Harry Potter: Don't touch

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***

Potter had already been sitting in the Room-at-Will for about an hour after bedtime, reading various Runes books. Harry was distracted from studying the article "Vigour - A Magical Explanation" in one of the informative papers by Justin suddenly appearing.

- There you are! Come into the living room, everyone's looking for you!

- What? They're looking for me? Why? - Potter wondered.The thought of the whole school freaking out because he'd decided to stay in the Room-A-Wish Room after lights out made him sick to his stomach.

- You're not going to believe this! Sirius Black came in. Went through all the defences and ended up in the Gryffindor common room.

- What? But I'm in Hufflepuff!

- You're not going to believe this, I know. I don't think he does, or he's not really after you. I don't know, but we'll talk about it later. I should take you to Dumbledore, you can ask him.

Harry and Justin left the Room-as-Wish and ran to the Headmaster's office. Waiting for them at the entrance was Professor McGonagall.

- Potter! Praise the heavens! - She exclaimed. - Where have you been? Don't you know it's forbidden to leave the drawing room after bedtime?

- He wasn't! - Justin grinned. - You're not breaking the rule about leaving the drawing room late if you don't go in there!

McGonagall's face darkened.

- March to the Great Hall, Mr Finch-Fletchley. And you, Potter, to the Headmaster's office.

Harry staggered into the study, thinking of a reason why he might have been out of the drawing room after lights out. Nothing good came to mind, just silly excuses like 'Went to the loo, forgot what was in the room', 'Forgot the sound password to the entrance' and 'Got locked out, couldn't get out.' None of these fit as a working reason. Guess I'd have to tell the truth.

When Potter entered the study, Albus Dumbledore was sitting in his chair writing a letter at a rapid pace. Seeing Harry, the Headmaster put aside his quill and asked with fatigue in his mind:

- 'So, where have you been since lights out?

- Sorry, Headmaster. I was reading in one of the Hogwarts study rooms," Potter said half-truthfully.

- So much reading that you didn't notice it was nightfall?

- I thought it would be all right if I went to bed an hour late, sir.

The Headmaster was silent for a while.

- 'Tell me, Harry, I wouldn't be wrong in saying that you are well aware of Sirius Black's motivations, would I?

- No, you wouldn't be wrong, sir.

- That's what I thought. With so many people close to you around who know a secret, it's very unlikely that the secret will pass your ears. Nymphadora should be ashamed, she shouldn't have told you.

It wasn't a question, but a statement, so Potter was in no hurry to refute the Headmaster's words with the fact that it was Moody, not Tonks, who had informed him about Black.

- I'm in a quandary, Harry. Why did Sirius go to the Gryffindor drawing room in the first place?

- Maybe he didn't know I was at Hufflepuff," Harry voiced Justin's suggestion. - He thought I was in Gryffindor like my parents, so he went into a random third year bedroom.... He was in the third year dormitory, wasn't he, sir?

- Right, he was discovered when he tore Ron Weasley's veil. But I find it strange that such a carefully planned infiltration was thwarted by sheer stupidity. And it couldn't have been unplanned - I still don't understand how Black got past the Dementors or how he knew the password to the drawing room.

- Well, he's a criminal. He couldn't just walk into the Tonks' and ask what department I'm in. Couldn't he, sir?

- But he did find out about the Dementors somehow.....

The Headmaster was interrupted when Minerva McGonagall entered the office.

- Albus, all the children are in the Great Hall. Apart from Potter, there are no absentees.

- Very good, Minerva, wait for me there, I'll be there shortly.

The Dean of Gryffindor nodded and walked out.

- Tell me, Harry, have you noticed anything strange lately? - Dumbledore turned to him. - Have there been any strange things that have been happening to you.

- Dementor attacks count, sir? - Harry recalled an incident that had happened at the end of the Slytherin match.

Right before Cedric caught the snitch, a slew of Dementors had somehow infiltrated the stadium. Then Harry flew away from the playing field in terror, but Draco Malfoy was less fortunate - he fell onto the pitch and his broom broke, flying off into the Rattlesnake Willow.

- No, I looked into the incident, the Dementors were acting on their own initiative, there was no way their act could have been instigated by Black. Anything else?

Harry thought for a moment. Riddle's strange behaviour when he'd heard about Sirius Black's possible invasion, the huge dog chasing Potter, the diary's confusion. Which of these count as weird?

- At the match, I saw a huge dog staring at me.... Like it was human. I thought it was just watching the match, but then I realised it was only watching my movements. That really freaked me out. But here's the other weird thing, I remembered her, at the Tonks' house, when I.... Mm-hmm.

When I was running away from Moody with Justin?

- I was jogging, and I saw a dog just like that. I didn't get a good look at it, but it had the same look. I think it might have been the same animal.

- Interesting," Dumbledore pondered. - Did you notice if that dog looked like a human?

- I don't think so. Do you think this dog could have been an animagus? And Sirius.

- Sirius Black is not an animagus," Dumbledore beat Potter's question. - Even if he decided not to register with the Ministry, he wouldn't have enough time. First he studied at Hogwarts, then he spied for Voldemort, and then he was in prison. It took at least a year of hard work to learn how to turn into a certain animal at will. Black didn't have that. It could have been Black's accomplice, but then the events finally lose any sense. Why didn't he attack? Harry, are you sure it was the same dog?

- Well... - Harry thought for a moment and mentally compared the dogs to each other. - Yes. It was definitely the same dog. I've never seen that look anywhere else.

- Unfortunately, I can't put an animagic barrier around the school, because that would make it very difficult for Professor McGonagall. But I will put the best magical defence currently available outside your bedroom. Please try not to leave your bed after bedtime, your safety is paramount.

Dumbledore got up from his chair and walked over to the window:

- I have no idea what Sirius Black is up to, and I don't like it. Probably should have closed the school as early as last year....

* * *

There was a feeling that after Sirius Black had infiltrated the school, the people around Potter had become dumbed down and started doing strange things. Teachers were coming up with all sorts of reasons to escort Potter from room to room. The reasons were so ridiculous that Harry felt like he was in some sort of madhouse.

"Oops, I forgot my wand in the transfiguration room, Mr Potter, is this the right place for you by any chance? I'll show you out."

"Mr Potter, I need to talk to you about something, but we can only talk in the Astronomy room, come on, I'll walk you out."

Among all the professors only two teachers with different approaches to the problem at hand stood out, Flitwick and Snape. Professor Flitwick didn't even try to pretend, he was just straightforward about the fact that the Headmaster had asked him to accompany Harry to the rooms where the lesson would be held. Snape, on the other hand, acted quite differently: he would take Potter by the arm with visible disgust and force him to the classroom, his gaze saying, "If you resist and Sirius Black doesn't kill you, then I'll kill you." Sometimes Hagrid would join these escorts, accompanied by a rooster. From the outside it looked very unusual: Harry, the Professor, Hagrid and the roosters walking around Hogwarts.

Strange things began to happen to Potter's friends as well. Two days after Black's attack, Ron Weasley's rat died, and he told Harry that Hermione had sicced her "ginger tiger" on Corosta, which turned out to be a nice cat. Justin remembered his aristocratic origins and told Potter how cool it would be to introduce lessons in fencing, dancing and etiquette. Harry tried to refute this nonsense: no matter how good you were with a sword, it wouldn't save you from a Stupefy in the face, dancing was useless, if Hogwarts had dancing lessons, Potter would have skipped them without a doubt, and etiquette was a bullshit argument," Harry used his strongest argument. But Justin was like a pea against a wall.

Colin Creevey, who had missed most of last year because of the basilisk attack, was trying to rouse the people to battle against Peeves. The poltergeist had chosen Pansy Parkinson as his victim - she had carelessly called him an ugly clown with a nasty sense of humour. Peeves prepared traps for her in the Wish Room, and then set them outside the snake faculty lounge. Of course, it wasn't just Pansy who got caught in them, but also many other innocent students, which included Creevey. Colin had asked Potter to fight back against the ghost, but Harry had refused to be persuaded, citing his busyness as a reason why an open confrontation with the ghost was not in his area of interest. Peeves was the one person Potter clearly did not want to see as an enemy.

Only two people were not involved in the general lunacy: Ginny Weasley and Tom Riddle. The former had led a rather secluded life since arriving at Hogwarts: she hardly ever appeared in the common living room, she always sat away from everyone at the table, she kept to herself, but she had an extensive social circle.

Potter was a part of it; they often exchanged a few words, and lately Ginny had even been relatively calm in his presence, at least nothing was falling out of her hands. Polumna Lovegood was undergoing a major transformation in the presence of her best friend, the Weasleys, becoming outgoing, talkative, and cheerful. Fred and George Weasley - of all her brothers, the younger Weasley was only good with these two funny men. Harry had noticed back in second year that Percy and Ginny acted as if they were strangers to each other, and the constant bickering between Ron and his sister gave a clear indication of their relationship. But with Fred and George, Ginny, despite her not-so-open nature, has quietly kept on the same page. The twins, to the horror of the Puffenduys, often visited the Badger Faculty Drawing Room and played pranks to amuse the younger Weasley. And Colin Creevey - Ginny's desk mate had been on good terms with him since her last year. Harry supposed it might have been due to their shared and rather inadequate obsession with him and later Lockhart, but the fact remained that Weasley had become very good friends with Colin Creevey, and she had been the very first to visit the boy after he had been cured of his daze.

After a little help with some of the Hufflepuff features, Harry didn't cross paths with Ginny that often, but after Weasley joined the Quidditch team in the Hunter's seat, Potter found himself talking to the new Hufflepuff student more and more often. And after she had shipped eight quaffles into the Slytherin team's rings in her debut match, the rest of the squad had taken an interest in Ginny.

But despite the good relationship, Harry spent far more time socialising with Tom Riddle. The man imprisoned in the diary possessed a great deal of incredible knowledge, and Potter sometimes wondered how a mere Hogwarts student could possess such information while studying. Of course, it was much harder to communicate with the diary than with a human - although Tom could hear the interlocutor perfectly well, he couldn't speak, and Harry had to read the answer to his statements. And that made the process of communication rather inconvenient, Potter couldn't do his own things, like studying some spells and talking to the diary at the same time. He had to be distracted to read one or another of Riddle's remarks.

However, the process of communication itself was worth it. Tom Riddle, according to him, was a diligent student and knew a lot of quite strong and not the most light spells, which he kindly agreed to share with Potter. Harry immediately agreed. Alastor Moody had told him that one could use any means to crush an enemy, so the term 'not the brightest' didn't scare Potter. There was a bit of a problem with the training, though; Riddle insisted on visiting the Room-at-Will at night, and Harry himself refused, pointing to Dumbledore's request. However, Tom was quickly able to convince Potter that the Headmaster was simply mistaken or dramatising: Black wouldn't find him in the room, and if Harry stayed out of the bedroom once or twice after bedtime, it wouldn't be a big deal.

* * *

"I'm beginning to doubt this is a good idea after all," Potter wrote in Riddle's diary.

It was late at night, and on his way to the Wishing Room, Harry had almost been caught by Snape patrolling the corridors. Now he hid in one of the empty classrooms and waited for the sounds outside to recede into the distance.

Don't worry. Nothing bad will happen, I can assure you of that," Riddle wrote.

Harry had to use Lumos to read Tom's reply, as the letters on the diary were barely visible in the darkness.

- Oh well," Potter sighed and walked out of the classroom.

This time the Room-as-Wish was transformed into a brightly lit room with many targets and mannequins.

Harry looked around the room, satisfied, and asked:

- Well? Shall we get started?

Let's.

Let's start with an easy one. The spell is Seco. It's a cutting spell. The movement of the wand must be the same as the cut you want to make.

- What's the point of it? There's a perfectly good analogue, Diffindo.

Diffindo is for dumb freshers. It's a very weak spell. Seco, on the other hand, cuts the way the caster wants it to. It can be used to cut bread as well as a person.

Potter swallowed involuntarily.

"Oh well, it's too late to retreat anyway," he decided, waved his wand and exclaimed:

- Seko!

There was no flash from the spell. A small hole in space in the shape of a straight line flew off the wand and into the wall.

Did you cut it? - Riddle asked.

- No, I missed, I'll try again. Seco!

Potter was more accurate this time. The black dummy with the wand in his hand fell in two. Five more swings of the wand, and five targets turned into ten half targets.

- That's a cool spell! - Potter cheered. - It always works, it's very easy to control, and it's also incredibly powerful!

There you go! I told you. Dark spells are the strongest, and if I were you, I'd only learn them, and maybe a couple of light ones that don't have a dark analogue.

Without giving that line a second thought, Tom continued:

Try this one. It's an ancient Roman spell called Kighn Sept. I learnt about it when I was already imprisoned in this diary. It's very difficult to use. You have to pronounce it correctly and feel the bone levers and cover a certain area with them. It's necromancy.

- Necromancy? And you think I could use a spell like that?

I think so, it doesn't require the special power of necromancy. Just the right application.

Harry hesitated, Riddle was clearly not telling him something. As far as Potter knew about necromancy, and he knew about it only from Tom's stories, every spell required the so-called 'necromancer's power', that is, a certain experience in sacrifices and other, not the most humane, actions.

Without much hope, Harry aimed at the mannequin and exclaimed:

- Keehn Sapt!

Nothing happened.

- What's next? - He asked the diary.

You cast the wrong spell. It should be Kihn Sapt, you forgot the sound in the middle of the first word. Pronunciation is very important here.

No matter how hard Harry tried, he couldn't spell it. The Wishing Room had no information on this spell, and in all his time, this was the first problem the wonder room couldn't help him figure out. Relying on Tom's words alone, Potter finally made progress after half an hour - he began to feel an incomprehensible force from underneath the mannequin. Riddle said it was meant to be, and soon he would be able to control that force.

- Let's have one last thing, it's getting late, I might not get enough sleep for the first two stories of magic.

Alright, let's do the last one then," Riddle agreed.

Quite simple, needed more for intimidation than for any other more useful purpose..... Morsmordre.