Harry potter : Forgotten Lord

From his spot he watched silently as the headmaster carried on inspecting the door, obviously checking the runes that he himself had been examining minutes earlier. Once again confirming his belief, that there was some type of detection ward on the door.

This had immediately alerted the headmaster to someone attempting to open the door.

...

He then spent the rest of the night checking books on wards; seeing if he could recognize the ward guarding the door, based on the runes he saw, and then trying to find a means to bypass them. The thrill of that evening had awoken his lion's courage and his desire for adventure. But he was a raven, which meant he would plan his next move first, with logical steps, slowly working towards his goal.

Besides researching wards and runes, he had started researching how to brew the Draught of Living Death. Mainly due to the potions professor having said in one of his classical rant like lectures, that it could put an individual into a death-like sleep, hence the name, giving him a possible means to get passed the three headed dog. Of course, he would still have to brew it, since he could hardly ask for help.

The rest of his time was spent focusing on his studies; he moved his attention away from charms since he was on target for mastering his goal, instead deciding to focus on some of his weaker subjects. Fortunately having Penny study with him regularly helped speed up the process, whilst providing extra bits of information only gained from practical experience.

During one of his study sessions with Penny; Daphne and her friends had sat with them, but were far less talkative than normal, clearly due to Penny's presence. Harry had explained how younger year Ravens often had a mentor or a monitor to help them out during their first year or two to ensure they developed the correct 'Ravenclaw' work ethic, and to help encourage inner house unity between the years, which seemed to make them relax a bit.

Then he explained how Penny was using him as a shield to help keep away Percy, since he disliked Harry for some reason, while giving the group his best innocent expression. It had been rather funny watching Penny's face turned bright red in embarrassment, and tried to deny the comment, which had only resulted in low small smiles and bit of snickering from around the table, at the thought of a first year protecting a fifth year, and helped break the tension in the air.

Penny then went on and stated, "Percy is all well and good, but he just does not understand the need for some peace and quiet, and doesn't know when to take the hint to leave a girl alone." This caused another round of smiles; however Harry was wondering why Penny was willing to be so helpful.

Of course, he knew Penny had been charged with being his 'mentor' for a year, and had some responsibilities for him. From everything he knew of Penny, he knew she was helpful, since she helped other younger years and was generally considered a kind-hearted girl by the student body as whole. But it still didn't explain why she seemed bit over eager to stay in his good graces. Maybe because she considered him a brother or something along those lines, he hoped that was the case.

However, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was another motive behind her eagerness to help him out. It reminded him a bit too much of his uncle bragging about buttering up his clients, before saying the price of the sale, or when his uncle would invite around his bosses for dinner, and 'kiss' ass to get his promotion or a sale.

After all, why hang out with them besides to piss Percy off? Surely she had other friends in the upper years she could use as buffer just as effectively? All these things had him thinking over Penny's motive, but at the moment he felt like he was missing an angle.

But as long as it was doing him no harm, he was fine with it. Since he was benefiting from her knowledge and insight gained from having 5 years of education in wielding magic, so it was a win-win situation for both of them.

After all, most friendships had a reason behind them, just what was the reasoning behind Penny's actions? He wanted to know just for his own peace of mind. Daphne's and Tracy's friendship, or at least partnership was for better grades, so what was Penny's?

Maybe it was just fear of being betrayed or hurt by someone he liked that was bugging him? Unfortunately he couldn't forget from history, how many times a dagger in the back from a 'friend' had ended reigns and lives.

His parents were an example of how a betrayal from a friend could be devastating, and then there was also Caesar's own friend Brutus who betrayed him, resulting in his death and a start of a civil war. He wouldn't allow it to happen to him, he wouldn't allow himself to be stabbed in the back.

Turning his thoughts to more positive ones, rather than dwelling on the negatives ones, he thought about Padma, and her budding friendship with Tracy. She was a lot like Parvati; a very talkative person as soon as you got passed her shell, and if he was any judge, Tracey gave Padma the female friend she needed. He didn't pay much attention to their gossiping, though he noticed that Daphne was happy that they were hitting it off well, now that ice had been broken enough between the pair.

It was obvious that Daphne needed a break, from the constant gossip Tracy could produce. Daphne and his friendship was developing well, as he was more and more frequently able to bring out small smiles from behind her mask. He in addition had made the connection that Daphne had some training in Occlumency, since he was rarely able to feel her emotions, like he did with Tracy.

Whenever he picked up Tracy's emotions, they were lively and energized; to be honest it was refreshing. He was half tempted to ask Daphne about it, but thought better of it, and decided to wait until they got a chance to talk alone, outside school, rather than risk being overheard by the many listening ears in the school.

The four of them had developed their own study group of sorts. Blaise would tag along, but didn't speak much. He gave off the impression of uncaring, and of being distant, similar to Daphne in some ways. But when Harry caught his eyes, he knew it was an act, aimed to disarm people around him.

It was clear Blaise disliked him for some reason, but at least he acted civil around Harry unlike some people, such as Ron and Draco. A couple times during these study group sessions, he saw the Lioness Hermione eyeing them warily from across the room from her own desk.

The girl was obviously lonely; he didn't have to be empathic to pick it up. It was clear from her body language that she wanted company but couldn't bring herself to join them out of pride. Simply put, the girl was being a typical Lion in her attitude towards them, probably just because of the snakes being there, and buying into that whole crap about the whole Slytherin being evil that Ron and Neville blurted out rather frequently.

Just shaking his head, he really hoped the girl would open her eyes and realize the reason she was alone was because she had driven away all the other Lions by flaunting her knowledge in front of them and making them feel stupid. No one likes feeling inferior.

Leaving the girl, He wondered when she would finally work up the courage to talk to them that her own house was famed for.

...

Halloween

Harry had been feeling down all week. This was the week that the dark lord had finally been defeated, but to him the celebrations felt wrong; his parents had been murdered 10 years ago by the dark lord's followers. People expected him to carry on like nothing happened. Out of his 'friends' he had been the only one who lost family in the war. The rest had just heard stories from their families.

Eventually Padma pieced together the clues, and realized the reason why he was down, when she had caught him reading his mother's letter, and had warned the others to keep their distance. He knew in time the feelings of loss would lessen, but it still didn't make it easier with everyone celebrating. He had sent Padma down to the feast, saying that he would prefer to be alone, with some space to get his feelings in check.

One of the things that annoyed Harry a bit was Neville; the boy just didn't seem affected that the magical world was celebrating the day his parents were murdered. True, he supposed Neville had had a long time to make his peace with the whole ordeal, and had grown up with the knowledge. The only reason he was taking it so hard was because he only found out this summer, hence the emotions were still raw.

Leaving the peace and quiet of the library and heading to his dorm, he had finally found a means to get past the warded door. All Harry needed to do was place a series of counter runes at the door and charge them; they would interfere with the ward for a length of time which depended on the power of the original charge on the door.

He still had to get passed the dog and the next set of protections. However the sound of a couple of girls screaming brought his attention back to reality. He rushed toward the sound. Maybe it wasn't his smartest moment. After all, screaming is never a good thing.

His wand jumped into his hand as he ran. Rushing down the corridor and almost colliding with Neville and Ron. Before either of them could say anything another series screams sent the trio into a head long sprint to the source.

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