Getting rid of the evidence turned out to be far more difficult than one might have expected. Richard was the only one who knew how to cast Evanesco, the Vanishing Spell. Even then, the spell did a very poor job of removing blood from surfaces. Apparently, that was because the house-elf had been a magical creature.
In the end, it took Richard an entire hour to remove every trace of blood. The body parts, however, proved much more difficult. The boy simply didn't have enough magical power to disintegrate them. That left him with a choice: somehow grind everything into mince and then destroy it in small portions, or gather everything together and hide it.
Grosvenor considered what he was capable of and glanced at Harry, who still hadn't fully recovered from what had happened, and realised that the second option was far more practical.
When they tried cleaning Harry's robes with magic, the fabric came apart right on him. Fortunately, Grosvenor, being meticulous by nature, always carried a spare change of clothes in case he got dirty. He pulled out one of his spare robes, which Potter immediately changed into. The ruined clothes went into a bag Transfigured from some rubbish, made of very thick black polythene. A second identical bag was used for the construction set that had once been a homicidal house-elf. Both bags were then, with some difficulty, stuffed into the Undetectably Extended bag.
The next problem was putting the room back in order. Reparo, the Mending Charm, refused to work on Hogwarts' magic-saturated walls. Richard had to gather up the stone fragments with Summoning Charms. This time Harry proved quite useful: with yellow bolts of Flipendo, he smashed the stones into rubble. The rubble was then packed into the holes left in the wall by the railgun shots, and Richie cast a Sticking Charm over the mass, fusing the material together at the molecular level.
Despite their liberal use of magic, it took the boys another three hours to restore the room to something resembling order.
The monotonous work drove Harry's worries from his mind. It also helped that Richie had removed the remains of the mad house-elf from sight and cleaned everything up.
The boys had been at it for so long that they missed dinner. Worse still, curfew had already begun.
"Richie, where are we going to...?" Potter began hesitantly. "Well, you know..."
Richard frowned thoughtfully.
I wonder if we're the first students to end up in a situation like this, or whether someone before us has killed somebody on the castle grounds and then had to wonder where to hide the body? And if there were students like that, how did they deal with it?
"Hmm..." he drawled aloud. "We have options. Ideally, we should get the body out of the castle and bury it somewhere."
"A secret passage?" Harry raised an eyebrow slightly.
"That's exactly what I was thinking."
"But Richie, the Weasley twins said Filch knows about a lot of the secret passages. And Snape keeps an eye on the passage we used before."
"There's a passage behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy, but I don't want to use that one."
"Why?" Potter asked, mildly puzzled.
"There are portraits there, Harry! Magical portraits!"
"Whoa!" Harry immediately understood. "They could rat us out."
"Exactly."
"Richie, then maybe we could use the passage through the Whomping Willow?"
Richie shook his head and listed the arguments he considered compelling at the moment.
"We don't know how to open the passage. And it's out in the open. Not an option."
Potter's face fell, worry plainly showing on it.
"Then... Richie, what are we supposed to do?"
"I recently found out about another secret passage. It's on the second floor, in the girls' lavatory."
"The girls' lavatory?!" Potter exclaimed in horror.
"That's not the worst part, Harry. The problem is, we don't know the password."
"Then is there even any point in going there?" Potter wondered.
"There is," Richard replied, though uncertainty could be heard in his voice. "At least we can try to open the passage."
"And if we can't?" Harry looked at his friend, hoping for the best.
"As a last resort, we'll Transfigure the remains into something small and flush them down the toilet. It'll take a long time and be difficult, but it's doable in principle."
Harry immediately perked up. Now that sounded like a plan. Admittedly, the thought of having to handle the remains of the homicidal house-elf still frightened him. By now, he had already regretted using the railguns—and giving Richard the idea to create them in the first place—a hundred times over.
The boys changed into their ninja suits and slipped invisibly out into the corridor. They made it to the second floor without any trouble, avoiding the teachers on patrol, the ghosts, the caretaker, and Peeves the poltergeist.
"Here we are," Richard began. "This is..."
"...MOANING MYRTLE'S lavatory!" Harry finished for him.
"Exactly. So keep your voice down, and no names."
Myrtle, the translucent ghost of a thirteen-year-old girl wearing large horn-rimmed spectacles, was perched atop the cistern in the last cubicle.
"Who's there?" she cried, suddenly alert. "Why have you come? To make fun of me?"
Richard used a universal Repelling Charm. The girl's ghost was swept off the cistern and slammed into the wall, sinking almost entirely through it. Her face, the only part still sticking out of the wall, took on an offended expression. Bursting into loud sobs, Myrtle dived into the toilet and disappeared.
"Bit drastic," Potter commented.
"Perfectly reasonable," Richard replied. "I've heard from the older students that Myrtle's extremely touchy. She'll be off crying somewhere by the lake now. That should buy us about four hours."
"Can we come out of stealth mode now?" Harry asked.
"I suppose so. We should conserve the charge."
Richie and Harry were using the first version of the ninja suit, in which the invisibility enchantments worked for only one hour a day. The newer suits, made with Demiguise hair and graphene film, were all being supplied to the intelligence services for very substantial sums.
"So where's this passage?" Harry asked, looking around.
Richie walked over to the wall where the sinks were mounted. Standing in front of the middle sink, he pointed at the wall.
"Here."
Harry carefully examined the wall and the sink.
"Not a single seam," he observed.
Richard was doing the same. He wasn't merely looking, but tapping on the walls as well.
"Yeah, no seams. Sounds the same everywhere, too. Top-tier concealment."
"Richie, are you sure there's actually a passage there?" Harry tore his attention away from the wall. "How do you even know about it?"
Richard smirked and gave a short reply.
"Bring up your map."
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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