Early the next morning, the three girls, woken by the room's preset alarm clock, sensed at once that something was wrong.
When Snape was hurriedly summoned over by Hermione, Kate was still lying in bed, her little face pale, drenched in sweat. Though she hadn't woken, the look of agony on her was plain to see.
"Professor, what's wrong with her? Please, you have to save her!" Hermione was so frightened that half her soul had nearly flown out of her; not caring in the slightest about Snape's usual air of authority, she frantically clutched at his robes and cried out.
Without bothering to make her step back, Snape, his face grim, examined Kate with a spell, then swiftly scooped her up into his arms.
"I'll take her to St. Mungo's. The rest of you, stick to the original plan—go assemble on the second floor and have your meal!"
"But—" Hermione was about to say something more when Cho Chang pulled her back in time.
Only then did she come to her senses: right now she should let Snape rush Kate to the hospital for treatment, not waste his time.
Silently letting go of his robes, she watched Snape Apparate and vanish before their very eyes. Hermione turned her head, her face full of misery, and looked at the others for a moment.
Then her tears came all at once, streaming down in a sudden rush.
"Don't worry, Hermione, she'll be all right." As the oldest child present, Cho Chang could only press down the worry in her own heart and do her best to comfort her.
The little lion lifted her head, eyes reddened, and saw Luna gently holding out a tissue to her with a look of concern. With mixed feelings, she took it: "Thank you..."
Cho Chang patted her on the back: "All right, let's hurry down. When Professor Snape comes back, we'll find a chance to ask him."
"Mm." Hermione gave a faint nod, and with the two of them accompanying her, they left the room together.
Meanwhile, at this very moment, Snape had already Apparated to the little path outside Hogwarts castle.
His face cold, he stared down at the Kate in his arms, eyes still tightly shut, and said in a low voice, "If you don't get up this instant, I'm dropping you on the ground."
The girl in his arms snapped her eyes open at once, nimbly hopped down, and stretched her limbs loose.
"Thank you, Head of House, for carrying me back!" she said, beaming as she bowed to him.
When it came to manners, she was always beyond reproach.
But Snape's expression didn't improve much for all her politeness. "You didn't drink that vial of potion."
"A Potion brewed by a Potions Master like you, Head of House—you can scarcely find a single bottle of it on the open market. Why would I waste it on an occasion like this?"
Kate wore an expression that said there was nothing he could do about her anyway.
What's more, if she drank that potion, she'd have to sleep the entire morning away—far too much of a waste of time.
So instead she'd used a potion made by Slughorn. It served no other purpose than to give her a legitimate excuse whenever she wanted to feign illness and skip class.
It sounded rather like the sort of prank merchandise only the Weasley twins could have come up with, but the art of potion-making was ancient and far-reaching, so it was hardly strange that a few recipes existed that weren't recorded in any textbook.
"Since you didn't use it, then give it back." Snape gave a cold snort and held out his hand to her for the potion directly.
But how could Kate possibly hand it over so easily? She only said with a grin, "I'll repay you double for the raw materials and the labor," and then went bounding and skipping away.
Leaving Snape standing alone where he was, his expression shifting between dark and light. After a while, he gave another cold snort, turned, and swept off with a flick of his sleeve.
If she turned out to have guessed wrong about the ingredients in the recipe, then it would be another half-month of detention for her.
Kate, who had still been skipping along, suddenly felt an inexplicable chill run down her spine. She instinctively glanced back, but Snape was nowhere to be seen.
This old bat would surely cover for her... mm, definitely!
Rubbing her nose lightly, she raised her wand, used a Levitation Charm to float herself up, and then, with Bluebell Flames as a booster, went rocketing toward the castle in a gale.
From far off, she spotted that white-bearded old man standing outside the castle, with an even more familiar figure beside him.
"Grandpa Rand?" Kate's heart lurched. She at once dispelled the spell, dropped down from the air, and ran a few steps until she came before the two of them. "How did you end up here?"
The old butler rubbed her head. "You and this old fellow are going to deal with the Basilisk—how could I not come and help?"
"I..." Kate was momentarily at a loss for words, and shot a somewhat helpless glance at Dumbledore beside him. "Professor, you told him everything."
Dumbledore gave a deliberately playful shrug: "Well, who told me to have known him for so much longer?"
Fine, you win.
Kate was choked into speechlessness. If it came to competing with the old butler over who had known Dumbledore longer, she fell far, far short.
But still...
"Grandpa Rand, you're not going to stop me?" she asked cautiously.
The kindly smile on the old butler's face drew in slightly, and the hand stroking her head slowed by a few degrees.
After a good long while, he said in a low voice: "Miss, you have exactly the same temper as your mother. Once you've made a decision and fixed your sights on a goal, you won't change it."
Kate was startled. She seldom learned anything about her parents from the old butler's lips, especially her mother—the times he'd brought her up could be counted on one's fingers.
But it seemed that each and every time, what he said was that she and her mother were very much alike in nature.
Only now wasn't quite the moment to be speaking of such things. The old butler shifted the subject and gently pinched her little cheek:
"It's precisely because of that. I know I can't stop you, so all I can do is choose to come and help—to protect you even at the cost of my life."
"Grandpa..."
Kate gazed at him with an aching heart, the rims of her eyes on the verge of reddening—only to hear Dumbledore pipe up from the side: "You old fellow, dying won't come so easily for you."
"Heh, I'm talking to my granddaughter—what business is it of yours?" The old butler shot him a sidelong glance, then turned back and asked her with a cheerful chuckle:
"I figured you'd come back early, so you probably haven't had breakfast yet, have you? I've prepared a meal—why not have a little something to line your stomach first?"
So it turned out these two old men could bicker too.
One wonders what a certain first-generation Dark Lord would think if he could see a scene like this.
Holding back a smile, Kate readily nodded along: "Mm, thank you, Grandpa!"
As she said it, she raised her eyebrows and glanced at Dumbledore, then walked inside together with the old butler.
You may have known him longer, but Grandpa Rand dotes on her more!
In any case, counting in the years from her previous life, she wasn't any younger than these two old men before her—so in front of them, she let herself relax and treated herself as a child.
After eating her fill, a fine and satisfying meal, in front of the two old men, and feeling the Mana she'd expended within her body climb back to its peak, Kate finally stood up and said, "I'm ready now."
"Mm, then take these along first." The old butler fished three pairs of sunglasses out from inside his robes. "You all know what happens when you come face to face with a Basilisk, don't you?"
"Uh... will these really work?"
Kate's face gave a twitch. She knew that any creature meeting the Basilisk's gaze directly would die on the spot, while any creature meeting its gaze indirectly would be petrified.
So the old butler giving them sunglasses was meant to keep them from making eye contact with the Basilisk, so that at the very least they could save their lives.
The intention was a good one, but could ordinary sunglasses really block a Basilisk's gaze?
She recalled that Myrtle had been wearing glasses, too, before she died, hadn't she?
Holding the sunglasses up and waving them about in the sunlight, Kate put them on half in doubt—only to discover that the view they presented before her eyes was a little different from that of ordinary sunglasses.
"This smell..." Her nose twitched faintly; she oddly took the sunglasses off again and sniffed them carefully. "Is this the smell of blood?"
Dumbledore glanced at the old butler. "That's dragon's blood he went to some trouble to obtain. Once it's smeared on, it can temporarily block out the Basilisk's gaze."
Dragon's blood has that effect too?
"But I never saw this effect mentioned in your published works," Kate asked with a strange look on her face.
The Twelve Uses of Dragon's Blood—she had read that book several times over, and nowhere in it was this use recorded.
"That, ah..." Dumbledore rubbed his nose. "Just chalk it up to an oversight on my part—I forgot to write it in."
Are you serious?
Kate stared at the two old men for a while with a look that said she hadn't the energy to even snark at them, then leaned in close to the sunglasses again and worked hard at analyzing the smells inside.
Aside from dragon's blood, there seemed to be something else as well, but it wasn't as if she had a dog's nose—she really couldn't sniff it out.
Oh well. The two old men had their little secrets; she couldn't very well expose them outright.
Wisely choosing to skip past this topic, she put the sunglasses back on, adapted a little to the view tinged with black and red before her eyes, and then said in a steady voice:
"According to the original plan: if we can't find the Chamber of Secrets, we'll turn all of Hogwarts upside down. And once we find the Basilisk, we make blinding its eyes the top priority."
She turned her head and looked at the two utterly unruffled old men: "Any other questions?"
"No problem," Dumbledore said, putting on his own sunglasses. "I've already had Hagrid take all the pets away, and I've given the centaurs in the Forbidden Forest a heads-up as well."
Tsk... why did it feel so uncanny, treating the White Dark Lord like a subordinate?
Suppressing this little flicker of strangeness, Kate probed once more: "So, Professor, Grandpa Rand—you two are coming with me?"
The two old men, in perfect unspoken accord, each took a step back.
Hiss—eerie, far too eerie.
Old Man Dumbledore, behaving like this—does that Dark Lord of yours know about it?
Forcing down the urge to snark, Kate finally drew out her wand and, hesitating, took two steps forward: "Then... I'm starting?"
"Do whatever you like—we two are right here." The old butler, at least, said something that sounded human.
Dumbledore was still smiling all over his face, which lent this whole Basilisk-fighting venture the air of a game of make-believe.
Fine—since the White Dark Lord was backing her up, there should be no harm in cutting loose a little.
Limbering up her wrist a bit, the Mana throughout her whole body, which had never once been fully released, was at this moment completely mustered.
That overwhelmingly immense power made even the two old men—who had only meant to see just how far she could go—change color slightly in spite of themselves.
To possess such formidable Mana and yet not have turned into an Obscurus—it was nothing short of a tremendous blessing for the whole of England's magical world.
Dumbledore was even already imagining that, had this child unfortunately become an Obscurus back then, its destructive power would likely have been no less than—if not greater than—that of Credence all those years ago.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
With one nimble spell from Kate, the Mana that had lain dormant within her tiny body suddenly whipped up a storm, gushing forth in an instant through her dedicated wand, its output already at 200%!
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