Disclaimer:

Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K Rowling. I own nothing but the original characters I make.

"Dialogue"

'Thoughts'

-Author notes-

Chapter 194: The Ritual Part 1

Two more months passed after that.

Marcus Flint, Lucian Bole, and Adrian Pucey returned to school after spending almost a week in Saint Mungo's.

Marcus and Lucian did not have visible scarring from their injuries, but Adrian had some visible burns on his chest and neck area. Burns inflicted with cursed fire were not easy to remove.

As for Montage and Derrick… they never came back.

Many stories started to circulate about them. About Montage having lost his arm and Derrick having been permanently castrated with a dark curse.

There were also many rumors about the person or persons responsible for the attack since no one had been officially punished for it.

A few started to mention Harry since he was one of the students being interrogated, along with some other seniors. But those rumors quickly faded and were replaced by more fantastical ones like… Neville Longbottom awakened his full power and took revenge against the Slytherins. Or the ghost of the founder, Salazar Slytherin himself came back from the grave to put some order in his house.

Only a few knew the truth, but the parents of the five affected students were desperately looking for the real responsible one. And they wanted blood.

Two weeks before Christmas break

Space distorted around inside the main chamber and two figures appeared.

"Why did you have to use apparition?" Daphne felt a bit disoriented.

"The entrance to this place has been closed. This is the fastest way to access it," Harry answered.

Daphne got her bearings back and looked around.

She then screamed.

"Mmm… maybe I should have warned you." Harry realized his mistake.

"This is the Chamber of Secrets!" Daphne screamed again. Terrible memories of their last year resurfaced in her mind. "Ahhh!"

"There are no more snakes here and the Professors even fixed the floor and walls. It's quite safe," Harry assured her and hoped she would stop screaming so loudly.

It took her a minute, but she finally calmed down a bit.

"When you asked me if I was free on the weekend, I thought we were going to Hogsmeade…" Daphne muttered.

"Yes, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."

"I even put on a new dress… and now I am in a humid chamber that smells of… death…" She added.

"Again… very sorry. But hey, you look very stunning." He gave her a thumbs-up.

"R-Really?" That appeared to cheer her up a bit.

"Yes, but now we must get down to business… I don't know how long this will take." Harry started to walk to the end of the chamber where his young self had once battled the basilisk with the sword of Gryffindor.

"You still haven't told me why we are here." Daphne hurried to follow him.

"I have been making the preparations since we came back to Hogwarts, but for this last part, I need a bit of help." He stopped in front of the large circle that had been drawn onto the stone floor.

Daphne saw it and got goosebumps.

"You are not going to summon another one of those things… right?"

"Huh?... oh, right. I understand the confusion… no, this has nothing to do with demons. This is a circle for a different kind of ritual," Harry pointed out.

"A ritual?" She knew a bit about rituals. But only what she had read in books.

"I thought no one used them anymore. Since the Ministry declared them all illegal."

Harry opened a leather bag and started taking out several boxes, glass vials, and other containers before placing them carefully on the ground, close to the circle.

"They are... technically not legal, that's true."

"But you are doing one anyway… why am I not surprised?"

She then seemed to recall something else.

"Wait, aren't rituals like… extremely dangerous? And don't you need to make sacrifices for them to work? That's why they were made illegal!"

"Well… I suppose they are. But everything has a price. All the magic we use comes with some price, and the more powerful ones have bigger prices."

"That's very vague…" Daphne frowned. She felt like Harry was doing it on purpose to avoid telling her more.

"I wanna know what this ritual does and… what the price is."

"Remember what you told me on our first week? You said that your family owes me a great favor and that you would do anything to repay it."

Her frown deepened.

"I don't think those were my exact words… but yes. Are you going to ask me to help you and not ask questions?"

Harry shrugged. "To sum things up… I'm going to perform two rituals, one to enhance my muscles and bones. The other one is to enhance my reflexes and perception. The prices are not as harmful as you think."

Daphne knew him enough to know that this was going to be as much detail as she was going to get.

"Fine… what do I need to do?"

Harry smiled. "Thanks."

He went over the materials, naming each one of them and making sure she remembered them.

"These are some of the ingredients my father acquired for you," she recalled some of the listed items.

"Yes. Now what you need to do is to place a specific ingredient in one of those small circles surrounding the big one. You will place them exactly when I tell you… timing is very important." This is why he didn't ask Dobby to assist him. He loved the elf but would not trust him with a task this precise.

Dumbledore would have been a better choice than Daphne, but the old man would not have helped him. He understood rituals much better than her. And would be able to guess that Harry was going to have to sacrifice many years of his life to successfully perform these rituals.

"Now, we can begin." Harry took off his robes.

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