Chapter 7: Zero for Three (or The Chamber of Secrets is Open Again)
[In which a great many connections are made very quickly, and Hermione comes up with an idea that will never work.]
Saturday, 31 October 1992 Hogwarts
The addition of Quidditch to Mary's schedule meant that she was quite genuinely busy for the first time since coming to Hogwarts. All through the first year, she had had time to sit around, chatting with her friends or looking up new and interesting books, or even joining pick-up games of quodpot or quiddell. Now, however, she, along with the rest of the Quidditch team, was out on the pitch on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday after dinner until curfew, and from six to noon on Saturday. Bletchley told the new team members that Flint would reduce practice hours after their first match, but in the meanwhile it was somewhat overwhelming. Mary supposed she shouldn't complain, because the upperclassmen on the team put in even more time than that, writing plays and strategies for different combinations of players in the common room in the evenings, but she missed Hermione.
She still saw plenty of Lilian, even if they didn't have much chance to talk while they were in the air, but the hours that the other girls could spend with Hermione were suddenly very limited, and Mary also had to finish her homework while they were together. The only time they could really talk or explore anymore was Sunday, and Mary quickly realized that exercising an extra fifteen hours a week left her wanting nothing more than to sit around and relax by Sunday afternoon.
On the plus side, spending all her spare time flying and learning Quidditch strategies meant she had very little time or energy to spend worrying about whether Lilian (or any other Slytherin) was trying to manipulate her, and being on the team meant that many of the older Slytherins who would never have bothered to speak to her before now acknowledged her in the corridors and common room. Depending on how well they did in the first match, she might actually gain some degree of popularity among the upper years. Malfoy would, too, of course, but that couldn't be helped.
It took two weeks for Mary to wonder what Hermione was up to, now, in all the hours she would before have spent with Mary and Lilian. The answer, of course, was that she was spending considerably more time with the other Ravenclaws. She had become closer friends with her room-mate, Padma Patil, and Padma's best friend, Morag MacDougal, as well as joining Aerin and her friends Lara, Thomas, and Kirke in the Ravenclaw common room or the library.
It was somewhat of a relief to know that Hermione wasn't just pining away for Mary and Lilian in some dark corner of the library, but Mary was briefly (before she was whisked away for yet another practice session) unpleasantly surprised to realize that Hermione had a life of her own, to which Mary wasn't privy. In all honesty, before that day, Mary had no idea who Hermione's room-mate was. She had entirely forgotten that Ravenclaws even had room-mates, though she was sure she had known it at some point. From Hermione's slight flush whenever she mentioned Kirke, Mary thought the older girl might have overcome her infatuation with their ridiculous excuse for a defense professor, but she didn't ask, because she preferred not to talk about the insufferable man at all if she could help it.
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
September and October passed quickly for Mary, between classes, Quidditch practice, and trying to find time to maintain her minimal social life. Before she knew it, some variation of the insidious, time-warping curse that affected the latter half of her first year had taken effect, and it was the last Saturday of October: Halloween already, and the first Quidditch match was exactly a week away.
Captain Flint did not cancel practice for the holiday, and in fact laughed when Lilian suggested the idea the day prior – not unkindly, because he knew that they would be exhausted come time for the Revel, but enough to crush the second-years' hopes of a day off. The resigned underclassmen trooped out to the field, bright and early, and returned to their dorm after lunch with hopes of catching a nap before the Feast, so that they would be able to make it through the very long night ahead.
It was not to be. All three dungeon levels, including the Slytherin dorms, were permeated by a hideous noise, like an unholy cross of fingernails scraping on slate and the most wretched screeching that could be coaxed from an abused violin.
By the time the Quidditch team returned from their practice, even the most stubborn of Slytherins had relocated, either to the library or to various abandoned classrooms, to wait out the racket. Mary and Lilian did not discover the source of the obnoxious sound until they came across the friendlier contingent of their yearmates, who were holed up in the girls' usual corner of the library with a slightly uncomfortable-looking Hermione. The Ravenclaw knew of the other second-year Slytherins, of course (Mary and Lilian talked about them often enough), but she had never spent much time with them.
"Moon, Potter. Finally give up on the dungeons?" Blaise asked as they dropped their bags and looked around in confusion.
"You say finally like we were in the castle at all this morning," Lilian pointed out. "Practice ended just before lunch."
"Oh, right, Quidditch," Blaise rolled his eyes.
"Yes, Quidditch. What the hell is going on downstairs?" Mary asked.
Daphne and Blaise (and Hermione, who had apparently already heard the Slytherins' complaints at length) explained that one of the ghosts was celebrating a Death Day Party later that evening. The party was, the Slytherins had learned, basically a mockery of a birthday party, where a ghost commemorated major anniversaries of its death, and the noise was due to a spectral orchestra, which had assembled to play in honor of the Deathday Ghost, whichever one it was. No one they had spoken to knew or cared whose party it was, nor did they have any desire to attend, though apparently the Bloody Baron had dropped by the Slytherin common room that morning to pass along a mass invitation to the House. More to the point, no one could determine exactly where the unholy orchestra was practicing (and they did try, for much of the morning, according to Blaise and Daphne – several older students had offered to send the entire orchestra beyond the veil they could be found).
Hermione, who hadn't been in the dungeons to hear the noise herself, thought the Slytherins' poor attitude about the whole thing was a slight overreaction to a bit of unpleasant music. She thought they ought to go, since they had been invited, and because "How often do living people ever attend such an event?" The Slytherins, who vastly outnumbered her and who had all heard the wailing, so-called 'music,' responded, "Never, and for good reason."
Slytherin House was apparently invited to some sort of ghost party every other year or so, according to Theo (who had gotten it from one of the prefects while Daphne and Blaise were orchestra-hunting), as a sort of courtesy paid to the neighbors, or so his informant had insisted. The ghosts did their social duty in informing the living of the event, the Slytherins were moderately less likely to complain to the Headmaster than they would have been if they weren't invited. Everyone involved understood that none of the living would ever attend, but the proprieties were satisfied all around.
Aside from the thoroughly unpleasant entertainment, rumor had it the ghosts never served food fit for living people, and even Hermione had to admit that none of the castle ghosts were great conversationalists ("Would you want to go to a party with Moaning Myrtle, Jeanie?"). As for the ghosts' perspective on the issue, Daphne summed it up best: "Granger, they scheduled it for a time when they knew every human in the castle had a prior engagement. It's practically a flashing sign saying 'don't come.'"
"Fine!" Hermione had finally capitulated with a huff. "But I still think we're missing a great opportunity."
"We're not!" Mary and Lilian chorused, as quietly as they could. Madam Pince was hovering around their section of the stacks.
After that, the conversation shifted to less divisive topics: their shared Charms class, the homework for their other classes, and gossip about their fellow students.
Zacharias Smith had taken it upon himself over the course of the past two months to humiliate Lockhart in every possible way, most recently by volunteering whenever the 'professor' asked for a hand with his dramatic reconstructions of his defeat of various creatures. (They hadn't had another practical lesson since the first disastrous week with the Pixies.) Since no one else ever volunteered in the Slytherin/Hufflepuff class, Smith had already been a villager with a "Babbling Curse" which caused him to shout insults and curses at the 'professor' and a Yeti with a head cold who gave the 'professor' a bloody nose in the name of dramatic accuracy. When Lockhart gave him detention over it, Smith reportedly went to Professor Sprout, insisting that that was exactly what the Yeti had tried to do in the book, and he had fully expected Lockhart to block him, per the "script." She rescinded the punishment.
Hermione, who had Transfiguration and DADA with the Gryffindors, reported that Neville, who was her partner in Transfiguration, had finally gotten a new wand, and had since improved to being at least an average wizard, instead of the hopeless squib he had seemed in their first classes together. He was, the Slytherins noted, still terrible at Potions, but they could only hope he would gain a bit of confidence and stop blowing up their lab section every other week. As amusing as it was to intentionally ruin the Little Weasel's day every so often, it was just irritating when everyone constantly had to evacuate because Longbottom melted another cauldron.
And Lilian managed to get Hermione to confirm the rumors that Padma Patil was currently in a fight with her Gryffindor twin and Lavender Brown over Cedric Diggory, an older Hufflepuff. According to unfounded gossip (which in Hogwarts could be either surprisingly accurate or entirely wrong, but never anywhere in the middle), Brown and Red Patil were fighting over which of them was allowed to make a move on Diggory (who would doubtless be uninterested in either of them anyway), while Blue Patil was furious with her twin for losing her head over any boy, and with Brown for isolating her already-unpopular sister further within her dorm. Daphne was perhaps a bit too pleased about this, and Mary couldn't help but wonder what was in it for her.
It was common knowledge that neither Sophie Roper nor Fay Dunbar, the other second-year Gryffindor girls, cared much for Red Patil or Brown. It was less common knowledge that Dunbar and Daphne had been chatting every so often since their meeting on the train on the way back to school, and had contrived between the two of them to instigate two large, cross-house all-female cliques. Almost all the Hufflepuff second-year girls (with the exception of Leanne Malone, who spent most of her time with Wayne Hopkins and Ollie Rivers) loosely followed Dunbar's lead, as did Roper, who many of the second-years thought was so meek that she must have been mis-sorted.
Daphne, on the other hand, was making serious inroads with the Ravenclaw second-years and Slytherin first-years. She made a face whenever it was brought up, and said that dealing with Ravenclaws was like herding cats, but Lisa Turpin, Su Li, and Mandy Brocklehurst, as well as all the new snakeling girls (except Nora Blum, who was a loner, and Artie Seran, who mostly associated with her older sister) followed her. So far as Mary and Lilian could figure, it was Daphne's plan to eventually unite their two factions and wrest the title of most popular underclassman girl at Hogwarts from Cho Chang, a pretty Ravenclaw in the year ahead of them, who was uncommonly social for one of her house. Exactly how Dunbar fit into the end-game and why Daphne wanted this title, Mary couldn't fathom, but apparently she did.
In any case, Daphne seemed pleased that Red Patil and Brown were becoming more isolated from one another, and she was pleased with Lilian and Hermione for confirming the rumors. Her pleasant mood carried over to the others. As Catherine said, a good hostess can make or break the atmosphere of a party, and the same principles obviously applied to sullen gatherings in abandoned corners of the library. The latter half of their afternoon was spent in amiable conversation, chipping away idly at their ever-present list of homework assignments. The five Slytherins and Hermione entered the Great Hall for the Halloween feast in high spirits, despite the early-morning Quidditch practice and the ghost-imposed exile from their dorm, whispering about the Revel and how best to sneak out of the castle at the appointed time.
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
The Halloween Feast was even more brilliant than the previous year's, with a troop of animated human skeletons demonstrating ballroom dances to creepy organ music during the main course, and a thundering herd of ghostly horsemen who charged through dessert, playing polo with what appeared to be their leader's head. Thankfully, the ghost orchestra stayed confined in whatever subdungeon they were occupying for the evening, and, as expected, none of the usual Hogwarts ghosts made an appearance. There were enormous floating jack-o-lanterns, lit from inside as well as the usual flocks of floating candles. The only thing missing was the bats, which had spent the previous year swooping down on the students (though never actually touching them). The half-moon was bright above them, and the stars shone clearly in the cloudless sky, some enchantment helping their light overcome that of the candles.
The first years goggled at the decorations and entertainment, and the older students tried valiantly not to look as impressed as they were. Mary overheard Enyo Seran telling her little sister that this was the best Halloween display the school had come up with in at least her four years. Mary was very glad they had managed to convince Hermione that this was truly the better way to spend their evening, because it surely would have been some kind of crime to miss it.
The house elves had outdone themselves on the sweets, serving delicate, animated, spun-sugar trifles in the shape of dangerous creatures alongside the main course. They lasted until the very end of the feast, as no one wanted to be the first to break the wing of a dragon or the manticore's tail. When they finally did, the creatures fought back, and had to be subdued with the students' dinner knives. They bled various flavors of custard and syrup. Mary helped her fellow second-years slay and butcher a Scylla filled with raspberry custard and chocolate syrup. It was delicious, and the most fun she had had at any Hogwarts feast. She decided she would have to tell Cammy how impressed all the students were the next time she saw the elf.
It was, Mary thought, probably the best evening she had ever had at Hogwarts, which was saying a lot, since most of her best memories had happened at the Castle. She couldn't wait for the Revel, which she thought would be the perfect end to an already magical night.
In retrospect, she should have known something would go wrong. Hermione kept insisting that two instances did not a pattern make, especially when one was eleven years before, so she could not reasonably have predicted that the evening would take a nasty turn.
Mary, however, realized the truth as soon as she came on the scene by Moaning Myrtle's loo: She was clearly cursed never to have an uneventful Samhain. Halloween in the muggle world had always been her favorite holiday, but between her parents dying, the Troll Incident, and whatever stupidity was going on with the Chamber of Secrets and Filch's not-quite-murdered cat, the magical equivalent didn't have quite the same charm. And to make matters worse, when the Slytherins returned to their common room, Professor Snape had swept in and announced that the Revel was cancelled, for real. They were absolutely not to sneak out, because the Chamber was a Slytherin myth, and woe betide any Slytherin found out of bounds on the night the Chamber was claimed to be opened again.
Even Draco, who had been so amused in the corridor, reading the message: "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, Beware," at the top of his voice, and laughing about how the mudbloods would be next (which earned him a stomped foot from Mary and a very irritated look from Hermione), was nervous, sitting in the common room and listening to the upperclassmen discuss how this would affect Slytherin as a house. The overwhelming consensus was that this would be bad for their already-tarnished image.
The message had been daubed with what looked like fresh blood (but smelled like paint), in dripping, foot-high letters. The caretaker's evil cat was found, hanging by her tail from a torch bracket, stiff as a board, looking for all the world like she was dead. The Gryffindors had been the first to pass the message on their way to their tower, but it wasn't long until the news spread back down the stairs to the Great Hall, and then most of the school had gathered, morbidly curious. Filch was accusing each person he saw in turn of killing his poor Mrs. Norris, which was amusing in its own way. Not that many of them hadn't wanted to kill the demonic beast at one time or another, but no one believed that Ron Weasley or Neville Longbottom actually had the stones to do it. And besides, the Headmaster had proclaimed that the cat wasn't dead at all, but merely petrified. (Someone said that Lockhart had been the first professor on the scene, and loudly declared that he knew exactly which curse had killed her, but then, after Dumbledore made his announcement, equally loudly declared that he had recognized it as petrification all along, which was almost as funny as the idea of Longbottom killing the cat.)
The myth, such as it was, was far more interesting than the fact that the cat had been petrified.
According to Monty and Flint, the Chamber of Secrets was a room, built and enchanted by Slytherin himself before he was driven out of the castle. Slytherin was well-known for his views on muggleborns – he thought they were substandard wizards and ought not be allowed in the school. It was said he had gotten into an argument with Gryffindor over the matter. The other three founders sided with him, and that's why he was forced out. The Chamber housed a monster, and the legend said that Slytherin's true heir would one day find and command the monster to kill all the muggleborns in the school.
The story was interrupted at that point by Wendy Madden and Arthur Roth, who declared everything that Monty and Flint were saying to be utter rubbish. The Quidditch captain took exception to the interruption, and demanded they prove their claims. Unfortunately for Flint, Wendy disappeared into the House Library for about five minutes, and reappeared with an ancient-looking scroll and several books and shoved them into the incredulous boy's hands. According to these, the newcomers claimed, Slytherin was either muggleborn or halfblood himself.
Monty had nearly wet himself laughing at that claim, and the upperclassman onlookers had muttered about how of course Madden and Roth would claim Slytherin wasn't a pureblood, because neither of their families had been pure for generations.
Arthur pressed the case, heedless of the murmurs. It wasn't as though either he or his girlfriend were especially popular to begin with – he could afford to tell his story without incurring too much additional social stigma.
Slytherin, supposedly, if one believed Roth and Madden, had at least one muggle parent, and had been a near-victim of a particularly vicious witch-hunt as a child. He did not trust muggles, and he feared that muggleborns, the ones who did not give up their muggle heritage and all ties to the muggle world, would, on the whole, be too indoctrinated into their parents' religion and beliefs to ever fit in with magicals. All it would take, he warned, was one untrustworthy muggleborn to destroy their fledgling school, betraying them to the muggles. The monster in the Chamber was meant to protect the school at need, against invasion and traitors alike, but probably hadn't been intended to kill muggleborns, no matter how the heirs had used it in the past.
A heated debate arose, with most of the students in the common room taking one side or the other. Mary and Lilian, and, somewhat surprisingly, Blaise, Daphne, and Theo, were with the much smaller group supporting Madden and Roth. Mary thought that their argument made more sense – they gave a reason why Slytherin hadn't wanted muggleborns around – though the latter three might only have chosen their side to oppose Draco and Pansy, who were vehemently supporting a Pureblooded Slytherin. Aradia Carmichael, and thus her clique, Mary noted, didn't take a side, which she thought probably meant their leader didn't know which side would be the winners, and she didn't want to choose incorrectly. There was a lot of shouting, and the two sides managed to segregate themselves on opposite sides of the common room, but no offensive spells were cast. It wasn't often Slytherin managed to so thoroughly divide itself, and the older snakes especially hesitated to hex potential allies, even out of the eyes of the other houses.
Professor Snape came back half an hour later to report that the cat could be fixed, and so far there was no evidence that the Chamber of Secrets was indeed open and that the evening's events not the result of a joke in very poor tastes. The Headmaster was of the opinion that no student would have the knowledge or power to pull off such a prank, but Professor Snape said he believed it to be within the capabilities of many sixth and seventh-years, had they managed to access the right texts. At this he gave a hard look to several older students from Dark families, whose parents would likely have such books in their private libraries. The Revel, he reminded them before he swept out of the common room for the second time that evening, was still cancelled.
The presence of their head of house quelled the brewing storm, and after his announcement, almost everyone stalked off to their own bedrooms (or perhaps for the older students, to continue to talk in their friends' rooms). Mary lay in bed, too angry to sleep, mulling over all that she had heard. A few facts could be more or less distinguished from the furious tirade of insults and verbal assaults.
The most interesting thing was that, although they disagreed on its purpose, no one denied that the Chamber or the Monster existed. They didn't know what the monster was, but it had supposedly been active at least once before, about fifty years ago. A Slytherin prefect had gotten a special award for services to the school for "catching" the monster, which had been attacking (muggleborn) students all year and eventually killed one. Opinions were divided over whether this prefect had caught the real monster, or had just taken advantage of the situation and made something up, or had actually been the Heir framing someone for his misdeeds, or if the Chamber had even really been open then, either. Most people on both sides of the argument leaned toward the second explanation or the last one.
A decidedly less pleasant, though still interesting, thing was that Mary, apparently, was the most likely candidate to be the Heir. She had strongly implied as much the year before, when she put her Parseltongue abilities on display for the house. She hadn't realized it at the time, but by claiming that she belonged in Slytherin House, she had also implied that she belonged to the House of Slytherin. And that, she suspected, was very, very bad, especially if someone was going to go around attacking muggleborns essentially in her name.
The Slytherins, of course, knew she hadn't done it, because she had been with Lilian, Blaise, Daphne, and Theo all afternoon, and certainly hadn't left the feast to go petrify a cat. She couldn't imagine when she would even have had time to find the Chamber of Secrets, given her currently hectic schedule. Everyone in the house, so far as Mary could gather from the alibis shouted across the common room, had been present and accounted for, either at the feast, or with the upperclassmen setting up the Samhain Revel that wasn't, or (in two different cases) by exactly one other person with whom they had been snogging in a broom cupboard.
But it did not seem likely that the rest of the school would accept her witnesses' word so easily. She was not looking forward to dealing with them.
Friday, 6 November 1992 Hogwarts
By Tuesday, nearly everyone but the Slytherins and Mary's close friends were actively avoiding her. This was a subtle difference from the school's usual response to her presence. Normally, most of the Hufflepuffs, Gryffindors, and Ravenclaws treated her like any other Slytherin, occasionally giving her suspicious looks, but for the most part letting her get on with her day without interruption. Now, the Hufflepuffs were crossing corridors to avoid her, and sitting as far away as possible in their shared classes – Justin Finch-Fletchley actually turned and ran away when he came across Mary alone in the library, the twit! – and the Gryffindors began to growl at her every time she got too close to them. (Professor Snape had used this as an excuse to take twenty points from the Lions in Potions on Friday.) Even the Ravenclaws, who normally got along better with Slytherin than any other house, were warily keeping their distance, though in fairness to the Ravens, they were warily avoiding all the other Snakes, too.
Hermione, when Mary and Lilian told her about the information they had gathered in the common room after the school found out about the writing on the wall (carefully leaving out the fact that a good three-quarters of their house was currently not speaking to the remaining quarter over whether their founder had been a pureblood or not – that was an internal matter), grew pensive.
"Hmmm…," she said, tapping her lips with her pen. "That fits with what I remember from Hogwarts a History on the Chamber."
Now that she mentioned it, Mary did seem to recall hearing of the Chamber of Secrets before. "Doesn't it just say that the Chamber is a myth, and supposedly contains a monster?"
"Yes," Lilian confirmed, surprising both of the others. "What? I read! You act like you've never seen me pick up a book before!" She threw a wadded up bit of parchment at Hermione, which got stuck in her hair.
"We know you read," the older girl said distractedly, trying to retrieve the parchment. "You just never mentioned you'd read that book. Lizzie?" She looked at Mary with pleading eyes, and with a sigh, the green-eyed Slytherin plucked the ball of parchment from her hair.
"You really should invest in learning a hair-taming charm or three," Lilian commented.
"The Heir of Slytherin may be commanding some mythical monster to go around attacking students," "Cats," Mary interjected, "and you think I ought to be worried about my hair? Priorities, Lili!"
Lilian shrugged. "What are you going to do about the Chamber? At least your hair is a problem you can deal with."
And at that, an unholy light entered Hermione's eyes. Had she seen herself at that moment, she probably would have thought that she bore an uncanny resemblance to her mother, for all they looked very little alike. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do about the Chamber," she said, her tone somewhere between excited and angry. "I'm going to figure out who's doing it, and why!"
And with that she gathered up her books and swept out of the library.
"Challenge accepted," Mary murmured, watching her first friend walk away.
Lilian grinned. "Hermione Granger, girl detective, is on the case!"
Mary looked at her askance. She didn't know the reference, but she did know that wizards didn't have detectives. "You know, sometimes I think you know more about muggle culture than I do."
"I probably do. My parents don't care what we get up to, and Sean used to take me and Aerin to the muggle library and the theater when he was tired of watching us. You lived in a cupboard until you came to Hogwarts."
Mary could think of nothing to say to that, so she returned to her Transfiguration essay, trying to push the Heir of Slytherin nonsense out of her mind.
The Slytherins did not see much of Hermione for several days. When she reappeared, they learned that she had managed to verify that the Chamber had, indeed, been opened in the early 1940s, and that Moaning Myrtle, the teenage ghost who haunted the second-floor girls' loo, was the ghost of the girl who was killed back then: Myrtle Phelps, a Ravenclaw muggleborn. Hermione had tried to talk to her about how she had died, and offended her so badly that she dove into a toilet, spraying the living girl and the entire bathroom with water. It was probably clean enough, since no one ever used that loo if they could help it, and especially not that toilet, but it was hilarious in concept, and Mary and Lilian vowed never to let Hermione live it down.
The Ravenclaw gave them a look promising eternal retribution if they followed through on that threat, but wisely said nothing more on the subject. She had considered trying to track down the student who had "captured" the monster before, but decided that that would be a fool's errand. Clearly he (or she) hadn't managed to actually close the Chamber for good, so she assumed, like most of the older Slytherins, that he (or she) had just taken advantage of the attacks to make a name for him- (or her-) self.
Instead of chasing down sixty-five-year-old ex-Slytherin Prefects, Hermione had spent most of Wednesday and Thursday keeping an eye out for anything suspicious in the castle. The only strange thing she found was that every spider in the castle seemed to desperately want to be out of the castle. Mary and Lilian had noticed them, too, evacuating the classrooms in skittering hoards on Wednesday. Unfortunately, as a clue, it was somewhat lacking: After talking to some of the older Ravenclaws, Hermione was fairly certain that someone had just renewed the anti-pest wards, driving them out.
}{-}{-}{-}{-}{
On Friday, the Weasley twins ambushed Mary and Lilian on the way back to the dungeons after Quidditch practice, dragging them into a classroom where Hermione was already waiting, tapping her toe impatiently.
"We, dearest snakelings,"
"Have a problem."
Mary and Lilian exchanged a look with each other and then with Hermione, who shrugged. She looked a bit irritated that the twins hadn't filled her in on their problem already.
"What is it?" Mary asked.
The boys gave a theatrical sigh. "Our idiot brother," "and his little buddy Neville," "think that your housemate," "Malfoy," "is the Heir of Slytherin."
Both Mary and Lilian started laughing at this.
"Why are you laughing?" Hermione asked angrily. "This is important!"
"It's not Malfoy," Mary said.
"Haven't you heard? It's Mary," Lilian pointed out, still giggling.
"No it's not." Hermione scowled at her friends. "I can't believe you aren't taking this seriously."
Lilian rolled her eyes. "It's not that we're not taking you seriously, it's just that…" she trailed off, trying to find a way to explain their apparent disinterest in Hermione's mystery.
"It's Mrs. Norris!" Mary blurted out. It wasn't like a person had actually been attacked.
The twins and Lilian laughed. Hermione turned her glare on Mary.
"It's still not Malfoy, anyway," Lilian said.
"How do," "you know?"
"He's not related to Slytherin at all. He's the heir of Malfoy. Their whole family history is known since they came over with the Normans, and there's no Slytherins in it. Why don't you know that?"
The twins rolled their eyes at Lilian. "Because pureblood history," "is boring."
"But it has to be someone in Slytherin," Hermione said. "Not Malfoy, maybe, and not Mary, but… We should find some way to question the upperclassmen."
"What did," "you have in mind?" the twins were giving Hermione an amused and evaluating look.
"Well… Professor Snape mentioned something in class the other week. Polyjuice potion?"
"We may," "have heard of it," the Twins said. Mary and Lilian shook their heads. Snape definitely hadn't mentioned it in their section, but that wasn't entirely unexpected. He didn't lecture much unless he was answering questions, and the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs asked far more than the Slytherins. Gryffindors didn't even bother trying. They lost points for breathing too loudly on occasion. Speaking would only draw Professor Snape's irritated attention to themselves.
"It lets you look like anyone for an hour," Hermione explained. "I bet I could get the recipe, and then we could pretend to be upperclassmen and ask around to see if anyone knows what's going on!"
"Are you thinking the same thing I am, Fred?"
"Of course I'm the better looking twin." Fred ducked George's cuff at the back of his head with a snigger. "Yes, there are many things we could do with such a potion," he said, slightly more seriously.
"It's in a book in the restricted section – I'd just need to get a note from a professor to take it out… and then I suppose some of the ingredients might be a bit difficult to acquire… but you guys would help, right?"
"Anything for you," "Hermione, dear."
Mary and Lilian exchanged a look. There was really no point in trying to impersonate Slytherins, especially upperclassmen. Mary tried to object, but George spoke over her.
"Lockhart will sign anything that stands still long enough," he pointed out.
"And we specialize in acquiring difficult items," Fred added.
"I thought you specialized in pranks and mayhem."
"That too," the boys answered Lilian in tandem.
"Guys, wait!" Mary finally broke in. "It's not going to work."
"Of course it will! I'm sure I can do it," Hermione said. "All you have to do is follow the instructions." That pretty much summed up her approach to Potions.
"Yes, that part will be fine, I'm sure, but the older Slytherins will know you're an imposter right away."
"She's right. You'd never get past their wards to go anywhere private, and it's not like they'd just sit around the commons chatting about this sort of thing."
That wasn't what Mary had meant, though it was absolutely true. "None of you are really very Slytherin, either," she tried to clarify.
"Did you just hear Not-Mary volunteering, George?"
"I believe I did, O favorite brother mine," George said.
The twins had a gleam of amusement in their eyes, but Hermione looked deadly serious. "I'll get the book, then, and we'll see what we need to do!"
"But, I –"
"We have to go, we're going to be late for curfew!" Hermione cut Mary off.
"Indeed, wouldn't want to break curfew," "while we're considering how to brew dangerous," "and possibly illegal," "potions to impersonate a bunch of older Snakes," "to question them about the Chamber of Secrets!" "That's just a step too far."
"Oh, shut up, you two! Mary, good luck with the match tomorrow! I'll be cheering for you." And with that, Hermione was gone.
"What about us?" one of the boys said, slipping out the door after her. "Yeah, we're playing too!" his twin said as the troublemaking trio moved away toward the stairs. The quickest way to both of their towers lay together for at least a few floors.
"What the bloody hell just happened?" Mary asked, blinking at Lilian in confusion.
"I think we've just been press-ganged into some sort of half-cooked shenanigan." Lilian looked as confused as Mary felt.
"But… It will never work."
"No, but can you see us convincing Hermione of that?"
"Maybe if we tell her… Professor Snape has everything under control?"
"Well, he has been questioning people, right?"
"I think so. Carmichael and Grey were complaining yesterday about having to meet with him."
"So if she brings it up again, we'll tell her it's sorted, and we want nothing to do with it, right?"
"Right."
"Come on then, we're going to be late, too." The bell for curfew was already ringing.
Course of action decided, the Slytherins sneaked back to their common room and the sullen silence that had prevailed there all week as the house sorted out their opinions on their founder's history.