Huffily Puffily || Golden Trio

All the King's Horses || xl

Over the next few weeks, Lucy realized with great dismay that trying to find records of a covered up event was, shockingly, incredibly difficult.

She couldn't count the amount of times she broke into the previous caretaker's office. She scoured through the countless filing cabinets, but to her dismay, both Hagrid and Tom's file was missing. She tried looking for the girl who died, too, but there was no record of anyone dying in Hogwarts. In her opinion, it seemed a little wrong to cover up such a controversial event.

"You're still looking here?"

Tom sat in the dusty office chair watching her bemusedly. He'd gone back into the diary when she started her search, and looking at the clock, he could see it'd been four hours since she started.

"Yes, it's like they erased everyone involved off the face of the planet," Lucy huffed. She sat back, stretching her legs out in front of her. They were bloody stiff, that was for sure. "Is this girl the only one who's died at Hogwarts?"

"Not even remotely," he replied. He kicked his feet up on the desk like he owned the place and Lucy rolled her eyes. Someone was arrogant today. "The year after the Chamber was opened, a few older muggle-borns were poisoned. Someone slipped it into their drinks at breakfast, and their tongues rotted and fell off. One of them had a particularly bad reaction and died, although the Ministry vehemently denied it had anything to do with the poison."

Her jaw dropped. "Really? Who did it?"

"Technically the culprit was never caught, but us Slytherins knew it was Carrow's doing. He couldn't have been more smug about it."

"How does someone get away with that?" She felt disgusted thinking about it. Those poor students must have been in such agony; poisoning someone for their blood status was simply despicable.

"Nobody saw him do it. Dumbledore knew, of course— the next time Carrow was caught shoving a muggle-born in the corridors, he had Dippet expel him in an instant."

Good, she thought. She eyed Tom's nostalgic look and said, "Tom, your friends were sort of messed up."

He scowled immediately. "He wasn't my—"

"Yes, I know, you don't have friends." She waved a hand at him dismissively. He could say he didn't have friends all he wanted but she specifically remembered him telling her that he helped Abraxas out by going on a double-date with him. If that wasn't friendship, she didn't know what was. He was just a stubborn git.

Tom looked irritated at her gesture. He hated being interrupted. Tough. She ignored him and went back to looking through the files. If she soothed his ego every time he got annoyed, she'd be doing it all day long.

"If you haven't found it by now, you're never going to," he said scornfully as she began pulling records out of another filing cabinet. "Dippet wouldn't have left them anywhere a nosy student might find them. He obsessed over his reputation."

"What a nonce!" She let the files slip from her fingers and she lay over the opened drawer, groaning dramatically. "Why is life so hard for beautiful people?"

"I think you've been around Lockhart too much lately."

"The fame, the money, it's all too much," she continued sorrowfully.

Tom snorted. "I'd say you're famously annoying."

She jumped away from the cabinet like she'd been shot and threw a hand over her heart. "Oh no, I've been wounded!" She waved her wand and made it so that red dye stained her shirt, "Would you look at that, you've shot me..."