The Degrees of Deception

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from the Harry Potter universe, they were created by, and belong to JK Rowling.

Chapter One – Prologue

Many Years ago, during the time of the Founders

Deep, in the dimly lit dungeons of Hogwarts, the legendary Salazar Slytherin mourned the loss of his favourite great-grandson, Sable. Sable, a young child of only 8 had been murdered, in cold blood, by his own cousin. Mere years older, the child had been encouraged to take Sables life to rid of the 'threat' to his inheritance. Not even into adolescence, Salazar wondered if the murderer could grasp the concept of death, and the reality that Sable would not be returning, to play as they used to.

Salazar ran a hand over his long silver hard, he felt ill and weary in his grief. Much of his family had inherited his thirst for power, but the death of this innocent boy was a new low. Members of the proud Slytherin line had taken to butchering those blood relatives they perceived as competition. Soon Salazar knew he would be gone from this world and if something was not done, the noble line of Slytherin would die out, becoming nothing more than faint memories and legends in musty history books of the Hogwarts Library, floors above him. Oh yes, the Slytherins thirst for power and their willingness to kill their own blood would have dire consequences.

'No, this cannot happen. I will not allow it happen' Poor Sable had already been killed, it was only a matter of time before an assailant tried to kill Salazar's wife, or Salazar himself, in their quest for domination.

Salazar reached a wrinkled hand into his long black robes, pulling out a piece of parchment. Into the early hours of the morning he worked creating a potion. He brewed a blend of different ingredients, testing and re-testing to ensure their success before finding components to tie the potion to the bloodline. The mighty basilisk in his chamber was a connection to the Slytherin line and hence, he collected some of its blood. Carefully, he took a silver lock of his wife's hair and some of his own blood and added them to the cauldron.

The formerly bubbling potion turned a vivid acid greenand became perfectly still, so Salazar could see his reflection, that of a man hundreds of years old, staring back at him. Salazar then drank the potion himself, thereby protecting his bloodline from the being killed, by any means, by one also of the Slytherin line.

Salazar Slytherin, master potion maker, had just created a binding spell that blocked the Avada Kedarva curse.

To his knowledge, it was the best blocker for the curse in existence and he knew, it would be near impossible to replicate. With a flick of his wrist, the notes on the parchment shot towards the fire under the cauldron and burned. With his recipe safe he walked to his desk and pulled out his journal. In parseltongue he wrote

Only one not of the Slytherin blood line

Can defeat us, the powerful ones

I, Salazar Slytherin, have made it so

No more shall we spill the blood

Of our families

He wrote this as a warning to future generations; they would know they are unable to kill their kin when he was long dead and unable to tell them, for surely Salazar's journal written entirely in parseltongue would remain in the family.

The next morning he sent word to every member of the Slytherin bloodline and informed them of the spell, some were relived, others outraged and some hired assassins to carry out the deed for them. A clever plan but none were talented enough to kill a Slytherin and all failed.

As the decades wore on Slytherin and the other founders died, the bloodline passed down the journal, all the time becoming poorer and poorer until it was sold for 50 galleons in a store in Knockturn alley nearly two centuries after Salazar died.

Many members of the family remembered the spell Slytherin had cast and did not kill each other, though every so often a family member would become enraged and try to the kill the other, a bright green light like an explosion would occur and the curse would rebound, killing the caster, reminding the Slytherin line of the ancient spell Slytherin had cast.

Eventually, the Slytherins began to die out, poor and forgotten, leaving only a few members of the Slytherin bloodline. For this reason they did not attempt to kill each other any more but the story of the curse was still past through the Slytherin family by word of mouth. The curse remained inactive for decades.

Until, one Halloween night at Godrics Hollow.

A/N I do not like Harry and Ginny stories so this story will never be one, Hopefully I will be able to keep this story interesting and update it on a regular basis. I know this is a short chapter but Hey it's a prologue, that shouldn't count!