Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowlings.
Chapter 8 is done!
Chapter 8
Someone had taken the wise precaution of enlarging the tables in the Great Hall. Harry was more than grateful for this, because the students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had chosen to rejoin the tables they had sat at yesterday. This left the larger Gryffindor table considerably more spacious than before and nobody needed to brush against him, or sit with a leg pressed up against his.
After enduring Katie Bell's closeness at the last lunch Harry tactically chose a seat between Ron, who would be firmly focused on food at this, or any, mealtime, and the corner. He had space to continue reading without any uncomfortable interruptions and as long as he left his arm between Ron and his rack of toast he had enough breakfast as well.
It promised to be a good day.
The Goblet of Fire was still cheerfully burning away at the opposite end of the hall to where he was sitting. The blue flames flickering in the corner of his eye, reflected on the inside of his glasses. It grew annoying quite quickly and Harry was forced to turn back in towards the table and the conversation.
'Ten sickles says it's Angelina,' he heard Seamus mutter.
'You're on,' Dean replied, keeping a weather eye on Hermione who thoroughly disapproved of gambling. 'It will Diggory or that uppity Ravenclaw for sure.'
'He won't pay you,' Ron accused through a mouthful of bacon. 'Seamus still owes me for the house-elf bet.'
'Don't remind me,' Dean shuddered. 'And keep it down, Hermione's not remembered to try foist badges onto us today yet. Let's try and make it last?'
'Badges?' Harry looked up from his book curiously.
'Yeah,' Seamus glowered. 'It's your damn fault. That rubbish you concocted and fed her about house-elves at Hogwarts set her off in search of the kitchens and now she's gone and started an enslaved magical people's rights group.'
'I wasn't expecting her to do that,' he objected. 'I just wanted to stop her attempts to force feed me.'
'Well it worked, but we're all paying a high price for it,' Dean said with mock seriousness.
'She hasn't tried to sell me one,' Harry shrugged.
'You haven't exactly been around, mate,' Ron retorted. 'We're living dangerously, we are.'
'Yeah, any more refusals and she'll realise we don't agree with her,' Dean cut in.
'Or worse,' Seamus grinned, 'we might end up like Neville.'
Harry looked down the table in search of their shy friend, but saw nothing amiss. He raised an eyebrow at the Irish wizard.
'Hermione's sold him about ten badges already, but he keeps forgetting them. She thinks he's doing it on purpose and has taken to harassing him about wearing them every time she sees him.'
'Better him than us,' Dean advocated, 'better him than us.'
'Too true,' Ron agreed. 'She went mental on Lavender when she refused to wear one because it didn't go with her lip gloss.'
'Best refusal yet,' Seamus laughed. 'Hermione was absolutely livid that lip gloss could be considered of equal importance to her anti-slavery movement.'
'Someone needs to tell her about the differences between keeping house-elves and having slaves,' Ron groused. 'It's growing well beyond a joke.'
They all turned to look at expectantly at Harry. 'I don't actually know myself,' he apologised. 'Have you tried leaving books about it lying around near her? She'll see them, read them, and maybe stop. Once she's learnt a bit more about she'll realise she's wrong and move on. Hermione's never been one to cling to an opinion she knows is incorrect.'
'That's a good idea, mate,' Seamus agreed. 'Cunning. It's worth the trip to the library too.' Hermione, fortunately, was not listening and remained unaware.
'Do you reckon they'll announce the champions today?' Ron asked, throwing a furtive place at the goblet.
'Dumbledore said he would,' Dean answered.
Harry really had very little interest in the Triwizard Tournament and buried his nose back into the pages of his charms book. The cover had started to fall off from centuries of neglect in the chamber, and the outer pages were all but illegible. The section on the water-conjuring spell was both unmarred and interesting, if a little theory heavy for Harry's taste, but he curiously went through it regardless. The charm would save him a great deal of effort in the night. Everyone hated it when someone staggered or rummaged around noisily in the middle of the dormitory searching for a drink.
He quietly pinched Ron's goblet to practice.
'Aguamenti,' he murmured, pointing his wand tip into the vessel.
A very small dribble of water filled the bottom few inches of the goblet. For a first attempt it wasn't too bad, there was water. He could practise the action and visualisation later in the common room or in the chamber.
Turning the next few pages, most of which seemed to be adhered together by something that looked unpleasantly like bile, he found an interesting note on shield charms.
The shield charm is a heavily intent based ward, adapted from basic hex deflection into a more practical defense. As such it can only be penetrated by spells cast with stronger intent and focus. The ultimate example of which is the Killing Curse that has such a potent level of intent it cannot be shielded against.
It was quite a useful little nugget of information and Harry was rather glad he'd snuck the book out past the watchful eyes of Salazar's portrait. It was just a shame he hadn't found a more intact copy, or couldn't read enough of the title to buy one of his own.
Happily ensconced in the weathered tome he continued to pour over the few legible pages, munching on toast in between turning them, and trying not to get any crumbs on the book. His attempt was more out of a learned fear of Madam Pince than anything since this spell book was rather beyond saving.
It was quite a while later, when he was considering the wand movement of the stunning spell, that an odd, uncomfortable feeling began to make itself known.
Harry ignored it as best he could and focused harder on the book, but the sensation persisted and eventually he looked up out of growing paranoia.
The entirety of the Great Hall was staring at him.
I missed something important, he realised, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.
Harry was intimately familiar with this feeling; he experienced it every time something went unexpectedly, horribly wrong for him.
'Good book, Harry?' Professor Dumbledore asked lightly from halfway down the hall.
He nodded warily in reply and there was a titter of laughter. The sudden attention was giving him a serious urge to run for the doors.
'Would you mind joining the others?' The old headmaster gestured towards the small door at the end of the hall.
Eager to be out of the hall and from under the eyes of the entire assembled population of Hogwarts Harry complied, still somewhat mystified.
It was only when he caught sight of the utter betrayal etched into his friends' faces and read the beginning of his name off the burnt-edged piece of parchment Dumbledore was still holding that he realised what had just happened.
Oh, he paused mid-step in shock. Oh, this is not seriously happening, is it?
Harry turned back to ask Dumbledore what was going on, but one look at the headmaster's stern expression stopped that idea dead in its tracks.
I didn't even want to watch the tournament, let alone take part.
He fixed the flaming cup with his most venomous glare, half-tempted to try and take some measure of revenge for what the object had just done to him.
'What is it, Harry?' Cedric Diggory asked when he entered the antechamber. 'Do they want us to go back?'
Harry blinked. Evidently Cedric was the Hogwarts representative, which led him down two paths of thought.
What the hell am I here for if he's the champion? Harry wondered. Slightly less importantly, but immediately afterwards, came the realisation that Seamus owed Dean ten sickles.
'This is unprecedented,' a loud voice boomed. Harry recognised Ludo Bagman from his commentary at the World Cup. 'A fourth champion.'
'He is going to compete?' The silver-haired girl seemed almost as displeased by the turn of events as he was. Her unimpressed look of dismissal was reflected in the eyes of both Cedric and Viktor Krum, Durmstrang's chosen student.
'He has to,' a dry, tired voice explained. Harry recognised the voice and face of Mr Crouch from the articles about the World Cup. 'Entering your name in the goblet represents the creation of a magically binding contract.'
Of course it does, Harry fumed. Every year. Every single year. I shouldn't even be surprised anymore.
'What,' he queried, more out of a desire to clear his name than any real hope of escape, 'if you didn't put your name in and happened to find yourself here anyway?'
'Are you suggesting that you did not enter your name, Mr Potter?' Dumbledore swept into the room, taking centre-stage immediately. He was trailed by a disapproving Head of Gryffindor, a rather paranoid looking Professor Moody and a sneering Snape. The latter was not abnormal at all and Harry was almost comforted by the familiarity of the expression.
'I wasn't suggesting it, sir,' Harry defended. 'I can say with complete certainty that I didn't consciously do so, nor,' he continued, as Snape's sneer grew more pronounced, 'did I get another student to do it.'
'He's lying,' the Beauxbatons student declared. 'How else did his name come out?' She tossed her hair indignantly and raised her chin. Cedric and Krum stayed quiet. The actual Hogwarts Champion seemed slightly confused and Krum did not seem to care in the slightest whether he was lying or not. His hostile gaze did not lessen, not even when it passed over his other, more conventional competitors.
'It does seem unlikely, Harry,' Dumbledore probed.
Harry just shrugged. There was nothing else to say. He hadn't done it, was rather tired of being stared at by people, and was stuck in the stupid tournament anyway.
'We would like an extra champion,' the enormous headmistress of Beauxbatons demanded. 'Hogwarts cannot have two when we only have one.'
'Hogwarts has only one champion,' Harry decided, eager to get this over with. 'Cedric put his name in and was chosen, he is the representative of the school.' The Hufflepuff student looked rather taken aback by Harry's announcement.
'You have to compete,' Mr Crouch told him firmly, 'else you will lose your magic.'
'I know,' Harry stated flatly. He was not stupid enough to risk that. 'I don't have to belong to a school, though. I'll turn up and take part, but I won't be earning any extra points for Hogwarts when I never even wanted to compete in the first place.'
'If that is what you wish,' the headmaster nodded. His eyes had lost their twinkle and Harry could only see unending disappointment within them. It struck him as a profoundly unfair reaction. Professor Dumbledore should have made it impossible for this to occur with the age line. He had to know Harry wasn't lying, so why was he wearing that mask of disapproval.
'Is that acceptable?' Mr Crouch asked the other champions.
'It's not like he will earn any points anyway,' the French witch replied. Krum and Cedric just nodded, the latter considerably more amicably.
'Then it's settled,' Bagman cried cheerfully, completely oblivious to the mood in the room. 'We'll come and fetch you before the wand-weighing ceremony at the start of the tournament.'
The other champions filed out past Harry. He received rather neutral looks from Krum and Cedric, but the Beauxbatons champion glared at him through her veil of silver hair.
I don't think she likes me.
'Stay here please, Harry,' Dumbledore ordered.
He waited nervously while everyone else left, wondering what else the headmaster could have to say to him.
'I didn't expect this from you, my boy,' Dumbledore declared, shaking his head. 'I won't pretend to understand why you entered, but you have to take part now and you're at a great disadvantage. The tasks were designed for sixth and seventh year students not fourth years.'
'I didn't enter my name,' Harry repeated, but he was beginning to give up on any hope of anyone listening to him.
'I see,' Dumbledore responded softly. The look of utter disappointment had returned and it was beginning to provoke Harry's ire.
What do I have to do for people to trust me?
This was beyond ridiculous.
He turned and left without waiting for the headmaster to dismiss him. Somebody had put his name in the Goblet of Fire and he would find out who and why before exacting an appropriate level of vengeance.
His journey back to the common room was dogged by whispers and barbed comments. Slytherin and Hufflepuff in particular were rather open about their disdain for him.
At least my friends will believe me once I tell them.
Gryffindor tower greeted him with stark silence.
'I can't believe you, Harry,' Ron spoke up after a moment. 'You said you wouldn't put your name in. You promised us you'd be watching alongside us.'
Seamus, Dean, and many of the friends from his year were regarding him rather coldly. It was worse than the reactions he'd received in the corridors. He'd expected those.
'You could have at least told us how you managed it so we'd have a chance as well,' Seamus said frigidly. 'Your word doesn't mean much does it.' They turned away from him when he tried to protest, even Hermione, though she seemed reluctant.
Why won't they listen?
'You guys believe me right?' he asked, looking rather desperately at three Gryffindor team chasers.
'You told us you weren't going to enter,' Angelina, retorted angrily, 'but your name came out, didn't it?' Alicia and Katie said nothing, but he could see they at least partially agreed with their friend.
Harry searched across the sea of cold faces for a single supportive look, but found none, even little Colin Creevey was looking hostile. Three years of friendship and trust swept aside by an incident he wasn't even responsible for.
So that's how it is. He tightened his hands into fists. So much for house loyalty.
He spun around and stormed out, ignoring the stares that followed him. He was so angry, so utterly furious with all of them. It was white-hot, searing him from the inside, and potent enough to make his whole tremble.
He stalked in the direction of the Chamber of Secrets, fingering his wand. They accused him of betrayal, him, when they wouldn't even wait to hear him explain.
Salazar was right. I should have made better friends.
He stormed right past Myrtle's cubicle down the stairs, but the usually friendly ghost was nowhere to be seen.
Reaching the main hall where the basilisk corpse lay he unleashed every violent spell he knew in all directions, serpent effigies shattered, throwing dust and sharp stone fragments across the chamber, but Harry didn't stop. A sharp piece caught him on the cheek, but the stinging pain was so much less than the burning torrent of rage his house's betrayal had created. No amount of furious spell casting seemed to lessen it and in the end he just slumped against one of the ruin walls and pounded his fist onto the flagstones until it hurt too much too continue.
He wasn't sure exactly how long he sat there seething, staring at nothing and thinking about how his closest friends could have turned their back on him, but in the end his rage abandoned him just as they had.
It left him feeling rather hollow.
'What were you doing?' Salazar asked him incredulously when he made his way into the study.
'Venting,' Harry replied shortly.
'What happened?'
'My name was chosen for the Triwizard Tournament. I didn't even enter, but nobody will listen to me, let alone believe me.' Without the anger he had felt before his explanation sounded very tired, almost resigned. 'My housemates and friends certainly don't,' he finished wearily.
'I do,' the painting told him. The snake stayed silent, eying him through Salazar's hair.
'What does it say about my friends that the only one who trusts me is a thousand year old portrait?' Harry demanded.
'It says Godric and Helga would both be very disappointed.' Salazar's tone was unusually frank. 'Tell me about the tournament.'
'It has tasks,' Harry began, drawing on what he had overheard from Ron and the others. 'Three of them. There is a champion from each of Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, and me.'
'Is it dangerous?'
'It was cancelled because the contestants kept dying.'
'Something worth winning, then,' Slytherin declared.
'I'm competing with much older students; the best in their schools.'
'You're my heir,' Salazar reminded him gently. 'You're a prodigy at transfiguration, you'll be proficient at duelling, and you're powerful in your own right. You can win. You will win.'
'Why would I even want to win?' Harry asked him, exasperated.
'The hat nearly put you in Slytherin, yes?'
'Yes.'
'Then use some of that ambition you must have lurking inside you and prove yourself better. Silence your doubters and former friends by winning the damn thing. They'll come flocking back to you afterwards I guarantee it.' The portrait sounded particularly scathing at that.
'What if I don't want them back,' Harry decided.
'Make better allies, then.' The painting's wand let out a spurt of green and silver sparks. 'You wanted to be stronger, accomplish it. Participating and winning this tournament will prove you really have bettered yourself as you wished to.'
I do need to be better. Harry could not bear the idea of another Pettigrew escaping.
'What should I do?' Harry asked his ancestor. 'How can I win?'
'Cunning. They will underestimate you. Ignore your pride and use theirs against them. A serpent strikes from hiding.' Salazar paused to consider his statement and the snake around his shoulders hissed in the brief moment of silence.
'Do the rituals,' he suggested again. 'The first is more of a risk if you carry it out before your magical core has finished growing, but its benefits will be greater. The second is virtually risk free when done properly. The ritual was a common practice in my time, all but a rite of a passage. It will encourage your body to improve itself more quickly, though that is a very simplistic explanation. Neither will bring you incredible power, but they will help close the gap between you and the others. Tom Riddle profited greatly from these, though he took them many steps further afterwards on his own.'
Harry did not want to follow in the footsteps of Tom Riddle. The idea alone was nauseating. The man had become more a monster than anything human, if he had not been born one to begin with.
'Intent is the most important part of magic,' Salazar reminded him, watching his internal struggle.
He needed to be stronger, but Harry knew that nobody would understand, they'd think he had betrayed them and gone dark. He'd be dubbed the next Voldemort swiftly enough.
He was about to refuse, fearing the reaction of the school and his memory of the time when everyone considered him the Heir of Slytherin, but then he remembered the cold, hostile faces in Gryffindor Tower and the disappointment of his teachers. They already thought he had betrayed them. Salazar had alone had trusted him. Harry should do the same in return.
'I'll do it,' he decided.
There were very faint footprints on the ladder up to where Salazar had informed the books about the rituals were. The feet were too large to be Ginny's, about the same size as Harry's own, but he had never climbed the ladder.
It was with a slight chill that he realised Salazar's comment about following in Tom Riddle's footsteps had come very literally true. Harry scuffed the marks away with his feet.
'First two in the book,' the portrait told him as he jumped off the ladder. 'They're not very complex, just dangerous if you do something wrong.'
Harry placed the two battered looking books down on the text on top of a very dusty copy of Secrets of the Darkest Art. It was a large, black, leather-bound tome with sheafs of parchment sticking out of different pages.
Tom Riddle's homework, no doubt.
He picked up his rituals books and retrieved his wand.
'Am I likely to do anything wrong?' Harry inquired. This was not exactly the best time for Salazar to be encouraging any of his reservations.
'Not with me here,' the painting assured him. 'Now take me out into the chamber. You're not drawing runes all over the study.' Harry sighed. He hated carrying the painting. Whomever had cast an anti-levitating charm on it, probably Salazar himself, was a sadist of the highest order.
Salazar Slytherin was a perfectionist. Harry was made to completely erase and redraw both sets of runes several times before the ancient portrait was satisfied and allowed him proceed.
'A little blood, only a few drops, at each of the points,' he instructed, gazing critically across the shapes Harry had etched into the floor with his wand.
The runes were a bright violet, the enchantments arrayed in an asymmetrical seven-pointed star that spread out around him, and simpler triangle for ritual Salazar assured him would improve his body.
Harry drew his wand gently across his palm, splitting the skin with a wordless cutting spell. A thin line of red welled up and tricked down his palm.
'What happens now?' he asked the founder dubiously, spattering a few drops of blood on each of the corners of the two shapes.
'You stand exactly at the centre,' both Salazar and his snake indicated the middle of the star, 'and channel a little magic. It will increase the potential of your magical core by a very small fraction, but more importantly it will alter the ease with which you can wield your magic.'
Harry didn't move.
'Fine,' the founder sighed, 'I'll embellish. Think of your magical core as a bubble. As you grow towards your majority the bubble gets bigger, taking in magic from outside. This ritual, to use a limited metaphor that doesn't require centuries of study to understand, changes the consistency of the bubble. Very slightly more natural magic is taken in and your magic can be pulled out swifter and more easily, relative to before.'
'And if something goes wrong?'
'Your runes are perfect, so unless you are interrupted,' Salazar gave him a pointed look to remind exactly how impossible that was, 'nothing will happen.'
'Humour me?'
'Your bubble changes too much and bursts,' Slytherin told him flatly. Harry flinched. 'It is a virtually non-existent possibility.'
'And the other ritual? Any nasty surprises there?'
'If you drew the triangle incorrectly or unevenly the effects might only be limited to certain parts of your body, but even if that happened you could simply redo it to correct things.'
'Will it fix my eyesight?' Harry fingered his glasses.
'No,' the portrait shook its head. 'It allows your body to make better use of what it's given, developing more quickly and easily, but won't affect pre-existing problems like that. It will likely only give you the body of an athletic fourteen year old and perhaps speed up puberty.'
That was a shame. Harry hated it when his glasses fell off in the middle of something important. It almost always happened. They'd fall off and he'd have to scrabble around blindly for them, usually in the presence of something highly dangerous.
'I don't have to be naked do I?' It was cold in the chamber. The study had warming charms placed all over it, but out here, directly below the back lake, there was nothing to stop the cold filtering in.
'Only a very precise and advanced ritual would be affected by clothing like yours. Fortunately for both of us these two are neither.' The snake, which had rather insultingly hidden beneath Salazar's robe at his question, slithered back out of the founder's sleeve and curled about his arm. 'You should probably leave your wand outside, though, just in case.'
Harry carefully placed his holly and phoenix feather wand outside the edges of the runic star. He felt rather vulnerable without it.
'I suppose I had best get started,' Harry said. He felt surprisingly light, unburdened by emotion. His fury from earlier had left him and nothing had come to take its place.
I won't turn back, he declared, as the glyphs began to glow more brightly, pulsing frenetically on the floor around him. I won't even look back.
AN: Please read and review. Thanks to those of you who have, or will.
