Chapter Text
They had spent an hour searching for the kitchens before giving up and trudging back to spot they met. Apparently during this time, Henrietta learnt something new, never trust that one Zabini with directions.
"What do you think about the broom incident, today?" Mattheo inquired her when they lagged behind the group which consisted a frustrated Hermione, a complaining Malfoy and a defeated Zabini, making sure that none of them heard him.
"What do you think about it?" She questioned back.
Mattheo paused for a moment like he was arranging all his theories in an order before he opening his mouth to answer.
"They did it with intend to kill you. Someone in this very castle intends to kill you."
Henrietta nodded. "Why do you think they would do that?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. The only one who would have a re—" He gave a slightest bit of pause but Henrietta caught it. "—ason to kill you might be.. I don’t know maybe some enemies of the potter family. You are the only Potter left after all."
Henrietta narrowed her eyes at him and asked. "Do you think the Potter have any?"
"No, not really. But we never know." He said gazing into her eyes.The moonlight bleached his features until he looked like one of the vampires Dudley used to watch on television. His dark hair, though not as dark as her midnight locks, curled down over his eyes. Henrietta had already made peace with the fact that he was beautiful but really—in the moonlight Mattheo was undeniably breathtaking, the night in the forbidden forest was a proof.
Forbidden forest. Right. Henrietta just remembered what she had initially planned to ask him if they ever met alone.
"What was that creature in the forest?" She asked, tilting her head.
Before Mattheo could open his mouth to answer he was cut by Hermione's panicked shouts. "It's Miss Norris! Oh no!" She shouted pointing at the black cat that was just raced down the corridor.
"Do you think it will tell Flitch." Draco asked. Heavy Footsteps rang through the corridor. They all looked towards the dark corridor where the sounds were getting closer.
"Well, it already did." Henrietta said dryly. "What are we waiting for run!"
If there was one thing that Henrietta was starting to hate about the castle was how unhelpful it becomes when they she is in trouble—the stairs they were going up practically deposited them on the third floor corridor.
The third floor corridor.
The one with the door at the end.
The one Dumbledore had mentioned, specifically, at the start of term feast. In the tone of someone saying a thing they expected to only have to say once.
A painful death awaits anyone who enters.
Henrietta looked at the door.
The door looked back at her in the way that—if doors had faces and mouths—it would have been wearing a smug smile that said, You have no choice.
"Yeah, no." Blaise shook his and turned back from the door.
The sound of Filch's footsteps echoed up the stairwell behind them. Closer than they should have been.
Everyone looked at the door. Then at the stairwell. Then at the door.
"I hate this castle," Malfoy said, with a feeling Henrietta agreed with.
Mattheo pushed the door open.
They went in.
It was dark. Henrietta hated that.It was also very large — larger than it should have been for a corridor room, the kind of large that suggested the castle had opinions about interior dimensions that didn't align with the exterior. The smell was animal and warm and underneath that something else, something older.
Then something in the dark breathed.
Not one breath. Three.
She felt Hermione's hand find her arm in the dark.
Mattheo, slightly ahead of her placing himself in between the dark and her, had gone completely still. Blaise had stopped breathing entirely. Malfoy made a sound that he would spend considerable energy denying later.
Her eyes adjusted.
The dog was enormous. Three heads, which tracked between them with the unhurried attention of something that had done this before and knew how it ended. Its paws were the size of large about the size of Hermione's and her torso combined.The ceiling above it was high and the dog nearly reached it and all three of its mouths were open and all three sets of teeth were present and accounted for.
Under its paw — she caught it in the second before her brain started issuing more urgent communications — a trapdoor.
Then the nearest head lunged.
"Back," Mattheo said, and grabbed her arm and they were moving, all of them, the door behind them, the corridor, the staircase, down, the footsteps of Filch somewhere above or below or neither, none of it mattering because they were running and the castle for once seemed to agree that running was the correct approach and the stairs stayed stairs and deposited them somewhere near the entrance hall and they ran until the running stopped being necessary and then they stopped.
Blaise put his hands on his knees.
"Three," he said. "It had three heads."
"Yes," said Mattheo.
"That is three more than a dog should have."
"Biologically speaking," Henrietta said, still catching her breath, "Cerberus type creatures are well documented in magical—"
"Potter," said Blaise. "Not right now."
"Right."
Malfoy was against the wall with an expression that had moved entirely past disdain and arrived somewhere new. Hermione was doing the thing she did when she was frightened and processing it by being precise — her breathing was careful and her hands were clasped and her eyes were moving.
Henrietta looked at Mattheo.
He looked at her.
The trapdoor, she thought. Something under the trapdoor. Something the three headed dog was keeping people away from.
Something someone had tried to kill her to get to. But it was not like she was the one protecting it. So why did they attack her? What is behind the trapdoor? Why would they want it? Why would they keep such an important object in school full of children? Thoughts spiralled in her mind. She could see the same happening with Mattheo too.
She could tell from his face that he had seen it too. The trapdoor had also evoked things in his mind
He said nothing. Neither did she. They didn't need to.
"We tell no one about this," Malfoy said, from the wall.
"Agreed," said Blaise.
"Absolutely agreed," said Hermione, which surprised everyone including herself.
They looked at each other in the particular way of people who have just survived something together and are not sure what category that puts them in.
"Right," said Henrietta. "Bed."
No one argued.
They parted at the junction — Slytherins one way, Gryffindors the other — with none of the ceremony of the kitchen plan and all of the weight of the thing they'd just seen. And the thought of going to the Hospital wing long forgotten.
Mattheo was last again.
He looked at her. The expression she was learning.
"The creature in the forest," he said quietly. "The trapdoor. The broom—."
"—It's connected." She cut him.
"Yes."
He held her gaze for one moment longer than necessary.
"Be careful, Etta."
Chills spread through her body. She didn't have an answer for that nor her reaction. So she nodded.
He went.
She stood at the junction for a moment in the dark castle with the warmth of the used nickname still sitting somewhere in her chest.
Then she followed Hermione.
Sleep did not seize her for a long time.
The trapdoor. The figure in the forest. The broom.
It's connected.
She knew. She had known since the match, probably. She just hadn't let herself finish the thought yet.
She let herself finish it now, in the dark, with Hermione's quiet breathing beside her and the castle settling around them.
Someone was trying to get to whatever was under that trapdoor.
Someone was willing to drink unicorn blood to stay alive long enough to do it.
....
Someone had tried to kill her today.
Be careful.