"Are you the Grey Lady?"
Hermione rushed up and asked. Justin cautiously cast a Muffliato Charm, then scanned their surroundings like he was bracing for an ambush.
The ghost nodded, saying nothing.
"And you're the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?" Hermione added, precise as ever.
"Yes."
Her tone wasn't friendly in the slightest.
"Please—we need your help. We need you to tell us everything you know about the missing diadem," Hermione blurted out in one breath.
It was like she could only ease the dread in her chest by forcing the words out.
"I'm afraid…" The ghost's lips twisted into a cold sneer. She turned to leave. "I can't help you."
"Wait!"
Hermione panicked for a split second. Anger and nerves were crushing her, and the ghost hovered right in front of her.
"This is urgent," Hermione snapped.
"You're not the first student to covet the diadem," the ghost said scornfully. "Generation after generation has pestered me—"
"We found it! No—Sean found it!" Hermione blurted.
The moment she said Sean's name, her frantic edge melted away like snow.
The ghost's gaze settled on the young wizard beside Hermione. Or rather—she'd been watching him all along.
"You… found it?" the ghost asked.
"Yes, Miss Helena," Sean said.
The air went still.
The Grey Lady studied Sean carefully. A storm of emotions flickered in her eyes, then settled into a blank calm.
"Would you like to see it?" Sean asked softly.
"Lead the way."
She drifted to Sean's side without sparing Hermione or Justin another glance.
Ten minutes later, the Room of Requirement welcomed visitors once again.
The ghost looked around the room that could change at will, and her grey-white eyes dimmed.
"I have questions. In exchange, I'll answer yours," she said to Sean.
"Go ahead."
Sean flicked his wand, and the diadem appeared before them again.
"How did you find it?" the ghost asked.
"Voldemort hid it in the Room of Requirement," Sean replied.
"Your turn."
Sean hesitated, then asked carefully, "Do you… want to move on?"
"Sean—" Justin hissed under his breath. Hermione and Justin both looked baffled.
"We came to remove the diadem's curse so we can use it, didn't we?" Hermione pressed, still not understanding.
Before Justin could respond, the ghost spoke in a low voice.
"She chose you… She always does. That's why I hated her—because she was always like that. If she'd been crueler, I—"
Grey-white beads spilled from the corners of her eyes.
After a long moment, she finally whispered so only Sean could hear, "I… have no face left."
"I understand," Sean said, lowering his lashes. "Your turn to ask."
"How do you know my name?" the ghost demanded.
"Mr. Owl told me," Sean said quietly.
"Rowena—" The ghost's mouth curled with bitter mockery. "He's never spoken to me. Of course—you're the one she chose. The one they chose. But I'm not—"
She cut herself off, then looked at Sean and didn't continue.
"Ask, young wizard. You may ask three more questions."
Sean was about to speak, but Justin and Hermione traded a look and stepped forward.
"May I ask one?" Justin said.
"Fine," Sean answered, understanding how desperate they were.
"Lady Helena—do you know how Ravenclaw's diadem was found, and how it ended up becoming a Horcrux?" Justin asked.
The ghost went still, drifting in place. She lowered her gaze to Justin.
"That is a long story… Once, I stole the diadem from my mother."
"You—you did what?" Hermione stared.
"I stole it," Helena Ravenclaw repeated. She looked past them to Sean. "Because I wanted to be smarter than my mother. More famous. So I ran with it."
Hermione and Justin were stunned, forcing themselves to listen as the ghost continued:
"They say my mother never admitted it was gone. She pretended the diadem was still with her.
She even hid the loss from the other founders of Hogwarts—hid my terrible betrayal.
Later, my mother fell ill. Gravely. And though I had done something unforgivable, she desperately wanted to see me again.
She sent a man to find me—a man who had loved me for a long time. I refused him. My mother knew he would never stop until he found me."
The ghost drew a deep breath and tipped her head back.
"He found the forest where I was hiding. I refused to return. He flew into a rage. The Bloody Baron was always violent. He hated that I rejected him, envied my freedom—so he stabbed me to death."
"Baron? You mean—" Justin and Hermione felt like they'd stumbled into something too awful to hear.
"The Bloody Baron. Yes." The Grey Lady lifted her cloak, revealing a dark wound on her pale chest. "When he came to his senses, he was sick with remorse. He took the same weapon he'd used to kill me, and killed himself.
All these centuries later, he still wears chains as penance—he deserves it."
She added the last line with a cold laugh.
"Then—then the diadem?" Hermione and Justin asked together.
"When I heard him stumbling toward me through the forest, I hid it," she said. "And it stayed there. In a hollow tree."
"A hollow tree—what tree? Where?" Hermione pressed.
"In a forest in Albania. A desolate place. I thought my mother would never reach me there."
"Albania—then what? How did it—"
"I—I don't know!" The ghost's hatred flared, ugly and raw. "I never saw it! Of course—it was my stupidity—and she always knew that—"
After the burst of fury, she went distant again.
"Voldemort… he was good at making people like him. He seemed… understanding… sympathetic…
He tricked the truth out of me and defiled the diadem with the worst act imaginable. It can't be undone. I will never forgive it.
If anyone means to kill him, I would give anything."
"You're not the only one Riddle fooled with pretty words," Justin said gently. "When he needs to be, he can be charming.
My mother says the human heart is the hardest thing to predict."
Hermione's head had dropped. They'd gotten the answer they least wanted.
"Perhaps." The ghost gave a low, bitter sound. "You have two questions left."
"How is life as a ghost?" Sean asked, when Justin and Hermione couldn't think of anything.
"Lonely. Regretful. A shame I earned." The Grey Lady's voice was self-mocking. "What sort of answer did you expect?"
"You should leave," Sean sighed, almost soundlessly.
He'd expected the diadem's damage to be irreversible.
The only reason he hadn't destroyed it immediately was because of something he'd read in The Ghost Book:
[A wizard who becomes a ghost has an obsession beyond ordinary imagining, but that obsession needs support.
If, in the world of souls, there is no one waiting for them, then even a ghost will lose their way—
and that shows in their fading intellect and emotion.]
Which meant that beyond death—past the Veil—Rowena Ravenclaw might still be waiting. In the dim, never-bright dawn of the in-between… perhaps she'd wandered for a thousand years.
"You have one question left," the Grey Lady said distantly. She'd lived in sorrow and humiliation for centuries. She didn't need anyone breaking into that abyss.
"I don't have one," Sean said.
At the same time, he raised his wand.
A massive stone guardian rose again. It took the basilisk fang floating out of the Wizard's Book and moved to destroy the diadem in a blur.
Then Whitey burst back in from the snowstorm outside.
It battered the window, and in its talons—absurdly—was a sword set with a ruby.
"A dignified ending," Sean said calmly.
He pointed his wand. The stone guardian obeyed, and in the others' stunned silence, it brought the sword down and split the diadem in two.
A blood-black, sticky substance oozed out.
The diadem shuddered violently, then cracked into fragments inside the cabinet.
As it broke, they all seemed to hear an incredibly faint, incredibly distant scream—not from the castle, not from the grounds, but from inside the thing itself.
A head wreathed in black smoke burst from the ruined diadem and shot straight at Sean.
Justin lunged without thinking.
But something went wrong—again. The smoky head thrashed, screamed, and then scattered into nothing, like ash caught in a gust.
"You—Green—That was Ravenclaw's diadem!" the Grey Lady cried, horrified.
"A wizard's wisdom was never inside a diadem," Sean said, perfectly even.
For a heartbeat, she looked stunned—then went utterly still, as if she'd understood something at last.
Hermione, at her side, looked like she might faint.
The Room of Requirement fell silent, except for the Grey Lady—who suddenly began to laugh, low and fierce, almost exhilarated.
She was laughing because a piece of Voldemort had been destroyed.
"Basilisk fang—Gryffindor's sword soaked in venom—those can destroy Horcruxes. Either way… I must thank you, Mr. Green.
You corrected my mistake… and you gave it a dignified end."