Welcome back, dear readers, to "Infinity Keeps Me Alive"

If it's unfair for everyone, it's fair.

Cheater

- Complete and send a letter to Amelia Bones, requesting a trial for Sirius: check.

- Write a second letter, this one to inform Remus of the injustice brought upon the Black heir and ask for his testimony, either to prove Sirius innocent or have him properly convicted: check.

- Compose a final letter to Gringotts, in order to iron out the last bits of their scheme regarding his parents' wills: check.

- Prevent Tonks – the Metamorphmagus had finally cracked up and threatened him into using her last name – and Daphne from strangling the twins whenever the redhead menaces decided to mess around with the Room of Requirement: … still a work in progress, but the brothers were still alive after more than three weeks so it was pretty encouraging.

Satisfied with his check-list, Harry Potter grabbed Nathaniel from atop his bed's headboard and exited his room.

He was running late already and Daphne would blow a fuse if he made her wait any longer than necessary. Theo and Blaise had vacated the dorm almost an hour ago and Tracey… was probably long gone too, the brunette witch simply couldn't seem to stay still for any period of time.

"You're late, Potter." growled Daphne.

The common room had been deserted for quite some time and the lonely witch had resorted, as she waited for the infuriatingly tardy wizard, to furiously pacing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the male quarters.

Suffice it to say that she wasn't feeling particularly tolerant right now.

"I know." replied Harry in a slightly sad voice. "I'm just… not really into this whole Halloween thing."

The Greengrass heiress was taken aback by his mournful tone, and only when she saw his frozen face did she finally connected his tardiness to his personal history.

"… your parents" she realized, her ire soundly squashed. "I'm sorry."

"You're not responsible." replied the boy with a strained smile. "Come on, let's get something to eat. I'm starving."

The two Slytherin had barely exited their common room when the voice of a familiar seventh-year witch made itself heard.

"You're late, Harry."

Now didn't that sound familiar.

"Tonks? What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you, cousin." she smiled, shoulder-length curls a bright shade of yellow. "I figured that someone would have to physically drag you to dinner today and I wanted to volunteer."

"So you just decided to stand by the entrance until he showed up." summarized Nathaniel. "How dedicated, Miss Tonks."

"But what if I'd already left?" asked Harry. "What if I'd just locked myself in my room?"

"Your roommates confirmed that you were in here –" she brushed off. "– and I knew that Miss Greengrass wouldn't have let you brood."

"Brood?" frowned the wizard.

Daphne nodded, amused.

"Brood." repeated the Metamorphmagus. "So it was just a matter of time and I have plenty to spare. Now hurry up, I want to eat my fill before they close the Great Hall."

And without further ado, witches, wizard and hat proceeded to exit the school's deserted dungeons, their path leading them to the Great Hall and the feast waiting there.

"We're not that late." countered Harry. "And even if we were, we could just go to the kitchen."

"What kitchen?"

He stopped dead in his track and stared at the Metamorphmagus

"… you're… actually serious?"

"What?" asked the confused witch, her hair instantly turning gray.

"You never… never found…" snorted the wizard, before promptly dissolving into laughter. "Hahaha!"

"Okay, what's up with you?" frowned the redhead – she was getting there anyway – Hufflepuff, surprised by her cousin's reaction.

"Nothing… nothing…" he denied not so convincingly. "It's just… haha, you spent over six years here and… hahaaa… you never… ahahaha, never found the kitchen. Hahahaaaa."

"And that's funny?"

"It is." chuckled the Sorting Hat. "It really is."

"Why?"

Harry took pity of his cousin and, taking a deep breath to calm himself, put an end to her sufferings.

"Because the entrance is something like ten meters away from the Hufflepuff common room." he explained, a wide smile on his face.

And before she could assimilate that information, he resumed walking toward the Great Hall.

All the teachers and other students were probably there already, eating profusely.

Well, all but one.

Harry knew that Quirrell was running around too, probably already guiding a troll through the school's passageways. The possessed DADA professor had a sort of understanding with the beasts, they listened to him extremely easily… probably because of a similar IQ level.

And tonight, he would use one as a diversion, giving himself enough time to run straight to the third floor and attempt to pass Fluffy. In another life, the disgusting beast had even tried to kill Hermione.

The time-traveler was thinking about this unpleasant bit of history, wondering how it would play out this time and ignoring his cousin's outraged rant, when his answer came inthe most unexpected of ways.

[Kill her.]

Harry froze, eyes wide in disbelief. Nathaniel was at a loss of words, his mouth moving silently in stupor. Tonks, who had been trying to catch the pair for the last minute or so, bumped into the suddenly immobile wizard and fell the ground, yelping. Daphne moved over to her housemate just in time to hear him whisper a single word, in a voice so haunted, so unbelievably horrified, that it sent shivers down her spine.

"No..."

[Isolate the shapeless one… tear her apart.]

"Is something wrong, Potter?" asked the worrying blonde.

Well, it depended.

Was he presently listening to the voice of a category five creature that only two persons in the entire school, if not the entire British Wizarding Community, could hear? Three if you counted Nathaniel, who could understand it through his thoughts?

Also, had he understood it properly and was the thing after Tonks?

If the answers were yes, then something was wrong alright.

"Please, tell me it's just a stupid joke." almost pleaded the wizard, ignoring the other Slytherin completely.

"Harry?" tried Tonks, her hair oscillating between grayish and washed-out blue.

[Must kill her… will kill her.]

The hat cursed.

The wizard chocked slightly, producing some kind of sob mixed with a nervous laugh… then he threw his head back and yelled at the ceiling.

"THAT'S CHEATING YOU NOSELESS BASTARD SON OF A SQUIB!"

In the Great Hall of Hogwarts, a student suddenly noticed that something was amiss.

Unlike Harry and Nathaniel, he wasn't hearing a murderous voice or reading the mind of someone who was. He simply was quite perceptive and the absence of his newest friends – Tonks didn't count, he'd known her for years now – was enough for his brain to identify the abnormal situation.

"Forge?"

"Is something wrong Gred?"

"I… think so, yes."

"Potter?"

"And Greengrass." he added. "And Tonks, they're all missing."

Forge thought about it for a second.

"His parents died on Halloween." he reminded his twin. "I can't really see Harry celebrating today."

"So what, he's boycotting and they're keeping him company?"

"Probably." nodded Forge. "They must be in their common room, the kitchen, the Room… or maybe – and please brother mine, never tell Tonks I suggested this – in a broom closet"

Gred looked intensely at the front door for an entire minute, after what he shook his head.

"No." he whispered. "I don't know why, but I have a bad feeling. Something's up, trust me about this..."

Forge frown.

He'd only ever seen Gred act like this once before, right before they'd been caught trying to force Ron under an Unbreakable Vow. His brother had told him that something bad was about to happen and he'd soon been proven right, when their father had given them the spanking of a lifetime.

He emptied his plate in five seconds top and rose from his seat.

"Come on, let's make sure that this idiot isn't dragging Tonks and poor Ms. Greengrass into anything stupid."

A grateful nod later, the two twins were isolating themselves in an out-of-the-way alcove, around a piece of old parchment.

"You took the map with you?" asked Forge with astonishment.

"A presentiment." shrugged Gred, activating the device.

His brother was seriously afraid now.

If the map was involved, then stupid just didn't cut it anymore…

"Okay, here's the plan" instructed Harry. "Tonks, you're the bait."

"I'm WHA –"

"Stupefy."

The Metamorphmagus collapsed to the floor, unconsciousness stripping her hair down to a neutral black.

"Good." nodded the wizard.

"GOOD?!" yelled a shocked Daphne. "Potter, what are you doing?"

"My part." he replied gravely. "And you get to do yours. Go to Hagrid's and bring me a rooster."

"I… what?"

"Bring. Me. A. Rooster." he repeated. "Did I mispronounce?"

"A rooster?" insisted the witch, utterly lost.

The wizard sighed and pointed at the ceiling.

"You heard that thing?"

"What thing?" she asked.

"Precisely, you don't know what we're facing, but I do." replied the time-traveler. "Trust me Daphne, we need a rooster."

"Trust you?" she repeated incredulously. "YOU JUST STUNNED YOUR COUSIN!"

"I just saved her life." he growled.

"I'm sorry Ms. Greengrass, but he's telling the truth." said Nathaniel.

"Can't you take two damn minutes to explain?" growled the witch, her patience running thin.

"We don't have two minutes, the school is in mortal peril." countered Harry. "Now off you go, take Nat with you and no matter what happens, don't look."

Not letting her enough time to complain, he put the hat on her head and pushed it as low as possible, blocking her eyes.

And after twenty seconds of struggle, when she finally managed to extract her head from the leathery trap, Tonks and her friend – though she was seriously beginning to reconsider that – were nowhere in sight.

Daphne Greengrass was pissed.

Not only was she starving, that idiot Potter was also making her steal a rooster from the school without so much as an explanation.

"In twelve meters, turn left at 25°."

Oh, and he was making her do it entirely blind, Hatfield obscuring her view and guiding her around the building, to protect her had said the hat.

"Take a step to the right or you'll go straight into a suit of armor."

She was SO hexing Potter for that.

"Greengrass has just left the castle." Forge informed his brother, following the Slytherin on the Marauder's Map. "The other two?"

"They're on the second floor and… wait, isn't that Moaning Myrtle's bathroom?" asked Gred.

"It is." confirmed his twin as he watched the dots labeled Harry James Potter and Nymphadora Tonks stand still in the haunted lavatory. "What are they doing in there?"

Gred was about to answer that he had no bloody idea when the dots disappeared entirely, making him groan.

"Not again."

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?"

"Sorry Greengrass, I remembered about Fawkes when I reached the Chamber." apologized Harry, a flaming bird on his shoulder and a more mundane one in his arms.

The blonde took a deep breath and promised herself that she would hexing him not once, but twice.

"What Chamber?" she asked, barely containing her anger. "And where's your cousin?"

"Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secret." provided Nathaniel. "And we left Miss Tonks there."

"You found Slytherin's…" began Daphne, only to stop mid-sentence. "You know what, no, don't answer that."

"She's learning."

"Shut up." hissed the witch. "Now what's the bloody rooster for?"

"Basilisk hunting." replied the time-traveler, seizing her shoulder.

She had no time to protest, her body vanishing in a sudden blaze.

"Aaaand, they're gone." commented Forge.

Gred began to massage his brow… Potter was giving him a headache.

"So… this is the Chamber of Secret." said Daphne, gesturing at the vast room they'd just appeared in through flame-travel.

Harry nodded.

"And there's a millennium-old basilisk in there."

He nodded again.

"AND YOU WANT TO FIGHT IT? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!"

"Something like that." grinned Nathaniel, now back on Harry's head.

"Don't start, Nat." warned the time traveler. "And I'm not fighting anything in there, Greengrass. It would put the two of you –" he gestured at the prone form of Tonks, sprawled on the Chamber's cold floor with the Headmaster's phoenix calmly nesting on her head. "– in harm's way and I'd rather avoid getting a dislocated shoulder and temporary mortal poisoning."

"Temporary..." mumbled the puzzled blonde.

"So no, I'm not going to take Slytherin's snake down with the Sword of Gryffindor, poetic justice be damned. I'm totally using the rooster cheat code on that one, thank you very much."

"You found the Sword of –"

"Catch." interrupted Harry, taking the artifact out of Nathaniel and throwing it to the witch, pommel first.

She grabbed it awkwardly and spent the next minute looking at the weapon, struggling to accept the fact that she was holding one of the lost legacies of the Founders while standing in the middle of another.

Then the rooster squeaked and her trance was broken straightaway.

"What's the…? Did your rooster just squeak?"

The wizard groaned.

"It's not a rooster, it's a mouse. All the real ones were killed and I had to transfigure something."

"Needs more work." commented the Sorting Hat.

"She interrupted me." tried to justify his wearer.

"What do you need a rooster for anyway?" asked Daphne.

"Its crow is fatal to Basilisks." he explained, resuming his wand-waving around the struggling volatile. "We help it a bit with a Sonorus and it does the job for us. Now let me concentrate."

The blond Slytherin had to admit that it sounded a lot more reasonable than a deadly fight against the mythical creature.

"Okay, that should do it." said the wizard, flicking his wand one last time before releasing the transfigured animal.

And indeed, the ex-mouse began to squawk like a proper rooster.

"Excellent, now the Sonorus –"

Another charm was layered on the animal.

"– and we just have to make it crow. The pipes should reverberate the sound all around the school."

"And how do you make it crow exactly?"

"Well..." began the wizard, glancing at the Sword of Gryffindor.

"No, find something else." dismissed Daphne, knowing where he was going with this. "We're not skewering that poor mouse and that's final."

"We don't have the time to be picky." he retorted. "The basilisk could show up at any moment now."

"That thing is coming?" she paled. "Here?"

"It seems intent on killing the shapeless one." nodded Harry. "I did say Tonks was the bait, didn't I?"

"But… why would it tried to –"

"Because Tom wanted a diversion and knows how to hold a grudge." her growled. "And because Tonks is the half-blood daughter of a mudblood and a blood traitor, who also happens to be both a friend of mine and a distantly-related cousin, making her every single one of his favorite targets at once."

The blonde Slytherin was about to ask who this Tom character was when the sound of stone – scales, those were scales – grinding on stone echoed around the Chamber, followed by a nerve-wracking hiss.

"Shit." cursed the wizard. "Incoming!"

"Close your eyes." advised Nathaniel quite uselessly, as the witch had already proceeded to do just that.

She felt her housemates pry the sword from her hands and tried to protest.

"Potter!"

"Not now, Daphne." he growled. "Accio rooster."

The bird squawked indignantly as it was manhandled by the summoning charm, making the approaching basilisk hiss in displeasure. Had he recognized the threat?

It certainly seemed so, as it began to discuss with Harry, using short, angry hisses.

"Over my dead body." concluded the determined wizard after several seconds, switching back to English.

Daphne heard him swing his sword, her closed eyelids not doing anything to help shield her from the perturbing wet noise of metal cutting into flesh and blood splattering on the cold, hard ground…

A wall of sound hit her head on and she felt her legs give out under her.

An earsplitting and tortured crow resonated around Hogwarts, immediately followed by the most horrible, most deafening screeching sound students, staff members and house elves alike had ever heard.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" shouted Forge, furiously rubbing his ears to stop that annoying ringing noise in his head.

"SOUNDED LIKE ANIMAL CRUELTY." yelled back Gred, remembering how Scabbers had once shrieked in a similar manner, if at a lower volume.

If Potter had nothing to do with this, he would eat the Marauder's Map.

"Remembered that time when you sicced a bunch of snakes on a pair of jerksand joked about feedingthem to a werewolf, right before furnishing the Weasleys twins with the Room of Requirement, forevermore convincing me that you couldn't actually get any scarier?" mirthfully asked Nathaniel, not bothered by the insanely powerful crowing. "Well congratulation, you just proved me wrong by torturing a defenseless rooster and blowing your own eardrums up, along with everyone else's."

"OKAY, SO I MAY HAVE OVERPOWERED THAT SONORUS A BIT." admitted Harry in a loud voice, his hearing temporarily damaged due to his proximity to the charmed rooster.

"YOU THINK, POTTER?" angrily shouted Daphne. "AS SOON AS WE GET OUT OF HERE, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU."

Harry began to contemplate letting her cool off in the Chamber for a few hours. Surely Tonks could use the company, right?

"AT LEAST THE BASILISK IS DEAD." he pointed out, trying to appease his fellow Slytherin.

"Its master isn't." reminded Nathaniel somberly.

"Master." whimpered a heavily bleeding Quirinus Quirrell, dragging himself back to his room. "Wha… what was that?"

The DADA Professor had been on the third floor, attempting to reach the Philosopher's stone, when those unexpected noises had destabilized him at the worst possible moment. His right arm had been caught in between the jaws of an extremely annoyed Cerberus and basically shredded. A few of his ribs had also been broken when the dumb beast had thrown him into a wall.

He'd barely escaped with his life.

"Master?" tried Quirrell again, distressed by the absence of response to his first inquiry. "Master?!"

But his pleas went unanswered, his puppeteer way too weakened by the state of his marionette.

"Found them!" called Forge, indicating a group of names that had just popped up on the Marauders' Map.

"About time!" exclaimed Gred. "The Hufflepuff dorms? You recon they're done for the night?"

"Looks like it, they just dropped Tonks." replied his brother, as two of the names vanished, leaving the Metamorphmagus alone in what had to be her bedroom.

The Weasleys shifted their attention to the Slytherin common room and waited for the two firsties to appear.

A minute passed… then another one… and another –

"I look up from the dungeons" sighed one of the twin.

"and I look down from the upper floors." tiredly concurred the other. "You know, I think Potter's doing this on purpose."

"… he'd better not be."

In a burst of flames, several beings materialized on the forbidden third floor.

"Where are we this time?" sighed Daphne, holding a trembling rooster and seriously wondering when this crazy night would finally be over.

"Third floor." answered Harry in a concerned voice, looking past his housemate with empty eyes.

The witch looked back and gasped in a mixture of surprise, fear and disgust.
An imposing door, probably designed to hold back some sort of massive creature, was ajar and splattered with blood. Scarlet trails were flowing out of the opening and covering the entire hallway, reaching for the nearby staircase.

"What happened here?" asked the nervous witch.

Instead of answering, the wizard threw the door open, revealing a massive three-headed dog right behind it. Its fur was visibly drenched in blood and a few ribbons of shredded fabric were hanging from one of its jaws.

"Fawkes." called out the wizard.

The phoenix seemed to know what was expected of him and began to fly around the room, singing. Daphne felt slightly better, hearing that mesmerizing melody. Seeing the massive Cerberus suddenly falling asleep was also a great thing for her heart rate and she managed to speak, albeit arduously.

"That's… a Cerberus."

"Daphne, Fluffy." introduced Harry, already inspecting the massive dog to localize possible injuries.

"This is your aunt's dog?" asked the girl sarcastically, pointing a delicate finger at the slobbering beast.

"It's Hagrid's." admitted the wizard before sighing in relief. "I can't find any wound, it's just Quirrell's blood."

The blonde looked at him quizzically.

"Professor Quirrell? That's his blood?"

"Probably lost a limb or two." smirked Nathaniel.

It was a rather out-of-place reaction… except that Harry was smiling too.

"Do we… help him?" hesitated Daphne.

Harry's wand was out instantly.

"No." growled the wizard, his green eyes colder than she'd ever seen them. "We're taking that bastard down."

Finding Quirrell was easy, they just had to follow the arrow… huh, the blood.

The man had dragged himself to his apartments, leaving crimson prints on every surface along the way. When they discovered him, he was trying to cure himself, casting a constant stream of poorly-executed healing spells to mend his gaping wounds.

"Only a shredded arm?" commented Harry, startling the sobbing teacher. "Too bad."

"Potter?" squeaked – actually squeaked! – the man.

"Hello Professor."

He leveled his wand and cast the Blood Fluidifying Curse.

"Goodbye Professor."

"Oh, come on!" swore Forge as yet another name disappeared from the map. "A teacher now?"

Severus Snape was concerned… extremely concerned, in fact.

When those horrible noises had been heard earlier at dinner, he'd immediately understood that that fool Quirinus was behind it, using the phenomenon as a distraction to reach the Stone.

It was a sound plan too. With Albus trying to maintain calm and the other professors attempting to locate the origin of the shrieks, the third floor was left unprotected and the Potion Master had had to discreetly exit the Great Hall to investigate the forbidden corridor himself.

He'd found blood.

It was quite literally all over the place, but the Cerberus didn't seem hurt in the slightest. Reassured that his colleague had been unable to progress further than the first room, Severus had then followed the bloody trails which, unsurprisingly, had led him straight to the DADA classroom.

He'd barged in, wand at the ready to defeat that greedy thief… but Quirrell was already dead, his body horribly lacerated by the guardian dog.

But the man's slow and painful demise was overall unimportant, what really concerned him was that annoying feeling that he was missing something… something important.

As he left the room, a mouse squeaked from underneath a piece of furniture.

Meanwhile, back in the Slytherin common room, two first-years, an old hat and a phoenix materialized in a blaze.

"Thanks Fawkes, I owe you one." smiled Harry, petting the majestic bird.

His answer came in the form of a contented thrill and a burst of fire, the Headmaster's companion flaming back to his office.

"We're back in the common room." observed Daphne, still clearly dazed despite the more familiar setting. "And you let the phoenix go, so… we're done?"

"We are."

"No more gallivanting around the castle, hunting monsters and murdering people." smirked Nathaniel. "Not in the near future anyway."

The witch visibly relaxed, as if an incommensurable burden had been lifted off her shoulders. Eyes closed, she took a deep breath and… slapped her housemate, twice.

"… I probably deserved that.".

Daphne didn't look like the sort of person who would resort to physical violence, but he supposed that he had pushed her pretty far.

"That was for involving me in a bloody murder!" snarled the blonde. "Now will you two morons take five minutes to tell me WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON or do I have to hex the truth out of you?"

"You do know Tonks will want to hear this, right? And that I hate to repeat myself?"

Two steel-gray eyes glared at him.

"… fine." complied the wizard. "Long story short, Quirrell was possessed by Tom Riddle."

"Who?"

"Voldemort." he revealed. "That thing you saw coming out of Quirrell was a shade of his."

The girl blinked once.

Twice.

And started to massage her brow.

"Okay, Voldemort was our DADA Professor." she sighed, remembering that her friend had suspected the teacher for weeks. "What was he doing on the third floor corridor? Why would he willingly face a Cerberus?"

"He was trying to steal an item that Fluffy is guarding for the Headmaster." answered the wizard. "And I'm not telling you what, because it's none of your business… or mine, for that matter."

"… fine, but why today? Why precisely on Samhain? Is… Tom, really that rancorous?"

"HE IS!" replied both wizard and hat.

"O~kay?" blinked Daphne, somewhat surprised by the statement. "And the basilisk?"

"Just a diversion to occupy the staff elsewhere, Voldy heard about Tonks waiting alone in the dungeons and asked his pet to take her down. That's what it claimed anyway."

"Right, you talked with it. And before that, you heard it through the walls." she recalled. "But you only heard hissing, parseltongue, right? How could you know it was a basilisk?"

"Its voice was deep, almost deafening." replied Harry. "It had to be something massive and a basilisk matched the profile. Also, Nat told me."

"Salazar's Chamber may not be tied to the castle's main ward scheme, but its entrances are." explained Nathaniel at the witch inquisitive look. "The beast registered on it the instant it left its lair."

"Which is how you located the Chamber." she falsely assumed. "And the Headmaster wasn't notified?"

"Albus's ties to the castle have always been a bit loose and there are many things he still hasn't learnt. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but he is no Ward Master." replied the hat. "The flaming chicken was notified though."

"Aaand now I want fried chicken." groaned Harry, empty stomach rumbling. "Loopy."

Daphne yelped and made a most graceful little jump when a house elf answered the wizard 's call.

"Harry Potter called Loopy?"

"I did." he smiled. "I'm not exactly comfortable with Halloween and would like to avoid the Great Hall altogether. Could you be a dear and bring my friend and I a little something to eat? Perhaps some fried chicken?"

"Loopy can." nodded the elf, vanishing in a pop.

"I swear you're going to give me a heart-attack one of this days, Potter." lamented the witch, holding her hands to her chest. "I just know it."