Chapter 2.2 Autumn 1992
Harry passed his fourth year Runes exam, and agreed to do the OWL exam at the end of the year. He also wrote to Arrow, the British broom manufacturer, that he had been unable to find any books on making a broom in Flourish and Blotts and that the only mention he had been able to find in the Hogwarts library had been so old that he thought modern methods must be better, and that he was sure that the intricacies of making a quidditch quality broom were kept a secret by each company, but that maybe they were willing to point him to something that covered the basics, because, frankly, the Hogwarts brooms were a danger to the students, and he was hoping to replace them with something that at least wouldn't throw their riders off. He got back a letter with a description that covered exactly what he had asked for. They would need to collect wood and twigs just after the trees had lost their leaves, let them air-dry over winter, carve the runes on them in the month before Easter and have them checked by the Runes professor, and then on Easter Monday Arrow would send an employee to help them assemble the brooms and make sure that they were safe. Professor Babbling agreed to sponsor a broom-making club and to advertise it to her fifth till seventh year classes. Harry was overwhelmed by the response. Seventy-six students, a majority of those taking Runes, wanted to join. Harry went to speak to Hagrid, to ask whether it would be possible to collect enough wood for that many brooms. Hagrid said that since magical wooden artefacts were best made with wood from magical trees, and that there were enough trees in the Forbidden Forest, but that they would need to cultivate woodlice, because it would take a lot to keep the bowtruckles from attacking. Harry was fascinated, there were so many details to take care of, but it sounded like it would work.
Professor Lockhart was worse than Professor Quirrell. The latter had only been difficult to understand, but the former didn't teach at all. Just spouted hot air. After reading one of his books, and having a quick look through the others, he had already had his doubts. Why had they been assigned books that didn't explain how to do a single spell? They were vague about the tactics used to defeat the various creatures and beings. And they spent far too much time on trivial details. Much like Lockhart himself during his classes. Harry started a rumour campaign to counteract the admiration the professor was getting from a majority of the students. Harry pointed out how the other teachers treated him with contempt. How he didn't teach anything they would need to know for their exams. How, after one of his lessons, if the students were to get into exactly the same situation, they still wouldn't know how to deal with the problem. He was not the only one who had launched a diatribe against him but in the beginning he got little traction. However, as the weeks went by and more people started to notice the lack of both practical and theoretical learning, the tide started to turn.
Harry also spoke to everybody who had helped keep track of all the points awarded and deducted and detentions assigned by Professor Snape. He told them of the success of getting a letter published in the Daily Prophet. Then, Harry suggested it would be more effective if his behaviour could be compared to that of the other three heads of house, or possibly all the teachers. Although that would require 126 students, unless one student covered more than one class, everybody was so fed up with Snape that they got enough volunteers to cover all classes.
During quidditch trials, Harry outflew Cho Chang for the Seeker position. Cho still managed to get on the team as a chaser. Harry thanked Cedric for lending him his broom, and ordered a Nimbus 2001 from Quality Quidditch Supplies. Harry may have been a natural flyer, the fact still was that he had only had a few flying lessons, and one year of watching other students playing. Therefore, in the beginning, practice was exhausting. He was glad that he had kept up his fitness over the holidays, and had talked many of the members of last year's duelling club into resuming their training, but still, during the first few weeks he knew exactly which muscles were not covered by his usual routine. In addition, after everybody had gotten used to their class schedule, the duelling club resumed.
At the end of September, someone knocked on the Common Room door. There were a few people who were sitting closer to the door, but when nobody got up, Harry went over intending to see who was there. Marietta Edgecombe, a third year, told him, "don't open."
"Why not?"
"Because it's Loony."
"Who or what is Loony?", Harry asked, but she just turned away, so Harry asked the nearest prefect, who also refused to answer. Harry figured that if Loony was a troll, they would stop him before he opened the door, and if it was a poltergeist or similar, he would just have to suffer any resulting indignity to learn something new. However, when he drew his wand and opened the door, there was only a student, a Ravenclaw student, and a first year by the look of it, so Harry put away his wand and said, "come in, I'm Harry."
"Thank you, Harry Potter, I'm Luna Lovegood."
"Would you like to join us, we're doing our homework?"
"Not now, but thank you for letting me in," and with that she went up to the dorms.
After that his things started disappearing. Harry was very familiar with bullying and the way bullies tried to isolate their victims with tactics like that, so he started to ward his possessions. It was a laborious process, but he decided to see it as good runes practice. Knowing that if he started out with mild defences he would risk a slowly escalating arms-race, which, with only two years' worth of Runes, he would lose, he went for as vicious as he could make it. When he found the shoes that had disappeared, they were soaking wet, but at least his things stopped disappearing.
The next time he saw Luna, he told her what he had done, and that his things had stopped disappearing, and would she like him to do the same to her things?
Luna declined, saying she didn't want to upset the Nargles.
Harry suggested that Professor Flitwick might know of a way to protect her things without upsetting the Nargles, but Luna was not interested. Luna did come to talk to him once in a while, especially when he was doing Runes in the library. Luna knew quite a bit, and she and Harry could both teach each other things.
As the weather grew colder, Harry started to hear a voice. Someone wanted to kill. 'Dobby's terrible plot,' Harry thought. On Halloween Filch's cat was petrified, and a message was left above her:
The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware.
Professor Binns had his two minutes of fame, and explained that one of the four founders of Hogwarts had created the Chamber of Secrets with a monster inside, to protect the school from Muggles, that only the Heir of Slytherin could control and unleash. A month went by and Colin Creevey, a muggle-born first-year was petrified. Panic reigned for a while, but because there was no target, it soon morphed into a general sense of unease.
During the Ravenclaw against Hufflepuff quidditch match, one of the bludgers wouldn't stop following Harry. Madam Hooch replaced it with a different bludger and Harry won his first game for Ravenclaw by catching the snitch. Days later, Harry broke his arm when someone hexed him as he was walking down the stairs. Unfortunately, Professor Lockhart was the first teacher on the scene and vanished all the bones in his arm. Harry spent a most unpleasant night in the hospital wing, during which Dobby came by and confessed to have been the one to hex Harry. Harry tried once more to convince him that Dobby was either going to succeed too well and get Harry killed, but he wasn't going to get Harry sent to a home where he didn't want to go anyway. Although Dobby let slip a few hints and then perpetrated bodily harm on himself, he seemed unable to say what was going on.
