I hope you all enjoyed the last chapter! I figure Gabriel wouldn't like brooms too much, having spent at least three millennia flying under his own power.

Anyway, did any of you figure out the code already? It might take Gabriel a while to do so, but it's because of a little technicality...if any one thinks they have it figured out, PM me [NOT a review - we don't want other people to have it easy] and let me know! If you're right, you get a clue about what's in the room. If you're wrong, keep trying!

Anyway. Susan and Michael may factor in later. I'm planning to keep Hermione as one of Gabriel's friends, but I'm not super sure about Ron. He'll definitely come in later, but if they do become friends it will be when he's a little older.

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or Harry Potter.

Something was very, very wrong with the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

Aside from his obvious qualities and the class itself, of course. Quirrel was a man who could barely say his own name without stuttering, much less give a lecture on the dangers of vampires. These wizards even thought they were killed with a stake to the heart, for Dad's sake.

He wore a turban that was always leaking this strange smell, and never answered any questions about it. There were several ridiculous rumors about why he wore it so often, but Gabriel thought it had something to do with whatever mauled, bastardized shred of soul was hidden under it.

Even more unfortunately, Gabriel thought he knew exactly what it was - or rather, who.

He had only seen a scrap like that twice before - once, Halloweeen 1981, in the man who'd been vaporized in the explosion. The second time, it was when he'd realized that the scrap from before had attached itself to him. The thing was sneaky - even Gabriel had only realized it was there when it was finally gone, with the rest of Harry Potter's soul.

He kept eyes on Quirrel at all times - a little spy camera was nothing to conjure up, and this was an affordable expense of Grace. The man didn't seem to behave suspiciously, until Gabriel's alert went off during History of Magic. He left the room, faking illness, and as soon as he found an alcove he ducked in and watched through the camera at what was happening.

The soul shard seemed to be alert, as Quirrel was having an actual conversation with it. Gabriel listened carefully, intending to get as much as he could out of it. So Quirrel was here on the shard's orders, or rather Voldemort's orders - Gabriel had been told the story and he could put two and two together. Voldemort wanted something that was hidden here, but Quirrel was apparently having a bit of a hard time getting it. He had put one of its protections in place, like all of the staff had...and Snape was suspicious of him. That was a surprise - Gabriel didn't know that the Potions master could be suspicious of anyone, outside of accusing Gryffindors of cheating.

But what did Voldemort want that was hidden in Hogwarts? He couldn't have known about Ravenclaw's treasure. How many artifacts were hidden in Hogwarts, anyway?

Hermione sat down next to Gabriel at lunch on Tuesday. He paused in his thoughts, glancing over at her.

"Hi," she said unnecessarily.

"Hi." Gabriel returned to the plate of food he'd served himself to keep people from thinking he was starving himself. "Is there a reason you decided to join me?"

"I thought-" Hermione faltered a little. "You said on the train...we're friends, right?"

Gabriel glanced at her, knowing she couldn't have had many friends growing up. "Sure," he said. Hermione beamed.

"I heard about what you did during flying class," she said, making herself comfortable at the Ravenclaw table. The boy sitting next to her shifted sideways to make room. "That was really brave."

Gabriel made a noncommittal noise. "I don't really like flying." A blatant lie. He didn't like broomsticks, was the problem.

"Really?" Hermione sounded vastly relieved. "I don't either, but everyone makes such a big deal out of it! It's like football."

"Sports everywhere are generally a big deal," Gabriel agreed. "It's the one point where the magical world isn't any more ridiculous than the regular one."

"What do you mean, ridiculous?"

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "Look around you, Hermione." he said, gesturing. "We're in a room lit by torches because in thousands of years, not a single wizard has bothered to install electricity."

"It doesn't work around magic," Hermione replied quickly.

"Then why do wizards have those little radios?" Gabriel challenged. "I've seen at least half the people in Ravenclaw crowded around it, listening to Quidditch matches."

Hermione frowned. Gabriel continued on. "And even if it did, you're saying that no one's bothered to try and figure out how to make it work?" He thought he saw one of the Ravenclaws near him turn to listen. "And if you think about it," he said, "We're banned from using magic in the halls, but there's no rule against fighting, because everyone assumes that you use magic in a fight. The mundane equivalent doesn't occur to anyone."

He saw Hermione's eyes widen in realization. "It's because they hate muggles, isn't it?" she asked. "And they don't offer English or Math, either, and no language classes or geography!"

"Exactly," Gabriel pointed at Hermione. "They expect everyone who comes here to stay in the magical world, and have no way of getting muggle transcripts."

Hermione met his gaze. "Why start pointing all of this out?" she asked. "Were you planning to do something about it?"

Gabriel smirked.

Gabriel frowned as he realized someone was following him.

He turned around to see a Slytherin boy, one he recognized from the Sorting. "Is there a reason you're stalking me?" Gabriel asked.

The boy seemed put off by his attitude, but didn't comment on it. "My name's Draco Malfoy," he said. "I noticed you were hanging out with that girl at lunch the other day, the Muggleborn."

"That's a little rude," Gabriel commented, but Malfoy ignored him.

"I thought you might want some help," he continued, "Learning how to properly move about the magical world and all that. You need to know not to associate with the wrong sort. I could help, if you like." He stuck out his hand.

Gabriel didn't take it. "I associate with those I like," he said coolly. "Come back and try again when you've stopped mimicking your dad and started thinking for yourself." He turned and kept walking, leaving Malfoy shocked in the middle of the hallway.

"Fuck," said Gabriel loudly as he realized he had no idea where he was. He'd been trying to look cool and disdainful as he was walking away from Malfoy and had wandered into a completely unfamiliar part of the castle.

"Now what," he grumbled to himself. "Should I keep walking? I might get even more lost. This place is a Dad-damn maze..." he trailed of as he heard something coming from behind the door in front of him.

Was someone crying?

Hesitantly, he walked forward and opened the door. He heard someone gasp as the door creaked. It opened on a large bathroom, stalls lined up against one wall and one firmly shut.

"Hello?"

"Harry?" Someone asked incredulously.

"Hermione, why are you crying in the bathroom?"

"Why are you even in here?" Gabriel heard her sniffle. "This is the girl's loo!"

"I don't care what gender you are. Why are you crying?"

"That's not what I meant!" Hermione's voice came through much clearer now that Gabriel was standing in front of the stall she had locked herself in.

"I'm not leaving until you answer." Later, Gabriel would wonder why he had insisted on knowing.

Hermione was quiet for several moments. Then, "Ron Weasley was mean to me."

Gabriel would have rolled his eyes if he had been talking to anyone other than an eleven-year-old girl. "Okay, what did he say?" Ron Weasley, heading for semi painful retribution: check.

"He didn't say it to my face." Gabriel could practically hear her tearing up. "But we were partners for Charms today and I thought since he seemed alright on the train it would go well but he got mad when I did the spell before him and I was just trying to help and then he said-"

"Alright, alright, I think I get it." Gabriel leaned his back against the wooden door. "So what? Who cares what he thinks? He's a kid."

"So are we," Hermione pointed out. Gabriel glanced down at himself.

"True," he admitted. He was, at least physically, only eleven. "But that doesn't mean whatever he said was true."

"You don't even know what he said." Hermione sounded reproachful.

"Doesn't matter," Gabriel responded immediately. He hurried to stand up as the lock on the bathroom stall clicked open. Hermione opened it a crack and peered out at him.

"You really think so?"

"If you're smart enough to do the spell on the first try, then, yeah."

Hermione hugged him suddenly, and Gabriel's arms were pinned to his sides in her tight grip. He stumbled backwards, nearly sending both of them into an inconvenient puddle, and Hermione quickly let go.

"Sorry," she said.

"It's fine, as long as you don't lock yourself back in that stall." That made a smile tug at Hermione's lips, and Gabriel grinned back. "Since neither of us is going to be on time for class now," he said grandly, ignoring Hermione's look of horror as she realized she'd skipped class, "I propose that we explore the school." He tugged Hermione along by the wrist, ignoring her protests that they should go to class.

"Live a little," Gabriel said cheerfully. "How much free time are we going to get? You can make up homework."

Hermione glanced around every corner as they walked, as if she expected a teacher to pop out of the walls and demand to know what they were doing.

"Stop!" she hissed as Gabriel attempted to open a door. "We can't go in there!"

Gabriel glanced from her back to the door and affirmed that no, there was no sign forbidding anyone to enter. "Why not?"

"This is the third floor," Hermione said, as if that explained everything.

Gabriel stared at her blankly.

"It's forbidden," Hermione explained exasperatedly. "Dumbledore said so, at the beginning of the year. Weren't you paying attention?"

"Not really," said Gabriel swinging the door open. "Besides," he added at Hermione's openmouthed expression. "If they really wanted us to stay out, why leave the door open?"

"We'll be in trouble," Hermione hissed, following Gabriel in to convince him of what a bad idea it was. "We'll be expelled for sure."

"Uh huh." Gabriel continued down the hallway, Hermione jumping as the torches on the wall flared up. The fire illuminated another door at the end of the dusty hall.

Gabriel rattled the door as he reached it. "It's locked," he announced, undeterred. "Know any good spells?" he asked Hermione.

"I'm not going to help you break the rules!"

"Oh, here we go." Gabriel found the actual mechanism for the door and released it, the lock disengaging with a metallic click. Gabriel swung the door open.

Behind him, Hermione squeaked.

Gabriel slammed the door shut just as the dog on the other side jumped. Hermione shouted something and a spell arced off her wand and hit the door, resulting in a loud thump as the beast hit it. She took off running, and Gabriel sprinted after her to catch up as barking echoed after them.

Hermione slid to the floor as soon as they left the corridor, and Gabriel closed the door behind him.

"What was that?" she shrieked. "That should not be in a school!"

"No," Gabriel agreed, sitting next to her. "So I suppose we have a dilemma on our hands."

"What?" Hermione turned to him, distracted from the shock.

"Well," Gabriel said. "If we're banned from going in there, obviously the staff knows that dog is there. So what do they want a giant Cerberus for?"

He could practically see the cogs whirling in Hermione's mind. The clock tower tolled in the distance, marking the time. Students began to flood the corridors, all heading downstairs for dinner.

"Harry," Hermione said slowly. "What if it's guarding something?"

"How do you figure?"

"I thought I saw something under it... it was standing on top of a trapdoor, maybe. And there are plenty of old artifacts it could be guarding, maybe something from the Founders. Hogwarts, A History says that each of the Founders had a special item - Gryffindor's sword, Ravenclaw's diadem."

Gabriel stared up at the statue in the Ravenclaw common room. He hadn't gone to dinner, but instead straight to the tower, a possibility lingering in his head. Hermione had mentioned 'Ravenclaw's diadem'. Could that be the treasure the note referred to?

"You don't look like a heavenly weapon," Gabriel muttered. The common room was deserted, so he could say whatever he wanted. And now that he looked closer, there was a tiny etched epitaph on the carved diadem.

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." Muriel had always valued knowledge more than the rest of them, though perhaps that was her vessel's fault on this occasion. Gabriel studied the words intently.

"Is it a riddle? A code?" He wondered aloud, beginning to pace back and forth. Several nights of studying the letter had done nothing for him, even though he'd spent years on codework for fun once. This looked to be just as unhelpful.

"Might as well start at the beginning. The dog is guarding something, possibly what I'm looking for. How hard could it be to get past it?" Gabriel decided. "Not now, though. If whoever put it there is smart at all, they'll have been alerted that someone nearly got in. When would be the best time to deal with it?"

Not today. When would he be assured that everyone was in one place, and no teachers were roaming the halls or in their offices?

Tomorrow? Next week? Gabriel cast around for any time there would be a reason for everyone to be in one place, when something struck him.

Halloween.

Everyone would be celebrating, even the teachers...and if he got caught he could claim he was mourning his parents. That would probably work, unless it was Snape who caught him. Gabriel congratulated himself on a good plan and moved towards the staircases up to the dorms. What had been next on his list? Oh yes. Ron Weasley.

Gabriel settled himself on his bed so it would look like he was asleep, and waited. He amused himself with mental games and trying to figure out what the diadem or the note could mean while his dorm mates came up from dinner, noisy as they prepared for bed. Gabriel listened until he was sure that everyone was asleep, and then for one extra hour to make sure no one would be awake. The clock read midnight when Gabriel allowed himself to slip off.

Angels didn't sleep. That didn't mean that it was impossible for them to fall asleep.

Sleeping meant only one thing; it allowed them to send mental messages more easily, and so Gabriel took this opportunity to extend his consciousness a little bit. He jerked in his 'sleep' as he ran into something unexpected, something similar to a warm...thing surrounding him while at the same time not being that at all. It felt like it was examining Gabriel, feeling for his intentions, and when it released him Gabriel swore he heard something similar to a laugh.

Please tell me that the castle is not sentient.

Gabriel sent his...dream self, for lack of a better word, along the mental corridors until he reached a dreaming mind that he managed to recognize as Ron's.

Excellent.

He was dreaming about a sport played on broomsticks, of all things, and Gabriel saw the distinctive red hair underneath the goalie's helmet. He watched the dream for several moments, and someone must have scored a goal because the imaginary crowd began cheering loudly.

Now what to do to make it a little darker...

Gabriel leaned down to pick up a spider on the floor of one of the stands, and smirked.

Gabriel purposely bumped into Ron the next morning, suppressing a smirk as the boy jumped at the small touch. "What's the matter?" He said aloud, pretending to be confused. Ron relaxed when he saw it was just Gabriel, and shook his head, muttering something about a nightmare.

Gabriel laughed internally as he found a seat at Ravenclaw table. Hermione was waiting for him next to an empty spot, saving the space with a thick book. Gabriel sat on top of it, and then hurriedly got off, as Hermione looked ready to beat him over the head with the textbook in her hands.

"You don't sit on books!" She said indignantly after removing the thick volume from the bench.

"What's that for?" The book was at least four inches thick.

"I got in from the library last night," Hermione's attitude switched from anger to lecture-mode in a heartbeat. "I wanted to look up Cerberuses - and guess what I found." She flipped through the pages, finding a spot somewhere in the middle of the book

"Cerberus," she read aloud, "Guards the entrance of the underworld and prevents dead souls from escaping. It allows them to enter but suffers none to leave, and is also known as a hellhound." She looked at Gabriel expectantly.

Gabriel hadn't known this beforehand. The Greeks hadn't been the nicest, and among the pagans they were generally regarded as the crazy ones. All of that aside, inter-Pantheon meetings didn't occur often, and from his place in the Norse realm Gabriel left the Greeks to themselves. Learning that they thought the dead could have escaped the underworld was a bit of a laugh, though he frowned at the phrase 'underworld'. Didn't everyone have a version of Heaven? No wonder the Greeks were so dysfunctional, if all they had was their Hell.

"Harry?" Hermione snapped her fingers in front of his face, drawing him out of his thoughts. "Hello? Don't you realize what this means?"

"...No?" He did of course, but why not act like he was a child for once.

"It means that the dog had to have been guarding something," Hermione hissed, looking around for anyone who might be eavesdropping. "And I went to the library to look up old newspapers to see if they had any articles on something that would need protecting." She slapped a newspaper clipping down on the table in front of Gabriel.

Break-in at Gringotts Bank!

The article went on to detail how a someone had attempted to steal the contents of a vault [which had been luckily emptied earlier that day] and how the Goblins refused to comment.

"Emptied earlier that day...?" Gabriel read aloud. He doubted that the Founders had kept their things at Gringotts. Was this a different artifact, or had someone found the 'treasure' and moved it?

Hermione was practically bouncing. "Something's being hidden in the school for sure! It's got to be very dangerous, or else they wouldn't risk bringing in a Cerberus!"

"The only question is, what is it?" Gabriel said quietly.

Yes, I KNOW Hermione was in the bathroom on Halloween. However, for the purposes of the story, I've been fiddling with things a little bit, and I needed Gabriel available on Halloween to go check out 'whatever's' hidden under Fluffy. Don't worry, the troll is still a factor.

Read and review! Let me know about the code if you think you've got it!