“What’s it saying?” Morning Sun asked.
She, Hermione, and Silversong were following Harry up the passage from Nearly Headless Nick’s death-day party at a dead run. Ginny hadn’t come, being uninterested in a death day party, and had promised to save them seats in the Great Hall, after a quick diary entry. Then, Harry had suddenly gone off after a voice neither of the others could hear.
Harry didn’t answer, and charged up into the entrance hall, then on up the stairs. Morning paused briefly, looking at the Great Hall for a second, but turned away quickly, looking a little worried. Silver briefly debated asking about it, but decided against it.
Silversong was the first to see it; both Hermione and Morning were looking at Harry, waiting for him to tell them what he’d heard, beyond the brief cries he’d already given them during the dash.
She raised one hand to point. “Over there,” she muttered.
Someone had daubed something red on the wall, between two windows, about a foot high. It looked like it might be words, but she couldn’t tell for sure. She was sure, though, that it was glinting in the flickering torchlight, and it looked like there was something greyish stuck to the wall underneath it.
“The Chamber of Secrets has been opened, enemies of the Heir beware,” Morning read from afar, even though Silver- who had the best angle- wasn’t sure if it was even words to begin with. “And I don’t think I’ve seen that cat hanging underneath before, but she feels familiar.”
Hermione put a hand to her chest.
Silver walked slowly closer, looking carefully. “That…”
Morning caught her unexpectedly by an arm. “Looks like wet paint,” she stated. “And watch out for the puddle.” She pointed at the floor.
Sliver glanced down, and nodded; she hadn’t realized the water was there. Then, Lyra trotted past, splashing right through the water like she didn’t care about it, and stopped in front of the words.
Silver looked both ways down the passage, but didn’t see anywhere that Lyra could have come from.
“The Chamber of Secrets has been opened, enemies of the Heir beware,” Lyra read to herself. “Chamber of Secrets, Chamber of Secrets, where have I heard of that before?”
Hermione tilted her head. “I… I think it was in Hogwarts: A History?”
Lyra shook her head. “No, not that, this was-!” She froze for a second, and took a breath. “Right. Well, the good news is that she’s not dead.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Morning muttered.
Lyra nodded. “Probably because dead cats don’t have emotions, right?”
“Ahh…”
Silver looked at Morning. She, like the rest of their herd, rather suspected that Lyra knew Morning was a Changeling. She’d been making small comments about the unique abilities that Morning had because she was a changeling for the last month or so- but always in private, almost like she was trying to keep it from someone else.
She shrugged. “Well, dead cats also don’t have auras, and hers is stable.” Then she took a deep breath, turned down the passage away from them, and yelled. “DUMBLEDORE!”
“That was loud,” Harry muttered.
“How’d you yell that loud?” Silver asked.
“Amplification spell.” She pointed at the words. “The old Plan had something about this in it, but Dumbledore assured us over a month ago that he’d verified it wouldn’t happen, and we wouldn’t have to worry about it. He must have missed something, and needs to know immediately.”
“The old Plan?” Harry asked.
She nodded. “He was in the process of throwing it out when we arrived at Hogwarts this year, then we helped him formulate a new one that actually accounts for the differences. And this time, we were able to exclude almost everyone from it- and the only reason you’re on the new plan, Harry, is because you’re the one Voldemort will be targeting. There wasn’t supposed to be anything happening this year, though- beyond Lockhart, but he’s supposed to be harmless.”
Silver’s eyebrows rose. Harry, the only one of the herd to have had classes directly with the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, had a very, very negative opinion of the man, who had apparently endangered his very first class by unleashing a bunch of cornish pixies on them with practically no warning.
“Harmless, yeah,” Harry muttered doubtfully.
Lyra grinned. “I did say ‘supposed to be’.”
Hermione only nodded.
Filch was the first staff member to show up, though. “What’s going on?” he demanded. Then he froze. “My Cat! What has-!” He rounded on Harry, for some reason. “What have you done to Mrs. Norris?”
“It wasn’t him,” Lyra stated flatly.
He ignored her. “You’ve killed her! I’ll kill you, you-!”
“It wasn’t him,” Lyra repeated. “And she’s not dead.”
Filch ignored her- but Dumbledore arrived right at that moment, with Snape and Lockhart right behind him. “Argus,” he began.
Filch stopped accusing right away, looking almost pleadingly up at Dumbledore.
Lyra stepped back from the words, and pointed wordlessly.
Dumbledore stepped closer, and looked at it. “... Huh. I must have been wrong.” He looked at Lyra. “Tonight, then?”
Lyra nodded. “We’ll be there.”
Dumbledore stepped closer, and unhooked Mrs. Norris’ tail from the torch bracket.
“My office is nearest,” Lockhart suggested. “Just upstairs.”
“Thank you, Gilderoy,” Dumbledore said, and started walking. Both teachers and Filch all followed right behind him. Next went Lyra, then Harry, Silver, and Morning.
Hermione almost followed, but paused suddenly. “I’ll meet you at his office,” she muttered. “I need to use the bathroom.” Then she headed in the other direction.
Silver had to wonder if she was avoiding Lockhart’s office or something- the nearest available bathroom wasn’t in the opposite direction.
It wasn’t a very long walk. Hardly a couple minutes had passed before they were filing into Lockhart’s office.
Silver had a mere moment to notice the various Lockharts in his pictures- they practically wallpapered the room- dashing out of view, their hair in rollers, before her attention was drawn to Lyra. Lyra had paused at the door to let them pass- and then blocked Morning from entering.
She looked back at Lyra, and opened her mouth to speak- but Lyra put a finger very briefly to her lips.
She waited about a second, before Lyra spoke, quietly. “Morning, I need you to meet Hermione on the main staircase. She’s on her way to the Hospital Wing with an unconscious Ginny.”
Morning blinked. “Got it.” She dashed away.
“You needed her to…?” Silver asked quietly.
Lyra briefly touched her lips with a finger again.
“... Okay.” She turned to watch what was going on in the office.
Dumbledore laid Mrs. Norris on the desk and began to examine her, Filch watching anxiously. Lockhart started pacing back and forth behind Dumbledore, spouting off information about some curse that he thought had killed her, and how he could have saved her if he had been present.
Silver noticed when Twilight, Bonbon, and Moondancer all entered the room, about thirty seconds later.
Finally, while Lockhart was reciting a list of murders he’d prevented- he was certainly not helping the situation- Dumbledore spoke. “She’s not dead,” he announced.
Lockhart stopped talking at once.
“Not dead?” Filch asked. “Then why is she all…?”
“She has been petrified,” Dumbledore informed him.
“Petrified, huh?” Twilight asked, putting a finger to her chin. “Interesting word to use. Looks to me like she was being killed slowly, but her magic was able to protect her by putting her into stasis- and in so doing, effectively rendered her immortal for the duration.”
Moondancer nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m seeing too. But seeing as we’ve never explored the term ‘petrify’ in this world’s wizarding literature…”
“True,” Twilight nodded. “We could well be talking about the same thing.” She looked up at Dumbledore. “I have to admit, I’m curious how you would go about treating her?”
Dumbledore smiled softly. “All she needs is some mandrake restorative draft, and she’ll be back to normal in no time.”
“Oh, I could whip up a mandrake restorative draft in my sleep,” Lockhart intoned. “Must have done it a hundred times by now.”
“Excuse me,” Snape interrupted. “I believe I am the potions master at this school.”
“Wow. I’m going to ask if I can get a sample of that draft for magical examination, then- we usually treat it by letting them heal themselves, and a potion would make it a lot faster.”
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. “How long would that take?”
She shrugged. “About a thousand years.”
“A thousand years!?!” Filch exclaimed.
“Down to, oh, how long, with that draft?”
“About a minute,” Snape answered.
Dumbledore nodded. “It’s going to be a few months, though, before we have any mandrakes available. To our luck, Professor Sprout managed to procure some this year- I understand they should be ready in the spring.”
“Alright then,” Bonbon muttered. “I suppose the only questions left would be who, and how.”
Filch pointed at Harry. “Ask him! He did it!”
Bonbon looked at Harry, then at Lyra, who was shaking her head.
“He read my-!” Filch continued. “He knows I’m a- that I’m a- a squib!”
Silver blinked. That would tend to explain a lot.
Lyra blinked, looked at Filch, Harry, Filch again, and finally at Twilight. “What’s a squib?”
Twilight shrugged. “I was about to ask you that.” She looked at Moondancer.
Moondancer shook her head. “Don’t think I’ve ever read or heard that word before.”
Silver spoke. “Simply put… Simply put, a squib is a muggle born from wizards. It’s… It’s more complicated than that, but…”
Lyra tilted her head. “Wait. So, when Neville was telling us at breakfast early last year that his family wasn’t sure if he’d be magical enough to come…”
Silver nodded. “They were worried he might be a squib, but he’s not. Squibs have magical awareness, but are unable to use magic themselves.”
“Huh,” Lyra muttered. “Well, once I get the Papa Tango finished- I’m currently trying to figure out why it didn’t seem to work on Ginny- I’m planning on making something to allow muggles to be made into wizards. I’ll have to see if I can’t make it compatible with squibs too, won’t I?”
“Or, you know,” Twilight muttered, “Law Breaker.”
Lyra blinked. “True.”
The room was silent for several seconds.
“He did it!” Filch barked into the silence, pointing at Harry.
Dumbledore sighed. “Argus… No second-year could have done this. And I know who did do it- it was the same person that did it fifty years ago. The only question is, how.”
“And that’s a very good question,” Moondancer scowled.