Hello, guys!
Because of the holiday season, I want to celebrate with you in two ways.
The first is that, starting today, Monday the 22nd until Sunday, January 4th, I will publish daily chapters so you have plenty to read during these holidays.
After that date, I will return to my usual schedule.
The second surprise is that, starting December 24th, I will activate a 50% discount on all tiers of my Patreon.
The promotion will be active for 2 weeks, ending on January 6th.
If you wanted to read the advanced chapters, this is your chance.
Merry Christmas!
Mike.
Patreon / iLikeeMikee
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Chapter 32: The Night Raid
The silence in Ravenclaw Tower was almost absolute, broken only by the rustle of pages and the occasional scratching of a quill. Timothy sat in a secluded corner of the common room, an Advanced Arithmancy book open in front of him, though he wasn't reading it. His gaze was fixed on the fireplace, but his mind was miles away, in the laboratory inside his trunk, processing the particle physics equations he had archived from the University of London library.
This second year had been a blessing of productivity.
Dumbledore's intervention at the end of the summer had been a necessary pivot. Timothy had taken the old wizard's advice to heart; not out of an emotional awakening, but because the logic was flawless. An unbalanced system was inefficient. Suffering a mental breakdown from exhaustion, like what almost happened in his first year, would halt his research entirely. Therefore, "balance" became the project's new priority.
He had established an ironclad routine. Six hours of sleep, without fail. Three hours for meals and mandatory socialization, his "anchors", which usually consisted of playing chess with Ron or having one-sided intellectual debates with Hermione. And the remaining fifteen hours of the day were for work.
The result was a student who, to the outside world, seemed to have "relaxed". His grades remained "Outstanding", but he no longer had that feverish, obsessive aura that had worried the professors so much. Now he was simply the Ravenclaw "genius", quiet, distant, and absurdly gifted.
But the true reason for this calm was the success of his summer mission.
Timothy smiled to himself, remembering the chaos at Flourish and Blotts. By acquiring and archiving Tom Riddle's diary before it reached Ginny Weasley's hands, he had decapitated the year's plot before it began. There had been no attacks. There had been no petrifications. There were no messages written in blood, nor a castle on the verge of panic. The most peaceful school year in recent Hogwarts memory was unfolding around him, and it was all thanks to his silent intervention. The year's greatest threat was not an ancient monster, but Gilderoy Lockhart's incompetence, which was a source of constant amusement for him.
This self-created calm had given him the most valuable resource: uninterrupted time.
He closed the Arithmancy book. His duty as a "model student" was over for today. It was time for the real work.
He politely said goodbye to his housemates and headed to his dormitory. Once inside the privacy of his single room, he entered his seven-compartment trunk. The dusty smell of the Diagon Alley apartment greeted him, and from there, he descended to the laboratory compartment.
He stood in front of his blackboard, which was covered in runic equations and potion formulas. His wandless magic practice was progressing, but slowly. His Archive was nearly full with Muggle science, but his analysis of the Philosopher's Stone was proving to be a conceptual challenge.
He needed a new data set. He needed a new project.
His mind went to the file "Specimen 01: T. Riddle". He had copied it. He had analyzed it. And he had left the biggest prize intact, gathering dust beneath the castle. The knowledge of Parseltongue. The location of the Chamber. The map of the Basilisk's nest.
He considered the variables. Dumbledore was in the castle, but he was relaxed, believing the threat from the previous year had been resolved. The professors were busy with midterm exams. The students were in their common rooms. No one was patrolling the corridors looking for a threat that didn't exist. The risk was minimal. And the reward... the reward was incalculable.
Shed basilisk skin, an almost indestructible armor material of a value that would make Lucius look poor. Basilisk venom, one of the few known Horcrux-destroying agents. And most importantly: the arcane architecture of a chamber built by Salazar Slytherin himself. It was a library of ancient magic waiting to be archived.
Calm and balance were efficient tools. But tonight, the architect's obsession demanded new materials. Timothy climbed out of his trunk, put on his school robes, and left his dormitory. It was time to claim his prize.
The Ravenclaw common room was almost empty, bathed in the bluish moonlight streaming through the high arched windows. A couple of seventh-year students were dozing on a mountain of books at a corner table, quills fallen from their hands. The rest of the tower was silent.
Timothy, however, was filled with a cold, controlled energy. Fatigue was a variable he had learned to manage with potions and sheer will, but tonight, the anticipation of new data was a more potent stimulant than any brew.
He left the common room, the eagle knocker asking him no questions; it had already learned that his focused intent was enough for the door to recognize him. The seventh-floor corridor was dark and silent. He didn't run. Running was noisy, inefficient. He moved with quiet purpose.
He knew the castle had its own security systems: Filch and his sensorily acute cat, the gossiping portraits that acted as conscious surveillance cameras, and the ghosts themselves. His plan required absolute stealth.
He stopped in a shadowy alcove, away from the moonlight's glow. He pulled out his ash wand. Despite his growing mastery of wandless magic for conceptual tasks, for standard and complex spells that required precise and immediate application, the wand remained the most efficient tool, a perfect channeler.
He muttered an incantation that wasn't in any Hogwarts textbook. It was a variant of a NEWT-level Disillusionment Charm he had archived from a Ministry infiltration manual in the Restricted Section. The spell didn't just blur him; it bent light and sound around him, muffling his footsteps and cooling his magical signature. To all intents and purposes, he became a ghost, a walking void.
He began the long descent. His mind, protected by the walls of his Occlumency, was calm. He didn't feel the nervous excitement of a Gryffindor breaking the rules, nor the malicious anticipation of a Slytherin. He felt the focused calm of an engineer about to dismantle a fascinating machine.
On the fourth floor, he stopped. His senses, now sharpened by his own stealth magic, picked up a sound. The familiar and unpleasant hiss of Mrs. Norris. He pressed himself against the wall, merging with the cold stone. He saw the scrawny cat turn the corner, her eyes like lanterns in the dark. The cat paused, sniffing the air. She could sense something, an anomaly in the air, but couldn't see it. Timothy held his breath, not out of necessity, but out of discipline. The sound of Filch's shuffling footsteps echoed in the distance. The cat hissed in frustration and ran to meet her master.
'Primitive', thought Timothy. 'A biological guard and a sensory one. Inefficient'.
He continued his descent. Every staircase that moved, every portrait that snored, were data points in his mental map of the castle. Finally, he reached the second floor. The corridor was dark, cold, and strangely silent. Students avoided it. Even the ghosts seemed to stay away. He found the door. The "OUT OF ORDER" sign hung crookedly.
The girls' bathroom door. The entry point. He slipped inside. The air was frigid, much colder than the corridor, and smelled of rusty pipes, damp dust, and something deeper, a lingering trace of sadness and dark magic. Moonlight spilled through a high, dirty window, illuminating a row of cracked stone sinks. The only sound was the constant echo of a dripping tap somewhere.
Timothy slipped inside, his high-level disillusionment charm making him a silent distortion in the shadows. His stealth was impeccable. He was halfway to the row of sinks when a sharp, mournful wail broke the silence.
"Ohhhhh, look who it is!"
The voice was high-pitched, whining, and resonated with a watery quality. Timothy stopped instantly. His Occlumency was a wall of ice; he showed no surprise, no fear, only cold assessment.
From inside a toilet stall door at the back, a ghostly, translucent figure glided out. It was Moaning Myrtle. Her pearly form glowed in the darkness, wearing thick glasses and ghostly pigtails. She floated in the middle of the room, looking directly in his direction.
"I know you're there!", she moaned, her voice rising. "I can feel you! A boy! You've come to my bathroom!".
Timothy remained perfectly motionless. He had archived the data on Myrtle: a Level 4 ghost, highly emotional, volatile, bound to her place of death. A distraction.
"Why are you hiding?", her voice changed suddenly, becoming flirtatious and shy. "Oh, you must be shy! I like shy boys! Did you come to see me? Nobody ever comes to see me, except to make fun of me or throw things!".
She did a little pirouette in the air, her movements erratic. Timothy ignored her completely. His attention was fixed on the row of sinks, looking for the correct tap. According to Riddle's memory, it was the third from the left, the only unused one, with a small copper snake engraved on the metal. He took a slow, silent step.
"Hey!", shouted Myrtle, her mood changing again, now sounding offended. "Don't ignore me! I know you're there! You smell... different. Not like the other boys. You smell like old books and... electricity".
'Fascinating', thought his analytical mind, even while hidden. 'An extrasensory perception of residual magic. Useful. But still an inefficient distraction'.
He continued moving, one silent step at a time.
"Rude!", she shrieked, flying directly at him. Timothy tensed, bracing for the horrible sensation of a ghost passing through him. Myrtle passed through the spot where he was, but his disillusionment magic seemed to deflect her essence. She passed through empty air and turned, confused.
"Where... why can't I...? Don't make fun of me!".
Timothy had reached the sink. It was the correct one. The small snake was there, worn by time. He was ignoring her completely, his focus entirely on the opening mechanism. This was the last straw for Myrtle. Being ignored was worse than being insulted.
"DON'T IGNORE ME!", she roared, her voice reaching a pitch so high it vibrated the water in the toilets. "YOU COME HERE, TO MY BATHROOM, YOU HIDE, YOU DON'T TALK TO ME! YOU SURELY CAME TO THROW ANOTHER BOOK DOWN MY TOILET, LIKE THAT POOR OLIVE HORNBY! GET OUT! OUT, OUT, OUT!".
She was having a full-blown tantrum, flying in furious circles around the ceiling and screaming at the top of her lungs. Timothy frowned. This was a problem. The noise would attract Filch, or worse, a professor. His window of opportunity was closing. He had to act.
He waited. His patience, forged in a void of aeons, was infinite. He could stand there all night. She was just an emotional variable. And emotional variables always burn out.
Sure enough, after a minute of screaming with no response, Myrtle, getting no reaction—no fear, no mockery, not even a shout of "shut up"—deflated. Her rage collapsed back into her usual misery.
"Nobody likes me...", she sobbed. "Not even the cute, invisible boys who sneak into my bathroom... I wish I were dead!".
Timothy almost snorted. 'You already are. It's a tautology'.
With a final, heart-wrenching wail that echoed off the porcelain, Moaning Myrtle turned, flew into her favorite toilet, and dove into the bowl with a loud ghostly SPLASH!, sending a geyser of real, cold water all over the bathroom floor.
The second-floor girls' bathroom fell silent again. An almost absolute silence, broken only by the unearthly echo of Myrtle's crying from the depths of the plumbing and the rhythmic drip... drip... drip... of a dripping tap in the furthest sink.
Timothy remained perfectly motionless in the shadows for thirty more seconds, his analytical mind calculating the probability of her returning. Zero. Her tantrum had been a complete emotional cycle; now she would be in her U-bend, feeling sorry for herself for hours. The "Myrtle" variable was neutralized.
With a thought, he undid the Disillusionment Charm. The sensation was like taking off a cold, wet wetsuit. The bathroom air, heavy with the smell of rust and dust, seemed to touch his skin again. He materialized in the gloom, a solid figure in dark robes in a bathroom that hadn't seen a male student in decades.
He ignored the mess of water on the floor and walked with quiet purpose toward the row of stone sinks. His eyes scanned the copper taps, his mind already comparing what he saw with the information he had extracted from Riddle's diary. Most were worn by use and time. But one, the third from the left, was covered in a patina of disuse. And there, on the side of the tap, was the key. A small snake, no bigger than his fingernail, was engraved on the metal.
'Primitive, but effective', thought Timothy. A secret hidden in plain sight, protected not by powerful magic, but by simple psychology.
It was the moment of truth. The knowledge was there, perfectly archived in his mental library. He had absorbed the consciousness of young Tom Riddle, and with it, the innate fluency of Parseltongue. It wasn't something he had to learn. It was something that now, simply, he knew.
He leaned toward the tap. He felt no nervousness. He didn't feel Harry's excitement at discovering an ability. He felt the quiet confidence of an engineer about to use the right tool for the job. He closed his eyes for a moment, not to concentrate, but to access the file. He opened his mouth.
~Open~.
The sound that came out of his throat was not human. He felt it vibrate deep in his chest, a guttural and resonant hiss that the bathroom acoustics amplified. It was a command, not a request.
For an instant, nothing happened. The tap kept dripping. Then, a low sound, like a tombstone scraping against granite, rumbled beneath his feet. The entire sink began to shake. The copper tap spun on itself like the lid of a jar, and the entire sink assembly—the porcelain basin and the stone column that supported it—sank cleanly into the floor, disappearing with a dull and definitive thud.
Where the sink had been, there was now a hole. A circular tunnel, wide enough for a grown man to pass through comfortably, plunging into absolute darkness. A blast of cold air shot out of the hole, hitting him in the face. It was air that hadn't been breathed in fifty years, and it smelled of millennia of dust, of decay, of the dry skin of ancient reptiles and of a stagnant, powerful magic.
Timothy looked into the unfathomable darkness. His Archive told him it was a slide, leading to the depths of the castle.
There was no emotion on his face. Only cold satisfaction. The script was correct. Access was granted.
'Phase one, complete', he thought.
Without a second's hesitation, he sat on the edge of the hole, pushed himself forward, and jumped into the void, sliding into the darkness below.