~To the Waters and the Wild~

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~Gilderoy Lockhart~

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Warning: This is still a Harry-Voldemort romance!

Author's Note: My apologies for the very long delay in posting this chapter! Life's been a little challenging lately, but I'm back to writing again. Thank you so very much for all the encouraging reviews!

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Harry's friendship with the soul shard in the diary deepened over the next few months. He would spend hours every night, long after the other Slytherin boys were asleep, talking to Tom.

Tom liked hearing about fairies, but he also loved talking about school, and about spells and wizarding magic. Sometimes, when Tom wrote about the things he loved the best, such as the old morocco-bound books in the Hogwarts library, the echo of footsteps down long-forgotten corridors of the castle, or the scent of the wild apple blossoms down by the lake in spring, Harry almost felt as if Tom was becoming a little bit visible. Sometimes, when Tom's words grew wistful on the page and his writing slowed, Harry could begin make out a faint outline of a boy in the shadowy dormitory.

The boy was very lovely to look at, with night-dark curls and eyes the color of moonlight on water. Harry would hold his breath whenever the boy flickered into view, hoping that he would stay and become more real. But the phantom boy never lingered for more than a few moments before fading into the darkness again.

But other nights, Tom would write about strange dark thoughts that filled his mind, and then Harry couldn't see him at all. Harry suspected that the poor, beautiful boy in the diary had been wounded when he had been torn from the soul to which he had once belonged, for there were times when Tom said things that sounded a bit mad.

Tom had some curious ideas about blood, for example. He would sometimes talk to Harry about blood, and about how there were different sorts of blood in the world. Some wizards, he explained to Harry, had pure blood, while others had only half blood, and others had blood that was muddy. Harry read Tom's words with growing alarm. Perhaps there was some terrible wound in Tom's soul shard that made him believe these strange things? Harry had seen blood before, of course, and he knew that it was all the same, red and wet, unless you happened to be a unicorn (in which case your blood would be silvery) or a very old dragon (whose blood often took on a slight golden sheen). But mud in your blood? Surely that would make you terribly sick? And how could anyone get by with only half blood? Harry shook his head slowly as he read Tom's fevered ramblings. He touched the letters in the diary that spelled out Tom's madness, sending little sparks of fairy magic into the page, until Tom stopped saying such wild things and began to remember the feel of grass under his feet on a spring morning instead.

...

The spring months went by quickly for Harry and his friends, and soon all the students were busy with something called exams. Harry liked exams very much. Instead of the teachers talking incessantly to the students, as they did during the rest of the school year (which could make you a little sleepy at times), the professors wrote down questions about things they would like to know more about, and the students got to tell them what they knew. Harry made sure to include all sorts of interesting information about plants for Professor Snape (would't he be surprised to learn that raspberry leaves made you delightfully ticklish, and that juniper berries gave you a clearer singing voice?) and the real story behind the Goblin Rebellion for Professor Binns. How Binns would laugh when he realized that the whole thing had started with a fairy joke that was lost in translation!

And all too soon came the end of the school year, the farewell feast, and the journey home for the summer. Harry missed his new friends very badly during the summer months, of course, but at least he had Shard and Tom. He had wanted to bring Ron and Draco home to the forest for the summer as well, but Leaf had hinted delicately that the other outcast fairies were not quite ready for three human wizard children at once, especially if two of them were very new at magic.

"Perhaps your friends can come when they are a little older," wrote Leaf in a letter to Harry. "When they have their magic completely under control and won't take someone's eyes out by mistake. Too many mis-fired spells in the forest, and we would attract the attention of the Faerie Queen and her henchmen, and I'm sure no one wants that!"

So Harry and Hedwig went home by themselves, and they spent a lovely summer in the forest surrounded by all their old fairy and animal friends. Leaf and Twig couldn't get enough of listening to Harry's stories of Hogwarts and all his new friends, and Hedwig was the star of the fir tree where the owls lived. Wolf was ecstatic to see Harry as well, of course, but unfortunately, he didn't seem to care for Tom very much. In fact, Wolf tried to rip the diary apart as soon as Harry's back was turned, but Harry could sense Tom's anguish and managed to tear the diary away from Wolf just in time. Fortunately, Tom wasn't hurt, although he was a little shaken up. Harry put the torn pages back together with his best fairy magic, and Tom's writing appeared just as clearly as it had before. But there was no denying that Wolf had given both Tom and Harry a bad fright, and Harry made sure he carried the diary with him at all times after that.

...

"Have you heard, Harry?" said Ron as they were all gathered in the Great Hall again for the Welcoming Feast in the fall. "There is a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher again, and this one is apparently famous. My Mum has read every single one of his books."

Harry looked up at the staff table with interest. To his disappointment, the new professor was very different from Quirrell. He had no secret soul shard or interesting turban, just a lot of brilliant hair and shiny teeth. And whereas poor Quirrell had always seemed a bit melancholy, the new professor appeared to be terribly happy; his smile swept over the room like a merciless beam of bright lamplight.

Draco glanced doubtfully at the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher as well. "Apparently, Professor Lockhart knows a lot of banshees and vampires. We are to read all of his books about his encounters with them for class." He wrinkled his nose a little. "According to my father, some of the Old World vampires are quite civilized, but I don't see why anyone would want to get acquainted with a banshee."

"Banshees are very excitable, of course," nodded Harry. "But what's a vampire? I've never met one of those."

Ron shuddered ever so slightly. "They are sort of like human wizards, Harry, except that they are immortal, and they like to drink human blood... They'll even bite your neck to suck your blood out if they are really thirsty."

"Oh." Harry pondered this stunning piece of information for a while. Vampires drank human blood? Oh no! Perhaps that was how some wizards had become half-blood? What a strange and terrible thought!

As soon as the feast was over, Professor Lockhart swooped down on Harry like some large beaming bird of prey. "Harry, Harry, Harry!"

He clicked his tongue and regarded Harry with an expression of tender exasperation.

"What?" Harry looked up at him, bewildered.

"I hear that you have been going around telling people that you we're raised by fairies!" Lockhart shook his shiny golden head a little. "Was it reading my books that set this off, Harry? I have seen this before, of course: An impressionable child picks up one of my works, and before you know it, he imagines that he is off on some grand adventure of his own..." Lockhart sighed. "All very understandable, of course, but it won't do to go around telling others that your imagined adventures are real, Harry! Especially since even a child knows that fairies don't exist! Now, if you had claimed to have been raised by grindylows, I am sure you would have found a gullible believer or two. But fairies! My dear boy, you can't expect anyone to believe that!" He petted Harry gently on the head. "Oh, don't look so alarmed! No harm done, Harry - I understand how easy it is to be carried away when you first begin reading my books. It's all right to fantasize about being like me, of course, but perhaps you had better keep those thoughts to yourself in the future! And for Merlin's sake, try to keep it realistic, Harry! I mean, fairies!"

The Slytherin students stared at Lockhart in silence for a long moment.

"Er... Harry can fly, sir," said Draco Malfoy weakly.

"And walk through doors," muttered Blaise Zabini.

Lockhart's smile grew even more brilliant. "Oh, come now, boys! Flying and walking through doors? Mere fantasies inspired by a certain passage on page 136 of Voyage With A Vampire! You really must try to keep your wild imagination in check, Harry! I will see you all in Defense Against the Dark Arts class in the morning, and I will treat you to some exciting stories of real adventure!"

He flashed them all a dazzling smile and walked off, bright turquoise robes billowing behind him. Harry could hear Lockhart muttering under his breath: "Completely star-struck, poor child!"

Harry stared after him. "He thinks I was hit by a star? You know, I think there is something wrong with poor Professor Lockhart; he seems terribly confused."

Blaise Zabini shrugged. "Oh, he will figure it all out soon enough, Harry!" He snorted disdainfully. "Voyage with A Vampire, indeed! As if any pure-blood vampire would give him the time of day!"

In response to Draco's quizzical glance, he muttered: "My former uncle by marriage is from an old vampire family. My aunt divorced him because of his...er... drinking problem."

"Ah," murmured Draco sympathetically.

...

Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor Lockhart proved to be a very curious experience indeed. For some reason, all the textbooks had pictures of a smiling Lockhart on the cover. "Me!" exclaimed Lockhart as he held up two of the smiling books next to his own smiling face. Harry looked at the three identical smiles and was suddenly reminded, irresistibly, of the three-headed Fluffy.

"Gilderoy Lockhart, five time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award, but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!" said Lockhart happily.

"Too bad!" squeaked a tiny voice in Pixie somewhere nearby. "Because I bet that would have worked!" A chorus of hysterical Pixie laughter followed.

Uh oh. Pixies! Harry glanced quickly around the room. Yes! There they were, under the blanket that fluttered suspiciously on Lockhart's desk. Harry frowned. Bringing pixies into a roomful of children did not strike him as a very good idea. Pixies were very beautiful to look at, of course, with their lovely bluebell color and delicate transparent wings, and their chatter could be quite amusing, but Harry knew that pixies were full of tricks. They always seemed to think it was hilarious to pick up non-flying creatures and leave them in high places, watching them struggle to get down.

Unfortunately, Professor Lockhart didn't seem to know pixies nearly as well as he appeared to know ghouls, trolls, banshees, and vampires, for he tore the blanket off the cage that held the pixies and opened the little wire door with a flourish: "Cornish pixies! Let's see what you make of them, class!"

The next moment, the classroom was buzzing with tiny blue creatures who reached for the screaming children and laughed gleefully.

Lockhart staggered backwards. "Pe-peskipiksi pesternomi," he babbled, absurdly.

The pixies just laughed even harder at that and began to lift Neville into the air by his ears. Poor Neville screamed in terror as his feet left the ground. He seemed to be even worse with heights than Trevor.

"Excuse me!" said Harry sternly in his best Pixie, flying after Neville and the pixies. "We will not be playing those games today. Let go, please." He sent a shower of his strongest fairy magic in Neville's direction, and the pixies who were carrying him let go, startled. Harry lowered Neville gently to the ground.

"Oh!" exclaimed a small pixie who had been about to pull Harry's hair. He withdrew his hand quickly. "Beg your pardon, sir, we didn't know you were another flying creature. No harm meant, I'm sure. We just wanted to play with the flightless ones a bit. Just a bit of harmless fun. Care to join us? If you help us, we might even be able to lift up the big shiny one with all the teeth. Think the chandelier will hold him?" His tiny voice was as clear and lovely as a small silver bell.

"No," said Harry firmly. "We will not be lifting anyone. These are my friends, and I want you to leave them alone."

The pixie frowned. "They are all yours? Oh, drat it, we didn't realize these were taken already. Mind if we have just one or two? No? Hey! Careful with that magic, sir - do you want to burn a chap's wings off? All right, all right, sir, keep your hair on! We were just leaving."

The pixies, who were looking very nervously at Harry now, headed quickly for the open window. Soon they had all vanished into the bright September air, muttering a few choice bad words in their little tinkling voices as they flew off.

Lockhart, who had been crouching behind his desk, glanced up at Harry, who was still hovering near the ceiling. "Ha-Harry?" His dazzling smile had vanished now, and he was looking distinctly ill at ease. "Why... why are you up there?" His voice was cracking now, and beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. "You can't be up there! Oh, Merlin, I am hallucinating! Excuse me, children, I am feeling rather unwell... I will be in my office." He dashed out of the classroom door, leaving only a stack of brightly smiling books behind on his desk.

...

Harry did feel bad about poor Lockhart, who had looked quite ill indeed, so after calming Neville down, he decided to stop by the professor's office and see how he was doing. But as he was walking in the direction of Lockhart's office, he suddenly heard a great voice from somewhere inside the ancient stone walls, speaking in Snake:

*Come. Come to me... Want to rip... Want to tear... Come to me!"

Snake! whispered Shard happily in the back of Harry's mind. Snakesnakesnake!

Harry paused and listened. Yes, there was definitely a snake somewhere nearby, and a large one, too, by the sounds of it. He sounded rather moody, though. What exactly was it he wanted to rip? Harry hesitated. Normally, he would be happy to talk to any animal, but something about the voice of this particular snake didn't sound at all friendly.

Lonely snake? suggested Shard, and Harry realized that Shard may very well be right. Perhaps this poor snake was just unhappy because he was all by himself?

*Hello!* called Harry in Snake. *Where are you, then? I can hear you, but I can't see you.*

There was a sudden pause in the low hissing inside the wall. Then the voice came again: *Come. Come to me. Just follow my voice... Follow me...*

*All right!* called Harry back. *Just keep talking then, and I'll find you in a minute.* He walked quickly along the ancient stone corridors, following the faint sound of muttered Snake behind the walls. He could sense Shard stirring eagerly in the back of his mind now, anxious to see the great serpent.

But what was that? Something was stirring in the pocket of Harry's robes, and something sharp poked him in the ribs. It took Harry a moment to realize that it was his diary. How strange - he had never known it to move on its own accord before!

"Tom?" Harry paused his steps and pulled the diary from his pocket. "What are you doing, Tom?" He pulled the diary out and opened it.

You mustn't follow the basilisk, Harry, wrote the diary. I don't want you to be the one opening the chamber. Someone else, perhaps. But not you. I want you to stay here and tell me stories. Please?

Harry stared, uncertainly, at the elegant handwriting that danced across the page.

*Come!* insisted the snake. *Come to me!*

Harry felt in his pocket for a quill so he could write something back to Tom, but he didn't have one.

*Lonely snake*, whispered Shard. *Oursnake, oursnake.*

Harry hesitated for a moment, then whispered into the diary: "It'll be all right, Tom. I'll tell you a story as soon as I get back. I won't be long." He closed the diary gently and put it back in his pocket. Was it just his imagination, or did the book still stir a little even after he closed it?

*Come!* said the voice inside the wall. The snake sounded a little upset now. He must be getting very lonely inside that heavy wall by himself, poor thing.

*All right!* said Harry soothingly. *Don't worry! I'm coming!*