The Snake-who-lived
"When a wizard goes over ter the Dark Side, there's nothin' and no one that matters to 'em anymore."
Rubeus Hagrid
Chapter 10: The grey-paged book
When Harry woke up, he found himself staring at the ceiling of the infirmary room. By now, it was a rather familiar ceiling. He had been in this room more times than he cared to remember.
Remember
"Percy!" he gasped, sitting up. All at once, a powerful headache assaulted him, reminding him that, perhaps, moving quickly after taking a fifty feet drop was not a good idea. Blindly, he grabbed for his glasses and put them on his nose.
On a bed not too far away, Percy Weasley was laying down, frozen still, like a statue. His left hand was clenched around nothing, his face, unlike Norris, was one out outrage and surprise. He was half-covered by the drape – although it was a rather futile gesture, considering he wouldn't feel the cold anyhow – and his glasses were lying on the bedside table.
Harry sighed. As much as he disliked the prefect, he hadn't wished for anything like this to happen to him.
"Ah, Mister Potter. Finally awake, I see." Madam Pomfresh said, holding a tray of food. "You are completely healed. One of your ribs pierced your lungs, so take it easy for the next three days and you should be all right."
"umm… what happened to the Bludger? Why was it acting like that?" Harry asked, puzzled.
"The headmaster couldn't find anything odd about it, oddly enough." The nurse replied, depositing the tray near Harry. "Eat then leave."
Harry nodded and looked around. "Um… Was Blaise here?"
"Miss Zabini? Yes. She categorically refused to leave your side, until Mr Weasley came in. By now, I believe most of Slytherin should know the news."
"He's… all right, right? Just petrified…"
"Yes." The woman gave him a look. "Eat."
Quickly, he obeyed. As soon as the first bite was swallowed, he realized exactly how hungry he was. The last bit of food he had eaten had been what little he had been able to swallow during the breakfast, the day before. Before he knew it, he had finished and was asking for seconds.
The door of the infirmary suddenly opened. Hoping that, perhaps, it was Blaise or Draco, Harry looked up…
…it wasn't them.
Three students entered the room. All three were tall, all three were male, and all three had red hair and freckles. All three were also related to the newest victim. They were Ron, Fred and George Weasley.
"Merlin… Percy!" Ron gasped as soon as he entered.
The twins stayed silent, but their expressions of horror revealed their feelings better than words ever could.
Behind them, in the doorway, McGonagall stared, mouth open. Apparently, she couldn't believe it either.
The three brothers went to the prefect's sides, but stayed silent. Harry understood perfectly. He could only see one of the twins' faces – there was still no way for him to discern them – but the only expression there was shock and a good dose of remorse, as if he was remembering all the pranks he had pulled on his older brother.
"Professor McGonagall, if you'd please move out of the way," A voice said from outside the infirmary. He recognized that voice. It was Professor Snape.
The elderly woman quickly realized she was blocking the path and swiftly moved out of the way, allowing another red-head inside, followed by her head of house.
Seeing Ginny's horrified face was ten times harder than her brothers, for Harry. She let out a shrill shriek and dashed to his side.
"What are you doing here?" he heard Ron hiss.
"He's my brother, too!" She replied loudly, before turning to the petrified one. "…"
The twins suddenly got up.
"We'll catch whoever's doing this." The one he could see said, determination on his face.
"And they'll pay for messing with this family." The other one agreed with a nod.
In his bed, Harry nodded as well, seeing Ginny sob silently. He still owed the Weasleys, and Ginny was his friend.
'I'll catch whoever it is.' He vowed. 'And I'll make damn sure he's stopped.'
His breakfast ended, Harry got up and swiftly walked out of the room, ignoring the glare Ron shot at him and barely avoiding running into a worried-looking fifth year Ravenclaw Prefect, the same one who had slapped Percy before. As he walked down the multiple stairways of Hogwarts, he felt rather than heard the rumor – Percy had been attacked. Percy Weasley, a prefect, pure-blood from a Muggle-loving family, had been attacked. That was the fact. The result of the attack, however, was what the rumors were all about. Some said he was dead, others, right, said he was petrified, like Norris. A small minority hoped that Percy had defeated the monster and was simply in the infirmary to recover from the ordeal.
What was obvious was the resulting panic. Percy Weasley had been a pure-blood. Public opinion decided it was because his family was pro-Muggle. And so, everyone, even pure-bloods, suddenly became especially jumpy.
The Slytherin common room was in an uproar. The good news just kept on coming – Their spectacular, and rather humiliating, flat-out victory against the Gryffindor Quidditch team (280-10, he heard), and now, the petrification of the school's most hated Gryffindor Prefect. The many, many pieces of trash littering the floor proved that the dungeons had been lively from a party.
However, he couldn't find his friends. Xu and Emma were sitting on their usual sofa, doing their homework.
"Oh, hello, Harry." Xu said, looking up from the parchment page one second, before returning to it, her thin eyes squinting further, as if she was reading something very hard to understand. Harry replied with a nod.
"Where are Draco and Blaise?" He asked.
"They left a while ago, going to see that Muggle-born girl… erm…"
"Heh-mao-nee." Xu supplied, not looking up.
"Right." Emma said, thanking the other girl. "Apparently, they didn't think you'd be up so soon… you took quite a fall."
"Good thing Benlaoshi no touch you, would make it worse."
"Bunlaoshi?" Harry asked, blinking and mispronouncing.
"Her nickname for Professor Lockhart." Emma said, frowning. "She refuses to say what it means, though."
From Xu's sadistic and satisfied smirk, he guessed it was nothing pleasant.
Finding their location was a simple matter. Where else would the three Slytherins go and meet their Gryffindor friend than in "their" empty classroom, where they had taken to meeting each other during the previous year – usually to discuss the stone, Quirrell or, in Blaise's case, to eat tons of candy.
He was right. The brass door opened on the familiar, well-lit, small room on the third floor, near the charms classrooms. Inside, he saw Draco, sprawled on a chair, looking rather bored, Blaise, wrestling a red Bertie Bott's bean from Ginny, and a rather annoyed Hermione, who was shuffling through an exemplary of Hogwarts, a History.
To his surprise, Ginny didn't look all that sad. However, when he looked for a little longer, he definitely saw that her eyes didn't have that… glittering quality to them, as if she was shielding her feelings away.
"Hey Harry!" Draco called, smirking. "Want to play Chess?"
Knowing that agreeing to that was as intelligent as switching OWL results with Crabbe or Goyle, he politely refused with a: "Hell no."
"Why does everyone say that?" Draco wasn't whining. After all, Malfoys don't whine. They complain, instead. "Is it because I'm the uncontested king of chess?"
"Ron is as good as you are." Hermione flatly noted, her nose still in the book.
"I told you, it was a lucky break! A fluke!" he vehemently protested.
With a snort and a shake of his head, Harry sat down on a desk between Draco and Blaise, who had successfully pulled the red bean out of the younger yet taller girl's grasp and quickly threw it in her mouth, only to gag and spit it across the room.
"Blood! Ugh!"
"Thanks, then." Ginny said with a smirk.
"Grr, there's NOTHING in this!!" Hermione growled, slamming the book shut and shoving it on the nearest desk.
"Hey, careful!" Draco yelped, grabbing the book. "That thing costs a lot, you know!"
"Oh, I'm sure your finances are devastated." She retorted flatly, sulking. "But there's nothing in it that I don't already know…"
"About what?"
"The legend of the chamber of secrets." Hermione said. "Professor Binns told us a bit about it, how the heir opens the room and uses the monster in it to kill off those of Muggle blood, but that's all it says in it!"
Blaise turned to Draco, giving him a flat look. "Wasn't it 'an old legend, passed on only among the highest-ranked, strictly-Slytherin families'?"
Draco shrugged. "Hey, all it takes is one tell-tale…"
Ignoring them, Harry asked Hermione: "What were you looking for, then?"
"Anything!" The girl replied. "And I still can't believe Hogwarts, a History doesn't have anything about it… it's the most complete resource on anything School-related. It's supposed to tell everything."
"Well, if nobody found anything else than that about the legend, except the heir," Ginny calmly said, her voice softer than usual, "it's normal that it only has that much information in it, isn't it? It's not an all-knowing book."
"Or a clair Bible." Draco added.
Hermione sighed. "You're right. But… I mean… it's disappointing."
"Ah, yes. Our resident bookworm, deceived by her one, true love…" The platinum-haired boy said with a fake swoon, hugging Hogwarts, a History tightly.
"Draco, did I ever tell you you're an insufferable prat?"
"I don't believe I've had that honor yet," Draco replied honestly in an exaggerated Elizabethan accent, "but I thank you, bushy-haired lady, and add that you, at times, are one yourself."
"Git."
Few days passed calmly. Ginny, with the help of Emma and Xu, seemed to come out of it. Pretty soon, Harry saw her grin, while writing in that little black book he knew was her diary.
The shock of the attack settled and suspicious had began to arise. The fact that Harry had, once again, been alone at the time of the attack – it wasn't known Blaise had been with him – he was once again pointed at. But very few agreed, this time. After all, he had received, as far as the rumor mill was concerned, a broken rib, perforated lung, broken arm – some even said it had become infected and had been amputated and grown back magically – and, to the limit, a concussion and broken skull. Those few who had claimed he was in a coma had taken rather sheepish looks when he had walked in front of them, though.
That lifted the ridiculous theory that there was a Harry Potter impersonator in school. Nobody believed that one.
As for Hermione, she had simply given up on finding information on the Chamber itself. Instead, she searched the library for anything petrification-related, hoping to get a clue on who was the heir through how he had managed to petrify people. However, even with Harry and Draco helping – Blaise had steadfastly refused, saying she had spent enough time 'booking around' last year – they didn't manage to find anything. Hermione was livid.
"There has to be something!!" She declared with the same tone of voice as someone holding on a belief like a lifeline.
"Well, if there's information about this anywhere, it's in there." Draco said, pointing a the entrance to the restricted section. "And there's no way Pince will let us through, even with a word from the teachers. Besides, we need to know exactly what we want."
"And we don't." Harry said.
"Unless there's a book called: 'Petrification for dummies', I think not." The boy replied.
The solution was easily found. It was located in Harry's trunk, between his Weasley sweater and a pair of clean robes. His invisibility cloak.
The plan was simple and riskless – at least, for Draco and Blaise.
Harry would go in alone, grab the first book on petrification he could find then run back to the common room. When he tried to ask why he was going alone, he received this for an answer:
"It's stealthier to go alone. And if we were caught red-handed, it would look very bad, especially lately."
"Besides, you're not hoping a lady like me to risk her schooling, right?"
Dejectedly, wondering, for the thousandth time, exactly why he was doing this, Harry silently pushed the doors of the library open. Madam Pince was asleep, in her office. He knew, however, that the sound insulation was very bad – from less fortunate Slytherins' stories.
He made it in the restricted section without any trouble. It was just as he remembered it, from last year. Eerie, dark, filled with soft, undecipherable whispers. Harry half expected a mist to form around him. Pulling his wits around him, he scouted around for his goal.
'Petrification has to be in the dark magic section.' He thought, looking at the plates. Finding the right row near the deepest end of the section, he began to search for anything petrification-related.
Ok. Insert a pause, here.
Harry Potter is brave. Yes. He is also powerful, capable of casting a spell most wizards are unable to do at the tender age of 13. However, he does have failings. He is very stubborn, quite reckless and, most of all, has an insatiable curiosity.
After all, who was it that looked into Dumbledore's Pensieve, even though he knew touching anything magical without knowing what it is was rather foolish?
[Censored for non-OotP readers] And who is it that, rather recklessly, took another look into -----'s Pensieve, even though he perfectly knew what it was, and how ----- would react?
Ok. Unpause. I just wanted to clear this up.
The books were all mostly unattractive; either because they were huge, either because they had odd, weird or creepy titles, or because the books themselves were rather weird or creepy. The titles varied between: '10 easy steps to get rid of your neighbor' to 'the ten most painful tortures'. Surely both of those were best sellers, but not quite what he was looking for. He finally stopped in front of a large dark purple book.
The dark magic lexicon
'…Professor Snape said petrification was of the most advanced dark magic…' Harry thought. 'I guess there might be something in this…'
After carefully slipping the dusty book out of the way, Harry was rather surprised to see it didn't look nearly as creepy as the other books in the section. Its pages were grey, but didn't look old. Knowing the way the magical world worked, he supposed the pages had been made grey.
Then, he opened it.
The first page was blank.
The second page as well.
The third page didn't want to turn.
Blinking, Harry shrugged. 'Pince probably sealed it because it's dangerous.' He thought, closing it and slipping it back to where it was. After being rid of the book, he got up again and started to search for anything on petrification…
*Swooop*
Quidditch training kicked in as he heard something coming at him quickly. Unconsciously, he twisted to the side, hitting his forehead on a bookshelf. Said bookshelf broke in a sinister cracking and all the books it held stumbled to the ground, some of them opening. Unfortunately, his old friend from last year, the screaming book, opened as well.
Cursing under his breath, Harry looked at what had caused him to dodge so disastrously.
The grey-paged book was hovering before him, open on the first page. Where there was nothing but grey before, an eerie, blood red writing was now scribbled across the page.
Do not try to get rid of me, Harry Potter
"What in the name of Merlin is going on in here?!" He heard Pince ask as she quickly walked in the restricted section.
Quickly deciding leaving a book with his name written in it in the dark arts area of the restricted section was a "capital B" Bad idea. Harry caught it from mid-air, snuffed it in his backpack and quickly left, careful not to bother any closed books and not to step on the open ones – especially not that menacing one with the fangs.
Barely avoiding colliding into Pince, Harry silently ran away. Luckily, Pince had left the chain unhooked and the way for his exit wide and clear.
He managed to get in the Slytherin common room, out of breath. Draco and Blaise had both decided to make it as un-suspicious as possible and had said they wouldn't wait for him.
Harry was grateful, because it let him look at the grey-paged book he had snitched away.
Angrily, he threw his backpack down on his usual seat, opened it and pulled the offending book out. Opening it at the first page, where the message had disappeared, Harry glared.
"Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have got me through?!"
A second after the last word was said, another message wrote itself in the same, blood-red ink.
Do write in me, it will look less suspicious, and will not make you look like you are losing it. And as for getting you into trouble, I apologize. I have spent a long time in that damned Library, and desperately wanted to get out. You were my first opportunity in fifty-three years.
'I managed to get the only possessed book that's polite.' Harry thought wryly. Taking a quill and inkpot from his backpack, he wrote back.
Sorry, it's the first time I talk to a talking book.
The answer came a few seconds later.
I see. Is there anything you're looking for?
Quickly, Harry's quill was sent to work again.
I'm looking for information on Petrification curses.
There is no petrification curse that I know of. There is, however, a petrification ritual, and a blood-freezing curse that has about the same effect, minus the life-preserving quality of petrification.
The words were written, but it didn't stop Harry from reading the tone as rather cold-hearted. They were cold, technical and quite emotionless, as if it didn't care about the possible victim.
'It's a book.' He reminded himself. 'Of course it doesn't care.' Choosing the most likely one in the list, he wrote again:
I'd like to know about the ritual, if it's possible.
Very Well. Please remove your hands from me.
Obeying quickly, Harry wasn't all that surprised to see a final message flash before his eyes—
Thank you
--before the pages suddenly whipped open, as if someone was blowing air on them. They stopped on a full page, this time. The magic spell itself was written in an odd manner, as if it was some kind of mix between a potion and a charm.
Petrification ritual
Difficulty level: High
Time required in preparation: six months
Effect: Freezes the selected victim into stone. As stone is eternal, yet incapable of thought, the petrified person will not change, nor be able to act in any way. Waking up from the ritual effect – which can only be done through the effect of a mandrake draught or a counter-ritual – feels like waking up from a long sleep. The victim has no memories of the petrified time.
Required ingredients:
Harry didn't read any further. It wasn't possibly that. The preparation time was much, much too long for the seemingly spontaneous attacks. Plus, the image drawn beside the text showed someone standing over someone else, who was laying down in a blood red devil's star pattern, with candles on each point. It looked like stuff that might be taken from an old, clichéd movie.
'Apparently, those movies are accurate.'
However, as accurate as they were, there was no sign of any drawings or candle wax on the floor during either of the attacks.
The pages suddenly twitched and Harry found himself pulling his hands out quickly, a second before the book turned itself back to page one.
Did you find what you were looking for?
Taking his quill, he wrote one word: No.
Ah, then I am sorry I could not help. The book replied. I believe it is late. You should go to sleep.
Harry let out a yawn and closed the book. It was right. His watch told him it was some time after midnight, impossible to tell in the dim light – and his lack of attention due to drowsiness. In his tired state, he did not notice the book floating back into his backpack, carrying his invisibility cloak along with the inkpot and quill, nor the backpack following him up the stairs. When he lay down on the bed, barely avoiding crushing Nemesis in the process, his mind was already sleeping. Hence, he did not notice the backpack laying itself down by his bed, on his unlocked trunk.
Author's notes:
There are two anime cameos in this chapter, although the first one is rather hard to spot. It's actually more like a famous quote from that anime… The other is painfully obvious.
Special thanks to Simply Myself for helping my atrocious Chinese.
That's all for now ^_-
ANSWERS TO THE GENETICALLY MUTATED TWO-HEADED DOG/SNAKE HYBRIDS OF THE REVIEWERS:
General Review response about the Percy thing: Wait 'till the end of this, I'll answer it then ^_-.
King Jasbon: Draco already knows Dobby is up to something. As for the last part… well… hehe, secret.
Simply Myself: Thanks for the Chinese info. I know about as much Chinese as Zimbabwean, whatever language that is. 20 cents a minute? Geez, that's cheap. If I had to pay that much, I'd empty up Bill Gates' account in a few days. Thanks for reviewing and welcome back!
RaistlinofMetallica: Perfectly understandable. And thank you! I enjoyed doing the PRAT class, too ^_^
Flummox: I noticed you did a shameless plug for me in your bio, lol. Thanks. Yes he is. Flint is cruel, evil, sadistic and not nice. I honestly have no idea what Snape was thinking when he let his team under Flint's lead… which is rather bad, considering I could have him kicked off – or killed off - at any moment. Mwahaha. Author power. ^_- EVIL, eh? Ends in Very Insane Laughter, maybe. Personally, I like doing Lockhart's classes. Does it show? Mwahaha. Yes, I'm evil. Yay for Snape indeed, imagine the mess that would have happened if Lockhart had de-boned his ribs!! Yes, definitely. Either sailor moon or Ah, Megami-sama. But those aren't as bad. Well, I hope I torn you out of your boredom for another ten minutes of your existence… ^_-
VMorticia: Hehe. True. I'd say poor both. Definitely scary, Harry/Hagrid, lol. It's fun to have a character that barely speaks English, you can mess around with slang she doesn't know. Voldemort…. Using my FISHER PRICE VOICE THIGNY(tm)? Hmm… I dunno if I'd like to give it to him.
BF110C4: Everyone has their hobbies, I guess. As for Snape, well… that's what I was afraid of. Lol. He'll be nastier in book 3. Right now, though… He's still nasty, just not to Harry. And since the story is told from Harry's POV, it shows on his side. Look at JK's description of him in book 1. She makes him look like he doesn't have the smallest good quality in him.
Kimara: I can't really break off the planned set of scenes I have decided on, at least, not until Christmas (And that chapter's a treat, lol, can't wait to write it up)
Jordan: Lost your K's this time, didn't ya? Well, here you go. Updated! And yes, losing his ribs would have been a little more difficult for Harry to do important things, like… umm… breathe?
Mella deRanged: As I wrote above, all this will be explained later.
Fanfic Fan: Thank you!
