Harry sat in the library reading over the spell book he had taken from the Slytherin common room. He frowned at the old yellowed pages with faded writing. The last time he had seen the book the pages had been crisp and his bold hand writing had been readable. Rowena's voice drifted up from the back of his mind telling him that he really should put a preservation spell on his books. Damn the woman for being right. At the time he had thought Rowena had been indulging in her book fetish.

The prickly sensation of Hermione staring at him started to get on his nerves. He was glad to have her back, but this was ridiculous. First she was mad at him for not being Harry, and now she was breathing down his neck trying to get her hands on the book. Finally he looked up at her where she sat with her hands folded in front of her on the table. "Okay, you might as well get over here so you can read over my shoulder."

Hermione immediately jumped up and rounded the table. Harry didn't even see her move before he heard the scrape of the chair next to him. She wrinkled her nose at the spell he was looking at. It detailed a procedure for using someone's blood to turn them into a golem. Suddenly the book was no longer in front of him. Harry blinked at Hermione annoyed that she was acting this way. She had no right… "Is this the spell you were looking for?" She asked completely unperturbed by his seething.

Harry looked at the book. Yes, it was the exact spell that Voldemort had used to resurrect himself. Harry nodded shortly, began to read. Hermione had most likely cut three hours out of his search by finding the spell in less than ten minutes, but that didn't mean he was going to thank her for it. Harry flipped the page over. He already knew the spell intimately from being one of the key ingredients. On the back of the page in his own hand was a list of the advantages and disadvantages inherent in the spell.

He scanned the list. It seemed that the spell was almost fool proof. Voldemort could not be killed by physical means, nor could offensive magic affect him. The body Voldemort inhabited could be dismembered but would never truly die. The spell tied the soul to the body permanently. There were some disadvantages, but they all dealt with the casting of the spell.

Harry sat back and sighed. Hermione pulled the book back to herself and read the spell. "Well, that didn't really help." She looked up. "What now?"

Harry shook his head. "I'm missing something, something basic."

"Harry, this whole book is about blood magic." Harry nodded. "Blood magic is illegal." Harry nodded again waiting for her to tell him off for having and illegal book at hand. "Can I read it?" Harry shrugged. He was already deep into his own thoughts trying to puzzle out what he was missing.

"Do you have any ideas?" He asked Hermione suddenly.

She looked up startled. "Give me some time to study up on this," was his answer. Lovely, annoying, nose stuck in book, just like Rowena. Harry left her in the library. It was getting exasperating. Voldemort was on a rampage. Entire families ended up dead every day. Harry couldn't help but think that he was the cause of all the suffering. Snape had been reporting to Dumbledore that Voldemort was concentrating most of his powers on finding a certain dark witch, but there seemed to be no end to the bad news. Three Ministry officials had gone missing since last week.

The castle corridor seemed to be darker than usual. Harry trudged up to the Gryffindor common room with his eyes on the floor. The part that pissed him off the most was that Dumbledore seemed to be doing nothing about the situation. That old man was supposed to be the one Voldemort feared the most, but the tracking spell Harry had placed on the Headmaster placed Dumbledore in Fudge's office most of the time he was away from the school. In Harry's opinion the Headmaster should stop spending so much time placating that fool and solve the bloody problem in front of him. Namely the miniature Deatheaters roaming the school, his sources in the Slytherin dorm had told him that the sixth and seventh years were holding private meetings late at night. Nothing good could come of that.

Suddenly the hall warmed. Harry could feel the soft heat and the support that the castle was giving him. She had never liked it when he was sad. He smiled and placed his hand on the wall. The stone was warm and rough to the touch. Then he was pulled into the castle's memory. Ghostly forms appeared in the hall walking quickly in reverse. I was like watching a rewinding movie. Harry wondered briefly what the castle wanted to show him. People continued to race past him. A few even walked through him.

As the flashback started to slow Harry started to notice the small changes that had taken place in the hall. When am I? He asked the castle unperturbed. He had used this feature of the castle more than once as Salazar to seem omnipotent to his students. There was a time when no secrets were kept from him within these walls.

A loud, brash laugh made him turn to the way he had come. His eyes widened at the site that greeted him. Walking toward him was his father and Sirius. They both looked so young and care free. Sirius was clutching something in his hand. The rakish smile on his face proclaimed to the world that one of his pranks had gone very well.

"I can't believe that old bat kicked us out of the library for that." James Potter said in a huff, slightly less enthusiastic about whatever had happened. "You know that we can't possibly finish that report for McGonagall now that we are banned from the library."

"What do you care, you were going to BS the whole ting anyway." Sirius said. He held up the object in his fist. "Besides the whole thing was worth it." Harry peered closer trying to figure out what he was holding.

James grinned. "Yeah, that was totally worth it. Let me have it." James held out his hand "Snape's going to freak when he finds it missing. What is it supposed to do anyway?" He held up the small vile and gazed at its contents. Harry could see that it was a dark red fluid.

"Don't know all I know is that it is something that he is working on to get his masters in potions."

"No shit. Looks like blood." Harry had to agree, but he knew it wasn't the color was too dark to be blood. Harry took a step closer to the two other boys trying to get a closer look. The image disappeared as soon as his hand left the stone.

"Damn it!" He had forgotten that in order to see the castle's memory you had to stay in direct contact with the stones, and the castle had to like you, but Harry had no problem with that. The old girl loved him. Harry shook his head. He wanted to ask the castle to repeat the memory, but he knew that someone, somewhere, had felt that surge of magic. It is kind of hard to miss the sun during the day. It seemed that it was time to pay another visit to Snape. The day kept getting better and better. Harry continued on to the Gryffindor tower. He needed a nap before dinner.

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The Slytherin common room was quiet, but then the Slytherin common room was always quiet. No matter how many people were shoved into the room they would immediately break off into separate groups and start scheming. Draco sat on one of the couches with Blaise practically draped across his lap. Draco tried to ignore the boy but he just wouldn't shut up. Blaise was currently complaining about Draco's "relationship" with Potter.

"Would you please shut up about Harry Bloody Potter," Draco rubbed his eyes trying to remember what he had been thinking about before Blaise had started to discuss the possibilities of his fascination with the Gryffindor. The idiot had no clue. "Fine, fine." Blaise pouted and laid his head on Draco's thigh. Draco grimaced and was about to say something when he realized that the other boy had finally shut up. He shrugged. If it kept him from being interrupted by mindless chatter he could put up with it. He went back to his pondering.

From all the evidence he could gather, Draco had to admit that Potter was telling the truth when he said he had been Salazar Slytherin. Potter didn't even act like a Gryffindor anymore. He had also mentioned a creed that if read allowed would give him, Draco, more power than he had ever imagined. But two problems presented themselves in the form of two other Dark Lords already fighting for a title meant for one. Draco was not stupid; even if he could find the creed he knew that he didn't have the training to defeat one let alone both Potter and Voldemort. Draco threw that aside. First things first. He needed to secure a copy of the creed.

"Blaise,"

"Huh," the other boy mumbled. He had fallen asleep.

Draco sighed. "I need your help to research something."

"What?"

"Do you still have that talisman you made that makes you invisible to the spells placed on the restricted section of the library?"

"Yep"

"Good let's go."

"Wait a minute." Blaise help up his hand. "What are we researching?"

"The secret to the Dark Lords power."

Blaise's eyes widened. "What makes you think we would find something like that in the library?"

"Two reasons: Salazar Slytherin had this power and would have kept it in a well guarded location, and Voldemort had to have found it when he was a student here, considering he lived in the muggle world when he was not at Hogwarts."

Blaise nodded. "Do you have any idea what we are looking for?"

"All I know is that it is a creed of some kind."

"That's not much." Blaise said disapprovingly. "But I have something that will make this search much quicker."

"What?"

"Wait right here, my love." Blaise disappeared into the dorms without giving Draco time to comment on being called "love." Such a disgusting word. He thought.

Blaise came back and sat down beside Draco holding out his hand. Sitting in the middle of his palm was an unremarkable black stone. Draco picked up the stone with his fingers careful not to touch Blaise's hand. "What," he asked, is this?" He held up the stone between thumb and forefinger.

Blaise smiled. "You know my hobby of making talismans out of everyday objects." Draco arched his brow and he rushed on. "This one is used to look up a topic using key words. All you have to do is point your wand at the stone and say 'find' then say the key words. Every book with all of the key words will glow a light blue. It'll even show what pages the information you are looking for is on."

Draco picked his jaw up off the floor. He knew that Blaise had an almost obsessive habit of putting spells on inanimate objects. There was even a chair in the corner of the common room that started to scream profanities if you sat on it. This though was amazing. He had never heard of anything like it. "That is amazing."

A big goofy grin plastered itself on Blaise's face. He glanced at his watch. "It's already eleven o' clock. You want to go now?"

Draco nodded then came to his senses. "Why do you want to help me?"

"Because I love you, and you will owe me one for this."

Draco winced that couldn't be good. "Fine, let's go."

In the library Draco stood behind Blaise tapping his toe impatiently on the stone floor. "Will you stop that." Blaise snapped. "If this stone lights up all the books with 'tap tap tap' in them I'm going to hit you. What exactly are we looking for?"

Draco scowled at the reprimand. "I don't know exactly. The only thing I know is that it is the creed of the Dark Lord. I'm not even sure if that is what it is called."

Blaise arched an eyebrow. He looked at the stone in his hand and said very clearly, "Find: Creed, Dark Lord." A small blue light lifted out of the stone. It hovered for a second before zooming over to the nearest shelf. It shot through the center of every book in the library in under a minute. Every once in a while a book would light up with a soft blue glow. The light returned to hover above the stone. The number 136 flashed briefly in the light before it disappeared. The chosen books still glowed.

"What the hell was that?" Draco asked.

"The stone found 136 books containing both the words Dark Lord and creed. Let's get started."

"136 books! We can't check all of them before morning!"

"That is why I suggest we get started." Blaise strode elegantly over to the nearest shelf and pulled out a glowing book. The Book went dark. He flipped through the book until he came to a couple of pages that glowed. "See, it won't take as long as you think. All you have to do is check the glowing pages for whatever you are looking for. I would help, but you continue to be annoyingly vague."

Draco grabbed the book from the other boy and scanned the glowing pages before putting the book back on the shelf. "I keep telling you, I myself don't know. It is a creed; it will give me power; I want it that is enough."

Blaise huffed. "I'm going to bed." He left Draco to spend a tiresome night searching. But by dawn the next morning a very tired Draco stumbled back to the dorms with a triumphant smile on his face. He set his alarm to go off in time to join Harry at practice. Classes were not a appealing as his pillow at the moment.