RAVENCLAW!

21. Innocence

When Harry woke up again he felt slightly better than before. His head still hurt like hell but he could easily move without feeling like vomiting. He sat up on his bed and reached for his glasses. Now able to see properly again he spotted a bowl of cold soup on his nightstand. The watch lying next to it told him it was about 4 in the afternoon but Harry couldn't be sure it still was the same day. He tried to remember what exactly had happened. One thing he was sure of was that he had been sick and that the Dursleys were very angry at him.

Knowing that he had to do this sooner or later he decided to get up and tell them he was fine again. As soon as his foot touched the ground he flinched back. Curiously he inspected the sole of his foot and found dried blood and some shards of broken glass sticking out of his skin. Pulling a face he cleared it from any pieces of medicine bottle before having another go at walking. When he reached the bathroom he realised it still probably was the same day because the floor was still the mess he made of it and Petunia would never let Dudley brush his teeth in a room like that.

As he would have to do this anyway Harry took some toilet paper, let it soak in some water and went to his knees, cleaning up everything including the ugly leftovers in his room. When he was finished he washed out his feet in the shower and wrapped them in toilet paper to prevent them from starting to bleed again. Then he put on two pairs of Vernon's old socks as cushioning and ate his soup which tasted very boring but he didn't expect anything else.

After giving Hedwig a sympathetic look he finally went downstairs to get it over with. It went as well as possible in a situation like this. Didn't mean he could avoid doing the chores today but he got away with the less energy draining tasks. Still, when he went to bed this evening, he felt like a horde of trolls had just ran him over.

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It was only on the next morning that he realised that Hedwig hadn't had anything to eat that day and he made a mental note to himself to buy some bird treats from the 5 pound note he had gotten for Christmas as soon as he come to an animal store. A supermarket would probably do as well.

He had luck.
Two days later, when the Dursleys were sure he wouldn't faint again after too much exhaustion, they sent him to buy some groceries at the local supermarket. He finished the shopping as fast as possible and then went through some streets nearby scanning them for a pet store. Just as he was about to go back to Privet Drive (his arms were hurting from carrying the bags and the Dursleys would get suspiscious if he didn't return soon) he saw one. Relieved he entered and grabbed the first bag of bird treats he saw. They were for canaries but that didn't matter.

"Hello,kid,"

said the woman behind the counter. She was very young, she probably did this as a summer job.

"How many canaries do you have?"

"One - Wait, no. I don't have any. I have an owl."

The girl made wide eyes.

"An owl? Really? I've never heard of such a thing before! A pet owl. Crazy world."

Harry was getting nervous.

"Can I please just pay, I need to hurry."

"But you can't feed an owl canary treats! They need meat! Living spiders or mice!"

"What? Um, well, I would let her out to hunt but, you know, my aunt and uncle..."

"I see. Let's do this: I'll sell you a box of living spiders and you can come back to get more if they are used up. If they die you can still feed them to your owl for the following three days but not after that."

Harry nodded  and she went to the back of the shop before returning with a box the size of maybe a watermelon.

"This is 15 pounds then."

"How much would i get for 5?"

She waved it off and took the money while Harry stared at her in wonder, about to complain. He wanted to pay for everything!

"Now get out! I thought you were in a hurry!"

"Thanks a lot!"

This evening Hedwig was a happy owl and Harry didn't even get scolded for taking so long. Turns out they had been at the swimming hall with some of Dudley's bully friends.

The following weeks all went in a pretty similar fashion: Waking up, making breakfast, doing chores, avoiding the Dursleys and so on.
Up until his birthday it all went like this and he didn't once get a letter from Ron, Hermione or anyone for that matter. Not even from Terry who had promised to send Harry some notes to help him finish the potions essay they had to write over the holidays. But probably he just wasn't finished with it himself and Harry wasn't able to write it anyways with all his school stuff stuck in that cupboard. And Ron and Hermione... maybe they just didn't remember his birthday. Remembering dates had never been Ron's thing.

And then Dobby showed up, making everything worse. Well, at least now he knew that his friends remembered him! You always have to see the positive sides! Did you know how hard it was to see the positive sides when you are locked in your room with bars in front of your window and getting cold soup shoved through a cat-flap once a day?
Not even mentioning the letter he got from the ministry for performing magic outside of school in the presence of muggles when it had actually been some weird house elf called 'Dobby'.

Good thing he was rescued by Ron, Fred and George only three days into his punishment. You can't survive long with only tinned soup to 'eat'.
He suddenly felt so light and happy as he flew across the country in a car with three red-headed idiots, his beloved owl finally soaring across the night sky again, right next to them.

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"How did it go?"

"Mister Harry Potter is a great man, even greater than you praised him to be! He offered me to sit down! On a seat!"

"Ugh, what a Hufflepuff. Anyway, I don't care how he treated you. I want to know if you did it!"

"Mister Potter insisted that he would go to Hogwarts either way but then I made his family angry and they locked him in his room and said that he would never have any contact to wizards ever again."

Draco's heart lurched. Harry's family was even worse than he'd thought. Would he be fine? He shook his head to come back to senses. Better than if he returned to Hogwarts. Much safer at least.

"I want you to return once a day to check if anything changed."

"Yes, Master Draco, Sir."

The day after his birthday Draco had started his research on the chamber of secrets. It took him a few days until he had found something and his mother was already getting suspicious as to why he spent more time  in their library instead of flying on his new broom.

And what he found wasn't pleasing at all. There weren't many books about said chamber. The only information he got was that it was a hidden chamber in Hogwarts, built by Salazar Slytherin himself and that a monster was supposed to live in it. Nothing more than a legend. And no reason to worry as long as it was closed. But his father had the key and he probably planned on slipping it to a school girl.
Everyone would be in danger. Except the Slytherins. If this chamber had been built by Salazar he surely wouldn't hurt the students of his own house. And Draco was sure that he himself would be safe as well as his father would never set something free that could be hurting his only son.

But Harry?
Considering how often The Boy Who Lived To Annoy managed to get into trouble he would be the very first one to be attacked. He couldn't let that happen.
So Draco had decided to stop Potter from returning to Hogwarts. First he had sent Dobby to capture all his letters before they reached Harry and when that hadn't worked he told the house elf to talk to the other boy, to convince him to stay home.

And here they were.