Chapter 28

"Teach him to mess with Slytherin in our own dungeon," Crabbe (or Goyle) said.

"Yeah, shows him to mess with us in our own classroom," said Goyle (or Crabbe).

"And for that time on the train," Crabbe (probably) added.

"Yeah, that time on the Hogwarts express," said Goyle.

"Yeah, and for when Potter got the Remembrall from you," Crabbed continued.

"Yeah, for that time he showed you up in flying in front of everyone and got Longbottom's Remembrall," Goyle clarified.

"And then when he got put on the Quidditch team even though first years aren't allowed."

"Yeah, for when the teachers were so impressed at how great his flying was that he became the youngest Seeker in a century," said Goyle.

"In future," Malfoy said coldly, "could you two not list out every time they've shown us up whenever I have a victory?"

"Sorry boss," said Crabbe. "It's just that they have so, you know, many of them."

"Yeah boss," said Goyle. "They have so many, and they're real easy to remember, because everyone always talks about them."

Malfoy sighed. He wondered if the warranty had expired, or if he couldn't just send these two back for a pair of shiny, new goons.

o—o—o—o

"I can't help but feel like there was something I was supposed to do this morning," Milo said as he walked back to the castle from the forest, "but I just can't remember what it was. Can't have been very important."

o—o—o—o

Hermione was forced to admit to herself, however reluctantly, that she was dead bored. The three boys were total morons, but they did make things interesting. She wondered if there was some way she could work her way back into their preposterous plan without looking exceedingly foolish. She applied her towering intellect to the problem, hypothesized various scenarios and predicted their likely outcomes, and thirty seconds later said:

"Nope."

Hermione sighed. It wasn't even that their points were even slightly convincing, it was just that it was sort of fun, in a dark way, to imagine that You-Know-Who really was returning and that he was after the Stone and Snape was a dark wizard...

"But I can't go back on my position," she reminded herself. "Or I'll look like an idiot."

"Yes, but just think," she countered, "what if it is true? What if Snape is trying to get the Stone for You-Know-Who? Shouldn't I be helping put a stop to this?"

"If it is, Dumbledore would know, and he would do something. He's the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of, after all."

"But Dumbledore is just one person," the other side of her argued, "he could get caught by surprise, or called away, or be sleeping, or distracted, or anything."

"But if Dumbledore isn't enough, how could I possibly help? I'm barely twelve."

"Is that what everyone said in the last war?" she questioned herself. "Did they just say, 'I'm only a dressmaker, Dumbledore will take care of it, and in any case my marks in Defence Against the Dark Arts were rubbish,' and nobody did anything?"

"Doing the opposite and going on a witch hunt now will only make things worse," she protested. "There's no knowing where it will end."

"Without a witch hunt, you'll never catch witches."

"I am a witch!"

"You—er, I—know what I mean."

"So I'll just wait until there's proof," she said, "and then I'll help in any way that I can. How is that not reasonable?"

"Just think, Hermione, think. You—er, I—know what the problem is."

She sighed.

"It's that it's Harry and Ron that I'm depending on to find conclusive proof," she said defeatedly.

o—o—o—o

"Professor," Harry asked the ghost of Professor Binns politely, "Ron and I were wondering if you could help us on a little independent research?"

"Research—my help—independent—why, I'd be delighted!" the ghost said. "Would you believe that in all my years of teaching, no student has ever asked me that? What is it you need to know?"

"Nicolas Flamel," Ron said. "He just seemed like such a... a... uh, a dynamic and interesting—"

"—historically significant—" Harry added.

"—yeah, historically significant, dynamic, interesting, historical, erm a, figure." Ron finished lamely.

"And we'd love to hear everything you know about him," Harry said. For some unimaginable reason, most of the library seemed to be checked out already (maybe they were doing some re-organizing?) so they'd resorted to actually asking a professor for help. It seemed to rub Harry the wrong way, somehow, going to an adult, but it was all they could come up with.

Harry diligently tried, he really did, to listen to everything Binns said about Flamel and to stay awake while doing so, but the stone's texture in the floor was just so much more interesting. Ron's eyes developed a glassy look in under five minutes (glassier than usual, that is), and by the third hour Harry wasn't quite sure that he didn't look the at least as bad.

"Well," he said after they'd (finally) left Binns' office, "that was, uh, interesting."

"Was it?" Ron asked. "Glad to hear it."

"I think," Harry said, "that we might need Hermione."

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that, mate," Ron said with a sigh. "Did we learn anything important, though?"

Harry shrugged.

"Flamel's a big, powerful wizard and master alchemist who found out how to create a Philosopher's Stone—turns out, it's not necessarily a unique object, but he only ever made the one, anyway—which can turn lead into gold and create the Elixir of Life. He used to fight Dark Wizards, but decided to retire with his wife way back, and he's been sort of neutral since then. Keeps to himself, mostly."

"So, nothing we didn't already know," Ron said. "Great, just great. Well, there went our Saturday, eh?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I hope Milo found something more useful in the Forbidden Forest."

"And that he didn't get eaten by werewolves," Ron added.

o—o—o—o

Milo, in a rare moment of luck, made a Listen check successfully. He almost wished he hadn't. He'd hoped to get out of the woods without the mandatory random encounter.

"Invisibility," he said as he faded from sight. Hope it's not a false alarm, he thought. That was my last 2nd-level spell.

All he'd heard was movement in the shrubs, and it could have been caused by anything. Really, when it came down to it, Milo not only didn't know what kind of creatures lived in this forest, but this world. Bugbears? Owlbears? Dire bears? Giant bears? Shapeshifted druids in the form of bears? Gods help him, grizzly bears?

As it turned out, it was far, far worse than any form of bear or bear-like monstrosity.

It was Professor Snape.

Is he here looking for me? Or is he the one killing unicorns, and he's going for another one? I could follow him, Milo thought, but Invisibility only lasts four minutes. And if I run into trouble, I'm already out of spells. Milo bit his lip. I feel like Harry Potter would for sure, but... well... this is a job for a Rogue. I've got no business sneaking around in a forest, tailing people. I'm a Wizard, I should have people for this. He frowned.

"Hey, Mordy," he whispered, "time to put that +10 bonus to Move Silently to use." Mordenkainen, who had been sitting on his shoulder, nodded gravely (although Milo couldn't see, because the familiar was as invisible as he was) and scampered noiselessly after the Potions Master.

o—o—o—o

"You're late," Lucius hissed. "You were supposed to be here forty-seven seconds ago."

Snape said nothing.

"I need a favour," Lucius said. "It would do well for you to comply."

"Go on," Snape shrugged.

"There is a certain individual who, I understand, is a first-year student attending Hogwarts," Lucius said. "He has no business here. Have him expelled.

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