Armed with his new wand Harry quickly regained his spot as the most powerful second year, he resented the fact that he was incapable of performing the more powerful magic he had been learning before Christmas but there was little that could be done.
He had also not been cleared to create any more mithril, which left him feeling vulnerable. It was the first time since he had discovered his mithril that he realised he wouldn't always be able to depend upon it to save him, this led to him being more cautious around the other students.
After word of Justin's attack spread the students had become divided, half of the students, mainly Gryffindors and Slytherins, believed he was innocent and couldn't be the heir of Slytherin. The other half thought he was responsible for Justin's fate although not all of them thought he was the heir.
Ernie Macmillan was the most vocal about his 'guilt' and had stirred up most of the Hufflepuffs into following him, some of the Slytherins, being led by Gregory Goyle, believed he had been the one to attack Justin and had stolen then title of heir of Slytherin. Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy were the most adamant about his innocence and tried to get their respective houses to agree with them.
The house that was most divided was Ravenclaw, the second and third years assumed Harry was guilty while the upper years either refused to join a side or argued he had no reason to attack Justin. Nobody had bothered trying to pretend like Harry wasn't capable of performing such magic.
The first years didn't know enough about Harry to build up a firm opinion and the upper years had encouraged them to stay neutral, due to his house's hostility he had entirely moved from his dormitory to his workshop. With assistance from Dumbledore they had added an additional room in the workshop that would serve as his temporary bedroom.
Dumbledore had protected it himself and they had installed a second generation Ward generator, or Mithril Ward as Bathsheda had jokingly called it. It was the only generator Harry had been able to make that used the ward mimic ideology before the Christmas break and Harry's ban from making more mithril.
This meant that in order for Harry to be attacked the assailant would need to first find his room, break through his own defenses, the first gen Ward generator and then bypass Dumbledore's protections and the much more powerful Mithril Ward. Harry didn't know if this was to protect him from what had attacked Justin or from the other students, either way it should be more than enough to keep him safe.
Harry was on his way to get the last of his things from his old dormitory when he ran into Luna Lovegood, she seemed to be walking around aimlessly but Harry noticed she only had pajamas on under her school cloak and her feet were bare.
He pulled off the invisibility cloak and walked up to her
"Are you alright Luna?"
"Oh, hello Harry, yes I'm fine. It's just I seemed to have been locked out of the common room so I thought I might as well use this time to find my things." Luna said dreamily, although Harry thought he might have heard a touch of sadness.
"Why do you need to find your things?" Harry asked confused
"Well because the nargles stole them of course" Luna said as if it was the most logical thing in the world.
"People have been taking your stuff?" Harry led her to the common room and when he knocked the raven said
"A riddle I have given, yet no answer, I received. The riddle I have given goes thus:
I'm the sweetest of sounds in Orchestra heard,
Yet in Orchestra never was seen.
I'm a bird of gay plumage, yet less like a bird,
Nothing ever in Nature was seen.
Touch the earth I expire, in water I die,
In air I lose breath, yet can swim and can fly;
Darkness destroys me, and light is my death,
And I only keep going by holding my breath.
If my name can't be guessed by a boy or a man,
By a woman or girl it certainly can.
What am I?"
Harry looked at the door stunned, he had never heard this riddle before and didn't have a clue on how to solve it, he turned to Luna who just shrugged.
"May I ask why this riddle was chosen?" Harry asked
"That was the riddle that was next on the list, it was coined by Samuel Wilberforce in 1873 and has never been answered." The raven replied
"Then why are you asking a first year?"
The ravel did not reply and instead chose to just peer at him intently
"If it has never been answered then how will you know if we get the right answer?" The raven blinked and seemed to become lost in thought for a moment.
"I will know" it said simply
"But how?" Harry insisted
"Because you will know it is a lie"
Harry turned away with disgust and drew his wand, he willed himself to See into the door, with his loss in power he seemed to have lost all his progress with his mage sight. He hoped it was only a temporary setback until he regained his previous strength.
It took a while to get break through the protective barrier before he was able to see inside the enchantments, like the stairs at Malfoy Manor the main enchantment was a conditional enchantment, in order to activate the enchantments which allowed free entry the riddle had to be solved, there was also a bypass that allowed the Headmaster to just deactivate the entire enchantment array for quick entry in.
Even if he had permission to use his mithril Harry doubted it would have helped him gain entry, the condition at Malfoy Manor just wanted a specific magical item and signature, but the conditional here needed a physical password to be said verbally. Every time the password was correctly entered it somehow changed the riddle from the raven and set the answer as the new password.
Harry didn't know how it got the next riddle or what the answer was as the conditional enchantment only took whatever the user said and checked it with something behind the door, which meant Harry couldn't just trick the array into thinking he had said the correct password.
He considered just blasting the door out of its frame but he didn't actually know any spells that would directly achieve that effect and he didn't want to guess the consequences of trying to bodge a spell into doing it. Once more Harry regretted his loss of mithril, it would be a simple 'stick, wait, explode, direct inwards' ideologies and he would be able to stick the mithril to the door, hide around the corner and wait for it to blow.
Looking at his mithril rings he knew he could use what little alchemy he knew to transmute the door into something soft or small and just walk in but Nicolas had locked the Stone after he had used it on Malfoy. He then looked at his second ring, the magical sabre that could rip through anything including wards, it would easily break through the door and enchantments but that might also risk breaking not just the wards around Ravenclaw tower but the wards around all of Hogwarts.
Sighing in defeat Harry turned from the door in disgust and faced Luna
"Turns out I can't get in either, but you can stay in my room for tonight if you want."
He had decided to give Luna his bed and after routing through his trunk had retrieved the camp bed he had used over the summer, it was comfier than the actual bed as rather than just be enchanted to be comfy it's entire purpose was to provide comfort.
As normal he awoke early, after checking on Luna he quickly dressed and armed himself with some of the more experimental objects he and Bathsheda had developed before his ban, among them the spear he had used against Voldemort.
It seemed nobody had ever noticed that at midnight every night the castle ran automated checks on the wards and enchantments, this included the common rooms. When Harry asked for the riddle rather than the unsolvable one from the night before he only had to answer the 'what came first', a favourite of the raven.
Once inside his common room he gripped his wand tightly and reached out with his magic, he was looking for anything that held Luna's signature. He pulled the closest items to him and put them in a mithril bag, then once he had everything he pulled out what looked like a mithril pen and began writing a short message in the air
'Bullying will not be tolerated, Luna Lovegood is under my protection. - Harry Potter'
The words floated in the air, glowing menacingly, he had found a similar spell in the library one day however that spell wrote the words in fire which didn't appeal to Harry, he wanted something he could show off and claim as his own.
Unlike the original spell these words could only be dispelled by the writer, considering the message was floating in the very center of the common room nobody could claim to miss it.
With that done he headed to Professor Flitwick's office, he knew the man also woke early and liked to read student's essays before going to breakfast. Flitwick looked surprised to see Harry, it could have been something to do with the large bag he had over his shoulder or the spear he held.
"Good morning Harry… is there something I can do for you?"
Harry briefly explained what had been happening with Luna, when he was finished Flitwick looked furious. He followed Harry to his workshop and spoke to Luna in private, while they talked Harry fiddled nervously with his wand. Eventually Flitwick left to go talk to the Ravenclaws, he told Harry and Luna to stay in the room.
"Do you want to hear what he's saying?" Harry asked Luna after a moment of silence
Luna looked at him strangely but nodded hesitantly. Harry flicked his wand at what looked like an old muggle radio, but rather than play music it would repeat whatever was said near the mithril stone it was linked to, which was currently stuck to the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw.
It was easy to tell when the speaker activated as Flitwick's voice boomed out of it.
"I don't care why you did it Ms. Edgecombe, you do not take another student's belongings, especially not from a first year! I expect everything to be returned by tonight and no more will be said about it. I must say I am extremely disappointed by everyone's attitude this year, one new student bullied and another forced to leave his dormitory… I expected you to be smarter than this."
"But sir, Harry attacked Justin!" Harry wasn't sure who had said it as the speaker distorted the voice slightly but he could guess it was a member of his year group.
"There has been no evidence of that other than your own convictions, the Headmaster believes in his innocence… What would Harry gain by attacking his fellow students?"
Harry decided to switch off the speaker before anyone had a chance to respond, he didn't want to hear the excuses the Ravenclaws came up with, to him they had made their decision to abandon him and he wasn't about to forgive them anytime soon.
"Have you learned the levitation charm yet?" Harry asked Luna, at her nod he conjured two strips of wood and levitated one.
"Basically levitate the other piece of wood and we see who can get the wood to go the fastest"
This chapter took longer than planned, in part due to my school closing and all the work associated with it, as such this chapter suffered.
I have finally rewritten the first chapter, overall it changes little to the story but it should now be easier to read.
For Harry I don't see him returning to Ravenclaw anytime soon, but he has now taken the first steps into building a friendship with Luna. The game they play at the end is the same racing game Harry and Ron used to play when they were friends.
In terms of what has been happening that Harry doesn't know about all I will say is Dobby hasn't just been sitting around waiting for Harry to call him, I also have a question, who do you think would win, Sixth year Tom Riddle or second year Harry Potter?