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The Grey Lady…
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Harry saw the small crowd of students as he walked into the room. The place was big enough for what it was going to be used for. He made a mental note to thank McGonagall for allowing them to practice here otherwise Harry was worried that he'd have to give up the secrecy of the room of requirement.
Hermione saw him first and came up to him. "How many are there?" he asked.
"Forty two," she said. "None from Slytherin though."
"Can't say I'm surprised," Harry said dryly.
The students had noticed him by now. Surprisingly, they all looked like they were taking this whole thing seriously. However, Harry still felt nervous and that was evident from the look on his face. Luckily, the twins came up to his rescue.
"May we have your attention please?" Fred said looking at the students as he and his twin brother came to stand on either side of Harry. "Welcome to the Defense Club."
"Every one of you knows why you are here," George said. "All of you have taken a voluntary decision to be part of this group."
"But you must also know that you are here to mostly help each other," Fred continued. "We expect senior students to help the junior years. There's no better teacher than one student teaching another because we all know how students think and understand things. Use that and help one other. As the name of this group suggests we are here to learn defense only. If you can't defend yourself then you can forget about protecting others. I know no one wants to hear this and it might not be appropriate for me to say this to the first and second year students, but you know about the danger that we all are in and it won't see whether you are a young boy, a girl or someone who's injured and helpless. They will come after you either way. If you can, fight back but if you can't, you should at least know how to defend yourselves until help arrives. For that reason, you all can expect to learn a few spells that you wouldn't find in your Hogwarts curriculum."
With that Fred stepped back and everyone now looked at Harry, wondering if he had something to say as well. He didn't, but he felt like he should. However, nothing came to his mind. He began to feel even more nervous when someone spoke from the students' crowd.
"Is it true that you can cast the patronus charm?"
Everyone, including Harry, looked at Susan Bones who had just spoken. They all then turned to look at him with shocked expressions.
"Can you?" asked a sixth year Ravenclaw.
"Yes, he can," Hermione said quickly. "He protected Sirius from dozens of dementors two years ago, all by himself."
Harry looked at her but she gave him a silent look, telling him to trust the process.
"Can you show us?" asked a first year Gryffindor.
The room became silent as everyone looked at Harry when Neville spoke. "After everything that he said came true, do you still doubt him?"
"It's alright, Neville," Harry said slowly before looking at them. "We won't get anything done if we can't trust each other." He then stepped forward and took out his wand. Everyone looked at him impatiently and excitedly. Harry then closed his eyes and thought of the memory which had been his happiest as of yet and unsurprisingly Daphne's face came to his mind. He smiled slightly and then flicked his wand. "Expecto patronum."
Everyone stepped back as a brilliant stag erupted out of Harry's wand, standing about seven feet tall. Its bright white light filled the room as everyone looked at it with shocked eyes. Even Hermione was surprised. She knew Harry could cast the patronus charm but she didn't know that he had learnt to cast a corporeal one. It made her wonder how much he had improved since last year.
The stag looked around for a full minute before disappearing when Harry cancelled the spell. Silence filled the room as everyone stood with their eyes and mouths opened wide.
"Unlike it's been said all this time, it actually doesn't take a great witch or wizard to cast the patronus spell," he said. "Anyone can do it. That's because unlike most spells the patronus charm doesn't solely rely on your magical prowess. It mostly depends on how powerful that one memory of yours is that gives you the most amount of happiness. The rest is just practice. So, let us begin."
Harry didn't think that the first spell he would be teaching them was the patronus charm but at least they had started.
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It was late at night when Draco arrived on the fifth floor of the Ravenclaw Tower. He made a mental note to thank Luna again as she had managed to get Helena to meet him.
It was hard to see but luckily the moon was bright enough. Draco looked around wondering where the ghost was when he saw her appear in front of him from the wall. He almost got spooked up but maintained his demeanor.
"You are…the Grey Lady," he said a bit hesitatingly.
"I do not answer to that name," she said with a tone of warning as she looked at Draco from top to bottom. "You are a Slytherin. The only reason I am talking to you is because of Luna."
"I'm sorry," Draco said apologizing for calling Helena using the nickname. "I couldn't find you on my own so I had to ask Luna for help."
"She is a kind girl. She said she trusts you," Helena said before pausing. "So, what is it that you want to talk about?"
Draco seemed hesitant at first but then he finally spoke. "There is something that I am looking for and only you can help me find it," he said. "It is your mother's lost diadem."
Her expressions changed immediately as Helena looked at him angrily. "I knew you snakes could not be trusted," she said and turned around, preparing to leave.
"I want to destroy it!" Draco said quickly. Helena stopped and slowly turned to look at him. "I know what he did to it. I know you know it too which is why you want the same thing."
"You think I want it destroyed?" she said with a soft chuckle before smiling slightly. "I no longer care what happens to that diadem."
Draco was confused. "Why?" he asked.
"Because everything that has been told about it is nothing but lies," Helena said. "It doesn't give you the power of wisdom or intelligence. I didn't know it until I had stolen it from my mother. I always envied the attention which she got because of her intelligence. She often said that it was because of the diadem. So being jealous, I stole it for myself. But when I wore it nothing happened. I realized that it wasn't the diadem that had given my mother her wisdom. It was her and her alone. Ashamed, I couldn't bring myself to face her. So I secretly put the diadem back amongst her things and then ran away. When she got ill and wanted to see me, my mother sent Baron to bring me to her. When I refused to go, he killed me. Regretting that I couldn't see her in her final moments, I came back to Hogwarts as a ghost but by then it was too late.
"Feeling angry, I blamed it all on the diadem and wanted to destroy it," she continued. "But as a ghost I couldn't even touch it. It remained amongst my mother's belongings, constantly reminding me of her…of my regret. I realized that destroying it was the only way I could get over my regret but then I decided not to do it. It was the one thing that I had left of my mother as everything else was taken. Despite not having to see me in her last moments she died in peace so, her ghost moved into the afterlife. The diadem was all I had left to remember her. However, centuries later a boy came to me looking for it and I got persuaded by his manipulation. His words made my regret come back and once again I began to hate that thing. And in my anger I told him where it was so he could destroy it. By the time I could realize my mistake, he had done his deed. He had cursed that diadem with black magic and I couldn't do anything. The only remnant of my mother was tainted and all I could feel from it was rot and darkness."
"That's why you don't care whatever happens to it anymore," Draco said. There was a pause from his side and the place filled with an eerie silence before he continued. "If that diadem isn't destroyed, a lot of innocent people will die. I know he hid it in this castle but I can't find it. Please, only you can tell me where it is."
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"Is this the last trip?" Matt asked as he and Ann apparated inside the Greengrass Manor.
"It is," she said. "I just need to get a few more things from my lab."
"Alright I'll see what else we can take," Matt said. "We won't be coming back to this place until this impending war is over."
"How sure are you that we will be able to come back here at all?" Ann asked with a sad smile.
"We can always hope," he said smiling back. "Come on, the quicker we get out of here the better."
Ann nodded before heading towards the basement where her lab was, while Matt went upstairs to see if he could take anything. Over the last three days the two had been making trips to their home to get everything of importance and moving them to a safe location which only they knew. Once the moving was done they would take their daughters and move out of Potter Manor. It was discussed with Harry and Sirius and they had no issues with it. They also didn't ask where this safe house was because the less people knew the better it was.
Ann entered her lab and took a moment to look around. She had already taken the ingredients that would come in handy for making important potions like healing or blood replenishing ones, but she still had some more left to take. This could very well be her last time here so she wanted to soak it all in. A minute later she began to put the ingredients in a magically extended pouch when she noticed something and stopped.
It was the vial which contained Harry's blood that she had taken from him in order to find out what magic Lily had used on it. She had done all the tests she could but had found nothing out of the normal in the blood. So she had concluded that maybe Lily's protection had worn off, probably after Voldemort had used Harry's blood to come back. She had told the same to Harry and he had responded saying that he hadn't hoped to find anything from it all. What little of his blood remained Ann had put it safely in her ingredients' cabinets and had forgotten about it. This was the first time that she was looking at it as she remembered she had it with her.
However, something seemed different.
She took out the vial from the cabinet to take a closer look and was shocked to see that the blood was moving, as if it was alive. Curious, she removed the stopper and floated a few drops of the blood into a shallow glass dish that resembled much like the muggle Petri dish. There were some runic engravings on it which measured the amount of magic coming out of whatever was placed on it and the moment Harry's blood touched the glass, those runes lit up immediately. At first the glow was of faint yellow which told Ann that the blood was magical. She wasn't surprised at all. It was a common thing to happen. However, a few seconds later the glow began to diminish and the runes started turning black in color. That had her attention and she was shocked to say the least. She didn't know what it meant. The runes could either glow a faint yellow or didn't glow at all. So this was different. A minute later, however, the dish exploded and Ann's face was hit with a few glass shards.
She fell back, mostly out of shock before she quickly healed her face with a flick of her wand since they were very minor scratches. Luckily nothing went in her eyes or mouth. She then slowly stood up and looked at what remained of the Petri dish and her eyes widened in shock as the blood that was splattered on the table had began to move and clump together. It then coagulated into a round sphere, the size of a marble.
Ann tried to look at it more closely so she cast the floating spell on it. However, nothing happened. Her spell didn't work. She tried again and again but the small sphere of blood didn't seem to have any affect. She tried that spell on the chair next to the table and it worked fine which meant that it was the blood was blocking the spell.
"What are you?" she said to herself as she leaned a bit closer to look at the sphere when it suddenly started to shake. Ann immediately backed up, wondering what was going on. However, her eyes never left the sphere as its surface started forming ripples because of the shaking until a few seconds later the whole sphere turned black. It then hardened before forming cracks and then crumbled into dust.
"Are you done, love?" Matt called from upstairs.
"Y…Yeah, give me a few seconds," Ann said before grabbing an empty vial and collecting some of that dust in it using a piece of paper. She didn't want to touch it or mistakenly inhale it because she didn't know what it was. She then grabbed the vial which had Harry's blood in it before putting them all in her pouch and leaving the lab.
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A/N: I have altered the story about the diadem a bit so it fits with the story. That is all I wanted to say…
Thanks for reading…
