Filtered: R. Lupin

[alvearium]

Remus, have you got your computer turned on? Minerva confided something to me- I hope you don't mind, but it seemed worth asking about. She said you wished to explore the chambers of the late Professor Quirrel. I have no doubt that you would have a scholarly interest in their contents, and of course our usual concerns about security do not apply to

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[rjohnlupin]

Well, actually Sir, there was rather more to it, I'm afraid.

You see, I'd... Well, I'd happened upon something that I thought might have shed some light on some of Voldemort's actions while Quirrel was his host, and I'd exhausted the less invasive avenues of research open to me.

So I asked Minerva to let me examine his rooms. More importantly, his secret chamber. And she did, but the contents had been disturbed. No, rifled. Things had been removed. Minerva says the room sealed itself upon Quirrel's death, and so he must not have noticed the loss before then.

[alvearium]

How very alarming. You think that this burglary transpired before Quirrel's death, then? Perhaps you'd better start a bit further back--if you wouldn't mind telling me what it was that you found.

[rjohnlupin]

Well

[alvearium]

Visorbs. I should have checked that area more carefully.

He did make a Horcrux, I'm quite certain of it. His grossly altered appearance first caused me to suspect. But the Horcrux was destroyed, long ago, by Harry.

[rjohnlupin]

When, Sir? I mean when exactly?

[alvearium]

The diary that seduced young Ginny Weasley- it could only have functioned as it did with a powerful and malicious consciousness within it. Harry destroyed it with the tooth of the Basilisk in his second year.

[rjohnlupin]

But sir, how can that be? Voldemort wasn't restored to his body until Harry's fourth year in school. How could he have held on for two whole years without anything to anchor his soul?

[alvearium]

It's an interesting thought. Did not Harry report that Voldemort claimed to have inhabited one body after another over the years? But you think that was only a part of him?

[rjohnlupin]

I don't know, Sir. I only know that this matter of horcruxes troubles me. Significantly. I can't seem to let it rest.

I know that Tom Riddle travelled to Russia, and I know he came across the writings of a Russian wizard who knew how they were made, and how to destroy them -- that journal, or rather part of it, was hidden in something that Quirrel had given to Madam Pince. Further evidence of his squirreling things away against discovery, I suppose.

But that Peter had been involved... well. I had really rather not go digging up Peter Pettigrew's ghost, but I would really, really like to find some way to reassure myself about all this horcrux business.

[alvearium]

I don't blame you. I hardly need ask you to be discreet about this, Remus. Thankfully, few in the Wizarding World have any idea that such a thing as a horcrux even exists, and I have strived to keep that information out of the Hogwarts curriculum, both formal and informal. You will, of course, find nothing on them in the library.

I have always believed that Voldemort's own stopped with the diary, and, during the War, nothing happened to make me abandon that view. But it is certainly worth looking into.

What was Pettigrew's part in this? Do you suppose that Voldemort sent him to retrieve this information from Quirrel's quarters? If so, did he ever receive it, I wonder?

[rjohnlupin]

I asked Severus -- circumspectly as I could, of course -- and he vertified that it was Peter's actions alone that returned Voldemort to a physical form. The Death Eaters had been told that it was a potion which did it.

But now, having watched Peter rip in half the only text which I have ever seen to directly address the subject of horcruxes, and walk out with those pages...I can't say I believe wholly that there wasn't more at work than just bone of the father, blood of the enemy and hand of the loyal servant.

If I could only find those pages, I feel sure I'd at least have some place to start looking. Which is ironic, since I've no idea where to start looking for those pages. You know he used to hide things all over the school, back when we were students, Sir? Notes and candies and stashes of Zonko's stuff all over the place. The rest of us never knew where he kept getting the stuff.

And now I've no idea where to begin.

[alvearium]

Oh, well, Hogwarts is nothing if not well-supplied with nooks and crannies. Where to begin--that is indeed the question. Perhaps we should attempt a process of elimination.

I suggest we assume, as a provisional premise, that all useful hiding places in Gryffindor Tower would have been discovered by James and Sirius--or, if not by them, by their heirs, to wit: Fred and George Weasley. Further, that anything by way of a guide to the very Darkest Arts, if discovered by one of them, would have sooner or later found its way into either my hands, yours, or Harry's (a less certain assumption), then perhaps we can rule that out.

What other parts of the Castle Peter was known to frequent--well, you or Sirius would know better than I.

[rjohnlupin]

Right. Well, he was more than a little bit fond of the Quidditch Pitch -- followed Sirius and James down there whenever they'd anything at all to do in the area, despite his troubles with flying.

And in his rat form he held a certain proclivity for the Dungeons as well. Let's see... oh, also the kitchens. And the Forbidden Forest. Oh, and the gargoyles on the East facing roof of the Great Hall -- I think it was him that discovered they could talk. So that's any number of places up there as well.

I'm tired just imagining searching them all.

[alvearium]

I think we can rule out the forest--Peter wasn't the brightest student ever to pass through these halls, but let us assume for now that he would not have hidden a unique and valuable sheaf of papers in the woods.

The Dungeons would have been my first guess, but for the fact that, at the time in question, they were supervised by Severus, and I rather think that Peter would have thought twice about frequenting them. It's not as though Severus actually encourages rats in the Dungeons; he's not as fond of them as I am.

The Elves, likewise, frown upon rats in the kitchens, for obvious reasons.

I would like to consult with the mice. None of them are old enough to remember Peter, of course, but they may lead me to something nonetheless. I'll get back to you.

[rjohnlupin]

Thank you Sir. I'm also going to follow up with a possible connection to a Daisy Ellison that Peter seems to have been seeing back around the time we all left Hogwarts. None of us knew about her, and I can't for the life of me remember any student with that name while we were here, but I've a letter she wrote to him, and it seems that she was rather trusted by him at that time. There's a chance he might have gone back to her when he came to possess the papers in question.

I'll let you know what, if anything, she has to tell me. Once I locate her, that is. Assuming she survived.