Chapter 378: Ghostly Shadows of the Past
"Are you the Grey Lady?"
Hermione rushed forward to ask, her voice echoing slightly in the corridor. Justin cautiously cast a Quietening Charm and began observing their surroundings with the intensity of a wizard expecting an ambush.
The ghost gave a slow, solemn nod but remained silent.
"You are the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?" Hermione added, her tone becoming more precise.
"I am," the ghost replied. Her tone was anything but welcoming.
"Please, we need your help. We need you to tell us everything you know about the lost diadem," Hermione said, the words tumbling out in a single breath. It seemed that speaking was the only way to manage the terrifying anxiety clawing at her chest.
"I'm afraid," the ghost lady's lips twisted into a cold sneer as she turned to drift away, "that I cannot help you."
"Wait!"
Hermione's voice cracked with a mix of panic and desperation. The ghost continued to hover, circling slowly in the air before them.
"This is a matter of great urgency!" Hermione pressed.
"You are not the first student to covet the diadem," the ghost said contemptuously. "Generation after generation, they badger me, seeking the prize—"
"We've found it! Or rather, Sean found it!"
At the mention of Sean's name, Hermione's panic seemed to evaporate like frost under a morning sun. The ghost's gaze immediately locked onto the young wizard standing beside her. In truth, she had been watching him from the moment they approached.
"You... found it?" the ghost lady asked.
"Yes, Miss Helena," Sean replied quietly.
The atmosphere grew heavy and still. The ghost lady studied Sean with a piercing intensity, her eyes flickering with a storm of complex emotions before settling into a haunted calm.
"Would you like to see it?" Sean asked softly.
"Lead the way," she said, drifting closer to him. She didn't spare a second glance for Hermione or Justin.
Ten minutes later, the Room of Requirement welcomed its guests once more.
The ghost lady gazed around the room that could transform into anything the heart desired, her grey eyes dimming with a look of profound melancholy.
"I have questions. In exchange, I shall answer yours," she said, looking directly at Sean.
"Please, go ahead," Sean said. He flicked his wand, and the diadem manifested on a pedestal before them.
"How did you locate it?" she asked.
"Voldemort hid it here, in the Room of Hidden Things," Sean answered.
"Then it is your turn," she noted.
"Do you... wish to move on?" Sean asked, choosing his words with care.
"Sean!" Justin hissed from the side. Both he and Hermione wore expressions of utter confusion.
"We're here to break the curse so we can use the diadem, aren't we?" Hermione asked, her bewilderment getting the better of her.
Before Justin could respond, the ghost lady's voice rang out, low and bitter.
"She chose you... she always does this. It is why I have hated her so... if she had only been harder, if she had been less forgiving, I..."
Pearly, translucent droplets fell from the ghost's eyes. She murmured to herself for a moment before addressing Sean again, her voice a mere whisper in his ear. "I... have no face left to show her..."
"I understand," Sean said, lowering his eyes. "It is your turn to ask."
"How did you learn my name?" she demanded.
"The Owl Gentleman told me," Sean whispered.
"Rav? Hmph—he has never spoken a word to me. But then, you are her chosen. You were chosen by all of them. But I... I was not." The corner of her mouth quirked into a mocking arc. She spared Sean a final look and sighed. "Ask your questions, young wizard. You have three remaining."
Sean prepared to speak, but Justin and Hermione exchanged a quick look and stepped closer.
"May I ask a question?" Justin ventured.
"Very well," Sean said, seeing their desperation for answers.
"Madam Helena, do you know how Ravenclaw's Diadem was found, and how it was turned into a Horcrux?" Justin asked.
The ghost lady became perfectly still, drifting weightlessly as she looked down at Justin.
"It is a very old story... long ago, I stole the diadem from my mother."
"You—you did what?" Hermione's eyes nearly bulged out of her head.
"I stole the diadem," Helena Ravenclaw repeated. She looked past the other two, her eyes fixed solely on Sean. "I did it because I wanted to be cleverer than my mother. I wanted the fame she possessed. So, I took the prize and I fled."
Justin and Hermione stood in stunned silence, forcing themselves to listen as the ghost continued.
"They say my mother never admitted the diadem was gone. She maintained the lie that it was still in her possession. She even hid the loss from the other Founders, keeping my terrible betrayal a secret. Later, she fell ill—fatally so. Despite what I had done, she was desperate to see me one last time.
"She sent a man to find me—a man who had loved me for a long time, but whom I had always rejected. She knew he would not rest until he had tracked me down."
She took a deep, spectral breath and tilted her head back.
"He found me in the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with him, he flew into a rage. The Baron was always a man of violent temper. He hated that I had spurned him, and he was jealous of the freedom I had found. So, he stabbed me to death."
"The Baron? You mean—?"
Justin and Hermione felt as though they had stumbled into a dark, historical nightmare.
"The Bloody Baron, yes," the Grey Lady said. She pulled back her velvet cloak, revealing a dark, jagged wound in her snow-white chest. "When he realized what he had done, he was overcome with remorse. He took the same weapon that had ended my life and turned it upon himself. Centuries have passed, and he still wears his chains as a mark of penance... he deserves no less." She added the last part with a cold, sharp laugh.
"And... and the diadem?" they asked together.
"When I heard the Baron stumbling through the forest toward me, I hid it. I tucked it away inside a hollow tree. It remained there for nearly a thousand years."
"A hollow tree? Where?"
"In a forest in Albania. A desolate, lonely place where I thought my mother's reach could never find it."
"Albania... and then what? How did it get here?"
"I... I did not see!" The ghost lady's voice flared with a sudden, terrible resentment. "I never see clearly! It was my own stupidity, and she knew it would be my undoing!"
After the outburst, her anger faded into a hollow vacancy. "Voldemort... he was... he was very good at being liked. He seemed... understanding. He seemed to have a heart. He flattered the secret from me, and then he used the foulest of acts to defile the diadem. The damage is irreversible. I shall never forgive him. If there is someone in this world who intends to kill him, I would give them everything I have."
"You aren't the only one Riddle has deceived with sweet words, Ma'am," Justin offered gently. "He could be very charming when he needed something. My mother always said that the human heart is the most difficult thing to map."
Hermione's shoulders slumped. They had received the worst possible answer.
"Perhaps," the Grey Lady whispered. "You have two questions remaining."
"What is life like for a ghost?" Sean asked, breaking the silence before his friends could think of another question.
"Loneliness. Regret. A shameful existence that I have earned," she replied with bitter self-derision. "What other answer did you expect?"
"Perhaps... it is time for you to leave," Sean said softly, letting out a silent sigh.
The Diadem was indeed damaged beyond repair. Sean had anticipated this. He hadn't destroyed it immediately because he had seen a specific passage in the Book of Ghosts:
[Wizards who become ghosts carry an obsession beyond the comprehension of the living. But this obsession requires an anchor. If there is no one in the world of the soul waiting for them, the ghost will eventually lose its way. This manifests as a slow erosion of their intellect and their emotions.]
This implied that on the other side of the veil, Rowena Ravenclaw might still be waiting. She might have been wandering the twilight of the Lands Between for a thousand years, waiting for her daughter to join her.
"You have one question left," the ghost lady said, looking dazed. She had been immersed in her grief and shame for ten centuries. She was accustomed to despair and didn't know how to handle someone trying to reach into it.
"I have no more questions," Sean said.
He slowly raised his wand. A massive stone guardian detached itself from the wall once more. It took the Basilisk fang from the air where it hovered and prepared to strike the crown with terminal force.
Suddenly, Snowy swooped in from the high windows, returning from the winter storm. She flapped her wings against the glass, her talons clutching a silver sword encrusted with rubies.
"A dignified conclusion," Sean noted.
With a flick of Sean's wand, the stone guardian obeyed his will. Under the shocked gazes of his friends, the statue swung the Sword of Gryffindor, cleaving the Diadem in two.
A thick, viscous, ink-black substance began to seep from the shattered metal. The trio felt a violent vibration ripple through the air as the relic disintegrated. As it broke, they all heard a faint, distant, and agonizingly high-pitched shriek—a sound that didn't come from the castle or the grounds, but from the very heart of the dying object.
A wisp of black smoke in the shape of a screaming head erupted from the Diadem, lunging straight for Sean.
Justin started to throw himself in the way, but before he could move, the black shade hissed, flickered, and dissolved into nothingness.
"You... Sean... that was Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem!" the ghost lady gasped in horror.
"A wizard's wisdom was never contained within a piece of jewelry," Sean said calmly.
The Grey Lady stood in stunned silence. A moment later, a look of profound realization crossed her face. Perhaps this was the difference between him and everyone else.
Beside her, Hermione was paralyzed with shock. The Room of Requirement fell into a heavy silence, broken only by a sudden, low, and genuinely joyful laugh from Helena Ravenclaw. She was exulting in the destruction of Voldemort's soul-fragment.
"A Basilisk fang... a sword steeped in venom... a substance capable of ending a Horcrux," she murmured. "Regardless of the cost, I thank you, Mr. Green. You have mended my error... and you have given the Diadem a dignified exit."
[End of Chapter 378]
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