April first saw no April Fool's jokes being played due to the sombre mood, what it did see was Harry violently destroying training dummies that had the ability to reassemble themselves after they were destroyed.
Draco was privately glad that he hadn't offered to duel him as he took in the carnage around him. This had started off with Harry showing him what he had learned from the Zabrak Warfare techniques, and had quickly turned into Harry allowing his anger out fully. Soon he was casting dark magic so foul that his eyes had turned red and Draco had begun to suspect the room was warded against the detection of dark magic.
After Harry cast the Bone Breaking Charm and the Entrail Expelling Charm he dropped to his knees and his eyes returned to their normal green. He looked lost and confused and if Draco had looked closer he would have seen the worry on his face, a worry that would be echoed by Draco when he heard the words that came out of Harry's mouth.
"How long have I been up here? Why can't I remember anything of the training, well, anything after the first five minutes?"
Draco simply didn't know what to do.
Ever since he had experienced his first instance of memory loss, the first that he knew of anyway, Harry had spent more time with Professor Snape learning Occlumency.
In the last eight days since the incident he had managed to create a Memory Palace, a sort of central hub for his brain, which was meant to be a place you could drop things off and pick things up from, a place you don't live in.
"This is to prevent people from entering their Memory Palace only to fall asleep there, resulting in them waking up inside their mind and believing it to be the real world. Wizards have completely burned their minds out by stepping outside their front door, only to have to mentally generate every area they saw. This wouldn't be too bad at the start however, let's say they walked from Wales all the way through England and into Scotland and then to Hogwarts, all of these places become the Memory Palace, or at least part of it. Try to imagine every step from here to Wales, Mr Potter, I assure you that is beyond the scope of the human brain, therein exceeding the mental capacity of the wizard and their brain dies."
For this reason Harry saw it fitting that he used his favourite classroom, sure he had been ambushed in there the last time he physically entered the room, but it's not like he would actually enter the room. Seeing as how the room had a stock cupboard off to the side that was fairly sizable, it would be perfect.
Once Professor Snape was satisfied with his progress, he was allowed to leave.
"Same time tomorrow, sir?" He asked as he left, as usual, and received a nod before leaving.
The morning of the thirteenth of April was a fairly warm one, the flowers were fully in bloom with birds singing in the sky. The clouds looked so light and fluffy today that they looked almost fake. The air was ripe with mischief and mystery, and Nargles were about.
Luna Lovegood had taken to putting up posters wherever she thought they would appreciate it. Luna enjoyed stories, she always had, she knew that if you listened hard enough, even the stones of Hogwarts' walls had stories they could tell. Whether they would or wouldn't was up to them.
These posters offered advice on how to repel Nargles and how to avoid them, when she had first arrived at Hogwarts in September she had been shocked at the lack of warning posters up. She was lost in her own world, taping the posters on the walls, when suddenly one of the "walls" she attached a poster to, began to move.
"So… this is honestly the first time I've had a poster stuck to me," the wall that wasn't a wall remarked to her.
"I only put the posters where they want to go, so really that poster had to have connected with you prior to now," came Luna's reply.
"Why are you in the Dungeons when it's so nice out today?" the not-wall inquired.
"Well, you see, the Centaurs have already asked me to stop putting them up on trees in the forest and none of the trees that are dotted about the grounds wanted posters," she informed him in a deadly serious, but also dreamy tone, as if she was a stern fairy.
"Well, if you have any future posters to stick up, make sure you ask them their feelings about a placement on me," the boy answered her tone with an identical one.
"I shall do so right now with some of my older posters that I didn't manage to put up, I do have to address you by name to them so that would be most helpful. Mine is Luna, Luna Lovegood."
"I'm Harry, Harry Potter."
With that Luna went up towards the Ravenclaw Common Room, listening to the stories of the steps on the way up.
April twentieth was the first day of the year that saw Harry, Ron, Draco, and Hermione all relaxing; they had been studying together twice a week as a group, but today was just a day of relaxation. Harry had been reluctant to just put everything on hold for an entire day, but was eventually convinced of the benefits. Harry was currently filling the room with multicoloured smoke from his wand, admiring the turbulent flow and the patterns it made.
Hermione was in the process of brewing a solution to induce euphoria and was just in the final stages before it could be consumed.
Ron and Draco were eating brownies and making jokes, just chilling out while waiting for the potion to be completed.
When the time came and the potion was done they drank the day away. Thank Merlin for the staff meeting taking up the whole day.
"…with exams coming up I think it will be a good way to minimise attacks."
"This isn't good, Albus, nothing about this is good. Minerva is down, a large chunk of the students have been petrified, and frankly the rest are terrified. I propose we close no later than two weeks from now," Filius Flitwick squeaked out after hours of debate.
"With all due respect, Headmaster, I agree with Filus on this, too long has this gone on. However… I can't help but state the obvious fact that if we do close the school, which many parents have called for already, we would be unable to open next year. In fact for good measure we would have to remain closed for five years to allow the current first years to age out of a Hogwarts education, six if we wanted to avoid the possibility of any current students returning for their eighth year," Professor Snape drawled out, not disinterested, as tired of all the attacks as everyone else.
"I think it is obvious then, we must catch the perpetrator or perpetrators of these attacks and have them removed and imprisoned…"
The meeting carried on in a similar manner for many hours more before it finally ended.
Today had been awful, first she had gotten into a fight with Ron, then on the way to Charms she had managed to run straight into Professor Snape and knocked him straight over, which had her lose Gryffindor a hundred house points, resulting in her entire house shunning her. Not even Percy was sympathetic, opting to tell her to watch where she was going in future.
Everything at Hogwarts was awful, especially for her. She opened her bag and, without meaning to, picked out the black book she always had on her. Once it was in her hand she thought about how Tom would help her, so she went to her room, sat on her bed and began to write.
Almost as soon as her quill touched the paper she was gone, her eyes a deep dark blood red.
"This isn't me!" she screamed, but like always nobody answered.
Tom piloted her body as easily as if it was his own and to be fair, after 50 years as a book, it pretty much was at the moment. The time was coming when he would finally gain a new body, a stronger body. For now he would just have to settle for an attack.
When he saw Penelope Clearwater sitting alone practising her eyeliner, he snuck up on her. When she saw Ginny's eyes she froze, when she saw yellow eyes she froze for good.
A week had passed since the petrification of Penelope Clearwater and Harry was sick of getting nowhere. He was sitting with Draco and Ron in the Vipers' Arena, it turned out that one of the many passageways out of the room ended by the Gryffindor common room, and they were speculating on who it could be when Harry remembered something that had completely hidden itself in his brain. He remembered the black book Ginny had with her all the time, and the memory it had shared with him. If the book could have such an impact on him, then it could do the same to anyone. As he was raising this point to the others a loud voice was heard throughout the school.
"I would like to please ask all students to return to their dormitories until further notice. A student has been taken into the Chamber of Secrets and the Ministry is on its way... Anyone caught in the hallways will lose their house a thousand points each."
"You don't think…" Ron began before Harry burst out swearing and then shouting in Parsletongue.
"Where the hell is the Chamber of Secrets."
Almost the second he finished shouting a small section of the floor opened up, before they could go down Ron suggested they get reinforcements.
So they left, through a secret passageway leading to the second floor, as they got around the corner they walked past the door to Lockhart's office to see him frantically packing. Outraged, Harry took the cloak off and entered the room to give him a piece of his mind.
"What on earth do you think you're doing? The school is in crisis and you're trying to bolt," Harry seethed at the blonde doofus who gave a sheepish expression when he saw he was caught.
"Ah Harry my boy, I was just getting all the things I'll need to find the Chamber, nothing to see here. I'll let you run along now, you don't have to worry about losing house points, it'll be our little secret." Lockhart tried to defuse the situation, but Harry wasn't buying it. He cast a body-bind charm on him and floated him down the passageway and into the Vipers' Arena, down the floor passage and carried on to the Chamber of Secrets.
When they arrived Harry removed the body-bind and made sure that Lockhart's wand was hidden in his pocket.
"Well Professor, here is where you put your money where your mouth is, and who knows maybe you can write about today. Gilderoy Lockhart and the Chamber of Secrets, I can see it now. Maybe even, The Curious Case of the Chamber of Secrets."
"I appreciate the optimism there Harry, this is just a little above my pay grade as a teacher…"
"Professor don't worry I can afford to pay you back for guiding us through these scary events. How does 50,000 Galleons sound?"
"You see Harry, my going rate is quite a bit more than that."
"Ah Professor, that isn't a worry, just name your fee for your services and you'll have it as soon as we are back up in the castle proper."
"I won't do it for less than a million Galleons," Lockhart finally answered with a smug look on his face, thinking he had won.
"That won't be an issue, Professor."
Lockhart's face paled even more and he opened his mouth to argue when Harry hit him with a very unique curse. It caused intensely painful electricity to course through any part of the body that the caster wanted.
"Just a little insurance Professor, only I can remove it and upon my death, provided the curse is still active of course, it will simultaneously flood every single part of your body with electricity at its highest setting until you're burned up."
With a taste of the pain, Lockhart finally began moving through the cave. As they walked Harry was already using Legilimency to implant false memories of guilt into Lockhart.