Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s all gone to shit
Yuletide is a rather more subdued affair this year. It feels wrong to have it without Em, so they sort of don’t. Arthur insists they should all have fun, but no one can quite get into the spirit. That’s not to say it’s a complete wash. They all get a Weasley sweater (well, Draco doesn’t just yet, but Merlin’s been making him a mockup since they sorted out their differences, so he gets half of one). They spend most of the break by his bedside- most everyone’s gone home in fear of being the next victim, so they have him all to themselves. Justin Finch-Fletchley is the latest, and of course everyone’s blaming Harry. Because that makes sense.
With everyone home for the holidays, though, they can spend ages playing exploding snap and laughing at each other in the infirmary unaccosted by Em’s many admirers. There’s plenty of room for Pandora and Hedwig- they even sneak the other animals out a few times for cuddles. Draco even gets away with asking for Dobby over the break, so he stays with them too. He bursts into tears when he discovers his master has made the right kind of friends at last, and quickly has to pull himself together when Hobby shows up with treacle tarts.
They all exchange much more modest gifts this year, mostly things like new card decks and packs of licorice wands, but Draco easily takes the cake in that regard. He somehow seems to know just what everyone needs, gifting them each things no one else would’ve thought of that turn out to be just perfect. He does nothing in halves. He gifts Hermione a purse with an extension charm on it that she can reach her whole arm into, so she can cart around as many books as she likes at a time. Ron gets a book called ‘From Pet to Partner: how to train anxiety out of your familiar’. He gives Arthur a holster for his wand that he can strap to his waist or thigh or chest as he sees fit. It lives at his hip now, ready to be unsheathed as Excalibur is meant to be. Draco leaves Em’s gift- an auto-ironer- under his hospital bed. That boy’s clothes are never not creased. Finally, for Harry, he works with Poppy to get Harry’s eyes tested properly without alerting him, then goes and buys him some proper spectacles. About time someone did. They’re much the same as his old ones in style, but a stylish gold, and slicker in make and body. They probably cost an arm and a leg, not that Draco will say.
On the investigation front, Arthur makes frustratingly slow progress. He’s been over the staff files so many times he could quote them by heart, and still he has no leads- or none that have proven worth following up on. He’s starting to think this is more likely a case of possession. If it were a spy, he’d have them by now- they’d leave traces. There is simply nothing to go off of, and that makes him think it’s not as straightforward as that. For now, his best hope is catching the culprit in the unknowing act. You’d think that would be easier- systematically culling all the roosters on school grounds isn’t a clean job. Alas, no clues yet.
Whoever it is, or whoever’s possessing them, seems to have caught onto his game. Hard to avoid, given that he has the entire castle on high alert. The attacks have stuttered to a stop. The heir’s gone quiet. The school is hesitantly releasing the breath it’s been holding, wary of the turn of good luck being more of a calm before the storm. Some, of course, are too stupid to have thought of that.
Gilderoy Lockhart, for one. He seems to think he's single-handedly saved the school. Harry overhears him telling Professor McGonagall so while the Gryffindors are lining up for Transfiguration.
“I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble, Minerva,” he says, tapping his nose knowingly and winking. “I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him. You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won’t say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing...”
Harry and Arthur have both been equally wary of whatever the great twat meant by that, but neither of them could’ve dreamt up the nightmare as it turns out. No, this is a shade of pink that one should really only ever encounter in hell.
On February the fourteenth, the Great Hall is awash in garish pink from wall to wall. Large, lurid pink flowers disrupt the tasteful mahogany in horrid fashion. Pale pink heart-shaped confetti falls from the soft blue sky-ceiling, and while Arthur has the advantage of being able to simply brush it off, Harry knows it’s settling into his own tragic thicket of hair and he’ll likely be picking it out until the day he dies. He can’t help but marvel for a minute though at just how sharp every little flake is through his new lenses. The world is such a rich thing when one can see.
They make their way through the hellscape to their usual spot at the table that was formerly Hufflepuff’s- they like the corner where they can see everyone and more or less keep out of the spotlight. Draco’s shaking confetti off his bacon with a look of disgust. Harry’s glad to see he’s trying- the boy doesn’t typically eat much, particularly in terms of meat, and a few weeks ago he blanched at the thought of touching anything so greasy as bacon.
“What’s going on?” Harry asks, sitting down and looking between his equally unimpressed crew. Arthur picks a flower and starts peeling the most offensively pink petals off in an attempt to save it.
Ron jabs a thumb behind him at the teachers’ table, apparently too disgusted to speak. Harry almost laughs. Lockhart’s impossible to miss, resembling one of his god awful flowers in hellish pink from head to toe. He’s beaming genially as he gestures for silence, obviously very pleased with himself. The muscle going in Professor McGonagall’s cheek is visible from the back of the room. Snape seems to have cast something like an invisible umbrella, causing the blasted confetti to fall around him in a cascade without touching him. That might just be his general disposition though. Hagrid’s beard is about as bad as Harry’s hair, and Harry wonders if he won’t just have to shave it off. Now that’s a horrible thought.
“Happy Valentine’s Day!” Lockhart booms grandiosly, throwing his arm up in spectacular fashion. “And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all — and it doesn’t end here!”
Lockhart claps his hands and clicks his heel in time, and on cue, the grand doors shudder open. In marches a parade of surly-looking dwarves, all of them middle-aged men, all of them in loose-fitting togas, flimsy little wings, and carrying small golden harps. Harry can’t decide which ones are worse- the ones with little to no body hair, or the ones with far, far too much.
Arthur gapes. “What the f-”
“My friendly, card-carrying cupids!” beams Lockhart. “They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn’t stop here! I’m sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion? And while you’re at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I’ve ever met, the sly old dog!”
Professor Flitwick buries his face in his hands. The look on Snape’s face says the first person to ask him for a Love Potion will be force-fed poison.
“This can’t be legal,” Draco scoffs.
“The wings, ” Arthur coughs, eyes goggling at the ‘cupids’. “That is so racist.”
Ron shakes his confetti off like a dog as they leave the great hall. Arthur does Hermione’s hair in a tight fishtail so she doesn’t get too much of the stuff caught in it. He also manages to get the flower he’s been peeling down to just the simple white centre, and tucks that into Mione’s braid while he’s there.
Harry’s a lost cause. At least Arthur’s sympathetic. Draco can’t look at him at all through the day without laughing.
Arthur gets the worst of it. He has a few admirers himself, so it’s not a terrible surprise when he gets his fair share of ‘verbal valentines’. He suspects the veritable mob Merlin’s got after him have turned their affections on Arthur in his absence, which is a little funny if he thinks about it. Draco gets one too, though none of them are there to see it and Draco refuses to repeat the lyrics. Harry still makes a point of laughing at him.
Arthur’s with them practically all day, though, being in their house, and they all get front row seats to the show. Arthur takes them all in stride, more like a diplomat than anything. To quite a few girls’ dismay, his cheeks don’t so much as colour at a single horribly written line, no matter who’s giggling behind him. There are a few that stand out though; The first of which comes in second period and makes his head snap up, finally interested.
“Roses are red, violets are blue,
If you ever listen, then I’ll eat a shoe.
You thick-headed prat,
You think you’re all that,
And I’m the dumb bastard who loves you.”
Professor Sprout immediately chases the dwarf off and reports him for bad language, baffled at how such a valentine even made it this far. It makes Arthur smile incredulously, though, so the job’s been done. He’ll have to look out for Sprout, though- she’s likely to take this as someone trying to steal Arthur out from under Em’s unresponsive nose. She’s already sending him disapproving looks.
“We’d know if Em was awake, yeah?” Ron asks, leaning over to whisper to Harry.
“Yeah, couldn’t be him…” Harry says, equally wigged out. That sounded exactly like him.
The next one of note comes over lunch, when a fat little dwarf scampers up to them, hitching up his loincloth and clearing his smoker’s throat.
“His hair is so blonde, his eyes are so blue,
A cliché the likes of which you never knew,
He's simply divine,
A true man out of time,
If you fall for him, all the best to you."
Ron falls out of his seat laughing. Harry has to grab onto Draco to not end up the same way. And lo and behold, for the first time today, Arthur’s blushing.
Arthur singles out another three throughout the day that probably came straight from Merlin. That crafty little shit. He probably got a mental message through the caretakers or something, and instead of using it to help, he used it to pull this. Fucking typical. He knows damn well he can’t be blamed for it, either, playing vegetable in the infirmary with a perpetual poker face. It’s the perfect cover. The twat. What an incredibly Merlin thing to do. The worst part? It works like a charm. It makes Arthur smile like a loon.
He doesn’t have to suffer alone for long, though. Late that afternoon, Harry gets one on the way to Charms.
“Oy, you! ‘Arry Potter!” shouts a particularly grim-looking dwarf, elbowing people out of the way to get to Harry. The poor boy can’t quite blush with his skin tone, but he does his darndest. The look on his face is quite embarrassed enough, anyway. He ducks his fluffy head and tries to burrow into the crowd in a great escape, but being a scrawny underfed eleven-year-old about a head shorter than just about everyone else, he doesn’t get far. Centre of attention that he is these days, the usual duck-and-run doesn’t quite work the same as it used to. The beefy little dwarf has him by the collar in seconds.
“I’ve got a musical message to deliver to ‘Arry Potter in person,” he announces throatily. Does he gargle with razor blades?
“Nothere,” Harry hisses desperately, bucking like a bronco. In the struggle his bag splits open, and he races to shove everything back together and get out of there before the dwarf can get through the first verse.
“Potter? What’s going on?” Draco’s voice lilts down the corridor as the boy himself swims through the crowd as smoothly as a silverfish. Harry almost groans out loud at his luck. Arthur stifles a laugh as he watches Harry double his efforts to get out of there.
“What’s all this commotion?” says another familiar voice as Percy Weasley arrives. Is that Ginny? Oh, you’re kidding, is Snape waiting ‘round the corner too??
Harry makes a last-ditch break for it and is promptly taken down in a spectacular tackle by the scantily-clad dwarf. Ron hisses through his teeth. Hermione winces in sympathy.
“Right,” Harry’s accoster huffs, sitting on Harry’s ankles. “Here is your singing valentine:
His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, his hair is as dark as a blackboard–
I wish he was mine, he’s really divine,
The hero who conquered the Dark Lord!”
Harry does not have approximately fourteen thousand years of diplomacy and politics in his back pocket, so he doesn’t take it quite as smoothly as Arthur. To his credit, he does his best to laugh along with everyone else while he looks like he’s hitching his hopes on spontaneous combustion. And it is rather hard to act natural when one’s best friend is on the floor crying tears of mirth. Hermione is covering her eyes like that’ll block it out. Arthur is wheezing as he all but lifts Harry up by the scruff and finally aids his retreat. Draco has a sly grin slipping over his pale face, and it looks like doom. His shit-eating expression is worse than the entire corridor’s howls combined.
“I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!” Harry hears him call out. Somewhere amongst the first-years, Ginny squeaks. Arthur admonishes Draco for it, but it’s through breathless giggles.
Yes, spontaneous combustion sounds ideal right about now.
💝🌷
Easter comes around quickly, and still Arthur makes no progress. He’s actually losing his mind. He comes at it from every angle: the chamber, the crime scene, the victims, the history, Riddle, Sal, Basil, even Myrtle. It’s like he has every piece of the puzzle except the important one that makes it a recognizable picture. With no more attacks occurring, he has nothing more to go on.
He helps the kids pick their courses for next year and mourns the fact that Merlin isn’t here to argue. He has no one to look at sideways whenever Harry and Draco get caught up in each other. He still turns halfway to split the investigation work up before realising he’s doing this alone for now. He finds himself turning to the castle for comfort- that and the investigation. For a while he even avoids the infirmary, because he knows Merlin would either be yelling at him for his stupidity or telling him he’s working far too hard. Probably both. Even catatonic, Merlin makes him feel guilty for driving himself into the ground. Unbelievable.
Arthur keeps him as updated as he can, but all he ever has is bad news. He thinks he might be onto something with his horcrux theory- if someone interacted enough with one they could fall into a form of possession, which would explain how Riddle’s meddling. Unfortunately it just makes the search harder, since a)Arthur can’t confirm this, b)the horcrux could be anything, and c)it could have a hold on anyone.
The security measures of the school get tighter, the mood grimmer. Quidditch is cancelled. There are two more attacks, and with none of the victims being Slytherins, the inter-house rifts they just so carefully mended begin to open again. Suspicion seeps into the halls of Hogwarts.
What. A. Mess.
And then Hermione gets got.
That girl is too damn smart for her own good. While Arthur was running around in circles, she was figuring it out for herself. Her petrified body was found holding a crumpled page on Basilisks with a note that read pipes in the margins, and in her other hand she was holding a mirror.
Few things scare Arthur more than brilliant preteens. This is a perfect example of why.
With her down, it’s only a matter of time before Harry, Ron and Draco start getting into their fair share of trouble. He can’t leave them alone for half a second to return to his entirely fruitless efforts for fear of them confronting potential monsters for information or putting something together that they shouldn’t. Honestly, it’s lucky Hagrid hasn’t cracked and let anything slip yet. He’s suspect number one though, and Albus is preoccupied defending him to the ministry, so Arthur’s short a man on that front as well. Yes, everything’s going swimmingly.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is the mandrakes’ seasoning. Arthur finds himself clinging to that eventuality, counting the approximate days. He and Professor Sprout strike a sort of weary understanding in their shared desperation to see Em back on his feet. He checks in with her every day now. All they have to do is wait.
But of course, it can never be that easy.
“All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please.”
Arthur and Sprout exchange a look, tired bodies injected with enough fear to propel them forth without another word at alarming pace. Arthur only prays the boys aren’t in any position to sneak into the crossfire. On one hand, he doesn’t have to explain why he’s headed straight for the teacher’s lounge with the staff, but on the other, he doesn’t have eyes on his assets. His kids could be plunging into the chamber itself in the name of curiosity as they speak. It wouldn’t be out of character now that 100% of their impulse control is lying in the infirmary in separate beds.
With very few of the teachers being privy to Arthur’s particular status, he splits from Sprout and watches the meeting invisibly from the back of the room. The staff shuffle in far too slowly for his liking, some of them even looking half-bored. Arthur, rapidly approaching the end of his fraying rope, bites down a thunderous growl.
Finally, finally, everyone’s present. McGonagall stands and addresses them gravely, folding her hands in front of her with a fearful look.
“It has happened,” she states clearly. “A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself.”
What? Why? Arthur’s eyes narrow as questions and theories race through his head.
Flitwick lets out a squeal. Sprout claps her hands over her mouth. Snape grips the back of a chair hard enough to make the wood creak. He is the first to speak.
“How can you be sure?”
“The Heir of Slytherin left another message. Right underneath the first one. ‘Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.’ ”
Professor Flitwick bursts into tears.
Her? What’s significant enough about 'her' to be the exception? Will she be the last? Is she the possessed culprit? A witness? Bait? Involved in some other way? Why now? If it’s the possessed she’ll have walked down herself, leaving no evidence. But Riddle would only get rid of his trump card if he’s accomplished what he set out to. He’s found some other way to come back in the flesh through her? Arthur can’t think how. Why else risk this drastic a play, though?
“Who is it?” asks Madam Hooch as her knees weaken and send her sinking into a chair. “Which student?”
Arthur’s head snaps up. This could break it wide open.
“Ginny Weasley.”