Real Harry lowered his novel just long enough to sweep another cold glare across the stands.
The last few whispers died instantly.
He returned to his book without comment.
Memory-Harry continued.
“Right!
That was first year—the 1991–92 school year.
Let’s move on to the fun and games of second year—1992–93.
“September and October 1992 was peaceful.
I was looking forward to a quiet year.
The only downer to that point was that Dumbledore had seemed to think it was a good idea to hire that utter fraud, Gilderoy Lockhart, as our replacement DADA Professor.
If any of you dunderheads had read his books, as I did before I’d even started at school that year, and had figured out the timelines he used, it should have been as clear to you as it was to me that there is no possible way the man could have accomplished what he claimed.
“In three different areas he purported himself to be in two different locations in completely different parts of the world.
Secondly, he wrote that he’d vanquished a werewolf simply by punching it on the nose, a zombie by sprinkling salt on it, and other completely laughable supposed feats!
“That the man wasn’t, even by then, already discovered to be a complete fraud just goes to show how collectively stupid wizards and witches truly are!”
He sighed.
“But I digress.
Everything was going as I expected when—wouldn’t you know it?—it was Hallowe’en again.
“Stupidly, I found myself being dragged down to a room in the dungeons to attend the 500th Deathday party of the Gryffindor house ghost, Sir Nicholas ‘Nearly Headless Nick’ de Mimsy-Porpington, instead of attending the start of the Feast.
It was after we’d left the party and were making our way back to the Gryffindor Tower that we came across what happened right outside the same bathroom Hermione was crying in exactly a year earlier, when she nearly got herself squished by a troll’s club.
“The floor was covered in water.
Caretaker Filch’s cat, Mrs Norris, was hanging from a wall sconce by her tail—we thought she was dead—and there was writing on the wall directly below her.
It said: Enemies of the heir, beware.
“Moments after we arrived, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw students came up from the Feast and were making their own ways back to their dorms.
“Malfoy—the Mis-Sorted Gryffindor who wears green trim—was with them for whatever reason—seeing as his common room is supposed to be in the dungeons and there’s no real reason he should have been on the second floor—and cackled out about how mudbloods would be next.
Always opening his mouth before he engages his brain, that boy.
Then relies on his godfather, Severus Snape, to pull his nads out of the fire for him.”
Several students in the stands snickered.
Malfoy’s face, visible in the judges’ box area, had gone an alarming shade of red.
“Of course, Caretaker Filch showed he lacks logic as much as a proper wizard or witch by immediately accusing me of killing his cat.
“But as Ron, Hermione and I were first on the scene, for most people that meant we were guilty of whatever happened.
Dumbledore dragged the three of us, the Mrs Norris catcicle, Filch, Minerva McGonagall and Fraud Lockhart off to Lockhart’s classroom and office to investigate matters further.
Of course, Severus Snape also managed to invite himself along, as he usually does.
“The way Snape always seems to be hovering around Dumbledore, inviting himself or being invited into meetings he has no right to be involved in, I’ve come to think of him as Dumbledore’s shadow brought to life.
Either that, or he secretly lusts after the man and follows him around like a lovesick puppy.
But maybe that lust is actually the other way round.”
Memory-Harry shrugged.
“Anyway, after poking and prodding the Mrs Norris catsicle for a while and Lockhart rambling on with his nonsense, Dumbledore eventually declared she wasn’t dead, only petrified.
“However, what came of that was the whole school now had it in the back of their minds that I was responsible for the attack.
“A week later, Colin Creevey was the next to be petrified.
Watch what happened that night in the Infirmary.
“I also remind you, for those who were there, that was the day I had the bones in my arm vanished by ‘Fraudhart’.
So for the entire duration of that day, from shortly after lunch until the next morning, I was under the direct supervision of Madam Pomfrey in the Infirmary.
There’s no possible way I could have been the one who attacked the boy.”
The memory began with Harry lying awake in a hospital bed.
Dumbledore backed into the room in his nightclothes, McGonagall walking in with him.
Between them they carried the rigid form of Colin Creevey.
They laid him on a bed.
Dumbledore opened the boy’s camera, saw the melted insides, and immediately declared that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened.
Memory-Harry reappeared.
“Did you all catch how Dumbledore, after he’d opened Creevey’s camera and seen the insides were all melted, said it meant the Chamber of Secrets had been opened?
Why would he say that?
That he did meant he knew what the monster in the Chamber was.
He had to have!
Otherwise the melted insides of the camera wouldn’t have meant anything to him.
“Oh, and just so you know—a basilisk is the only creature that could do that to a camera.
Yet further proof Dumbledore knew the monster was a basilisk.”
The projection shifted again.
“Which then brings us to Lockhart’s aborted Duelling Club.
The first and only meeting of that club.
The one where it became known, even to me, that I’m a Parselmouth.
Watch what happened.”
The memory showed the duelling platform.
Malfoy, smirking, cast Serpensortia.
A large black mamba appeared, hissing and coiling.
Lockhart’s panicked attempt to banish it only enraged the snake further.
It turned toward Justin Finch-Fletchley.
Harry stepped forward, speaking in a low, sibilant language no one else understood.
The snake immediately backed off and relaxed.
The reaction in the Great Hall was instant—gasps, accusations, fear.
Memory-Harry’s voice overlaid the scene, dry and cutting.
“Now, here we see a simple example of the stupidity of wizards and witches.
Wizard logic: Harry Potter is shown to be a Parselmouth, everyone knows Voldemort was a Parselmouth, Voldemort was evil, therefore Harry Potter must be evil.
It completely ignores the fact that Merlin was a Parselmouth, so was Paracelsus, and Parselmouths are revered in other parts of the world because Parseltongue magic is proven to be best suited to healing magic.
“Using that same logic we must accept that Minerva McGonagall’s Animagus form is a dog.
Using the same wizard logic: Minerva McGonagall’s Animagus form has four legs and a tail, everyone knows dogs have four legs and a tail, therefore Minerva McGonagall’s Animagus form is a dog.
Stupidity, dressed as common sense, is still stupidity!
“For those who do not know what I told that very venomous black mamba—I told it to stop and not attack.
That’s why it backed off!
What was I playing at, Finch-Fletchley?
I was saving your naffing life, you moron!
“That then led to almost the whole school turning against me.
I was being bullied left, right and centre.”
The projection held on the image of eleven-year-old Harry standing alone on the duelling platform while the rest of the hall stared at him with open fear and hostility.
Real Harry turned another page in his novel.
The dragon at the far end of the arena shifted restlessly, wings rustling against its chains.
In the judges’ box Amelia Bones sat very still, her monocle glinting as she watched both the floating memories and the silenced Headmaster beside her.
Memory-Harry’s voice returned, quieter but no less sharp.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, was only the beginning of second year.
The Chamber of Secrets had been opened.
The heir of Slytherin was apparently among us.
And once again, the only person anyone seemed interested in blaming… was me.”
He let the silence stretch.
“Shall we continue?”