Chapter 22

"So we are looking for some kind of … what?" asked Narcissa.

"According to Albus, who has his moments if you can prod him, Tom Riddle was in the habit of collecting trophies from the kids he terrorised in the orphanage where he grew up," said Tiberius. The Marauders were having tea in his personal chambers. "I suspect that he may have tried to find the sort of artefacts that people would be unlikely to destroy even if they found them. Horace told me that the boy kept a diary during the time that the Chamber of Secrets was opened, and I wager he did the opening. I think his diary might be one of the horcruces. But that might be too precious to leave him. He worked for a while for Borgin and Burke, so he might have got his hand on any number of odd artefacts there. Albus believes that he acquired the cup of Hufflepuff and the locket of Slytherin when he was working there, based on the memory of a house elf."

"Is that reliable?" asked Narcissa.

"Any true memory is reliable. The unfortunate elf may have been senile, but probably not as senile as she thought. She's supposed to have accidentally killed her mistress, but I wouldn't mind betting that she had … help."

"What an egregious little toerag Riddle is," said Severus.

"Severus, how can you use an excellent word like 'egregious' in combination with such a vulgarity as 'toerag'?" groaned Tiberius.

"Natural talent?" suggested Severus. "How's it going with the researches on Remus?"

"It won't be easy," said Tiberius, accepting that curing a friend was bound to loom larger in the eyes of his grandson than dealing with anything so nebulous as horcruces. "However, I have two ideas I am working on, and I will hope to have perfected one by the end of the year."

"Thank you, sir," said Remus. "I have to say that the runestone, meditation and chanting make such a huge difference that I am grateful to you and to Sev even if you can't work out anything more."

"I confess I'd not mind a modicum of fame for curing lycanthropy," said Tiberius.

"Which is good, but how will I know if I see a horcrux in Slytherin House?" asked Narcissa.

"You will feel tense, angry, uptight," said Tiberius. "Don't go looking right before you are due for your monthlies, because the hormones might just confuse you. Go looking when you have sat and meditated and are in a state of peacefulness."

Narcissa nodded.

"This I can do," she said. "Would he have hidden more than one in the school?"

"I don't know. I was thinking of him using Slytherin house because of the bad atmosphere there these days, which surely can't be entirely accounted for by Death Eaters in the school."

"There might be places which are more neutral where people don't linger," said Narcissa. "I just wondered if he'd hide something like Hufflepuff's cup in plain view, under illusion magic to look like a prize cup, in the trophy room, perhaps under a gaze-repelling charm so people don't dwell on looking at it."

Tiberius stared, with some respect.

"That is actually fairly brilliant, Narcissa, and within the psyche of the boldness of Riddle," he said.

Narcissa returned to Slytherin House and paused to stare at the portrait of Salazar Slytherin in an obscure corridor. Famously, the portrait did not interact with students, and the rumour was that the likeness was so poor that the personality of Salazar was outraged and refused to enter the portrait at all. This was belied by the way the eyes occasionally followed the students about, which is why it had been banished from the common room. Narcissa personally thought that it was more likely that Slytherin considered himself above the banal daily chatter of any schoolchildren, rather like the Bloody Baron, who was rumoured to be a descendant of Slytherin himself.

She studied the medallion he wore, a large disk with a stylised snake on it in emeralds, making the letter 'S'.

And then she frowned.

There was a similar shape in the frame, but it was bulbous and oval, as though the medallion itself had been worked into something like the front of a locket. And there was a chain running from it, pressed into the frame.

Narcissa reached for it, and then let her hand drop. The portrait's eyes glittered maliciously.

"Wise move," it murmured, barely audible.

"It needs an adult who understands these things," said Narcissa.

The portrait said no more, but Narcissa could have sworn that there was a brief, curt nod.

She swung round and made directly for the private quarters of the DADA professor.

OoOoOo

"Narcissa?"

"Come quickly, Mr. Prince, I've found one of them!"

"A horcrux? Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."

"My apologies, of course not. Where is it?"

"Embedded in the frame of the portrait of Salazar Slytherin. He actually spoke to me!"

"He used to be relatively chatty in my young day."

She stared.

"Really? I've never known him to speak at all."

"Mmm. I'll see if he speaks to me."

OoOoOo

"Honoured founder, why is it that you will not speak to your people? I recall you used to talk to me willingly enough, discussing runecraft."

The portrait glared from under hooded eyelids.

"Kill the abomination who says he is my heir. And get that … thing … out of my frame."

"The second will lead to the first," said Tiberius. "I am hoping to use a ritual …"

"Ritual be damned, you need basilisk venom."

"Honoured founder, where am I to find basilisk venom? I doubt there are any…"

"There is a basilisk sleeping in the Chamber of Secrets. The abomination awoke it to kill other students, those who it thought were invading muggle priests, whose magic did not hold markers of familial protection."

"So you don't disapprove of muggle born wizards?" blurted out Narcissa.

"Fool of a wench! I disapprove of those who don't understand our world and want to destroy it! Muggleborn were always adopted into wizarding families in my young day, and had ritual adoption markers."

"That … makes sense," said Narcissa.

"Time for me to adopt the Evans girls perhaps then," said Tiberius. "How does one get to the Chamber of Secrets, and persuade the basilisk not to hurt one?"

"You need one of my bloodline, who can learn parseltongue from me, if they do not know it naturally, of course," said the portrait.

"Of course," said Tiberius, smiling mirthlessly. "Well that might take some doing. I'll have to get back to you."

"Just find out if anyone has a family history from around the fens," snapped the portrait, and turned his back on them.

Narcissa and Tiberius exchanged a look and rolled their eyes.

OoOoOo

"So we need to find someone whose family is from the fens, in the hopes that they might be descended from Slytherin," said Narcissa to the other Marauders.

"Well, we're from Devon, so we're no help, and the Malfoy side from Wiltshire," said Phil.

"And we Princes are from Yorkshire, though all the families of old lines are inter-related," said Severus.

"Potters are from the south," said James. "Siri?"

"Also mostly the south," Sirius scowled. "And some connection to Derbyshire."

"I'm from Devon," said Charity.

"We're from London," said Peter.

"And me from Shropshire," said Remus.

"And Petunia and Lily from Yorkshire like Sev," said James.

"No, actually we aren't," said Lily. "We moved to Yorkshire for Daddy to take up a job there. We came from Lincolnshire, near the Cambridge border. From a little village not that far from St Ives, called Little Hangleton."

"Interesting name," said Sirius.

"Well, it wasn't a nice place," said Lily. "Mummy found it creepy, so Daddy moved out readily enough. Tuney and I always had nightmares, Mummy says, when we got to about five."

"The age to manifest magic," said Severus.

"Yes, I suppose so," said Lily. "Oh! Is that why Tuney suppressed it?"

"It could be," said Severus. "Well! We must find out more. But it could be why you have magic in the family."

"Wait, you think we might be descended from the founder, Salazar Slytherin?" asked Petunia. "Why weren't we in Slytherin House, then?"

"Well could it be because we had already met Lucius Malfoy," said Severus.

"Oh, yeah," said Petunia. "Not for one moment was I going to listen to the hat telling me I was ambitious enough for Slytherin House after that."

"Did it offer it to you too?" asked Lily.

"Yes, and I turned it down."

"The hat plainly has some idea about background as well," said Narcissa.

"Unfortunately you won't have family Slytherin markers on your magic after such a long time," said Sirius. "But we need to get you to talk to the portrait of Salazar Slytherin."

"What else is an invisibility cloak for?" grinned James.

"We can't all get under it," grumbled Peter.

"No, but a couple of us can be let in by Narcissa and steal the portrait a little bit," said James.

"James," said Severus, "Wouldn't it be easier for my grandfather to just take the portrait to his quarters and we go in via the entrance from the main part of the school?"

"You take all the fun out of it," grumbled James.

"There'll be plenty of fun in finding a basilisk without getting killed or petrified," said Severus.

James brightened and Severus suppressed a groan that his irony was being taken at face value.

OoOoOo

The youngsters faced the portrait in Tiberius Prince's room.

Ssss ssso you are my descendantsssss? Ssss hissed the portrait.

"I can almost hear words," said Lily.

Ssss We are your kindred ssss hissed Petunia.

The other Marauders stared at her.

"Do you understand it?" asked Severus, impressed. Petunia flushed.

"Yes, I do," she said.

"You are of my blood," said the portrait. "Prince, you will place the ritual markers of my bloodline on these two girls. The other will be able to learn to speak parseltongue with practice."

"I am not sure I know the markers, founder," said Tiberius.

"Call yourself a ritual warlock?" the portrait sneered. "Look at the medallion, locket as it is now. It has been worn by generations of my kindred. There will be skin flakes caught in the chain."

"Ewww," Petunia whispered to James. The portrait glared at her.

"Daughter of snakes, it is to your good fortune that this is so. It will give you my protection."

"Er, yes, sir," said Petunia, abashed.

Tiberius passed his wand over the chain, and began a chant, conjuring up patterns from it.

"Hey, that's Peverell," said James. "We have that in our heritance."

"And there's Malfoy in there too, and Black, not surprising," said Sirius. "The Peverell is fairly strong though."

"Hush," said Tiberius. He overlaid all the patterns and pulled away a strand which was one that was found in all. Then he started walking around the Evans sisters, chanting in a harsh voice and drawing runes in light in the circle about them. The runes flared, achingly bright, and the marker was sucked into the circle.

"Test it," said the portrait.

Tiberius cast a familial revelation spell, and the sigil of Slytherin showed up, in addition to a number of others.

"Gaunt, that's no surprise, the Gaunts lived in the fens, or rather, they lived in squalor in the region of the fens," said Tiberius. "Marvolo was at school with Albus and me, was several knuts short of a sickle, he didn't wash and he could scarcely string a coherent sentence together. He should never have been at school, and I swear he was swiving his sisters, Messalina and Morgause. Messalina married a Carrow as I recall, I have no idea what happened to Morgause."

"Daddy traced his family tree and we have a Merrychild Gaunt on it, in about 1850," said Lily.

"That will be the connection, then," said Tiberius. "Likely she was a squib who escaped the family."

"The abomination said his name was Tom Marvolo Riddle," volunteered the portrait.

"The empty mansion house was called Riddle House," said Petunia, suddenly. "It was haunted. Or so people said. I remember now!"

"The Gaunts never owned a mansion," said Tiberius. "So it looks as though Marvolo had a daughter who married a muggle-born Riddle? Maybe we shall find him in the book of all people."

"You won't," said the portrait. "The abomination used to talk to me, it's how he found out about the Chamber of Secrets; I'm afraid I told him before I realised what an abomination he was. He looked for his surname there. Riddle was a muggle, and he had black rages about it. Boasted about murdering him when he came back for his sixth year, but he put a curse on me, not to talk about him until I had been able to converse in parseltongue. I owe you gratitude, my granddaughter of granddaughters," he bowed to Petunia, who flushed. "I am sorry you are not in my house," he added, regretfully.

"We'd met people who were and they weren't nice," said Petunia. "Because of him."

"Call him 'Cousin Tom' when you meet him," said Salazar. "He will hate that more than anything else."

"Don't you go encouraging these younglings into anything too dangerous, founder," said Tiberius.

"If they come face to face with the abomination, they will need every distraction they can muster," said the Portrait. "Now hang me back where I belong, and the rest of you do what you can to learn Parseltongue if you want to help your friend."

"You belong in the common room, founder, and that's where you are going," said Narcissa, firmly.