Hey guys! Another chapter already!

Wow you are all going to be so disappointed when I go back to school and start updating maybe every other month.

*cough* anyway, next chapter! This one took a bit of thought, since I had to think of a decent place for Ravenclaw to have created. Yes, we finally see the secret room in this chapter. I apologize for spoilers. [no I don't]

I realized, after reading through a couple chapters, that the code I mention being contained in the letter doesn't come through on the actual story! The format is much wider than these documents. I really didn't realize, but it any of you are confused about the answer Gabriel gets, it's because the parchment is thinner than the document format of these stories and so the words are in different orders.

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or Harry Potter.

Gabriel was lying spread-eagle on his bed, the papers lying in a haphazard pile in front of. He had gone through them methodically, over and over, checking for every single kind of code that had existed around the founder's era, and then some. It wasn't an every-other-word code. It wasn't the first letter of every word strung together. It wasn't a numerical code. It definitely wasn't a mirror code, which Gabriel hadn't even bothered trying.

So what was left? Gabriel squinted at the paper, as if blurrier vision would reveal its secrets.

"Hold on..." Okay, maybe blurry vision wasn't doing anything, but he had noticed something.

"The..." Gabriel trailed off as his eyes scanned down the page. Perhaps the first letter of each sentence yielded nothing, but the first letter of each line gave him something entirely different.

Gabriel nearly slipped and fell in his scramble for a clean sheet of parchment. Inkwell propped precariously on the bed, quill in hand, and fresh paper in his lap, Gabriel examined the page.

"The...Hogwarts...every...eagerly...advancement...simply..." His quill scratched as Gabriel wrote out each letter, leaving a space in between each since he had no way of knowing where a word ended. "Them...Hell...and...leave..."

Words were forming on the page and Gabriel's excitement mounted. Never mind that the diadem was missing, he was finally getting somewhere with this!

"Lately...write...arbitrarily...yesterday...whoever..." Gabriel stopped speaking them aloud, worried that someone might peer behind the curtains if they heard him muttering. All of his dorm mates knew that he preferred to work on his bed with the drapes closed, but ever since the night he'd landed in the hospital wing and no one had noticed until that morning, they were a little more leery of leaving him to his own devices.

Each, stealing, the, upper, please, two, left, each, fear, the, three, Muriel. Gabriel looked down at what he had written, hastily corking his ink bottle.

THEEASTHALLWAYWESTUPTLEFTTM

Well, that was easily enough divided into words. Gabriel moved to one of the small desks that were provided, setting his things down and carefully secreting the original papers in his bedside drawer.

The chair scraped against the floor as Gabriel pulled it out and seated himself, quill already scratching out words on the yellowed parchment.

THE EAST HALLWAY WEST UP T LEFT T M

Why the random T's? Gabriel frowned until he remembered that, when translated back into English, the numbers hadn't been written out. He quickly rewrote it.

THE EAST HALLWAY WEST UP 2 LEFT 3 M

M was obviously a throwaway, as Muriel wouldn't have counted her signature. 'West up' could have meant several things, but Gabriel was willing to bet that it meant 'upwards, to the west' or more simply put, diagonally left.

So the directions now read

THE EAST HALLWAY DIAGONALLY UP 2 LEFT 3

Gabriel now found himself facing a problem almost as difficult as the one he'd just solved.

"Which east hallway?"

How many east hallways could there be in one school? There were only eight floors after all, Gabriel reasoned, and if he explored the east side of the school on each of them he'd be sure to stumble across a sign sooner or later.

As in most cases, it was easier said than done.

Gabriel only had the weekends to work after all, and February was no easier than the rest of the school year in terms of homework. Sometimes Gabriel sat down and seriously wondered if he really should have accepted the offer to come here.

The answer always turned out to be yes, as the alternative was spending another seven years with the Dursleys until he 'came of age' in the muggle world and was allowed to leave. Part of the reason was, of course, that he'd have never discovered what was basically his sister's will otherwise. But the Dursleys were the majority of his reason.

This decision, however, was sorely tested when it took Gabriel three days of combing the corridors and no results to discover that he was on the wrong side of the school. He nearly took a chunk of stone out of the wall when he discovered this, and after expressing his frustration with a couple of choice words, Gabriel located the actual east side of the school and started over.

This was, of course, assuming that the message meant 'the hallway on the east side' and not 'the hallway going east'. If that was the case, Gabriel thought he might be forced to give up the challenge altogether.

None of the hallways he investigated bore any sign of a secret door or any clue that might tell him where to look. There were no ever-so-slightly out of place 'walls', or initials carved into the wall, or even invisible marks in Enochian.

There was, however, one thing that Gabriel learned.

There were exactly four hallways in the school which went straight from one side of the castle to another - one on each side, for each cardinal direction on a map. Four long hallways, four founders. It was as close to a clue as Gabriel was going to get.

Unfortunately, there were two drawbacks. One, they were all on different floors. Two, technically three of them could have been the hallway he was looking for - one on the east side, two others who could both technically be 'leading' east while still not being on the east side.

Three, they went from one side of the castle to the other, and that was quite a lot of space in which to hide a secret room.

Gabriel decided to start simply - after all, once he'd translated it, the code had been very simple - and began with the hallway on the east side.

"Ugh." Gabriel groaned as he leaned against the wall. "This is going nowhere!"

He slid down it to rest on the floor. "Why is this so difficult? I'm an archangel damnit!"

The hallway, luckily, was mostly deserted, with only a few students talking and drifting aimlessly down by the other end. The majority of students seemed to be either in their common rooms or studying, as apparently the upper years had some sort of huge test coming up. Many of the Ravenclaws, of course, had already got together plans for study groups to prepare for the end-of-year tests, which were in June. Gabriel had refused to join on the grounds that it was pointless to start studying three months in advance, because then he'd forget everything again by the time tests actually began.

This did not seem to deter any of his Housemates. Hermione was just as bad, drawing up study schedules for herself and panicking that she wouldn't be able to remember the 1912 Werewolf code of conduct or some other tidbit of history that they'd barely even gone over in class.

Gabriel certainly didn't remember learning about it, but he was unsure how much of that was him not paying attention in History of Magic, and how much of it was the fact that Binns wasn't really a very good teacher. Even Gabriel found him unbearably boring, and he had been sure earlier in the year that Hermione was employing some sort of spell to stay awake during his lectures. Well, Gabriel wasn't really asleep in class, but he certainly wasn't paying attention.

In the present, these thoughts were the farthest from Gabriel's mind they had ever been.

"Absolutely no help," he grumbled to himself from his seat on a small stone bench which was set into the wall. "Thanks a lot, Muriel, your clue skills are absolutely horrible. The east hallway, you say. Which east hallway?"

"Harry!"

"What?" Gabriel turned around and saw Hermione thrusting a piece of parchment in his face. He blinked, stepping back slightly to give himself some room. "What's that?"

"It's for you." Hermione shoved it into his hands. "To help you with review - I know you don't like homework and such and of course you'd put everything off until the last minute-"

"Hermione-" Please tell me this isn't what I think it is. "Is this a study schedule?"

"Yes," Hermione replied matter-of-factly. "And I really think you need to use it because cramming isn't going to work! These are our finals, Harry! They decide whether we get into the next year!"

Gabriel put a hand carefully on Hermione's shoulder. "You do know that exams aren't for another three months, right?"

"Yes!" she snapped, and Gabriel quickly snatched his hand back as though it were about to be bitten off. "That doesn't change the fact that preparation is important!" She dug around in her bag, turning away slightly and Gabriel was tempted to run while he could. "I've got one for Michael, too, so give it to him when you see him, okay?"

"Not 'him'," Gabriel corrected as he accepted the second sheet of parchment.

Hermione gave Gabriel a confused look. "What's that suppose to mean?"

"Michael's not a he." Gabriel glanced over the schedule warily, seeing that she had filled basically all his free time. They were even color-coded by class.

This didn't seem to help Hermone's confusion. "Are you saying Michael's a girl?"

"I'm saying he's not either." Gabriel folded his sheet up and stuck it in his pocket, where he hoped to forget about it completely and possibly lose it. "Ask them yourself if you're so confused."

"Who's them?"

"Michael."

"Oh." Hermione seemed less confused now, and more curious. "... Where are you going?"

"Around," Gabriel replied. "I'm exploring the castle." That sounded better than 'I'm looking for Ravenclaw's secret room based on a set of really vague directions'.

"Can I come?" And there went that time to look for it. Suppressing his frustration, Gabriel nodded.

"This castle's so big, though," Hermione said as they walked. They had wandered through the school and ended up at the hallway Gabriel had been investigating, mainly because Gabriel was very subtle about things when he wanted to be and he thought that he might as well try to look a little more. "I mean, is it really necessary? I suppose that when it was built they would have needed to defend themselves."

"Probably."

"But are moving staircases really necessary?" Hermione seemed very put out on the topic. "It's hard enough getting to class on time - and the rooms aren't even numbered! They could at least give us a map."

"I don't think a map exists, actually." Gabriel glanced out a nearby window and down into the courtyard, where there were a bunch of students milling around. It was the weekend, after all.

"Well then, it seems a bit ridiculous that no one's ever made one." Hermione said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Maybe no one ever thought of it."

"A castle this big, and you think no one has ever thought of mapping it? Harry, please."

Gabriel grinned at Hermione. "Maybe none of them were as smart as you."

Hermione blushed heavily at the compliment, choosing to look away and stare at a random place on the wall.

"What's that?" She said curiously. Gabriel turned around to see her looking at a rough patch of stone.

"The wall?" He suggested. Hermione shot him a look and walked closer to see it better. Gabriel followed.

It turned out not to be just a rough patch of stone, but something carved into the wall. Gabriel's heart migrated to somewhere in the vicinity of his throat when he realized that it wasn't just any carving, but a single rune.

To most wizards, it would just be nonsense. To Gabriel, however...

"What's this?" asked Hermione curiously, oblivious to Gabriel's shock. "It looks like a rune."

"It looks a bit like what's on my wand," said Gabriel, playing the part of 'curious kid' and hiding his surprise. Hermione whirled around to face him.

"Your wand? You mean the carvings on it? Can I see?" she asked eagerly.

Gabriel took his wand out of the pocket that seemed to be sewn into their robes for that reason. "See?" he said, offering her the handle and a clear view. Hermione inspected it critically, taking the wand and angling it to get a better look at the 'made-up' runes.

"Hmm," was all she said, handing it back to Gabriel. "Harry, you didn't make this, did you?"

"The wand?"

Hermione looked exasperated. "No! I mean this rune in the wall. You didn't put it there, did you?"

"Why would I carve something from my wand on the wall?" Gabriel affected a puzzled expression.

Hermione shrugged. "I was just asking. It is a bit strange, to find something from your wand on the wall."

"Well, I solemnly swear that I did not carve that there."

"I believe you."

Gabriel was, once again, hidden behind his curtains. His bed seemed to be his only private space in the entire school. And privacy was a necessity most of the time, including now. Gabriel was going back over the events of the year, singling out any suspicious or odd events and making a list of things to figure out.

Number one: What is the Cerberus guarding?

That was definitely on the top of the list, and for a multitude of reasons. The foremost being, why in Hell's name did they think it would be a good idea to hide an object so valuable it needs layers upon layers of protection in a school? Full of children? Honestly.

Number two: Why has no one else noticed that Quirrel is possessed?

If Dumbledore really was the greatest wizard of the twentieth century, one would assume that he'd be more on top of these things. Especially since he hired the man.

Number three: At some point put plan into action.

This was more of a note to himself, as earlier in the year Gabriel and Hermione had gotten to talking about the various problems in the magical world and had decided to do something about it. Whatever they could, anyway, even though only Gabriel would be around to see if it really worked.

Number four: Who was Tom Riddle?

This probably should have been number one, as Gabriel was far more determined to track him down and wring the diadem's location out of him than he was to figure out what was under the trapdoor in the third floor corridor. He had found Tom Riddle's name on an award in the trophy room, for 'Special Services to the School', which either meant that he was actually an okay person or he was like Malfoy and his father had donated a fuck ton of money to the school.

The list was rapidly devolving into questions beyond the school, as Gabriel added numbers five and six: Why was his Grace taking so long to come back and Why did his siblings come here respectively.

Number seven: How many of his siblings had been here?

There were many things Gabriel was curious about, but the first four definitely took precedence. Not necessarily in that order, of course, but the most important all the same.

At the moment, however, Gabriel had far more important concerns than unanswered questions.

He hadn't returned to the hallway where Hermione had found the rune immediately. Instead, Gabriel had waited, watching for the perfect opportunity to slip off unnoticed and open it. He found his chance after several weeks of being constantly frustrated in his efforts.

It was late April, almost May really, and the student body was either outside enjoying the weather or, more likely, inside studying for upcoming exams. The teachers had piled on homework as the tests drew nearer, seemingly agreeing with Hermione, and Gabriel had very nearly resorted to using magic to get it done faster.

Anyway. The exam fever had provided Gabriel with the cover necessary to get to the east corridor without running into anyone. As he stood in front of the wall, his eyes picked out the rune that Hermione had pointed out.

He raised his wand, tapping at the wall with the rune as his starting point. "Two up to the left..." Tap, tap. "Three to the left..." Tap, tap, tap. It didn't react at all.

Of course it didn't.

Why should anything be that easy.

Frowning, Gabriel tucked his wand away. Perhaps...it was much too early to be using his Grace after it had so recently been depleted, but Gabriel didn't have a choice if he wanted to get in.

Breathing deeply, he reached up and tapped the rune with his finger. It lit up, the fractional portion of Grace reacting with it. Gabriel tapped in the same pattern he had with his wand, his fingertip leaving a faint white mark behind that slowly faded as he moved on.

Two diagonally, three left. Gabriel waited with bated breath.

Ever so slowly, the wall retracted inward and swung out of the way, the grind of stone on stone loud in the empty corridor. The wooden door that was revealed was dusty, presumably from having been left undisturbed for so many decades. Gabriel swore he could feel his heart trying to beat through his ribs as he reached forward and took the handle.

The door creaked as it opened, showing a small balcony and a spiral staircase which led downwards until it faded out of sight and into the darkness. Gabriel peered over the railing as the door closed behind him with a soft thump.

Lights ignited themselves as the door closed, and the telltale grind of stone said that the secret door was keeping itself a secret. It was amazing the spells had even lasted this long, Gabriel thought, as he watched the tiny witch-lights blaze a trail through the darkness along the railing. The spiral descended deeper than he could see and as Gabriel walked slowly down the stairs he thought it was a bit anticlimactic that he went to all this trouble for a staircase.

It went on for quite a while. As Gabriel walked he wondered if it would ever end, since there was no floor in sight. Muriel wouldn't have been that mean, would she? Maybe this was her idea of an endurance test, since normally angels wouldn't get tired at all. But Gabriel had barely any Grace left, and so he did get tired after a while, at which point he sat sidesaddle on the railing and slid down at least half of it. It was much faster, though he had to charm the railing to stop himself getting scraped on the rough stone.

The darkness rushed past him as he slid, the lights which had blinked on in the railing the only source of light. Gabriel mused that it probably looked quite dramatic, with his face lit from below by the blue witchlight.

The bottom rushed up to meet him and Gabriel sprang off the railing just in time, landing and neatly avoiding crashing into the newel post. He looked around, finding himself in a small circular room which didn't appear to have any visible exits.

"Come on." Gabriel glanced around for something that would give him a clue. "Hello? Is there some sort of system in place here? It's me, Gabriel!"

Something lit itself on the far wall. It was a long sheet of parchment tacked to the wall, with a quill placed in a slot next to it. A sloppy signature was already inked there, the lines blurring as if whoever wrote it was unused to quills.

Gabriel approached and stared at it for some time.

"Samandiriel," he read. "So you did find this place. Were you Tom Riddle, perhaps?"

Gabriel snorted even as he said it. The idea of anyone describing Samandiriel as 'charismatic' or 'charming' was laughable.

Taking the quill out of its slot, Gabriel signed his name in swooping Enochian. The familiar curve of the letter was almost comforting, the sigil standing black against the parchment.

Something shifted in the wall surrounding Gabriel. He swung around as his signature melted into the paper, leaving only a faint trace of black like Samandiriel's had become, though Gabriel had assumed that to be because of age. Another wall was moving, retreating into the surrounding wall and showing a doorway into an adjoining room.

Gabriel stepped through and whistled, a long note stretching out as he looked around.

It was a large room, with shelves stretching towards the ceiling stuffed full of books. There was a path which led to the exact opposite of the room where a desk sat, a single torch illuminating it. Gabriel looked around in awe, wondering when Muriel had amassed such a collection.

A thought struck Gabriel suddenly.

"I can never let Hermione in here," he said aloud. "She'll never leave."

He walked carefully towards the desk, footsteps light and quiet on the dusty stone floor. The room was quiet around him - the kind of quiet that is not scary, or lonely, but instead suits the atmosphere.

On the desk lay a single book, bound by bronze string and with a cover of dark blue leather. it had a simple slip of the same string to keep it shut, which fell to pieces as soon as Gabriel touched it.

Handling the ancient journal carefully, Gabriel eased open the binding. It was Muriel's - her signature was on the first page. Gabriel closed it and did not touch it again - whatever thoughts were there were not his business.

Under the journal were scattered pages, scribblings in Enochian. One caught Gabriel's eye - for some reason, there was a folded piece addressed to him.

Warily, he reached for it and drew it out from the pile. It dislodged two more, addressed to Michael and Raphael respectively. Gabriel placed them back on the desk carefully, trying not to knock anything else off while being curious why Muriel had written letters to the three archangels, and directed his attention to the page still in his hands. Trying not to rip the aged parchment, Gabriel unfolded his letter.

Aaaand I'm gonna end it there.

Hope you guys enjoyed my imagining of Muriel's secret room!

Read and review, as always! Reviews feed my muse.