THIS CHAPTER IS AN AUTHOR'S NOTE CHAPTER

So remember when I said that I would hopefully be done with this story by September? I'm not. I'm going out on a limb here and beginning to post anyway, even though I'm nowhere near as close to finished as I was when I started posting the last two stories because this one is really long, and I don't want to do all the formatting at once. So for the moment, this story will update once a week, on Mondays.

This time around, I will only be answering reviews by PM, so if you have a question, make sure you log in to review.

'Mary Potter and the Chained Servant' is a sequel to 'Mary Potter and the Call to Adventure' and parallels 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.'

THIS CHAPTER MAY CONTAIN INFORMATION CONSIDERED SPOILERS, ESPECIALLY FOR THE SECOND STORY IN THE SERIES.

If you have already read the previous books in this series, you should be aware that I've done a bit of ret-conning in order to make a few details work out in the later books of the series. Firstly, the Hogwarts muggleborn population 'boom' has now been adjusted to occur the year before the halfblood and pureblood post-war boom. This is because muggleborns were killed by Death Eaters as they began to exhibit signs of magic, normally around nine months of age, thus when the war ended, there would have been quite a few muggleborns around who hadn't yet showed signs of magic (as well as a few late bloomers like Hermione). There were two muggleborns in the class of 1991 and now there are fifteen in the class of 1992.

Secondly, due to a plan I forgot I had made for Neville in book 7, it is important that his mother was Amos Diggory's little sister, not Molly Prewett's. Molly's sister's name is now Anna, a Hufflepuff who was a year ahead of Alice Diggory at Hogwarts, and who died fighting for the Order in 1979.

If you would rather skip straight to the story, or to the disclaimers at the end of this chapter feel free to do so: nothing in this chapter is essential to your understanding or enjoyment of the rest of it, especially if you've already read the earlier stories in the series.

See Preface to Book 2 for a recap of Book 1; See Preface to Book 1 for background for how this AU differs from Canon.

Mary spends the summer between first and second years with Minerva's (deceased) husband's family (the Urquharts) getting a crash course in what it means to be a proper pureblooded young lady. She visits the Grangers for the week of her birthday and has a bit of a breakdown over the fact that she's falling behind on the muggle side of things and it seems that she's never going to catch up, but Emma talks her through it. Lilian visits her at the Urquharts' for the last week before Hogwarts.

Dobby shows up on Mary's birthday, on the train, and at the Gryffindor/Slytherin Quidditch match. Mary calls on Cammy to capture the elf when he shows up in the hospital wing, and he is banned from Hogwarts by the other elves. Mary learns that he is mentally ill due to an untreatable memetic parasite called 'tweelks' which cause him to seek freedom even at the cost of his own and others' safety.

Colin Creevey tries to stalk Mary the same way he stalks Harry, but Mary takes it a bit more seriously, and attempts to get a restraining order on him before he is petrified.

Lockhart accosts Mary in Flourish and Blotts, as well as on the first day of classes. She quickly grows to hate him, and repeatedly says that if she were really the Heir of Slytherin, she would have long since attacked him, rather than Finch-Fletchley. He really is a useless professor. The Hufflepuffs and Slytherins refuse to go to his classes for a month after the third petrification. He is outed as a fraud at the end of year feast, effectively ruining his reputation and career outside of the school.

Mary makes the Quidditch team as seeker. Draco is a starting chaser. Lilian is a reserve chaser. Hermione makes friends with other Ravenclaws in the absence of Mary and Lilian.

There is a lot more ritual magic in the second book than the first, including Mabon, Yule, and Midsummer rituals, a simple little birthday ceremony, and a crazy complicated re-embodiment ritual that Diary!Tom comes up with on the fly in the Chamber, because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Dumbledore tries to get Mary to accompany him to the Wizengamot over Christmas, and is haughtily rebuffed, because Elizabeth Potter is nobody's pawn, even if she is technically also Mary Potter, Girl Who Lived. She also makes it clear that she doesn't trust him after the Chamber incident. Which, really, is only fair, because he's clearly becoming more suspicious of her as well.

Emma Granger (who has been taking tea on occasion with Catherine Urquhart) finds out over winter break that there have been a series of attacks at Hogwarts. She (with Catherine's help) sends a Howler on the first day back to term, taking to task not only Hermione and Mary, but also McGonagall and Flitwick, who agreed to inform her of any dangers at the school. Flitwick is NOT PLEASED.

Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood and Diary!Tom: Ginny receives the diary as in canon, but doesn't start writing in it until after she gets to school. Her angst and sorrow over the way her roommates treat her and her crappy home life is much less irritating to Tom than her Harry Potter obsession (which she uses as a form of escapism from the former in Canon), so he doesn't make a target out of Mary like he did Harry. Ginny realizes what's going on over winter break, and tries a number of ways to get rid of the book, including several suicide attempts. Tom foils them all, taking over her body and repeatedly obliviating her. When Ginny manages to break free of the Diary, Luna finds it almost immediately. Tom rather likes Luna. She's interesting. But after gathering another perspective on his presumed heir, he convinces her to give the Diary back to Ginny.

The Veritaserum Plot begins in November, and runs through Easter. It entails the trio, Aerin, the twins, Morgana Yaxley and her boys, and Luna dosing all of the non-Slytherin students (and Lockhart) with Veritaserum and questioning them as to whether they are behind the attacks, in such a way that they won't remember it as anything other than perhaps an odd dream. Professor Snape questioned all the Slytherins, so they are considered cleared. They actually do manage to figure out that Ginny is behind it, but not until Easter Hols, because it takes time to drug that many students.

What happens in the Chamber of Secrets stays in the Chamber of Secrets. The Weasley twins kidnap Mary to open doors for them in Parseltongue as they go after Ginny, into the Chamber. They slay the basilisk (which is a bit of a farce). Because they used magic to do so, rather than heroically stabbing it with the Sword of Gryffindor, its own magic, accumulated over a thousand years, flooded the Chamber, swamping their wands and killing all spells in progress, including the enchantments on the Diary that were siphoning off Ginny's life force. Oops. Tom, who can use wandless magic, keeps them all trapped in the Chamber and makes them cooperate with him to get a damn body under pain of slowly dying of thirst, because he's certainly not going to let them leave. He breaks the bond between himself and Voldemort, whom he clearly views as a bloody idiot, takes the kids' memories of exactly what happened after the basilisk died, and lets them go (because there's no reason to kill potential minions inside Hogwarts, and Lord Voldemort rewards those who serve him well).

Snape is heavily involved in trying to figure out exactly what happened in the Chamber, because Mary would rather he legilimize her than Dumbledore. He is also able to recognize the Horcrux much more quickly than Dumbledore, and sees no reason to keep this from Mary and her friends. He is also the one who insists on punishments for the Veritaserum Plot and the Weasleys' kidnapping of Mary to go slay a basilisk. Everyone involved in the Veritaserum Plot (which may or may not have involved actual Veritaserum) will serve one hour of detention for every student they assaulted, on Saturdays over the course of the next term, with Snape. He needs the summer to come up with appropriately devious tasks/punishments for them to complete. The Weasleys have detention with him every day for the last eleven weeks of term for kidnapping Mary.

Snape makes certain observations while examining Mary's memories of the Chamber which cause him to question whether Tom's theory that Mary is actually his granddaughter (Mary speaks Parsel, and her mother was a 'muggleborn' who was suspiciously powerful and had a reputation for doing crazy unthinkable rituals) could possibly be correct. Tom dismissed this theory when he realized the connection between his alter ego and Mary, saying that she must be his magical heir due to soul magic gone really impressively wrong, but Snape convinces Mary to use a lineage revealing potion anyway, because now he can't unsee the similarities between Lily and Voldemort. This shows that Lily Evans was, indeed, the daughter of Matilde Harrison (previously thought to be Lily's aunt) and Tom Riddle. Mary and Snape agree not to speak of what Mary christens "the whole undead evil grandfather thing."

And Hermione still managed to turn herself into a catgirl, because she was curious about polyjuice and got tricked by the twins.

This story will continue to diverge from canon at an increasing rate. Mary's activities have not affected the Weasleys' trip to Egypt, or their getting a photo in the paper, or Fudge giving a copy of the paper to Sirius, so Sirius still breaks out of Azkaban. There are new classes to deal with, and Hermione has a Time Turner. Remus and dementors are at Hogwarts, which means there's cause to learn the Patronus Charm. Mary is banned from Hogsmeade for a completely different reason than Harry was, and of course there are detentions from Snape to deal with for the previous year's adventures. There are some staffing changes at Hogwarts, and the kids do some serious growing up (even Draco). Nothing big happens, but enough little things happen that the kind of build up to have a formidable impact on character development. There will be new rituals, new rooms to explore, more interaction with Snape and Lupin, and lots of side-plot development.

My eternal gratitude to 's Feenrai and cinnamonarabesque, who kindly beta-read this story. Fanfiction's lightning king, Belial666, inwardtransience, and Toraach, and AO3's Sigfried have also provided invaluable feedback on worldbuilding issues, and I can't thank them enough for putting up with my pages of geeky emails about characterization and themes and ridiculously overly-obsessive magical theory essays.

As implied by the fact that this work is posted on a fan fiction site, I do not own most of the characters in this story, or the general plot, or most of the settings. I don't claim to. Even things that are not taken from canon may bear a striking resemblance to other fan works, due to the fact that I've read far too many such things. No plagiarism is intended. If you see something that looks familiar from fan fiction, PM me and I will add a reference.

This story is written for fun, not profit, and I have and will receive no money in relation to it. Furthermore, as this is a single-point-of-divergence universe (or it's supposed to be), there will be points where dialogue which is not affected by changes to canon thus far is lifted directly from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In order to preserve the pacing of the story, these passages have not been marked. I do not claim ownership of those lines. If you recognize them, you doubtless know who does.

Cross-posted on AO3.