lxxxvii. where eagles roost
The voice had come again to haunt her cupboard door.
Harriet sat curled in a ball among the spiders and clouds of dust, hiding behind her own knees as she watched the slender, shimmering bar of light glowing against the dirty floor. A shadow crossed the light again and again as someone—something—paced on the other side.
"Aunt Petunia?" Harriet whispered.
The shadow never stopped its restless drifting. "Harrrrrriet," the voice crooned, and claws skittered against the cupboard door. "Let me in, Harriet."
Harriet hugged her knees closer.
"Only for a moment, I promissse." The claws tapped the thin wood. Tap, tap, tap. "I could tell you what you want to know. I could tell you what she found. I could tell you where the Aerie lies."
Hesitating, Harriet peeked at the light through her lashes. How strange. The walls of her cupboard had never felt closer or more cramped before, nor the light so dim. Surely Aunt Petunia would be there soon to wake her up? But wait—.
"What do you know?" she asked.
A terrible, wrenching laugh crawled into Harriet's ears and no matter how she tried to block it out, it continued to scrape and tear at her, and then the banging began. Heavy fists battered the cupboard door again and again, shaking it, bottles and jars tipping, shattering, spiders raining from the risers overhead—.
"LET ME IN!" it howled. "LET ME IN, LETMEIN!"
Harriet clasped onto the door's tiny handle and held on for all she was worth, squeezing her eyes shut, willing it to stop, screaming with all her might, "NO!"
And then—.
And then Harriet woke in her comfortable bed, shrouded in the murky green light of the dormitory, drenched in sweat and shaking from head to foot. Someone had their hand on her shoulder, and she started, blinking at the figure leaning over her bed.
"Harriet," Elara whispered, and Harriet let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding, the sound of it breaking like a sob. The hand retreated then, leaving her cold and adrift. Harriet heard soft footsteps, the thump of a trunk lid opening. The figure returned, looming closer until the weight of warm, curling coils settled on the coverlet, and Livius hissed something tired and nonsensical in her ear as Harriet drew her arms around him.
The blanket shifted, drawing up to cover both girl and serpent, and the hand came again, cool against her clammy forehead, thumb brushing a fond, idle stroke against her forehead.
"Go back to sleep."
Harriet might have murmured a response, but she had her eyes shut, and the heavy, tired lethargy dragged her under before she could give her nightmares another thought.
x X x
A persistent nudging against her cheek pulled Harriet into a foggy, reluctant awareness some hours later.
"Stop," she grumbled, and a cold tongue flicked against her skin. "Livi."
"Missstresss hasss ssslumbered too long," he said, one of his growing horns jabbing her jaw. "It isss time to wake."
Grunting, Harriet pushed Livi's snout away, but she did pull herself upright, fumbling at the nightstand for her glasses and wand. The dorm lacked the usual clamor and bustle that came with a bunch of girls getting ready for class. Harriet jerked her bed hangings open and stretched to see the clock.
It was twenty past ten on a Tuesday.
"Oh, fuck," Harriet whispered, waiting for the sputtered gasp and chastisement that never came. She glanced at Hermione's bed and found it waiting forlorn and empty. On the other side of her, however, the bed still held a sleeping lump. "Elara. Elara—."
Harriet lobbed a pillow, and the other witch groaned when it landed on her head. "Knock it off."
"Wake up! We've missed breakfast and Herbology. We're going to miss Defense, too, if we don't get up."
Elara groaned again and rolled to her back, scowling at the ceiling. "What does it matter, with Lockhart substituting?"
"You say that now, but we'll both hate life if Snape comes thundering down here to find out if we've died in our sleep." Harriet dragged herself out from under the covers. "Besides, at least Lockhart's pulled himself together enough to give us study hall."
Elara muttered something that sounded like "Marginally," and Harriet couldn't disagree. The bloke showed up sober, which was something.
Together, they spent the next ten minutes rushing through their morning routines, throwing together their books and the homework they'd need for Transfiguration and Charms after lunch. Tucking her things—and Livi—into place, Harriet paused when she glanced at the bottom drawer of her desk, thoughts veering toward the book hidden therein. By unspoken agreement, the three of them knew not to take Salazar Slytherin's tome out anywhere where it might be seen by Professor Slytherin—but Professor Slytherin wasn't here now. Mulling the idea over, Harriet finally opened the drawer and squirreled the book away with her others, deciding she might as well get something useful done in Defense today.
They met up with their class as Professor Sprout escorted them back into the castle from the Greenhouses, and though the Herbology instructor scolded them for missing class, Harriet decided she went easy on them, considering the missing member of their trio. In the Defense classroom, Mr. Lockhart waited for the Slytherins, the Gryffindors already in their seats, the gaudy wizard back to swanning about and talking out of his arse—though he did have the good sense to shut up when Professor Sprout sent him a disappointed look.
Harriet dropped into her seat by the empty one reserved for Hermione. She fought to urge to stare at it.
She'll be okay in just a few months, she told herself as she dragged out her Defense text—and then Salazar Slytherin's book, glancing around to see the others already indulging in their own work or staring off into space. Already Lockhart had descended from his borrowed desk to pester the Boy Who Lived, and though Longbottom looked put out by the attention, the nattering Gryffindor girls fawned over the wizard and his self-important prattling.
"Idiots," Harriet mumbled, rifling through the thick tome until she found the parchment she, Hermione, and Elara had been taking all their notes on. It was sacrilege to Hermione for anyone to annotate directly inside a book—especially an ancient, historic thing like Salazar's journal—which made her decision to tear that page from Hogwarts: A History all the more shocking. Harriet knew with all her heart that Hermione meant for them to find it, that it was important. Her best friend could be overzealous or just plain barmy when it came to study, but Hermione was not stupid. Something dire sent her off sprinting for the library, and it had to be hidden somewhere in that tome resting on Harriet's desk.
She turned the parchment round on its side, flattening the curling edge worn from too much handling, and squinted at a hasty line of Hermione's tiny handwriting. "Aerie: noun," it read. "A large nest of a bird of prey, especially an eagle, typically built high in a tree or on a cliff."
Well, Harriet already knew that—.
Nest.
She prodded her spectacles back up her nose and scrutinized the word as it stirred a foggy memory from weeks ago. Elara sat at her own desk with her head down on her closed textbook, but Harriet could recall how she and Hermione had argued about a translation regarding the word. But what had it been, exactly?
"Potter, what are you doing?"
She glanced at Malfoy lounging in his seat. "Studying. You should try it sometime."
"Why are you being so intense about it? He's not even looking at this side of the room."
"Leave me alone, Malfoy."
"Fine."
Harriet went back to reading, though she tried to look bored as the rest of the class, slouching enough to put off Malfoy's curious glances. She flipped through several pages—and then stopped, because she couldn't actually read the book, and her friends had been discussing the translation, which meant it was somewhere on the parchment. Harriet flipped the sheet over again, scanning the cramped lines for handwriting that wasn't her own.
"The nest awaits when thee march forth in search of knowledge and find thyself among the gander," Hermione had written in a scrolling semi-crescent, fitting it in between the rest of the snippets she'd deciphered. "When you answer thus the faceless bust, step to yourself in the moon's reflection."
"I can't decipher this nonsense!" Hermione had despaired, and Harriet could see her predicament—because the Founder had been fond of riddles and puzzles, and Harriet had to wonder about that, because Rowena Ravenclaw had supposedly liked riddles, too. Her finger traced the word nest. What if her friends had chosen the wrong translation of the word from Anglo-Saxon to English? What if, instead of nest, Slytherin had meant…an aerie?
A nervous thrum of discovery went through Harriet, and she couldn't stop herself from straightening her spine, reading and rereading the line.
"The nest—Aerie—awaits when thee march forth in search of knowledge and find thyself among the gander."
A gander. That's a—a goose, isn't it? Was the Aerie outside on the grounds somewhere? That didn't make any sense at all, did it? Bloody hell, this is literally sending me on a wild goose chase—.
"In search of knowledge."
If anyone wanted to know anything at all, if they "sought knowledge," wouldn't their first stop be the library? Twice now, Harriet had gone looking for the library and twice she'd come upon that peculiar, looping corridor, in which hung a portrait of a woman herding a gaggle of very rude geese. She'd been so busy trying to find the exit and continue on to library, Harriet had barely given that misshapen, faceless bust asking funny questions a thought.
No way, she thought, skin buzzing, expression stunned. There's no way—.
And yet, in the twisted logic of a witch and wizard long dead, it had a certain clarity: an archive that could be found only if you sought knowledge, if you could answer a question—satisfy that need of being worthy. But why had no one discovered it before? Surely Harriet wasn't the first to go lost searching for the library.
"Step to yourself in the moon's reflection."
Well, that sounded like a mirror—and what had Professor Dumbledore told them? "Early alchemists referred to silver as the 'metal of the moon.'"
"That's…barking," Harriet whispered, voice reed-thin, her hands trembling. It's a bloody Moon Mirror. It's talking about a Moon Mirror!
As Harriet prepared herself to kick Elara awake and hiss her findings, a trickle of magic washed over the whole of the room, stilling the idle, ambient conversations—and scaring a muffled yelp out of Lockhart.
"Instructors must escort students to their dormitories immediately," echoed Professor McGonagall's voice, seeming to emanate from the walls themselves. "All classes are canceled until further notice."
"What's going on?" Runcorn asked aloud, earning more than a few speculative murmurs. As one, eyes swiveled to Lockhart, who looked back at them like a spooked owl.
"I, uh, I—well, you have to get back to your dormitories, obviously! Gryffindors first, I think. You lot are quite lucky—and safe!—with me as your guide…."
Books and parchment shuffled about, chairs dragging on the stone floor. Harriet jumped to her feet and hurried to set her own things to rights, tugging on Elara's sleeve to gain her attention.
"What is it?"
"I think—." Harriet licked her lips and glanced about, but the other Slytherins paid them no mind. "I think I found something."
"…Something?"
Nodding several times, Harriet tried to tell her about the Aerie, about the geese and the bust, but then she caught the watchful, askance look of Neville Longbottom and scowled. "Wait until we're back in the dungeons. Nosy prat…."
Lockhart sauntered from the classroom, looking nothing like the plastered, sobbing wreck Harriet had half-dragged, half-kicked back into the spare room off the entrance hall last week. Harriet kept a close hold on her bag as they journeyed up to the tower rather than down to the entrance hall, and Zabini complained aloud about having to walk from the top of the school all the way back down to the sub-levels.
"Exercise builds character, Mr. Zabini!" Mr. Lockhart proclaimed. Zabini grumbled about the kind of character he thought Lockhart could use.
They climbed the stairwell and came upon an intersecting hall where Gryffindors of all year groups merged together. There was a great deal of noise and panic, no one seeming to move in the right direction, and Harriet found herself being trod on more than once.
"Look!"
"On the wall there, plain as day—!"
"Someone's been taken!"
"Merlin—!"
"What are we going to do—?!"
"We need Professor Dumbledore—!"
Bracing herself, Harriet shoved and elbowed and squeezed her way through the older students until she could see the wall in question. New, glistening letters had been painted against the stones. "Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever," Harriet read aloud, voice lost to the shouting and crying around her. "Her who? There's nothing in the bloody Chamber."
That's the point, isn't it? The Heir's been lying from the beginning.
"Get out of here, Slytherin!"
Someone shoved Harriet, and she would have fallen if not for days of Quidditch teaching her better footing. Harriet ducked back into the crowd before whoever had touched her could try it again. The Gryffindors turned on the class of poor, unfortunate Slytherin second-years who'd stumbled into their midst, and though the professors tried to control the situation, several of Harriet's classmates wore terrified expressions.
She didn't wait to see what would happen; she grasped Elara by the hand and ran for the stairs. The sound of their heels clattering on the stone steps echoed in the confined space, and Harriet's loaded bag swung hard against her leg, leaving bruises.
"What are you doing?" Elara demanded.
"I think I know where it is," Harriet panted as they passed another landing.
"What?"
"The Aerie! I think—that's where the snake will be! Don't you see? Hermione realized it! The Mirrors—the connections between Ravenclaw and Slytherin! Whoever opened the Chamber knew to hide the Basilisk in the Aerie! They know about the Moon Mirrors!"
"We're not going there, are we?!"
"I have to see if—if I'm right. And then, we'll need someone—Professor Snape, or McGonagall, or anyone! Hurry!"
By the time they reached the level the library was located on, Harriet's heart was hammering in her chest, and Elara's breathing had been reduced to a reluctant wheeze. They didn't have time. If she could prove where the Basilisk was—if Harriet could find the Aerie, then maybe it wouldn't be too late. She didn't know who'd been taken. She hadn't even known there'd been another attack—but she did know if someone died, Hogwarts would never be the same. Professor Dumbledore would never come back. It was entirely possible the school might close down—permanently.
Harriet shook those errant thoughts from her head and fixed in her mind the idea of a book. Knowledge, she told herself again and again, footsteps echoing, breathing ragged. Knowledge, I'm searching for knowledge. I'm in search of knowledge.
They turned a corner, and Harriet half-expected to see the library, for her idea to be wrong. Instead, they rounded the bend and came face to face with a familiar shepherd in her grassy field. The painted geese looked at Harriet and honked.
Red-faced and doubled over, Elara eyed the loud birds with disdain. "We've been here before," she commented. "When we were looking for the library."
"Yeah." Harriet moved on, coming to a stop before the misshapen marble bust stationed about halfway down the visible corridor. It appeared as yet another innocuous piece of Hogwarts' decor, no stranger than the suits of armor prone to moving or the portraits that followed students about gossiping. Whoever had sculpted the bust must have started the face, giving it the impression of a nose, the slight indents below the brow line, the sloping cheeks, but they hadn't finished. Still, Harriet felt the thing was staring at her as she approached. A high, feminine voice spoke.
"Have thee none, I am plenty. Those of means, need of me. Partake of me, and thou shalt perish. What am I?"
"It's one of those stupid riddles!" Harriet said, reaching into her bag to jerk the parchment free of Salazar's book. "Salazar Slytherin came up with these! I translated all of his bloody riddles and most of the answers, where is it…?"
"It's nothing, Harriet."
"It not n—."
"The answer is nothing."
Harriet blinked, and Elara gave her an impatient look. "Oh. Right, then." She tucked the parchment away, then faced the bust and cleared her throat. "You are nothing."
The bust didn't reply. Instead, it moved and shifted backward, dissolving into the wall like a sugar cube melting in hot tea. The wall rippled again—and something else came forward. A large, rather plain mirror popped into existence where the bust and its plinth had been, leaving Harriet and Elara to gaze at their disheveled reflections.
Harriet swallowed, trying to rid the sudden dryness gripping her throat. "Open," she told the Moon Mirror in Parseltongue. Just like the one in Salazar's study, the mirror didn't move or glisten or give any indication that it'd changed, but when Harriet brushed her fingertips against its surface, they slipped through like pebbles dipping into a still pond. She pulled back before it could yank her through.
This is it.
"We need to go find a professor," Harriet said, and Elara nodded. Harriet turned—and almost walked into a wand. "W-what are you doing here, Longbottom? Weasley?!"
The Boy Who Lived and his constant companion stood in the corridor with them, and Harriet could only think that her own pounding heart and quick breathing had covered the sound of their approach. Longbottom had his wand trained on Harriet, and he looked nastier than she had ever seen the prat before.
"I knew it was you," he spat.
"What are you on about?"
"I knew you were the Heir!" He jabbed her with the wand and Livi hissed, forcing Harriet back a step. "You're always going about hissing and whispering and talking to yourself when your lackeys aren't there! I knew it was you!"
"You prejudiced arsehole!" Harriet shouted. "Just because I'm in Slytherin—!"
He jabbed her again.
"Stop it!"
Elara went for her wand, but Weasley had his own pointed at her, and both she and Harriet knew better than to test Weasley's wretched wand. It might backfire on him. It might do nothing—or it might set them both on fire.
"This is it, isn't it? It's the Chamber! I knew if I followed you around enough you'd eventually lead me to it!"
"The Chamber's not—." Harriet stopped herself before she could say something stupid, like 'the Chamber's not here, it's downstairs in a loo!' "I'm not the Heir! I swear to Merlin, Longbottom, you've got to be the dumbest twat ever born. How could I be the Heir? I was in your bloody class not twenty minutes out when the Heir attacked again!"
His brow furrowed, but Longbottom didn't let up. If anything, his grip on his wand only tightened. "That doesn't matter. You could have had someone help you! Or cursed them!"
Harriet sneered and considered kicking the idiot in the bits and making a run for it, but if he jinxed her, or knocked her unconscious, whoever had been taken might die. "Stop mucking about, Longbottom. You have no proof—and we need to find a professor right now!"
His gaze flicked past her, then back to Harriet. Twice more he did this before something hardened his resolve. "Fine. Proof? I'll get my proof!"
Harriet had been watching his wand hand; she didn't see his other until Longbottom pressed it to her chest and pushed with considerable force. Harriet gasped—
And stumbled back into the waiting mirror.
A/N: Harriet: *talks to Livi about cake or crickets or his favorite place to nap.*
Neville: "That is some sinister plotting going on right there. Better attack."