Chapter 30
Weeks since the incident passed by and by then end of the term the castle generally quieted down and relaxed. Professors Snape and Evans-Potter continued the dueling club and the students now significantly improved their dueling skills thanks to the club. As the time passed by, Severus Snape's detentions paid off and now Harry was easily considered to be the best duelist of his year as well as the best student in the Defense in the practical field; in the theoretical part of the course, Hermione Granger was still on top as she was in most of her classes.
On December twentieth Harry and his friends packed their trunks and were ready to leave home for the Winter Holidays. Their search for more clues towards finding the Basilisk or its chamber did not give results but the Team Potter still continued their search.
As Harry was returning to his common room after the dinner, he heard the voice once again and ran like crazy at it the place where the voice was heading. At one point the voice vanished and Harry saw a couple other people being petrified. Now, the number of students was much smaller with only three people being petrified but one person in particular made Harry extremely unhappy. The boy saw that his best friend Hermione Granger lay motionless. "Hermione, no!" cried Harry as he ran towards his friend.
The boy hugged his friend but then felt that her body was cold. The girl looked like a large doll as she lay motionless and did not respond to her friend.
"Harry?" Harry saw that his mother walked towards him as she was passing by and saw the petrified students as well.
"Mother, Hermione is petrified too" cried the boy and tears escaped his eyes. As Lily Evans approached her son, she sat next to him and hugged her son, as she needed to comfort her baby.
"It will be alright Harry, Professor Sprout told the other Professors that her Mandrakes are about half way done and she expects that all victims would return to normal by the end of the year." Harry's mood got little better but he still did not want to think as if his best friend was petrified.
"Harry, Hermione will get better as all the others be" she reassured her son. Harry looked at his mother with sadness in his eyes and then before he stood up, he kissed the girl on the cheek. Lily Evans smiled as she expected the two Slytherins to end up together at some point and it seemed that her hopes would occur much sooner than expected.
The elder witch lifted the three students, and carried them to the Hospital wing. Harry decided to follows his mother. When the two arrived in the Hospital Wing, Lily gently put the petrified students on the beds. "More petrified students?" asked the school nurse and the Professor nodded. The nurse made a sign and proceeded to check her new patients.
After sitting for two hours at Hermione's bed Harry went to his dormitory, where he saw his now decreasing circle of friends. "It would be funny in a cruel way if by the end of the year all my friends were wounded and separated from my life" thought Harry as he told his few remaining friends of what had happened.
"Are you going home for the holiday?" asked Draco and Harry shook his head.
"I must remain close to Hermione, she was petrified and I cannot go far away," he told his friend
"Well. See you after the holidays" replied Harry and then looked at his other friends.
"What about you Minerva? And you Ginny?"
"Hermione is my cousin and I am staying in the castle, as family must stick together, especially in these times," replied Minerva.
"And as for me, I do not wish to go home and see my mother as I think she will be furious with my sorting. I will go home during the summer but not sooner. Besides, twins are staying too and I plan to learn some trick they know," replied Ginny to her friend. Harry smiled, as he now knew that at least some of his friends would stay in the castle with him for the winter.
As the Winter holidays began, Harry played in the snow with Ginny and Minerva as well as twins but he did not stay out of the castle for long as he spend most of his free time in the hospital wing next to Hermione. Even Madam Pomfrey stopped asking him to leave as she saw his determination to be by Hermione's side.
A week passed and Harry got used to his Winter Holiday. In the morning he woke up in the Hospital Wing and went to have breakfast, then played with his friends outside of the Castle and after the lunch he spent four hours straight taking extra dueling sessions with Professor Snape, who was pushing his limits. By the end of Snape's "detentions", Harry was really exhausted and sweat ran on him like rivers and the boy returned to the Hospital Wing where he read different books to his friend, hoping that she would somehow recognize at least his voice.
On December twenty eight Harry was walking from his "detention", when he saw Minerva running at him. "What's the matter, Minerva?" he asked the girl.
"Harry, look what I found in a girl's toilet. I went to a girl's toilet and mistakenly arrived into one that nobody visits and found a crying ghost with a book lying on the floor. I took the book and here it is"
"Tom Marvolo Riddle" read Harry as he looked at the book. It was a small diary that as he opened, he saw nothing written in it.
"Do you think it belongs to a student here?" asked the girl
"I doubt it. I never heard the name Tom Riddle before. Lets look in the library" the boy suggested and the two friends went to the room with thousands of ancient texts, where they searched for any person with name Tom Riddle.
"This book says that Tom Riddle was a student at Hogwarts about fifty years ago and he received an award for special serviced for the school as he helped to capture the person, who lets the monster out." Read Harry and the two friends looked at each other. They did not find much more information on him, only the generic things like his status as a Prefect and Head Boy as well as his Slytherin placement.
"His past suggests that he was a good student," said Harry as he looked in the book.
Later in the evening, the two friends were studying the diary and the girl was half way dreaming when Harry spilled a drop of ink on a page and then saw it disappeared.
"Minerva" he shook the girl and she looked at him
"Look, I think I found something. The ink disappears when dropped in it" the two put more ink in the book but it all disappeared.
"Lets write our name," suggested the girl as she wrote a sentence.
"Hello, my name is Minerva Granger and my friend over here is Harry Potter" she wrote and the two students saw that ink disappeared again. However, another sentence then appeared on the same page.
"Hello Harry Potter and Minerva Granger. My name is Tom Riddle," they read.
"Do you know who opened the Chamber of Secrets about fifty years ago?" suggested Minerva as she wrote her question.
"Yes, but I cannot tell you. However, I can show it to you" the diary replied and the two Slytherins then realized that they got sunk inside the diary.
"I think that this diary is a Pensieve with a memory placed inside." Suggested Harry as he remembered his mother telling about an object like this. The two students looked around and saw Tom Riddle talking to Professor Dumbledore, who looked much younger despite still having a large beard. They heard the Professor asking Tom if he knew anything about the attacks and Tom replied negatively although the snakes' instincts suggested otherwise.
"You know, Tom looks like you" joked Harry as he saw striking similarities in Tom Riddle's appearance to his friend's"
"Stop it Harry, no way he can be my grandfather," she jokingly yelled at him and the two then followed Tom as he went to some part of the castle.
"I am sorry Hagrid but I have to do this. I cannot allow Hogwarts to close!" shouted Tom and stunned the tall student. The two snakes saw their gamekeeper, who looked much younger. Tom Riddle then opened the box Hagrid had and tried to kill the creature but it quickly ran away. The last thing the two students saw was a rather large Tarantula sized spider running away in the forest. Then everything faded and the students returned to the castle and sat in the Hospital Ward.
"Hagrid is innocent" Harry realized and the girl agreed as they knew that the monster had to be a snake and the spider did not fit it. The two made a deep breath as now they had another task to complete- to prove that Rubeus Hagrid was innocent.
A/N: I placed some hint on the main future relationship in this chapter although I think by now everybody could guess what it would be.
Next chapter: another conversation with Dumbledore.