Published at 27th of May 2024 12:08 am

Chapter 91: Of Gifts and Clues

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16 November 1992, Hogwarts

After all, the match against Slytherin was in a few days and Neville wanted to be ready. Neville wanted to show Malfoy and the entire world, that it didn't matter how much money he threw at everything. Neville would still be the superior seeker. Oliver Wood and the rest of the Quidditch team were putting their faith in him, and he will not disappoint them. He had trained day and night for this. What could go wrong?

Harry woke up that morning not looking forward to the rest of the day, even if it was a Sunday. He could see where things were headed, and it wasn't something he wanted to be a part of. It all started with a Quidditch game two days back, and things really started to heat up then.

Tracy had dragged him and his friends to attend the match since it was often the most interesting one of the entire school year. The Gryffindor Slytherin rivalry was really heated when it came to Quidditch, and it showed.

Longbottom and Malfoy had spent almost two months doing nothing but training for the match, granting everyone a little break and a very calm school year. Harry knew that after the game things would go back to the way they used to be, but he didn't expect things to explode like this.

Yeah, the game was mostly dominated by the Slytherins because of the brooms Lucius Malfoy donated to the Slytherin Quidditch team, but then, of course, a bulger started targeting Longbottom for some reason and ended up almost killing the boy by knocking him off his broom and hit him in the head after he had fallen. The young celebrity found himself with severely broken ribs, a cracked skull, and legs that were pretty much crushed. He ended up in the infirmary and wasn't seen since. Oliver Wood, of course, had complained that the ball was obviously cursed, and Madam Hooch agreed with him.

To be completely honest, if Harry didn't know that a House Elf had done it, he would have been impressed. Quidditch equipment is notoriously hard to enchant or curse because of the countless enchantments that are filling it to the brink. If a student had done it, they would have needed to break into Madam Hooch's office without being noticed by the wards, add a curse that is so woven into the enchantments of the bulger that it would be unnoticed by the flying instructor during her the standard pre-match detection. If a NEWT student could pull it off, Harry would have raised his eyebrows in surprise.

Now, House Elves work on a separate magical system. The Potter scion didn't really understand how it worked, only that it had different properties and rules. Honestly, he didn't have the time to research properly, even if he was planning on getting a house elf, the moment, he has an actual place. They were dead useful, after all. But since they were a complete unknown in terms of magical potential, it would be possible for a house elf to curse the bulger.

Anyway, the match was cancelled, since the Bulger was obviously cursed, but there was no proof that any of the Slytherins had done it. But worst of all it was proclaimed to be a tie with no points for either house. Considering that the entire Quidditch tournament is calculated using the sum of points that each house has after all their matches, both Gryffindor and Slytherin were penalized, and weren't happy with the results.

Harry had heard murmuring the previous day of Slytherins saying that the Gryffindors did this so that they wouldn't lose as badly because of their new brooms, the Gryffindors said that it was obviously done to take out their 'star' seeker. Tensions were brewing, and no one was happy.

And if that wasn't enough, Dean Thomas was attacked and petrified just the night after the game. So, yeah, things were obviously getting serious, and it was threatening to turn Hogwarts into an all-out war at any moment. All it would need is a spark to light things up.

To be perfectly frank, Harry was not looking forward to it, especially since he was in the middle of exploring the gift that his magical crest had given him. The repository of spells remained the same, and obviously limited, but the actual gift just activated at random intervals.

When the spirit of Ignotus Peverell mentioned that he didn't try most magical fields, he didn't think that he mentioned divination of all things. It wasn't really as much of a sham as he thought it was going to be, but it definitely was relatively unreliable. Sure, there were fields like scrying that give out tangible results, but seeing the future was so fickle that it rarely ever meant anything.

All Harry had gotten were some weird dreams about a giant snake eating a black lion the night before Dean Thomas was attacked, and a sudden vision of the boy frozen in his place the moment it did happen. It could be helpful in the long run, but so far, all the books he had read about seeing the future seemed to be nonsense. But at least, Harry had a halfway dependable way to know when an attack happens exactly, which is something he could leverage.

But outside the unreliable gift that his ancestor had given him, Harry was also blessed with a single design, a single theory, so to speak. One that would allow him to craft a weapon that could possibly kill a Basilisk. But the materials needed for something like this were so unattainable, that he had only one contact that could help him get them, Arcturus Black.

Harry hated that he had to rely on a virtual stranger for something like this, but he had no choice. Well, there was the Room of Hidden Things, but the chances of that working were minimal.

The Potter scion was already at a disadvantage since he has lost the entrance to the chamber. From what he could understand, the entire place was in some kind of pocket dimension that was activated using a password in Parseltongue. It was why it was so easily moved away by Riddle, and Harry had checked but there seemed to be absolutely nothing out of the ordinary underneath Moaning Myrtle's sink.

At least, the founder wasn't some creep who put his chamber in a girl's bathroom. There wasn't even plumbing when they did the castle, so someone moved it there, probably Riddle. If you think about it, it was an intelligent move. Bathrooms are already warded so no traps could be sprung on him there, the location also made it easier to connect to the castle pipes to allow the Basilisk to move around, and finally, no one would think of this being a place to do so. That means that Riddle had to look for another place with similar advantages to his new chamber, but still, it didn't mean anything since Harry didn't know any Parseltongue. He checked by summoning a snake and seeing if he could understand the hissing. He got nothing…

There wasn't much about the snake tongue in the Hogwarts Library, even in the restricted section, something that was odd since it was common knowledge and the founder of the House of Snakes himself was one. Yeah, that had Dumbledore's fingerprints all over it.

Not for the first time, Harry wished to know where the man put all the books he kept taking from the library. They would probably be enough to fill an entirely new one by themselves. That's how many books the man just confiscated because they were 'too dangerous'.

Now, the biggest question was, why did Riddle attack Dean Thomas? The boy mostly kept to himself and liked art. He didn't get into fights; he didn't make a spectacle of himself. Most people didn't even know if he was a muggleborn or a half-blood, and no one really cared. Hermione Granger would make a better target if he wanted to scare muggleborns. She was loud, she was a friend of the boy who lived, and she like to show up to the purebloods who looked down on her for being a Muggleborn. Colin Creevey was also the same. He was a high-profile target just for annoying everyone around him with nonsensical questions and taking hundreds of photos every day.

So, yeah, why Dean Thomas? Riddle hadn't attacked him in the stories, so why did this change? Maybe he knew something that Riddle didn't want to be spread out. No, he was smarter than that. A memory charm and a mental compulsion would be enough to silence anyone who wasn't a high-level Occlumens, something that Dean Thomas just wasn't.

Harry was so engrossed with his thoughts that he didn't notice his friends sitting next to him for breakfast, and was then poked by Daphne, "What the hell, Daph."

"You're being inconsiderate again. Remember, we agreed that when you're literally next to us, you wouldn't get lost in your own head."

Harry looked down, "Sorry, I didn't notice you sitting down."

"Of course, you didn't," Tracy commented, "So, what's making you this distracted?"

"The Chamber of Secrets…" Harry simply replied.

"So, you're like a quarter of the school that wants to be the ones to solve the infamous mystery of the founder," Blaise said with a sarcastic tone.

Harry shook his head, "No, I already solved most of it, but the problem I have is why Dean Thomas was chosen as a target."

"What, you solved it?" Daphne asked.

"Well, most of it, really. It's a bit obvious if you know where to look. You need to go back to the original attack, and you'll be able to have enough information to make your conclusions. Each attack is supposed to make a statement of sorts. Filch was an attack on the staff, showing everyone that no one was safe. Especially since he was barely gone for a minute when he was petrified. Every single old attack was the same, so the attacker is using similar means, in a way. The next person to be petrified is supposed to be known by most people. It's useless to spread fear if you don't know who the victims are in the first place. So, it had to be someone noticeable. Colin Creevey, Hermione Granger, and people like that. The purpose is to spread fear, so the question is, why Dean Thomas? He keeps to himself, and no one outside our year even knows who he is. Before the attack, I bet none of you knew that he was a Muggleborn. So, the question is why he was attacked in the first place?"

Daphne gave him a weird look, "What makes you think that the goal is to make people afraid?"

"Well, it has to do with the method of attack," Harry explained, "It's not a spell, because Dumbledore would have easily countered it. Wand magic is structured like that, but a creature's magic can be stubborn and unpredictable. And if the beast is what I think it is, then whoever is controlling it is making sure that it only petrifies people and not killing them. Killing people would actually be easier to do and would leave fewer clues in the crime scene."

"Yeah, but you're basing all of this on the attacks that happened years ago. Whoever is doing this is different. What if they don't want to spread fear? What if there isn't a convoluted plan?" Daphne responded.

That's ridiculous. Of course, Riddle wants to spread fear… Oh! Maybe he did want that before, but this is different. Tom Riddle woke up in the future and saw how much of a disappointment his future self was, so what would he do? Would he really restart a reign of terror just to momentarily hurt Dumbledore, who was in a much more secure position than he was when Tom was still a teenager?

No, of course, he wouldn't. There had to be something else. Something that's tied to Dean Thomas. Something that was different, this time… There had to be another motivation. Tom was a brilliant wizard, but he was fundamentally different. He was a Horcrux. So, what would a Horcrux need? He didn't have any magic, hence the need to possess people. Wait a minute, Harry was thinking of Riddle as its own independent person. But he wasn't, was he?

Harry stood up with a huge grin on his face and just exclaimed, "You're a genius, Daph!"

He then kissed her cheek and ran out of the Great Hall. He had a Diadem to find, after all.

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