Chapter One: Snake in the Bird's Nest

There were many stereotypes pertaining to the four founders of Hogwarts. They were so woven into the actual history that one had to be part of their lineage to truly know which were fact and which were fiction… Or, one just had to have a lot of time, or twice as much money as time. It was even better if one had both, like Lord Voldemort.

The founders obviously realized that they were going to be a part of history, to leave behind what they had: whole libraries, wills, journals, notes, things that historians would cut out their own hearts just to see. But they never would, because Lord Voldemort had most of those. And why? Because he wanted them.

It was simple to obtain such documents and information When one had power one tended to attract powerful followers whose family lines held sway. The only place that might hold more information on the founders than Riddle Manor was Hogwarts where the location of the actual libraries of the founders could be found, assuming one knew where to look. But no one did, because Voldemort held that information.

He'd started collecting such information after he'd found the Chamber of Secrets nearly fifty years ago even though he hated to think of things like that in terms of numbers, and - with it – found all of Salazar Slytherin's documents, including a bunch of drafts of letters that he'd written to his lover, Rowena Ravenclaw, when she'd been traveling for a few years on some project that he alluded to but never actually described. It was she who had sent him the young Basilisk that he had grown so fond of, and whose descendant Voldemort himself had come to like exceedingly well.

But knowing this made Voldemort, or at that time young Tom Riddle, curious. Following the fiasco with the Chamber, during his remaining time at Hogwarts after researching all he could about the Horcruxes he planned to make but did not dare make in the school itself, which would hardly have been prudent with Dumbledore watching him more closely than ever, he set about trying to find Rowena Ravenclaw's secret room. Salazar Slytherin had alluded to such a room, as he had mentioned that each founder had such a hidden retreat. Voldemort had never found it, but he'd gotten close. He found all the documentation pertaining to her study, but had never actually found the retreat itself. Even had he found it, though, he realized he would have had no way of opening it, as he was not her heir. He kept all of her documentation with Slytherin's and would have begun looking for the other two founders' information, except he ran out of time when his seventh year at Hogwarts ended. And then he never did have time to go back and actually find the rooms of the other two founders, because Albus Dumbledore became Headmaster.

Of course, one of the first things Dumbledore did as Headmaster was try to find the rooms of the founders. And, though the man never did find the Chamber of Secrets, the Chamber of Wisdom, the Chamber of Courage, or the Chamber of Faith, he did find the documents for the other two founders, Helga Hufflepuff and Godric Gryffindor.

Well, that wasn't completely correct; his team found those documents that Voldemort allowed them to find, as his loyal Death Eaters in the group had sent him all of the good information. Ah, yes, the Lestranges. They had been so good at their jobs, pity they had been sent to rot in Azkaban for it when they should have been congratulated.

But, that wasn't really what Lord Voldemort was thinking about, going through the information at his disposal about the founders. No, it was the startling facts of Harry's true heritage. One couldn't look at the boy himself because he hadn't been raised properly, so of course he would act differently than was his true nature right now. Give that a few years to come out.

Voldemort was pondering Harry's mother, Lily Evans. He had never actually met the woman, unless pointing one's wand at a woman and killing her counted as "meeting" her, but there had been something there that… wasn't quite right. From what he'd heard, she had been a studious little thing, and that only increased the feeling that there was something he was missing. So he was going to try to find out what it was, and if his suspicions were correct, the work he'd done in those months of boredom was about to answer all of his questions.

It would be obvious to anyone who had actually read Salazar's journal or letters to Rowena that the two had been lovers. It was also obvious that the two had kept it as secret as possible from the other founders, although the reason for this was unknown. Yet they'd never had any children together, as both of their genealogies showed. Salazar had left the three other founders, and like any other pureblood, had married another pureblood, and thus created the line from which Voldemort's mother descended.

But what had happened to Rowena? Her journal entries got progressively shorter as the time passed after Salazar's departure, and it was obvious that she was still very much in love with him, even though his arranged marriage was a stable one that produced heirs, and Salazar never once returned to the founders after their split. There was never any mention of another lover, yet Rowena somehow had descendants. There was a family tree and everything, and that was the key to his answer.

Rowena's something-or-other grandchild had caused a problem for the Ravenclaw bloodlineand had been disowned. She'd married some common riff-raff or something like that, which had dismayed her parents. But no one ever said whom she married. Her name had basically been burnt out of the family tree, and the name of her half-muggle lover, whom Voldemort had seen so many obscenities directed towards in letters between family members that it wasn't even amusing anymore, had never even been recorded; in not one of the letters was he mentioned by name, even though the Dark Lord had already been through most of the pile of letters. These were already dated after the marriage…

And then he found it. Dated twelve months after Selena Ravenclaw had chosen marriage over family there was a letter from her older sister to her mother:

"Selena wrote me today, and I nearly broke tradition and went to murder her. She has a child, a son, by that horrible half-blood thing that she "married". I still cannot believe that there is a spawn of that Evans boy running around with blood from the Ravenclaw family…"

There it was. Finally a clue. Now it made sense why something had triggered inside him when he'd killed that woman. Even after all the years of dilution, Salazar's blood could tell when Rowena's blood was present, in just the same way that Voldemort got a different feeling when around that meddlesome Dumbledore, who had the combined blood of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, who had married shortly after Salazar left the founders. It made one mourn the loss of the old blood magic. It was proof right here of how strong it was.

But Voldemort had new things to think about now that he knew. He would need to check the Evans genealogy to make sure that it was the same name, but, assuming that it was the same person, and assuming that Harry was Ravenclaw's descendant, then that at least cleared up some of the confusion.

Harry awoke to the sound of his dorm mates moving about in their normal noisy manner. Groaning softly, he realized that he ached all over. Probably from that ritual, he thought, forcing his reluctant muscles to move him into a sitting position.

"Harry, you up yet, mate?"

"I'm up, Ron," Harry muttered through the bed curtains, pulling them back after he said so, as if to prove it to the energetic redhead who was already dressed and, from the looks of the wet hair clinging to his scalp, showered.

"Hurry up, Harry, or you'll miss breakfast!" Seamus called out from the other side of the room.

Harry muttered about how he knew that, and made his way over to the dormitory showers. Hot water did sound very good right about now. Maybe he'd skip breakfast and just use up the rest of it.

He pulled his pajama top off and dropped it on the floor carelessly. Yawning, he moved over to the shower stalls, pausing as a flash of green in the mirror caught his attention. There was a band of green on his right side…

Slowly, Harry twisted so he could see his back and realized that the band of green he'd seen was the tail end of a tattooed snake that coiled around his back, up over his shoulder and stopped, as Harry finished turning in a semi-circle so that his left arm was to the mirror, on his left upper arm. The snake was open-mouthed and fanged, a green representation of the snake from the Dark Mark that he was so familiar with.

It hadn't been just a dream, like all the others Voldemort had sent to him in previous years. What had happened had been real. There was no going back. And Harry grinned, as he turned the faucet on the shower to the highest temperature he could tolerate, though he found that this temperature was rather high.

Harry fought to concentrate on Charms, he really did, but it was a losing battle, and he knew it. Besides, he already knew this Charm; one couldn't learn the Dark Arts without first learning easier ones, and the easiest spells were ones like whatever it was Professor Flitwick was describing. So Harry gave up. He knew how to pick his battles. And he needed the extra sleep anyway. Tonight he had some searching to do.

It was all part of the plan that had to be implemented before he could be revealed to the Death Eaters and, more importantly, to Draco; it was the last piece of the puzzlethat Voldemort needed before he would explain his choice of heir. Harry had just nodded and gone back to thinking about Draco at that point, but he had understood the gist of it. Voldemort was the heir of Slytherin, a very pureblooded family. Therefore, it was assumed that every founder's family was pureblooded, which – of course – was complete lunacyas both Voldemort and he were actually half-bloods when it came to lineage.

But he'd learned that the present definition of "pureblood" was not absolute. Before the medieval times, the word had held a very different meaning. It had nothing to do with the red stuff that flowed through veins and came gushing out of a wound or cut. No, pureblood had to do with the life "blood" of one's magic. A pureblooded person had pure magic, magic that came from the days when blood magic was used to keep the string of magic which flows throughout all living things stable. This was passed down from generation to generation until little anomalies started to pop up.

These anomalies were people who could manipulate magic, but didn't actually have it in their blood. These were the muggle-borns. Eventually they married in with some of the purebloods and strange things occurred. Generations were created where a person couldn't use magic, and most of these people left to go live with others who could not and would not ever use magic. These created the "mudbloods", later called "squibs"; people who would never learn to use magic because of the problems created from integrating the muggle-borns with the purebloods. That is why it is such an insult to a muggle-born if you call them a mudblood. It's like saying they are a mistake, a freak of naturewho has no place in the world because the world is held by magic and is forever lost to them because of their "dirty" blood.

But getting back to the point of things, since Voldemort was a pureblood,he would obviously be choosing another pureblood to succeed him. Voldemort had some theory that Harry was actually descended from Rowena Ravenclaw, so Harry had been given the task of finding the Chamber of Wisdom to prove so.

The whole thing was rather insane, really. Harry couldn't communicate with birds, like Rowena had been seen to do while alive. He'd tried, Merlin only knew how many times he'd tried. But he had never managed to get Hedwig to speak back to him. She understood him because she was a smart owl, or at least that's what he'd told Voldemort when she'd flown to his outstretched arm when he'd asked. Harry couldn't have communicated with her because he'd been speaking English the entire time. But Voldemort had said that the ability would come when he wasn't trying so hard, just like speaking to snakes had come when he'd been at the zoo and had just randomly commented on his cousin's behavior to the boa, although Voldemort hadn't really known the details, of course. Nevertheless, Harry was still skeptical.

But that wouldn't stop Harry from looking for this Chamber of Wisdom. Because only after this room was definitely found and Harry was identified as Voldemort's heir would he be able to reveal himself to Draco. Stupid tradition-type things. If Harry saw Draco flirt with one more Slytherin–

Oh, but class was over. Good. Now he just had to sit through dinner, and then he could start searching… if he could only find a way out of Gryffindor tower without attracting attention to himself. Ah, the joys of possessing an invisibility cloak.

Harry walked silently down the halls that were almost deserted now as students were heading to their dormitories and not up to the Owlery, as he was. The invisibility cloak seemed to slide across the floor like water as he made his way up the many steps and opened the door silently. As he pulled off the cloak and draped it over one arm, Hedwig flew down to perch on his shoulder.

"Hey, girl," he spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb any of the other owls… which, on second thought, should just be waking up now, anyway.

All the clues left by Rowena pointed to her Chamber opening out of the Owlery, but Voldemort had never been able to find the entrance. He had said it was because he couldn't speak to owls, assuming, as Harry thought he was suggesting, without question that all the Chambers would open in the same way. Harry looked around the room cautiously, not really sure where to begin.

Okay, if I were a founder, where would I put the door to my Chamber? Harry began searching along the walls for some sort of indentation that might indicate the entrance to a room, or maybe even a carving like there was on the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

"Where is it?" He whispered to himself as he completed the full circle around the perimeter of the room. He had to at least find the entrance. If he couldn't get in, that was Voldemort's problem, because it would prove that Harry had been right, but finding it shouldn't be this hard.

Hedwig cooed from where she sat as Harry moved across the room.

"Do you know where the entrance to the Chamber of Wisdom is?" Harry asked her quietly. He was very surprised when she flew from his shoulder to the window.

Well there went that theory. Harry couldn't talk to owls. And if Harry couldn't talk to owls, or even birds in general, then there was no way that he would find this Chamber.

He turned to leave, but there was an annoyed hooting from behind him. Hedwig was sitting on the windowsill, not having gone through it as Harry had expected. And she was looking at him as if expecting him to do something. Leaving his invisibility cloak in a corner, Harry crossed the room again. Hedwig moved back from where she'd been sitting and looked down at a crevice in the windowsill.

And Harry saw it. On the intersection of the bottom and the right side of the window frame was a small engraving: a bird, maybe some form of owl--he couldn't be sure--with its wings spread in flight.

"Open up" Harry breathed, and, in the growing twilight, the words came out as a series of soft hoots.

The wall around the window shifted to form a staircase that spiraled down somewhere. Harry's eyes widened as he realized the implications of what he had just done. He looked over at Hedwig, as if for confirmation that this was actually happening, and she looked very pleased with him, as if saying "I told you that you could do it".