At dinner, Bing Huan seemed rather distracted. Hermione put a chicken leg on his plate. "Eat properly. You'll be hungry tonight."
He picked up the chicken leg and took a fierce bite. "No, I just can't figure it out. Ever since I realized I could sense malice, my ability had never failed me. How could this happen?"
"Not even once?"
"Actually, 'malice sensing' covers a pretty broad range. For example, say you're a police officer—or an Auror, as you call them. While working a case, you might have to attack a suspect to save someone. I can sense what you're planning to do when you decide how to attack."
Fred asked, "Wouldn't it depend on who you were dealing with?"
George added, "Wouldn't there be a difference between someone powerful and someone who wasn't?"
Bing Huan took a sip of water and continued, "It doesn't have an absolute connection to strength. It's about having a high degree of self-control. Let me put it this way: my master... You probably wouldn't have much idea what I mean by that. The three most powerful people in the Wizarding World are Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Voldemort.
"Voldemort doesn't count—he radiates malice just by standing there. The other two, though, would escape my detection unless they deliberately lowered their guard."
Hermione asked, "Could there be any exceptions?"
"Ennmm, yes. For example, someone could give an order in advance, leaving a machine or someone incapable of thinking on standby until something happened later. Or someone could be hypnotized into seeing Harry as some kind of mechanism, with nothing else in the entire Quidditch Pitch, and made to believe the world would end if they didn't break it.
"Another possibility is that the person attacking has a very unusual way of thinking. They know only that stopping Harry is for his own good and don't consider the consequences at all. Those are the only cases I can think of. The first is impossible. Quidditch is so intense that it would be difficult to control anything without being there in person, let alone predict what would happen in advance.
"The second could evade my malice sensing, but people who've been hypnotized usually don't hide their magical traces, and there would still be clues. As for the third, it was just a possibility my master came up with under ideal conditions. Are there really intelligent beings like that in the world?"
They discussed it for a long time without reaching a conclusion. Seeing that the sky outside had gone dark, they left the Great Hall. Ron suddenly remembered something. "Do you think that guy might go after Harry again tonight, since he didn't succeed earlier?"
Draco said, "Could be!"
The four of them agreed to check on Harry after lights-out.
In the School Infirmary, Harry, who had been dozing lightly, felt someone on his bed and hurriedly sat up in fright. "Dobby?!"
The House-elf looked at Harry. "Harry Potter still returned to school. Why didn't he go home after missing the train?"
"How did you know I missed the train?" Harry jolted.
Realizing he'd let something slip, Dobby panicked at once. In his panic, he confessed everything he'd been doing over the past few days. The more he confessed, the more agitated he became. "Dobby can't let Harry Potter stay here, or the Chamber of Secrets will be opened..."
"You know about the Chamber of Secrets!" Harry immediately seized on the key point.
"Harry Potter, don't ask Dobby anymore. Ah! Dobby's been found!" Dobby vanished like a puff of smoke. Bing Huan, who'd hurried in, only managed to pluck off a strand of what seemed to be hair. "So creatures like this really exist."
Bing Huan had sensed Dobby as soon as he appeared, so he'd put Breath Concealment Talismans on all four of them and crept closer. They'd overheard most of the conversation between the two. Ron went over to ask Harry if he was all right, while Hermione took the hair and compared it with examples in a book to see if it really belonged to a House-elf.
Draco suddenly called out, "Dobby... isn't he my family's House-elf?"
"Huh?!"
It turned out that before the summer holidays, Lucius had been dealing with Dark Wizards while pretending to hate Harry Potter. He'd even threatened to open the Chamber of Secrets and get rid of Harry. Dobby had happened to see it from the doorway, and Draco had seen Dobby looking panicked.
Ron murmured, "So what were we even guarding against all summer?"
"You could've asked me sooner." Draco sounded a little wronged. Who would've guessed? Professor Snape, the person he'd been most unsure about in first year, had been known to him; and now he'd known about the mysterious Dobby this whole term, too. Yet both times, Draco had been the last to find out.
The group looked at one another in silence. Then footsteps sounded outside, and Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Madam Pomfrey, and another staff member came in carrying a stretcher.
"..." Professor McGonagall clearly hadn't expected such a crowd tonight. "I hope you can explain why you're here at this hour." Although she was angry, some lingering fear showed on her face. Something quite terrible must have happened.
Hermione held up Dobby's hair. "Professor, we found the suspect who attacked Harry. It all happened so suddenly that we didn't have time to notify the professors. We just saved Harry again."
Professor McGonagall took it and examined it closely. "This is a House-elf's hair. All right, Miss Granger, I'll let it go this time. I hope you'll notify the professors promptly next time. Now, go back to bed." As if still worried, she stopped them again. "Wait. Stay here for a little while. We'll escort you back soon."
Only then did Bing Huan look at the "statue" on the bed. "Colin?" He was holding his camera, his face frozen in terror, his whole body rigid just like Mrs. Norris had been.
"McGonagall saw him on the stairs. Poor boy's been Petrified." Dumbledore, wearing his dressing gown, bent down and picked up Colin's camera. The moment he opened it, a puff of hot air rose from inside, followed by the smell of burning plastic.
"Looks like whoever's behind this isn't simple. Even ordinary methods can't capture an image." Bing Huan fanned the smell away and frowned.
"What does that mean, Albus?" Professor McGonagall asked urgently.
"It means Hogwarts is no longer safe."
"When has Hogwarts ever been safe?" Bing Huan asked, puzzled. Every year, the final exam seemed to involve taking on Voldemort alone. He couldn't see how that had anything to do with safety.
"...It was, more or less, before you started school."
In History of Magic the next day, Hermione interrupted Professor Binns's long-winded lecture and raised her hand to ask about the Chamber of Secrets. The story went back to Hogwarts' four Founders. Salazar Slytherin believed that magical education should have a higher barrier to entry—for example, only children from wizarding families should be admitted.
The other three Founders opposed him. After a fierce argument, Slytherin left the school. Before leaving, he declared that there was a Chamber of Secrets within the school and that he would help his heir purge it.
"Purge? What a ridiculous and foolish theory." Bing Huan had directly chosen to anger a crowd of extreme supporters of Pure-blood supremacy. Professor Binns, however, was quite curious about this boy from the East. "What makes you say that, young man?"
Bing Huan addressed the professor before replying. "Although I don't yet fully understand the Wizarding World, and I can't offer a practical solution based on what I know now, I'm certain that extreme Pure-blood ideology has nowhere to go. If they want to preserve Pure-blood status, their only path is increasingly frequent and severe inbreeding.
"That would only mean more and more children born with disabilities, while the Pure-blood families grew smaller and smaller until they died out. That's why more and more Pure-blood families now remove people without magical ability from their family trees instead of forbidding intermarriage. In other words, many people who pride themselves on their noble blood are themselves Half-bloods—the very people they look down on most."
"A very bold interpretation. Sit down."
There were no classes that afternoon, so Bing Huan and Hermione were heading to the library. After they'd taken just a couple of steps, the older couple blocked their way. Dumbledore called Bing Huan away to discuss something, mostly in exchange for Grindelwald tutoring Hermione.
Grindelwald led Hermione to the Pensieve. "This is a Pensieve. It can help us think through the little details in our memories."
"How does this have anything to do with my studies?"
"Sorry, young lady. If you have any questions in the future, feel free to ask me. But today, could you first take a look at the old man's memory?" As he spoke, Grindelwald used his wand to draw out a memory and put it into the Pensieve. "This was a few nights ago. It certainly gave Albus and me a scare."
Hermione looked at it dubiously. It showed Dumbledore arguing with Bing Huan, with Harry and the Chosen One's part omitted, of course. She watched the boy argue with the two most powerful old men in the Wizarding World for her sake, even going so far as to threaten them.
Grindelwald said from beside her, "I've known the boy longer than you have. He seems cheerful, but he's very closed off. That's exactly why he values his relationships so deeply, to the point that he might do foolish things. I hope you'll be there to pull him back when he needs it."
"I'm sorry." Hermione wiped her eyes and answered without much hesitation. "If he really does something wrong, I'll help him make it right. That has nothing to do with your asking me. Bing Huan is important to me, too. But if he hasn't done anything wrong, I'll stand by him, no matter which side we're on."
"Even if that means opposing us?"
Hermione didn't answer. She simply bowed and walked out of the Headmaster's Office.
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