Hailey gasped suddenly, looking wildly up at the ceiling while crossing the Entrance Hall. Oliver Wood stared at her odd behavior- but of course, she wasn’t done. She turned to the side, put one hand to her mouth, and yelled. “Bonbon! Parcel!”
Wood looked just in time to see Bonbon yell back. “Six!” Then she vanished into the crowd.
Hailey turned to Wood. “I’ll meet you at the pitch,” she ordered- then turned and vanished into the crowd as well.
Professor McGonagall fairly crashed down the passage, despite being only partly physical. Doors exploded open in showers of sparks on either side of her as she passed, revealing empty classroom after empty classroom.
Then, just as suddenly as the doors were opening, she stopped.
There was a single long, unbroken, sorrowful note from a trumpet sounding throughout the Castle.
Someone had found not the monster, but a victim. Someone had been attacked.
The note ended… and was followed by two quick blasts. A double attack.
She snarled, and vanished on the spot, warping reality to jump directly to the Library, where the trumpet was coming from.
Then she winced; Hailey was there, shielding her eyes with the collapsible trumpet. She must’ve seen.
“Professor McGonagall,” Hailey greeted, without preamble, and held her amputated arm out, towards the floor.
She looked… and sighed.
“We’re going to need to cancel the match, won’t we?” Hailey asked, an unnatural calm in her voice.
McGonagall nodded soberly. “Yes. We’ll be up to Level Three.” She bowed her head and, noticing that Hailey was rather pointedly averting her eyes, warped back out, to make her announcement down at the Quidditch Pitch.
Some part of her, however, had to wonder how Hailey knew she could do that- she’d practically expected it.
Silversong, after Ron had invited her to sit in the stands with him and Hermione, followed Professor McGonagall quietly into the Hospital Wing, half-expecting to see Hailey and Hermione lying on beds.
Fortunately, only one of them was.
“Hermione,” Ron moaned, running forward to look at her.
Silver ran forwards as well… Then, upon reaching Hermione’s side, she paused, and looked at her clenched hand. “There’s something in her hand,” she observed.
Hailey looked up. “Can you get it out?”
“What is it?” McGonagall asked.
Madam Pomfrey looked up from where she was bending over a Ravenclaw- specifically, that prefect, Penelope Clearwater, that Harry and Ron had asked for directions to the Slytherin common room. Before she could say anything, though, Silver had already slid her hand over Hermione’s clenched fist… and used the same to hide the strange blue aura that seemed to follow her new telekinetic powers around. Telekinetic powers which only seemed to function while she was a girl, to boot- probably why she hadn’t discovered them before.
Her telekinesis was able to work the paper out almost effortlessly, before she flattened it on the sheets.
Hailey leaned over Hermione to peer at it, then nodded, and looked up at McGonagall. “She figured it out,” she informed her calmly. “The monster is a basilisk.”
There was an ominous muttering all throughout the class when Silversong entered her Transfiguration class, once again disguised as Draco. Instructor Morning Sun, rather than smiling at the class as usual, was looking grim and almost pained. Instructor Quick Switch was watching her nervously.
Finally, the last student entered, and sat down. Nobody moved, for almost a full minute.
Then Morning heaved a sigh. “You may have heard,” she began. “That there was another attack.”
Everyone nodded; it was sorta hard to miss, what with the big announcements over the weekend and the new rules.
Morning looked up. “Hermione Granger. Penelope Clearwater.” She sighed again. “This attack marks two firsts. First prefect… and first student instructor. No deaths, yet.” She looked around the room. “We have reason to believe the attacks are being perpetrated by the Diary of Tom Riddle, mind-controlling those who read it into opening the Chamber of Secrets. Rest assured that if you have been controlled for this purpose, you are not at fault, and will not be held responsible; if you have any information on the whereabouts of this book, please come forward. Your instructors, your head student instructors, the Professors, even Professor Dumbledore himself.” She looked out across them. “If you find yourself in possession of this book, do not open it.
“Not many know that Tom Riddle is in fact Lord Voldemort, and he left a piece of his mind in that book. I need hardly remind you all just how dangerous Voldemort can be.” She sighed. “If you know someone is in possession of it, please come forward. The diary likely exhibits psychological pressures to keep its possessor- its victim- from coming forward, from resisting it.”
Ginny sat, hugging her knees to her chest, on her bed. Ariel was sitting next to her, in a large, conjured mirror.
The diary sat in front of them.
“What do I do?” Ginny asked blankly. “How do I tell her?”
The Student Instructor Program Management Team was practically prowling the school, and had been giving speeches about the latest attack, and that diary, at every single class, all day long. For two of the three classes she’d had that day, it had been Hailey giving the speech, with a hard note in her voice, a burning inferno in her eyes, and a deadly calm about her person. She was hurt, and hurt badly, Ginny could tell- but she was still fighting, no matter how much it hurt. The speech had been delivered by Bonbon in her third class, a terrifying girl with a calm, no-nonsense tone, no apparent emotions at all, and the glint of chilled steel in her eyes.
Ariel stared at the diary as well, leaning against the cold mirror. “I… I don’t know. Shall we… drop it somewhere? You know, like the first time?”
“But- but what if Hailey-! What if he spills my secrets?”
Ariel tried to hug her, but crashed into the mirror. “If she gets that book, I can promise you she’ll destroy it as quickly and violently as possible, with the covers still closed.”
“But… but how?”
Professor McGonagall looked up at the knock on her office door. “Enter,” she called.
The door opened, and Bonbon entered, carrying a very tall stack of pages that had been interestingly sectioned apart- the weekly report. She would have taken it to Dumbledore- but the Governors had apparently decided to suspend him. At least Hagrid hadn’t been taken; according to Dumbledore, it had been highly amusing to visit Hagrid for that purpose, only to find Bonbon already there… and armed with a newspaper. The girl had read the three page story to Fudge aloud, and cautioned him that because of the article, the otherwise preemptive imprisonment would probably come across as complicit to the general public. As a result, he’d made a different decision. Ever since, the investigators mentioned in the article weren’t just investigators- they were government investigators, though in name only.
Bonbon placed the report on her desk. “This is… most of the weekly report.”
She nodded. “I assume all is going well?”
“As well as it can,” Bonbon nodded.
“Any progress on the Chamber?”
The girl’s mouth quirked in a smile. She didn’t move her hands. “And this is the rest of the report.”
No less than six other students then entered, each pushing a cart stacked at least head-high with pages.
“Oh My,” McGonagall uttered.
“Hailey’s report,” Bonbon finished. She looked at it. “Two hundred ninety-six thousand, four hundred twelve pages,” she said slowly. “And how she had time to write it all, let alone sit in on seventy-three classes, interview twelve hundred eighty four students,” she was speeding up, “and narrow down the Diary’s location to the Gryffindor Girls’ dormitory-!” She cut herself off. “By all rights, there wasn’t enough time in a year for her to do what she did this week. But she did it.”
“You seem… irritated,” McGonagall noted.
Bonbon nodded. “Usually, I’m the one making early deductions, inexplicably narrowing things down. But here? I don’t even know where to start, and she’s already crossed off seventy-eight percent of the school’s population. Individually.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, she can’t go much further than that. She’s still unable to enter the girl’s dormitories herself.”
McGonagall tilted her head. “How did she cross out the other Houses, then? Or their girls?”
Bonbon shrugged. “Her report on that comprises… those five carts.”
Hogwarts Discovers New Goddess of Report Writing!
Silversong stared at the headline of the Sunday edition of the Daily Prophet.
“What?” Goyle asked.
She shoved it at him silently, without using Draco’s despicable voice.
“What the-!?” Goyle began.
Her head snapped up. She’d never heard Goyle say that before. “What- You can understand it?”
“I-!” He paused. “H-Hailey,” he told Silver. “New…” He paused again. “Kill? No…” It looked like hard work. “Ssssssssskill transfffffffffthing. Is hard, but…” Another pause. “Yearning? No…”
“Learning,” Silver automatically corrected.
“Learning, yes,” Goyle nodded.
“... Ahh. And Crabbe?”
“Crabbe too.”
“Pinkie Pie?”
“Gyah! Oh, hi Hailey.”
“I need your help.”
“Wait what? You need my help?”
“Yes. It’s going to start with a spell Hermione invented: The Skill Transfer.”
“Hey Hailey, I got the glowies! Went to the clouds too! No effect in Britain, though. How about you?”
“I’m too busy, Pinkie. It can catch up later.”
McGonagall looked up, and up, and up, at the pages stacked right to the ceiling.
“This is room one out of seven… of Hailey’s report,” Bonbon sighed.