Harry potter and the breeding darkness

Chapter 17

Harry quickly went through his Prefect rounds before slipping out the Honeydukes tunnel and portkeying back to the manor just before 10:30 pm. He went into the time-turner room, went back 24-hours, and raced up the stairs to the study where he knew Tom would be waiting for him.

"Tom, you will not believe what happened today!" Harry exclaimed as he jogged in through the door and shut it behind him.

Tom looked up from his desk with hesitant curiosity in his eyes. "Oh, what happened?"

Harry collapsed heavily onto the lounge then Tom turned in his chair to face Harry and more fully give him his attention. Harry went on to tell him about receiving the scroll summoning him to Dumbledore's office later that evening before on to describe Dumbledore taking him into the pensieve to show Harry the fake prophecy and the mountain of ridiculous crap he had then spouted about the power of 'love'.

"So he's going to be giving you lessons on how to defeat me?" Tom said with an obvious air of amusement to his voice.

Harry snorted. "Yeah, but somehow I don't imagine he's going to be teaching me dueling."

"I wonder what he's going to teach you..." Tom mused quietly.

"Seeing as how he's got less than a year to live and he's supposedly going to giving me the 'information I need to defeat you', I bet it's going to be whatever he knows about your horcruxes," Harry said.

"Yes, I suspect you are right."

"Hey, you said that one of your horcruxes is in the Room of Requirement, right? Something of Ravenclaw?"

"Ravenclaw's Diadem, yes."

"I think I should retrieve it. I don't feel good knowing it's so close to Dumbledore."

Tom nodded his head, looking thoughtful. "Yes, that's probably best."

"I was planning to go down to the Chamber Saturday to get that book. After that, I can head into the Room of Requirement. Bring both of them that night. I can even use my student time-turner so that my Gryffindor 'friends' don't even notice I'm gone."

"Sounds like a valid plan."

Tom went on to describe exactly how Harry would find the Diadem as well as a refresher on where to look for the book that would detail the stealth parsel spell that would allow Harry to 'phase'.

Finally, the two decided to call it a night and headed to bed.

The next day at the manor passed too quickly for Harry's tastes. He had quickly come to realize he distinctly preferred his days at the manor to his days back at Hogwarts. It was Friday again and that night was an advanced training session. Snape was in attendance, which Harry was almost surprised by, but he figured that he had probably managed to slip out of the castle unnoticed while he was in his meeting with Dumbledore watching the fake prophecy in the Pensieve.

At just after 10:30 that night, Harry portkeyed back to Hogwarts, then went up to Gryffindor tower, and went to sleep. The next day, shortly after breakfast, Harry gave his Gryffindor 'friends' the slip by ducking into an alcove and pulling his invisibility cloak over his head while they were distracted. He rushed off to Myrtle's bathroom and made his way down into the Chamber for the first time that school year.

The horribly battered remains of the basilisk were still down there and he realized that he probably needed to banish what was left sometime soon. He wouldn't be training down there anymore so he didn't need it. It had been great at taking the brunt of his spells back when he was teaching himself Dark Arts but now he had his training sessions back at the manor and if he ever did need to practice while at Hogwarts, he could just use the Room of Requirement or shrink down one of the dummies that he and Tom had made then bring it down here.