Chapter 125

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A/N Harry has received the letter in Chapter 123 but not Chapter 124.

Friday 1/11/92

Dear Spencer

I really regret missing the Halloween feast to attend Nick's Deathday party, it wasn't worth it. Nick said he was pleased we were there but he didn't seem to take much notice of us, I don't believe he would have cared if we didn't come. One thing I had never realised about ghosts before the party is that they're really cold. Those tales about ghosts causing an uncanny chill on a warm day are based on facts. I never noticed before because it sems to me to be really bad manners to walk through a ghost when you can see them and the hallways at Hogwarts are always drafty and a bit chilly if the sun's not shining through the windows so one ghost nearby doesn't make much difference, but being one of only a few live people in a whole room full of ghosts feels like standing in the industrial freezer at the restaurant even without touching any of them. Of course, the party was in the dungeons, one of the coldest parts of the castle anyway but you could see your breath in the room. I don't know how the Slytherins can stand living down there. No wonder they have a reputation for all being bad tempered. I would be too if I spent all my nights shivering in cold dank rooms.

There was food at the party but not anything we could eat, it was all rotten, Nick explained to us that ghosts can kind of taste things if they pass their mouth through them if the taste is strong enough. I don't know why that means they'd want rotting and mouldy food rather than a good curry or chilli though. I wouldn't have minded a curry, they don't serve them at Hogwarts and of course Vernon would never eat such a foreign food but we had some at Dean's and at Scoil Draiocht and I loved them and it would have warmed us up.

The Deathday party was actually really boring, most of the ghosts didn't want to talk to us and we accidentally upset Moaning Myrtle this ghost of a student who rushed away crying which offended a heap of other ghosts. Then the headless hunt came and they throw their heads around and pretend to play polo with them. I don't think it's very scary though it probably would be if they weren't all white and transparent, though watching one ghost's head being thrown through another ghost is a bit freaky. They ruined Nick's party for him and he left so we could leave too.

Something odd happened as we were coming out of the dungeons though, which is the real reason I regret not having been in the great hall enjoying the feast with everyone else. I heard a voice. It was saying "Rip… Tear… Kill" it sounded cold and mean like it really wanted to kill someone. The voice seemed loud and the hallway was quiet but the others said they couldn't hear it. This is the second time I've heard it, the last time was late at night in detention with Lockhart up on the second floor. We chased it up the stairs but never saw who was speaking. I know, chasing after someone who's looking to kill someone was stupid particularly since everyone else in the castle was at the feast, we should have gone into the great hall where everyone else was. You'll be relieved to know we never caught up to whoever it was but we did find the caretaker's cat turned into something like a statue and hanging from one of the wall torches. Someone had painted on the wall the words. THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE." You can read a bit about the Chamber of Secrets in 'Hogwarts a History', supposedly it was built by Salazar Slytherin one of the school's founders while they were building the school but nobody has been able to find it for hundreds of years. Though I suppose you remember all that.

We were going to get away back to the common room but the feast let out and we got caught there with what looked like a dead cat and the words. The caretaker tried to blame me and Snape tried to use that as an excuse to have me kicked off the Quidditch team but Dumbledore believed me for me for once when I said I didn't do it, (that might just have been the strangest thing that happened that night), and said this was very advanced magic and couldn't have been done by a second year. Anyway I didn't want to tell them about the voice I heard. If the other's really didn't hear it they wouldn't have believed me anyway. Ron and Hermione didn't mention it either, though I was sure Hermione would have. We ended up being sent up to the common room without any dinner which I reckon was punishment enough. The fruit bowl was actually full of bread rolls with hot roast beef and gravy in them instead of fruit though so it wasn't so bad. I've never seen it have stuff other than fruit in it but last year when it was really freezing it had hot apples in it sometimes which were delicious.

I think that before we went to the deathday party, Ron was mostly complaining about missing the feast for the sake of complaining, especially after finding out that the other boys weren't going to go to the deathday party. Now of course he's complaining about everything that happened from the food at the party, the ghosts' attitudes and how what happened on our way upstairs wouldn't have happened if we were at the feast which is complete rubbish it still would have happened but we definitely wouldn't have been the one to find the petrified cat and Filch wouldn't have blamed us but who cares about that Dumbledore told everyone it couldn't have been us.

The feasts are seen as a big deal but nothing special actually happens at them, it's just a dinner with decorations and more food choices. There are lots of Samhain rituals which can be done this time of year by someone who follows the pagan beliefs and a lot of the pureblood families are pagan, or at least were a couple of generations ago. But none of those are openly done at Hogwarts, Seamus was complaining about it. You asked about the extra food at a feast, you're right that nobody ever leaves any meal at Hogwarts hungry unless they want to. Or unless Hermione or someone is dragging them out of the hall in a hurry to go and research whatever she's got a bee in her bonnet about this time, which she mostly drags me because Ron refuses to come until he finishes eating and she never wants to wait for him. The feast has a lot of food more choices than we normally get but also fancier foods, there's almost always a roast usually beef or lamb and pork or Chicken, but also all the trimmings, Yorkshire pudding, cauliflower au gratin, and for some reason sausage rolls, and mint humbugs. Then several different ice creams and a couple of different desserts. I think what Ron likes best about feasts though is that they go for an hour longer than dinner is usually so he can fit in more helpings, like the Dursleys at that all-you-can-eat buffet you took me to. How he isn't as fat as Dudley is a miracle, but he is a lot more active than Dudley, especially at school with the ten flights of stairs from the great hall to our dorm.

This was the second year in a row that something has happened during the Halloween feast. I asked Oliver and he said nothing had happened during the feasts in the four years he was here before I started. Honestly if it didn't disrupt quidditch I'm not sure that he would have noticed but the girls and the twins heard his answer and didn't contradict him.

Dean was on board with the prank idea of using one of his pictures on the idiot's classroom door. We researched spells to stop him ripping it off the door, there's such a thing as a permanent sticking charm that actually when you read about it means it will stick until it's cancelled and takes twice as much magic to cancel as it does to cast which wouldn't work for us because twice as much magic as a twelve year old would be pretty easy for an adult, but we found a book on how to add passwords to your spells so they cannot be undone without saying the password. It's easy to cast, well I found it easy Seamus and Dean struggled a bit, and makes even the simplest of spells irreversible until the password is given so I'm not sure what a book about a spell like that is doing in a school library, it would be so easy to misuse. So, we found the most grotesque looking picture of Lockhart Dean had, enlarged it and used a password based permanent sticking charm to stick it to the outside of the classroom door and a password based notice-me-not charm to prevent the professors or Filch from seeing it. All we need to do now is make sure only the other students hear the password and nobody associates hearing one of us say it with the apparent appearance of the picture. I found a solution to the problem of people remembering who was speaking when the picture appeared, it's called a sound bubble. You put a certain sound, in this case the spoken password, in the bubble and when it's popped the sound is released. The bubbles are pretty small and it will still work if you pop them in your pocket without anyone noticing. The brilliant thing about it is that we didn't have to use our own voice, we recorded Snape telling off Ron, calling him a dunderheaded fool, and once made you can use the replication charm to make as many of them as you want. That means that the only real risk of anyone guessing it was us is if they recognise Dean's drawing style, which basically means his dorm mates, Ron's too oblivious of anything that doesn't interest him and I don't think that Neville would dob us in, or dob Dean in. Using Snape's insult for the sound bubbles has the added advantage of potentially pissing off Ron without him getting upset with us if he realises that it was what Snape said to him, we had the opportunity to use a more personally directed insult but repeating that in front of everyone could be seen as bullying. The sound bubble is an enchantment not a spell so nobody is going to suspect a second year and insulting Ron also diverts suspicion away from the Gryffindors, there were plenty of Slytherins around when Snape told Ron off and nobody will ever believe it was his supposed best mate. It's also very apt, if anyone in this school is a dunderheaded fool it's that idiot Lockhart. The only real downside is that the password isn't keyed to me, anyone saying it in the presence of the picture will break the spell. For the sticking charm I used a quote from one of my science books. Something I'm sure wouldn't be said in Hogwarts by anyone accidentally and Snape is the only one likely to use the notice-me-not password and he isn't likely to be lurking around near the idiot's classroom door. Even if he does say it near the door and realises what happened he won't say anything for fear of being blamed, that and he hates the idiot as much as I do. I know Hagrid said nobody applied for the DADA Professor job but the rumour is that Snape applied for it every year.

Your friend always

Harry

A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.

Please stay safe everyone.