𝗷𝗮𝗻𝗲, harry potter

˗ˋ 73

CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE
✧
-: fifth year :-

── IN WHICH SHE LEARNS OF
THE STONE AND THE CHAMBER

. . .

Where did he even begin? Behind the glasses, Harry's eyes flickered from the wand on his bedside table to Jane as she got comfortable, passing her one of the patchwork cushions that Mrs Weasley had dotted around the entirety of the house to try and brighten up the drab corners, and watched as she leant it against the dark wood of the bedframe, shuffling around so that it curved into the small of her back.

It was, in all sense of the word, a serious conversation, but all the same, their legs brushed as they extended across the begrudgingly neat bedsheets that Kreacher moaned and whined about making early that morning.

"You know who Voldemort is.. right?" Harry recieved a nod at that. "Of course." He swallowed, itching the back of his neck. "I guess.. it all really started when he killed my parents.. my mum - her name was Lily, and my dad was called James - sacrificed herself and saved me. I was delivered to the Dursleys and grew up there. Once I was approaching my eleventh birthday, I started getting all these letters addressed to me, the only ones I ever got. And after my Uncle Vernon went crazy trying to escape them, Hagrid broke down the door and gave me my letter in person."

"Hagrid?" Jane asked.

"Hogwart's Gamekeeper-turned-Care-of-Magical-Creatures-Professor. He's a half giant, harboured a three-headed dog and an illegal dragon egg in my first year." Harry nodded. "Anyways, a month after going to Diagon Alley I started Hogwarts, and met Ron. I became friends with Hermione later on, when a troll was let into the castle and almost killed her on the night of Halloween."

"Right.. sounds.. exciting?" Jane raised her eyebrows apprehensively. Harry let out somewhat of a chuckle. Flora really had told her nothing. 

And so he proceeded to tell her about his first year, about how he was the youngest Seeker on the Quidditch team in a century, how they accidentally discovered Fluffy and helped Hagrid smuggle out a dragon to Ron's brother Charlie who worked with dragons - something that Jane really did look excited about. He told her how they had gotten caught, and the Invisibilty Cloak had been left behind and McGonagall had subjected them to detention in the Forbidden Forest, and how the nightmare of his scar pains had tormented him. 

The entirety of the year had been shrouded by the break-in at Gringotts, which Harry, Hermione and Ron were quick to discover to be in search of the Philospher's Stone and it's Elixir of Life - which was, at that point, at Hogwarts. They had followed Snape (their primary suspect) down the hatch and completed a multitude of tasks in order to save the Stone. But to their surprise, it had been Quirrel down there as opposed to Snape, and Harry watched as his touch caused Quirrel's face to disintegrate and leave him unconcious. 

His summer holidays followed was a nightmare, as Jane found out. Bars on his window, Hedwig locked in her cage, being fed cold canned minestrone soup, house-elves named Dobby landing cream cakes on boss' wives head. But Ron, Fred and George were to their rescue in their flying Ford Anglia and Harry had spent the rest of the time at the Burrow, with only one mix-up whilst using the Floo System and ended up in Knockturn Alley.

When they returned to school, after a disasterous turn of events when Ron and Harry couldn't get through the King's Cross barrier and took the flying car to school, Harry was back to playing Quidditch, their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher even more of a nightmare than mumbling Quirrell. But having a no-good teacher was the least of their worries when Harry began to hear whispering around the castle, and after a Deathday party, stumbled upon Mrs Norris, the caretaker's cat, petrified and hung up against a message in what seemed like blood.