Summary of the last chapter:

Harry grudgingly apologizes to Lockhart, threatening him at the same time to involve his Head of House if Lockhart gives him trouble again.

During Harry's first Quidditch match, one of the Bludgers attacks Harry relentlessly, landing him in the hospital wing. He is accosted by Dobby, who admits to having cursed the Bludger to make Harry go home. Harry manages to trick him into admitting that he's a Malfoy elf. Dobby vanishes when a petrified Colin Creevey is brought in.

Bloodlines

The next morning, as soon as Madam Pomfrey released him, Harry informed his Head of House about the mysterious house-elf's late night visit. Professor Snape seemed rather alarmed about it and was, like Harry, incensed that he had turned the Bludger into a deadly weapon. He told Harry that Dobby's behaviour was most unusual for a house-elf. Apparently, they didn't regard themselves as slaves, but loved to serve their family, and they were not at all known for taking initiative.

"I'll tell the headmaster that the wards need adjustment. No house-elf who doesn't belong here should have been be able to Apparate into Hogwarts in the first place."

"I told you security measures are a joke around here," complained Tom to Harry. "Hagrid claims the castle's the safest place there is, but how can that be if a strange elf can Apparate straight into the infirmary just like that? He could have killed you in your sleep, had he wanted to. All it needs is an unscrupulous elf-owner who is willing to use his servant as an assassin!"

"At least we can be reasonably sure that killing me is not what the secret plot is all about," Harry joked, "unless the idea of simply using his elf didn't cross Mr. Malfoy's mind." Then he told the professor how he had tricked Dobby into revealing who he belonged to.

Again, Professor Snape couldn't entirely hide his surprise. "Lucius Malfoy is a very vocal adversary of Professor Dumbledore," he said pensively. "I can only imagine that whatever plot the elf warned you about is supposed to cause him trouble. Petrified students will definitely do that. Maybe the story with the heir and the chamber is a red herring, supposed to divert the attention from himself. The Malfoys are not related to Salazar Slytherin, and Draco is definitely not his heir. Lucius would never do anything to endanger his own son, and setting loose a monster inside the castle walls does just that – provided such a mystical beast really exists."

"Not if the beast only attacks Muggleborns," Harry objected.

"I don't know of any beast that is able to determine a wizard's blood status. No, I'm sure that whoever is behind this nefarious plot is human. And we won't be able to prove the Malfoys' involvement based on what that deranged elf told you. House-elves can't be forced to testify against their owner." The professor seemed thoughtful, then nodded to himself. "I'll see what I can find out. Until then, we'll ward the castle against elves that don't belong here, and you will try your best to not get into mischief! It's really annoying having to take you to the hospital wing all the time."

"He really likes you, Harry!" said Tom, sounding thrilled. "I think there's undisguised concern for you underneath all that snark."

As Harry had no intention of roaming the corridors at night like Colin had, he nodded. "Don't worry, Professor, I don't want to spend God knows how long petrified. How long do you think it's going to be until the mandrakes are mature? And why doesn't Hogwarts simply order the Restorative Draught from an apothecary?"

"Because the draught has to be freshly prepared from fresh roots. Mandrakes also have a fixed growing cycle. The seedlings are planted in late summer and ripen within nine months. So unfortunately, Mr. Creevey will be missing a great deal of classes."

Hermione, when Harry later told her and Neville about what had occurred during the night and his talk with Professor Snape, was aghast.

"But Colin can't be missing months of classes! He'll never catch up? That's horrible!"

"He'll probably have to repeat the year," mused Harry. "But at least he isn't dead."

"I'm shocked that it was an elf who intercepted your mail, blocked the barrier and set a Bludger onto you," said Neville thoughtfully. "It's very unusual behaviour. Are you sure he's trying to help? It doesn't seem particularly helpful …"

Harry shrugged. "That's what he claims, but I don't get it either. House-elves are weird."

"Oh! With everything that has been going on since we came back, I totally forgot to do my research on the topic of elf-enslavement!" Hermione cried out in dismay. "How could it have slipped my mind?"

When Neville asked what she was talking about, Hermione launched into a lament about elves being held in slavery by wizards and obviously being mistreated, and that something had to be done about it.

"But – we have house-elves, too," said Neville, looking at Harry and seeking help. "Mimsy and Hooper. And they're not being mistreated!"

"Well, just because some wizards are treating them decently doesn't make the concept alright. Sorry, Neville. What happens if your elves don't want to do what you're asking them to do?"

The look Neville gave her was one of utter perplexity. "That's like asking what if the sun won't rise tomorrow," he said after a moment of thinking. "It won't happen. Elves like to please. Doing what we ask them to do makes them happy."

"It obviously didn't make Dobby happy!" argued Hermione, who wouldn't be deterred. And as always, Hermione started changing the world by diving into research, which probably wasn't the worst first step to take, as Tom pointed out. Harry and Neville were happy to let her be.

The next weeks were no fun for Harry. For some reason – and he suspected Draco behind it - Harry was cast even more suspicious glances in the corridors, and he noticed that some students seemed to be giving him a wide berth. Apparently, rumour had it that he was the heir of Slytherin for sure and had it out for Muggleborns like Colin Creevey.

"But that's utterly ridiculous!" he vented his frustration to Neville and Hermione. "I'm best friends with a Muggleborn, and my own mother was one! Why should I have it out for them?"

"I've heard people say that you only befriended Hermione for the sake of appearances," Neville reluctantly informed him. "Which would mean you've been planning this from the beginning of year one. Very dedicated of you, though."

As generally the case with Harry, his housemates were unsure what to think. There were those who looked at him with a form of guarded respect, as if they couldn't quite believe the rumours, but would greatly approve should they turn out to be true. Then there were those who didn't doubt that he'd put the message on the wall, but who at the same time were convinced that he couldn't possibly be the heir of Slytherin due to his Mudblood mother. Those were angry with him for being an imposter, daring to soil Slytherin's reputation. Only Blaise seemed to be on his side, even if not openly so.

Draco was decidedly undecided. The fact that Harry was now thought to be the heir of Slytherin had surprised him at first. Then he seemed full of schadenfreude for the trouble it was giving Harry, while a tiny whiff of doubt remained with him.

"Tell me one thing, Draco, since you're obviously an expert on blood status," said Harry, who was fed up with Draco's blood purity rants and the insults to his mother and friend. "Are all Muggles Mudbloods?"

"No, of course they aren't," said Draco, frowning at the stupid question. "They're just Muggles – they don't have any magic." As always, he had no idea where Harry was going with his line of inqiry.

"Okay, so Muggles without magic have normal blood, but if they have a child that has magic, the child is a Mudblood," Harry summarized, then pretended to be thinking hard. "So you are basically saying that it's the magic that is sullying their blood?"

Draco stared at him aghast, not knowing how to respond to that.

"And if it's magic that makes the blood of Muggleborns muddy," Harry continued contemplatively, "… what exactly does that say about purebloods?"

Tom snickered. "Well argued, Harry! Just when did you get so clever?"

"Since I'm living with a smartarse in my head," Harry deadpanned.

"It's beautiful - look at all the gaping mouths! Not Greg and Vincent though. They didn't even get the point but are probably hungry again and hoping that someone will throw in some food if they keep their beaks open. You know what – I wonder if all the inbreeding makes purebloods stupid. You should discuss the hypothesis with Draco tomorrow."

"Thanks, I think I'll pass."

Harry didn't like being in the common room much, due to the many queer looks he was getting. He had pulled out his invisibility cloak and often used it to pass through it unseen, or, if need be, to sit quietly in a corner reading before going to bed. It definitely had its advantages, as he and Tom were able to eavesdrop on the conversations going on that way.

They so overheard Draco telling his cronies one evening that he had spoken to his father, who had assured him that Harry Potter was definitely NOT the heir of Slytherin. The heir was doubtlessly worthy of their proud founder's heritage, and Harry certainly wasn't. But he also found it entertaining that Harry, the hailed hero of the wizarding world, was under suspicion of being a dark wizard.

"It is kind of funny," Tom had to admit, if only reluctantly. "But it goes to show how fickle most people are. At least we can be reasonably sure now that Draco's not the heir. He knows nothing, no matter how much he likes to pretend he does."

Unfortunately, Draco, after his father's assurances, was taking malicious pleasure in putting oil to the fire. He could often be heard speculating that Harry might be Slytherin's heir after all – who knew if Harry's Muggle grandfather had really been the father of Lily Potter? She wouldn't be the first child conceived out of wedlock, and might have had a wizard for a father, for all they knew.

Probably inspired by Harry's idea that magic wasn't supposed to soil anyone's blood, Draco suddenly came up with a new theory about Hermione, too. He had found out somehow that there was a semi-famous potioneer named Hector Dagworth-Granger, and theorized openly that she might not be a Muggleborn at all, but the daughter of a halfblood Squib.

"I always thought that she couldn't possibly be a Mudblood," Draco was heard saying. "Everybody knows how inferior their magic is, and Granger is a true swot and overachiever, she wouldn't manage half of the charms if she truly was what she claims."

Hermione insisted that she'd never heard of the name Dagworth-Granger before, and was certain that her dad had neither been a Squib nor a clandestine wizard, but the doubt was sowed and warmly received by Slytherins who hadn't liked the idea at all that a Muggleborn could outdo them in anything magical.

"You're right, Harry, this is really beyond ridiculous!" fumed Hermione, who had taken pride in her Muggle heritage and didn't like being turned into a halfblood just to fit into the pureblood supremacists' narrative. "I'm afraid they won't stop with this nonsense until the real heir is found. And what's stopping him from attacking more people in the meanwhile? I can only hope he believes the silly tales Draco is spinning, or I could be next!"

"Or me," said Neville darkly. "In the eyes of some purebloods, I'm not much better than a Squib."

"That's utter nonsense, Neville, and you should stop saying and believing it," Hermione chided. "But I think we should investigate and try to find the real culprit.". "That's an excellent idea!" Tom chimed in. "Let's make a list and put down the facts we know."

"Let's make a list!" suggested Hermione, causing Harry to laugh.

"What?" his friend asked, slightly irritated.

"Nothing. The same idea just popped up into my mind. So - what do we know so far?"

Hermione took out a piece of parchment and a quill, ready to write down the facts that were known to them.

"We know that the chamber's real and that it houses some kind of beast that is able to petrify people," Neville summarized.

"That's a good starting point. Do we know which beasts are able to do that? No? Okay – that should be easy enough to find out."

"It doesn't have to be the beast that does the petrifications, though," Neville put in for consideration. "It might be a witch or a wizard. We should find out if there's a spell that can do the same thing."

"Well, there are spells," Harry replied. "Dumbledore himself admitted that much. But he said no second year would be able to use them. And that they're dark."

"If it was a student last time – let's say a fourth year or up, he'd be what – sixty-six today? So it might be a son or even grandson of said student who's causing all this trouble now."

"We could check if there were any students around in 1943 who have kids in school today," Hermione suggested. "Hogwarts doesn't have year books – that's an American thing – but there are graduation records, sorted by decade. If we look at the years from 1943 to 1950, we should have all students covered. Though it's highly doubtful that it was a first or a second year."

Harry agreed. "Then let's start with 1943 and work our way up from there. But there's another thing to research: What families descend from the line of Slytherin? As obsessed as wizards are with their ancestry, there surely must be books about bloodlines."

"I'll start researching the beasts," decided Hermione. "You can work on Slytherin's descendents, Neville. And you, Harry, should start looking into the graduation records of 1943."

Both complied, and all of them set out on their assigned tasks. After over an hour of researching in numerous books in different library aisles and furious note-taking, they were all back at the table, reporting their findings.

Harry laid two large, dust-covered books on the table. "Okay, in here are lists of graduates from 1940 to 1950. There are two names that stick out: Tiberius Nott and Abraxas Malfoy, who both graduated in 1945. They both have grandkids in Slytherin today. The problem is that I hardly know any upper years by name. There may be other matches which make more sense than Theo, and we already know it isn't Draco. Unless you say it's the quiet ones that are trouble."

"Did you copy all the names down?" asked Hermione.

"Uhm, no. Do I have to?"

"Well, if you don't want to go back to the books every time we need to check a name, yes," answered Hermione, which had Tom snickering and Harry moaning. Hermione gave him a chiding glance and continued: "Besides, it'd be good if each of us got their own list, so we can highlight any more names we come across. We'll have to pay attention to people's surnames from now on. There have to be more than those two, there aren't THAT many wizarding families."

"It won't be that bad if you use your biro and normal paper," suggested Tom. "Much easier than writing on parchment."

"Fine. I'll do it. But let's first hear what Neville found out."

"Really not that much," said Neville, when asked. "There is no Slytherin family anymore, as we already knew. The last descendants of Salazar Slytherin in Britain were the Gaunts. They were the only known Parselmouths, which is why their family is considered to be the only existing direct line."

There was a line of Parselmouths in Britain? Tom echoed Harry's surprise. They hadn't known that. Was it was a hereditary gift? Were the Potters descended from the Gaunts?

"I hope not, if that gets out, they'll be even more convinced that it must be me!" Harry moaned, though only for Tom's ears.

"So if Salazar ever had a son," Hermione concluded, "his heir's line ended in daughters at some point, who married into the Gaunt family. But surely there must have been other daughters who married into other families, Neville?"

"Well, it's like you say: All wizarding families are in one way or another related to each other, so there's probably Slytherin blood in many of us. But the only family explicitly mentioned is the Gaunts. They are special because they cared so much about blood purity that they practiced inbreeding - maybe they wanted to keep their Parsel abilities strong or something. It didn't do them much good, though. The last mentioned descendant that I found was Marvolo Gaunt and it says that he lived impoverished."

"Marvolo!" said Harry and Tom at the same time, stunned.

"Yes, just like your snake, funny, isn't it!"

"That IS a funny coincidence," Harry said finally, wondering how Tom had come up with the name.

Tom was taken aback, too. Could it be that HE was a descendant of that line? He spoke Parsel and knew nothing about his parents. It wasn't so far-fetched. But then it would be logical to assume that he was the heir of Slytherin!

Harry felt his friend's concern. "If you're AN heir of Slytherin, there must be others, as you didn't open the Chamber and attacked no one, and neither did I." Aloud, he said: "We have new things to research then: Finding out more about the Gaunts. That's our best hint so far."

"Was there a Gaunt on the list of graduates?"

"No, not that I remember. But I'll check again when I copy the names."

"There's an archive of Daily Prophets in the Ministry that can be accessed from here," Hermione informed them. "Madame Pince showed me how the spell works to search for certain tags. I'll see what I can find on the Gaunts."

"You mean you can browse an entire archive by telling the spell what word to look for?" asked Harry, fascinated. "That's handy! Magic's really awesome! I wish we had something like that in the Muggle word!"

Neville turned to Hermione. "What have you found out about beasts that can petrify?"

"Basically nothing. The only magical creature with the power to petrify others is a Gorgon. They're female winged creatures with snake hair. Even Muggles know about Medusa, the most prominent of them."

"My grandma told me that in the 19th century, there was a portrait of a Gorgon and her suitor in the castle. Supposedly, just looking at this painting could cause the viewer to become temporarily petrified. They had to lock it away."

"Interesting! Maybe someone found it and used it to petrify Mrs. Norris and Colin?"

"I doubt it. Gorgons seem to be a bit of a myth in the wizarding world as well. It's more likely that it was a cursed painting. But yes, using such a thing as a weapon sounds feasible … "

"Let's hope this picture isn't another dangerous item that Dumbledore left lying around in an unused classroom for any random student to stumble upon ..." commented Tom darkly.

"Well, I had hoped our investigations would be a little more fruitful," said Harry, disappointed. "This isn't much to go on."

"No," Hermione shook her head, echoing the sentiment, "it isn't. Especially if we take into account that this so-called heir of Slytherin might not be a blood relative at all. It's possible that he considers himself Salazar's heir in spirit rather than in blood."

"You're right," said Harry frustratedly. "I doubt we'll find him like this.

A/N: Google was invented in 1996 – Harry didn't have to wait for long to see his wish come true!

The picture of a Gorgon and her lover is Hogwarts Legacy canon. It fit into this chapter nicely.