"Attention students!" Dumbledore announced one night at dinner. "I have good news in what I know has been a trying year. Tomorrow we will be hosting an expert to assist Madame Pomfrey in brewing the very complicated potion needed to rouse our petrified peers and friends. She estimates the Restorative Drought should be ready by the end of next month."
And when they went to visit Hermione that next day, Alabasandria Adams stood in the Hospital Wing, alongside most of the professors and some Ministry officials.
"Mama!" Harry shouted with glee. He pulled her into a hug, his relief was instantaneous. Mama would be able to fix this.
"Hello Harry." Her apprentice's face was stricken with anguish so Alabasandria gave him a brief squeeze back to his crushing hug, shuffling them off to the side so they could talk alone. She hadn't been sure if interfering at Hogwarts was a good idea, putting on a public face was not her strong suit, but the despair in Harry's letter was matched with the sniffles he was now trying to hide in her sweater. She hadn't seen him this upset in years. Harry needed her here.
"You're the expert Dumbledore called in?"
"Yes. Mandrakes only mature in the summer, so they needed a supplier from outside the country and Snape wasn't helping much so here I am. When you wrote to me about Hermione I owled an old colleague of mine from Peru and now we're all arguing about the price of things and other such bureaucratic nightmares."
"You'll be able to fix it, right mama?" His head poked out from her sweater, eyes wide with hope.
"Of course, Harry. It's a simple potion. Just time-consuming and expensive. Although to prevent this from happening again, something should be done about this Heir of Slytherin business. Again, there is a lot of talking being done, but not a lot of doing."
Harry's face hardened.
"I'm working on it," he said. His voice dropped lower. "I'm hunting down Slytherin's grave but there's a strict curfew in place. Students can't go anywhere alone. I'd have to sneak out after dark so I want to have a better clue of its location beforehand."
She nodded. "Let me know if you need help." She pried her koala-esque apprentice off of her, giving him a final pat on the head. "Now scurry off and let the adults talk. I'll be in the castle for a while if you need me." She turned back to the group, giving them an awkward, forced smile as they began to coo over how sweet Harry was and what a loving mother she was.
Despite the morale boost provided by the petrified students' imminent recovery, Harry still couldn't find anything helpful in his books, and the few times he ventured outside of the library to interact with the world around him, he saw that the rumors and theories about him being the Heir had only increased. Despite his worry over Hermione being obvious, it deterred none of the students from their wild gossip, and a few brave or stupid souls began to follow him around in hopes of catching him in the act. Jokes on them, his anger was on such a short fuse they had better hope he didn't start killing them out of spite.
It was because of both of those things that Luna finally insisted on dragging him away from his books and succeeding one weekend in February.
"This is an odd spot to meet up, Luna." Harry looked around the girls' lavatory with confusion. "I suppose none of my stalkers will look for me here, though."
"Exactly," Luna said. "No one goes in here because of Moaning Myrtle. And you can't bring books into a bathroom or else they'll get wet. It will be a nice break for you."
Ron and Harry looked around the empty bathroom, wondering how they were supposed to spend their free period in such a place.
"Er, thanks Luna," Harry said. "I guess we could play a round of Exploding Snap?"
"Looks like someone's been here recently," Ron muttered from where he'd wandered off to explore. On the other side of the sinks, fine mist sprayed from a busted pipe leaving a layer of water across the area. He noticed something laying on the floor and headed over to investigate.
Harry followed his movement and felt a sudden rush of dread settle inside him. Something was wrong.
"Yeah, look guys. Someone left this book on the ground."
"Don't touch that!" Harry ordered as his gaze honed in on the book. One of the tattoos on his back burst into a flash of searing hot pain. Without thinking, his shadow rose from behind him. Snapping its sharp jaws at the book, it swallowed the thing whole.
"Harry?" Ron questioned. His face had gone pale with surprise and fright.
"That was - that was probably the thing causing all this. It's a dangerous Dark artifact. I need to bring it to mama immediately."
"Alright, let's head downstairs -" But Harry's instincts were going haywire and the boy was too panicked to listen. Ron screamed as the shadows lunged at their ankles and dragged the children instantly to the dungeons. Ron and Luna crashed to the ground, disoriented. Alabasandria didn't look up from where she sat at a large cauldron.
"I told you not to do that at Hogwarts," she said in her neutral-toned voice.
"Mama I found a horcrux in the girl's bathroom!"
"What!?"
....
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