Duel Enrollment

Haunted

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Once the boys were busy he texted Severus to tell him the news and give him a heads up on a possible basilisk extraction. He knew one thing for sure ... Dumbledore wasn't going to like that ...

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"Lucius ... I think this is what Severus wanted us to look at." Narcissa said gravely.

The Malfoy Lord looked at his son's textbook from the previous year that his wife handed him, "I'm not seeing the- ... these symptoms ... this can't be ... unless ..." Lucius stared at the words blankly, trying to process the meaning behind them.

The conclusion he reached prompted him to take the book and head for the floo. He barely heard Narcissa call after him as green flames enveloped him taking him away. Without fully realizing it, he appeared in the floo in Dumbledore's office, but the old fool didn't seem there so he didn't care about his intrusive action. Lucius stormed out of the office and through the halls. After startling a few students who didn't expect him to quickly stride passed them, he found Severus' honeymoon suite.

"Severus!" Lucius yelled as he pounded on the door.

It took several minutes of constant pounding, but a shirtless and tired Severus did eventually open the door, "What's wrong-"

"Slow increase in unpredictability, mental decline, drastic physical changes ... His soul was broken, wasn't it?" Lucius snapped, tossing the book to the floor as his anger rose, "That book said there's a treatment. He's alive-"

Severus covered his friend's mouth before anything else could be said, "I know how you feel, Lucius. Dammit, we both went through that, but he is not responsible ... read the book more carefully before snapping at me and for the love of Merlin don't ever bring this up here of all places. Leave through my floo.." Severus snapped before dragging Lucius into his suite and slamming the the door so fast Lucius couldn't respond and neither could someone else.

If you were standing there watching the swift exchange you might've noticed something off. It was a sound. An odd, wince inducing, crunch of a sound to be exact and it came right when Severus slammed his door shut. Also, if you looked down you'd see blood droplets suddenly appear on the floor seemingly out of nowhere. In fact, a trail of blood drops was slowly materializing out of nothing!

Or was it? Listening carefully will reveal the sound of footsteps accompanying the appearance of each droplet. The blood drops and footsteps made a path that wound its way through the halls at the speed of someone running and all the way back to a certain statue that was out of the way revealing the stairs because Lucius left it that way. Some angry mutters were heard as the footsteps padded up the steps and the door to Dumbledore's office swung open.

Once the door slammed shut and a flutter of fabric shimmered in the air before falling to the floor revealing it to be a cloak that was hiding Dumbledore with a bloody nose. "I need to shut down the floo. People can't go wandering around my office!" Dumbledore tried to say, but it was a bit muddled with the broken nose and constant blood flowing.

The headmaster dropped the cloak and whimpered as he pointed his wand at his busted nose. He cast a healing spell on his swelling bruised nose resulting in a sharp pop as the nose snapped back in place. After taking a moment to collect himself and casting a cleaning spell that will affect all the blood he bled even in the halls he glared at the fireplace.

"I'll just deactivate it. It's not like I need it." Dumbledore said as he approached the fireplace intent on stopping people from simply walking into his office. He knew he could easily apparate away since he was the headmaster and the only one allowed to so really he had no need for it.