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.
Its at this point, that directing Haily to instead place her report in The Room Of Requirements, means that General L-Space Theory kicks in, and Holly evolves as the thaumaturigally infused information density volume product exceeds the sentience event horizon limit?
TL:DR Make Freinds. Write A Letter.
Wait, what happened to her arm?
How many animals has Hailey killed with that report, how many geese had their wings stripped and how many pots of ink were drained maybe that should be vats.
While I am by in large enjoying this story there are times when things go extremely over the top such as Hailey's report or is Doctor Hooves/ Time Turner involved
11059462 At a guess it was the cursed necklace that was sent to a student during the books
Yeah there's no way she did that without a time turner. There isn't enough time in s year to write all that. Hell, there isn't enough time to read that in a year. Shenanigans are afoot. Very, very powerful shenanigans.
Woah...poor McGonagall
They better get to the bottom of the mystery before Hailey produces a report large enough to create a 1:1 scale Amazon rainforest.
Did Pinkie just become an alicorn?
11059466
11059513
I think Hailey did worse than time manipulation. From the sound of that "skill transfer" spell bit at the end she temporarily became Pinkie Pie 2.0 to do those reports.
11059462
If you remember, as you probably don’t (neither did my editors), she lost her hand when Mr. Weasley crashed the car into Madam Pomfrey’s office at the beginning of the year. It really doesn’t seem to bother her very much, does it?
11059702
Yes, she did. You can bet her friends will go nuts when she returns to Equestria.
11059947
Well, we already know Hermione can compress time…. (When she was going to get Silver for the Dueling Club, she revealed that’s how Pinkie’s instant-run thing works…)
11059466
…. She used muggle tools, not quills, ink pots, and parchment. So…. None? But yes, she undoubtedly burned through quite a bit of ink- even with the efficiency of things like pens!
11059984 11059947 Regardless of how it was pulled off materials used there is a limit to how much anyone person can read and comprehend in a given time. This is when they need a Cliff notes version that can be read in a reasonable amount of time giving the highlights and pointing to the larger report if more details are desired or needed
11059466
If it were ordinary paper, it would have been an entire train of wood chip gondola cars. I figure about a square mile of pulpwood grade trees cut down and sent to the paper mill.
11060133
Yes. Undoubtedly the "cliff's notes" version was given verbally to Bonbon or the like, or maybe placed in the initial report as a "summary" or whatever... Basically, whenever the reports have come into the story before this point, Bonbon has given Dumbledore a quick verbal rundown of the high points, even though she also doesn't have the time to read the whole thing- and we've seen it. Now? The "high points"... are the number of pages in Hailey's report, really. At least, to us.
11060152
It does raise the question of exactly how all that paper got to Hogwarts in the first place, doesn't it?
11059975
What? They haven't grew her hand back yet?
11060573
As I recall, when Dumbledore revealed she’d lost it, he also revealed it wouldn’t be safe for her to take the potion necessary to regrow it for a couple years at least- it was one of those “until she turns” but I forget the age he specified.
11060626
prosthetics still exist and we see 2 examples in canon - moody's enhanced (?) peg leg, and wormtail's 'absolute loyalty' silver hand from voldemort's spell
11061176
I don’t know…. maybe she just never asked for one, maybe they didn’t want to because it might make regrowing harder later? It certainly doesn’t seem to have inconvenienced her that much.
See, everyone else might be impressed, but I'm just stuck wondering how Hailey is so monumentally terrible at report-writing that she wrote hundreds of thousands of pages of surely irrelevant details.
11091694
I love this. How could she possibly have found that many relevant, significant details, or did she just write everything down then analyze her own report to figure out what was important?
11091694
I just realised that with thousands of people at the school that many details is required to make sure no-one is acting strange.