"No Draco, when I said we needed a better teacher for the year I didn't mean myself, I'm not doing it," Harry staunchly refused for what was definitely not the first time.

"It's the best option, you know it as well as anyone. The war will come, and with it, Death."

"I'm not a teacher though, I have no experience."

"That's a lie. Look at Elias, if he keeps it up, he will overtake you with his combat training. He has even been showing me, seeing as you refuse to even consider the prospect of a training club."

"We have Duelling classes for a reason, Draco."

"That's just it, Professor Lupin was a good Defence teacher, but when compared to Flitwick he is just average at best," Hermione interjected before adding something else.

"I think that it is a noble idea, you're the only one in denial, Harry."

"I'll think about it if it will get you lot off my back."

"That's all we're asking mate," Draco replied.

/_-_-_^_^_-_-/

"Not you too, Blaise, if you're here to tell me I need to teach everyone-"

"My mother has sent her personal notes on the process of becoming an Elemental. She said to tell you that once you begin you must keep it up every day, with all of your focus on it at the time."

"Oh… great! I shall make sure to begin this soon. Maybe after Halloween."

"If you're going to wait that long, you might as well begin it on Halloween. Who knows, you might get a head start by doing so."

"You're still keeping up with the cryptic explanations? Your mother said there would be no more secrets or lies. Can I safely assume that beginning these steps on Halloween will actually help?"

"If there is significance on that day, personal significance I mean, then it should help."

"Honestly, Blaise, if you don't drop the cryptic routine, I might have to slap you."

"Slap me and I will ground you."

"What?" Harry shot back, completely befuddled by the suddenly parental tone.

"You know, ground you…" Blaise's mischievous grin appeared on his face, which was met with a disappointed sigh from Harry.

"I still think I might slap you."

The two boys laughed as Harry went to swipe at Blaise's head, missing completely.

/_-_^_^_-_-/

"Hello, Harry Potter," a voice sounded out of nowhere, shattering Harry's train of thought.

"Luna, how are you?", he replied once he saw the speaker.

"Oh, I've disturbed your thoughts, I can almost hear them fleeing through your ears."

"Urm… I guess. I was thinking about Dudley's connection with Rowena, that he got from the Font, and it had me wondering if I should drink from it myself."

"That's silly. You don't need a magical artifact to be wise, neither did Dudley. All you really have to do is listen, something I thought Dudley would have appreciated more."

"What do the walls tell you now?"

"That you're planning to fight the Dark Lord, who happens to be one of our teachers, however, you're trying to avoid any overt hostility towards him out of fear he will attack the students. Oh and Pansy Parkinson is planning to break you and Daphne up."

"How do you know that last bit, the one before the Pansy thing. I've not said that to anyone out loud, not even myself.," Harry asked, thoroughly perplexed.

"I can hear it on repeat in your thoughts, you're projecting it so hard that I wouldn't be entirely surprised if others had picked up on it."

"That's terrible, I really hope nobody else has picked up on it."

"It's like a ghost of a thought, not a thought itself, at least not the kind that a Legilimens would pick up on, maybe you should ask Dudley if he's heard anything," Luna suggested, earning a small nod from Harry.

"I shall do just that, but while I have you here I'd like to ask you to talk to Helena more, she says you haven't made time for her lately."

"Halloween is very near, which will bring an opportunity for me to find her and say the things left unsaid."

"I'll be honest with you, I have no idea what you're on about and so I'm going to take this chance to go."

"Your honesty is always quite refreshing, I shall see you another time."

Harry left the blonde girl alone, deciding he would wander around and try to work on controlling his thoughts. He walked from the Library to the Astronomy tower, and from there he looked out upon the grounds. He spent so long standing there and staring that he didn't notice he was no longer alone.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Professor Gaunt, what are you doing all the way up here?"

"I'll have you know that I used to come up here quite frequently when I was a student here, back when people would torment me for my supposed Muggle heritage."

"If you know what that is like then why do you want to kill the Muggle-borns? Like, I understand Salazar Slytherin's motivations, after all, we were being hunted to extinction, but I can't understand what you hope to gain by pursuing this bloodshed."

"That is a rather prudent question. You see, I never wanted it when I was young, it was after creating my third Horcrux that it came to be. At least that is how Voldemort Senior tells it."

"Wait, you call him Voldemort Senior? Really?" Harry laughed in disbelief.

"Yeah well, what do you call him?" Professor Gaunt retorted.

"Voldemort Prime."

"That's just as bad," the Professor laughed, causing Harry to turn slightly red. "I don't intend to slaughter all of the Muggle-borns. Sure, I may have tried to use the Basilisk to do so at one point; however, as I said before, five decades trapped as a memory in a book will change you."

"That's just the thing, that would turn most people insane. How is it that you have turned out so… normal. Relatively speaking, at least."

"And what is that last bit supposed to mean?"

"You've met your older self, he takes every opportunity to revel in the pain of others, even torturing me every time he entered my mind, speaking of which, he hasn't done so for a while."

"What you have to understand about him is that he holds all of the bitterness and maliciousness of our soul. I was made more normal by Ginny Weasley, she poured herself into me and left me a different person."

"That's just like-"

"Like the version of me you went out of your way to create?"

"Yeah, he has some of my mind in his. Not in the shared bridge way that we have, or at least I don't believe so."

"Think about this before our next chat and maybe then you can find an answer to your burning question."

"I still don't understand your intentions here, are you recruiting?" Harry asked sceptically.

"Are you volunteering?"

"No, but-"

"Then you will have to figure that out on your own," Professor Gaunt finished as he began to walk over to the door and vanished a moment later.

Deciding he didn't much feel like company Harry flew off the Astronomy tower and landed on the very top of the roof, sitting and taking in the view as he thought about his professor's words.

/_-_-^_^/

Sitting in the Gryffindor common room were Ronald Weasley and Draco Malfoy, who had been told via the rings that Harry, Dudley, and Elias had all gone out on an adventure together. Part of him missed the fun of doing random stuff with Harry, although a reminder from Draco about their simply awful patrol sessions in first year had killed that nostalgia.

"They were absolutely boring, standing still and silent all night." Ron agreed.

"Exactly, now look where you are. You're in the top fifteen students of the year, compare that to two years ago, or the year before that, when you were barely scraping by. As much as Harry and the rest of the Vipers are my friends, and as you know I'd do anything for them, I feel like we're all moving apart as friends." Draco responded.

"Maybe, but I think it's just a temporary thing. We're the Vipers after all."

"Yeah yeah, well what does Mr Viper want to do today?"

"I can think of a few things." He smiled at Draco, who smiled back at him.

"I bet you can," Draco responded, not allowing Ron the chance to reply, having kissed him before he could get a word out.

"One day we will have to tell the rest of the Vipers about us."

"We don't have to tell anyone, Ron, it's not their business. Besides, if they haven't picked up on it by now then I doubt they ever will."

/_-_-^_^_-_-/

"Where did Rowena say the Diadem was?" Harry asked his two brothers as they were searching for it one day. "Helena mentioned the room on the seventh floor, but it's a fairly substantial room."

"It's on a bust of her head, but the exact location is unknown. Who knows when I'll next be able to talk to her though. I know that it's not enough to go on, but we have all the time in the world." Dudley responded.

"We would have if this was any previous year. I think Professor Gaunt is here to reclaim the Diadem for himself."

"Reclaim?" Elias asked.

"It's one of his Horcruxes, I'm sure we've had this conversation before."

"Maybe, I guess it slipped my mind." Elias acknowledged.

After their sixth time pacing by the picture of a troll learning ballet they still had no luck.

"We all need to be on the same page, or at the very least only one of us should be pacing to open the door."

"I'm thinking about a room to hide things," Elias replied.

"I'm asking for a room to find things."

"Let me find the room, you two can just watch," Elias said, surprising the other two when he added. "Come on, I know we have all the time in the world apparently, but Cresswell and I are planning a prank or two on our fellow third years."

"Alright," the two older boys answered in unison, stepping away from the corridor and watching him pace. After Elias' third rotation a large door appeared, almost forcing itself out of the wall. Elias shot them an "I told you so" look and the three entered the room.

It was the single largest space they had seen within Hogwarts, the thought of manually searching through the room filled them with dread.

"Accio Diadem," Dudley tried and failed to summon the Horcrux. "I don't think we will have an easy time doing this."

"Accio bust of Rowena Ravenclaw," Harry intoned, bringing towards him a stone head, without the Horcrux on it.

"Ah bollocks, now we don't even have the bust to help us look," Dudley complained as the three boys walked towards the direction the bust had flown from.

They passed an old wardrobe-looking thing, as well as the largest mountain of chairs and desks to ever be assembled in one place. They saw many broken quills and crystal balls, a river of broken inkwells, pouring their contents out and traveling far beyond their line of sight.

After walking around close to two hours, and passing Chair Mountain for the third time, the group were getting impatient.

"You just had to summon the bust, didn't you."

"I wouldn't have even thought of it if you hadn't tried to summon the Diadem," Harry snapped back at Dudley, who just shrugged.

"Can you hear that?" Dudley whispered, stopping the others at the sound of faint hissing.

"It's Parseltongue, or at least it should be, it just sounds like generic hissing. Use your magical hearing, 'ley."

"Sure, gimme a second of quiet," he answered, his senses spreading out around him. "It keeps shifting and throwing its voice, like an echo on top of an echo."

"Can't you summon it in Parseltongue?" Elias asked, sparking a light in Harry's eyes.

"I didn't think of that, like at all. Accio Diadem."

For a long moment, nothing happened, inspiring Harry to try again. As soon as the words were out of his mouth a second time he was hit in the head by the Diadem, causing it to settle there for a moment before Dudley grabbed it off his head to admire it.

"This is it, the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw, I can't believe that it has literally been in the castle for years."

"That's not it, I didn't know before now but I might have already destroyed it. I forged a sword last year with what I thought was a tiara. It fought me, almost as if it was sentient. I feel something from this, something different."

"Rowena Ravenclaw herself told me that this is the Diadem, I'll have to ask her about this tiara thing later when I ask her about purifying this."

"Please do, I'd like to know exactly what is in my sword."

"Helena will be really pleased if we manage to purify it," Elias beamed at the two as they left.

"And to think that it was here the whole time, imagine that."

As the three left Dudley noticed Harry rubbing his forehead rather intensely, but neglected to comment.

/_-_-^_^_^_^/

"You're searching for something, aren't you?" Harry abruptly asked Professor Gaunt upon entering his office.

"I may well be, what do you think I'm searching for?"

"That's too easy, you can just refuse me the truth if I present it. Just know that I know."

"Indeed. Has it ever crossed your one-track mind that I am here simply to teach?"

"Drop this bullshit facade, it is really getting old."

"I thought we had made real progress on the Astronomy tower, but if you're going to regress back to that baseless accusation then I'm afraid I overestimated you."

"I know about the Diadem."

"The… Diadem? I don't follow, is that significant to my older self in any way?"

"As if you don't know."

"Wait, have you been operating under the assumption that he and I are able to communicate like you and I, or you and he can? I am searching for something and seeing as you refuse to even begin to believe me, I'm going to tell you my plan, my full plan, for my time here at Hogwarts."

"Go on."

"I want to know if there is a way to reassemble one's soul, after resurrecting him he stopped having a direct way to influence me. The person you call Tom Riddle is the person I have tried to form myself into. I don't care about this war, I have no need to concern myself with a rogue shard of my soul, it is the smallest bit as far as I know, and so when I can find the other soul vessels I believe I can absorb the soul shard from it. The problem is, I don't know exactly what has been turned into a Horcrux, it could be anything."

"You came from the Diary, which was destroyed by Ron; I may have destroyed the Diadem of Ravenclaw, but we're not entirely sure about that, then I combined the Locket and the Cup of Hufflepuff to make Tom, so that's four. There was the shard that caused a tumour and now that tumour is sentient. I don't know beyond that though."

"There's still a shard within you." The Professor casually remarked, shattering Harry's world.

"What do you mean? That was removed during the surgery I had, I know it was."

"Yes, that shard was removed. But you see, there is a shard that resides within your scar, I can feel the soul within you, it is the bridge between our minds."

"Take it out. NOW. That's what you want, isn't it? To reclaim pieces of your soul?"

"I can't do that, to remove it would kill you."

"That's a lie, it has to be a lie." Harry started crying at that, the sound of it annoying the Professor.

"If that is all, Potter, you should be going now."

/_-^_^_-_/

There were few areas in Hogwarts Harry hadn't explored yet, and such a thing was unacceptable to him at that moment, and so he had begun to walk around, keeping his Map and Cloak on him at all times these days.

He had just climbed up near the top of one of the many towers in Hogwarts and had reached the base of a spiral staircase, which he now began to head up. The entire time he felt as if he was being watched, almost guided up the stairs. At the top of the staircase was a rope ladder leading up into a trapdoor. With trepidation, he climbed even higher and pushed the door aside.

The room he had arrived in was heavily perfumed, with smoke overtaking him and leaving his head slightly hazy.

"Hello? Is anyone in here?" he called out to the seemingly empty room, noticing a strange woman materialise out of the smoke.

"Yes, my dear. I have waited for this day, it has always led to this, take a seat please," the odd woman greeted him, her eyes magnified by the massive glasses she wore.

"My name is Sybil Trelawney, and Fate has asked me to guide you. I see much around you, you carry great sadness and guilt. You're worried about something that has to be. The path forward is treacherous and must be walked slowly, only then will you be able to see more than one step at a time. You will meet her soon, and when you do, I must apologise, for nothing will quite be the same afterwards."

Once she had fallen silent her whole body relaxed for a moment and she regarded Harry as if she was surprised by his presence.

"I'm sorry, dear, what was it you wanted?"

"It's fine, I was just leaving."

/_-_-^_^/