Chapter 160

His initial intention when he'd decided to bring the Basilisk outside was to test if the Fidelius was working properly or not, and to let the Basilisk get reacquainted with the corridors that it hadn't seen in many years. But this turn of events wasn't entirely unwelcome.

His mind worked at breakneck speeds as he modified his plans. This would be the first step of his mission. A suitably eerie first warning to spread panic and discord amongst the students and the staff, before he began his true plan to drive the old coot from the school.

Yes. This would do finely.

He hung the cat by its tail from the nearest torch bracket and conjured up some red paint, which he used to daub a single message on the wall in foot-long letters.

The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware.

At the moment when this nefarious plan was being realized at Hogwarts, two lower level Law Enforcement officials were chatting their way through their boring midnight shift at the Ministry of Magic. The clock gave a chime as it struck two o' clock in the morning, and their conversation shifted to office gossip.

"Did you hear what happened to Vance and Tonks a couple of days ago?" Benji asked his friend Stewie.

"On the day they brought in that child beater muggle?" Stewie asked.

"Yeah. The fellas over at Mungo's reckon it was a lot worse than just beating. They reckon it was some messed up shit mate. They're collecting evidence for the trial next week, but I reckon it's the Kiss for that bastard."

"Good riddance," Stewie said darkly, "That poor girl. It must have been so hard…"

"Yeah…Well, she's in a better place now. I heard that she got all healed up by the Mungo mind healers, and couple o' muggleborns took her in yesterday. She'll be fine I reckon. But enough about that. You haven't even heard the real interesting thing"

"What's that?"

"It wasn't Vance and Tonks who took the guy down, it was some sort of hooded guy that nobody knows."

"So? Maybe it was some wizard playing vigilante. That's not really new, is it? What's interesting about that?"

"Well…I'm not supposed to tell this to anyone, but I heard this from Barry, who heard it from Olivia, who heard it from Vance herself. You know how Tonks was a victim of a kidnapping last year?" Benji asked in a hushed voice.

"Yeah. I read about it in the public archives. She said in her statement that some guy used wandless magic to torch the place and save her," Stewie replied. It wasn't really uncommon for Aurors and Auror trainees to have messed up pasts and nothing really escaped the DMLE grapevine.

"The guy she described, the one that saved her?" Benji said, with the air of sharing some great secret, "Exact same description Vance gave for this man. The healers reckoned that she had some hallucinations, but now Vance has seen him too. The guy is real"

"What!? No way! That kind of wandless magic…I doubt even Moody could do something like that. No way that's true!"

"It is," Benji insisted, "And you know what's more weird and shocking? The healer who patched up the muggle bastard found that the man had almost drowned, gotten his head bashed in, and broken eighty bones. Yet not only the house was entirely untouched and unharmed, no magic had been cast in the house"

"No magic?"

"None. This guy is a professional. Not even a single trace that he was ever there. He either somehow managed to find an untraceable wand, or did the entire thing wandlessly. The only thing we even know about him is that he has a yew wand."

"So? Has anyone run through the wand records yet? To check who has yew wands in active use?"

"Yeah. Vance did that. And you know what she found?"

"What?"

"There aren't many people with yew wands within the last century mate. Less than half a dozen. Vance has gone and checked most of those. Couple of dead people, whose wands are with them in their graves. A couple of current users in the ministry and couple of students in Hogwarts. There is only one wand in Britain that's made of yew and is missing. It's a chap named Tom Riddle. Been missing for decades now. He's even listed in the records as assumed dead."

"So she found nothing?" Stewie asked.

"Nothing in the records. But…people are saying something else. Something troubling"

"What? Stop with the suspense already!"

"Alright alright. Listen. It's not on the wand records, but I asked some Aurors from the last war, and they remember it. They remember another yew wand that was never found after its owner died. You know who it belonged to?"

"Who?"

"You Know Who."

"I don't know who. Who?"

"No, you bloody idiot. The dark wizard. You know Who!"

"That You Know Who?!"

"Exactly! Some are saying that he's back or something. They're not saying it publicly, or to anyone that matters, but they're saying it."

"You believe them?"

"Not really. I reckon it's some foreign wizard or something who's trying to do some good. But you know how times are. You never know what to believe. There've always been people who've believed that You Know Who isn't really dead. Only…gone for now. It's all pretty confusing."

"So who'd you reckon the guy is?"

"Who knows? But I don't think it's You Know Who."

"…Can we just call him He Who Must Not Be Named from now on?"

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