Oi.  Finally finished.  I'm going to work on the next chapter of A Gaunt Tale next, as well as try to work on a few of my Death Note stories a little more again.

Review, if you don't mind?

It's hard to describe looking at the sky on a cloudy morning. Looking up at the clouds on that particular Saturday, it was easy to tell that rain would come soon as even the sky mourned over what was soon to happen to Hogwarts, though it was one of the few entities who knew. The sky knew everything, as she covered everything at all times of the day, in darkness and in light. On those bleak and dreary days of September humidity, there was always one small part in the skies that differed from the rest; it was that one spot that could burn a person's eyes right out of their head if they stared for too long. That was the sun, trying hard to illuminate the majestic castle on the cliff that was Hogwarts, to give us the light we needed to see the difference in the paths of right and wrong.

The ones who didn't know the difference between the two could be helped by nothing, not even the vibrant shining of the sun's rays. Tom Riddle didn't care about that light. As he had said so often to so many, there's no such thing as good and evil, light and dark. There was only power and ambition; weakness and apathy.

These days, I know Annabelle was right to be worried about my association with Tom Riddle. In those days, however, I dismissed it as the general nagging that Orion always complained about when it came to Walburga. The difference in them, however, was that they never loved each other. Their partnership was arranged to keep the Black family pure in blood, as were many marriages of the day. My father didn't have the mind to do anything of the sort, and Annabelle came from a family of blood traitors that she was deeply ashamed of. We weren't forced, and her nagging wasn't just for the sake of nagging. I did love her, but I was beginning to think she didn't believe it. Whether she did or now, she still cared about me; I see that now. I might have been able to avoid what was to happen on that Saturday if I had seen it then.

Looking back, I wonder if I could have grown apart from Tom if I had gone to Hogsmeade with Annabelle, as she had pleaded for me to do at breakfast that morning. We all make mistakes, but my mistake cost me my entire life. It didn't cost me my life in the most literal sense – I lived, but I lived a life that, in the back of my mind, I always regretted. I finally see that now. As a teenager, however, I had become too blind from staring into the sun and waiting for its light to show me the right way, to be able to see any sort of revelation. Looking for revelations had never helped. Had I been more patient, it would have come to me.

On that morning, I was dragged forcibly out of the castle by Annabelle, who was still pleading with me to forget Tom, if just for one day. Even though I had to admit to myself her terms weren't particularly steep, I still couldn't go. There were things that needed to be done, and now was the only time they could be done. I couldn't tell her about the Chamber of Secrets, though I wished in the back of my mind that I could have, if only for the sake of helping her to understand why I refused to even consider listening to her.

"Timothy!" I was pulled out of my thoughts by both her scold and her hand shaking my arm as the last few students destined for Hogsmede were leaving the front entrance of the castle. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Yes," I said impatiently. "I should go to Hogsmede because Riddle is a psychopath. Is that all, now?"

She let go of my arm, but only to hit it. "You just don't get it, you idiot!" she said crossly. She then looked around before continuing quietly, and as fast as the speed of sound could accelerate her voice. "Riddle's up to something or else he wouldn't be needing an invisibility cloak and I know it's bad and I know you shouldn't be involved in it or you're going to either get yourself arrested or killed! Don't you understand that?"

"I might understand you a bit better if you weren't talking so bloody fast."

She took in a sharp breath, clenching her hands into fists. I could tell I was making her angry – it wasn't my intention to do so. I was just good at it, especially when I wasn't trying to. She spoke again, taking a tone of calmness that sounded almost deadly – it was then that I figured it would probably be a good idea to just not speak again.

"You're about," she said, pointing at me, "to make me very angry. You don't want to make me angry. You heard every word of what I said, I'm not going to repeat myself. Are you staying?"

"Haven't I already answered that question a few times?"

"I'm giving you one more chance to answer it. Are you staying?"

"Yes, for the last time, I am."

Annabelle nodded, smiling in an almost kind manner – I had trained my eyes to tell the difference, however. This smile was as far from kind as it could possibly be. "Fine," she said. "Stay friends with Tom. I'm not going to testify in your favor when you're arrested. And if you die, I may hold a séance and call you back from the dead just to say 'I told you so!'"

And at that, she walked off without another word. That was all the better for me – I'd have only gotten myself into deeper trouble if I had been allowed to open my mouth again. I headed back into the castle and to the dungeons, to the left of the marble staircase in the entrance hall. Tom was supposed to have stayed there to devise some plan to get Annabelle's invisibility cloak. I didn't like the idea of tricking her, but certain measures had to be taken when it came to some things.

As I reached the bare patch of wall I knew lead to the Slytherin common room, I muttered the password, watched the wall dissolve, and headed it. I didn't glance back, as I already knew it would reformulate behind me. In the common room, Tom was pacing in front of the staircases and flipping through the pages of a book that I recognized to be Hogwarts, a History. Why he felt the need to look through it was beyond me – he had read and reread the book so many times that it was amazing he didn't have every page catalogued within his memory. It seemed he found what he was looking for as I reached one of the green armchairs and took a seat.

"There you are…" he murmured, pointing to something in the book. He quickly skimmed over the page, then shut the book and walked over to the small table in front of the sofa, from which he retrieved another book, one on reversal spells and counter-curses. "Still no luck talking her into letting you borrow the cloak?" He sat down on the sofa and flipped to the back of the book.

"None," I said. "She's rather protective of it."

"Or stubborn. There…" he added in an undertone, tracing along a page in the book to something, and then flipping back a couple hundred pages. "We may just have to steal it if that's going to be the case."

I raised my eyebrows. "Steal?"

Tom looked up as he reached the page he was looking for. "It wasn't my first idea, but the only other valid ones would involve Potts's cooperation, which doesn't seem to be available."

"You do realize that the girls' staircase is guarded, don't you?"

"That would be why I'm looking for the proper reversal spells," said Tom, indicating the book. "One is an alarm spell, which can be foiled with a silencing charm, the other turns the stairs into a slide, which is what I'm looking for now."

"Don't you think the founders would have developed an original spell for that?" I asked. "They wouldn't want us to be able to find a way to break in inside a book."

"It'll be a variation of a previously published spell," said Tom, "so I'll have to come up with my own variation of a reversal spell for it. I don't think it'll be too hard."

I shrugged in response. I honestly thought the idea of outsmarting the four founders of Hogwarts sounded at least slightly difficult, but I didn't feel like arguing it. "What're you planning on doing about the roosters?"

"That's fairly obvious, don't you think?"

"I mean, when?" I asked. "I figured we'd go ahead and get that done while everyone's out of the castle."

"As soon as I can come up with something here," said Tom absently, now reading something in the book, "then I'll fix that and get rid of the roosters myself while you get the cloak from upstairs. Did you see whether or not Blanell headed out to Hogsmede this morning?"

"I believe he was headed that way," I said – I had seen him walking, but I had been too busy getting a reprimanding to have been able to focus on much else. "The worst that'll be at his cabin'll be that Hagrid."

"I can take care of him easily enough," said Tom. "So you'll be here getting that cloak." At this, Tom shut the book and set it on the table. "Since the Gryffindor dorms are located on two spiral staircases, according to Hogwarts a History, this spell wouldn't work for them. It seems the founders specifically used an irremovable spell, but it can be thwarted for a few seconds, which is long enough to get up the staircases in this common room."

"They made halls at the tops of the staircases here because we're under the lake and the stairs couldn't have travelled any higher, right?"

"It could have," said Tom. "The magic to make it withstand the force of the water would have been easy enough to do if they had made the common rooms like the rest of the house dorms, but Slytherin apparently chose to have his houses' commons made differently for whatever reason. So," Tom said, standing and walking towards the stairs, "you'll only need the spell to be done once, as the staircases can turn into a slide on your way back down with no worries. You may have to perform another silencing spell, but that's a fairly basic charm. There's not enough time for me to tell you what spell I'm using to make the staircase work properly, but you won't need it done more than once, just don't forget the silencing charm on the way down. Also, bring the cloak to me, as I'll be needing it immediately."

He pointed his wand towards the stairs and muttered "Silencio." I stood and moved to the stairs as well, as he was murmuring something else at the stairs. He waved his wand. The stairs gave off a bright white glow for a moment. "Fifteen seconds," he said, moving towards the exit to the common room. "You'll want to go now before it wears off."

It took me a split second to snap out of my initial confusion, and I then headed quickly up the staircase. I was amazed that the spell worked – I had been subjected to learning about the charm placed on the stairs the hard way in my third year. It was then that Annabelle had decided it would be amusing to play a trick on me by sending me upstairs to get something out of her trunk, all the while knowing what would happen.

I had forgotten the Silencing Spell. I'll tell you, I felt absolutely brilliant with that one. I stepped onto the stairs, feeling rather triumphant that I had managed to quietly retrieve the cloak (after having to search for it, and it turned out to be hidden under her mattress) without anyone noticing whatsoever. By the flood of first and second year giggles from the hall after I stepped onto the stairs leading back into the common rooms when the siren went off, I knew I had been heard. I did as my instincts told me to – after sliding down the staircase-turned-stone slide, I ran as fast as my feet would carry me.

I stopped to catch my breath and to hide the cloak when I was a fair distance down the dungeon corridors. I froze for a short moment when I heard footsteps coming from around the corner ahead of me. It couldn't be Tom – he was waiting for the cloak. I was going to be brutally murdered in the middle of the dungeons if it was Annabelle, but – I looked down at my watch as I thought of this – no, it hadn't been long since they had left for Hogsmeade, not long enough for them to have come back…. I finished hiding the cloak inside my own, much less invisible cloak, and started down the corridor as casually as I could without seeming suspicious (or, rather, I hoped I didn't seem suspicious).

I was grateful when Professor Slughorn walked past me with little more than a kind "hello."

I wasn't quite as grateful when he stopped me after walking past me to ask me the question I had been dreading anyone asking.

"Timothy?"

I jumped in my startle before turning around slowly. "Yes, Professor?" Good – at least I had managed to keep my voice calm. That was a miracle in itself, acting was never one of my strong points.

"Just out of curiosity, isn't today one of the Hogsmeade trips?"

"Yes, actually," I said, crossing my arms to hold the invisibility cloak in place (I was sure I had felt it slip, but it could have just been paranoia), "but I wasn't feeling well enough to go this morning. I decided to stay behind."

"Ah, yes, I did hear there was a bout of the flu going around. I do believe Madam Harte has something for it in the hospital wing, you might want to check with her."

"I should be headed that way sometime today," I said.

I gave a sigh of relief when Slughorn left for his classroom to grade papers – it wouldn't have been good for him to have gotten suspicious of me. Slughorn was one of the few teachers that didn't have a problem with me, and I planned to keep it that way. He generally had a tendency to surround himself with students of rich or famous background and those whose futures seemed promising. As far as his students were concerned, I fell into the famous category for my family, and Tom fell into the promising future category for nearly everything he did – he had received O's on all of his O.W.L.s last year, for instance – so we were two of Slughorn's favorite students. As our head of house, Professor Abraxas Malfoy, would be retiring after this year (much to the dismay of his son in my year, who never got into any trouble for this reason), and Slughorn was likely to be picked as Slytherin's new head, I preferred to stay on his good side and go through at least one year of school with a head of house that didn't mind me.

I emerged into the entrance hall a few minutes after speaking with Slughorn, and I headed outside quickly before I could be seen by any other suspicious teachers. I was scared to death of being caught with a stolen invisibility cloak – they were already against the rules, and were even more so when stolen. I moved quickly in the direction of the forbidden forest, where I knew Blanell's house (if you could even call it a house) to be located. I got there quickly with as fast as I had been walking, and stepped over the small fence that led back to the garden and the area the animals were kept. Tom was sitting on top of a crate on the other side of the chickens' pen, where a number of roosters lay dead on the ground, though one was on another crate nearby.

"You did get the cloak, didn't you?" asked Tom, looking up. I pulled it from between my shirt and my own cloak.

"Ran into Slughorn on the way, I needed to hide it. Did you think about Prior Incantatem?"

"Yes," said Tom standing and grabbing the rooster on the other crate by the legs with slight revulsion. "Prior Incantatem only works backwards for five spells, so I did ten spells that we've either been learning in class or are used in everyday situations, which should erase the Killing Curse from my wand's detectable memory. Cloak." I handed him the cloak. "I'll be wearing it back into the castle, as I'd look a bit odd carrying a dead bird with me. If you're stopped because someone saw you here, just come up with an excuse and I'll go on ahead to the common room and hide the bird somewhere.

"Right," I said. "You'll not want to take off the cloak until you get back in our dorm."

"Why?"

"I forgot the silencing spell on the way back down the stairs, there may still be a ruckus in there with the first and second years."

Tom rolled his eyes and threw the cloak on. "Forgot?" his now disembodied voice said. "Brilliant."

"I see," I said sarcastically, and started walking, "you only decide to be sarcastic when I can't see you well enough to take a swing at you."

"Obviously, after seeing what happened to Longbottom last year," said Tom's voice from my left. "I'm not an idiot. Hence why I'm not in Gryffindor. Keep quiet now, people are going to think you're talking to yourself. Most of them already think you'll go mad by the time you're thirty by looking at your dad."

"If we're using him as an example, twenty would probably be a more accurate age," I said in disgust – whether I respected my father or not had nothing to do with what I thought of him. I was slightly ashamed to be related to someone like him, but I wouldn't have said that to his face. That was respectful enough. "Maybe he'll hex the wrong Muggle soon and get sent to Azkaban. Then I could leave."

I walked back to the castle in silence, only aware of where Tom was by the occasional snapping of a twig on the ground somewhere in my vicinity. I was stopped abruptly in the entrance hall and it was all I could do not to bang my head on the wall for this distraction.  Had it been anyone else, I'd have been fine, but no – it just had to be this.

"Mr. Gaunt?" I flinched at the voice of the figure I had just passed, and I heard quiet footsteps go on past me as Tom headed for the dungeons. I turned on the spot to see Dumbledore looking at about the area Tom would have been seen were it not for the cloak – could he see through them? No, that was impossible. Dumbledore was just mad – brilliant, no doubt, but absolutely bonkers.

"Professor," I said calmly, nodding in regard. "I'm guessing you'd like to know why I'm not in Hogsmeade, sir?"

I quickly put up a wall in my mind – any time Dumbledore was suspicious of my actions, he had a tendency to, without any warning, attempt to employ Legilimency on me. He should have known by now that it didn't work, though I doubt he knew how much study I had put into Legilimency and Occlumency. He never had been able to pick the lock on my mind, nor had he been able to use it on Tom since I had taught him. If it angered Albus Dumbledore, however, he showed no signs of it.

"I was going to ask, yes," he said. He was also good at hiding suspicion.

"Professor Slughorn's already asked, that's how I guessed. I just wasn't feeling well enough to head out this morning."

I doubted I sounded convincing, but as long as I kept up my barricade, he could never know. "But you were feeling well enough to take a walk around the grounds?"

"Not really," I said. "I was trying to find Tom, I needed to ask him about an essay for Defense Against the Dark Arts. I know he stayed behind, but I'm not sure where he was. Could you let him know I'm looking for him if you happen to spot him?"

I gave a sigh of relief once Dumbledore agreed to this and was out of earshot. The only teacher whose suspicion really had a tendency to unnerve me was Dumbledore. I had a headache after just a couple minutes of trying to keep him from invading my mind. I headed for the dungeons now as well to wait for tonight to roll around – to wait for the time Tom would make his warning to the castle that the chamber of secrets had been opened.