The Dark Apprentice

The Dark Apprentice Chapter 1

Chapter 1

He had only wanted to clear his name.

For months he had pulled his hair out trying to discover who the heir of Slytherin may have been, but every turn led to a dead end.

He had been bullied by the older Pureblood Slytherins, who believed he could not possibly live up to the noble legacy of Salazar Slytherin. He was targeted by the angry muggle-borns who thought him a bigot. He was then harassed by what was left of the school, wanting to know how he had petrified those who had been attacked.

He was a pariah.

In a way, he had always been one. He had rejected the friendships of the other students his age since his arrival at Hogwarts. Years of being close to Dudley and his little gang had really turned his brain against other children. He knew there was an inherent cruelty in them all, and he couldn't bring himself to trust even the kindest of faces. This rejection had not done him any favors when it came time to look for allies.

The entire school had taken out their fear, frustration, and outrage on him for the last 7 months in some form or another. Even the neutrals in his house who usually respected his space with cold silence displayed outward signs of aggression or dissatisfaction. All because he could speak to snakes.

Harry Potter cursed every member in the history of his family. One of them had carried the gift in their blood and gave it to him, despite there being no historical evidence that a parselmouth had ever descended from the Potter family, and unless his mother hailed from Slytherin's line hundreds of years ago his gift seemed like a fluke of magic.

Seven months of dead ends until now. His eyes were wide, and unblinking, as they took in the scene before him. His heart pounded in his chest, each beat echoing like a drum in the oppressive silence of the hallway. He wanted to scream, to run, to attack, but his body refused to obey. The girl's tiny shadow seemed to mock his helplessness as she continued to paint the wall with dark crimson streaks.

He knew his own senses must have been deceiving him, and somehow the girl was blissfully unaware that she had been caught in her own web of horror. Harry was watching in paralyzed rage as the little Weasley girl finished her message on the wall. HER SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER.

He wanted to confront the girl. He was no slouch with a wand, and far beyond the capabilities of any first year, but something told him to wait. His Phoenix and Holly wand thrummed in his hand begging him to attack her. This girl had stood by and watched the school turn against him, while she had been causing the petrifications.

It's impossible. Harry thought to himself. There was no way a Weasley was a parselmouth. She could not possibly be the heir of Slytherin. Even if she was, how would she have learned about the basilisk?

It had taken Harry hundreds of hours of research under his father's old invisibility cloak, at all hours of the night, to discover what had been causing the attacks. Begrudgingly his biggest hint had come from Professor Snape. When Harry was found at the scene of the second attack he had been escorted to Dumbledore's office where Snape had refused to accept that Harry had been responsible. This had seemed to surprise the Headmaster as much as it did Harry.

There was no love lost between Harry and his head of house. Snape seemed to hate his existence, and yet still the man had defended Harry. The man had admitted there was no way a second year was controlling magic that had to have been of the darkest arts. Few pieces of magic could petrify the muggleborns the way they had been, and none of them were simple.

This led Harry to believe that it wasn't a student causing the students to be petrified, but perhaps a creature or artifact. He had after all been hearing voices for months, and they had all been coming from the walls, around the time of each attack. Once he had figured out he wasn't going crazy he put his mind to clearing his name, and despite being this close he could not believe that little Ginny Weasley was the Heir of Slytherin. She had to be an accomplice, not the true heir.