The Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter Male Reader Insert

26: Sorrow

"Riddle might have gotten the wrong person." said Hermione. "Maybe it was some other monster that was attacking people..."

"How many monsters d'you think this place can hold?" Ron asked dully.

Harry had informed them of the memory that Riddle's diary had shown him. How the monster had killed a girl fifty years ago, how Riddle did not want to be returned to the Muggle Orphanage he lived in, how he had caught Hagrid in the dungeons and gotten him expelled, how the creature Hagrid had been trying to hide had escaped.

"We always knew Hagrid had been expelled," said Harry miserably.

"And the attacks must've stopped after Hagrid was kicked out. Otherwise, Riddle wouldn't have gotten his award." Y/N added.

Ron tried a different tack.

"Riddle does sound like Percy - who asked him to grass on Hagrid, anyway?"

"But the monster had killed someone, Ron," said Hermione.

"And Riddle was going to go back to some Muggle Orphanage if they closed Hogwarts," said Harry. "I don't blame him for wanting to stay here."

"And what," said Y/N, his voice dangerously sweet, "is wrong with living in a Muggle Orphanage, Harry?"

Harry suddenly realised what he had said, and gulped nervously. "N-nothing! I just meant that he seemed like he disliked it there! I wasn't t-talking about Muggle orphanages in general!"

Ron felt it was best to change the subject. "You met Hagrid in Knockturn Alley, didn't you, Harry?"

"He was buying a Flesh-Eating Slug Repellant," said Harry quickly.

The four of them fell silent. After a long pause, Hermione voiced the knottiest question of all in a hesitant voice: "Do you think we should go and ask Hagrid about it all?"

"That'd be a cheerful visit," said Ron. "Hello, Hagrid, tell us, have you been setting anything mad and hairy loose in the castle lately?"

In the end, they decided that they wouldn't say anything to Hagrid unless there was another attack, and as more days went by with no whisper from the disembodied voice Harry kept apparently hearing, they became hopeful that they would never need to talk to him about why he had been expelled. It was now nearly four months since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick had been petrified, and nearly everybody seemed to think that the attacker, whoever it was, had retired for good. Ernie Macmillan asked Y/N quite politely to pass a bucket of leaping toadstools in Herbology one day, and in March several of the Mandrakes threw a loud and rausous party in Greenhouse Three. This made Professor Sprout very happy.

"The moment they start trying to move into each other's pots, we'll now they're fully mature," she told Y/N. "Then we'll be able to able to revive those poor people in the hospital wing."

* * *

Gryffindor's next Quidditch match would be against Hufflepuff. Harry was being dragged to practice every night after dinner, so he barely had time for anything but Quidditch and homework. However, he did so quite happily, as he felt Gryffindor's chances for the Quidditch Cup had never been better.

But his cheerful mood wouldn't last long. At the top of the stairs to the dormitory, he found Y/N angrily staring at the room.

As Harry peered in, Y/N saw his face drop. The contents of his trunk had been thrown everywhere. His cloak lay ripped on the floor. The bedclothes had been pulled off his four-poster and the drawer had been pulled out of his bedside cabinet, the contents strewn over the mattress.