Stay - Mattheo Riddle

Squib

". . . I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadogou," said Lockhart, "a series of attacks, the full story's in my autobiography, I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once. . . ."

The photographs of Lockhart on the walls were all nodding in agreement as he talked. One of them had forgotten to remove his hair net. At last Dumbledore straightened up. 

"She's not dead, Argus," he said softly and Kirra couldn't help but let out a relieved sigh. Lockhart stopped abruptly in the middle of counting the number of murders he had prevented. 

"Not dead?" choked Filch, looking through his fingers at Mrs. Norris. "But why's she all — all stiff and frozen?" 

"She has been Petrified," said Dumbledore ("Ah! I thought so!" said Lockhart which caused Kirra and the two Slytherins to roll their eyes). "But how, I cannot say. . . ." 

"Ask them!" shrieked Filch, turning his blotched and tear-stained face to Harry and Kirra. 

"No second year could have done this," said Dumbledore firmly. "It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced —" 

"They did it, they did it!" Filch spat, his pouchy face purpling. "You saw what they wrote on the wall! He found — in my office — he knows I'm a —I'm a — He would have told her" Filch's face worked horribly. "They know I'm a Squib!" he finished. 

"I never touched Mrs. Norris!" Harry said loudly, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at him, including all the Lockharts on the walls while Kirra pushed herself further back into the seat.

"Kirra was with us the whole evening, she didn't do this" Mattheo snapped and he ignored the suspicious looks that Dumbledore, Minerva and Snape were giving him, after all, he was an heir... but technically speaking, he wasn't the only person in the room that was an heir.

"And I don't even know what a Squib is." Both Potters said quickly 

"Rubbish!" snarled Filch. "He saw my Kwikspell letter!" 

"If I might speak, Headmaster," said Snape from the shadows, and Kirra's sense of foreboding increased; she was sure nothing Snape had to say was going to do them any good. "The Potters and their friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said, a slight sneer curling his mouth as though he doubted it. 

"But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was Harry in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Halloween feast?" Harry, Ron and Hermione all launched into an explanation about the deathday party. 

". . . there were hundreds of ghosts, they'll tell you we were there —" 

"But why not join the feast afterwards?" said Snape, his black eyes glittering in the candlelight. "Why go up to that corridor?" Ron and Hermione looked at Harry. "Because — because —" Harry said, "because we were tired and wanted to go to bed," he said and kirra knew he had heard the voice too. 

"Without any supper?" said Snape, a triumphant smile flickering across his gaunt face. "I didn't think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties." 

"We weren't hungry," said Ron loudly as his stomach gave a huge rumble. Snape's nasty smile widened. 

"I suggest, Headmaster, that Mr Potter is not being entirely truthful," he said. "It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready, to be honest."