Fred and George were suffering a little shell shock after what was being called the Battle of the Buffet tables, due to the large number of tables from the Great Hall that had died in the battle between Draco Malfoy (whom yesterday either twin would confidently have pranked openly without fear of reprisal) battled Harry and Neville, while largely ignoring the attacks of Professor Flitwick, former European dueling champion, Professor McGonagall, a Transfiguration Master, and Professor Snape a rumored former Death Eater of Voldemort's inner circle.
There were weighty matters of morality and survival that ought to be balanced by any wizard with half a brain before getting involved in matters as complicated as what was the truth behind the Heir of Slytherin, and the ongoing campaign of terror and petrification being waged against the Hogwarts students. Unfortunately, each Weasley twin had half of a brain, and each had independently left thoughts of consequences to the other while they focused on the Gryffindorish bits that were shinier.
"I say Fred," Said George
"They seem to have locked up," Continued Fred
"Our Ickle Secondies." Finished George
"Kill one little pervert peeper" Complained Fred
"Who was legally dead anyway," Offered George
"So totally doesn't count!" Concluded Fred
"So totally doesn't count!" Agreed George
"And our little study-puff is in prison." Gloomed Fred
"Then our little Snakeykins gets put in the slammer for telling Snapey that Draco's in trouble." Offered Fred.
"I only got detention for tellying Snapey that Draco was an House Elf in a bad wig." Reminisced George happily.
"Detention sure, but no jail time!" Offered Fred, with a career delinquents understanding of the proper flow of the justice system.
"Our little tougher-puffs are in the clink" Complained George
"For not getting greased," cursed Fred
"By that greasy git," Continued George
"Draco!" They finished together.
"It's a miscarriage of Justice!" Shouted Fred
"Blimey" Said George
"What bit was shocking?" Asked Fred concerned.
"I didn't even know justice was pregnant." Pointed out George
"You can't be," Offered Fred
"Too careful!" Agreed George
"It would be terrible" Offered Fred
"If our little puffs" Agreed George
"And little snakey" Offered Fred
"And the actual snakey, " Pointed out George
"Very definitely the actual snakey" Agreed Fred
"Went mysteriously" Offered Fred
"And quite inexplicably" Agreed George
"Missing!" They offered together
They rounded the corner towards the stairs to the Griffindor Tower when they ran, almost literally, into the black robed formed of Professor Snape.
"Weasleys" Snape sneered. "You will come with me to my laboratory for your detention."
"Our" Began Fred looking confused
"Detention?" Finished George looking rather interested.
Snape sneered his best, and as Head of Slytherin his best was simply outstanding, sneer and drawled quite lazily as if he simply could not be bothered to rush any of the words as the twins were simply not of sufficient importance to warrant any change in his normal breathing.
"You will be very thankful that I am consenting to take you to the dungeons to work off your detention for the next two weeks for the crime of stealing an experimental potion, one that the stars will not be aligned properly to even attempt again for seventeen and one quarter years."
Snape said, then turned and began walking to the Dungeon with great sweeping steps that implied an urgency quite at odds with his words. Fred and George shared a look, matching the words and actions and coming up with some sort of Slytherin doublespeak, they nodded and grinned.
Snape didn't prank, but the Weasley's understood that may just be for the same reason that grown lions don't play tag. Cubs and kittens play tag to learn to hunt. Lions simply hunt. Perhaps snakes work the same way, and this snake was slithering with quite lethal intent. Two lion cubs scampered towards the dungeons with a grin that spoke of the danger of rogue lions working together.
Inside the dungeon, Snape took them to a table in front of a huge array of equipment so involved that they could not even fathom its purpose. There was a cauldron brewing, a long series of rune marked glassware and magical water cooling for condensing, a second runic filter that glowed with enough power to make the air shimmer, and bits of golden liquid visible in the bottom curve of the final condensation coil.
Snape began cursing loudly.
"Do you know how hard it is to collect enough fairy dust to make a time turner? The Unspeakables have been crafting them for centuries and have less than a dozen. There are fairies in the Forbidden Forest, and a master potioner, if he was so inclined, could collect that fairy dust, and if the stars aligned just right, could in fact make a potion that would allow someone to journey back in time just once to stop a tragic event from occurring. If I could have brewed such a potion, I would have used it to go back and make sure my most promising Slytherin potion apprentice did not end up rotting in custody, and the first decently promising Hufflepuffs since Diggory didn't end up sitting in the dungeons waiting for someone to accidentally get cursed into a puddle of goo trying to escape."
Fred said the quiet part out loud. "Awful lot of conditionals in there"
George amplified, "But you could say it was true."
Fred speculated. "Even under oath."
Two blue eyed gingers met the gaze of the darkest eyes they had ever seen and three sets of lips twitched into the ghost of a smile.
"Because you stole this Time Travel potion, I am unable to go back and stop an annoying but promising Hufflepuff from being taken to the Chamber of Secrets to a fate Myrtle Warren most likely discovered. I am unable to fulfil my oath sworn duty to rescue my godson Draco from whatever power he has mistakenly trifled with, and I am unable to rescue my promising Slytherin snakelet and her misguided but not useless Hufflepuffs from unlawful confinement."
Snape directed their attention to two quite full potion vials, labeled quite clearly "Time Potion"
Fred looked at it. It looked remarkably like Ogden's Finest Firewhiskey
George sniffed it. It smelled quite a bit like Ogden's Finest Firewhiskey
"Dirty thieving Weasleys!" They chanted, as they drank the vials.
As their first taste of 25 year old Ogden's Finest private reserve Firewiskey filled their belly with warmth, they opened their mouth to blow a pair of golden fireballs, noting that it did indeed taste even better as flame.
Taking Georges wand and flicking it, causing an odd stench and single slug to appear, Snape frowned and handed it back. Taking Freds and flicking it and getting a single pale purple lilly, Snape nodded and turned to the twins.
"For the crime of stealing an irreplaceable time travel potion, I have locked you in the dungeon tonight for the first of a week's worth of detention. I of course last saw you when I locked the door behind me as I went to the cells below to see my unjustly imprisoned student. You will of course be here when I return in several hours." Snape said as he turned and with his borrowed wand began to incant rather more loudly than necessary.
First there were the two disillusionment charms, then there was some sort of complex anti-tracking charm that Fred and George worked hard to memorize, just in case they ever needed to do something nefarious again. Snape held out the borrowed wand until an unseen hand took it back.
Snape then walked over to the cabinet that was the secret door the twins used to enter his lab and steal the potions ingredients for their prank potions, and dusted the shelf and tutted softly.
Without a word, Snape swept to the door and passed through. He very slowly drew his wand and even more slowly closed the door before casting his most powerful locking charm, then a pair of independent detection spells that would sound a very powerful alarm should someone open the door or pass through even in immaterial form.
To someone who didn't know about the secret door the twins found on the Marauder's Map, and Snape officially didn't know about. The twins who were last visible sitting in the lab could of course have never left or returned without setting off the alarm.
Fred and George silently vowed not to target Professor Snape with any direct pranks. They had a feeling he was a long way down the road they had only begun treading, and had walked it for far more serious purposes than they.
Snape stood before the cell his student had been locked in. Auror McInnis was aware that his benefactor, Cornelius Fudge, owed his position to Lucius Malfoy, and that Severus Snape was both a close confidant of Malfoy, but deeply respected by Minister Fudge himself. This didn't give Snape any authority over Auror McInnis, but it made the Auror unwilling to antagonize him.
"Miss Bulstrode is neither a criminal nor a commoner. She is Lady Selwyn by Right of Conquest. Her imprisonment here is at best a school detention. That Dumbledore has chosen to abuse his authority to set Aurors at her door not Hogwarts professors or elves is both illegal and unwise. Should anything untoward happen to my student while in your care, your position as an Auror will provide no legal shield as you are not guarding someone you have any right to imprison. Without even the pretext of a charge, you have no legal immunity as an Auror. If she so much as falls getting out of bed, I will challenge and kill you." Snape said coldly while looking at his student through the cell's grate.
Auror McInnis smirked. "Not much of a threat, when three of you Hogwarts professors had to get saved by a second year from the Malfoy brat."
Severus Snape smiled slowly and widely at Auror McInnis and said quite loudly.
"I think you will find, Auror McInnis, that Hogwarts students are far more dangerous than you will believe." Snape said, and then whirled to walk down the hallway, nod to the second Auror at the door, before stalking off to do potions inventory with Poppy Pomfrey in the Infirmary while his Gryffindor delinquents were quite possibly working hard cleaning glassware in the dungeon in their detention. Snape smiled. Quite possibly. Grammer was, like logic, a matter of precision for wizards with any pretentions to true power.
Auror McInnis was chuckling at the pretentious black robed drama queen who had just left. A professor thinking to threaten an Auror. These ivory tower types really made him laugh. Can't even control a bloody student and thinks he can challenge an professional Auror!
Then he heard the voices coming from the empty hallway. The sound of the little bells from a child's jack in the box sounded, as if from everywhere and nowhere.
"Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! Goes the weasel."
At the sound of Pop! Two figures appeared before Auror McInnis at the cell door and Auror Daniels at the main door. Too close and two fast for them to get an impression of their attackers, it was over before the startled Aurors could process it had started. Unlike the expected threats, neither figure had taken space and drawn wands, instead, they raised their beater bats and brought them down with quite a sharp Pop!
That was the last either Auror would remember before waking up in the Hogwarts infirmary, aware that they had several very interested Aurors wondering how they lost three very valuable students under protective custody without a single spell or intruder being noticed.
Milicent was stuck in a silenced cell, without anything to do. There were wards on the place preventing her from doing magic, which of course she could use her particular affinity to put to sleep if she needed to. Without news of the outside world, she didn't know if she needed to. She had given Professor Snape enough to wiggle free of his obedience oaths to Dumbledore, that is if she was right about the godparent oaths he had with Draco.
When she was born, half blood daughter of the former Heir Secundus to a Noble but not ancient House there weren't exactly volunteers lined up around the block to become her godparents. She didn't know if the oaths were magically binding enough to balance the teachers obedience oaths to Dumbledore. She was betting everything on Slytherin instincts on power relationships and hidden motivations. In a way, it was a fitting test to see if the half educated half blood usurper was fit to sit the Selwyn seat in the upper echelons of Dark Family power.
Her cell door flung open and two ginger idiots with beater bats dragging unconscious Aurors came in babbling at the top of their lungs, because discretion is somehow anti-Gryffindor.
"Queen of Beaters, your subjects bring you offerings!" George offered dragging the two unconscious Aurors through he door.
Fred held up McInnis head, then let it fall with a tut-tut sound.
"This one is a bit ugly, but he had your wand." Fred offered.
George dragged the second one's head up. "This one is prettier!"
Fred examined the left hand and held up the ring. "But married."
George sighed. "Still no good then."
Fred argued "He did have the key to the warded door out of the cell block though!"
George cheered. "Not a total loss then!"
Milicent looked at the ginger menaces and let out an un-Slytherin giggle.
"What are you doing here? More to the point, how are you here in the first place? No one can get in here without permission, and you frankly wouldn't be allowed even as a prisoner for fear you would steal the bars or turn the manacles into octopus or something."
George looked very serious. "Can't say."
Fred agreed. "Super secret."
George nodded. "Even from us."
Fred explained. "Snape gave us detention."
George said. "For stealing the time travel potion."
Fred noted. "Quite a surprise,"
George agreed. "As we hadn't done it yet."
Fred offered helpfully. "But Snape wouldn't lie."
George agreed. "He's a professor."
Fred amplifed. "And a Slytherin."
George nodded. "Straightforward types those Slytherin. Not like those tricky Hufflepuffs."
Fred agreed. "Or law abiding Gryffindors."
George sighed. "Good thing for us."
Fred cheered. "That we are locked in Snape's potion dungeon."
George offered. "Right at this very moment."
Milicent raised an eyebrow at their presence before her.
Fred made a placating gesture. "Just a side effect."
George continued. "Of the time travel potion.'
Fred mused. "Nobodies fault really."
George concluded. "Quite experimental."
Milicent did the Slytherin math, solved the equation for Snape and divided the remainder by Weasley squared and asked the question.
"What happened. Why now?" Milicent demanded.
Fred looked dead serious. "Draco broke Hermione out of the cells. Half killed Auror Dawlish and cast some unforgivable on Hermione. Left a message in her blood saying "Her bones will lie in the Chamber of Secrets".
George concluded. "Dumbledore won't admit it exists, wants to magic you lot cross-eyed so you can't even hiss to Noodle anymore. Right off his rocker that one."
Milicent's voice went cold as she confirmed her last data point.
"So no one is going after her?" She said, her voice no longer amused.
Fred and George shook their heads.
Milicent smiled sweetly. Then asked sweetly.
"Fred, be a dear, and pass me your bat through the bars."
Fred looked confused, offering the wand and the bat. "Not the wand?" He said as she took the bat.
Milicent smiled sweetly. "Why no. This is an impregnable warded cell. No one can cast spells in here. Why the wards could keep Grindelwald from casting Lumos, so a wand is no good to me. I am told that the bars are magically strengthened so a troll could not break them."
Fred and George nodded. "Told that by a professor." They said
"So it must be true." They continued.
They waved to her and began to leave her cell, leaving the door open, keys and ward tokens in a pile by the unconscious Aurors.
Fred offered. "Got to run,"
George explained. "Potion might wear off at any moment."
Fred agreed. "No telling how it works."
George nodded. "It's experimental."
The two of them vanished more or less tracelessly as they managed to pull off a half decent attempt at disillusionment. They had always picked up new magic quickly.
Milicent on the other hand, was seeking inside herself for old magic. Wild magic.
In the beginning, before there was even a world, there were two forces. Ice and Fire. Fire was creation and chaos, life and change, but that wasn't her. Was not her magic, was not her soul.
"Isa" She breathed. Ice, stillness, stasis. The cessation of all motion, vibration, and flow.
Touching the bars with her hand, she let the purity of Isa, the foundation of the universe, the void, the cold, the emptiness open up within her. She became stillness on an atomic level, and shared it with the enchanted steel, with the powerful containment and detection wards of the cell.
Then she struck.
A muggle tank round would not have dented those bars, as the enchantments in them allowed the force to dissipate through dimensions beyond those the muggles understood, and their metalic bonds were enhanced by charms to give them a material strength beyond the limits of muggle physics. Or they would, if they had any flow left to them at all. The force could not vibrate through the bonds, could not dissipate through the dimensions, could not even compress its structure and deform.
It shattered.
The runic array could not trigger, for no energy flowed within it. Once flow was again allowed, doubtless it would begin its containment, it's stunning, and its alarm functions, but that would be hours from now when the this part of universe remembered that time flowed and energy moved. Right now, it was enjoying a pause.
Milicent was rather less paused. She took wand, ward key and a great deal of rage. She was no Gryffindor to charge off to the battle for glory. She was no Hufflepuff to take a job uncomplaining because they knew no better.
She was a Slytherin Morganna damn it. She knew that she was a second year student, and had no business entering the Chamber of Secrets to face what was now probably a fully reborn Tom Riddle, or give him his true name at this point, Voldemort. She had no business even facing the basilisk that had somehow managed to live a thousand years since Salazar Slytherin decided Hogwarts needed a deathless murderserpent of its own.
Still, for all Slytherin's valued cunning, for all they prided themselves on ambition, there was one thing they did not dwell upon, but that one think kept the other houses from successfully targeting them. No one took from Slytherin. Take from them, and Slytherin stopped counting the cost. Hermione was hers. Malfoy/Riddle and the basilisk thought to steal from Milicent Bulstrode, Lady Selwyn by Right of Conquest?
Right, time to go open a few more doors she thought.
Harry had been looking at Noodle in his stasis cube, wondering why Noodle was no longer in Hermione's cell. His lack of sound and news left him waiting for some of the adults to do their job and take care of Tom Riddle and the little Malfoy prat he was riding before someone got killed. He was more than willing to open the chamber, but wasn't it time the Champion of the Light did some Merlin be damned championing?
Harry looked up as the door opened, and Neville and Milicent dragged in an unconscious Auror.
Harry looked at the broken nose and shut eyes of the Auror and asked the bat holding Milicent in shock.
"Milly! Did you club the Auror unconscious?" Harry said in shock.
Milicent shrugged and shook her head. "I certainly tried to, but the blighter is quick like a Mongoose hopped up on Pixie dust. He not only blocked my bludger bat but had my wrist locked and about to break."
Harry blinked, then pointed at the unconscious Auror again. "Then how?"
Milicent ruffled Neville's hair and the large Hufflepuff blushed scarlet. "One shot to the kidney, then when he turned a right cross to the nose and before you can say goodnight he was napping."
"Stand back." Milicent said as she began her freezing of the wards and bars for a third time, shattering them with a single blow.
She then turned, frowned at the Stasis cube and flicked it. Stasis looked briefly at Milicent's power and decided obedience was required and stopped stopping. Noodle poured out of his prison with an angry hiss.
"$ The King of Serpents is loose. He starves. He will kill soon. We must flee.$" Noodle hissed.
Harry nodded, having heard this from Noodle before. The questions about how he was broken out being addressed, and Noodles opinion of the fight or flight option being registered. This left the question of why he was being broken out, to join the disturbing question about why Noodle's stasis cage was with him now not Hermione.
Neville was already explaining. Hufflepuff's being better at direct information dumps that Slytherin's who seemed to have an allergy to direct statements.
"Draco took Hermione, half killed her guard. He was hurting her when he left, and swore he was going to make her ask the basilisk to kill her." Neville said flatly.
Harry snarled, "Accio wand!" and his wand slapped his hand with a satisfying thump. He reached down and took his potions belt from the Auror and buckled it back on. His broom, bat, and ready potions were still present. He noted Neville and Milicent were also fully rigged for battle. Kind of the Aurors to keep their confiscated gear with them, but the legal limbo they were in meant the school could not take them, nor the DMLE, so the Aurors simply kept them until the legal status of their detention was settled.
"We go now. We get Hermione back. Kill Riddle." Harry said.
"$ Talk later monkeys! To the Chamber, we must save Mouse Giver $ Noodle hissed imperiously.
"$ What happened to 'the king of serpents is upon us, run for your lives' $" Harry hissed jogging after his sprinting snake.
"$ That is before he took Mouse Stealer. $" Noodle hissed.
Milicent could not resist the chance to poke at the proud serpent. "$ What about the King of Snakes?$" Hissed Milicent, noting the ground speed of a magical Rock Viper enhanced by runes, strengthened by forbidden rituals and a diet of potion enhanced mice was somewhere between alarming and oh sweet suffering Merlin that's fast."
"$ Vive la revolution! $" Shouted Noodle, weighing the overthrow of the natural order of the serpent world and magic as a whole was clearly less important than the fate of his Mouse Giver.
Three jogging escaping prisoners thundering past surprised students on the way to the second floor ladies washroom of Moaning Myrtle Warren, the dripping depressive deceased casualty of the last Chamber of Secrets opening all agreed.