Harry woke up the next day feeling unaccountably nervous about something, but then remembered what he wanted to do and the nervousness was easily explained. He was shivering but couldn't separate his nervousness and guilt from actually being cold. When he went down to breakfast with the three Hogwarts students (one of the girls formally introduced herself as Sarah Cyrilla), he tried to look innocent. His porridge wasn't as warming as usual.
After he finished eating, Harry went back up to his dormitory to spend a good hour with the Explicatrix, trying to figure out what it was that it was supposed to do. This time he tried yelling at it, rubbing it with his hands and attempt to crystal gaze with it. Nothing worked. Shaking his head at it, Harry turned to the lifeless staff sitting on his trunk. Raides sprang to life in his hand and immediately asked him to let her go so she could transform.
After he told her what he wanted to do --
"I really don't see how this is going to work, Harry," she said as if he was crazy, "I really don't. I mean, once you're found missing from Hogwarts, the next place they're going to search is Hayden's because you know damn well they aren't going to check with the Dursleys."
"I know," said Harry sheepishly, sitting heavily upon his bed, "but there just has to be a way."
"And if for reason you manage to find out how, if you take me to New York with you, how are you going to explain my absence? This is hopeless, Harry, as much as I want to go, too."
Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles in frustration. Deep down, he knew Raides was right but refused to believe her.
"Why can't you get your memory back!" he shouted furiously. "Someone must have put one seriously strong Memory Charm on you to stop you from remembering your 'magic so forbidden' but they also made you forget all your useful magic! There is a way to do this, there has to be..."
He quickly sat up from his bed as if there was something he just thought of doing but it was nothing more than to pace back and forth, thinking hard (but getting nowhere).
"Harry, you can't," said Raides in a matter-of-fact tone. "You go to New York, you won't be here. The minute someone comes looking for you and can't find you anywhere, you're busted."
"Then there has to be a way to trick everyone into thinking I'm here," said Harry as if there was nothing to it.
"How?" asked Raides blankly. "That would require constant Memory Charms to stop everyone from looking for you when they wanted to and to forget they could never find you. I don't think you want to Disapparate from here to there very often either because the farther you go, the harder it is and the harder it is, the greater chance of a splinch and we all know how fun that is," she finished grimly.
"You can do anything with magic," said Harry defiantly. "There's a spell out there to do this, I know there is. I wish Hermione was here," he said, gloomily thinking of how Hermione solved many of his problems, "she'd find it..."
"Yeah, well, she's several thousand miles away across an ocean and enjoying herself while spending time with Ron," Raides reminded Harry.
Raides moved out of the way as Harry, forgetting where he was standing, tried to sit on her; he fell onto the floor, scowling at her ("I'm not a couch").
"You could check the Restricted Section of the library," Raides said as Harry got up to sit upon his four-poster again. "Go tonight, use me to go invisible."
"Ha," said Harry victoriously, wasting no time and holding out his hand for Raides to jump into as the staff. "Why didn't I think of that? Forget later, we're going there now."
"Occare!" Harry shouted, pointing the crystal in Raides' mouth at himself -- and after making sure Raides and himself were both invisible, the two set off for the library, Harry paying no attention to the idea that Raides was invisible yet he could see her anyway.
Raides, not having proper hands, knocked many books off the shelves in an attempt to grab them with her front paws and tail. The two of them had been searching for a good ten minutes, both invisible, only able to see the other because they could both see invisible things ("Of course I can see invisible things," Raides had said when Harry asked if both of them being invisible would be a problem).
"If you knock down any more books, Mrs. Norris is going to go get Filch!" Harry hissed.
"You could always just possess her again," said Raides, grinning.
Harry shot her an extremely angry look and pulled Weird Wizarding Dilemmas off the shelf in front of him. He opened it up to look at the index and spotted a chapter devoted to being in two places at once. Heart thumping, Harry read the first paragraph.
Through the ages, time has become more demanding on people. You have to be stirring your potion as well as on your broom to an important meeting. Can't do both? This has led the way into a search for a way to be in two places at once to deal with such a problem.
And without even reading the rest of the page, Harry hurried over to Raides who was reading a toppled pile of books around the corner, her tail stuck up in the air.
"This is it," said Harry in a dramatic whisper, the book floating ominously down because his hand was invisible, still trying to ignore the fact that he shouldn't be able to see Raides.
"Found something, have you?" she asked, closing Wild Ways Around Your Wizarding Woes with a golden paw.
"I bet you anything the ancients had a spell for this," Harry went on fervently.
"Well go on, finish reading it."
Harry read, but there was no mention of any kind of spell, just that it had been looked into.
"A fat lot of help this was," said Harry angrily, waving his wand and watching all the books fly into their proper place.
"Haven't you learned anything from the Mark of Ancients and me?" Raides asked, shaking her head in shame.
"What?" barked Harry.
"Wave me around a bit while thinking. You're bound to come up with a spell."
Harry fixed her with a pale stare.
"I -- I'm still not comfortable with that..." he said cautiously.
"Do you want to go to New York or don't you?"
"No, I want to sit here until my eyeballs fall out," said Harry hotly. "Yes, of course I do!"
"Little ray of sunshine, aren't you?" asked Raides sarcastically.
"Don't know what you're talking about," Harry retorted casually.
"I'm trying to help."
"I see," Harry snapped.
"What are you snapping at me for?"
"I'm not --" Harry began angrily again, but then he stopped abruptly, fell heavily into the nearest chair and finished sheepishly with, "I am snapping out at you..."
"You be glad I don't walk out on my masters and that I'm to serve them until they die," said Raides, grinning.
"This is not the time to be cracking dumb jokes or mentioning me dying, Raides," Harry told her seriously.
"All right, all right... What do you want to do, then?"
"I want to find a way to make a copy of myself!"
Harry then held out his hand for Raides to jump into, waved her around stupidly and heard the words "Animus Speculum!" escape his mouth.
There was a flash of scarlet light, a shock from Raides that made Harry drop her ("Ouch," she said lazily), and before his eyes, out of thin air appeared a version of himself that was so much like the real thing the only thing reason he knew it wasn't was because it just appeared in front of him.
"That works," said Raides.
When Harry found his voice, he asked, "Why do you keep shocking me sometimes?"
Raides, the crystal in her mouth gone, replied, "Who knows. I was gone for ten thousand years. There's bound to be a surge of magic occassionally."
And then, his eyes finally believing he was staring at a mirror image of himself, "Is it safe to leave -- er -- me here?"
"Go on," said Harry's image which made both Raides and the real Harry's mouth drop. "I'm you. No one'll ever know."
Freaky wasn't the word for it, thought Harry. It looked exactly like him. It moved exactly like he did. It had his exact voice. It said everything in exactly the same way he would. It was wearing his clothes. It even scratched its head in confusion with its pointer finger then nervously flattened its bangs over the lightning-shaped scar on its forehead. The only difference between the real Harry and the image was that the image seemed to know what was going on.
"So -- so you're me," said the real Harry slowly. "Do you think the same way I do?" He stuck out a hand to touch the image's hand which was shivering (was it because he was cold or because he was scared?) in exactly the same fashion as he was.
"Does Professor Trelawney give that stupid look every time you look at her?" said the image.
"C'mon Raides," said the real Harry at once, "we're Disapparating to Whitewonder Tower."
"We're connected by Foresight!" called the image at Harry's retreating back.
It looked like Harry was in the clear. He had an exact copy of himself roaming Hogwarts and even he couldn't tell the difference. How would anyone ever find out? When Raides and Harry were up in Gryffindor Tower Raides said, "Hey, if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?"
"Right. So, let's get this over with," said Harry nervously once they were in Hogsmeade so he could Disapparate as it no longer worked at Hogwarts. "I'm starting to have second thoughts. Deliquesco!" Harry shouted, Raides in hand.
There was a popping noise and as Harry looked down at himself to make sure he hadn't been splinched, he realized that he wasn't exactly in a building. He wasn't even in a friendly environment. All those pairs of red eyes looking back at him angrily was what made him drop the staff clutched for safety in his hand and Raides turn back into the great golden and scarlet lion.
"I didn't think we'd actually end up in the right spot," said Raides as Harry involuntarily recoiled in fear; there were a bunch more pairs of eyes poking themselves out.
The two of them had Disapparated near a cave, the ground beneath them a rusted metal color, the sky above them instead solid rock and the only light was provided by a weak, dancing flame set inside a huge glass plate, resting on a one foot tall stone stand.
As Harry saw the owner of one particularly cold set of eyes, he saw that it was a mountain troll, a large, twelve foot tall mountain troll carrying a particularly big club, an evil glint in its tiny eyes. But there wasn't just one of them. There were about thirty. And they were on all sides.
A loud roar behind Harry made him stop walking backwards and wheel around only to meet the eyes of creatures with large, greyish purple bodies, a humped back, two very long horns on their heads and walking on large, four-thumbed feet. He didn't need to listen to his instinct to know what those growls of hunger meant. There were about thirty of those, too.
"Raides," Harry choked, turning his head to the seven foot lion next to time that was looking like all her dreams had come true. Was she really capable of killing everything around them without at least Harry dying?
The trolls and the other creaures, he recognized as graphorns from Hagrid's classes were closing in but that wasn't going to be all their troubles. There was a manticore rearing its head which was that of a man. Its body resembled Raides' and it's tail was that of a scorpion. It was crooning softly which told Harry it had recently eaten something.
And to top it all off, the humongous silhouette of a gigantic leopard was coming slowly into view. Though it was far away, there was no mistaking the size of it; it was a nundu, the most dangerous beast known to wizard kind.
One of the graphorns lunged at Harry but he managed to get out of the way of its horns as it soared passed him. He stepped on an imp, which made a cracking noise and he knew he had broken its bones as he stampeded over it.
"RAIDES!" screamed Harry, dodging a rock thrown by another imp, shaking its fist angrily at him.
He took refuge by what he could only see as being a Fire Turret, except that the turret wasn't firing. One arm covering his head, the other clutching the Order of Merlin plaque he was crouched low to the ground. For a good fifteen minutes Harry stayed there, listening to gross squishy noises, the cracking of bones, Raides' unmistakable roars, cries of pain and cries of death, dreading the moment when Raides died. Except it didn't come.
More times than one he felt something hit his back or would hear the splatter of what, when it first happened, he thought was water but turned out to be blood. One time a graphorn head rolled his way, severed off its body. As hard as Raides tried, when a troll went flying over Harry, the fact that its stomach was ripped open, spraying blood all over the place, showering the ground as it flew past and, consequently, Harry, couldn't be helped.
At one point, he heard lots of crunching.
"You can look, now," said Raides.
Harry, shaking, slowly stood up and saw a large pile of bones next to Raides. For a while he couldn't believe it, that Raides had actually killed everything including the nundu and manticore, two of the most dangerous creatures alive. But when he surveyed the battlegrounds, there was a lot of skin strips, pieces of horn, hair and blood. Harry himself looked like he had done some killing of his own with his bare hands. He stood there until what he saw in front of him sank into his slightly numb brain.
And when he could do something more than stare, he waved his wand at himself, cleaning his clothing and Raides.
Still invisible, Harry said, "We should find Whitewonder Tower so we can get inside but we ought to clean up that -- er -- pile of..."
With a wave of his wand, the entire pile of bones ignited on fire and within a few seconds, had burned to cinders. When the smoke had cleared and all that was left was a single bone for Raides to chew on, she pointed her golden tail at the huge lettering behind them that said Whitewonder Tower.
"You weren't that off-course, considering..." Raides commented thoughtfully.
Trotting happily along Harry's side and clenching her jaws tightly on her bone, Raides followed him into the strikingly white building made entirely out of marble. Now that he had a chance to look around, he saw that the school was set inside what looked like a large cave dug out of the ground. The ceiling made out of rock rose hundreds of feet above them and though they were underground, it almost felt like being outside. There was no sunlight but all along the towering ceiling were small torches. Above the grand entrance of the tower that rose almost touching the rocky ceiling, there were dancing blue-white flames forming the words Paladin Laurence Patrick Hayden's Manhattan School of Wizardry.