Harry Potter and the Lighting Lord

Chapter 21

Several days later, Harry and Daphne found themselves back at Hogwarts for the second term of school. The attacks on students thankfully seemed to have stopped after Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been petrified. Things were moving steadily. Harry and Daphne spent the majority of their time studying in the Room of Requirement as usual. Harry was really curious to know how the room worked. He first thought it was highly advanced illusionary magic, but then everything seemed so real, he really couldn't understand how the room came to be. He spent several hours duelling against what the room could throw at him as well. The duelling dummies provided by the room weren't anything like the ones he had back home; these were insanely deadly, using a wide range of spells. The castle had observed many of the duelling characteristics of various people over the centuries and used them against Harry.

Every duellist had a different technique. Wizards and Witches like Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, and James Potter used Battle Transfiguration for their duels; others like Filius Flitwick, Lily Potter and Alastor Moody used a wide range of Charms, curses and jinxes while others like Voldemort and Bellatrix Lesterange used their wide arsenal of dark magic spells. Harry had decided that he didn't like being dependent on any one area alone; that provided a weakness for the opponent to exploit; Battle Transfiguration, for example, was difficult to practice while in an enclosed space. So he combined everything to achieve his goals. He used charms on his transfigured objects while attacking the frustrated opponent with deadly curses and jinxes. He didn't really like many of the dark spells he had found; they needed a lot of negative emotion to power them and he wasn't keen on becoming another Voldemort. But he had taken to practicing the Fiendfyre curse, in small doses of course.

As February rolled in, people were getting much happier because of the lack of attacks. Harry was happy for that, but the cynical part of him thought that something drastic was going to happen soon. He was still working on Voldemort's memories, but he didn't have much luck. Instead, he gained more knowledge about spells and duelling, and while he was happy for that, it didn't help his current predicament.

In the first week of February, Harry was just returning from Quidditch practice when he heard a distant echo of the voice again; the same cold, deadly voice. "Kill . . . Rip . . . so hungry . . . Kill this time . . ."

Harry's eyes went wide. He immediately put his ear to the wall and began following the voice. He ran as the voice dimmed; this was probably the only chance he was ever going to get of finding out what the monster in the chamber really was. He quickly turned a corner and gasped when he saw Penelope Clearwater and Hermione Granger both petrified. He decided that this was too easy a target for Dumbledore to frame him. Just as he was about to leave, Peeves decided to enter the scene.

"What are up to Potty? Po - " The poltergeist stopped in mid-sentence and before Harry could do anything, the ghost shouted at the top of his voice "MURDER! MURDER IN THE HALLWAYS! ATTACK! ATAAAACKKK! NO ONE IS SAFE IN THE CASTLE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

Everything happened so fast that Harry didn't have time to react. Doors opened immediately and people rushed out and spotted Harry standing next to the petrified bodies of Hermione Granger and Penelope Clearwater.

"Aha! Caught in the act! I knew you were the heir of Slytherin! It looks like those rumours of you bring a parselmouth are true after all!" shouted Ron Weasley, pointing his finger at Harry.

"Parselmouth?" whispered others as they all stared at Harry with terrified looks on their faces.

Professor McGonagall soon came over to them "What's going on here?" she shouted. "What - " She stopped cold as she looked at the petrified students. Her eyes landed on Harry and he could see that she had a cold look on her face. "Potter, come with me" she said coldly.