Chapter 95

Aman, Hannah, and Susan hurried over to the stands to secure good seats to watch the match.

"He's not here yet. Why is he back to his weird old habits of vanishing?! I told him that this match is an important one to watch so we can win against the Slytherins and Gryffindors when we have a match against them."

Hannah waited for him to sit down and then sat down beside him, "Well… maybe he found some interesting books. You know that he gets too excited and pays no attention to his surroundings when he's totally invested right?"

Aman nodded but he knew that the situation was different this time. Alex's behavior was entirely different from the last year.

Susan took her seat beside Hannah and looked at Aman, "Are you trying to say that our Hufflepuff's team doesn't need this thing called studying huh?"

"Not really… Our first match is with you guys so we don't have a choice here. We can't study your playstyle. Not like it matters though… your team is weak."

Susan scowled and turned front instead of responding to him while Hannah just shook her head, sighing.

Meanwhile, Neville and Hermione walked over to the last seats that had the highest viewpoint. The stands were pretty much empty and that was what they wanted. Neville took out a small rectangular box that was the size of two adult fingers combined.

Hermione pointed her wand at the box and after a few simple wand movements and an almost inaudible whisper, a jet of sparks hit the box.

Both of them looked at each other's faces and nodded in understanding. Neville took a deep breath and with the help of his wand and the first spell he had learned in first year, made the box fly into the sky.

"Almost…", he muttered as he controlled it pretty well and after a few more seconds, the box touched the edge of the roof that was there to protect them from the rains and sun.

Neville beamed when he accomplished his mission and hugged Hermione.

"I did it!"

"Yes, yes, you did it. Good job Neville." He said, patting his back gently.

After they did what they were asked to do, they found a nice place to sit and waited for the match to start.

*************

Alex's arms shook as he did the last few pushups until they gave in. Instead of resting, he stood up and began doing the squats and then continued to the crunches.

While he did his workouts, a glass orb floated a meter away from him and his eyes rarely left the orb.

It went on for hours as he worked out, his sets getting shorter and shorter as he completed more cycles.

"Hmm… no changes. Good for me I guess." He muttered as he lay down on the floor. Potions were consumed before he stood back up again and continued working out.

'Now all I have to do is wait for Ginny to act. If my predictions are right, she should've already unlocked the chamber of secrets so someone should get petrified so that the staff gets alerted. Not like it matters though… Dumbledore will most probably let Harry get involved. That old haaa… whatever.'

There was not much of an improvement as he was still stuck at the forty mark, unable to go past forty-five. It was only when it was midnight that he stopped and headed to his dormitory after consuming his potions.

'Ugh, my muscles are still sore. Maybe I should drink a little more… nah I'll wait until morning. Hmm… what's that sound…?'

He stopped in his tracks and pressed his body to the nearby wall, hoping that no one spotted him.

"Sssss-"

'Oh, it's the snake.' He thought, shrugging and continuing back on his way, only to stop with a frown on his face.

'…. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?'

**********

Filch was walking around the castle doing his usual patrol duty and while he was walking down the stairs, he heard a wail.

"Not that crying ghost again!", he growled and headed towards the sound as fast as he could. The wait had stopped but he frowned when he heard no more sounds.

'That girl doesn't stop for a while after she starts wailing. She usually doesn't make a sound unless someone does something to her so that peeves must have done something to her, that rule-breaking poltergeist!'

He was about to enter the lavatory to check what happened when he stopped in his tracks before freezing like a statue.

A few minutes later, a loud explosion occurred near him. The ghosts appeared in the location first to check what happened and then a few professors walked towards them.

Snape looked at the bloody baron, "What happened here?"

There was no response for a while but then, the ghost seemed to have decided to speak, "Looks like the successor is finally here…"

Snape took Filch away while the other professors looked at his back, frowning.

Flitwick walked to the wall that was damaged and inspected it, "A brilliant use of bombarda…. Maybe someone saw Filch but didn't want to show themselves?"

"Yes… That's the most probable thing. Mostly a student but is it really a recurrence of the incident that happened a few decades ago?"

No one replied but instead, turned towards the footsteps that were approaching them.

"It most probably is." Said Dumbledore as he stopped in front of the broken wall.

"Petrification… and it happened right in front of this lavatory again. Tell the students to not enter this area and lock this lavatory. Unfortunately, we have a lot of classes here so we cannot lock this whole floor."

All the professors nodded before going back to their chambers. They had been through the same thing once before and were unable to do a thing. This time was also no different in their minds.

Dumbledore stayed behind as he stared at the locked door.