Chapter 11
July 2002 (1.5 years later, Age 15)
Ares emerged from Gringotts after checking with Slashjaw that he had received his payment for a job he had done a few weeks before; his most profitable yet. He didn't really care about the money, he had more than enough as it was, but he still got a rush every time he got paid another astronomical sum. It had been his favourite type of client as well; rich purebloods. Men who were ruled by their ego and their pride, acting on impulse rather than the cool logic that he himself prized and willing to pay far more than necessary just to prove that they could. The target was invariably another rich pureblood with strong wards and defences, so it was always an enjoyable challenge. Anyone else would be seen as beneath their notice, certainly not worth hiring the best wands there were to deal with.
This time the target had been a Serbian wizard called Arman Novak, the head of a rather powerful family. The client wanted him dead before a Gringotts meeting that was set for three days after the contract was given out, a near impossible time frame when dealing with powerful wards and security. He had used that to raise the price even more, the man was obviously quite desperate. The client had also wanted them to "take care of his family", which included a wife and daughter. Outraged growls had filled the air at that and several threats had been shouted towards the man, Ares' hand twitching for his wand. Women and children were off limits, with a few exceptions like Bellatrix Lestrange. There were few mercenaries who would harm women if they were not attacked first and even fewer who would even think about harming a child.
There were a few exceptions, but they would never do so now. The year before one man had killed an entire family including two young children to ensure that the family headship would pass to the man who had hired him, a similar contract to this one. When that had come out many wanted his head, but Ares got there first. He had dragged him to the front of a contract meeting, stunning the potential client and then proceeded to use some of his own created spells on the man. His screams had been proof that they worked quite well, and there had not been a single instance of a child being hurt since. Children were a sore spot for him, and many of his 'personal projects' were against those that harmed them.
After a bit of digging he had found out why the client was so desperate, and why he wanted the family wiped out: Arman Novak was his cousin and planned to formally disown him at the Gringotts meeting, leaving him with nothing. It was all about family hierarchy – how boring. Contrary to popular belief disowning someone from a family, especially an old family, was neither fast nor easy. Blood samples had to be destroyed, family artefacts had to be recovered, vault access revoked and they had to be forced from their homes if they belonged to the family. The process could take anywhere from a week to several months, but as soon as it was formally commanded nothing could stop it, even the Head dying. But if Novak died before the meeting had even taken place, then their client would become the Head. Certainly explained why he was so willing to pay such an extortionate sum.
His day of investigation had erased any qualms he had about killing the man, slight as they may have been. If there was a profit to be made he was involved, whether it was legal or not. Novak had fingers in everything from illegal potions to muggle weapons, clearly uncaring to the lives he ruined along the way. Ares had been quite eager to kill him.
The actual job went far easier than expected. The man was paranoid, with hired security and regularly recharged wards. The client had said he had around ten hired security at any one time, but Ares had counted that many on the outside alone. Yet another instance of clients underplaying the difficulty.
It had only been him and four others, it being a stealth mission the smaller the group the better. He would have preferred to do it himself, but if he got found a ten on one fight was unlikely to go his way regardless of how skilled he was. They had used disillusionment charms as they crossed the lawn, dashing between hedges and fountains while trying to keep low to minimise the distinctive shimmer of the charm. The guards had been overconfident, thinking that no one could breach the wards without them knowing, so they had barely been paying attention and more than once Ares had to restrain the impulse to covertly take out some of the more isolated guards just to even the odds in case they were discovered. He hadn't though, because that would just make sure that they were. It had been easy to get into the manor; a silent charm to mimic the sound of a boot scuffing against the dirt and the guards had walked straight past them, allowing them to simply duck inside while they investigated the sound, removing their disillusionment charms once they entered the entry hall. Inside the well-lit corridors the shimmer of the charm would be much easier to see, and it was far more beneficial to know exactly where each other was when in enclosed spaces.
They had met only one guard as they crept through the corridors on their way to Novak's study, dead before he had a chance to signal for help after a bolt of green light flashed from one of the intruders' wands. Ares had to grit his teeth every time someone used the Killing Curse, knowing there was no way they would ever stop using it. After raising a silencing charm to ensure they weren't caught one of them cast blasting curse at the door, the rest swiftly following with a series of piercing hexes. He was dead before he could have even seen through the splinters that flew towards him. They had then just left the way they came in, closing the hole Ares had made in the wards as they left.
The agreement was that the client would wait two weeks before making the payment so that there were no suspicious transactions that could incriminate him, on the condition that he signed a magical contract not to give any details about them to anyone for any reason in any way, be it by description, drawing, pensieve memory, Legilimency or anything else. He had been reluctant but had agreed once he worked out that if he didn't they would kill him, contract or not. It also had the benefit of making it impossible for him to send anyone to after them as was sometimes seen after high profile jobs, the clients wanting to remove any possible evidence they were involved. But whoever was hired wouldn't know who to come after if he couldn't tell them. Ares doubted he had thought of that.
There were few that would even consider doing so anyway, only the stupid and the arrogant would take a job against him. He had made himself a reputation quickly since he became a part of the hidden underbelly of the wizarding world, until now he was their ghost story. The Ferryman of souls was whispered about fearfully by those that would attract his ire, the criminals and the corrupt, and those that had seen him at work spoke with awe and horror as they recounted what they had seen, some insisting that he could not be human. He knew he was not as good as the stories said, that numbers and events had been exaggerated, but he certainly wasn't going to correct them - he never allowed himself to show any weakness, any exhaustion, any hesitation, any humanity, and that was where the whisperings had come from; if he could do what he did and show no effects, what was he truly capable of?
He slept soundly most nights now, his conscience relatively clear. He enjoyed the fight, the battle, but not the killing. He didn't really feel one way or the other about it, he got to pleasure from it but also no disgust, not anymore; death was inevitable, the only question was when. Even now though he was still sometimes plagued by his own thoughts. What would Olivia think of him? Malcolm had been a soldier, would he understand or would he think him a monster? Would they even recognise him anymore?
It had been worse at the start though, when after each job he would spend sleepless nights tormented by vivid images of blood and death, most of which he had caused. He knew the targets he took were bad people – dark wizards and criminals who profited from misery and who took pleasure in the pain of others – so their deaths did not bother him, but what about the guards he killed to get to them, or the children of the people he killed. They had done nothing, and yet he was either taking their lives or ruining them. That was what still haunted him from time to time, and he took a little comfort in that fact. It meant he was not a monster hidden behind a mask of humanity; rather he was a human who hid behind the reputation of a monster.
There had been a job he had taken early on, infiltration of a pureblood estate to steal several books and artefacts that were wanted on the black market, nothing he hadn't done before. But a new guy had made a sound and tipped the guards off, and it had turned into a full-fledged fight – the three of them and the ten guards. The rookie had died, and normally it wouldn't have bothered him much. It was not the first time someone he was working with had been killed, and it had been him that caused them to be discovered in the first place. But he had died because of Ares.
He had seen the guard who had killed him, had enough time to put a piercing hex between his eyes before he even cast the spell, but hadn't. During his scouting he had heard that particular guard talking about his daughter fondly, apparently she had performed her first bout of accidental magic, and he had hesitated for a split second. The guard had cast the Killing Curse and the mercenary had dropped like a marionette with his strings cut, and only then had Ares acted. He hated that curse with a passion, only used by those that truly enjoyed killing, and that had snapped him out of his momentary pause. A man capable of casting it was not one who deserved mercy, daughter or not.
It was then that he had decided that emotions were a weakness that couldn't be afforded in his line of work and began pushing them down as far as he could, but try as he might he could never eradicate them. There was always a swirling pool of mismatched emotion swirling in his gut, and he hated that he had no idea how to deal with any of them. So he just pushed them down even more.
The bright glare of the sun against his irises snapped him from his thoughts as he looked around, eyes squinted slightly. It was August and the rush of school shoppers was in full swing; the alley was filled with laughing children pressing their faces against shop windows only to be pulled away by fondly exasperated parents, there were flashing adverts and colourful displays hoping to encourage passers-by into their shops. When he used to see loving parents and happy children he would be feel anger and bitterness and envy, but now he felt none of that. He liked his life, he wasn't happy per se but he was content. He had everything he needed, and what had happened to him had made him a wizard far better than anyone of them could be. The only thing he did feel was loss, because the smile on the parent's faces was just like the one Olivia used to have when she saw him.
He noticed that there was a queue that reached outside the door of Flourish and Blotts, and most of them were middle aged witches. When Ares looked through the window he saw it was because Gilderoy Lockhart was having a book signing, stood on a stage at the back of the shop like a prized peacock. It seemed he was going to be a Hogwarts professor, there was no other reason he would have a book signing during the times families had little money because of the Hogwarts supplies they were buying. The thought almost made him laugh and made him even more thankful he had decided not to go to Hogwarts; he knew all too well the man was a pathetic fraud.
He had written a book called Wanderings with Werewolves during which he claimed he had saved a village from werewolves. He hadn't, of course, because it was Ares and another Armenian wizard who had killed every single one of them. When he had seen the book he had quickly found the wizard he had done the job with and looked into his mind – he had to make sure he hadn't leaked anything about him to Lockhart. The memory charm was well done, clearly Lockhart had had a lot of practise, but he had used Obliviate which just blocked the memory instead of using the less well known and more difficult spell to wipe the memory completely. Ares had been able to get past it quite easily. As it turned out the man had taken full credit for the job without even mentioning him, so he didn't have anything to worry about. He had removed the memory charm though, that way the other wizard owed him a favour.
Just then there were gasps and camera flashes coming from the archway and people began to crowd, desperate to see what the commotion was about. The crowd was thick and he couldn't see much from his position, just glimpses as people shuffled and stretched to get a better view.
A flash of red hair. Round wire rimmed glasses. Emerald eyes.
It was them.
His wand was in his hand before he could begin to quiet the anger and the hate that blazed in his chest, pleading to show them just what a 'squib' was capable of. With great effort he controlled the impulse and flicked his wand back into his holster, but the temptation to take it back out again was still there. They were smiling and looked happy, happy even though they thought he was dead. The hate swelled.
They had their hands on the shoulders of a red haired boy as they steered him through the crowd, the boy who had once been his brother. He didn't hate Jack Potter, rather he felt nothing towards him. He had resented him at first for the fact that the Potters had wanted him but not Harry, that it was Jack that they got rid of him for. But now he didn't. He had got a hold over his hatred and forced himself to be rational, and remembered that Jack had been a child who had no involvement in the decision to throw him away like he was nothing. He had had no feelings either way about him; he was just a stranger.
He knew if he stayed here there was a chance his anger would grow until he could no longer control it, so he walked quickly past them and out of the alley to apparate home. He never noticed the way his birth father's head swivelled around searchingly as he walked away.
'The ring vibrated' James Potter thought as he looked around the alley, looking for someone with at least a passing resemblance to him. Like many family rings of Ancient families the ring vibrated when a blood relation came close, used to identify imposters disguised as family with Polyjuice or glamours when Blood Feuds were common and families fought between themselves, and the rings vibration depended on how close the relation was. This hadn't been that a strong, a cousin and a distant one at that, but it had vibrated nonetheless. As far as James knew he and Jack were the only remaining blood Potters at all, so even a distant relation was important. As the weak vibration faded to nothing he knew they had gone and returned his attention to his family, putting the vibration out of his mind for now.
~Scene Change~
The Chamber of Secrets had been opened? Clearly Dumbledore had tried his best to keep it quiet and done so quite well, it was February and the details of were only just trickling out. Ares had heard about it from one of his less reputable contacts so it would take at least a few weeks to reach the general population, sooner after what he was planning.
He did marvel at the stupidity of wizards, wondering what the monster could possibly be. It was Slytherin's monster, a man whose house animal as a snake and who was a well-known Parselmouth, for Merlin's sake. Obviously it was going to be a basilisk. Granted the fact that the victims were petrified and not killed would seem to discount the idea, but then they could literally just ask the ghost that had been killed last time the Chamber was opened. That was what he was going to do to try and find out how to get in. Anyone who had been to Hogwarts would know about Moaning Myrtle, and he had read it in the newspaper from when it was first opened. When he had looked into the last time the Chamber was opened he found that a boy called Tom Riddle had been given a Special Services award for supposedly driving the creature away, but clearly that hadn't happened. That made Tom Riddle Voldemort in all likelihood. That amused him; Riddle wasn't a pureblood name so the madman who had died saying purebloods were superior hadn't even been one.
He was eager to visit the fabled Chamber of Secrets as well; he knew he was a Parselmouth and any defences would probably involve that so he was pretty sure he could get in, and if not he hoped he would be able to get through regardless.
Finding out he could speak Parseltongue had been a surprise, though not unwelcome. As it turned out several other Nightshades had had the ability, but no one knew where it had come from. There had never been a marriage between a Nightshade and a family known for the ability either. There were a few books on Parselmagic in the Nightshade library that he had read, but Parselmagic books were so rare that he hadn't found any more. It was too useful a skill not to try and learn more spells; no one would know what spell he was using, so they would be unable to reverse whatever the effect of it was quickly. It was exponentially more difficult to counter a spell cast in Parseltongue in a different language as well, and that was if they even knew what it was.
Because Basilisks could be so easily controlled by a Parselmouth they were classed as WMDs by the ICW and had been used as such several times in the distant past, and so there was a reward for anyone who could provide evidence they had killed one. The last time that had happened was in 1447 in Turkey, and the reward for the men that killed it had been 30,000 galleons between them. When that was adjusted for today, the figure became nearly 25 million galleons. That was how much he was going to try and get – he knew they would try and talk him down but he wouldn't budge much. And he would get to keep the basilisk that he had killed as well. The venom from a thousand year old basilisk would be worth millions by itself, without even considering the rest of it.
The problem was how to kill it. The hide was tougher than a dragon's and he didn't want to try and control it using Parseltongue. After a thousand years of isolation who knew if it would even obey his commands, and he could hardly command it to kill itself anyway. His blades would probably be able to pierce its hide considering how easily they went through dragonhide, but getting close enough to stab a basilisk was impossible. After a thousand years it could be so big that the wound wouldn't kill it anyway, and then he would be dead for sure. Fiendfyre would probably work but then he would be wasting an entire basilisk, something he was unwilling to do. It was said that the crow of a rooster was lethal to the king of serpents, but he didn't believe that for a second; it sounded like a rumour spread by a Parseltongue speaking Dark Lord, so that when wizards came for him they were armed with chickens instead of weapons, easy prey for their basilisk. It would require some planning.
~Scene Change~
A week later Ares was stalking through the unfamiliar corridors of Hogwarts towards the second floor bathroom that the ghost inhabited, his footfalls the only sound in the late night stillness as he glanced around at the place where he once would have spent much of his adolescence. In another life would these halls have been familiar, would he be laughing and joking with her? Would he be just an average wizard who would be forgotten in a second instead of what he was?
Getting in had been far easier than he thought it would be. The wards may have once been unthinkably strong but they had been neglected since then, not maintained nearly enough. And then they had been expanded to include the lake, the quidditch pitch, the greenhouses and the forest, yet the wards had not been added to or strengthened anywhere near enough to maintain the strength they once had. Now the wards were stretched thin with rips forming in their surface like wet parchment, the threads that made them up taut enough that a single powerful blow could snap them.
As he crept upwards Ares listened for patrolling teachers or students who were out after curfew, having to blend into the shadows behind a suit of armour as a stern looking woman walked past. He met no one after that until he reached the girls bathroom on the second floor and placed a silencing charm around it so he wasn't discovered.
When he slipped inside he was thankful he had as the ghost flew out of a toilet and stared at him angrily, shrieking that a boy was in her bathroom. With a flick of his wand her angry shrieks became pained and then she was silent, looking at him in fear. The spell he had used was one of few that caused ghosts pain without destroying them, not that he wasn't considering doing so after he had got the information he needed. Ghosts were souls that had not left the world of the living yet, and it was the Ferryman's job to take them to the Underworld.
"Where is the entrance to the chamber?"
Her answer was to point a shaking arm towards the sinks behind him, and then dive into the toilet again as soon as his back was turned. It seemed he wouldn't be sending her to the realm of the dead after all. A pity, this ghost was particularly irritating.
When he cast detection charms at the sinks he found several nasty wards covering the floor below one of them, all tied into a password charm. It was pretty obvious what the password was.
"§Open§" he hissed, slipping easily into Parseltongue.
As soon as the hissed word left his lips the sound of stone grinding filled the bathroom as the sink slid forwards and sunk down into the floor to expose a slime coated pipe wide enough for a car. Clearly this wasn't the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, there was no way Salazar Slytherin would have a slide to get into his secret chamber. No, this was just the exit for the basilisk to use and there were probably others around the school, but it would still get him there.
He cast a high powered cleaning charm down the pipe before he jumped down and plummeted in free fall for a split second until his back touched the pipe and he slid downwards in darkness through countless twists and turns, until without warning he shot out of the end of the pipe and landed with a crunch. With a thought a ball of bright light appeared above his palm and illuminated the small cavern he was in as well as the pile of animal bones he was sprawled in. Standing up he removed the grime on his clothes with a flick of his fingers and cast a few proximity wards on the pipe before he began to walk through the cavern. He didn't want the person who had been opening the chamber to arrive without him knowing.
Stalactites speared downwards from the roof of the cave, casting long shadows across the rock as he walked. A dark green skin that had long since been shed coiled across the floor of the cavern, its near black scales glinting in the glow of his spell. It had to have been forty feet long at least! How much had the beast grown since then?
After several more minutes of walking he reached a great stone door engraved with intertwining snakes, their glittering emerald eyes seeming to stare straight through him. With another hissed command the door slowly swung open and he entered the Chamber of Secrets, his wand in one hand ready to cast Fiendfyre and run.
The chamber was vast and dimly lit, both sides lined with stone statues of snakes that were seemingly carved directly from the wall, their eyes holding the same glittering emeralds as those on the door that followed him as he walked. The stone walkway was flooded, the water reflecting a chilling green glow that came from everywhere yet nowhere, and lead to a an enormous statue of who he assumed was Salazar Slytherin. The statues mouth was hollow and gaping; presumably that was where the basilisk slept.
Ares approached slowly and began casting detection charms on the tunnel and found various hibernation, heating and nourishment charms delicately interwoven to ensure that whenever the beast awoke it was at the peak of physical health. That said nothing for its mental state though, after a thousand years alone it was probably insane.
Withdrawing several shrunken blocks from his pocket, Ares withdrew his wand and restored them to their original size. It had taken several days of thinking for him to come up with this plan, and he was almost sure it would work. Almost. Any fight between him and the basilisk would be suicide, so he had had to come up with a way to kill it without being anywhere near it. What he had come up with was unusual but, in his opinion, quite brilliant. He would trap it and then drain the air from within its crate, suffocating it.
The blocks he had just resized were magically reinforced concrete – a rarely used material but one of the strongest in the magical world, as well as one of the most expensive due to the phoenix tears used in its production. Gringotts lined the inside of their most valuable vaults with it as it was able to withstand even the most powerful blasting curses with nothing more than a few chips. Materials could be shrunk and enlarged without losing any of their strength, but when they are conjured or transfigured some was always lost. Ares was relying on that strength being sufficient to withstand a thousand year old basilisk thrashing to get out.
He could have just blocked off the nest where the beast slept and done the same thing, but he had no idea if it had more than one exit, or whether the charms he had just found had secondary ones that would kick in if the first set failed. It was too risky, too many unknowns.
For the next hour Ares enlarged and joined the blocks to create a large box with one end open for the basilisk to go in, as well as hole that he had charmed to be a one way valve. He didn't know how big the beast was but he needed the box to be small enough that it wouldn't take hours to drain the air. In the end he made the box as tall as he needed it but as long as the entire chamber, and once the whole of the basilisk had entered the box he could seal the open end and then shrink the sides to make the box smaller. To make sure the basilisk actually went in he had used a complicated illusion combined with a modified heating charm; snakes saw in infrared as well as colour, so if it only saw one of them it might not believe it. He had put several dead cows whose stomachs were filled with the Draught of Living Death at the end in the hopes that they would help knock the snake out so that it didn't thrash around and break the walls. He was taking no chances.
Once he was done Ares used a banishing charm to send himself flying upwards and then a levitation charm to slow his momentum and carry himself onto the top of Slytherin's statue before casting a scent masking charm on himself. Taking a deep breath and praying his plan would work, he called the Slytherin's monster out.
"§Open§"
The sound of stone grinding echoed through the chamber before faint hissing and the sound of scales scratching against stone could be heard as it slithered through the tunnel. Ares was backed against the wall out of sight in case it looked up, replying only on his hearing to know when he could release the charm holding the end piece of concrete up.
The hissing became louder and louder until he could hear it right below him, but it was unintelligible and deranged, holding no words. The hissing became fainter and echoed slightly as it entered the box towards his illusion and he peeked over the edge to see a column of green at least 6 feet wide crawling forwards, slowly thinning to a pointed tail. As soon as the tail disappeared he cancelled the spell causing the end wall to fall from where it had hovered before he activated the matching runes he had carved into both the exposed edges of the sides and the end. A few flicks of his wand shrunk the sides until the box was about sixty feet long and then he began to remove the air while the walls quaked as the basilisk thrashed. The walls held.
Effectively, he was summoning the air from the inside; a simple spell that he could do in his sleep. However, he would have to perform the spell constantly for however long it took to remove all of it, or at least most of it - he wasn't sure how long that would take, though it was probably at least fifteen minutes. As he took more oxygen the basilisk would thrash less often and with less power; he just hoped the walls held until then and the potioned cows did their job.
As he had expected the basilisk's pounding became weaker and less frequent until after twenty minutes it had stopped completely, which was lucky as cracks had begun to split the walls of his box and the floor around it was covered in dust and chunks of crumbled concrete. He continued siphoning air out for another ten minutes after that to make sure there was no chance of there being enough for it to survive or wake up before he sealed it. He honestly wasn't sure how long it would take for it to die, but he wasn't going to take any chances to save himself a few hours. Besides, everyone currently in Hogwarts would be waking up fairly soon and he wanted to look around the almost mythical chamber. He had decided he would just stay there until the early hours of the next morning before leaving, that way there would no chance of being caught or of the basilisk surviving.
He cast a tempus charm with a twist of his wrist, the glowing red numbers reading 7:42. Clearly he had been here longer than he thought. Conjuring a bed with a few flicks of his wand Ares settled down to sleep; if he was going to be here for a day there was no point staying up, and the constant drain of the summoning spell as well as all the transfiguration had tired him more than he expected.
When he woke up later the chamber looked exactly as it had when he fell asleep, there being no way to tell what time it was. Another twist of his wrist told him it was 17:13 – over nine hours of sleep, but still hours until he could safely leave, and he still had to think of a way to harvest the basilisk. He couldn't even call house elves, he had tried. Rising and vanishing the conjured bed with an absentminded slash of his wand, Ares started casting detection spells over every inch of the chamber, looking for anything hidden. This was Slytherin's secret chamber; he must have put more than a basilisk down here – a secret library, potions lab or ritual room maybe.
A while later his detection charms found something on one of the snake statues that stood in rows along the sides of the chamber. When he approached it he started casting more in depth detection charms to find out exactly what it was and what it did, finding that it was an entrance based on blood magic. He could find no wards or curses that would attack if he wasn't a blood relation, so he pressed his wand to his palm and cast a low powered cutting curse before pressing it to the statue. The snake's eyes glowed brightly before the statue shifted sideways to allow him entrance.
'I'm related to Salazar Slytherin?' he thought confusedly. But he had looked at his family tapestry and there had never been a recorded marriage between the two families, so how could they possibly share the same blood?
Carefully he walked through the doorway, extending his magic to search for any curses or wards but finding none. The room he had entered was a lavish office, tastefully decorated in green and silver with a single door on the right. In the centre there was a large oak desk with a pensieve perched on top and a high backed leather chair behind it, smaller versions of which were sat in front of the desk. There was a charmed window showing the view of Hogwarts from the astronomy tower flanked by two empty bookshelves.
"I do hope you're not as insane as the last one." A voice spoke from behind him.
He turned as fast as he could, his wand out and glowing a sickly purple. A silver framed portrait was stuck to the wall behind him, its occupant looking back at him with a raised eyebrow. Long black hair cascaded down to his shoulders framing a thin, aristocratic face wrinkled with age. He wore a set of fine robes lined with green, a silver locket hanging from his neck and dangling in the middle of his chest. A pale grey adder coiled around the man's shoulders, its forked tongue flicking out intermittently. The portrait of Salazar Slytherin.
"You look sane, but then the last one did at first too." The portrait mused.
"I assume you're talking about Voldemort?" Ares said, recovering from his shock quickly.
"So you know his little made up name have you? He'll be pleased; all he ever talked about was becoming the greatest wizard in history and killing muggles. A good thing I put all the books in the family vault before I left, the boy was psychotic." He spat before calming down again "Who are you, how are we related?"
"We're not. There is no recorded marriage between our families."
"A Nightshade are you?" Slytherin said knowingly. Ares eyes narrowed. How did a portrait know who he was, could someone else have worked it out?
"I can see you want an explanation, and you will have it," he said with a small sigh.
"My parents were killed by a mob of hateful muggles when I was a child, and I had to run to escape my own death. I survived on my wits alone, stealing what I could, moving constantly across much of Britain and into Europe and never staying in one place for long. My family, while not a rich one, was old and wise, knowing of magics that few others did; there were many who would seek to gain access to our knowledge to use against whoever they chose. I couldn't allow that to happen.
"There were no magical schools then, Hogwarts was the first, so I learnt all the magic I could everywhere I went. And then I met the Nightshades by chance in Bulgaria when I was 14 years old, and they allowed me to stay with them and taught me all the magic they knew. They had a son, Emyr, who was about my age, and he became my brother in all but blood. We travelled across lands learning all the magic we could until we finally returned to Britain and I met Godric, Helga and Rowena. By the time Hogwarts had been created we were both nearly forty and while Emyr had a wife and two children, I had no one. The Nightshade family had become my own, and I had lost my adoptive parents to old age and then my brother to his own wife and children, and I felt alone for the first time since my parents died. Emyr swiftly dissuaded me from that notion, I was the uncle of his children, blood mattered not. But still I felt alone.
"One day Emyr had come to see me at Hogwarts when we received a frantic message from his wife, and we raced to his home to see smoke rising from the centre of the village while agonised screams filled our ears. We both instantly recognised the voice. The muggles had seen his daughter perform accidental magic, and they had burned her for it. She was 7 years old and they killed her, yet they called us the spawn of the Devil," his eyes blazed with unholy anger as he spoke, "And if the daughter was a witch, well then that meant the mother was as well – it was her screams we had heard as we arrived. We killed every single muggle in that village, but I couldn't remember any of it afterwards. It was just a blur of rage and anguish; Emyr and his family were my family and they had taken them from us. We had got there in time to save his son, but neither he nor Emyr were the same afterwards.
"When I returned to Hogwarts Godric, Rowena and Helga had heard about what happened and their reaction was not one of sympathy or of anger at the muggles for killing an innocent little girl, it was to tell me we should not have killed those animals, that the muggles only had to be educated about us and we could all live peacefully. Even Rowena, who I had believed would one day become my wife, believed it. They said they understood, but if they did such stupidity would not have left their lips. I could not continue to work with them after that, so I created this chamber and left my familiar, Basil, to guard against the muggles and left Hogwarts.
"After Rowena betrayed me I doubted I would ever find someone I wanted to spend my life with, yet I wanted my family name to live on. Emyr and I had been brothers in all but blood for decades, so we modified the blood adoption ritual so that the adoption would be only partial and used it on his son. His bloodline would then have access to the blood and the magic of the Slytherin family and my name would not die with me. It wasn't necessary in the end anyway; there was a woman who became my apprentice several years later who I spent years teaching about all the magic I knew. She was nearly two decades my junior so we had to keep it secret else my name and the name of Hogwarts be tarnished. I may have left but I still believed that all magical children needed to be taught and was still known as a founder, so if it got out that I was in a relationship with a student parents would no longer send their children to learn. We fell in love and planned to marry shortly after– the most wonderful person you could ever hope to meet, kind and caring, intelligent and beautiful. She died in childbirth, bringing our daughter into the world," the portrait said quietly, the pain clearly heard in his voice.
"If you had children, why has there not been a Lord Slytherin since you?"
"Like many houses the ring would only accept males so my daughter was not able take up the Lordship, and Emyr and his son had left Britain shortly after the ritual, looking for a place to live that was more tolerant of magicals. I know not if he ever found such a place. That left me with nobody to pass the title to so my final act before my death was to have this portrait made and the ring concealed inside, and then I came here to my chamber and put it behind the blood lock so that when my descendants came I could judge them to be worthy of the title Lord Slytherin or not. That is what the pensieve is for; it is enchanted to detect any attempt at memory tampering or attempt to withhold even a section of their lives, and connected directly to this portrait so their memories become mine. Then I could see not only their actions, but I could feel their emotions, know their desires. I would know them better than they know themselves."
"There have been many in here seeking the lordship but never have I found them to be worthy of it. Many were arrogant, entitled and weak willed. Others were violent, vicious and hateful. Such people should not hold the title; they would only destroy my family. But that has happened anyway," the portrait added bitterly, "my grandson, named Salazar after me, came here not long after my death. Power hungry and wicked, he wanted nothing more than to kill every muggle he could find. I never did find out why, whether there was a reason or if he was simply violently insane. He wanted access to the Slytherin vaults and the knowledge they held, but I refused him. He could not destroy my portrait for he would destroy the ring as he did so, and when he left I hoped to have seen the last of him. I was not to be so lucky; he came back several years later crazed by rituals, screaming that he had killed thousands of muggles and that he was the greatest wizard to ever live. He attempted to command Basil to emerge and kill all the muggle and muggle born children he could find, but Basil was still my familiar and he refused the command. He obeyed when I told him to kill my grandson; I could not allow him to leave and continue slaughtering people. He was the worst of my descendants to ever come here, until the last one who seemed intent on following his example," Salazar snarled, "Did he do so?"
"Riddle told your basilisk to attack muggleborn students when he was still in school, and it did. After so many years it was deranged, it's hissing didn't even forming words. A student was killed, and then the chamber was never opened again during his time at Hogwarts; I assume he was worried about getting caught. It remained unopened until this year when it was opened again and several students have been petrified, though none have died, probably out of pure luck. After he left school he formed a little army of sycophants he called Death Eaters to do his dirty work, all pureblood radicals who thought they were better than everyone else who killed thousands of people, both muggle and magical. And then he died, and a lot of his Death Eaters just bought their way out of prosecution and are still walking around."
"Basil will have to be dealt with, there is a Parseltongue phrase that will secure his nest and remove the nourishment charms; he will starve to death. It will take centuries, but he will be asleep for all of it and unable to get out."
"He is already dead, either that or very close to it."
At Slytherin's look he explained how he had done it, and the portrait looked both impressed at his ingenuity and saddened by the death of his familiar.
"I just don't know who's been opening the chamber if it's not Voldemort."
"I wouldn't be sure it wasn't. Riddle was obsessed with cheating death, insisting he would become immortal. True immortality is-"
"-impossible, but there are ways that give a bastardised and corrupted version of it; even if there wasn't he would probably try to make one." Ares cut off, having seen instructions for a ritual that had to be done once a solar cycle and would bind the soul of someone's murdered blood relation to them so that if they were killed, the bonded soul was sent on instead of theirs. They could then use another ritual to create a new body for their soul to inhabit.
"I assume you simply came across such knowledge during your readings of your family library, but such magics are black and break the very laws of the world. They should never be attempted." The ancient portrait spoke seriously and Ares nodded back; few of even the darkest wizards would commit such an atrocity.
Salazar gestured with a wrinkled hand towards the desk, the snake hissing irritably when it was dislodged from its perch.
"Place your memories in the pensieve and I will judge you to be worthy of the title of Lord Slytherin. Maybe you will be the one to finally take up the title and restore the family name to what it once was. You certainly do not seem like the others."
Though he was hesitant to show anyone his memories, portrait or not, the chance of having access to the Slytherin vaults was far too appealing to pass up. So, touching his wand to his temple, Ares concentrated on copying and removing every memory he had. Normally it took only a matter of seconds to withdraw a memory, but those were an hour long at most. What he was withdrawing now was sixteen years of memories, and it took over ten minutes of constant concentration. Finally he had withdrawn everything and the memories that hung from the tip of his wand glowed brightly, looking like the tail of a unicorn as opposed to a single strand as was normal when withdrawing memories.
When he released them into the grey basin, intricately engraved with runes that seemed to shift in front of his eyes, Salazar's green eyes clouded over as the new memories were assimilated. Several minutes later his eyes cleared and they were not filled with pity as Ares had feared, but with respect and a hint of pride.
"You have suffered much pain, much anger and much heartbreak and yet you are not like any of the others who have stood before me – you have no desire to destroy, to conquer or to oppress as they did. Others who hear the name you chose for yourself think you a monster. But they are only partially right – there are several sides to you. There is the monster that they see, there is the man that they do not, and there is the boy – the part that you have buried ever since that day when the one you loved died, but no matter how well you bury it it never goes away. There are so many parts to your soul, both light and dark, but none are evil. You truly are a worthy Lord of House Slytherin." He had a thoughtful look on his face through his speech which became a small smile as he finished.
With a click the bottom corner of the portraits frame swung open to reveal a small hollow that held a wooden box, ornately carved with twisting serpents with the house ring laid inside on black velvet, glinting slightly into the torchlight. The ring was made up of a great silver snake that coiled around itself to form a thick band, a polished emerald with the Slytherin crest painstakingly etched into its surface held in its gaping maw.
When he slid the ring onto the ring finger of his right hand the emerald glowed softly before the ring resized to his finger. When it did so he felt the wards around the chamber bind to him and he knew they would allow him to apparate in as he pleased, but he could not feel the wards of Hogwarts. It made sense that the wards of the chamber were separate, it would have been easy for any headmaster to find otherwise, but he had expected the ring of a founder to at least give a connection if not an ability to manipulate them. As it was he figured it was lucky that it hadn't; Dumbledore would surely feel if someone connected to the wards he had controlled for decades.
Suddenly he stiffened slightly; his proximity wards had tripped. Whoever had been opening the Chamber was here.
Quickly he left the room without a word, the door sliding shut as he left, and weaved a quick illusion over the box so that the chamber looked as it had when he arrived. It wouldn't stand up to more than a few seconds of scrutiny but that was all he really needed. He could just use his connection to the wards to keep them out, but he wanted to know who it was. If it was Riddle that would be confirmation he had cheated death, and if it wasn't then he would deal with them. He didn't accept attacks on children.
Parseltongue was a rare ability all over the world and exceptionally rare in Britain, though it was more prominent in Africa and India. There were more snakes there, and if your village had someone who could command the snakes not to attack chances were they would survive and pass on the ability. It was doubtful it was someone from another country though – the British Wizarding World was far too insular.
He ducked out of sight and applied a disillusionment charm just as the door began to open. The person who entered was not who he was expecting; a small red haired girl who couldn't have been older than first or second year, but there was something wrong. Her movements were not those of a small girl, they were much like how he had moved when he trained to be comfortable in every possible morph – as if she were unused to that body. A silent stunner to the back knocked her out just as she began to turn, clearly having seen through the illusion. He could feel wave after wave of the foulest magic he had ever come across pouring off the girl as he approached, or more accurately the book that she clutched to desperately even in unconsciousness.
A flick of his wand separated it from her and he began casting diagnostic spells on the girl, only to blanch slightly in a combination of anger and disbelief. She had been possessed, but no mere object was capable of possession. They could be enchanted with compulsions until even a wizard capable of throwing off the imperius with ease would struggle to withstand it, but they could not possess. A possession involved overpowering the victims mind until it could simply be bypassed and the possessor would then have full control over their victim's body, but for that another mind was needed. A possession required a soul. He had made a Horcrux.
Glancing back to where the book had skidded to a halt his mind worked at a rapid pace, thinking about the man who he had thought dead. If he was smart he would have made a Horcrux and thrown it into the middle of the ocean so no one would ever find it, but this Horcrux wasn't made to be an object to be guarded and protected; this was acting as a weapon against muggleborns, and if he was this carelesswith a piece of his soul just how many others had he made?
A Horcrux was among the worst of magic's near endless possibilities and any that existed must be destroyed. But it was the effects of making one as well as the act itself. A soul was not just an entity that anchored your body to the Earth, it was what made each person them. In tearing pieces from it Voldemort had torn pieces from his mind and his sanity, which must have been lacking already to even make the first one. It made them more unhinged and more deranged, like a rabid dog instead of human.
He placed the girl under a strong sleeping charm until he decided what to do with her before picking up the book and walking back to the hidden office from where he dropped the book onto the desk as soon as he could; with how attuned to magic he was just holding it was enough to make him feel dirty.
"He made horcruxes. The fool made horcruxes."
"Horcruxes? He made more than one? Why would you think that, such a thing has never been done before! It might not even be possible to split one's soul more than once!"
"This one possessed a girl to open the chamber – if he had only made one he wouldn't be using it as a weapon. You've seen his memories; how many would he make? Where would he hide them?" Ares asked, in no mood for anything but directness.
"I never saw Tom Riddle's memories, not all of them. He tried to show only sections of his life, and even those he had attempted to conceal certain parts of. I never saw anything before his first year of Hogwarts, but I knew from the moment he walked in here that he would never be Lord Slytherin. His eyes held a malice so deep he had drowned in it even then. As for how many he would make, Tom Riddle was a very intelligent, very studious boy yet superstitious; he believed that only a Slytherin could speak Parseltongue, that he had been chosen by a higher power to become the greatest wizard to ever walk the Earth. It was not religion, not God, but he would say that Magic itself had chosen him." Salazar's tone held disbelief even as he spat the delusions of his ancestor, "I suspect he would use Arithmancy. It is believed that the number seven is the most magically powerful number and three the most stable. Creating even one horcrux is an atrocity, to make three or even seven is an evil beyond almost any seen before." The portraits voice was dripping with disgust and outrage at the thought, while Ares' mind was working furiously.
He would want them destroyed anyway and would do so to stop the monster coming back anyway, but that wasn't the only reason; Voldemort had attacked the cottage and nearly killed him, and made Jack Potter the Boy-Who-Lived. It was because of Voldemort that every bad thing that had ever happened to him had happened. Even if he wouldn't change anything in his life, he had still suffered because of him. He wanted him dead.
His mind grinded to a momentary halt.
Why would Voldemort attack the cottage when James and Lily Potter were both out? He had already been told the secret by Pettigrew; he could have just waited for them to come back and removed two of his opponent's best combatants. Unless they weren't the targets, but why would two children be the targets of a Dark Lord who had almost conquered an entire country. What was so special about them? It could have been about his Gryffindor blood, but then James would have been the target too. There was no way for him to know about his Nightshade ancestry and certainly not about his subsequent Slytherin ancestry either, so what was it? He growled slightly as he paced, his mind drawing a blank.
What made two children so important?
And then he realised. There was no reason someone like Voldemort would pause his near completed domination of wizarding Britain for anything other than a serious threat against him. Two children were not immediate threats to him, so the only way they could be was if he somehow knew that they would be at some point in the future. A prophecy.
Divination was a notoriously vague magic but was no less real than transfiguration or charms. There were many cases of prophecies coming true, and while there were a lot of frauds who claimed to be Seers Voldemort wouldn't have risked it if he wasn't absolutely sure it was real. Running from prophecies never worked either – the prophecy still came true regardless. The trouble was that the prophecy might not even be about him, it might be about Jack Potter, but he had no way of knowing unless he checked. He was going to have to break in to the Department of Mysteries, what he assumed was probably among the most heavily protected buildings in the country. Fantastic.
When he expressed his theory to his long dead ancestor he agreed after a few moments of thought and shared his opinions on prophecy – it was not to be disregarded but not to be believed in too heavily either.
Grabbing the diary as he walked out he carried it out into the main chamber before he dropped it and swiftly incinerated it in a surge of Fiendfyre, satisfying himself with the pained screams coming from the book before it became ash. A flick of his wand vanished the dust to leave only scorched stone and he turned towards the entrance of the chamber, finally having decided what to do with the girl. After removing any memories she had of that night he called a house elf to deposit her in her house common room without anyone knowing, that way it would hopefully be assumed she had just fallen asleep there. He didn't want anyone to know he knew about the horcruxes.
As he turned around to face the box that had now been sealed for nearly 16 hours Ares forcibly pushed his thoughts away from Voldemort, prophecies and horcruxes before he apparated up on top of the statue, now being in control of the wards, just in case the basilisk was still alive. Taking a deep breath he flicked his wand to vanish the wall of the box and waited silently for even the slightest indication it was still alive. After several minutes of silence he finally peeked over the side to see the lifeless form of Salazar Slytherin's monster.
It was enormous, at least seventy feet in length, and literally spilling out of the vanished side as if it were a thick liquid. Its scales were a dark green, near black colour that glinted slightly and would stand up to even the most powerful of curses, the same as the shed skin he had seen on his way in. Luckily its eyelids were closed, he had no idea if they retained their killing gaze even after death. He would have to get an elf to use some small animals to test it before they harvested it. Its jaws were closed, but still he was sure that the fangs were as long as his arm and dripping with the deadliest toxin known to man, muggle or magical.
After several minutes of observation from all sides Ares called for his house elves to begin harvesting the beast of everything and to contact the goblins if need be. He doubted it would be needed, house elves could find a way to do almost anything, but just in case it was. He also instructed one to bring Salazar's portrait back to the manor and to hang in with his other tutors; he would be an invaluable teacher for both conventional magic and Parselmagic, and after spending nearly a thousand years alone he figured the founder could do with some company. Especially now that he wasn't waiting for the next Lord Slytherin.
Finally apparating back to his home, Ares' mind returned to Voldemort and the prophecy. It was time to start planning a break in.
A/N: I know I have used a time skip in both this chapter and the last one but I've already taken longer than I planned to on this part and I don't want to drag it out. I also know that the Lord Slytherin thing might seem too much and too obvious. Hopefully I've shown how the killing etc impacted his emotional state and morals. The basilisk death was obviously a bit anticlimactic but it was basically just a way to get him involved with Riddle.
There's a poll on my profile for the pairing of this so I'd appreciate it if you guys did that, it would help me decide exactly how I'm going to do a few things.
Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed!