"Helena, think carefully. Think about the time you spent with Lady Ravenclaw. Did she ever mention anything related?" Ted asked Helena.
"Thoughts... bundled-up thoughts..." Helena's eyes were vacant as she sank into deep thought.
For a ghost with little sense of time, that contemplation lasted two or three hours.
Ted returned after dinner, and Helena was still floating there, deep in thought.
By midnight, Ted could no longer stay awake and decided they could continue tomorrow.
He had meant to persuade her to rest first and think it over slowly, but before he could speak, she interrupted him.
"I... I think I might remember. Mother, she... she seemed to have said something like that..." Her expression was agitated, sorrowful, yet tinged with remembrance.
She walked up to the statue and called softly, "Mother? Mother! Mother, I'm back. Open the door for me. I'm Helena."
Suddenly, Ted sensed a fluctuation of Magic Power from the statue!
He quickly cast a detection spell and, sure enough, saw an increasingly bright blue glow on the statue.
Then Lady Ravenclaw's statue blinked and began to speak. "Helena, my daughter, is that you?"
It was a gentle, clear voice, carrying the air of an elegant and wise lady.
Pearl-white tears streamed down Helena's face. Choking back sobs, she stretched out her hands to embrace her mother, but they could only pass through the statue—she was already a ghost, dead for nearly a thousand years.
"Mother! Mother, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." she sobbed.
"Don't cry, Helena. Don't cry, my poor daughter..." She looked Helena over.
"I was already in very poor condition then. I was afraid I would never see you again, and afraid that you would be unable to go on. It was my fault. I should not have sent Barrow to find you. His