Chapter 16: Snakes and Secret Societies
Harry soon discovered that establishing an underground student organization was no easy feat. There were quite a few details that needed to be ironed out before they would be able to meet for the first time. In one of his empty notebooks, Harry had come up with a preliminary list of the elements they would need to make the club a success: a secure location, a method of covert communication, and a way to ensure that the club was kept a secret.
Harry added a caveat to that last point. While he wanted to keep the nature of their club secret from everyone but those involved, he also wanted the existence of the club to be clear. He wanted to design a symbol for the group that would show their unity without demonstrating their purpose. He wanted Umbridge to know they were up to something while simultaneously making it impossible for her to discover what they were actually doing. He knew that it would drive her insane. It would be his own personal act of revenge against the Toad.
The first step in all of this was to scope out potential members. It was for this purpose that Harry gathered together his closest friends in the Gryffindor Common Room on Sunday afternoon. As he watched Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Ginny, and Neville brainstorming how to find people who would be interested, Harry felt a surge of pride. His friends were amazing. He had absolute faith that they would locate all the potential recruits in Hogwarts. Each of them had friends in other houses, and they would use those contacts to find potential allies throughout the school. With each of their friends asking around, it wouldn't be difficult to create a network of communication.
Hopefully by the end of the week, they would have a preliminary list of members. Harry wanted students from every house and from every year group. He believed that everyone, regardless of age, blood-status, or house had a right to learn how to defend themselves.
While his friends worked on finding members, Harry would be working on the problem of securing a location and developing a method of communication.
For the first problem, Harry knew exactly who to ask. On Sunday evening, he shut his curtains tightly, cast a Silencing Spell, and whispered. "Dobby?"
The House-elf appeared right in front of Harry, wearing an exorbitant number of hats and a wide grin. "How can Dobby be helping Harry Potter?" Dobby asked, excitement coming off him in waves.
Harry leaned in close to the elf, trying to convey the seriousness of his request. "I need a place to train students to defend themselves. It needs to be big enough for us all to practice, but we have to be able to keep it hidden. Do you know of anything like that, Dobby?"
To Harry's utter shock and delight, Dobby did, in fact, know of a place just like that. As he explained the concept of the Come-and-Go Room (also known as the Room of Requirement), Harry once again felt truly hopeful. If Dobby was right about this room, they might actually be able to pull this off without getting caught.
Not wanting to waste any time, Harry decided to check out the Room of Requirement right away. It was just after midnight, but Harry would much rather do something productive than face another night of horror-filled dreams.
He pulled on his invisibility cloak, grabbed the Marauder's Map, and headed up to the 7th floor. He found the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy, turning to face the empty wall opposite it. Just as Dobby had directed him, he paced in front of the empty wall three times, thinking hard of a place where they could learn to defend themselves.
After his third pass, a nondescript door appeared in the wall. Opening it, Harry found himself in a large room. He couldn't hold back a huge grin as he examined the space. It was perfect. There was a blackboard, practice dummies, ample space for Spell-casting, and enough cushions to ensure that the students would be safe if anyone's Spells became over-enthusiastic.
The only problem was that Harry didn't know how many other people knew about this room. He simply couldn't risk it being found.
The only solution he could think of was to cast a Fidelius Charm over the room. He knew the Spell could only be performed by extremely powerful wizards. Before the exercise in Charms that had revealed the true extent of his raw magical power, Harry never would have thought himself capable of casting it. Now, however, he had a fairly strong suspicion that he would be able to perform the Spell.
Because of the secrecy and scale of this organization, however, he would need to modify the charm. Normally, the Secret Keeper could only share the knowledge of the location by word of mouth or by writing down the location and showing it to someone. Harry couldn't risk doing that. In a school of this size, he would never be able to tell everyone the location without being overheard. The same thing went for writing it down. His handwriting would be recognized, and anyone might stumble upon the paper.
He hoped to attach the spell to an object. Anyone in possession of that object would know the location. Harry was fully aware of how difficult this would be. Applying such complex magic to an object, especially if it was being done with original spells, would take any spell-crafter months. Luckily for Harry, he had a unique talent up his sleeve: Parseltongue.
One thing Harry had learned in the reading he'd done in the Black Library at Grimmauld Place was that Parseltongue was far more versatile as a Spell-Crafting language than Latin. Because the words themselves were already magical, they could meld with the Magical Structure of any spell. For that reason, as long as they had enough power, Parselmouths could accomplish a lot with intent-based magic.
Once he'd discovered this, Harry couldn't understand why Voldemort didn't do all his casting in Parseltongue. He would be able to accomplish so much. As he had done more research, Harry had discovered the reason Voldemort didn't cast in Parseltongue: he was incapable of doing so. Casting in Parseltongue had a magical requirement that Voldemort did not meet. Parseltongue was the language of snakes. Snakes were predators, naturally, but they did not have mal-intent in the same way humans did. Snakes did not kill out of hate or a desire to do so, they did so out of necessity.
The characteristic of snakes meant that in order to cast in Parseltongue, the human in question must not have committed murder. Murdering someone changed your magic, morphing and twisting it into something out of balance with the natural world. Voldemort would be able to use Parseltongue to speak to snakes, but he would never be able to use it in his casting.
Harry, who had only ever killed in self-defense, was magically compatible with casting in Parseltongue. He was likely the only person alive who would be able to cast with it.
The ability to use Parseltongue in spell-creation would make designing the Fidelius-linked-object much easier.
Although a Parselmouth could, in theory, use Parseltongue on any object, Harry was not an ordinary Parselmouth. Because he had gained the ability from another Wizard, Harry still needed to be faced with a snake-like image in order to speak Parseltongue. For this reason, he decided that the object needed to resemble a snake.
It didn't take long for Harry to come up with the perfect idea. He wanted something that would subtly show their unity without giving them away. The object needed to be small but difficult to lose. The solution was clear: a ring.
He would craft small snakes out of metal. Then, he could use Parseltongue to charm them to bite their own tails when they were introduced to their rightful owner. When the snake bit its tail, they would form perfect rings. Harry liked the idea of having an Ouroboros (a snake biting its tail) as the symbol for their group because it represented eternity. It would show their unending loyalty to one another and to the cause.
With his Parseltongue abilities, he would be able to imbue the rings with far more magic than one could usually put on an object. He could link them to the Fidelius, key them to respond to only one person, code them with secrecy charms, and even make them into communication devices.
The secrecy charms would be difficult to accomplish. He wanted to make it so that people would only be able to speak of the club with people who also wore the rings. That way, no one could reveal their secret either accidentally or with the intention of betraying them.
Harry also wanted to turn them into communication devices. He guessed that if he linked the rings together, he would be able to send messages to anyone wearing one. If he included a translation spell on everyone else's rings, he should be able to get any messages he spoke to his ring to appear in English on the bands of the other rings.
Harry sighed, taking a moment to think about the monumental nature of the task ahead of him. Even with the advantage of Parseltongue, this was going to be very difficult. Sure, he would be able to design spells without doing Arithmancy, but he still needed to ask for very specific things in Parseltongue. He would need to think of every detail and create strict parameters. Parselmagic also took a lot of power and concentration. Because it was purely intent-based, there was nothing to help channel the magic.
It was a good thing Harry didn't sleep much because he was going to have to work around the clock if he wanted to get these done this week.
He would begin working on the rings tomorrow. Once they were done he would cast the Fidelius charm. Then, once his friends had the list of members created, Harry would have them give the rings to each person on the list.
After he had finished mapping out his ideas in his notebook, he glanced at the clock.
"Damn it," Harry swore, jumping to his feet and packing away his things.
It was six in the morning. He had spent more than five hours sitting in this room, making plans. He was used to running on little sleep, but this was getting a bit ridiculous.
It was only Monday, and Harry just knew this was going to be a tough week. He was determined to get these rings done by Friday, even if it killed him.
He knew that he wouldn't be getting much sleep until the club was up and running. Somehow, he didn't care that much. This cause was worth losing sleep over. Besides, this is exactly why coffee and Wideye Potions were invented.
Harry spent the entire day trying to keep his nervous energy in check. Several times, he found himself literally bouncing up and down, to the great amusement of his friends. Harry didn't know why Spell-Crafting made him feel like this, but the prospect of spending all week tinkering with magic made him giddy.
Harry's plan for that night was to find the metal he would use for the rings. He hoped that the Room of Requirement would be able to provide some for him. He didn't fancy trying to conjure that much metal. It was possible, but it would take a lot of the power that he so desperately needed to complete the rest of the Spell-work.
When Harry explained the Room of Requirement and his plan for the rings to his friends, they were just as excited as he had been. Fred and George had been over the moon at the prospect of an inventing space free from the eyes of teachers (and Hermione).
After Harry explained his plans for the evening, George had insisted on joining him. "Fred and I have basically the same friends, so he can handle recruitment. Besides, you need an assistant. This is too much work for you to do alone."
"Okay," Harry said, secretly very happy that George would be joining him.
As soon as dinner was finished, Harry and George headed up to the Room of Requirement. Harry stopped before the door, wondering what he should ask for. In the end, he decided to just ask for a place where they could find the things they needed.
To his shock and dismay, they ended up in a giant room absolutely filled with piles upon piles of junk.
"Merlin, it's gonna take forever to find stuff in here," George whispered, staring in awe at the mountains of stuff. "What exactly am I looking for?" he asked, turning to look at Harry.
"Anything made of metal. Silver or brass would probably be best, but anything is fine."
"Right. Well, I'll go right, you go left. Let's meet back here in an hour or so to see what we've got."
They set off, Harry gazing in awe at the stuff. He was suddenly struck with a thought. There was no such thing as a Spell for detecting metal, but this was a great opportunity to try out his Parselmagic.
He pulled out his wand. "Serpensortia."
A tiny green snake materialized on the floor, gazing up at him with intelligent eyes.
"Hello, little one," Harry spoke, letting the silky feeling of Parseltongue wash over him.
"Hello, big one," the snake replied, slithering up his arm and wrapping itself around his wrist like a bracelet. "You are warm. I think I will keep you"
Harry laughed, he hadn't realized snakes were this funny.
Focusing on the snake, Harry pondered what he wanted. "Show me metal," he tried, channeling his magic through his wand.
Nothing happened.
He probably needed to be more specific.
"Show me the silver," he hissed.
This time, spots of light appeared all around the room, indicating where objects containing silver were.
"What the hell?" George's voice echoed from across the room, shock clear in his tone. "What just happened?"
"It's just a Spell, George," Harry called back. "It should show you where silver is."
"WICKED!"
Harry grinned, turning toward one of the glowing piles. After a bit of rifling around, he located the glowing object. It was a simple necklace inset with a blue crystal. It looked like it might be a birthstone. Harry put it into his rucksack, once again appreciating the usefulness of undetectable extension charms.
He continued his journey through the room, happily picking up silver items as he went. His best find was a pair of shoes that were completely covered in diamonds of different colors. He wondered for a moment if they were the shoes from the Wizard of Oz. He was only just able to resist the temptation to put them on and click his heels together. He reasoned that he didn't really have a home for them to take him to anyway.
He was just about to turn back when something made him stop dead in his tracks. The tugging sensation, the same sensation he had felt when he'd first found the locket, had just returned to his scar.
With growing dread, he moved toward the source of the tugging. Just like with the locket, Harry found that his magic was pushing him to keep getting closer to the object, forcing him forward. His rational mind knew that this was a bad idea. The locket was evil, and this object likely was as well.
No amount of rationality could stop the pull, and he found himself moving toward the source of the tugging, almost completely against his will.
After about five minutes of walking, he found it. Sitting atop a velvet cushion was the most beautiful tiara Harry had ever seen: intricate arches of delicate silver inlaid with gleaming sapphires. Harry reached out a hand, lightly brushing the central sapphire. Robotically, he pulled the tiara down and put it into his school bag, relieved that the tugging had finally stopped.
Noticing that his hour was nearly up, he hurried back to find George, doing his best to put all thoughts of the tiara from his mind. He would deal with it later.
Once they were reunited, Harry and George carefully went through their haul, picking out the best items. They wouldn't need much metal as Harry intended the rings to be quite small.
After securing their chosen objects in his rucksack, Harry asked the room to give him a space where he could create the rings. The room around them transformed into a tiny forge.
Harry had no idea what any of the stuff did, but that was what magic was for.
George went to one corner of the room which transformed into a small Potions lab. "I'm making us some Wideye Potion," he said, practically reading Harry's mind. "I think we're going to need it."
Harry moved to the center of the room, moving to stand before a large stone slab with a deep indentation in its center. It looked like someone had carved a bowl out of the stone. It was the perfect place to hold the molten metal.
He reached into his rucksack, pulling out a large silver chalice and the diamond-encrusted shoes.
After he'd found the shoes, Harry decided to put diamonds in for the snake's eyes, adding another dimension of beauty to the rings. The fact that the shoes had diamonds in blue, yellow, red, and green only made the idea more perfect. Every person's ring would bear the color of their house.
He wasn't exactly sure how to get the diamonds off the shoes, so he went back to basics. He pointed his wand at the shoes, channeling as much magic as he could into the spell. "Accio diamonds."
To his surprised delight, the diamonds flew right off the shoes. He directed them onto the table where they lay in a gleaming pile of refracting colors. He asked the room for a bowl and scooped the diamonds into it. For a moment he imagined how the Dursleys would react if they could see him now, literally holding a bowl full of diamonds.
Brushing away that thought, he pulled out a single red diamond, admiring how perfectly polished it was. He'd known that red diamonds existed, but he had certainly never expected to see one in person. Placing the diamond back into the bowl, he frowned down at the glittering objects. As they were, the diamonds were too large for his purposes. He thought maybe a Cutting Curse would work, as long as it had enough power behind it.
He channeled his magic through his arm, imagining the exact size he wanted. "Diffindo."
The large diamonds split into about ten tiny diamonds each. They were just the size he wanted. Unfortunately, as soon as the Spell ended, Harry began to feel extremely lightheaded, room spinning around him. Without him consciously asking, the room provided a cushy armchair just in time for him to collapse into it.
"Harry?" George called, hurrying over. "What happened?"
"Just...too much magic. I need a minute."
George looked at the table behind him. "Did you just cut diamonds?" he asked, voice choked. "Why would you try that? You know that they're the hardest material ever, right? What were you thinking?"
"It's fine. It worked, didn't it?"
"I don't care that it worked. Next time, don't just assume that you have enough power to do something. That could have ended very badly, Harry."
Harry felt his guilt rising as he looked at George's pale, worried face. He hadn't realized the Spell was that dangerous. "Sorry," he whispered, meaning it.
"It's fine. Just, please don't try any more stupid stunts today."
"I won't."
It took nearly 45 minutes before Harry felt strong enough to get back to work. When he was finally ready, he pulled out the silver chalice, trying to figure out how to return it to molten silver. He thought Parseltongue might be his best bet. He placed the chalice into the indentation in the stone, debating the proper wording.
"Become liquid," he tried.
Nothing.
"Return to liquid."
Nothing.
"Return to liquid fire."
Nothing.
"Through fire, return to liquid."
To his delight, the cup began to morph and melt, twisting itself together until the indentation contained a pool of molten metal. Unfortunately, he could see some impurities, tiny specks of darker gray floating to the surface.
"Separate what is not silver," he hissed, somehow getting the language right on the first try this time. The other metals rose above the silver, and he vanished them with a quick Vanishing Spell.
Now came the part that he had no idea how to do. In theory, he should be able to use intent to form the metal into the shape he wanted. If he could keep his concentration, a mental picture should be enough.
"Mold yourself into my mind's image," he hissed, keeping the image of the tiny snake he wanted firmly in his mind, clinging to the mental picture. A small drop of the metal rose above the surface, transforming before his eyes. George stopped his work, coming over to watch as the metal formed itself into a perfect image of a tiny snake, complete with miniature scales. Two of the tiny red diamonds flew up from the table, affixing themselves to the snake's empty eye sockets.
"Wow," George breathed. "That's some seriously cool magic."
Harry nodded, admiring the beautiful metal snake floating in the air before them. He cast a quick Freezing Charm on the metal, forcing it to solidify, then lowered it onto the table.
Over the next hour and a half, Harry made close to 100 of the tiny snakes. Once he got the hang of it, he could do two or three of the snakes at once. He had made roughly equal numbers of each color, hoping that the club would have an equal distribution of members from each house. He knew that he had probably made far too many of the snakes, but he would rather have too many than have to make more later.
He scooped all but one of the snakes into the small bag he'd brought with him.
It was time to figure out all the Charms he wanted to put on them. Just as he was about to get started, a buzzing noise sounded from his bag. Pulling out the two-way mirror, he accepted the incoming call from his godfather.
Sirius' face appeared in the mirror, smiling wildly. "Harry! I'm so happy you picked up! I wanted you to see my latest prank. Come in here, Moony!"
Remus appeared next to Sirius in the mirror, sporting green hair and a very exasperated expression. Harry burst out laughing.
"It suits you, Remus!" George called from behind Harry.
"Who's that?" Remus said, craning his neck to see past Harry.
George came over to Harry, perching on the arm of his chair.
"Oh, hi, George. What are you two doing?"
"Harry's starting an underground student defence club. I'm helping."
"Oh, excellent!" Sirius exclaimed, clearly delighted at the idea of Harry breaking rules. "How can we help?"
Harry explained everything: The Room of Requirement, the rings, and his desire to help students learn to defend themselves.
Remus listened intently, amber eyes shining with interest. "All the enchanting you're doing with the Parselmagic sounds fascinating! You'll have to show me the rings over Christmas. Since you're going to be teaching, would you like to borrow the books I used when I taught?"
Harry felt a wave of gratitude pass over him. "That would be great, Remus. Thank you so much!"
"Of course. I'll send them tonight. They might even make it to you by tomorrow."
They chatted for a bit longer before Harry ended the call.
He had a lot more work to do.
Harry decided to start with a Spell that would make the ring only work for a single individual. Pulling out one of the red-eyed snakes, he debated how to best go about this. If he gave each snake a command in Parseltongue, they should be able to follow it.
He turned to the tiny, metal snake in his hand. "Wake, Friend"
As he had hoped, the snake began moving as if it was alive, slithering about on his hand. It wasn't alive, of course, but he had theorized that Parselmouths could get inanimate snakes to move. It was the only thing that could explain the moving metal and stone snakes he had observed in the Chamber of Secrets.
His ring would be easiest because he could just order the snake directly in Parseltongue. For the others, he would have to give each snake a code word in English so that the others could activate it.
Focusing his attention back on the snake he ordered "Form a circle around my finger, biting your own tail. Once you are done, sleep again. Never wake for anyone but your wearer."
The tiny snake did as it was commanded, slithering up his left hand and settling itself around his index finger. It circled twice around his finger before turning its head down and biting its own tail. Once it had formed the ring, it stopped moving, leaving a beautiful silver ring on his finger.
He asked George to try to take the ring off his finger. No matter how hard he tried, George couldn't get the ring to budge. Even the Summoning Charm didn't work.
When Harry tried to take the ring off, it slid off easily, the snake uncurling itself and returning to its original position. They had turned out exactly as he wanted!
Now all he had to do was add the secrecy spells, the communications spells, and the Fidelius link.
He was just about to get started when George took his notebook from him. "It's time to go."
"I just want to work for a bit longer. There's so much to…"
George shook his head. "It's nearly midnight. You still have homework to do, and we have Quidditch practice in the morning. Plus, I'm pretty sure you must be nearing Magical Exhaustion with the number of Spells you've done tonight."
Knowing that George was probably right, Harry agreed to stop for the night.
After he'd vanished the conjured snake, the two of them headed back to the Common Room under Harry's invisibility cloak. It was slow going because Harry's legs were like jelly, shaking horribly. George had been right about the Magical Exhaustion.
Once they were back in the Common Room, George stayed with Harry until he had finished his homework, providing the extra motivation Harry needed to power through his fatigue.
When he made it back to his dormitory, Harry finally allowed his mind to return to the problem of the tiara he'd found. He didn't know why these objects called to him so much, but he was powerless to resist. Not seeing any other option, Harry buried the tiara in his trunk, settling it right next to the locket.
That night, Harry's dreams were more vivid than ever, the dark hallway flashing through his mind over and over again. It ran on an endless loop until morning, leaving him with an omnipresent feeling of deep frustration. He was going to go mad if this kept up.
The only thing that prevented Harry from actually going mad was George giving him one of the Wideye Potions he'd made the night before, the Potion lifting his spirits immediately. His mood got another boost when the books Remus had promised arrived in the claws of a very proud barn owl. He wouldn't have time to read the books this week, but they would be very useful once he started planning lessons.
Over the next several days, Harry continued working on his Spells, imbuing each and every metal snake with the necessary enchantments. By Friday morning he'd successfully imbued them with a Secrecy Charm that would prevent any member from talking about their club with anyone who wasn't wearing a ring themselves.
He'd also made them into rudimentary communication devices. He could speak in Parseltongue to his ring, the message appearing in English on the other rings. Making the rings go both ways was far more complicated. In the end, he'd imbued only five rings with the ability to communicate back to him (one each for Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Neville).
After some deliberation, he'd decided that each ring would need to be keyed to a specific person, making an individualized activation codeword for each ring. He'd also created connections between his ring and all the others so that he could activate just parts of the network at a time. He would be able to send messages and warnings to specific individuals or specific groups. It had been a terribly long process. He didn't even know how many Wideye Potions he had drunk, but he guessed it was far too many.
Now that he'd created each ring, he went about keying them to specific individuals. The others had given him their lists of names that very morning. It ended up being twenty-five people from Gryffindor, twenty-three from Ravenclaw, twenty-one from Hufflepuff, and eighteen from Slytherin. It was fairly evenly split between years: twenty-one in years one through three, forty in years four through five, and twenty-six in years six through seven.
Harry was very pleased with those numbers, glad that they'd reached a diverse subset of the student body.
That evening, Harry keyed each ring to their future owner, setting the activation codeword as each student's first name. He kept them in order by inscribing each name into the underside of the snake. Once the ring was on, the name would be invisible, flush against the person's finger.
Harry would distribute the snakes to his friends who would ensure they made it to the designated owner. Once that person had the snake in their hand, all they had to do was say their own name for the snake to awake and form the Ouroborus shape around their finger.
That done, all that was left was to cast the Fidelius Charm and link it to the rings. This part of the process turned out to be fairly easy. The Fidelius, although it took a huge amount of power, was an easy spell to cast. He had worked so extensively with the rings by this point that it was simple for him to give the secret to each ring as if it was a person. As soon as a person put on the ring, they would know the location of the Room of Requirement.
The only difficult part about Harry's work that night was that he was alone. Fred had pulled George away for some experimenting, and Harry had felt too awkward to ask him to stay.
He was surprised by how much he missed having George with him.
That night, he actually finished before curfew, starting back to the Common Room without his invisibility cloak.
Later, he would wish that he'd worn it.
He had to walk pretty slowly because the Fidelius Charm had left him profoundly exhausted, sapping the majority of his strength. He'd only made it about halfway back to the tower when he came face to face with Michael McManus, the Hufflepuff Prefect who'd slammed him into a wall a week ago.
When he caught sight of Harry, McManus' handsome face twisted with ugly rage. Harry was too tired to react as McManus slammed him against the wall, holding him there with an arm at his throat, cutting off his air supply.
"Listen, Potter. I'm not fooled by your little act. I know you killed Cedric. You better watch your back because I'm coming for you. When you least expect it, I'm going to…"
"Hem hem."
To Harry's dismay, Umbridge had just turned the corner, watching the scene unfold with apparent interest.
"What is going on here, Mr. McManus?" she asked sweetly.
McManus released Harry and stepped back. Harry could only stand there gasping for breath, waiting for the black dots to fade from his vision.
"Potter was acting erratic, Professor," McManus said. "He tried to attack me. I had to restrain him."
It wasn't even a good lie, but Umbridge bought it anyway.
"Attacking students, Mr. Potter?" she asked gleefully. "I think that warrants another week of detention. I'll see you in my office at five on Monday evening."
McManus smirked at Harry before leaving the hallway, Umbridge following close behind. Harry stood alone, wondering how on earth he was going to get through another week of detentions.
As the unfairness of the situation sank in, he was more determined than ever to get the defense club up and running. He would protect the other students from Umbridge. He would protect them even though he couldn't protect himself. Umbridge might win this battle against him, but he would win the war.
He would win the war, and she would pay.