Chapter Fourteen: Prowlings and a Year Concluded
Harry was under the impression that someone was following him.
Of course, it wasn't as if said person was ever going to catch him, but it would be useful to find out how they were somehow tracking him when he was supposed to be untrackable.
He was making his way through the darkened corridors of Hogwarts, small, nimble, and invisible. Having a demiguise as an animagus came in handy, especially when one wanted to sneak around and explore the castle.
Christmas break had just ended, and all of the students were once more located inside of the castle. It was after curfew, so everyone else, except for the other Slytherins exploring, and they'd all taken the liberty of disillusioning themselves, so, unless whoever was following them had some sort of tracking device –– those of which were highly illegal –– they shouldn't be able to be followed, especially Harry.
"I don't understand," was that Potter's voice? "The map says that he's right over here, but I can't see him." Map? What map? Did the Gryffindorks somehow have a map the likes of which Harry and the others were trying to create?
"Maybe the map is lying," ah, and there was Weasel-bee, so Lardbottom and mudblood Granger couldn't be far behind.
"The map never lies," continued Potter, annoyed.
"Homenum revelio," muttered mudblood Granger, and Harry stifled a groan.
"There's someone else here," muttered Granger.
"I'm telling you," said Jamie rather furiously. "It's Malfoy! The map says so, right here!"
"Guys," said Ron uneasily. "He's getting closer." Indeed he was. Harry quickly scaled up the jutted stone walls of the castle, making his way over suits of armor and sleeping portraits, before swooping down –– still invisible –– and snatching the 'Map' right out of Potter's hands.
"Hey!" Scarhead exclaimed. "He's getting away!" Harry high-tailed it through the empty corridors, clutching the map close, and made his way to a secluded, abandoned room, having lost Potter and the rest of the Gryffindorks long ago. Morphing back into the form of a wizard, he took a moment to scan the map, and quickly spotted the dots symbolizing himself and his friends, and quickly, using rather complex cloaking magic, removed their names from the map.
Morphing back into a demiguise and quickly turning invisible, he snatched the map back up and started bounding back through the corridors, looking for the Gryffindorks. He found them rushing through the halls, aimlessly, complaining all the while.
"I can't believe the ponce stole the Marauder's Map," Jamie was complaining.
"Little shit," grumbled Ron.
"Ronald!" exclaimed Hermione. "Language!"
"Look!" Neville pointed up at the piece of parchment floating down smoothly from the sky. Jamie, using his seeker skills, quickly snatched it out of the air and scanned it with his eyes.
"He's not on the map," he said with a frown.
"What do you mean?" asked mudblood Granger. "The map sees everyone and, unless Malfoy somehow found a way to apparate inside of the wards of Hogwarts, he's still within the castle." Funny the mudblood should mention that. Harry was actually working on making runic wristbands with his Uncle Rodolphus in order to counteract the anti-apparation and anti-portkey wards around Hogwarts, as well as the anti-flight wards, which was why Harry and Draco hadn't been zooming around the castle as black shadowy substance already.
"It's not just him," said Ron with a frown, looking at the Map curiously. "I can't find the other Malfoy either, or Nott, or Zabini, or Greengrass."
"The other third year Slytherins are there, though?" asked the mudblood.
"Yeah," said Weasel-bee thoughtfully. "I wonder how in Merlin's name they managed to pull that off."
"Probably Dark Magic," sneered Scarhead. "They are junior Death Eaters, after all, what should we have expected?"
"Jamie, really, you shouldn't be so quick to judge," snapped Hermione. "You can't judge a person just by their parents."
"But Hermione," complained Ron, rather like a petulant child. "They're Death Eaters, they don't deserve to be judged fairly."
"But doesn't that make us just as bad as them?" argued Hermione, and, for once, the Gryffindorks were silent. Inwardly, Harry was scowling, and was suppressing a rather unbecoming monkey-ish chitter of rage. What right did the mudblood have to assume that she was even capable of judging them, or even being on the same level. Really, the blood-traitors and mudbloods had no class. No class at all.
"Who cares," snarled Jamie harshly. "Let's go back to the Common Room." Harry quickly high-tailed it back to the Slytherin Common Room, where the others were already filtering in one-by-one, going over all of the shortcuts and secret passageways they'd found and spelled to the maps (as there was a copy for each of them), and Harry told them of his encounter of the Gryffindork kind.
"Obviously, they didn't make it," said Daphne once he'd finished his explanation. "Sure, Granger's smart, but she'd need outside help to make something like that, and she has basically no magical contacts, as she's a mudblood."
"Good point," said Draco, ever the strategist. "Which means that they simply have possession of their map, it could have been created a long time ago."
"Didn't even have the RoR on it," said Harry, clucking his tongue against his teeth. "Amateurs."
As the Slytherins descended upon the Great Hall the next morning, the students were already gossiping about the latest tidbit of news: Potter's Firebolt. Of course, being the stupid blood-traitors and mudbloods they were, they couldn't get past the sleek, shiny exterior of Potter's broom in order to see that the Slytherins' Dragonriders were still the top brooms in the school. Honestly, it was like working with newborn house elves, the level of stupidity.
"You would think," said Zabini as he took a bite out of his morning waffles, "that they would find something of more importance to converse over, instead of mooning over a broomstick."
Harry made a small noise of agreement from the back of his throat, too preoccupied taking a small bite of bacon while studying his notes furiously, eyes flickering over long reams of parchment, taking in all of the arithmancy sequences and the rune systems, having done a diagnostic spell on the Hogwarts wards a few days previous. A small frown crossed his face as his eyebrows scrunched up in concentration.
"Working on your little project?" asked Nott, and Harry nodded absentmindedly.
"Dear Merlin," he said, mainly to himself. "These are some of the most complex wards I've ever come across. Much trickier than the wards at the Manor, definately. There are layers upon layers, intertwining and weaving through one another, and added at different times, too, so there are different magical techniques… it will take months to fully analyze these, and I expect I won't be able to do final carvings until fifth year at the earliest."
"That tricky, huh?" asked Daphne sympathetically, and Harry looked down at the parchment sourly.
"There must be some sort of algorithm or something in order to make this a bit easier, but nothing's making sense so far. It's extremely complicated, but I'm confident that I'll be able to have the entire process mastered by any deadline set for me. After all, this is just a hypothetical project. If Uncle Rodolphus and I were actually able to pull it off… it would be a feat never before seen. An incredible honor, really, to be able to work with such a complex system." The others were looking at him as though he were a bit insane –– and he didn't deny it, insanity ran on the Black side of the family –– as none of them really understood just how much of a ward/rune freak Harry was.
In fact, though he would never have to work a day in his life, Harry had considered the path of a cursebreaker or Ward Master, as they were both incredible respectable positions, but he'd have to focus on the duties and obligations that being Lord Black would thrust upon him, and he knew that the time was soon approaching. Of course, he couldn't claim Lordship until he was sixteen, but he could claim Head of House whenever the previous Head passed, and Arcturus was getting on in his years, Narcissa didn't think he had much time left at all.
"If you think about it," Harry was trying to explain the process of warding to his friends over breakfast, even though the only one even close to his level of understanding on runes was Daphne, whose grandfather had been a cursebreaker, "it's a bit like a riddle. It provides you a mind-stimulating challenge, and the more riddles you complete, the easier it becomes later on, as you start thinking in riddles, or, in this case, wards. Magic is a complex science, and no one will ever be able to fully understand it, but we can come close. But, like most enigmas, we cannot let ourselves drown in the mystery, because that, unfortunately, usually leads to insanity."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Draco, rather perplexed.
"Well," answered Harry. "Magic is the Earth's lifesource, the beginning. If one somehow manages to obtain the knowledge that has been thirsted after since the beginning of time, the mystery evaporates, and the meager barriers put up by the mind in order to keep searching collapse, leading to the ultimate demise of whomever was searching. If there isn't anything to search for anymore, the thing ceases to exist. In, which case, he who would hold the answer to all magic would lose the very thing he'd quested to understand."
"That doesn't sound very pleasant," said Zabini, and Harry rolled his eyes.
"Of course it wouldn't be unpleasant, Zabini," he deadpanned, looking patronizingly at the caramel skinned Italian boy. "I wouldn't be able to fathom the idea of being without magic… it would be as if there were no life at all… I wonder how the filthy muggles even survive."
"You can't miss what you've never had," Daphne added thoughtfully, and Harry nodded, and the conversation ended as the five returned to their meals. People were hurriedly making bets on the outcome of the Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw match that was scheduled to take place later that day, as it was a Saturday.
"I'd go and taunt him," said Draco, shooting a disdainful look Potter's way. "But I've decided that he isn't worth all of the effort." Harry shot him an incredulous look.
"Who are you and what have you done to my brother?" Draco smirked at him and Harry smirked back, easily morphing his facial features to match those of his brother's.
"Well, I could have grown up, you know," at Harry's raised eyebrow, Draco conceded. "Fine, I'm still really tired and don't have the energy needed to confront the little pompous bastard, so I'm taking the day off from 'Potter Tormenting'." Harry laughed, his features morphing back into his own.
"That sounds more like you." They headed outside, heading to sit with their Ravenclaw friends who weren't on the team. Harry had changed his hair a rather dashing light shade of blue for the occasion.
"How long do you think this is going to last?" enquired Harry, and Boot frowned slightly.
"If the snitch is being cooperative, not long. Sure, Chang's been training, but she hasn't got near the amount of skill in the air as Potter does. If he catches the snitch before our Chasers can get some action, we're done for."
"Better hope Potter doesn't catch the snitch, then." But, alas, the Slytherins couldn't foil all the plans of the Gryffindorks, and, within the first five minutes of the game, Jamie Potter had the snitch within his grasp, smirking arrogantly to himself as his current fling –– Lavender Brown –– came rushing up to congratulate him in a rather… public manner.
Daphne scrunched up her nose in distaste.
"No class, the lot of them."
"Must give their mothers quite a fright," Tracey added, shivering slightly. "Such attitudes, its a wonder they even have pure blood at all, the way they act."
"Well, they had to be called blood traitors for a reason." Blaise and Zabini veered off to go to the library to finish a Potions essay, while Daphne followed Tracey to their Common Room. Harry and Draco proceeded to theirs, and had their wands raised quickly when they found a man standing there.
He was short, probably only five feet tall, and was thin and gaunt, having lost all of his excess fat from thirteen years in prison. His hair was receding slightly, and was a mousy brown color, and his eyes were watery blue and seemed to be frozen in an everlasting expression of fear. Like a rat, his arms were drawn close to his body as if to protect himself, and his teeth were elongated slightly and yellow, and he stunk.
"Wormtail."
"Young Masters Malfoy," Wormtail continued with a small bow of his head. "The Dark Lord has told me to come here to inform you of his plan ––"
"You can do that, but please, for the love of Merlin, take a shower and get a clean pair of clothes." They snuck him to the Prefect's bathroom, and, after he didn't smell like a pile of vomit covered droppings, they allowed him to tell his tale, both boys listening raptly and paying extremely close attention.
And, after Pettigrew was done, he nodded at them once, before transforming into a small brown rat and scampering off, to do whatever he needed to do in order to make sure that all the attention was on him.
The next morning, the castle was alive with gossip once more as the teachers once again combed through the castle for any sign of Pettigrew, as he'd somehow made his way into the Gryffindor Common Room, and up to Potter's room, where he'd made a show of tarnishing the bed hangings and wrecking the room, and Potter had been sulking over the loss of a map, though no one except the Slytherins and his friends knew what he was talking about.
Classes throughout the rest of the year continued with little to no surprises, and Pettigrew seemed to have finally fled the school, as the Slytherins could not find them on their little maps, which were coming along quite nicely. They spent their weekend days and nights prowling the corridors of the castle, combing the ancient building to find secret passageways and hidden rooms. It was quite fun, actually, and they would draw in their own instructions on how to access some of the trickier hidden rooms, which usually required a password or twisting a knob or something of the sort.
Harry in particular had spent a lot of time exploring the Chamber of Secrets and looting the dead Basilisk for all potential potions ingredients. Through the Chamber, he discovered a complex tunnelling system that he quickly added to the maps, though he and Draco would be the only ones able to open them, as they were the only two who could speak the language of the snakes. The tunnels opened up to different parts of the castle, as well as some locations in the caverns underneath the lake, and underneath the Forbidden Forest. Harry even found Salazar Slytherin's private headquarters at the heart of the Chamber.
He'd taken to working on his project there, among all of the ancient scrolls and texts written in Parseltongue, pouring over the notes on runes and warding, including the original set-up of the Hogwarts warding plans, and tips on how to counter them. It was certainly speeding along the process, and Harry had already started the first loop of carvings on the platinum bands provided for him, as platinum was one of the few metals that was immune to all magic, so, once the runes were carved, no one would be able to change them. Very tedious work, very dangerous. One wrong stroke of the carving tools and Harry could find himself dead.
The map, though, they had had much more progress with. Through the combined efforts of their little group, they'd discovered over a hundred secret passageways and hidden rooms, and added them all to their maps, which were completed now. When opened with the codeword –– which was individually set by each person –– it read "The Pureblood's Guide to Hogwarts", and then had a personalized message, such as "Welcome, Mr. Malfoy.", and the maps were blood keyed to only work for their owners.
Quidditch was going well, too, for the Slytherins. They absolutely crushed Hufflepuff with an ending score of 370 - 60, but they were narrowly defeated by Ravenclaw when Chang caught the snitch, bring the score to 180 - 160. They were still in the lead, though, and Gryffindor would have to have a major victory over Hufflepuff in order to win the cup. However, that would be easily attainable, as the Hufflepuffs didn't really have a good lineup this year, and their only good player was their Captain and Seeker, fifth year Cedric Diggory, a muggle-loving traitorous pureblood. Two of the only real purebloods in Hufflepuff were Zacharias Smith and Ernie Macmillan, though Harry and Draco couldn't stand Smith or Macmillan, as they were distant cousins and convinced that they were descended from Helga Hufflepuff herself, and thus, more important.
That, of course, did not bode well for the boys, who had been blessed by the Heir of Slytherin, the Dark Lord. That, and they were the heirs to the largest fortunes in all of Magical Britain, and, possibly, the entire magical community. That, in their mind, as well as a clear record of their lineage, made them of more importance than the likes of Smith and Macmillan. The only decent Gryffindor pureblood was Cormac McLaggen, who was also a pompous idiot who didn't know which way was up, and mainly tried to impress girls who weren't interested in him in all of his fourth year glory.
As usual, work picked up towards the end of the year, and the Slytherins had less time for all of their side projects as homework was heaped upon them in preparation for the end of the year exams, but the excitement for the Quidditch final did not lesson, the anticipated game between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. Harry, who usually changed his hair to the color of the team he was supporting, grudgingly turned his hair a bright lemon yellow, which caused Daphne to giggle, and he spent the majority of the match sulking as Daphne found entertainment in his hair color, but she made up for it later by kissing him softly, thanking him for being a good sport.
To the disappointment of the Slytherins, and the Hufflepuffs, the Gryffindors won the match, and, for the first time in nine years, the Gryffindor team got to hold the Quidditch Cup. Wood was practically in tears, and even the Slytherins, deep in the dungeons later that night, could hear the rambunctious celebration of the Gryffindors all the way up in the Gryffindor tower, which was quite a feat.
Retaliation was issued the next morning, though, when seven years worth of grumpy, sleep deprived Slytherins made their way down to the Great Hall and someone cursed all the Gryffindors to not be able to sleep for three days. Professor Snape generously gave all of the Slytherins monday off of their classes in order to sleep, saying that they needed rest to be able to perform at their highest levels, so a day was spent napping and relaxing, much to the envy of the other Houses, whose Heads of House wouldn't budge on their studies and preparing for exams.
The end of the year was fast approaching, and it was a mad dash to the finish line. Harry, so far, had finished the first three rune loops for the platinum band, and now he had to work on the intertwining layers and the rune sequences. In Harry's opinion, the exams were fairly easy, and he didn't understand why everyone thought that they were so difficult. Though it pained him to admit it, Lupin's practical was actually pretty fun.
And soon, the time had come to once more head down to Hogsmeade and hop on the Hogwart's Express, marking the conclusion of another year at Hogwarts.