//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13:  Chamber Trouble RW 
// Story: The Girl who Didn't Just Live 
// by computerneek 
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“Good morning, Hailey,” Bonbon greeted.
“Mornin’, Bonbon,” Hailey answered; she’d just arrived at the Leaky Cauldron in response to Bonbon’s letter informing her the shopping season had begun, so her presence was needed in the Alley as a management team member.  “So, what’ve we got?”
“Some bloke called Gilderoy Lockhart is taking over Defense Against the Dark Arts,” Bonbon informed her immediately.
“Some bloke, huh?” Hailey mirrored.  “Yet the world seems to think he’s a celebrity.”
She nodded.  “Yup.  And Dumbledore told me outright that he thinks the man’s a fraud.”
She winced.  “Yeah, I can see that.  What’s the booklist look like?”
She held out a list.
“Oof, he’s put all his mainstream books on it.”  She scowled.  “Not a single one of those books contains a second of instruction; they’re storybooks.  Nevermind that they’re all about him doing certain things, and if you don’t count that two of the books happen at the same time as each other, there are forty-three points of conflict between the books.”  She sighed.  “And if you include his non-mainstream works, some of which might actually be useful in Defense Against the Dark Arts, you get even more- though those books- mostly information books like Fantastic Beasts- all agree with each other, and constantly cite sources.”
“Whelp,” Bonbon muttered.  “Does that mean Defense will be about the same this year as last?”
She shrugged.  “I expect it to be, yeah.  That means only those of us that will be attending his classes directly will need any of his books.  For the rest of them…”  She paused.  “I think I’d like to assign An Introduction to Defensive Magic by Hezekiah Pinkusheen for first-years, then-!”
“Pincushion?” Bonbon asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Pinkusheen,” Hailey corrected.  “Yes, it sounds similar, but her book is one of the best I’ve seen when it comes to defensive theory.  Second-years can get Everyday Mischief and the Cessation Thereof by Miranda Goshawk- one of her more mischievous titles, and I think even Lockhart’s students will need our books too.”
Bonbon scribbled both titles down in her notepad.  “And for the upper-year supplementary classes?”
She rubbed her chin.  “Hmm…  Third years can get How To Train Your Garden Gnome by Cressida Dowell, and perhaps I should remind you that they’re also part of the Program.”
She raised an eyebrow as she wrote it down.  “Are you trying to make extra Weasley twins?”
She laughed.  “Nah.  I’ll have the first years focus on basic defensive theory, then second years learn defensive spellwork, and third-years learn about common creatures they might encounter.  Fourth gets One Spell Fits All by Nadia Silvesti, to learn how to apply their repertoire in creative ways, expanding their capabilities with said repertoire.”  She paused.  “We can also note that third-years and up are welcome to pick up all books for earlier years as well, and I will help them to ‘catch up’ with anything they didn’t know already- almost like remedial classes.”  She rubbed her chin.  “Hmm, those might need special timeslots.”
“What about the second-years?”
She shrugged.  “Most of my instruction last year came from Hezekiah’s wonderful book, and Madam Pince told me her five copies spent a cumulative two weeks in the library last year; it won’t take long at all to make sure everyone’s at the same point our current first years will be at the beginning of their second year.”  She paused.  “Fifth-years get Situational Defense Theory:  How Far is Too Far? By Adalbert Waffling, and in that class, we’ll be focusing on managing danger and the ethics of defense- and hopefully, anyone that goes through there will not be dead weight- literally or figuratively- in the event of a crisis.  Though yes, it might be advisable for our second-years to get Hezekiah’s book as well, though I’m not sure that there’s enough in Diagon Alley for that.”
“You’ve got everything planned out,” she observed.  “And I have to say, that’s more than I’m told the seventh years are learning so far.”
“Not surprised, what with one inadequate teacher after another,” Hailey shrugged.  “Sixth years get Self-Sustaining Spells in a Seashell by Wendelin Werdwave.  Fun fact, Wendelin is actually a direct descendent of Wendelin the Weird, a fourteenth-century witch that allowed herself to be burned in the Witch Hunts no less than forty-seven times.  One of the interim ancestors lived by the sea, and made a living selling seashell necklaces to bring the sound of the sea with people that went inland.  They were considered good-luck charms, even if you weren’t going inland.”  She sighed.  “Too bad you can’t find them today.”
“And…  what will our NEWT students be learning from her?”
“Warding and enchantments,” she answered, “with a focus on building and dismantling wards, since Arithmancy and Runes focus on object enchantment.  Sixth-year Defense students will also be learning the basics of Cursebreaking, which otherwise isn’t taught at Hogwarts- and hasn’t been for decades.”
“That brother of Ginny’s must be pretty impressive then.”
“Yup.  I’m told he was self-taught, and even then only barely managed to clear the bar to become a Cursebreaker.  Now, a couple short years later, he’s one of the best there is- really quite amazing for someone that’s only twenty one years old.”
She snorted.  “And so many purebloods still think the Weasleys suck,” Bonbon sighed.  “They haven’t a clue what they’re missing out on.  So what do the top-level students study?”
“They get Spellweavers:  Fine-Tuning Your Wand by Constance Featherwick.  They’ll be learning cast chaining, multicasting, and minicasting, techniques that all allow you to cast spells faster and more effectively.”  She let out a soft sigh.  “I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not very good at any of the above just yet.  Cast chaining is about reducing the gap between spell casts; multicasting casts spells simultaneous to one another, using whole or part of a spell’s wand motion as a whole or part of another spell’s wand motion; and minicasting is about making those wand motions smaller and smaller, and thence faster, without losing effectiveness.  As silent incantations can be basically instant and are expected of all NEWT students in all classes, that’ll enable them to perform what’s called ‘flash-casting’, where the entire cast, start to finish, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.”
“Alright,” Bonbon nodded, tugging the page free from her notepad and passing it to Hailey, who inspected it calmly.  “Take that to Flourish and Blotts, then- and do you have your shopping list yet?”
“Not yet, no.  How many first-years this year?”
“Two thousand three hundred and forty-five,” Bonbon answered promptly.  “Are you ready to help hunt for instructors?  I estimate we’ll need a total of two thousand six hundred or so.”
“Yup,” Hailey nodded.  “How long until the first few shoppers?”
“First two are already in the Alley,” Bonbon informed her.  “Both are half-flood first-years with only one magical parent, and they know we’ll have a little discrepancy when it comes to the books.”
“Speaking of…  shall I just pick up a hundred and twenty copies of each of the Lockhart-prescribed books on the Program’s dime, and have them loaned out to those of our Instructors that attend his classes?”
“And the upper years?” Bonbon asked, raising an eyebrow.
She shrugged.  “Every single student fourth year and above will be attending his classes,” she informed her.  “As such, they’ll need those books, and we can’t easily justify buying them for them.  For the first three, they’re only needed by our Instructors, so we can use Program-owned books.”
“Fair.”





“Good morning, Ginny.”
Ginny looked up at the sudden greeting, then abandoned her shelter behind her mother in an instant, running straight to Hailey to hug her.  “Hailey!” she greeted.  Had anyone ever told her during her past life that she would reincarnate into someone that would do something like that, she probably would have tortured them for even thinking about it- but now, she really didn’t care.  Hailey still felt oddly safe- and it didn’t exactly hurt that she now had a fair amount of working, Astrium-based machinery back in her bedroom.
She found it rather weird that she, an upstanding, pure-blooded Witch, would enjoy creating and experimenting with what was, for all intents and purposes, muggle technology quite so much.  She’d even built a magic-based matter transmutation engine and an ‘Astrium Forge’ and started shuttling dirt in from outside via psionic teleportation, which meant she was gaining Astrium rather faster than she had before.
It was strange…  yet, when she thought about it objectively, it probably wasn’t as strange as her father’s obsession with enchanting actual muggle technology into oblivion.
So she made sure to design everything she made with Astrium to be unenchantable- an interesting technique involving trace amounts of Luminous Astrium (which took insane amounts of energy to make, so building a bigger generator had been a top priority) and a special, anti-enchantment enchantment her Seed had taught her.
Hailey chuckled.  “Always so energetic, huh?” she smiled.  “Might be a problem if you keep doing that every time you see me at Hogwarts.  Speaking of, I’m fairly sure you’re at least as qualified to teach as any other first-year, so which subject do you want?”
She blinked then pulled back.  “Say what?”
She smiled.  “How would you like to be a Student Instructor?”
“Uh…”  She trailed off, blushing faintly.  “I might be a bit shy for that.”
Hailey laughed.  “Oh, after some of the colorheads we turned into stellar teachers last year, that won’t be a problem at all.  So, interested?”
She sighed.  “Yeah,” she muttered.  “Probably help with the whole shy thing, too.  You wouldn’t believe how embarrassing that is.”  She paused.  “How about…  Defense?”
Hailey chuckled, reaching over to tug a packet of papers from a bag sitting on the chair next to her; she’d been people-watching from Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor.  She then offered them to Ginny.  “How about this?”
She looked at it…  and baulked.  “A-Are you sure?”
She smiled.  “I doubt there’s anyone better qualified in the entire year,” she informed her.  “Come to think of it, have you been to Flourish and Blotts yet, by any chance?”
“Not yet,” Ginny answered, and sighed.  “It’s going to be expensive, though- five sets of Lockhart books.  Those things aren’t cheap.”
“Good thing you and Ron don’t need any, isn’t it?” Hailey smiled.
She looked up.  “Say what?”
She shrugged.  “I’ve read those books, and Dumbledore told us he thinks he’s a fraud.  So, no first, second, or third year student needs a copy of any of his books.”
“What?  But don’t the Instructors still have to go to his classes?”
She smiled.  “Yep.  And I’ve already purchased all one hundred and twenty copies of each of those books that said Instructors will need, to be loaned out by the Student Instructor Program rather than purchased by a little over thirty times as many students as will actually need them.”  She chuckled softly.  “Of course, we’ve also assigned our own Defense textbooks this time, since we expect to continue last year’s development of the Program teaching Defense classes all the way up through seventh year, and we’ve made him aware of our assignments.”
“You’re assigning books?” she asked.
She shrugged.  “Dumbledore said Lockhart was a fraud, so what else did he expect us to do?  Live through a year of absolutely dismal Defense instruction?  Nah.  Not long after people came back from the winter holidays, we basically took over the entire subject, and that’s going to continue this year.  Now then.”  She turned to look at the next table over.  “Mind if I get distracted for a couple hours, Bonbon?”
Ginny flinched as Bonbon- the scary girl from Eeylops the year before- looked over from her people-watching and shrugged.  “I don’t see why that’d be a problem.  See anyone good?”
Hailey silently held up the packet she’d offered Ginny, which Ginny had promptly placed on the table.  The packet which declared the position she was being offered to be a Lead Student Instructor, not just a regular one.  Then she tapped Ginny on the top of the head with it, causing her to squeak in protest as she ducked and attempted to grab the offensive document out of the air.
Bonbon laughed.  “Of course,” she chuckled.  “I should have seen that coming, shouldn’t I?  Anyways, go have fun.”
Hailey giggled as Ginny caught the document and lowered it firmly back to the table.  “Then we might as well, mightn’t we?” she told Ginny.
“Might as well what?” Ginny asked.
Hailey chuckled, swiping the document back off the table and into her bag as she rose from her chair.  “Mrs. Weasley?” she asked.
Ginny turned, and barely suppressed a flinch of surprise as she realized her mother had been standing just ten feet behind her for the entire time.
“Yes?” Molly Weasley, Ginny’s mother, asked.
“Is it okay if Ginny does her shopping with me, rather than the rest of the family?” she asked.
Ginny got the sudden funny feeling that Hailey was doing something to…  encourage her mother to agree, but she didn’t have any idea what.  Why hadn’t she noticed that before?  Was it because she was paying more attention to her psionic senses than last time she’d been in Diagon Alley with Hailey, back when she’d met Petunia and found out she was rich?
Speaking of her aunt, Hailey appeared to be alone today, no adults in evidence at all.
“Sure,” Molly stated, then paused.  “You said neither Ron nor Ginny would need Lockhart books?”
“Yep,” Hailey agreed.  “Should save you a few galleons, shouldn’t it?”  She sighed.  “I’m sorry that Fred, George, and Percy will still need sets of those books.  They’re above the third year, so I can’t justify billing it to the Student Instructor Program and loaning them out to the people that’ll actually be in his class.”
“Why won’t the rest need it?”
She shrugged.  “Would you use The Adventures of Marty Higgs, the Mad Muggle as a Charms textbook?”
Molly, Ginny, and a couple of her brothers- primarily the Twins- snorted.  Ginny and the twins snickered as well.
“Absolutely not,” Molly answered.  “That’s a storybook, not a textbook, no matter who wrote it.”
Hailey nodded.  “And that’s why we’re disregarding the assigned Lockhart books:  I’ve read them, and they’re storybooks, not textbooks.  There’s basically nothing in any of them that even could be useful in a Defense class, so obviously Hogwarts’ reputation for getting terrible Defense professors isn’t over yet.”
“Oh, alright,” Molly sighed.  “Well, have fun, you too!  We’ll meet in the Leaky Cauldron tonight?”
“Hmm,” Hailey muttered.  “Are you sure you want to wait that long?  I don’t expect it’d be difficult to send her home by Floo or even Phoebe at the end of the day.”
“...  True,” Molly muttered.  “Well, Ginny, don’t stay out too long, and have fun with your friend!”  She then dragged the boys away, in the direction of Gringotts.
“Uh,” Ginny muttered, when Hailey simply watched them go.  “Aren’t we going to the same place?”
“I doubt that kind of suggestive magic would be enough to maintain the illusion if she saw us in Gringotts,” she informed her.  “We’ll go in while they’re winding through the tunnels.”
“Suggestive magic?” Ginny asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Why else do you think she’d fail to notice that you can’t exactly go shopping with no money?”
She laughed.  “So what’s it going to take?”
“Just don’t draw attention to where the money came from, and she won’t notice.”





“Hey Ginny,” Hailey smiled, rising from her chair as Ginny entered her office.  It was late Friday night, the evening of the second day of term; both Hailey and Ginny had experienced their first Defense Against the Dark Arts classes with Lockhart on Thursday, then today would have included the first one Ginny had taught.
Hailey, meanwhile, had taught three classes of Defense on Thursday, two first-year and one second-year, all three just ten minutes after identical classes of Lockhart’s, and with all the same students.  On Fridays, she taught two, just like Lockhart- second years for Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, then seventh year NEWT students from all four houses, both also ten minutes after the identical, official classes.  The NEWT class only had a few students in it, all aiming to become aurors- and frighteningly, very few of them had even heard of half the things on her syllabus for the earlier years, so she was giving them a crash course through the lower-year books that they’d all brought.  She had a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t actually get to her seventh-year curriculum until much closer to graduation than any of them would like.
“How’s your first week been?” Hailey finished.
Ginny closed the door behind her, then sighed.  “Um…”  She paused, then looked up.  “My first week?” she asked.  “It’s only been two days.”
Hailey shrugged.  “Yet you should’ve had about sixty other Student Instructors report to you earlier today,” she informed her, “simply because it’s the end of the week.”
Ginny blushed.  “Y-Yeah, I did,” she muttered.  “A lot of…”  She sighed.  “Most of them have teaching assignments in the beginning of the week, so they didn’t have much to report.”
Hailey shrugged.  “As expected, really.  How do the rest say they’re doing?”
“Amazingly well,” Ginny answered, then sighed.  “Though of course, I suppose…”  She paused.  “You know my shyness got in the way, don’t you?”
She shrugged again, raising a hand to knock on the wall next to her desk.  “I expect you powered through it with sheer force of will, right?”
Ginny nodded faintly, watching as half of the entire wall of the rectangular room faded into nothing, revealing a comfortably furnished sitting area, six comfortable armchairs set around a circular table that was adorned by a delicate tea set.  She could see the faint stream of steam floating from the spout of the teapot.
Hailey glanced at her, walking around her desk and into that sitting area.  “C’mon, have a seat.  Got some really good tea today.”
She snorted and jogged over, claiming an armchair next to the one Hailey took.  “How’s that wall work?” she asked.
“Abused my Royal powers,” Hailey answered quickly.  “This is actually an unused classroom that we’ve sectioned with these false walls.  There’s nine compartments per such classroom; the HSIs get all nine as part of their ‘office’.  As an LSI, you’ll have three of them composing your office, with the office of another LSI in the same year and subject across the ‘hall’ from yours.  You’ll be able to temporarily deactivate the intervening walls on either side of your office to access a sitting area like this one- the tea is automagically supplied, by the way- and on the other side, just like the opposite side here in my office, you’ll have a shielded activities section, for if you need to demonstrate a spell or tutor someone.  The regular Student Instructors don’t have any extra spaces, which lets us cram six offices into a single classroom- a fairly important compression, since we only have a total of twice as many classrooms in the Castle as classes, so we can’t afford to give everyone even half-classroom offices like yours, let alone full-classroom offices like the HSIs.”
“Ahh,” she nodded, then sipped the tea Hailey had poured her while she spoke.  “Oh, you’re right, that is good tea.”  She leaned back in her chair.  “So, since I’ve got basically nothing to report right now beyond ‘people are figuring out what is what’, how about…”  She paused.  “Lockhart.  He was…  well.  When I went into his class, I was a bit nervous, I’ll be the first to admit- but by five minutes in, I guess I’d already subconsciously dismissed him as a nobody.  Quizzed us on himself for the first half-hour, then started…  goofing off at the front of the class.”
Hailey chuckled.  “Better than happened in his very first class, the second-year class that just happened to include me,” she observed.  “Well, for certain definitions of ‘better’.  Quizzed us on himself, gave me ten points for perfect score, then unleashed a cage of Cornish Pixies on the class.  That was particularly fun; I mean, you should have seen the lecture Lockhart got from Morning Sun for that.”
Ginny chuckled- but a moment later, a knock sounded on Hailey’s office door.
Hailey leaned back so she could see it around the false wall.  “Enter,” she called.
Ginny couldn’t see the door directly, but she heard it open, and close, and caught a glimpse of someone standing near it.
“Ahh, speak of the devil,” Hailey smiled.  “Come on over, Morning.  We were just discussing that class of Lockhart’s.”
Then, right as the new girl appeared around the corner, Ginny also recognized her psionic signature.
This was the girl she’d crossed paths with in Ollivanders’ a little over a year before, when she’d gotten her wand.
The girl that could definitely tell that she wasn’t normal.
“Good evening, Hailey,” the girl, Morning Sun, greeted.  “Nothing all that amusing to report- or at least, not that you haven’t seen already.  Few classes done, nobody had any trouble, readings assigned.”  She shrugged.  “Typical Welcome Week, really.”  She paused.  “Do you mind?”  She gestured towards the seat on Hailey’s other side.
“No problem,” Hailey smiled, pouring a third cup of tea.  “In Ginny’s class, Lockhart quizzed the class on himself then…”  She paused, looking at Ginny.  “You said he ‘goofed off’ for the rest?”
She nodded, carefully suppressing her nervousness.  “Y-Yeah,” she said, stuttering slightly despite her effort, and unable to suppress a brief glance towards Morning and her badge, which declared her the Lead Student Instructor for Defense Against the Dark Arts for Second-Year Ravenclaws.  “He acted out a quick scene from Travels with Trolls.”
“Don’t worry,” Morning smiled kindly, “I don’t bite.”
Hailey chuckled.  “Of course you don’t.  But just as you can sense her…  uniqueness, so can she yours.”
Morning nodded.  “I expected as much.  Don’t worry, I won’t be telling anyone.”  She laughed.  “I mean, I’m probably in more danger than you are if people find out, and I’m the second-in-command of the Royal Guard!”
Ginny let out a chuckle in spite of herself.
Hailey didn’t restrain her chuckle.  “Yup, definitely more danger.  Ginny would probably be revered as a Royal- something neither of us wants- rather than threatened, though.”
Morning shrugged.  “Eh,” she muttered, waving it off.  “At least Lockhart didn’t try to unleash Cornish Pixies on you, did he?”
Ginny blinked, and shook her head.  “N-No, he didn’t,” she answered.  “What happened?”
“Me and Morning stunned all the pixies into paperweights, then while most of the class swept them up to return them to their cage, Morning here went after Lockhart.  If the classrooms weren’t soundproof, Hagrid might have heard it.”
Morning blushed.  “I’m not sure it was that loud,” she complained.  “But yes, I’m not about to stand for the careless endangerment of the students in his care.”  She shrugged.  “I didn’t make Second in Command for nothing.”
“No, you didn’t,” Hailey agreed.  “I still remember when you received that Special Award for Services to the School about two hours after you first arrived at the school.”
Morning shook her head.  “Only doing my job.”
“Never said you weren’t,” Hailey smiled, then turned to Ginny.  “By the way, in his acting, how do you think he did?”
“He’s a terrible actor,” she answered promptly, an odd calm having settled over her while the other two girls talked.  “And to top it off, he doesn’t have nearly the coordination necessary to cast any of the spells he ‘used’.”
“Not surprised,” Hailey mused, sipping her tea.  “Go ahead and try it, Morning,” she added.  “I’ve got a really good one today.”
Morning shrugged.  “Oh, why not,” she smiled and tried it.  “Oh wow, you’re right.  That is good stuff.”
Quite suddenly, a voice that wasn’t any of theirs floated through the ceiling.
“Come…  Come to me.  Let me rip you.  Let me tear you.  Let me kill you.”
Hailey looked up in the direction it had come from.  “What was that?” she asked.
Morning put her tea down.  “I didn’t hear it,” she informed them.
“Parseltongue,” Ginny answered.  “Snake language.  Anyone that can’t speak it won’t have heard it- and Parselmouths, people that can speak it, are really rare, so unless there are some among the colorheads, we’re probably the only two in the Castle.”  She winced when she noticed Morning’s eyebrow raising, even as she felt a sudden, strange undercurrent of trust.  It was weird- though not as weird as when she’d first met Hailey.
Hailey looked at her.  “Alright.  What was that?”
She glanced uncertainly at Morning.
“She’ll keep the secret,” Hailey informed her- but Ginny didn’t miss the command in her voice.  She wasn’t just telling her Morning would keep the secret- she was commanding Morning to, with the full confidence that it would be obeyed.
“That sounded like the Monster of Slytherin from the Chamber of Secrets,” she informed Hailey.  “It’s a Basilisk- and merely opening the Chamber won’t unleash it.  Neither will descending into said Chamber- it has to be deliberate, and it can’t get out on its own.”
“Basilisk?” Morning asked.
“King of Snakes,” Hailey recited instantly.  “Killed by the crowing of a rooster, but it has a lethal gaze.  If you see it indirectly, such as through a mirror or window, it’ll only petrify you, for which the only cure is a Mandrake draft, which has a waiting list some fifty years long.”
“Mandrakes are really rare and hard to cultivate, on top of being nearly impossible to get even if you do find them,” Ginny added.  “Their lethal screams don’t exactly help.”
“Professor Sprout had her second-year class repotting some new mandrakes in Greenhouse Three yesterday,” Hailey continued.  “It’s going to take much of the year for them to be ready, but nobody will have to wait fifty years to resume their schooling.”
“Do you know if it was unleashed before?” Morning asked suddenly.
“It was,” Ginny answered immediately- unsure if it was Hailey’s assurance or that strange undercurrent of trust that made her do so.  Hailey nodded when she met her eyes, so she took a deep breath.  “When I was at Hogwarts in my last life, during my fifth year.  About fifty years ago.”  She paused to remember.  “There were a few attacks where people got petrified, then Myrtle Warren- also known, nowadays at least, as Moaning Myrtle- was killed in the final attack.”  She sighed.  “The entrance to the Chamber is in her bathroom, across from her stall- but they never caught the culprit.  Hagrid was accused of it and expelled, but nobody believed it was actually him.  Only the headmaster, an old fool by the name of Armando Dippet, and the boy that ‘caught’ him, the fifth-year prefect Tom Riddle…  who was the true culprit.”
“Riddle?” Hailey asked.
“That’d have to be Voldemort,” Morning nodded.  “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
Hailey sighed.  “Me neither.”
“Isn’t Voldemort dead?” Ginny asked.
Morning raised an eyebrow.  “I wish.  Dumbledore successfully placed a tracer on a phantom, whose identity was confirmed to be Lord Voldemort, at the end of last year as it raced off into the distance.  It’s in an Albanian forest right now, but nobody is exactly sure why he remained as a phantom- nor why he was able to possess Professor Quirrell as such.”
Ginny blinked.  “Uh…  Okay.”  She paused.  “There’s only one way I know of to assure that a wizard can stick around as a phantom like that,” she informed them, “and that’s something called a ‘horcrux’.”
“Horcrux?” Morning asked.
“Powerful dark magic object,” Hailey answered.  “Basically, a Dark wizard uses an act of cold-blooded murder to fracture his soul, then uses a bunch of dark magic to attach the generated fragment to an object before it can fuse back into the rest of his soul.  If the right- also Dark- enchantments are placed on that horcrux, it is theoretically capable of possessing any wizard that handles it- and Voldemort was known to be a parselmouth, so if one of his horcruxes is in the school, anyone it possesses will also be a parselmouth for the duration of the possession.”  She scowled.  “The possessed would likely not remember anything that happened while they were possessed, so it could be using them to access the Chamber of Secrets and summon the monster.”
There was a brief pause.
“If we assume that’s the case, can we predict such a Horcrux’ behavior?” Morning asked, looking at Ginny.
Ginny winced; Morning had obviously figured out her past identity already, or at least guessed it.  “If it is, the first time is probably more to confirm that the Basilisk is still alive than anything else.  If that’s the case, nobody should get hurt.  If it’s not…”  She sighed.  “It probably is.  There’s a pretty big riddle buried deep in the Chamber that you have to solve to be able to summon the Basilisk, even from inside the Chamber itself- and when I visited the chamber yesterday, there were no signs that anyone had been down there at all over the last fifty years.”
“How hard is that riddle?” Morning asked.
“Very hard,” Ginny answered.  “I solved it in my past life- I never was one to turn down a challenge- but it took almost a whole month.”
She raised an eyebrow.  “You know how to summon the Monster?” she asked.
Ginny nodded, wondering if she should have revealed that tidbit.
“Would destroying the monster be effective?”
She shook her head.  “There’s a spell of some sort down there, presumably set by Salazar Slytherin, that will spawn a new one within hours of the death of the last one.  Unless someone can break that curse, killing the monster is pointless- and breaking the curse would be insanely dangerous, because of the monster’s presence and constant replacement.”
“Is there a bottleneck we can utilize?”
She shook her head.  “It can be summoned with a poem sung in parseltongue at any sink in the Castle.”
“Do you know what or where the Horcrux might be, or might look like?”
She shook her head.  “Voldemort made several of them, including a diary, a crown, a locket with a necklace chain, a ring, and a cup.  I rather doubt it’s the cup or the crown, but the other three would be fairly easy to hide- especially the ring, though that one would be hard to acquire without getting hit by a powerful withering curse, and the locket should be submerged in a powerful, slow-acting poison in an Inferi-filled cave a long way from here.”
“What does it take to destroy a Horcrux?”
“The Killing Curse, Fiendfyre, or Basilisk venom,” Hailey answered immediately.  “There’s also a special, three-hour ritual you can conduct on the night of the full moon that will do it without destroying the container.”
Ginny blinked.  “I didn’t know about the ritual,” she observed.
She shrugged.  “It’s a recent discovery.”
Morning rubbed her chin.  “That’s sounding like the best we can do is guess-and-check,” she grumbled, “and I hate guess and check.”
“We should be able to use the process of elimination,” Hailey observed.  “Should make it a lot faster.”
“True,” Morning agreed.  “Though for that, given the size of the student body, we’ll need some way for any one ‘investigator’ to instantly alert the rest whenever they detect the Monster roaming about or find a victim.  Ideas?”
“I imagine a telepathic signal would probably be easiest,” Hailey muttered, then looked up at Ginny.  “Do you think you can do that?”
Ginny rubbed her chin.  “Hmm…  Yes, I should be able to build us a telepathic network, and tie our investigators to it.  Should completely eliminate information travel time- and risk, as said network would also be able to detect attacks against any of its nodes, lethal or not, and sound the alarm on its own.”
“How long would that network last?” Morning asked.
Ginny tilted her head.  “Theoretically indefinitely,” she answered.  “We can remove people from it, but unless we do, it lasts forever.”
Morning rubbed her chin this time.  “Would it be able to detect if one of its nodes was possessed?”
“Absolutely,” she answered instantly.
“How hard would it be to set up a school-wide network like that, and tell people it’s a library lookup system or something, then use that alert function to identify who’s being possessed the next time they get possessed?”
“Ahh…”  She rubbed her chin.  “I’d have to build a network database…”  She paused.  “I don’t have nearly enough Astrium to do that school-wide, and probably won’t for another year or two, but the technical capability is no different from making just a few nodes.”
“Then perhaps we can use it to coordinate our investigation,” Hailey mused.  “Say, we tie our investigators to it rather than the suspects, and anytime there’s an attack, all the investigators examine their surroundings and we try to cross out as many people as possible, and pick more investigators to cross out as much of the remainder as possible on the next attack, and repeat, until we can either connect all the remaining suspects or post investigators to monitor them around the clock.”
Morning scowled.  “We…  could,” she allowed.  “We’ll have to be very careful to make sure we don’t cross out anyone that even might be possessed.  But yeah, that sounds like it might be the best solution available with limited resources.”  She turned to Ginny.  “So, what do you need to set that network up?”
“Time,” she answered promptly, “and not a lot of it.  I’ll need to build some miniaturized communications devices to pass out; I’ve already built a full-size, full-capability one and installed it in myself, so that’ll host the network no problem.”  She paused.  “We won’t be able to eliminate that network vulnerability until I can build a database, which takes a lot more Astrium than a dozen minicoms, and shift the network hosting duty to it.”  She closed her eyes and concentrated, holding out her hand, so a stream of blue light flowed out from it and started to gather into a blue crystal.
“What’s that?” Morning asked.
“Astrium,” she answered promptly.  “I don’t have much of it with me right now, but it should be enough to set up the network between us three and possibly a couple more, before I get back down to the Chamber of Secrets, where I have an Astrium production operation churning away, to get more.”  She scowled.  “The hard part will be that I can only carry so much up from the Chamber at once, and production capacity will quickly exceed the amount I can transport discreetly.”
“So Phoebe wouldn’t…?” Hailey began.
She blushed.  “Fair.”
Morning raised an eyebrow.  “Is there a way to automatically transport it up to some location in the Castle?”
“Yes,” she answered, while a couple other colors of light- a much lighter blue making a small, bizarrely transparent crystal and a wave of dark, black light- it looked as strange as it sounded- to produce a small black crystal.  “I can liquefy it in raw form and pump it up somewhere, then use that same conduit for the energy necessary for type conversions.”
She turned to Hailey.  “How difficult would it be to get a dedicated Astrium Room up here, that investigation management could fetch comms from to assign new investigators without having to go through Ginevra?”
“Ginny,” Hailey corrected almost automatically.  “And I’m not sure, I’d have to talk to Bonbon.  Shouldn’t be an issue, though, there’s a lot of unused classrooms even after we made the offices.”  She paused.  “Speaking of, since our investigators don’t actually have to be confirmed unpossessed thanks to the network fault thing, I’d like to induct her.”
Morning tilted her head.  “Hmm, that’s an assumption I’d rather not make,” she scowled.  “Is there a way to detect parselmouths throughout the school, just in case the Horcrux found a Parselmouth we don’t know about, and taught or convinced them to do it of their own free will?”
Hailey and Ginny looked at each other, even as the crystals in Ginny’s hands flowed together, almost like liquids, to form into a series of six-inch metal rods about as big around as the tip of her wand.  “Uh, no,” Ginny muttered, looking back at Morning.  “But if we can’t trust Bonbon, who can we trust?”
“That very question has resulted in more criminals being trusted than I like to think about,” Morning informed her.  “For the moment, we three are the only trustworthy ones, until and unless we can verify otherwise.”  She glanced at Hailey.  “Go ahead and still ask about the Astrium Room, but make it sound like Ginny wants to build that library access system we discussed earlier as its cover story, and needs somewhere to set up the production infrastructure.  Do not mention the Chamber of Secrets at all.  I assume she knows about Ginny’s powers?”
She nodded.  “And mine, not that anyone knows my limits.”  She scowled.  “Even I don’t.”
“Good.”  She turned to Ginny.  “I’m going to ask you to spend a bit of spare Astrium on making it look like all of your production infrastructure is in that Astrium room- and is there a way to set it up so that only existing investigators- not just people that’ve received that minicom thing- can retrieve more?”
“Yes,” she answered, holding a handful of minicoms in one hand as she rubbed her chin with the other, the leftover Luminous and Nocturnic Astrium- the transparent and black crystals- stored safely back inside her body.  “We’d probably only want to hide some of them, if we’re going to be making it a library database system.”
“Though a library database would still rely on building a database, wouldn’t it?” Hailey mused, tilting her head.  “We could probably tell her it’s a telepathic network to help the Management Team function more smoothly, which we could anticipate eventually expanding to serve a library database function.”
“Good idea,” Morning nodded.  “I imagine the management team would probably benefit a lot from being able to notify each other of when things happen and so on.”  She turned to Hailey.  “Do you think Bonbon will want to expand it to the rest of the Program as well?”
She nodded.  “She’ll almost certainly want to expand the network first to LSIs, then to Student Instructors, and finally to the rest of the student body, in order.  It’ll make managing things like Potions mishaps a lot smoother and easier.”
“Even if it’ll function as, essentially, mental mail,” Ginny muttered.  “No delay, but only concepts- not even words, those are automatically applied by the recipient’s mind.”  She scowled.  “For…  certain, highly-trusted people, like you, Hailey, I’m okay with going for the full-size version that’s mounted in my head, called an Obelisk, and don’t ask me why because I don’t know either.  That installation will involve the very time-consuming installation of an Astrium Control Module to allow it to interface properly- and the Obelisks are similarly more capable.  That said, unlike the minicoms, any obelisk connections will know who I am…  and be able to control exactly who they’re sending stuff to.  Mesh network between them, basically, rather than hub-and-node.”
“More capable?”
She winced.  “Voice, information, understanding- anything you can perceive, you can send through a connection between two Obelisks, and it will be delivered in perfect clarity.  You could even stream your senses through it.”  She paused.  “Though, unlike the minicoms, the Obelisks can’t be configured to self-disable during exam times, and really can’t be removed from the network.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I’ll leave that up to you, then,” Morning informed Ginny.  “I’ll just ask that you don’t give one to anyone that you don’t know, without a doubt, is trustworthy, including on the Chamber business.”  Pause.  “Which at the moment, does not include anyone that isn’t in this room.”  She sighed.  “When summoning the Monster…  does our Culprit have to stay with the Monster, or no?”
“No,” Ginny answered.  “They have to stand in front of the sink they want to summon it from, though- and anyone that happens to be in the room will know that they’re speaking parseltongue.  It sounds like…”  She paused to switch languages.  “Something something.”
“Something very somethingy,” Morning immediately answered, in parseltongue, before switching to English.  “By the nature of what I am, I automatically can speak every language that anything magical can or ever has been able to,” she informed her.  “I do not, however, have the apparent ability to hear through walls that you parselmouths seem to.”
“And also by the nature of what you are, you should be immune to the deadly aspect of the Basilisk’s gaze,” Hailey informed her.  “I’m not so sure about the petrification one, but you should be able to at least resist that as well.”  She sighed.  “And by the nature of what I am, I’m immune to both aspects of its gaze and its venom.”
“I know a potion that will render a witch or wizard immune to the gaze for about three hours,” Ginny informed them.  “It’ll take about a month to brew, but it only requires common ingredients.  Shall I brew a small ocean of it?”
Morning snorted.  “Shouldn’t need that much, but definitely brew a good amount.  We’ll want every investigator to have some on-hand at all times, so they can protect themselves against it if they have reason to believe it’s approaching them, or even just in case when we sound the alarm, if they can do so discreetly.”  She paused.  “And with that in mind, we’ll want a decent reserve, in case the Basilisk is summoned several times in quick succession.  I’d imagine we want each investigator to have, what, two or more doses, separately bottled, on hand at all times?”
Ginny nodded.  “Sounds good to me.  It would let them protect themselves for longer…  or protect someone else near them.”  She placed the minicoms in the center of the table like a handful of pencils.  “Here’s all the minicoms I can make with the Astrium I have on hand,” she informed them.  “They’re configured to auto-install in anyone that touches them and doesn’t already have one, and when they do, they’ll automatically search for a name and send it to me so I can identify the connection.”
“A name,” Morning repeated.
“A name,” she nodded.  “Specifically, it’s looking for your name in the same place your nameplate does.  It’s meant so I can correctly identify random messages people send, since those messages don’t contain identity bands unless they’re being sent between two Obelisks.”
Hailey reached out to take one, and the moment she touched it, it vanished in a burst of light and she blinked.  “Oh, that’s interesting,” she mused.
Morning watched her for a second, then did the same.  “Creative,” she observed.
Ginny blushed.  Both names had come across exactly as she’d expected, and the script she’d set up in her Seed had automatically assigned the names to the associated minicom IDs.  “If we only do the management team and a couple extra, I should have the Astrium to build a database in about two months.”