Harry Riddle || Harry potter

Chapter 20: Orpheus and His Lyre

Harry landed on the hard wooden floor with a muffled thump. "I hate that ladder," he ground out.

The Easter Holidays had arrived, it being Good Friday. Harry had originally been planning to stay at Hogwarts, but after realizing Weasley and Finnigan and Thomas would all be there, and that Hermione and Draco and Neville all wouldn't, he'd decided that going home might be best. He'd already finished his enormous amount of homework and had moved on to looking into ways of getting past three-headed dogs, something he would've preferred to do at Hogwarts, what with the library being much bigger.

Harry slowly pulled himself up off the floor and glared at the ladder. The bookshelves in the Riddle Manor library were as tall as the room's ceiling, and the ladder that you had to climb to get to the books on the top shelves was charmed to move automatically - and sometimes unexpectedly. Harry had gotten thrown off more times than he would like to count, and he wondered once again who had decided that having a hostile ladder would be conducive to retrieving books.

With a final angry noise issuing from his throat, he moved to a chair in the middle of the room and roughly slammed the book down on the low table in front of it. "Three headed dogs," Harry muttered while flipping through the thick book, only to sneeze at the dust that fluttered from the long-untouched pages.

"Harry!"

Harry snapped the book shut and looked to the doorway, where his father was leaning against the threshold, an annoyed scowl on his face.

"Yes, Dad?" he asked innocently.

"That snake of yours is fighting with Nagini," Tom snapped.

"Montague?" Harry wrinkled his nose and shrugged. "Nagini will kick his nonexistent ass."

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. "Just thought I'd let you know so you won't be wondering what happened if you find your snake dead in the morning."

"Montague has a rather large ego. He likes to pick fights. Nagini knows not to hurt him." He paused and added, "Too badly."

Tom raised an eyebrow at him. After standing there watching him for several seconds, he turned on his heels and was about to leave, but Harry's voice stopped him. "Dad, what's a three headed dog called?"

"A Cerberus," he replied. He slowly turned around. "Why do you need to know about that?"

"Care of Magical Creatures class," Harry replied without missing a beat. "That great oaf, Hagrid, is obsessed with huge monsters. He's going to get us all killed one of these days. But I have to write an essay. The hypocrite-I bet he doesn't even know how to spell his own name! Write an essay! Ha!"

Tom looked only vaguely convinced, but after staring at him suspiciously for a few seconds he turned on his heel and stalked away.

As soon as his footsteps faded, Harry started flipping through pages at a frantic pace. "Cerberus, Cerberus," he muttered, only to stop upon finding a page that was completely covered by an intricate drawing of a three headed dog. "Found it!"

The Cerberus

The Cerberus is a giant, three headed dog-

Harry nodded to himself impatiently. He'd already known that, it was fairly obvious from the drawing. He looked to the next paragraph.

-A fully grown Cerberus weighs almost 3,000 pounds and can be almost 10 feet tall. They require an enormous amount of care-

Harry shook his head. He didn't give a damn about how to care for one, that was Hagrid's job. He skimmed further down the page.

-A Cerberus is almost impossible to defeat by means of brute strength. It would take an amazing amount of poison to kill them, so they are relatively immune from being poisoned-

Harry sighed. It looked as if he wouldn't be getting past the bloody dog anytime soon. He was about to shut the book, but two small paragraphs at the bottom of the page caught his eye.

-In ancient Grecian-muggle myth, the Cerberus was the guardian of the gates of Hades (Hell). A man named Orpheus, the son of a nymph and a king, managed to lull the Cerberus to sleep by playing music for it on his lyre.

While that story is purely fiction, it is true that a weakness of the Cerberus is music. It tends to make them fall into a deep, deep sleep that can only be broken when the music stops.

Harry dropped the book in shock and promptly did an embarrassing victory dance around the library.

"What the-what are you doing?"

Harry stopped abruptly mid-twirl and cleared his throat. "Nothing, Dad."