Chapter 6
The lack of proper sleep was bound to catch up to Harry eventually. It just so happened that his extraordinary bad luck made it catch up to him at the worst possible time. The worst possible time at this moment happened to be at breakfast. Oliver Wood, insane fanatical quidditch player that he was, had scheduled dual quidditch tryouts and practice as soon as possible, making it land on Sunday, which Harry had missed, seeing as he’d slept through it from exhaustion. That’s how he found himself having one of the worst Mondays ever.
“Potter, why weren’t you at the tryouts?” he all but yelled “What were you doing?”
Head on the table, Harry groaned out “I was busy Oliver, and I slept in.”
“What kept you so busy that you would miss the tryouts of all things? You know how important you are to our strategies!”
“Believe it or not Oliver, but there are some things that are more important than a fucking sport!” Harry retorted, slowly building up to the point where he was yelling ever so slightly.
It was then that he realized he might have fucked up ever so slightly, considering everyone in the Great Hall was staring at him like he had gone crazy and stabbed someone.
“Harry, are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine Ron. I just need some alone time.” Harry replied, pushing his chair out and stalking out the Great Hall. Giving the Hall one last glance as he was leaving, he saw three pairs of eyes watching him intensely. One set with a knowing look, the other two with interest and concern.
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If someone were to stumble upon Harry at that moment, they would probably think the rumors of him being an insane dark wizard-in-training, what with the statues and banners of cephalopodic creatures that didn’t look very earthly, as well as the fact that Harry himself was chanting in a language that was so guttural it sounded as though the human tongue shouldn’t have been able to speak it, and if you weren’t suffused with Daedric energy, it probably would have given you a migraine at best. At worst, well… it wouldn’t have been pretty.
As he was reciting the verses from Winds of Change he was chiseling various glyphs and sigils into the floor and walls, then proceeding to ‘set’ their power with some blood. It was rather tiring work, but also quite satisfying if one ignored the fact that he couldn’t use any magic without risking destabilizing the web of daedric energies he was painstakingly weaving.
Given his attunement to the energetic flows of Oblivion, and specifically his sensitivity to the frequencies of Apocrypha it really was quite thrilling when he felt each thread of the tapestry of reality he was reweaving snap into place.
The new reality in the Chamber of Secrets was practically complete, with just the finishing touches being necessary, like pools of churning, oily not-quite-liquid.
After one last half hour of carving and chanting, he stood up and gave a sigh of relief as a surge of power passed through him. It was finally done. He could make contact tomorrow, he was far too tired to deal with Daedric Princes right now.
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Fred and George liked to think that they were rather smart, if not in an entirely conventional sense. That was why they had been keeping an eye on Harry when he started behaving… weirdly. They hadn’t expected him to disappear off the Marauders Map every day for the entire week. Naturally, after his… outburst in the hall, they decided to follow him to where he was going, but for some reason when they tried to follow him for the first time, he kind of… phased in and out of being on the map.
After that, they decided to passively observe him, deciding to give their plan a second try when he looked like he was about to pass out. They had been following him for the past half hour when suddenly a small blonde girl came twirling around the corner.
“Hello, Messrs. Weasleys! I take it you’re trying to follow Harry?”
“Oh! Hi Luna. Uh, yeah, but something’s messing with our… methods. It happened last time as well.” George replied.
“Mm, that would happen, wouldn’t it? You’ll need my help to get to him, of course. Ooh, I wonder if you’ll be offered Her pact? That would be fun! Follow along.”
So it was that the twins followed Luna all the way down to the second floor, and into a girl’s bathroom, where Harry was standing in front of the sinks, saying something in Parseltongue of all things.
When the sink finished grinding down and out of the way, Luna spoke up. “Hello Champion, Prince.”
Harry whirled around, and twirled his hand, summoning an odd spectral dagger. “Who the fuck are you? What do you mean Prince?”
“Luna Lovegood, at your service, and as for the latter question you can just ask Him what I mean, though it’s rather obvious if you know what to look for.”
To the twins what happened next looked a lot like Harry was talking to himself, and they remembered the rumors saying he was an insane dark wizard.
“Who is she? No, no she told me her name. You know what I meant, that’s your whole domain. Fine, who is she under? Oh, you have got to be kidding me! She’s one of His?” Turning back to the other three people in the bathroom with him he said “Right, things have gotten a lot more complicated. Aureal one, you go in first, then the twins. Oh and Fred, George, don’t try anything, I’m feeling stab happy right now.”
Luna went up to the chasm and dropped down with a weird wave, followed by the twins, wondering how they’d gotten stuck in the middle of this, with Harry following after. It was quite the long drop, which left the twins to wonder if Harry really was a dark wizard and was planning on sacrificing them, and what he meant by “Aureal one”. Overall they were just so very confused.
Eventually, the quartet landed in a small cave, with Fred breaking the silence.
“Where exactly are we then? And what the fuck is going on?”
“For the what, you’ll find our soon enough, for the where, the entrance to what used to be the Chamber of Secrets. Now move, or we’ll be late.”
The place that apparently used to be the Chamber of Secrets, if you asked the twins, looked a lot more… tentacle-themed, not the snakes you might have expected it to. At the very center was a giant statue of a mass of tentacles and eyes, with weird glyphs on the floors, glowing an ominous green.
“Well, get ready for the show boys. Oh and Fred, try not to stare.”
The twins were about to ask what Luna meant when Harry called out in a language they had never heard before, and three… beings materialized out of a haze of purple.
A writhing mass of oily green tentacles and eyes, floating on nothingness.
A white-haired, bearded man in half-toned clothes, floating upside down, like he was sitting in a chair.
And a tall woman, seemingly made of shadows, with two crows on her shoulders.