as needed
Later, they realize that Voldemort has left a Horcrux at Hogwarts. It is where he first learns about magic after all.
Sirius excitedly informs the Order about a room at the seventh-floor corridor that shifts into exactly the kind of room the user needs it to be.
“I used it to test the worst of our pranks,” he grins mischievously. Blair rolls her eyes. “It’s not on the Map, but it can easily be found.”
“It’s probably the Ravenclaw item!” Lily gestures excitedly. Harry laughs, too, his mother’s enthusiasm infectious.
“Yes, love, but what?” James asks, throwing an arm around his wife and son.
Dan clears his throat. “I can ask the Ravenclaw Ghost. I am acquainted with her.”
Blair raises an eyebrow.
“And how would you know Ravenclaw’s ghost, Humphrey? You’re a Slytherin. Blair says dangerously.
“I, uh, used to visit a….. friend at Ravenclaw,” Dan says, his smile sheepish. He has the grace to blush at everyone’s resulting taunts.
Sirius and Reg have to restrain Blair from throwing something at Dan.
-
Dan enters Hogwarts on the pretext of applying for the Defense job that Professor Haywood has vacated. Severus accompanies him, naturally, as the Potions instructor. This is one of the moments when Blair is exceedingly grateful that Dan is sorted into Slytherin - no one will look askance at Severus aiding the younger boy. Slytherins do protect their own.
Dan finagles the information on the horcrux from the Ravenclaw ghost, who turns out to be the daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw herself. She was resistant, at first, but capitulates due to her fondness for Dan and his Ravenclaw… friend. Blair seethes when she hears this statement.
Lady Helena Ravenclaw narrates to him that long ago, she had run away with her own mother’s diadem, envious of her prodigious skill. She was killed brutally by Slytherin’s ghost, the Bloody Baron, who was tasked to convince her to return.
The diadem was left in a forest in Albania until a charming Slytherin student, not unlike Dan, according to Lady Ravenclaw, convinced her to reveal its whereabouts.
-
Dan and Severus retrieve the diadem in record time. Severus mutters darkly about the sloppiness of Hogwarts students upon their return.
“You were one of them not so long ago,” Sirius says teasingly, his own unique attempt at conciliation. Blair knows that there is something of a dark history between the two of them. She is fully aware of her brother’s faults.
“Yes, but I was frightful at being a normal student,” Severus says drily. “As you were fully aware of, Black.” To everyone’s surprise, he grins.
The whole room laughs.
Blair thinks, perhaps, that they have weathered the worst of it.
She hopes that it will be smooth sailing from now on.