As James watched the two muggleborns volley ideas back & forth like two Ravenclaws on an info-dump, he sighed and silently slid over the aforementioned diary that contained all that they had been—and would be—talking about. At the forefront of the book, there sat the crisp pages of parchment containing Jean's parentage (both the one pertaining to the Dagworth-Grangers that they'd gotten when Sirius had taken Jean for a blood test, and the wardship granted to her under the Potter's good name. There was also a small anecdote about familial bonding that seemed to have occurred—or would occur?—in the near future) before drawing out the portrait of Headmaster Black out of his pocket.
"Remember when Lily said that this would be incredibly difficult to believe?" James prompted, setting the shrunken portrait down on the table between them. "Feel free to ask him your questions, ma'am. Headmaster Black is unlikely to lie to you, isn't he?"
Lady Harfang spared a wary look towards the aforementioned portrait, deflating only slightly at the sight of the uptight headmaster. "Where…where did you get that?"
"It—"
"—Excuse you? I am not an it!" Headmaster Black snarked.
"Sorry, sir" James apologised, reflexively. "He was hidden in the recesses of Jean's bag"
Lady Augustus looked him dead in the eyes, her own widened in surprise as her jaw dropped. James would admit that it was the first time that he had ever seen the Longbottom matriarch look so ruffled; he felt like he should've been proud at ruffling her feathers so thoroughly but the subject matter forbade it. Although, it was easy to see why Lady Augusta was so upset by this simple fact of a portrait from a prominent House being in the possession of a muggleborn—time traveller or not. Because that implied that this Jean-child had successfully infiltrated the infamous Grimmauld Place in order to steal the muggle-hating portrait. If that were true, then the truth was certainly stranger than fiction.
"Headmaster, is what the Potter boy say, true?" Lady Augustus asked—damn-near barking at the portrait. "Is the girl truly from the future—when was she born? And why—why were you in her bag?"
"Watch your tone, girl!" Headmaster Black reprimanded with a huff, "As for the chit, I am unsure as to the exact date of birth, but given her time of arrival & departure at Hogwarts, it is most likely sometime before the turn of the decade"
"I—I see"
"And, I'll have you know, that I was stolen from the Ancient & Most Noble House of Black! The utter lack of respect was shocking, let me tell you! And I would not have stayed in her possession had Headmaster Snape not requested as such!"
"Headmaster…Snape?" Andromeda repeated, shock evident on her face. "As in the…Prince's boy? That Snape?"
"One and the same, or so it seems" James nodded, eyes bitter and lips thinned.
Lady Harfang closed her eyes in exasperation and breathed in sharply, letting it hiss out through clenched teeth. "You mean to tell us that someone sent a baby—a muggleborn baby—from the future, to 1980? Why? What purpose does it serve—?"
"—Actually, she was only around ten or eleven years old when she showed up on our doorstep" James interjected, hand half-raised as if he were back school.
Lady Harfang nodded, "Again, I ask, what purpose does this serve? Why did she need Headmaster Black's portrait? And what does it have to do with Tom Riddle? Did he—Mabuka-forbid—did he send her?"
"We're not entirely sure" James responded, hesitantly. "As we've said, we haven't truly translated the diary in its entirety yet. But what we do know, is that sometime in the near future Jean travels—travelled, whatever—back in time—whether it was intentional or not—with the tools to stop this war. Plus, Healer Pomfrey mentioned signs of regression and transfiguration when she was first healing her, so there is a possibility that Jean was much older when she left her timeline than when she arrived in ours"
"Which would make sense" Lily chimed in, now done with her mind-boggling conversation with Ted. "Considering the fact that she's all-but-devoured the Potter library in such a short time. Not to mention, all of those high-level enchantments that we found on her beaded bag. I think it's fair to say that she may very well have had schooling—proper schooling, not just tutoring—before this"
"And though we're not sure as to the how or the why she came back" James continued, "We do think that she has a plan to stop the war or, at the very least, prevent her future—however terrible it may be—from happening again"
Andromeda's brow furrowed in confusion. "What makes you say that?"
"Because" Lily replied, "Although we can't truly understand these notes, they are quite meticulously-written" She nodded to the yellowed pages of the diary that they carefully flicked through.
"Wouldn't doing so—stopping the war or changing it from what she knew, I mean—wouldn't that effectively erase herself from whichever timeline she first originated from?" Ted puzzled as he flipped though the pages, some of which appeared to hold calculations of some kind. "And doing, Merlin-knows-what to this timeline as well"
"That was our line of thought, yes" James nodded. "But according to those notes—or at least the ones we can understand—the timeline has already been irrevocably changed"
"So, that's a no on sending her back to her own timeline, then?"
"A-ah, so far, we're more concerned with what she might know and how it can help us"
"How it can help you end the war, you mean? And what would you do once you have it? Would you retreat from your current neutrality? Return to Dumbledore's Order? Or would you take things into your own hands?"
"We—we're not quite sure…"
"Hn"
"What's got you so quiet, Andy?" Ted nudged his wife.
"How—how is this all possible?" Andromeda frowned as she peered down at the diary that had been slid over to her, as if it would all suddenly make sense.
"Haven't you been listening, Andy—?"
"—No, I mean how do you plan to figure out what is real and what is not?" She asked, turning to the table at large. "Let me see if I've got this right; according to Teddy & Lily, if someone goes back in time and alters the past, then our reality—as we know it—would change. We could look strange and things could be totally different and not even know it"
"So you were listening!" Ted smiled jokingly.
"Shut up" She replied without any real heat.
"Thanks to the incident with Madam Mintumble" Lily continued, picking up the unspoken cue. "We know that meddling with the timeline has quite severe consequences. Although the Department of Mysteries have been frustratingly vague as to what those consequences are. The one witch that I did manage to squeeze something out of, said that if time travel was supposed to happen, then it would've been already woven into the timeline. It's all rather confusing if I'm to be honest"
"As for Headmaster Black's portrait" James added, "It sounds like it was used as a means of gathering information on the goings-on at Hogwarts and so on"
"I see" Andromeda hummed, not quite satisfied. "But what does this have to do with this Tom Riddle fellow?"
"That's what we'd like to know. He seems to be interwoven through Jean's plans, rather tightly. Because his initials appear to pop up several times, in there" James nodded to the diary before he turned fully to Lady Harfang with pleading eyes. "Please, ma'am, can't you tell us anything? Anything at all?"
"Thomas M. Riddle…" Lady Harfang mused as she leant back in her chair, hands clasped tightly around her empty glass. The sigh on her lips was heavy and there was a tension in her shoulders that hadn't been there before. "When I knew of him, he was a charming boy. Tall, handsome, the apple of many an eye and every inch of him was a snake. You see, the wizard that the world now knows as You-Know-Who today, was once the golden boy of Hogwarts"
The collective gasp in the room was audible."…What?"
"It's true" Lady Harfang sighed wearily, "He was a darling boy of Slytherin who could do no wrong in the eyes of many. So, it seemed like it was only inevitable for him to become Head Boy. But…there were…rumours"
"R-rumours?" Lily prompted, a little shaky at the notion that her ward may very well be wrapped up in something far darker than they'd first thought.
"…There was a girl—a fourth year 'Claw—who no one really cared for" Lady Harfang hesitantly explained. "One day, during the summer of '43, she died; brutally and very mysteriously. Those near the second-floor bathroom said that they heard her scream and instinctively knew that it wasn't the usual kind of hormone-crazed teenage girl scream. They said it was chilling; like the breaking of a pane of ice and that it cut off so abruptly that it made the hairs on the back of their necks, stand up. Eventually, only one of them was brave enough to venture inside; although whether that was of their own violation or peer pressure, is anyone's guess"
"What…what happened?" Ted asked, swallowing thickly. "What's this got to do with Tom Riddle?"
"Well, funnily enough" Lady Harfang sardonically replied, her tone implying that it was not at all humourous. "One of the first people on the scene was Tom Riddle. He was the one to take her to the Hospital Wing, and he was the one who watched her leave the castle, draped in bed linens and escorted out of the door by aurors & healers. They say that he had this sort of…look on his face; it was the kind of expression that makes your stomach curl and your hair stand on end"
"Who was it? Who was the girl? The one that died?" Andromeda asked, quietly.
"She was a muggleborn, if I remember rightly" Lady Harfang mused, lips pursed in thought. "I believe her name was Myrtle…Warren. Yes, that sounds about right"
"Myrtle Warren?" Ted puzzled.
"Moaning Myrtle…!" Lily breathed, sharing a look of recognition with Andromeda across the table.
Lady Harfang's brow pulled low over her gaze in confusion. That was not a name that she'd heard before. "Pardon?"
"Moaning Myrtle; she's the schoolgirl ghost who haunts the second-floor girl's lavatory" Andromeda explained to the elder witch, "No one ever goes there anymore, because of her. She's always wailing and clogging up the pipes"
"Ah yes, poor girl, stuck a haunting a lavatory" The former Lady of the Manor nodded sombrely. "Why, I still remember how panicked everyone was in the beginning, when all of those students were petrified"
"Petrified?"
"Essentially, they were turned to stone; unable to move or eat, or sleep. No one knew what caused it, of course, save for the one who did it. But there were rumours floating about, about a secret chamber beneath the school and the monster held inside"
"D'you mean that old bonfire story about the Chamber of Secrets? The one with the giant-ass snake?" James piped up. "But isn't just a ghost story used to scare kids?"
"It depends on who you ask" Headmaster Black snidely interjected, "Why I, myself, have never found such a thing in all my years at Hogwarts. But then again, heirs and birthrights are such difficult things. Why, I recall…"
"…No one knows for certain; save for Slytherin's rightful heir" Lady Harfang further explained, talking over the Headmaster who continued to spout prejudice nonsense in the background. "But at the time, there was talk of closing the school down before the culprit was caught"
"Closing Hogwarts?" Ted balked, "Has that ever been done before?"
"There's been a smattering of instances on occasion throughout the years. But in this case, it never came to fruition because, after Myrtle's untimely death, that kind of talk sort just…stopped" Lady Harfang replied. "Now that I think about it, that was right around the time that the Slytherin's little gentlemen's club—the Knights of Walpurgis—rose in popularity" She hummed in thought, finger idly tapping her chin. "I s'pose the culprit must've just moved onto brighter & better things. They never did catch them in the end and I'm sure that Myrtle's ghost never said anything to the contrary, but—as only an heir of Slytherin can open the Chamber of Secrets—many—myself, included—presumed that the heir was Tom Riddle. He was, afterall, Slytherin's darling little princeling"
"A-ah"