Chapter 26

Rumors had been hitting the Hogwarts mill harder than ever. Finding Hermione Granger's body, and it having been found just like Mrs. Norris with the chamber message written was to close together to be a coincidence. Thankfully no one knew how Harry and Professor Potter had stumbled upon the girl, unfortunately everyone knew that the two had found her though. Harry was grateful that his mother promised to look into what could have caused this immediately, while Mandy Brocklehurst pledged her services to the Runes teacher to help find what had harmed her best friend.

Dumbledore and Harry had got into a pretty one side heated argument about what should be done. Harry wanted to basically call in every favor to get the girl awake again, while Dumbledore insisted that the mandrake draught would be ready in just a few months, probably late March. The young man was outraged that the headmaster was going to leave a student in that state for such a long period of time, and had decided to take things into his own hands.

With the Potter connections they used some influence they had with the goblins to put the word out that the Lord Potter was in need of mandrake restorative, and that they would pay fairly handsomely for it. Within the next week they had gotten a response, and said that they could get it to them by mid February. They tried to wait and see if anyone else was going to have it sooner, but no other word came, as it was just such an uncommon problem these days, and no one had it on hand.

The stress of all that was happening had put a hold on Harry's animagus training, and his two wanded practice. It would be disappointing, but he knew he now had bigger problems, including another threat that was likely coming from within the castle.

A month had passed since Hermione's petrification, and the only thing he had to show for it was aggravation at the arrogance of his defense against the Dark Arts teacher. Lockhart had insisted on multiple occasions that, "If only I could have reached her just a few minutes sooner, I know just the counter spell."

At first Harry thought it was arrogance at least, but then Flitwick informed him it was actually stupidity. There was not a spell currently known to man that could reverse the effects of a petrification.

Dueling training was twice a week with professor Flitwick, and it was about the only thing in his life that was going well. His mom had made him promise to keep the hearing voices things to himself, just for the time being. Harry didn't like keeping something like this from his friends, but he was going to respect his mother's wishes for now, especially since they were backed by his dad and the other maruaders. Harry wasn't all knowing, but figured when that many people went against the idea of telling his friends for other opinions, then perhaps he should take that into account.

It was just two days after the worse valentines day of Harry's life when he received word that they were going to administer the mandrake restorative to Hermione. It was the worse valentines day of his life because that idiot Lockhart had decided that it would be a good idea to allow girls to send valentines day poems/messages to their loved ones or people they admired through dwarves. Unfortunately for his pride he had received a rather embarrassing one that went:

"His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,
His hair is as dark as a blackboard.
I wish he was mine, he's truly divine,
the hero who conquered the Dark Lord."

Harry was of course mortified and all his friends laughed, but he merely shook it off, and swore pranking revenge on Gilderoy Lockhart the fraud himself. The only upside to the man's existence in Harry's opinion was when he had tried to hit on Lily Potter while James was in the castle, and he ended up walking in on the whole thing, which basically scared the existence right out of the good Defense teacher. Needless to say they were a lot of spoken, and unspoken threats by the wrath in James Potter's eyes.

Regardless of his bad few weeks he was excited to finally break this puzzle and hear what had sent Hermione into her current state. Harry and Mandy were both at her bedside when they administered the draft, but what followed was rather unexpected. At first the girl began to loosen up, and then her eyes shot open, and she stared lifelessly at the ceiling, and then she began to scream. It was a rather horrifying moment, because he couldn't honestly tell if the girl was screaming in pain or fear. When they managed to calm her down with a calming potion she merely began hyperventilating, and spoke softly, "Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes."

She said it a dozen times before closing her eyes, opening them, and then saying it again. Harry turned to his dad who was acting auror on the scene, "What the hell is wrong with her?"

No one bothered to admonish him on his language, but James spoke to his oldest son with a sad tone, "Something has harmed her mind. Whatever happened to her, or whatever she saw, it couldn't have been good."

Skeptically Harry said, "It had to have been dark magic. There can't be to many things someone could see that could do this to them, even fewer things that you could see in a school. She sounds like she just came out of a dark closet after a month."

Mandy however was crying trying to talk to her friend, trying to get some recognition. The headmaster who remained silent up until this point said, "It is as I feared. The chamber of secrets has been reopened."

James quickly asked, "Do you mean more things like this are going to happen?"

Dumbledore shook his head after a moment, "It is hard to say at this point. It has been a month since the last the attack, and nearly four since the first attack. There was no direct message with the last attack, but that could have been circumstantial."

He took a meaningful glance at Harry, and James Potter nodded. They all realized that Harry had probably almost caught the person in the act, but missed them by mere seconds.

Mandy was given a calming draught and escorted out of the hospital wing, by Professor Flitwick, while everyone else watched a sleeping Hermione with knots in their stomach. What kind of magic caused this? Even Dumbledore acted like he had never seen something like this. Either that or it was worse, and Dumbledore had seen something like this and he didn't want to believe it was happening again. Whatever it was, it made Harry very uneasy.

Another month passed, and the Slytherin vs. Hufflepuff week was upon the school. The first week involved a BLOW OUT quidditch game where Hufflepuff put up 590 points breaking a school record. That day Harry had put up 18 goals, also a school record, while Heidi put up 15, and Malcolm put up 11 goals, with Cedric catching the snitch. Slytherin was utterly demolished thanks to the beaters injuring most of their team on accident. At one point it was four on seven. Marcus Flint had been taken out of the game, one of the beaters, and Draco Malfoy. So collectively they had lost a seeker, a beater, and their star chaser, which literally killed them. Cedric easily caught the snitch about an hour and a half into the game, for the sole reason of it hadn't made an appearance. Hufflepuff wasn't really trying to be a bad sport it was just unlucky that the team was unwilling to relent, and that Cedric couldn't find the damn snitch. Regardless it was a record breaking day and made the Hufflepuff 2-0 for the year, and 5-0 since Harry started.

This time around it was also Harry's teams turn to start the matches, with the odd numbered seeds going first. Harry took joy in watching Hannah crush Draco Malfoy into the next century, while the duel between her and Daphne Greengrass was rather entertaining, it proved to be a long one where Hannah was barely able to disarm the #9 seed girl. Harry thought that Hannah was going to go easy in the next fight, but proved the Abbot dueling skills were closer than most originally thought between her and her brother. She fought for six minutes straight, with mostly dodging, before she got blown out of the ring by Hestia Carrow. It was a great fight, and the kinder of the two Carrow twins was panting for breath when Leanne stepped into the ring. The fight was one of the fastest Harry had ever seen because the Leanne barraged Hestia to submission, and in seconds the new Hufflepuff dueling member picked up her first victory.

Sadly the other Carrow sister didn't go down as easily, but Leanne still managed to pull it out. When Marcus Flint came out though she was in for a nasty surprise. She was not used to such a ferocious fighting style, and the girl went down quick.

Harry felt bad for Anthony Rickett, because he had yet to win a match this year, and the oldest Potter doubted he would pull this one out. He was proven correct after a rather intense duel took place, but Anthony could still not manage to pull off a victory.

Malcolm took the stage from there, and Anthony had done his job well when, so when the two exchanged spells it was a lot of power being flung around, and Malcolm managed to topple the boy after a pretty short exchange of heavy spells. When the #1 seed Terrence Higgs took the stage though the crowd went quiet. There had been some nasty rumors about his family going around at the Ministry, and some were saying that Terrence had killed his dad, but no reason was ever reasonably stated. Harry didn't know what to think about these rumors, mostly because the few times the two had associated he was far kinder than any other Slytherin had been to him. Adopting the wait and see policy Malcolm and Terrence began their duel, and most of the spells the Slytherin Captain was using Harry could not identify at all, which did not bode well. Thankfully Malcolm had been working with Harry on shield variety, and was holding him pretty well, however that meant he had no time to be offensive to attempt to wear his opponent out. He managed to keep it up for nearly two minutes before he collapsed to the ground on one knee, and his shield broke causing him to take a violent curse to the chest which made him break into a coughing fit before a stunner hit him, and a blue spell hit him. Darrel was on the platform reviving his teammate so fast, most people didn't even see him move. Terrence was also over at his side, but Harry had his wand pointing at him just in case. Dumbledore moved to interfere before things escalated, but Terrence held his hands up in a surrender like gesture, "I am just making sure my counter spell worked. The blue one that hit him in the end was the counter spell to the purple curse."

Harry nodded at the boy, and noticed that Malcolm was no longer coughing, but being patted on the back by Darrel. Cedric jumped onto the stage to help him off, and the crowd clapped for good sport.

Harry was called up next, and Terrence grinned at him while taking the other side. When Dumbledore called for bows, Terrence gave the oldest Potter a surprisingly deep bow, which Harry didn't quite return, but bowed formally none the less. When the two backed up, Terrence didn't take a dueling position and when the countdown was over neither moved. The Slytherin Captain kept his wand a little to close to his chest, and didn't really move into a defensive or offensive orthodox position.

Harry wondered if this was some kind of tactic, and fired a stunner to test the waters. To the surprise of the whole crowd the spell went right past him. IT seemed like it was right on point, but it ended up veering off at the last moment. Eyes widening Harry realized that his spell had just been deflected by a ward. Growling Harry summoned up his magic and bellowed out a powerful curse, "Bombarda Maxima!"

This caused Terrence's eyes to widen, and he too a step back throwing up a shield, but it was to late. The spell was enveloped by a defensive glow in front of him for about five seconds, but Harry kept pushing magic into the spell and over powered the wards, and when the wards went down it slammed into the the seventh year Slytherin's shield, and knocked him backwards. This allowed Harry to rain stunners down upon the boy, and eventually banish him three time before he managed to get him off the platform effectively ending the duel.

The crowd, at least the ones that weren't Hufflepuff, was shocked into silence. Before their very eyes, they just saw a second year over power a sixth year ward scheme, with one spell, and manage to knock through a shield with the same spell. Though Harry didn't show it, he had put a lot of his marbles into that working. He was exhausted and he only basically used one over powered spell, and maybe ten stunners. He could probably cast stunners for hours if that was all he was casting, so ten to him was just a needle in a haystack of his power at this point, but what he had done impressed, and concerned people with his power. The team had a brief meeting with their captain, and he half heartedly expressed his disappointment with not being able to fight, but also congratulated everyone on their victory. He also told everyone that they would be being reseeded soon, in order to get some people in the right spots that would benefit the team the most.

His dad was one of the first to greet him at the end of the match, and expressed his pride in his power levels which weren't very often shown. He was also questioned on how his transformation was coming, and Harry promised him that things were going well, and that he couldn't wait to get his first transformation down completely.

He was also given the opportunity to spend the day with his brother and sister after his match which made things a bit better. The relationship between Jack and Harry was also much better now that Jack was allowed to train with Harry once a week, and training with Neville and the other Gryffindor's every other day. It was clear that Jack wanted more training with his brother, but Harry wasn't so excited to let him do any more just yet. It was clear Jack enjoyed the training with his brother, and the difficulty that it was, so he wanted more, just like any Potter before him would. It scared Harry that his brother might get dragged into his fight on default, and he tried to keep him at an arms length when it came to these things, but his godfather Sirius in a moment of wisdom told him that he couldn't protect Jack forever, and that he was going to be his own man one day, and Harry would have to respect that. Needless to say Harry wasn't quite there yet.

The following week was the first week of April, and Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw matches were upon the school. The quidditch match was great. Jack managed to put up a lot of points, and made his whole team look pretty good, and Neville made a snitch grab right from under Cho Chang which gave Gryffindor a healthy 2-0 record going against Hufflepuff in the final match which would be in Mid-May.

The dueling matches went by better than they did last time, and Jack pulled off a good two victories, almost three, but was put down by a furious Cho Chang. He didn't go down easy, and made her an easy opponent in the next fight, but he did eventually go down. The real surprise had been Neville who was the #5 seed who ended up closing house against, Grant, and Hillard, while almost taking down Rodger Davies. Between Oliver and Percy they managed to take him out, but even then it was pretty close. Despite what Harry thought of the coward it was no doubt that he was a talented duelist. This made Gryffindor 3-1 in dueling having lost to Slytherin once, but it was of no matter, as most knew they were going to have to beat Hufflepuff twice for the gauntlet, and that was just impossible to most peoples statistical minds. They would also have to beat Hufflepuff by a whopping 430 points to win the cup, which was equally unlikely.

In the third week of April not much had changed. Hermione was still in St. Mungos with unknown mental conditions, and Lockhart decided to hold a dueling club demonstration where people were actually required to attend. The demonstration was between him and Professor Potter who did not look thrilled to be at the center of attention.

Lockhart boasted, "The headmaster granted me permission to hold this little dueling club in order to train you all up, in case you are ever in need to protect yourselves, like I have, for more information read my collective works."

With that the arrogant berk through his coat into the crowd, and some giggling girls caught it causing Harry to roll his eyes while Susan sighed. Harry gave the girl an odd look and she blushed, "He may be an idiot, but he is still a good looking idiot."

Shaking his head in order to ignore the statement by the pretty red head, he tried to pay attention to the idiot ramble, "Don't worry, you'll still have your beautiful Runes teacher when I am through with her. Never fear."

Harry rolled his eyes, while Lily seemed to take a personal insult to what he had said. When the countdown began she stood their waiting for the man to curse out of pure etiquette, and when he threw an ascension charm at her she batted it away and returned it with a disarming charm that knocked the man off his feet.

When he stood up he laughed, "An excellent suggestion Professor Potter, though I must say if I had wanted to block what you were doing it would have been pretty obvious."

In a sickly sweet voice she countered, "Perhaps we should teach the students how to block unfriendly spells. We wouldn't want another case of what just happened."

Lockhart seemed to ponder this with a link of fear for a moment before retorting, "An excellent idea Professor Potter, how about we get a demonstration pair, Malfoy Potter."

Harry grinned, knowing what would follow. The two boys approached the pitch from opposite sides, and Lily seemed like she wanted to protest the duel, but instead moved aside and patted Harry on the shoulder as she walked past him. When the two took positions on the platform they went face to face, while Draco muttered, "Scared Potter?"

Cheekily Harry responded, "You wish!"

When the duel was being countdown Malfoy proved to be a rat and threw a spell before one was counted, but Harry merely through up a slow shield charm to exaggerate the movement, in hope of giving a good demonstration of the charm. Even saying it verbally. Harry then returned the spell and it seemed Draco had to yell the spell to make something pop up, but it did manage to absorb his stunning spell. This went back and fourth three times before Draco got knocked off his feet, and jumped back up, "Serpentsortia!"

The crowd gasped as a long six foot King Kobra came out of the boys wand and made its way towards Harry. The crowd seemed frozen, and some pour kid in the crowd even made a strange noise, which caused the snake to stop, rear up and nearly strike the boy, but without thinking Harry hissed, "STOP!"

The snake instantly look backed up at Harry, and the boy spoke, "Be gone!"

Then he blasted it as quick as possible, causing the snake to erupt into a ball of fire. A pin could've dropped in the great hall, and the world would have heard it. Without hesitating any longer, Harry stunned Draco, and walked off the platform, anxious to get away from all the stares.

Hannah had caught up with him pretty quick grabbing his arm, "Are you mad? Announcing your a parselmouth in front of all those people after what has been happening?"

Harry stopped and gave the girl a cold look, "I didn't mean to it just slipped out. I thought the snake was going to attack that kid."

Hannah shook her head, "Harry that was Justin, from our house, from our year, the boy you share a dorm with. It sounded like you were telling the snake to attack him. The other Puffs I am sure are going to defend you, but this is going to be where it will bite us for not telling the others that you had this ability."

Harry relaxed a bit at the word 'us', it was said so casually as if she had never expected it to be any different. Harry sighed in stress, "I was afraid. It looked like it was going to attack whoever made that noise."

"Do you know what this means?" Hannah asked.

"Everyone is now going to think I am the heir of Slytherin. It said that only Slytherin's descendants can speak the snake tongue. Merlin knows its why the symbol of Slytherin house is a snake. They are going to think we are related now." Harry said with stress lacing his voice.

"Hopefully Susan will be able to convince some people other wise, she can be pretty persuasive. At least she will be able to convince our house, who cares about the others. Gryffindor will stand with Jack and Neville who already knew, so hopefully the only damage control we will need is our friends in Ravenclaw because they still aren't happy with what happened to Hermione."

Harry hissed, "And they think I was? She was my friend, and most of them new it. I saved her life last year for Merlin sakes."

Hannah got defensive immediately, "I didn't say it was right Harry, I just said that we needed to be ready for it."

Feeling bad for snapping at what felt like his only friend in the moment he apologized, "I'm sorry. I just reacted, and I am still just reacting."

The girl grinned taking his hand gently, "I once told you that your fierce loyalty was an endearing trait Harry, that hasn't changed. Now come on, we need to go do some damage control among our other friends.

Harry nodded giving the girl a weak smile, but never letting go of her hand as they walked to face the house.

(A/N) This is kind of just a filler chapter, and I think the next one might be too :p, however once we get to 28 and 29 things are going to get interesting, so stay tuned! Update on Wednesday or Thursday!