"Did you get permission to leave Hogwarts this weekend?" Dan asked Luna. 

The monster boy and the girl were sitting in their corner of the library again, Mantis was back on his friend's shoulders and refused to leave. Somehow, the green guy knew that Dan had suffered in his absence.

Dan chucked it to magic stuff. 

When he returned from the Catacombs, Luna tried to find out all the details about the "Secret Labyrinth inside the Chamber of Secrets" first thing. Dan was only too happy to answer all her questions.

During an impromptu interview, he managed to draw a rough map of the dungeon. Dan wasn't sure about the proportions of the corridors, but it was enough for his purposes. 

"When does your father pick us up from the entrance?" Dan asked Luna as he put his scrolls into his trusty bottomless backpack.

"Daddy will come in an hour and apparate us home. He was very excited to hear that you're coming along." The girl said with a smile. "I think it's good that he wants to meet you, we don't get guests very often."

Dan nodded, leaning back in his chair and sighing heavily. He had been feeling a little tired lately, especially after returning from the catacombs. 

"Danil Khromov? Did you know that bottomless bags are illegal?" Luna suddenly asked, looking at his backpack.

"They are?" Dan said, bewildered. But suddenly he understood why both professors looked like they had swallowed flies when they gave him this artifact. 

"Well, not as illegal as highly regulated." The girl clarified, also putting her things in her bag. "Daddy used to say that it's always worth hiding important things better so that even you can't find them at first."

Shrugging, Dan reminded himself not to talk about the illegal shit in his possession. Considering that technically he was an illegal immigrant himself and he hadn't even seen the representatives of the magic law, it was quite simple.

Together – Dan under an invisibility spell and Luna in the open – they slowly walked towards the gates of Hogwarts, talking quietly among themselves. Although rather only Luna was telling about all the things she had at home, and the monster boy was listening, putting his hand on her shoulder to let her know that he was still around.

The students who passed by looked at them with confused eyes, but when they saw that it was Luna talking to herself, they quickly lost interest. Loony was just talking to herself, what else could you expect from her?

Stepping outside just in time, they saw Professor Flitwick talking to a tall man with white-and-silver hair that hung down to his shoulders. His robes were even brighter than Dumbledore's morning robes, and they were already a bright purple.

"Daddy!" Luna screamed and ran to her father, jumping into his arms, the man caught his daughter laughing and twirled her around him.

"Hello, little moonbean, how are you?"

While Luna was talking quickly about all sorts of things, Flitwick muttered something and his wand glowed for a moment. His eyes immediately found Dan and the professor nodded slightly in his direction.

"Professor, thanks for keeping me company." Xenophilius told Flitwick. "We'll be leaving now, but where… Ah, where is the Umgubular Slashkilter?" He asked, looking around.

Dan, without hesitation, took a step forward and just as he was about to put his hand on the wizard's shoulder, Xeno's eyes snapped in his direction.

"Oh, you're already here! Right, right, then we won't even have to wait. I hope everyone's ready?"

Flitwick looked doubtfully at Xeno, but decided to speak up anyway.

"I've already made sure your daughter has met with you, so yes, my presence is not required here!" He said with his usual cheer. "But Professor Dumbledore asked you to be reminded that the very existence of your daughter's friend must remain a secret. At least for the time being, until we find an acceptable solution to his situation."

Xeno went a little cross-eyed in confusion, but then a light bulb seemed to go on above him.

"Oh, of course! I don't want to make a sensation so early, especially in this time of the month. We're not Greedygrogs, after all!"

Grabbing his daughter's hand and grabbing Dan's elbow – somehow – Xeno paused for a moment. "You'll want to hold your breath for the first time."

The moment and all three disappeared in a swirl of color and magic. Danil Khromov and Luna Lovegood left Hogwarts for Halloween. The last thought in Dan's head was: 'What are Greedygrogs?'

---

Harry had noticed something odd about Hermione lately. From the day they saw those spiders, she looked even more stressed than before. At the beginning of the year, she was just constantly irritated, but now she looked just awful.

Her face was pale, huge bags under her eyes and twitching at the slightest unexpected sound or touch. Hermione acted like a paranoid war veteran who had just left the battlefield.

Even her roommates noticed her behavior and approached Harry with their concerns. Hell, even Ron noticed that something was wrong!

At first, he decided to wait a couple of days, Hermione was an independent girl and could solve her problems herself. But after a week with no improvement, Harry began to doubt her ability to solve this particular problem. Whatever it was.

Finally, on the day of Halloween, Harry decided to do something.

As they were walking to the Great Hall to attend the Halloween feast, Harry stopped her.

"Hermione, can we talk?" He asked.

"... Sure?" She answered uncertainly.

When they were in the abandoned classroom, away from prying eyes and ears, Harry paused for a moment, not sure where to start.

From birth, he was rather isolated from his peers for the most part, because all traditional Pureblood families traditionally only revealed their heirs to the world when they reached their seventh year of life.

And Aunt Bella was nothing if not a pureblooded traditionalist. Harry was sure that if his mother had not expressed her desire to show her world both the wizarding world and the Muggle world in her will, Bella would have raised him exclusively as the heir of the Black family.

But even if he saw more of the world than the usual wix out there, that didn't mean he was good at confronting his own friends, especially about their own problems.

"Hermione, are you okay? I– we're worried about you; can you tell me what's going on? Whatever it is, we can help you." He winced at how generic that sounded.

The girl didn't answer for a long time, just staring at Harry for a few minutes. He gave her time to collect her thoughts, at least he thought she needed some time.

Hermione, meanwhile, was trying to decide if she should lie again, but that thought died the moment she saw Harry's eyes. What was the point of lying if they already knew something was wrong?

Her travel with the time-turner could be hidden by the reflection of questions and gaslighting, but now? When her knowledge hung on her like a stone and dragged her under… She would be stupid if she thought she could hide the stress on her face. 

"No," she eventually said, frustrated by no measure, "I'm not okay, I've been waiting for weeks for one of the professors to take me aside and expel me from Hogwarts for what I saw! Or worse, it will find me and tear me apart!"

Just in the last two days, Professor McGonagall and Professor Bubbling asked her to stay after class and each time her heart stopped in horror. But her worry turned out to be for naught, because every time they only advised her to visit the medical wing because she looked under the weather.

"I do not know what to do, this-this thing doesn't appear in any book!" She threw up her hands to the air. "It used magic and single-handedly killed two dozen Acromantulas! Harry, it could apparate within Hogwarts grounds– it apparated within Hogwarts' Wards! It should be impossible!"

Harry, seeing that his friend was beginning to panic, slowly put his arm around her shoulders, trying to calm her down. 

"I searched the entire library, even the restricted section, but there was nothing anywhere! I even ordered books from France, but even they were useless! And I don't know what to do, I don't even know what it is! How can I fight it, if I have no idea what it is?"

Harry began to form a picture of what had happened in his head. Hermione was somehow able to find out what killed those Acromantulas and was horrified by what she saw. But how did she know? Harry thought it was all over when they arrived. So, unless she time-traveled, it would be impossible for her to know what happened, and no one should be stupid enough to give a thirteen-year-old a time-traveling device, right?

Looking at the girl in his arms, he decided that it was no longer so important.

"Hermione, calm down, who did you see?" Harry squeezed her shoulder, trying to stop her flow of words.

The girl sighed sharply and stopped, this time actually collecting her thoughts.

"... The first time I saw it was at the beginning of the year, when Hagrid asked me to look after Fang, do you remember?" Harry nodded in response. "Then I thought I thought someone was behind the trees, but after what I saw that day…"

Hermione squeezed Harry back.

"It was tall, maybe even taller than Hagrid. And thin as a skeleton. Jet-black skin and arms far too long for it to be a human. It could use magic without a wand, Harry." She whispered. "Not like normal creatures that use passive magic. It used spells."

This made Harry stop. A being that could use magic without a wand? This was a huge problem, especially so if it was hostile.

"But the Professors got it handled, right? You could've asked them." He pointed out and Hermione let out a bitter laugh. 

"After how they ignored us in the first year? After the useless fraud in second year tried to wipe your mind? Harry, if I tried to talk to them, they would've made things worse."

It made Harry see just how deep the rabbit hole was. If Hermione said that the professors would make things worse, then she really was not in her mind.

"And you still didn't tell us anything…?" He asked, feeling a little hurt.

"I thought I could handle it myself." Hermione mumbled back and their conversation stilled for a while. Each of them had information to digest, more Harry than Hermione. The girl needed some time to calm down.

But after a while, she spoke again.

"It was with Luna, talking to her like a friend t least that's what it looked like. I think they were feeding thestrals in the forbidden forest."

"Wha–" His question was interrupted by the sound of an explosion and high-pitched screams of horror. The floor shook as if from an earthquake and age-old dust fell from the ceiling.

Both of them jerked away from each other, wands already in their hands, their eyes back at the door. Their emotional moment is forgotten and gone.

"Let's go!" Harry quickly made up his mind and ran, opening the door with a wave of his wand and a bark of: "Aberto!"

"Harry, wait!" Hermione tried to stop him, but the Boy-who-lived was already in the hallway looking for trouble.

The Halloween has already begun.

---

Dan, meanwhile, sat at the table with Xenophilius and listened to the man talking for an hour.

"–the Aurors are part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, many of them are working from within the ministry to bring down our state using a combination of Dark Magic and the gum disease. As a newcomer to our world, you just need to know that. Oh, but I didn't explain what is the gum disease is–"

The worst thing about the verbal vomit that Xenophilius Lovegood uttered was, that after a while, it began to make sense.