In the last two weeks before Christmas, the atmosphere in Hogwarts Castle grew increasingly festive, and everyone's spirits lifted.
Although the Chamber of Secrets had yet to be found and no one knew who the supposed heir was, the most dangerous threat, the monster in the chamber, was already gone. Everyone let their guard down and gradually even forgot about the matter.
School life returned to normal, and everyone went back to the dull routine of classes and homework.
Over the past few days, Harry had had a new thought that made him feel a little uncomfortable.
He felt he might have been wrong about some things.
If Voldemort could speak Parseltongue too, then Harry's own Parseltongue might not be an innate talent, nor something inherited from his father.
He had asked Hagrid about this in a roundabout way recently, confirming that his dad could not speak Parseltongue, or at least had never shown any sign of being able to.
In that case, the reason he could speak Parseltongue probably lay with the soul fragment in his mental world that he suspected belonged to Voldemort.
He called it a suspicion, but after the Black Man invaded his mental world, Harry was already fairly certain that it must be a fragment of Voldemort's soul.
Harry guessed that on the night Voldemort killed his parents, he had intended to kill Harry with the Avada Kedavra curse as well, only for it to rebound off the blood protection his mother had bestowed on him.
Although he had no way to learn Dark Magic on the level of the Unforgivable Curses, such as Avada Kedavra, there were still ways to learn about the spell.
Harry knew that this spell differed from most offensive magic. It did not actually kill by inflicting fatal injuries on