This chapter has not been proof-read.
Chapter Fifty-One
Harry was pretty sure that they jinxed it.
The entire Chamber seemed to have changed in some way. The place was brighter, thrumming with magic that hadn't been there the last time they had visited. It was almost as if it had gone back in time. The remaining grime that they hadn't been able to get off of the snake statues had completely vanished and there was no trace of water damage anywhere in the Chamber. Harry wouldn't have been able to guess that the place had been flooded for decades at least, centuries at most.
"What happened here?" He wondered. It hadn't been that long since they'd been down here and as far as Harry knew, he was the only one that could even get down here since no one else spoke Parseltongue. He also very much doubted that Voldemort had broken into the castle just to clean the Chamber.
'If he didn't bother the first time, I doubt he'd bother now. Especially when infiltrating the castle,' Gabriel agreed. 'Not to mention the fact that he doesn't have a body.'
Harry snorted at the image of a bodiless Voldemort attempting the clean the Chamber. Yeah, he really doubted that was the case whatsoever.
"Perhaps the nargles did it?" Luna suggested though for once, she didn't seem to think that was the case. Harry shook his head in answer and went back to inspecting the Chamber.
He moved towards the snake statues and laid his hand on it. Harry blinked in surprise at the sudden warmth that was flooding through his limb. The magic coating the statue danced around his hand in greeting, like he was an old friend that hadn't been seen in years.
'That is definitely not normal.' Gabriel breathed in their head.
'I don't think that it's harmful either,' Harry frowned. The magic was clean and friendly in a way that reminded him a bit of the main part of the castle and the Burrow.
'Oh,' Gabriel startled in their mind. 'It's Hogwarts.'
Harry felt realization dawn on him as well. It hadn't even occurred to him that the magic that decorated the walls of Hogwarts had never been present within the Chamber. In fact, the Chamber had been devoid of the sentient magic entirely. Now, though, the magic of the school had completely filled the Chamber and brought life back to it.
"It's alright, Luna," Harry grinned at her. Luna gave him a curious look, the question as clear as day on her face. "It's just the castle taking back the Chamber."
Luna beamed back at him, a brightness in her eyes as she went back to inspect the changes. Harry turned his attention back to the magic surrounding his hand. It felt good in a way that was difficult to describe and he was reluctant to remove the appendage and lose that feeling. 'I wonder why the castle is only taking back the Chamber now?'
'It could be a lot of reasons. We've pretty much restored the place completely, so the castle could have decided to help us along.' Yet Gabriel didn't sound all that sure of this answer and Harry couldn't help but think that there was something else going on. Something they were missing that caused the castle to act now through the Chamber had been restored for weeks.
'I don't like this,' Harry admitted, an uneasy feeling settling into his gut. 'The castle knows something we don't, information that made it act now instead of later.'
'Something that makes it think the Chamber might be needed,' Gabriel added in, resigned. 'Can't we just have one year, one single year, where something horrible isn't about to happen. First this Tournament, then Barty Crouch Jr, and now the castle is preparing for something. I almost miss the Dementors!'
Keyword being 'almost', Harry thought to himself dryly. Yet his other self had a point, this year seemed to be trying its hardest to make their lives miserable. And that wasn't even counting the cryptic message he now had to decipher.
They had felt when they had first started restoring the Chamber that it would be needed again. Yet, this confirmation from the castle itself, so sudden with no warning, made Harry anxious. He'd never considered that it would be needed so soon. It made him nervous, a sinking feeling in his gut.
"Hey, Luna," Harry called to the blond. "I'm going to go check out Slytherin's study. I want to see if anything there has changed as well."
Luna smiled at him. "Of course, Harry," she replied dreamily before going back to whatever it was she was doing. From the looks of it, she was working on the remaining tapestries that needed to be restored. Or she could just be admiring the thread used, it was hard to tell with her sometimes.
Harry turned around and began making his way to the hidden trap door. He wasn't all that surprised to see that the castle's presence was coating the wooden entrance. He raised his eyebrows in surprise with the trap door swung open as he approached it, revealing a no longer dark hole. Harry blinked at the smooth, black stone that was likely the 'elevator' they'd been using to go down and back up. 'That explains why we thought it was an endless pit.' Gabriel sighed. 'Honestly, who uses black stone for something like that?'
Harry didn't have an answer. It wasn't like it had hurt them in the long run and they'd never really had any trouble going up and down after that first time. Harry moved to the foot holes and climbed down to the platform. He braced himself as the stone moved downwards, the wind still feeling strange on his wings.
Harry blinked as the study appeared before him, brighter than he'd ever seen it. The light source form the crystal was almost redundant with the amount of magic that was swirling around the room. That wasn't what really caught Harry's attention. No, Harry was focused on the wooden door.
It was open, revealing a long stretch of hallway that illuminated by the same crystals that were in the study. Harry immediately moved to the doorway and was surprised to see that there were five more doors along the walls and another, larger door, at the very end.
Harry had no idea where the door leads and felt a thrill of excitement shudder through his body and wings. Grinning like mad, he moved through the door and down the hallway. As he got closer to the first door, it swung open, revealing another study. This one, unlike Slytherin's, was done in blue and bronze. 'Ravenclaw,' Gabriel muttered. Book littered the walls and even parts of the floor with no order to them.
'Luna is going to love this,' Harry breathed silently. Rowena Ravenclaw's study, untouched since her death. There was even a small pedestal that Harry knew was likely where her lost diadem would have sat. He was a bit disappointed to see it empty but shrugged the thought away. It would have really hard to explain how he'd come across the famous missing diadem.
Moving out of the room, the door across the hall swung open. Harry snorted at the red and golden colors that decorated the room. The founders had, apparently, been very fond of their colors. Unlike Slytherin and Ravenclaw, weapons of all kinds littered the walls and Harry was amused to see a familiar sword hanging behind the desk. 'Well, that explains where it went after our second year,' Gabriel laughed. 'That's some magic, connecting it to the Sorting Hat. A good theft protection too.'
Harry snorted and moved further into the room. The desk was overflowing with different tomes on Runes and Spellcasting. Harry raised his eyebrows when he noticed a knife with unfinished runes carved into it. Whatever it was that claimed Godric Gryffindor's life, it was sudden enough that he'd been unable to finish this project.
Harry walked out of the room and didn't even pause when the next door opened by itself. Hogwarts clearly had an order it wanted him to visit each room in and Harry wasn't about to protest. It was a bit thrilling if he was honest. He'd known that Hogwarts was sentient ever since he'd gained the ability to see magic yet this was the first time the castle actively decided to interact with him.
He wasn't even slightly surprised to see that the room was decorated in yellow and black. The content of Hufflepuff's study was where the real surprise laid. Similar to Gryffindor's, various weapons lay scattered about, however, there was also a pensive on one side of the room, and two bookcases along each side of it. Harry was amused to see that one bookcase was filled with nothing but cookbooks. The other was filled with journals, likely Hufflepuff's own.
'A person of many interests,' Gabriel snickered. Harry grinned openly as he pulled one of the journal's down and flipped it open. Inside was a recipe for Treacle Tarts, of all things.
'Definitely not what I was expecting.' Harry placed the journal back onto the shelves and made a note to copy of few of the recipes down for Mrs. Weasely. He'd give them to her after he told the Headmaster about this place. There was no way that he could keep all of this secret from the man now. As much as he was wary of the Headmaster, Dumbledore deserved to know about all of this. Harry would just have to be careful in how he told the man about it all. Maybe he should broach the topic with Sirius and Remus first, he mused.
He'd also have to fill in Hermione. Distraction from her studies or not, she would actually kill him if he kept this from her. Not to mention that now she was filled in he didn't need to hide his abilities from her anymore. Ron shouldn't ask too many questions either, the redhead no doubt knew that he'd been learning everything soon enough.
There was no way he was telling the twins, though. Harry rather liked the school standing and he had no doubt that the two would find some way to use something down here in one of their pranks. Even if they had to learn Old English to use any of it.
'I wonder what the other rooms are,' Gabriel mused. They had gone through all of the studies, what else was down here?
Harry left Hufflepuff's study and moved to the next room. The door swung open and Harry snorted when he saw it was a library. While not as big as the Hogwarts Library, it was still a decent size, holding at least two hundred tomes. 'I guess I know where Hermione's going to spend most of her time,' Harry grinned. He'd never even thought about the Founders making their own personal library though he supposed he should have. It also explained why Gryffindor hadn't bothered with any bookcases and why Hufflepuff only had cookbooks. It did, however, make Ravenclaw's study even more amusing. Harry wondered how many of the tomes they had found in the main Chamber actually came from this room.
Harry shrugged and moved on to the next room. He'd leave that up to Luna and Hermione to sort out later. The door across the hall from the library swung open. Harry was unsurprised to see a private potion's lab. Ingredients lined the walls and a workstation sat in the middle of the room. Harry had no idea if the ingredients would still be good so he left them alone. Who knew what kind of reaction some of them would have if he messed with them?
Harry turned to the last door and was only somewhat surprised when the door remained closed. Mostly, he was disappointed, having been hoping that he'd be able to get a complete answer for once as to the truth behind the Chamber and everything else that had been lost to time.
'Should have realized it wasn't going to be that easy,' Gabriel grumbled in their head. 'At least we have more to go on than we did before. Whatever is behind that door, we'll find out eventually.'
Harry hummed in agreement, eyeing the pulsing magic around the door with curiosity. No doubt Hogwarts was keeping this a secret for a reason. Until then, he just needed to figure out what all these new discoveries meant. Why had this happened now? What was Hogwarts preparing for? Just why had the castle allowed him past Slytherin's study now?
Harry had a feeling that he really wasn't going to like the answer.
"What do you mean that Voldemort's trying to regain power?!" Sirius shouted, anger and fear lacing his voice.
He was in the Headmaster's office along with the Heads of Houses, having been called by Dumbledore to an emergency meeting. Sirius hadn't known what to think when he'd gotten the message yet it definitely hadn't been this.
The Ministry had completed their interrogation of Barty Crouch Jr and they hadn't liked what the man had to say. Barty had confirmed how he'd gotten out of Azkaban and that he'd been the one to enter Harry into the Tournament. It was the why and how that had not been well received.
After escaping from his father (who had him under the Imperius Curse since breaking him out because Crouch Senior really was a bastard even to his own son) Barty had tracked down Peter Pettigrew and through the rat, the remains of Voldemort. Pettigrew had nursed the wraith after somehow getting the dark lord a somewhat physical body.
It was Voldemort behind everything. Harry was never going to let them live this down, Sirius sighed internally. His godson had called it from the start and maybe he should have paid more attention to that. Even when all the signs had pointed towards Bartemous Crouch (and that made a lot of sense, now) they shouldn't have shut down the Voldemort angle. If they sped up taking out his Horcruxes then it might not have even been a problem in the first place.
Now they knew that Voldemort was alive, trying to gain power, and had the rat with him but they didn't know where the asshole was or how he planned on grabbing Harry. Just that he'd used the information he'd gained from a Ministry employee (Merlin, that poor woman) and had crafted the runes that had been used to mess with the Goblet.
That wasn't really what Sirius was angry about. No, they could have stopped this in its tracks, shut down every plan Voldemort had, if not for that stupid fucking pink toad.
She'd called the Dementors to guard the prisoner. Then, like an idiot, she'd left them alone with him. All their information, every heads' up they had on Voldemort's plan, gone because of a stupid moron clad in pink with the most annoying simpering voice Sirius had ever heard. "Damnit!" He growled, a bit of Padfoot sneaking into his voice.
"Is there any place that you can think of where Voldemort would go?" Remus asked, calmer than Sirius thought he had any right to be. Sometimes he hated his friends' naturally calm demeanor.
Dumbledore paused a thoughtful look on his face before frowning. "There are a few places that I can think of that Voldemort would be able to hide. I'll begin making inquiries with a few of the old crowd, see if they can't look into them."
Remus blinked, a bit shocked. "You aren't going to check them out yourself?"
Dumbledore shook his head. "Until we know how Voldemort is planning on reaching Harry, it's better that I don't leave the castle. I'm afraid I will also have to suspend Harry's Hogsmeade weekends. Without Barty posing as Alastor, we have no way of knowing if he's going to change his plans."
Sirius winced. Harry wasn't going to be happy about that, especially not after they filled him in on everything that was going on. Dumbledore glanced at him, amused. "I suppose that it would be a fool's errand to ask you to keep this from him?"
Remus snorted before Sirius could. "Harry needs to know that he needs to be careful," he said. "Otherwise he'll end up doing something absolutely idiotic and end up in the middle of it completely unprepared."
Everyone in the room grimaced, likely remembering the previous incidents of years past that Remus and Harry refused to completely fill him in on. For some reason, they were under the impression that he would freak out if he knew everything. Sirius had a horrible feeling that they were probably right.
"Lupin has a point," Severus Snape of all people added in. "Potter seems to flock towards danger no matter what we do. Much as I disapprove of this, keeping the boy in the loop will at least give him a chance to be ready for the attack when it comes."
Sirius stared at the greasy haired man, baffled. So, did the rest of the room, barring Dumbledore. Snape made it no secret how he felt about Harry and his 'moronic tendency to throw himself in the path of whatever danger so much as sniffles at him in his arrogance that no one else is able to handle the danger'.
"Very well," the Headmaster twinkled at them all. Sirius wondered if the man would still have that twinkle if his beard suddenly disappeared. Better yet, maybe he could convince a house-elf to run off with the man's Lemon Drops that he was so fond of. Sirius knew that it would be petty but the dog animagus had never claimed that he was above pettiness. In fact, he remembered quite clearly that he informed everyone to the exact opposite. "I will leave informing young Harry to yourself and Remus, Sirius. I will inform Filch that Harry is not to be allowed to attend Hogsmeade until further notice."
"Albus," Minerva interrupted before the man could dismiss them. "What will the Ministry be doing to handle this?"
The twinkle died a bit in the Headmaster's eyes and Sirius wondered how the Minister had managed to get that sort of reaction. He probably wasn't going to like it. He tended to dislike everything about the Ministry in recent memory. Starting with Crouch (who he sort of hoped was dead because not even Crouch deserved to be a prisoner of Voldemort) and ending with the pink toad that was pretending to be a human. He rather hoped that he wouldn't have to put the Minister on that list.
"The Minister is in a state of," Dumbledore paused. "Panic is the right word, I believe."
"In other words, he's not doing anything and is probably only a few choice words away from outright denial." Pomona sighed. "How that man ever became Minister, I don't know. As for Hogwarts, I think it best if we begin increasing the security around the school."
Dumbledore hummed, considering. "I will talk to Hagrid and have him warn the rest of the inhabitants of the forest. Filius, I would like you to see about enhancing the protections on the entrances and common rooms. I will alert the ghosts and the portraits to be on the lookout for anyone that looks out of place. Remus, if you could give them a description of Peter's animagus form?"
"Of course," Remus answered immediately.
"Very good!" The old man clapped. "Severus, please consult with Poppy and to begin stocking up the Hospital Wing. Make sure she knows how to detect Polyjuice as well."
Snape nodded before stalking out of the room. Sirius was pleased to watch him go. Maybe they hadn't been the nicest when it came to the git during their school years but Snape gave as good as he got. He doubted that they'd ever really get along.
"Sirius," Dumbledore began. "I'll leave Harry to you."
Oh sure, Sirius grumbled as it sunk in what he meant. Give him the easy job.
'Why can't we ever catch a break?'
Harry ignored the comment in favor of banging his head on the table in front of him.
"That's not going to help," Sirius said helpfully. Harry just groaned in answer.
He jinxed himself. He'd known that he wasn't going to like that answer but he really hadn't seen this coming. Of all that times that something like this could have happened, why did it have to be now?
They were in Sirius' office, which had been warded to keep others from listening to their conversation. With that knowledge, Harry began cursing in every single language that he could think of.
"I have feeling that if I knew what you just said, I'd have to scold you." His godfather was far to amused for Harry's peace of mind.
Harry snorted at him. He knew very well that Sirius didn't care one bit if Harry cursed or not. Sirius cursed worse that anyone that Harry had ever known if given the chance. Sirius merely stuck out his tongue in response to Harry's snort. "They've decided to make you my keeper from now on?" Harry asked, mostly as a way to keep this conversation from completely devolving. If there was one thing that his godfather was good at, it was distracting from the original topic. No doubt as self-preservation due to pranking, Harry thought in amusement.
Sirius grimaced. "Unfortunately. I don't know how they expect that to work," his godfather gave him a rueful smile. "You're good at ditching your watchers when you want to."
Harry gave the most innocent smile he could manage. Sirius merely raised his eyebrows at him.
'Yeah, no one who has lived with us is ever going to fall for that anymore.' Gabriel lamented. 'Even Ron and Hermione don't fall for that anymore.'
'I think Skeeter's the only one who actually falls for it,' Harry admitted. Most of the student body had pretty much caught on after the whole Dragon event. Not that he had given anything away during that time, all he'd done was call his broom and duck in cover, but the entire populace of Hogwarts had pretty much unanimously decided that Harry no longer qualified as 'innocent' afterward.
'Might have something to do with Skeeter's article as well,' Gabriel snickered. 'I'm pretty sure that the Twins bragged about that after they heard Cedric blaming it on them. Corrupting the innocent Harry Potter and all that.'
Harry blinked, 'Huh, I hadn't considered that.'
Before they could really discuss that further, Sirius interrupted. "Not that it isn't really interesting watching you talk to yourself," the man began smirking. Harry glared at him, causing the man to laugh. "What was it that you wanted to tell me pup? You're the one who dragged me aside, remember?"
Oh yeah, Harry gave him a sheepish look. He'd grabbed his godfather from the middle of the hallway, probably startling anyone around them, and proceeded to pull Sirius towards his own office. He'd had Sirius go first with his news after the man mentioned having wanted to talk to him anyways. Harry paused, considering how he was going to start this, before shrugging and just jumping into it.
"During the first month of school, I went down into the Chamber to see if Tom had hidden any of his Horcruxes down there." Harry shrugged. "There was nothing down there but after that first visit, I had the feeling that the Chamber was going to be needed. So, I started restoring it with Luna Lovegood."
Sirius raised his eyebrows in surprise. "You're joking," the dog animagus breathed. "Is that where you've been disappearing to all this time?!"
Harry grinned at him, nodding. 'I'd wondered if anyone had noticed that.'
"While we were down there, we found a hidden trapdoor that leads even further down," Harry decided to leave out the incident that followed that discovery. Sirius never took things like that well. "We found Slytherin's study."
"Of course you did," Sirius bemoaned, rubbing his temples. Harry almost felt bad for piling this on top of what was probably an already stressful day. "What else did you find? If that was it, you wouldn't have decided to tell me now."
'Very true,' Gabriel mused. 'We do have a bad habit of keeping people out of the loop on certain things.'
Harry winced inwardly. 'We should probably try and correct that.'
'Sure we will.' Harry could feel the disbelief behind that.
"Hogwarts reintegrated itself to the Chamber," Harry said bluntly. There was no real easy way to tell someone that the castle was sentient. "It's part of the castle again."
"And it wasn't part of the castle before?" Sirius asked and yep, that was the voice his godfather used whenever he had a bad headache coming on. Maybe he should have told Remus and had the werewolf fill Sirius in. Remus was much better at explaining things to Sirius that didn't make his head hurt. "Wait, what do you mean Hogwarts reintegrated the chamber into itself?!"
'Here we go.'
"Hogwarts is sentient," Harry drove into it. "The amount of magic that saturates the walls and the fact that it's been here for over a thousand years, the castle has gained sentience. I noticed it when I first started getting the ability to see magic back."
"Oh great," Sirius sounded like he was having trouble reconciling that information with what he knew of the castle. "Hogwarts is alive. That's perfectly fine. Completely normal. Oh Merlin, I need a drink."
'Best get this over with before we break him,' Gabriel sighed. 'Or before he gets smashed.'
"Either way," Harry pushed forward. "Since the Chamber is connected to the castle's magic again, there were changes. The castle completely restored everything in the Chamber's structure that Luna and I couldn't fix. Because of that, I went down to the study to see if anything had changed down there."
Sirius looked much calmer and interested now, seemingly understanding where this conversation was going. He'd also most likely tabled the 'castle is alive' breakdown until later, knowing the man.
"When we first found the study, there was a door there that we couldn't open. When I went down there again, the castle had opened the doorway for me." Harry grinned, still a bit giddy at everything he'd found. While he definitely didn't like the reason for everything (Voldemort was never something he wanted to deal with) he could accept that the discovery was almost worth it.
'Except not really because there's a maniac trying to kill us again.'
'Oh, don't ruin the moment.'
'Therapists nightmare,' came the retort.
"It's not just Slytherin's study," He continued without pause. "Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw's study is down there too. There's even a potions lab and a library down there and I don't think anyone's touched it since they died."
Sirius stared at him, wide-eyed and almost gaping. "You found the studies of all the Founder?!"
There it was, that was the reaction Harry was hoping for. "I did."
"Merlin, Remus is going to move down there, and we'll never see him again," Sirius breathed. There was a glint in his eyes that suggested that Sirius would join his friend. "Wait, if the entrance is in the Chamber, how did they all get down there?"
Harry shrugged. "There's another door down there that Hogwarts hasn't opened yet. There's probably another way down through it, if I had to guess. You know what this does mean though?"
Sirius frowned at him and Harry could tell that the man hadn't located the implications of this. "It means that all the Founders had a way into the Chamber. They probably helped build it!" Harry grinned as Sirius blinked in realization. "Everything that we know about Slytherin is wrong!"
Sirius hesitated, "Pup, are you sure?"
"Positive. When Luna and I were restoring everything, we found rooms that had been hidden for years. Broken down portraits and tapestries that we either got rid of or restored. There were benches down there and remains of desks, Sirius. If anything, I think the Chamber was a sanctuary. A place that only someone from a magical bloodline could access and a protector that only Slytherin could control to defend the castle from an attack." Harry paused, waiting for his godfather to connect the dots.
"An attack from what?"
"Muggles." Harry held up his hand before Sirius could comment. "Yes, I know. History of magic paints the Witch Burnings as some mild inconvenience but Sirius, that was only true to adult Purebloods. Muggleborns and even Halfbloods? They didn't have a way to learn spells to protect themselves back then, Padfoot. Heck, some didn't even have wands! Ollivander's ancestors sold wands, yes, but only those who grew up with magic knew what a wand even was."
"And not all muggleborns can accept the fact that they're wizards," he continued. "Even today, some turn down attending Hogwarts and get their magic bound and minds erased so they can live 'normal' lives. Back when being a witch or wizard was seen as a crime and the sentence death? Anyone of those muggleborns could have led the Witch Hunters here after they were approached by the Founders."
"Which is why the Founders made a Chamber the muggles couldn't get into." Sirius finished for him. He looked as if everything he'd ever thought had been ripped out from under him. Which was probably accurate, Harry grimaced. "Merlin, how could things have been twisted so much in only a thousand years?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I only really theorized about it before. Luna, though, she found a journal detailing the reasons after I showed her the other studies. Ravenclaw had written the whole thing down, she even detailed an outline for the wards so that the Chamber wouldn't be their only line of defense."
Getting her to put the journal down and leave the Chamber after that had been an experience. In futility, for the most part. He had a feeling he was going to have a harder time with Hermione and maybe even Remus after the other two saw everything that was down there. Harry had finally been forced to steal her book on Old English just to get the girl to pay attention to him. He wondered if he'd have to start teaching them after this.
"You can't keep this secret, Harry." Sirius finally breathed. "You just uncovered pieces history that have been lost likely since the death of the Founders. Who knows what could be down there? Wait, was Ravenclaw's diadem down there?"
Harry almost snickered at the question. "No," he shook his head. "Just the pedestal where it was kept. The diadem is still missing."
Sirius looked almost disappointed.
"I did find Gryffindor's sword." Harry grinned at him. "Apparently, when it goes back into the Sorting Hat, it returns to his study."
"Oh Merlin," Sirius grinned. "This is brilliant Harry! I can't wait to see the look on Binn's face when he learns the Chamber is not only real but that it invalidates everything we know about that time era."
'Probably similar to how he looked when Hermione interrupted his lesson in our second year,' Gabriel laughed. Harry snickered.
"I can't believe this is where you've been disappearing to!" Sirius shook his head. "I never would have guessed any of this. How are you planning on telling everyone?"
Harry winced. "Ah, that's why I wanted to talk to you. I know we need to let Dumbledore in on everything at the very least, but I have no clue how to go about telling him anything. How do I explain exactly why I was going down there in the first place? Or why I only told Luna? Not to mention how a fourth year and a third year restored the Chamber in the first place."
"Ah," Sirius winced as well. "That's going to hard. I don't know how much Dumbledore suspects about Voldemort and how he's alive. Do you think it's time to start letting him in on the secret? He's going to be watching you closer than ever with Voldemort as an immediate threat to both you and the school."
'Fuck,' Gabriel cursed. 'He's going to start noticing things that are off about us. I'm a bit surprised that we haven't caught his attention yet.'
"He's bound to already know that there's something off about us," Harry mused aloud, answering both Sirius and Gabriel. "Second year with the Chamber and last year with the Dementors? No one is ever going to claim that Albus Dumbledore is stupid. I think Hope might be the only reason he hasn't pushed it."
Unicorns were picky. They only accepted those with a pure soul and Harry had befriended her before he'd started regaining his memories of Gabriel and their past lives. Dumbledore probably would have seen that as a good sign.
"I know that neither of is entirely comfortable with him," Sirius sighed. "Not completely anyway. But he knows Voldemort better than any of us. I don't know how. Maybe from when he was a student, though I can't remember seeing his name down in the year books."
Harry winced. Ah, he knew he'd been forgetting something when he'd told Sirius about Horcruxes. Tom Riddle wasn't really connected with Voldemort to the populace. Or even anyone outside of Dumbledore, Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione. Harry didn't think that anyone else knew, he had no doubt that Voldemort had killed anyone he could that knew the truth behind his heritage and origin.
"He might know where Voldemort would hide the Horcruxes or even what they look like better than we would." Harry sighed. He'd hoped that he wouldn't have ever needed to include Dumbledore on any level. The man gave him an eerie feeling at times, like there was something dark trying to overtake his soul that Harry couldn't see. It had taken him a long time to pinpoint that as the reason behind his unease with the man.
'Whatever it is,' Gabriel sighed. 'We might actually need him. We could have gotten by without him before this, however, Voldemort's actions don't give us a lot of time. He's a problem that we need to deal with before this gets out of hand.'
"Exactly," Sirius sighed, unknowingly dragging Harry back into the conversation at hand. "While it might be a boon to us and while it could speed things up, we don't do this unless you're sure, Harry. We can debate why he needs to be told, the good that could result from having him with us, and even the possible necessity behind it. But we don't do or say anything unless you can answer me one thing. Without any hesitation whatsoever."
There was a seriousness in his eyes, enough so that Harry didn't snort at the unintentional joke his thoughts had conjured. Even Gabriel stayed quiet, interested in hearing what Sirius had to say. The question his godfather was certain would answer the Dumbledore problem.
"Do you trust him?"
Well, here you are! A new chapter!
Yeah, I know. Another chapter so soon! I didn't really expect to finish this before Thanksgiving break but I ended up getting really into writing this chapter and put off some homework instead. I'm going to regret that later tonight, I just know it. I'm pretty sure I have an essay due tomorrow that I need to finish. You know what, I'm regretting it already now that I'm looking at what time it is and my list of things due tomorrow. Crap.
Oh well, I probably needed a break from the homework anyway. And you get a new chapter out of my procrastination so I doubt you're all complaining. ;D
Welp, I'm going to cut this short because I actually do need to get that essay done tonight. As always, I will answer any and all questions you ask barring spoilers.
~MisteryMaiden~
