Harry and the Pirates, Chapter 30

Cats and Catastrophes

by Technomad

It took Professor Dumbledore's full authority to calm down the howling Argus Filch, along with a promise that his cat would be restored to full health. Harry and the other Slytherins watched developments.

"What does that mean, written on the wall?" asked Luna. "What's the Chamber of Secrets?"

Harry and Dudley exchanged glances, then shook their heads. Much to Harry's surprise, it was Draco Malfoy that provided the answer.

"It means, Looney, that Salazar Slytherin's secret chamber has been opened! His Heir has come back to purge the school of all who are unworthy to attend!" Everybody stared at him, and several of the senior Slytherins grabbed Draco from behind, one slapping a hand over his mouth.

"When we get you back into our common room, fool, you'll soon learn to hold your tongue when other Houses are present!" snarled Adrian Pucey. Draco squirmed, then took a look into Pucey's eyes and visibly decided that shutting up was a far better idea. Crabbe and Goyle looked, at first, like they wanted to intervene, but the size and number of the sixth- and seventh-year Slytherins surrounding their boss made them decide that this was not the time. The way the other older Slytherins were glaring at him was very ominous. Harry almost felt sorry for the blond poof. Almost.

Once things had broken up, and they were safely back in the Slytherin common room, Draco was dragged off by the older Slytherins. Luna gave the others a wide-eyed look. "So what is all this fuss about, anyway? I mean, Mrs. Norris is a pain and Filch is another…but who'd petrify a cat?"

Hermione gathered the others in their little group into a cozy corner, where there were several sofas and leather-padded chairs. Harry chose a sofa, and rather to his surprise, Ginny Weasley sat down beside him, as Luna did the same with Dudley on the other sofa. The others all chose chairs.

As their resident facts person, Hermione began. "Well…in Hogwarts, a History it is mentioned early on that Salazar Slytherin, our House's founder, differed from the other Houses' founders on whether or not to admit Muggle-born pupils to Hogwarts. He had his reasons; at that time, there was a great deal of misunderstanding and hostility toward magical people among Muggles, and he feared that a Muggle-born might turn against us to side with his Muggle kin."

"I see," Ron said, his eyes narrowing in thought. "And the others disagreed with him, I take it."

"Exactly! Godric, Helga and Rowena all thought that Muggles would be so seduced by magic that they'd happily join the wizard world and forget their origins. And, in most cases, they were proven right. The exceptions…let's just say they were dealt with." Hermione suddenly looked very crafty.

Harry could imagine just how that had gone. He knew that magical people could be very ruthless when they needed or wanted to be; the history of the Goblin Rebellions said as much. Without a good deal of ruthless determination, the wizards could have been exterminated or enslaved by the goblins.

"However, before he left, Salazar Slytherin is said to have created a magically-concealed chamber, deep within the bowels of the castle, in which he left a monster in wait. One day, the Heir of Slytherin would come to the castle, unleash the monster, and kill all the Muggleborns." Hermione snorted. "As if a monster could have survived all these centuries sealed up in a chamber! Someone's probably playing on those old stories for their own reasons."

"Yes, and I have an idea of just who that might be, don't I just?" muttered Dudley, cutting his eyes over to the corner where Draco Malfoy was being dragged back into the common room. The blond boy looked very shaken. "Malfoy prances around as though he were the heir of Merlin; wouldn't being the Heir of Slytherin suit him right down to the ground?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Ginny said. "He was with us all through the feast. That kind of lets him out of being the person who did this."

"Yes, but people are coming and going all the time at the feasts," Harry pointed out. "And the 'heir of Slytherin' could just as easily be in another House, couldn't he?" Seeing Hermione begin to raise an eyebrow, Harry hastily added: "Or 'she?'" Hermione smiled, and Harry knew he'd dodged a bullet.

"We don't have anything like enough information. We don't even know if the chamber exists." Hermione got up. "Until we've got more information, I move we wait and watch. And keep an eye on each other. Last year's little business with the Squirrel isn't something I've forgotten. Just because we're here doesn't mean that hinky things aren't going on." Seeing the gleam in the boys' eyes, she snapped "And I don't mean that, either! You! Gutter! Out!" Chuckling, the group broke up.

Over the next few days, Harry's little group stuck as closely together as they could. By common, unspoken consent, they kept a particularly close eye on Luna, since she was the one of them most interested in strange monsters. They formed a regular subject at her father's newspaper. She was also the most trusting of them. Ginny Weasley almost never left the blonde's side, and when he was available, Dudley always had room under his arm for her. Luna, herself, accepted the situation in her usual cheerful way.

Harry wished he had eyes in the back of his head sometimes. He "kept his head on a swivel," as he'd heard Revy recommend once in Roanapur, and both his wand and pistol were close at hand at all times. He also stuck close to Dudley and Ron, and, most of the time, Hermione and the other girls.

They weren't the only ones. The whole school was acting spooked; you almost never saw people by themselves any more, and the Houses tended to separate more from each other. Harry rather regretted this; he privately suspected the Weasley twins of having had a hand in Mrs. Norris' petrification, since they and Mr. Filch had been feuding since their first meeting.

Ron managed to get Percy to talk to them. "Honestly, little brother, I don't think it's really their style, if you know what I mean," Percy said, shaking his head. "Their pranks generally target a specific person, and while they're not above being cruel to an animal, as you know…"

"Yes, I know," Ron said, scowling. Harry made a mental note to ask just what Ron was talking about; this sounded like a bitter old memory.

Percy cleared his throat. "But they were with me for the entire feast, from beginning to end, at the Gryffindor table. I was keeping a particular eye on them, and they didn't leave the table until everybody else did, just before Mrs. Norris was discovered. That's what we call an alibi."

Dudley and Harry both nodded. With their experience in Roanapur, they could tell a valid alibi from a false one, and Percy, they knew, was not at all given to lying, or to covering for his prankish younger brothers. "Aye, well, back to square one," Dudley sighed.

Percy gave them a stern look. "If you're trying to find out who did this, best of British to you…but for the gods' sake, be careful!" The Slytherins all nodded, thanked him, and left.

Draco Malfoy had apparently learned a valuable lesson from the talking-to the senior Slytherins had given him; he was keeping a low-ish profile. Harry was inclined to thank Buddha for small mercies, and did not question everybody else's good luck. The girls reported that Pansy Parkinson was also being awfully quiet, which made life in the girls' dorm much more peaceful.

Meanwhile, school life went on. One day, posters went up around the school, in which Gilderoy Lockhart announced that his proteges were ready to challenge Flitwick's students in a friendly duelling contest. Reading the posters, Harry, Ron, Draco, Dudley and Luna suddenly smiled. The smiles they wore would have looked appropriate coming out of a dark forest at night.

Hermione was in full cry, gloating about her inevitable triumphs, along with Lockhart's other partisans. Flitwick smiled and shook his head, counselling his own pupils to keep a low profile.

"Overconfidence is a weakness in a duellist, children," he told them one evening at one of their practices. "No wizard is so powerful that he may not be defeated." Luna cleared her throat in a pointed way, and he added "Or witch, either." Luna gave him a beaming smile, and he smiled back; Luna's smiles were generally contagious. Harry had noticed that Slytherin had become a rather cheerier place since she had arrived. She was never down in the dumps, and could usually find a bright side to any situation.

Dudley beeped Luna's nose, and Luna giggled. "One day you'll be a powerful witch," Dudley predicted. "Maybe as powerful as Professor McGonagall." When consulted on the subject, Flitwick had allowed that while all of the faculty could handle themselves well on the duelling ground, the ones he'd least like to tangle with were, in that order, Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape. Hearing their House Head praised that highly filled all the Slytherins present with pride.

"Do you think I could teach a subject at Hogwarts some day?" Luna asked, her eyes wide. "I'd always planned on taking the Quibbler over one day, and hopefully finding the Crumple-Horned Snorkack!"

"Life doesn't always turn out the way you expect, Luna," Ron put in. "Our Mum planned to be an Auror when she was in school; then she met Dad and, well, one thing led to another. They ended up getting married right out of school, and she settled in to…be Mum." Reading between the lines, Harry figured out rather quickly what had happened. He knew that the Aurors didn't allow their trainees to be pregnant, and from the relative haste of their marriage, he wouldn't have been surprised to find that the eager bride had taken seven months to do what took a cow or Countess nine. He smiled to himself. People never changed.

"My own Mum never expected to end up in Asia," Dudley offered. "After Dad died, though, she didn't want to stay in England, and she got a good job offer in Singapore."

"Asia sounds great fun," Luna commented.

Dudley smiled at her. "Maybe someday you'll get to see it!"

A few days later, they were reminded that peril walked the halls of the school. Coming up a corridor, they were confronted by a startling sight. A group of Gryffindors were kneeling or standing around someone who'd apparently been stricken; he was lying on the floor.

When he got a closer look, Harry saw that it was Colin Creevey, a Muggle-born Gryffindor firstie. He knew the younger boy slightly, mainly because Colin had an annoying habit of wanting to take his picture at every opportunity. Not being Lockhart, he tried to avoid the junior paparazzo without hurting his feelings; he didn't have the heart to slap Creevey down. He was hyper-enthusiastic about everything about Hogwarts. Most people were very kind to him, realizing how amazing it all seemed to a boy raised without any inkling that magic was real.

Now he was lying on the corridor floor, stiff and stark, but somehow, still alive. His camera was clutched in his hand, as though he were about to take a picture. Hermione's eyes went wide, and she sniffled. Luna moved closer to Dudley, and Harry found himself with Ginny under his arm. He held her close; she was a pleasant armful.

The Gryffindors were looking at the Slytherins with hostility. One of them, more tactless or bolder than the others, snarled: "You! Your damn old Heir did this!" Several people on both sides pulled their wands, and Harry suddenly felt like he did back in Roanapur, when trouble was about to break out. He drew his own wand, unobtrusively, from its arm sheath.

"Not us! We were in classes!" That was Ron; the redhead was generally the most impulsive of them. Over the chessboard, he turned into an ice-cold calculating machine who could and did routinely wipe the board with his Housemates, but, day-to-day, he was generally the easiest of them to provoke into action. "Why would we want to hurt Colin, anyway?"

"Because he's always stalking Harry Potter! Harry would want to get rid of him!"

Harry sighed, wearily. Gryffindor obtuseness never failed to amaze him. "Look. In the first place, I was in class. I've dozens of people, and Professor Flitwick, who'll swear they saw me there. Even if my Housemates would all lie for me…and, believe me, not all of them love me enough to perjure themselves for me…are you about to call Flitwick a liar?"

That got through to them, and the atmosphere became rather less tense. "Good point. But then, who did this? Who would?"

"Who, indeed, Mr. Johnson?" That was Professor Dumbledore. With Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey in tow, the headmaster surveyed the gathering. "Who would want to harm Mr. Creevey? I am quite sure that Mr. Potter has other ways of making his displeasure known, should he wish to be free of Mr. Creevey's importunities."

Squatting beside Colin, Professor Dumbledore pried the camera out of his cold stiff hands. "Let us see what Mr. Creevey photographed. Perhaps this will give us a clue to whatever has been happening in this school." Before Harry or any other Muggle-raised could stop him, Dumbledore opened the back of the camera.

As it happened, it made no difference. When he opened the camera, a puff of smoke came out, and Harry could see that the film was burned. "My goodness." Dumbledore said, quietly. "Madame Pomfrey, would you please see to it that Mr. Creevey is taken to the hospital wing?"

It was a very quiet group of Slytherins who arrived back at their common room.

END Chapter 30