lxxxv. in search of answers
On a Sunday midway through February, the majority of the school's student body tromped out of the castle into the brisk weather and headed for the Quidditch Pitch.
Hermione and Elara didn't want to go. Neither did several of the older Slytherins for whom the glamour of Quidditch had worn off, at least when their own team wasn't playing. Harriet knew her friends didn't much enjoy the game, not as she did, and so she didn't needle them relentlessly about attending. "Just promise you'll be careful and won't leave the dorms," she said. Hermione rolled her eyes and Elara gave a distracted nod.
"We'll be fine, Harriet. We promise."
And so the younger witch left her friends to follow the crowd into the castle's corridors. Malfoy made a passing comment on Harriet being a loner, and Nott pointed out that Crabbe and Goyle had gone on ahead without him, and he yelped, running to catch up with the other two. Harriet shared a laugh with Nott and Zabini, though she couldn't shake the feeling of being the odd one out, drifting toward the edges of the group. They were almost out of the entrance hall when she glimpsed a flash of crimson and paused, spotting Ginny Weasley standing in the middle of the passage, staring at the wall.
Frowning, Harriet broke off from the group and went to Ginny's side. "Weasley?" she said. The girl's eyes remained faceted on the blank stretch of stone in front of her—until Harriet gave her shoulder a light tap. Ginny blinked and looked around.
"…Potter?"
"All right, Weasley?"
"I…yeah, I'm fine." She shook her head, then glanced past Harriet toward the entrance hall, then behind her. In the sunlight coming through the window, Harriet could see that Ginny's face was paler than usual, her freckles stark, her blue eyes dark and distant. "Where did Luna go?"
"Luna? She's probably headed to the pitch, Ginny. We can go check, if you want. It's not a good idea to stand around alone these days, yeah?"
Weasley narrowed her eyes as if trying to figure whether or not Harriet was threatening her, and then the redhead shook herself again. "You're right. I thought she was right here—but Luna's a bit, erm, flighty?"
Harriet got the impression Ginny wanted to say "empty-headed," and she forced herself to not point out that it hadn't been Lovegood she found aimlessly standing in an empty corridor. They hurried to catch up with the rest of the school, jumping down the steps and cutting through the courtyard, meeting the tail end of the leaving students and falling into place. As they slowed to a walk, Harriet had to admit that while she didn't know Ginny well, they'd become more friendly over the past few months, exchanging smiles or nods in the halls, sitting at the same table in the library when Hermione didn't crowd the space with extra books. Weasley seemed…off, somehow, and Harriet couldn't decide what was wrong.
It had been quiet at Hogwarts, for the most part. Many students had begun the inevitable shift toward normalcy, thinking the danger of "the Heir" had passed since no one had turned up Petrified since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick. Even Professor Slytherin had been marginally less acerbic, though he and the other teachers remained on edge, just like Harriet and her friends. Great big ruddy snakes didn't just up and disappear, and Hermione asserted that whoever stole the Basilisk must have done so for a purpose and their purpose hadn't been fulfilled. "There will be more attacks," she had said just last week. "I imagine the Headmaster is determined to purge the school during the summer, so they have to complete whatever their plan is before the end of the school year. Anyone who thinks otherwise is—well, they're an idiot."
Oddly enough, the Slytherins remained the most vigilant despite how some of the older, nastier upper-years sneered about the Heir doing "good work," and Neville Longbottom still hadn't stopped bloody following Harriet around. Harriet had confronted him several times and Elara told the git off more than once, but he persisted and seemed to be there whenever she turned around, his eyes all scrunched and squinted, looking at Harriet like she'd killed a bloke. She didn't have a clue what she'd done to earn his suspicions.
"How are things in Gryffindor Tower?" she asked Ginny, who shrugged.
"Better, I guess. It's a bit quieter, what with everyone trying to prepare for the exams before the Ostara hols. Is it like that in Slytherin?"
"Not really? It's never been loud. Snape would probably gut us if we were."
"Oh." Ginny's brow furrowed as they came under the shadow of the Quidditch stands. "Hey, can you tell me what your common room looks like?"
Confused, Harriet replied, "Err, I guess? It's got couches and armchairs, a few tables, a few hearths. It all looks a bit antique. Oh, and the windows. They looks out into the lake."
"Ha, I knew it." Harriet raised a brow and Ginny rushed to explain. "My brothers, Fred and George, you know them, right? They claim they've snuck into Slytherin common room before, but I always knew they were full of it. They said you lot have a big snake statue in the middle of the common room with an altar in front of it."
Harriet snorted. "Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you about that. It's ten feet tall and we sacrifice lost Hufflepuffs there on the weekends."
They shared a laugh as they started up the steps into the stands, arriving at the higher level out of breath and chilled by the bracing wind. Harriet could already spot the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff teams down on the field meeting in the middle with Madam Hooch. She looked about, squinting through her smudged glasses, but didn't see Luna Lovegood among the gathered spectators.
"She's over there," Ginny noted with a breath of relief, pointing out her Ravenclaw friend seated in a sea of crimson and gold scarfs. A fission of unease crawled down Harriet's spine as she followed and realized she'd landed right in the midst of the Gryffindor upperclassmen. She recognized the sixth-years Rivers and Wattle, the two idiots who'd tried to steal her letter from Mr. Flamel and pushed her into the mud. They sneered at Harriet as Ginny took the empty space by Luna.
"I…should probably go, Ginny."
"Huh?" the first-year asked, glancing at Harriet, then turning to the harsh, hateful glares being thrown at the bespectacled witch. "You can sit with us, if you'd like. Leave off, Elijah!"
Rivers—or Elijah as Ginny called him—had a nasty comment in reply, and Ginny's reddening face quickly brought the Gryffindor prefect Percy Weasley over, who basically told them all off and finally let Harriet sit down. She tried concentrating on the game as it played out, feeling dreadfully out of place among the Gryffindors despite Ginny's reassurance. Every time Neville scored and they cheered, Harriet got a strange, unfamiliar tightening in her middle that she couldn't quite describe. She sat among people who adored and worshiped the Boy Who Lived while they despised Harriet—and the only things separating Longbottom and her were a lie and a hat's split-second decision. In another life, it could have been her out there on the pitch wearing red and gold while people chanted her name.
It would be easy to say she was jealous, but she wasn't. No, Harriet was…unsettled. One lie turned attention from her to Longbottom, and it changed the whole of the world, it seemed. One lie had changed history and turned Salazar Slytherin into the pure-blood fanatic messiah. She thought of all the things she'd ever been told and learned, and Harriet wondered what else was a lie, and what was the truth.
The game ended with Gryffindor victorious, and Harriet made a quick escape, saying goodbye to a distracted Ginny and Luna before tumbling down the steps and into the stream of disgruntled Slytherins already leaving the stands. Harriet paid little mind to the upset grumbling—Gryffindor's win brought them closer to the fore, and if Slytherin lost against them in their own match, they'd lose the cup. As Seeker, she made all the right noises and remarks about crushing the dunderheaded House of Lions when the time came, but her heart wasn't in it, and she was glad to escape back into the dorms.
"Bloody Gryffindors and their thick heads," she muttered, dragging her scarf off from her neck, scratching at the prickling itch beginning to needle her neck. She shouldered open the door into the room she shared with seven other witches and asked, "Hermione, do you know where that cream Madam Pomfrey gave me for my scar is—?"
Her question trailed off unanswered as Harriet spotted no sign of the bushy-haired witch. Her hangings stood open, baring the tidy bed to view, while her carrel remained its usual explosion of strewn study supplies, scrolls and books and journals stacked high on its surface. Next to it was Harriet's desk, and then Elara's—and it was here Harriet spotted her other best friend slumped in her chair, using a thick book as a pillow.
"Hey—." Harriet shook her shoulder until Elara sat up and flinched, wiping away a bit of drool on the back of her glove. "Where's Hermione?"
"What? Is the game over already?"
"It's been three hours." Harriet couldn't suppress the note of urgency squeezing her voice. "Where's Hermione?"
Elara shook of the vestiges of sleep and turned to Hermione's carrel, pausing upon seeing it vacant. "I—don't know, apparently. I thought she was right here—."
Harriet strode over to Hermione's desk and searched the surface, scattering quills and loose parchment, snatching up the sheet left on top. "'Went to the library. Had to check something,'" she read aloud, unease twisting in her heart. "'Be back soon.' When is soon? When did she leave?"
A pained, guilty expression crossed Elara's face, and Harriet headed out of the room. "Harriet—."
"She knows she's not supposed to wander alone—!"
Swallowing, Harriet darted through the crowded common room without looking back, telling herself she was being paranoid, that she'd find Hermione already on her way back down to the dungeons. She didn't give her eyes the chance to adjust to the dimmer, murky light of the corridor outside the common room's entrance, and subsequently only made it a meter or so before colliding with a solid body.
"Potter!" Professor Slytherin gasped, clutching the spot on his chest Harriet had slammed her head against. "That is the second time you've ran into my person, careless wretch! What do you think you're doing?!"
Dazed by the blow, Harriet stumbled—and then stumbled again when Elara crashed into her back and almost sent her careening into Slytherin again. "Professor! Hermione! We—we were just going to check on Hermione!"
"Granger? What about her?"
"She left the dormitory without telling anyone," Elara said, wringing her hands. "We don't know how long ago."
"She did not attend that obnoxious sporting event?"
"No, sir."
Professor Slytherin appeared to think their statements over, his eyes half-closed and narrowed. "Ah," he finally uttered, at which point he seized both Harriet and Elara by their elbows and marched them down the hall in the opposite direction from which they'd intended to go.
"P-Professor!" Harriet argued, dragging her feet, but the wizard didn't stop until they reached Snape's office, and he kicked open the door, throwing them both inside. The Potions Master was not, fortunately, in residence.
"Stay here until you are called for," Slytherin snapped. With an errant wave of his hand, the door slammed shut, leaving Elara and Harriet sealed inside.
"Arsehole," Harriet whispered under her breath, hands balled into fists. The quiet pressed close, ghoulish things floating and drifting inside their jars, the cold sinking into her bones. "Why couldn't he just let us go check on her?"
Elara sighed and sank onto the hard, straight-backed chair Snape left out for students. She rubbed her tired eyes.
Harriet paced, and as time trickled by, she paced more, faster, the dread in her belly growing until it became full-blown nausea. "What is he going to do? Just leave us in here? Did he even go look for Hermione?" She stopped and turned to Elara. "What was she reading before you fell asleep?"
"A bit of everything, really," she muttered, silver eyes roving over the cramped shelves. "You know how she gets. I think she was researching the Basilisk."
Harriet let out an irritated huff. She nosed about Snape's shelves and books, trying to take her mind off her worry and their impromptu imprisonment, but Snape kept nothing there one wouldn't see in the library. Well over an hour passed them by before the locked door opened again, revealing the blank, unfriendly countenance of Professor Snape. Harriet expected to be yelled at—or berated. She would have loved to hear another Snape lecture on bothersome-witches-doing-what-they-should-not-be-doing, but Snape said nothing, standing just beyond the room's threshold with his arms crossed and his eyes hard.
"Follow me," he said softly.
Harriet's stomach flip-flopped and bile burned the back of her throat. "Professor?" she managed to say. "Is—where's Hermione?"
"Just do as you're told, Miss Potter. You as well, Black."
He retreated into the hall and started walking, Harriet following close to his heels. It didn't take long for her to realize where they were going, and Elara grabbed her by the hand, holding her back, fingers squeezing tight enough to bruise.
Voices grumbled and bled together inside the hospital wing, Harriet so worried and scared she almost didn't recognize Draco's mum and dad when she finally passed through the doors. She wondered why they were there—and then realized that they would be the ones called if Hermione was—.
Harriet yanked free of Elara, pushed past Snape, and darted forward—only stopping when Professor Slytherin caught her with a hand against the chest, pain hurtling through her so fast Harriet thought she might be sick. "Hermione!" she shouted.
"Miss Potter," Madam Pomfrey chastened, stepping out from behind the bed's curtain. "If you cannot control yourself, I will have to ask—."
Harriet barely heard a word she said; instead, she fixed her gaze on the figure of her best friend lying still as death on the narrow hospital bed, her brown eyes wide and unseeing, one hand clenched in a fist against her middle, the other extended as if holding something up.
Petrified. Hermione was Petrified.
"Harriet."
Professor Dumbledore had his hand on her shoulder, fingers squeezing, and the Headmaster cut such a hard, angry look at Professor Slytherin, the younger wizard sneered and retracted his own hand from her person. There were other people in the infirmary, too—a man and a woman dressed in wrinkled robes, as if they'd thrown them on in a hurry, standing in the partially open curtains around a separate bed. The man had his arm around the woman, and she sniffled into a handkerchief. Harriet realized someone else must have been attacked by the Basilisk, too.
"Miss Potter, Miss Black," Madam Pomfrey said to gain their attention. She lifted a small, handheld mirror from Hermione's bedside. "Miss Granger was holding when she was found. Does this mean anything to either of you?"
Frowning, Harriet shook her head, and Elara took her hand again. She squeezed her friend's fingers, wanting something to ground her, wanting to turn and run and close her eyes. Who cares about some stupid mirror! It's just a bloody mirror!
"Is this how you run your school, Dumbledore?" Mr. Malfoy sneered, turning his back on Hermione and his wife as he approached the Headmaster. "Rest assured, the Minister will be hearing about the abysmal state of things at Hogwarts."
"I'm certain he will, Lucius."
Professor Slytherin made a sound more akin to a snarl than a scoff, and Mr. Malfoy had the good sense to back up, throat bobbing as he glanced in his direction.
"I think," Professor Dumbledore said as he dropped his hand from Harriet, his voice breaking the harsh, stagnant silence. "It would be best if we take further discussion to my office. Let us give Misses Potter and Black a moment alone with their friend."
The Headmaster ushered the Malfoys and Professors Slytherin and Snape away from the bed, and Narcissa stopped just long enough to touch Harriet's arm, then Elara's, before departing after her husband. Madam Pomfrey huffed and muttered under her breath, but she didn't kick Harriet and Elara from the room, instead going about and fixing the curtains, hiding them from the view of the couple at the other bed. Harriet still didn't know who the other victim was.
A horrid sense of powerlessness overwhelmed her, coupled with rage and something that tasted bitterly of defeat. "She promised she wouldn't go off on her own," Harriet whispered. "She promised. What was she thinking?"
"It's not her fault, Harriet."
"I know that! I do." It was the Heir's fault, or the Basilisk's, or—Harriet's, for going to that stupid Quidditch game when she hadn't even paid attention to a bloody thing. Why did she go? Why didn't she stay when she knew how much danger Hermione was in?
Elara looked the mirror over, tracing one finger along the brass frame. "I think this is Pansy's," she remarked. "Why would Hermione take this?"
Shrugging, Harriet wiped her face as tears stung and burned in the corner of her eyes. She refused to cry. She wouldn't cry—not when she wanted to find whoever had let the Basilisk out and punch them right in the ruddy face, or wake Hermione up and shake her for being so stubborn.
Extending her arm, she touched the cold, stiff fingers of the hand Hermione held tight against her chest—and she felt something scratch her fingertips. "She's holding something."
Elara set the mirror down and came to Harriet's side, furrowing her brow as Harriet carefully pinched the corner of what looked like a crumpled ball of parchment Hermione had clenched tightly in her hand. She gave it a tug, and with slow, patient speed, freed it from Hermione's grasp without hurting the Petrified girl. Harriet straightened the rumpled sheet out as Elara asked, "What is it?"
It was a page from a book—a page Harriet recognized because they'd pored over this same page down in the depths of her trunk, squinting in the paltry lantern light as they read about Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets in Hogwarts: A History. Hermione had drawn a hasty circle around a sentence of the text, but not in the section about the Chamber; rather, she'd highlighted a throwaway line about "Ravenclaw's secret library."
In the bottom margin, Hermione's tidy script wrote out the words, " 's Aerie."
"Ravenclaw's Aerie," Harriet murmured aloud, hands smoothing the harsh crinkles in the thick parchment. "What is Ravenclaw's Aerie?"
Elara shook her head.
The pair of witches stood in silent sentinel for far longer than they should have, and when Madam Pomfrey came to escort them out, they went with heavy hearts—and with a page torn from a library book folded in Harriet's pocket.
A/N: Ostara - Pagan equivalent of Easter, celebrated around the vernal (spring) equinox. I.e., spring break.