Disclaimer: Harry Potter might not be copyrighted by JK Rowling in the year 1943, but don't give Congress any ideas.

A/N: Well, this chapter and the next one were a real bear. It's of the utmost important to setting up next year, so I had to get it just right. I had to make it one of my longest chapters to get across everything I wanted to say, and then I decided to split it in half at the last minute, not just because of the length, but because the new end of this chapter felt like a more natural break. As such, you get a windfall: the next chapter will go up on Tuesday night.

Thanks to Pahan for some good advice on what direction to take in these chapters.

Chapter 33

A few days into the new term, Harry found an old, blank diary that someone had tried to flush down Moaning Myrtle's toilet, much to the ghost's distress. Hermione didn't think much of it at first. She thought it looked familiar for some reason, but she couldn't quite place it. But then she saw the name on the inside cover: T. M. Riddle, and Ron remembered that T. M. Riddle had won an award for special services to the school in 1943.

"But that's the same year the Chamber of Secrets was opened!" Hermione exclaimed. "Myrtle, you said you knew a Tom Riddle. Do you remember anything about him getting an award?"

Myrtle wasn't in much condition to answer questions after flooding the bathroom, but she managed to say, "No. People don't tend to make big announcements in here." She moaned and started to head back to her stall.

"Myrtle, wait!" Hermione said. "Do you know anything about the Chamber of Secrets? It was opened while Tom Riddle was here. I think he caught the person who opened it."

At that, Myrtle actually looked fearful, though what a ghost could be afraid of she didn't know. "No, no one knew anything," she said. "All we knew was that people were being petrified, and no one knew how."

"Oh…" Harry and Ron grumbled that it was a dead end, but Hermione was still making the connections: Myrtle had been alive when Tom Riddle was here. Tom Riddle was here when the Chamber of Secrets was opened. And Professor Vector had told her—ages ago, now—right after the troll incident—that only one student had died at Hogwarts in the past fifty years.

"Myrtle…" she said cautiously, "you…you were the one student who died when the Chamber was opened, weren't you?"

Myrtle's "breath" hitched, and she whined softly, but she nodded her head.

Harry and Ron gasped loudly and burst into a flurry of questions.

"Did you see the Heir?"

"Did you get a good look at the monster?"

"Did you hear anything?"

"No—no, no, NO!" Myrtle cried, and she stuck her nose in the air. "I never knew how it happened. It just happened one day. And that's all I know." And with that, she dove back into her toilet.

Hermione sighed and gave the boys an exasperated look.

"Sorry," Harry said.

"What?" said Ron. "It's not our fault she's a nutter."

As far as they could tell, T. M. Riddle's diary was blank and had no special properties or hidden messages whatsoever. Hermione and Ron wrote it off as worthless, but Harry held onto it, saying he wanted to know why someone had tried to throw it away.

Meanwhile, Hermione gave Filch a few days to cool off after Myrtle had enraged him by flooding the second floor corridor before approaching him about her personal project. The problem was that she had promised not to go anywhere alone, and few other people actually wanted to approach Filch. Things were gradually quieting down, since there hadn't been any new attacks since Justin, but she wasn't taking any chances.

"Please, Harry?" she said.

"Hermione, he hates me! He still thinks I petrified Mrs. Norris."

"Well, maybe if you help do something nice for him, you'll convince him otherwise. And he knows you already know he's a squib, so we're not spreading his secret around more…And…and I wanted to use you in the experiment, too," she admitted.

"What? Why? I thought you were testing non-magical people."

"Yes, but I need a control."

"A what?"

"A magical person to see if the runes work the same as a wand. I could do it, but it would be better if I got someone who was more…average at potions."

"And that's me?" Harry said sceptically.

"No offence. But it's really you or Ron, though, and he's at least as stubborn as you are."

Harry looked over to where Ron was sitting. They were roughly equals in Potions, but he had to admit that Ron probably had even less patience for the subject (or Filch) than he did. "You're not gonna put my name in print, are you?"

"Of course not. You're Subject H."

"Subject H?"

"It's an anonymous label. It's standard practice in the muggle world. Filch is Subject A, and my parents are Subjects D and E."

Harry sighed, but said, "Okay, when are we going?"

"Right after dinner, I think. Filch should check in at his office after meals. We can catch him then."

Hermione's prediction proved to be correct. When they grabbed their potions kits and went down to Filch's office, they found him there, looking as sour-faced as ever. Losing the companionship of his cat hadn't done him any favours, and he didn't seem to have anyone else. Hermione suspected that this was the first time a student had willingly knocked on his door in years, and his reaction was about what one would expect.

"Excuse me, Mr. Filch?" she said.

"Huh? What? What are you two doing here?. Come to rub it in, have you?"

"No, Mr. Filch," Hermione said. "I thought I might be able to help you."

Hermione thought she might have short-circuited his brain, as Filch was left opening and closing his mouth like a fish. "Help…me…? What kind of bloody ridiculous prank is that? No one comes here to help me."

"Well, it's not entirely that, sir, but I really do think it will help you."

"And just how do you think you can help me?"

Hermione took a deep breath. Given how sensitive Filch was, she had to be careful about how she said this: "I think I've invented a better system to help you brew potions than Kwikspell."

That was even less believable. "You…but…that…I'm…" Filch stammered. "What are you playing at? Think you'll play a cruel joke on the squib, do you? Get out of my office!"

Filch moved to shove them out the door, but Hermione put her foot down: "It's not a joke, Mr. Filch. It worked for my parents, and they're muggles."

Filch stopped, looking interested, maybe even hopeful, for the first time. "You got muggles to brew potions?" he said.

"Yes, I did. It was simple enough with runic clusters. I'm going to write it up for The Practical Potioneer, and I was hoping I could use you as an additional demonstration. I wouldn't have to use your name."

"You…were…? And what's he doing here?" He pointed at Harry.

Hermione smiled slightly: "He's the other test subject."

Filch's eyes flicked back and forth between them. Experimenting on a student would probably brighten his day a bit. "Alright, I'm listening," he said.

Hermione explained the experimental procedure. She would observe Harry brewing the Alihotsy Draught using his wand, and Filch would use his Kwikspell method. Filch didn't like that much, but she assured him it was for a good cause. After that, they would both start over using the runes. Filch agreed, and she convinced him and Harry to sign a release form she had written up, giving her permission to publish their test results. (She wasn't sure if wizards used release forms, but it was good practice.)

As expected, Harry's Alihotsy Draught turned out decent and usable, while Filch's was nearly as useless as her parents' first attempts. It was a tiny bit better, she found, probably because of a bit of latent magic in the wand Filch was trying to use.

But when they started the second round, using the runes, an amazing change came over Filch. As soon as Hermione showed him how to use the runic spells, and his ingredients started dissolving properly, he started to look happy—and not his usual evil happy, either. His sunken, sagging face lit up with a genuine smile that made him look a good decade younger.

"Sweet Merlin, it's…it's working! It's actually working!" he exclaimed. He wasn't even halfway through the potion when he grabbed his Kwikspells notes and chucked them in the bin, and when he finished, and Hermione declared his potion acceptable, he was actually crying with joy, and he shook Hermione's hand.

"I can't tell you how much this means to me," he said. Most of the wheeze was even gone from his voice. "I've been trying to do real magic for so long…I…th-thank you, M-Miss Granger."

"You're welcome, Mr. Filch. I'm glad I could help," she replied with a smile.

Then, Filch looked at the clock. "Oh, dear, it's past curfew isn't it?" Hermione started sweating as she realised what time it was, and Harry's eyes widened in horror. But it seemed their efforts to help had paid off, for Filch said, "I'll tell you what, you bring me a stack of those runes tomorrow, and I'll pretend I forgot what time it is."

Hermione smiled again: "Deal."

As they walked back up to Gryffindor Tower, Harry whispered, "Did you just make friends with Filch?"

"I think I might have done," Hermione replied. "You know, I don't think it's that hard if you actually take an interest in people." She remembered the house elves and Myrtle. "And who knows? It could come in handy someday."

Harry probably never would have even thought to try to befriend Filch, but he could agree with that.

The next day, Filch went around the castle smiling and actually acting halfway friendly. This caused the teachers to wonder if he'd been drugged with potions, and it caused Fred and George Weasley to run away from him screaming that it was a sign of the apocalypse.

Valentine's Day was a complete mess courtesy of Gilderoy Lockhart. His suggestion that the students ask Snape for love potions was bad enough. His singing valentine dwarfs dressed up as cupid and disrupting classes all day pushed Hermione a lot further into becoming disillusioned with him, especially since Valentine's Day was on a Sunday, and he apparently couldn't put together the sing-o-gram squad until Monday.

Hermione was glad the day was over when she slumped down in the Common Room after dinner. But to her surprise, she looked up and saw Ginny Weasley approaching her. She hadn't seen much of Ginny since last fall, and the younger girl certainly hadn't really approached her since then.

"Hermione…" Ginny said shakily. She had been looking better in the new term, but she seemed very nervous tonight. "Can I…can I ask you something?" she said.

"Uh, sure, Ginny. What's up?"

"Well…when that, uh, dwarf delivered Harry's Valentine…"

"Oh, that," Hermione said. It was an open secret by now that Ginny had sent Harry a truly absurd love poem as a valentine.

"Well, no, not that, exactly…" the younger girl cut in. "It's just that…I saw…when Harry's bag ripped, he had this diary."

"Oh, he's still carrying that old thing around?" Hermione said dismissively. "I don't know why. There's nothing special about it besides someone dumping it in Myrtle's bathroom."

Ginny seemed to relax and then rapidly tense up again as Hermione spoke. "Well, you see…" she stammered. "About that…I—"

"Oh, his eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad…" They were interrupted when Fred and George came into the Common Room, singing their own rendition of Harry's valentine. However, George stopped when he saw the mortified and enraged look on Ginny's face and elbowed Fred to do the same.

"Um, hi, Gin-Gin," Fred said nervously. "We were just saying how…nice that song was."

"Uh, yeah, right," George joined in. "Rhyming pickled toad and blackboard was a little off, but it's still very complimentary."

"Oh, just stop it!" Ginny cried.

"If you like fresh-pickled toads, anyway," Fred quipped.

"Chiroptera mucosa!"

Fred ran up to his dorm with black bats beating about his head.

"Uh…I'll just go help him," George said, and he dashed away.

"Wow, Ginny, are you sure you can't teach me that spell?" Hermione asked.

"No. If I taught it to you, then you could use it against me."

"But I wouldn't use it against you."

"I'm going to my room," Ginny said abruptly, and she started up the stairs.

Hermione shook her head and didn't remember until it was too late to ask Ginny what she had wanted to talk about.

The next day, Ron and Harry came up to Hermione frantically and tried to explain that the Heir of Slytherin—the person who had opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago and was caught and expelled after killing Myrtle—was Hagrid.

This came about after Harry actually wrote in T. M. Riddle's diary for the first time, and someone or something calling itself Tom Riddle's memory not only wrote back (which was weird enough), but somehow showed Harry the memory of himself catching Hagrid with the monster.

But something just didn't smell right about that story, they all agreed uneasily.

"Okay, on one hand, nobody said the Heir of Slytherin had to be doing it on purpose," Hermione analysed the scene. "And I hate to admit it, but Hagrid just might be clueless enough to keep letting the monster out even after it attacked five people, and like you said, Harry, the attacks must have stopped after he was caught, or Riddle wouldn't have got that award."

"Hagrid probably felt sorry for it being cooped up so long," Ron groaned.

"But I'm not sure, though," Hermione said. "Hagrid's still been here as the groundskeeper for the past fifty years. Why would he start opening the Chamber again now? And why did Lucius Malfoy seem to know something was going to happen."

"Think Hagrid's got a secret kid who just showed up?" said Ron.

Harry and Hermione looked vaguely horrified at the thought. "Not unless it's Goyle," Harry tried to lighten the mood. "He's the only one who's big enough."

"No, there's something else," Hermione said. "Harry, you said the monster was big and hairy and had pincers and lots of legs, right?"

"Yeah."

"Like an acromantula?"

"Like a what?"

"A giant talking spider."

Ron squealed and shivered.

"I dunno. I guess it could have been. Why?"

"Because Professor Vector told me that when she was a student, there was a rumour that Slytherin's monster was an acromantula, but she checked into it, and it turns out that acromantulas don't petrify people."

"So, you think the monster is something else?" Harry said hopefully.

"Seriously? How many monsters d'you think this place can hold?" Ron said."

Hermione sighed. They'd been going in circles for hours about this. "Do you think we should go and ask Hagrid about this?" she said.

"Oh, that'll be a great visit," Ron said. "Say, Hagrid, you been playing with anything mad and hairy in the castle lately?"

Harry shuddered and looked down at his feet uncomfortably. "He probably doesn't want to talk about being expelled," he said. "I think…I think we should leave him alone unless there's another attack. It's been over two months, after all."

"Yes, I suppose so," Hermione said.

Hermione kept doing her research on that, though, along with everything else on her list. She was hip-deep in differential equations, and she was getting tantalising and frightening glimpses of how full-blown curses worked through them. Meanwhile, she looked up everything she could find about acromantulas, some more background reading for her potions paper, and a smattering of material on ghosts—she still hoped against hope that she could do something for poor Myrtle. It had to be especially hard being killed by Slytherin's monster, she thought, and she must have been targeted for being a muggle-born, which somehow made it even worse.

Professor Babbling also held a couple more seminars on non-Norse runes during the spring, which the Gryffindor Trio attended. Harry was glad to get some more practice to get his runic spells to last all summer this year. Ron was making more progress than Harry was. It took an effort for both of them to overcome their natural scribbles and draw the words straight, but Harry was also hampered by deliberately holding himself back all through primary school to get worse grades than his cousin. It was nothing short of a crime against academia in Hermione's mind. If she ever got her hands on those Dursleys…

In any case, as the weeks crept by with no more attacks, Hermione began to relax, although she dutifully continued to find an escort whenever she was out in the corridors. Maybe it was like Lockhart said, and the Heir had given up (though she doubted by now that it was because of him).

Today, Hermione was digging for information about ghosts again, and this time, she struck gold. There was very little information to be had, especially on the mysterious subject of where ghosts actually came from, but even from the introduction of this book, she could tell it was going to be an interesting read:

Comparatively little has been written about the nature of the afterlife of ghosts as opposed to the lives of the various races of Beings. This is a great oversight, as ghosts are in a sense, the most like us, and at the same time, the most unlike us, being not Being, but Spirit, yet of the same nature of souls as those of witches and wizards. In this book, I have endeavoured to begin to correct this oversight, with one of the most extensive projects ever undertaken to interview ghosts of various ages to gain insights into their experiences and ways of thinking.

Hermione knew she would take a closer look at the whole thing later, but she presently skimmed to a few topics of interest, and she was very glad to see that someone besides herself had noticed these issues. But then, as she began to read the author's observations, her eagerness faded, replaced by a growing sense of horror:

Ghosts are frequently described as being difficult to talk to, out of touch, and not very aware of the land of the living, and their memories of history are notoriously poor, especially for the older ghosts. Most wizards dismiss this as being just the way things are. Few ever bother to ask why this should be so, which is unfortunate, as it would seem to be most unfair to the ghosts themselves, and it deprives the living of what could be an invaluable historical record. There have been only a handful of long-term studies following the same ghosts over many years to try to understand this behaviour of the Spirits, but by combining the available anecdotes, we may now draw a plausible conclusion.

Hermione could tell from the language, the rigorous writing style, and just the interest in the topic that the author of the book was almost certainly a muggle-born or half-blood. There ight be some purebloods who could write like that, but they were surely few and far between, even among agreeable ones, like Mr. Weasley.

Ghosts' poor memories appear to stem from the fact that, because ghosts do not physically age or change, they are, for the most part, trapped in the same personality and, to some extent, even the same state of mind that they had when they died. On close examination, they also appear to be unable to form new, lasting memories. Careful comparisons of my and others' interviews conducted over a period of years reveal that they typically remember the first few years after they died and the last few years before the present, but very little in between. A person they were well acquainted with a decade ago may be entirely forgotten, and new information that is learnt in the interim is eventually lost.

In addition, while ghosts may yet develop a little, mentally and emotionally, in the first few years after their deaths, most such changes prove to be temporary in nature. The only thing that I have observed to promote a permanent (and usually positive) change in a ghost's personality, as well as new, lasting memories, is if the ghost is able to resolve some "unfinished business", such as reconciling with a family member or avenging their death.

Hermione put the book down after that, feeling a little sick to her stomach. She knew Myrtle had issues, but she never imagined that the afterlife of a ghost could be that awful. It certainly explained a lot, though. She was pretty sure Myrtle had been near-suicidally depressed even before the Heir got her, and with no real possibility of recovering or growing beyond that, she had simply stayed there, crying in the bathroom for the next fifty years. That was bad enough, but to add on top of that not being able to form new permanent memories and learn new material—to Hermione's mind, that would be a fate worse than death. She felt even sorrier for Myrtle now, but she didn't have any idea what to do about it.

She began to feel something else, as well: a strange, slightly sick feeling as she remembered a half-serious retort she'd made in anger to Ron nearly a year ago: "If we get eaten, I'm haunting you." She shuddered at the thought. In the immediate aftermath of that harrowing incident, they had thought it funny, but it didn't seem funny at all, now. She still didn't fully understand ghosts, but she sincerely hoped that she would never wind up haunting anybody.