Harry Potter: Don't touch

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***

Potter's ingenious plan was ruined by one unimportant unaccounted for detail.

- Naudia, you can write, can't you?

- No, Naudya can't," the house elf replied, dropping his head dejectedly.

- How can't you? You're an elf! I mean, haven't your masters ever once asked you to, I don't know, answer a letter?

- Naudi had no masters, except Headmaster Dumbledore. Naudia was born and lived at Hogwarts!

Harry looked around and, finding nothing suspicious, pulled a diary and pen out of his ish bag.

"Did you hear that? He can't write."- Harry wrote.

"I heard. Find another houseboy. I'm sure there's at least one at Hogwarts who can write."

"But he's the only one I can trust out of the elves."

- Harry Potter is upset that bad Naudia can't write? - The house elf was ready to cry.

"Terrible, what a lowlife!"- Riddle's response appeared in the diary.

"Are there really no better options? I hate to even touch this abomination, even though my sense of touch is disabled."

- 'No Naudia, don't feel bad, I'll think of something,' Harry tried to reassure the houseboy before replying to Riddle.

"Don't you dare write to him like that, he might take offence and turn you in, and I'm not crazy about his mental capacity either, but I couldn't think of any better options, if you have options, voice them."

"Why can't you put Imperius on someone and make them wear me?"

- How could Naudia not be upset, after all, he had upset Harry Potter!

"Because I'll be sent to Azkaban if they notice. The House elf option is the most optimal."

- Naudya is inept! Naudya is bad!

"If you back up properly and don't get caught, you won't get sent away, I already wrote that you should try it."

- How could Naudya not learn how to write! He failed...

- Naudya, stop it! Can you read?

- Naudya can read! - exclaimed the houseboy happily.

"Write something, I'll show the houseboy, pretend you're happy to meet him."

"Hi Naudya, my name is Tom Riddle, I'm a friend of Harry Potter's."

Harry handed the diary to Naudya, pointing out where and what he should read.

- P-P-Pri... V-V-vet. Hello! Hello, book! Naudya is pleased to meet Harry Potter's friend! Naudya wonders what your name is?

The houseboy stared at the diary in surprise.

- Where did the letters go?! I only managed to read six! There were more! Where are they?

- 'Okay Naudya, well done, now give me the diary back,' Potter said hurriedly, hoping that Tom hadn't had time to comment on the houseboy's reading abilities yet.

"It's me again, he's only managed to read one word, could you make the words disappear slower?"

"No. I had the missing ink set up while I still had a body, it was done for safety."

This was followed by another inscription.

"I'm not happy with the houseboy. He is too dumb to understand my words, I am surprised that this monkey learnt to read somewhere. I advise you not to socialise with such an idiot. Even servants should have a modicum of intelligence."

- Thank you, Naudya, my friend is tired until your help is needed. We're going to get some rest, okay?

- Of course Harry Potter, Naudya will be in the kitchen if needed.

As Harry walked towards the transfiguration room, Tom came up with an interesting idea on how he could gain a body."I know a ritual that will help me gain a body, I need your blood, only it has to be taken in a violent way, such is the condition of the ritual, flesh..."

"...Ginny Weasley's, I guess... Or maybe Snape's would work, I'm not sure. Also need my father's bone, he's supposed to be dead and buried in some Muggle cemetery. His name is Tom Riddle too."

"Well your father I can still find your father. The blood is a problem, how to forcibly take it is the question, but you'd have to be suicidal to cut Snape's hand off. Bad ritual."

"There are no others. Or there are, but I don't know about them. And I've read the entire Malfoy library in my time."

"The Malfoys?"

With the ability to experience Riddle's emotions, Harry realised that he had written something he shouldn't have reported.

"Long story. The diary was stolen and taken to the Malfoy library by mistake. Then I was found and taken from there."

"I see."

For the first time ever, Harry didn't believe Tom. The emotions he could feel were at odds with the words, or rather the letters. But this was likely a sore subject for Riddle, so he chose not to communicate everything. Potter couldn't blame him for that.

"Anyway, if I pass by Snape's severed hand, I'll let you know. For now, how to organise this ritual, I have no ideas."

* * *

Hogwarts champions were exempt from final exams, so Potter wasn't too keen on learning the school syllabus in lessons. So in transfiguration, instead of learning a spell that allowed him to turn one animate object into another, he decided to study a spell that was supposed to scare away spiders.

Harry was determined to prepare himself as best as he could for the final test, he wanted very badly to place in the top five, but with his particular speed and erudition he might well end up in the bottom three. Winning the Tournament seemed something very distant to him, Bagman had made a bad move by betting his life savings on it, and Potter was assessing his strengths without unreasonable hope. Even with a map of the first part of the labyrinth, first place was not in his sights. But Potter would have been happy with second, third, and even fifth place, so he studied spells against phoenixes, ghouls, figured out how to destroy the hedges of the maze, figured out how to set up the Direction spell on Bagman's map; Harry was also a regular visitor to the Ravenclaw drawing room, practising solving riddles so he wouldn't fail in front of the sphinxes.

Some knowledge he already had, such as the boggarts and redcaps Lupin had taught him how to defeat last year.

So only spiders remained unlearned; only Potter needed the spiders themselves in order to practise a spell to repel spiders.

- Arachnis!

Spells to summon living creatures worked without a flash. After moving his wand, a tiny spider appeared on the desk in front of Potter. Harry sat alone at the desk, so there was no one to notice his exercise. Justin Finch-Fletchley was less eager to attend lessons than Potter, he was out with Fleur Delacourt, having fun with Anton Nana and the twins, generally doing anything but studying.

- Arania Exumi! - A bluish flash hit the spider.

Practising a new spell in transfiguration class was a bad idea. Harry wondered how he hadn't realised this before, as it was obvious to the point of being horribly obvious. Calling up a spider and hitting it with an unknown spell in class, Potter was lucky that it didn't grow to the size of a tarantula and just scurried off to Ron Weasley's desk. When he saw the unexpected guest, he panicked and knocked the desk over. The lesson was almost disrupted, but Professor McGonagall quickly sorted out the problem by removing the spider and identifying the culprit. Hogwarts champions weren't exempt from practising, so at four in the afternoon, Harry went to the transfiguration room to write the phrase "I will not disrupt lessons" two hundred times.

McGonagall wasn't in the room for some reason, so Harry decided to cheat and magically conjured up all the necessary notes in a couple of seconds. To avoid arousing the professor's suspicion, he decided to sit in the office for a while, pretending to take notes. There was decidedly nothing to do, so Potter began to look around McGonagall's slightly altered office. On his first look around, he came across the one thing that wasn't supposed to be here. An enemy manifester.

The enemy manifester had been invented by Alastor Moody during the Magical War about fifteen years ago. The invention worked on a very complicated system, consisting of a mirror and a small cabinet that contained a complex magical system that Potter didn't understand. However, the result of the enemy manifester was not so difficult to understand: the mirror, attached to the cabinet, displayed the enemies of the owner of the manifester, who were currently performing actions that threatened the owner.The enemy manifester was quite difficult to make and was permanently attached to a particular person, so such a device was a luxury, but Alastor certainly had one. Mad-Eye also stated that Voldemort's spy also had such a device. What's an enemy manifester doing here?

- Have you completed your task yet? - McGonagall had crept up unnoticed, even by Potter, who was keeping a close eye on the situation, and it took an incredible effort for him not to stun the professor at the first second.

- I managed it, yes," Harry fumbled discreetly for his spare wand in his sleeve.

It was possible that McGonagall, or rather whoever was hiding under the professor's identity, had realised that Potter had discovered something he shouldn't have. And it was entirely possible that a Death Eaters would try to attack.

- I was just curious about this device, it reminds me of something," Harry pulled out his main wand and prepared to put up a shield.

- Is this yours? - Professor McGonagall approached the enemy manifester.

Harry caught the moment and peered into the mirror, but found no one there, either Minerva, or the person impersonating her, was not the owner of the manifester, or he had somehow managed to keep Potter from noticing anything.

- No, it wasn't mine. I think I've seen it somewhere-" Potter couldn't think of what to say. - Do you happen to know whose device this is, by any chance?

- No, Mr Potter, but I'd love to hear your side of the story, I don't have a storeroom of forgotten items in my office, and I'd like to return this thing to its owner. I found this strange mirror in the Great Hall this morning, do you know anything about it?

- No, I don't," Harry shook his head.

- In that case, since you've completed your task, I'll ask you to leave the office, before handing me the sheet.

* * *

Moody had disappeared somewhere, so Harry decided to put any questions he had about the Enemy Manifestor on hold for a little while. Potter had two questions, the first was "Why would a spy decide to get rid of a great way to keep track of other people's suspicions?" and the second was "Can the owner of the manifester somehow block information about enemies from coming through the mirror when a stranger is around?"

The answer to both of these questions could narrow down the suspects. But while Mad-Eye was away, it was too risky to take any action. So Potter headed for the drawing room, to read a book about the deadly duel between Hogwarts and Durmstrang students near the Cup of the Three Wizards in 1326. However, his plans had undergone an adjustment. Waiting for him in the Hufflepuff drawing room was Ron Weasley.

- 'Hey Harry, you didn't do that on purpose today, did you? The spider thing.

- No, of course not. I was just learning how to scare them, but I miscalculated the strength of the spell. How did you get into the living room? I thought we had a security system.

- You don't need a password to get in. The twins showed me how to get in here, so it wasn't a problem.

- Well, it's not important, why are you here?

- I was looking for you. The thing is, I don't really like spiders.

- And you want me to show you the spell I used in transfiguration, right? - Potter suggested.

- Yes, that's right," Ron was glad he didn't have to say the same thing out loud.

- All right, let's go down an empty corridor and I'll teach you. It's an elemental spell, no wand movements required, and you don't even have to say the words all the way through.

Potter and Weasley left the living room and went looking for an empty corridor. Meanwhile, in Filch's office, Nana poured vodka into a small saucer and tried to get Mrs Norris drunk by baiting her with valerian.

It was getting evening...