As winter made the slow transition into spring and February rolled in, the attacks ceased, but the students remained convinced that Harry and I were the cause of them in the first place.

Lockhart greatly enjoyed in taking credit for this cease of attacks, always saying how he must've scared the beast off. He also insisted on a 'morale booster', which occurred on February fourteenth, a day I was already dreading.

I walked into the Entrance Hall, wearing my usual black clothes with my hair over my tired eyes, which I was constantly rubbing. The girls in my dorm kept me up the previous night giggling and talking about boys and which one they liked. I felt like I was going deaf. Sighing tiredly, I pushed open the door to the Great Hall.

Being a daughter of Hades, I have a dislike—if not hatred—of all things girly. I hate the color pink, anything having to do with Barbie, you get the idea. So when I walked into the Hall and saw pink everywhere… My eyes quite literally burned.

I pulled my hood up and stared at the blackness of my hair in front of my face until I got to the table. I was thankful that Harry and Ron were both as disgusted as I was.

"Please, please, please tell me that this doesn't happen every year," I begged.

They shook their heads. So I tried to ignore it; it all became impossible to ignore when Lockhart brought out dwarf-cupids.

"I'm gonna throw up," I said in disgust.

I decided before breakfast was over that I would skip classes for today to spare my eyes and ears the pain.

So, during classes, I remained in the dormitory, playing guitar (anything but love songs) and reading a book on the Salem witch trials. Every now and then, Hermione would come in between classes and give me a short "This is irresponsible" and then left.

I had no fear as I walked into dinner, not even as McGonagall handed me a detention slip. I translated it and read it. It said that I had been absent from all my classes—No, duh, I thought—and that my detention would be served that night with Snape in the dungeons scrubbing cauldrons from eight to whenever he released me.

Shhh-kh shhh-kh shhh-kh

I scrubbed cauldron after cauldron with a long brush. I sighed, disliking the whole thing. Each cauldron had a different rancid odor, each as nastier as the last. I sat at a table near Snape's desk as I worked while he graded papers. Neither of us spoke until I noticed an…essence—not exactly a smell—coming off Snape. I looked at him thoughtfully as I scrubbed.

He seemed to have noticed me staring at him and set down his quill in annoyance.

"What is it, Necros?"

I caught myself and turned my attention back to the gray-green crust I was scrubbing off the bottom of the cauldron.

"Nothing, Professor, I just… couldn't ignore your essence."

He took it the wrong way; he contracted his greasy eyebrows.

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

I looked at him. "Not like that. I sense…pain, regret, frustration…death…coming from you, You must dwell on it often, or it wouldn't be so strong that I could sense it."

Snape's eyes widened and his lips pursed, but he sighed and answered, "I made a few wrong turns, wrong choices, and it ended up in the death of a loved one."

I furrowed my brow, but nodded and said nothing.

"Since we've strayed onto the subject," Snape began, leaning forward in his desk over the apparently forgotten ungraded papers but still maintaining the surly look he always wore, "you can commune with the dead, am I correct?"

"Yeah…" I said, not sure where he was going with this.

"Say…someone who died eleven years ago. Would you still be able to?" He kept the same tone of voice he always had, but I could tell that he was leading up to something else.

"Depends," I said simply.

"On what?"

"On where they get judged."

Snape leaned back in his chair, still giving me a quizzical look. "Judged?"

I stopped scrubbing and explained that people get judged after death based off how they acted in life. Snape nodded.

"Say…someone who lived a relatively good life."

"Then they'd be judged into Elysium."

Silence.

"And?"

"And what?"

"Would you be able to commune with them?"

"No."

"And why not?"

"I'm not allowed in Elysium or to talk to anyone from Elysium."

"Why not? Is it not your dominion?" He had begun to sound frustrated.

"It's my father's dominion, and it's prompt for a bet, believe it or not."

He gave me yet another puzzled look.

I explained the prophesy and that my father and I had made a bet that if I wasn't the Child of the Prophesy, then I'd be allowed to visit Elysium. Snape grumbled something like: "—wait four years—"

"You can at least summon the dead, am I wrong?"

"I can, but not from Elysium."

"Raise the dead?"

"No." Before he could yell "Why not?" again, I said, "It would be unnatural and I, of all people, must respect the Laws of Death."

"What about the Resurrection Stone?" he stormed.

I furrowed my brow. I'd only heard of the Stone in stories.

"I don't know how you know about it, but the Stone is very complex. It was never meant to fully bring back the dead. No one can fully bring the dead back to life, not me, not my father."

He scowled at me for a few minutes and my ADHD made it hard to keep still.

"You may leave," he growled finally, snatching his quill and scribbling corrections all over some unfortunate student's paper that I doubted were incorrect in the first place.

"It's not my fault that—"

"Get—OUT," he said without looking up.

I stood, wiped my hands on a formerly clean cloth, and headed toward the door.

"And unless you want another detention, you will speak of this to no one," he called to my retreating back.

"Yes, sir," I said automatically over my shoulder, and then exited the room. As I walked through the dungeons and up the stairs, my mind reeled with questions. I wondered who Snape had wanted to bring back. Who could he miss so much? Were they a close relative? A good friend? Perhaps—and I shuddered at the thought—more than a friend?

I forced my mind to stop at that thought as I entered the Common Room.

I hadn't realized how late it was until I walked in to find the Common Room empty. I looked around in case one of the twins were to jump me (Which they've done before) and noticed the open book on the desk. I furrowed my brow and walked over.

It was Tom Riddle's diary.

It was now dry, but just as empty. Cautiously, I reached a hand to flip a page.

I drew my hand back quickly as the seam in the middle of the pages began to bleed bright streams of light. I backed up a few paces, my eyebrows close together and my eyes wide. In a blinding flash of light, a figure was thrust into the chair; as my blurred, spotted vision returned to normal, I recognized him as—

"Harry?"

He swiveled around in his seat, looking excited.

"I know who did it!"

"Did what?"

"It was Hagrid!" he exclaimed. "Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago!"

oOo

"It can't be Hagrid, it just…can't be," said Hermione as we walked down the noisy corridor toward the next class. By then, Harry had told us the entire story of what he had seen in the diary. Once was enough for me, but Ron and Hermione kept asking him to tell them again and again.

We decided to do nothing about it unless there was another attack. Frankly, I found it all a little hard to believe. I mean, sure, Hagrid had a taste for questionably dangerous creatures, but I'd never thought him to be the type that would send any out after students.

Nothing much happened over the next few weeks and months. Professor Sprout informed us in Herbology that the Mandrakes were nearly ready, it was just a matter of time.

When the time came, I had a slightly difficult decision when it came to choosing classes for the next year. I decided to take the same classes as Harry and Ron, with the exception of Divination. I took Muggle Studies instead.

"But don't you know practically everything about Muggles?" Ron demanded.

I shrugged. "Gotta pass at least one subject. Besides, it's not my place to be messing around with that Divination business. Leave that to Apollo and the Oracle."

"Oracle?"

"You know, someone actually blessed by Apollo to give prophesies, like the Great Prophesy."

"What's the Great Prophesy?" Hermione asked eagerly.

"That one I told you about, the one about a child of the Big Three turning sixteen."

I sat alone in the Common Room much, practicing my guitar. I'd begun learning how to play the theme for Quantum Leap, a TV show I enjoyed. There were a few other students, but not many. Most of them had gone out to watch the Quidditch practices. I barely noticed when Neville walked by and headed up the staircase. I did, however, noticed when he yelped and ran back down and ran straight out of the Common Room. At first, I was concerned, but then I reminded myself that Neville could be scared by nearly anything. So I went back to playing.

Several minutes later, though, he and Harry rushed through the portrait-hole and up the stairs, trailed by several other boys in our year including Ron. I let the shadows that composed my guitar diffuse and followed them. I pushed my way to the doorway. I stood there, my mouth agape. The entirety of Harry's possessions were trashed, ransacked, torn open and thrown everywhere.

"Damn," I said. "It must've been a Gryffindor."

"Aye," put in Seamus Finnigan. "No one else knows our password."

"Whoever it was, they must've been looking for something," said Ron, picking up the remains of a textbook.

"And they found it," said Harry, who had just finished rifling through his belongings. "Tom Riddle's diary is gone."

The next day was a Quidditch match against Hufflepuff. On the way out of the Great Hall, Harry heard the voice again. This time, I heard it as well.

"Kill this time…let me rip…tear…kill!"

Hermione got an idea and rushed to the library.

Ron and I went up to the stands waiting for the match to start. Just before it did, McGonagall made the announcement that the match had been cancelled.

There was an uproar of protests and groans from all stands and Ron and I tried to make our way down to the Pitch to find out what the hell was going on.

Surprisingly, she was looking for us as well. Harry was at her side and she told us there was something the three of us needed to see.

She led us to the Infirmary. "There has been another attack—another double attack."

My heart splashed into my stomach, sending a cold wave throughout my middle. We passed by Madam Pomfrey tending to a Ravenclaw girl.

"I warn you, this may be a bit of a shock," said McGonagall as she drew back the curtains of the next bed.

Hermione lay deathly still on the bed, her eyes glassy and unblinking. She had a look of sudden, shocking realization on her face and her arm was raised as though she had been holding something. Her hand, though, was empty at the moment.

"They were found near the library. Along with this." She held up a small, circular mirror. "Does it mean anything to you?"

We shook out heads, still staring at Hermione.

McGonagall escorted us back to the Common Room. Harry, Ron, and I had a long, silent conversation on the way.

It wasn't often that all the Gryffindors were in the Common Room at once. We quickly found out why when McGonagall came in carrying a roll of parchment. She called us to attention, unrolled it, and began reading it.

"All students will return to their house common rooms by six o' clock every evening. No student is to leave the dormitories after that time. You will be escorted to each lesson by a teacher. No student is to use the bathroom unaccompanied by a teacher. All further Quidditch training and matches are to be postponed. There will be no evening activities."

She rolled up the parchment and looked around the room at the openmouthed faces of the Gryffindors. As they all broke into their own conversations, she approached me.

"And absolutely no Shadow-traveling."

I gaped at her. "But Professor—"

"No excuses, no exceptions. Those are the rules. And trust me; they are set with your well-being in mind." With that, she left.

It wasn't long before the twins approached me.

"What did she want you for?" asked George (By then, I'd learned how to distinguish the two from each other).

"She told me not to Shadow-travel." I told them

"Oh, right," laughed Fred. "Don't want you sneaking out—"

"—to steal the soul—" George interjected.

"—of some innocent student!" they said together.

I rolled my eyes, smirking. Leave it to the twins to cheer me up. My rolling eyes fell on Percy, sitting in a chair near the fire, looking almost as pale as me.

"Um…is he…" I pointed at him.

"He's in shock," said George. "That Ravenclaw girl—Penelope Clearwater—she's a prefect. I don't think he thought the monster would dare attack a prefect."

"He wouldn't," I agreed. I looked over and saw Harry and Ron whispering to each other. When they saw me looking at them, they waved me over. I muttered a quick "See you later" to the twins and walked over.

"We've got to talk to Hagrid," whispered Harry. "I can't believe it's him, but if he did set the monster loose last time, he'll know how to get into the Chamber of Secrets. That's a start."

"But you heard McGonagall. We're not allowed to leave the tower except for class," said Ron.

They both looked at me, and I raised my hands in surrender.

"Don't look at me, shadow-travel's out." They both sighed in disappointment.

" I think it's time to bring my dad's old cloak out again."

Managing to fit the three of us under the cloak, we sprinted across the grounds in the pitch black night. We knocked on the front door of Hagrid's hut, and a rather large crossbow greeted us. Once Hagrid recognized us, he lowered it and sighed in relief.

"What's that for?" Harry whispered as we walked in.

"Oh, nuthin'—er—I've bin expectin'—doesn't matter—How 'bout a pot o' tea?" he offered.

We sat down at the table as he made tea. His hands shook noticeably and when he tried to fill a tea cup, he overfilled it and hardly noticed.

"Are you alright?" I asked, taking the overfilled cup.

"I'm fine. Fine," he muttered, nodding.

"So, did you hear about Hermione?" Ron asked him.

"Oh, I heard abou' that alrigh'," Hagrid replied.

A knock on the door caught our attention. Quickly, we got back under the cloak and retreated to a far back corner. Hagrid took up his crossbow again, answering the door.

Skipping the awkward situation of the conversation including Cornelius Fudge, Dumbledore, and even Lucius, Draco's dad, Harry, Ron and I sat back and listened to the entire thing. I took a couple elbows to the ribs when I nearly cursed aloud at Malfoy. As they were about to take Hagrid away, he ended with a strange, but rather obvious clue.

"If anyone were lookin' for some stuff, then all they'd have to do would be to follow the spiders. Yep. That'd lead them right to it."

And he was gone.