A/N - Apologies I was informed I had missed a 'Break' which I normally switch for single lines, I have corrected this now. Please enjoy and review if you like it!

Chapter 16

Even with the walk from Hogsmeade, they had arrived at the castle with several hours to spare and although the Headmaster spent one of those playing Gobstones with Terry (and losing in a bizarre turn of events), the elderly professor did eventually have to leave to prepare for the feast. He cleaned his green stained beard with a wave of his hand and congratulated Terry on his victory before making his way out of the Hall, leaving the two of them to wait in the empty room.

They spent the remaining two hours chatting and enjoying their ability to, legally, cast magic again. The hall was filled with sparks and lights and floating scraps of paper as Harry let his magic flow freely down the length of his wand, the two spent several minutes trying a tug-of-war with a piece of parchment, both trying to move it towards themselves and away from the other.

Harry was only distracted from his focus on the floating ball of scrunched up parchment when a stern cough sounded from the doorway of the hall. His focus had been so great that his awareness had shrunk from the edges of the Great Hall to just cover the tables around him and Terry. With a small flex of his will, he pushed his awareness out until it once again filled the majority of the hall and revealed the now open doors where a frowning Professor McGonagall stood with her arms crossed.

"While I praise your efforts at improving your magical focus, perhaps you could find a method that doesn't result in a mess of parchment scraps gentlemen?" The Transfiguration Mistress gestured with her wand at the floor around Harry and Terry and the various torn pieces of parchment they had used in their challenges all vanished from the floor. Harry let his concentration drop on the levitation spell, the sudden lack of resistance causing the parchment to smack into Terry's chest as he rubbed the back of his head embarrassedly.

"Sorry Professor McGonagall, we just wanted to do something to pass the time." Harry explained as Terry quickly tucked his hard-won trophy into his pocket and mumbled his own apology.

It seemed to be enough to mollify the strict witch who just nodded with a sigh and then ushered them towards the Ravenclaw table. "Professor Flitwick let me know about your troubles with the train, I'm just glad you did the sensible thing and found someone to bring you here. Now smarten up, the other students will be along very shortly."

The deputy headmistress made her way up to the staff table just as a side door behind the head table opened and the Headmaster stepped out followed by most of the rest of the staff. Oddly, Professor Flitwick and Professor Snape were the last to step into the hall and seemed to be in deep discussion together, even forgoing their usual seats to sit together at the end of the table.

Almost as soon as the staff had all sat down, the main doors to the hall swung open and the students from the train began to fill the hall, splitting into four streams that all swarmed their respective tables. Harry and Terry were sat with their backs to the Hufflepuff table so Terry was caught unawares when a figure suddenly separated from the group and tackled him and Harry in a hug that pressed their chests against the table edge. Harry had been able to prepare himself somewhat but even he grunted as the wind was forced from his chest.

"Where were you two?! We were so worried!" Susan squeezed the two of them tighter for a moment as Hannah did her best to pry the redhead away. "You will be explaining this later." Susan demanded as she relented and let herself be pulled over to the Hufflepuff table.

"She's a maniac, I think I've cracked a rib." Terry wheezed as he rubbed his chest and winced in pain. Before Harry could reply, the doors to the great hall opened again and Professor McGonagall led a long line of new first year students up the divide between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables.

It was odd to watch the sorting as a spectator instead of a participant and Harry found himself paying particular attention to the sorting hat's magic as it worked, breaking from his observations only to clap and cheer when a new student joined Ravenclaw. He couldn't discern how the hat worked, he didn't recognise any of the runes or movements of the magic that made up the floppy enchanted hat, but it was still interesting to watch it work.

After running through the long list of new students, a longer list than there had been for the previous year's sorting Harry was fairly certain, then the hat was taken away and Professor Dumbledore stood from his seat and gestured for the school's attention. In no time the hall fell silent, no magic flowed from the man to do this, his sheer presence demanded respect and at least that much obedience from even the most rebellious of students.

"Welcome! Welcome to new students and old alike, welcome to Hogwarts. Now I am sure you are all eager to eat so I will be brief. As many of you know, we found ourselves once again without a Defence Professor after an unfortunate incident last year, however the Governors have provided a candidate for the position. Gilderoy Lockhart has joined us and will be imparting the knowledge he has collected on his many adventures, please give him a warm welcome." Dumbledore gestured with one arm behind him where a tall wizard was sat, his blond hair perfectly coiffed and a wide smile on his face as he waved to the hall.

Like a wave rippling across the hall, whispers and giggles and feminine sighs echoed at the new professor's introduction, the noises only stopping when the Headmaster raised his hands again.

"Our caretaker Mr Filch has also asked I remind you all that magic in the hallways is forbidden and that he has added three new items to the banned enchanted objects list; Fanged Frisbees, Screaming Yo-Yo's and Gambol's Ricochet Balls are all now forbidden. The full list, which is now 358 items long, can be found outside Mr Filch's office for those who might care to look. And now on with the feast." With a loud clap of his hands the empty tables were suddenly covered with food and in no time the hall was filled with the sound of merry reunions and students filling their stomachs.

Harry enjoyed spending time with his aunt but deep down he knew, as he tucked into a slice of chicken pie, that his home was really Hogwarts.

"My name is Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin 3rd Class, Honorary member of the British Defence League, Five times winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award." The new Defence professor flashed his signature grin at the class as he started their first lesson with him. "But I didn't defeat the Hag of Homorog by smiling at her." A few of the students chuckled at Lockhart's joke before he tapped a stack of parchment on his desk and a sheet of the parchment landed in front of all the students. "I thought we would start with a little quiz, nothing too difficult, it's just to see how much attention you all paid to your books. You can have ten minutes starting now."

Amidst the rustling of parchment and the faint scratching of quills, Harry frowned as he ran a hand across his parchment and realised he would find this very difficult. There was no Braille on this test, he couldn't read it. After fighting through a brief burst of embarrassment he raised his hand, he still couldn't cast the surprisingly difficult translation spell for written text to Braille so he would need to ask the professor to do so.

"Oh yes Mr…Mr Potter? Well well a minor celebrity in your own right of course, do you have a question for me already?" Harry grimaced at the word 'celebrity' but nodded nonetheless.

"Er yes professor, sorry but I still haven't got the hang of the translation charm yet and I can't… could you create a braille copy of the test for me please?" Harry asked as he gestured to the paper in front of him.

He was surprised when Professor Lockhart didn't reply straight away, he supposed it was a rather niche spell and not many had need of it but the famed wizard's reaction was still odd.

"Nonsense Harry, may I call you Harry? No no, you don't need to complete the test anyway. That's only for the beginners anyway, you're at least above that already." Lockhart faux whispered as he picked up the sheet of parchment from Harry's desk and walked back to the front of the room. "In fact, I think you're all too advanced for that little test, besides books and scrolls can only teach you so much."

As Lockhart turned and reached down behind his desk, Terry leaned over to Harry. "Couldn't learn anything from the test anyway, first question was about his favourite colour!" He whispered, equal parts amused and outraged.

"Now I must warn you," Lockhart gripped a blue cloth in his hand, draped across an ominously rattling object on his desk. "Don't scream or cry, it might provoke them!"

With a dramatic flourish, the cloth whipped away from the cage to reveal…pixies. Or at least Harry was fairly sure they were pixies, Hagrid had pointed out a nest of them on one of their walks along the edge of the forest and the little creatures looked fairly similar to those in the cage, though they had been far less agitated than the mass of angrily buzzing wings and limbs struggling against the metal bars. Harry felt rather sorry for them, compared to the happy pixies in the forest these creatures seemed thin and angry.

"They're not dangerous, they're just pixies!" Michael Corner shouted from the back of the class.

"Freshly caught Cornish Pixies to be precise. If you think they're not dangerous then you should have no trouble dealing with them." Lockhart tapped the front of the cage with his wand and with a sound like a hurricane, the door swung open and a wild cascade of wild pixies exploded across the room. They swarmed the room, biting and scratching anything and everything they touched as they enjoyed their newfound freedom.

Pandemonium. The cloud of pixies surged across the desks as shrieks and screams filled the room, students clambered over desks and knocked over chairs to get away from the wrathful cloud and quickly cries of pain sounded as the slowest students or those closest to the front were surrounded by the pixies.

A few resourceful students had been able to cast spells to fend off the little blue devils, but the majority of the class were cowering or fleeing for the door. Even Professor Lockhart seemed to be having trouble, he had ducked under his desk and was scrabbling for something on the floor.

Harry and Terry had made it to Susan and Hannah and were throwing sparks and other spells at the winged creatures whenever one neared their corner of the room. Harry had tripped in his haste and was still half lying on the stone floor when a larger group of pixies broke off from the cloud in the middle of the room and winged its way towards the foursome.

"Immobulus!" Hannah shouted from the left, a wash of magic freezing the pixies in the air just before they reached the edge of the desk they were huddled behind.

"Oh good thinking Han!" Susan cheered as the frozen pixies drifted away, leaving them space to join the mass exodus of students from the classroom.

"Do you think Professor Lockhart is okay?" Hannah asked as they stumbled away from the room, Harry couldn't help but feel bad for the professor who was likely still hiding under his desk, but as he limped along, he figured that a Defence professor could probably handle himself well enough, a sentiment Terry seemed to share.

"Who cares? The lunatic let out a bunch of wild pixies and then disappeared on us!" Terry shouted as they hurried away from the room.

"Maybe he was just trying to show us how even small creatures can be dangerous?" Hannah suggested, but even she didn't sound like she believed it.

The only silver lining to the pixie debacle was that Harry and Terry could make it down to the dungeons for their Potions lesson with time to spare. This year they would be sharing the labs with the Slytherin second years instead of the Hufflepuff's, so they bid farewell to Susan and Hannah at the ground floor and descended deeper into the bowels of the castle.

They were the first ones to the laboratory, but the door was locked so they settled outside the room chatting until they were joined by the rest of the Ravenclaws, a few still looked shaken by the Defence lesson. The Slytherin's arrived in one solid group with a few minutes to spare and, almost like he had been waiting for them, the door to the lab swung open as Professor Snape stepped out and stared apathetically at them all.

"Inside." He instructed in a low rasping voice, and they were all quick to comply.

It was interesting, when sharing the lessons with Hufflepuff's there was no real distinction between the two houses, they mingled and sat amongst each other. This was not the case with the Slytherins. The room was arranged with a gap down the middle and the far sides for students to walk down without having to jostle others brewing and the Slytherins all sat down to the of this middle aisle, leaving no ambiguity to their intention. It didn't matter much to Harry, his limited interactions with the serpent house had all been negative, although admittedly he had only spoken with four of his year mates from Slytherin.

"Your previous year has been spent on the most basic of potions in order to teach you the proper techniques to be used in brewing. It is expected that now you have a foundation in the elemental rules and methods, you can begin to brew more complex potions. This year we will be focussing on potions with a longer brewing time. You will need to ascertain the stages in the brewing process where it is safe to stop for a prolonged period of time." Beside him, Terry rubbed his hands together eagerly. "Mr Potter, how do you know if it is safe to pause brewing a potion for more than an hour?"

"According to Arsenius Jigger, it is only safe to stop the brewing of a potion when there are no ongoing reactions or evolutions of heat and when the next step does not include the addition of a stimulant or ingredient which might agitate the potion." Harry was extremely grateful for the time he had spent reading ahead over the summer, the 'rest point' as it was called in some books was a big part of potion making and cropped up several times in the books he had read.

"Correct. For the first term either I or your books will instruct you on the rest point of the potions you will be brewing, however after the Winter Break you will need to recognise these stages on your own so pay attention." Snape jabbed his wand at the chalkboard at the front of the room and writing appeared on it. "Copy this down!"

Luckily for Harry, Terry was able to whisper the instructions on the board to him and his quill jotted them down in braille. For a moment he thought Professor Snape would scold him on the use of magic in the classroom, but the man seemed satisfied to ignore his existence, instead praising the brewing techniques of Draco and the other Slytherins. He did take a few points from Harry for not grinding his lionfish spines correctly, but Harry could live with that compared to the stories he had heard from Neville.

In fact, it was only because of Neville's warnings from his time in Potions with the Slytherins that Harry was able to recognise the small object that sailed across the room and nearly landed in his cauldron. He was able to reach out and grab the little missile before it reached his potion, but he doubted anyone without his sight could have detected it through the clouds of smoke and vapours that filled most of the room. He nudged Terry and opened his palm to show him what he had caught.

"Bloody hell, keep that away from the cauldrons Harry. That's a Salamander scale, if that got into this it would…well it would probably have burned anyone nearby pretty horribly at least." Terry whispered to him.

Harry hadn't been able to track the object back to who had thrown it, but it had definitely come from the Slytherin side of the lab. He folded some scrap parchment around the scale and slipped it into his bag, it looked like he would need to be on the lookout for any more sabotage attempts now they were in class with the Slytherins.

"Apparently McGonagall heard about the pixies and tore Lockhart a new one, Nev said they were just reading passages from his books for their lesson." Terry whispered to Harry as they sat around their familiar table in the library.

"The Weasley twins reckon that he had to head to Diagon over lunch, something about his wand being stolen by a pixie." Neville added leaving all three boys to fight chuckles at the thought.

"You shouldn't laugh about that, poor Professor Lockhart damaged his wand defending one of the Hufflepuff's from the pixies." Hermione interjected with a frown. "It's quite heroic of him really."

Harry considered mentioning that Lockhart had been hiding beneath his desk before deciding against it, it wasn't worth the questions from Hermione anyway. Terry and Neville had some knowledge of his sight, nothing specific but he had been around both of them enough for them to know that his impairment was less of an issue than he had let most of the school believe. There had been a conversation last year about it and both had readily accepted his honest explanation that while his eyes definitely didn't work, he was only blind in the traditional sense of the word.

"I heard he took a vow to never hurt an innocent being so he couldn't do anything to the poor things, that's why he threw his wand at them to help us." Hannah added, Hermione nodded along eagerly at the explanation. It sounded odd to Harry, he was sure there were ways to trap the pixies without hurting them that Lockhart could have tried before throwing his wand, but he didn't fancy arguing with the girls who fervently believed in the man.

"How was Charms for you then Nev? I heard we're covering temperature charms?" Harry asked in an effort to steer the conversation to safer waters.

"This term we will be moving onto more complex animate transfigurations. You have all showed success in more simple transfigurations but now we will be performing transformations with less similarities, we will start with the vertebrate-to-wood and move onto the far more difficult vertebrate-to-glass. I will give only one warning, anyone found to be casting these spells on another person will be in detention with me until summer if they are not expelled." Professor McGonagall stared at the class for a long moment before she nodded and gestured at the small cages on the desks. "In front of you are a variety of small vertebrate creatures, you will be transforming them into simple wooden objects. Start with just turning them to wooden statues of themselves and once you can do so to my satisfaction, you will vary the shape to increase the difference and difficulty."

The little cage on Harry and Terry's desk contained two small mice, next to them Susan and Hannah had two small frogs in their cage much to the girls' disgust. It wasn't too great a jump to go from hedgehogs and pincushions to mice and wooden mice and Harry quickly had a wooden mouse in front of him, though he wasn't sure how the colour, he suspected it wasn't quite right as Terry let out a quick snort at the sight of it.

"An excellent start Mr Potter, now reverse the change and try transfiguring the mouse into a box instead." Professor McGonagall instructed from behind them. Harry quickly cast the reversal spell, briefly restoring life to the mouse as it squeaked and dashed for the edge of the desk.

"Mutatio Lignum" He focussed on the change he wanted to make, forcing his will on the mouse. Tendrils of green wrapped around it, sinking into it and changing its form, its shape to his intent. The box that teetered and wobbled half-off the desk wasn't perfect, it wasn't quite as uniform or smooth as he had intended but it was undeniably a wooden box and not a mouse.

"Mate that's pretty bloody good." Terry praised as he picked up the box to examine it. A stern cough from behind them reminded Terry that Professor McGonagall was still stood observing them.

"I will forgive Mr Boot's language on this occasion, as that is a very impressive feat Mr Potter and on your first try no less. Five points to Ravenclaw." Professor McGonagall tapped the box with her wand, unravelling Harry's spell in a split second. "Now try making a more complicated shape while I go and check on Miss Parkinson."

Harry spent the rest of the lesson trying to add details to the box, making it bigger and smaller, adding carvings to it. It was difficult work, especially for him. His awareness made some textures and details appear differently in his minds eye, he could feel the ridges and bumps, he was aware of them, but he couldn't envision them the same way others would. But he struggled on nonetheless and with some occasionally helpful comments from Terry, he finished the lesson with a rather ornate wooden box. It had carvings of ravens chasing little mice along the edges and sides and engraved into the lid was a bird with its wings spread wide. By the end of his efforts, Harry had the beginnings of a headache building but he was pleased with the results.

"Your father would be proud Mr Potter, he was a master of Transfiguration and created a similar box in his second year, though his had a little more diversity in the decoration. Lions and stags, though he too included a mouse if I remember correctly." Professor McGonagall smiled at Harry and patted him on the shoulder. "He would be proud of you Harry. I know you have had difficulties with some of the aesthetical areas of Transfiguration, but you have done well to overcome them."

Harry left the Scottish witch's classroom with a smile and a proud warmth as he and Terry made their way down to the Great Hall for lunch. Apart from the disastrous Defence lesson the day before, his lessons were going well and his extra reading over the summer had already helped him in several classes. With Quirrell gone and Voldemort off in Albania, he was safe and content to enjoy his time in the Castle with his friends.

Two months passed by far too quickly and all too soon it was Halloween again. Harry did his best not to let the reminder of his parents' fate get him down, but as the day approached more students would whisper and point, the events of twelve years previous were still famous even if most of the school was happy to leave him be the rest of the year. His friends did their best to keep his spirits high, Terry let him win at Gobstones, Neville showed him a new plant in the greenhouses that only bloomed around magic and glittered in Harry's sight. Susan and Hannah took a different approach, deciding that it was best to distract him with work instead of fun, and asked him for help with their homework and practicing spells. It worked surprisingly well; Harry knew what they were doing but he was still able to distract himself with them for a time and it had the added benefit of improving their grades as a group.

By the time they were heading to the Halloween feast Harry was in slightly better spirits than his first year, he intended to spend it enjoying himself with his friends as best he could. Those plans were spoiled almost immediately when a voice called out from behind him. A voice he unfortunately knew all too well.

"Not going off to have a little cry this year Potter?" Malfoy asked as Crabbe and Goyle pushed their way down the stairs to form a path for the blonde Slytherin. "I would have thought you'd be off in the girl's bathroom with Longbottom like last year, having a little get together for the orphans club were you?"

"Shut it Malfoy!" Terry shouted without turning to look at him. Harry gripped his cane tightly but otherwise did his best to ignore the boys' words, hurtful as they were.

"I wasn't talking to you Boot, then again I suppose you feel left out. After all, at least Longbottom and Potter come from pureblood families, your no better than a mudblood." Malfoy spat at them. Harry was relieved that Neville wasn't with them, he doubted the Gryffindor would have been able to restrain himself at Malfoy's cruel words.

The words hurt, but they soon reached the safe harbour of the Great Hall and Malfoy fell silent, the boy was arrogant but even he knew that spouting off in front of all the teachers would get him in serious trouble. He settled for a final smirk in their direction before joining the Slytherin table, leaving Harry and Terry to sullenly sit at the Ravenclaw table and pick despondently at the marvellous feast on display.

The feast passed in a blur for Harry, Terry eventually joined a conversation with an older year about Quidditch but Harry couldn't summon the energy to participate. A younger girl, Luna Lovegood, did eventually get a few words out of him when she asked him about his Wrackspurts and Nargles but mostly he sat and did his best not to think about what he had missed out on.

Once the feast was officially over, Harry was one of the first to leave the hall, he just wanted to go to sleep and for the day to be over. He knew he should have waited for Terry, but he felt drained, he just wanted the sweet oblivion of sleep so he wouldn't have to think for a while.

HUUUUNGRY

The sourceless voice echoed around the corridor, a quick check showed nothing near him in his sight but he knew from Castamir that it was possible to hide magic, even if it was very difficult. He took a few tentative steps forward, the tap-tap of his cane the only sound before the voice cried out again, rasping and monstrously loud.

MUST HUNT

MUST KILL

YEEAOW

The last sound was very different, not deep and angry but high and scared and certainly not human.

Harry carried on, walking towards the next staircase and the sound he had heard. As he rounded the corner, he found the corridor ahead to be empty. No Troll or other monster as he had feared. There was some water on the ground still, likely from those trekking in from outside but aside from that nothing out of the ordinary. A few more steps and he noticed something. There was something on the wall up ahead. Something had been spattered across the wall between two sconces and stuck below it, about a metre off the ground was something else. A cat. But it wasn't that the cat had somehow defied gravity and remained on the wall that drew Harry closer, nor was it the sound of echoing footsteps from the direction of the Great Hall. It was the magic that surrounded the cat that drew him closer.

Thick chains of acidic green speckled with bright searing orange wound around and through the cat's body. The ethereal chains were probably not visible to the naked eye, but to Harry they burned in his sight. The cat's own muted brown was almost entirely blotted out by the magic, but there were no symbols or runes in the magic as Harry had become accustomed to seeing in most powerful spells. These chains of magic were … pure for want of a better word, untainted by structure. Before he could examine the magic further, a hand grabbed him roughly by the collar and shoved him against the wall.

"What have you done to my cat?!" Mr Filch screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as he pushed him harder against the wall.

"Mr Filch I didn't I swear-" Harry protested as he felt a warm dampness soak across the back of his head. Behind the caretaker the crowds from the hall caught up and begin to fill the corridor, shocked gasps and even a short scream followed quickly at the sight.

"Enemies of the Heir beware. Huh, guess that means you'll be next mudblood." Malfoy sneered from the front of the crowd as he pointed towards Neville and Hermione who had both also pushed their way to the front.

Harry did his best to push against Filch's grip and eventually with a surge of strength he didn't know he possessed, he was able to break the caretaker's hold and shove him away though the effort left him leaning on his cane and the wall to hold him up.

"What is going on here?" Professor Snape demanded as the crowds split for him and he stepped closer. "Potter if this is some sort of prank I'll have you out on your ear before you can say-" Snape began before Filch interrupted him with an anguished cry.

"A prank? He's killed my cat! I'll string him up by his ankles and lash him till he confesses!" Filch stormed back towards Harry with his arms outstretched.

"ENOUGH" Filch froze in place and the crowds split again, this time to reveal the Headmaster and the rest of the House heads. "Mr Filch you will not touch a student in such a manner again or your time here will be at an end. Now let us take Mrs Norris to my office and we can work out what has happened." Professor Dumbledore gestured towards the cat and she floated away from the wall to hover beside him. "In the meantime, if you could all return to your dormitories, we will investigate what has occurred here. Mr Potter, I think it best if you come along as well."

"My office is closer and at your disposal Albus." Lockhart offered from behind the Headmaster who nodded once and led the way to the defence professors quarters with Harry and the now silently fuming Mr Filch following behind.

Once they reached the quarters, the Headmaster began to examine the cat. First by waving a hand over and around the animal without touching it and then by prodding and poking it with his long wand. Little tendrils of violet magic probed at the thick chains that bound the cat, but every time the two magics touched, the chains would bristle and tighten, digging deeper into the cat's form. Eventually the Headmaster straightened with a sigh and shook his head.

"Mrs Norris is not dead Mr Filch, she is petrified though how and why I could not say." Professor Dumbledore stated wearily.

"P-petrified? Not dead? So you can fix what the boy did to her?" Filch asked desperation filling his voice.

"I cannot, not yet at least. However our resident Potions Master can brew a restorative from Mandrake root that should revive Mrs Norris. I can say that whatever did this to Mrs Norris is well beyond Mr Potter's abilities, no matter how prodigious he may be." Professor Dumbledore smiled kindly at Harry before directing his next question to him. "But you may have heard or noticed something that could help us Mr Potter, can you think of anything out of the ordinary that occurred during your walk before you found Mrs Norris and the writing on the wall?"

"Writing on the wall, sir?" Harry asked in confusion.

"Ah of course, my apologies Harry, I forgot about your particular difficulty. There was writing on the wall above Mrs Norris, someone had written a message in blood. Animal blood I believe." Dumbledore explained.

"Oh." Harry wrestled for a brief moment with the thought of mentioning the voice he had heard, but really it could have been his imagination. Besides, even he knew that hearing random voices wasn't a good sign. "No professor I'm sorry but there's nothing."

"If I may Headmaster, its entirely possible that Mr Potter was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, given his track record of attacking other students and general trouble making-" Professor Snape suddenly fell silent as Professor Flitwick let out a sudden spark from his wand. Bright and brief, it floated from his wand tip lighting up the room before fading away just as quickly.

"My apologies Severus, I think my emotions got the better of me. You were saying something about Mr Potter's previous behaviour?" Professor Flitwick asked in a bland tone as he stepped a little closer to the Potions Master.

"The boy attacked Mr Malfoy without provocation last year and-" Snape rebutted in a heated tone before falling silent as the Headmaster raised a hand.

"Peace, Severus. There were several eyewitnesses who described Mr Malfoy as the antagonist of said encounter which is why I overrode your decision to revoke Mr Malfoy's punishment. As I said, whatever caused Mrs Norris' petrification is well beyond Mr Potter's current abilities." The Headmaster dropped his hand with a heavy sigh and gestured towards the door. "You may go Mr Potter, but please do come to me if you think of anything that could help us."

Harry nodded quickly and then left, sighing in relief as the door swung closed behind him. Without Quirrell and Voldemort it was supposed to be a peaceful year. He knew that many questions would await him in the common room, but he had few answers for his housemates. He hadn't even known there was writing on the wall. He did know one thing though. He wouldn't be caught unawares and unable to defend himself this time. Holding his cane in one hand and his wand firmly in the other, he made his way towards Ravenclaw tower.

"You need to set aside your prejudices Severus, forget your feelings for the boy's father. They are not the same." Flitwick demanded angrily.

"I am well aware of who Mr Potter is Filius. Now if you will excuse me, I need to prepare for the brewing of the Mandrake Draught." Professor Snape stalked from the room, slamming the door closed behind him to leave the odd group of the Headmaster, Professor Flitwick, Filch, Lockhart and a petrified cat behind.

"It's a shame I wasn't there, I know just the spell to stop such a thing." Lockhart bragged from his seat in the corner, though his claims went mostly ignored by the other men in the room.

"Argus, I will ensure that Mrs Norris is restored to her former self." Albus promised much to the caretaker's visible relief. "However, if you ever touch another student as you did today, I will have you in chains in front of the Wizengamot without hesitation. Am I clear?" The relief turned to horror as the caretaker's face grew pale and haggard.

"Y-yes Headmaster." Filch nodded his head and, with a final longing look at the petrified feline, left the room with his head hung low.

"Albus I might not have been here in the forties, but I heard the stories. Is it the same as before? Is it happening again?" Flitwick asked.

"I do not know, it could be a student prank. Someone heard a story from a parent and decided to play a misguided joke." Dumbledore let out a long breath and shook his head sadly. "But yes, this is how it started the last time. If they follow the same pattern we will have a few weeks, perhaps a month and there will be another attack."

"There were a lot of rumours Albus, about the last time. My first year we were all warned not to walk the halls alone. Nobody would say how it was stopped though, only that someone was expelled. You were teaching back then; do you know who it was? Do they have a child here now? Or a niece or nephew perhaps?" Filius asked, though there was little hope in his voice. He knew that if Albus had any strong suspicions, he would have acted on them by now. The terror that had resulted from the last time the Chamber was opened had almost led to the school's closure and several students were injured in fights and attempts to escape the school.

"Neither the culprit nor the one expelled for the attacks have any family at the school currently." Dumbledore answered in his usual infuriatingly cryptic manner. "No, we will need to be vigilant Filius and you will need to keep watch over Mr Potter, if the Chamber is truly open again then he is in more danger than the rest of us." The Headmaster warned as he picked the frozen cat up and made his way to the door.

"Harry? Why?" Flitwick asked worriedly.

"Because he has stood against the last Heir of Slytherin twice already, whoever has opened the Chamber will need to prove themselves greater than the previous Heir. What better way than slaying the Heir's mortal enemy?" Dumbledore explained as he walked out of the door, a stiff cat under one arm and his wand in the other, leaving a nervous Charms Master and an oblivious Defence Professor in his wake.

A/N Hey everyone! Well as I have had to so many times before, I must apologise. I am currently moving house and this story has unfortunately had to take the backseat to real life once again. I know, its terribly annoying. I will be doing my best to stick to the one release per month schedule and from the reviews and messages I have received, it seems like most of you like the longer chapters, but I will try to keep them under 10k words as has been requested.

SO…this chapter covered a fair amount of time, I wanted to ease Harry back into things, but I also didn't want to waste a whole chapter on a single day/week of his schooling. I hope I've done a good job showing the time passing but let me know.

There are some easter eggs in this chapter, I've sprinkled some across previous chapters as well and you guys have spotted most of them, will you catch these?

As always, let me know what you think, your reviews and messages make this worthwhile, I don't think I could have stuck with this for so long without your help so thank you all or your continued support!

Until next time,

Daedalus Smythe