Second Year

Oh come on!

Is this supposed to be a joke?

Now, don't get me wrong. I live on a shelf 364 days of the year. A little mystery goes a long way towards making my life more bearable.

Take last year's Sorting. Now what, I ask you, was I supposed to make of the fact that there were a student and teacher with matching secondary auras? Of course, I'd barely begun to consider the question before I had the answer plucked out of Harry Potter's head. Technically his forehead, but no matter. It was a pity that the mystery was solved so quickly, but I was amply compensated for my loss.

Those memories were delicious.

And it's not like it didn't work out. Sure, Quirrell might have been playing host to the most recent iteration of Evil Overlord, but he got caught in the end. Something about trying to steal some ridiculously overpowered magical artifact.

Aw, sweet of you to think that. No, I'm not talking about myself. Now pipe down and let me finish.

Actually, I'd heard some whispers that it was Harry Potter who had confronted him. Very interesting. But no matter, all's well that ends well. Riddle's wraith was gone and done, Harry had again triumphed over tall, dark, and bulbous, and I was anticipating a return to normalcy.

So what was that doing here?

On my first scan of the Great Hall, I thought that Harry Potter was standing among the first years.

Weird.

Then I realized that it wasn't Harry Potter at all. In fact, his magical signature wasn't anywhere in the Great Hall. For some reason he was skipping the Welcoming Feast this year.

Again, weird.

Turns out the person I'd mistaken him for was someone else entirely. First year, female, strong-willed, a bit temperamental with a side of mischief. When I was placed on the first student's head, I immediately sought her out. The mop of red hair was a giveaway: it was the youngest Weasley girl.

So what was she doing with Voldemort's magic stuck in her head?

Really weird.

Granted, it was a far more immature magical signature than I'd seen on either Harry or Quirrell, which told me that this version of the aura was probably younger than the others.

I was so wrapped up in figuring out what was going on, that I didn't notice the other startlingly odd thing about the new First Year students to be Sorted.

Then it was too late.

"Lovegood, Luna."

Merlin's boogers, what was up with her aura? I'd never even heard of some of those colors. As she walked up, I had no idea where she should go, and I was not looking forward to rummaging through her memories.

Ow! Pain pain pain.

Okay, breathe in, breathe out, push through the pain. Turns out fairy magic doesn't interface well with normal magic. Learn something new every day.

If I were to guess, one of Luna's parents – probably her Mum – was basically the equivalent of a squib from the fairly world, living in exile from the Seelie Court. That'd explain why her daughter was able to see fairy magic, without being able to use any of it.

Kinda cool, actually.

Rather, it would have been 'kinda cool,' if not for that 'sweet Circe what in the blazes is that?' vision of something little Miss Lovegood calls a 'wrackspurt'.

Apparently they're little critters that live off ambient rationality, and mess with your ability to think. And, according to her most recent memories, it seems I have an ungodly number of them nesting in my brim.

So now I have to live with the knowledge that I am infested with mind-sucking fairy parasites, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Kill me now.

Besides the fairy shenanigans, Luna turned out to be surprisingly easy to Sort. My cry of "Ravenclaw" couldn't come soon enough. Frankly, it was more of a yelp.

At last I had worked through the rest of the list and came to sit on Miss Weasley's head.

Ah. The second aura came from Riddle's first horcrux, the diary he'd given to Malfoy. But how—?

Gryffindor went to sharpen his sword again. Seriously, Malfoy? Give an incredibly dark artifact to a girl, hoping to have her unleash Slytherin's Monster on unsuspecting schoolchildren (including, by the way, your own son), and why? To make one of your political rivals look bad? Can you get more petty?

As we had so often over the last thousand years, each of us cursed our original selves, the Artificers. Malfoy's deeds weren't related to the Sorting, so we were once more bound to silence.

It turned out that, like the Lovegood girl, Miss Weasley was actually quite easy to Sort once you compensated for the diary's influence.

"Gryffindor!"

And all too soon it was back to the shelf, another year of helplessness ahead of me.

It was the middle of December when my hibernation was interrupted, by someone plucking me off the shelf without so much as a 'by your leave.' Now who—?

Ah. "Bee in your bonnet, Harry Potter?"

Rhetorical question, really. This kid's mind was all over the place.

"Er, yes – sorry to bother you – I wanted to ask—"

"You've been wondering whether I put you in the right House," Robin finished smartly, as the rest of us immersed ourselves in the poor boy's memories of the past year and a half.

Seems the rumors were true: he had been the one to confront Quirrell after all. I'll admit that the part where Harry somehow flash-fried Riddle's host with his bare hands was more than a little weird. Puts a new spin on the phrase 'caught red-handed,' though.

And then there was this year's fiasco. Oh boy.

We all felt for the poor boy at the center of this maelstrom. How unlucky do you have to be, to be at the scene of the first attack, publicly revealed as a parselmouth, reviled as a dark wizard, and then be again the first at the scene of an attack on precisely the same person who had reviled you before?

On the other hand, of course, Harry clearly wasn't firing on all cylinders. Sorry, it must be said. How do you not connect "hey, look, I have this incredibly rare talent of speaking to snakes!" to "attacks by a beast that once belonged to a Founder renowned for his affinity to snakes" to "the voice in the walls only I can hear immediately before each attack"?

Honestly, it's not that difficult!

Perhaps his lapse was excusable. He had, after all, been pretty thoroughly indoctrinated to 'not ask questions.' But what of the other students, or staff?

How was it that none of the Professors had made such a connection, or acted on it if they had? Surely they can't all be that addle-minded.

And don't talk to me about wrackspurts!

We were so caught up in the sudden influx of memories, that we almost didn't hear Robin finish telling Harry, "But I stand by what I said before: you would have done well in Slytherin."

Just like that, we were off his head. "You're lying," we heard, the voice seeming confident though we could tell his aura was roiling in turmoil and self-doubt.

And then he walked away.

Oh how we started on Robin after that. 'What were you thinking?' we badgered him. 'You saw how he's been treated, how he was feeling. He wanted to reassurance that he wasn't crazy or evil, and for him that meant anything but Slytherin.' Even Salazar agreed with that, hardly even feeling the slight on his House. 'How could you say that? Why did you say the one thing that could make him feel worse?'

Turns out Robin had simply choked under pressure. Who knew that living like hermits for a thousand years might leave us unprepared for the real world?

It took nearly a month for Robin to live that one down. Perhaps it was unfair of us – okay, we knew it was unfair of us – but it was either that or deal with the real issue. We had fought so long for freedom, but what if we succeeded? Who could say that any of us were ready for freedom when it came?

Now that was a sobering thought.

It was near the end of May when our conclave was broken for a third time. This time it wasn't a student – no, this time it was the resident fire-turkey who took us off the shelf.

Don't get me wrong. In circumstances were different I might have said that Fawkes was a good friend of mine. But when two immortals are forced to co-inhabit a confined space for nearly a millennium, it's pretty much inevitable that they'll get on each others' nerves.

Of course, our relationship wasn't helped by the fact that I was basically blinded any time I glanced in Fawkes' direction. You see, phoenixes are composed almost entirely of pure magic, being manifestations of the element Fire. Looking at a phoenix when you're able to see auras is like staring into the surface of the sun. Pain will invariably ensue.

And now he was grabbing me, and I had no idea why. Indeed, I'd barely had time to react before I felt a warm soft light consume me. It was a sensation I'd felt once or twice before: Fakwes had flame-transported me somewhere.

Another second and the warm sensation was succeeded by a blast of much colder air. I'd have thought he'd brought me somewhere outside, but the air was stale, almost fetid. Fawkes began to sing as he flew, a haunting melody made all the more eerie by the echoes from the walls.

Turning to my aura sight, I could tell that the walls themselves bore traces of wards long-since faded, wards that Salazar recognized as those he had erected over his Chamber.

More noteworthy for the rest of us, however, were the three auras in the middle of the Chamber floor. Well, two and a half. Possibly four. Hey, when you're dealing with double auras, it can be really hard to tell!

On the ground was Miss Weasley. The good news was, her aura was now cleansed of the Diary's influence. The bad news was, that was only because the Diary's aura was now self-sustaining, and was in fact standing over her body draining power out of her. Not cool. Lastly, standing a ways apart was Harry Potter himself, aura blazing.

Fawkes dropped us at Harry's feet.

Oh come on! What am I supposed to do from down here — mind-meld with his toes? What's your problem, fire-turkey?

Then I heard a voice, cold and cunning. "That's a phoenix…." It came from the diary's aura, which now stretched out to form a wraith-like image of a sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle.

"Fawkes?" Harry asked the bird now perched on his shoulder.

Again, not firing on all cylinders.

"And that – that's the old school Sorting Hat." At that Riddle began to laugh, hollow cackles that echoed in the empty Chamber and sent shivers up my seams. "This is what Dumbledore sends his defender! A songbird and an old hat! Do you feel brave, Harry Potter? Do you feel safe now?"

And to my surprise he did. Riddle may not have seen it, but Harry's aura visibly strengthened, less fear and more resolve. Godric was so proud.

Fortunately, junior-grade Evil Overlord he was, Riddle started to monologue. Unfortunately, Harry was still so new to this whole Underdog Hero business that he didn't take advantage of the opening.

Then Riddle hissed, and part of the wall began to retract. Only Salazar understood the words, and he passed the parsel-tongue message to the rest of us:

"Speak to me, Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four."

We stared at him.

Salazar hastily explained how that wasn't the original password, and that someone must have changed it.

Okay, that's fair. But before we could tease him for having such supercilious heirs (or for being the minor deity of his own little cult) we heard another sound. This time it wasn't stone scraping against stone. This was something else, something alive.

"Kill him."

We'd known from the last year's horcrux memories that during his school years Riddle had discovered and corrupted Salazar's former pet basilisk. But even with that memory, none of us were prepared for the actual presence of the thing – not just its power, but the sheer menace radiating off its aura.

And of course there was its size. Holy crap it was huge. Its aura just kept going, and going, and going. By the time all of it had come into view, there must have been over fifteen meters of it.

Fawkes lifted off Harry's shoulder and engaged the basilisk directly. Its blinding white aura flickering as it moved around the immense dark aura of the snake. It was like alternating between staring at the sun and being confined to an unlit room.

I never imagined the pain of looking at a phoenix could somehow be worse.

Then something in the basilisk's aura shifted, its power visibly dimmed. "NO!" screamed Riddle. "Leave the bird – leave the bird! The boy is behind you! You can still smell him – kill him!"

The serpent swayed, dazed and blinded. Its tail whipped across the floor, sending me careening into Harry Potter. The boy rammed me onto his head, his mind whimpering just as his voice had been moments before, "Help me – help me – please help me."

Now, to be fair, the Artificers had chosen Robin not because he was good with a blade, but because he was good with children. But that meant that, of the five of us, only Robin was unused to combat.

At the first sign of the basilisk, he'd gone into shock.

Only Harry's desperate cry for help snapped him out of it, but even then he could not work through his fear. Then we felt it, sensed as the hat tightened around Harry's head. Our brim contracted like a sphincter, and like a sphincter, something passed through it.

Had we pants, Robin would have pooped them.

No, he wouldn't be living this down any time soon.

Harry whisked us off his head as his mind turned from "help!" to "ow!" In that moment we saw it. A glittering blade of silver, wreathed in magic.

Godric recognized it immediately: "My sword!"

In that moment we understood. Yes, we apparently had an excretory system, and yes, Robin was in charge of that too. More to the point, we realized that the Artificers had bound Gryffindor's Sword to us. Godric's heirs could summon the sword in an hour of need, but when they had finished, it would be returned to us, strengthened by the magic that had wielded it.

But that's not all we realized. The Artificers had not just bound the Sword to us. They had bound our constraints to the Sword. Each time it was summoned, we were freed. Each time it returned, we were bound anew. And here at last we understood. Here at last we felt it.

We were free.

We were so enraptured by our newfound freedom that we paid hardly any attention to the battle going on around us. We only distantly heard Riddle's shrieked commands… the basilisk's wild careening… the slick noise of sword piercing flesh… Harry's collapse to the floor… Fawkes' mournful crooning… Riddle's gloating voice suddenly tinged with concern and fear… the bang of his wand as Fawkes took flight… the slap of air as Fawkes dropped the diary into Harry's lap… and at last the shrieks of pain as Riddle disintegrated.

We only returned to ourselves as Harry gathered us up, along with his wand and the Sword that had been impaled in the basilisk's mouth.

Now was our chance.

Then Harry was rushing over to comfort the horrified Miss Weasley, reassuring her through her tears.

Now was our chance.

Then Harry was helping her to her feet and urging her forward, forward, forward, towards the door that would lead us out of the Chamber.

Soon I would be returned to my shelf; soon I would be again bound by the Sword; soon it would be too late.

Now was my chance.