Chapter Two: Ravenclaw
The stairway curved down into a darkness that Harry found himself lost in. "Lumos," Harry whispered, and a pale light was cast upon the stone walls of the small hallway that opened out from the circular stairwell.
Harry's footsteps seemed to undulate around him as he walked and the walls seemed to close in almost protectively around him. It was as if they knew him, but they were just stone… so how could they want to protect him? But then again… this was Hogwarts, and it was not the first time he'd felt that the castle was somehow… sentient.
A small door of black wood was all that the solemn hallway led to, and Harry paused slightly as the doorknob seemed to warm as his hand neared it.
The room he entered was lit by a faint cerulean light that brightened as he entered. Hedwig cooed from her position on Harry's shoulder and flew to a perch that was placed on a table in the middle of the room. Harry looked around in wonder at the room. The lofty rafters were decorated with detailed carvings of birds in flight, more birds than Harry had ever seen or even known existed. The walls of the room were covered in books of every shape and size, leather-bound volumes that held no dust, even though not a soul had entered the room for countless years. There was no fireplace in the room, but the floor seemed to radiate warmth upwards. Harry placed his wand back in his pocket and stepped further into the room.
There was a desk pushed up against the back of the room, with a plush chair placed in front of it, as if the occupant of the room had just left and was going to return. Harry felt a longing from the room, as if the room had waited for its creator to return… waited, but nothing had happened.
Hedwig squawked, and Harry's eyes were drawn back to the center of the room. Next to her perch was a stand, the top carved in the image of a phoenix in flight. Held between its outstretched wings was a blue orb that swirled with an electricity that seemed to boil within it. Suddenly, a small lightning bolt flashed out against its surface; the action then repeated itself a few seconds later.
Harry stepped closer to it so he could peer into its depths. Hedwig cooed impatiently.
"What?" he asked her.
She brought her beak down to peck at the orb's surface.
Harry again looked at the orb, and then tentatively brought a finger up to touch it. A bolt of lighting struck out at his finger, and curled itself around the point where his skin touched the surface. He added finger after finger, and, each time, a bolt from inside of the orb lashed out to the new point of contact and continued to stream towards him as his fingers stayed on the orb. Harry carefully added his other hand's fingers, and then slowly brought his palms to touch the surface, as well.
Lightning slashed out at him and coiled around his body. The orb flashed, and Harry could almost feel it speak.
Ravenclaw.
Harry's vision filled with the blue depths of the orb, and he seemed to fall in the churning shadowy depths. There was an incredible jolt of something and the orb cracked down its center. Harry's vision swam, and he lost all connection with the world as everything went black.
"Harry. Wake up, please. They will start to wonder if you do not. Wake up, Harry. It's almost breakfast."
What?
"Harry, you need to go to breakfast. If you do not, questions will be asked that we cannot have asked."
Harry's eyes blinked, and he looked up into the frantic eyes of Hedwig. "What?'
You must get down to breakfast, Harry."
Hedwig was talking. Harry bolted upright and immediately regretted the action.
"What's going on?" he asked, realizing only after he had spoken that the words had come out as soft coos… similar to how birds sounded.
"You must go down to breakfast, Harry." Hedwig's words sounded insistent, even though, to an outsider, it would just seem as if the owl was hooting at him. "People will ask questions if you do not."
That was certainly true, and something that he didn't want. But an even more pressing matter had to be attended to first. Looking around the room his eyes landed on the desk pushed against the wall. Let's hope the ink hasn't dried out, he thought as he crossed on unsteady feet to the desk and fumbled around for some parchment, ink, and a quill. A smile lit his features when he found that the ink had been covered securely and had not dried out, even after all the years that the room had been in seclusion.
Not bothering with a heading, or even signing his name to the letter he wrote a single line of words in the blue-black ink:
I found it.
He rolled up the letter and turned to see Hedwig with her foot outstretched towards him.
"You're always one step ahead of me, girl," he told her fondly.
"Of course I am," she responded with an air of superiority
"Please take it to Voldemort."
Harry later could have sworn that the owl nodded at him before taking off down the passageway.
Harry looked around the room one last time before leaving, and noticed that the blue orb had disappeared. A strange coincidence, but he needed to get down to breakfast.
"Harry, where were you?" Hermione's mother-is-scolding-you tone rang in his ears. "We looked all over for you and couldn't find you. Now you arrive late for breakfast. You only have fifteen minutes before Transfiguration."
Harry's mind easily supplied him with an excuse as he concentrated on looking bashful. "Sorry, Hermione. I got up early to look something up in the library and lost track of the time."
Hermione's attitude lifted immediately and she let it go. Beside him, Ron laughed quietly.
"Good save there, mate."
"I try." Harry grinned at him, but his eyes were focused across the hall where the Slytherin tables were set. Draco had left for classes already… bloody hell.
Transfiguration with Slytherins and Gryffindors was always a class where one had to be alert. Not even the fact that the professor was the head of Gryffindor House would stop the small number of pranks that would be planned for that class. Most were never put into action because of said professor, but if there was even the slightest opening… well, one just always had to be alert in that class.
The seating was also as segregated as it got: Slytherins on one side, Gryffindors on the other and no one could make the students change it. Draco Malfoy, being a proud Slytherin sat in the middle of the group of students from his House, and no one from Slytherin ever sat in his chair.
But even though Draco didn't need to get to class early in order to procure this seat for himself, he did so anyway. Unlike other classes that were later in the day, no one talked when they came into this class. Everyone was still in a sleepy morning haze, so it was a good time to sit and think. And if the particular chair he picked happened to allow him to watch Potter enter the room for class and sit down in his chair, which was a few seats in front of the one that would have been Draco's own on the Gryffindor side of the room, then that was yet another reason to get to class early.
Harry felt Draco's eyes on him for a few moments as he walked into the classroom and almost lost the fight with his emotions to look over at the blond. But he couldn't, not yet. Draco had to know about Voldemort's heir first, then he could look at Draco all he wanted. Damn, Voldemort had better hurry up!
Hedwig was sitting on Harry's bed when he entered the boys' dormitory that afternoon.
"Hey, girl, did he reply?" Harry asked.
"Yes, he did. He was quite annoyed with your brevity."
"I bet he was," Harry murmured, as he accepted the letter and glanced at it. "But that didn't stop him from being just as brief," he muttered.
Potter,
We are going to discuss this tonight.
"Are you alright?"
Harry nodded, leaning back against the headboard. "Just impatient," he cooed back at her.
"You won't have to wait long. He told that worm-man that he would summon his inner circle tonight."
Harry's upper lip curled at the thought of Wormtail. A spark of blue lightning flamed to life at his fingertips and startled him out of his inner musings
"You are upset. Why?" Hedwig asked softly.
"How did I do that?" Harry breathed.
"That is Rowena's power. You have inherited it" Hedwig explained. "All of the founders had expanded magical powers which is what made them great enough for history. In time, you will discover your true nature, my Harry and then you will be greater than they all were."
"How do you know so much?" Harry grinned at her.
Hedwig looked at him, and Harry felt a smile in her words when she replied, "Salazar left his heir a Basilisk; one to guide his heir in his place. Rowena, too, left her heir a familiar: a Snowy Owl. It was not mere coincidence that I became yours."
It was nine in the evening when Harry was jolted "out" of his sleep by the feeling of falling on the ebony floor that he knew from his dream experience two nights earlier.
"Sleeping already, Harry? Don't teenagers normally enjoy later hours?"
Harry shot a glare at the man who sat near the fireplace and was watching with an amused look in his crimson eyes, as he slowly rose to his feet.
"Well?" Voldemort hissed. "What occurred in the Chamber of Wisdom?"
Harry saw the knowing look in those red eyes. "You know very well what happened, so why are you even bothering to ask?"
"Because I must be sure. Can you now communicate with your owl?"
"Yes."
"Good, then more of Ravenclaw's powers will come to you in time. I will release the dream-state and allow you to get back to your sleep. In the meantime, I shall have a discussion with my Death Eaters."
Harry smirked wryly, knowing full well there wouldn't be much "discussion", just Voldemort telling his Death Eaters what he wanted them to know. With the feeling of a decisive twist, the dream ended, and Harry knew no more other than a dreamless sleep.
Harry could see the next morning that there was hidden unrest within the Slytherins; but one could only tell that from the younger students. They hadn't yet mastered the art of concealing something that was wrong, and allowed some emotions to break through; the older students, like Draco, for example, were flawless in their emotions. One couldn't tell that anything out of the ordinary was taking place, based on their attitude.
But it was good that they'd heard from their parents already, or at least they had all heard by the time breakfast was over. Now, all he had to wait through were stupid classes before he could talk to Draco about it. Harry himself would have gladly skipped all the classes and grabbed Draco in the hallway just as breakfast ended, but Draco would want to go to all of his classes. Oh well, Harry could count down the hours… it wasn't like he hadn't done so before anyway.