12. Chamber of Secrets
That night in the Room, The Professor brought them a tiara, one decorated with moonstones and diamonds. They started casting their detection spells immediately and comparing results.
"Strong compulsion charm," Hermione muttered.
"Goblin-made, for sure," Harry added, "with those protective charms embedded in it."
"Quite a few charms, actually, a dozen, at least, that I can see."
It was the dark-curse detection charm that set them back on their heels. So far, the darkest they had ever seen was more of dark-grey that you could easily see through. This time, though, it was almost a black fog that nearly totally obscured the tiara.
"What on earth is that?" Hermione said, shocked.
The Professor nodded sagely. "A soul-shard has been added to this by Riddle."
They both gasped.
"How do we get rid of it?" Hermione said, aghast.
Harry glared at the tiara. "The only way I know is with basilisk venom."
The Professor smiled. "Are you sure?"
They stared at The Professor in surprise.
"You are curse-breakers."
They glanced at the tiara, but when they looked back at The Professor, s/he was gone. They discussed a bit on what they might be able to do to the tiara.
They continued their bird transfigurations. Along the way, they mastered the problem of size, too. The undetectable expansion charm was the clue. They cast it on themselves as they transfigured, and the extra mass incompatible with their target creature and its size was hidden inside their bodies, undetectable. It also reduced their weight as the charm rendered whatever it took in as never more than a fraction of an ounce! That also made taking their clothes and anything they carried much easier than using a shrinking spell with accio. Their Grimms could range from cat-sized to as big as a miniature horse, and their birds could get as small as a humming bird.
Flying as a bird was not easy, and they ended up spending hours crashing into the sand, trees, and water. To say they slept soundly each night was an understatement.
Splitting their time with their other pursuits, it took them the rest of the night, twelve "days", to research and tease out all the secrets in the tiara. One set of spells, the ones they suspected were placed by Riddle, were all tied to the compulsion charm they had noted first.
But it wasn't the trigger. The trigger was an intent charm. If you happened to be intent on doing something else, nothing happened, you would walk on by the diadem as if it were just another piece of jewellery. On the other hand, if you were just . . . wandering? . . . and happened to stop on seeing the tiara? Then the compulsion to put the tiara on began to spin up. The longer you looked at it without being distracted, the stronger the compulsion became until you did put it on. Once that happened, the soul-shard would piggy-back on the mind-spells the tiara already had and slide into your mind. Before you knew it, you would be a puppet of the soul-shard.
Whether it could drain someone of their life-force to become an independent person, like the diary had tried to do to Ginny, wasn't something they wanted to experiment with.
The only reason Harry hadn't succumbed to his piece of Riddle's soul-shard was because it had been just the piece, by itself. No other spells had been present to facilitate that outcome. Then there was his mother's sacrificial protection, of course.
Fortunately, Riddle had never thought anyone would want to disassemble the spell-set on the tiara. He apparently thought no one would ever notice his alterations before it was too late. Or that someone might possess a mediocrum of common-sense and check the tiara first.
He was muggle-born, he should have known to use common-sense, himself. Or, as Crouch as Moody was always saying, "Constant Vigilance!"
Because the compulsion was triggered by the intent-spell, it was actually easier to remove the compulsion first. With the compulsion spell gone, they only needed to work on the spells that facilitated the soul-shard's attack on the person who put-on the tiara.
.o\O/o.
It was always fun on Fridays to watch Snape's face sour each time Harry handed him a perfectly-brewed vial of the day's potion.
Not that Harry or Hermione would admit it, but The Professor always had them brew the target potion in the Room as the last task of the last "day" the night before Potions class. Included in that preparation were any improvements to the recipe that were not in the Standard Book, nor on the board in the classroom.
Helping matters were the rune-stones Harry had started to use back in early January — January Third, to be precise. Three rune-stones placed around the cauldron, with notice-me-nots on them for everyone else, provided a protego-like field over the top of his cauldron. No longer could someone — (cough) Draco (cough) — toss in anything when Harry was distracted.
In fact, the runes actually made whatever was thrown bounce back and zero-in on that person's own cauldron.
The first time it had happened, at the next class on the Seventh, and Harry was blamed, he had said he would go to the Headmaster and have him use his pensieve to prove Harry was innocent. And when he did, Harry expected the points lost to be restored, the detention cancelled, and the party responsible be punished, instead, and that he be given full points for the potion Snape had vanished.
Half-an-hour later, after class, Harry was outside Dumbledore's Office with Professors McGonagall and Snape. Five minutes later, after hearing Harry's side of the story, and Professor Snape calling him a liar, the Headmaster said, "I have complete faith Professor Snape."
"But Professor Snape admits he did not see me do what I am accused of doing," Harry said reasonably. "Therefore, your faith in him has no relevance. He is taking the word of someone who harasses me at every opportunity. Do you have complete faith in Mr. Malfoy doing no wrong, Headmaster?" Harry paused. "Is there a reason why you don't want to see the memory of what happened? Are you worried it will prove your faith is mistaken?"
Snape glared and said, "Ten points for disrespecting the Headmaster!"
Professor McGonagall narrowed her eyes and glanced between the two older wizards.
"Actually, Headmaster, why don't you want to see the truth of the memory?" she said.
"I'm sure that isn't necessary," he said placidly.
"And I'm sure it is, considering you are depending on the word of a student who has been caught numerous times harassing Mr. Potter." She crossed her arms and glared him.
The Headmaster stared back a moment, then sighed in a way that conveyed he felt much put upon. He got up and brought over the pensieve. Sighing again, he brought his wand to the side of Harry's head and drew out the memory.
"I believe a projection will do," he said as he dropped the memory into the bowl. He tapped the side of the bowl and an image of Harry at his cauldron appeared. Nothing happened for several seconds, then something flew into view from the side. It appeared to bounce off the top edge of the cauldron and rebounded out of view. A moment later, there was a scream and the sound of a cauldron hissing and melting. The memory continued as Snape baselessly accused Harry, and Harry defending himself.
"Well," said McGonagall when it was finished, "It's clear that Mr. Potter had nothing to do with Mr. Malfoy's cauldron melting, isn't it?"
She glared at Snape. "I think it's time we went inside that memory to see just who threw whatever that was at Mr. Potter's cauldron." She looked at the Headmaster and raised an eyebrow. "We have a clear case of someone deliberately sabotaging another student's brew. We cannot, in good conscience, ignore it." The Headmaster slowly nodded.
"So," McGonagall said frostily a few minutes later, "Mr. Malfoy was the engineer of his own failed effort at sabotage. The detention is cancelled, Mr. Potter, take ten points to compensate for those erroneously taken by Professor Snape. Take an additional ten points for having to prove you were telling the truth to the Headmaster, and ten more points for persisting in the face of possible punishment to prove your case. Mr. Potter will also receive full-marks for his potion which you erroneously vanished, correct, Professor Snape?"
Gritting his teeth, Snape slowly nodded.
"In view of Professor Snape's obvious bias in favour of Mr. Malfoy over Mr. Potter, and any concerns regarding mine, Mr. Malfoy will serve detention with Mr. Filch. Ten points from Mr. Malfoy for attempted sabotage, and ten points taken for lying to Professor Snape." She stopped and glared at Snape. "Also, you gave Mr. Malfoy full points for the potion he ruined himself, you will reverse that, given that we now know the truth."
Harry could see the muscles flexing in Professor Snape's cheeks as he nodded.
She turned to the Headmaster. "I have had several of my lions claim that their potions were sabotaged by other students, and that Professor Snape never believed them. I shall be gathering some memories to see if what happened with Mr. Potter is an isolated incident or an endemic problem."
"Professor McGonagall," Harry said quickly, "I can give you a dozen of those, right now!"
"I'm sure that isn't necessary, Mr. Potter," the Headmaster said genially, stroking his beard.
If Snape had been a basilisk, Harry would be dead by the glare he was getting.
Professor McGonagall stared at the Headmaster in disbelief. "You just saw proof that Mr. Potter's potion was almost sabotaged and he was falsely accused by a Slytherin classmate of wrong-doing in Professor Snape's class. He says he has further proof of sabotage and you dismiss it?" she said incredulously. "Why don't we see the truth and then decide if it was necessary!"
Harry could barely restrain his joy as he provided memories, starting with his very first day in potions when he was berated for not knowing the answer to fourth-year, fifth-year, and sixth-year questions. Him losing points for not helping a student and then losing points for helping the same student, Neville losing points for breathing too loud, and he just could not leave out the incident where Hermione lost points for asking a relevant question!
Professor McGonagall was furious when they saw the projections. Even the Headmaster looked disturbed. "Ye ask a first-year Muggle-raised student questions wi' answers they won't see fur thee years? Points aff fur breathin' tay lood? Points taken fur askin' questions? Whit is th' purpose ay teachin' if nae tae answer questions!" Her voice kept getting louder until at the end she was yelling.
She glared at the Potions Master.
"Ah hink we've seen enaw, Headmaster," she said formally, "Pull th' Book ay Points, we hae a clear case 'at Professur Snape has bin abusin' th' point system. Jist changi' th' points in th' pest tae reflect th' students' true standin' is insufficient, however," she continued with a glare at Snape, "especially fur those students fa hae left Hogwarts. We need tae make a statement 'at sic' behavioor isnae tae be tolerated. Aw points incorrectly taken thes year ur awarded shaa be reversed at dooble. As punichment fur th' past, those taken ur awarded in th's pas' years shaa be reversed in th' dooble points ay each future year until the abuse started!"
Which meant that for the next ten years Slytherin would be out of the running for the House cup.
Professor Snape was fairly quivering in anger, but he held his silence. He knew that if he objected, it would not go well for him.
"If it is only puckle isolated incidents, 'en it wulnae make much difference, will it, Professur Snape?" she said twisting the knife. She knew just from the complaints she had had over the years that it had to be a massive number of points. Any complaint he made would prove her point without needing to look at the Book.
He gave a stiff nod.
"Now, Minerva . . .," the Headmaster started consolingly.
She turned and glared at him. "We can start reit noo, wi' thes year, an' wark uir way backwards." She narrowed her eyes. "If ye don't want tae spend th' time dealin' wi' it, Ah will dae it myself!"
He stopped and nodded slowly. As Depute, she had that authority. Forbidding it would transform the incident into a fiendfyre blaze. Sighing at the intransigence of some people, he stood, walked over to a bookshelf to one side of his desk, and removed a very thick book. He brought it back to his desk and dropped it down.
"You may go, Mr. Potter," he said dismissively.
Harry was more than happy to leave. Just as he reached the door, though, Professor McGonagall spoke up. "Harry? Twintie points fur bringin' thes tae mah attention."
"Twenty!" objected Snape, his face turning red.
McGonagall looked at him and raised one eyebrow. "Yoo're reit. Make it fife percent ay th' points improperly taken frim Harry fur th' lest fower years!"
His face turned redder, but he remained silent.
Harry hurried out of the room.
Ron and Hermione laughed themselves silly when Harry later related the story. The twins fell down laughing.
By the time dinner had arrived, Slytherin barely had a tenth of what they had had before the points review started. The other three Houses were higher, with Gryffindor having double the points of their closest competitor, Ravenclaw.
Since then, the tensions between the Slytherins and Gryffindors in Potions had ratcheted up, but the number of incidents in the class between the two groups had dropped to zero. Plus, the points taken from Gryffindors had fallen sharply to a much lower number, as had the points awarded to Slytherins.
McGonagall apparently had threatened to match him point for point if he started frivolously awarding points to the Slytherins.
Just remembering brought a smile to Harry's face as he returned to his station and started packing up his tools this Friday.
The real icing on the cake was that the Slytherins had no hope of winning the House Cup this year . . . or for the next ten years, Harry knew.
Hogwarts: A History would be sure to include a section on Snape's behaviour, with the consequences he incurred, as a warning to future professors.
.o\O/o.
That night, with the help of a ritual-circle and runes, they managed to transfer the soul-shard to a mouse.
Their first thought, afterwards, was to kill the rat — especially given the red-eyed glare and bared-teeth it gave them as soon as it woke in its unbreakable, doorless cage that was barely big enough for it to fit. Apparently, its will was unable to resist the takeover by the soul-shard.
"Wait, Harry," Hermione said, holding up her hand, as he prepared to send a drilling curse at the mouse.
He stopped and looked at her.
"You said there are five more horcruxes, right?"
He shook his head. "My Death Agent said eight pieces, including Riddle. I was one, the diary was one, and this one is the third. That leaves four horcruxes plus Riddle."
"Do you think we could use the principle of similarity to track the other pieces with the mouse?"
They didn't ask The Professor where he got the Draught of Living Death vial, but less than half a drop was enough to put the mouse out. There would be no attempts at escape, nor freak accidents of magic that might let him get free.
Before they started research on what they needed to do to make Voldemouse a compass pointing to the other horcruxes, they sealed the mouse's cage in a block of crystal. A rune-sequence on the outside ensured that the air inside was fresh, and that no magic could be cast inside the block. Now, even if he somehow woke, he wouldn't be able to escape. It was also unbreakable and impervious to inside and outside magic.
Of course, by this time they had discovered that the words engraved into the tiara, "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," identified it as Rowena Ravenclaw's famous diadem. The same diadem that had mysteriously disappeared a thousand years ago.
Based on how the spells apparently were able to penetrate someone's mind with an ease that was matched only by the sorting hat, they concluded that Godric and Rowena must have collaborated on making the sorting hat. Or that Rowena had already pioneered the spells and merely shared them with Godric.
However, despite the tiara's reputation about making the wearer smarter, wearing it hadn't given Rowena the smarts to predict her daughter's theft of the item out of jealousy. Nor had it allowed Helena, her daughter, to realize that the wizard sent to bring her home, the now-ghost known as The Baron, would kill her in a jealous-lover's fit of rage when she refused to accompany him.
All information told to them by The Professor.
As a result, neither of the two students noticed any real improvements in their thinking while wearing the tiara after it had been cleansed of the foul taint. They decided they weren't sure if any improvements were their imaginations at work, given that they knew what the tiara was supposed to do, or if it really helped them.
So, using spells to imitate occlumency's advantages in improving memory, supressing emotional reactions, and making connections between seemingly unrelated facts only helped those who had yet to learn that skill, or hadn't had enough experience with it, yet. It didn't, unfortunately, really make them wiser.
No matter what had happened in the past, Harry and Hermione found themselves with a priceless artifact in their possession in the present. Without any idea of what to do with it.
They couldn't reveal that they had it without warning Riddle that he had lost an anchor. If that happened, he might decide to check the others. When he found another one was missing, he would probably move the others.
Plus, Harry had the feeling that if they did turn it over to the Headmaster, it would just end up adorning a corner of his office. No one but himself, and a few selected sycophants would see it, just like he had done with the Sword of Gryffindor.
Then, in the future, some corrupt Headmaster would decide that he needed to store the two Founder's items in his vault. He would claim it was for safety reasons, to protect them from theft. Then, after a few decades, or a century, they would have become Family Heirlooms — neither treasure would ever be seen in public, again.
"Well," he said to Hermione after explaining his reasoning, "if it was destined to go into someone's Family Vault, I can't think of a better Family Vault than mine!"
She sadly agreed.
It was the last "day" in the Room, by then, and tomorrow would be Saturday. So, the two retrieved a small coin-pouch with a draw-string from the Room of Lost things, added an undetectable expansion spell, as well as shrinking, impervious, and indestructible spells.
Then they shrank the tiara, placed it in coin-pouch, and put a shrunken note on the pouch to place it in Harry's new vault at Gringotts.
Naturally, sending a vault key via owl was a practice discouraged by the bank. That could end up with the key stolen, especially if the Ministry or a thief put an owl redirect spell up. Harry didn't believe for one moment that anyone would be able to get his mail from Hedwig, but he'd rather not put her at risk. So, he followed what he had been told to do and put a drop of his blood at the parchment's bottom at the end of his signature to identify which Vault to place the item in.
Once everything was properly prepared not to inconvenience Hedwig, he strung the pouch around his neck so he didn't accidentally leave it behind when Dobby took him to his dorm-bed. He would take the package to the owlery sometime tomorrow when it was convenient.
He considered writing another letter to Sirius, but decided it would be better to wait. The odds that someone might intercept anything he sent were small . . . but not zero.
.o\O/o.
Saturday and Sunday passed with the four of them, him, Hermione, Luna, and Ron, flying around on their brooms — with the help of numerous warming charms. Ron rode Harry's Firebolt while he and Hermione used school brooms. They were still almost half-frozen by the time they went inside the castle.
Hermione had drastically improved her skills. She would never get on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but she had much more confidence when in the air. While still refusing to try any stunts, she wouldn't be a sitting duck if it came to a fight or flight on a broomstick.
Some of that was her practice with flying in the Room as a bird. She no longer feared falling. If she were more than a dozen yards up, she had plenty of time to transfigure herself into a bird. Any lower, and the softening charm she could wandlessly cast would save her.
In the Room over the weekend, they managed to find a series of spells that would make Voldemouse into living compass. Instead of pointing North, of course, he pointed towards the closest piece of himself that there was. Unfortunately, all the two knew at this point was that there were one or more pieces to the south — and they had more important things to worry about, at the moment.
Their wandless spells were still limited, but the longer they used a spell the easier it became. So, despite it being boring, they practiced protego, accio, finite, stupefy, episkey, expelliarmus, pello, dissilio, and incendio over and over until they could barely cast at anything.
They also spent time flying as birds, getting better and better at handling themselves and building up the arm/wing strength. They did the same as merfolk, fine-tuning their upper bodies and fishtails' shapes to propel them more efficiently and faster.
Sorting the books in the Room of Lost/Hidden things was an ongoing project. It was simple in concept, and easy to execute. The first result, however, was a mountain of books.
They modified their request to have the Room provide a door in their classroom area that opened to a room with only the books or items they were searching for at the moment.
They started with textbooks at Hogwarts and ended up with several dozen complete sets of books for all seven current years of Hogwarts. They also had an equal quantity of books for each of many assorted electives, both current and past. Finding duelling with swords as an elective was odd, until they realized it was from the early eleven-hundred's when one had to able to handle both a sword and a wand if they wanted to not attract attention. There were also textbooks on rituals, runes, necromancy, sigils, handwriting, fencing, finance, government, poetry, becoming an animagus, estate management, business management, farm management, enchantment basics and advanced, sailing, and world geography. Plus, texts on languages, such as French, Italian, Bulgarian, Spanish, and others.
There were hundreds of older textbooks that had been replaced by newer editions. Those might interest a collector, but it was doubtful.
They separated the books into two piles, one was of books not in the school's library, the other was of books that were. The ones the library didn't have, they would give to Madam Pince at the end of the year for her to decide if they were needed. The others they would sell to students.
One interesting experiment they did was to request the best book of each subject. Surprisingly, not all the ones mentioned in their Hogwarts letters were those at the top of the piles. Well, that the DADA books weren't wasn't a surprise, but some of the others were.
They naturally added one each of those books to their own collections. They planned to peruse them later to see if they had any nuggets of information they hadn't seen, yet.
The book piles for selling and giving to the library were rather large. They stored them in a trunk they had expanded into a dozen rooms.
With the textbooks out of the way, they did a search for any other books or written materials.
They shouldn't have been surprised at the ton, literally, of pornography, both pictorial and written, that they found. Some of it was eye-opening, especially the magazines with pictures and drawings that moved — there were also stand-alone pictures and drawings. Harry was positive he saw nude drawings and pictures of several witches who were related to students currently in school — possibly either grandparents or parents. Some of the pictures were in the magazines!
Even Hermione, whose parents had made sure she knew all about sex, and its myriad of combinations, before attending Hogwarts, was startled to see some of the things in the magazines. It seemed that there was a bit of a difference between dry textbooks with clinical drawings and pictures on the subject and seeing what people actually did!
Hermione had heard of zoophilia, but the magical creatures in the wizarding world added a whole new dimension to the kink.
Their "nights" in their bedroom were rather interesting, as a result. Their skills with transfigurations were put to the test, sometimes with gratifying results, they decided.
Another ton of books and magazines were in the category of racy stories and pictures. They ranged from slightly naughty to very pornographic.
Dwarfing the pornography, though, were several tons of newsparchments, magazines, and books on wizarding sports, with the occasional Muggle one. Coming a close second were the fashion and beauty magazines and books.
Apparently, unless a student actually vanished or incinerated a book, magazine, newsparchment, drawing, or picture, the house-elves collected them and put them in the Room of Abandoned Things.
They had come across a dozen books that had been quite stomach-churning after they removed the curses on them and actually looked at what was written in them. They were tempted to destroy them, but then thought it would be better to keep them to identify the curses if they were ever used. That many of the spells in the books included their counters was a strong vote in favour of keeping them. Instead, they vanished the directions on how to cast the spells, leaving only the descriptions of key words the spells had to help them be identified when cast, what the spell looked like when cast, what they did, and their counter-curses.
They would collate the books into three reference books: One each for themselves, Hogwarts, and St. Mungo's Hospital.
There were seventeen trunks, a pile of twenty-nine brooms, a huge mound of clothes, and an incredible number of jewels and jewellery.
Even without the earnings from the basilisk, the jewels alone would have provided a decade of living expenses if Harry and Hermione were frugal. Especially if they used their apartment trunks as their residences.
Not that they needed to do that, considering what the Goblins had told them what their shares of the basilisk would total.
Hermione insisted Harry go through the clothes and pick out a new wardrobe. There was no reason he needed to dress like a bum. With the wardrobe spells and runes they knew, making them a perfect fit was not a problem. Especially his tired and worn trainers, which even reparo had given up on fixing.
The number of potion vials with dried-out contents was staggering. As were the empty wine and alcohol bottles. There must have been an alcoholic, or several, most likely, in residence at one time or another. Some bottles still had tiny amounts left in them, indicating that there was at least one present, now.
Probably Trelawney, they concluded.
Toys were quite a collection, too: fanged frisbees, gobstone sets, wizarding chess sets, screaming yo-yo's, wizarding skittles, and a bunch more that Harry recognized as banned by Filch. Most were easy to return to almost new, physically, with the reparo charm. Freshening the charms on some of the items would take a bit more effort and time.
They would make for an interesting starting inventory for the twins' shop when they opened it.
Then there were the various other items, too: cauldrons of many different types; glass and crystal phials; telescopes, both standard and fancy ones that folded into small card-deck-sized carrying cases as light as a feather; brass measuring scales, again, both standard and fancy ones that folded up just like the telescopes; stirring utensils, both plain and programmable auto-turning; duelling targets that moved erratically and randomly; Foe-Glasses; Secrecy Sensors; and a whole pile of equipment for carving runes with practice and real blank stones to use, both starter and high-quality.
Their personal trunks now had a completely equipped potion-lab, and a room of other top-notch tools for astronomy, runes, and arithmancy.
They had enough leftover equipment and clothing to outfit several shops in Diagon Alley! Harry was sure a costume shop in London would love to have some of the period clothing in the pile they had.
Finally, there was the furniture, statuary, and myriad of other items that belonged to the school and had been placed in the Room by the house-elves.
One extremely useful find were the extra duelling manikins. A few reparo's and magic-freshening charms provided them with multiple opponents each in duels, which had limited their practice up to now. Like the other manikins, the repaired ones adapted to their skill levels, used the same spells they did, and slowly sped up as they duelled, forcing the student to improve.
One potentially useful find was something The Professor had called a Vanishing Cabinet. They were normally paired, and allowed one to move from one location to another almost immediately. A big plus, apparently, was that it had none of the side-effects of all the other methods of wizarding transport! The Floo, Knight Bus, portkey, apparition, all of those had serious disadvantages — not the Vanishing Cabinets, though. According to The Professor, you simply stepped in, closed the door, turned around re-opened the door, and there you were! It also went through all forms of spells that prevented the other forms of movement.
A Vanishing Cabinet's only flaw was that it couldn't move a large number of people quickly. One or two at a time, only.
It was broken, unfortunately, and The Professor didn't know where the other one of the set was.
If they could find it, they had an easy way out of Hogwarts to track down the Tom's other pieces. But first, they would have to fix it.
Repairing it, however, would not be a simple task. Reparo fixed only the physical damage, it couldn't restore the magic. The Professor provided a spell that would, slowly, push magic back into the now-non-magical repaired sections, but it would take many repeated castings.
.o\O/o.
Sirius replying to Harry's owl on Monday was both gratifying and disappointing. The message was simply one line, Send date of next Hogsmeade weekend by return owl. Harry scribbled out a quick response on the same parchment, Weekend after next, lots to talk about, and sent the same owl off with it.
Hagrid brought two unicorn foals to his class, and then tried to give his version of a pep-talk to Harry.
"Nothing to worry about, Hagrid, I've already explored the Loch and shouldn't have much trouble at all," he replied.
Hagrid looked pleased at his confidence, and wished him well.
Moody even came up to him to offer a few suggestions.
The next few nights, Harry spent practicing his magic underwater. The Room transformed their beach into a replica of Black Loch and offered up many of the perils Harry might face, including hostile mermen.
The stunning spell didn't seem to work well against any of the underwater denizens, forcing Harry to rely on other spells. Relashio, instead of sending sparks, sent a burst of hot water. That would do against the smaller creatures in the Loch. The knockback jinx seemed the next choice up in violence for the larger creatures. Unfortunately, that charm, and its more powerful cousins, threw him back as much as it threw the target away from him.
However, the banishing charm did make for a quick and rapid method of moving underwater. Unfortunately, it was difficult to control.
Protego worked just fine, though, at protecting him from attacks.
"What are we going to do, tomorrow?" Harry said the "evening" before returning to the castle.
Hermione frowned. "I don't know." She sighed. "Most of the clue seems easy enough." She held up her index finger. "First, from The Daily Prophet, confirmed by the clue in the egg, we know it will be in Black Loch and that the Merfolk are involved." She shook her head. "Their refusal to help you also confirms it."
She pushed up her middle finger. "Second, they say they will take what you sorely miss, which implies it's something you own or would miss if you didn't own it."
Harry snorted. "These are Wizards, they won't just take anything. We've already concluded that they'll take hostages."
Her ring finger was next. "Third, the time limit is an hour."
Then came her little finger. "The fourth condition, about the penalty for not beating an hour is much more concerning: it's gone, it won't come back."
She shook her head. She looked at Harry. "They wouldn't really destroy what they took, or kill the hostages, would they?" She sighed. "Maybe they're being disingenuous — they don't really mean it, they just added it to make it sound more dangerous than it really is?"
Harry frowned back at her. "Really? You think they would care?" He rolled his eyes. "Based on how the Headmaster said only students of age could enter their names in the Tournament? But, somehow, I was entered? Then he proclaimed, time after time, how the First Task, while dangerous, no one would be in danger of losing their lives? Yet, the First Task had Dragons with absolutely no safety measures for the Champions? Proven by how I died in that Task! Only the intervention of a prophecy allowed me to return from Death!" He sighed. "And remember in First-year, 'The third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death?' And it had only a simple, First-year lock instead of something only an adult could open? Yeah, not very concerned about a student dying." He shook his head. "So, no, I don't think whoever they take will be at all safe, either before or after the time-limit."
She sighed dejectedly.
He pressed his lips together tightly. "There is absolutely no way I'm going to let them place you in any danger!" he declared loudly.
She blushed.
"While I'm sure the Merfolk have a deal with the Headmaster, there are plenty of other creatures in the Loch who haven't!" he continued.
He began pacing. "I'm pretty sure they won't do anything to disrupt classes, so they'll probably wait until after dinner to approach you. So," he looked over at her, "you can hide in the Room after we eat."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," she mused. "What if the Headmaster asks a house-elf to look for me in the castle? All they would have to do is visit the Room to find me."
"The Chamber of Secrets? It's not a place house-elves frequent, and it's outside of Hogwart's spells . . . plus, you could stay in your apartment trunk down there, and they wouldn't find you — especially with the blood-locks on it!"
She slowly nodded. "That might work. We can check during lunch to see if the Headmaster put any spells on the entrance in Myrtle's toilets. If he did, those will make him think we didn't go to the Chamber. That'll give us time to plan on how to break them after Herbology and Runes — we don't want to implicate Dobby by using him to transport us down there."
.o\O/o.
With their glasses looking for the magic and the curse-breaking skills they'd been learning, it was easy to see in detail the spells placed by the Headmaster to monitor any activity in Myrtle's Toilets.
They both had their shrunken trunks, each light as a feather, on their legilimens-blocking necklaces, so they were never without them at hand. If they ever had to make a run for it, they would have everything they owned with them.
Thursday's dinner was tense, as they weren't sure if a Professor would approach them. Ron, naturally, didn't notice, except to tell Harry to relax, the Task would be a breeze for him. Fortunately, no Prefect or Professor made an appearance except as normal.
Immediately after they finished the two hurried off towards the Gryffindor dorm — skipping dessert horrified Ron. However, as soon as they were in one of the not-so-secret passages, they hid under Harry's invisibility cloak and snuck back down to Myrtle's toilets.
Having already scoped them out, it took only a few short minutes to deceive the Headmaster's alerts and for Hermione to hop on her broom and fly down into the Chamber.
Because Dobby worked in the kitchens at Hogwarts, they didn't want to involve him. If asked by the Headmaster, he could honestly and earnestly answer that he did not know.
Harry stayed behind to make sure everything was returned to normal. Changing the parseltongue password to a bit more complicated that a simple "open" was no effort for Harry. The new one was House-elf Freedom Tunnel. Something no pure-blood would ever say, and something only a parseltongue could manage to say.
He was disappointed, in retrospect, that the Headmaster hadn't placed a portrait of a witch into the room, under a don't-notice-this, to watch for errant students.
.o\O/o.
