Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 48 Second Contact

Time flies, in the blink of an eye it was already February.

After his brief conversation with Tom Riddle on Christmass, he didn’t try to contact Tom again, Ivan thought it was necessary to ignore him for a while.

The atmosphere in the school is still tense even though the attacks have stopped and the Mandrake grass has matured but most students were still in a panic.

Lockhart seemed to think he needed to do something.

“You don’t need to worry, the chamber of secrets will never be opened,” that’s what Lockhart said at the end of every defense against the dark arts class. “The culprit must have known I would catch them sooner or later, so they wisely stopped before I did.”

“What is needed now is to eliminate the bad memories,” said Lockhart, “I don’t have much to say but I think I have the answers,”

By the time they had breakfast on February 14 everyone knew what Lockhart was doing to boost morale.

When Ivan entered the Great Hall early that morning, he saw that all the walls were covered with big, bright pink flowers. Worse still there was countless heart-shaped confetti that kept following from the light blue ceiling.

Lockhart sat at the teacher’s desk, wearing a bright pink robe that matched the decorations, and the professors sitting beside him had a strange face. Professor McGonagall slightly twitched and Snape looked like he was going to barf.

Next, Lockhart announced he arranged a small surprise.

In the next moment twelve dwarfs walked through the doors, unlike regular dwarfs, they all had golden wings and a harp on their backs.

Lockhart called them friendly little cupids.

He told the students they could use them to deliver Valentine’s cards or ask Snape for advice on how to brew a love potion.

Ivan didn’t know if anyone dared to ask Snape about the potion, but the dwarfs kept rushing around the school delivering Valentine’s cards.

Among the teachers, Lockhart received the most cards, nearly 200 or more.

It made him the least popular among the teachers and when a dwarf came into the classroom for the twelfth time, Professor McGonagall ran Ivan out with a nasty stare.

Next, a dwarf brought him a song for his Valentine’s day gift.

But Ivan was quicker than the dwarf and cast ‘Silencio’.

To prevent other dwarfs from finding him, Ivan went back to the common room.

Ivan decided to talk to Tom Riddle once more, it seems after more than a month of neglect made the other side impatient.

When Ivan opened the diary an article that answered his last question for potions class appeared.

“I’ve already done that assignment myself and Professor Snape gave me a lousy grade, so my question now is…….” said Ivan with a wry smile, he wrote his recent magical research question.

After about a minute, there was an answer written on the page. (Note: Magical world’s Google)

Riddle gave him a perfect answer which gave him a deep sense of enlightenment, it seems Riddle’s understanding was even deeper than the professors.

In this way, Ivan began to communicate with Tom Riddle for the second time.

Every night, after everyone was asleep, he quietly took out the diary, he wrote his difficulties in his magical studies, the problems became more and more difficult, there are many questions young wizards wouldn’t normally ask.

But Riddle didn’t seem to notice, Riddle wanted to talk to Ivan about the Chamber of Secrets, and the man who opened it.

But every time Ivan changed the subject, Riddle was adapting to Ivan’s way. A strange agreement formed between the two, first Riddle told a story about the chamber of secrets and then Ivan asked his questions.

As a young Voldemort, Tom Riddle had a vast reserve of knowledge and could answer almost every question that Ivan raised if he wanted to.

From the simplest classroom assignment to the most esoteric magical theory.

For example, the method of recording sound that bothered Ivan for so long was given to him by Riddle which could save a sound to any item.

Thanks to Riddle’s help the ‘Academic research’ section of the Hogwarts’ Magic was booming, there was no longer any boring articles like the ones Luna wrote but actual research articles.

After Transfiguration class, Professor McGonagall even told Ivan that she was surprised at the depth of his research on Animagus.

In addition, the editor of the Daily Prophet, who had been following his newspaper, had offered to reprint some of his research articles, and Ivan even received some manuscripts from a number of professional magical academic journals.

But of course, most of the articles were Tom’s.

In just a month, Ivan’s progress had soared to new heights.

He learned a lot from Riddle, such as theoretical knowledge that wasn’t taught in class, including dark magic. In fact, the other side seems to have been intentionally or unconsciously teaching Ivan the Dark Arts and encouraging him to use these spells.

At first, Ivan didn’t feel anything unusual.

After consulting with Professor Flitwick, he learned that Tom had been teaching him dark magic.

Until then, Ivan was unaware how serious the problem was, he thought it would be helpful to know more about dark magic.

After a while, he finally noticed what was wrong, and the dark magic seemed to have affected his thinking. He grew more irritable and sensitive, and every time he practiced the dark magic there were cruel thoughts that appeared inside his head.

In particular, when he recently clashed with Malfoy, Ivan was tempted to pull out his wand and use a new spell he had just learned.

It was similar to Snape’s ‘Sectumsempra’ spell but way more powerful and if Malfoy gets hit Malfoy might die.

Because he stopped himself at the last moment, it didn’t lead to any irreversible consequences.

This made him terrified, this was a dangerous sign.

He now realized why Riddle would uncharacteristically teach him magical knowledge.

Riddle was looking for a way to weaken Ivan’s will since Ivan was always wary of him and not interested in the Chamber of Secrets so he tempted Ivan with magical knowledge and when Ivan is lost in power, that would give him a chance to control Ivan.

Even if Riddle can’t control him, Ivan’s final result was likely to become the same as Voldemort, an evil dark wizard.

Since then, Ivan never dared to touch the diary again, Tom Riddle is truly evil he can gradually take control of one’s mind.

Even people like Ivan who were on high alert from the beginning can fall into his clutches.