Chapter 26

A Plan

The girl usually wasn't one for breaking school rules, but recently, it had become almost normal for her. The new curfew meant going to her dormitory when there were hours of light left in the day. Since she had perfected a disillusionment charm, she'd been freed from the confines of ordinary hours and been able to go where she wished when she wished, for the most part. It had been easy to check in to her common room, and then slip out, invisible to all eyes but her own, as someone else opened the entrance.

Now it was actually time to go to sleep. She hadn't been able to sleep as much as she should have for days now, and she'd caught herself dozing off and yawning too many times in the past half hour. And there she was doing it again. She had turned another corner without care. She could still be heard - and evidently had been heard, or else, how did he know she was there?

Albus Potter stood in the corridor holding a piece of parchment. His green eyes seemed to look right past her charm to see her standing in her robes in front of him.

"What are you doing out so late, Malia?" he asked her. A breath seemed to catch in her throat as Malia inhaled. How could he know it was her? What else had he been able to find out without her knowing? She drew her wand from her left pocket, and held it for a moment.

"Do you know something about where students are disappearing to -"

And then the stunning spell hit Albus in the chest without warning. His eyes widened at the last second - realization dawning across his face, before he crashed to the floor. Funny, that he hadn't thought to put up a shield beforehand. A few well-placed compliments went so far in creating fake friendships. Not that it was something she enjoyed doing - but the ends justify the means, don't they?

Malia rushed over to cast a disillusionment charm on him as well, but when she bent over, she realized she wouldn't have to. He hadn't heard her coming. Albus Potter probably hadn't even known a thing about her project. He'd simply seen Malia walking behind him on this ever-so-convenient map.

She scooped it up in her hand and watched the teachers' dots wander around. No one was patrolling this area of the castle at the moment - and when they did, there would be no reason for them to suspect a thing had gone on in that first-floor corridor. Albus Potter would be gone.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"Will you need anyone else to go sir?" the messenger asked him.

Harry shook his head. "No, everyone who I would need to help me has already been informed. Besides, it's probably nothing too formidable."

The girl nodded nervously. She was one of several young auror recruits that couldn't seem to get over the fact that he was the famous Harry Potter.

Harry passed her in the hall, and continued to think about the letter he had received from the Hogwarts Headmistress the previous day. Two Hogwarts students had gone missing, seemingly with no warning. Contradictory to what he had told the young auror-in-training, he was extremely worried about it. Nothing suspicious like this had happened at Hogwarts since Voldemort's demise, and although he knew it couldn't be that particular dark wizard, that didn't mean that this threat would be any less of a problem.

Since they hadn't had any big problems in crime recently, he guessed that whatever was going on was student related. If this was so, the young dark-lord-in-training could be stopped and prevented before they did anything catastrophic.

Harry exited the Ministry and turned on his heel, before experiencing the brief discomfort that came with apparition. He reappeared right outside the Hogwarts gates, where McGonagall herself was waiting for him.

"Mr. Potter, thank you for coming," McGonagall said. She had a grave expression on her face, one he didn't think he had seen since the war - although her face when Harry had told her of James' and Fred's pranks before they had gone to Hogwarts had been close.

"Of course. Nothing is more important than student safety, I hope I can help you. Shall I go straight to check the Chamber of Secrets then?" Harry responded as he walked into the Hogwarts grounds.

"That is our next planned step, yes, but there's something else."

Harry tipped his head, waiting for her to go on.

"Another student is gone - possibly not connected, since they were last seen quite recently, but with recent activities…" she trailed off.

"You think it's connected. Who else knows about this disappearance? Have you contacted friends or family?" Asked Harry. He wanted to ask so many other questions, but he waited for a response first.

"That's what I'm doing right now, Harry," McGonagall's voice was lowered in an even more somber tone. "It's Albus, Harry. Albus hasn't been seen anywhere for at least an hour"

Harry's heart sank. The comfort of being back at his old school seemed to fade away. The vibrant greens of the grass and trees faded to grey. He couldn't seem to find happiness in the birds' chirps anymore - only a warning. It's only been an hour, he told himself. If you were still in school, it would be just like you to sneak away to try and save people yourself, that's what he's probably doing. But what if he had found something - something that he couldn't get himself out of?

"Your other children are waiting in your office. We can send them back to their common rooms, but I thought you might want to talk to them first."

Harry nodded, but didn't say anything until they were in the castle, but then he cleared his throat. He couldn't let emotions get in the way of him doing his job. "Have you found any connection between the three, then?"

McGonagall shook her head. "Not much. Miss Wood was in the same year as your son. It doesn't look like they were good friends, but it wouldn't have been odd to see the three of them - Albus and the two Wood twins that is - talking together about quidditch before a game. There is no connection whatsoever with the other missing student, who was a seventh year

The brief conversation that followed, told Harry everything McGonagall knew about the disappearances. This topic carried them up to the stone gargoyle outside the Headmistress' office, without mention of the name 'Albus.'

"Calico," She said, and the gargoyle moved aside to let them in. Before, Harry would have spent a few moments amused at the password. When McGonagall had first become Headmistress, her passwords had stayed names of previous headmasters. Then they had switched to candies, like they were in Dumbledore's day, and most recently, all of the passwords had been cat related. But with recent events, it didn't quite cheer Harry as it used to.

"Dad!" Lily tackled her dad in a hug that, had Lily been a bit bigger, could have knocked the wind out of him. "Can we help? I want to be a hero, like you were!"

Harry looked down into her brown eyes sadly. Lily, out of his three children, seemed least able to grasp how dangerous his childhood had been. He wasn't blind to her longing for adventure. Unlike Harry, her reasons for wanting that adventure seemed to be farther away from a "saving people thing," and closer to a "being famous" thing. She had the hardest time living under his shadow, and would do anything to earn her fame by her own merits instead of his.

"Sorry Lily. This mystery is for adults only to get involved with. You don't need to be apart of it." And I don't want to see you get hurt, he almost added, but he realized that saying such a thing aloud would only make her angry.

"But you went after the Philosopher's Stone when you were only my age!" Lily argued.

Harry tried not to blame her for not understanding, but he couldn't help the feeling of irritation growing stronger. He guessed from Lily's expression of frustration that his own anger had not gone unnoticed. "I only went after the Stone because there were no adults already dealing with the situation."

"But -"

"Believe me, if I could have been sure that they were, I would never have felt like I had to do it myself!" Harry continued, and when Lily looked like she was going to say something else, he added, "That's enough Lily! I don't want to hear any more of this."

Harry changed his focus to James, ignoring Lily's attempt to continue the argument. His eldest son still sat in a chair in front of the desk, examining his fingernails.

"James?" Harry whispered.

"Dad?" James questioned sarcastically.

"It's not your fault, you know."

"I know. But, I just feel like I should have noticed… I feel like I should have noticed if something odd was going on with him."

Harry nodded. "I think you would have, James. I don't think this had anything to do with Albus. He was just randomly picked. And hey, it's only been an hour. It mightn't be anything to worry about." This was not entirely true. What were the chances that the son of Harry Potter would be disappear randomly? It wasn't impossible, but it was low enough to cause some concern.

"Do you two have anything else to tell me?" Harry asked.

The two shook their heads.

"Alright then, we'll walk you to Gryffindor Tower then. Stick together when you can, and when you can't, be sure to stay with someone. So far, the attacker only goes for lone students."

After dropping his kids off safely with Professor Longbottom, Harry met McGonagall in the second floor girl's bathroom.

The bathroom had been refurbished since Harry had last been in there. It looked much the same, but bathroom stalls had been replaced with newer ones, that looked both cleaner and undamaged by the watermarks left by Myrtle's many bathroom floodings. The only things left untouched were the sinks.

"We've set spells to trigger if the sink or any of the pipes move," McGonagall told Harry. "So far, nothing's been triggered, and I'm the only one that can remove the enchantments." The headmistress took a few steps close to the pipes and did just that.

"Ooh, I've been trying to get to those for ages!" a voice from above wails.

Harry looked up to see Moaning Myrtle swooping down from the ceiling, looking as unchanged as always.

"Myrtle, I am going to need you to refrain from flooding the bathroom while the enchantments are gone. I've had quite enough of that, and it's quite nice to have this as a functional bathroom," pronounced Mcgonagall.

The ghost seemed to retreat a little. Apparently her usual enthusiasm to talk about anything dreary was held back by either McGonagall's position as headmistress, or her glare that all students feared. Either way, the ghost made no further interruption as Harry leaned next to the sink, looking for the snake.

Once he found it he called in parseltongue for the entrance to open. Harry's parseltongue was a bit rough and didn't come out as smoothly as it had in his school years, but it did the trick. After the part of Voldemort inside him had died, Harry had found himself unable to speak the old language instinctively. But if he paid close attention, he could still understand the snakes, and from that, he had re-learned much of the snake language.*

"Well," Harry said, looking into the pipe that had opened. "Here goes nothing."

He stepped in and slid down the pipe, and could hear McGonagall behind him. He wasn't sure if she had ever been down into the chamber herself. He and Ron had been called in once before to open the chamber when Hogwarts was reopening after the battle, but Harry couldn't recall seeing the professor there. During their visit, members of the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures, the Auror Office, and several St. Mungos workers had looked around the place to ensure safety and search for the unknown. Much of the grime and bones in the corridor had been cleared up, and the remains of the basilisk had been taken various places for study.

Before walking further into the chamber, Harry raised his wand. Although they'd still have to search the chamber for anything suspicious, casting homenum revelio would save them the surprise of running into anyone unexpectedly. The spell revealed that no one else was present. A sweep through using any other spells Harry and McGonagall could think of, plus looking into any suspect nook or cranny gave nothing away.

"Well, they're not here, that's for sure," Harry said into the cavern. Hearing only the sounds of water dripping in a corner and the skidding of his own feet as a response, he turned around.

The headmistress had also finished searching her area of the room, and was now gazing upwards at the towering pillars and snake carvings around every corner. She shook her head, as if disregarding something she had thought before walking with Harry towards the exit.

Back at the staff room, quite a few aurors and teachers waited for the results of that search. Harry was drawn to look towards the faces he knew the best - Ron and Neville stood next to each other to one side of the room.

"Well, there's some good news, and some bad news," he said, looking at his friends. He felt as if sharing this experience with them would give him more strength, somehow, since they had been through similar things in their own time at Hogwarts. "The Chamber of Secrets has not been opened again. There's nothing remotely dangerous down there. But that also means that none of the students have been found."

Harry wasn't sure what he had expected as a reaction, but the silence that followed his statement was not welcomed. He wanted someone to say something, to make a suggestion of some kind.

"Have you thought of the room of requirement?" If they're being kept in there, no spell would detect it," Ron finally pointed out.

"That's a good point, Mr. Weasley," McGonagall said. "We've patrolled that area extensively, but we should put permanent guards around that door. Someone should also run another test to see if anyone is currently in there." McGonagall waited to see if there were any more suggestions before saying anything more. "If they can't be found soon, we will be forced to look at closing the school. We will try our hardest not to let this happen. We've arranged for a school evacuation tomorrow so that the school can be fully searched, but if this yields no results… there may be nothing else we can do."

"But if you close the school, you would be throwing out students that could be witnesses! You never know when someone might just be too afraid to come forwards," Ron debated.

Harry insisted otherwise. "Students are disappearing, Ron. This is different than anything else. A student being injured or petrified is one thing. They can be healed! Them vanishing without a trace is another. We have no idea what's happened to them. It isn't safe for any of the students to stay if it can't be stopped."

"Not only would you be removing witnesses, but if one of the students is the kidnapper, you've left the taken students to starve if we don't find them in time. Assuming they're being kept on the Hogwarts grounds," Ron responded.

Harry remembered what he had thought earlier about preventing another dark wizard from coming from Hogwarts, and had to admit that Ron had a good point.

"Both of you make good points," McGonagall told them. "I think that the best plan would be to leave the school open for a few more days as long as there are no other troubles. But if we're going to leave the school open, we'll need a better plan than the one we have currently."

The rest of the aurors and Hogwarts staff nodded, and looked towards Ron and Harry. This discussion seemed to have become a debate between the two aurors and the headmistress, to which all other attendees were only viewers.

"They wouldn't want the school to close. Whoever is taking the students, that is," Harry thought aloud. "Hopefully they'll still need access to the students they've taken. News that the school might close could cause them to change plans."

"So McGonagall can announce that the school will be forced to close in a few days if the students aren't found," suggested Ron. "And hopefully, someone will either come forwards to give us information, or the crook will make a rushed mistake. And if they don't, well, we weren't lying. The school would have to be closed at some point."

So everyone was agreed with the plan. Aurors and teachers went back to patrolling, and McGonagall went to give a short, but essential, speech.

*Pretty sure that JK Rowling said he couldn't speak parseltongue anymore, but I think this is a good compromise for this story.

Hello everyone! It has been less than a month since the last chapter, so cheers to that.

I really look forwards to reading the reviews for this chapter though, so tell me what you think! I'm actually really excited to see how this story turns out (I know what's going to happen, but it's still super exciting anyway).

I'm going to try to get one more chapter out before I have finals and final projects and stuff, but seeing as I already have gotten a few huge final projects, I'm really not sure what will happen. And after that, I'm just so excited about this story that with school out, I'll probably spend quite a lot of time writing, and finish the story quite quickly.