Metanoia • Harry Potter • Book I

Chapter Ten

As Argus Filch broke through the crowd, Keziah's insides collapsed within each other. Her skin may've had a troop of army ants crawling beneath the surface and she wouldn't have known the difference.

Distantly, she could hear the crowd slowly start whispering, many fingers pointed at the Golden Trio, standing below Mrs Norris while Filch attempted to throttle Harry. She needed to do something, her mind crowed from beyond the fog.

Tearing away from her friends, Keziah stumbled forward rather like an inferius. Given the current state of things, the connection made her shudder.

She reached her brother at the same time as the teachers.

"Miss Potter," said Professor McGonagall in a strangled voice. "What are you doing?"

"I want to be here," she replied fiercely, her swirling mind doubling her anger. "I'm not leaving him."

Snape suddenly looked sick as he watched her. "She can stay, Minerva."

McGonagall looked like she wanted to argue, brows pinched in worry but Dumbledore beat her to it.

"It is fine, Minerva," he said gravely, adjusting his half-moon glasses to look at Mrs Norris. "Come with me, Argus. Children, you too."

Lockhart stepped forward eagerly. Keziah wrinkled her nose at him, but apart from a reproachful glance from McGonagall, nobody noticed.

"My office is nearest, Headmaster - just upstairs - please feel free—"

The crowd stepped aside like the red sea to let them pass. Theo looked like he wanted to say something as Keziah walked by but he bit his tongue.

Stepping into Lockhart's classroom, there was a flurry of movement that made Keziah's stomach roll. Several of Lockhart's portraits rushed out of frame, rollers in their hair. The real Lockhart lit up the room with a flick. Dumbledore laid Mrs Norris's petrified body across the desk.

Keziah blinked at the adjective her brain had conjured up. Where had 'petrified' come from?

Biting the inside of her cheek, she joined Harry, Ron and Hermione in the chairs outside the pools of candlelight.

Harry glanced at her tensely but Keziah couldn't even look at him without her brain hurting. She needed to talk to Madam Pomfrey but how could she do so without sounding crazy.

Trying to halt her thoughts, Keziah focused on the professors. Dumbledore was barely an inch away from Mrs Norris's scratchy fur, poking and prodding the poor creature while McGonagall leaned in just as closely. Snape stood in the shadow nearly smiling.

Lockhart hovered around the group, throwing out the least helpful advice Keziah had ever had the misfortune to hear.

"It was definitely a curse that killed her - probably the Transmogrifian Torture - I've seen it used many times, so unlucky I wasn't there, I know the very countercurse that would have saved her..."

His comments were punctuated by Filch's racking sobs. The old man was doubled over in grief, and Keziah felt horrible. She couldn't help but feel like it was her fault this had happened at all.

"...I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadougou," said Lockhart, "a series of attacks, the full story's in my autobiography, I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once..."

Her fists clenched at the man's words. He looked so joyful despite the sombre atmosphere choking the office. Her blood boiled with fury towards the sorry excuse for a wizard.

It was worse since all of Lockhart's portraits were murmuring in agreement. One of them was still wearing a hairnet.

Finally, Dumbledore straightened.