Chapter 11 - Lost the Plot
I hadn't taken the Knight bus direct to Kings Cross, I'd detoured to Diagon, thankfully Gringotts opened each day at six am.
I popped in and said a quick passing hello to Griphook by pure chance and grabbed a handful of coins from the vault and made my way to the Alley.
On my first trip here, as I later discovered, McGonagall had got the basic trunk offered by the largest luggage shop on the Alley.
There was a little ring from a bell as I entered, and wove through the shoulder high stacks of luggage and other baggage.
"Hello, need some assistance?" A soft voice came from the old shopkeeper at the desk.
"Please, I'm looking for a replacement trunk, something with a lot of storage." I asked.
It was 9.20am by the time I'd settled on one.
Six compartments, one for clothes, one a bookshelf that had enough space for just over 150 books apparently, one for a Broom, supplies and quidditch gear, one was a room, the size of which was a little bigger than the room I had at the Dursley's. It had a bed, small desk and a second bookcase, and the ladder to get in and out of the trunk. The fifth had an expansion charm, basically an seemingly endless pit where things go in, can't be seen and only the owner can pull them out. The last was a standard compartment.
I also got a second big standard trunk, my plan being to fill them up with sellable food from the RoR, then shrink both and chuck them in the sixth compartment to sell off later.
I also had the option to add on a seventh and eighth compartment later if needed.
I had other plans for Diagon Alley by they'll have to wait for Easter break or Summer.
With my old trunk shrunk and stored in my new trunk, I made my way to Flourish and Blotts to peruse the shelves with the last bit of freedom before making my way to platform 9 3/4.
1015am-ish
After leaving the Cauldron I headed to the nearest mini supermarket and got a couple of meal deals to see me through the train ride, and shoved them in my backpack with the Wizarding sweets which cost much less than on the train.
I slipped down a quiet side street and hailed the knight bus to the station.
Even as early as I was it didn't take long to watch from my chosen compartment as the platform filled up with people sending off their kids to Scotland.
I was pondering the best aisle to start flogging in the RoR, when my thoughts were interrupted.
"Happy new year Harry!" I heard Hermione say before the bushy haired girl ploughed into me to give me a hug that was more like she was trying to squeeze the air out of me.
"ThankyouforthebooksIcantwaittodiscussthemwithyouhowfarareyouintoreadingthem?howwasyourChristmas?"
She miraculously said in a single breath.
"Happy new year to you too Hermione." I said while laughing.
The door slid open and a voice said.
"Sorry to interrupt, but we were hoping to join you in here, unless you want us to come back later."
I looked up to see a grinning Terry and smirking Kevin.
"Shut up Terry." I said while rolling my eyes.
Hermione blushed a little when she realised how we looked and sheepishly let go.
Eventually Neville and Seamus joined us but Seamus went off to find Dean once the train was moving and most students had settled.
The rest of the trip was relaxing, bar an appearance from Draco just after the announcement that we were half an hour from Hogsmeade.
"Well, it's a shame that the Hogwarts house elves don't know how to make sure that the dirt stays out of the castle when they're done." He drawled as he leant on the compartment door.
"You're right, how did they ever let you in in the first place?" I quipped easily.
"How dare you Potter." He said flustered by my turnabout.
"Easily." I smiled innocently. "Quite easily." I must've hit some kind of nerve.
"Shut up you peasant Lord, your family squandered their wealth and status, and your blood traitor Father went and married your mudblood of a mother. You and all your worthless 'friends' can rot for all I care. Honestly, my Father is right, standards have fallen drastically at Hogwarts."
He grinned viciously as though he'd won.
There had been a sharp intake of breath from all.
I had plans to try and redeem the house of snakes in the eyes of others and individuals where possible. But every word out of this spoiled idiot's mouth made it harder and harder to justify.
I knew he was just a child parroting his fathers beliefs but
I also couldn't let this kind of challenge just go.
I placed my bookmark and closed my book slowly.
"Let me make this clear, Draco."
"I don't think much of you and your father, but you have the opportunity to be better than he is, but the only way to do that is to not act like a pompous asshole."
"So, you can say what you like about me and my dead parents, but as weak as that insult was, if, if, you insult my friends again, I guarantee that you won't be able to do so a third time."
I finished with my most Snape-like glare as silence reigned in the now increasingly claustrophobic compartment.
For a brief moment I thought that he looked as though about to cry, then he hurried away muttering a barely audible, "I'll get you one day Potter." To himself.
With that dealt we got ready to arrive back to school.
The next few weeks just seemed to slip by, at least in every class bar defence against the dark arts.
The class no longer with a professor to lead it was being covered by a handful of other teachers, the problem being that the other teachers who could take the subject were of the core classes and thus, too busy. Eventually it was agreed that Professor Vector would take the first four years and that McGonagall, Snape and Flitwick would share the work load for OWL students and the sixth and seventh years were to be taught by a number of Aurors once organised, this all went into effect as the third week of term started.
As for me, spare time was improving of my magic and enjoying some freedom without worrying about Voldemort snapping off a killing curse at me mid lesson, especially if I had a potions assignment due. I could hear Snape's drawl at the funeral. "He may be goneâ.but went owing me another foot of parchment on the ingredients in a boil-curing potionâ"
Now with the canon on ice, I was looking into great big-ruddy-look-at-you-and-you-die snakes known as Basilisks.
And more so what I was going to do about it?
I also need to plan how to get the Marauders map - if it existed - and find other ways to secure a win for the side of angels.
What would make it easier was the nice surprise that was awaiting me in my dorm room the first night back.
Flashback
After the new year feast ended, and having to slog up to the common room only to remember that I need to answer a bloody riddle.
"We run but never walk. We have hands but no arms to see. With faces but do not speak. No eyes, though my name might disagree." Said the door.
"Watches" I mumble.
After another arduous climb I managed to flop into bed as my door swung closed.
It took a while for me to notice the pile of Christmas presents neatly arranged on my desk.
As much as I wanted to rip them all open, the one I was hoping for drew my eye.
Plain brown wrapping.
Tied with string.
Once opened, a note.
Your father left this in my possession before he died.
It is time it was returned to you.
Use it well.
Oh I will Dumbledore, I will.
End flashback.
It wasn't until the first week of February that my months of mapping the RoR's room of hidden things finally paid off.
After about two hours of training I had changed the room over to the hidden things and began mapping, I'd got to about three stacks in last my furthest point and I could feel this slight pull, a compulsion to investigate.
As I approached the next stack, it was as though I could hear someone whispering in my ear.
'Findmefindmefindme...wearmewearmewearme.'
When I spotted the delicate Ravenclaw's Diadem it crescendo into a screaming in my head, to put it on, become wise and intelligent to rule supreme. I caught myself when my hand was only a foot or sho away from plucking it up and plopping it in my head.
I startled myself and pulled my hand away and ran to the door.
After retrieving what appeared to be plain wooden box from my trunk, I returned to the RoR. I had found this handy little box while looking for stuff to sell during the Easter holidays.
The box was a light brown wood, with a single engraved rune on the lid, and a plush red velvet interior. The tag on it had said 'enchanted to contain the magic of enchanted items, for the concealment of all magicks'.
I had figured a good way to contain the Horcruxes before drowning them in Basilisk venom or a nice fiendfyre bath. Then I could store them in my expanded compartment for extra safety.
I very, very, verrrrrry carefully approach the Diadem this time now aware of its compulsions, as soon as I could, I levitated the box over to the diadem and then tried to levitate the diadem, but nothing happened and I felt the magic wither out about a ruler length aware from it.
After a beat I levitated the little pillow it was sitting on. (Which made me wonder, did Riddle see the little pillow and think it was perfect to put it there or did he conjure it for it to sit on. Either option was funny for different reasons of course.)
I tilted the pillow allowing the headpiece to slid into the box, I swished my wand and the lid shut.
The second the lid shut I felt the compulsion break.
One Down.
Six to go.
It was only to days later I was lucky enough to stumble onto what would be a future plot point on the first floor.
The vanishing cabinet.
Obviously the twins hadn't shoved Montague into it yet as that happens in OotP, I looked around, saw one student walking away from me, quickly shrunk it down and popped it into my pocket ridden in my robes.
This had turned out to be a good week so far.
In my training room version of the RoR I was once again collapsing, this time into a giant beanbag thing.
I had finally got all my combat spells as close to ambidextrous as I'd ever be able, meaning I could wield to wands and fire spells from all sorts of odd angles that death munchers and idiots alike wouldn't have trained for or expect, at least that was my thinking. Now I need to start figuring out how to fire two spells at once.
The more I looked into this the more I came back to Occlumency.
Progress had been slow, but thankfully there had been some. It's such a tricky discipline no wonder so few wizards bothered.
I was ever getting closer to organising my mind and memories which was only like step one of ten.
After taking a quick dip in a pool created by the room, a change of clothes, I sat down to further study the cloak of invisibility, my deathly hallow.
I had since returning, only used it twice, once to sneak around the castle at night the first night I got it and once a week later to access the restricted section.
When I did that I could feel the wards sort of bend around me without them triggering, I had been trying to see if and how that could be replicated in any way, shape, or form; to no avail.
I did find one awesome feature that either canon Harry never did, or simply wasn't present there.
When wearing the cloak, the wearer could make it visible and when thought or spoken allowed, has a chameleon effect.
I had been wearing it while thinking, 'it's a shame I couldn't wear it in plain sight.'
To which the cloak transfigured to look like my school robe.
As I now awkwardly wearing two school robes I quickly adjusted to be only wearing the invisibility cloak in disguise.
With a thought I made it look like a plain robe, it could do patterns, colours, though the more complex the pattern or design, the more faded it looked at the edges. This of course only served to make it like a more worn piece of clothing and a bit older, but simpler more modern robes wouldn't go amiss. I could now use this really well.
With this little discovery, February was shaping up to be a decent month. Heck, now book one plot had been dealt with, I'd completely avoided the plot for half blood prince, (I'd swiped the old textbook of Snape's and had that stored in my mystery void of expansion.); With the Diary not in play till end of August, that'll be dealt with then, and the goblet of fire set to be a fourth year thing unless there was a major change outside of my control, as far as book three, Sirius shouldn't have gone to Azkaban...
Then it hit me, I'd been back in the magical world since September.
Where is Sirius? Or Remus for that matter?
The questions irked me, it was the next day on February the twelfth when after what I thought was going to be a quiet end of year wrap up did the other shoe drop.
And boy did it drop, hard.
0225am Wednesday 12th of February 1992
Cell block A, cell 113
Low security wing
Inmate: Black, Sirius
Sentenced : 12 months, 10 served
Semi-disgraced Auror Sirus black or well, currently, Padfoot woke with a shudder.
The air in Azkaban always had a staleness to it, a prolonged exposure to housing the dementors, but this was different.
There was a shift and an over extended lull in the rhythm of the soul destroying place.
He and many others in the low security blocks held their breath, though most hadn't realised they were.
It seemed to grow from the lower cell blocks. D and E, the high security ones where they threw the worst of the worst.
So much so, that the human guards called them the doomed and eliminated cells.
Down there in the centre of the high security cells was the pit. The humans couldn't enter, not that they would want to, only the dementors went in and out of that hell hole, it was the space that you would've said was the heart of the place, or the place a heart would've been, anywhere else.
One row across from the pit entrance on cell block D, were some of Voldemorts inner circle. Monsters in their own right.
One cell had a fanatic of the Dark Lord's, her mind broken, made more twisted by the long exposure to the dementors, had her eyes closed, her hair was matted in places, fallen out in others, a shell of how she once looked when younger and living as a beautiful aristocrat.
She could feel the shift too.
And she listened, and she waited.
It started as a whisper on the wind, a voice, wandering,
Lost
And alone.
A voice she never thought to hear again.
A voice that made her shiver with...anticipation.
His voice.
She cackled.
Loud, echoing, the silence broken as her mind, the breath held by all who could feel the change released but not relaxed, a tension at breaking point.
'We have much work to do...Bellatrix...'
Then all hell broke loose.
A/N : mwhahaa cliff hanger
Why did Sirius end up in Azkaban? Where is Remus Lupin?
All to be revealed
till then...onwards!