Sorry for the delay! I've been watching and rewatching Lucifer on Netflix lately. It's safe to say that I'm addicted to the show.

This chapter originally was gonna be the Dueling Club chapter but one thing led to another and this is the result. I've forgotten that things led up to the events of the Dueling Club. Plus, like I've said before, I have to occasionally make up events in this story while staying true to the original content (WHICH I DO NOT OWN! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THAT?).

Enjoy!

Chapter 16

Frustration

"Rin!" Harry called out. The Japanese boy was leaving the Great Hall, licking his fingers after enjoying the blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Rin saw Harry and waved.

"Hey Harry!" The scarred boy managed to catch up to Rin. "What's going on?"

"I need to talk to you about last night."

Rin paused. "You mean about what happened to Shutterbug?" he asked for clarity. Harry nodded. Rin looked around to make sure no one was looking. "Okay, but not here." The two boys left the castle. Harry continued to follow Rin until they reached the shore of the lake.

As soon as Rin started skipping rocks, Harry spoke up again. "Rin?"

"So what did you want to talk about, Harry?" he asked.

"I wanted to talk about last night," Harry answered. "What were you doing with Professor Dumbledore so late at night?"

Rin skipped another rock into the lake before answering. "You know the blue flames that keep bursting out of me?" he asked, his tone not his usual happy-go-lucky one.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, why?"

Rin was quiet for a long time before answering. "...I can't control them," he murmured.

Harry blinked. "'Can't control them'? What do you mean?"

Skip, skip, skip…

"Ever since last year I haven't been able to cast a single spell without blue flames being mixed in," Rin explained.

Harry nodded again. It made sense. For as long as Harry had known Rin, he was always setting things on fire. Never intentionally of course, but it was a constant source of frustration for the Japanese boy.

"So you're learning how to control them?" Harry asked. Rin nodded as he threw another rock into the lake. "And Dumbledore's been helping you?"

SPLASH!

Harry jumped at the sudden noise having become accustomed to the small sounds of skipping rocks. He didn't notice that Rin threw a huge rock into the water. Rin's bangs were hiding his eyes, his hands clenched into fists.

"He's trying," he said through gritted teeth. "We've been trying different ways to control them."

"And?"

"His latest guess is my desire to protect my friends," Rin answered.

Harry frowned. "That seems kind of cliche, don't you think?"

"I know! I feel like there has to be more to it than that but I don't know what!" Rin yelled in frustration. He threw another large rock into the lake.

Harry thought for a moment before speaking. "It kind of makes sense." Rin looked at him in confusion. "Hear me out. All those times we've seen the flames outside of class were when one of us was in trouble."

Rin thought for a moment. "I guess that makes sense. There was the first time rescuing Hermione from the troll," he recalled.

"Second time was in the Forbidden Forest when Quirrel tried to attack us," said Harry.

"And the third time was when we were all tangled in the Devil's Snare," Rin continued. "I remember hearing Ron being choked by it."

Harry especially remembered that time. As soon as the blue flames spread throughout the Devil's Snare, Harry was sure that he would be burnt to a crisp but he wasn't. In fact, the flames felt warm. His clothes weren't even singed.

"Then it happened again when we were fighting Voldemort and Professor Quirrel in the final chamber," Harry recalled.

Rin sighed heavily. "It seems like Dumbledore's right but… I still feel like there's still more to it."

"Do you think Yukio has any idea about the flames? He seemed pretty upset when he found out last year."

Rin shrugged. "Don't think so. He didn't mention it after we got home or throughout the summer," he answered.

"Weird," Harry muttered.

Rin sighed again. "This is getting us nowhere. Let's go back inside."

"Good idea. Let's find Ron and Hermione. Hopefully they've gotten started on the Polyjuice Potion," said Harry. The two boys started walking back towards the castle.

"Speaking of which, where are we making the potion?" asked Rin. "I doubt an empty classroom would be the safest place to make it. Anyone could find it."

~0~0~0~

Rin's eyebrow twitched as they entered Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Of all the places to make a secret potion, it had to be this place.

"We've decided this is the safest place to hide it," Ron explained.

"How's your arm, Harry?" asked Yukio.

"Fine," Harry answered.

"You guys started the potion already?" asked Rin.

"We heard what happened last night - we heard Professor McGonagall tell Flitwick about it this morning," Hermione explained.

"Terry saw the announcement on the bulletin board in the Ravenclaw common room," Yukio added. "My question for you, Rin, is what were you doing out after curfew with Professor Dumbledore?"

Ron and Hermione looked up from the potion.

"Is that where you were last night?" asked Ron.

"What did you do this time, Rin?" Hermione asked accusingly.

A tick mark appeared on Rin's head. "Seriously, Hermione? I don't get into trouble that often!" Yukio coughed to hide a laugh. Rin caught that. "Got something you wanna add, Yukio?"

"You get into trouble more often than Harry or Ron," Yukio snickered.

"Do not!"

"How many times did you break Malfoy's nose last year?"

"I never got busted for that!"

"It cost Gryffindor a few points," Ron muttered.

"Only the first time!" Rin argued. "Besides, you were part of that fight too!"

"Drop it, both of you!" Hermione snapped.

Harry stepped in before it turned into a full-blown argument. "There's something you should know." Harry then explained what Dobby told him last night. Rin included additional details as well. By the time Harry was finished, Ron and Hermione's jaws were on the bathroom floor.

"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened before?" asked Hermione.

"This settles it," Ron triumphantly said. "Lucius Malfoy must've opened it when he was at school here and now he's teaching dear old Draco how to do it."

Yukio gripped his chin. "When was the last time the chamber was opened? If it was, indeed, Lucius Malfoy, then the Chamber of Secrets had to have been opened twenty or thirty years ago," he assumed.

"That's why we need to get answers out of Malfoy as soon as possible," said Hermione.

Harry turned to Ron. "Have your parents mentioned anything about the Chamber of Secrets from when they were in school?"

Ron shook his head no. "Don't think so. Percy's written to them a few times since Mrs. Norris."

"And?" Rin pressed.

Ron shrugged resignedly. "Percy wouldn't say what Mum and Dad told him. Typical of him."

"Something tells me asking Percy would be a bad idea," Yukio muttered.

~0~0~0~

Shiro was just bidding his parishioners goodbye after a Sunday service. While he always gave it his all during each service, his heart was not in it today. He received a letter from Yukio a few weeks ago saying something happened on Halloween night. The groundskeeper's cat was Petrified.

'Petrified? With a capital 'P'? What does that mean? And what's the Chamber of Secrets?'

As soon as the last parishioner left, Shiro went to the backyard and sat down on a bench to think. The leaves in the trees had already turned a variety of warm colors, signaling that fall was here. It was times like these he wished he had an owl to contact Albus Dumbledore to ask him about what was going on at Hogwarts. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a letter addressed to Dumbledore and his cell phone. 'Maybe I should contact someone at the Magic Branch…'

A Japanese scops owl landed on a high branch of one of the trees. He stared at Shiro with blood red eyes. He looked around to make sure no one was looking or listening.

"Think you can do me a favor?" he asked the bird.

The owl lowered his eyelids and tilted his head as if to say "I'm listening."

"I need to get a message to someone in Europe. He's a wizard and a good friend. Up for an international flight?" Shiro asked. The owl didn't answer, instead he tilted his head in the other direction. "You can have free access to the attic and backyard of all the mice and other vermin."

The owl let out a hoot and glided down to the empty spot on the bench next to Shiro. Having had experience attaching letters to owls in the past (all of them belonged to one of the Order of the Phoenix members), Shiro had no problem with this owl.

"Well if you're gonna be staying here, you're gonna need a name," he told the owl. The bird tilted his head again. Shiro studied the bird. He couldn't look away from the blood red eyes. "Sekigan. What do you think?"

The owl looked away in thought before hooting again enthusiastically.

Shiro chuckled. "Okay, Sekigan it is. It means 'red eye.' Now get going. Deliver that letter directly to Albus Dumbledore. He has a super long beard, you can't miss him."

Sekigan hooted again and took flight.

One of the priests, Tadami Misumi, approached Shiro and had witnessed Sekigan's departure.

"What was that about, Father Fujimoto?" the eldest priest asked Shiro.

Shiro turned to Tadami. "You saw that, huh?" He shrugged. "Yukio wrote to me, saying that something happened at school that has me concerned."

"I remember you reading it to us. You didn't use the owl that delivered Yukio's letter?"

"I told it that I didn't have a response at the time," Shiro explained. "Besides, I didn't send that letter to Yukio, it's going to Dumbledore."

"How do you know that it will take your letter to Dumbledore?" asked Tadami.

"It was flying around in the daytime and it understood everything I said," Shiro answered. "I won't always use him to deliver letters to Hogwarts. I think it's best if I used him to stay in touch with the Magic Branch. If something really is Petrifying students at Hogwarts, then we need to keep tabs on the place."

"Do we even know if it's a demon?"

"Yukio assures me that it wasn't a demon but it still puzzles me. Harry Potter was able to hear what Petrified the school groundskeeper's cat. Kuro was able to hear it too. The boys and their friends couldn't hear it though," Shiro explained.

"Does the boy have a temptaint?" asked Tadami. Shiro shook his head no. "Then how is a cat sidthe and a boy without a temptaint able to hear this creature, but Yukio, who has a temptaint, cannot?"

"That's the million yen question," Shiro grumbled.

"Shura's a teacher there, right? Perhaps she could look into it?"

"Harry told her about what he heard. As far as I know, she's probably looking into it after what happened on Halloween. All we can do is wait and see what happens," Shiro said resignedly.

I decided to give Shiro an owl to communicate with Dumbledore. Wizards are very old school and Shiro can't just contact Hogwarts with a phone call (by the way, I'm very aware that the Harry Potter storyline and the Blue Exorcist storyline are decades apart but I've taken creative liberties so don't bother pointing that out).

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