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Chapter Twenty Two: Invisibility Project
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The blue flames flickered and flared from between the jaws of the carved snakes and in the frame, Salazar closed his eyes and titled his head back. He remained in that position for some time, before his head once more dropped forwards, and a smile of great satisfaction came over his features.
However, it was his eyes that bore the most startling change. If they had appeared lively in the dim light of the corridors where Harry had discovered him, then it was nothing compared to what they looked like now.
They remained dark, but the flames reflected off the irises, casting them in a dark blue. Other irises appeared to have a glazing of colour, but Salazar's looked like they had been dyed to the core with such a deep cobalt blue as to be almost black. These were eyes that were far too alive to be a normal portrait, giving Harry the feeling that the fourth founder may have invested a whole lot more of his soul in the picture than any of the others.
Blinking, Harry took a minute step away from the most lifelike picture. He really wanted to get into the rooms, but he also had the feeling that he shouldn't be too hasty with Slytherin. If he were as secretive as the others had described, then he wouldn't take too kindly to Harry trying to barge into his private chambers.
"Good to be back?" he asked tentatively.
"Yes…" the other man hissed.
He made a casual gesture with his arm, and Harry found himself gaping at a comfortable looking blue sofa that had appeared behind him.
"Sit, little one. We have a lot to discuss," the portrait told him, and with a careful glance, Harry complied.
There was a stretch of silence, which Salazar seemed to be waiting for Harry to break. However, Harry himself was preoccupied with his memories of what had occurred before he'd found the portrait at all. He'd been lured out of his bed again, and led…where? By what? He wasn't sure anymore…the sleepy recollections were slipping out of his mind like water.
No, they weren't. They were slipping behind that impenetrable barrier in his head where he knew all the answers to this were kept. But he did remember that Salazar had agreed with him. That had been how he had found the picture after all. Could this have something to do with Voldemort? It certainly sounded like something he'd have concocted, and to have Slytherin thrown into the mix too. Things were not looking good for him. He'd need to start setting up some precautions to stop him wandering around at night.
Then there was the magic the man had just performed. Neither Helga nor Rowena had done anything to that extent, nor made it seem so trivial. To have sealed enough of the soul in something to still perform powerful magic with it? It was an idea that reeked of Voldemort, but even then, he had needed a life to bring him back to full power from the diary. Salazar performed magic without a fresh influx of someone else's energy.
"Have you met your heir?" Harry questioned, a dark expression on his face. The dark haired man before him raised a brow and gave him a measuring look.
"I was unaware that I had an heir by blood," he replied smoothly. Harry couldn't help but feel his brows raise a little in disbelief.
"And I'm supposed to believe Slytherin, the man renowned most for deception and lies?" he asked, his words unintentionally laced with sarcasm.
"Deception, yes. Lies, no. Lies are for the inexperienced and ignorant."
"So we can safely assume that you have never heard or communicated with Tom Riddle?" Harry pursued.
"Yes," he answered briskly. "Now, for my questions. Why have you come after my portrait?" Harry blinked; he hadn't been expecting him to be so straightforward.
"The castle is going to need all the protection it can get. You haven't been around for awhile, but when you last were, we were at war. That ended, but the main instigator rose from the dead last summer, and now we're just waiting for him to strike," he said, tensing a little as he recalled that terrible night. "His primary target will be Hogwarts," Harry told him.
Slytherin was giving him an odd, calculating look, which Harry didn't appreciate in the least.
"What is your name?" Salazar asked at length.
"Harry Potter," he said.
"Well, Harry, if both Rowena and Helga have given you their trust, as I can feel they have, then I will too. You are welcome to enter my rooms," he said, the odd look that had been in his eyes completely gone, and in its place was a courteous countenance.
"Really?" Harry asked, suspicious at the invitation.
"If, of course, you know what to say," Slytherin added. Ah, Harry thought, there's that condition.
Frowning, he leant further back into the plush sofa. Something at the back of his head was fluttering away, like the delicate gossamer wings of a moth, if only he manage to capture it. Flashes of memory dashed across his mind as he thought, unaware of the minutes slipping past.
It had to be parseltongue, he thought. That went without question. Everything that Slytherin protected was in parseltongue, simply because it was so exclusive.
He'd read more about parseltongue recently. Like any other language, it was possible to learn it in the human form, although difficult. However, the gift of the parselmouth and the true sign of it was the ability to talk to snakes. Any human could learn to understand the sounds issuing from another human mouth, but it was impossible for anyone but a true parselmouth to speak to snakes and understand them. As far as Harry knew, the snakes wouldn't be so keen to obey someone who had just learnt the language rather than being born with it either.
He ran through Salazar's various protections over the Chamber of Secrets, trying to determine a pattern among them. That had been the only time he'd dealt with the man, even if he had been long dead at that time. All the passwords were in parseltongue, but there wasn't anything momentous about them was there?
Or perhaps there was. He could remember the feeling of standing before Riddle as he called the Basilisk out, watching that massive statue of Salazar Slytherin move and the king of serpents slither out like some elongated deadly tongue.
Standing in one swift motion, he moved towards Salazar's portrait purposefully. There could be only one thing to say to the man before him that would convince him totally that Harry was someone to be trusted.
"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four," he hissed, deliberately letting his eyes fall a little in submission. He certainly knew that it would be interpreted that way.
There was a pause, and then he saw out of the corner of his eye another dark smile spread across the older man's face. The torches fluttered and died, and the portrait swung open.
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There was an eerie similarity between Salazar's rooms and those of Rowena. However, whilst Rowena's had been light and cheerful, Salazar's were dark and mysterious. Harry had been expecting to find something to live up to the Founder's reputation for the sinister and dark, and he was not disappointed.
What really got to him though, was the odd silence in the room. Helga's had had the fire crackling, and Rowena's, whilst silent, had been the quiet of a library. Salazar's reminded Harry of the quiet found in a graveyard. Lacking in birdsong and the sound of nature, the respectful hush of death all around. It sent a chill down his spine.
The room that stretched before him was quite long, and rectangular. The ceiling stretched far up into the sky, and a domed glass roof was above, but it was a long and oblong, similar to the room shape, and the sky shown outside was dark and stormy looking.
These rooms also had several levels but unlike Rowena's, which only had two, there were three levels stretching up either side of him. The entire room was done in dark colours, mainly blacks and deep greens, but occasionally there would be touches done in the same pale wood from the corridor outside. Once again, the floor Harry was on was relatively empty aside from a few shelves, but he suspected that there was probably more to this level of the room than met the eye.
Frowning, Harry noted that there were no portraits visible on the ground floor. Rowena's had been hung straight before him, but it was not so with Salazar's. With a prickling feeling at the back of his neck, Harry turned, and started as he spotted Salazar staring down at him from above the doorway. It was so typically Slytherin to have a portrait where anyone who entered the room would be unable to see it.
"This is more what I expected a Founder's room to look like," Harry said with a nervous smile. This was definitely not a place that put him at ease like the other rooms. It reminded him of the dungeons, and Snape's classrooms.
"And the others were not as you had expected?" Salazar inquired lightly, but his eyes had sharpened. Harry shrugged.
"Not really. I'd sort of imagined them being done in House colours or something," Harry admitted. Salazar simply stared, and Harry suddenly felt pressed to explain more clearly. "Well, Helga's rooms are light and cheery, and so are Rowena's, but I'd thought that the House colours were each of your favourite colours, so it only made sense to expect your rooms done in them."
Salazar raised one dark brow at him, and Harry felt himself cringing inwardly. "Sorry," he added.
"It is not an ill founded assumption, little one," Salazar said, before looking down at him with another odd expression on his face. "Come, I will show you around my rooms. No doubt you are curious."
Harry nodded hesitantly. He was curious, but he was also less than comfortable. That he was allowed in the rooms at all was kind, to be sure, but he had expected it to take a lot more than that to convince him. Maybe he was merely being overly suspicious, but his instincts had never led him wrong before.
"To your left are a set of stairs," Slytherin gestured, and Harry turned to find himself looking at another set of spiral stairs. It certainly seemed that the Founders had a penchant for them.
It didn't take him long to climb them, and when he had settled on the next level he found himself quite startled to realise that there was a walkway spanning the open gap down the centre of the room to the opposite side that certainly hadn't been there when he was below.
Looking around himself, he found that he was in a comfortable sitting area of sorts. There was a pair of elegant sofas similar to the one that Salazar had conjured for him and a comfortable looking armchair that appeared to have been well used. They sat before a low table, and to his delight, a fireplace. It had definitely not been warm in the corridors outside, and the cold had managed to work its way into Harry's bones.
Hurrying over, Harry was pleased to note that there was another portrait above the fireplace, as was normal in the other rooms. It was a comforting regularity that eased some of Harry's unease. After a questioning look at Salazar, he made to reach for the box of matches he spotted laying by the fireplace.
He was quite unprepared when with a sound like a firecracker he found himself thrown off his feet and hurled backwards a few metres. Shocked, he lay still for a few minutes, trying to steady his reeling head. When he did look up, he noticed that he hadn't even been able to touch the box that stood by the grate.
It was only when he turned his attention to the portrait that he noticed Salazar's pleased smirk.
"What the hell was that?" he exclaimed breathlessly, feeling for all the world like the air had been knocked out of his lungs. Which, on reflection, it probably had.
"That, was a little precautionary spell," he informed him. Harry just gaped at the smug expression the Founder was wearing. He'd always thought Slytherins were paranoid, but this…
"You could have warned me," Harry grumbled, still picking himself off his feet.
"I believe that you learn far more effectively through your own trial and mistakes," here the Founder's smile widened a little. "Experience is the greatest teacher." Harry just stared at him blankly.
"Well, can I have the counter charm or password or whatever so I can light a fire?" Harry asked, a little bemused by the whole thing.
In response, large golden flames leapt into the grate, and a wave of heat settled over him. Harry found he much preferred these bright, orange flames to the ghostly ones outside at the moment. There was something about blue flames that made him feel as if they weren't warming him at all.
"I suppose you're going to tell me that the chairs and sofas are charmed against people sitting on them," Harry joked, but instantly sobered when he saw the smile return to Salazar's face. He was beginning to notice that that particular smile didn't mean something good. The man also had very pointed looking teeth that made Harry feel a little unsettled, and he remembered tales of vampires. Somehow he didn't think he'd manage to be surprised if it turned out that Salazar Slytherin had been a vampire.
"You'll understand soon enough. You simply need to ask," he said. Harry looked at him sceptically.
"And you're really going to tell me the answers, aren't you?" he deadpanned.
"It is not me that you need to ask," was the reply.
Harry's irritation rose, but he looked at the man curiously, trying to decipher the meaning of his comment. Slowly, he tore his gaze from the portrait and turned it to the slightly battered looking armchair.
As he inched closer, his eyes widened. A pattern over the blue fabric that he had taken to be simply a pattern were, in fact, hundreds of tiny interwoven snakes. As he shifted, he could see their tiny heads following him. To confirm his suspicions he moved to the fireplace and sure enough, there at the back of the grate was a large serpent engraved into the metal. He watched warily as its eyes followed him.
"You've animated all your furniture?" Harry asked, incredulous. He had to admit, the man certainly had skill enough to do just that. To animate the snakes in the Chamber of Secrets had been impressive enough, but this was incredible. Not to mention paranoid in the extreme.
"It became something of a pastime of mine over the years," the older man admitted, his overly alive eyes still on Harry.
"So it seems," he replied dazedly, his eyes scanning over the various items around him. Hell, even the rug and the table had snakes on them. The shelves were decorated with them. The stairs had them as handrails. How could he not have noticed before this? Still, it was only now he was actively looking for them that he found them.
Remembering what Salazar had said, he returned to the chair he had been previously examining. Looking it over, he could see hundreds of tiny snakes still, but two far larger ones intertwined over the back of it. Harry decided to address himself to them.
"Little snakes, can I sit here?" he asked.
"Can we trust it?" said one.
"The master told us not to speak to anyone but himself," the other replied.
"But the master has been gone for many years."
"Yes, but his image is still there, listening and watching."
There was a pause, before the first one spoke again. "The master can no longer use our help. He can only sit in the image, while his bones lie underground."
Harry frowned, faintly disturbed by their surreal conversation. Perhaps he could help though…
"Your master told me to ask you," he said in what he hoped was a confident voice. He had been practising parseltongue more recently, and he was becoming more proficient at making conscious switches between languages.
"Oh, this one knows that we cannot understand what our master says in the other tongue. How cruel he is!" Exclaimed the one that seemed opposed to him sitting down. Casting a glance at Slytherin, Harry found him only watching his battle with the little creatures with amusement.
"When has the master ever lied to us? The master would not allow the little one to lie to us," the first snake insisted. Harry noted with interest that all the nearby snakes were watching this confrontation. If he won, then he was sure that he would have a lot more luck with the rest of the furniture.
"The master has his own plans," the second one said, but it sounded hesitant. Harry decided that it was time to intervene.
"Would he have let me in if he thought I would do you wrong?" he asked. There was a moment of silence, as the two appeared to consider what he had said.
"We will let you sit, little one," they told him, with an inclination of their heads. Harry returned the favour and settled himself in the armchair with a sigh, making sure to stroke the embroidered snakes he'd been speaking to.
He had been interested to note that Salazar himself used the same title for him as the snakes did. Perhaps it was simply because he had spent so much time speaking in the snake tongue.
As Harry surveyed the room, he was suddenly struck by the extent of Salazar's precautions. Even if someone did manage to open the door, get through the illusion of a labyrinth, and gain access to these rooms, they would still be unable to make use of anything unless they spoke parseltongue, and had Salazar's approval. For once, Harry found himself inordinately grateful for the gift.
"Very clever of you," he told Salazar.
"What is?" he asked, but from his tone Harry could tell that he already knew the answer.
"Using animated snakes on the furniture. Not only are they loyal only to you, but only another parselmouth could use the room. Or even get into it," he added. He would bet his last knut that Lord Voldemort would love nothing better than to know about this place, if he didn't already. He was still less than confident that the portrait had told him the truth about meeting his heir.
"It was entirely necessary. I could not afford that anyone gain access," said Salazar.
"But you let me in," Harry pointed out.
"But I let you in," he agreed.
"Why?" Harry asked, and knew the moment he saw Slytherin pause before answering that this would be the crux of the matter.
"Because I need one who is able to help me outside of these rooms," Salazar said, the smile now gone and his dark eyes looking at Harry piercingly.
"I thought you could use the magic of the castle," Harry asked suspiciously.
"I can," admitted the older man with a slight shrug. "But there are some things that can only be done in person." Seeing Harry's expression grow even more distrustful, he added, "But I do not intend to have you do anything you do not wish to. Simply a few tasks here and there."
Harry paused to mull that over for a moment. Small tasks…but what? He wasn't at all reassured by the man's comment that he would do nothing he did not wish to. What he really wanted to know though, was what the rewards were for him.
"And what do I get out of this deal?" he asked, careful to keep his expression neutral. There was another long moment where Salazar considered his question, his unnaturally vibrant eyes sparkling slightly against the flames.
"You have access to these rooms, and the secrets that you are able to find within them." With a fresh smile on his face he eyed Harry. "And let me assure you, there is much that you will not find." He paused once more, thinking.
"Some of the things you will retrieve will be useful to you, of course. Some of them will not be yours to use, but others…" he trailed off suggestively, and Harry's eyes brightened at the idea of finding valuable treasure hidden around the school. It wouldn't be so bad. After all, he had an invisibility cloak and the Marauder's map with him. But the Headmaster would be able to spot him…
"Er…" Harry hesitated, unsure of how to phrase his question. "You said yourself that you knew about deception," he stated. When Slytherin inclined his head, he continued a little more boldly. "I was wondering…well, really two things. I have an invisibility cloak, but the headmaster can see through it," Harry didn't miss the way Slytherin's eyes darkened at the mention of the headmaster. Obviously they hadn't got along too well. "I was wondering if you knew why?"
"And you wish to know how to stop him, too?" he asked, and Harry responded with a nod.
"If you'd tell me," he said.
Salazar looked out over the room, his eyes growing distant.
"I happen to have a very intimate knowledge of the creation of an invisibility cloak, and it is a key to the ability of not being fooled by their power. The invisibility cloak is a complex mesh of spells. They are made from the hair of the Demiguise, which is a very difficult substance to apply spells to, and thus the charms must be layered over one base charm that will stick to the substance." He paused, and looked at Harry to see that he was following the thread.
"The base charm for most invisibility cloaks is, oddly enough, the Loyalty charm. Demiguises are intensely loyal to those they deem to trust, and their pelt accepts the spell easily. Woven into that, are several charms that trigger the invisibility mechanism when it covers a body, and several Disillusionment charms." Salazar leant back, pausing to examine one hand casually.
"There are several ways to bypass a Cloak, but as well as I know the headmaster, I would suggest that he would choose to fool the Loyalty charm." Harry started a little at this information. Salazar Slytherin knew the headmaster well? He almost interrupted, but thought better of it at the last moment.
"Loyalty charms are not easily fooled," Salazar said lazily. "To bypass the Loyalty charm, you must apply a variant of it to yourself. And for that to work, you must feel at least some loyalty towards the person you wish to see. Albus Dumbledore would not be able to experience such a phenomenon with his enemies," he said, his eyes narrowing a little. "If someone he felt no loyalty to appropriated your cloak, he would not be able to see through it, but no doubt he has placed his own spells upon such a valuable item to prevent that from occurring."
Harry sat back, head churning with information. So Dumbledore was loyal to him, if only the barest amount, and that was how he could see through the Cloak. It seemed a little farfetched, but Slytherin had explained it clearly enough for him to grasp.
However, Slytherin himself seemed irritated, both that Dumbledore could see through his Cloak, and that he was loyal to Harry. He'd said his name, and he'd said he knew the man. It seemed that Dumbledore and he had some history together. Not for the first time, Harry found himself wondering what the headmaster had said to the last Founder.
"So…how can I stop him from seeing me without…" Harry trailed off. He didn't want to think of the rest of the sentence. Unfortunately, Slytherin continued.
"Losing his loyalty?" Salazar suggested with a curl of his lip.
"I don't want to do that. I can't," Harry said stiffly. Salazar looked at him contemplatively for a moment, before continuing in a nostalgic tone.
"No, I imagine that you would not. But there are more ways than that to hide yourself from those loyal to you." Harry frowned a little at his tone, but asked the question on the tip of his tongue anyway.
"How?" He knew that it was certainly worth being able to avoid the headmaster's sight. Salazar looked contemplatively out over the rooms as he thought.
"Many ways, some more complicated than most. I would suggest that you try the alteration of the Loyalty charm. I have always wondered why they are not made with this extra spell intact, but it greatly differs between makers," he said thoughtfully.
Harry's head was buzzing with questions about the subject, and he asked the foremost one, even though somewhere at the back of his head a small voice was telling him that he was too much like Hermione with a new book for his own good.
"Different makers?" he asked for clarification.
"Indeed. There are several Cloak makers, or there were when I was alive. They are very refined, and exceptionally difficult to make, not only because the Demiguise is so notoriously rare, and does not respond well to captivity. Those who craft them use different spells for the bases, and have different ways of working. In my time, it was possible to identify the maker from their choice of base spell. From what you have said, it is safe to assume that your Cloak has a Loyalty base," the Founder informed him.
"From what I've said? But I only said that Dumbledore could see through it," Harry said, suspicious once more.
"Ah, but Dumbledore is too noble to use such underhanded methods on a pupil, and let me tell you, the other methods are underhanded. He is also unlikely to know of any other bases, as they are rare to find even among Cloak makers," Salazar explained casually.
"How…how do you know so much about Invisibility Cloaks?" Harry asked; voicing the question that had been plaguing his mind since this line of information began.
"Ah, Harry. I will tell you this only because you have proved most inquisitive so far," Salazar told him, his eyes taking on an odd gleam as he spoke. "In my youth Invisibility Cloaks existed, yes, but they were unrefined in their design, and each I found was ineffective. It was during the travels of my younger years that I encountered a very interesting man that had a theory about Demiguises. As you might have been able to guess, we finalised the design that you see today."
Harry blinked. This was the man that had practically created the Cloak he used? Still, he could imagine that it would be very appealing to embark on such a venture, especially to a man like Salazar Slytherin. The man interrupted his thoughts.
"What else does your Cloak do?" Harry looked at him dimly. What did he mean, 'what else'?
"It…er. It makes me invisible," Harry said, bemused. "That's all."
Salazar raised a brow in surprise. "That's all?"
"That's all," Harry affirmed.
"Then perhaps, you would like to embark on a little project with me," Salazar said with a secretive smile.
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Notes: Well, there we are. I managed to post a chapter before Christmas, at least for us Brits anyway. Merry Christmas everyone, and have a very good New Year.
- Dream Red