The following day in History of Magic, Professor Binns repeated the legend about the Chamber of Secrets, but went on to dismiss it with a prejudice.
“It’s a myth, a complete absurdity,” he said, waving his translucent arm. “As I told the second years earlier today, the castle has been searched and nobody”not even Dumbledore”has found any sign that a chamber of secrets exists. The charms it would take to conceal such a thing so thoroughly would require an enormous amount of power and skill.”
Binns’ eyes flicked to the side, and I looked in time to see Jacinto lowering his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Neithercut?”
“Could it not be that the professors, past and present, have been looking in the wrong places? There is a lot more to Hogwarts’ grounds than just the castle.”
“You have a valid point,” Binns said, “but the fact remains that no supposed Chamber has ever been found.”
Billy Watson, a short-haired boy who sat near the front of the class, raised his hand and spoke before Binns acknowledged him. “What about the Heir of Slytherin?”
“Slytherin has no living Heir,” Binns said. “The
Founder’s bloodline died out a long time ago. Now if we’ve had enough
diversion, it would do us all good to return to attested facts and leave these
absurd legends lie where they may.”
Staring at the ghostly professor, I silently wondered if he might have a
non-living heir. My mind was throwing possibility after possibility up to be
wrestled around, but my brain kept returning to the smooth-talking American
boy. He seemed so confident”even mocking. “‘Maybe the Professors have been
looking in the wrong places,’” I sneered as the bell rang. “You’d be the one to
ask, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d be the one to ask what?” came a voice from behind me. I started, but turned to find that it was Grant joining me as we left Binns’ classroom, not Jacinto. Their voices were not similar; I was just growing paranoid from my own suspicion. I gave shifty glances to the other Slytherins to keep Grant from his persistent questions, until finally there was enough distance between us and everyone else that Grant and I could talk privately.
“I think it’s Jacinto,” I said breathlessly, too quickly.
Grant blinked as if he hadn’t understood me, then looked around. “I don’t see him, I think he’s already
gone down to lunch.”
“No,” I said tersely. “I think Jacinto has something to do with Ginevra Weasley
acting oddly, and I think he has something to do with the attack on that cat
and the writing.”
Grant stared at me, and then snickered. “You think what?”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re seriously jumping to conclusions,” Grant said. “What could possibly make
you think that? I mean the bloke saved your life.”
I grimaced. I couldn’t deny that”if not my life, Jacinto had certainly saved me
from an array of fractures. But the utter calm he projected, the friendly smile
he put on whenever I passed him in a corridor or caught his eye in the common
room”it felt hollow, false, as if it were a glamour behind which a hideous
beast hid, awaiting its prey.
“I just don’t buy his American Golden Boy routine. It’s bollocks.”
“Of course it’s bollocks,” Grant said. “Everyone in Slytherin puts on a false face, except maybe you. Probably even you, sometimes. That doesn’t mean he’s some sort of killer. What has you so convinced?”
“The night I saw Ginny sneaking around, he was up and
about when I came back into the Common Room. It was late, and he was the only
one in there.”
“Michelle, Jacinto stays up late every night. He barely sleeps.”
I glared. “Well that’s odd, isn’t it? Maybe he has some special power from
being Slytherin’s Heir. He doesn’t need sleep like us mortals.”
“You don’t really believe this, do you?” Grant said. He rubbed his head with a
couple fingers as if trying to massage his brain. “You’re being mad, Michelle.
You’re so terrified because of your heritage that you’re trying to project it
all onto someone who makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“You told me fear was a good thing,” I said.
“But it’s a slippery thing to hold on to, and sooner or
later it has you behaving like an idiot.”
I glared at him. “Why are you so keen on defending him?” Grant had sped up and
I sped up too to match his pace. “What has he done for you”I’m the one whose
life he saved.”
“He’s”he saved your life, and you’re my friend so””
My eyes narrowed. “That’s not it,” I barked.
“Fine,” said Grant, stopping dead. I stopped too. “Here it is: Jacinto is the
only boy in my dorm who doesn’t insult me. I’ve never once heard ‘Freak’ or
‘The Nasty’ from him. He doesn’t rattle on about Blood Purity or laugh about
the failings of Muggles like McFly and Harper, and he doesn’t sit there and nod
along in agreement like that prat Watson. He’s smarter than all of them put
together.”
I stepped back and looked at the floor. “Okay,” I said. “I get that””
“No you don’t,” Grant said. “I know you’ve not had much
of a picnic since you started coming here, but every day for the past eleven
years I’ve had to cope with sisters, parents, practically every bloody person I
meet treating me like I’m less than human. You think people look down on you
for being a Muggleborn?”
“Grant””
“Try having them look down on you for being the big flashing poster boy for why Blood Purity is rubbish.” He held up a finger to his face pointing to his skin, to the sickly whiteness of it. “Try being the one bad hand dealt to a pair of gamblers who are husband and wife and first cousins at the same time, and everyone knowing that’s the case and being too sodding caught up in it to admit the obvious”so dependent on their rotten ideas that they just hate their son instead of changing their minds.”
“Grant, I didn’t know.” I hugged my books closer to my chest and shuddered. Suddenly a lot of things made more sense. “You never told me that your””
“Well it’s not something anyone wants to talk about,” he said, continuing towards the Great Hall. “Least of all me.”
0000
Saturday morning, I wrote Amanda a letter, and mentioned
the book 1984 that I’d seen Jacinto
reading. Just as I put it in its tube, I heard Copi say something from within
my sketchbook. I opened it to her page.
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you going to the Quidditch game?” she asked, innocently.
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want to go to the Quidditch game because I didn’t feel right cheering for my own House, knowing how the team was full of big, stupid thugs who were mostly prejudiced”and worse, good friends with Malfoy ever since he’d bought a Seekership with a set of fancy racing brooms.
“Come on, it’ll be fun!” Copi said. “You can sit with the
Ravenclaws. Maybe Endy will be
there.”
“Oh, that’s just not fair,” I muttered. “You can’t play the Endy card.”
“I can and I did,” Copi said. “Come on, you’ve never
watched a Quidditch match before.”
“Fine, fine,” I said, pushing away from the little writing table in the
dormitory. I put the tube with my letter for Amanda in my jeans pocket and pulled
on a pair of robes with no emblem or colors identifying me as a Slytherin. I
found the Common Room deserted except for Ariana Davis, who was doing homework
on a low green sofa. She glanced up at me, saw who I was, and looked away.
Outside the Common Room I found Grant returning from breakfast, finally, and grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, we’re going to the Quidditch game,” I said.
“What? Michelle I don’t want to””
“We’re going,” I growled.
Grant winced. “Okay, but why the sudden interest in Quidditch? And why do you
need to drag me along?”
I think my face flushed red; I know, at least, that it got extremely hot all of a sudden.
“I wanted to see Endy,” I told him.
“Why do you need me to help you chase boys?” Grant growled as I dragged him up across the covered bridge and around towards the Pitch.
“B’cuz,” I said. “I want emotional support if I make a
fool of myself.”
“And you think I’m the best wizard for that
job?”
I forced myself not to admit that he had a point on that last bit; we reached the stadium soon after and found a couple of seats in the Ravenclaw section. I could see Endymion down near the front, cheering for Gryffindor, and scooted closer to him laterally every time someone got up off the bench I was on. Grant, for his part, ignored me and watched the game. By the time I took my focus off Endy (who obviously didn’t know I was there), it had started to rain. And, I noticed, there was something of a commotion over the match. I studied the whirling brooms and Quidditch balls, trying to discern what was so interesting.
“Do you know what’s happening?” I whispered to Grant.
He frowned. “My eyesight’s not the best, but I think it has something to do with
Potter.”
“No joke! That bludger has gone mad,” said John
Edgecomb’s sister Marietta. “It’s trying to kill him.”
“Why would a bludger do that?” I said dismissively. But I followed Potter’s
movements, and sure enough they were matched almost one-to-one by the little
black ball. Several times, beaters hit the thing away from him, but it turned
in mid air and kept arcing at him again.
“Should we do something?” My question was directed at
Grant, but Marietta answered.
“What do you two care, you’re Slytherins, aren’t you? If Potter’s out of the
game, it’s in the bag for you.” She gasped at a near miss in which Potter was
nearly smashed in the face. “Why are you even sitting here?”
“You know how welcome us Mudbloods are in Slytherin,” I
said sardonically. I didn’t want to give the real reason lest it travel from
Marietta to her brother, who one nearly needed a Crowbar Jinx to separate from
Endy’s side. Then I winced as I felt God’s finger hovering over the Smite
Button, for my lie.
Back on the pitch, Malfoy sat by the Snitch without trying to grab it while Harry stopped dead for a moment and let the bludger hit him in the right arm. I could hear”or at least imagined I could hear”the bone snap from all the way up in the stands. He seemed to half-lunge, half-fall off his broom, holding onto it with his legs only, and reach out for the little winged ball.
Potter had the Snitch.
The Gryffindors”as well as the Ravenclaws and
Hufflepuffs”erupted into a round of cheering, while Grant muttered, “Woo-hoo, a
pointless victory in a pointless game. Three cheers and all
that rot.”
The rest of the Gryffindor team, along with Collin Creevey ”recognizable by his
massive camera”and a few others ran onto the field. The Rogue bludger came in
for another swipe at Harry, but exploded from a spell cast by a girl I assumed
to be Potter’s friend Hermione Granger.
The worst part, though, came moments later, when Captain Vainglory cast a spell
that removed all the bones in Harry’s arm. I stared as his limb flopped around
like a big fleshy piece of toffee, and felt ill. I climbed the stands to the
top and leaned over it as a precaution against my nausea”and then goggled when
I saw someone familiar emerging from a patch of woods”not the Forbidden
Forrest, but a smaller grove north of the Pitch. I couldn’t quite make him out
through the rain, but I instantly suspected who it was.
“Jacinto?” I muttered.
I reached into my pocket and accosted a random Ravenclaw boy. “I’ll give you a galleon for that spyglass,” I told him.
He goggled, and handed me the tiny telescope; I handed him the coin, then ran back up to the top to look through my new spyglass. Sure enough, it was Jacinto, dressed in a pair of work boots and a thick black cloak. I wiped the rain out of my face and exhaled a misty breath.
“What are you doing up there?” I whispered. His words from just days before
came to my mind: What if they’re just
looking in the wrong place?
0000
As the students began filing out of the stadium after the
match was over, I pulled Grant aside.
“I saw Jacinto,” I said.
“Saw him?” Grant eyed me, puzzled. “Where?”
I pointed at the strip of forest along the northern wall. “He was coming from
that way. Remember what he said the other day about the Hogwarts grounds being
more than just the castle? Maybe it’s hidden in those woods.”
“What’s hidden in those woods?”
“The Chamber of Secrets!” I said, glaring at him. “Come on, let’s find out.”
“You’re still on this?” He let out a disgusted sigh. “Fine, I’ll come with you, but only so I can gloat when we don’t find anything.”
We made our way across the field, the early-afternoon sun trying to poke its rays through the clouds as we went. My trainers were covered in mud by the time we reached the line of trees, but we plunged in anyway. It was misty and damp in the woods, and both of us drew our wands. Animals or monsters, invisible in all the fog and shadows; screeched and skittered about, drawing more adrenaline into my bloodstream. I heard a growl that I was certain wasn’t my stomach. I’d never been into the Forbidden Forest; if it was creepier than this one, I never wanted to.
“It’s kind of cold in here,” Grant said. We’d been in the woods for barely five minutes, but he was only wearing a faded green shirt and a pair of jeans that looked like they’d survived since the 1970s, while I still had on my non-descript robes, now damp, their ends covered in mud, but still defending against the weather well enough.
I held up my wand and whispered, Lumos. The light gave me a slightly better view of the area around us, but fog still limited how far I could see ahead. And this at midday. I shuddered to think of this place at night.
Up ahead, then, I caught a glimpse of something square and manufactured against the cool blanket of fog. I took a few steps closer, Grant following, until I could see that it was a small shack, an old outhouse judging by the crescent moon on the door.
“Should we go back?” Grant said.
“And get a professor?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “A professor for what, we haven’t found anything.”
I raised an eyebrow of my own. “Grant,
I know you said your eyes were bad, but I didn’t think you meant that bad. Do you not see that shack in
front of us?”
Grant turned and squinted, then grunted. “Gah!
M-m-michelle””
“What?” I hissed. His tone was pleading and, I thought, needlessly fearful.
“I saw it,” he puzzled. “But I didn’t notice it. Someone must have put Apathy
on it.”
I stared at the little shack and took a step closer, holding out my wand and
letting the light shine on it. “Apathy?”
“It’s a type of spell used to keep things from being noticed,” Grant said. “There are a lot of different types, like Repello Muggletum.”
“Repello Muggletum?” I parroted. “That’s the laziest
incantation for a spell I’ve ever heard.”
“This is different though, since it worked on me, and I’m not a Muggle.” Grant
stepped forward and touched the door of the shack. There was a loud pop and a
spark of electricity jumped from his fingers to the door, or vice versa, and
Grant jerked his arm back. He swore in Afrikaans and shook his hand.
“And the door has an electrical charge,” I said,
frowning. “Grant, stand back.” I aimed my wand at the
door, remembered Othello Harper’s snearing face, and said, Flipendo. My jinx blasted the door open, tearing the lock off and
sending a static charge between it and the frame. The spark of electricity died
down, and I stepped inside and motioned for Grant to follow. It was a tight
fit, but at least there was no smell”if it had been an outhouse, the pit had
long been filled in and now there was only a small table inside, wooden and
weathered as the rest of the shack. In the middle sat a pewter cauldron in
which bubbled some green concoction that gave off a smell like rancid cabbage.
“Appetizing,” Grant said.
I bent down and looked under the cauldron to see a fire
burning up from a rune that had been carved into the table, and that prompted
me to notice that four other runes, different to the one that created the
flame, yet identical to each other, were carved into the tabletop near the four
corners. I tested my immediate suspicion by trying to tap the cauldron with my
wand, but found its tip hitting an invisible barrier.
“This is advanced stuff,” I said.
“Michelle, this is university-level stuff. There’s not even a wizarding
university in Great Britain.”
“But there is one in America,” I said. “And Jacinto mentioned his mother had
some books left over from her time there.”
Grant sighed again, but this time, he didn’t look as
confident. “Okay,” he said. “All this does look quite bad, but maybe Jacinto
saw someone else coming out of the woods and was investigating. It doesn’t mean
he set this up.”
I nodded. “Fine, but I’m going to tell a professor about this.”
Before we left, Grant used a stick of chewing gum to try and stick the latch
back on the door to the shack to hid the fact we’d
broken in. We would later learn that this didn’t work out too well.
0000
Mostly out of trepidation, I did not immediately go to Snape”Snape being
the obvious choice as both my head of house as well as Jacinto’s. Snape’s own
attitude was partially to blame for that, but I still confess that it was
ultimately my choice. By the time I worked up the courage, we had just got back
to the Common Room after dinner. To my surprise, there was an enormous plate of
cookies sitting on a table in the corner, beneath a banner that read VICTORY
COOKIES”except that victory was
marked out with the word CONSOLATION written underneath it in Literally Magic
Marker. Arianna Davis told me that she had baked them herself assured me they
were safe.
I was surprised to find that one cookie had Mario’s face on it, and I quickly ate it up. This was a mistake; immediately my memory is fuzzy, and I recall only brief snippets of careless conversations that I had, completely unconcerned.
I woke up the next morning with the strangest feeling that I had forgotten something important. And then I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Josie standing over me, her eyes full of fear, but not for herself. “Michelle,” she said softly. “There was another attack. This time it was a student.”
Thus I learned of the petrifaction of Collin Creevey.