Back to Hogwarts
Clyde, the seventeen-year-old, thin boy, with black hair and blue eyes, ran through the corridors of Hogwarts, lined with series of torches, which hissed to life as soon as he went past. He was accompanied by Blanche, a girl of his class having long blonde hair and a graceful face. Clyde was attracted to her almost all his school life there, but he never admitted it to her or anyone. At this moment, they were bunking class together and hurrying towards the Gryffindor Tower, to their dormitories. They knew that they were not the only ones doing so. The reason was that the great, famous Harry Potter – the ‘boy who lived’ and the one who vanquished the Dark Lord, had returned to Hogwarts after ten years.
Being a muggle-born, Clyde was not initially much familiar to the stories of Harry Potter. But he was introduced to them by Blanche, who was a die-hard fan. Harry Potter was the hero and the first love of Blanche, as she would put it time and again. In the initial school days, she would not stop blabbing about the ‘Chosen One’ and his fight against Voldemort, and it made Clyde inclined to find out more and more about Harry Potter. When he did, he too was fascinated.
Clyde and Blanche together reached the common room panting, and they stood behind the crowd of students that have already gathered there. At the center of the room, standing next to the dark red high-back couch and running his fingers over the silk, stood Harry Potter himself, along with his wife and ex-classmate, Ginny Weasley-Potter. Her brother and Harry's best friend, the redhead Ron Weasley was sitting on that couch, while looking around with a smiling face. Harry Potter was reminiscing about how they all once used to sit in that room and on that couch by the hearth, discussing about school, homework and sometimes about the more serious fights in their lives.
Harry looked much older than depicted by the pictures in his story books. The scar on his forehead had started to fade and his jawline had become harder. Perhaps the life of an Auror has not been much kinder to him. After sharing some of his lesser known life stories there at Hogwarts, Harry stopped and moved on to sit on another couch. The students crowded around him further, asking all sorts of silly and annoying questions. Harry answered them all patiently and even signed autographs for the students that extended notepads and Harry's own moving pictures towards him with pleading eyes. Blanche was one amongst them. After Harry, Ron and Ginny left the common room to go to the quarters allotted to them at Hogwarts, Clyde and Blanche together collapsed on one of the couches.
Blanche held the signed picture tightly to her bosom and kissed it, saying, “It was our last year of school and my dream has been fulfilled! I met Harry Potter! I’m so grateful. I’ve decided. I will become an Auror, so that I get to work with him – under him. I might slip a few vials of love potion into his tea or something!”
“You do realize that he has a wife and a family?” Clyde said, “And besides, you cannot jinx him that easily. He’s the Harry Potter.”
“I wish I could!”
“Say, I did not see Hermione Granger. Where is she?” Clyde asked and another House-mate of his replied, “She has not come. Apparently, she is very busy with her works at the Ministry.”
“They say that she has a good chance of becoming the Minister for Magic in the next election!” added another.
“She can be the minister for magic!” Blanche said looking down at the picture in her hand, “But Harry Potter is Harry Potter.”
Even though nothing has been stated officially and nobody was speaking of it, everybody knew the real reason why Harry Potter had returned to Hogwarts. He came there not as an ex-student, but as an Auror at the special request of Headmistress McGonagall. There have been three strange attacks on the students at Hogwarts and nobody knew yet who the attacker was. One of the students had been cursed so bad, that he had ended up in the hospital wing!
The first attack happened on Halloween night. One of the large knight armors on the corridor wall, came to life and tried to slash at a passing student with its huge sword! He managed to escape the first strike, but was thrown to the ground by a kick from the metal boot of the faceless knight. The armor was under a strong spell and it took two teachers to finally thwart it. The whole event was dismissed as a Halloween prank, but the prankster was never found.
The next event happened a week later in broad daylight on the Hogwarts courtyard! This time, a vine on the grassy ground, turned into a huge snake and went for another second-year student! She screamed as the serpent twisted around her at lightning speed and started to constrict her. She was only saved as Clyde came to her aid in the right time with the spell, ‘Vipera Evanasca’. This time, the teachers and prefects investigated things more seriously, but was still unable to trace who had turned the vine into the snake.
Things were quiet for about a month, after which the most vicious attack happened. One of the prefects of Gryffindor was attacked during his duty, late evening. He was struck by a deadly curse and would have had died, if not for a group of students passing through the hallway at that very moment. They caught a glimpse of the attacker turn and run away down the corridor, but could not identify the person in any way. The unconscious prefect was taken to the hospital and he had been in there since then – still recovering.
There seemed to be no link between these attacks, except that all the students attacked were either muggle-born or half-blood. Many feared that the pure-blood prejudice had returned to Hogwarts after all this time. The matter had been taken up to the headmistress and she immediately took action. As the attacker was not found even after several searches and interrogations, she had decided to involve the Auror office.
“I do not want a repetition of the Chamber of Secrets phase in my school again!” she had said, "Let the professionals handle it!"
So, Harry Potter was there at Hogwarts to investigate the attacks and protect the students from further harm. Ron and Ginny had tagged along with him to get a chance to visit their school again. Now, the three of them walked along the courtyard under the sun, to go to the hospital wing. The lake extended behind them and a cold breeze blew from there towards the castle. Winter was at their doorstep, and perhaps so was evil darkness, once more.
“I was walking down the hallway when I saw a hooded figure standing at the far end.” the Gryffindor prefect with tired bloodshot eyes, said sitting on the bed in the hospital wing, “I thought it was a student, so I shouted out, telling them to not loiter around at that hour. They hissed something inaudible at me – I couldn’t understand!”
Harry listened intently, while Ginny caressed the boy’s shoulder to comfort him. The boy continued, “I stepped ahead towards the student with half a mind to deduct some house points, and they raised their wand at me. I did mine. They shot a spell at me, and I blocked it, warning them that I will deduct points for their behavior. Then the ground rumbled and I lost balance somehow. Darkness emerged out of my opponent’s wand and blacked me out completely. Then I woke up in the hospital wing – after four days!”
“You keep referring to your attacker as ‘they’.” Harry said, “Can you not even tell whether it was a boy or a girl?”
“No! I couldn’t see their face at all. It was absolutely covered and hooded in black. And they didn’t even speak properly.”
“How do you know it was a student, then?” Ron asked from another chair next to the bed.
The prefect answered, “The shoes and robes that they were wearing was a part of our uniform. Only students wear them.”
“And what house uniform was he or she wearing?” Ginny asked.
“Can’t say!” he replied, “Their robe had no house scarf, emblem or color – at least none that I could see during the brief encounter we had.”
Finally, after some more basic questions, Harry, Ron and Ginny thanked him and came out of the hospital.
After an hour, they sat by the fire in the common room of the guest quarters at Hogwarts, with three glasses of butterbeers.
Harry sipped from his glass and said to the other two, “Look! Turning a knight armor and a vine into life, is pretty advanced Charm and Transfiguration skill. But making them attack others, require magic that are prohibited in school. And the curse that the prefect boy suffered was one of the top five curses, using which is a crime, unless provoked with a life and death situation!”
“So?” Ginny asked.
“I have inquired at the ministry. No such foul magic was detected by the Trace at Hogwarts.” Harry said and stood up to walk towards the hearth, “That can only mean two things! Either the attacker is a seventh-year student of age, whereafter the Trace breaks. Or, it was a teacher.”
“A teacher?” Ron almost yelled out, “That’s outrageous! How can you even think that?”
“How can you be so thick, Ron?” Ginny interrupted, “Have you forgotten how foul Umbridge was? And Quirrell and Crouch Junior? They were all teachers, weren’t they?”
“That was before!” Ron said, “Gone are those dark days!”
“Dark days would be gone only when my colleagues and I will be out of a job!” Harry snapped, “That doesn’t feel like anytime soon! A devil is inside the walls of Hogwarts, and I have to find it.”
He placed down the glass and added, “I’ll be going to Professor McGonagall now, to discuss the matter in private. Meanwhile, it’d be better if you two wander the castle a bit. See if you can find anything worth noting. And the students will also feel safe with you around.”
After Harry left the room, Ron asked Ginny, while they too prepared to move, “Tell me, Sister! Who do you think is behind these attacks?”
“I don’t know!” Ginny said with a grieving tone, “Whether it is a student or a teacher, both possibilities are equally messed up. I thought that it would be good to be back at school. But frankly speaking, it is not. All the memories that come back to me are not good, you know. Some are terribly bad!”
“You mean like that poem you wrote to Harry, on Valentine’s Day?” Ron asked with a grin.
