For all that it makes Harry's stomach hurt to even think this, September is made a lot easier by the fact that he's rapidly alienating all of his friends. He has enough time for research into the Chamber of Secrets, homework with Millicent and Gemma (whom he tells quietly about Neville's club and then ignores all her attempts to get him alone), detention at least twice a week with Umbridge, and mealtime and late-night chats with Blaise and Theo, but even that much is a strain. If he were still finding time to meet with Neville, Hermione, and Ron, or if Umbridge hadn't banned Quidditch and he had to go to practices, or if he were spending any leisure time with anyone, really, he'd lose his tenuous hold on something else. As it is, he often wishes for more hours in the day. He's got his new electives this year—Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures—and though they're definitely all interesting and he's glad he's taking all three, it's also a lot of extra work. Ancient Runes alone is three worksheets a week and two feet of parchment on the development of the Futhark alphabet due at the end of the third week of September. And that's not even mentioning Hagrid's insane lessons, which he's pretty sure are going to get him killed before Voldemort does if he doesn't keep up with the reading.
But it's okay. It's okay, because he's not talking to the Gryffindors any more, and Blaise and Theo aren't really talking to him, except in the way they had in first year, when they were more acquaintances than friends. Whatever Theo's dad said to him about Harry, Theo probably repeated it to Blaise. Neither of them could possibly know anything, Harry's sure of that much; if Theo knew anything he'd have told Blaise, and while neither of them is confrontational, Harry is sure their treatment of him would be much more frosty.
So instead, he turns his social time into work time, and every day he feels the strain of it a little more. It reminds him of the Dursleys, when every hour had been something to just get through, because life at home was misery and the few hours he had at school weren't nearly happy enough to distract from what he had waiting for him when he went back to Privet Drive at 3 o'clock. He'd had no one to talk to, not a single person in the world who knew enough about him to think that there might be something wrong, or who cared enough to do anything if they did know. But he'd gotten through ten years like that; he can get through a few weeks of this, just until he finds Voldemort's stupid Chamber.
As soon as he finds the Chamber, he tells himself, he'll write to Sirius and tell him what Umbridge has been doing. He knows that the moment Sirius finds out that Umbridge is making Harry spend hours writing I must not tell lies in his own blood, he'll be pulled out of school, and damn what the Ministry says. That can't happen, because Harry needs to be at Hogwarts—even aside from needing to find the Chamber, he needs to learn this first new magical home all over again, even better, to refresh his Occlumency. He needs to relearn what it feels like to be safe here, because if he forgets that, his mind won't be safe either. So he endures, and he walks the corridors under his Cloak late at night whenever he can spare the sleep, the Marauder's Map open. He studies the parchment and then walks the paths he's mapped in his mind in the daylight between classes. He marks where the suits of armour stand and which portraits have nuns and which have unicorns, which ones talk and which sleep, the tapestries and the scones, and he searches.
The Chamber of Secrets isn't on the Map, of course, and if it could be found even by a studied wanderer someone would have found it ages ago. But Harry finds other things: abandoned classrooms, beautiful works of art, hiding places, shortcuts. He finds trick steps (some on the Map, some not), and secret passages (all on the Map, but sometimes hidden even there). He asks the memories imprinted into the parchment about their favourite places, and visits the high walkway where his dad took his mum on a date in their seventh year and his favourite window to sit in and spy on the others Houses during their Quidditch practices. He goes to the place where Remus used to sit and study when he wanted to be alone, and the place where he'd sit when he wanted Sirius to find him. He finds a lab in the dungeons that Sirius would sneak off to by himself in sixth and seventh year to brew without supervision, where the ceiling is still decorated with scorch marks, where he says that sometimes Lily would show up and join him, which was how he knew she was alright; and the hidden store-room, converted to a lounge for the Marauders and still stocked with ugly overstuffed couches and moth-eaten cushions, where he'd first transformed into Padfoot. Harry stores away all of those places in new corners of his mind and sets up defences around them, guarding fondness and borrowed nostalgia. He goes to them as often as he can, whenever he feels most defeated.
It's a long three weeks. On the first Wednesday of October, Harry decides that all determination aside, he's not getting anywhere any more. He feels like he's read everything that isn't completely crackpot that the library has to offer on the subject, and he's not getting anywhere. So he gathers his notes and he waits until after dinner, and then under his Cloak he slips down to Snape's office.
When he arrives, he takes off his Cloak, stows it, and then enters without knocking; the snake in the portrait laughs at him. The door's not locked or warded, and the portrait does let him in, which makes him feel fairly confident that he's fine to ignore Snape's searing glare.
"Potter," Snape says, though at least he waits until Harry has the door closed again behind himself. "What exactly do you think you are doing here? I do not have office hours at this time. If you have some sort of juvenile complaint about the upcoming Hogsmeade weekend, it will wait until Friday."
"It's not that," Harry says. "You're always in your office at least for a while after dinner on Wednesdays, and I needed to talk to you."
"How do you know that?" Snape demands.
"I pay attention," Harry says, shrugging. He's not going to admit that he's been studying the Marauder's Map, trying to learn the habits of certain people in the castle—mostly Umbridge and her cronies, but Snape too, and Dumbledore. He's also been keeping tabs on his friends in Gryffindor, because he can't exactly hang out with them and find out where they'll be and what they're up to that way.
"I see," Snape says, in a forbidding tone. "Well. You may return when I do have office hours—"
"It's about the Chamber of Secrets," Harry interrupts, uncaring of the scowl that appears on Snape's face. "I figured you wouldn't want to be talking about this at a time when people would know we were meeting, and might ask what we talked about."
Snape visibly grits his teeth, and then says, "Fine. Speak."
Harry smiles at him, thin and unamused, then produces a folded sheaf of parchment from his satchel. "These are all my notes on it," he says. "I've been reading everything I can find about the history of Hogwarts for weeks, and I haven't found anything helpful. I reckon you've been doing your own research, and unlike me, you've got access to the Restricted Section. So?"
"Do not be impertinent," Snape says, but he gets up and comes around his desk to snatch the notes from Harry's hand. It's the work of moments for him to skim through them, and then he looks up, impassive, and says, "Your conclusions are… sound."
Harry sighs. "I was afraid you'd say that." Because the conclusion he's come to is that no one really knows anything. There are a lot of arguments about the Chamber of Secrets, if it exists, and what it even is if it does. Most of the historians seem to think it's myth.
"The Dark Lord would not have sent you chasing a fairy tale," Snape says.
"I know," Harry says, and runs a hand through his hair, pushing the mess out of his eyes, and watches as Snape's eyes tighten at the corners. "If he were just going to kill me anyway, he'd have just… done that, right?"
"Indeed."
"So there must be something. He found it, after all."
"He may have destroyed his materials," Snape says, which is something that had occurred to Harry as well. That Snape was thinking it too means that that's probably what happened—damn it.
"So… the library is a dead end?"
"Not entirely," Snape says, and goes back over to his desk. He collects what looks, to Harry's surprise, like a muggle file folder and brings it back, then offers it. Harry opens it, and finds that inside there are a number of documents: newspaper clippings, and once he shuffles those aside, he finds what looks like a report from the Hospital Wing, and beneath that, an official copy of a death certificate. The certificate has the name "Myrtle Warren" on it; the date of death is June 13, 1943.
"What is this?" Harry asks, reading it over. Myrtle, whoever she was, had died of cardiac arrest. The Hospital Wing sheet details that she has been a third year Ravenclaw and that she had died in Hogwarts, but is otherwise similarly lacking details of where and how.
"The only record, so far as I can tell, of the last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened," Snape says. "Attend to the clippings, Potter."
Harry does so. The first clipping, the earliest, clearly comes at the end of a developing story, since it references earlier articles. It's a fairly long article summarizing the events of the past few months: a series of attacks within Hogwarts by "the Heir of Slytherin," all of which had resulted in the petrifaction of a muggleborn student. The article, published in early June, states that Hogwarts is set to be closed due to the faculty's inability to find the perpetrator and put a stop to the attacks, "as they will soon begin to threaten magical-blooded students." Harry scowls, reading that, but shuffles to the next article. This one is dated the same as Myrtle's death certificate, and is about the arrest of one Rubeus Hagrid for "irresponsible keeping of restricted creatures," and it briefly mentions that a student at Hogwarts had been killed. He frowns—Hagrid, the former gamekeeper, now Care professor? If he'd been arrested for irresponsible keeping of restricted creatures why in Merlin's name was Dumbledore letting him teach? The following articles don't offer much more information; they're very short. The third article, dated a few days later, is about Hagrid's expulsion from Hogwarts and the breaking of his wand as punishment for his actions leading indirectly to the death of the still-unnamed Hogwarts student. The last article is a slightly longer announcement about a Special Award for Services to the School being granted to one Tom Marvolo Riddle for his work in apprehending the beast that had caused the death of a still unnamed student. Harry remembers vaguely having seen that award in a case during his first year; he'd wondered then what Tom Riddle had done to earn it. Now he knows. And…
Harry's attention catches on the name. He's spent far more time than he'd like to admit staring at that scrawled name in the diary: T. M. Riddle. "You don't think…" he says slowly.
"The plaque containing the award is still in the trophy room," Snape says. "I will not make any declarations of surety, Mr. Potter, but I have my suspicions."
"So he killed her?" Harry asks. He knows the answer, but…
"Presumably," Snape says. "If indeed Riddle is who we believe he is. That name may belong to a bystander or a goat."
Harry nods, but he somehow doubts it. He hands back the file folder and says, "Where did you find that stuff?"
"In a locked archive of school records." Snape returns the folder to his desk and then sits down, folding his hands precisely in front of him. Harry takes the cue and goes to sit in the chair across from him. "I am inclined to believe that Armando Dippet, the Headmaster of that era, sealed the records to prevent the embarrassment of the school from becoming widely known. Hogwarts is obliged by magic to retain records of all happenings, but the school is not obliged to make them public, or even accessible."
"Right," Harry says. "So, something bad happened in 1943, the Chamber was opened then, but it got covered up. Were there other articles?"
"Only one other with anything relevant," Snape says, and produces another small scrap of paper. "According to the earliest article on those events, this was written on a wall in chicken's blood just prior to the first attack."
Harry takes the scrap and reads, written in Snape's spidery handwriting, Witness the great work of Salazar Slytherin; behold the power of the Secret of his Chamber.
"Right," Harry says again, looking down at it, and then carefully folds it and tucks it into his pocket. The Heir of Slytherin hadn't needed to call himself that—from Harry's own reading, he knows that it's a frequent aspect of the story that only Slytherin's true heir, whatever that means, will be able to open the Chamber. "So… what now?"
Snape gives him an inscrutable look. "This is your task," he says. "The Dark Lord would be displeased if I were to interfere."
Which is to say, Harry assumes, that Snape's not going to be any further help—and really, now that he thinks about it, he's only been this helpful because Harry came and asked the right questions. He's probably had that file for weeks, but he hadn't said anything. Bastard.
"Fine," Harry says. He shoves his notes back into his satchel, indulges in a glare, and then bows and says, "Good night, sir."
Then he turns and starts to walk away. He's stopped part way to the door by Snape saying, "One more thing, Potter."
"Yes, professor?" Harry turns back around, peers at Snape through the shadow. The professor's office is dimly lit as always; Harry has no idea how he manages to work in here.
"You should do better to stay below Umbridge's notice," he says, and he looks down—down at where Harry's left hand is wrapped in a bandage, mostly hidden in a slightly-too-long sleeve.
Of course he'd noticed. He probably knows exactly what Umbridge has been doing in her detentions. There's no way he knows what Harry's been writing, unless Umbridge had told him herself, but he's probably had complaints from the few others Slytherins who've ended up in detention with her—not many of them are so unlikely to whine uselessly about her being mean as Harry is. But he surely knows that Umbridge's punishments make a rather permanent impression.
"I think it's a bit too late for that, sir," Harry says, and he means both that there's no way that she'll ever be off his back, and that I will not tell lies is already going to be scarred into his skin forever, no matter if he backs down now. No point, then, in backing down—now or ever.
Harry starts with the Heir of Slytherin. Or, more accurately, he starts with Slytherin, as much as there is to be found about him. On the first Hogsmeade weekend—Umbridge hasn't banned visits yet, at least—he… well, he still goes to Honeyduke's, because he has some self-respect. He and Theo and Blaise spent a good twenty minutes in there supplying themselves thoroughly, just in case Umbridge does ban visits to town and they can't come back. But he also goes to Paige & Turner, the small independent bookshop still operated by its elderly founders (the eponymous, of course, though Harry can tell from the gleam in their eyes when they introduce themselves that even after all these years, they still enjoy the pun), and buys up a few books on the history of Hogwarts and the era surrounding its founding. He goes back to the castle, takes his new books to the library, and spends a long stretch of afternoons pretending to do homework while he actually reads those and every other book that he can find that has any sort of biography of Salazar Slytherin and his descendants, cross-referencing where he can to try to sort truth from speculation from outright lies. There's an unfortunate lot of the latter. Then he goes back to his dorm and he actually does homework, somewhat half-heartedly, while he chews on everything that he'd read that day. Usually he sits with Millicent in the common room, who will nudge him when he gets too obviously distracted by the inside of his own head, but won't actually say anything about it.
Umbridge is around more than ever, which does make it hard to get any work done on his own extracurricular projects. She's declared herself High Inquisitor, whatever that's supposed to mean, and has taken to lurking in the corner of all of the classrooms, watching the teachers and making notes, and clearing her throat in that false, obnoxious way whenever they get close to saying something she doesn't approve of. She knows, then, all of the assignments, and Harry's overheard her scolding students in the halls for walking about openly carrying books that aren't for classes they're taking, whether they be fiction or extracurricular study—the Ravenclaws in particular are furious, but there's not much anyone can do. Harry, too, takes to hiding his books deep in his satchel, only reading in the library when he knows she's teaching a class, and doing a lot of his research by light of Lumos under his covers.
He learns a thing or two. The first, probably the most important, is that Slytherin is probably history's most well-known Parselmouth. It explains a lot about the reaction Sirius, Remus, Kingsley, and Amanda had had in that meeting when he revealed that he could talk to snakes himself. Slytherin wasn't exactly well liked in the magical world, his name and his House associated with evil; that Parseltongue is also a known Dark talent really only made things worse. So: snakes. There are an awful lot of them dotted here and there throughout the castle, especially in the dungeons where Slytherin's influence is strong: carvings and paintings, bits of decoration and embellishment on the walls and railings of the staircases that led down here and in the corridors surrounding the common room. Harry'd even talked to the snake portrait above the fireplace in the common room itself.
This, then, has to be a part of Slytherin's legacy, and a marker of his line. But the books didn't really mention other known Parselmouths. It isn't a common gift, apparently, even in lines that had it very strongly like Slytherin's. And Slytherin's line itself vanishes quickly into the mists of time after Slytherin himself—the books say that he'd had a son, but that both of them had gone to the continent after Slytherin's falling out with the other Founders and when the line returned to Britain, the only remaining heir was a woman, so the blood died out in the male line several hundred years ago… and at that point, everyone had lost interest, of course. The books on Slytherin and his line stop after that point: they mention that Graciela Slytherin had married into the House of Gaunt, and that was it. Thereafter the House of Slytherin was extinct in the male line, one book says, and so perished the legacy of Britain's greatest proclaimed villain… or its greatest would-be protector.
After he reads that, Harry has to take a break and give himself a breather. The magical world's strange prejudices and ideas about blood and descent are so frustrating sometimes. Harry wasn't exactly a stellar student in primary, but he remembers some science classes and teachers talking about how you could inherit things from your father and your mother in equal parts. But they tracked Families and Houses, and if one was absorbed into the other, it's like they assumed that all those inherited gifts would just… vanish along with the name.
Harry himself is a case for the fact that it just doesn't work like that, though. His Indian ancestors had lost whatever name they'd had and become part of the House of Potter along the way, but their gift, the Parseltongue he'd inherited, it hadn't gone away. It had just been incorporated into the greater pool of everything that made up his history and his magic, all of everything he'd gotten from his parents.
But that doesn't matter to anyone else in the magical world, or at least not to any of the authors of any of the books that he's been reading. What matters is the continuity of the House and its name, and that was lost ages ago. Knowing it'll probably be fruitless, because he's had a million lessons on prominent pureblood families at this point and never even heard the name, he does try to look up the Gaunts, and he even manages to find something. Not that it's much, but the Gaunt family name appears on the list of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, which Sirius had told Harry was complete poppycock. The list was flawed even in its accounting of lineage, and moreover excluded a number of other known pureblood Houses, including the Potters—the House of Harry's own birth, Sirius had told him, had been as pureblood as they came right up until his dad's marriage to his mum.
So that's… useless. The Gaunts existed and were known for a good long time, but who knows what branch of the family it was that survived—Harry fails to find a family tree in the library. He'll probably have to check the Black library, which had a much larger collection of magical lineages in its records, if he wants to find that. That means there's no way for him to know that if the branch that Graciela Slytherin had married into had survived, if her blood survived. If it hadn't, then the Parseltongue had to have come from somewhere else, and if it had… where were the Gaunts now? Because they might have made Nott's list back in the 1930s, but Harry's never heard the name mentioned in the 1990s, and that means he has no way to figure out which of their descendants might have ended up at Hogwarts and gone about opening the Chamber of Secrets in the 1940s, and who therefore might still be alive to tell him how to find the damned thing, or whose existence at least would give him a new avenue of research.
There's still the suspicion, at least, about Tom Riddle. Tom Riddle who might be Voldemort. That sliver of suspicion, that the person who owned the diary is the person who opened the Chamber is the person who gave him the task, is enough to keep him working right up until Halloween, although he more than once wants to throw the terrible, prejudiced books he's stuck reading across the room.
On the morning of October 31st, an overcast but dry Sunday, Harry finds himself sitting once more in the common room, doing homework absently while he turns all the pieces of the puzzle he's managed to gather over in his head. There's something there, he knows—he just can't seem to put it together.
He groans under his breath, staring down at his History of Magic text. This is where I could really use Hermione, he thinks to himself. She'd have this all put together in an instant—but I can't.
"Binns giving you trouble?" someone says, and then Gemma drops into a chair at Harry's side. "More Goblin Wars, I imagine?"
"Something like that," Harry says, staring blearily down at his text. He's honestly not sure what he's supposed to be reading about. "D'you think if I just… researched something interesting and turned in an essay on that, he would notice?"
Gemma considers that and then shrugs meditatively. "It probably wouldn't hurt to try."
"… Yeah." Any of his research on the Heir of Slytherin would probably read more like fiction at this point, but maybe writing it down would help him put it all in line. Ugh.
"Though somehow, Harry, I think you've got more on your mind than a boring assignment," Gemma says, and when he looks up at her she's got that incisive look on her face, the one that never fails to make him nervous.
He shifts a little in his chair. "It… I—"
"You know you can tell me anything." Her voice is hushed.
"I know," Harry says, and looks away. Then he runs a hand through his hair, agitated, and says, "It's Halloween."
There's a brief silence, and then she says, "Ah," very gently. "I'm sorry, Harry."
"No, it's—it's okay. I mean, it's not okay. But… I don't remember them." Harry keeps his eyes down, because it's true, he does miss his parents, and he knows he'd probably have spent the night thinking of them, and will probably dream about them… but right now, he's using them. He thinks the curdling guilt and disgust he feels for himself would probably show on his face if he had to look Gemma in the eye right now.
"You're allowed to miss them," she says, ignorant of the turmoil in Harry's head. She puts her hand on his shoulder, soft, an attempt at comfort that he doesn't deserve. To her, he's just a kid—an influential kid, sure, but still just a third year and one of her many Slytherin ducklings. "Even if you never knew them, you can feel sad for their loss."
"I know." Harry rubs the back of his neck, dislodges Gemma's hand, and pulls away. A bit hastily, he gathers his books, and says, "I think I'm going to… go somewhere."
She just sighs, and when he finally manages to look at her face again, she looks compassionate. "If you go fly, take someone with you? Just in case something happens. I think Cassius is free; he and Rhea were going out to the grounds, I think, to enjoy our last bit of dry weather."
"Sure," Harry says dully, though really, flying is a good idea—it'll clear his head. But he wants to be alone.
He does go back to his dorm and get his broom and his practice Snitch, and he waves at Gemma on his way back out through the common room. But he doesn't go find Warrington and Rhea—Rhea Levidis, a pureblood girl a year Harry's senior, who Harry vaguely thinks might be dating Warrington—on the grounds. He just heads straight to the Quidditch pitch. He pulls on his flying gloves, mounts, and looses the Snitch, then wastes a content hour or two chasing it around, practicing dives and loops and wicked-fast spirals until all he's thinking about is the burn in his wrists and his thighs from gripping his broom, the pull of his shoulder from reaching for the tiny golden ball, and the cold of the wind in his face.
It's not until he lands that he becomes aware that someone has come to watch him. Marcus Flint is standing to one side of the pitch, and offers a few slow claps when Harry's feet set back on the ground. He ambles over in his usual slow, purposeful way as Harry tucks the Snitch away and tugs his gloves off.
"Potter," Flint says, once he's close. "Some tidy flying."
"Thanks," Harry says, a little wary. "No Quidditch this year, so…"
"Good to keep in practice," Flint says with a brisk nod. "Potter—"
"Is this about—"
"Shut up," Flint says, his tone abruptly harsh.
"Right." Harry ducks his head. Of course it's about Voldemort and the Death Eaters. "Sorry, Flint."
"Are you?" Flint shakes his head. "I doubt you're sorry enough, Potter."
"Do you think you're going to be the one to teach me some contrition, Flint?" Harry asks, letting his own voice go harsh to match the way Flint is suddenly soft. "Because I think we both know that there are other people who will want that pleasure, should it become necessary. Which it won't. I'm not an idiot."
Flint stares him down, his face hard. He's studying Harry, testing him, and Harry meets his eyes squarely. Last year he'd been intimidated a bit by Flint, by his dark, deep-set eyes and the harshness of his face; he's not handsome, and he's tall. Taller, now, and a year too old. He has plenty on his side. But Harry's faced scarier than him by now, and come out… scarred, maybe, but not broken.
Finally, Flint says, "No. But we named you right, Potter; you're a lion in snake's clothes. Make sure that your attempt at bravery doesn't end with your pelt hanging on someone's wall—you'd make a pretty trophy."
Then, with that disturbing statement, Flint turns and walks off. Only once he's entirely gone from Harry's sight does Harry let himself shiver, troubled. He's not sure what Flint thinks he knows, but he's got information about Harry, and he's in a position to learn plenty more if Harry slips up. It's a reminder to be doubly careful about what he tells anyone, what he does, how he responds—lion in snake's clothing he might be, but he's got to wear that snake skin as if it never belonged to anyone else.
That thought sticks in his head the rest of the day, as he returns to the common room to oil his broom and put it away. Blaise and Theo have returned from wherever they'd been in the morning—the library, probably—so Harry hangs out with them, talking about homework and the possibility of some Quidditch pickup games. Umbridge's decree bans any student clubs or teams, but doesn't strictly ban one-off games, which Theo says some of the other Quidditch enthusiasts in the school are discussing. Harry chimes in with enthusiasm at the prospect—it would be nice to play again, even if it means not playing with his usual teammates.
The afternoon wears on, and the Halloween Feast approaches. The castle smells of cinnamon and nutmeg and roasting pumpkin as it always does, and the smell has crept down into the dungeons, so that by the time dinner arrives Harry and his dormmates' stomaches are all rumbling. They head together in an eager clump toward the Great Hall, and take great pleasure in stuffing themselves on roast beef and fried pumpkin and squash soup, chicken and wild rice, seasonal vegetables in delicious sauces, and then afterward they eat pumpkin pie until they're all groaning and complaining of stomach aches. It's the best kind of discomfort, in Harry's opinion. Much better than the ache of hunger.
They all stumble back to the dorm in high spirits, and on the way through the common room Harry's eye catches on the portrait of the snake hanging above the mantel—it nods at him, and he nods back. There's an idea, he thinks to himself, and resolves to go out looking for other snakes in the castle to talk to and ask questions of about the Chamber, if he can manage to get away from other people. Maybe after curfew…
It's a good, productive thought, one that carries him through getting ready for bed and his before-sleep meditation in a good mood. He doesn't bother to shore up his Occlumency, knowing even as he leaves the door to his inner Hogwarts open that he'll probably dream. And dream he does, wandering through mist-filled halls that echo with distant sibilant speech, too faint for him to make out the words. He chases the whispers but never quite manages to catch up; every time he turns a corner, the voice has gone ahead into the indistinct distance. He's never sure what he expects to find when he runs through the halls, his breath coming in pants, and turns blind corners or passes though shadowed doorways, whether it will be a blessing or a terror. He never finds either.
The trouble with Occlumency, Harry muses the next morning when he wakes from that dream, is that though he rarely dreams, he now always remembers it when he does. At least Blaise and Theo respect the quiet, contemplative mood he's in as they move through their morning ablutions together, moving around one another and in and out of their bathroom in a pattern now well-practiced. Harry's a little lost in his own head, paying no attention to their quiet conversation, and he leaves the dorm first, heading straight for the Great Hall. He's settled with a cup of tea and a piece of toast by the time most of the rest of the student body has arrived, and is watching a little absent-mindedly for the post—he's expecting a letter from Sirius.
Hedwig does arrive with all the rest when the owls do come swirling in on a chill breeze, but she's not clutching a letter, only Harry's copy of the Daily Prophet—he personally would prefer not to waste the money, but Sirius pays for his subscription so that he'll be "up to date" on, if not always the most substantial news, at least what the rest of the magical world thinks is important. He sets the paper aside for a minute to stroke Hedwig's silky feathers and feed her a sausage, deciding that it can wait a moment, when a soft commotion begins to sweep over the hall. Harry glances up, sees heads bent over papers, friends crowding around friends and starting to whisper at every table, and sighs.
When he unrolls his own paper, though, he finds that it's no stupid sensationalist story that has all the students in a flutter. The half-page photo on the front page is of a dark fortress island surrounded by stormy seas, ragged specks of black floating above it against burgeoning clouds, threatening even in greyscale. One wall of the fortress looks damaged even in the distant photo, smoke streaming out from it.
The headline says, Attack on Azkaban! History's First Breakout: Death Eaters Freed En Masse!