That day, Taylor and Luna whispered to each other late into the night about conspiracies, the heir, the attack and The Quibbler. It was a good thing the Halloween feast had been on a Saturday, because they were not ready to wake up early. They missed breakfast by a few hours, settling up to wait for lunch instead.
“Can I borrow Nap to send a letter home?” Luna asked the next morning.
Taylor nodded, looking around for the lazy bird, and not finding her. Was Nap still mad?
“She… hasn’t returned yet?” Taylor said, confused.
Nap didn’t return for a few days, and when she did, she dropped a letter on Taylor’s lap then perched on her head. At least Taylor knew the fat owl wasn’t mad at her. The letter from mum also had an explanation about why Nap took so long to return. Mum had used Nap to contact a few wizarding services, like magazines and newspapers, and that she’d probably need Nap again in the near future.
With the owl back, Luna sent her letter home detailing to her father the conspiracy at hand.
With a bit of finagling, Taylor managed to get a few spiders near Luna fleeing the castle and pretended she just noticed that happening. Luna took that as a new mystery to solve, even if Taylor felt like her own acting had been subpar and Luna had just decided not to ask questions.
“We should visit Hagrid to ask him about the spiders. He had a book and all.”
That settled part of their plans for the next weekend, after the near infinite amount of homework had been finished.
For days, students could talk of little but the attack. Filch did his best to remind everyone at every occasion. He paced the spot where they found Mrs Norris like a man possessed. More than once, he tried to clean up the bloody message, with a variety of different cleaning products, to no avail. When he wasn’t camping the spot, he was skulking red-eyed through the corridors, lunging at students and trying to put them in detention for things like ‘breathing loudly’ and ‘looking happy’.
There were rumors about. Too many to even list them all, but a few were worth paying more attention to.
Half of the castle population was secretly celebrating the attack. Students hated Filch so much they were actually happy someone attacked his cat.
There was a growing sentiment, centered towards a few second year students, that Harry Potter was the heir and he was out to get the ‘muggle born’. It took a while to find out why they were thinking that, and it was because Harry had been vocal about hating his ‘muggle’ adoptive family. That, somehow, got interpreted as Harry hating wizards born out of non-magical parents.
The attack had other repercussions, however. A lot of older Slytherins behaved like this was some revenge done in their behalf because of the Comeuppance curse, as if the Heir had given them permission to be bullies. Taylor had to crack down hard on those, often leaving them full of itchy welts and belongings swamped in mud. Thankfully, that didn’t last long, and most learned fast and abandoned that idea.
There were a few standouts among students, of course.
The first one was Ginny: she looked even more tired, and cried a lot when there was no-one near or when confronted by her older siblings. She took to writing in a diary almost feverishly when alone. The diary seemed magical, it actually wrote back to Ginny, which was very cool. It was like the perfect diary.
Taylor did her best to not pry on the girl’s privacy. She’d be pretty mad if someone stood over her shoulder while she wrote letters to her mum, and Ginny was almost a friend, really. They hadn’t talked much in the past weeks, she’d been quirky and Harry-obsessed, but she didn’t treat Taylor any differently like the others. That alone warranted an almost friend label.
The second one was Malfoy. The blond prat kept complaining, loudly, that it was a shame he wasn’t the heir, and that if he was, he’d clear the whole school of mudbloods in one fell swoop. Did he even realise he was talking about assault, and possibly murder? Taylor questioned his intelligence.
He did receive letters from home, to which he complained to his two shadows about:
“Father won’t tell me anything about the last time the Chamber was opened.” he whined to his thuggish audience. “It was fifty years ago, before his time, but he knows all about it, and all he says is that it was all kept quiet and it’ll look suspicious if I know too much. But he let slip one thing: last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened, a Mudblood died. I hope it’s Granger who dies this time.”
By spying on Harry’s friends, Taylor also learned that her copy of Hogwarts: A History would be useful aside from interesting trivia. Hermione had been going to the library trying to get a copy, but all had been taken already.
With that tidbit in mind, she took out her book and started reading. And Hermione had been right. There was a small section on castle myths and legends.
According to the book, it was a fact that the four founders (Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin) built the castle together, far from prying non-magical eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution.
For a few years, the founders worked in harmony, but then disagreements sprang up between them. Slytherin wanted to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of non-magical parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school.
The myth part of the tale was that Slytherin had built a hidden chamber in the castle, of which the other founders knew nothing. According to the legend, he sealed the Chamber of Secrets so that none would be able to open it until his own true heir arrived at the school. The heir alone would be able to unseal the chamber, unleash the horror within, and use it to purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic.
Another, small side note added that in the 1940s, a student was accused of opening the chamber, and that a girl died when he did so. He was caught by a Tom M. Riddle and expelled, but no one ever found the Chamber of Secrets or caught the horror that resided inside. The book didn’t mention what happened to the expelled student, or the name of the one who died.
Taylor remembered Tom Riddle’s medal of Extraordinary services to the school in the trophy room. At least she could confirm that part. She related all of that to Luna, who in turn sent the tidbits to her father.
There were a few other interesting bits Taylor picked up, mostly regarding Most-Suspicious-Hero Harry.
Like a psychopath in some thriller novel, he returned to the scene of crime. Together with his friends, they decided to investigate and ended up sneaking inside the out-of-commission girl’s bathroom, and got caught by Percy when leaving, losing house points.
Having found no useful information in the bathroom, they were now planning to break school rules, or better yet, Hermione was planning to break the school rules. Influenced by Ron, who was convinced the heir was Draco or that Draco knew who the heir was, they were planning to brew a polyjuice potion to impersonate Slytherin students and ask Malfoy questions.
To do that, they’d enlist Lockhart’s unknowing help. With his permission slip, they were able to check out a book from the reserved section of the library, which left Taylor feeling very envious. Maybe she should try to be nice to Lockhart too? If he was that easy going, saying good things about his books (and they were excellent fantasy books) might pay off?
Another part of Taylor really wanted a peek at that potions book. Moste Potente Potions was a fascinating name. Thus, unashamedly, Taylor added a new task to her ever growing task-list of things.
During school hours, when students were busy, she had a pixie sneak into Hermione’s room, and read from the potions book. With another pixie in her hive, she started making a copy of the book's contents, skipping the too gruesome potions. She didn’t want or need slow acting poisons, fast acting poisons, or even flesh rotting potions. No, what caught her interest were the outliers. Polyjuice, Felix Felicis, Ageing Potion and so much more.
The week passed in a whirlwind of surveillance (with no apparent heir) and lots of homework. It seemed the professors were trying to keep students out of trouble by swamping them in busywork.
Saturday afternoon, after spending the whole morning finishing up the school assignments, Taylor led a smiling Luna outside the castle and towards the grounds. She’d sent an owl confirming if Hagrid was free (he was) and promised to visit that afternoon.
When she got closer to his hut, she didn’t feel any presence at the ends of her range inside the forest, which was a shame. That was still something Taylor wanted to check out, but she just didn’t have the time.
After petting a sprawled Fang near the doorway, she knocked on the groundskeeper door.
“Ello,” Hagrid said, poking his huge head outside smiling at both. “Taylor, come in, come in.”
Nap flew off Taylor’s head (a relief, since Nap was getting really heavy) to land near the windows, spread her wings and hoot at the giant. Hagrid laughed, picking up strips of dried meat from his pocket and feeding the lazy bird.
“Yer growin’ up nicely, girl,” he said, offering the strips.
Luna followed Taylor inside until both were huddled onto the couch. Hagrid served tea and cake. Having prior experience, Taylor broke the cake then dunked it into the tea. Luna looked at all that fascinated, before following the example.
“Hullo, Hagrid, this is my friend, Luna Lovegood.”
“Hullo,” Luna said, waving gently. “And thank you for the food. It’s the first time I get to eat a giant’s cake.”
“Nice ta meet yer,” Hagrid grabbed their hands in his giant mitts.
Taylor didn’t bring the subject in question immediately, she wanted to soften up the giant first.
“Can I see the book again? I want to show Luna what the rainbow-silk spiders look like.”
Hagrid smiled and nodded. “O’course, o’course.”
Soon after, he had the book delivered.
“I didn’ get ter tell yer last time, but don’ take ter heart everythin’ the book says, alright? Some o’ the things in that book are plain wrong.”
Taylor nodded, opening the book eagerly. Luna scooted closer and page by page, they read, pointed and talked about the many, many critters described there.
“They’re very pretty,” Luna said looking at the drawing of the Rainbow-silk spiders.
Taylor wanted to bring out one of the spiders she had hidden under her hair to show Luna, but resisted the urge. No breaking promises.
“Yer mentioned in yer owl yer saw somethin’ interestin’ ‘bout spiders. What was it?”
She finished gobbling more of the cake, then sipping the tea before addressing the spider issue.
“I’m not sure why, but recently I’ve seen a lot of spiders fleeing the castle. It’s like they are afraid of something, do you know why?”
Hagrid's poker face was horrible. “I have no idea,” he lied.
Immediately she knew she was onto something. Taylor exchanged glances with Luna.
“But they are scared of something, right? Is it the horror inside the chamber? Do you know anything about it?”
“No!” Hagrid said, too loudly.
Luna tilted her head. “That’s a shame. I was hoping it was a nice horror. It must be terribly lonely, being in there alone. Lonely ones usually are nice, daddy says.”
“Nice —” Hagrid scowled. “‘Course he’s nice, he wouldn’ hurt a fly unless—" He stopped dead, horror dawning on his face. “There’s no he. I never said he.”
“You just did,” Luna said pleasantly. “Four times.”
Hagrid got up. “Forget what I said, I shouldn’ have said that.”
“Alright,” Luna said, taking another bite of cake.