Chapter 68 - 68- in to the pipe

Marcus's POV

Their public apology was quick enough, but the next couple of months were an absolute nightmare for the golden group, and Marcus especially.

It was filled with disgust from Hufflepuffs, who couldn't believe someone can do something so cruel as to knockout three students and put in a locked closet.

Snickering from Ravenclaw, who apparently couldn't believe someone was dumb enough to believe Malfoy was the heir of Slytherin.

And anger from Gryffindor and Slytherin, Gryffindor, for the point lost, as they lost on Christmas's day almost 300 points, and Slytherin, as they kidnapped three of them and got into their common room.

All of that led to than being hated by the entire school, and in magical school being hated? Makes everyday full of jinxes and haxes.

If that was all, Marcus could have dealt with it, as he wasn't the only one.

But Marcus has to deal with two more things

1) some people still thought he was the heir, and that he went after Malfoy to get the suspicions off him.

2) the article that Rita Skeeter published made all her readers Hunt for blood, which meant he got howlers everyday from people he didn't know just to shame him.

After being told he is Merlin's gift to the wizarding world since he could remember, it was hard to be hated by so many people, which was why his conviction got stronger.

He would find the chamber of secrets and he would be beloved by all again.

Harry's POV

Harry really wanted to go to the press at the moment he heard the first howler, he wanted to tell the entire world how James and Lily Potter abandoned him, and how, a month after they met him again they disinherited him based on his house, but he didn't.

He knew that by the end of the year Marcus would once again be a hero, and that all would be forgotten.

He also didn't want them wary of him, as his plans before destroying them politically was destroying them financially, a thing that was underway, as with his lessons in blacksmithing and multiple degrees, he planed till the end of the school year on taking more than 2/5 of their money, and with the money he already took, they would have less then half of what they used to have in their vaults.

Those too reasons was why he left his wish to revile everything.

So instead, Harry spent the next few months enjoying the misfortune of the golden group and studying.

His transfigurations were stuck at the start of fifth year, as although vanishing came easy to him, with the need to just make the atoms separate from each other with a burst of magic, a thing that needed control of a first year Charm but more energy, something he had in spare, but he didn't have the needed control for conjunctions, which needs to make the atoms in the air gather and change quickly.

His arithmancy was enough for a master, which wasn't hard, as it was as hard as finishing high school and he planed when he has time work on using harder mathematical equations that he learned in the university.

His charms benefited from his arithmancy studies and he made progress with the Fidelius Charm, he didn't master it, as it would need someone he completely trusted, but he finally understood the soul it was talking about.

He wasn't sure if it is the same soul they were talking about in creating a Horcrux, but in this case the soul is the magic a person has.

You see, as magic work on intent, by using the charm to put the secret in your magic and then give it away which makes you permanently weaker if it works, if you trust the person completely, the magic unite with the person and he not only becomes the secret keeper, but also more powerful as this part of your magic become part of him but if you don't trust him completely, the magic, after some time, is rejecting the person and it fails.

His potions are another thing that benefited from arithmancy, as he could finally understand the need to stir in exact numbers and do things clockwise and counterclockwise.

The number of times you stir determines the amount of magic you put in, just like the way you move your wand determine the control in your magic, and the way you stir strengthens the intent you put inside, just like words do it in wand subjects, but becouse of the materials you use in the potion the intent can't change beyond the abilities the items had, which is who you need knowledge of the items.

All of this meant to Harry that instead of putting his magic unconsciously as he is being taught, he should use his wandless abilities to do those things without the need to stir, which meant that while his grades in class went down, as he needed to experiment on the amount of control, his understanding of potions grew bigger and bigger.

One thing that didn't benefitted as much as he wanted was his work on DNA, which didn't progress beyond creating a spell that make a hologram of the DNA of the person you hit with the spell, and even that he managed to do only after Hermione got petrified, which to him meant the start of the end of the second year.

His study of runes made him understand that he only need to memories their meanings, write them correctly and put magic into them when they are complete, which was why he started by memorizing all the runes that are known, and he was still in the middle of it.

His blacksmithing lessons continued nicely, with him finally reaching to the creation of jewelry, and he was expecting to start goblin enchanting in his third year.

He finally started uniting his four Occlumency methods, with his Death Star Occlumency as the core, fake memories as a diversion outside of it, ice Occlumency (Greengrass) around the fake memories, and traps and maze in front of his mind.

He had two reasons to do it that way.

1) Both Dumbledore and Snape knew he has Occlumency, and he figured out that if the one they knew about was his fake memories Occlumency (Snape because he taught him that and Dumbledore because he looked into his mind and saw the first trap thinking it was a enhanced fake memory) so putting the fake memories in front would be useless as they wouldn't believe them.

so instead, he put the traps and maze on the front of his mind, knowing that even if they won't believe those memories, thinking they are fake, the biggest problem with the traps, which is the pain, wouldn't be possible to ignore.

And even if someone manage to pass the first layer of Occlumency with enough power to blast the second layer, he would believe the memories he sees there are the true ones, not knowing it is fake, something that would take time to determine, exhausting the attacker.

While everyone of his Occlumency layers are great, his greatest work Is the Death Star layer, in which he started using it as experimentation's field, where every night, before sleep, everything he learns, magical or not, real or not, is used to make it a fortress.

He felt sorry for the poor man who manage to reach the Star after being emotionally magical and physically exhausted.

Lastly his coding.

After learning basic coding and practicing it, Harry noticed how the golems he creat in transfigurations work similarly to coding, so he started trying to put the way he put a mind patterns in transfigurations into his coding.

While it is hard work, he hoped he could creat the first artificial intelligence.

Harry continued to think about his accomplishments in this year, as the word open got out of his mouth, even though if someone heard him it would have sounded like a whisper of a snake.

As the slide opened up, Harry made a jump to his first visit of the chamber of secrets