Back to: Harry Potter » Harry Potter and the Cracked Reservoir
Also available as: Epub | txt | pdf | lit | mobi
Harry Potter and the Cracked Reservoir
Chapter 34: Warnings
By Musings of Apathy
Chapter 34: Warnings
Thanks to my Betas; Donalddeutsch, Sparky40sw and Cateagle.
Young Phillipa Stone entered the Great Hall for dinner. Something had just set her off enough to make her forget her normal activities. Normally she would be happy and bubbly, talking with her friends, showing off a new bauble or piece of jewelry that her esteemed father had gotten for his little angel. She was a proper daughter, respecting her father while she twisted him around her little finger. Not that he would be anything but happy with the situation, he loved his daughter more than life itself. He had ever since his beloved wife of twenty years had died at the age of fifty-one, just four years into their lovely daughter’s life.
He had always provided the best for his family, first just he and his wife and then at the age of forty-seven, his wife blessed him with a daughter. This made his work even more important, as now he had to ensure her future, both financially and the mere continued existence. Years ago, before gaining a daughter, even before gaining a wife, he had chosen his career with care. The wizarding world needed protection from itself and from the magic it used. That’s why he chose to become an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries. He would protect the community through research and learning. Most of the stuff that he learned was not fit for the public, but that would not be a problem, as no one entered the Unspeakable’s bastion.
His obsession with his career ended when his wife died. His wife had been a wonderful mother to his little Phillipa and he had done his all to provide everything that they could ever need, rising to the top of the department in record time, one of the few well paid, honest positions in the ministry. Without his wife, he realized that his daughter needed him, not his money, now. He continued his work, but kept it to working hours, preferring to come home and spend a quiet dinner with his little angel. On the times that he had to spend more time in the department, he would just bring his joy with him, letting her meet the others in the office. He worked while she played and learned. The smile on her face was enough to belay any fears about her playing in such a place as the Department of Mysteries.
This time spent with the most rare of learned people was formative for the young girl. She learned to be observant and unseen. At that moment, reentering the Great Hall, she needed the skills to find Harry Potter.
As she walked to the Slytherin table, she calmly looked up and down the length of the Gryffindor table for the patch of unruly raven hair that should be beside the flowing red. What she found was just one patch of red and it was the wrong one. That patch of red in the sea of browns, blonds and blacks, was huddled rather close to a bushy brown and too short shorn to be the companion to the one she wanted to find.
Obviously, as Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger were alone at dinner, Harry Potter and Ginevra Weasley were elsewhere enjoying dinner. Their dates were famous amongst the Hogwarts students, both in their romance where few other couples could achieve anything but a broom closet, and in their mystery, as none of the curious students had a clue where they were or how they got there. This left Phillipa with naught to do but sit and eat.
"Hey," she addressed her friends, "what’s up?"
"Not much," they answered around the current gossip that they were circulating.
"Anything special happen while I was out?" she asked.
She was answered with a cacophony of rumors and gossip, but one piece of information filtered through that was actually of interest to the young Slytherin.
"Harry and Ginny skipped this," she motioned to the dishes laid out on the table, "lovely dinner again?" she asked sarcastically. "How can that girl be so lucky to get such a good boyfriend?" she asked, making sure that her voice had a good amount of jealousy in disguise her true intent. Her friends would understand jealousy. Ambition was often fueled by a covetous nature.
"Bet she’s just giving it to him good," said a girl across the table from them, butting in on their conversation.
"Not what I heard," Phillipa’s friend Marra said. "I heard that one of those pranks from Ginny’s brothers was for McGonagall and Pomfrey to give Harry ‘The Talk’ and Harry decided that he wanted to wait until marriage until ‘it’ comes up."
"So, what," said Terri, her other good friend, "Ginny’s been happy with that?"
"Didn’t say that," said Marra. "She’ll change the situation when she gets the chance."
"As if," said the girl who butted in, "he wants it and he is probably getting it from her good. That’s all boys want and that’s what you have to do to get what you want," she said with a disgusted but assured look to her face.
"Maybe the boys that you hang on," said Terri, "But we. at least, consider boys from other houses not the just leeches that are in our house. Slytherin boys are all ambition and no respect."
"Terri," Phillipa sighed, "I’m sure that there are a couple of decent guys in our house. We just haven’t found them yet."
"Well, wait for some snakes to get off their bellies if you want," Terri said, "but I’m going to look for some warm blooded meat."
Phillipa’s growl at not finding the Gryffindor turned into laughter at her friend’s predatory statement.
‘Okay, Phi,’ the young Slytherin said to herself, ‘got’ta find him today. No choices.’
Phillipa walked down the corridor at breakfast time. She entered and looked slyly at the Gryffindor table as she walked between the Slytherin table and the wall. She didn’t see him there until she saw movement at the last end of the table that she was to check. Harry stood and gave a short kiss to Ginny before turning and exiting the hall.
Phillipa swore and reversed her direction as covertly as she could.
It looked like breakfast today would be forfeit.
She entered the entrance hall in time to see the tale of his robes whip around the corner leading to the transfiguration classroom. Frustrated, she picked up a jog as she cleared the vision of the students in the Great Hall, casting a silencing spell on her feet to prevent anyone from getting suspicious from hearing her run in the halls.
Two flights of stairs and three corridors later, she saw Harry standing on the beautiful stone seal, rifling through a book-bag hanging from his shoulder.
"C’mon, where is it?" Harry said in frustration.
Phillipa reached him just as he pulled a book from the bag, "There it is. Thought someone took it."
Phillipa reached up to grab his shoulder, trying to get his attention. Harry’s startled to find a companion just as they disappear from the transfiguration corridor.
When the displaced Phillipa came to her senses in a different place than she was a fraction of a second previously, she did the only thing that came to mind. She screamed.
Unluckily for Harry, he was beside her and she was faced mostly into his ear.
Alarmed and dazed by the appearance of an unknown person and the loud noise in his ear, Harry spun around, a Stunner fired before he could be further assaulted. Harry’s training worked overtime for his safety.
Harry blinked and found a student that he was unfamiliar with lying prone on the ground at his feet, her eyes closed. One glance told him that she didn’t have her wand out and she did not have the sheen of sweat that could be expected if adrenalin had been flowing to prepare her for a fight. She must have been completely surprised.
"Oh, bollocks," Harry said.
Harry conjured a comfortable chair and gently placed her in it. She probably wasn’t going to be happy.
"Enervate," Harry cast, awakening her.
Her eyelids fluttered. She shook her head quickly to the side several times before fully opening her eyes.
"What’s going on?" she began slowly. "Where are we? What happenned?"
Harry grimaced at the sitting girl.
"Um," he started brilliantly, "It seems that you grabbed me just as I was transporting down here and you came for the ride."
"But…"
Harry continued, "When we got here you screamed in my ear and I reacted, thinking it to be an attack and stunned you. Once I realized that I was wrong about the attack, I woke you up," he said. "Sorry."
She looked at him with calculating eyes. "Where are we, then?"
He smiled back, despite her untrusting glare. "We’re in my training area. The Chamber of Secrets," he said, gesturing to the Chamber surrounding her chair.
"How did we get here?" she asked.
Harry’s smile held for a second before a frown slowly graced his features. "First," he said, "why were you sneaking up on me? Why didn’t I hear you? What do you want?"
This caused a grin to grace Phillipa’s face. "Inquisitive, aren’t you?" she joked. She held up one finger and said as if reading a grocery list, "I needed to meet you." She raised a second finger, "I cast a silencing charm on my feet." She raised a third finger, "I needed to warn you," she said, as if it were the most natural thing to say in day-to-day conversation.
"Warn me about what? And why did you silence your feet?" he asked shaking his head to clear it.
"No," she said with authority, "First you answer my question. How did we get here?"
Harry retreated inwardly. "Um," he stalled, "That’s a secret. I can’t tell you."
She smiled an all-knowing smile that told him, more than anything that she was used to getting everything that she wanted. And yet that did not make her give off an air of a spoiled child, more a self-confident young woman.
"I see," she said succinctly. "Let me take a guess then."
She smirked. He frowned.
"This is a secret that your girlfriend knows," he listened and tried not to give anything away. "And can use," he tried not to react. "And yet your friends, Ron and Hermione, don’t know," he was having a harder time not reacting to that revelation. "Why don’t they know about it?"
Harry didn’t answer.
"Ron wouldn’t understand the effort it took to learn how," she stated certainly. "And Hermione might think herself superior to you even after the effort, but in truth, you want your smarter friend to go through the effort to figure it out herself. Maybe you have disappeared or reappeared right in her sight?" she considered, the question completely rhetorical. "No, you wouldn’t reappear in front of her, because then she would ask questions directly. No, you will slowly pique her interest until she has to find out for herself." She smiled at the information she could read directly from his face, even when he thought that he was giving no reaction. "But in the beginning she will just ask you and bug you. You won’t give her anything. She has to figure it out on her own with minimal hints from you." She watched the slight smile that graced the corner of his lips. "No, you won’t make it as easy on her as you made it on Ginny; just a couple of hints if she needs them. And the more hints that she needs, the more disappointed you’ll get. You want her to figure it out, because in the end, when she figures it out, she’ll realize that you are intelligent, more than she understood before."
"Damn you, witch," he cursed, jokingly. "You should contemplate becoming a mind healer or a wizarding psychologist or something. How did you do that? Have you been stalking me or something?"
She smiled, "No. You don’t realize that you’re in a fishbowl here. People like to watch other people. It’s a form of entertainment. I, however, watch everything and everyone. I like to observe. I’m really good at seeing things that others don’t."
"Very good," said Harry. "But you still don’t know how I do it."
"True," she acknowledged. "But with one more piece of information, you will tell me yourself."
"Not likely."
"Likely," she calmly countered. "If you don’t tell me, I am going to tell Hermione your secret. That the transportation is through the Hogwarts Seals."
"How did you…?" Harry fumbled.
"Easily. It just came together for me moments ago. First evidence is the Halloween Ball. Everyone was concentrating on the ancient looking archways as how we got to this very Chamber, but they were all wrong. That was just a red herring."
"And here I thought that all Slytherins shunned muggle literature," Harry quipped.
"Not all," she replied. "The next time I saw you transport, you took me for a ride with you minutes ago. The common factor is that, despite the arch or lack there of, both times were directly over a seal."
Harry gave a noncommittal grunt.
"I do love your work, by the way," she complimented him. "Ever since the beginning of the term, I have been admiring the stonework."
"Thank you," he said, no longer bothering to deny it.
"You probably don’t want people to think about each one being slightly different, after all, they are just art, right?" she asked. "Now, do you think that it might cut your fun short if I just told all of that to Hermione? She will be on it like a bloodhound and then she will tell me how it works when she is done. Either way, I will know."
Harry grimaced. He didn’t want Hermione to have that much help in the matter. That much information would render his efforts to give Hermione a puzzle, moot.
"Fine," Harry said. It really didn’t matter. The Slytherin would probably find out anyway. "The seals are made of all natural stone and gems with certain magical potential. They are made of thousands of blocks carved precisely into rune blocks and fitted together so the seam is nearly invisible. The runic combination enacts a transportation spell between the crests." Harry smiled. It actually felt good to tell another about what he had done. "The key is in the differences between the crests. That is how you make it work, by knowing the differences…the correct differences."
"Brilliant," she proclaimed. "How did you find time for this?"
The first thing to spring to mind was Harry’s start of the previous summer and the flesh searing ritual that Voldemort mistakenly put him through. Meant to increase the Dark Lord’s power, he only succeeded in unlocking all of Harry’s and damaging the natural containment for his magical power. This caused the snowball chain of events that forced him to spend half his summer sequestered in the castle with nothing better to do than study, train and contemplate ways to make that easier. The transport system had been born out of laziness more than ingenuity. All this went through Harry’s mind and was promptly dismissed as the stated reason for his available time to modify the castle. Instead, he went for a more generic answer that the ‘Junior Detective’ couldn’t read anything classified into. As his experience with the Wizengamot had been outlined in effect, if not detail, in the press, he was safe in using those circumstances to explain away his unusual summer accommodations.
"Where I was living was no longer suitable," Harry told her after his contemplative pause without lying, "so the Headmaster allowed me to stay in the castle for half of the summer until I could join my friends. I found the books on runes and stones and just mashed the things together so I could come down here without using the horrid normal entrance."
"I may be a year behind you," Phillipa scoffed, "but I’m pretty sure that you are not in Ancient Runes. It seems invention is a bit more than mashing things together. Care to explain?"
Harry laughed. "This is definitely a case where being able to read the language of Runes is not necessary. The only thing necessary is to find the right instructions or five and combine them in the right manner to get the correct result. A whole dictionary of runes isn’t necessary."
"I don’t know about that," she said with skepticism. "I’m in the class and I don’t think that I’m anywhere close to even thinking about something like that."
"Ah, yes," Harry smiled, "But you have not read the necessary primer. I found a book that detailed the lost art of runic construction. When you have the right tools, the task doesn’t even need a master to complete."
"Right," she drawled.
"Back to the question, before we got distracted," he said. "What was the warning?"
She shook her head clear. "Oh…yeah. Draco wants to get revenge on Ginny for getting him punished. I wouldn’t put it past him to hurt or kill her. He’s a right sociopath, that one," she said. "I overheard him ranting about how it was all her fault and she would pay for his loss of power in Slytherin."
"Hmm," Harry contemplated, tapping his chin with his index finger. "Thank you for warning me. Ginny and I will take precautions."
"Good," she said. "Now, get me out of here."
"Ginny," Harry said in a private alcove, "We have a problem."