And here's the thirty sixth chapter of "A Year Too Soon"! Enjoy!
* Review Response:
DarkRavie, TheGreatBubbaJ, lonewolf 83, BMS, Yaw613, Majerus, The Shadows Mistress, Uday Sra, geekymom, Slytherin Studios, Guest, thank you for your reviews, folks!
Jostanos, except for the point three, that sounds a lot more like Harry from Lunpine Horror's "Fate's Gamble".
Capito Celcior, Luiz4200, yeah, Peter's imprudence is going to bite him in his backside eventually, though still not for awhile.
magitech, well, that part was written kinda from Peter's point of view, so it's how he thinks things are - which isn't necessarily how they are in reality.
HegemonyWalker, and a different - and more dangerous for Light, if successful - way of reviving Voldemort will be used. So, poor Harry.
jmartinez8089, probably, no? But will Ginny realize those loopholes exist, that is the question.
Quietlovingman, it's still Hagrid, so don't expect him to hide cool beasts away from his students too much.
Dark Serpent Cat, 1) no, at least not within the planned scope of the story; 2) maybe, we will see about it; 3) a bit, but he's still Hagrid; 4) maybe? 5) Alecto and Amycus will show up in the story at some point; 6) maybe? I really haven't even thought about bringing Aberforth into the story. And, quite frankly, Harry has no reason to visit the "Hog's Head" at this point of the story.
* AN: As always, great thanks to my friend Skelekitty for his help in polishing this chapter.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Harry Potter" franchise. No profit is being made. Same goes for any books, video games, anime or manga I may or may not use for ideas.
"speaking"
"parseltongue"
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A Year Too Soon
Chapter XXXVI: Life Goes On
Harry stifled a yawn as he flipped the page of the book on Magical handicraft he had picked from the Hogwarts library. It was quite an interesting read, even if it clearly was intended for those more knowledgeable about Magical arts. Yawning again, he glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost eleven in the evening already. He really should be going to bed soon, lest he be dead on his feet tomorrow. Letting out a small sigh, the green-eyed youth closed the book and got out of his armchair.
Before he could make more than a couple of steps towards the dormitories, though, the door leading into the Slytherin common room swung open and a man, whom many recognized as Lord Greengrass, stepped in, followed closely by Professor Snape. The two wizards quickly scanned the room then, but it looked like the person they were looking for - Daphne - wasn't there.
"Ms. Warrens, please fetch Ms. Greengrass for me." The Potions Master asked one of the sixth year female students. "Wake her up if necessary; this is important." The witch nodded and quickly disappeared towards the girls' dormitory.
Seeing as Lord Greengrass was in a very serious mood, Harry quickly concluded that the man likely wouldn't take kindly to being questioned about the reason for his visit. Thus, the young wizard wisely stayed his curiosity for the moment, resolving to get his answer later, from Daphne or maybe in some other way. Still, he was going to stay and see if he could learn more about what was going on.
Daphne emerged from the dormitory some five minutes later and immediately hurried to her father's side. It was quite obvious that she too had no idea why he was there.
"Father?" The young witch said.
"Come with me, Daphne." Lord Greengrass commanded. "Everything will be explained in Professor Snape's office." The girl nodded hesitantly and the two of them made their way out of the Slytherin common room.
Daphne didn't return to the common room that night. Neither was she anywhere to be seen during breakfast the next morning. This, of course, made her friends worry for her and many other students curious about the reason for her sudden absence. And since the only thing people knew for sure was that she had left with her father, they began conjecturing, coming up with even more ridiculous 'explanations'. Professor Snape, of course, knew what really was going on here, but… The reason for Daphne's sudden disappearance was likely something rather private and he knew better than to reveal it to the whole student body. However, he didn't bother trying to stop the students from guessing what had happened, knowing that they'd talk about it regardless.
Daphne finally returned to the castle in the afternoon of the second day of her absence. And she didn't look all that well: her eyes were red, like she had cried a lot and there were some shadows under them.
"What happened?" Tracey asked as she and the rest of the clique welcomed Daphne back.
"The Curse struck 'Tori." The witch in question replied.
"The Greengrass Curse?" Blaise asked with both surprise and fear in his voice. "Poor 'Tori. Will she make a full recovery this time?" Daphne nodded.
"The healers say, she will." The Greengrass heiress said. "But she's on bed rest for at least a week. They wanted to take her to 's but mother insisted Astoria remains at the manor."
"The Greengrass Curse?" Harry whispered to Flora and Hestia. He hadn't heard anything about that before, even if he did hang around Daphne and, occasionally, Astoria for the past two years. Daphne, however, heard him and answered his question in the twins' stead:
"It is not spoken of openly, so I'd rather you keep quiet about it, but for the last few generations there has been a curse on my family." She said. "We still don't know its exact nature, but the curse results in one's body and, especially, their heart becoming very frail, leading to an early death, often in mid-twenties." After a brief pause, she continued: "According to the records we have, this curse becomes active around one's eighth birthday. When it didn't happen with Astoria, we were all hopeful that… That the curse was no more… But…" Daphne trailed off as did her best not to break into tears.
"I'm sorry, I..." Harry began apologizing, but the witch interrupted him.
"No, it's alright. I'd have probably told you this sooner or later anyway." Daphne said. "It's just… This isn't something that is easy to talk about."
"Uhm… Well…" The green-eyed wizard finally broke the uneasy silence that fell over their clique. "May I suggest looking into non-Magical medications?" He suggested, surprising everyone.
"How can those be of any help to 'Tori?" Tracey was the first one to voice this question. "They don't know anything about Magic, much less about the Greengrass Curse. How can anything muggle make do anything that can help Astoria?"
"While they certainly don't know about magic, they also have people born with weaker bodies. And to help them live mostly-normal lives, Muggles have created various medications." Harry replied carefully. "These medications are highly unlikely to do anything about the curse itself, but they could help dealing with the curse's effects. It might not help much, but it'd be better than nothing."
"It doesn't look like it'll hurt to try." Daphne said after thinking over his suggestion for a few long moments. "I'll relay it to mother and father, but it will ultimately be up to them if they follow it or not." The young Potter nodded.
"Just tell them that they should consult a doctor, or at least a pharmacist before buying anything. A wrong medication, or a bad mix of good ones, can do more harm than good." Harry warned.
"I will." Daphne said with a nod.
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Harvesting the basilisk took a couple of weeks. It wasn't very surprising, though, considering the size of the ancient serpent and the still-functioning wards of the Chamber of Secrets that disallowed entering it via apparation or portkeys. The only way to change that required messing around with the wards and Dumbledore was very reluctant to do that even if he did know where the Chamber's ward stone was hidden.
Eventually, though, the job was finished and the basilisk was processed completely with only its massive skull set aside to be buried as requested by Lord Slytherin.
All things considered, this funeral was a rather quiet affair. Aside from Dumbledore, Harry and Lord Slytherin, the only people in attendance were Hagrid, Professor Kettleburn and a couple of Ministry wands sent by Mr. Grimblehawk. Sure, there also were many people watching the event from afar, but those were just students that were simply curious about what their Headmaster was going to do with that giant snake skull.
Later that day, Harry received a summon from Dumbledore. The note was rather short and only told him that the old warlock wanted to talk about the basilisk parts he now had in his possession.
"You wanted to speak to me, Headmaster?" The young Potter asked as he stepped into the man's office.
"Yes. Please have a seat." Dumbledore replied, gesturing towards the chair in front of his table. Once Harry was seated, the man continued: "I was able to negotiate the selling of basilisk meat with the Goblins at Gringotts. Here are the parchments that you'll need to sign if you want to sell your share." He said while handing the said documents over to Harry. "You'll need to decide where to deposit your earnings." The Headmaster added.
"What do you mean, Sir?" The teen asked.
"While it's true that you can direct gold to your trust vault, I'd advise you to open a new one for this." Upon seeing Harry's unspoken question, Dumbledore elaborated: "Your trust vault can only store money as per the agreement your parents had signed with the bank. You won't be allowed to put basilisk's bones and hide you now own in there." The Headmaster said. "You can use the main Potter vault for that, but you won't be able to retrieve things from there until you are seventeen." Harry nodded, accepting the man's reasoning. Sure, he planned to get himself emancipated - and, thus, gain control over all properties, vaults and businesses owned by House Potter - this next summer, but the Headmaster needn't know about that.
"A new vault does sound like a good idea, Sir." He replied. With a nod of his own, Dumbledore passed him a few more sheets of parchments bearing Gringotts coat of arms.
"Then please fill these forms as well, Mr. Potter. There's a spot to indicate what kind of vault you want, so don't forget to mark the general-purpose one. It defaults to money-only otherwise." The man said. "I'll bring them with me to the bank tomorrow morning and have the goblins owl you the key to your new vault."
"Thank you, Sir." The green-eyed youth replied as he set out to fill in the forms he was given.
~/ *** \~
"Do you think you can show us the Chamber of Secrets, Harry?" Flora asked, somewhat out of the blue, as the three young Slytherins worked on their Care for Magical Creatures essays. "Please?"
"Are you sure you want to go there right now? That place is quite dirty." Harry said recalling the state of the Chamber itself and the tunnels leading into it: centuries worth of grime everywhere and thousands of rat skeletons littering the floor. And the Ministry people who harvested the basilisk's carcass hadn't bothered with cleaning anything beyond their immediate working area. ...Perhaps he should go down there and put the place in order himself later? Surely, Lord Slytherin wouldn't want his Chamber to remain in such a pitiful state...
"C'mon, Harry, it's the legendary Chamber of Secrets! Of course we'd want to see it." Flora countered while her sister nodded in agreement. "So what if it is a little dirty? - We still want to see it." Seeing as there was no way for him to win this fight, the green-eyed youth conceded:
"Alright." He said. "Just be sure to wear something you aren't afraid to bedraggle." After a brief pause, he decided to add: "Oh, and if you're afraid of animal skeletons, it might be a good idea to wait until the Chamber has been cleaned up a little." Hestia looked rather hesitant after hearing that, but her bolder twin was all set to visit the legendary place as soon as possible.
"Thank you for the warning, Harry." Flora said. After a brief pause, she asked: "So, when can you show us the Chamber?"
"Well…" He began. "There actually isn't much to see down there, so I think we'll be fine if we go down there in the afternoon before our Astronomy class… So, the day after tomorrow?" The twins nodded.
"Works for us." Flora said.
"A girls' toilet? Is that really where the entrance to the legendary Chamber of Secrets is located?" Flora asked as Harry led her and Hestia into the Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
"Well… It's possible that this place was something else in the past." Harry replied. "And it's probably not the entrance meant for the people - it's just the only passable one that we know of." Stopping in front of the sinks, he hissed in Parseltongue: "Open." Once the sinks slid apart, revealing the gaping maw of the pipe, he issued the second command: "Stairs." This caused stair steps to emerge from the previously-smooth 'bottom' of the pipe. He then drew his wand and lit its tip with the Lumos spell. "Let's go."
Walking down the stairs definitely took much longer than sliding down the pipe, but before long the three teenagers found themselves walking into the first antechamber preceding the Chamber of Secrets. Flora and, especially, Hestia looked unnerved and disgusted by the myriad of rat skeletons covering the floor there. This wasn't enough to turn them back, though.
Harry canceled his lighting spell as there was no further need for it and the trio continued their journey to the Chamber of Secrets. Clearing the tunnel, they soon found themselves in the cavernous opening that was sealed off by a solid wall with two entwined serpents carved onto it.
"So… This is the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets?" Flora asked, eyeing the wall in front of them. "Looks very Slytherin." She remarked. Indeed, between the snake reliefs and green lighting, there was no way this place could have belonged to any other Founder.
"That it does." Harry agreed. "Shall we go inside?" He asked then.
"Yeah, let's." Hestia said, a hope that the Chamber didn't have any rat skeletons in it quite audible in her voice. Nodding, the young wizard turned towards the engraved snakes and hissed:
"Open." The serpents parted, slithering away from each other, as the wall cracked open, revealing the passage into the Founder's hidden chamber. Stepping inside, he turned around to face the girls. "Welcome to the Chamber of Secrets, the lost legacy of Salazar Slytherin!" Harry said, spreading his arms in the most dramatic fashion he could muster, which caused Flora and Hestia to giggle a little.
Then they went to explore the Chamber, fascinated by the towering stone pillars, rising to support unseen-in-darkness ceiling; by the snake carvings on those pillars and even by the large stone head on the wall opposite of the entrance, despite it having little resemblance with Salazar Slytherin. They even peeked inside the 'small' room hidden behind the statue that had been the basilisk's nest.
"...And this is all?" Flora asked. "For the place called 'Chamber of Secrets', it certainly lacks when it comes to secrets for us to uncover."
"Well…" Harry shrugged. "You've heard Lord Slytherin saying that it originally was a refuge in case the castle is captured by the enemies, not some super-secret room where he studies Arcane arts he didn't want to share with the other Founders."
"True." The girl confirmed. "But with the name it has right now, you just can't help but be disappointed with how mundane it is. You'd think there would be something mysterious and unknown hiding in there." Here, she made a pause before continuing: "Still, it's a great honor to see these halls, so, thank you for bringing us here, Harry." And then she gave the green-eyed teen a kiss on his cheek.
"Yes, thank you for showing us the fabled Chamber of Secrets, Harry." Hestia agreed with her sister, giving the wizard a kiss of her own.
~/ *** \~
A couple of days later, Dumbledore was once again in his temporary workshop located deep within the Department of Mysteries. It was a large, circular room with several enchanted chandeliers providing the light. In the center of the room there was a small pedestal with an old leather-bound diary sitting on it. Surrounding this pedestal, there were several runic arrays, their combined effect being keeping whatever was happening within them from affecting the rest of the room. Many would wonder why such a seemingly innocent object required such complex wards, but the Hogwarts Headmaster was one of the few people who knew the truth about this diary: it was one of Voldemort's horcruxes, an extremely dangerous piece of an unspeakably-dark Magic.
The old warlock turned his gaze to the numerous chalkboards situated along the wall, displaying his - and, more recently, Croaker's as well - failed attempts at creating a functioning horcrux-detection ward. The cursed thing stubbornly refused to trigger any of the wards they had tried over the past weeks.
"Back again, Professor?" The Unspeakable said as he joined Dumbledore in the workshop.
"Yes, though I'm not sure there is much I can do today. I'm running out of ideas to try." The Hogwarts Headmaster replied. This made Croaker smile from under the hood of his robe.
"Then allow me to share with you some of the thoughts I've had yesternight." The man said as he walked up to one of the blackboards and wiped a good portion of the runic array drawn on it. He then drew several new strings of symbols in place of the ones he had just erased. "If we use something like this, the detection focus of the ward will shift a little, hopefully enabling it to detect passive and incomplete souls like the horcrux over there." He explained his idea. Dumbledore was silent for a few long seconds as he considered Croaker's suggestion.
"I'm not sure that this will work, but it is worth a try." He said finally.
"Let's get to work then!" The Unspeakable said with audible enthusiasm while conjuring a rag to wipe one of the chalkboards clean.
That's all, folks!
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