Chapter 48: Second contact

Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye it was February.

After his brief conversation with Tom Riddle at Christmas, Ivan did not attempt to contact Tom again, as he thought it necessary to ignore him for a while.

The atmosphere in the school remained tense even though the attacks had ceased and the mandrakes were beginning to mature, but most of the students were still panicking.

In this situation, Lockhart seemed to think he needed to do something.

"You don't have to worry, the Chamber of Secrets will never be opened. The culprit must have known I would catch him sooner or later, so he wisely stopped before I caught him," that's what Lockhart said at the end of every Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

There was a murmur in the classes, most of them skeptical at his statement.

"What is needed now is to remove the bad memories. I don't have much to say, but I think I have the answers," said Lockhart

When they had breakfast on Feb. 14, everyone knew what Lockhart was doing to boost morale.

When Ivan entered the Great Dining Hall early in the morning, he saw that all the walls were covered with large, bright pink flowers. Worse, there were countless heart-shaped confetti drifting down from the light blue ceiling.

Lockhart sat at the teachers' desk, wearing a bright pink robe that matched the decorations, and the teachers sitting next to him had a strange look on their faces. Professor McGonagall fidgeted a bit and Snape looked like he was going to throw up.

Next, Lockhart announced that he had a little surprise in store.

The next instant, twelve dwarves came through the doors, unlike ordinary dwarves, they all had golden wings and a harp on their backs.

Lockhart called them friendly little cupids.

He told the students they could use them to hand out valentines or ask Snape for advice on how to brew a love potion.

Ivan didn't know if anyone would dare ask Snape about the potion, but the dwarves were still running around the school handing out valentines.

Among the teachers, Lockhart received the most cards, almost 200 or more.

This made him the least popular among the teachers and when a dwarf entered the classroom for the twelfth time, Professor McGonagall shooed Ivan out with the dwarf.

The boy and the dwarf stared wide-eyed at each other in the hallway for a long time before the dwarf seemed to remember his mission; this time he had brought a greeting card with a song for Ivan.

But Ivan was quicker than the dwarf and used 'Silence'.

To avoid being found by other dwarves, Ivan returned to the Gryffindor common room.

He threw his book bag helplessly onto the couch, and Tom Riddle's diary fell out of it.

Ivan decided to talk to Tom Riddle one more time, it seemed that after more than a month of neglect he made the other side impatient.

When Ivan opened the paper, an article appeared answering his last question for potions class.

"I've already done that assignment myself, and Professor Snape gave me a bad grade, so my question now is....," the corners of Ivan's mouth turned up slightly as he nonchalantly wrote down the problems he had encountered during his recent magical research.

After a minute, another paragraph of answers appeared at the top of the journal.

Riddle had given perfect answers to the problems Ivan had encountered, giving him a sense of clarity and, in some cases, even greater understanding than that of the professors.

In this way, Ivan began to communicate with Tom Riddle for the second time.

Every night, after everyone was asleep, he quietly took out the diary, wrote down his difficulties in his magical studies, the problems became more and more difficult, there are many questions that young wizards would not normally ask.

But Riddle did not give up, Riddle wanted to talk to Ivan about the Chamber of Secrets and the man who opened it.

But every time Ivan changed the subject, Riddle fell into step with him. A strange arrangement formed between the two, first Riddle told a story about the Chamber of Secrets and then Ivan asked his questions.

As a young Voldemort, Tom Riddle had a vast store of knowledge and could answer almost any question Ivan posed if he so desired.

From the simplest classroom assignment to the most esoteric magical theory.

For example, the method of sound recording that bothered Ivan for so long was given to him by Riddle, who could store a sound in any item.

Thanks to Riddle's help, the 'Academic Research of Hogwarts Magic' section was booming, no more boring articles like the ones Luna wrote, but actual research papers.

After the Transfiguration class, Professor McGonagall even told Ivan that she was amazed at the depth of his research on Animagi.

In addition, the editor of The Prophet newspaper, who had been following his paper, had offered to reprint some of his research articles, and Ivan even received some manuscripts from several professional magical academic journals.

But of course, most of the articles were Tom's.

In just one month, Ivan's progress had soared to new heights.

He learned much from Riddle, such as theoretical knowledge that was not taught in class, including dark magic. In fact, the other side seemed to have been intentionally or unconsciously teaching Ivan the Dark Arts and encouraging him to use these spells.

At first, Ivan did not sense anything unusual.

After consulting with Professor Flitwick, he learned that Tom had been teaching him dark magic.

Until then, Ivan was unaware of the seriousness of the problem, he thought it would be useful to know more about black magic.

After a while, he finally realized what was wrong, and the black magic seemed to have affected his thinking. He became more irritable and sensitive, and whenever he practiced black magic there were cruel thoughts that popped into his head.

In particular, when he had recently faced Malfoy, Ivan pulled out his wand without even thinking and used a spell he had just learned on his opponent.

It was similar to Snape's spell 'Sectumsempra' but much more powerful and if Malfoy was hit by the spell, Malfoy could die.

Fortunately, Ivan came to his senses at the last moment and threw the spell into the air, so that no one could get hurt.

This terrified him, it was a dangerous sign.

Suddenly he understood why Riddle was teaching him magical knowledge in an unusual way.

Riddle was looking for a way to weaken Ivan's will, as Ivan was always wary of him and was not interested in the Chamber of Secrets, so he tempted Ivan with magical knowledge and when Ivan was lost in power, he would have a chance to control Ivan.

Even if Riddle cannot control him, it is likely that Ivan's end result would be the same as Voldemort's, an evil dark wizard.

Since then, Ivan had not dared to touch the diary again, Tom Riddle was really evil, he could take control of the mind bit by bit.

Even people like Ivan, who were on high alert from the beginning, could fall into his clutches.