Checking out the Chamber

The next day I had History of Magic, which was just as boring as it usually was. With the speed I could read and comprehend books now, I didn't even bother pretending to pay attention since I could just learn everything he was saying from a book.

After History of Magic, I slipped away before Hermione and Ron could talk to me to go do something I should've done a while ago. Making my way to the second floor, I walked into the girls bathroom.

As I walked towards the sinks, a voice interrupted me.

"Well hello there Harry Potter. You've come to visit me."

Turning around to look at the ghost that had popped her head through the door of the bathroom stall, I said "Hello Myrtle, it's nice to see you again."

"I was getting ever so lonely all by myself."

'I feel like I'm going to regret this.'

"Myrtle, would you like to come with me to explore the Chamber of Secrets? You can't tell anyone though." I asked her.

"Oh, an adventure, how exciting. I won't tell anyone, you're the only person who's come to visit me. I'll keep your secret, let's go." She said excitedly, emerging from the stall door entirely.

Making my way to the sink, I hissed "Open" in parseltongue and the sink began to shift, opening up into a tunnel.

"Let's go Myrtle." I said and jumped into the hole, sliding down the tunnel. Reaching the bottom, I slid into the ground hard. With how strong my body was now it didn't hurt, but it was still an unpleasant experience.

'I'll have to find an easier way down and up.'

Myrtle came floating down behind me, looking around the room.

"So this is where that boy went whenever he came here. It's very dreary."

"Yes yes it is. Come one, let's get to the main part of the chamber." I said, moving deeper into the chamber until I came upon the snake door. Hissing "Open" again, it moved, opening up to show the place where I had fought the basilisk.

The corpse of the giant snake was still there, sitting as though it had just been killed. The ravages of time seemed to not affect it, as it hadn't decayed in the slightest.

"So that's what killed me huh. It's nice to see for myself that it's dead." Myrtle said behind me with a sigh.

'I never really thought about the fact that Myrtle died so young.'

"Hey Myrtle, wanna see something cool." I said, trying to distract her.

"Oh, what is it?" she asked, bouncing back up, but I noticed she was pointedly looking away from the basilisk corpse.

Moving in front of the statue of Salazar Slytherin, I said in parseltongue "Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four."

The statue's mouth slowly opened and I made my way towards the opening, with Myrtle following behind me. Climbing through the opening, I found a dark tunnel. Summoning my wand, a quick "Lumos" gave us a light source as we made our way down the tunnel. It winded around a ways until it opened up more.

There were two rooms, sectioned off by a divider between them. On one side I could see a trail of bones, so I assumed that was where the basilisk slept. Ignoring that for now, we went down the path to the other room.

Stepping out of the tunnel into the room, I found bookshelves lining the walls. There was a circle on the ground with an intricate design to it and potions lining shelves. There was also a desk sitting out in the open, with a book sitting in the middle of it. Making my way over to the bookshelf, I took the closest book to me off the shelf and looked at the title.

"The Basics of Parselmagic." I read aloud. Myrtle had distracted herself by looking at the circle on the ground, so I opened the book and read the introduction.

It seemed that Parselmagic was a form of magic by speaking in Parseltongue to cast the spells. Contrary to the way Parseltongue was viewed, it was an entirely healing based magic. It allowed one to heal wounds quickly and treat various illnesses, much in the same way potions do but much quicker and on the fly.

'I've definitely got to learn as much of this as I can.' Looking at the titles of some of the other books, I found books about potion making, runes, rituals, arithmancy and all sorts of different subjects. Moving away from the bookshelf, I made my way to the desk and looked at the book sitting on it.

Picking it up reading the first few pages, I found that it was the journal of Salazar Slytherin. The first few pages were addressed to whoever found the book, telling them that this room was his study. Taking the journal and putting it in my robe pocket, I went back to the bookshelf and took the Parselmagic book as well.

"Myrtle I've got to get to class soon, so we're going to have to leave." I said.

"Wait, before you do come look at this." Myrtle responded.

Moving over to the circle she had been examining, I crouched down and looked at it closely.

'This kind of reminds me of Rias' summoning circle.' I thought.

"I don't know why, but this feels familiar to me." Myrtle said in a daze.

"We can figure it out later Myrtle. We'll come back soon, but let's get out of here for now." I said.

Myrtle shook her daze off and nodded her head. We made our way back through the tunnel, exiting the mouth of the statue. When we exited, the mouth closed behind us.

Making our way past the basilisk corpse, which I noticed Myrtle still refused to look at, we stood in front of the tunnel we had originally came down.

'Parseltongue opens everything around here so...'

"Exit" "Stairs" I hissed different words in Parseltongue until stairs worked. The tunnel shifted, opening to become taller and stairs formed, lining the bottom with steps.

Walking up the steps took longer than sliding down the tunnel, but eventually we made our way up and out of the chamber, with the sink closing behind us.

"This was fun Myrtle. I'll come back again soon." I said as I walked towards the entrance of the bathroom.

"Thanks for bringing me with you. Nobody comes to visit me, so it was nice to talk to someone again." Myrtle said.

'I guess she's lonely sitting in this bathroom all of the time.'

"No problem Myrtle. See you soon." I waved goodbye and made my way out of the bathroom, casting a quick Scourgify to get rid of the grime I had picked up in the chamber.

'There's a lot to look at in there. I can learn a lot from what Slytherin left behind.'

I walked down to potions class, making it outside a little before class was set to start.

"Where were you Harry? You missed lunch." Hermione asked.

"I was doing some reading in a room I found." I lied. I don't know what it was, but I didn't want to tell her about what I had been doing. Maybe it was the way she reacted to finding out I was better than her at Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, but I wanted something that was just mine. Ron and Hermione knew about a lot, but this was something that was just for me.

"Be careful mate or you'll turn into Hermione. Studying all the time and reading books." Ron said which earned him a slap on the arm from Hermione. It was at this point that Snape arrived and we entered for our potions lesson.

The rest of the day passed normally. Potions was annoying to deal with Snape's jabs at me, but that was normal for his class. I decided to spend the rest of the day hanging out with Ron and Hermione, playing chess while sitting outside. After dinner, we made our way up to the Gryffindor common room and worked on some of the homework Snape had already managed to assign us.

After a little while, I headed up to my bed and took out the books on Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. I hadn't gotten a chance to meet up with Rias since it would look weird if I kept disappearing every night, but I wanted to at least get through more of the studying.

I got through two of the more advanced books on the subject before deciding it was time to go to sleep for the night.

--------------------------------------------------------------Days passed and I settled into a sort of routine. Classes were the same way they were last year, so it wasn't much of a change for me besides having an extra one. I started to get more homework from them, so I couldn't spend as much time working on the stuff I really wanted to. There was one class that stood out, however, Mad-Eye Moody's Defense Against the Dark Arts class. The first class he held was one to remember.

--------------------------------------------------------------Flashback

I walked into the Defense Against the Dark Arts room with Ron and Hermione, not really sure what to expect from this teacher. I had found out he was a former Auror, but how that would translate into teaching would be interesting to see.

We all began to take out our books when he walked in and said "Put those things away. We're doing a practical demonstration today."

He walked to the front of the class and stood in front of us.

"I'm not going to bother with all of that extra stuff, so we're getting right into class. First subject, the Unforgivables."

There were some gasps around the room, but I got a lot more focused. I had heard so much about how "it was a miracle I survived the killing curse" but nobody was keen on explaining to me what the curse actually did.

"Can anyone name on of the three curses deemed unforgiveable?" Moody asked.

Neville slowly raised his hand. "The Cruciatus curse." he stuttered out.

"Ah yes, you would know that one now wouldn't you Longbottom." Moody said and pulled out a jar with three spiders in it. Levitating one of them out, he enlarged it.

"Crucio" Moody called out and the spider began to writhe in pain. Neville near me had a worried look on his face and had a death grip on his desk.

"Stop it, you're scaring him." Hermione yelled out. Moody hesitated for a second before stopping the curse.

"Can anyone volunteer the next curse?" Moody asked.

"Imperio, the Imperius curse." Hermione said.

"Yes and the curse that got numerous Death Eaters off on a technicality. The total control of the victim." Moody said and levitated another spider out of the case.

"Imperio" he said and began to control the spider, moving it around the room and having it jump on different people.

People freaked out about a giant spider being near them, but once Moody had had his fun he put the spider back in the case.

"And what, pray tell, is the last curse." He asked while looking directly at me.

"The killing curse." I answered.

"The killing curse. The curse that ends something's life in an instant with no signs. Only one person has ever survived it." Moody said, gesturing towards me before levitating the last spider out of the jar.

"Avada Kedavra" Moody said and a sickly green light came from his wand, hitting the spider and making it go still.

--------------------------------------------------------------That class was one that showed what kind of teacher Moody was, and he was one everyone enjoyed.

After that, I fell into a schedule. I would spend my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays studying the books I took from the room I used with Rias or the ones I took from the Chamber. At night on those days I would summon Rias and we would train. Now that we knew I wouldn't be hurt at her current level, we would work on her control and my awareness. Rias would work on condensing her Power of Destruction as much as possible and maintaining control to attack me with it in different forms, while I closed my eyes, trying to improve my general spatial awareness when an attack was coming for me. I wanted to be able to dodge well, so that I didn't become overly reliant on my magic resistance.

Other than that, I had made some progress on the evil pieces. I was slowly isolating the different aspects of them, making progress on getting the binding portion by itself so I could remove it.

I had only gone back down to the chamber one more time with Myrtle, to collect more books on Parselmagic and take the advanced Arithmancy and Ancient Runes books that were there. Salazar Slytherin was a scholar who devoted himself to finding new ways to use magic. Most of the books in his chamber were ones he wrote himself, with the thing that he had discovered. He offered an interesting perspective that was helping me make progress with the evil pieces.

On the other days I would work on my homework and hang out with Ron and Hermione. Even if I wanted to get this done as soon as possible, I didn't want it to be all that I did.

With how much of my time was taken up, I didn't even notice when it was time for the other schools to arrive. It wasn't until it was lunch time and Hermione dragged me outside that I realized they were arriving today.

We were all assembled outside to wait for the other schools.

"Look" someone called out. Looking where they pointed, we spotted a carriage being pulled by flying horses.

It landed on the ground a little ways away from us and from it emerged the Beauxbatons students. After every student had emerged, their Headmistress came out as well. She was an extremely tall woman, rivaling the height of Hagrid.

"You reckon she's half giant?" Ron whispered to me.

Shrugging my shoulders in response, I watched as the Beauxbatons group made their way forward, with their Headmistress and Dumbledore exchanging pleasantries.

"Oh great, she's here too." Hermione muttered under her breath, but I heard her. Following her line of sight, I looked to where she was looking and surprisingly saw Fleur.

'I never did ask her where she went to school. I guess this is what she meant by seeing me sooner than I thought.'

Fleur seemed to be looking through the crowd. When her eyes landed on me she gave a small wave. I returned it when the Durmstrang group decided to show up.

A boat emerged from the lake, sending up a spray of water into the air. It docked and from it emerged a fur clad group of students. They made their way down, with their Headmaster in the lead.

There were some called of "Krum" and I saw that everyone was excited because Viktor Krum was a student at Durmstrang.

The Durmstrang Headmaster made his way over to the other two and the different Headmasters talked for a little while before Dumbledore loudly called out "Let's all head inside for dinner."

We made our way into the Great Hall, while I was thinking 'So the champions of the Triwizard Tournament will be decided soon. Hopefully I'm wrong and I won't get picked.' But even I didn't believe myself.