lxxxvi. the horror welcomes her again

Hogwarts wasn't the same after Hermione and a Ravenclaw named Penelope Clearwater were found Petrified.

Of course, for Harriet and Elara, going through the motions in a world where their best friend had been turned to living stone by a monster was something like a waking nightmare, but the rest of the school wasn't unaffected, either. In the week following the attack, the staff suspended all privileges, meaning no Quidditch, no Hogsmeade for the older students, no wandering about the castle without a chaperon. Teachers marched them from class to class, from the Great Hall to their dorms, and no one could go to the library unless they made an appointment with Madam Pince. Defense turned into a study hall, since Professor Slytherin seemed about one step away from hexing them all bloody.

Harriet kept catching herself looking over her shoulder, waiting for Hermione to comment on this or that—but Hermione wasn't there. The endless stream of dialog that filled her days with information and details was flat and jagged, like an old scar she couldn't stop her fingers from scratching at. Ravenclaw's Aerie. Neither Harriet nor Elara could figure out what Hermione had meant by writing that, and they couldn't go to the library to research it. They pulled apart Hermione's notes at her carrel, but whatever brilliant leap of logic had sent the witch sprinting off out the dorms hadn't been written down. They were at a loss.

Harriet knew it had something to do with that "secret library" bit Hermione had circled in on the torn page. The problem was, Hogwarts: A History had even less written on the supposed library than it did on the Chamber, and Harriet knew even if it did have information, it'd all be rubbish, given how the passage on the Underneath—as Harriet began to refer to the Chamber in her head—held almost nothing but lies.

She'd tried asking Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein about it, but while they thought they'd heard the term before, they had no knowledge attached to it.

"Talk to one of the sixth or seventh years," Terry told her. "They know quite a bit about the castle that we don't."

Speaking with an upper-year Ravenclaw proved impossible, as being marched about like tin soldiers from one point to the next with little intersection meant Harriet barely saw the upper-classmen outside of meals. She didn't dare approach anyone in public, where anyone could see or hear their conversation. What if the "Heir" overheard them? What if they attacked again?

Harriet's chance for answers came on Thursday, of all days. Professor Selwyn spent half a class period ranting about this or that nuisance, and then he ushered them out the door early, muttering about having better things to do than shepherd the likes of them around the bloody castle. He stomped on ahead of the group as the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins meandered down into the dungeons for their free period. Harriet hung back, gathering and sorting all the notes she'd been taking for Hermione, and was the last to exit the classroom. She walked quietly with Elara, absorbed in her own thoughts, and as they reached the ground floor, Harriet thought she saw a flicker of…turquoise.

In fact, after she paused to study the ajar door leading into the empty foyer adjoined to the entrance hall, she knew she'd the back of someone's gaudy blue robes disappearing inside. Familiar robes.

Inspiration struck.

"Harriet?" Elara asked.

"Go on ahead," she replied, and when the other girl gave her an incredulous look, Harriet patted the lumpy pocket of her robes. "I have my Cloak, and I'll be down in just a few minutes. I won't leave the Entrance Hall."

The class was moving farther off, so with a huff, Elara turned and hurried after them. Harriet waited for a second more to see if someone would note her absence, then crossed to the open door, poking her head inside. "…Mr. Lockhart?"

The wizard let out a strangled shriek, feathers firing from the end of his held wand. Harriet ducked behind the door in case he threw any other spells, then looked inside again, glaring.

"Oh," Lockhart said with a great, wheezing exhale. He slumped against the wall at his back like a boneless sack, sliding down its length, and Harriet noted the open bottle of Wizarding booze sitting at his hip. He reeked something fierce. "Oh, Merlin have mercy, it's only you."

Harriet stepped into the chamber and gave Lockhart a wary once over. Frankly, he looked like shite; his pretty hair resembled Snape's more and more these days, and he had the twitchy, wild-eyed stare of someone who'd gone without sleep for quite a few nights. His turquoise robes had a stain down the front as if he'd dribbled his morning tea.

He made for a pathetic sight.

Looking down at the bloke, Harriet balanced a hand on her hip and scoffed. "Aren't you supposed to be out looking for the Heir? Or doing anything useful? Not hiding in here getting—sloshed!"

Lockhart gaped at her and clutched the bottle closer, fumbling his wand. "It's not as if I volunteered for this!" he shrieked. "My poor hair! I'm going bald—bald, I tell you! People banging on the door at all hours of the day and night, demanding I do something—and what am I meant to do? What can I do that Albus Dumbledore can't?!" His face twisted as if he might start blubbering, and Harriet thought Lockhart had one of the ugliest crying faces she'd ever seen, and she included Dudley in that comparison.

"Stop your whinging," she snapped, though the slightest niggling of pity wormed its way into thoughts. The bloke was a liar and an idiot, and the Ministry had preyed on that. He hadn't meant anything malicious with his incompetence. "Answer me something; Hermione told me you were a Ravenclaw. Is that true?"

Lockhart sniffled, wiping his snotty nose on his sleeve. During the height of her inexplicable crush, Hermione used to natter on with facts about Lockhart, ranging from information about his books to the wizard himself, and the particular curiosity about him having been a Ravenclaw stuck out to Harriet because she'd marveled that such a numpty had come from the House of Eagles. "Yes, what of it?" He gave the bottle a forlorn nudge.

"Have you ever heard of Ravenclaw's Aerie?"

He sniffled again, fished a frilly, lilac handkerchief out of his robes, and blew his nose like a foghorn. "Of course. It's one of those silly little myths they use to share around the dorms, like Rowena's diadem, or Helga's cupboard, Godric's mythical armory, or Slytherin's Chamber—."

His voice began to rise toward a shriek again at the mention of the Chamber, and so Harriet made calming motions with her hands. Merlin forbid Snape came swooping by and hear the pissed wizard crying and wailing with Harriet in the room. "Okay, okay! It's fine, I don't want to know about that. I just want to know what the Aerie is."

"It's supposed to be a library or something. Some kind of great, private archive of Rowena Ravenclaw's, and she built Hogwarts as a place to share all the knowledge she gathered therein. Not that that makes any kind of sense." He took a deep, pulling swig from the bottle, his breath leaving a sticky, sweet smell in the air. Lockhart started to slur in earnest, swaying in his spot sprawled against the wall. "It used to be a game, y'know? A spot of hazin' in—in Ravenclaw, to get someone to climbing all the towers lookin' for it. Why're you asking about this, anyway? You're a very nosy little girl, aren't you?"

"Yeah, and?" Harriet glowered. For a Ravenclaw, his information sounded bizarrely backward. How would she have a library before Hogwarts was built? "My best friend's laid up in hospital and the only help the Ministry's sent is you. If you don't get eaten before all is said and done, you'd better rethink your life choices. You aren't nearly clever enough to be a con-artist."

Lockhart started breathing funny halfway through Harriet's sentence and she doubted he'd heard much of the rest of it. "E-eaten!"

Footsteps sounded out in the hall, coming down the marble steps, and Harriet told Lockhart in no uncertain terms he needed to shut his drunk gob as she eased the door almost shut and peeked through the crack.

"It's all just a formality of—of course," said an odd, short wizard in pinstriped robes and a lime-green bowler hat. "Just until the inquiry's over, you understand. Such terrible things going, and the Minister is worried—."

Harriet recognized Professor Slytherin's answering voice and almost recoiled. "If I wished to hear the Minister's opinion, I would ask for it myself."

Behind the pair walked Professor Dumbledore and another two wizards Harriet didn't know, both dressed in familiar maroon robes. She couldn't see Professor Dumbledore's face, but she heard his soft, grim tone when he addressed the plump wizard at the head of their procession. "I trust, Cornelius, that our Minister recalls a full session of the Wizengamot and unanimous voting by the Board of Governors is required to dismiss a Headmaster from the school midterm?"

"W-Well, it's the Board that's called for the inquiry, Albus. After what happened to Mr. Malfoy's ward…."

"Ah, Lucius' charms at work," Slytherin cut in, and Harriet shivered. The group of Ministry officials led by the wizard named Cornelius moved farther down the hall, approaching the towering doors barring entrance into the castle. "How very convenient for him and the Minister. And what of my removal, Fudge? How is Gaunt managing to spin that? I can't imagine the Board would be foolish enough to vote me out as well."

"It is just until the inquiry is solved, Professor Slytherin, I ensure you…."

The wizards kept moving, passing through the entrance into the speckled light of late afternoon, and Harriet eased the door open wider, stepping into the hall to better watch Professor Dumbledore's retreating back. The voices dwindled with distance, and the farther Dumbledore walked, the colder the school became—or, perhaps, the colder Harriet became. Soon she shook and shivered, unable to shed the frightening terror freezing her in place.

What have they done?

"Wazzit?" Mr. Lockhart asked, having crawled out of the extra room after Harriet. He had feathers in his limp hair. "What's happenin'?"

Harriet swallowed. "I think Headmaster Dumbledore has been removed from Hogwarts."

The answering moment of silence resounded in her ears louder than the rush of her breathing—and then Lockhart let out a hysterical, panicked laugh, and fainted dead away on the floor.

x X x

That evening, by the fireside in a house that remained empty more often than not, Albus Dumbledore sat reading a journal.

It was not a nice journal, not by any stretch of the imagination. Though the elderly wizard spent much of his time worrying about one thing or another, that journal in particular had been worrying him for weeks, ever since it fell from the pocket of a bespectacled, green-eyed student and came into his possession. Sometimes he marveled at the sheer serendipity Harriet Potter managed to wield, when years of effort on his, Minerva's, and Severus' parts had failed to yield the very thing he now held open in his hand: the thoughts and ruminations of Tom Slytherin, the man who was—and wasn't—Tom Riddle.

At his side, his wand hovered and moved of its own accord, drawing sharp streaks of light as it continued to decode Tom's evolving cipher. It was a clever bit of Charm work meshed with Arithmancy; at odd moments such as this, Albus mourned the brilliance of a boy who'd turned his purpose to evil as a man. He pondered if Tom Riddle had always been destined for this path, or if Albus—if all of them—had failed him in some way.

He grieved for the death of an innocence that might have never been, but only for an instant that passed as quickly as it came, because Albus and the world had suffered greatly at the end of Riddle's wand and he had no mercy in his heart for such a creature anymore.

The symbols and letters of Tom's journal continued to begrudgingly swap themselves around and change their shape. The night aged, and so did Albus Dumbledore, as with every page he turned, the lines in his face dragged themselves deeper and horror found its place behind his half-moon spectacles.

Dawn rose just as Albus finished the final line, and he turned to the window, barely able to see the light for the shadow that darkened his heart.

He remembered, then, Harriet in his office, raw, alien anger in her voice, "Why haven't you done anything?!" He remembered her confusion, as if she hadn't known what had come over her. He remembered the flicker of red overcoming her eyes, gone like a vapor, a morning mist caught and torn in the breeze.

Albus thought of the monstrous things Tom Riddle had done to his own soul, and contemplated what he might have done to another.

"Oh, my dear girl," he whispered. He gripped the journal hard enough for his wizened knuckles to turn white.

From his perch in the corner, Fawkes gave a lone, mournful cry.


A/N: The chapter title is from Emily Dickinson's "The Soul has Bandaged moments." It's a haunting piece, and when I read it, I think of Harriet's soul being despoiled by Voldemort's, the instability of it, the yearning to be free, and yet being dragged under its influence again. The final stanza is - "The Horror welcomes her, again, / These, are not brayed of Tongue," basically says the nightmare / struggle of it all is unspeakable. So that's my spot of poetry analysis for today.