43: Rumours

[3rd Pov]

The night after what happened at the Dueling Club, in the Gryffindor tower, Hope lay awake, watching as the snow fell through the tower windows, lost in thought...

Hope knew what Parseltongue was. Every child hailing from a wizarding family probably knew. It was the mark of dark magic.

They couldn't be descendants of Salazar Slytherin. It was unthinkable, she thought. Their father had told them little about the Potter family. It was obvious it pained him, speaking about his parents, who died saving both Harry and Hope.

But even so, her father couldn't speak to snakes, right?

Yet, even after assuring herself of the fact, she couldn't sleep.

When people saw her brother speaking to that snake, almost as if encouraging her to attack Justin Finch-Fletchley, they naturally thought the boy's sister could do the same.

Quietly, Hope tried to say some words in Parseltongue, only for nothing to come out. She wondered if she had to be face-to-face with a snake for it to happen.

"But I'm a Gryffindor," she muttered, watching a lone snowflake fall onto the window.

Had the Sorting Hat made a mistake?

Hope turned over, trying to sleep. She could only hope those from outside of her close friend group wouldn't believe the rumours that were bound to surface. The face of a silver-haired boy came to her mind.

Her cheeks reddened, and Hope shook her head.

She really had to sleep, mostly because of the train trip the day after tomorrow.

__________

By the next morning, the snow that had begun in the night had turned into a blizzard so thick that most of the school was holed up in the castle.

It was the last day of the year in the castle for some, so the halls were hectic with students walking from one place to another, checking if the elves didn't miss anything with their luggage, and spending their last few hours with their friends.

"So, any plans for the Holidays?" asked an excited Tracey while their group walked past the corridors near the library, ignoring the howling winds that shook the castle windows.

The castle was darker than usual because of the swirling grey snow at every window, so the halls were unusually cold.

Shivering, Theodore stuttered. "Y-Yeah, my parents are going to take me to Paris. S-Sightseeing, mostly,"

"Oh?" Alaric raised an eyebrow. "If you want, I can point you to some places you should visit," he said.

"You've been to France?" curiously asked Blaise, to which Alaric simply nodded his head.

"Heh, I'm also leaving the country," crossing her arms, Tracey puffed her chest proudly.

Turning in a corner, they continued walking through the cold corridors.

"Lucky," muttered Blaise, somewhat jealous. "I'll have to spend Christmas at my Nan's house, while my mom attends Merlin knows how many 'dinners',"

Alaric and Theodore chuckled, while the two girls didn't understand why Blaise had emphasized the 'dinners' with air quotes.

"Isn't your Grandmother's house in Italy?" commented Tracey. "That's pretty cool,"

"You wouldn't say that if you spent all of your holidays there,"

They continued to walk past the numerous empty classrooms, with the occasional ghost greeting them from a random wall. Without them noticing, the temperature started plummeting around the group, the walls getting cold to the touch.

In front of them, a group of shivering Hufflepufs was huddled together, whispering to each other, mostly about gossip.

"So anyway," a short boy was saying. "I told Justin to hide up in our dormitory until tomorrow. If Potter has his sights on him, it's better if he keeps a low profile for a while. I warned him. Since he let slip to Potter he was a muggle-born, I was expecting something like this to happen,"

"I still don't think it's him," retorted a stout older girl. "Did you see what Grindelwald did to Professor Lockhart? He must've wanted to get rid of the biggest obstacle in his path,"

"Oh, please," another boy sighed exasperatedly. "Harry Potter is a Parselmouth. That's one big red flag for a Dark Wizard. Have you ever heard of a decent one who could talk to snakes?"

One of the boys who was yet to talk raised his hand all of a sudden, motioning for the other kids to stop talking.

"What if," he said, pausing dramatically. "Potter is the heir, but Grindelwald is trying to stop him,"

The faces of the others morphed slowly into confusion, failing to understand what the boy was trying to say.

"What I mean is," he continued. "What if Grindelwald doesn't want another Dark Lord on his turf? Think about it! Potter had some sort of run-in with Filch. Next thing we know, Filch's cat's attacked! And, apart from his friends and sister, who was the other person there?"

There was some murmuring before the short boy replied.

"Grindelwald," he said.

"But Alaric always seems so nice..." muttered the girl who had yet to speak the whole conversation. "And Potter was the one who made You-Know-Who disappear, so he can't be all bad, can he?"

The other boy clicked his tongue.

"No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean, he was only a baby after all. He should've been blasted to smithereens," He dropped his voice until it was only a whisper. "And I bet You-Know-Who wanted to do the same thing Grindelwald is trying to do. Didn't want any competition,"

As the Hufflepuffs shared their theories, a pair of hands dropped on one of the boy's shoulders.

Flinching, he turned to look, only for his face to lose its colour the moment he saw a boy with silver-blonde hair behind him.

"Hello," greeted Alaric with an all but friendly smile. "I couldn't help but overhear the conversation you were having. Care to share?"

Not only Alaric but his friends couldn't help but find the sight before them funny: Every one of the Hufflepuffs looked as though they had been Petrified by the sight of him.

"What, did the beast catch you already?" Blaise taunted. "But I thought you were a Pureblood, Hannah,"

"I-I..." stuttered the girl with blonde pigtails couldn't get a word out, recoiling in fear when she saw the group of Slytherins.

Before the dark-skinned boy could continue his bashing, an elbow stroke his ribs, causing Blaise to clutch his abdomen in pain.

Alaric reached into his robe's pockets, taking out a few talismans, the same students could buy from the stand outside his workshop.

"Here," he said, presenting them to the fearful kids.

They stared at the boy for a while. Hesitantly, they took the talismans out of his hand and stored them in their robes.

"See?" Alaric said with a tinge of annoyance in his voice. "If I was a Dark Lord, would I be giving my talismans for FREE?"

He made sure to emphasize the 'FREE' whilst the kids jolted from him raising his voice. A grimace formed on his face, expressing his pain for losing a few galleons.

"T-Thank you, I g-guess," said one of the Hufflepuff boys, unsure of Alaric's real intentions.

With a look at his friends, the Badgers quickly left them all alone in the corridor, running towards their common room.

"Let's go," simply said Alaric, resuming his walk, his friends following him.

"You're too nice," muttered Daphne with a sigh. Alaric only chuckled.

Normally, he would've pulled a prank on them without a second thought, but the rumours had started to get worse, even to the point of targeting his sister and friends.

If it was only him, Alaric would shrug and ignore the comments, but he knew the rest couldn't do the same, and the rumours and gossip would only pile up if he didn't do anything.

They walked up some stairs and turned along another corridor, which was particularly dark; the torches had been extinguished by a strong, icy draft that was blowing through a loose windowpane.

Halfway down the passage, near one of the unused bathrooms, they spotted something.

"He's just incriminating himself at this point," said Tracey with a deadpan face.

In front of them, Harry Potter was on the ground, scared, dragging himself away from a petrified Justin and frozen Sir Headless Nick.

__________

"First Mr Creevey and now Mr Finch-Fletchley! This has to stop Albus!"

Inside the headmaster's office, a worried McGonagall paced around the room, expressing her concerns to the headmaster himself.

Dumbledore sighed and started caressing his long white beard. His half-moon spectacles flashed with intrigue while he was reading the report given by none other than Madam Pomfrey.

It was now the Holidays, so few students remained in the castle, leaving the professors and Headmaster to brainstorm a solution for the attacks.

"I have a suggestion, Headmaster," said Snape in his distinctive voice. "All of the attacks occurred outside in the corridors, so I would suggest implementing an early curfew when the students come back,"

"And we will, Severus, we will," pushing his glasses up his nose, Dumbledore stored the report in a drawer in his desk.

An uncomfortable silence settled when the Headmaster got up a walked near his personal library. He traced his finger over the numerous titles before it stopped on what appeared to be a Bestiary.

Albus opened the book and began to flip its pages, before sighing again and placing the book on top of his desk.

"Anything yet?" he asked his nephew, who was sitting near the other two professors, a book, similar to the one Albus had, in his hands.

"It's not a Gorgon," the boy said, mostly to himself. "A Gorgon's gaze can't petrify either ghosts or ammortal beings, so we can remove it from the list,"

The two professors and the Headmaster knew of the boy's competence when it came to magical knowledge, so they allowed him to be present at this emergency meeting.

While Alaric's knowledge wasn't yet at the professor's level, another bright mind certainly helped relieve their burden by a bit.

"Then we're only left with creatures I'd rather not face," said the potions professor without any apparent concern in his voice.

Again, silence settled in the office, the only noise being the flipping of pages and Alaric scribbling notes away on a piece of parchment.

While this meeting was happening, a certain insufferable fraud of a teacher was happily humming in his voice.

Why? Because in his hands were some reports from some of his most loyal fans/students, about the rumors the man himself started to spread.

'With this, everyone will think it was all an act,' Lockhart thought excitedly. When he read the part that stated Alaric was being painted as a Dark Lord, the man faked sadness.

'I'm sorry, Alaric, my boy. If you're ever as famous as me, you'll understand,' he continued thinking, creating more and more delusions of reality.

Unmistakably, Lockhart did everything he did for attention. Being the only magical child of three siblings, Gilderoy swiftly became their mother's unashamed favorite, being showered with love and care.

This caused him to think of himself as a genius, but when he entered Hogwarts, the truth came crashing down on him.

The fact that he was merely ordinary, that more talented and gifted children were there, and that nobody was particularly impressed by his naturally wavy hair, disappointed him.

Gilderoy did achieve good marks and his teachers did think that, with hard work, he might be able to make something of himself.

His vanity was such that he valued learning not for education, but because it granted him attention; he craved attention and prizes and begged the Headmaster to start a school newspaper purely so he could see his own name in print.

He even went as far as to carve out his name in large letters on the Quidditch field, even if it earned him weeks of detention.

He increasingly devoted his talents to insincere shortcuts and cowardly dodges, focused on attention-seeking and neglecting true learning, which made him go down the path he now threads.

Whilst the man hummed at his successful plan, a certain black cat, with more intelligence in its eyes than it should have, carefully listened and observed the professor.

With a small meow of disgust, the cat left the room, back into the corridors, blending into the dark shadows cast by the moon.

**********

A/N: I had a huge headache while writing this chapter, so if you spot any grammar mistakes, do point them out, please.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!