'From Harry?'
'No. Hermione Granger,' said Sirius. 'It's quite a letter.' He held it up for Lupin to see. 'Five sheets of parchment.'
'What did she have to say?' asked Lupin, who had an odd sort of feeling that he already knew.
'What didn't she have to say?' said Sirius. 'She wanted to tell me what happened. She says that she was kidnapped by a wizard claiming to be Salazar Slytherin. Wormtail was working for him. He dragged her off to some ruin in the forest and Harry and Draco found her there.'
'A wizard claiming to be Slytherin?' echoed Lupin, eyebrows raised.
'Well, anyone can go around claiming to be Slytherin,' said Sirius defensively. 'You'd be surprised. I can't tell you, back when I was an Auror, how many puny-looking vampires I dispatched who went around calling themselves Dracula and Lestat.'
'More to the point,' said Lupin, 'What did this wizard want with Hermione?'
'That's where it gets interesting,' said Sirius. 'Apparently he elaborated on this very baroque mythology, involving Slytherin, Rowena Ravenclaw, Godric Gryffindor, several demons-'
'She's telling the truth, Sirius,' said Lupin, shortly.
'Well, of course she is. Hermione wouldn't lie. I'm just saying that grown men who kidnap teenage girls and drag them off to forest hideaways usually have one thing on their minds. Maybe he thought telling her that he was Salazar Slytherin would impress her.'
'And maybe he really was Salazar Slytherin,' said Lupin. 'The prophecy said he would come back. The centaurs say he's back. One by one, the creatures he brought into existence — the dementors, the veelas, the vampires — are vanishing. And we know that Peter — that Wormtail always flees to the shadow of the most powerful wizard.
And what other wizard could be more powerful than Voldemort?'
Sirius looked dubious.
'Why on earth is she telling you all this, Sirius?' Lupin added.
Sirius looked more dubious. 'I'm not exactly sure,' he said. 'She seems to be convinced that Slytherin has some kind of connection to
— '
'To Draco?' said Lupin.
'Yes,' said Sirius. 'She's convinced he's in some kind of danger, but she doesn't want me to tell him that she thinks so. She says that when they confronted Slytherin, Draco greeted him like..like he knew who he was.'
'Maybe he did know,' said Lupin. 'He is a descendent of Slytherin, isn't he? And I told you about that prophecy, that Slytherin will rise and with the help of his descendent, will wreak havoc and terror on the wizarding world?'
'You can't tell me you think Draco's going to go around wreaking havoc and terror on the wizarding world,' said Sirius doubtfully.
'He's only sixteen.'
'I didn't say that,' said Lupin. 'But things are beginning to fall into place.'
Sirius looked at him dubiously. 'Please tell me that place is somewhere near this place,' he said. 'Because I am not following you.'
Lupin looked back at the book he was holding and said, 'Sirius, have you ever seen a picture of the Founding Four?'
'Well, I've seen portraits, statues and the like.'
'But never a portrait of them when they were young.'
Sirius stared at him. 'What are you getting at?'
'Come here,' said Lupin, and beckoned him over. Sirius got to his feet and came around behind Lupin's chair. He followed his friend's gaze down to the desk, where the book the centaurs had given him lay open to its last page. Half the page was taken up with more unreadable squiggles. The lower half of the page was an illustration.
Yellowed with age, the parchment looked so ancient that it surely would have fallen apart if it had not been held together by spells.
But it was, and the illustration, done with bold strokes of ink, stood out plain and clear. It was a group portrait of four people. 'That's Helga Hufflepuff, Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin,' Lupin said.
Sirius stared. Whoever the unknown artist of the portrait had been, they had captured not just the appearance but the spirit of all four.
Salazar stood with his chin raised, looking arrogant; Rowena looked thoughtful, Helga ebullient, and Godric faced the observer with a direct and challenging gaze. He knew why Lupin had showed him this. There was, in all their faces, a definite resemblance to four children that he knew. It wasn't physically obvious, but it was there, in their eyes, the way they held themselves, the way they stood.
'What does ut mean?' said Sirius.
'You know what?' said Lupin. 'I've absolutely no idea.'
When Hermione returned to the tent and sat down on the bed, she found that she was shaking with reaction, almost as if she'd just had some sort of terrible scare. She could still feel the potion coursing through her body like poison, knotting her stomach with confusion and anxiety. She leaned forward and put her face in her hands.
'Hermione?' said Ginny's voice.
Hermione whipped her hands away from her face and sat up. 'I'm sorry. Did I wake you up?'
