A/N: Thanks everyone for over 1k reads! I know, I haven't updated in like ages, but I suddenly ran out of ideas to write. It is like I know where the story is heading but it feels kinda obsolete to write about what happens in between.
Harry was currently taking his friend for a ride on top of Blaze in his large form one early morning — although they may or may not have cast a Silencing charm to stop Hermione from ranting. But they were pleased to hear that even Hermione enjoyed herself once they were high enough to see the entire highland with Hogwarts no larger than a small Lego castle.
"That was the most enthralling experience I've ever had", Hermione painted as they landed on solid ground.
"Now you may change your opinion regarding brooms?", to which she stubbornly screamed, "Never!"
"Well, I'm starving already and the results are due today, right?", Ron said, and they headed for breakfast.
The 'Conservative' faction had appointed Tiberius Nott as the candidate, who quite openly displayed his roots with Moldy out in the public, and the old coot was barely able to procure enough audience in his campaign.
Sirius, however, had shown finally some sense of maturity in his speeches, although he did indeed say, "As some might possibly know, I like to do things more than mere speeches"
And so the owls came in huge numbers, and Harry had tossed his Knut in the air which surprisingly the owl did catch in its beak to run off. Reading the headlines, he almost squealed in delight.
"Uncle Siri won it!", he almost shouted to the entire hall.
Sirius Black elected the new Minister of Magic
By Robert Dowle
In what seemed like the most clean win in Wizarding history, Sirius Black won among the public at an awe-astounding 14,238 votes out of 21,323. The Light faction easily overpowered the Dark at numbers almost twice as profound than of the time of the tenure of Nobby Leach. He gave his acceptance speech at the Ministry stating that, "I solemnly swear I am up to something really good" as his motto for his term.
He has placed quite a few powerful wizards and witches as his associates including Augusta Lonngbottom, Dedalus Diggle and the current reigning European Champion Duellist Remus Lupin, who surprisingly didn't attend the ceremony, with Minister Black saying, "He had a bit of an accident with his practice"
Minister Black has. . .
"Your godfather's the Minister now. What more could you ask?", Ron commented.
"It is not as good as it seems, you know. Now he won't be able to meet me as much", Harry did a mock-pout.
"Of course, ickle Potty still wants more, does he?", Malfoy came up to him.
"I swear, if you could actually make a genuine roast upon me by not repeating the same old dung, I'd give you my Thunderbird", Harry shrugged off.
"And if we charged even a knut as a tax for Malfoys repeating the same insults, the ministry would be swimming in gold", Neville said and they high-fived, with that bored look on their face still.
"So, what's the plan for today?", Nev asked. It was a Sunday after all, and Dumbledore had left for the annual ICW conference.
"You know, in that horrendous bathroom on the second floor where I'm brewing my Polyjuice to show to Professor Snape? There's this —", but Harry and Nev cut her off by saying together,
"You're in Moaning Myrtle's room!?"
"You know about her?", she asked, not expecting that.
"Come on, Hermione! We're Gen 2 Marauders for a reason", Harry replied.
"Anyways, I was thinking about. . . "
And so life continued normally for all of them, with them kicking Lockhart's. . . Bottom, every single class, to the point where Harry literally commanded Dumbledore to remove that fraud of a teacher out of the school.
But for some strange reason, Harry couldn't somehow make Calypso and Hermione friends at all. They'd be tense and barely utter a word to the other, and hastily move away if the other was in his company. It was annoying, really. Girls indeed were strange creatures.
But he couldn't realise why in the world did Halloween at Hogwarts mena trouble every time.
This time, he was returning with Hermione who was busy chatting away about her runic translations when he felt a familiar chill going across the room.
"§ Rip. Tear. Kill. . . §"
Harry stopped dead in his tracks. That voice was definitely Parseltongue. And that of a fearsome serpentine too, seeing the depth of that voice. He looked around, trying to see who was there, but to no avail.
The next thing he knows, he had blown away Filthy Filch and was sitting in Dumbledore's office being accused of the petrification of Mrs. Norris.
"The level at which Filch adores Mrs. Norris, I shudder to wonder what happened to Mr. Norris", he commented as they moved back to Gryffindor Tower.
Speed up a few weeks, and he kicked Malfoy's (don't say it, Harry!) again in the annual Duelling competition and won again. But what really 'petrified' him was the mysterious serpentine who was roaming around in the castle, which Harry believed was responsible for these frequent petrifications.
But the Board of Governors had other ideas.
"How could they possibly allow a twelve-year-old child to take such a beast as a pet to the school!", Rose Parkinson shrieked when she had come to the school to investigate the matter and bumped into Harry.
"I happen to have a license of handling wyverns and dragons affiliated by the ICW and the British Ministry, ma'am, which I'm afraid some of your own dragon staff don't have"
"We can't allow such monstrosity to run amock these walls"
"And we can't also allow such derogatory in the minds of the Heads, but as it happens, here we are", he shrugged and moved away.
But as the school year went on, the board of governors made a decree to ban any 'flying beast' except birds inside the territory of the castle, which Harry has scoffed at and said, "they should've specifically mentioned 'Harry Potter's wyvern' instead"
It wasn't much of a problem, as a Marauder clearly knows the best ways outside the castle to pass undetected. And clearly Blaze was an independent beast now, so even he wasn't that sad, just immensely furious.
Even Harry had shared that sentiment, but as the days wore on without his closest buddy by his side, he got a bit, ahem, distant.
"You're sad", Ron said, backed by the other three with nods of affirmation.
"No I'm not", he tried to lie, but failed miserably.
"C'mon mate, 'tis alright to be sad. Why don't you go out and fly", but Harry only remembered Blaze even further at the mention of flying, and quietly strode off into the forms and slept again.
"He's a bit complicated with his emotions", Neville said quietly.
"That, Neville, is the understatement of the millenium", Ron chewed further on his chicken and Hermione just shook her head at his eating etiquette.
And now that Sirius was Minister, he attended lesser and lesser calls for the following weeks. He promised it was just 'cleaning the fudge off' month, and later it'd be back to normal.
At least Harry hoped so.
As the days wore on, Hogwarts found more of these stony petrifications. Flinch-Fletchley, Colin Creevy — the Hogwarts photographer and Penelope Clearwater even.
But what broke him from the inside was when Hermione too had been caught by that monster.
The Hogwarts Quidditch League was eventually cancelled and the school was in a mini emergency, making Hogwarts feel like more of a prison than a school.
Harry re-opened his old Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and started reading up on serpentine creatures after one day the Parsel voice became unbearable to hear.
He really needed Hermione's sharp brain to solve this puzzle. While he was knowy smart, she was actually rationally smart. She could crack muggle puzzles with ease, which Harry sometimes took a long time to understand and contemplate.
But he'd prove himself to her this time. He'd solve this mystery all by himself, come what may. Something in his gut roared at the thought, and he read on and on.
A cockatrice was too strange and impractical. Wyrms were perhaps a possibility, what with the large pipes that Dad had happened to burst open once during a prank, but anything more evolved than a wyvern or basilisk lost the serpentine language and just roared.
Wait a second there. . .
A Basilisk!
It fit. Everything fit. The pipes. The gazing. Everything. He might as well tell Dumbledore and. . .
"No Harry!!", a voice startled him and he tripped over himself.
"What happened Mr. Salazar?", Harry said angrily.
"You — You just can't go and kill my dear Andrea now!", he spat angrily.
"Who?!", Harry asked. This man was a hell lot confusing.
"Don't you know what exactly is the Chamber of Secrets?"
"O'course. Some people are into the myth that you supposedly hid a gigantic monster that only your Heir could unleash", Harry scoffed.
"Well, kinda", Salazar shrugged. He then reprimanded himself mentally. Apparently, living with young Millennials did wonders to your vocabulary, even for an aristocratic pureblood.
"Andrea is my pet basilisk. She was my familiar, my extended family. She even protected the castle borders from a near attack by the Saxons to capture the castle before we fully constructed it into a school.
Yes, I did boast my pride in there, and used that place as my quarters sometimes and brewed complex potions and practiced the Dark Arts in there"
Upon seeing Harry's grimace at the last phrase, Salazar did his smirk again and said, "Whose signature spell is actually Dark Fire, eh?"
"Alright, now maybe she's just ran out of rodents and other things to eat and is just searching for food", Harry said sarcastically.
"No. My last descendant, that filthy half-blood — no offence to you, Harry — who thinks that just being a raving lunatic obsessed over killing a one-year-old child and learning the arts that I myself fought against —"
"Mr. Salazar, the basilisk", Harry reminded.
"Yeah, that Tom Marvolo Riddle, he thinks that my legacy was to set Purebloods at the top like that filthy muggle Hitler somehow. How can such a vile wretched beast be related to me is above my knowledge. And so he had found and opened the chamber and is controlling my poor baby", he said in a voice not at all suiting the stoic aristocratic exterior.
"At least that's what Andrea told me", he shrugged at Harry's gaze.
"So I'm supposed to tame her and pat her on the head and say, 'everything's gonna be fine, Andy. We'll free you from that monster', while my best friend is stuck there petrified on the hospital bed?"
"Not at all. You just need to feed Andrea that diary of his", he said in a bored tone.
"And what? Will he learn his lesson now that his secrets were torn apart and go home crying? At least I hope that Riddle would have more nerve than that. And will she be all fulfilled like somebody fed her elven bread?"
"You are an emotional wreck right now without your familiar and lady are no longer with you", he commented dryly, at Harry ground his teeth in anger.
"But how would I feed that diary to her anyways?", and Salazar told him about his plan.
Suffice to say, you shouldn't trust batty old wizards in their ways.
Right now, he was running around pipes while a gigantic fifty-feet snake was chasing him around sewers. And did he mention that he was currently blindfolded as well?
After tripping over what was probably the hundredth time, he heard the cackle of Riddle echoing throughout the walls, and so he ran for his dear life and away out of the entrance, panting hard.
"I thought Godric's students showed foolhardy bravery and recklessness", Salazar said as he watched Harry have a panic attack.
" 'A little big?' Seems like you have really gone batty from your trip from Down Under"
"Did you get that diary from him?", he asked, cutting the conversation.
"You know what? Yeah, I did. Now keep it with you and don't ever tell me to do something like that again. I'll call Dad. Maybe if Dumbledore's scared of you and Death, then his troops might easily kill your beast of a pet with a dozen roosters on Sonorus"
Salazar's ire was too much to handle. Still, he reminded himself, this was just a twelve-year-old he was dealing with. "You know what? I don't care if you're the Master of Death or not. If you dare come in between me and my business, the things I'd do to you won't be ever found in recorded history. Just because you're a twelve year old doesn't mean that the world revolves around you, no matter what you may have been spoonfed as a child. The outside world should never know about you, but still they do. So grow up a bit and think of other's things too"
Harry's magic flared, ricketing the portraits and blowing off the torches. He stormed off sharply, while Salazar shook his head in disapproval. This won't do at all. That boy needed to be humbled before he gets crushed down or worse, goes the wrong paths.
A/N: A bit shorter chapter here, but this needs to be done since a major plot twist is around the corner in the next one. And my updates would be more frequent.
Maybe.