Secrets of the Office Main Story Closed

Lamik Fillestar wanted answers, and he wanted them as quick as possible. After all, it simply made no sense. Even if Harry Potter had murdered somebody, why in the world would he have decided to just rest in the common room afterwards? The man was meant to be a hero, not an idiot. No, any smart killer would attempt to run away. Lamik figured that he might have just misunderstood something. Because of this and because I need an excuse to get Lamik into the office he had decided to speak with the Headmaster and find out some more. Though Lamik hadnt seen Solomon Lear in a while, the boy assumed that he was in his office doing paperwork or cuddling his armor set.

As he walked into Solomons office, Lamik was suprised by the fact that the man didnt seem to be there. "Hello?" He said loudly, looking around. Upon closer inspection of the room, things seemed a bit off. The first thing he noticed- and the one that he decided to approach first as it was nearest to him- was the doorframe. As though something had slammed the door open- it was broken. The young Gryffindor ran his hands along the cracks and splinters (if there were any), and tried to figure out what had happened.

Jorah was sitting in his favorite spot in the Great Hall facing the fireplace. He shoveled another helping of fluffy yellow eggs and a crispy sausage link into his mouth while he flipped through the Daily Prophet. He took a sip of his orange juice, HACK Hack Ahem! Jorah choked on his juice as he read the words that Harry Potter was found guilty of murder. Guilty! That can't be! Jorah finished the article. The murder occurred here at Hogwarts! In the Headmaster's office!, Jorah thought to himself. He looked over to the staff table, the Headmaster wasn't there. Thinking back, its been a while since Jorah saw the Headmaster. Its not like he's hard to miss in his armor. If hes not around, maybe I can ask the paintings in his office what happened. If Harry actually killed someone in Lear's office, the portraits would have seen it.

Jorah left the Great Hall for the Headmaster's office. When he arrived, it seemed he wasn't the only student who had read the article in the Prophet. An older Gryffindor student was examining a door frame which appeared to be damaged. Jorah nodded as he passed the student. To his dismay, he found the office completely devoid of portraits. "They're gone! Where are the portraits?" Even the Sorting Hat was missing, it seemed there would be no additional witnesses to what happened that night. Jorah examined the office, it was neat, but covered in dust. It looks like the Headmaster hasn't been in here for a while. If there was a murder, there was likely a struggle, struggles leave messes, and the House Elves clean messes, maybe one of them knows something. At the very least they might have a clue where Headmaster Lear went off to. Jorah recalled that the House Elves could be found in the Kitchens. He could move down there if there were no House Elves nearby.

Action: Attempt to find a House Elf that attends to the Headmaster's Office

Katrina had been wondering when a good time to see the headmaster was. As too many people know, her muggle parents were killed in a house fire last spring. Since the fire, Katrina had adopted the tradition to weekly send a letter to the anonymous person who sent her the original letter telling her what happened. The school owl had delivered the letters but never brought one back. Katrina was hiking up the stairs curious if the headmaster had any clue who the owl belonged to.
The first thing that was off, was that Katrina heard two boys’ voices ahead. She turned the final corner to see Lamik, who had been in her cabin this summer, and who she thought might be Jorah, who had been stabbed at the masked ball.
Katrina shuddered, since that eventful night, nightmares had plagued her constantly. Jorah being stabbed was one of such nightmares. She brushed the oddness aside and approached them.
“What’s going on? Where’s the headmaster?” Katrina approached Liam and noticed the broken doorframe.
“What happened here?” she breathed under her breath.
Katrina took a step into the office and sneezed. It was then that she noticed a thin layer of dust all over the room and a cold fireplace. Had the headmaster not been here in a long time? How was the school running without him? Did the other professors know about this?
Katrina debated leaving the scene. She could easily duck out of this mystery and not ever have a second thought about it. Other students could figure out what happened and Katrina would just hear the rumors about it later. But what if she had something to contribute?
Katrina looked around the room and decided to look closer at the fireplace. Didn’t someone clean this room? Wouldn’t the house elves clean this? A fine layer of ash spewed out of the cold fireplace. Katrina took a closer look careful not to disturb any clues.

Action: Inspect fireplace

@Lamik Fillestar @Jorah Moussa @Solomon Lear

Lamik Fillestar would decide to complain to Professor Lear, the rather forgettable Headmaster who normally spends his long winter evenings by the fireplace with a pygmy puff at his side and a nice set of armor on his lap.

Strange imagry aside. Perhaps Headmaster Lear knew something more about Harry Potter's incarceration. It was one of those devestating moments or to moralle of the school, one of their most famed allumni in prison, disgraced for murder. Solomon was not the Headmaster at the time, but he was one of the few Professors that remained at this school from the time period. Oddly enough there was a great deal of staff turn-over after Potter's alleged murder of Dolores Umbridge.

Lamik would not get very far. The door would be the first thing he noticed. The door to Solomon's office was wrong. The doorframe was damaged. As if the wood itself was bashed into. Crashed through. His fingers would feel large hunks of hardwood that had been fractured. They were only in place because of the nails that held them there or the fact that the the wood was roughly wedged back into place.

Lamik inspects the doorframe.
Roll: 14

It was obvious that something or someone broke into this office. When? Well, that was harder to say, but these bits of wood were wedged back into place. The door was not repaired. A thousand-year old Scottish castle that was for the most part in good repair and even modernized with the times, up to magical standards. It was likely that this happened recently.

Furthermore, the door itself. There was a depression in the door just above the brass doorknob shaped like a gryffin. It was as if some sort of powerful concussive force had pounded the door and broke the bar through the frame.

Jorah Moussa would arrive while Lamik was assessing the door. The partially opened door would reveal an empty, clean office. Well, mostly clean, there was a thin layer of dust on the flat surfaces but everything as picked up. The hat was gone, even the portraits were missing.

Jorah would come to a unique conclusion: find the house elves and ask them for some additional information regarding Solomon's office 'cleaning.' Jorah was headed to the kitchens (altering your accesses to facilitate this). He would promptly turn around and leave without a word. He had ideas of his own.

Katrina Walker would ask Lamik a few questions, the generic what happened line of questioning. She would walk past Lamik and Jorah would turn around and just before she entered. Katrina would note the dust. Either the house elves have been derelict in their duties or this space made an unreal amount of dust.

Katrina was looking at the fireplace.
Roll: 9

Looking into the fireplace she would see a thick bed of ash. The girl would sift through the fireplace, the small bits of porcelain... No, it was too dull to be a dish. The color of ivory, the bits that were not burnt. So many and so tiny. She would find a number of these strange, small white, pointy in some cases as one pierced her finger and a drop of blood pooled at the site of the insult. Pointy, dangerous little bugger. There were other, larger bits in there. They were rounded with an uneven surface. More like a terrible thimble that only protects part of the finger.



Someone had been in here before Katrina. There were some comb marks in the ash before she had dug in. Little did she know that earlier that day Jo Morgan had looked in that very same fireplace. Between her time here and Katrina's, the house elves had not entered the office.

As Lamiks fingers slid over the shards of wood, he realized something. "Somebody broke in..." He said, more to himself then to anyone else. Though the boy had noticed the two other kids on the room, his curiosity- along with the dread mounting up in his stomach- kept the better of him. As he took a few steps away from the door frame, another thought dawned on him. If whatever had broken the door had taken place too long ago, the house elves would havd cleaned everything up. The break in must have happened recently, though exactly how recently it was difficult to say. Still, the culprit managed to enter and leave the office undetected. For all any of them knew, they could still be somewhere in the castle.

Lamik reasoned that the door had been broken in one of two ways. The first and most likely was a spell. Though he didnt know any, the Gryffindor knew that spells existed that could deliver extremely powerful blows. The second was that somebody bashed the door down with sheer strength, but Lamik couldnt think of anyone who was strong enough to do that- not until he recalled the ball, at least. From his understanding, the disasters that took place during the masquarade ball were all due to a group of part-giants. Examining the cracks and splinters once again, Lamik realized with a shudder that at least to him, the doors seemed to have been broken down without the use of magic. "Would half giants be able to destroy the doorframe?" he asked whoever was in the room with him.

As he looked around the office, Lamik reasoned that whoever the culprit was, they might have wanted to steal something. The young boy walked over to Solomons desk and looked it over, trying to open any draweres he could see in it in search of a sign of what happened.

When the Daily Prophet was released, Millie hadn't even read it. She truly did not give a damn about whatever gossip was going on in the world. It didn't really interest her.

That is, until she got a good glimpse at it.

The page was titled "The Chosen One is the Guilty One: Potter is found guilty of murder".  Her parents had often talked about the trials, mostly saying how it was codswallop that he was accused of a murder in the first place. He was such a nice person! Even though neither of them knew him personally. He saved the wizarding world, so he must've been a good kid.

Once she saw the page, she snagged it from the Great Hall, and began reading the page. There wasn't even solid evidence that he had actually done anything! Witnesses could easily lie, especially if bribed! Millie was more so confused rather than upset. How had the murder occured in the Headmaster's office? Wouldn't the paintings in the room seen what had happened? Everything about the "murder" seemed too suspicious for her not to investigate.

So, her first thought was to walk up to the office herself. She could ask Professor Lear if he knew anything, even though it was probably classified for very obvious reasons.

As she reached the office, she was rather shocked to find two students in there, and no sign of the Headmaster. They were investigating, just the thing Millie wanted to do. "I'm guessing you guys saw the Prophet too?" She asked, entering.

The first thing she noticed was, the portraits of the former headmasters and headmisstreses were missing. Where could the hundreds of paintings go? It wasn't like they had moved- no- someone must've moved them. But, who would have enough time to move every single portrait one by one?

She stepped further into the room, and began searching around.

Action: Search for the portraits

Juniper must have turned around at least five times before resolving to actually find the Headmaster's Office. She just couldn't think of any real reason she should be there. It seemed like very, very bad timing to ask about a grade.

In theory, Juniper didn't care about perfect marks. Much less celebrities or reputations. If she'd been asked, she'd quickly say those things weren't important.

In practice, she checked the House Cups every single day, she double and triple-checked her homework, and she privately agonized over a recent 'E' on her report card and the tarnish it left on her otherwise perfect marks. In practice, Juniper was a hyper-competitive, glory-driven sort of nerd.

And today, the entire castle seemed to be buzzing with the news about Harry Potter. It overshadowed everything, and no one was happy. The news hung like a dark cloud over the castle, filling the place with a deep sense of unease. Gryffindor students were particularly upset. Although Juniper was muggle-born and hadn't been brought up with all the history, she'd read the Daily Prophet article and she knew the basics... namely that Harry Potter was a hero-savior-celebrity-Gryffindor of the wizarding world who had no real equivalent in the muggle world, and that his conviction was shrouded in mystery and dubious circumstances. She also gathered that magic folk's faith in their government seemed a close equivalent to muggles' faith in theirs (which is to say, not great).

So she supposed she was hoping to broach the subject of Potter's conviction with the Headmaster as well. Maybe he had some insight about what really happened... they say it took place in his office, after all. Maybe he could even tell her this whole uncomfortable mess would blow over, and her 'E' could somehow be made and 'O', and Gryffindor and everyone it sheltered could return to its former glory.OOC: never will I actually request a grade be changed, this is just the over-reaction on the part of my character and a reason for her to walk up here!

Approaching the door to the Headmaster's office, she stopped again and almost turned around a final time. This was stupid... she had no business being up here and was only interfering... he couldn't change the grade, he probably couldn't tell her any good news...

wait, was the door broken?

It looked all bashed in. It didn't seem right that it would be in such disrepair, being the Headmaster's and all. What was more, there was no Headmaster Lear in sight, while instead, several students were poking about. Juniper recognized Katrina, who she'd recently met on the Grounds.

Juniper was intrigued, and in spite of all better judgement, decided to poke around as well. She knew she had no real skills to offer and not much magic to speak of, but she wanted to know what was happening here. For one thing, there was not a single portrait on the walls, and although she'd never been up here before she could see from the coloration of the walls where many portraits should have hung. There was a fine layer of dust or maybe ash over everything, as if the room had been sitting stagnant for... how long could it have been? Katrina was carefully inspecting the fireplace, another boy [with guts] was bold enough to go through the Headmaster's desk. Something was brewing.

"I'm guessing you guys saw the Prophet too?" a kind-looking older girl asked.

"Yes..." Juniper started. She felt a bit like a fraud, being a first year and a muggle born and joining what looked to be a serious, student-led investigation. "I take it we're not waiting for the Headmaster?" she asked the little crowd in the room. @Lamik Fillestar @Jorah Moussa @Katrina Walker @Euphrasia Millie

She looked among them for an answer and began scanning the surfaces of the room, slowly going over books, tables and artifacts, looking for any sort of fingerprint or disturbance in the fine layer of dust.

action: search dusty surfaces for clues

The article highlighted in the Daily Prophet had definitely caught her attention too. As she was marching up to the Headmaster's Office, rolled up newspaper in hand, she kept mulling over the facts."It just doesn't seem feasible."She muttered to herself stopping short glancing at the damaged door frame that led to the office within."Hold that thought."Last time she had even passed here, the exterior had seemed untouched. The curosity was burning and some sort of unspoken power from within almost beckoned her inside, to reveal what secrets were being hidden inside. She would rather not walk in on a body as the Daily Prophet had mentioned about the murder. Eyeing the doorframe with hesitation, she walked inside coming to the realization she was not the only one present.

There was quite a small group assembled now and among them, she recognized a few. There was Millie, that girl who had stood up for her at the Great Hall to those nasty students, that incident was still burnt into her mind and then there was..it was him. Lamik. Right, right, control yourself.If she acted normal, she would be fine besides they had more pressing matters to investigate like...wait, where were the portraits."Anyone find anything interesting yet?"She asked of no one in particular glancing around the room. Something was off yet she couldn't place what.

The thing that irked her was that all the portraits were gone. Every single one. It sure looked like someone had just walked in here, took them off the wall and waltzed off without even being noticed which was insane to comprehend. No, there was a bigger story to this. She walked over to the bare walls where the paintings usually hung her eyes scanning them frowning. "Has anyone even seen Headmaster Lear recently? You would think with such a case, he would be here ASAP."Pulling out her wand, she muttered the incantation for Lumos lighting the tip of her wand and scanning the wall once more to go over any detail she had missed. A little light never hurt anyone.

Search portrait walls for clues with Lumos

Katrina looked closer at the silt. It seemed like someone less careful had drug their fingers through it. Not someone who caused the drama but an investigator. Katrina scooped up a tiny handful and let in sit in the palm of her hand. She brushed her fingers through it an bit back a yelp, a small bit struck her finger and caused a small droplet of blood to form. The inquisitive Gryffindor peered closer and gasped.

"They look like Pigmy Puff skulls!" she yelped before she could contain her horror. What happened here?

A few other students came in. She must be missing something. Because it was not likely that this many people would just come to the Headmaster's Office. @Euphrasia Millie walked it, whom Katrina remembered from one late-night conversation a long time ago. What about the Prophet?

"What do you mean?" Katrina asked somewhat-quietly.

Two other figures entered. There was obviously something they know that Katrina didn't. One girl @Elena Jangleton used Lumos to look at the walls for some odd reason. @Juniper Irving that Katrina met once walked in as well.

Katrina scanned the room and counted five Gryffindors searching for clues. @Lamik Fillestar @Jorah Moussa @Euphrasia Millie @Juniper Irving and @Elena Jones

Katrina looked closer at the tiny skulls. Katrina had heard some rumors about Lear, but had no clue if any of them were true. To be frank, the last time she seen the Headmaster was during the Masked Ball where he left soon after it started. Katrina was puzzled, had she even seen him there or was she just imagining things. That horror filled night was one she had been trying to push aside.

Action: Inspect skulls further