Speak Up - Female Deaf Harry Potter AU

The Chamber of Secrets

That evening the twins and Hari set up a huge prank for the entire Slytherin team. They were just heading back to the common room when Something spoke directly into her mind. It was a voice, a voice to chill the bone marrow, a voice of breathtaking, ice-cold venom.

"Come ... come to me.... I must rip you.... I must tear you .... I must kill you . . . ."

She froze, but it was gone, it must have been her imagination, she couldn't hear after all.... could she?

'Do you hear something?' She asked them, but they didn't.

• • •

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Hari performed the next task in the animagus book. She had left a crystal phial in the moonlight all the night before. She detached the leaf from her mouth, glad to be rid of it, and added it to the phial. She added a silver teaspoon of dew that came from a place that neither sunlight nor human feet had touched for seven days. She had achieved this by collecting it from a plant and locking it in her trunk for seven days. Then she added the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawk Moth, that she had bought in Diagon alley to the crystal phial as well. She locked it in a light and sound proof box, that she carried with her everywhere and waited for the next thunderstorm. Every sundown and sunrise she placed her wand tip over her heart and chanted in her head, 'Amato Animo Animato Animagus'.

It rained for days on end, but no thunderstorm; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid's pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds. Oliver Wood's enthusiasm for regular training sessions, however, was not dampened, which was why Hari was to be found, late one stormy Saturday afternoon on Halloween, returning to dinner, drenched to the skin and splattered with mud..

As Hari squelched along the deserted corridor she came across somebody who looked just as preoccupied as he was. Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Gryffindor Tower, was staring morosely out of a window. Wondering if she could help him, she stepped into his field of vision.
"Hello," said Nearly Headless Nick. He wore a dashing, plumed hat on his long curly hair, and a tunic with a ruff, which concealed the fact that his neck was almost completely severed. 
'Hello, is something wrong?' Hari signed
"Ah," Nearly Headless Nick waved an elegant hand, "a matter of no importance. . . . It's not as though I really wanted to join. . . Thought I'd apply, but apparently I 'don't fulfill requirements''" There was a look of great bitterness on his face. "But you would think, wouldn't you," he erupted suddenly, pulling the letter back out of his pocket, "that getting hit forty-five times in the neck with a blunt axe would qualify you to join the Headless Hunt?"

Hari, who was obviously supposed to agree, nodded.

"I mean, nobody wishes more than I do that it had all been quick and clean, and my head had come off properly, I mean, it would have saved me a great deal of pain and ridicule. However -" Nearly Headless Nick shook his letter open and read furiously: "'We can only accept huntsmen whose heads have parted company with their bodies. You will appreciate that it would be impossible otherwise for members to participate in hunt activities such as Horseback Head-Juggling and Head Polo. It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must inform you that you do not fulfill our requirements. With very best wishes, Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore.'" Fuming, Nearly Headless Nick stuffed the letter away. "Half an inch of skin and sinew holding my neck on, Harry! Most people would think that's good and beheaded, but oh, no, it's not enough for Sir Properly Decapitated-Podmore."

'You have a sword.'

"What do you mean by that?"

'You have a sword, sir. Just use it to cut the rest of the skin.'

Nearly Headless Nick was speechless. "Why have I never thought of that?" He asked after a minute. "I will get one of the other ghosts to do just that for me, thank you Potter."

And then Harry heard it again, this time she was sure.
". . . rip . . . tear . . . kill . . ."
It was the same voice, the same cold, murderous voice she had heard with the twins,

'Do you hear anything?' She asked Nick. 

"No sorry," he seemed confused. "But I must be off, heads to be chopping!" and he sped off through the wall.

". . . kill . . . time to kill . . . must kill"

The voice was growing fainter. Hari was sure it was moving away - moving upward. A mixture of fear and excitement gripped her as she stared at the dark ceiling; how could it be moving upward? Was it a phantom, to whom stone ceilings didn't matter? She began to run, up the stairs, into the entrance hall. She sprinted up the marble staircase to the first floor. Distantly, from the floor above, and growing fainter still, she heard the voice, echoing in her head: ". . . I smell blood. . . . I SMELL BLOOD!"
She ran up the next flight of steps three at a time, not stopping until she turned a corner into the last, deserted passage.

Something was shining on the wall ahead. She approached slowly, squinting through the darkness. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches. 

The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

There was something hanging below it. She edged nearer, Hari slipped in a large puddle of water on the floor, soaking her robes. She picked herself up, and inched toward the message, eyes fixed on a dark shadow beneath it. She realized what it was, and leapt backward with a splash, soaking herself further. Mrs. Norris, Flich's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring, it looked as though she'd been petified.
Hari backed away, not wanting to be found there, she had about a minute until people arived because dinner had ended. She was right next to a bathroom. She decided to hide in it. After entering it she realized it was Moaning Mytle's bathroom. She'd never been there, but had heard of it. She suddenly felt a burst of magic, quickly hiding in a cubical, she saw Ginny coming out from behind the sink. She quickly ran over to Ginny, who was leaning against the wall, looking faint. 

Ginny looked scared when she saw Hari.

'Are you ok?' She signed. Ginny nodded, before leaving the bathroom.

Hari didn't leave, why had she felt a burst of magic?  She looked everywhere, and yet could fine nothing. She had heard something, the only things she had ever heard was Voldemort........ and then she remembered..... she could also hear snakes, though she'd thought she'd been imagining things at the time. She left the bathroom, and didn't mention anything to anyone. 

• • •

That night she again put her wand tip to her heart, and this time she could feel a second heartbeat beating alongside her own.