xxxiv. clever witches

Harriet grimaced when she heard the familiar patter of Madam Pomfrey's approaching footsteps.

"Miss Potter," the mediwitch snapped when she stepped out of her office and found the girl attempting to escape the wing, one hand still on the knob, moments away from slipping through the opening. "I told you—."

"But I'm perfectly well now!" Harriet argued, and the witch scowled, flicking her wand so the infirmary doors slipped right out of Harriet's hands and closed. "C'mon, Madam Pomfrey—!"

"As I said, Miss Potter, you may return to class tomorrow, but for the weekend you are to remain here." She pointed one imperious finger back into the ward's depths. "Bed."

Harriet returned the way she'd come, Madam Pomfrey quick on her heels, tucking Harriet in until the bespectacled girl felt all but strangled by the tight sheets. "Now rest. The more you rest, the quicker you can leave."

Harriet scrunched her nose at the witch's back when Madam Pomfrey finally returned to her office and quickly disentangled herself from the sheets, though Harriet did remain put. She was mostly sure the threats about Sticking Charms weren't real—but only mostly, and Harriet didn't much fancy being stuck anywhere while some nutter agent of the Dark Lord ran about the school wanting her dead.

An hour passed before Hermione and Elara arrived, both slinking by the ajar office door so Madam Pomfrey wouldn't shoo them away before they had a chance to visit. Harriet perked up at their entrance and grinned as her friends hurried over and slid the screen into place behind them, blocking view of the ward once more.

"Did you bring it?" Harriet asked, positively bouncing with eagerness as Hermione adjusted the satchel slung across her shoulder and searched the interior.

"Yes, of course I brought it, though I don't see why you want it so much…."

The bushy-haired girl unearthed Harriet's copy of 101 Legendary Artefacts of the Wizarding World.

"Excellent!" Harriet crowed before checking the volume of her voice, glancing toward the screen. "Really, thank you, Hermione."

"It's fine," Hermione said, though a pleased blushed spread across her cheeks. "Oh! And Elara brought—."

The taller girl stuck a hand into the pocket of her robes and withdrew a coiled bit of green.

"Kevin!" Harriet said as Elara deposited the little snake into her waiting hands. Kevin was the Christmas cracker snake she'd stuffed into her pocket at the feast and had promptly forgotten, until she returned to the dorms and heard Livi hiss about an intruder. "Thanks, but why'd you bring him?"

"Livi's been going a bit…a bit mental," Hermione confessed, eying the snake with a healthy dose of caution. "We can't see him, of course, but he did tear Parkinson's bed to shreds and broke a mirror. I tried telling him you were fine—but, well, I don't speak snake, do I?"

"No," Harriet affirmed. "Though Livi understands some English when he feels like it."

"Elara came up with the idea of bringing you Kevin—such a ridiculous name, Harriet, really—so you could tell him what happened, and he could tell Livi."

Harriet lifted Kevin to her face. "I dunno if that'll work," she said, dubious. "Kevin's a bit of an idiot."

The snake blinked one eye, then the other, as his black tongue flickered.

"Really?" Hermione asked as she sank into the visitor's chair. Elara elected to perch on the end of the bed, and Harriet folded her legs to give her room. "That's fascinating. You know he's not a real snake; he's a low-level Transfiguration golem created by the magic in the cracker you pulled. He's like the insects and animals we work with in Professor McGonagall's class."

Harriet blinked. "So—wait? Those animals aren't real?"

"They're real in the sense that they have flesh and synapses and comprehend basic stimuli. According to Professor McGonagall, however, they lack a certain indefinable spark of life. Did you know that's where the stories of Frankenstein came from? He was a wizard who attempted to bring a human golem to life. The creation of human golems is Dark magic, of course, though they are permitted in the training of Healers and mediwizards—and, anyway, Frankenstein thought to use dead bodies as his base because he felt it was the closest he could get to true living flesh, and that broaches into Necromancy, which is a forbidden branch of Transfiguration—."

Harriet and Elara nodded their heads at proper intervals while Hermione rattled off more magical history, until she paused for breath and realized she'd been rambling at some length. "Oh, I'm sorry, the thought got away from me. Anyway, Kevin's a golem. It's quite interesting that he's able to understand and perform commands."

"Yeah," Harriet replied. "I wonder if that's why Livi hates him, though. I had to ask him nicely not to eat Kevin and now Livi treats him like his own personal slave."

"Oh, Harriet, that's awful."

"Well, what would you have me do?" the bespectacled girl huffed. "Livius is almost as heavy as I am and I don't much fancy getting into an argument with a miffed Horned Serpent."

Hermione subsided with a cross expression and Elara smirked, turning before the older Slytherin could see. Harriet stroked a finger against Kevin's skull to get his attention.

"Misstresss," the little snake hissed, wriggling in her palm, looping skinny coils about her wrist.

"Hullo, Kevin," Harriet said. "Can you bring a message to Livi?"

The snake swayed.

"Tell Livi I am okay. Can you do that?"

The swaying paused, then Kevin responded, "Kevin will."

Harriet gave the snake a minute to process the information before testing him. "Kevin will what?"

Kevin's beady little eyes widened as he stared at Harriet and whipped his forked tongue out. "Kevin will…?" His coils tightened, voice puzzled. "Kevin will…Kevin will bitesss."

Satisfied with his decision, he reared back and bit the finger that'd been stroking his head—the finger that was bigger around than the whole of the little snake's body.

Harriet pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

It took several more rounds of repetition and finger chomping before Harriet felt they had a semi-decent chance of Kevin relaying a proper message to Livi, and she handed the snake back to Elara, who slipped him into a pocket without so much as a flinch. They chatted quietly for a few minutes about the rumors swirling through the school and the general unease in Slytherin House after one of their own was poisoned. Harriet propped open 101 Legendary Artefacts in her lap and began flipping through pages.

"So why did you want the book?" Hermione asked as Harriet frowned at the picture of a green suit of armor. "I know you must be bored up here, but you were rather…insistent, and specific."

Harriet stopped her perusal and considered her two friends, Hermione and Elara considering her in return. Should she tell them what the Headmaster had said? What would they do? Harriet didn't want them to worry—or, worse, decide being around Harriet was too hazardous for their own health, which might very well be true if Harriet's would-be murderer felt less stingy with his poisons. She fiddled with the corner of a page.

"Professor Dumbledore…when he came Friday night, he told me that I was poisoned by an agent of the Dark Lord."

"What?!" Hermione gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth when the exclamation echoed. Both she and Elara paled considerably, torn between outright horror and incredulity. Harriet rushed to explain.

"I know, I know, I didn't really believe him at first, either. Professor Dumbledore said I was a mistake to—to him. That he meant to kill me when I was a baby with my parents, and that he's not really dead like we think he is." Harriet picked at the book until the page's corner and she pressed her thumb against it, flustered. She didn't meet their eyes. "They don't know who the agent is, 'course, and I'm not the reason they're here. According to the Headmaster, the Dark Lord wants something that Dumbledore has—an artifact, he said, that was in Gringotts before and then came here." And I want to bloody well know what it is if I'm going to be murdered over it.

"And did—did Professor Dumbledore say what this artifact was?"

"No. I think he was going to, but Snape looked like his head might explode if the Headmaster did." Harriet patted the book. "So I thought I might find something in here."

"But, Harriet, it could be anything."

"I know, but if it's something important enough that the bloody Dark Lord wants it so much, and it had to be moved from Gringotts of all places, then maybe it's in here."

Elara lifted and folded one leg at the knee so she could sit more on the bed and crane her neck to look at the book. Harriet was relieved neither she nor Hermione had gotten to their feet and ran from the room. "Rule out anything overly large," Elara muttered, pointing out a picture of Hebo's dragon-drawn chariot. "Anything ancient with old magic in it can't be shrunk, and usually can't be levitated. The goblins have week-long waiting periods to get over-sized objects in and out of Gringotts because of the mine shafts; it would not have been removed as quietly as it has been."

Harriet flipped ahead, nodding. "How 'bout any of these?" she asked as she pointed out a fancy array of different swords. "Excalibur. Galatine. Cla—cla—? The Clam Sola."

Hermione bounced out of her chair and came to Harriet's side. "Claiomh Solais, Harriet. Not Clam."

"Well, however it's pronounced—what do you think? This says it glowed with the light of the sun and could cut enemies in half. Oh, bloody hell."

Hermione gave her swearing a half-hearted reprimand as she nibbled at her lower lip, deep in thought. "That…that wouldn't make sense. Oh, none of it makes sense at all! You-Know-Who is supposed to be dead! How could Headmaster Dumbledore—?" Hermione took a shuddering breath as she saw Elara's stern expression and Harriet's nervous flinching. "I'm sorry. No, not a sword. Most listed here are accounted for and are simply legendary for their ownership. Not very useful."

The next few pages held three items collectively entitled the Deathly Hallows. "I'd want these if I was a murderous Dark Lord," Harriet said as she stared at an illustration of a black rock, wand, and cape. "Listen to this; 'it is said that he who brings Death's three Hallows together shall be his master, and confront that which terrifies mortal man.'"

Hermione shook her head. "No. The Deathly Hallows are purely a legend. Witches and wizards have claimed to own the Elder Wand or the Cloak of Invisibility dozens of times over the centuries and are always proved wrong. Whatever You-Know-Who is after has to be real, because the Headmaster says it was in Gringotts before." Suddenly, she blinked, her mouth popping open in silent shock. "The third-floor corridor on the right-hand side!"

Harriet knew about the corridor, of course; Professor Dumbledore had told them all at the start of school to avoid the place unless they wanted to die. It wasn't the kind of thing one forgets in a hurry. The Slytherins, being Slytherins, avoided the place and generally only spoke about the corridor in theory if they spoke of it at all—while the Gryffindors gamely admitted they'd tried the door at least once, just wanting a peek, but couldn't get past the lock.

"That must be where he's put it," Hermione said, grinning from ear to ear. "Why else keep something potentially dangerous in a school?"

Elara, reading an line about Goswhit, Arthur's helmet, frowned and said, "He was overtly theatrical about that, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"His speech regarding the corridor was blatant, given before the whole school. He didn't need to say anything, did he? He could've just kept the door locked and anyone who came across it would've been quietly turned away, as we've seen. Instead, he told everyone about it. I would presume he also told this agent."

Hermione's eyes widened. "You don't think it's in there."

"If the Headmaster was a Slytherin, I would guarantee it wasn't."

They continued to theorize on the Headmaster's motivations while Harriet flipped further ahead in the book, moving past the Shield of El Cid, the Brisingamen, the Gem of Kukulkan, and settling on the image of a black cauldron oozing veins of green. "'Pair Dadeni: Cauldron of Rebirth,'" she read aloud, interrupting Hermione. "'Those who possess the Cauldron are said to be able to pour life into the dead and revive them from their eternal rest'." Harriet glanced up. "Professor Dumbledore said he'd use any mean he could to 'return to our plane.' D'you think this is it?"

They debated the idea, then Hermione shook her head, decisive, hair bristling about her frustrated face. "No. The Pair Dadeni is real, unlike the Hallows, but it's been lost. See, right here it says; 'The last owner Cadfan Blevins reported the Pair Dadeni missing from his Vaults in 1982.'"

Elara scoffed. "Reported missing, Hermione. The Blevins are a dodgy Welsh pure-blood family on the verge of selling their House rights. Cadfan was trying to pull what the Muggles call an insurance scam. Doesn't work well against the goblins, I'd gather."

"Why haven't I heard about the Blevins family?"

"Because the Malfoys are narrow-minded. I doubt they want to teach you much about pure-bloods outside England or Scotland."

Harriet kept reading, pressing a knuckle between her teeth and biting down as she concentrated. No, she thought. Not the Cauldron. Looking at the pictures, it's much too big and probably weighs five or six stones. Professor Dumbledore said Voldemort is unable to live and unable to die; I don't think the Cauldron would help him.

A flash of red on a new page caught Harriet's eye and she paused. "'The Philosopher's Stone—.'" She had barely begun to read before Hermione snatched the book from her hands. "Steady on!"

Hermione's brown eyes flicked back and forth at dizzying speeds. "This!" she cried, Harriet and Elara hurrying to shush her. She continued at the same volume. "It has to be this. It fits!"

"Shh! Lower your voice!"

Hermione scoffed. "If she hasn't come to shoo us off by now, she's not going to. You do know she has wards around the beds, right?"

Harriet opened her mouth to say that, no, she hadn't known that, when Elara asked, "What is the Philosopher's Stone?" and tried to read the book's print upside down. Hermione flipped the text around.

"'The Philosopher's Stone exists as the pinnacle achievement in the field of alchemy, with only alchemist Nicholas Flamel noted as a successful creator of the legendary substance. The Stone can transform any metal into gold and is capable of creating the Elixir of Life, which grants its drinker health, immortality, and preserves them from infirmity.'"

The three girls shared a look over the book's colorful pages. "But why does it have to be this?" Harriet asked. "Why are you so certain?" Sure, the immorality and wealth seemed perfect, but Harriet thought the Cauldron would fit the needs of a man not wholly alive too if he really wanted it—or maybe one of those fancy swords that could cut enemies in half just by nicking them. Ick.

"Because," Hermione replied, smug as could be, a smile curling her lips. "The Ministry offers public records of Hogwarts' merits and standards, which includes the qualifications and references of the school's professors. I reviewed them over the summer because I wanted to know why Hogwarts was considered one of the best schools in the world. Did you know Professor Snape became Europe's youngest Potions Master and got references from both Ebus Pippet and the Libatius Borage? And Professor Flitwick used to be an international dueling champion—? But, anyway, I looked up the professors' qualifications, and then the Headmaster's."

"And?"

"And Professor Dumbledore is eminently qualified for his positions as Headmaster and Supreme Mugwump of the ICW. He's widely recognized as an authority and genius in his fields of mastery, Transfiguration and alchemy—the latter of which he apprenticed for under—."

"Nicholas Flamel," Elara said as she caught the train of Hermione's thought. "He received his mastery from Nicholas Flamel, so it would be safe to assume they remained friends."

"And who would you ask to guard your precious and valuable stone if not your good friend and master sorcerer, Albus Dumbledore?"

Suddenly, from behind the screen came the sound of slow, methodical clapping.

"Well, well," said a familiar voice, and Harriet's heart almost escaped her chest when Professor Slytherin stepped into view, sliding out from behind the screen with effortless grace and a haughty smirk in place. "Aren't you a trio of clever, clever witches."

Both Elara and Hermione stood, only to sit once more when getting off the bed only brought them closer to the Defense professor. Slytherin's unnerving red eyes flicked between them, contemplating, until he settled on Harriet. "Dumbledore is a meddler," he said at length, flicking imaginary lint from his robe sleeve. "He is a meddler of the highest order, a wizard of passable talent who uses the skills of others to elevate his status and quite enjoys having Slytherins clean up the mess. I couldn't begin to fathom his reasons for wanting you to know of the Philosopher's Stone, but I will give you three some sound advice; clever little first years who stick their noses into the business of Dark Lords don't become clever little second years."

Harriet swallowed. She didn't know if he was threatening them with expulsion or—or something worse.

"Leave it be. Don't ask questions."

Hermione and Elara nodded, mumbling "Yes, Professor," but Harriet—perhaps emboldened by boredom or her very recent escape from death, briefly met the wizard's gaze. Prickling alighted from her shoulder and trailed across her collarbone, scraping at her chest and her throat. "We're Slytherins, sir," she said, swallowing again. "Not mad."

He seemed to find that funny because he laughed—and the sound hit Harriet like a bucket of ice water. I've heard that laugh before. High, cold, and utterly humorless, Professor Slytherin's cackling caused all three witches to shiver with unknowable dread.

"Quite right, Miss Potter. Thirty points to Slytherin."