The Son of Lord Voldemort

Chapter 54

Summer was creeping over the grounds around the castle; sky and lake alike turned periwinkle blue and flowers large as cabbages burst into bloom in the greenhouses. There was only a month left before exams, so the afternoons found Harrison and his friends studying in the library or practicing their spells in the Room of Requirement. Harrison enjoyed his time spent in the Room of Requirement; there he was able to practice advanced magic that he knew would be a bad idea to perform in front of his teachers.

Potions was becoming a sort of daily torture for Ron and his friends. One morning during class, Snape caught Ron trying to throw random ingredients into Draco's cauldron, he received the longest, not to mention loudest, lecture Harrison had ever heard Snape give; he also received a week's worth of detention and a large loss of points. The Slytherins thought it was extremely amusing that Ron had spent about 3/4 of this school year serving detention.

Ron, Dean and Seamus had begun taking out their hatred on the Slytherins on Hermione and Neville since they weren't as skilled as Harrison and his friends. Harrison had to heal Neville several times and he was just barely able to stop them from jumping Hermione one Saturday morning. He had been walking with Daphne to the Great Hall when he heard his friends panicked voice. He blasted the three boys into the wall and held Hermione as she cried into his shirt. Daphne had retrieved Snape and the three Gryffindors lost sixty points for an unprovoked attack. This incident caused their fellow Gryffindors to shun them even more, they were now so far in the negatives it would take a miracle to be in the positives before the year ended.

Harrison had been impatiently wondering why there hadn't been another attack. The Aurors were still patrolling the halls but not as many as there had once been. He was about to plan a way of getting into the Gryffindor dormitory and seeing if Ginny still had the diary when an announcement was made that echoed throughout the school.

"All students must return to their dormitory immediately," McGonagall's voice said. "All professors to the second floor."

Harrison exchanged a significant look with Draco.

"Do you think it's killed someone?" Draco asked with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

"I don't know," Harrison answered. "But I'm going to go find out, if it has I'll need to get the diary." He pulled out his wand and tapped his head, slowly he began to disappear. "If Severus asks where I am tell him that I went to see what's going on." Draco nodded and a disillusioned Harrison began walking to the second floor as he cast silencing charms on himself to keep from being heard. It was pointless to be invisible if you were heard.

Harrison reached the second floor and he heard several voices all speaking at once. He turned the corner and stopped at the sight, a smirk formed on his lips. The gray stone wall ahead of him had words glistening in large blood red letters.

Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever.

Laying on the ground in front of the words were three bodies, but unlike Zacharias and Justin they weren't petrified. Gilderoy Lockhart, Rufus Scrimgeour and that mousy first year Colin Creevey were lying dead. Colin had a look of immense horror etched on his face and Lockhart's blue eyes were as wide as saucers. Rufus had a fierce expression on his face and his wand was clutched in his hand.

The professors and small group of Aurors were talking in panicked voices until Dumbledore held up his hands. Snape's eyes roamed over to where Harrison was standing and for a moment he could've sworn the man knew he was standing there.

"What do we do Albus?" McGonagall's horrified voice asked. "How do we find Miss Weasley?" Her voice was shaking and she was ghostly pale.

Dumbledore looked older than his many years. "I do not know Minerva." His blue eyes looked hard as they roamed over the dead bodies.

Flitwick burst into tears and Sprout put a comforting arm around the tiny professor. The Aurors were staring at Rufus' body and an Auror with purple hair shuddered as Kingsley rubbed her back soothingly. There was a feeling of death and misery and the air and Harrison felt giddy. He wanted to laugh at the fact that the annoying fraud was dead and he could care less about the Gryffindor boy. An Auror dying as well was just a bonus. However he knew that he now had to get the diary and stop all of this. He walked backwards until he was around the corner and made his way to the bathroom he knew held the entrance to the chamber. He could still hear Flitwick's sobs in the distance.

Harrison walked into the bathroom which was thankfully void of Moaning Myrtle. He stopped in front of an ordinary looking sink.

Open. Harrison hissed and the next second, the sink began to move; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

Harrison cast a quick cleaning charm before sliding down, he could feel wind blowing in his face as he twisted and turned. He knew that he was going deep below the school and he could feel the air becoming cooler. He flew out of the end of the pipe and landed on his feet. He canceled the disillusionment and cast a lumos. The tunnel was so dark that he could only see a little distance ahead. His shadow on the wet walls looked monstrous in the wand-light. He heard a crunching sound and looked down, he grimaced as he saw the skull of a rat. He looked back up and saw a large figure in the distance. He lifted his wand higher and the light slid over a gigantic snake skin, of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

He walked past the snake skin and the tunnel turned and turned again. The air got cooler and the smell worse as he walked on. At last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds. Their eyes looked strangely alive and Harrison had heard from his father that if you didn't speak in Parseltongue they would attack.

Open. Harrison hissed once more and the serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight and Harrison walked inside.