In Horace Slughorn's defence, he couldn't have known that all this would happen. All he had wanted to do was play match-maker between his two favourite students, Tom Riddle and Artemis Potter.
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--------------------> THE WORDS WERE STILL BEING SCRUBBED OFF THE WALL when Artemis passed by the corridor the next morning. Confirming her worst suspicions, the red ink indeed turned out to be blood. Whose, Artemis didn't know and frankly, didn't want to find out.
Everybody at Hogwarts knew about it. It, being the girl currently in the hospital wing, the message on the wall and the cruel choice of ink with which it had been written.
While the teachers had initially assumed the message to be a prank, all those thoughts burnt when she informed them about the petrified student. Harming another student was not a prank. It was violence and violence of any kind was unacceptable.
Artemis did not want to talk about last night to anyone at all. She wanted to forget about it all. She wished for it to be just a scary nightmare that she could wake up from. Unfortunately, the incident was all the rest of the students could talk about, some even daring to approach her for information until kind Fleamont, loyal Harfang, nice Ignatius, cinnamon roll Roman and sweet Reginald threatened to release bludgers on anyone who spoke about the incident around her, and actually following through with that threat once, successfully making all the gossipers silent. Gen just stomped on people's feet with her impossibly pointed heels.
Tom was also keeping his mouth shut, flashing a tight smile at anyone who voiced out questions and ignoring their existence entirely.
The teachers were trying their best to keep calm however their facade was early see-through and anybody could tell that they were pretty shaken up about it as well. The Chamber of Secrets was thought to be a myth and the House of Slytherin, extinct. The portrait of Salazar Slytherin did nothing but glare when questioned, refusing to speak, just adorned a mysteriously cruel smirk. A girl had been petrified and they didn't know what to do or what caused this to happen. This was one of the rare firsts in the history of Hogwarts.
There were just two weeks left for school to get over, but now, everybody wanted to get home immediately.
Artemis didn't want to be house-ist here, but probably the only people whose faces were decorated with smiles were the majority of those who had been sorted into Slytherin.
Her second cousin, Abraxas, and the source of all misery, Walburga, in particular along with some of the other rich, dark-inclined purebloods went around telling everybody who would listen and even those who didn't about how grateful they were that the Heir of Slytherin was finally interweaving and purging them of the taint the so-called mudbloods had left on the school. They claimed that Salazar's pet wouldn't harm anybody of pureblood and its goal was to only wipe away the filth that was at Hogwarts.
Whenever they made those remarks, Artemis felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to use one of the forbidden unforgivables -the one with a pretty red colour- on them. Unfortunately, they were unforgivable so she didn't. No matter how much she wanted to.
