I do not own Harry Potter. If I did then things would have been considerably different, like someone else being pushed through the veil instead of Sirius, Remus and Tonks living happily together with lots of children, and various other things that, if I mention them in my disclaimer will probably ruin certain events I have planned for this story. I'd also like to thank all of you who've reviewed so far, you guys rock. You are among the best people in the world, even those of you who leave remarks bordering close to flames. All of these comments help immensely so thank you. The rest of you, thanks for reading and I hope you continue to enjoy the story
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Then, with nothing better to do, he cast a lighting charm and began to go through the books that Hermione left and he did his best not to look at the scrap of paper that had definitely not been there before.
"I can set people on fire." It was the first thing that Harry told Hermione when he was finally released from the care of Madam Pomfrey. Hermione blinked and raised a brow.
"And how did you discover this?" she asked in a mild voice as they walked through the hallways towards the Great Hall. Ron wasn't there and Harry wondered the feeling of relief from not seeing the red head was wrong. Hermione's eyes became unfocused and Harry felt the increasingly familiar shock of her back race through his brain. For a moment he concentrated on the memory and stopped briefly and a frown appeared on his face. He thrust the memory into the back of his mind and brought himself back to the conversation. Hermione was waiting for his answer, a glint of impatience appearing in her eyes.
"I got a little angry last night." Harry admitted, only somewhat reluctantly as he recalled the incident. He had been reading through the journals, trying not to think about the information that had been dumped on him and the idea that Dumbledore had betrayed his trust by casting a memory charm of all things on him. He was trying not to give himself a headache by attempting to remember whatever it was he forgot on his own. Mostly he was trying not to be angry about the whole situation. It was rather difficult, especially since a perfectly good target for his anger was right there, just a few beds away and unconscious and therefore incapable of taking away points in the event that a student was all but shouting quite a few rather creative combinations of various words that would have caused his Aunt Petunia to wash his mouth out with soap.
It was nice to let out all his frustration like that. He mentally resolved to do it more often, though how he could manage to yell at Snape without major consequences was, as of yet, unknown to him.
Unfortunately, he had apparently somehow developed the ability to set things on fire and that talent got away from him as he yelled at the greasy potions master. He still wasn't certain if it was a good thing that Madam Pomfrey had detected the smoke in time to put out the fire on Snape's clothes before any significant damage was made- though he was leaning towards it being a good thing only because he didn't want to have to deal with an angry Mina again. Unfortunately Madam Pomfrey had noticed that he was awake and dosed him with dreamless sleep potion which had not fully worn off so he was still a little drowsy.
Hermione was looking at him curiously but he didn't feel inclined to elaborate any further.
They began to wolf down their breakfast but before they finished Ron appeared at the table, a large grin on his face.
"Yesterday was brilliant, wasn't it?" Ron said as he began to pile food onto his plate.
"Yeah Ron, brilliant." Harry replied absently as he finished off the last of his breakfast.
He and Hermione left, ignoring Ron as he called out at them through the food that he had already stuffed into his mouth. He had plans for today and he didn't have time to deal with the boy who niggling memories proclaimed him less than an asset.
"Harry, where are we going?" Hermione asked after they completely passed the defense classroom. Mentally Harry wondered what kind of an idiot believed that more than one class with Lockhart in a week, or at all, was a good idea.
"I'm not exactly sure," Harry confessed, "But there's something this way that'll be useful. I lost a lot the other day, and I don't just mean my memories so I figured that I'd better start trying to regain it as fast as possible." He stopped for a moment and turned back to her,
"You could go to defense of course, I don't want to make you miss class." Harry assured her and Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Harry, I'm not going to class, especially when you've suddenly discovered a talent for setting things afire. Who's to say that you won't accidentally set yourself afire if I'm not there to help you?" Hermione told him, a hint of a smile on her face and then her eyes became distant and Harry paused for a moment as another memory came to mind. He shuddered and made a face.
"Definitely not going to defense today," Harry muttered. Hermione shot him a questioning glance but he refused to elaborate.
They continued to walk and Harry stopped midway up the stairs and Hermione frowned,
"What's the matter now?" Hermione huffed.
"I don't know where I'm going." Harry confessed sheepishly and Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Come on," she said, pulling ahead of him. He pretended not to notice the sudden hint of pink that appeared on her cheeks as he grabbed his hand.
"I think I know where you meant to lead us." She continued and they walked until they reached the seventh floor. Harry watched as Hermione paced back and forth in front of the wall across from a strange tapestry with ballet dancing trolls and a door appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
"Room of requirement, you showed it to me yesterday," Hermione told Harry before he even started to ask.
If she keeps answering things before I ask then it might be pretty annoying Harry thought absently as he followed his friend through the door that had just appeared.
The first thing he noticed was that the room was large, very, very large. At least three quidditch pitches could have easily fit inside with room to spare and his neck hurt just to try to squint up at the ceiling. The entire floor was covered with a strange black material that felt rather spongy under his feet and the same sort of stuff extended up the walls up to where Harry estimated Hagrid's head would be. A track of the spongy material was red and extended in a loop around the giant room for as far as Harry could see. In the center of the room were several tall, wooden polls with targets painted on them at various points. By the door were several leather balls, each one about the size of an apple and when he picked one of them up they seemed to be filled with sand.
"Strange," he heard Hermione mutter and he glanced over at her. She was poking at the black stuff on the walls.
"Didn't you know what this place would look like if you've been here before?" Harry asked, jumping slightly, testing the black stuff to see how bouncy it was.
"The room is always different, depending on what the person concentrates on when they summon it. I concentrated on a place we could test our new powers without hurting ourselves or each other." Hermione answered as she walked a little further out into the enormous room, "But I wasn't expecting it to be this big." Her voice echoed in the room.
"Well, let's get started." Harry said and Hermione smiled and nodded.
Harry started by trying to remember the feelings that had allowed him to summon the night before. By pretending the wood was Snape, Harry was quickly flinging fire at his chosen targets.
While Harry acted on his pyromaniac tendencies, he kept one eye on Hermione who was apparently trying to teach herself to juggle.
"What are you doing?" Harry asked when he finally managed to summon a small flame without picturing his potions professor being subjected to a horrible death by fire. He wasn't exactly sure why he was so angry at Snape but he suspected it had something to do with the memories he was still missing.
"Just a moment," Hermione answered, her expression one of deep concentration. Harry shrugged and continued to work with the fire in his hands.
Suddenly, one of the leather spheres came whizzing past his head to crash into the wooden pole, scattering bits of wood all over the place, nearly taking out one of Harry's eyes in the process. Fear shot through him for a brief moment and he raised his arm and turned away to try to avoid the wood flying at him. The ball of golden fire in his hand flared and a moment later, Harry stopped cringing and looked. He was surrounded by a wall of cherry red fire.
"Harry!" Hermione gasped and she rushed towards him, but the fire shield had not been dispersed.
"I'm okay," Harry called out to her as he looked at the red flames that surrounded him.
It took the better part of an hour for Harry to figure out how dismiss the shield from around him.
"You're lucky the fire didn't close all the way around you or you would have suffocated," Hermione observed, "And how did you do that?" she added.
"I have no idea." Harry confessed. He was getting rather tired with the knowledge that he had all these powers but he had no idea how to really use them. He felt like he was back in the hut on that rocky little island the Dursleys took him to in the attempt to keep him from going to Hogwarts and Hagrid had just come and informed him that he was a wizard. It was confusing, overwhelming and just slightly annoying that information was still being kept back from him.
"Well then, I guess the only way to find out is by recreating the circumstances that caused the reaction." Hermione mused and before Harry got a proper chance to react, she threw one of the leather spheres at him.
But the wall of fire did not reappear. Instead, Harry dodged it by just a hair. He ran back to where it had landed and retaliated by throwing the ball back at his friend with a stunning spell thrown immediately afterward.
Hermione dodged the ball and the spell, though not as gracefully as Harry had managed to dodge and she quickly cast a spell of her own that streaked through the air, a jet of purple, followed by three balls that twisted through the air. Harry smiled as he heard her laugh. They dodged each other's spells and the leather balls as they were tossed back and forth. It soon became less about trying to recreate the fire shield and more to see who could dodge the others' spell the longest.
By the end of the practice session, Hermione's nose had grown, her skin was neon orange, horns grew out of her forehead and she couldn't walk on her jelly jinxed legs.
Harry also had a set of his own horns, he had also lost his voice and the nails on his feet and hand had both grown three feet long.
"That was fun," Hermione giggled as she began to cast the spells to reverse the various jinxes and curses that remained on them, starting with the curse that had taken his voice from him so he could help her remove everything.
"I guess we missed more than just defense." Harry muttered as they left the room of requirements. People were coursing out of the doorways and even from the seventh floor he could smell what had to be dinner. His stomach rumbled.
"I think you're right." Hermione replied and they walked toward the great hall. But when they reached the second floor, Hermione stopped for a moment, her eyes wide.
"Harry, you said that you haven't been able to find the diary." Hermione gulped and for a moment Harry frowned but a sharp jab from Hermione's magic brought the memories to the front of his mind and he paled. He remembered what he had tried to stop the attacks from happening. He didn't think he could go through it all again. He couldn't go through the fear, the suspicion of all the students. But most of all, he knew that he couldn't handle seeing Hermione, pale and stiff and cold on the hospital bed, looking as if she was dead, unable to see or hear anything, unable to talk to him or nag at him. He couldn't go through that again.
"I've tried summoning the stupid thing since we got on the train," Harry growled, "Before Dumbledore pulled that memory stunt I checked the map every day for people who were wandering closer than usual to Myrtle's bathroom and I got nothing!"
"Doesn't the possessed person have to go to Myrtle's bathroom in order to get at the basilisk? And isn't the basilisk really more the problem at the moment?" Hermione asked and Harry's eyes widened.
"That's it!" he yelped. He had been concentrating so long on the diary that he had forgotten that it wasn't really the true threat, at least not unless it managed to suck out someone's life force. Of course, Dumbledore's meddling was in part to blame with his lack of mental acuity. He pushed that thought aside for the moment. The basilisk was the real threat and he knew what to do with the basilisk. He began to walk against the crowd, towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, "Just go save me a seat." Harry called back to Hermione. The girl rolled her eyes and caught up with Harry.
"Don't kill the snake yet." She told him and he paused and stared at her.
"What?" he asked, certain that she couldn't have told him not to kill the basilisk.
"You heard me. You can't kill the snake, at least not right now." Hermione repeated, "You don't have a rooster which is the only safe way known to kill a basilisk, fire would just warm up the place which would make the snake more active and I'm not going to let you charge down there with just your wand." She growled.
"But like you said, the basilisk is the threat. I've fought it before!" Harry protested weakly.
"And this time you'll do it better. The person won't strike until Halloween, isn't that right?" she asked and Harry nodded in confirmation, very glad that his best friend had been able to release that knowledge.
"Then we'll ask Myrtle to watch out for whoever comes to her bathroom more than usual," Hermione counseled and a mischievous expression appeared on her face, "I'm very sure she'll do anything you ask."
Harry glared at her.
"Fine," he finally agreed, "But I don't like relying on just Myrtle. She'll be invited to Nick's death day party, or she'll at least show up to it and that's on Halloween. Someone will upset her and she'll be no use watching the entrance, she'll be too busy sobbing." He reasoned and Hermione nodded in agreement and bit her lip.
"I don't know any sort of wards or anything that we could put around the bathroom." She confessed, "And even if I did, any magic cast on Hogwarts is automatically registered and everyone connected to and accepted by Hogwarts in any capacity besides student is notified."
"It is?" Harry replied, thinking about it. That would explain how a teacher, usually Snape, got to any spur of the moment hexing between students in the hallway before they escalated too far. It would also explain how the elves and Filch usually managed to clean up magic based messes so quickly.
"It says so in Hogwarts: A History*." Hermione replied primly and Harry thought for a moment. Then he blinked and grinned.
"You may not know a way to counteract the notifications," he started, "But I bet the twins do."
Hermione smiled in return and she started to head for the Great Hall but stopped when she realized that Harry wasn't following her.
"You go on ahead," he told her, "I'll go talk to Myrtle. It'll be better to have her watching even if she won't be as dependable. You can talk to the twins and ask them about setting up some security around her bathroom."
Hermione nodded and just before she left, Harry felt the sharp jab of her magic and remembered a previous conversation with the twins concerning a cage and a certain rat.
One thing at a time he told himself as somewhat reluctantly he made his way to Myrtle's bathroom.
"Harry!" cooed the voice of Moaning Myrtle as soon as he entered the dull room. He repressed a shiver as the ghost girl twined her arms around his neck in a chilling simile.
"Hello Myrtle," he replied, feeling both unnerved and rather sorry for the girl. She was obviously rather lonely if she was clinging to him this quickly. He felt the niggling of another memory in the back of his mind but without Hermione there it could not penetrate Dumbledore's measures to keep him from realizing what the memory was about.
"Myrtle, I have a little bit of a favor to ask you." He told the basilisk's victim and she looked at him with such blind devotion he felt rather nauseous and wondered if someone had somehow cast a spell on her.
"What is it Harry?" she asked, batting her eyes at him.
"I was wondering if you wouldn't mind keeping an eye on that sink that Hermione and I cast that spell on the other day." Harry said, remembering the lie he and Hermione had told her just in time, "There's something down there, a birthday present, and I don't want anyone except for myself to go down there. If someone tries, would you mind coming to tell me?" he continued to lie.
Myrtle frowned for a moment and looked at him coyly.
"I will," she started and Harry felt a shiver run down his spine at the expression that appeared on the girl's face as she continued, "if you promise that you'll come and talk to me and you give me a kiss."
He hoped that his face didn't reflect the horror he felt at the idea of kissing the ghost girl.
If she was Hermione maybe hissed that little voice and he blushed slightly and ignored it.
"Um, well," he stuttered, backing away from the ghost who glided closer with every step he took.
"Well, not right now then," Myrtle said finally as she suddenly backed away, "When you're older though, I'll be collecting my kiss." She said and Harry gulped and finally nodded and with that he fled as quickly as he could without insulting the temperamental ghost until he reached the stairs and he ran as fast as he pleased.
When he got to the Great Hall, most people had already sat down. Hermione waved over to him and he sat down next to her, the twins across from him.
"Did you ask them?" he whispered to his friend, trying to forget Myrtle's request. Hermione nodded.
"We'll take care of it Harry." Fred informed him.
"And we have that other thing ready too." George added and he held up a tiny bird cage, no bigger than a fingernail. Harry looked at it with apprehension.
"Er," he wanted to say something but he couldn't really think of anything that wouldn't be insulting. Both of the twins grinned at him.
"Don't worry Harry," George started,
"It'll be much bigger when you get the you-know-what," his twin continued.
"Until then, we don't get as many questions about a charm for a bracelet,"
"Than we would about a giant cage." The two finished together. Harry nodded in understanding,
"Good job," he told them, "and thank you, thank you very much."
The twins grinned again but Harry could see their eyes were serious. He watched as George flicked his wand and felt the sound around him soften somehow, as if he had been surrounded by cotton.
"But as we've explained to Hermione,"
"We've got some new tricks,"
"That we need a safe place to practice,"
"And people to practice on." A wicked glint appeared in their eyes and Harry couldn't help but laugh and he was glad to hear Hermione's own chuckle.
"Well, if you don't mind skipping defense or history…" Harry trailed off and smiled at the twin's expressions when he mentioned defense.
"Why on earth,"
"Would we mind missing a class,"
"taught by such a self absorbed git?"
"But Harry didn't say anything about skipping potions." Hermione said innocently and the three boys looked at her incredulously before they burst into laughter.
From that day on the twins joined Harry and Hermione as they skipped History and defense in favor of going to the room of requirement to practice their powers. Hermione increased how many things she could move and Harry increased his proficiency with the fire to the point where he could finally create the fire shield at will, but he had not been able to make it last as long as that first accidental one. The twins showed a talent for wandless illusions, Fred with visual illusions and George with illusions that affected the hearing and on occasion the other senses as well. When they combined their powers it was almost impossible for anyone besides themselves to tell what was real and what was illusion.
What infuriated Hermione was when the twins discovered a new talent, one that they delighted in using against her just for her reaction. They could apparate within Hogwarts.
It was discovered by accident. Harry was trying to regain his own ability to levitate and freeze things. Hermione was attempting to follow a meditation technique that one of the books described and had fallen into a deep trance while over a dozen of the sand filled balls that the room provided flew in orbit around her. Her eyes would be blank and the pigtail she had taken to putting her hair into after Harry lost control of his fire long enough to singe her hair would be floating slightly.
Harry managed to gain control of one of the spheres for a moment, just long enough for Hermione to unconsciously realize that she had lost control of something. They fought for control of the sphere until the combined force of their attempts made the ball sling shot away from them, right towards Fred's head. It would have killed him if Fred had not suddenly popped out of the way.
Hermione broke out of her trance and both she and Harry were very apologetic but when Fred realized that he could pop in and out at will without being threatened, he waved aside their apologies. Only moments after Fred discovered his new talent, George tried and succeeded in doing the same but no matter how much he tried, Harry couldn't replicate their talent. Hermione didn't try at all.
"You cannot apparate in Hogwarts!" she would snarl, glaring at the twins when she said so. They would just roll their eyes, pop out of sight only to reappear and pull at the pigtail or pinch her cheeks, laughing at her irritation.
While the trained, Harry tried to come up with a good way to approach Luna. The strange girl seemed to have made a small circle of friends, which made Harry feel a little better about accidentally interfering with her sorting. But at the same time it made him feel a little reluctant to interfere with her life. She seemed happy and it was funny to watch her put various costumes on the rat, everything from a tutu to a sari of all things. When she very loudly announced that female rats no longer had to worry because her rat could no longer bother them Harry choked on his meal. Hermione had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him. He had been sending Sirius bi weekly care packages covered in every charm he, Hermione and the twins could find to make sure that only Sirius could access them. Because of Harry's inability to provide proof of Sirius's innocence without tipping off the rat, the twins were still under the impression that he was sending the packages to his room so the Dursleys couldn't nearly starve him like they almost did in the past summer.
Besides the Luna problem things were going smoothly, very smoothly. A vivacious blonde woman had replaced the still comatose Professor Snape. Her name was Professor Destiny Queens and she had more than half of the school in love with her. Madam Pomfrey was getting used to students attempting to prolong Snape's coma by various means thinking it would keep the beautiful professor in the school.
Harry wasn't sure how he felt about the very healthy looking woman. On the one hand, she was a much better teacher than Snape. On the other hand, there was something about her that unsettled him, especially the way her eyes seemed to linger on the bracelet that he wore.
"What's going on?" Harry asked, putting the pretty teacher away from his mind, when he noted the pumpkins that were suddenly popping up all over the place.
"Tonight is Halloween." Hermione answered, her voice wary. Harry started and frowned. It couldn't be Halloween already. Time had gone by too quickly, Nick hadn't even invited him to the death day party. He blinked.
For that matter, besides Myrtle, none of the ghosts had come near him. He frowned, something was wrong.
"Come on Harry," Hermione said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, "Don't worry about it."
They went through the day without any incidents, even Professor Queens ignored him.
Harry was growing jumpier as the feast grew closer and it didn't help that there seemed to be absolutely no sign of anything wrong. But there was something that had his hair on end and made him feel jumpy.
"Calm down," Hermione hissed.
"Everything bad always happens on Halloween," Harry hissed back, "And look, Dumbledore isn't here!"
It was true, the old Headmaster was missing. Professor McGonagall had taken his usual spot at the table but she looked distinctly uncomfortable.
He almost made it through the entire feast but the feeling of wrongness, the feeling that he should be doing something kept increasing. He ignored the jovial atmosphere and ignored the fact that the twins had apparently come up with canary creams much sooner than they had in the previous timeline.
"Come on Harry," Hermione said suddenly and he looked up from his pumpkin pie, surprise evident in his eyes.
"There's only a few minutes left of the feast," Fred told him, a wicked grin on his face.
"And it might be prudent to leave a little early this time." George added, an equally wicked expression on his own face.
Harry returned the grin and as quietly as they could, the four snuck away from the Great Hall.
"I need to check something really quick." Harry told the other three and they nodded in agreement.
"The tower will be the first place people come looking for us anyway." George muttered.
Harry walked quickly towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, knowing he only had a few minutes before the rest of the students in the Great Hall left.
Give me my freedom, let me rip, let me kill, let me feast! Harry heard the low hissing and he quickened his pace.
"Fred, George, conjure some mirrors." Harry barked and the twins blinked but they obeyed and conjured a set of mirrors. Harry and Hermione both took one of them and Harry slowed down. They turned so they could see where they were going through the mirrors. Hermione gasped and nearly dropped hers. She turned around, her eyes wide.
"Harry," she whispered as she pointed to the floating figure, "look."
Moaning Myrtle, black and smoky and floating on her back. She looked horrified and behind her was Mrs. Norris hanging on the candle scone by her tale.
"Check the traps." Harry ordered as he moved to get a closer look at the words on the wall.
The Chamber of Secrets has been opened
Nice try mudbloods but nothing will stop me this time
"Harry, the traps, all of them were dismantled." Fred said after a moment. They heard the murmur of a large crowd coming their way.
"The map!" George hissed and Harry pulled the piece of parchment from his pocket.
"I solemnly swear I am up to no good!" he hissed and the spidery lines of ink seemed to flow at an incredibly slow rate over the parchment as they formed the map.
"This way!" Hermione hissed, being the fastest one to comprehend what the map was showing them. She moved the arm of one of the knights and a small niche opened up.
"Move over!" George hissed as they scrunched into the tiny opening.
"You first!" Hermione growled back. They waited until part of the crowed passed them and then slipped in behind a pair of hufflepuffs.
"What's going on?" Harry asked in as innocent of a tone as he could manage.
"The chamber of secrets, it's been opened!" came the whispered reply and both Harry and Hermione let out small groans.
"Not again." Harry muttered. He turned to stalk back to the Gryffindor tower, Hermione close on his heels while the twins remained behind.
There, now that this is done maybe I can finally concentrate on my stupid essay! Note: not betad, often written at one in the morning but I did run it through spell check. Please leave a review and tell me what you think.
Binboo hima nasai
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