She is in a very large but extremely cluttered room. Stacks of furniture, books, whole or partial statues, bottles of mysterious substances, small metal contraptions, and other random garbage are piled around her. The distant walls are stone, and one fairly nearby wall has a door in it.

She needs to figure out what in all the planes is going on, but this is a terrible place to do it. Way too many possible ambush locations. She draws her sword and moves her shield from her back to her arm and turns in a slow circle to sweep her immediate surroundings with both Detect Magic and Detect Evil.

Actually just Detect Evil, because this entire room is magic enough that she can barely make out anything else in it. Ow.

The crown that statue over there is wearing is evil. Nothing ambushes her.

If it's magic enough to read Evil it's probably worth grabbing and retooling but she's not nearly oriented enough to want to touch it right now. Her Will is strong but she's not Marshall, she can still get taken out. She makes a note of its location and picks her way to the door. Once she's set up with her back against the wall next to it so she'll have cover if anything comes through it, while still having decent visibility into the junk pile, she opens up the letter and reads it several times. 

The letter continues to say what it says. The second, inner sealed envelope is addressed to . . . five words in a script Samora can't read.

This is deeply confusing. Well, maybe the second letter will help, if she finds someone who can read it. It's fortunate that this happened shortly after she got truespeech, if they don't speak Taldane wherever this is . . . actually it's not fortune at all, is it, Nefreti Clepati is rumoured to be omniscient as well as insane. That goes a little bit of the way towards answering why Clepati would take an interest in Samora in particular, if she was filtering for that. The rest is probably explained by that "something in common" bit, unless that refers to the language too? But what would the language have to do with her party not getting sent here as well? Where is Britain, and what will happen to the passage of time if she leaves it?

Nethysians, argh.

It says that if she does the "obvious quest" she'll get sent back to the same place and time that she left from, which seems better than the alternative but also unnerving in its implications. What is the obvious quest? Maybe it's explained in the other letter, or maybe it's something to do with the cursed item she saw earlier, in which case she had better grab it. She makes her way back over to the statue head and uses a broken chair leg to knock its headband off into her bag of holding without touching it. She'll have to touch it eventually, but it should wait until she's somewhere more defensible, ideally with an ally present to whack her in the head if need be.

Samora explores the room some more and doesn't find anything else evil enough to be worth bothering with, but does grab several things that look potentially magic and a few that are merely made of gold or silver. That done, she heads out the door to learn more about where she's ended up.

She's in a stone hallway! The wall opposite the door has an elaborate tapestry of someone dressed like a wizard, surrounded by trolls in fluffy pink skirts. A little ways past that is a window, which reveals Samora's current position to be seven floors above ground level in a majestic castle.

The walls, floors, ceilings, etc continue to be sufficiently magic that doing anything with Detect Magic up is like trying to do anything with one's pupils dilated. Maybe a bit less so than in the first room? It would probably be possible to get used to eventually.

Wizards. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Wow! She's been seven floors down before, but never more than three or four up. She starts trying to navigate to the ground floor for lack of better ideas, goes down one staircase that turned out to be a lot longer than it looked when she started down it, and is now differently lost. Also she's pretty sure that painting muttered something under its breath as she walked past.

Here come some people. This one is rather small, and also slightly Evil.

This one is a bit taller and much more ginger and not Evil at all.

Samora turns at the sound of footsteps, relaxes as she sees it's a pair of human children, then tenses again when the shorter one comes out of her peripheral vision and into her Detect Evil cone. Maybe he's not actually a child, maybe he has a deeply tragic past, maybe he has an Evil item on him for the same class of reasons she does. More immediately, maybe he knows where they are. When they don't immediately attack her, she sheathes her sword as a gesture of peace.

"Hello. Where is this place?"

"Who are you and why do you have a sword?"

That is such a reasonable question. "I'm Samora, I was sent here by an archmage to help with a mysterious quest. Are you on a quest?"

Is this the sort of thing that happens with wizards??

"We know what Slytherin's monster is and where its lair is and we're going to go tell Professor Lockhart about it, but he's useless, so if you want to help fight a basilisk then go ahead I guess."

"It's got my sister."

"I can absolutely fight a basilisk, where is it?"

This is weirdly helpful behavior from an adult and Harry is suspicious, but he'll take what he can get. "Second floor girls' lav--you don't know how to navigate Hogwarts, do you. Follow me."

This is not the sort of thing that happens, actually. "We should still tell Lockhart. He said he was going into the chamber, he should know what the monster is." He starts off down the corridor at a jog.

"I wouldn't turn down an ally." She wants her party, but she'll take what she can get.

A little farther on, Harry knocks on a door labeled "Gilderoy Lockhart: Defense Against the Dark Arts". (Samora can't read it.)

The door opens just a crack, and a voice says "Mr. Potter? Mr Weasley? I'm rather busy at the moment, can you come back later?"

"Professor, we know what the monster is, it's a basilisk--"

"Alright, alright, not out in the hallway, come in." A very well-dressed blond man opens the door. He's Evil. He also appears to have been in the middle of packing everything in the room into suitcases.

Two out of three, what is with this place. Samora stands in the doorway, her body language saying "I am calm, I am in control, I do not want a fight but if a fight starts I am a serious threat."

"Why are you packing? You can't leave now!"

"Urgent appointment--couldn't be helped--"

"You're the Defense professor! You're supposed to be the best at fighting Dark creatures!"

"What about my sister! What about all that stuff you did in your books!"

"Well, you know, books can be misleading, simplifications for the reader and all that, had to make sure they'd sell decently, I may have fudged the truth in some places, or all the places, about who exactly did any given thing, and then done a few, or a lot, of Memory Charms so nobody could complicate the story . . ."

The things people will imperil their immortal souls over, if they haven't been raised with just laws and good examples to follow and the assurance that Heaven is achievable by ordinary people. It's tragic and a little embarrassing and not as immediately fixable as a monster terrorizing the populace.

"If he's actually a civilian we shouldn't drag him into combat. Let's go."

"Ah ah ah, not so fast, I can't have you three going around blabbing all my secrets either. Obli--"

"Expelliarmus!"

The wand Lockhart had been in the middle of drawing flies out of his hand. 

Ron grabs it and chucks it out the window."You're coming with us."

"What do you want me to do?" Lockhart asks, shaking. "I don't know where the Chamber is, I can't help you."

"We know where it is. Come on."

"Why do you want to bring him? We'd have to watch our backs against him as well as the basilisk. Let's tie him up and we can take him to the authorities when the immediate emergency is over." She starts pulling rope out of her bag of holding.

"Ah, yes, capital idea, that, very in favor of not coming along to fight a basilisk," says Lockhart, holding his hands out for more convenient tying-up.

This and the absence of his wand is probably sufficient to prevent him from sneaking up on them in ten minutes so sure, whatever.

And now it is time to go.

She also wants to gag Lockhart, because she understands how wizards work, but then she will follow the children and not stop to ponder the bizarre architecture. She doesn't have any hope that the boy's sister is alive, but catching the creature by surprise mid-meal would be nice and catching it before it before it leaves its lair again is important.

Here is a bathroom. It contains three toilets, three sinks, and a ghost, who explains when asked that she died upon seeing a pair of huge yellow eyes over that way.

Ghost: not immediately eating anyone's sister and therefore a problem for later.

This basilisk's gaze attack is a death effect: concerning! If the basilisks here are nastier than the ones at home this one might prove hard to solo. 

Its lair is in a secret passage inside the building: why is this building so large. Not important.

Harry finds the tap with the carving of a snake and hisses "open up" in a different language from the one he's been speaking so far. The secret passage opens up; it's a wide and very deep hole in the floor.

Samora peers into the hole. "That looks deeper than my remaining rope. We should try to lure the beast out instead of going down a hole we can't straightforwardly get back up."

"But Ginny could still be alive down there!"

"I'm sorry, mister--Weasley, right? Your sister has almost certainly already been eaten. The only thing we can do now is make sure the basilisk doesn't live long enough to kill anyone else."

"You're wrong. All the other victims were petrified and left where they were. If it took her into the Chamber there has to be a reason."

Hm, that's a good argument. Is it good enough that it's worth fighting on the monster's home ground with no line of retreat? Probably.

Typical adult behaviour.

Before Samora can finish her train of thought, Harry steps up to the edge of the hole. "I'm going in. You can come or you can stay here, I don't care."

The kid isn't bluffing. Samora jumps in the hole.

The hole turns sideways into a long slimy slide, which spirals around and then lets out into a large room. The temperature and humidity are clearly that of somewhere underground. It looks like a natural cave with the floor smoothed out and the walls carved back in a few places.

She's underground and covered in slime! It's almost comfortingly familiar, at this point.

Harry and Ron slide out of the tube a moment later.

The cave continues around a couple bends, and then a wall of scales looms out of the darkness (or, if you're Samora, is visible the moment she turns the corner). It's a shed snakeskin fifty feet long.

"That's a lot bigger than I thought basilisks could get. You two should stay here. Get a wall at your backs, and if you hear anything coming, close your eyes."

"No. We're coming too."

"What he said."

These kids are so scared and so brave and she has no idea how Potter ended up reading Evil when he's this good.

"I'm fifth circle and have death insurance. You're both very brave but I'm objectively at less risk than you are." And at less risk without them than with them.

"She's my sister. And we're not useless; Harry fought You-Know-Who last year."

"And I wouldn't have caught up to him without Ron."

She doesn't in fact know who, but they're just going to follow her if she doesn't physically prevent them, and at least one of them is strong enough to read an alignment off, and--she doesn't get the sense that whatever history they have has led them to want a heroic death. But if they did, they wouldn't be the first to make that choice, and some who do are glad of it. Still, she hopes that isn't it.

"Alright. But please try to stay out of melee, I'd feel terrible if I let either of you die."

"Don't worry, I would also feel pretty terrible if I died."

That gets a chuckle. Onward goes the impromptu party.

Not far past the snakeskin is a giant pair of doors, carved with a relief of entwined serpents whose eyes are gleaming emeralds.

"Open," hisses Harry, and shoots Samora a glance of guess you needed us after all.

Samora reads that glance loud and clear, and inclines her head in acknowledgement. There may be a trick for using truespeech to say item command words when nobody in the room speaks the language, but if there is Samora doesn't know it.

The next room is a vast rectangular hall. Its walls and ceiling are as smooth as its floor, and two rows of pillars as thick as ancient oaks march down its length. 

Ron and Harry walk with their faces down and their eyes half-shut, seeing just enough of the floor in front of them so as not to trip.

Samora closes her eyes entirely and focuses on her other senses. Detect Evil pans back and forth as she swings her head from side to side, but that's far from the only thing she's thinking about. She's tracking every footfall of herself and her companions, every distant drip of water, every stirring of the stagnant air, the shifting of the light from her glowing shield reflecting from the evenly spaced pillars onto her closed eyelids, and integrating it all into a picture of her surroundings almost as complete as what an ordinary person would be aware of with their eyes open. 

Samora's Wisdom headband cost more money than most Golarionites will see in a lifetime. It is not a luxury. It is a tool of survival.

Nonetheless it's the Detect Evil that first reports something amiss. It's over there, it's about as strong as the cursed item Samora found earlier, and it's breathing but not nearly loudly enough to be the size of the giant snakeskin.

Smart enough to read Evil means smart enough to be more dangerous for it, but stealth would have been a lost cause even if she'd been alone with her shield darkened. She clanks.

"Who are you and what have you done with Ginny Weasley?"

Before the Evil creature can answer, Ron sprints forward, yelling, "Ginny! Ginny are you alright? Can you hear me? Please wake up!" Harry is right behind him.

"She won't wake."

"Tom Riddle? Are you a ghost?"

"I am more than a ghost. I am a memory, preserved in a diary for fifty years. But soon I will be fully human. It's good to see you, Harry Potter. We have much to talk about."

"We can't talk here, the basilisk could show up at any moment!"

(Ron has hoisted Ginny over his shoulder.)

"The basilisk won't come until it's called."

"What d'you mean, until it's called? What's happened to Ginny?"

"That's quite a long story. But in short, she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to a boy in a book."

(Samora is debating the merits of starting the combat now versus waiting for more hints about what's up with Ginny. It doesn't look like something a channel can fix and she's only got one Dispel prepped.)

Riddle proceeds go to on about himself at great length, revealing important plot information such as: He's also known as Lord Voldemort. He's a huge jerk. He's been pretending to be Ginny's friend all year. He thinks he's the greatest sorcerer in the world.

Harry interrupts to assert that the greatest sorcerer in the world is Dumbledore, actually. It turns into a whole thing.

This argument is then interrupted by a song, high and strange and beautiful, with words in a language no human tongue can speak unaided. Neither the meter nor the melody can be translated, but the sense of the song is this:

At midnight in winter, the sun is still there

When you are under the mountains, the sun is still above you 

Though you are alone, you will never be friendless

Joy is stronger than darkness, love is stronger than death

And out of the song, in the midst of the song, in a burst of flame like arms thrown up to greet the morning, a phoenix arrives, carrying in his talons a Hat older than the Norman conquest.

"Is that the extent of Dumbledore's abilities? A bird and a hat? I don't care. Within the hour I will finish draining the girl's life into myself, and then I will be unstoppable!"

That's as much of a hint as she's likely to get and it means she's on a clock. "Release her and surrender or I will attack you." She punctuates this by pointing her sword at Riddle.

Who does she think she is, threatening him with a sword? "Silence, muggle."

Wrong answer. "Holy Smite." (Aimed up and to one side, so as not to catch Harry or the probably-Neutral Weasleys. The phoenix is obviously Good and therefore not a concern.)

"Aaaagh! You bitch! Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four!"

From above their heads comes the sound of stone sliding against stone as the giant statue's mouth opens, and something stirs in the depths.

"Eyes shut, everyone! Blessing of Fervor!" Harry, Ron, and Fawkes all feel a little faster, a little stronger, a little more ready to Kick Some Ass.

Ron sets Ginny down gently behind a pillar and goes to stand between her and Riddle, badly repaired wand at the ready.

"Go back! Don't come out here!" yells Harry in Parseltongue.

"Kill the intruders!"

"Yesss, friend. The cassstle will be sssafe."

"He's lying! We mean no harm! This doesn't have to be a fight."

"He sssmellssss like Sssalazar and you don't. I don't trusssst you. Die."

Samora throws herself to one side as the King of Serpent's fangs come down; her sword clatters off its armored hide. It might not read Evil but it sure is trying to kill them.

Fawkes swoops down at the monster with a defiant caw, and it screams a horrible, unnatural scream.

Lift your heads, open your eyes!

There is no need to fear!

Foe is blind and friends can see!

"It's blinded!" Samora translates, and launches another Holy Smite. It doesn't do a lot but it's more than her sword did.

Harry dashes forward to grab the Sorting Hat just as Samora finishes casting and gets caught in the edge of the sphere of blazing light, which--does him no harm whatsoever.

He jams the hat on his head, thinking desperately I don't know why Fawkes brought you here but we need all the help we can get! 

This, unlike the light, does him some harm. The Sword of Gryffindor, legendary blade of the bravest founder, forged by goblin master smiths in the fire that is the blood of the earth, treasure of Hogwarts since his death, thrice stolen and thrice returned, shining with rubies and silver, clonks Harry Potter on the noggin.

"Oi! Over here, you scaly git!" yells Ron, just before he whirls behind a pillar. 

The basilisk's own vast muscles propel it headfirst into the stone with a terrible CRUNCH. The car-sized head withdraws, stunned but furious, to reveal a crack running up the pillar.

Nothing they're doing is hitting hard enough. Her spells aren't going to bring it down before she runs out, her sword isn't going to bring it down before it gets lucky, Ron's courage and cleverness might bring it down but might bring the ceiling down on top of them as well. 

When Harry yanks the sword out of the hat, it's obvious that this is the phoenix's plan and their best shot. Maybe it's matched to the basilisk's vulnerability*. Maybe it's just extremely magic. But it's the right sword for the job and Harry is the right person to wield it.

"Inflict Moderate Wounds. You've got this, Harry!"

*Author's note: Avistani natural history doesn't have vuln and DR as separate concepts. They know there are monsters that are best attacked with particular materials but not that there are two different ways for that to work.

He has no idea how to use a sword, but he knows which end is the sharp bit! Time to stab!

The basilisk hiss-shrieks as a gash opens up on its side and that gash then gets a sword shoved in it. But now it knows exactly where at least one enemy is. Time to BITE.

And Harry lifts his sword and braces his feet with the steadiness of an infantry line facing down a cavalry charge, and steps forward at just the right moment as the basilisk's fangs come down and stabs off-center through the roof of its mouth.

The basilisk crashes to the floor, wounded beyond what even its vast health can bear. With the last of its strength and a voice distorted by the blade through its skull, it hisses, "Fffriend?"

"I didn't expect you to be so useless. Losing to two kids and a, whatever she is? Pathetic."

"I'm sorry it had to be this way," Samora murmurs as the great serpent's final breath shudders and stills. "Sarenrae, who welcomes all souls, may your lawyers be as ever wise and learned. Erastil, watch over this creature, who died protecting its home."

And then she turns to the Dark Wizard who spent the whole battle standing and watching as though indifferent to the outcome. "Last chance."

"Ha! I don't need the basilisk, and there's nothing you can do to me. I'm immortal." And indeed, while the Holy Smites clearly hurt, he has no visible wounds.

Harry is looking back and forth between Riddle, Ginny, and the diary lying on the floor.

Ron, who has snuck halfway around the edge of the Chamber unnoticed, darts out from behind a pillar, scoops up the diary, and throws it to Harry--

Who catches it one handed and impales it on the tip of Gryffindor's blood- and venom-dripping sword.

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAA

Ron runs to take his sister's hand. "Ginny?"

". . . Bwuh . . . Where am I? Ron, are you okay? I--I--" Ginny rolls to face the wall and starts sobbing quietly into her hands.

Hug. Hug hug hug.

Cling.

"I t-tried to tell you at b-breakfast, that it was me--I'm going to be expelled--what's Mum going to say--"

"You're not gonna be expelled. It was Riddle, he made you do all that stuff, and he's dead now. And the snake's dead too, you're safe, everything is gonna be okay. We just need to get out of here." Which they are definitely going to be able to do without a giant snake to ride, somehow.

"At dawn tomorrow I'll be able to prepare Angelic Aspect and fly us out of here, if we don't find a better way by then. Does anyone need healing or a drink of water in the meantime?"

Nobody got hit. Ginny will accept the offered waterskin after Ron gives her a look about it.

I can carry everyone if you carry each other 

There is no need to wait

It is always dawn somewhere 

The only thing that isn't awesome about phoenixes is that they tend to hang out on remote mountains instead of going where the trouble is, and this one isn't doing that. What an excellent friend.

"Thank you!" She follows Fawkes back towards the end of the giant pipe.

Harry follows. "So I still have no idea who you are, really. What are you doing here? Why do you cast spells with a sword instead of a wand?"

"I'm a cleric of Iomedae, and I'm afraid I don't really understand what I'm doing here myself", she says wryly. "I got a letter from an archmage--someone like what it sounds like Dumbledore is--that sent me here, and said I'd get sent back when I finished 'the obvious quest'. So I might just vanish again once we're all back somewhere safe, or there might be loose ends that need to get handled first. Or she was lying and I'm stuck here and I'll need to Plane Shift myself back home, but I don't know why she'd lie about it. I was previously in Otari, on the Isle of Kortos, in Avistan, on the planet Golarion. Oh, and I don't cast spells through my sword, I cast them through this." She taps the sunburst-and-sword medallion at her throat.

Huh. "We're in Hogwarts, in Scotland, on planet Earth." Does that make her a space alien like in Doctor Who?

"What's a cleric?" Ron pipes up from the back of the group where Ginny is leaning on him.

That's a weird thing to not know; hopefully she's not somewhere like Rahadoum. Would Nefreti Clepati send a cleric to Rahadoum? . . . Yes.

"Clerics get our magic from the gods, rather than from study or being born with it. Iomedae is the goddess of prioritization and defeating Evil, and I also care about defeating Evil as efficiently as possible, so She gives me magic to help me advance our shared goals."

"Are there other gods of other things?"

"Yes! There are Good gods who help mortals with farming and healing and art and travel and parties, and Neutral gods who do trade and self-improvement and revenge and stuff, or who don't care about mortals at all and just care about the sea or the forests or whatever. And there are Evil gods who suck and cause problems on purpose."

Getting magic from someone else seems worse than just having it. "If you stopped doing what Iomedae wanted, would you lose your magic?"

"If I became Evil, or Chaotic, or a bit of both, or if my priorities changed completely, then yeah," Samora explains with the total lack of anxiety of an astronomer explaining that it would be bad for their health to be suddenly teleported to the surface of Venus.

Yeah, see, that's not as good as having magic you can do whatever you want with. 

"Chaotic?"

Alignment system infodump! With afterlife capsule descriptions!

"I'll believe they have that wherever you came from, but we don't have that here."

"No, you definitely do--or, you might not have the spells for detecting them, and without that or gods I could see not having a formal theory of them, but you definitely still have the thing where people can help each other or hurt each other or be constrained by commitments or not. And my Detect Evil ability still works here." (Harry still reads faintly Evil despite having just risked his life to rescue a kid and defeated some kind of Evil necromancer. Maybe it's something in his pockets; maybe he has some kind of Marshall situation. Not being a skeleton in particular, necessarily, just being some kind of entity that pings Detect Evil no matter what his actual soul is doing.)

"Can you detect any of the other ones, or just evil?"

Tentative handraise?

"Come off it, Gin, there's no way you're evil."

"You're not. Most people your age are True Neutral, but if you were any of the other three I wouldn't be able to tell, Detect Evil is the only one I have on automatically. I could prepare a spell to see the other ones tomorrow, but I generally don't, there are other spells that are more useful and I only get so many a day."

Wow her magic is way worse. No wonder she has a sword all the time. He did not previously have strong opinions on swords but as of today he's pretty in favor. "Why do you get Detect Evil automatically and not the other ones? Did your god pick it?"

"Well, in my case it's a bit complicated, but yes, Iomedae tends to hand out Detect Evil, Evil gods tend to hand out Detect Good, etc, because that's what's most useful for combat. A bunch of my combat spells hit harder on Evil creatures than Neutral ones and don't hurt Good ones at all, and also being able to tell if there's an ambush on the other side of a door is a big help."

"Was the big glowing sphere one you used against the basilisk one of those?"

"Yes. It wasn't very effective because the basilisk wasn't actually Evil. It was a threat to innocent people, and we had to kill it to stop Riddle, but it wasn't Evil. I think it just wasn't smart enough to understand why it shouldn't kill us just because Riddle told it to." 

Harry stops, looking thoughtful. "When you did that second one, I ended up in it by accident, and I thought it was going to burn me like it did Riddle and the basilisk, but it didn't. Does that mean I'm Good?"

She hadn't been sure whether he'd actually gone in or just missed the edge of it, but she doesn't think he's lying. "It would mean that, yes. Which is odd, because you also show up to Detect Evil. I've seen it before, people with some kind of Evil magic attached to them who were themselves Good. You wouldn't happen to be secretly undead, would you?" She smiles to turn the question into a joke. If he is secretly undead and doesn't want to tell her, that's his business.

"Is there a way to tell for sure? The stuff Riddle said to me, about me being like him . . ."

"Are you worried you're potentially Evil, or potentially undead?" Samora asks seriously. "I can check you for either or both today, but if you are, the checking will hurt. I'll be able to heal you afterwards, though, so it will only hurt for a few moments even in the worst case. Also if you'd rather wait until tomorrow I can prepare the spell for checking all four alignments without potentially injuring you. The check for undead is just hitting you with a healing spell, which hurts undead, and then if it hurts I can hit you with a reverse healing spell, which heals undead and hurts living people."

"Maybe try the undead one today and the other one tomorrow, then." 

"Alright, brace yourself. Cure Light Wounds."

Harry makes a deeply weird facial expression as the miscellaneous bruises he got sliding down the tube and dodging the basilisk suddenly stop aching but also he gets a moment's shooting pain in his scar.

"Better or worse than the opposite of that?"

Better, probably, but also if he's secretly a zombie it's got to be because of having survived a killing curse as a baby, so it making his scar hurt is not actually reassuring. "Better, I think?"

Samora has never seen someone have mixed feelings about polarized energy before. That's the great thing about adventuring; you learn something new every day.

"Alright, probably not secretly undead then. Might be cursed or something? If I don't pop back to my planet before tomorrow and don't end up with combat plans for the day I can prepare a Remove Curse, see if that does anything. Or maybe I can get some more detail if I-- Detect Magic--nope, it's still too magic down here to see straight, never mind."

"If you might pop back to your planet tonight maybe you should check if I'm evil today."

"Come off it, Harry, you're not evil."

"You really don't seem Evil. Like sure, maybe everything you're saying and doing is an elaborate deception, but if you're working from the same information I am? You just risked your life to save a friend and defeat an Evil wizard. And did an excellent job of it, too. I don't know your past; maybe you've done some things you regret. But if you regret your mistakes, and try to make amends and do better next time, they won't weigh on your soul forever. As long as you're alive you can keep learning and growing and doing Good."

Fawkes trills and chimes his agreement, and takes a break from circling above the party's heads to land on Harry's shoulder and gently preen his hair for a moment before taking off again.

"And the phoenix likes you. You're fine."

"We should get out of here and tell everyone the basilisk's dead." He starts walking toward the exit again.

It's not that much farther to the bottom of the pipe. Samora takes hold of Fawkes' offered tail feathers and holds out a hand for the others.

Harry takes Samora's other hand and one of Ron's; Ron adjusts his arm around Ginny and makes sure she's holding on tight.

Being carried by a phoenix doesn't feel like dangling by one arm while other people's weight hangs off your other arm. It feels like changing from a being held down by gravity to a being whose nature is to ascend and to lift others up with you. They soar up the pipe together without touching the walls, surrounded by echoing song, rising back to the familiar world of air and light. Fawkes sets them all down gently on the floor of Myrtle's bathroom and then leads them, covered in slime but triumphant, along the hallway to Professor McGonagall's office.

This office contains: two people who are obviously the Weasley children's parents, and two people who are obviously powerful casters. Fawkes lands on one of the latter's shoulder.

The Weasley parents immediately scoop all three children into a hug of an intensity that only a parent who just stopped grieving can provide.

The powerful casters

greet Samora with a raised eyebrow.

"Samora, Church of Iomedae," she accounts for herself. "I was sent to this planet by an archmage, encountered Potter and Weasley on their way to rescue the younger Weasley and pitched in. They fight very well for their age."

"Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts, and this is my deputy Minerva McGonagall. What is the church of Iomedae?" he asks, staring into her eyes.

Ah yes, the archmage Harry supports and Riddle had beef with. She might have suspected even if he hadn't introduced himself; that Detect Thoughts went through her save like it wasn't there. She contemplates the general situation of gods on Golarion, the nature of Iomedae, and the structure and purpose of the church for a few seconds, then answers aloud for the other one. "Iomedae is the ascended goddess of prioritization and defeating Evil; Her church is centered on my home planet Golarion and focuses on protecting civilization there from major threats."

Tiny eyebrow twitch. (Translation: what in Merlin's name is this.)

"Fascinating. Truly even at my age I have a great deal to learn."

"Oh, and I have a letter from the archmage for someone here--I can't read this language, I'm using truespeech--it might be for you?" She fishes the letter out of the bag of holding and shows the address.

"Ah, yes, that would be for me." The letter floats gently out of her hand and opens itself on the way to his. 

Hello, Albus! I've sent Samora to help with your Voldemort problem. Let her hang around Hogwarts and make sure she has plenty of opportunities to go looking for trouble. Actually tell her the things she needs to know, if you can bear it. And be glad you're not one of the Evil yous, the Evil yous don't get such nice presents.

[Dumbledore's time travel password redacted for privacy]

[Archmage proof-of-work block redacted for being in inscrutable spell diagram notation]

Toodles,

Nefreti Clepati

P.S. Try not to eat so much of the anomaly's brain.

One of Dumbledore's eyebrows climbs gradually into his hair. He incinerates the letter with a twitch of his wand; within seconds not even ashes remain of it.

If she's cleared for any of that, she'll get told it eventually. Or maybe none of it has anything to do with her, maybe this is just how archmages on different planets send each other mail, what does she know.

The Weasleys (and Potter) have unhugged enough to be conversational.

Dumbledore turns a twinkling eye on Harry. "I'm glad you three all made it back safely. How did you find the Chamber of Secrets?"

Harry explains the book page he and Ron found in Hermione's petrified hand with the note "pipes", the realization that a basilisk in the plumbing explained why Moaning Myrtle died in a bathroom, their decision to tell Lockhart and discovery of Samora along the way, the confrontation with Lockhart--

"Oh no, he's probably still there, isn't he".

"It seems likely." He scans the group for people who could reasonably be split off from it, decides against sending Samora to navigate Hogwarts unassisted, and looks at McGonagall.

McGonagall steps out for about two moments*, then returns. "He's being dealt with."

(She sent a Patronus to Snape. She's not leaving this conversation until she finds out what happened to her students.)

*A Golarion time unit based on the length of time many spells take to cast. 

Harry, on being prompted to continue, explains their journey through the Chamber and their discovery of Riddle and Ginny. Then he hesitates, trying to figure out how to explain the whole diary possession thing in a way that makes it clear that Ginny didn't do anything wrong and how to prove what he says.

"What I would quite like to know is how Voldemort managed to enchant miss Weasley, when according to my sources he's hiding in the forests of Albania."

Oh, maybe that's why she hasn't vanished back to Otari yet. "Cursed diary possessing miss Weasley. Some kind of enchantment-necromancy combo, if I had to guess, but I don't because we can just show you. Harry, you've still got it, right?" Obviously an archmage won't have a problem getting a full understanding of an artifact from the post-destruction residue, or be bothered by the background magic from his own castle.

Indeed, neither the background magic nor the diary being inert poses any problem whatsoever. The diary itself, on the other hand. Dumbledore takes the diary when Harry holds it out, but his frown is already deepening before he sees it.

"Yes, it's fully destroyed now. Basilisk venom is a potent substance. Miss Weasley, you have from the sound of it had a very long day. I recommend you go to the hospital wing and let Madam Pomfrey look you over and prescribe a mug of hot chocolate and a good night's sleep."

"Then--I'm not in trouble?"

"Certainly not. Wizards much older and more experienced than you have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort. And his other victims should all have received their mandrake draught by now, so no harm done in the end."

Wobbly but genuine smile.

"Hermione's awake, then!"

"Just so. Perhaps you could escort your sister to the hospital wing and pay her a visit. And Minerva, I think all this merits a feast. Perhaps you could alert the kitchens. Harry, Samora, if you would remain here a few moments longer?"

Everyone with the surname Weasley departs in reasonably good spirits.

Likewise.

Dumbledore smiles at Harry. "You must have shown me real loyalty down there in the Chamber. Nothing but that could have called Fawkes to you."

"And you met Tom Riddle. He must have been very interested in you."

"Yes . . . Professor, why did Riddle say we were alike? Why do I speak Parseltongue? Why do I show up to Samora's evil-detecting spell?"

"You can speak Parseltongue, Harry, because Lord Voldemort--who is the last remaining descendant of Salazar Slytherin--can speak Parseltongue. I believe he unwittingly transferred some of his power to you, the night he gave you that scar."

"Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?"

Good heavens. Poor kid is probably cursed eight ways from Oathday. Maybe she's been sent here to help Dumbledore with a ritual or something.

"Then--I should be in Slytherin, the Sorting Hat knew I had Slytherin's power--"

Nope, wrong, incorrect. Having a fucked up sorcerer bloodline doesn't obligate you to do anything except inasmuch as everyone ought to make the most of their own talents. She doesn't know what Slytherin is but it does Not sound like a high-priority Good or Lawful project.

"And yet the Sorting Hat put you in Gryffindor. You know why it made that decision."

"It wasn't the Hat's idea . . . I asked for anything except Slytherin . . ."

"Yes. And that, Harry, is exactly what matters most. It is our choices, not our abilities, that determine who we really are."

Samora likes this archmage. She can see why he's friends with a phoenix.

"And if you want more proof that you are a true Gryffindor--observe."  Dumbledore takes the ruby-studded sword from its place on McGonagall's desk and shows Harry the name engraved on the blade: Godric Gryffindor.

"Woah."

"If I end up having enough downtime on this planet, would you like swordsmanship lessons? You seem to be living the sort of life where it won't hurt, assuming you have time for it alongside the magic. I began studying the blade when I was about your age, and I'm no great talent at it but I know enough to get you started."

Is that an option? Is that a thing that can happen? Does he want that?

"You know, I think that would be an excellent idea. Though perhaps with a blunter and less expensive sword, for the moment. Just take one from any of the suits of armor in the corridors; they generally don't fight back."

Probably the part of that he's kidding about is the part where the armor might fight back, but she should be on hand for the sword-getting just in case.

"But now, Harry, I believe you have some friends to celebrate with. Oh, and take two hundred points for Gryffindor, and tell mister Weasley I've given him two hundred as well."

Harry offskis. "I'll find you tomorrow for sword lessons? If you're still here?" He asks Samora on the way out.

"Definitely!" Is she expected to leave as well or is it time to find out what was in that letter?

Second thing!

"Thank you for your patience, Samora. It's time you were filled in on some context. You have arrived rather in the middle of things, and unless I am badly mistaken you will only get more so for some time. What are your current major points of confusion?"

Samora starts counting points off on her fingers. "What was in your letter if it's anything I should know about, what the full extent of my 'obvious quest' is, what's going on with Potter and Voldemort and in particular whether I can help with Potter's curse situation, what are Slytherin and Gryffindor. Also are the arcane mages here the kind who're born with it or the kind who learn it from books or some of each, my truespeech is being unclear."

"Your last question is the easiest: we are born with innate magical abilities and gain skill in using them through study and practice. Intelligence, diligence, accident of birth, and force of will all have their parts to play in mastering wizardry. And those are, approximately, the four virtues most prized by the four Founders of Hogwarts: Godric Gryffindor valued courage and determination, Rowena Ravenclaw, wit and curiosity, Helga Hufflepuff, diligence and loyalty, and Salazar Slytherin, cunning and a powerful lineage. Students arriving at Hogwarts are Sorted into a house by the Sorting Hat, which chooses based on the virtues they desire to cultivate. But perhaps the process will be more intuitive if you try on the Hat yourself. He is the expert, after all."

Samora looks at the ancient, raggedy, yet somehow dignified Hat on the desk. "So I just put it--him--on?"

"Just so."

Alright. Hat goes on head.

Well, hello there. It's been a while since I've met someone for the first time as an adult. And that headband! I haven't seen anything like it since Rowena's day. Anyway, are you here to be Sorted, or something else?

Hello! I'm told you can explain how the Houses work and it seems like the sort of thing I should know if I'm going to help solve problems here.

Well, you've certainly come to the right place. A lot of people will tell you that Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin are the brave house, the smart house, the nice house, and the evil house, or some such nonsense. But what the houses are, originally, is groups of students who were tutored by one of the four Founders and aspired to be like them, and they were people, human complicated people with strengths and weaknesses and priorities and philosophies that can't be summed up in a word apiece. I knew them, you see, when they were alive, and I have remembered them for a thousand years while they turned into dust and legends.

He sounds like her introductory theology teacher. She likes him already.

Gryffindor cared about courage, yes, but not purely physical courage. There's also the emotional courage to speak up when something isn't right even when people you respect don't agree, and the intellectual courage to face the truth no matter what it is. He saw the study of magic as fundamentally practical, oriented towards achieving things in the physical world alone or with a group of allies.

Ravenclaw saw magic as primarily an intellectual pursuit, a quest to understand the true underlying laws of reality. She loved curiosity, the urge to know for the sake of knowing, to share that knowledge with all who sought it, and to use it for the benefit of all.

Hufflepuff was the glue that held the other three together. She cared about friendship and loyalty and hard work, but mostly she cared about people. She saw wizardkind as a community, and the study of magic as a way to strengthen that community and preserve that culture. She cared more than any of the others about making sure every magical child she could reach had a home at Hogwarts.

Slytherin has a reputation, these days, for caring about the magical pedigree of his students more than anything else. And he did care about that, but not exclusively. He saw magic as a gift and a responsibility, something that not everyone was ready to use. He cared about the magical community and wanted to protect it from threats both internal and external. But he also cared about cultivating his students' talents. He believed in intelligence turned to practical ends, in the usefulness of knowing friend from foe and understanding what people want and how to work together with those you disagree with for a common end. He believed in finding the people with the will and the ability to do great things, then nurturing their talents and encouraging them to reach ever higher. His flaws have shaped his legacy more than any of the others, but his virtues were real virtues and many of his students accomplished great good in the world.

I think I understand. I resonate with Gryffindor more than any of the others, but it's obvious that all four of them working together would build something better than any one of them could have done alone.

If only it was so obvious to the eleven year olds I sort. I wish they'd get rid of that foolish "house point" contest they have every year to get them to try harder in class. It encourages the mindset where the houses are set against each other and only one can be the best. But I'm just ranting into the nearest listening ear at this point.

Everyone needs to rant sometimes. I appreciate the explanation! 

You're quite welcome, I'm sure.

Hat off. "That was illuminating."

"Excellent. Now, I believe you asked after my letter? It contained a number of puzzling things. The least puzzling was the solution to a problem in theoretical transfiguration I had been pondering and hadn't mentioned to anyone, and they only got odder from there. But the key part from your perspective was that you were sent here to pursue the final defeat of Lord Voldemort and prevent him from conquering this country."

"That makes sense. I'd appreciate information on his strengths and weaknesses and a map of how to get from here to Albania."

"I'm afraid it's going to be more complicated than that. And here is where I must ask you to promise me that you will keep certain matters secret before I can discuss them with you, even if it seems to you that they should not be concealed." He starts up another Detect Thoughts-alike.

High-bandwidth overview of her understanding of the importance of oaths! Also her reluctance to swear them generally but willingness to do so for matters as important as this seems to be, and the thing where she expects the Inheritor would renounce her for oathbreaking, this assurance being one of Her greatest gifts to Her empowered. Detect Thoughts is so useful, gosh, Samora is really gaining a deeper understanding of why the Inheritor had a permanent Telepathic Bond with her command staff when She was a mortal general.

"I would not ask this of you lightly. Keeping this information secret, especially from Harry Potter himself, may prove key to his survival and Lord Voldemort's downfall."

"Then you have my oath not to share it except with your permission, though my acting skills and susceptibility to mind-reading are as you see them."

"Thank you. I will need to train you in occlumency before sharing certain pieces of the puzzle, as Lord Voldemort is a legilimens of close to my own strength, though for reasons you will understand momentarily I hope you will be able to avoid a direct confrontation with him. Are you familiar with the nature of prophecies?"

"Prophecy is broken on my planet, but I know that elsewhere the gods and certain powerful outsiders are able to see the shape of the future and make plans that mortals can disrupt only rarely and by extraordinary effort."

"Then perhaps the connection between past and future here is weaker than it was on your planet before it broke. Prophecies here are made by Seers, not entirely voluntarily. They can be averted if their subjects choose to avert them, but prophecies and their subjects happen to be such that most of the time--though not always--the people involved will act so as to bring them about whether they are informed of the prophecy or not."

Reminds her of some of the weirder hypotheticals that came up in ethics seminar her senior year.

 "I know," the professor had said, "that thinking about some of these possibilities can feel like trying to turn your brain inside out. Try not to worry about it too much. You're very unlikely to ever end up in this sort of situation, and if you ever think you have you probably still haven't, but if you ever truly do, I hope that having thought about it in advance will help."

Thanks, professor Bjarnarsson; Samora hopes you're right.

"There was a prophecy spoken thirteen years ago," Dumbledore continues, "of which Voldemort already knows the first half; this much I can tell you without risk." His voice takes on the tone of one reciting a long-held memory. "The one with the power to vanquish the dark lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies." Voldemort came to believe that the prophecy referred to Harry Potter, and when young Harry survived his Killing Curse and destroyed his body in the process he must have become certain that he was correct. I believe that someday--though I hope that day may be long delayed--he will return to physical form and his full power. And when he does, his nature is such that he will seek out Harry Potter and try to destroy him, and Harry's nature is to stand and fight."

Poor kid. He's been handling it well, at least.

"Are you hoping to avert this prophecy, or see it fulfilled?--No, of course you can't answer that until you can tell me the second half. Is Voldemort undead, then, if he survived the destruction of his body, and what does he need to do to get a new one?"

"There are rituals, too Dark to speak of in any detail, that allow a wizard to tear off a piece of his soul--at a cost to his sanity-- anchor it to an object, and so survive the death of his body as a spirit. I believe this diary is one such. But it was not hidden behind walls and spells and traps, but deployed as a weapon. The Riddle I knew would not have risked his only defense against death so lightly. And so I fear that he has gone beyond even other dark lords in his depravity--that he has made more than one."

A lich. A lich with multiple phylacteries. "Inheritor guard us."

"I intend to research Riddle's history, trace the path of his rise to power, and find out what objects he may have chosen for this purpose and where he might have hidden them. I hope, but do not expect, to find them all; still, I will give Harry Potter whatever head start I can."

"I'll help as much as I can, of course. And--I may be able to meaningfully help already." Being an adventurer gives one a certain ability to put two and two together. "Before I ran into Potter and Weasley, I appeared in a room full of strange objects, and one of them had an Evil aura. I've had some success in the past, albeit with help, in turning powerful Evil magic items into similar Good ones, so I took it for later investigation. It seems rather too good to be true, but when a friendly archmage is picking your landing spot . . ."

"Did you touch it? Where is it? Show me."

"I didn't, I just knocked it into my bag. Getting it out again without touching it is going to be a bit of bother, here--" she unties the bag of holding from her waist and dumps it out on the floor, then starts piling everything except the strange Evil crown back in.

Dumbledore's eyebrows do gymnastics for the third time tonight. "The lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw. If it can indeed be cleansed, it would be a wonderful find. The historical and magical significance are both immense." He removes an oddly stiff and shiny white cloth from one of his many concealed pockets and wraps the diadem in it without touching it; the cloth seals itself into a cocoon and is returned to a different pocket. "Nonetheless, it may turn out that the best we can do is destroy it--and even that may prove difficult. Though as Harry so effectively demonstrated earlier tonight, a goblin-made sword that has drunk of a basilisk's venom is a potent weapon indeed."

"Good skill. I hope my having been sent here means it's the sort of thing a divine caster can help with."

"I hope so as well. Between that and occlumency lessons, I expect we'll be seeing a lot of each other for the next few months. Fortunately it's almost the end of term, so I'm about to be down to two and a half jobs. Perhaps tomorrow after lunch?"

"Sure. I have to spend an hour in prayer every day starting at dawn to prepare my spells, but other than that my schedule is completely open--I don't sleep."

"An enviable ability, though perhaps not entirely so; I find I do some of my best thinking in my sleep. Do you eat? I hope you do, as there's about to be a feast in the great hall."

"I do!" The Acts are very clear that it's a good idea to eat every now and then, especially when there are new friends to eat with.

"Excellent. One more thing before we go downstairs, then: do you know what my letter might have meant when it told me to 'stop eating the anomaly's brain'?"

Blink blink. "No. . . . Maybe stop eating brains entirely, just to be on the safe side?"

"I have never eaten anything resembling a brain, with the possible exception of one suspiciously flavored Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean."

"Yeah, I've got nothing, then. I've heard Nefreti Clepati is incomprehensible like that."

On their way through the spatially implausible corridors, they are interrupted by a different well-dressed Evil blond man.

"I seem to recall you were no longer employed here."

"Funny thing, that. The board of governors heard about the missing girl and decided to offer me the job back. They said some very strange things about it, too. Why, some of them seemed to believe they had been threatened into voting against me in the first place."

"And were you indeed the man for the job? Can the students rest easy tonight knowing that the culprit has been caught?"

"They can. It was the same person as last time, acting through a certain cursed diary. Which I last saw mister Potter taking as a souvenir while he thought I wasn't looking, and so I am quite surprised to see that it is currently in your pocket."

Lucius's eye twitches. "That child is nothing but trouble."

Smirk.

Dramatic cloak-swooshing turn. Exit stage left.

A few more implausible corridors later, Dumbledore is presiding over the feast from the high table and Samora has plonked herself next to Harry and Ron on the principle of "act like you're supposed to be there and see if anyone objects".

Nobody objects! She gets briefly questioned by Ron's brother Percy, but Dumbledore knowing she's here and being okay with it satisfies him.

"Ron and Harry told me about you and I have so many questions!"

"This is Hermione Granger, she's the one who figured out about the basilisk and then got petrified. 'mione, remember to let Samora eat anything between questions."

"I'd be happy to trade information about our worlds! So far it seems like the biggest difference between them is that the gods are active on mine."

“What kind of active? Do they do anything other than giving people magic?”

“Most of the time no, but the Lawful ones and a bunch of the Neutral ones have holy books, and there are occasional one-off miracles, like Heaven putting up a barrier around a dangerous planar rift, or gods sending people visions. And some divine magic involves the god doing something specific, like the Commune spell lets you ask them yes or no questions.”

“And all of this is common knowledge? What's a planar rift?”

“For the most part, yes; I've had a better education than most people get but all the basics are pretty well known in most countries. A planar rift is somewhere it's possible for creatures to pass from one plane to another without a Plane Shift spell. The one with the barrier is called the Worldwound and it goes to the Abyss, which is full of demons, so my country's army and some other countries’ armies and various adventurers are working to contain it and keep the demons away from everyone else.”

"What are demons?"

“Creatures of pure Chaos and Evil–did Ron and Harry explain alignments to you?--made from the souls of dead Chaotic Evil mortals.”

“They did, but I don't think I understand them yet. Does everyone agree on which things are Good and which things are Evil? Can people find out which one they are? Does everyone turn into something else when they die? Are the Evil afterlives horrible?”

“The gods agree, but it's complicated enough that mortals don't always. Most of it's common sense, though, just follow the laws and don't hurt anyone and try to help people who need it and you'll end up somewhere decent.

All the afterlives transform people eventually, but in the Good ones and Axis–that’s Lawful Neutral–it’s more like growing up and learning new things.

And the Evil afterlives are horrible, but the Good afterlives are working on conquering them. It'll take centuries, maybe millennia, but the plan is for everyone who possibly can to be okay eventually.”

“That's–good, I think. Probably better than everyone just being dead forever.”

Hermione focuses on her food for a minute, not saying what she's thinking. 

"Is there a way to talk to people in the afterlives?"

“Not easily, but there's a spell for scrying people, including dead ones, and a spell that lets me send someone a short message and get a short reply.”

"Um."

"Hm?"

“Doyouthinkyoucouldsendamessagetomyparents.”

“I can certainly try, tomorrow, and I expect to succeed. It doesn't always work across planes but it does more often than not.” She's tempted to Sending Marshall as well, but the bit in the letter about returning to the same time she left is giving her pause. If she does a Sending tomorrow, and then goes back to before Marshall receives it, then she could tell Marshall what he said before he thinks to say it, and then what if he said something else? The whole business seems questionable in a way that letting Harry tell his parents he misses them doesn't.

“So if magic is public knowledge where you're from, someone should tell you about the Statute of Secrecy.”

“Yes, that definitely sounds like something I should know about.”

Hermione's face lights up at the chance to explain something. "Muggles--that's people who don't have any magic--aren't allowed to know magic exists. Most wizards live in hidden towns that muggles can't get to, or in hidden houses in muggle cities, or way out in the country where there's nobody around to notice anything."

"Why's it a secret? What would happen if everyone knew?"

"Some people say the muggles would be afraid of the wizards and kill them--there have been killings, before, when a bunch of muggles started thinking there might be magic and killed anyone they suspected, whether they were really magic or not. Some say they'd want wizards to help solve all their problems. Some say that if it weren't for the Statute evil wizards would be able to conquer everyone with an army of mind-controlled muggles."

"I suppose solving everyone's problems would be harder if those other things happened, yes. And it's not crazy--Golarion does have countries that make some kinds of magic illegal and kill anyone they find doing it, and Evil necromancers have tried to conquer places with mind-controlled armies. But magic is so useful we're still better off for having it public. Oh, but you've only got sorcerers, right, not the kinds anyone can learn? That would change the cost-benefit a lot, if you end up with the same number of magic users either way."

"Yeah, it'd be different if everyone could learn. There's magic for finding muggleborns--witch or wizard kids born to muggle parents--and they get told about magic before they do anything that can't be explained away as a weird coincidence."

"If I'm recalling Riddle's monologue correctly he had some objections to that system, which leaves me somewhat favourably inclined to it."

"Yeah. Some people think muggleborns are worse. At magic, or at being part of wizarding society or something."

"It's a bunch of bunk, though. My family's been all wizards for ages and Hermione's doing better than me in everything."

Nod nod. "On Golarion some people get stronger more quickly than others, but as far as I know it's all about how clever or wise or splendid you are and how many opportunities you have to get into fights."

"Opportunities to get into fights?"

"Yes? That's how you get stronger, is by facing dangerous challenges at the limits of your abilities and overcoming them. It's not always literally fights but it mostly is."

"I think our kind of wizards just get stronger with hard work and practice even if it's not dangerous."

"Huh. That's probably a convenient way for it to be, if it means you can get a lot of powerful casters without half of them dying young."

"I'd say so!"

Yup. It would be pretty cool if repeatedly surviving Voldemort made him not need to do homework though.

Eventually the feast winds down and everyone heads off to bed.

------- To Be Continued -------