Training with Maurice, as it turned out, was...okay. Just okay. It was supposed to be an hour every Sunday, but it ended up being more like three quarters of one, since Maurice usually came a bit late and ended the lesson a bit early. He also didn't seem to be as into it as Alduin was. But it wasn't terrible, and Harry supposed it kept his hand in well enough.

The rest of the school year was going okay, too. Harry found that this year, there were two more people he needed to avoid in the school corridors, beside the usual Filch and Peeves: Colin Creevey and Lockhart.

Colin seemed to have an obsessive need to take pictures of him, or at least to shout greetings to him across a corridor full of people or half the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. Lockhart, in his turn, seemed desirous of discussing Harry's popularity with him ever since that article in the Prophet. He took to going to his desk after class, and asking him questions about Alduin's plans and whether his reluctance to speak to the media was, in his opinion, a viable strategy. Harry had no idea what to answer and so he usually just stood there, feeling awkward, until one of the other Gryffindors rescued him by pointing out that they really needed to get to the next class. Tuesdays were hellish, though – Defence was their last class of the day, and so there was no readily available excuse. Harry had already spent two hours there once, only Neville remaining bravely by his side, and it was dinner what rescued him.

There was probably nothing to be done about Lockhart – though Alduin kept hinting, in his letters, that he'll certainly not allow for a teacher who harassed him so much to remain the whole year. About Colin, though...after a few weeks of this, Harry approached Ginny Weasley as she was sitting alone in the common room, doing her homework.

"Hey," he said. "May I sit down?"

"Yeah, sure," she replied. "What is it?"

"Well, Colin's in your year, right?"

"Yeah," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Well, do you think you could tell him to tone it down a little? I mean...he's getting really unbearable."

Ginny sighed. "Do you think he's less overenthusiastic to us? I told you he was insufferable. I tried telling him already, but it's pointless."

Sophie entered the common room in that moment, and spotting Harry, headed towards them. "Hey, Harry," she said, "where's everyone?"

"Neville's in the library, looking for some book on Herbology or other. The rest, I have no clue."

"With Ron, I'd bet sleeping or eating – or playing chess, since it's too dark for Quidditch," Ginny said, and Sophie giggled.

"Well it's after dinner and to early to sleep," she said, "so I bet it's chess. Good for him, means he found someone to play with him and will stop badgering me."

"Tell me about it. The years when the twins were at school but he was still at home, it was all the time."

"Don't you like chess?" Harry asked.

Ginny shook her head. "Don't have the head for it," she said.

"Neither do I," Sophie agreed. "Or maybe I would have if I cared more about the game, but it's just so damn boring! My step-dad tried to teach me even before I went to Hogwarts, but...no."

"So Muggles play chess as well?" Ginny asked, surprised. "But I mean, the figures are charmed, so how can they…?"

Sophie started to explain, and Harry, who just noticed Ron and Neville coming in, excused himself and left them there to go see where his friends have been.

He kept thinking about Ginny and Sophie, though. He had been seeing them together a lot since the school year started, and it took him a while to realize why it seemed so strange. But now he had it. It was the first time he saw Sophie spending any amount of time with a girl.

He used the next chance he spoke to her without Ginny to ask about it. Sophie she just shrugged. "Ginny is an only girl with a lot of brothers, like me," she said. "I think we have a lot in common."

Harry supposed that made sense. "So Parvati and Lavender don't have any brothers?" He asked. He didn't recall them mentioning any, but that might not mean anything.

Sophie thought about it. "Do you know that I'm not sure?" She said. "But I'd guess not. I can't imagine how they'd survive if they did," she added under her breath. Harry wasn't entirely sure what that meant, and Sophie didn't look like she was about to explain, so he simply shrugged it off.

He was happy that Ginny had found a friend at Hogwarts, anyway, since Ron tended to roll his eyes whenever she joined them. She didn't seem to mind too much, but still, Harry supposed it must be irritating.

He was even more glad he had the mirror to communicate than he had been last year, not only because he could contact Alduin in cases like the pixies disaster – though Lockhart had stuck to reading from his books in classes ever since then, and having Harry play act certain parts, to his horror – but because he could actually see Wynn, and watch him growing. The boy had managed sitting without support by the end of September, and when Alduin propped the mirror in front of his son for Harry to see, Wynn tried, every time without fault, to reach for his cousin behind the glass, and usually toppled over, which was sometimes accompanied by crying. "He will learn one day," Alexandra had said with a laugh the last time they conversed, before taking her son into her arms.

She'd been laughing less than was usual for her lately, and Alduin explained that was because Wynn was now teething, which meant less sleep and more crying. Apparently, being a parent was very exhausting!

Another new thing this year was Pansy trying to make peace with him without actually apologizing, something Harry was determined not to give in to. Besides, it was very amusing watching her to do her best to try and be kind. Perhaps she would get into the habit? Harry tried not to get his hopes up, especially as Draco told him that there were no signs of her being any kinder outside of Harry's presence.

Harry also hadn't forgotten about his mission of finding the mysterious diary, but he had had no luck so far. He and his fellow Gryffindors had carefully studied the books on desks of every student in all of their classes, and every little book anyone took out in the Common Room, library or Great Hall, and 'accidentally' kicked over bags of several students considered likely candidates to be able to help them gather their things and use the opportunity to look through them.

Snape, too, had been doing a lot of random searches for contraband in classes lately, and Harry wondered whether Alduin had told him about the situation.

But still, as far as he knew, nothing.

Nothing until the moment Sophie ran down the stairs to the girls' dormitories one evening, grabbed Neville, Harry and Ron and literally dragged them out. "Parvati and Lavender," she said, "have a magical diary."

"What?" Harry asked, shocked.

"Or I should say Parvati has one, really, but she shared it with Lavender and shows it to her. They kept it from me, but I came up on them unexpectedly and they didn't manage to hide it, and they tried denying they were doing something, and I...well, I guess they could see I was kinda upset about that, and so Parvati relented and said it was a magical diary...it wrote back to them and everything, and she said it can even show them things."

"Do you think it can be…?" Harry whispered, and Neville nodded very gravely.

Harry took out his multi-way mirror, and called Alduin immediately.

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In addition to everything else on his plate, Alduin was currently fighting the feeling of guilt. Even more of it, that was, than what was usual for him.

It had been his encouragement – no, his direct invitation - that made Anil Patil found the Muggle Research Institute, after all. It was he who had painted a big target on Anil's forehead, or rather, on his daughter's. Of course, he never expected there could be retaliation of this sort in the cards, but still. He was the one who knew the relevant players. If someone should have predicted the resistance against the idea of the Institute could turn violent, it should have been him. Certainly not Anil, who usually did his best to stay out of the Ancient Houses dramatics in spite of his sister marrying into one, and who tended to mind his own business. And now his daughter had been targeted in response.

Lucius didn't want to go against Alduin, certainly not at this point. It was too risky. Alduin had spent the last two years diligently accumulating political capital, and he had had a very good starting position. He was a young war hero, pitied for his years of coma, his lost family and lost love, popular because of his wedding and small child, and the fact that he was Harry Potter's guardian. In eyes of the public, at the moment, he could do no wrong. And as for the Noble families, he managed to renew his old friendships and ties, and especially his two great-aunts from his father's side had ensured that he was connected by blood relations to most relevant Ravenclaw families. Harry guaranteed his ties to the Gryffindor ones. Also, his nine years of coma when he had been only gaining, not loosing, money, led to a significant increase of his wealth, and he was even now adding to it – it was, after all, cheaper to run a house with only three or four people than one like the Burke Manor, where eleven people lived at the moment, and all of them needed to be maintained in style.

Lucius, on the other hand, while still being certainly the richest head of an Ancient family – having to support only three people helped him as well – and the one with the most influence at the Ministry, had many things going against him. A number of wizards were afraid of him, which on one hand made them reluctant to go directly against him, but on the other, made them very unenthusiastic about any close ties as well. He had no loyalty, except perhaps from the Crabbes and Goyles. The ex-Death Eaters stuck together in a way, but chiefly because they had too much blackmail material on each other. The rest of polite society kept their distance, in small but significant ways. Why, just a few days ago, Alduin had witnessed Perpetua Burke shooing her children away from Narcissa Malfoy on some transparently made-up excuse when she judged they had spent too much time with her. Perpetua Burke, whose own mother-in-law was Narcissa's aunt! Narcissa bore it with perfect poise, of course, as always, but nevertheless, it was significant.

Lucius owed Alduin in this, too, for encouraging Harry's friendship with Draco. That might have been an additional reason why the man didn't go against him directly. He chose to attack Anil's family instead, and hope to discredit the entire Institute that way, and so make them lose any chance to pass the laws Alduin had spent so long lobbying for.

But Lucius had miscalculated, had relied on the loyalty of his house elf overmuch, and if Alduin could only get his hands on the diary...well, then one of his main goals ever since he woke from that coma would be over and done with.

Alduin briefly considered Floo-calling Dumbledore, but the same thing that had stalled his hand until now did so again. He was not entirely certain that Dumbledore was safe from the Ravenclaw dangers he had warned Harry against. He might wish to find and open the Chamber with the hopes of studying it. He might want to use it a some kind of trap for Riddle, or whatever his misguided reasoning had been last year. He had proven in the past that he was entirely willing to risk student lives. Alduin had been ready to turn to him if there was no progress in the search before Halloween, or if there were signs of acute danger, but Harry outdid himself once again and it seemed it would just be a matter of time now until he got his hands on the diary. So no, if possible, he would leave Dumbledore out of it once again.

However, it was time to contact Severus Snape once more.

Sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of his fireplace, the professor scowled when he heard Alduin's news. "If I'm still not to tell Dumbledore – and I'm not saying that I disagree with your reasoning – that what do you expect of me?"

"If you could find an innocuous way to look through Parvati Patil's things again, it would be great, though I believe she keeps the diary in her dormitory. Chiefly, I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye on her mental state. If you see a marked shift, we would need to act more quickly."

Snape merely nodded. "It is an interesting choice," he said then in a slightly mocking drawl, "to trust this to the Head of Slytherin. The search I could understand – there was, after all, a slightly bigger chance that the diary would be found on one of my students, and you don¨t have access to the school yourself. But telling me the identity of the Gryffindor in question, and potentially giving me quite an opportunity to find the diary..."

Alduin shrugged. "When it comes to those at Hogwarts who can be absolutely trusted no to be on Riddle's side, it's between you and Dumbledore – and McGonnagal, I suppose, but she would never agree to keep this quiet – and I trust you more than I trust him. It's that simple."

"Indeed," Snape muttered, his voice perfectly neutral.

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Harry and his friends had been instructed to try and steal the diary for a moment, to check whether it really was the one in question. But this was a thing easier said than done.

First, Sophie had to observe very carefully to find out where Parvati kept it, unless she wanted to ruffle through all of the other girl's stuff and draw attention to herself. Then they would need to ensure that neither Parvati nor Lavender were in the dormitory when they took the diary, but they'd cross that bridge when the came to it. For now, they were biding their time.

But they waited for Sophie to spot the hiding place, another very strange thing happened. Harry and his friends went to the library after dinner to do some last-minute work on a homework due the next day, and as they were returning to the Gryffindor tower just before curfew, Harry suddenly stopped. "Wait!" He said. "What is it?"

"What is what?" Ron asked.

"The voice!"

"I don't hear anything," Neville muttered.

But Harry did. "Come… come to me… Let me rip you.. .Let me tear you.. .Let me kill you…" a voice murmured, a voice so cold that Harry had never heard such a thing in his life - except from Riddle a year ago.

"It was right here!" He cried.

Ron gave him a strange look. "No it wasn't," he said.

"Maybe we just didn't hear it," Neville pointed out. "What did it say?"

Harry shuddered. "That it wanted to kill someone. It sounded like it meant it, too."

Now Neville looked worried. "Do you think it could be the monster from the chamber?" He asked.

"I don't think it talks, do you?" Harry shuddered once again. "Let's get back to Gryffindor tower," he said. "I don't much fancy a walk in the corridors tonight."

Harry waited a little anxiously the next morning to see if there wouldn't be a report of someone being hurt, but all was calm. However, he'd penned a letter to Alduin detailing the evens last night, and during breakfast, as he had half-expected, he could feel the mirror burning in his pocket.

"Harry," Alduin said very urgently as soon as Harry removed himself to somewhere with less people around, "you need to get the diary as soon as possible."

"You think the voice is related…?" Harry asked, confused. Had Neville been right? "But, I mean, I thought the monster was supposed to be a...well, a beast? They can't talk, can they?"

Alduin rubbed his eyes. "Harry, can you get privacy, please? Complete privacy?"

Casting an apologetic look at his friends, Harry left them standing in the corridor where they'd followed him and found an empty classroom. "So, Harry," Alduin spoke again, "what is the coat of arms animal of Slytherin?"

"Er, a snake?" Harry replied, confused by the seeming non-sequitur.

"Yes. And what skill did Alexandra tell you Salazar Slytherin had?"

"He was a parselmouth." Harry remembered that very well, given his own skill in the area.

"Very good," Alduin nodded patiently. "So, what do you think could be the monster in the chamber?"

Harry's eyes widened. "...you think it's a snake?"

"What did you think? A puffeskin?"

Harry blushed. "But, I mean, aren't snakes too small?"

"Some snakes, Harry. Some, on the other hand, are decidedly big enough."

"Okay, so it's a snake, how does it...wait. Wait. You think what I heard in the corridor was actually parseltongue, don't you? That's why no one else noticed, they just heard hissing."

"Very good, Harry. You can return to your friends now, but please, please make haste with the diary."

As luck would have it, Lavender and Parvati had a bitter argument only two days later, and Parvati was so upset she wasn't quite as careful when she took out her diary. Sophie saw her, and the following day, Ron and Neville drew girls-watching duty in the Great Hall while Harry, Sophie, Dean and Seamus skipped lunch to stay in the common room, and waited for Sophie to bring them the coveted book.