Window into the Past

🌙17🌙

I followed Dumbledore to the corridor and I looked up to see a message written in blood.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED! ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE!

My eyes nearly bulged out of my skull just reading that. I saw something hanging from the torch basket. A cat...Filch's cat.

"Argus, come with me, Mr Potter, Mr Weasley, Miss Granger, Miss Jones, come along too."

McGonagall and Snape tagged along too. Unfortunately so did Lockhart. It looked like the bloody thing was stuffed.

None of us were even listening to Lockhart going on and on about what spells he could have used.

He probably wouldn't even know them, one and two, I was too focused on my illness and talking to my father. 

"She's not dead, Argus," Dumbledore announced. "She's been petrified, although I do not know how..."

"Ask him!" Filch pointed at Harry. "No second year could perform this level of Dark Magic.." Dumbledore spoke up.

"He did it!" Filch insisted. "You saw what he wrote on the wall! He knows..he knows I'm a Squib!"

I looked at Harry and he just had this look of disbelief plastered all over his face. "I didn't touch Mrs Norris! I don't even know what a Squib is!"

"Rubbish, he saw my Kwikspell letter!"

"If I may speak," Snape piped up. "Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time but we have some suspicious circumstances, why were they here? Why weren't they at the Halloween feast?"

"We were at the Deathday Party, ask the ghosts! They saw us!" Ron piped up.

"But why come here?" Snape interrogated them. "We were looking for Joy," Harry told him. "I didn't want to go to the feast without her."

"I don't think Potter is being truthful, Headmaster," Snape smirked. "I think he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he's ready to be honest."

"Really Severus?" McGonagall grumbled, clearly annoyed. "The cat wasn't hit on the head with a broom, there is no reason to stop the boy from playing Quidditch! There's no evidence that Potter did anything wrong!"

"Innocent until proven guilty," Dumbledore agreed with her. "We can revive her, Argus, Professor Sprout has Mandrakes in her greenhouse and once they're fully grown, we can brew a restorative potion."

"I'll make it," Lockhart grinned. "Last time I checked, I'm the Potions master at this school," Snape glared at him.

Damn, you could literally feel the temperature drop. "You may go," Dumbledore dismissed them..but not me.

"Miss Jones, be careful, you must keep your friends close, do not push them away, understand?"

"Yes Professor," I nodded and he let me leave.

I caught up with Harry Ron and Hermione. "You were ages!" Ron exclaimed.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," I said sarcastically. We were walking to the feast and Harry paused as the others went ahead. "Are you okay?" 

"I hate being sick all the time," I told him. "I hate it. And I'm not getting better anytime soon. I'm so lost, Harry." 

I looked over to him, trying to keep the tears at bay. "I don't know how to make it stop. Will I just be sick for the rest of my life?" 

"The healers will figure something out, Joy," Harry tried to reassure me and I scoffed. "Yeah...right." 

"They will," he insisted. "There has to be something that can help..."