Chapter 35 - Restricted section (1/2)
Neal's life went smoothly with no unexpected events until Halloween. He daily attends to the classes. As they only have at most two classes every day, he has plenty of time to hang out with friends in the break times.
After returning to his room, he studies various spells in the cast-a-spell-kit which he got as a Christmas gift from Draco. Then before he goes asleep, he goes and visits one habitat each day in his suitcase and spends some time with them.
Just like the first year, he keeps practices Potions under Snape's supervision in the morning and going to Library in the afternoons. He goes to Charms club every alternate Sundays for a couple of hours and practices Quidditch when Slytherin books the training pitch. He seldom trains in the stadium as he was instructed by Flint to keep his technique as secret as possible. Since the stadium is open for all, he has no choice but to rarely practice there.
On the other Sundays, he just goes to Forbidden forest and roams around there with his suitcase while trying to visit rare beasts he can and returns with various Potion ingredients that were available inside the forest.
Even though Hagrid says Neal is familiar with the forest, many times, he gets lost somewhere and finds his way back to the castle with Isle's help. He's loved by the animals there as he tends to cure them at the sight of an injured one.
If it's a heavy injury that can't be healed by a healing spell, Neal opens his suitcase and sends it to one of the forest habitats and slowly heal it there with potions. Although Unicorns tend to run away from him whenever they see him as he has a strong affinity towards Dark Magic.
A day before Halloween, he went to meet Dumbledore and finally got his permission to spend the time in the Restricted section after requesting him and Prof. McGonagall for a whole year. With a letter in his hand, he entered the Restricted section on the Fourth floor where he saw sixth and seventh years with a few fifth years.
He didn't mind their surprise and started to look through the books one by one. As he found a book called ”Book of Spells” by Miranda Goshawk, he immediately pulled it out and saw the contents which have never seen Spells contained in the Library or textbooks.
He spends there until the evening until closing time and read the book.
On the day of Halloween, while everyone was enjoying the feast, Harry, Ron, and Hermoine attended Gryffindor's ghost Sir Nicholas' deathday party which was very gloomy and made Harry regret his rash decision of promise as they weren't even able to eat anything.
Meanwhile, in Myrtle's bathroom, Ginny Weasley stood before the entrance and spoke in a parseltongue while holding a diary. After opening the entrance of the chamber, she jumped inside and later entered the chamber of secrets.
She spoke in a parseltongue while looking at the Slytherin statue. When the mouth of the statue was opened, She was stunned for a while to see there was no Basilisk inside the chamber.
The next day on her bed, Ginny woke up and murmured, ”what a weird dream. Wait a second. How did I return to my room? I was supposed to go to Halloween feast yesterday evening”.
She grabbed her head in confusion, ”what's happening to me? Why I can't remember anything? Did someone use a spell to erase my memory or something?”. Then, she looked at the diary which was beside her and mumbled, ”should I ask Tom Riddle's help in the diary?”.
As the November entered, the first half of the Quidditch season is over. Harry Potter continued to catch the snitch three times and made Gryffindor stay in the first position with 3 wins. The rest are at second at 1 win each.
The 2nd half of the season started with Slytherin vs Gryffindor. Flint decided to let Neal participate just as they planned before. After training for 6 weeks, Neal finally stepped in the Quidditch stadium along with the team which sure surprised the students who sat in the stands.