After his discussion with the Ancient Slytherin Family Head, Hadrian made it a point to take his friends to meet the two painted ladies. He had not been successful in locating Dominic's portrait, and Salazar had no portrait in the castle proper, so this was the best he could do. Since he had finished his quest for the chamber so quickly, the Slytherins had told him and his friends about a special room on the seventh floor of the castle, across from a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy who was teaching trolls to dance ballet. The tapestry was rather memorable since trolls were about ten feet tall, rather stupid, and looked awful in pink tutus. But it did make finding the location rather easy, and following the instructions he had been given, he paced in front of the wall three times thinking of a room for himself and his friends to gather and practice magic where no one would find them.
A rather old looking wooden door with iron fastenings appeared in the blank wall opposite the tapestry. When he opened the door and the group made their way inside, they could only stare. There was a comfortable seating area with a fireplace and some bookshelves to assist them in their studies. The other side of the room was separated by a transparent wall, clearly warded, for them to practice casting. It housed training dummies, cushions, and other odds and ends suitable for children to use. And since he had been thinking about the need to study magic, and the Slytherins had offered their help, a large portrait of the four in a sitting room was hanging above the fireplace. The practice area also housed a picture, this time of a dueling platform, so they could better see the children's' spell work or offer demonstrations.
Salazar spent their first lesson answering questions regarding meditation and occlumency. Hermione and Neville had been working hard to master the skills, but were having trouble without a teacher to guide them. The twins listened avidly, deciding they would also practice. They all knew Hadrian had secrets he couldn't share with them, and they were working hard to gain the skills necessary to stand by him long-term. Hadrian was so touched by his friends being so willing to learn something that seemed so difficult for others their age just so they could be better friends to him.
When their lesson with the Slytherin family was over for the morning, they all scattered to their own pursuits. Hadrian used the afternoon to locate Ginny and begin phase one of the new and improved plan for the year. To that end, when he found her, he placed a low level compulsion to kill Hagrid's roosters and drain their blood into phials which would grow the longer she didn't comply. He also wove a forgetfulness charm with it, ensuring that once she completed the task, she would not remember why she had done so. He didn't expect she would act on the compulsion immediately, and planned for at least a couple of weeks to pass before she was unable to ignore it.
Hadrian watched Ginny rather closely, though he remained covert to see if she was beginning to succumb to his compulsion. Two weeks after he placed it, he was pleased to see she was getting twitchier by the hour. He anticipated that she'd be sneaking out of the castle within the next day or two if she hadn't already.
After Transfiguration, Hadrian was making his way to the library alone as the others had dashed off to get other books before their usual study session. He was involved in some extracurricular reading, and bumped into what he thought was a solid wall. Rubbing his nose, he looked up, only to find it was not a wall he had run into, but Hagrid. He was carrying a dead chicken by the neck, and mumbling about charming the chicken coop.
"I'm sorry, Hagrid," Hadrian started, "I wasn't paying attention."
"It's fine, 'arry," Hagrid replied with a fond smile. "Just makin' me way to the 'eadmaster's office. Either got a Blood-suckin' bugbear or foxes attackin' 'em. Gotta ask 'bout charmin' the chicken coop." He shook the chicken a bit to make his point.
"I see," Hadrian said politely. "Well, I won't hold you up, Hagrid. Good luck with the headmaster." He smiled and waved as he walked off. Perfect. Phase one complete.
By the time Halloween rolled around, Hadrian was getting twitchy himself. He was ready for the next step in the plan. Severus had given him a detention in potions on Thursday because he was making careless mistakes and not paying attention. During his detention, Severus had him scrub a few cauldrons while they discussed the plans. Severus was able to remind Hadrian of the bigger picture, calming his jittery nerves. They spent the last fifteen minutes of his detention in Sev's office, sitting on a couch. The students would never have believed it, but he had wrapped Hadrian up in his lap, snuggling the boy, and reminding him that he didn't have to do everything alone.
Hadrian felt much better after the time spent with Sev, and was able to contemplate the coming events with a calmer eye and more deliberate manner. He had located Ginny earlier in the week and imperiused her to catch Filch's cat on Halloween, feed it the petrification potion he and Severus had brewed several weeks ago, and go to the girls' bathroom on the second floor at the start of the feast. The bathroom was one of the main openings from the chamber into the school for Zelena. Ginny wouldn't actually release the queen snake, just hide for a bit, and use the blood she saved to write a message about the Heir of Slytherin on the wall outside the bathroom while everyone else was at the feast, flooding the bathroom with water by stopping one of the toilets, and leaving the cat to be found by the students later.
She appeared midway through the feast, pale and slightly shaky. Hadrian smiled internally, pleased at the outcome. He and his friends were part of the group which stumbled on the grisly scene after the feast. After their examination of the wall and petrified cat, Headmaster Dumbledore tried to separate Hadrian from his friends again, but Professors Flitwick, Prince, and McGonagall all came to his defense, each stating they noted his presence at the feast at different times. His friends corroborated that he had never left his table, which Luna was able to completely confirm having been sat in conversation with him the entire time. The idiot Defense teacher, Lockhart, tried to butt in with ridiculous tales of his stopping similar events, and offering to assist Harry with his fame, but nobody paid any attention to him.
A few days later, a notice went up in the common rooms announcing the formation of a dueling club. Many of the older years were excited, thinking that perhaps Professor Flitwick, a known dueling champion, had decided to add the club to allow students not participating in the 6th and 7th year Dueling class to get a bit of practice outside Defense. Others thought Professor Prince, who had a mastery in Defense, and was known as a spectacular duelist, even if he hadn't done the circuit.
The one thing everyone agreed on was that if Lockhart were in charge, it would be useless to attend. His classes were enough of a joke: calling students up to recreate what he said were his most famous achievements, but which could be debunked by any intelligent 2nd or 3rd year student with a brain and even a miniscule amount of common sense, was not what the students thought of as adequate preparation in Defense. The fifth and seventh years had formed their own study groups, which were sometimes overseen by one of the Heads of Houses. House rivalries were set aside for the sessions, and those who knew spells from older siblings or their families happily assisted those who didn't know them. Even the Slytherins chipped in a bit, though most often with borderline "dark" magic.
November 1992It was the first day of the announced dueling club. The great hall had been redecorated for the event, the house tables being removed and replaced with several dueling platforms, as well as areas with markers on the ground for individual spell practice. The entirety of the fifth and seventh year were present, hoping for something that would assist them for their exams, and most of the students from the other years had come as well. An audible groan of disappointment rippled through the room when Professor Lockhart ascended the stairs of the main dueling platform in the center of the hall. The students perked up a bit when Professor Prince entered the other side of the enclosure, but were disappointed with the fraud DADA professor began speaking.
Most of the students had completely tuned out, and were only brought back to attention by the two adults entering their dueling stance. It was ridiculously easy for Professor Prince to send an overpowered expelliarmus at Lockhart, blasting him back into the protective wards, his wand flying into the crowd. A few of the girls tittered rushing to touch his wand before he requested it back, but for the most part, everyone was pleased to see Lockhart get shown up so quickly. He quickly paired the students up for practice. In the confusion students began trickling away, not wanting to waste their time. Hadrian and his group were among them, choosing instead to go to the Room of Requirement and practice with qualified teachers.
When they exited the room for dinner later, the stories of incompetence were many, and several students mentioned that during one the example duels, an older student had conjured a serpent and when Lockhart tried to banish it, he only managed to lift it up in the air and let it fall, angering the snake. It wound up biting a student, and Severus had to rush the boy to the hospital wing after providing the antivenom and dismissing the rest of the children.
A few days later Hadrian was not showing the same jitters as he had with the previous plan. He himself had set up the petrification, leaving Ginny in the chamber with a slight memory wipe to mimic the loss of memory due to possession. Hadrian had located Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost, talking with Justin Finch-Fletchly on the fourth floor in a location where there were no portraits. He disillusioned himself, finding it easier to use when he had actual tasks to complete than trying to keep himself hidden under his cloak.
Placing a notice-me-not on a phial of petrification potion, Hadrian threw it at the ghost. The black color spreading across the ghost who was no longer able to talk and had been frozen in the blackened state put a look of abject fear on Justin's face. Hadrian hit him with a petrificus totalus from just under where Nick was floating and the boy fell straight back, the look of fear still present on his face. Hadrian poured a second phial of the potion down Justin's throat and then reversed the hex and removed his magical signature.
He wandered off for dinner, wondering who the unfortunate student would be to find the two. Hadrian made a mental note to retrieve Ginny from the chamber after he ate. Pleased with the evening's work, he found his friends in the library and they all trooped down to the great hall for dinner.
Saturday, December 12, 1992Gred and Forge had taken to whispering together whenever Hadrian's group was in training. Hadrian noticed them pouring over an old piece of rather folded up parchment a number of times when he entered the room of requirement. They always quickly put it away whenever they noticed Hadrian's attention, but he had been unable to determine what they were talking about or the significance of the parchment. Deciding not to think about it, he turned his attention back to Salazar and the Slytherins who were teaching his friends.
The second years were about halfway through the third year curriculum, Luna had recently started second year studies, and the fourth year twins were being whipped further into shape by being made to review things they had slacked off on in their previous three years. The two adamantly refused to learn anything other than their chosen electives but Salazar refused to tutor students who weren't putting in the effort for the core classes. The red-headed twins grumbled, but complied and their increasingly good marks had set rumors flowing through the school. They were still pranksters extraordinaire, and had traded good behavior during tutoring for old and forgotten Magic's that could be used for pranks. Salazar appreciated their splash of cunning, and Slytherin love of trades, and Hadrian privately thought he gave in without too much effort just to hear the stories of the pranks they pulled.
That particular study day, however, was for occlumency, and the Slytherin family thought the group would be safe from all but the strongest and most direct legilimens' attacks by the end of the year. Hadrian was pleased that his friends would be able to keep their secrets and their minds safe, but was also looking forward to his private Parselmagic lessons which occurred after the group tutoring. Since Draco and Hadrian were already proficient occlumens, they had taken to carefully practicing their legilimency on their friends under close supervision. Once the lesson was done, Hadrian vanished, never noticing the twins had attempted to follow him, and were studying the parchment again.
Entirely unknowing, Hadrian made his way through Zara's portrait on the fifth floor and transformed the stairs into a curly slide that would take him gently down to the chamber. It was much faster than traversing the stairs normally, and Dominic had mentioned he used to do that as well when he was a child. He settled himself down in the large room with the portraits with Zelena curled around the wall. They had just begun when the wards of the chamber alerted both Hadrian and Salazar that a snake had entered through one of the external passages which led to the Forbidden Forest.
Hadrian made his way to the entrance in question. The same situation had happened before and usually the snakes were happy enough to wander in, get warm and make their way back out and to whatever home they had. Hadrian had been waiting a few minutes when he finally heard the quiet swish of snake scales on stone. He had thought he would be required to go and search the passage for the snake as it had taken much longer for the snake to arrive than he anticipated.
When he could finally see the snake, he was no longer surprised. The snake was a gorgeous dark green with black patterns down its sides. The underside was lighter, but Hadrian could tell that if the snake chose to hide in a tree it would blend right in. The size of the reptile wasn't the problem, though the appearance of a 10 foot python that also appeared to have venomous fangs, was rather startling. No, it was the snake's movements which caused the delay. It was moving in short, choppy bursts, jerking itself along the floor. Quiet wordless hisses accompanied the sound.
Zelena followed Hadrian, intending to speak to the snake. When she saw and smelled the newcomer, she immediately made herself known, slithering forward and greeting the other.
§Nagini, youngling! It is good to see you!§ the basilisk hissed happily. §I have missed you!§
The now named Nagini stopped moving and carefully scented the air. §Zelena? And there is a human with you?§
Zelena carefully coiled around the smaller snake. §Yes, Nagini, it is I. Hadrian has come down to greet you as well.§
§I fear I am not in the best of shape to meet humans, Zelena§ Nagini hissed quietly.
Hadrian finally spoke, §it's alright, Nagini. You seem very tired. Perhaps we can talk another time.§
§There will not be much time for that, little speaker§ Nagini hissed, sadness coloring the tone of the hisses. §My bonded has vanished and though I have searched with the tiny thread of magic still lingering in the bond, I have not found my human. It has been eleven winters, I am fading fast now. I only came to spend my last days with Zelena, in hopes that the family magic might ease my suffering and allow me to pass painlessly.§
§The hatchling is gone?§ Zelena reared back.
§His spirit shattered on the muggle's Halloween many winters ago. He went to take care of a threat to him, and was instead nearly killed.§ Nagini hissed sadly.
§You will bond with the new heir, Nagini§ Zelena ordered imperiously. §If there is still a thread of magic connecting you to our Thomas, he is still out there somewhere.§
§You are Thomas Riddle's familiar?§ Hadrian asked.
A jerky nod was his answer. §He dabbled in magicks better left alone and lost his sanity. He came after me when I was a child. I am now his heir, and have been working with some of his followers to locate him and put him out of his misery. Salazar confirmed there was no way to restore him after his use of soul magick to create so many horcruxes§ Hadrian told the new snake.
Nagini slowly made her way to the boy in front of her. She jerkily raised herself to look into his eyes. A quick nod and she coiled herself back down, hissing in pain.
§May I cast a feather-light charm on you? I will take you to the antechamber to see the Slytherins. You are in too much pain to go yourself§ Hadrian was worried over the creature.
§I would like that, new heir§ Nagini said tiredly.
§You can call me Hadrian§ the boy offered as he waved his wand to place the charm and moved to pick up the large serpent. Zelena went ahead to gather the family and Hadrian slowly made his way back to the statue. He stepped onto Zelena's head which she poked out of the entrance as he approached and was quickly up the stairs and calling for the room to provide a large warmed cushion for Nagini.
The family had hastened into the painted sitting room when Zelena called for them, and Salazar stood when Hadrian carefully deposited the snake on the pillow.
§Oh, Nagini, my sweet, what has happened to you to be in such a state?§ Salazar hissed to the tired snake consolingly.
§Since she is Thomas' familiar and he has been reduced to a wraith, the familiar bond has been taken down to a single thread of magic from what she said§ Hadrian told the founder. §Zelena said she should bond with me and I would assist her, but with Tom being insane, I don't know what taking his familiar bond would do.§
Salazar explained that the magic remaining was so small, Thomas likely wouldn't notice it. And while that trickle would be released back to him, making him marginally more powerful, he thought it unlikely there was enough to make him a true threat.
The Slytherins also took the time to explain the difference in bond marks since he had two different versions present in his own bonds. Zelena's bond was a law unto itself and though she was technically his familiar, he had not made any familiar vows as was done with the usual familiar binding ritual. He knew her loyalty was to the Slytherin Family, which Dominic explained manifested in the green and silver coloration of the mark, and she would continue as their familiar as long as magic allowed her to live. Nagini's bond would be like his other bonds, only lighter due to the fact that he would be her second master. Zils and Hedwig were his full familiars, represented by the dark, fully filled marks. Hadrian hadn't actually seen a partial familiar bond mark, which they had described as an outline of the usual mark, but it was interesting all the same.
"But I don't have the goblins…" Hadrian said after they discussed the bonding. "I am going to Yule at the Malfoy's, we could probably arrange it then, but then Nagini will have to deal with another week and a half of pain before I can help."
"Nonsense, child," Salazar said briskly. "After hearing your stories of your childhood and your apprenticeship, I can only conclude you are a threadwizard. Possibly already at full strength, which means when your magical maturity occurs at your third magical maturation, with the power boost you receive you will likely be the most powerful threadwizard since Merlin himself. Your current power will be sufficient to handle the bonding on your own."
"...If you're certain," Hadrian said slowly. "I don't want to hurt Nagini any more than she is, though."
"You will be just fine, Hadrian," Salana said quietly. "As will Nagini."
"We would never allow you to do something with no chance of success, child," Zara added.
"Now," Salazar said, piercing his heir with a stare. "Similar to how you call the furniture, or think of the space you wish for when accessing the Room of Requirement, think of a place to perform your ritual, and stand in between the two pictures over there."
Hadrian gathered up Nagini and moved to the location instructed and thought of a ritual room. He had only seen the Gringotts main ritual room, so that was the picture he held in his mind. A door appeared on the wall, and when Hadrian opened it and stepped through, he was in a similar room to his mental image.
"This ritual room was created before the Gringotts main ritual room, but we did use the goblins during construction. They based their room on this one," Salazar said with a chuckle from a painting that looked like the viewing gallery he sat in at the bank.
Hadrian nodded, and stepped into the center, seeing branches of sage already smoking in racks on the wall. The room evidently knew which bond he would be doing as the appropriate accoutrements were already present. Ansuz (ᚨ), īsaz (ᛁ), and ehwaz (ᛖ) were already marked on the floor. The pink candles were forming the required triangle. And the ring of stones and woods popped into existence as he watched: Opal, African blackwood, Jasper, Birch, Turquoise, and Oak. Even though this would be a second bond for Nagini, it seemed the ritual requirements were the same.
The dark haired boy stepped into the circle, still cradling the large coiled form of Nagini. He gathered a few drops of Nagini's venom and blood under the instruction of Salazar. Because Zelena's bond mark was on his right ankle, he made a cut to his left, and tipped the small vial of her essence over, allowing the liquid to fall onto the cut. He didn't feel any pain, but since her venom was significantly less potent than a thousand-year-old basilisk, he figured it made sense. Once that was complete he stood and made the modified vow.
§I, Hadrian James Potter-Black, vow to sincerely trust you, boa constrictor Nagini, as my familiar. I will be sincerely loyal to you as you are sincerely loyal to me. I offer my blood and magic in sacrifice to our bond. Nagini, become my familiar!§ he finished hissing.
Nagini slowly moved to lick the cut. The usual snake bond mark formed around the cut, which Hadrian had made smaller this time, but it wasn't the dark black mark of a full familiar bond. It was greyish, almost silvery. He could feel his connection to Nagini, but it was much weaker than his bonds with Hedwig and Zils.
Chapter 29 Notes§Parseltongue§
The ritual layout is the same one used in Chapter 14 for Draco's bond with his familiar, and Chapter 23 for Hadrian's familiar bonds if you need to find them to refresh your memory.