Dear Harry,

This is Daphne Greengrass. Look, I'm not overly fond of you. Your blog is stupid and preposterously illegal. It's going to get you thrown in prison one of these days. You just go gallivanting all over this castle looking for trouble all the time without a care for who might get hurt by it. And your stupid play was the worst. But we're both Slytherins and I appreciate what you're doing to bring our house's reputation back. So I figure you should get a fair warning: something is very, very wrong with your girlfriend.

Setting aside the obvious flashing warning sign of her wanting to date you in the first place, Hermione has been acting very, very odd since her return to Hogwarts. Most people wouldn't have noticed it. You've noticed it, I've heard, because you're so close to her emotionally, and I've noticed it too since I'm close to her geographically. That is to say, we both reside in the same dorm so I spend a lot of time with her. Now most of the time, we avoid each other and we like it that way. Hermione's a bookworm and she should have been in Ravenclaw. And she has all the social graces of a flobberworm. Nowadays, however, the only book she ever seems to be seen with is that diary of hers. And she seems to know all the right things to say to everyone. The old Hermione had her foot constantly in her mouth. I refuse to believe she just suddenly acquired intricate knowledge of pureblood etiquette that even I would be hard pressed to match.

What's been going on while she's awake is alarming enough. But when she's sleeping, that's when things get far, far worse. She's constantly tossing and turning, almost convulsing. She practically sweats through her sheets. She talks in her sleep, begging someone or something to stop, begging it for mercy. She's said things like "I don't want to hurt Harry" and "I'll stop you; you'll never win." Sometimes, she just randomly screams in her sleep. Not only are her antics completely terrifying, they're making it nearly impossible for anyone in the dorms to get a decent night's sleep. And if you think Pansy is insufferable under normal circumstances, you haven't yet seen her when she hasn't gotten a full eight hours of sleep. She makes us utterly miserable.

Now were it just all of this, I'd probably just go to Mr. Lupin and be done with it. I've heard rumors about how her summer was. If even half of them are true, it would explain her behavior and then some. But yesterday night, something very strange happened. In the middle of the night, Hermione just got up out of bed and left the dorms. She was walking in the strangest manner, as if some outside force was manually controlling her steps bit by bit. Since I didn't want Hermione to fall down a moving staircase or something while she was sleepwalking, I followed her.

It took forever for Hermione to get to her destination. She was moving like she was drunk. Occasionally, she seemed to right herself and then run in the direction of, I think, the headmaster's office, but then she returned to her original pattern. Eventually, she went to the second floor, to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Now you're probably not familiar with Moaning Myrtle since she haunts a girl's bathroom. She's one of the more annoying ghosts in the castle. Apparently she was a student who died in that bathroom in the 70s. She's constantly complaining and bemoaning her wretched life and honestly, I probably would have killed her myself if I'd lived back then.

Hermione walked – if her jerky movements can really be called such – to a row of sinks. One of them had a snake emblazoned on it. And then the freakiest thing happened. She started hissing at the sink. Like whenever you "talk" to your snake. For the record, I still don't believe you're a Parseltongue. I think you made it all up so you could make yourself look better. I'm not going to say that to anyone, though, because it's a brilliant idea and I wish I'd come up with it myself. But Hermione, I think, is a real Parseltongue. Or maybe a Plumbingtongue, because, well, it's not an actual snake she was talking to.

Regardless of whether or not she has a gift for talking to snakes or plumbing, the sink moved aside, revealing some sort of tunnel. I let out a soft gasp, but it wasn't soft enough, because Hermione suddenly spotted me. All traces of her difficulty moving were gone as she pointed a wand at my face. "I figured you would figure it out eventually, Greengrass. Your family has always been noted for its intelligence, though not its wisdom, given your refusal to serve Lord Voldemort. Have you come to pledge fealty to me?"

"What in the bloody hell are you talking about, Hermione?" I demanded. "You can't be out after curfew like this! If you're caught, you'll lose Slytherin hundreds of points!"

Hermione gave a high pitched bout of laughter which made chills run down the entirety of my body. I've never been scared of anyone my age before, but Hermione in that moment was an entirely different story. "Oh, you have no clue what's going on, do you? Silly, silly girl." She suddenly flicked her wand and I was pinned to the wall with overwhelming force. She didn't even say the spell.

"You know, my original plan was to target the mudbloods," Hermione said, her eyes alight with insane fire. I just goggled at her. Why the hell was Hermione talking about targeting her fellow Muggleborn? And what the bloody hell was she referring to them with the slur everyone used to refer to her? She'd gone crazy. It was the only possible explanation. "But fear is fear. Targeting purebloods is just as viable a path as targeting the mudbloods. All are inferior before my glorious might."

She invoked a harsh guttural spell I didn't know and I was hurled across the room. Hermione walked up to me and leaned down, her face alight with madness and bloodlust. "I've been waiting for this moment for so long. To punish your family, Daphne, for not walking the right path in the war."

"Hermione, I don't know what's happening, but I can get you help," I tried.

Hermione cackled. "How can you help me, my dear, when you can't even help yourself?" She leaned down and for a second, I was terrified she was about to kiss me. So I bit her on the arm, so hard she dropped her wand.

I ran for the door, but Hermione picked up her wand fired some sort of electrical spell at me. Pure agony lanced through me for twenty seconds. "Only now, at the end, do you understand," she said and then let out a giggle. "I'll say this for Harry's silly movies. Most of them are stupid, but there's some darn good lines in them occasionally."

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"I'm someone far better than you could ever hope to be, Daphne," Hermione said. "Someone who's been waiting a very long time to get revenge. You'll be the first. You won't be the last."

I burst into tears, a thick, inelegant mess of blubbering, and when I sensed Hermione had let her guard down, I kicked her in the groin and set her on fire to boot. Then I ran down the secret passageway Hermione had opened. Whatever was down there couldn't be worse than the insane witch lurking above it. Hermione must have disagreed, because she hissed again and the door shut behind me.

The only way available to me was to go forward. I went through a series of tunnels, dimly lit by magical torches and decorated with a mostly serpentine motif. I had a hunch where I was going, but my thoughts were too consumed by terror to relegate this hunch to anywhere more important than the back of my head. I eventually ended up in a very large room flanked with towering pillars entwined with carved wood. At the far end of the room was a massive statute of none other than Salazar Slytherin.

I was in the Chamber of Secrets.

I was about to assume you were familiar with the Chamber of Secrets, since you're super proud of being Slytherin and all that, but I've heard all sorts of stories about how oblivious you are, so maybe it slipped past your head. Legend tells Salazar Slytherin left Hogwarts out of hatred for Muggleborns and left behind a hidden chamber with some sort of secret weapon that could be used to kill all Muggleborns. Only the most insane conspiracy theorists and crazed dark mages believe this now. Most people sensibly assumed that if such a chamber existed, it would have been discovered in the last thousand years.

Well, most people were wrong. In front of me was none other than Slytherin's secret weapon in the flesh. And I do mean flesh, because it was a basilisk, a fucking forty foot snake, which, if you believed the stories, could kill with just a look of its eyes. I'm not especially proud. Well, I am reasonably proud, but not too proud to refuse to admit I screamed my head off for a good three minutes at a time. It took that long to realize I wasn't dead. In fact, the basilisk was looking deliberately away from me as if it didn't even want to kill me. Was this because it had a conscience? Or was it because I was a pureblood? Or maybe it had just eaten and wasn't hungry.

Whatever happened, the basilisk slithered towards the left wall and pressed its head against a seemingly ordinary part of the wall. A secret passageway opened and I gingerly walked my way towards it, worried that this was all a ruse to lull me into a false sense of security. But I made my way into the passageway. It was only then I was able to relax a little. The basilisk wasn't able to fit inside the passageway. Unless it could shrink, I suppose…but thank goodness that idea didn't occur to me then.

When I got to the other end of the passageway, there was a flight of stairs leading up to a trapdoor. Much to my shock, when I opened the trapdoor, the Slytherin common room was on the other side. I quickly closed the trapdoor as soon as I'd gone through it – it seemed to have no way of opening on the other side – and hurried back to my dorms and pretended to be asleep. Of course I couldn't sleep at all, given how close I'd come to death. Nor would I have slept even if I wanted to, because that was just asking Hermione to murder me in my sleep.

After the most nerve-wracking several hours I've ever experienced in my entire life, absolutely terrified Hermione would pull the curtains and hit me with a Killing Curse, the morning finally came. Hermione pulled open the curtains, a look of confusion already plastered on her face, anticipating my supposed absence. Instead, her fake look of confusion morphed into a real one (with very little difference; whatever's running the Hermione Granger show, it's a pretty good actress when it wants to be) upon seeing me in my bed.

I didn't get sorted into Slytherin for the heck of it. I leapt off my bed and put Hermione into a tight hug. I was almost tempted to just crush her and make it look like an accident, but I didn't have much confidence in my ability to succeed. I started crying – you don't last long as a Slytherin girl without the ability to bring forth the crocodile tears – and plastered a grateful look on her face.

"Oh my gosh, Hermione, I'm so glad you're okay! I just had the most terrifying nightmare! You sleepwalked into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and turned into…I don't know, this thing. And then you threw me into the Chamber of Secrets and there was a basilisk there and it showed me a secret passageway back to the commons and…" I trailed off.

Now I did not have much confidence my gambit to make Hermione think I thought I'd just been dreaming would succeed. But it must have worked because she hasn't killed me yet and just gave me a reassuring smile. "Wow, that must have been terrifying," she said in a light, utterly convincing tone. "Good thing the Chamber's just a myth, huh?" We shared a laugh and I prayed Hermione couldn't hear how loudly my heart was beating.

I'm taking a huge risk by telling you this. She could literally kill me. But right now, someone needs to do something about Hermione – or whoever she is – and you're not the type to be so blinded by love you refuse to do what needs to be done. But I'm warning you, if you put on your blog I sent you this letter, you're not going to have to worry about Hermione killing you, because I'm going to do it for her.

Yours sincerely,

Daphne Greengrass

I just got the most incredibly alarming letter from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Let's call her Stephanie. Now Stephanie didn't want me to post the letter on the blog. Unfortunately for her, what she actually ended up saying was that she didn't want me to put on the blog she sent me the letter, and since she insulted me by claiming I can't speak to Ishtaran (who I am contractually obligated to tell you is the most wonderful snake who ever lived), I'm going to stick to the letter of her request and just not tell you her name.

In case you didn't read the attached letter, Stephanie is one of Hermione's dormmates and she has spun a fascinating tale about how Hermione is a) sneaking out of the dorms at night and opening up a secret passageway in a girl's bathroom to the Chamber of Secrets, b) attempted to kill Stephanie when she discovered this, and c) appears to be a secret Parseltongue.

Now honestly, I'm not sure whether or not to believe Stephanie. For all I know, this could just be an elaborate scheme to get me to break up with Hermione. Or Stephanie could have had a vivid nightmare. I know I, for one, once woke up Professor Sinistra in the middle of the night, terrified that zombie iguanas were overrunning the Red Sector. It wasn't until she reminded me that there is not, in fact, a Red Sector in Hogwarts and that the empty vastness of space is far more vast (and, for that matter, empty) than I could conceive that I calmed down. Well, calmed down about the zombie iguanas. The detention I got from waking up Professor Sinistra, on the other hand, I did not calm down about.

But I digress. The point is, since Hermione has been acting bloody strange over the last few weeks, I'm not ruling out Stephanie's story just yet. Every adult I've talked to, from Headmaster Lockhart to Hestia to Remus thinks I'm overreacting about Hermione's sudden personality change. They're sure Hermione is just going through the horrors of puberty. Ron is on the fence. On the one hand, he knows just as well as I do that the Hermione of today is a very different person than she was last year. But on the other hand, he correctly points out that the ways of girls can be quite mysterious and radical changes in personality are not unprecedented. Ginny, for example, turned from a sweet, demure child to a screaming warrior who's served detention on no less than five separate occasions for scouring the Forbidden Forest for monsters to fight.

I want so badly to think the adults are right and I'm wrong. But I can't help but think of, well…how ridiculous Stephanie's story is. Stephanie is a levelheaded person. She's direct, no nonsense, not very creative. If she was inventing a story to convince me something wrong was Hermione, she wouldn't come up with such an absurd, far fetched scenario. It's just not in her character. To me, it's far more likely to be true than false.

"Luckily, there's a surefire way the Muggles have come up with to identify when someone's an imposter," I told Ron as the two of us looked up lore about the fae in the library. Dobby had been quiet lately. Too quiet. I needed to be ready for when he struck again. "Now it only works in very specific circumstances, but fortunately for us, this is one of them."

"Looks like you'll be able to use it sooner than you thought," Ron observed, pointing at Hermione, who'd just walked in the library. Actually, she'd skipped inside the library, like she was Tracey or something. You know…now that I think about it, if Hermione (or whoever she is) was copying her current weird behavior from Tracey, that would make a lot of sense.

Hermione sent me a dazzling smile and gave me an awed look. I blushed a little. No matter how disconcerting Hermione has been lately, a part of me really, really loves being looked at like I'm the center of someone's universe. "Harry, my love, it's so good to see you again."

"I'm here too," Ron grumbled. "In case anyone cares."

No one cared. Well, I cared a little, I suppose, but right now I cared about whether or not my girlfriend was an imposter. "Ron and I have been having a disagreement and we could use a tiebreaker."

"Harry's right," Hermione said immediately and then she giggled. I shivered in fear. That giggle was just wrong. "I mean, Harry's usually right, so that's a pretty safe bet." She tilted her head contemplatively. "Why do we even stick with this guy, Harry? All he does is eat and complain. He'll never be as good as his brothers." Ron squirmed in his seat.

I glared at Hermione. "Ron's a great guy. You know that. We've been friends with him for a year. But that's not what's important right now." Hermione gazed at me attentively. Well, staring might be a better word for it. Was she even blinking? "Let me set the scene. You're walking in desert, walking around in the sand, when you look down and see a tortoise."

Hermione didn't react at all. There was no recognition in her eyes.

"The – the tortoise is crawling towards you. You flip the tortoise on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping." I slammed the flat of my hand on the table, barely able to constrain my anger. "Why are you not helping, Hermione?"

Hermione was blank for a few seconds. Completely blank. The lights were on but no one was at home. Then she came back and giggled that horrifying giggle. "Like, why would I do something like that? It's, like, silly! I'd never hurt another living creature like that. Only a sadist would do something like that."

"So they would," I said quietly, and then I practically pounced on her with a hug. "Thank you, Hermione. I'm really, really glad you told me that."

Hermione leaned into the hug and she planted a kiss on my lips. I almost threw up, but I managed to keep it in, barely. "You're so sweet, Harry. I'm gonna go now, okay? Let me know if you've got any more hypotheticals you wanna run by me!" She skipped out of the library as creepily as she'd skipped in.

"That's not Hermione," I announced without preamble.

"I don't understand what just happened," Ron said slowly.

I nodded. "That was the Voight-Kampff test. In the movie Blade Runner, it's meant to determine whether or not someone is a replicant, an artificial human."

"And because Hermione failed the test, you think she's…one of these replicants?"

I rolled my eyes. "It's a movie, Ron. Replicants aren't real. But it's not just any movie. It's Hermione's favorite movie. She's seen it more than thirty times. She can say the tears in rain monologue in her sleep – and has, according to Millicent. Hermione didn't fail the test when she gave her answer. She failed the test when she didn't recognize the question. I don't know who's that is, but it's not Hermione!"

And I was almost relieved, to be honest with you. If my girlfriend was the real Hermione, I would have to reckon with the fact she'd turned herself into someone I really didn't like. Someone I wasn't even convinced I wanted to be friends with anymore, much less date. But now I know she's an imposter, which means the real Hermione is out there somewhere. The girl I actually like, in a friends way and in, yeah, a more than friends way. I think. Spending weeks dating someone's imposter is bound to get your feelings for the original all twisted up.

"What do we do?" Ron demanded. "We both know this isn't going to be enough to convince an adult. And if we screw up, Fakemoine could kill us."

I spun Mum's flash drive around on my fingers for a while. I've been taking to carrying it everywhere I go since it's the only link I have to my mum. It's the diary," I realized. "Other than her personality, the diary is the only tangible change. She carries it everywhere and she goes absolutely feral when someone asks to look at it. What do we know about the diary?"

"She found it in her prison cell," Ron began. "Which is pretty strange, because why would a prison cell have a diary?"

I nodded. "And it's got a name on it. T. M. Riddle. Which sounds kind of familiar. Riddle…Riddle. Where have I heard that name before?"

Ron went pale all of a sudden. "Tom Marvolo Riddle! Remember? Dumbledore called out the name when he tried to kill me on opening night."

"He called me that too when he fought me," I recalled. "Tom Marvolo Riddle. Something about that name is…it's weird." I wrote it down on a sheet of paper. "Marvolo. Marvolo…" A horrifying thought occurred to me. I shuffled the letters around and my suspicions were confirmed. "Ron, it's an anagram. Tom Marvolo Riddle – I am Lord Voldemort."

Ron went pale. "Voldemort is back? And possessing Hermione?!"

I really hoped not. I'd never be able to live it down if it came out I'd been dating Voldemort and didn't even notice it. "Dumbledore said I had something called a Horcrux in my head. What if Voldemort was a lich and these Horcruxes were his phylacteries?"

"I don't know what that means. And we both know Dumbledore wasn't just playing without a full deck – he barely had any cards left."

That was a very good point, but my gut was telling me I was right on the money here. "In Muggle myth, liches are people who cheated death by separating their soul from their body and hiding it. The soul pieces are called phylacteries." I knew this because Dudley had been a secret D&D enthusiast, which I liked because it provided me with plenty of useful blackmail material. "What if the diary is a Horcrux? What if it's possessed Hermione?"

"You realize, though, we still don't have any proof of this. This whole Campy test thing convinced me, but Professor Jones is just going to say Hermione forgot about it because the Ministry messed with her head."

I sighed. "Yeah. That's a good point." Then an idea occurred to me. "But if Stephanie's letter is right, then the Chamber of Secrets is real! And if we can prove that, wouldn't that mean the rest is true?"

"If Stephanie's letter is right, there's a basilisk down there," Ron pointed out.

"We don't have time to find proof," I decided. "We need to figure out how to destroy the diary. And there's only one person who knows the answer to that question. One person who's extensively studied Horcruxes. He may not have figured out how to get it out of me without killing me, but I'm sure he knows how to destroy one."

Ron looked at me like I was crazy. I wasn't bothered. I was used to that look. "But Dumbledore's in the loony bin. How will we get there to talk to him? Without Riddle knowing?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "But I'm going to figure it out."

I'm going to save Hermione. I'm not going to stop until I figure out a way to destroy the diary and bring back my friend. Consider yourself on notice, Tom Marvolo Riddle.

FLAMEL HOUSE DESTROYED

By Laura Actu, Le Monde Magique

Residents of Paris's 3rd arrondissement were shocked today when the house of Nicolas Flamel, the only alchemist who successfully brewed a Philosopher's Stone, was destroyed in a massive fireball. Thankfully, there were no casualties as the celebrated alchemist and his wife Perenelle were in Indonesia at the time, but the building was considered to be a total loss.

Madame Flamel downplayed the significance of the attack in a prepared statement. The house in question, according to her, while famous as their residence among both Muggles and mages, was not actually where they'd lived at any point. While the Flamels do own the house, they set it up as a homeless shelter initially and later rented it out to a family (who were out of town at the time of the explosion) and a Muggle restaurant (which had temporarily closed due to the results of a recent health inspection).

Madame Flamel dismissed the possibility that the attack was an assassination attempt on her husband, pointing out that it was conducted with Muggle explosives and could just as easily have been the work of Muggle terrorists. Reports that a house elf was seen in the vicinity of the house just before the explosion could not be corroborated.

I'm extremely frustrated. I haven't found any information about how to destroy a Horcrux. Everyone I ask either has no clue what I'm talking about or does and thinks I'm evil for even mentioning the term. Riddle keeps the diary on him at all times so I haven't been able to run any experiments. I hadn't gotten any closer to figuring out how to sneak out and get to London to grill Dumbledore. And I've had to spend weeks pretending I'm dating the most important person in my life when I'm actually dating my parents' murderer. Which is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to be before and as you well recall, there's some stiff competition for that slot.

There hadn't been any progress in decoding the flash drive either. I finally bit the bullet and sent it to the Grangers, but they won't help me because they're not experts on decryption and they refuse to send it to any of their contacts because it'd be a violation of the Statute of Secrecy and they don't want to forget Hermione again. (I haven't told the Grangers about Hermione being possessed because the last thing I need is to add a pair of trigger happy dentists into the mix.) Deeds_of_stone was on radio silence.

The one bright spot in these miserable weeks was the Muggleborn-Pureblood Alliance, which was in full swing. One of the co-leaders suggested we do field trips and Professor Sinistra agreed. I attempted to suggest we visit St. Mungo's to see what the magical health system looks like. No one was interested. Instead, we visited Stonehenge, which turned out to be a portal to one of the more benign fae realms; Hogsmeade; and Avalon, once the home of King Arthur and now a cheesy theme park.

Finally, it came time for me to suggest a place to visit in the Muggle world and, as I decided on my most recent blog entry, I proposed we do a field trip to Edinburgh. As the nearest big city, it seemed a great place to immerse the Mageborn population into the Muggle world. There were some initial concerns about our ability to maintain the Statute of Secrecy, but I pointed out as long as we didn't actually do magic, no one would care if we talked about weird things or even brought up magical terms. Kids are really weird these days. Since I was a walking, talking exemplar of this very principle, everyone rolled with the idea.

While Professor Sinistra provided some input, I did most of the planning myself. Much to my relief, Riddle bowed out of the trip, citing homework. I think he just didn't want people to realize he didn't know very much about the modern world. Riddle's knowledge seemed to stop around the 1970s – which is when he went to Hogwarts according to the yearbooks I've found – and he doesn't know anything about modern technology. Nor does he have any desire to learn. Which is good news for me, because I can blog about him and his imposter ways to my heart's content.

We decided that we'd do things the same way the tourists did it: walking up the Royal Mile, a steep street leading from Holyrood Palace on one end to the Edinburgh Castle on the other. Holyrood Palace is the official residence of the monarch in Scotland. Mary, Queen of Scots, among many, many others, used to live here. We were all shocked when we ran into the ghost of Mary herself on our tour of the palace. Turns out she was a witch! She seemed delighted to have mage tourists and talked a lot about her life in the castle. The real Hermione would be so upset when she learned she missed out on this. As for me, I was in heaven. I wondered if I could persuade Binns to get Mary to be a guest lecturer. I'm going to ask him later.

The Royal Mile appeared to be a huge hit. Everyone knew about Muggle things like cars and traffic cones in the abstract, but seeing them in person filled the Mageborn with the same awe I felt when I saw moving staircases and living portraits. (Yes, I know they're not alive. Stop being pedantic. That's my job.) We got to visit places like St. Giles's Cathedral, the Scottish Poetry Library, and most importantly of all, the Chocolatarium. That was a chocolate emporium where we got to make our own chocolate bars, learn about how chocolate is made, and, most importantly, eat a lot of chocolate.

Eventually, we all split off for lunch. Most of the kids wanted to eat at the fancy, touristy tea shops, but I had a hankering for McDonald's, so I dragged Ron away from his dream of having fancy cucumber sandwiches and towards my dream of having him experience the glory that is French fries. "Trust me, Ron, your tastebuds will thank you, even if the rest of your body doesn't."

"Well, that's not very encouraging…"

But I am unstoppable force and Ron isn't anywhere close to being an immovable object. We deserved an opportunity to eat junk food and get our minds of our numerous troubles. But I should have realized the truth. Whenever trouble appears far away, it's the nearest. Or something like that. I'm not good with aphorisms, okay?!

For the maximum McDonald's experience, we both got ourselves Big Macs and fries and large drinks. I didn't know if I could eat everything on my tray, but darn it, I wanted to find out.

We were just on our way to the table when someone called out, "Harry, Ron, over here!" I turned, expecting to find one of our peers who had the same idea. Instead, there was a boy I didn't recognize sitting at a booth, eating chicken nuggets and drinking from an open cup of Coca-Cola. He seemed to be about my age. He had blue-grey eyes and long reddish-brown hair, a few shades darker than Ron's own style, which seemed to perfectly match the color of the school uniform he was wearing. He had a cane, which he'd leaned against the wall of the booth. I'd seen this boy before. He looked damnably familiar. But I couldn't quite place him.

"Do I know you?" I asked cautiously.

"You probably know me as Deeds_of_stone," the boy said. He had an accent. I'm not good at accents. One time, I was absolutely convinced my science teacher was from Portugal. He turned out to be from Russia. But I pegged the accent as being maybe German or Dutch. "I'm not ready to give out my name just yet, but you can call me Peter, if you want." Peter – Petros – stone. That tracked.

I nodded at Ron and the two of us sat down at Peter's table. "I know you," I said slowly. "How do I know you?"

Peter knew exactly what I was talking about. He knew where we'd met before. But instead he said, "We've never had the pleasure of formally meeting before."

If Peter wanted to keep his secrets, I supposed that was his business. There was far more important business at hand. "You decrypted the videos?"

Peter nodded. "I haven't watched them yet, of course. That wouldn't be right. At the end of the day, Harry, she's your mother, not mine." I waited for him to forward the files to my phone or give me another flash drive or something else. He didn't do any of those things. "I've recently met someone who knew you in primary school. He goes by the user name Lydude and wishes to remain otherwise anonymous for you. He was present at several incidents involving you."

"That llama knew too much," I muttered.

"I agree, but I was referring to certain magical incidents. You teleported to the roof of the school building when being chased by your cousin and his cronies. You turned your teacher's hair blue once. Now when he told me this story, when he tried to convince me the urban fantasy story I enjoyed so much was real, I naturally thought he was crazy. But a recent experiment I ran has convinced me otherwise."

I suddenly had a very bad feeling about what was coming. "Are you going to give me the files, Peter?"

He gave an apologetic look. "I will – eventually. After you do me some favors."

Ron looked like he was two seconds away from punching Peter. "How can you be so callous? He's an orphan – he doesn't have any memories of his mum! You're hurting a defenseless orphan." He pulled out his wand, despite my whispered pleas for him to put it away.

"You're not going to hurt me," Peter said calmly. "Not here, not now. If you fire a single spell, the Aurors will descend on you. And we both know what they did to Hermione. You want that for yourself?"

"This isn't right," I told Peter simply and quietly, and he flinched.

He nodded in acknowledgment. "I take no pleasure in this, Harry. But it's a necessity. We both know modern technology is going to doom the Statute. There are five million CCTV cameras in Britain alone. Look me in the face and tell me with honesty you think the Statute will last the decade." I couldn't. Peter was right. "Magic will be revealed to the world eventually. We want to do it on our own terms."

"That's absolutely nuts!" I shouted loud enough to get stares from patrons. "You can't smash the Statute of Secrecy," I added much more quietly. "You're going to get caught and Obliviated."

"We've taken precautions. And as for your indignation, spare me your hypocrisy. You've broken the Statute on your blog in so many ways I've lost count." I bowed my head. He was right about that too. "You opened a door, Harry. You shouldn't have been surprised when I chose to step through it."

"I don't need you to unlock the files, Peter. I have other options."

"You had other options," Peter said in a harsher tone than I'd heard him use before. "But you were right before, in a sense. We have met before, very briefly. I knew you were coming here today. I hacked into your phone, tracked it. I brushed past you at the Chocolatarium…and I pickpocketed you." He pulled out Mum's flash drive from his own pocket…

…and he tossed it into his cup of Coke, completely disabling it.

And since I hadn't made any copies of the files and I knew the Grangers had deleted the files from their own computers out of an abundance of caution, if I wanted to know what my mum had to say to me, I had no choice but to play Peter's game now. "You bastard," I hissed.

"Harry, what's happening here is more important than you or I. I'm not just doing this for kicks. I'm trying to avert a genocide. And if that means I have to use these files, your mother's last words to you, in order to accomplish that, then I'm going to do it." He laughed softly. "I feel I would have made a good Slytherin myself." He was right, not that I'd ever admit it.

Peter stood up. "I'm not the enemy here. In fact, as a gesture of good faith, I'll send you the first video, free of charge. I'm not going to ask you to do anything to hurt anyone. But I will be asking for favors later and they might be illegal and some of them might be immoral. If they are, I'll bear the brunt of them on my own soul, not you. See you around."

He walked out of the room without another word. I didn't know what to say. For the first time in a long while, I'd been thoroughly outmaneuvered. And not by some fragment of a dark lord, but by an ordinary Muggle kid. "What are we going to do?"

"We…could tell Hestia?" Ron suggested tentatively.

"And then we spend the rest of our lives in prison for breaking the Statute? No thanks!"

"I guess we could just…not play his game." Worst comes to worst, I didn't exactly need those files. I just really, really wanted them more than I'd ever wanted anything else, a desire to know exactly who my mum was that filled the entirety of my soul.

Ron looked at me scornfully. "We both know you're not going to do that. Look, Peter's a later problem. Right now, we have to deal with Riddle. Everything else can be dealt with later." He stood up. "Also, I know this is, like, a big deal for Muggles, but the food here is junk."

"Well, yeah. That's why they call it junk food."

"Now you tell me."