Chapter 33: Ravenclaw's Diadem

The writing part of the exam for Harry passed like in a blur. He just answered and answered the endless list of questions about all the kinds of magical properties of the potions, the laws of mixing potions, poisons and antidotes. He was sure only about his answer on the effects of the Polyjuice Potion and hoped he hadn't written complete nonsense giving the answers to the rest of the questions.

They all yawned while eating lunch, but then Harry didn't even notice when the time had passed and he had to do the practical part of the exam. At first, he was happy with his task – the exam required him to brew the Draught of Living Death, which they had prepared in the very first class by Slughorn. And he remembered well that Half-Blood Prince had suggested stirring the potion once clockwise every seven times after stirring counterclockwise. Or he had to stir seven times clockwise and that one was counterclockwise? And did he have to stir seven times or in the seventh time? He felt so tired that everything blurred into a mess, but finally, Harry decided to follow his initial intuition, making something that even resembled the required potion, filled it into a vial and handed it over to the examiner, Professor Pence, who sealed his vial and put a label on, having charmed his name on it. Harry Potter's little bottle lay in a box next to ones labelled Hermione Granger, Ernest Macmillan, Hannah Abbot, Theodor Nott and a few others. Draco, Ron, and Ginny were still brewing their potions.

Professor Pence gestured that he must now go to Professor Tofty.

"We meet again, Mr. Potter," Tofty greeted him with a smile. The old professor was sitting behind a table, on which a whole bunch of identical bottles were put, and at the edge of the table, there lay a bundle with rolled up strips of parchment. "You are welcome to pick one ticket," the examiner said as he pointed to the pile of strips. Harry chose one and unrolled it – there were seven numbers written on it. "So what do we have here?" Tofty asked as he reached for the parchment strip Harry had picked. Having taken the piece of parchment, he adjusted his glasses. "So, it's first, seventh…" the professor red, alternately looking at the strip and at the bunch of bottles, taking the correspondingly numbered samples. "Now then, Harry Potter, can you tell me what kind of potions these are?"

Harry uncorked the first vial and sniffed it. The smell didn't seem anyhow special. He looked at the colour – it was maroon. Harry wondered; it seemed, he had never seen such a potion.

"Well, Harry, what do you have there?" Professor Tofty asked as his wrinkled chin moved.

Harry jumped back to reality. He had suddenly felt dreamy, as if he had forgotten where he was for a second, and looked oddly at his examiner.

Tofty said calmly to him, "Harry, can you tell me what kind of potion this is?"

Harry looked confusedly at the little bottle – indeed he was holding some kind of potion in his hands, but he felt like his mind was swept completely blank. "Professor, I don't know. I seem to have forgotten everything."

Tofty's smile stretched even wider at that. "Well, well, just do think a little."

"It's the Forgetfulness Potion!" Harry realized – luckily the effect of the potion's vapour was very short-timed.

"That's correct," Tofty said approvingly as he took a quick look at the answer sheet. "However, Harry Potter, I would like to advise you not to smell any unknown potion or any other volatile substance like that. If you want to check the smell of it, do place the vessel of it slightly away from you and do wave with your palm the scent towards yourself. This way you'll avoid any unpleasant surprises like this one. You were lucky that it was the Forgetfulness Potion now, but what if it could've been Garrotting Gas?"

"I'll try to keep that in my mind," Harry replied and took the next bottle. It contained a thick, viscous, dark green liquid. Harry knew it right away – Polyjuice Potion. He also got Murtlap Essence, Strengthening Solution, the wart removing potion, pure water, but one of them he didn't recognize.

After finishing the exam, Harry felt beyond exhausted, especially taking into account the last night's adventures. Without waiting for Ron or Ginny, he went upstairs to the common room right away. There he met Hermione, who was desperately trying to study for tomorrow's Transfiguration exam.

"Take a rest, Hermione," Harry said as he took her notebook away from her. "I'm thinking that we practically need to take a nap right now."

"Maybe you're right. I almost mistook the orange juice for the Liquid Luck. That would've been such a failure!" Hermione laughed softly at her blunder, which she didn't make after all. Harry told her how he had inhaled fumes of the Forgetfulness Potion and had almost forgotten everything. They both laughed as they discussed more details about their Potions exam until they met Ron and Ginny. Then they indeed went to sleep right after dinner, and Harry was asleep instantly as his head touched the pillow. He slept until the very morning, having reread nothing for the Transfiguration exam.

In the morning, on his way to breakfast, he found Hermione in the common room as she was reading deeply her Transfiguration notes, and she jumped a little as he greeted her.

"Oh, Harry, it's you," she said, relieved. "Is it breakfast time already?"

"Yes, it's already half past seven," Harry confirmed, but then he asked suspiciously, "How long have you been studying now?"

"I got up at five o'clock," she replied as she rubbed her eyes and stretched out her arms. "I got up earlier to have some time to reread my notes. I really didn't have any energy for studying yesterday."

Today's Transfiguration exam, supervised by Professor Mawson, also went by as swiftly as a gust of wind. After vanishing a pig and conjuring up a couple of chairs out of thin air during the practical part of it in the afternoon, Harry exited the Great Hall feeling happy and began to climb the marble stairs. Anyway, one more exam was passed. There's only the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam tomorrow. And what was he going to do next? There was going to be the Quidditch game on Saturday, the End-of-Term Feast on Sunday, and then that was it – then they would have to leave Hogwarts. But where the Ravenclaw's Diadem might be, they had learned nothing new about it. Besides, Lucius Malfoy had said that he had no idea how long the prison he had made could hold the piece of Voldemort's torn soul, so they needed to find the Diadem as soon as possible.

After a while, the usual four of them had taken their favourite places by the fireplace, trying to read their notes on Defence Against the Dark Arts. However, after the dinner, there was a Quidditch feeling whirling in the air as the younger students began discussing with each other the Gryffindor Quidditch Team's prospects – as Hermione would put it – with too much enthusiasm, and it was indeed too much for her when one of the fifth year students did bring a sheet from his bed to the common room and now a whole bunch of them was writing and drawing on it.

"Let's go to the library," Hermione suggested wearily. At least in the library, it was Madam Pince's responsibility to keep order and silence, not hers. Harry, Ron, and Ginny agreed. They also felt disturbed by the commotion in the common room.

It was indeed much quieter in the library. Sitting down next to Ginny and Ron, Harry took his copy of Confronting the Faceless and opened it as he resumed his reading on signs of how to recognize a werewolf.

"Hello, my friends," a cheerful voice said from behind Harry after he had already spent some time repeating some topics. Harry nearly jumped and turned around to see Luna, who had put some kind of bright colourful circles in her hair. She sat down next to the four of them, putting her book aside.

"Aren't you going to study for tomorrow's exam at all?" Ron asked, looking at the girl.

"I'm in the process of preparing for it now," Luna replied seriously, giving her usual enigmatic smile. "You see, in my opinion, continuous studying before the exam does more harm than good. It's best to study hard for the exam a few days before it, but on the last night one needs to rest one's head in order to be able to think clearly the next morning."

"And of course, those plums of yours help with clear thinking too, don't they?" Hermione added, rather testily.

"Yes, Hermione," Luna answered her joyfully. "You've finally started to see more." It seemed to Harry that Luna had completely misunderstood Hermione's sarcasm, and an awkward silence fell between them, which everyone tried to ignore as they focused hard on their studying material for tomorrow's exam. Meanwhile, Luna reached into her school bag and took out a copy of The Quibbler, and she still continued to search for something in her bag. Finally giving up on her efforts, she put her hands on her copy of The Quibbler and softly muttered to herself, "Dad has printed a test he hadn't done a long time; I really wonder where I could've put my Specterspecs?"

Harry took a quick look at the girl. "Luna, aren't they on your head? You just…" Harry suddenly stopped and then very slowly and quietly finished the sentence to himself, "… don't see them." An incredible thought had occurred to him. This thought seemed to rise out of his spinal cord first, climbing up into his head, and his eyes seemed to open as if the last piece of a puzzle had fallen into its place. He realized where the Ravenclaw's Diadem might be! Perhaps that was the reason why they couldn't find it, because it wasn't hidden, but it was the opposite – it was placed somewhere everyone could see it, only no one noticed it.

"Harry, is there something wrong?" Ginny asked as she noticed his oddly pensive expression and wide eyes, while Luna curiously touched her hair and found the Specterspecs in them.

"I know where the Diadem must be," Harry called out as softly as possible. "Of course, it just has to be there!"

"Really?" Hermione and Ron said in unison as they looked at Harry in surprise, waiting for him to explain his point further.

"It's so obvious! Ravenclaw's Diadem is on the Ravenclaw's head!" Harry finished in a very hushed and dramatic voice.

Ron's eyes widened in anticipation of the adventure, but Hermione narrowed hers suspiciously. "Harry," she spoke, "the Ravenclaw's statue has a stone diadem on its head. It has been there since Hogwarts was founded."

"And how can you be sure about that?" Harry objected. "We didn't manage to check the statue thoroughly. If alchemy has taught me anything, it's that turning one material into another is absolutely no problem."

"But it means he needed to destroy the real statue, then," Hermione pointed out, though sounding more like interested in this thought than dismissive.

"I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to carefully remove the original stone diadem with Reducto and then replace it with the real one," Ginny spoke up now.

"Besides, when I wanted to look at the Diadem before the Battle of Hogwarts," Harry said excitedly, glancing over his shoulder to see if they weren't drawing too much of Madam Pince's attention with their chattering, "Voldemort did send his minions straight to the Ravenclaw Tower, not to the Room of Requirement. They knew I had seen the replica of it in the Lovegoods house – Xenophilius must have told them this during the interrogation – so the Carrows weren't sent there just to delay me, but to guard the Diadem."

"And You-Know-Who also did mention that Quirrel was a Ravenclaw student. Then he indeed knew perfectly well how to get into the Ravenclaw Tower," Ron remarked admiringly. Harry could feel that his friends were also noticing how every piece was falling in its correct place.

"And that's why he himself chose to be a Ravenclaw, so he could always be close to his Diadem," Ginny concluded. "That's why he didn't choose to be a Slytherin this time."

"And the most crucial thing," Harry said confidently as he raised a finger, "there's no better place for Ravenclaw's Diadem than to be on Ravenclaw's head! And wouldn't such a hiding place seem to him like a victory in trickery – he would've put his Horcrux right under everyone's noses, but no one would be smart enough to comprehend what it really was. And let's not even mention how many times we walked past the Ravenclaw Tower with our Location spell."

Everything was clicking into its places; Harry's mind was racing now. Now, when this thought had occurred to him, he wondered why he had never had it before. It seemed so obvious. Of course, the Diadem must be on Ravenclaw's head. It simply wasn't anywhere else – for Merlin's sake, they had checked practically the entire castle from top to bottom floor by floor. They only had to figure out how to get into Ravenclaw Tower again. Ron was ready to go there right now, but they agreed that it would be a bad idea to start tearing down the precious statue of all Ravenclaws just in front of their eyes now in the evening. Everyone agreed to wait until midnight and then Luna will let them in.

The midnight came and Harry, along with Hermione, Ron, and Ginny, was creeping quietly to the door of the Ravenclaw Tower, looking at the Marauder's Map. It was hard to tell what was actually going on in the tower, because all the Ravenclaw students' dots overlapped each other, but they stood calmly in the area of the Map which was depicted as the Ravenclaw Tower. Somewhere among all that crowd of dots, only one single point was moving – Luna Lovegood. Harry pressed his ear to the door, but everything seemed to be silent.

"Let's go inside?" Ron asked.

"We can try," Harry agreed, and Ron knocked on the door with the eagle-shaped doorknob.

"Hello! Are you ready to answer my question?" the knocker asked.

"We more or less are," Ron stated simply.

"Then do tell me – on which side of a cup its aspen is located?" the door said.

Before Ron had even opened his mouth to reply, the door opened and Luna's blonde head popped out.

"Come in, there's everything calm for now," the girl said to her friends and then stepped aside so they could quickly get inside.

Illuminated by the moon, the common room was now in twilight darkness, and the young people lit the tips of their wands. In the pale wand-cast light combined with night shadowy light, it seemed like the marble statue of Rowena Ravenclaw was glimmering as it proudly carried her crown of wisdom on her head.

"Be careful, Ron," Harry warned as his friend reached out upwards wanting to touch the Ravenclaw's Diadem. "Remember that Dumbledore gave away a whole palm of his when he touched a Horcrux too hastily." Ron immediately shot his hand back to himself.

Meanwhile, Harry tightened his grip on his wand and tried to gingerly approach the Diadem with it. He stood in front of Ravenclaw and looked into her face, then slowly brought his wand closer to her Diadem, trying to feel the spells protecting it. He didn't feel any sort of dangerous magic, so he tried to touch the Diadem with the shining tip of his wand.

Suddenly, like a shiver run down his spine. Harry blinked and tried to process what had just happened. He lowered his glowing wand to his side and gazed distractedly at the statue of Ravenclaw. What the hell was he doing in the Ravenclaw Tower in the middle of the night? His head felt as it had been swept clear of any thoughts, only one soft voice in the back of his mind was telling him that tomorrow there's going to be the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam. He must go back to his tower and have a good night's sleep. He's got nothing to do next to Ravenclaw's statue. Turning around, he looked at the faces of his friends, who were watching him with great anticipation. He understood nothing now; only that one thought of a soft voice was urging him that they needed to go back to the Gryffindor Tower.

"We must go back to our tower," he announced, obeying the voice in his thoughts.

"Harry, why?" Ginny asked. "We must get the Diadem."

Harry looked at the statue of Ravenclaw and her Diadem confused – he really didn't understand anything. Everything was fine with the Diadem. Why is he actually here in the middle of the night?

"The Diadem must stay in its place," he declared. "And we must go back to our tower."

"You sound like charmed with Confundus, Harry," Ginny scolded him. "We came here especially to get the Diadem."

"Charmed with Confundus! That's right, Ginny!" Hermione exclaimed softly. "The Diadem must be protected by the Confundus Charm." Then she raised her wand, while Harry looking at her in confusion, and began performing the curse removal spell they had learned well from Dawlish at the beginning of this school year. After Hermione's actions, the head of the statue glowed dimly for a moment, and suddenly Harry felt like some watery liquid had run over his body giving back his own thoughts. It seemed he wasn't really himself for the last few minutes.

"The charm should be removed now," Hermione announced, and then she reached into her pocket for her very tiny last piece of her Revealer. "I'll try it with my Revealer," she said as she was barely able to take it with her two fingers. Extremely carefully in order not to touch the Diadem with her fingertips, she rubbed the little piece of Revealer along the marble rim. Immediately, the light marble turned metallic there after the touch of her Revealer, and it glistened brightly in the dim light of the common room. After rubbing the band even further, it turned into metal and shone in the wand light for a while before slowly changing back into marble again.

"It's Illusory transfiguration," Hermione concluded. "The band isn't truly transfigured, it's enchanted just to look like a stone."

Since nothing bad had happened to Hermione's Revealer, Harry faced the full-length statue and reached with his hands upwards trying carefully to move the Diadem. Of course, it wasn't going to come off at all, as if it indeed was made of the same marble material as the rest of the statue. "How are we going to get it off?"

"Maybe we could try the same way Voldemort put it on?" Ginny suggested.

"Let me try it, Harry. One must be very careful with Reducto. It would be bad if we accidentally chop off half of Ravenclaw's head," Hermione said, and Harry agreed with her.

The girl took a chair and climbed on it so that she could get closer to the head of the statue. Gingerly, she silently dragged her wand along the edge of the Diadem which touched the head of the statue, leaving behind a line of a pale bluish light. This way she walked around the statue as Ron brought her some more chairs. When Hermione had reached the beginning spot with her wand, which was still glowing with faint blue light, she whispered, "Reducto!" and there was a soft cracking sound. She put her fingers on the Diadem and with a bit of effort carefully removed it from the head of the statue and handed it to Harry as she stepped down from a chair.

He took the Diadem – although it looked like made of marble, it was as cold as metal, and Harry could also sense the unpleasant, evil foreboding feeling that came with every crippled part of Voldemort's torn soul.

"This definitely is the real one," Harry confirmed with a wince since he remembered the depressive feeling too well, the Locket was giving them when they'd been hiding in the woods a year and a half ago.

"May I try to take off the illusion, too, Harry?" Hermione asked as she reached her hand towards the Diadem. "I'm really curious how it actually looks like."

Harry handed Hermione back the Diadem while he himself climbed onto one of the chairs Ron had put around the statue. While Hermione was trying to remove the spell, Harry wanted to put his own illusion on the ruined Ravenclaw statue. As Switch had taught them – it was like with all other transfiguration spells, Harry needed to focus on the desired outcome. He recalled the shape of the statue as it had looked before Hermione had removed the Diadem from its head.

He tried such a charm:

"A piece of marble, stone of décor

Do have a look you had once before."

To Harry's delight, the transfiguration spell had worked, and there seemed to reappear a diadem on the statue's head again. Now he just needed to bind the spell to the statue itself so that it wouldn't fade so soon.

"Diadem, do keep your shape,

Never do the lady escape."

The dim light that had appeared around the diadem seemed absorbing into the Ravenclaw's statue. Harry hoped this would be enough that the statue would keep its form as it was before as long as no one really wanted to check it more closely. And why would anyone do that? He put his fingers to the illusion of the diadem and they seemed to go through it until he felt the slightly jagged surface with his fingertips which Hermione had split off. It'll be fine this way it is, Harry thought. He didn't want trying to charm a real marble diadem right now at all.

Meanwhile, Hermione had managed to remove the marble look Voldemort had put on the Diadem with great effort. She looked at Harry's illusion charm and said approvingly, "Very good, Harry. Looks like real."

"Thanks," Harry said with a smile as he climbed down off his chair and turned his attention to the real Diadem now. Hermione gave it back to Harry quite hastily, wanting to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

Now the band looked like made of shiny metal and it was the same with the floral elements wrapping around it here and there. The peculiar siphons of which Xenophilius Lovegood had spoken were absent of this Diadem, however, a large sapphire gem was encrusted in front of it, but one of the two smaller moonstones embedded on each side of it had fallen out. But it didn't matter, because they needed to destroy the Diadem anyway.

"It's such a pity we have to ruin it in order to destroy Voldemort," Luna said simply, but this time Harry could hear a hint of sadness in her usually dreamy voice. Understandably, she admired the Diadem as a priceless treasure. Harry imagined he would feel exactly the same way if someone told him he had to destroy the Gryffindor Sword for good.

"Perhaps there's a way to save it?" Ginny asked.

"How?" Ron replied with a question. "It must be destroyed; otherwise we'll never get rid of You-Know-Who."

"Maybe it's possible to destroy the soul residing there without destroying the Diadem itself?" Luna asked. "Well, at least not utterly destroying it."

"That's unlikely possible," Hermione said thoughtfully, but didn't reject strictly the Ravenclaw girl's suggestion.

"Dumbledore did it," Luna claimed. "The Resurrection Stone has cracks, but it's not completely destroyed, since it no longer serves as a Horcrux for Voldemort's soul."

"Only Dumbledore didn't tell us how he did it," Harry replied, "and he more or less did sacrifice his right hand in the process of destroying the piece of the soul."

"But didn't he harm his palm because there was some dark curse put on it?" Ron asked thinking back. "Technically, it wasn't related to the destruction of the Horcrux."

"At the moment we have only one reliable method how to destroy Horcruxes and that is Basilisk venom," Hermione stated. "Of course, I could look for some other way in the library, but I have no idea what I should be looking for."

"Then I suggest doing this," Harry spoke decisively, "it's late tonight, we've already found the Diadem. For now, I'll keep it; maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we'll have a good idea. Now we aren't going down to the Chamber of Secrets after the Basilisk's fangs either." His friends agreed with him and as Luna led them out the door, they cautiously made their way back to their beds, whispering quietly.

He placed the Diadem in his suitcase wrapped in a pair of his pants – as Hermione had claimed that it might not be wise keep both parts of his soul next to each other in his pouch – Harry crawled into his bed, the night's events still running though his mind. Hermione's probably right, Voldemort hadn't enchanted Ravenclaw's Diadem with any additional dark magic since Dumbledore or some other people could have sensed the presence of the Dark Arts in the school. It was too risky, Harry thought, thinking back what Hermione had said about this matter on their way back to the common room. But we have to deal with Voldemort as soon as possible, no one knows how long Lucius Malfoy's spell is going to last. I just hope that it's not that weak; I hope we still have a day or two, so that we can try to save the Diadem…