A Snake in the Nest, Chapter Fourteen
A room full of ghosts wouldn't be anything but terrifying anywhere but Hogwarts, Cooro noted absently as they entered the Deathday party. Ignoring how confusing that thought was, he moved forward, looking for Nick. Or food, whatever came first.
Ghosts danced or floated around, and the few living beings (AKA the children) felt cold in their midst. A few ghosts eyed them in interest, focusing on Harry more than the others, but Nick welcomed them warmly.
Sort of.
"My dear friends… welcome." He bowed to them, looking mournful, but Husky could see the thankful look in his eyes as he nodded to Harry. Apparently living people were a great honor at these things.
From the looks they were getting, Husky confirmed the idea, then began to look for food. He wanted to get to it before Cooro, who he knew had skipped lunch to plot with the twins in their dorm.
Cooro noticed him looking, and took it as a challenge to find the table first.
"There's food over there, you two." Nana rolled her eyes, pointing over to the other end of the room. All eight of them (Neville had been dragged into it as well) began walking towards where she'd pointed. Cooro was bouncing and jumping, practically dancing along, and Hermione muttered to Nana that his markings were glowing enough to light up the room alone.
Suddenly, Cooro stopped, holding out his arms and wrinkling his nose.
"It's rotten." They could see the table better now, and sure enough, everything on it had gone bad. One ghost floated through a platter of haggis, mouth wide open.
"Can you taste it that way?" Ron looked curious. The man looked at him sadly. He was dressed like a bard from the Renaissance, and had a lute in his hands.
"Almost." He drifted off, and Cooro looked over the table carefully, trying to find something that wasn't spoiled.
"Hello Peeves." Harry said, and he looked up to see the resident poltergeist in front of them, wearing as many bright colors as was possible on one person.
"Nibbles?" He held out a bowl of moldy peanuts, and Nana gagged. Hermione shook her head as politely as she could, but she looked rather sick.
"Heard you talking about Myrtle." When was this? Husky wondered, watching Hermione pale slightly. Harry and Ron looked as bemused as he felt, and Cooro was talking to a knight with Senri, ignoring them all. He walked over to them, while Peeves continued to speak.
"Rude, talking about Myrtle. Shouldn't talk about people behind their backs. OI! MYRTLE!" Husky winced, and saw out of the corner of his eye a depressed looking girl with thick glasses glide over to where Hermione was pleading with Peeves to keep quiet. Senri turned to him as he walked over.
"What's happening?" He shrugged, listening as Peeves began to yell something and Cooro asked what the knight had done in his life.
"No idea. Something about Myrtle." Senri, who had heard Hermione's comments on the ghost, along with nods from Nana, smiled slightly and turned back to the knight, who looked rather pleased with the attention he was getting.
They were joined by the others, and managed to talk to several different guests in the room before Nick stopped the saws and began to make a speech.
He was interrupted by the arrival of several more ghosts on horseback, who were carrying their heads. Nick looked rather annoyed, and the ghost they were talking to, a healer from the American Civil war, told them they were the Headless Hunt. She drifted off after that, spotting someone she knew, and they walked over to where Nick stood. He was trying to talk to the leader, but was being ignored.
As they got close, the man saw Harry, and others, and came over.
"Live' uns! What're you doing here?" From the look on his face, Neville was fairly sure this new ghost was the one Nick complained about. "Sir Properly-Decapitated Podmore.' His real name was Sir Patrick, unfortunately.
"We're attending Nick's Deathday party, of course." Husky said, and Sir Patrick looked at him in slight surprise. The regal tones he usually hid had slipped out a bit there, and as a knight, he'd noticed them. He was about to respond again when his fellows pulled him back, starting a game of Head Hockey. Nick was trying to restart his speech, but no-one was listening.
"Come on, it's freezing in here. Let's go." Ron muttered, and the others nodded, leaving. Nick saw them, but all he did was smile a bit sadly and wave them on. Harry mouthed an apology, and seven children left the room, shivering.
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"I wish that hadn't gone so badly. Nick really doesn't like that guy, does he?" They were heading towards the warmer parts of the castle, and Nana kept glancing back, as though regretting leaving the party.
"No, but it's more because he can't join them than anything else. His head is still attached, and all." Harry noted, before stopping suddenly, looking around wildly.
"I can hear it again!" The others, discluding Ron and Hermione, looked at him in confusion.
"I can hear a voice… it's saying it's going to kill!" He ran off, following it, and the others followed.
"Can you hear anything, Nana?" Husky panted out as they ran.
"Just hissing." Well. That's odd. Neville noted, wondering how Harry could hear it better than Nana could.
Harry got to the corridor first, but Hermione saw the bloody writing on the wall.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE.
"It's written in blood." Neville noted distantly, sounding as though he couldn't really believe what he was saying. The nearest window was broken, and the shards of glass lay all around the rock that had caused it. Hanging beside the message was…
"Mrs. Norris. They got Filch's cat." Nana said, and she stepped forward, to take the cat down, when loud footsteps came from the end of the corridor. They looked at each other, and that was when Senri spoke up.
"Where's Cooro?"
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Cooro listened with interest as Moaning Myrtle explained how she'd died.
"Just like that? You never saw anything?" She shook her head. Like most of the ghosts in the room, she seemed rather flattered that he was asking about her death.
"No. The next thing I remember is waking up floating by my body. I haunted Olive Hornby for a long time before she went to the Ministry. Then I came back here." She smiled a bit at him. He grinned back, and was about to say something when Peeves came over.
"Myrtle and Cooooooro, sitting in a tree~" He crooned, and Myrtle's face quickly filled with tears, though it looked like she was blushing as well. She began to wail, and dashed away, Peeves trailing after her. Cooro made to follow, but a feeling of ice on his shoulder made him turn around. The Grey Lady was there, looking as mournful as she always did.
"Don't bother. It'll only egg him on. I have lived here for a very long time, and I've learned that nothing will deter him."
Somehow, it doesn't sound like you mean Peeves. Before Cooro could speak, she floated off. Her place was taken by Nick, who smiled at him.
"You didn't have to stick around, lad. This was doomed from the start, when I invited Patrick." Cooro shook his head.
"It was fun! I didn't mind coming." His stomach gurgled. Nick eyed him.
"I am a bit hungry, though." Nick glanced at the food, where several ghosts were gliding through it, trying to taste.
"Ah, I'd forgotten about that. Here's the Friar; I'll ask him to lead you to the kitchens." He flagged down the ghost in question, who, after a brief explanation, was more than happy to lead him there, and kept up a lively commentary on various people they passed, both in the party, and the portraits they passed. Most of the occupants were asleep now, and that was when Cooro realized how late it was.
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They sat in silence in Lockhart's office while Dumbledore examined Mrs. Norris. McGonagall, Snape, Filch and Lockhart were all there, each looking at the seemingly-dead cat on the desk.
Lockhart was babbling out random names of things that had 'definitely done her in,' and Filch was sobbing as each comment came out.
Finally, Dumbledore stood up.
"She's not dead, Argus." Husky lost track of the conversation for a while, everyone was yelling loudly and he wasn't very interested. Instead, he stared into the cat's glassy eyes. After a long moment, be blinked, and redirected his gaze to Snape, who was speaking.
He'd obviously been staring too long; for a moment, he'd sworn he could see a huge snake with yellow eyes reflecting from the cat's gaze.
"But why not join the feast afterwards?" What had he missed this time? "Why go to that corridor?" Ron was opening his mouth to say something, probably a lie about exactly what they'd been doing, when Senri jumped in.
"We were trying to find Cooro. He left earlier than us." The adults blinked, and looked the group over, apparently noticing that Cooro was not among them for the first time.
"So you were… looking for him, and came across this unfortunate scene in the process?" McGonagall asked warily, looking from face to face. They nodded, and Filch began to yell, wanting retribution for his beloved cat. Dumbledore reassured him that she would be fine, when Lockhart jumped in, claiming he could cure her with ease.
Wasn't he saying she was dead earlier? And that he knew exactly what had both killed and Petrified her a moment later? Nana wondered, and began to see the Professor in a different light. She glanced at Hermione, but from the look on her face, she hadn't noticed anything.
Finally, they were let go, and Neville released a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding. At the others looks, he shrugged.
"My gran would kill me if I got a detention, and I think this is a bit more extreme than that. You heard Dumbledore; it was Dark Magic."
"On the other hand, that's probably what cleared us in the first place. I'm fairly sure that when Dumbledore says it's not possible for a second year, he means it." Husky pointed out as they jumped the Vanishing Stair. He looked at Senri for contribution, but found him gone.
"Now where'd he go?" Nana looked around, and shrugged.
"To look for Cooro, I expect. Now," she adopted a business-like manner and looked at Harry, "you're going to tell us what's going on, and what you heard."
An hour of walking, sitting and talking later, the story was told. It wouldn't have taken as long if they weren't waiting for people to leave the Common Room and finally going to the Anima dorm. Ron looked around as Harry finished.
"Nifty, inn'it? Having a basically private room? We still have Dean and Seamus in ours." Husky shrugged. He was used to privacy from others; it didn't really click that they could have been separated.
"Yeah. It'd be a great base of operations if it wasn't, you know, the top of a tower. Me n' Nana are the only ones that could get here with a semblance of speed."
They all turned from their various positions in the room, startled, to see Cooro walking in, Senri behind him, both bearing large bags of… well, large, bulging bags, anyway.
"I brought food! From what Senri said, you lot didn't manage to get anything either, so I got a lot." He spilled the contents onto the bed, and they found the entirety of the feast, charmed to not spill, laid out. He held up some silverware as well.
"Where'd you get all of this?" Cooro looked at Harry, who was eating a drumstick and watching him.
"Gotta have some secrets, don't I?" He grinned and snatched a roll, sprawling next to Senri as he ate. HE was quickly filled in, and frowned a bit, thinking about Myrtle's story. He kept silent for the moment; he wasn't sure yet about it, so why say anything.
He was most interested in the comment on the hissing Nana had heard.
"And Harry could hear words?" They all nodded (the ones that weren't eating, anyway), and he frowned.
"Well, it rules out insanity, I think. You both heard it, just different things. Hmm…" He stayed silent, thinking.
"I can ask Gran, maybe. And you could ask Remus, or your parents. Maybe it's something we just haven't heard of." Neville suggested from the floor. Husky shrugged.
"Not a bad idea." Hermione piped up from her seat next to Nana.
"I can look in the library." This queued eye rolls from Ron and Harry, but as it was a rather good idea, they didn't say anything.
Eventually, they cleared out for bed. The girls departed first, and from what he could discern, Senri was fairly sure they were going to be up talking over the events in their own room. The other three boys left shortly after, yawning. Cooro flopped onto his bed, now entirely devoid of food, and was asleep in moments. Husky stared at him as he changed.
"I'll never understand how he does that." Senri glanced over from where he was climbing into his bed.
"Skill."
It's short; it is not even a full day, but I'm tired and want to sleep. So here it is.
Have any of you ever been to the Jack Daniel's distillery?