1992 to 1993, 2nd year
News about the second attack spread like wildfire despite the teachers' best efforts to keep things quiet. Harry reluctantly told his housemates what little he had learned the night the little Gryffindor had been brought in, but left out the part about the boy supposedly having tried to sneak into the Hospital Wing for Harry. The thought that some random kid with a camera who Harry had never even talked to before had tried to –
Better not think about it.
The boy had clearly been punished enough and Harry hoped that would be a lesson for him once the cure for the petrification was finished. No need to get his overprotective friends involved. For now, the boy couldn't do anything for the foreseeable future, anyway.
More pressing matters for Harry was the fact that Draco's parents were on an important business trip and so Draco would stay at Hogwarts for the holidays. (Daphne had somehow managed to convince Draco not to write to his father about the Dobby incident.) Harry did not mind the cancellation of the Malfoys' Yule Ball as much as Draco was bemoaning it, but this did make things rather difficult for Harry, who wanted nothing more than to curl up with Hedwig and a good book in Severus' quarters.
He couldn't do that without arousing suspicion if Draco was there. A problem that could have been easily solved were the headmaster not so insistent that the entire situation remain a secret. It annoyed Harry immensely – more so because the headmaster also refused to give Harry a proper explanation or allow Severus to do so.
"You know," Blaise said in a conversational tone, "if Draco's presence is bothering you so much, you could always come home with one of us."
Harry grimaced. "Am I that obvious?"
Blaise hummed. "I doubt Draco noticed, but it's written all over your face."
Visiting one of his friends wouldn't exactly solve his problem, though. Harry didn't actually mind Draco's presence, after all.
"Or," Blaise continued as if he was reading his thoughts, "you could pretend to come home with one of us and disappear off to somewhere. That would make us rather worried, but as long as we know you're safe and in good hands, we wouldn't mind helping out."
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He eventually settled on a simple, "I will think about it."
"If you two are done whispering," came Daphne's voice in front of them, "I would very much like to find out what this commotion is about."
Harry hadn't even noticed the crowd gathered around the notice board in the entrance hall.
"A Duelling Club," came Theodore's quiet voice, the boy appearing seemingly out of thin air. "First meeting tonight at eight o'clock in the Great Hall, no other information given."
"No information about whoever organised this?"
Theodore shook his head.
"The idea has its merit," Daphne mused.
"But what if it's Lockhart?" Harry asked.
"Then we will leave," Blaise replied with a shrug and a grin. "Simple as that."
Harry shook his head. "You can go without me." With how things currently were at the school, the event would most likely be extremely crowded. And Harry was still quite uncomfortable with large crowds. "If it's any good, I might reconsider."
"You can accompany Rhea, then," Daphne said.
Over lunch, Rhea had asked for someone to accompany her for the evening. She apparently wanted to go out and gather some ingredients for reasons she hadn't given and would have appreciated some extra hands.
"I can't just stay in the common room?"
"No one else will."
Harry looked at Theodore for confirmation, only to find him already gone. One day, Harry would figure out how Theodore was doing that.
Gathering ingredients with Rhea turned out to be quite peaceful, in the end. Harry didn't want to imagine the chaos going on in the Great Hall that very moment. He much preferred walking over the grounds with Rhea, carrying several baskets she filled with various, seemingly random things – from odd little plants plucked out of the middle of a patch of seemingly ordinary grass to pebbles from the shore of the lake to dead snails and even a dead bird they found near the Whomping Willow.
Harry vehemently refused to go near the Whomping Willow, but Rhea had no problem flitting around it, avoiding its whipping branches and looking for – well, Harry certainly had no idea.
At one point, they stumbled across a little first-year, who was looking for moon frogs. She had long, dirty blonde hair and wide, blue eyes and was dressed rather lightly for the weather.
"Oh, thank you," she said out of nowhere, a wide smile on her face.
"It was no problem," Rhea replied softly, making Harry frown in confusion.
They returned to the castle with the girl just before curfew, covered in dirt and positively exhausted with baskets full of ostensibly random things. The girl split off in the entrance hall to head for Ravenclaw Tower and Harry finally managed to ask Rhea about the odd exchange, but Rhea merely thanked him sincerely for the help, took the baskets from him and then disappeared, leaving him alone in front of the entrance to their common room.
Shaking his head at her antics and thinking about taking a nice, long shower, Harry said the password and began to descend the stairs.
"There you are."
Harry barely had a moment to recognise Pansy's voice and suppress the automatic flinch when his wrist was grabbed – and then he was being dragged over to where the others were gathered.
"It was Lockhart," Blaise told Harry.
Next to him, Pansy snickered. "He managed to rope Professor Snape in as his 'assistant'. You should have seen his expression! Oh, it was hilarious."
"Lockhart never stood a chance," Draco proclaimed, laughing.
Harry let them regale him with tales of the disastrous meeting, quite glad he had avoided that mess. He told Blaise and Daphne about his own evening when asked and then finally went to take his shower, quite content with how things had gone.
The next day began as any other, perfectly ordinary safe for the heavy snowfall – until news of a double attack made the rounds.
Apparently, during a cancelled Herbology lesson for the second-year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, a ghost and Justin Finch-Fletchley had been petrified. Hannah and Susan, who often joined the weekend study group with Justin, were distraught. The Slytherins wisely kept their mouths shut after Sue made a rather tactless remark that set the Hufflepuffs off again – and they had just managed to calm down, too! They were lucky Rhea hadn't joined them, for she had been positively delighted at the news of a ghost being petrified and then disappeared, presumably to go and examine said ghost closer.
"This is getting ridiculous," Susan said, voice still quivering. "The school should have done something long before now – if they don't want to close the school, they should have at least set up proper security measures, investigate the situation thoroughly, find the culprit – but nothing!"
"Didn't expect anything else, honestly," Harry heard Tracey mutter. When he caught her eye, she gave him a lopsided smile and added, "Hogwarts doesn't have the best track record. Remember the Troll last year? Not to forget the bloody staircases and the Bludgers."
Harry couldn't help but silently agree.
The mood going into the holidays was thus rather gloomy. Harry decided to stay at Hogwarts and just bear with Draco's presence. It wasn't that bad. Gregory did ask whether he should stay, too, with Vincent grunting his assent, but Draco deemed Harry enough company, so it ended up being just the two of them.
Harry found that if he allowed Draco to drone on and on about whatever story had caught his fancy and made vague acknowledging sounds now and then, Draco would let him get away with reading a book at the same time. Harry wasn't sure whether Draco assumed he was truly listening or simply didn't care as long as his audience appeared to be somewhat attentive and agreeable.
Being Draco's godfather, Severus had ample excuse to spend Christmas day with the two boys, even inviting both of them into his quarters. Harry needn't have worried about Draco figuring it out, for the boy was too busy talking Severus' ear off and being overly self-important to even notice Harry and Hedwig feeling right at home in their potion teacher's quarters.
It wasn't how Harry had imagined spending his holidays, but he could forgive Draco for making fun of the jumpers Mrs Figg had sent Harry as was apparently becoming tradition. Harry only had to mention that he appreciated someone going through the effort to make something specifically for him rather than buying some item he could easily purchase, himself, and that shut Draco up instantly.
The holidays went by covered in snow and Draco's dramatic stories and relative peace.
"My dear experts in all things magic," Rhea greeted the study group, "I have a mystery for you to solve."
A small, black book landed on the table, falling open to the first page.
Harry and the others looked at it for a moment, then back at Rhea, who pulled out a chair to sit down among them.
"Is that a diary?" Oliver asked curiously.
"Appears to be," Rhea replied. "One that is impervious to toilet water and rabbit blood."
"Rabbit blood?"
Rhea shrugged. "Accidentally spilled some on it."
"T. M. Riddle," Sue read aloud, leaning over the table to get a better look and decidedly ignoring the part about the blood just like Harry and everyone else was doing.
"I remember that name, but I cannot put my finger on it."
They all seemed to be avoiding to touch the diary, Harry noted.
"Tom Riddle received a Special Award for Services to the School in 1943 for catching the culprit the last time the Chamber of Secrets was opened."
All heads turned to stare at Theodore, who ducked his head.
"My father loves to hear himself talk as much as Draco does."
"And there's a shield with the name on it in the trophy room," Sue realised. She looked at Rhea. "Where did you find this? It must be over fifty years old by now."
"It is," Rhea agreed, reaching out to turn the book over and show them the front cover. "I heard through the ghostly grapevine that someone set off Myrtle again, so I went to calm her down before she decided to flood the entire second floor. Again. From what I gathered, someone tried to flush this book down the toilet and she happened to be sitting in the U-bend."
The other girls all groaned.
Oliver frowned. "Who is Myrtle and why would a book being flushed down the toilet cause her to flood an entire corridor?"
"Moaning Myrtle is a teenage ghost who haunts the girl's bathroom on the second floor," Sue explained. "Though she occasionally visits other places. She is very easily agitated and prone to wailing temper tantrums."
"Last time Peeves bullied her, she flooded half the corridor in front of her bathroom," Rhea said.
"Would that have been on Samhain?" Daphne asked.
"Yes."
"Hm..."
"Samhain?" Harry asked. "When the Chamber was first opened?"
"The writing is in front of Myrtle's bathroom, Harry." Rhea sighed. "And before you ask, I did question Myrtle about the incident, but she was too busy crying and angrily turning toilets into fountains to notice anything."
"So …" Hannah slowly said. "This book …?"
"It feels strange," Rhea told them. "Sinister and powerful, but also calm and … patient. Lying in wait. Attentive."
Chairs scraped loudly as several people abruptly leaned back from the table.
"And you want us to investigate it?"
Rhea gave them an ominous smile. "It would be a perfect opportunity to actually learn some defence against the Dark Arts, would it not? Lockhart is certainly not teaching us anything useful."
"No, thank you," Hannah said briskly, gathering her things and getting up from the table, Susan following suit.
"You Slytherins have the weirdest ideas," Oliver muttered.
"Come now, darling," Blaise said brightly. "Don't lump us in with a Lémure of all people."
"Let's have a look at it then." Oliver shot Rhea a sceptical look. "You're sure it's safe to touch?"
Rhea shrugged. "I wouldn't know."
In the face of Oliver's honestly offended look, Harry couldn't help but laugh.
Strange, dangerous things just kept happening at Hogwarts, but sometimes, Harry thought to himself, they didn't necessarily have to be bad.
o
Between homework, exam preparation and general school work, studying the diary took its time. There were no more attacks in the meantime, thankfully, and the worst that happened was the horror of Lockhart's Valentine's Day events.
The less said about that day the better.
They did eventually decide to try writing in the diary. Rhea was chosen for obvious reasons, though that turned out to be … Well, the diary actually wrote back, only, it turned out it couldn't decipher Rhea's messy scrawl and everyone else was too freaked out to try for themselves.
"So it really is sentient and it clearly has an advanced level of intelligence for an inanimate object."
"At this point," Sue said, "I really think we should hand it in."
Daphne gave her an amused look. "And which competent person would you give it to? Our Defence Professor would get himself possessed before even touching it."
"Surely, Headmaster Dumbledore –"
The collectively unimpressed looks from the Slytherin part of their group shut her up instantly.
"Well," Rhea said, drawing their attention. "If I write slowly and carefully enough, he seems to be able to decipher what I'm trying to say."
"Oh?" Oliver leaned over. "Show us, show us!"
"'Thank you. It is nice to meet you'," Rhea read out loud.
"What did you write?"
"That I fished his diary out of a toilet. Oh, he's writing more – 'Lucky that I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink. But I always knew that there would be those who would not want this diary read.'"
"What does it mean by that?" Harry asked, earning himself raised eyebrows all around.
"Have you forgotten who this diary belongs to?"
"What – do – you – know –" Rhea said slowly, carefully writing out the letters, "about – the – Cham – ber – of – Sec – rets – ? Merlin, this is difficult. Oh, oh wow. That's a lot of text. Let's see … The Chamber was opened in his fifth year – we knew that – the monster attacked several students and eventually killed one –"
There were several sharp intakes of breath.
"– Riddle caught the culprit, but Headmaster Dippet swept everything under the rug to avoid a scandal and gave him a nice, shiny trophy to keep quiet. Hm … And the monster is apparently still alive and 'the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned.'"
"That … is disconcerting," Sue said slowly.
"It is," Daphne agreed.
Rhea tilted her head at the diary. "He's asking whether the Chamber has been opened again."
"Don't tell it!" Daphne said quickly. "Tell it that you simply made the connection between the name on the diary and a story you heard."
Rhea gave her an exasperated look. "Do you know how exhausting this is? Unless Riddle learns to decipher my normal handwriting, I'm not doing this."
"But –"
"You keep forgetting," Blaise interjected, "that we have already determined this to be a Dark Artefact and such objects are not to be trusted under any circumstances."
"Oh, he's saying now that he can show us – me. Take me inside his memory of that night."
"Are you mad?" Sue exclaimed. "Say no! Don't touch it! Don't write in it anymore!"
Rhea gave her an odd look. "I wasn't going to agree."
"Good!"
"The question is," Oliver said. "What do we do with it now?"
"Could we contain it somehow?" Harry asked. "Make sure it can't hurt anyone?"
"We have yet to figure out how it can hurt anyone," Rhea said. "I don't know how to craft containment spells if I don't know what for – not yet, at least."
"You know how to craft containment spells?" Oliver asked faintly.
Rhea blinked. "You don't?"
"Of course not."
Blaise laughed. "Rhea keeps forgetting other families do not teach their children magic before Hogwarts."
"We have done so for many generations. It is tradition."
Oliver looked at her askance. "Why are you even at Hogwarts, then?"
Rhea tilted her head. "For socialisation? Grand-aunt Naenia always says it is important to learn how to interact with the living lest we forget ourselves before we even have the chance to remember. Now that I think about it, grand-aunt Naenia might have gone to school around the same time as Riddle, but I don't remember whether she went to Hogwarts or a different school. Or perhaps that was grand-uncle Veiovis? Which would be unfortunate, for Death claimed him many decades ago. My grandfather would have already graduated long before Riddle's time and we have no other elders left in that generation."
"Right," Oliver said slowly. "So you could ask your grand-aunt about it?"
"I could, yes."
"Then why have we not done this before?" He looked around. "Anyone else with family members that went to Hogwarts about fifty years ago?"
"My grandparents did not attend Hogwarts," Blaise said.
"Neither did mine," Sue added.
"Nor mine," came Oliver's reply.
"Mine were older," Daphne said. "Some of Draco's and Theodore's grandparents would have been the right age. Unfortunately, they're all dead."
Theodore nodded.
"I think mine are dead," Harry spoke up when everyone turned to look at him. "Though I don't know anything about them."
There was a pause.
Then Oliver put his hands on the table.
"Are we doing this, then? Are we solving the Secrets of the Chamber?"
Sue looked around the assembled group, shrugged, and then said what Harry and probably everyone else was thinking, "Why not?"