Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.
Number 70 is up. We're back to normal length now, no 8000 word monstrosity this time.
Chapter 70
Something heavy draped itself across his stomach and his eyes flashed open, hand snapping under his pillow to find his wand.
'Morning Harry,' Katie beamed from where she had leant back across his stomach. 'Time to get up.'
'Get off,' he groaned, looping an arm under her shoulder and pulling her upright off his stomach. 'I'm not even getting the train, remember.'
'Oh I know,' Katie giggled. 'Did you know you have the best bed hair I've ever seen?'
'How did you get in?' Harry asked, eyeing her curiously. 'I put a sticking charm on the curtains.'
'I knew that too,' she said, indicating the hole she had clearly cut in the drapes around his bed. 'It took me almost five whole seconds to get in once I lost patience with trying to draw them.' That at least explained where all the light was coming from.
'You wanted to say goodbye again this badly?' He teased, undoing his sticking charm, and sitting up. 'Does Alicia know where you are?'
'Yes,' Katie smirked, looking awfully smug about something. 'I finally convinced her to see sense: it only took until the last hour of our school life together.'
'Better late than never,' Harry quipped, distractedly patting his hair down, and transfiguring his pyjamas into something less revealing. Katie looked mildly disappointed, and pulled back the hangings for him.
'Where is all your stuff?' She asked, peering around his bed at his mostly empty trunk.
'Around,' Harry answered vaguely, stifling a yawn, and casting a quick tempus charm. It was just before nine. Katie was uncharacteristically active and cheerful for this time of the morning.
'Where's everyone else?' All the other beds were empty, something Katie had apparently only just noticed.
'Maybe they all left before they were forced to witness you murdered for waking me early,' Harry told her brightly. 'What possessed you to come and disturb me?'
'I wanted to say goodbye,' she answered, sitting down in the window and gazing out at the grey, undecided Scottish sky. Her breath fogged up the panes.
'Breakfast?' Katie suggested, turning back to look at him.
'Fine,' Harry grimaced. He wasn't going to be getting back to sleep, and he supposed there were worse ways to spend the next hour than with Katie, even if she was being exuberant a little earlier than normal.
'Why are you so cheerful?' He asked. 'It's your last day of school with Angelina and Alicia.'
'I know,' Katie beamed. 'Angelina had to cast a handful of Cheering Charms on me when we woke up so I'd be less miserable and actually get out of bed. She cast a few too many,' Katie giggled again, 'then I came down here to see you and she went to argue with Alicia about something.'
'That explains a lot,' Harry grinned. 'Though not why you thought waking me up was a good idea.'
'You get to see me,' Katie stated matter of factly.
'Let's go to breakfast,' Harry decided, closing and locking his trunk. His transfiguration would last easily long enough to sit through breakfast with Katie.
'Good idea,' she laughed, bouncing cheerfully from the room. Harry sighed, levitated his trunk, and followed her down into the empty common room. The trunk floated along after him, bumping against the wall when he turned the corner on the stairs.
'I'm going to miss Angelina and Alicia,' Katie nodded happily, 'they've been my best friends since second year when I joined the quidditch team.'
'You can still meet up with them over the summer and at Hogsmeade,' Harry assured her, ducking out through the painting of the Fat Lady, his trunk still trailing after him.
He wasn't entirely sure the Cheering Charms had been the best idea, it might have been better for Katie to just get through her emotions normally rather than have them so switched around on her. He briefly considered accompanying on the train so he knew there was someone to deal with the inevitable collapse, but Angelina and Alicia would be there for her, and he had to ward the Chamber of Secrets.
'I know,' Katie nodded. 'They're helping Fred and George with some enterprise they're starting this summer, but I'm not supposed to tell you that.' She looked oddly thoughtful. 'There's a lot of things they don't want me to tell you really.'
'You should probably listen to them,' Harry commented. He didn't really want to know what secrets Angelina and Alicia had shared with Katie. At the very least he would end up learning more about Fred and George than he ever wanted to.
'I promised,' Katie agreed, bounding down the stairs, narrowly missing the trick step and stopping to wait impatiently for him by the doors to the Great Hall while he tucked his trunk out of sight at the bottom of the steps.
It was full, completely so, and Harry sighed under his breath. He could've had a nice, quiet breakfast in the kitchens in another hour, then drifted to the chamber to follow whatever Salazar decided was the best way to ward the chamber. Instead he had to accompany what was effectively a drunk Katie at nine o'clock in the morning where everyone could see.
He'd already resigned himself to not getting any bacon.
Katie took a seat right on the nearest end of the Gryffindor Table, shooing second years up the bench to make space for the two of them.
'Here,' she beamed, passing him the toast rack with one hand and surreptitiously retrieving the plate of bacon with the other.
How devious, Harry smiled to himself.
'Thanks,' he said dryly, helping himself to a pair of pieces and taking a bite out of the first. To his shock she then offered him the plate of bacon, giggling at his expression. Knowing that it wasn't likely to come back if he refused he took a forkful and made himself a haphazard sandwich.
Harry glanced down the table, noting that everyone in his year, including Neville, was sitting just past the middle, and an irritated Alicia was sitting next to a very guilty looking Angelina just past them. He looked away when Angelina caught his eye and bit her lip.
'So what're you doing over the summer, Harry?' Katie asked.
'Not much,' Harry replied. 'Studying for NEWTs probably, and meeting up with friends.'
'Not going to see Fleur?' She asked quietly.
'I'll be seeing a lot of Fleur,' Harry grinned, then flushed at Katie's suggestive look. 'Probably be keeping my head down and staying safe as well,' he added more seriously. 'I'll be a target now,' Harry warned her.
'You've been a target every year.' Katie patted him on the cheek gently, accidentally brushing the tips of her fingers against the corner of his mouth. 'I don't care.'
'I'm still coming incognito when I meet up with you over the summer,' Harry smiled 'just in case.'
'You should bring Fleur,' Katie proposed. 'I'd like to actually meet her at some point. I have so many things to tell her about you.' A rather disconcerting spark of mischief gleamed in her dark eyes.
'Planning to embarrass me?' Harry chuckled.
'I'll try my hardest not to scare her off,' she shrugged.
'I don't think there's much you could tell her that would be more embarrassing than what she already knows,' Harry admitted, 'but don't let me dissuade you.'
'You won't,' she beamed, taking a large bite of her sandwich that inevitably contained all the remaining bacon.
'Wonderful,' Harry responded wryly, watching the first, most eager students start to head towards the doors and the carriages back to Hogsmeade Station. Katie noticed them too and took a more hurried bite of her sandwich. She was looking considerably less cheerful, the magic Angelina had cast was wearing off.
More and more students began to filter out, and Harry glimpsed Neville and Ron among them, the latter jostling aggressively with Malfoy when he strayed too close. Katie finished her sandwich, throwing a glance to where the other two chasers were lingering waiting for her.
'I'll see you in the summer, Harry,' she promised, leaning across to hug him with one arm. 'Any day's fine if you want to come visit. My parents own the third café on the left in the southern part of Diagon Alley.'
She probably should have told Neville that too, Harry realised.
'I'll come visit,' Harry assured her, returning the rather awkward, sideways hug as best he could until Katie eventually relinquished him and drifted reluctantly away to join Angelina and Alicia. He watched her back recede out the door, smiling when she looked back at him, then quietly helped himself to some eggs.
In a few minutes he was alone in the hall, scarfing the eggs down quickly so he could get to the chamber and out of from under Dumbledore's crooked nose as soon as possible.
Stealing one last slice of toast from the nearest rack he swept out of the hall, pirouetting around Argus Filch, who mumbled tetchily at him, and levitated his trunk again. The caretaker watched him ambivalently. His attitude was a little improved, though still far from perfect, now he no longer remembered the torment of being the only one without magic in his family.
Mrs Norris' stare, however, was every bit as malignant as before, and she watched Harry walk away up to the second floor with her dull, yellow eyes, licking at her paw in a manner that was somehow menacing.
Myrtle was hovering over the entrance, floating to and for in front of the sinks over a dry floor. She seemed strangely more translucent than normal. The usual, pearly aspect of her appearance had faded to little more than a faint outline, as if her figure was formed from heat haze.
'Are you ok?' Harry asked carefully, aware Myrtle had a tendency to fly off the handle when asked certain questions.
'I'm fading,' she whispered, sounding horribly distant. Her voice echoed from another place.
'What does that mean?' Harry knew little about ghosts, but fading sounded oddly final the way Myrtle had said it. He'd never considered anything more final than dying and becoming a ghost.
'I don't know,' the ghost murmured, floating over to him and sweeping her hand through his face. Harry felt only the faintest hint of cold from her fingers. 'I'm scared,' her voice trembled. 'I haven't been afraid in fifty years.'
'Maybe you're moving on?' Harry suggested as optimistically as he could.
'Maybe,' Myrtle sank down level with him. 'I don't feel attached to the bathroom anymore. I didn't even know you were here until you spoke. I can't feel it anymore.'
The horrible thought struck Harry that maybe Myrtle wasn't attached to the bathroom so much as the room where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was. A room that he was on the verge of changing.
Could Myrtle somehow know her connection with the entrance is about to change?
It seemed too convenient to be a coincidence.
'I can't see,' the girl gasped, horrified. 'I can't see anything.'
Harry snapped his head up, searching the air for the ever-fainter form of Myrtle. He found nothing, not even when he swept his hand through the air in search of that unpleasant cold sensation. Myrtle was gone.
'Open,' he hissed, still a little in shock. He'd never considered the possibility of something happening to a ghost. Even the stare of the basilisk did no more than petrify them, and now, for a reason he felt horrible sure was his fault, Myrtle had faded.
He drifted slowly down the stairs into the chamber, listening to the echo of footsteps across the main chamber, and justifying his actions to himself. If it was his fault, as he was increasingly certain it might be, then there was nothing that he could have done even if he had known. Voldemort could not be allowed entrance into the Chamber of Secrets and Hogwarts, not under any circumstances.
Sorry Myrtle, he apologised, just in case her fading was his fault.
'I'm back,' he announced, opening the door to the study and waiting for the bridge to rise out of the pool.
'So you are,' Salazar agreed quietly. The snake that normally encircled his shoulders was tightly wrapped around his chest, its head tucked against Slytherin's cheek. 'I have a story for you.'
Harry settled himself down in front of the desk, depositing his trunk in the corner and shifting the piles of books apart so he could clearly see the portrait. 'What's it about?' He inquired, intrigued by the painting's sorrowful tone.
'There are several variations,' Salazar began, 'but they all start with a witch and her younger brother. The witch, whose name has been lost to history, all but raised her younger brother after their parents died. She turned out to be quite a gifted witch, and, once her brother was old enough to remain at home alone, travelled the country crafting wands and other objects for the wealthy. Eventually she was asked to create an artefact of incredible power, a mirror that would create a perfect, permanent copy of any object it reflected.'
'That sounds like something that should not have been made so lightly,' Harry commented.
'Godric would agree, and, now I have learnt better, so do I,' Slytherin replied. 'It took the witch many attempts to craft the mirror, working in secret so as not to advertise her project, but when she was successful she left her brother behind and went to present it to the wizard who had commissioned it. This wizard was very pleased with her creation, but, fearing she might create another for another ordered her killed, and the witch was executed.'
'What happened to her brother?'
'That is the true story,' Salazar smiled faintly. 'He grew up knowing what became of his sister and determined to have his revenge and find a way to bring her back.'
'But she was dead,' Harry remarked, 'how could she be brought back?'
'Many things that were once considered impossible have become possible though magic,' Slytherin said sagely. 'He planned and studied for decades, for the wizard with the mirror had used it to become very powerful, marrying, having and raising his children, but never forgetting his goal. The younger brother went on to craft a wand to take his revenge, a wand that would be more powerful than anything any other wielded. It was rumoured that he was so bent on his revenge that he invoked the power of death itself to craft it, trading his own soul in return for it.'
'That sounds unbelievable,' Harry decided sceptically.
'I suspect he just crafted a very powerful wand,' Salazar agreed, 'but nonetheless he was not satisfied, because one wand against all the power of the wizard's followers would not be enough. He went further, crafting a cloak to let him sneak into the wizard's castle undetected, a cloak that was supposed to be powerful enough to hide him completely.'
Harry threw a glance at the folded, silvery surface of his own invisibility cloak.
'I see you have guessed at some of the relevance of this story,' Salazar smiled proudly. 'I knew you would. The younger brother slipped into the castle under his cloak, killed the wizard, destroyed the mirror his sister made so that it might never be used again, and left, but his desire to see her again had only grown over the years and his vengeance was not enough. At the advice of his wife and children he created a stone, one with the power to show him the dead, so that he could prove his quest was not impossible. It showed him his sister, drawing her from whatever comes after death, but her existence was not true enough and, determined to bring her back in full, he created one last artefact.'
'Why are you telling me this story?' Harry asked, a sudden feeling of foreboding striking him.
'You'll understand soon,' Slytherin assured him. 'The last thing he made was a gate, a veiled archway into the realm of death itself that he intended to enter and return from with his sister. The younger brother left the first three things he had made in the hands of his three children, the wand to the eldest, the cloak to his youngest, and the stone to the middle child, who had lost his daughter to disease, then went to find his sister. His family waited, they waited for many years, his wife died, but their father never returned.'
'Is this a warning?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'I do not intend to go chasing after the dead.'
'You have nobody to chase yet,' Salazar chastised him. 'This story was a myth when I lived, but Godric died trying to recover and destroy a wand that fitted its description for an old wizard by the name of Ignatius Peverell. He claimed the wand was an heirloom that had been stolen from him, but Godric believed the myth and wanted to remove such a dangerous weapon from the world. A decade or so later my wife died, and I came across his notes on the three artefacts, deciding, against logic, to search for the stone that might let me see my wife once more. I never found it, and the Peverell's denied its existence. My daughter never believed them.'
'And the cloak?' Harry asked, running his fingers across the material of his own.
'I suspect that the Peverell family kept the artefacts for themselves, encouraging the belief of myths and legends to conceal the truth of their existence. I have heard others, one even claims that the three brothers, the sons of the wizard who went through the gate, earned them from Death himself. Your cloak fits the description of the artefact from legend, and, should I be correct, will bear the symbol of the Peverell family upon it.'
Harry unfolded the cloak, running his eyes carefully over each inch. 'What am I looking for?'
'According to the myth the artefacts became talismans of the younger brother's family and they adopted their symbol as their own. In my day the Peverell family had an odd crest, one quite unlike any other I have seen. It was a triangle, divided in half by a line, and encasing a circle.'
'A triangular marking like this?' Harry held up the cloak, pointing to the barely visible symbol that might, with artistic interpretation, have once been a triangle like those he had seen on the graves in Godric's Hollow.
The veil, he realised, recalling where else he had seen that marking.
'It's true,' he voiced aloud. 'I've seen the doorway, it's in the Department of Mysteries.'
'Then it is likely the other artefacts exist too. I was sure, but never quite certain.'
'Why are you telling me about them now?' Harry demanded. 'You told me I would have to wait to learn about it.'
'Because it is time to reseal the Chamber of Secrets,' Salazar told him firmly.
'You think I will need one of the artefacts to seal it?'
'No,' Slytherin shook his head sadly, 'but you might desire one after we have, and it is dangerous to devote yourself to obtaining them.'
Harry frowned, not understanding at all.
'How do I seal it?' He asked, deciding eventually that it might be easier to try and figure out Salazar's cryptic story another time.
'I tied the blood wards here into my bloodline, and thus could use parseltongue and the sacrifice that had already been made for my family.' The painting sighed, wrinkling its brown, and gently stroked the blunt head of the serpent against his cheek. 'You have no such sacrifice to tie the wards too.'
'Can I not use my mother's?' Harry inquired.
'No,' Salazar shook his head. 'I have spent a long time considering this, it was necessary the moment Voldemort returned, and I have decided what has to happen. You are me heir now. If there are other descendants among your generations they have not found me, so we will reseal the chamber so that its wards are tied to those of your blood, and your descent. Your mother's sacrifice was intended only for you, not your descendants.'
'So how much blood?' Harry grinned nervously, all too aware that he had no blood-replenishing potions left.
'A single drop will be enough,' Slytherin answered slowly.
The grin slipped from Harry's face.
'I have to sacrifice something more valuable than just my blood and magic,' he realised, paling.
'Something almost invaluable,' Salazar told him sadly. 'It is the only way, no ordinary wards will suffice.'
'The cloak,' Harry exclaimed hopefully, 'that's why you told me the story, so I would understand how valuable the artefact is and can sacrifice it.'
'I wish it were so,' Salazar sighed, 'but your cloak, while very useful, is not invaluable. What do you have that is so dear to you that you might not survive without it.'
Fleur.
'No.' Harry's heart froze. 'I won't.'
'Not her,' Salazar assured him gently guessing at the source of his distress, 'I would never ask you to do that. Never. The answer is staring you in the face, Harry.' The painting peered down at him regretfully. 'I am not, as you once so tactfully told me, Salazar Slytherin, just an imprint of him on canvas. No lives need be wasted when I will suffice.'
'But I need you,' Harry murmured disbelievingly.
'I am here to assist my descendants, my family,' Slytherin said simply, 'there is no better choice than me.'
'I won't ever be able to speak to you again,' Harry whispered. The painting was a sarcastic, snide character, but, for all his faults, he cared, and Harry had grown used to having him care. That said nothing of how useful his knowledge and wisdom was.
'I have taught you as much I can before the risk of leaving the chamber unsealed grew too great. You will survive without me, and,' Salazar's smile returned, 'perhaps you might succeed where I failed and find the stone. You might have to tell my shade what has transpired, but I know myself, I will stand by my heir even when called from beyond the threshold of death.'
'You said it was too dangerous to search for one?'
'I said it was dangerous to devote yourself to finding one,' Salazar corrected. 'Look for it, but expect to be disappointed, give up if you find yourself sacrificing other things for your hunt, do not let the search consume you as it did me.'
'I'll look for it,' Harry decided.
And I'll find it, he decided to himself. The Peverell's must have been a famous family. It cannot be hard to discover what became of them and whomever has the stone now will lose it to me, one way or another I will have it.
'You have runes to draw,' Salazar reminded him unaware of Harry's resolution, 'the runes for the wards are inscribed in the patterns of the snakes' scales in the main chamber and across the ceiling, you need only go over them with your own magic.'
'Shall I carry you outside?' Harry offered.
'Just levitate me out,' the painting smirked.
'Wingardium leviosa,' Harry intoned, both amused and annoyed. The painting lifted off the wall, and floated gently after him across the bridge.
'There was never an anti-levitation charm was there,' Harry sighed.
'No,' the portrait smirked, 'but if it makes you feel better Tom never realised either and he was carrying me around for twice as long as you were.'
'I wouldn't have minded carrying you about a little longer,' Harry told him bitterly, the humour fading the moment his thought returned to what he had to do.
'The things that are necessary are not always easy,' Salazar comforted him. 'Besides,' he continued quietly, 'I have lingered in this chamber for long enough alone, and my friends have left no imprints of themselves to keep me company.'
Harry set him down at the centre of the chamber, using a sticking charm to keep the frame of the canvas upright, and very slowly and carefully inscribing the outlines of the runes that made up the scales of the serpent effigies.
There were thousands.
Each pillar had more than a hundred glyphs, and, in all the time he spent etching the symbols onto the stone in purple fire, Salazar watched him, smiling so proudly it hurt Harry's heart to look at him.
Eventually he had coated the columns in shimmering patterns of purple fire, the tiny runes all but illegible from where he stood in the centre, and Harry turned his attention to the ceiling, bathing the chamber in an indigo glow.
'You'll need a few extra ones now,' Slytherin told him. Harry already knew. The founder had needed only to use his blood to tie in the sacrifice that had already been made. He would need to make one of his own.
He scanned the lines of twisting, glowing runes that ran up the columns and onto the ceiling, then, at the ceiling's centre etched a few, simple glyphs with a shaking hand.
'Are you sure there is no other way?' He almost begged.
'I am,' Salazar whispered. 'I would not leave you to face Voldemort without me if there were a better option. Your intent must be strong, your desire to ward the chamber must be great enough to drive you to willingly sacrifice something practically invaluable, else the wards will fail.'
'Can I not just intend to sacrifice you?' Harry's voice choked on the last two words.
'It would not be the same,' Salazar reminded him gently, 'you know this.'
'How?' Harry asked, swallowing the lump in his throat, and clenching his jaw to stop the hot, prickling in his eyes.
'Do it quickly,' Salazar advised him softly, 'I will feel no pain regardless, but it will be easier for you if it is done in an instant.'
Weak, pale, yellow flames burst from the tip of his wand to hover in the air between them, guttering and failing. Slytherin's face shifted in slight disappointment at his lack of resolve.
'It is hard, Harry,' he said more firmly, 'but you are my heir, you will survive this and more.'
He needn't have said anything. The flicker of disappointment was enough to shame Harry into action. Salazar was sacrificing himself and he couldn't even bring himself to conjure fiendfyre properly.
It's pathetic, he snarled at himself. Unacceptable. I will see him again once I have the stone.
The flames billowed, flashing from yellow to a white so bright it obscured the purple glow of the runes around them. The fangs of the basilisk closed over the portrait of his ancestor with a sharp hiss, incinerating it in an instant. Harry knew Salazar would have appreciated the shape of the spell. Not giving himself time to think about the loss he extinguished the fire with a violent slash of his wand and drew its tip across the ball of his thumb. Flicking the droplets of blood that welled from the shallow cut up to spatter across the runes on the ceiling he waited, staring hard at his thumb and watching it slowly heal.
The flesh and skin had only crept halfway across the wound when the Chamber of Secrets lurched, trembling as if caught in an earthquake. The runes flared painfully bright, pulsing frenetically, then the light of the glyphs suddenly faded, plunging him into the dark.
He stood there for a long moment, closing his eyes against the gloom and the silence, hoping against hope, that Salazar might have survived, but he knew that the painting could not have. A thin, fragile wall held back his sorrow, catching it in his chest before it could spill out into the room around him.
Picturing the empty hall of his new house he stepped forwards, fleeing the silent chamber and barely noticing the world as it whirled back behind him.
He found Fleur in the next room, sitting on the old sofa, the only piece of furniture in the room. She stared up at him with worry and suddenly there didn't seem to be anything holding the hurt back anymore. Collapsing onto the sofa next to her he let the tears run, flowing hot across his cheeks despite his best attempts not to let them fall. Fleur gently drew his head down into her lap, cradling him softly until he cried himself to sleep in her arms.
AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!
