"Will he really manage to lure her out?"
"Yeah, Sykes has patrol duty on the same floor as her. He says he has a surefire way to lure her into the third-floor bathroom where we will wait for her."
Harry and I listened in on four Slytherin sixth and seventh years as they walked past us.
"Sykes finally came through. That bitch rejected me and I put Sykes on the case half a year ago. Took him long enough," the seediest looking of the bunch exclaimed. "If his father wants to have any hope in getting a promotion he better hope his son doesn't fuck up."
'Oh. So his feelings were hurt and now he's looking to... what? Run a train on 'her' with five dudes? Yeah, these are who were looking for,' I thought with an angered expression as I motioned for Harry to follow me.
We listened in as they climbed four more stairs and arrived at a girl's bathroom under the Disillusionment charm. Harry and I learned that this wasn't the first time these animals did something similar to a witch at Hogwarts and we even learned that the lone pregnant Hufflepuff witch was sadly a past target of theirs also.
Harry's hands were trembling in rage, and if it wasn't for my occlumency, I wouldn't look and behave much different. That reminded me to finish up my personal book on all I understood on Occlumency that I planned to gift to Harry, Hermione, Lara, and some other friends. The discipline was simply too overpowered not to share with people I cared about. And the Hogwarts library did not have a single book on it I could find.
It was a typical case of purebloods keeping the 'peasants' weak and malleable.
The two of us, Harry and I, were huddled under the cloak and inside this third floor girl's bathroom for a good twenty minutes and watched those four wretches discuss who would get to go first on which 'end' and I was glad I brought along my wristblade.
I feared what Harry would think of me, but I was not going to let them keep their 'tools of despair' any longer after tonight.
I also packed up my Hogwarts robe while still under the cloak, put the hoodie over my head and pulled the turtleneck over my nose. I silently changed the color of my outfit to the same color of the stone flooring and inwardly went over the assassin's silent takedown knowledge in my mind.
Eventually, the door to the bathroom opened and my eyes constricted as Penelope Clearwater, the prefect who introduced Harry and I to Ravenclaw stood there with a suspicious frown on her face. She had become a fond acquaintance in recent months, always willing to lend a helpful hand in the library or with the more complicated assignments.
From where we stood, we saw another prefect with the Slytherin colors on his robe look at her back with a resigned but determined expression.
'So he was really forced into doing it? Let's see how it plays out,' I thought as I pressed down Harry's wand hand and told him to wait with a hand sign.
"You said you heard voices in here, Prefect Sykes?" Penelope once more inquired as she waited at the opened door instead of going in.
"Yeah. I didn't want to check it since it's the girls restroom. It wouldn't be proper, so I got you, Prefect Clearwater."
Penelope merely hummed and cast a silent spell, still vigilantly standing outside the door and I saw Sykes panic.
"What is the meaning-" the frightened expression building on Penelope's face once whatever spell she cast apparently revealed the scheme, likely the human revealing charm, froze and she slowly fell forward.
Sykes had cast a silent 'Petrificus Totalus' at Penelope as her back was turned to him. He mumbled an apology as one of the Slytherin boys walked out of the shadows and caught the witch before she fell to the floor. By design, he touched her inappropriately when he did and Sykes closed his eyes with a hurt look in them.
"No need to look away, Sykes. You're going to be a part of this, whether you like it or not!" The man with the roaming hands said with a lecherous chuckle.
"That wasn't the deal, Mulciber! I want no part in this," Sykes angrily retorted after his eyes snapped open.
"Hehe, the only way you get away today is if your crime is the same as ours. We wouldn't know whether or not you'd rat us out otherwise, would we?"
"Yeah, Sykes. We even got you some stimulants in case you can't get it up. Aren't we nice fellas?" Another man from the group asked in derision.
"I thought you brought it because you wanted to go a bunch of times since this will be your first blonde?"
"I brought enough for everyone, no worries," the guy with the potency drugs waved away with a carefree smile.
"You can't make me do this," Sykes whispered angrily. "I'll get the professors right now!"
What answered Sykes was a 'Stupefy' that he was too late to dodge or stop and he slumped to the ground. The spell came from Mulciber, who was still groping Penelope with one hand hidden in her clothes as he aimed a wand at the Slytherin prefect hidden from Sykes' view.
"Give it to him now. We'll float her on top of him when we're done with her and his dick is about to explode with release," Mulciber ordered and went behind Penelope, who despite being petrified heard and felt everything.
A silent tear was starting to spill, but another guy went in front of her to carress her face.
"No worries. We know what we're doing. You'll get to feel real good, we'll make sure of it. And then you'll forget it all. We got a betting pool going to see whose brat you're going to birth, just like with Jensen. It's weird to think one of us is going to be a dad in a month, no?"
I heard enough and didn't want them to feed whatever they were planning to feed our prefect, so I pointed at two of the guys still standing further away to indicate that Harry deals with them, while I slipped out from under the invisibility cloak and stalked forward towards Penelope, Mulciber and the creepy-betting-pool guy.
Silently, I brought out the hidden blade, readied my wand, and cast the 'Lumos Funicola', the light rope charm and aimed it to wrap around the eyes of my two targets to blind them.
Both of the guys cried out in surprise and raised their hands towards their face, so I closed up the distance to the one in front of Penelope, pressed my wand into his back and silent-cast 'Incendio' to burn his back and overwhelm him with pain. In another swift move, I aimed the hidden blade at his loins and stabbed forward with an ease that others had buttering their toast with a hot knife.
I spun on my toes to get away from the first victim and past Penelope to get ready to deal with Mulciber. The boy had pointed his wand at Penelope's temple in a split second when he heard the screech from his partner in front of him, but I brought up the bloodied hidden blade and stabbed it through Mulciber's forearm with considerable strength, which made the wand point above the witch's head.
The light rope still blinded him and his friend, so he wasn't sure where his enemy was.
"You can't do-" I cut off his plea or threat or whatever this was going to be and kicked him to the side of his knee to make him stagger and lose his form, as I used my hidden blade still stuck in his arm to guide his own wand at his own head as he screamed.
He was still really close to Penelope, but I didn't have a free hand to get the petrified witch out of the way, so I had to make do with the situation as best as I could.
With a grip on his wand, I attempted something really hard to do, cast a spell through his wand he was still holding.
"'OBLIVIATE!'" I shouted in a modulated voice and poured all my considerable will into his wand. The spell went off, but because the tip rested on Mucliber's skin, I didn't see the potency and I couldn't be sure about its effect.
The young man immediately slumped over in my arms and I peeled the wand out of his hand and looked up.
Harry had dealt with the two other guys possibly via 'Stupefy' as both were knocked out cold and while I couldn't see him, one of the bodies kept twitching... Harry was kicking the guy over and over.
I looked up at Penelope and whispered with my still changed voice, "I'm sorry. You're safe now, but you won't like what I'll do next."
Instead of using a spell, I knocked Penelope out with knowledge I got from my assassin training by pressing a pressure point in her neck. I gently put her to the side and cushioned her head with her own robe that I straigthened out and went to business.
I sunk my hidden blade into the nether region of all four offenders, stopped the bloodflow with low-powered 'Episkey's, cast another round of 'Stupefy' and 'Obliviate' on all of them and then continued to inflict dark curses on all five Slytherin students, including Sykes, under the steely gaze of Harry.
One in particular would make one of the boys incredibly paranoid whenever he told a lie. I hoped it would end up with him revealing how many victims they had and how long this tradition was part of Slytherin, though I didn't know what would work first. The oath Slytherins take or my curse. To make sure some of it would come out, I did also carve the word 'RAPIST' into each of their foreheads for good measure and rubbed dirt into the wounds in hopes that it hurt and scarred.
It wouldn't for long thanks to the existance of potions, but I just needed the visual impact for when the aurors would see them.
I hadn't used my own wand to do any of that, so it won't get back to me... hopefully. And as my second last act I walked back to Penelope.
"I'm really, really sorry about this," I whispered and snapped her wand.
It was the only thing I could come up with to ensure she wouldn't be held accountable for anything that happened in here as I placed the broken wand in the hands of Mulciber.
"Let's go," I whispered to Harry and the boy silently threw the Deathly Hallow over my head and we were both once more invisible.
We walked out of the bathroom, left the door open and tipped over a giant glass showcase outside the door that shattered with the sound of a thousand car crashes in these vast, echoing stone halls. Thankfully, most sounds were muted for me under the invisibility cloak or I might have turned deaf.
As quickly as possible, Harry and I made our way back to our common room via a shortcut from this floor I was aware of thanks to the Weasley twins. The knocker wasn't a sentient portrait, thankfully, so nobody apparently noticed when it opened for us in the dead of night where only a scant few upper years were still up in the common room for some late-night studying or makeout sessions.
The two of us made our way up to our room and cleaned ourselves in our bathroom. When I came back outside with my hoodie folded over my arm and my hidden blade stowed away in the pouch, I saw Harry sitting on his bed, looking at nothing.
"This felt wrong," Harry mumbled. "Is it really alright for us to... do that?"
"You mean me ending their bloodlines unless Pomfrey can reconnect it?"
Harry visibly cringed but nodded.
"If they use it for such things, I won't lose sleep over it. We, and Penelope, were really lucky we were there. This is a fate I don't wish on anyone..."
With a deeply conflicted expression, Harry muttered, "You're right. When a dog turns rabid, it gets put down..."
"I mean, yeah, true. But we still live in a magic society, so there's probably a cure to rabies. And putting someone down can come in hundreds of ways. So you gotta be smart about it."
"Like how you didn't use your own wand unless necessary?"
"Yeah, exactly that."
"I heard Professor Flitwick say that's really, really difficult," Harry pointed out with a pondering expression.
"Occlumency helps. But yeah, the spells will never be as good as the ones you cast with your own wand."
"I see... what was the knife you had?"
I owed him this much, at least, so I took out the wrist blade I had used and equipped it on my arm. With a tug of my ringfinger, the blade shot forward.
"Family heirloom," I offered with a shrug and put the thing away again.
'Flitwick will likely find out it I was involved after seeing the cuts without magic in them... but he will stay quiet after finding out what almost happened to Penelope. I hope. I really need to keep my ownership of these blades quiet, though...'
-----
The next morning, Fred and George put a sleeping rat on the table in front of me at breakfast.
A few girls near me squeaked and tried to get away before even noticing the rat wasn't moving. Many more glared at the twins for this 'prank' until one of them, Fred I believed, raised his hand in surrender and explained, "Little Talion here asked for it and we only held up our end of the bargain. If you're going to look at anyone like that, look at your little Quidditch hero."
By that point I had discreetly put a few drops of sleeping potion into the rat's gullet with a syringe I hid under my sleeves and started to apologize to everyone for not making the point of delivery clear to the Weasley twins - who looked offended that I pushed them back into the limelight for a moment before they both did a theatrical bow and thanked everyone for being part of the 'prank'.
Penelope was missing from breakfast, as did five Slytherin students as well as Flitwick and Snape. But Dumbledore was here this time and gathered everyone's attention by tapping his glass chalice rather loudly.
"May I have your attention, everyone?" The murmur in the hall died down instantly, and the headmaster continued. "Once more, I am reluctant to admit that there has been another attack at this school. There were prefects involved, so we have no need of anyone coming forward unless you are aware of what happened on the third floor after curfew yesterday. But please keep yourself available in case the aurors have need of you. Something clearly started escalating this year, so we will dispense of all prefect curfew duties for the rest of the year and have aurors roam the hallways after dinner. Please bear in mind that breaking curfew will result in considerable punishment starting today."
Gossip rang through the great hall loudly the moment Dumbledore stepped out after his announcement.
As muggleborn weighed the pros and cons of staying in such a dangerous school, the purebloods were discussing how the trend was starting to turn much darker this year.
I confirmed Peter Pettigrew's identity as he laid on the breakfast table with narrowed eyes as I ignored the discussions around me. The darkness had always been there. It just reached the surface now that purebloods were targetted. But I really wondered how this climate at the school was sustainable.
Slytherins were so much more antagonistic in the first year than they had been in canon. And Dumbledore as the 'beacon of light' somehow allowed so much more to happen than I had anticipated.
"Hey, Talion," someone suddenly whispered into my ear and snapped me out of my musings.
"Yes, Hermione?" I asked quietly. "Why are we whispering?"
"I don't know... it felt appropriate," Hermione whispered. "Ah! But that's besides the point. I... I feel really unsafe. Can we, no, can you train me? Please?"
A third voice suddenly entered our conversation.
"Yeah, I wanted to ask for that, too. Flitwick trained you all year, right? You must know some self-defense?"
I turned to look at Mandy, who stood behind me all of a sudden and was about to answer when another two voices chimed in as two more girls leaned my way.
"Count me in," said Padma. "Pretty please?"
"I wouldn't mind getting trained in some self-defense either," Isobel softly added as she looked at me with soft eyes. She really liked doing that ever since our little adventure.
Instead of saying anything, I looked at Sue and Lisa a little further down the table on the opposite side, and they, too, looked at me with expectant eyes.
"I mean, we can try and see how my idea of training suits you during the break? Between lunch and dinner, so you have some time before for studying, and relaxation after dinner?"