe instead we should have asked you to ask the other professors to question their own students? Or Headmaster Dumbledore? But I kind of expect that you did.

I guess when we decided we were going to do something ourselves, we should have got Hermione to look for other truth serums and spells instead of just using the first one that we found? At least we talked her out of trying to use polyjuice to interrogate the older Slytherins. That would've been even more pointless. Do we get partial credit for that?

I think we did the best we could with the resources we had. We did test everything on ourselves, so we knew none of us were the Heir, and we used mostly the same questions you asked us, when you interviewed everyone. Maybe we shouldn't have been the ones to do it, but it seemed like someone had to, and no one else was.

What else should we have done? I don't know. We started the Basilisk rumor so everyone could protect themselves. Trying to find the real attacker was the only thing that would have helped Elizabeth, though.

If we hadn't done anything when we had the option of trying, I think I would feel worse. I mean, I feel bad for stealing half an hour of so many kids' lives, but I still think it was worth it, because for me it would have been way worse to sit around not being able to do anything.

Bad Things:

· We attacked way more people than Riddle, even if ours were less awful attacks.

· We brewed a really advanced, dangerous potion, and tested it on ourselves, which was dangerous to us.

Good Things:

· We felt like we were doing something, even if it wasn't very useful.

· Ginny Weasley was found out in April, instead of however many months or years later, and she didn't die.

· We foiled Riddle's plan.

o Mostly the twins and Liz, but he could have been anyone, so ruling out everyone else was just as important.

o The Basilisk and the Horcrux are dead now, and the Castle is safe.

Do the good things outweigh the bad? I don't know.

I don't know what else to write.

Merlin, I feel stupid, writing 'I don't know' over and over. It's like this was just a really bad situation, and we probably didn't do the right thing, but I don't know what the right thing was, and I wish someone would just tell us, or take care of it for us. Isn't that what adults are for? But no one did, and we did what we did and no one knows how it might have turned out if we didn't, so how can we know if we did the right thing or not? I mean, we didn't do it because we wanted to steal people's secrets for blackmail or something. We would never have done it just for that. And I don't think a situation like this is ever going to happen again, so, you know, I'm not ever planning on doing anything like this again.

No one else is done yet, and I don't want to be the first one to leave, so I guess I'll just keep thinking about it for a while…

[…]

(Excerpt - Adrian Lestrange)

I…

What we did was…

We did not use a Suggestibility Solution on the other students.

I believe our actions were poorly thought-out.

Have you charmed this parchment, sir? How positively devious.

But I refuse to provide a confession written in my own hand as to the events you allege I took part in. How does the saying go? "It's not that I don't trust you, sir, it's just that I don't trust you." Legalities don't really mean much when it comes down to public opinion, after all. And with a name like mine, it doesn't pay to go about making it easy to further persecution.

Instead, I suppose I shall write about each so-called detention. They weren't really detentions, because they weren't registered with the school, but we thought they were, and that we had to attend them. I am here now under threat of public revelations of morally abhorrent things I may or may not have done, regardless of their criminal nature. Continuing to sit here today does not in any way signify my un-coerced participation in this or any other 'detention.'

Today is 27 Nov. 1993. Myself and several companions have been assigned to write an essay of unspecified length, 'attempting to justify our actions' or, failing that, 'to explain exactly what we did wrong, why it was wrong, and how we ought to have handled the situation better.' I suspect that this is a trick intended to force us to implicate ourselves in illegal and/or immoral or unethical activities, in such a way as may be used against us in the future.

On 20 Nov. 1993, myself and my companions were given a truth serum under the aforementioned conditions of coercion, and placed behind one-way sound barriers with dicta-quills to record our answers to several questions asked by one Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin at Hogwarts. No one was physically able to hear our responses, but Professor Snape opened and examined each scroll before publically destroying them. As Professor Snape is a known master of the Mind Arts, it is not outside the realm of possibility that he has perfected the trick of total recall, and as such is perfectly aware of the material contained within those scrolls, which while not incriminating is likely in some cases sufficiently embarrassing to be considered blackmail-worthy.

On 13 Nov. 1993, myself and my companions, under the aforementioned conditions of coercion, were assigned to clean used cauldrons for eight hours, without magic. This process was tedious and dangerous, as we were required to determine and neutralize the components of the residues within the cauldrons before we proceeded to scrub them. Of the six cauldrons I cleaned, four contained residues which would have been dangerous or even deadly had they not been properly neutralized.

On 30 Oct. 1993, myself and my companions, under the aforementioned conditions of coercion, were assigned to copy the line "I must respect the rights of my fellow students" indefinitely. One of my companions arrived late to this task, and was assigned an additional detention with Mr. Filch, despite the fact that the detention was supposedly 'not mandatory' – not that we knew that at the time.

On 23 Oct. 1993, myself and my companions, half of whom are under the age of consent, were placed by Professor Snape under the Isolation Hex, which is a Dark spell, the use of which is controlled by the Ministry. It is restricted to use in Auror training, and is not, under any circumstances, to be used upon minors, due to the likelihood of mental trauma caused by total sensory deprivation. Even in Auror training, candidates must be evaluated by a certified Mind Healer for mental stability before the spell is placed upon them. I found this 'detention' to be so disconcerting that I looked it up after.

I realize that, if Professor Snape was telling the truth about illegal activities on Hogwarts' grounds not being prosecutable without the consent of the Headmaster, that it is unlikely he would be tried for this offence, but the fact of the matter remains, should the illegal and/or immoral activities that myself and my companions are alleged to have participated in become public knowledge, so too would this – and a teacher of children has more to fear from the ruin of his reputation than an underage student.

[…]

(Excerpt - Hermione Granger)

I suppose it would be easiest to address the points you have mentioned methodically and in order:

1. The rights of others are not less important than your own.

I understand this intellectually to be true, but when it comes down to it, I cannot bring myself to truly believe it.

In a matter of my life versus someone else's, I think I would choose to save myself. On a smaller scale, if my safety and comfort were at risk because of someone else's selfish actions, I believe I am fully within my rights to attempt to secure them – especially my safety. If it were a matter of my actions being selfish, or taking my pleasure at the expense of others, then I would agree. My right to happiness is only equal to everyone else's. But all rights are not equal to each other: my right to safety and an education supersedes the right of others, such as Riddle, to happiness, at least when that happiness would be best assured by the petrification or death of myself and people like me.

I don't think that I put my rights in general above others at any time last term – I could argue that even dosing everyone with Veritaserum was for their own good. They would have been safer with the apprehension of the Heir, just as I was. I know you will say (again) that it was not my right or responsibility to decide what is or is not for anyone's good but my own. Or perhaps even that I am a child, and as such, I am not allowed to make such decisions for myself, in many cases. But I am fully capable of doing so – evaluating pros and cons and deciding on a course of action. My life is mine to risk, and as my parents are muggles, they do not have any more authority in our world than I do as a child.

My rights are not more important than anyone else's, but no one else's are more important than mine, either, and I have no one to protect my rights for me if I don't do it myself.

2. Privacy, free will, and the sanctity of the mind are not to be tampered with lightly.

We – or at least I, as I cannot speak for the others – did not take these lightly, any more than you have taken them lightly in designing our punishment. We have discussed the difference between secrecy for its own sake, and necessary secrecy. In the case of an unknown attacker within the school, any plan to find him had to be kept secret to avoid alerting him to the hunt and somehow preparing for it and avoiding our search. So we could hardly let people remember that we had been questioning them. And we did do our best not to violate anyone's privacy any more than necessary to determine whether they were the Heir, and if they knew anything about the Chamber of Secrets. It's not as though we went around asking what color knickers everyone had on, or who their first snog was. That last detention took our privacy far more lightly than we took anyone else's.

3. You are not to rush forward with a plan before examining it from all possible angles, and determining whether the risks truly are justified, given the ends you seek.

This… we might have been able to do better on this. It's true that we didn't give the plan a lot of thought before we started it. I could have researched more options. Less extreme options. But that would have delayed us, if we decided that the most extreme option was the safest, and the one we needed, which you will recall from my essay on alternative truth-telling spells and potions, I determined in hindsight that we did. We did think about it and plan during the brewing process, and by the time we implemented it, it was as close to fool-proof as we could make it.

Given what we knew then, I still think it was worth the risk. I did look up the laws, before we did anything. I love magic, professor, but it makes little difference to me if I am unable to practice it due to being expelled and having my wand snapped, or because I was killed by some unknown monster, or because I was withdrawn from school in fear for my life, and thereafter unable to learn properly – you know the options for a muggleborn child. Willing independent tutors are few and far between, and day-schools insufficient for the truly inquiring mind – not to mention more expensive.

Brewing Veritaserum is difficult, but I trust my own skills and my ability to follow instructions. I tested it on myself first, well aware of the potential side effects if it had gone wrong. We did everything we could think of to make the plan safe, and I think we succeeded.

4. And perhaps most important: there is no absolution in ignorance, nor in self-righteousness. All actions have consequences, even if they are not immediately felt nor recognized.

I know you think I am a self-righteous know-it-all, just as much as you did before we started our current project. I know you think I'm impetuous and reckless and thoughtless, and that I should have been in Gryffindor. You've said it enough times, and I won't argue with any of that. But I am not and never have tried to use it as an excuse. I have never tried to escape taking responsibility for my actions. And I did know the possible consequences, for every stage of the plan. I knew it was risky, and that there were some unavoidable dangers, like when we petitioned the unicorn for his blood. And I still couldn't stand by and do nothing.

I think you have made the point that "all actions have consequences, even if they are not immediately felt nor recognized," and "even those activities which occur unseen, in the darkest of shadows; the decisions made in silence and concealed from all those who might judge, have an impact, if only on oneself" far more clearly in our discussions of my reading in the Restricted Section than in our detentions. Because we're only in detention because we got caught.

5. Attempt to justify your actions given the perspective you now have on the situation.

Knowing what I know now, from Ginny's memories and Lizzie's report of what happened in the Chamber, I am even more certain that we did the right thing in attempting to stop Riddle. We may have failed to stop his getting a corporeal body, but he had planned to hold onto her for months longer, and we spared her that by tipping him off.

I already knew, before we started these detentions, that we were acting rather paternalistically toward our fellow students by taking matters into our own hands. I read my parents' medical ethics books when I was nine. But the people who should have had the authority to make those decisions – the Heads of House and the Headmaster – did nothing – or at least did not assure us that the situation was under control, and I still feel justified in the assumption that they were doing nothing, given the fact that the Headmaster allowed Quirrelmort to lurk around the school all the previous year.

Would the other Heads of House have made the effort to seek out the Heir in their houses if we had asked them to? I am inclined to say 'no.' Aerin's friend Kirke and Prefect Clearwater asked Professor Flitwick, who insisted that there was nothing to fear right up until Sir Nicholas and Finch-Fletchley were petrified; Professor McGonagall proved that she would not be circumspect enough to question the culprit without alerting them when she took our suspicions about Quirrell directly to him; and Professor Sprout would never accuse her Badgers of anything so unfriendly as attacking other students. Even you, sir, seemed uninterested in apprehending the Heir, so long as it was not one of your Slytherins.

It was not, perhaps, the best of plans, or the best executed. I think if we were doing it all again, I might suggest we use different methods to decide which students to question first. We started mostly with the upper years, because we thought they would have had the longest time to find the Chamber, and the most skills to control the Monster, but starting with students newer to the school, or those whose behavior was suspicious might have been smarter. But it didn't really fall apart until the twins chased Riddle into the Chamber. Until then, it worked perfectly, albeit slower than I would have liked.

Sorry, sir. I know this isn't what you want to hear. But I still think we did the right thing, and that it was worth it.

6. Explain exactly what you did wrong, why it was wrong, and how you ought to have handled the situation instead.

What we did was necessary. Was it right to do it without asking anyone? Probably not. Was it wrong? Maybe? It wasn't anything I wouldn't willingly go through myself, at least.

If we could, I would apologize to the innocent students we questioned, but in the grand scheme of things, from their point of view, each of them suffered about the same effects as sitting through one History of Magic lesson. I understand that you want me to think before I do something so unutterably stupid as to rush headlong into a half-cooked plan again, and I promise I will, but I cannot promise that I will not, at some point, decide to take it upon myself to solve a problem that no one else seems to be working on.

I will, however, as we have discussed, consult you before doing anything that you might later qualify as 'categorically moronic.'

It's an interesting question, if you can even say whether a necessary thing is right or wrong to do. Do moral judgments have a place in matters of public safety? Or I guess, 'at what point?' because obviously there has to be a decision at some point. Obviously the safety of many is worth more than the happiness of the few, or no one would never be sent to prison, but history – both muggle and magical history – is full of examples where the 'good' of the many has been used as an excuse to persecute the few. I would, perhaps, go so far as to categorize Riddle's persecution of muggleborns, both in the school and during the War, in this way: we are a significant minority which he saw fit to attempt to exterminate for what he considered the good of society, and if you look at the statistics, he came scarily close to succeeding. […]

(Excerpt - Aerin Moon)

[…]

So, yes, it is clear to me now that what we did was wrong. It always was. I should have questioned exactly what Hermione needed those alembics and ingredients for in the first place, but I thought she was just experimenting, like half the house does. The things she asked me to pick up at Pasterel's were harmless. And as far as the 'Conspiracy' goes, at first, all I really did was help search for a creature that could petrify people.

They didn't tell me what they were planning to do until that Hufflepuff kid and the ghost got petrified.

I should have said 'no' then. I should have told them they were being stupid, and had no business trying to dose anyone with a truth serum. But Hermione and Elizabeth are my friends, and Annie's my sister. No matter how much of a twit she can be, or how bad an idea it sounded, I wasn't about to let her do something like that without me.

What really convinced me was when Annie and Elizabeth told me about Professor McGonagall pulling them up to the Headmaster's office, and how he didn't do anything but ask them if there was anything they wanted to tell him. Lilian was pretty sure he was trying to use Legilimency on them. Like he thought they were the attackers. And he didn't interrogate anyone else. We asked around. It was weird. Everyone knew you were talking to the Slytherins, sir, but Headmaster Dumbledore only talked to Elizabeth, and Professor Flitwick didn't question anyone. And that wasn't going to help solve anything. So I agreed to help them, even though the Plan sounded horribly risky. I thought I could do more good if I was helping than if I turned them in.

So I was against the plan from the start, but somehow I still got carried away. I even dragged Luna into it, when she figured out that it was probably a Basilisk. It was so easy to think we were doing the right thing, when Hermione was right there saying it, and everyone else seemed so determined, and even Luna didn't seem to have a problem with it, and we had forced her just the same as we were planning to do to everyone else.

But Grey was pissed, and Amy looked so lost and confused when we got her, and Eloise cried. Lara, Kirke and Thom looked at me like I killed their favorite puppy, and most of the younger kids… we scared them. Even if they don't remember, and don't treat me any different, I do. By the time we got to the second-years, it was making me sick, thinking that we were going to force that potion on even one more kid… again, and again.

And I still didn't stop. I didn't say anything. Because I thought what we were doing was awful, but necessary. I kept thinking, 'it's just a few more, we're almost done, we have to find them soon, and then we'll turn them in and it will be done.' And we did our best to teach everyone how to protect themselves, and reassured them that it wasn't any of the Slytherins or Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs (the twins didn't ever get through all of Gryffindor). And that was more than the professors did, either.

I was so scared when Elizabeth and the twins disappeared that I wasn't even worried about what we had done coming out. When they were found, then I started to be scared that we would be expelled, or even sent to Azkaban. It was a relief when I got the note saying that we were going to serve detention with you, not only because we weren't being expelled or worse, but because the secret and what we had been doing was eating away at me. It was a relief that someone outside of the Conspiracy, someone with greater perspective, knew, and had judged us worthy of earning a second chance.

I came to every one of these detentions even though Lara told me in September that I could probably get out of them, because I knew we deserved to be punished. Everything you've made us do was fair, even though some of it was horrifying and frustrating and traumatizing, because I saw those kids' faces before the Veritaserum kicked in and after we administered the antidote, especially when they fought it, and they were terrified. You were right, at least about me, when you talked about penance. I still feel very bad about what I – we – did, but at least I don't have nightmares anymore about little children with slack mouths and glazed eyes coming to and recoiling from me in fear.

Even though I justified my actions at the time, I think I knew, even then, that they truly were unjustifiable.

I think what bothers me the most is that I never said no, even when I realized that it wasn't harmless. I thought it was for the best at first, and then it was easier to just keep going along with it. Merlin and Morgan, it sounds awful looking back at everything. […]

(Excerpt - Morgana Yaxley)

[…]

In sum, then, I believe it is safe to say that although our actions were somewhat impetuous, in that they were taken with little regard for the thoughts or feelings of others, they were not made in haste, nor entirely thoughtlessly. We were not led along, all unwilling, into this plot, but were aware at every stage, and at every stage considered whether there were other options. For that we must take responsibility, and I do, fully, for my choices and my actions and my failure to find or make a better alternative course of action. I might never have had so bold and daring an idea as this in the first place, but I do not regret choosing to participate when the opportunity was presented.

I do regret, now, that our actions were taken at the expense of so many otherwise innocent children – had we, perhaps, given more thought to the individuals we were questioning, rather than to the difficulties of obtaining honest answers, disallowing evasiveness, and avoiding the notice of the Heir, we might have further minimized the collateral impact. It may interest you to know that we emulated your own tactics, beginning with the oldest, most experienced students in each House and working our way down to first-years.

So, lesson learned: I shall, in the future, endeavor to take into account the fact the impact my actions and choices have on other people. Thank you for taking the time to teach me a perspective which will doubtless be of value to me as I enter Society. I trust, however, that you will not be offended if I say that I look forward to meeting only in more amiable circumstances from here on out.

I also wanted to say thank you for letting me keep my position as Prefect. I realize that it was probably more the fact that you had no other options than true leniency, but I do appreciate it nevertheless.

Finally – and my apologies, sir, if this is too bold of me: if so, please disregard it in its entirety – but your speech, earlier… you sounded almost… desperate? We know you worry about your Slytherins growing up and finding their way into Azkaban, like so many of Slughorn's Slytherins did. It's not exactly secret that you want us to be successful, after we leave Hogwarts. I appreciate that, and I think most of the other upperclassmen do as well.

You don't act like you want us to grow up to follow the Dark Lord, like most of my friends' parents. Even my father admits that that road is the lesser evil, compared to the plans the Light has for our society, for all he has publicly repudiated the Dark Lord. He was worried, you know, when I started here, that you would teach all of the little Slytherins to be Death Eaters in training, and that I would be judged for his choices.

I think he's pleased that you teach us to think and reason and decide for ourselves how best to reach our full potential. I suspect I am in the minority, in that respect – many of the upperclassmen are at odds with their families because they wish to make their own choices in life.

We will not make our parents' mistakes, following them blindly into ruin as they followed their parents, or being easily led astray by flattery, or getting carried away by rhetoric and the thrill of power. We will not be led by our friends into war unquestioning of their motives, or resort to extremes without considering whether there are better alternatives. If nothing else, I think the explanation above should make that clear. We will think before we act, and even when given only the choice of poor options, we will make rational decisions – ones we can justify, because if you have taught us nothing else, sir, it is that our every choice will be questioned. And I thank you for that, as well.

(Excerpt - Fred Weasley)

[…]

Of course we'll justify our actions for you, sir:

It was your fault, the professors, for not doing something yourselves.

If you had done something, anything, to stop the attacks – not just you, personally, but any of you – maybe we wouldn't have felt it was necessary to try to solve the mystery and save the school ourselves.

You questioned the Slytherins under legilimency. We will give you credit for that. Even though having your Head of House inform you that he's going to use legilimency on you probably counts as consent only about as much as getting dosed in an abandoned classroom. It's not like any of the Snakes were going to tell you 'no.' But no one questioned us. Mary said that Dumbledore claimed to know who it was that had petrified Colin. He mentioned it in the Hospital Wing that night. And if you recall, we are now aware of how Quirrell was possessed by Riddle's future self. He – Dumbledore – and you all must have considered that Riddle was doing the same thing again – he could have been anyone. As evidenced by the fact that it was our sister.

We feel probably as bad as it's possible to feel about the fact we didn't realize Ginny was being possessed, but we can't feel bad about questioning everyone to try to figure out who was behind it. If you had done your jobs and actually looked into it for the safety of the students, we wouldn't have had to, but as it was, well… we didn't hesitate – we've done worse than knock out the entire school for half an hour just for a prank.

This was serious. And quite frankly, as the professor who has complained about our lack of motivation more than any other (even Minnie), we think you ought to appreciate the fact that we finally did something for more than a laugh. It even involved potions – really bloody difficult potions. We spent ages figuring out whether we could just conjure a glass still, and looking up all the contraindications and side effects and how to reverse them if something went wrong. We know we're not Potions Masters, but we think we've done alright for ourselves the last few years. And we test all our products on ourselves, including that one. We wouldn't have put everyone in even more danger to try to catch the Heir, or at least not more than we were willing to take on ourselves. It wasn't like he had killed anyone, so we weren't going to take that level of risk to stop him.

It's true that we weren't really thinking about what it's like to be jumped in the hall and forced to answer questions, or have your memories messed with. We don't really have any justification for that, besides saying that, legalities of the specific potion we used aside, it was nothing worse than Hogwarts students do to each other all the time, just more systematic, and on a larger scale. Merlin's pants – even the professors have been known to do worse. Did you know that until we questioned him, Lockhart was obliviating anyone who saw him do anything embarrassing, whenever there were few enough witnesses? You'd have to ask Yaxley what she did to him, but she swore she'd put a stop to it, even before the thing at the end of the year.

Really, we think that your real problem with the Conspiracy was that this one sets a bad precedent. Pranks are a fact of life at Hogwarts, but sneakily dosing everyone and making them forget all about it, in order to accomplish something more than a little harmless fun? That has the potential to be exploited on a much larger scale. Don't worry. We won't do anything with it. We're not malicious. It's not like we've ever warded the Slytherins out of their Common Room or made our rivals seriously ill or perved on the girls' showers or stolen test answers or set up anyone to get fired or expelled, even though we easily could. (Lockhart really wasn't us.) Your detention assignments made it pretty clear that you don't think very highly of us, but we do recognize where the line is, and we try not to cross it too far.

For the most part, we feel that the risks to the student body were minimal. The risks to us, individually, as the first ones to test the potion, and the brewers, and to the rest of the Conspiracy, collecting ingredients and risking getting caught were somewhat higher, but, again, to be honest, the risks of brewing and testing the potion weren't that much worse than our average Tuesday. We're daring, not stupid. It's true we weren't thinking of the legal risks of our actions. We were convinced that if we were successful and didn't actually hurt anyone, we wouldn't be punished. We looked up how the laws actually apply to underage students over the summer, and were quite pleased to find that that would be the case. Yes, the Wizengamot could try us and then wait to send us to Azkaban after our seventeenth birthday, but Dumbledore loves us, and would never press charges – not when we were trying to help.

There is something we want to make clear, though: when it comes to our family, there is absolutely no risk we would not take to keep them safe. Hermione thinks we went wrong when we dragged Mary into the Chamber, but she doesn't understand. She's an only child. Ginny is our little sister, and we have to take care of her. We will never regret any actions taken in pursuit of that end, and giving us detention until we graduate or even outing us to the Prophet won't change that fact. We'll own up to our actions and take any punishment we earn for them without complaint, even yours, but we won't apologize for that.

(Excerpt - George Weasley)

[…]

All that aside, well… we'd do it again.

We know that's the wrong answer, but it's true. See, even after everything you've made us do, the only part of the plan we feel a little bad about is that we didn't listen to Potter when she told us we should get you before we went into the Chamber. That was the plan: Find the Heir, tell Snape. But when it was our sister who was possessed, hostage, we panicked.

We would do anything for her.

Looking back, it would have made more sense to find you, and tell you what happened, but we weren't thinking. If we were, we would have listened to the kid. We're not sorry that we went ourselves, but given that we don't remember so much, we will admit that you might have done better. But then again, maybe not. Anything could have happened down there.

As for the rest of it, well… come on. The Rip Van Winkle Halloween Prank of 1990 had more lasting impact on the student body than our questioning. I think everyone we questioned would be happy to trade half an hour of muddle-headedness and a lingering sensation of having had a nightmare for assurance that none of their friends were the Heir of Slytherin. Which is basically what we were doing. Your detentions with the questioning and the obliviation were totally different – we know – we used the process on each other first. And it's not like we went out of our way to take advantage of anyone – we'd never! We didn't even ask Angelina, Katie, and Alicia if we should make a move on any of them, let alone anything we could use to embarrass anyone later. We talked about it with the others, and decided that it was only honorable and, you know, acceptable if everyone stuck to the list and didn't use this whole mess to screw with anyone. We do know how to be serious, and where to draw the line.

Most of the real risks were on us. Hermione, Fred and I, then Morgana and her lot, then the rest of the gang. Hermione, Fred and I did the brewing and tested it on ourselves first. Morgana, Wilkes, and Lestrange helped get a lot of the more dangerous ingredients. And any of us could have been caught, or, like actually happened, ran into the Heir unexpectedly at any time. We knew that, and we talked about it ahead of time, with each other and with some of the others. None of us went into this blind. We did a lot of research to make sure we weren't doing anything that would hurt anyone – If we did, we would have been just as bad as the Heir.

We didn't think we'd be caught, obviously. And we really didn't think about the legalities of what we were doing. But I think if we had, we would still have done it. For one thing, we would have realized that Dumbledore (or McGonagall) wouldn't actually expel us, let alone send us to Azkaban, for trying to help save the school, as soon as we looked up the laws and the Treaty (which we did, after you scared the stuffing out of us last term). And, well… we wouldn't let the law stop us from doing the right thing, anyway. And trying to find the Heir was definitely the right thing. We still don't understand why none of the (other) professors did anything.

But yeah, all else being equal, knowing what we do now, if we had to choose again, I reckon we would do the same thing.

[…]

(Excerpt - Mary Potter)

In conclusion, I have learned that I need to take more time to think before I act, and to put myself in other people's shoes before I do, and think about everything I'm doing that might hurt someone in some way, and then decide if it's really worth it. I also have to think about what the fall-out will be for me, including legally, which I didn't, and I should have, especially since I knew it was going to be trouble.

But I have also learned that the rules are not the same for everyone, and exceptions can be made if you are in the right position, or if you know the right people. See the fact that we all just got detention, even though I'm pretty sure you knew what we did as soon as you talked to me, Maia, Lils, and the Weasleys last year. And I learned about plausible deniability and deliberate misinterpretation, and how people in positions of authority sometimes have to use their discretion about how much they actually want to admit that they know.

I have also learned what it feels like to fight Suggestivity Solution and the Candid Concoction, how the laws of Magical Britain and the rules of Hogwarts differ, way more than I ever wanted to know about the anatomy of puppies, and ethical choices, and what is required for hospital-quality brewing. I can't believe I thought you were strict about methods before… I learned that there are at least six different potions that do not work to get the smell of Queasejelly out of my hair, how to do a non-verbal, wandless finite on myself, and that even after the Chamber, there are still things that would make me voluntarily choose to be obliviated. (Though I wish I knew what that was, exactly.)

I learned that I can't trust allies or even friends with everything. I did not believe you would poison me, even to teach me a lesson, and I was obviously wrong. I also did not believe that anyone would talk about the Conspiracy, and someone clearly did, because there was no reason for you to know Luna was involved if they didn't talk. I bet it was Morgana, because she's still a prefect. So I guess I can also say I learned that everyone has a price.

I learned that it's easier to break up a friendship than I thought – Aerin has hardly talked to the rest of us since Easter – but that secrets and adventures are good for making friends, too. I got Ginny as a kind of friend out of it, even if the twins are complete wankers. And I would never have met Luna without the Conspiracy.

From the Conspiracy itself, I learned what it's like to be under Veritaserum, and my sneaking around skills got much better, even if you don't approve of how we used those skills. As for what happened in the Chamber, well… you know what I learned there, and I don't know if I would have, otherwise, and I'm glad I do know that, now, even if I'm not happy about it, so I guess I'm okay with how that turned out. I'm not saying there weren't things we could have done differently – there definitely were, and I'm sure the others came up with things I didn't think of – but I think the most important thing I learned is that it could have gone worse.

Much, much worse.

From something going wrong in the questioning, to the Chamber, to our punishment, we were lucky. We got off easy, and that is definitely something I think we will all consider before the next time we come up with some big, reckless plan and throw ourselves into it because we feel helpless or scared. Those aren't good reasons to do anything, and we should always stop and think about what we're doing and why before we do it.

Severus

Hours later, Severus dropped the last commented-upon scroll back into the basket, set aside his quill, and rubbed his eyes. He had not expected the children to be so… insightful. It appeared that he had taught them even better than he thought. Some had shown clear remorse and repentance for their actions, but others – more than he had expected – stood by their initial decision, even when they had not fully comprehended the extent of their actions prior to their detentions.

The Weasleys were surprisingly rational creatures, though he snorted at the one who said they were daring, not stupid. He did give them some credit for managing the brewing, and for taking the punishments he decreed (for this and in the past) without complaint. And he had no small degree of respect for their negotiation abilities, when they finally came forward (after their last detention of the term) with the idea of harvesting the Basilisk for ingredients. (Though the suggestion itself was unnecessary, as Severus had noted the creature, already under a stasis ward, when he went into the Chamber to inspect the remnants of the rituals used there.) He had, eventually, agreed to pay them a ten percent finders' fee in exchange for their silence on the matter of his removing the obliviates on their sister's mind (a small price to pay to avoid the combined wrath of Molly Weasley and Albus Dumbledore). He was rather looking forward to his discussions with the goblins and the vampires over the winter hols – they would pay hand over fist for basilisk venom and bone.

But that was still weeks away. In the meanwhile, he was (still) vaguely irritated that Granger had already been aware of basic ethical principles, and included them in her initial decision, though that would explain why she was so steadfast in her defense of her own actions. Well, that and the fact that she clearly had a bit of an arguably justifiable victimization complex going on in regards to her muggleborn heritage. He would have to continue chipping away at her arrogance in their research meetings.

The thought was not so abhorrent as it might have been. She seemed to be doing an exemplary job thusfar with the reports he had assigned her outside of class (though he would never admit as much aloud), and discussed her external reading with an intelligence which far outstripped many of his colleagues. Yes, her opinions and analyses were often childishly underinformed, but he was certain that, given time, he could shape her into a true scholar, rather than simply a useful research assistant. One simply did not let potential like that escape due to a few (admittedly obnoxious) personality flaws.

He was far more irritated that nearly every one of the ten students had, at one point or another, with varying degrees of accusation, noted that they felt their actions were justified by the apparent apathy of the Headmaster and his fellow Heads of House. Even Lovegood had mentioned it, albeit as a straightforward explanation. And speaking of Lovegood, why in the nine bloody hells was she quoting Gellert Grindelwald at him? He couldn't decide if that, or the fact that she referred to the Isolation Hex as 'time out' was more disturbing. But he digressed.

At least the younger Miss Moon had recognized that he had likely tried to persuade the other Heads to question their own students (which he had), but it was absolutely infuriating to learn that Filius had been approached by multiple students from his own house, and done nothing! For potentially months before the Headmaster informed them that he had everything under control! Severus had been forced to spend all his spare time looking for ways to track a wraith or trace possession throughout the castle, as he was expressly forbidden to question the students of other houses 'willy nilly' (Pomona's words). And this was the first he was hearing of Dumbledore attempting to legilimize Mary Elizabeth and Miss Moon. What on earth was the man thinking? Did he not realize that he had already turned the Dark Lord against him with that tactic? It was no wonder that she had insisted that he be the one to examine her memories of the Chamber.

He sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose, and strongly considering whether half-past five in the morning was too late for alcohol. He had refrained while marking, though it had been a close call with Miss Yaxley's essay. He had not realized how close to the surface his concerns for the parallels between the Death Eaters and this latest crop of Slytherins were until she had put forth her analysis of his actions, so nearly cleverly concealed as thanks. Flatterer. Bah. He was no Horace Slughorn, eager to overlook impertinence if hidden behind a pleasant façade. And it was not too late at all, he decided, summoning a glass and a bottle. It wasn't as though he had to teach in the morning.

It wasn't exactly as though his fears were unfounded. The elder Miss Moon's words ('I think what bothers me the most is that I never said no, even when I realized that it wasn't harmless. I thought it was for the best at first, and then it was easier to just keep going along with it,' and 'I was against the plan from the start, but somehow I still got carried away,') struck far too close to home. Had he not heard the same from Regulus Black? From Seth Kelvin, and Thaddeus Kronk? They were all dead, now, for their sins and their weak hearts. Hadn't he had a similar realization himself, when he finally saw that the Dark Lord was, truly, mad? Half of those who pled imperius in the end had had their own doubts. If they had not been marked, they would surely have fled before That Night, uncomfortable with the violent turn their political ambitions had taken. Ambrose, Yaxley's father, had been one of them, he recalled, though Caspian Wilkes had thrown himself into the carnage with as much abandon as anyone.

Severus raised a silent toast to his fallen one-time companions. The whisky burned his throat, even as he felt it ease the tension behind his eyes. He let his head droop.

He wondered if he had been too obvious, lately, in his encouragement of free thought within Slytherin. It was a position he was quite certain he could defend from both sides, should it become necessary –the Headmaster would believe that he was encouraging the children to think before they acted, without turning them so far from their parents' values that the Dark Lord would suspect his loyalty. The Dark Lord would accept that he was training the soldiers of the future to act with intelligence – unlike so many of their worthless parents – aiding the Cause without losing his place within Dumbledore's trust by blatantly encouraging the Dark Arts or the like.

It would be harder to defend the shift he had encouraged within the house toward true neutrality, waiting to see what would become of Mary Potter, and protecting their new muggleborn student. Perhaps he could say that he feared losing his position should he treat those children differently from the other Snakes. But the effects within the House were already becoming evident. Some students he would have expected to eagerly await the Dark Lord's return – Flint, Montague, even Rosier and Avery, who had graduated the year prior – had expressed their reservations, and their willingness to see whether and how the young Potter managed to integrate herself into society. Given another five years, well… he hardly dared think it, not at this point.

In truth, Miss Yaxley was correct – he did not want his students to become Death Eaters – for in the deepest, truest recesses of his mind, he was not the Dark Lord's pawn any longer, and he would not see his former students fall on his information. But neither could he expect them to align themselves with Dumbledore, simply for a lack of better alternatives. If, and it was a big if, Mary Elizabeth could become a leader in her own right – a neutral, traditionalist sort of leader, perhaps – would they rally behind her, these children raised in the wake of war, taught to see how their parents had gone wrong – how he had gone wrong?

He snorted, and shook his head at his own folly. Perhaps in time. But as of now, Mary Potter was little more than a slightly tarnished figurehead – the Heir of Slytherin Who Lived – not any sort of player in her own right. He would watch and wait, and continue to teach his little Snakes to think, he decided, downing his third drink and heading for bed. There would be plenty of time to worry about the future of Slytherin and Magical Britain in the morning. Or afternoon, as the case might be.