HP: A Magical Journey Chapter 57

AUTHOR'S NOTE REGARDING THE DIRECTION OF THIS STORY.

Read if you don't like the now dubbed COLORS ARC.

I will be honest, I wasn't expecting that much of a push back against this concept. But after I thought about it I realized that the other stories have betrayed you guys because of something similar happening and then things going south.

To the readers who don't know about me that much, I would like to tell you guys that I am not one of those deep-thinking authors who can churn out storylines so unique that it stands out from the canon plot.

I love the canon timeline. I like to stick to the source material.

You guys saw how I remove Ginny as the Horcrux host, but then a few chapters later, I brought the storyline back to close to the canon by Mrs. Norris' petrification.

The canon plot gives me comfort, which I really like.

The 'cursed vault' wasn't even my idea. I discovered the existence of the cursed vaults in the games from a Discord member/fellow writer.

I admit I adapted it so that Quinn could do his own thing because I remember a reader telling me that Quinn and the story would become a slave to the canon plot at this rate.

This turned out to be good as I was able to spend an entire volume/story-year away from the plot with just a few intersections. Perfect for that point of the story.

Now, we came to this year (Quinn's third year/Canon second year/Chamber of Secrets.)

I introduced the COLORS arc (I am using this now). The response is not so great.

A lot of readers said that this ruined the story for them. That it is cliche, overused, and doesn't make sense.

But, please take a moment as I bring to your attention the key features of this story.

First is that Quinn is a pragmatic character (thank you @passive for using this adjective to describe Quinn). But a lot of you thought that because of the colors I am derailing the character because he is being influenced.

I would like to assure you guys that Quinn won't be going overboard. He would do things that are slightly out of character, but they won't be things like rāpé or torture or any other over-the-top things. The only time you guys might feel a little discomfort from his actions would come in the CLIMAX (a two-chapter simultaneous release.)

You don't have to worry about him going bat shit crazy and switching to the dark side. A lot of you may even like the things he will do under the influence of the colors.

The second feature of this story is the steady progression of Quinn's power level.

This is one of the top-selling points if not the best-selling point of this story. It doesn't help me and the story if I throw it away.

He is not OP from the get-go; he works for the power he gains. I am not looking to kick him up the power chart in one fell swoop by using the colors because in the last two chapters you can see that the colors are improving his magic.

There is a twist during the CLIMAX. But that DOESN'T means that it would be NERF.

I may sometimes like to read stories without ups and downs, adversity, and trials, but I don't enjoy writing them. I showed it last year when he almost froze to death.

So, I would like to say that this isn't my way to give a huge power boost to Quinn.

This isn't a feature, but a complaint that Quinn shouldn't come under the influence of colors because he has occlumency.

But, I haven't even told you guys the magic behind the colors. True, it has a major mental/mind portion, but even then, I have explained nothing about what the rune circles down in the vault did to Quinn.

The reason why he is under influence despite occlumency? I already mention ½ (half) of the reason already. It just needs the other ½ (half) so that it would click in the minds of the readers and make you pop out a reaction like 'Ah, that is why.' (At least I hope so.)

I will explain it later when Quinn manages to escape the colors.

Now, the reason why I choose to add COLORS ARC to this story.

At first, it was just an idea I thought was good and entertaining. But as I wrote, @passive (big brain helper) told me that the vaults should help Quinn gain/learn something.

He told me that when the founders built Hogwarts, their main motive was to teach young ones about magic. Even though the DADA, History of Magic, Muggle Studies, and Divination doesn't reflect that motive, the main objective of Hogwarts is to impart knowledge.

So, I decided that I would try to write the story in such a way that every vault would be a way for Quinn to grow not only as a magic-user but also as a person.

It is my way of telling that Hogwarts did help Quinn grow as a person. That him giving the school seven years of life isn't going to waste.

I didn't think this while writing the Icy vault, but still, Quinn gained perseverance and caution from it because he didn't give up even after he almost died. And caution so that he won't make hasty mistakes.

This vault and the colors are actually a major/good/important point in the storyline as it allows me to answer a few unanswered questions from the very first volume (Pre-Hogwarts: If any of you guys noticed the name of this volume you would have known that the choice between Hogwarts and Beauxbaton was an illusion.)

The aftermath which will come in the summer after the school year will give you guys a chance to know Quinn a lot more. It will be serious character development that will allow you to connect to Quinn.

(You guys can level up with Quinn too! For reference check out the image in the paragraph comment. Refresh if you can't see it.)

This volume also gives me the chance to tie up some loose ends and gives me the ability to create some new loose ends that I can tie up later in the story.

And finally, I can't snap this arc out of existence because I have 7 chapters in my stack out of which 5 chapters are on Patreón, and the remaining two are for rainy days.

So, if you really don't want to read this arc, I would suggest that you start stacking up chapters so that you can blaze through them in one sitting and don't have to sit through something you guys don't enjoy every single day till this is over.

And last but not the least, I would again reassure you that Quinn would be back to his dandy self by the end of this volume/year. In fact, he would be better as I would have injected a booster shot of character development.

I would iterate something I stated in the Aux chapter of this novel.

"Let's start something new, hoping it would turn out into something enjoyable."

So, give this content a chance, and I hope that this novel would stand up to your expectations.

THE ABOVE MESSAGE WAS FROM THE AUTHOR -- FictionOnlyReader.

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS FROM THE PERSON BEHIND FictionOnlyReader.

Click this paragraph comment to read the message.

START OF THE STORY - You guys didn't want colors, so you won't get in this one.

"You are an idiot!" yelled Ivy, glaring at her brother, who was looking away from her. "You hissed at people in the library. Everybody there heard you hissing."

She tore a handful of grass from the ground and threw it at him, "What were you thinking?!"

"I wasn't thinking, alright!" barked Harry, cleaning the blades of grass from his clothes, "They were being stupid, so I just did it to scare them."

"They are already plenty scare of you," scoffed Hermione, looking at the Black Lake in the distance.

The castle had become a little too stuffy for Harry. So the gang decided to take a walk. Spending their time outside, away from the eyes of everyone in the castle.

"I don't understand what is wrong with everyone," Ron chimed in, lying in the grass, "Harry isn't the Heir of Slytherin. I am sure that it is that git, Malfoy. Just look at him; he hates muggle and muggleborns."

"And, if he had held his tongue for a few more days," said Ivy, pointing at Harry, "Then the Polyjuice potion would have allowed us to get some information. Do you know how difficult it is to move around the castle with eyes following you everywhere?"

From the looks of it, Ivy was more worried about this situation than Harry. While the girl twin was pulling her hair in frustration, the boy twin was silently brooding.

Harry decided he needed some time alone, away from Ivy's occasional glares and Hermione's quips. He stood up from his spot, ready to leave.

"Now, where are you going?" asked Ivy.

"I just need some time alone," replied Harry, brushing his clothes, "Don't follow me."

Ivy tried to stop him, but Harry ignored his sister and walked away from his friends, deciding to return to the castle.

This wasn't how he wanted his second year to go. Last year, he had spent worrying about Snape and how he was trying to steal Philosopher's stone, but in the end, it turned out it wasn't Snape, but Voldemort stuck to the back of his Defense Against Dark Arts, Quirrell.

An entire year of his scar hurting, occasional headaches, and burning pains were stressful for him. Not to mention he had almost lost his sister to a Troll (she would disagree).

Thinking about his second year, Harry had hoped to be free of situations like these and hoped that it would be a carefree year with no extraordinary events, but it wasn't in his luck.

Even before his year started, Harry had met with an oddity, a house-elf by the name of Dobby, who warned him not to go to Hogwarts this year, talking about a danger that awaited him, but Harry had ignored the elf's ramblings and thought little about them.

At the start of the year, he and Ron had been blocked from entering platform nine and three-quarters. They had flown to Hogwarts in Ron's father's car. Which, in foresight, was an idiotic decision.

A decision that had almost gotten him expelled. Harry's mum had scolded him for hours and had been angry with him for a couple of weeks. Even his usual chill dad had been furious at Harry because multiple muggles had noticed the car flying in the sky.

Not to mention that the Whomping Willow had almost killed them by crushing the car while they were inside it. He and Ron got dirty looks from professor Sprout because of the damage to the tree by the car.

His new Defense Against Dark Arts didn't turn out like he imagined and taught them nothing and just made them recreate the scenes from his books and had them write poems about him and his achievements. His detentions with Lockhart were a menial work of replying to fan letters. And listening to him ramble on how to get famous and earn fame.

Then came the whole Chamber of Secret debacle with the Heir of Slytherin. Harry was determined the Heir as many people suspected him of being the Heir and petrified Filch's cat. He and his friends were sure that Draco was the Heir of Slytherin from the way he enjoyed looking at the bloody message and his very public despise of muggles and muggleborns.

Hermione had come up with the plan to use the Polyjuice potion to infiltrate the Slytherin house and gain some information, but in the time required to brew the potion, Colin Creevey had also been petrified.

And, he had found that the murderous bludger during the Quidditch game was Dobby the house-elf's doing so that Harry would get injured and go back home. Harry has almost strangled the scrawny elf in anger.

Above that, Harry had been hearing some disturbing voices about killing, blood, ripping, and all kinds of creepy dialogues. He had tried to share this with his friends, but it seemed no one else could hear the voices.

Just when he thought that the year couldn't get worse, he (and the rest of the school) found that he was a Parselmouth and could speak the language of the serpentine creatures. Something that was widely associated with dark wizards.

From that situation, Justin Finch-Fletchley had freaked out when he had tried to help him by asking the snake to leave Justin alone. The fallout was Justin being a scardey cat, and the entire school had made up their minds that he was the Heir of Slytherin.

"Bloody Fletchley!" cursed Harry, stamping his feet as he walked, "If I get my hands on him, he is looking for an ass-whooping."

Harry stamped up the stairs and turned along another corridor, which was particularly dark; a strong, icy draft that was blowing through a loose windowpane had extinguished the torches. He was halfway down the passage when he tripped headlong over something lying on the floor.

He turned to squint at what he had fallen over and felt as though his stomach had dissolved.

Justin Finch-Fletchley was lying on the floor, rigid and cold, a look of shock frozen on his face, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. And that wasn't all. Next to him was another figure, the strangest sight Harry had ever seen.

It was Nearly Headless Nick, no longer pearly-white and transparent, but black and smoky, floating immobile and horizontal, six inches off the floor. His head was half off, and his face wore an expression of shock identical to Justin's.

Harry got to his feet, his breathing fast and shallow, his heart doing a kind of drumroll against his ribs.

When he said he was going to get his hands on Justin, he meant nothing like this.

He looked wildly up and down the deserted corridor and saw a line of spiders scuttling as fast as they could away from the bodies. The only sounds were the muffled voices of teachers from the classes on either side.

'I could run, and no one would ever know I had been here.' Harry thought, but he couldn't just leave them lying here... He had to get help... Would anyone believe he had nothing to do with this?

As he stood there, panicking, a door right next to him opened with a bang. Peeves the Poltergeist came shooting out.

"Why it's potty wee Potter!" cackled Peeves, knocking Harry's glasses askew as he bounced past him. "What's Potter up to? Why is Potter lurking -"

Peeves stopped, halfway through a mid-air somersault. Upside down, the ghost spotted Justin and Nearly Headless Nick. He flipped the right way up, filled his lungs, and before Harry could stop him, screamed,

"ATTACK! ATTACK! ANOTHER ATTACK! NO MORTAL OR GHOST IS SAFE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ATTAAAACK!"

Crash - crash - crash - door after door flew open along the corridor, and people flooded out. For several long minutes, there was a scene of such confusion that Justin was in danger of being squashed, and people kept standing in Nearly Headless Nick. Harry found himself pinned against the wall as the teachers shouted for quiet. Professor McGonagall came running, followed by her own class, one of whom still had black-and-white-striped hair. She used her wand to set off a loud bang, which restored silence and ordered everyone back into their classes.

No sooner had the scene cleared somewhat than Ernie the Hufflepuff arrived, panting, on the scene.

"Caught in the Act!" Ernie yelled, his face stark white, pointing his finger dramatically at Harry.

Peeves was bobbing overhead, now grinning wickedly, surveying the scene; Peeves always loved chaos. As the teachers bent over Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, examining them, Peeves broke into song:

"Oh, Potter, you rotter, oh, what have you done. You're killing off students, you think it's good fun -"

"That's enough, Peeves!" barked Professor McGonagall, and Peeves

zoomed away backward, with his tongue out at Harry.

Professor Flitwick and Professor Sinistra of the Astronomy department carried Justin up to the hospital wing, but nobody seemed to know what to do for Nearly Headless Nick. In the end, Professor McGonagall conjured a large fan out of thin air, which she gave to Ernie with instructions to waft Nearly Headless Nick up the stairs. This Ernie did, fanning Nick along with like a silent black hovercraft.

This left Harry and Professor McGonagall alone together.

"This way, Potter," she said.

"Professor," said Harry at once, "I swear I didn't -"

"This is out of my hands, Potter," replied Professor McGonagall curtly.

They marched in silence around a corner, and she stopped before a large and exceptionally ugly stone gargoyle.

'I am screwed,' Harry thought as he stared at the gargoyle, 'So, screwed.'

- (Scene Break) -

Hogwarts hadn't changed in the years he had studied here in his day. The castle was the same as ever, a magical and majestic building standing for a millennium. The professors and students had changed, but that changed nothing in the ambiance of the mystical castle of Hogwarts.

Children's chatter, portraits passing their time, the specters floating around the corridors, and house-elves hurrying around doing their work. Everything was the same as the time he had studied and stayed here.

In the night's cover, he roamed in the spacious corridors, feeling the cool breeze caressing 'his' face. He had been walking around Hogwarts ever since he had got here; it was his home, after all, it was the only place that accepted him, provided him shelter and the means to be different than others like he always meant to be.

Being sorted into the Slytherin house was a nod to his ancestor Salazar Slytherin. The proof that the blood in his veins was of a noble lineage, a genealogy of the highest order. He saw it as the sign that he was meant to great things and destined to stand above others.

Due to his exceptional acting abilities, he could convince virtually all the Hogwarts staff and instructors that this facade was his true personality. The sole exception to this was Dumbledore, who, though not necessarily suspicious of him, never forgetting about his misdeeds or his unsettling behavior during their first meeting.

In turn, he realized that he had been careless in showing Dumbledore his true character upon their first meeting and never attempted to win him over as he had with his other instructors.

In time, he came to fear and despise Dumbledore. The old goat was too much of a hindrance to him.

But, now he was here, and Dumbledore had no idea that it was all his doing.

Gazing down, he admired the green trims on the clothing, fitting to his status as a member of house Slytherin. The greatest of the four, the noblest of them. And the one who knew what was best for the wizarding world.

He made his way to the gloomiest, most depressing bathroom he had ever set foot in. Under a large, cracked, and spotted mirror were a row of chipped sinks. The floor was damp and reflected the dull light given off by the stubs of a few candles, burning low in their holders; the wooden doors to the stalls were flaking and scratched, and one of them was dangling off its hinges.

Looking around, he saw that the girl wasn't there, maybe occupying another bathroom in the castle. It was better this way; he didn't want the girl to stare at him every time he visited here; it got bothersome quickly.

He walked to one of the unassuming sinks in the tattered bathroom and looked at one of the copper taps with a small snake engraved on it. A smile made it on 'his' face at the sight of the little snake.

"Open," he said.

Except that the words weren't in English; a strange hissing had escaped him, and at once, the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and spun. Next second, the sink moved; the sink, in fact, sank, right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

He lowered himself slowly into the pipe, then let go. It was like rushing down an endless, slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as broad as his, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downward, and knew that he was falling deeper below the school than even the dungeons.

At the end of the pipe's end, he jumped and expertly landed on the damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in.

"Lumos," he chanted the incantation, and his wand's tip lit up with white.

Walking on the tunnel's wet floor made loud slapping noise against the water, and the light from the wand cast shadows on the soaking walls that looked monstrous in the wand light.

The tunnel was quiet as a graveyard at night, and the only sound was the occasional crunch made when he stepped on the bones of small animals like rats littered around the floor.

The wand light shone the path after a dark bend and shed light over a gigantic snakeskin of a vivid, poisonous green, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The creature that had shed it must have been twenty feet long at least.

He smiled as he glided his hand against the snakeskin, feeling its texture as he walked beside the humongous shedding. And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds.

"Open," came the words in a low, faint hiss.

The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight.

Inside stood at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place.

Every footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls as the hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him.

Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

He had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor.

"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four," he hissed and watched as the giant stone face moved, mouth opening, wider and wider, to make a huge black hole. And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.

"Come out," he smiled as he watched the enormous body hit the stone floor of the Chamber. A serpent uncoiled itself from Slytherin's mouth.

He stared at the titanic serpent as it stared back at him.

If he had been anyone else, he would have been dead with a single look from the king of serpents. But because he spoke in the language of snakes, Parseltongue, the Basilisk didn't kill him with the gaze that could kill with a single glance.

A translucent third eyelid covered its acid yellow eyes, blocking the innate magic that resided in the Basilisk's eyes. The translucent eyelids were part of Basilisk's biology, present there in case the snake didn't want to use its killing gaze.

"You did well. Another mudblood down. Just like the great Slytherin wanted," he hissed at the snake.

"More, kill, rip, blood..." the Basilisk hissed in reply.

The Basilisk was a dreadful and dangerous beast. A horrifying monster with dark green scales, that creature was a violent and bloodthirsty beast of titanic size. After being put to sleep inside the Chamber for centuries, it wanted nothing but to get out and rampage.

"More will come," he laughed, "As soon as I gain a body, we will reap lives of those who are inferior and unworthy."

He laughed loudly and proclaimed,

"Soon, I, Tom Marvolo Riddle, will return to this world as Lord Voldemort and take my rightful place as the ruler of wizardkind and beyond."

"But before that," Riddle took out a diary from 'his' robes and spoke, "I want to know more about Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived. I want to know how a one-year-old babe took down my future."

Riddle planned to get the diary to the boy, wanting to find more about him and what he possessed to defeat the Dark lord.

The Basilisk hissed something that made Riddle chuckle in reply, "Yes, he will be quite fun to play with." He looked at the Basilisk and recalled, "He has a mudblood girl in his entourage, we should go for her next."

The Basilisk hissed in horrid glee, thrashing its tail in delight.

A boy and Basilisk stood in a dreary Chamber, planning to go after their next victim.

Harry Potter - Boy-who-lived - Boy-who-broods.

Tom Marvolo Riddle (Sixteen years old) - Lord Voldemort (Soul fragment)- Heir of Slytherin.

Chapter end