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***Very minor spoilers for HBP
The Other Records
“Don’t know what you mean, sir,” Harry answered innocently.
“Turn out your pockets, Potter,” snape sneered.
Harry fumbled around, making a big production out of complying, all the while casting a petulant look at Snape as each bit and bob emerged. He pulled the assortment of items from any other pocket he could manage, as the Professor became more and more impatient.
“I don’t think so, Potter,” Snape glowered, bracing both his hands on the desktop directly across from where Harry was seated. “There will be no subreption this time!”
Harry could feel his mental boundaries being assaulted. Setting his jaw, he determinedly began to concentrate on recreating the visions of James embarrassing the greasy-haired fifth-year version of Snape. The teen, suspended mid-air, flailing about as onlookers laughed. Harry focused on the spectators amused expressions.
The face across the desk began to colour. As a hand thumped the desk, it growled, “Get OUT! Now!”
Harry scooped everything off the table into his bag with a single swipe and raced from the room.
Waiting until most of the confusion had died down and the Common Room had cleared considerably, Harry handed the card to Ron and Hermione saying, “Look at this, tell me what you think.”
“Sounds like a good old fashioned brouhaha in the Hospital wing, to me,” Ron shrugged.
“’Shame Madam Pomfrey didn’t poison Bellatrix then…”
Hermione rolled her eyes.
Ron mumbled on off-handedly while studying the card with a furrowed brow, “I’ve done a detention without magic in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey keeps records in her office about them, too.”
“What?” Harry said, suddenly very interested.
Ron looked at him unfazed. “Yeah, she has all these files in her office that date back to who knows when.”
Harry jumped up and dashed up stairs, returning with his Invisibility Cloak in less than two minutes. He stuffed the index card into his robes and headed toward the portrait hole.
“Hey, wait!” Hermione said following him. “Where are you going?”
Ron caught up, answering, “Pomfrey’s office, where else?”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea….” She started to say pulling a pocket watch from her robes. “It’s after eleven!” When they didn’t pause, she followed the boys into the hallway.
As Hermione turned left and headed for the staircases, Ron and Harry turned right and hurried off in that direction.
She spun on her heel and caught up with them. “Where ARE you going?”
Harry barely slowed to answer, “Shhhhh. ‘Shortcut Fred and George showed me a while ago.”
At the dead end of the corridor, Harry reached under a tapestry that covered the entire wall and moved a stone. A scraping sound echoed back down the way they’d come as a narrow opening appeared beside the ugly wall hanging. “Hurry,” he said slipping through. The moment all three had passed into the gap the wall slid back into place, but rather than being lost in darkness, there was a muted yellow glow a few meters down the passageway.
Harry pushed cautiously on what would turn out to be the back of a bookcase once the Trio was past it. He peered around to make sure no unpleasant surprises lurked, then stepped out into the Fourth Floor hallway.
Hermione looked around disconcerted. “But we didn’t descend any steps or ramps!”
Harry shushed her again and hurried down a spindly staircase that seemed as though it might collapse if they stepped on it too hard. It came out three doors from the Hospital Wing.
Carefully opening the door a crack, Ron listened, then opened it wide. The moonlit dormitory was lined with neatly made severe looking, entirely unoccupied, beds. Madam Pomfrey’s private quarters, at the far end, had no sliver of light coming from below the door. The Trio crept forward.
“Muffliato,” Harry said pointing his wand at her rooms.
“Over here!” Ron motioned, leading them past half the beds where he turned away from the windows. A stuffy storeroom redolent of dust, oldness, and musty wood was hidden behind the storage area for unused screens. Inside the lights turned on automatically when the door opened. To the right, piles of odd-looking equipment were stacked on rank-upon-rank of shelves, while just as many file cabinets stretched away to the left.
Standing side-by-side part way along the front row, each of the three pulled a different drawer open and began shuffling through the overstuffed drawers.
“They’re filed by date,” Hermione said. “I’ve got the 1940s.”
Ron was kneeling. “Mine are the 1960s. Hold on! Here’s one from when my Dad was a Fourth year. Ewww! How’d he do that?”
Harry closed the drawer he’d been looking in and moved closer to Ron. In no time he whispered, “1974!”
He placed the drawer with October and November on the floor between them and they began searching through the records it contained.
Staring at the chart in her hand, Hermione let out a strangled, “Eep!”
The startled boys looked up.
“Colloidal Silver!” she hissed in a shocked whisper.
“What about it?”
“It’s what Bellatrix put into that Anodyne Solution.”
“What would it matter?” Ron asked. “Mum used it in several of the healing potions she gave us as kids. It’s supposed to enhance your immune system or something.”
“But it would have killed Lupin,” Harry said through gritted teeth. “If he’d have swallowed silver in any form…”
He took the file from Hermione and flipped through, skimming the comments so precisely written by the healer. Most of it was perfunctory, but there was a fairly large space in the middle of one of the back pages.
Hermione looked excited. She tipped her head sideways, “I wonder…. I’ve heard about it before, but never seen it... Of course, this might not be…”
“What ARE you on about?” Ron asked.
She drew her wand and touched the empty area which immediately came alive. “Magical ink!” she said triumphantly.
Suddenly words and illustrations began to crawl across the page. A listing of other files was cited, but the kids didn’t notice, transfixed by the story unfolding in the magical ink.
An accurate characterature of Sirius was subtly spiraling the end of his wand at several other students, one of which was a devastatingly beautiful girl with long dark hair.
The recipients began to painfully mutate into ancient creatures, with the dark-haired girl becoming the most ugly hag Harry had ever seen. A reference number to another file appeared.
A new panel emerged showing what could only be James and Peter casting hexes at another group, from their hiding place behind a stone column in one of the lower halls. A mass of something, possible bees or a flock of tiny birds swarmed after the hapless students. The numbers from several other charts came across the page.
Just as a third image began to coalesce on the page, the door burst open and Madam Pomfrey shrieked, “What are you doing in here?” Her eyes wide, she let loose a plangent cry, “My records!”
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Snape's Detention Duel - Round Two - Mission and Subs
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