That same morning …
Professor Babbling took the book and saw that the story stayed right in the thick of things. "Chapter Nine: The Writing on the Wall," she read out. "A bit redundant, but it's certainly appropriate."
The trouble kept on coming. Filch showed up and, believing Mrs. Norris was dead, threatened to kill Harry, which was ironically one of his most sympathetic moments, but regardless, Dumbledore swooped in and saved Harry, calling the whole group away from the crowd.
And of course, Lockhart had to come along and stick his nose in it, but everyone ignored him. Perhaps the most surprising part was that Dumbledore couldn't do anything to help Mrs. Norris, though he was able to determine that she wasn't dead.
"'She has been Petrified,' said Dumbledore. ('Ah, I thought so!' said Lockhart.) Were any of you actually paying attention to him?" Babbling asked the other teachers.
"As little as possible," McGonagall said drily, to laughs from the students.
Filch continue to insist the attack was Harry's doing because Harry knew he was a Squib, something that, looking back, struck Harry as a bit odd. "Did Filch know about the Chamber of Secrets story?" he wondered.
"Dunno," said Ron. "Probably. He'd been here long enough. Why?"
"Well, did he see the message and think I was the Heir? Or did he really think I hated Squibs?" He didn't like the idea that people thought he was a blood purist arse like Malfoy, especially before the whole Chamber mess.
"I think he was probably just panicking," Hermione said. "He did think he'd just lost his cat."
Snape, of course, thought it was suspicious that the three of them weren't at the feast and didn't come back afterwards. He seemed to sense Harry was holding back and tried to get him kicked off the Quidditch team for lying, but McGonagall quickly shut him down.
"'I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. The cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick.'"
"I've always thought McGonagall doesn't get enough credit for her sense of humor," said Fred.
"Honestly, I'd think it was more suspicious that Mr. Malfoy was there," Babbling said. "Shouldn't he have been going down to the dungeons with the rest of the Slytherins?"
Harry looked up sharply, gazing across the Great Hall at Malfoy. He was pretty sure the Slytherin hadn't known anything thanks to the Polyjuice caper, so what had he been doing there? Malfoy himself seemed to be getting some funny looks from his house-mates, too.
Snape stopped that line of thought immediately, though: "While unusual, Malfoy's whereabouts were fully accounted for."
"The students are dismissed directly to bed from the feasts," Babbling pointed out.
"There are always some who wander," he replied grudgingly. "However, that is an internal House matter."
"Hm," she said, and kept reading.
"There really wasn't time to get back to the feast anyway," Hermione pointed out.
"And I don't know about you, but I was put off the food for the night," Harry agreed.
Dumbledore couldn't revive Mrs. Norris himself, which suggested it was some pretty powerful dark magic, but he assured Filch that a Mandrake Draught would cure her.
"I was wondering," Babbling said, "did the Mandrakes have to be freshly mature? Surely, we could have bought some before spring."
"They do have to be freshly mature," Professor Sprout replied, "and it is possible to acquire them out of season, but much more difficult and expensive. The Board never would have approved the purchase for a cat, although I'm not sure what the story was after students started being petrified."
"I think," Dumbledore spoke up, "that we will find that some of the interests on the Board were less than benevolent at that time."
Ron let out a cough that sounded like, "Malfoy," although not loudly enough to be heard across the Great Hall. Some people, especially in the D.A., were giving resigned nods. They were all too familiar with the powers that be at Hogwarts being "less than benevolent" this year.
Babbling continued reading as Harry pulled Ron and Hermione into an empty classroom to demand some answers.
"'A Squib is someone who was born into a wizarding family, but hasn't got any magic powers. Kind of the opposite of Muggle-born wizards, but squibs are quite unusual.'"
At that, Hermione narrowed her eyes and got a funny look on her face, tapping her quill against her chin. Then, she scribbled a note at the bottom of her parchment: Muggle population much larger—Squibs more common? She looked up and shrugged when she saw her friends staring at her.
The older students remembered well how tense the castle had been even after that first attack. If anything, Harry's point of view downplayed the situation. Most people weren't exactly scared yet before the first student was attacked (other than Justin Finch-Fletchley), but people had speculated wildly about who had attacked Mrs. Norris, if they really were the Heir of Slytherin, just what the Chamber of Secrets was, and how the attacker had pulled off something even Dumbledore couldn't reverse—doubly so when the writing on the wall proved to be impervious to magical cleaning. The upper years might have even got parts of it right—and only the Slytherins knew was was being said in their own house.
"How did you get the writing off?" asked Tonks.
"Ah, that is an interesting story," Dumbledore explained. "I was prepared to do a detailed magical study of the problem the following summer. I was quite confident I could counter the Heir's magic, given time. However, the Board of Governors decided my time was better spent on normal administration and voted to chip away the damaged rock and re-face that section of wall." On hearing some surprised and somewhat indignant muttering from the students, he added, "I think you would be surprised how much repair work goes on at Hogwarts. Even a magical castle does not stand unblemished for a thousand years without a little help."
Ginny, of course, took the whole matter poorly, especially when Ron tried to reassure her that the attacker would be caught and expelled.
"Sorry, Gin," Ron said sheepishly. "I guess that didn't help very much."
"It's okay. You didn't know," she said, shaking out the tension. "And I think I was mostly just confused at that point. I was more worried that someone else would notice something was wrong and think I did it."
Meanwhile, Hermione had done what she did best and gone into full research mode—which unfortunately failed her because the one time she actually needed her copy of Hogwarts, A History, she'd left it at home.
"'The same reason everyone else wants it,' said Hermione, 'to read up on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets.'
"'What's that?" said Harry quickly.
"'That's just it. I can't remember,' said Hermione, biting her lip—"
"You couldn't remember something?" Fred whispered.
"Didn't you memorise your set books first year?" added George.
"I exaggerated!" she hissed.
"Scandalous!"
"Oh, cool it."
Hermione's plan B was to ask Professor Binns, which, surprisingly, worked. In fact, Binns actually managed to act "normal" for a few minutes as he explained the Chamber of Secrets legend. The younger students watched with fascination as Babbling recounted the story he told in the book about how Salazar Slytherin had wanted to exclude muggle-borns from the school and had a falling out with the other three Founders because of it, eventually causing him to leave the school. But legend said that Slytherin built a secret chamber holding a monster that his Heir could one day use to purge the muggle-borns from the school.
Hermione thought it was interesting too, hearing the story again knowing what she knew now. In fact, as Professor Babbling read it, she wrote down another note at the bottom of her parchment: Slytherin thought muggle-borns were 'untrustworthy,' not unworthy or weaker? But a moment later, she crossed out 'unworthy' and wrote a question mark above it when Binns mentioned that word in the story.
"Blimey, I can't believe Binns was ever interesting," said Fred.
"That was really Binns?" said a surprised Natalie McDonald from down the table. "Professor Babbling doesn't sound anything like him the way she's reading it."
"It was him," Hermione said. "It kind of surprised me too."
"How come the date of the founding isn't known?" Colin asked. "Did they lose the records?"
Hermione paused and thought. "You know…I'm not really sure." She made a note of that too, just for future reference.
"Now that was an interesting story."
Professor Babbling paused, and the teachers looked down the table to Professor Bragnam, the new History of Magic teacher, who had stayed nearly silent during most of the reading.
"In all my seven years as a student here, I don't think Professor Binns was ever once that interesting." He sighed and shook his head. "At risk of sounding like that arse Lockhart, it's too bad I wasn't here at the time."
Professor Sprout snorted: "That wouldn't be hard, Professor Bragnam. Anyone would have been better than that git."
"Well, it does sound that way. However, I'm sorry to say Professor Binns was uniquely unqualified for that situation. I would hope that any living teacher would have made an effort to help find the Chamber rather than dismissing it as a myth. Most myths have an element of truth to them, after all."
"Not to mention your experience with magical creatures," Professor Grubbly-Plank pointed out.
"Well, of course, Wilhelmina," he said. "I believe the monster turned out to be a basilisk? I'm not sure I could have worked that out on my own, but I would have at least tried to put the pieces together."
"Hopefully, we won't have any more of these problems, though," Babbling said, and she continued reading. For Ron, the story had only strengthened his impression of Slytherin House: "'Honestly, if the Sorting Hat had tried to put me in Slytherin, I'd've got the train straight back home…'"
Ron looked at Harry awkwardly. "Sorry, mate. That wasn't very nice," he said. "Still, you chose Gryffindor, didn't you?"
"Er, yeah."
Before long, Harry, Ron, and Hermione decided to investigate the scene of the crime, where they discovered scorch marks on the floor ("Did we ever figure out what those were from?" asked Harry) and the spiders trying to escape the castle, which exposed Ron's arachnophobia.
"Oh, bloody hell. I shoulda figured everyone would find out about that," he grumbled. He chanced a furtive look over at the Slytherin table, but he didn't see anyone particularly looking at him at the moment, but there were some laughs when Professor Babbling read about Fred accidentally (presumably) magicking Ron's teddy bear into a giant spider. Ron just shivered.
The trio then noticed that the corridor was near to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and decided to ask her if she'd seen anything, which of course, she hadn't.
"'Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself—'" Babbling stopped, making an uncomfortable face. She looked over at the head teachers: "Maybe this is a bit much? This seems awfully personal."
Snape waved her off. "I hardly think it matter, Bathsheda. "Miss Warren is hardly one to conceal her private affairs."
"Hm. Even so, it seems quite odd for a ghost to wind up in such a state. I wonder if we should try to get her some counselling…"
Meanwhile, their "detective work" was promptly interrupted by Percy, who was indignant that Ron was in a girls' bathroom and snooping around the scene of the crime—and concerned that it would upset Ginny.
Ginny shook her head when she heard that, and Ron gave her a funny look. "I didn't think you'd be expelled," she said. "I was scared Percy was gonna get me in trouble, so I made something up." She lowered her voice to a whisper so Ron, Harry, and Hermione could barely hear her. "That was…sort of Tom's idea."
Harry thought about that, then set his face grimly: "Yeah. I'm not surprised."
When searching for clues failed, the trio turned to idle speculation like the rest of the school, which predictably settled on Malfoy. However, Hermione already had plan to find out for sure—a plan that was "difficult. And dangerous—very dangerous. We'd be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect"—but a plan nonetheless: "'All we'd need would be some Polyjuice Potion.'"
Tonks shouted from the end of the High Table, "Oh, no, they didn't!" All the other teachers and the Ministry representatives stared at her, and after thinking about it for a moment, she said, "What am I saying? It's Harry and his friends. Of course they did. This isn't going to end well, is it?"
Snape shot a disdainful glance at the Gryffindor Table. "Brewing a N.E.W.T.-level potion in their second year without supervision?" he said. "What was your first clue?" Harry noticed some of the Slytherins snickering at that.
"It honestly doesn't come as so much of a surprise, Professor Tonks," Madam Pomfrey explained. "I suspected Polyjuice Potion was involved in certain events later that year."
"You mean when Miss Granger looked like a cat for a month?" said Professor Sinistra in horror.
"Confidentiality forbids me from giving out details," she replied archly.
Hermione covered her face with her hands.
"Well, at least you managed to patch her up," Tonks conceded. "If I told you how many times the DMLE has to people in to St. Mungo's after they get themselves in trouble in ridiculous ways. Still, I'm surprised they went that far that fast. This was still before the first student was attacked, right?"
"It was," said McGonagall. "Those three do get into an inordinate amount of trouble. Poppy, perhaps you should amend your amnesty policy to give further counselling to students who come in with questionable injuries."
"Minerva, my usual practises work perfectly fine except when it comes to Mr. Potter and his friends. Perhaps you should take a more proactive hand in working with them."
"I think," Dumbledore cut in, "that is a matter we can leave for the next staff meeting. Please continue, Bathsheda."
Babbling finished the chapter, making it clear that they really were going for the Polyjuice plan. "'Oh, come on, no teacher's going to fall for that,' said Ron. 'They'd have to be really thick…'" She chuckled. "I think I know where this is going." She handed the book to Professor Trelawney.
That evening, three hours later …
"That was…" began McGonagall.
"Yes," agreed Dumbledore.
"Exceptionally accurate," said Snape. Neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall disagreed with that.
They sat in silence for a few more minutes, digesting what they had just read, and the accuracy of the book's contents. The secret goings on in the Order of the Phoenix, most shockingly that it included printed the location of their headquarters, left little room for doubt.
"How could to author have got through the Fidelius Charm?" McGonagall wondered.
"If the book is from the future, then I can only presume that the Fidelius Charm was lifted before then," Dumbledore replied. "I suspect that if someone not privy to the secret were to read the book now, they could not read those lines, although I admit I do not know if the Fidelius Charm has ever been tested with the mass-printed word."
"And we are certain this is the only copy?" asked Snape.
"I will check again with the Weasley Twins to ensure there is no trouble. However, I am confident that no person outside the Order has seen this book. In any case, this at least confirms that we can rely on the books for future events, for it to show Fideliused secrets. If it were not for Dolores conducting that public reading, we would have continued on the same path as the book would show us."
"And you're confident of You-Know-Who not considering these books as a threat, Severus?" asked McGonagall.
"Without a doubt, Minerva," replied Snape.
"Then we must continue reading," said Dumbledore. "Let us start with Chapter 26 once again—Seen and Unforeseen. That would be right around the time Dolores found these books, I believe. We can finish the chapter now, so that we know what would have happened."
To be continued …