Disclaimer: I am just a mere visitor in the sublime world constructed by the brilliant mind that is J.K Rowling. Anything that rings a bell is hers.
A/N: Since doc manager doesn't allow me to place columns and such, I substituted spaces in the runic translation with asterisks, so where ever you see asterisks think of it as a space and the data is represented in three columns...
sorry for the confusion in advance
Kalina
Chapter 66
Harry's POV
I watched as she scratched furiously at the parchment in front of her, her brown eyes whizzing left and right so quickly it was dizzying to follow. Ron's soft snores filled the Library, I ran my fingers over the invisibility cloak in my lap. I tried doing my essay whilst Hermione worked but I was just too curious and excited at what she found out that might help Ky. Suddenly the scratching that pecked at the room for the last two hours stopped, Hermione lifted her head slowly, entranced by the parchment in front of her.
"It's done."
"And?" I sat up in my chair.
"I…I don't know what it means." Her voice was a tearful croak of disappointment, "It has nothing about magic over here. At all."
I tried to hide my disappointment; I was really hoping that this would work. Ky looked happy and back to normal, but I could tell that she was just pretending for our sakes. The fact that she was doing that meant that she was done being angry…she was slowly giving up.
"I managed to translate it into English." Hermione's lower lip quivered as she stared at the piece of parchment, her disappointment seemed to run even deeper than my own. "When Ky said that she shortened words for her own convenience, it made me think back to this parchment. Nott, Snake he may be, but I cannot fault his observatory skills. He described the parchment that he took the runes from, writing a note in the bottom stating: In comparison to the previous parchments, the penmanship was less meticulous, the parchment itself had jagged outlines as if hastily torn out and the reverse of the parchment seemed to be a page of some potions textbook."
"I don't understand how that is either here nor there, or how it's relevant to what Ky had said." I honestly just wanted to know if this was the cure for Ky.
"This means that Slytherin didn't want anyone else to see this parchment just yet. The rest of his work is neat and orderly, this is what we can presume is a personal draft copy. Which brings us to what Ky said, if you were Salazar Slytherin and you had to write something that was for your eyes only, what language would you use?"
I sighed, we should have thought of this immediately! "Parseltongue!"
She nodded her head, a strong frown on her face, "That was my thought initially but at the same time I cancelled that idea. Nott understood that parchment, he managed to transcribe the runes for me, and if it was some written derivation of Parseltongue he would never have understood it. I started with the most basic Runic language, Elder Furtakh but the runes didn't match. I then thought about the other parchments Nott had read from, they were all written in Latin, Slytherin had a penchant for the old languages. The parent language of Elder Furtakh is the Phoenician Alphabet but frustratingly enough that didn't work either. When Ky made that statement earlier it reminded me that if Slytherin was writing this down for his own personal use, and he didn't use Parseltongue, what else could he have used? Because he is such a notable parselmouth we forget that his mother tongue isn't that, he actually was of Basque heritage, his father arriving in England from the French Basque country in particular. I remember coming across something in one of the books Len left with me from Black Manor, he used a runic derivation of his father's home country."
I barely understood a word Hermione said; just happy she had found out the runic language, not really caring how that came about. I stared at the translation. I understood what Hermione meant about it not making sense. It was a spattering of numbers and alphabets, the only word that made an appearance was 'litron.'
AHM **************************************** AHM***************************** PT
JAM *****************************************MP ******************************GT
AAM – (1)69 litrons (7) 345 litrons *****************PP- (1) 64 litrons (7) 223 litrons ********LT- (1)? (7) ?
MMS ****************************************MMS *****************************HG
VAS *****************************************EF ******************************OG
RMS- (1) 62 litrons (7) 300 litrons ****************!AF-(1) 65 litrons; 65 litrons (7)
*******************************************20 litrons; 637 litrons *****************JG- (1)? (7) ?
MMS ***************************************MMS
VAS ****************************************GE
AMS- (1) 67 litrons (7) 250 litrons *****************DE- (1) 69 litrons (7) 435 litrons
MMS
VAS
AXS-(1) 68 litrons (7) 253 litrons
MMS
VAS
ATS- (1) 51 litrons (7) 487 litrons
PV
CV
BV- (1) 68 litrons, 45 litrons (7) 190 litrons,278 litrons
PV
CV
UV- (1) 68 litrons (7) 322 litrons
"It is three columns, like you thought but it's just a jumble of numbers and letters."
"No Harry, that's just it, not numbers. Measurements. The word litron appears next to every number. Litron is the predecessor to the word 'litre'"
I looked harder at the parchment, "So what is this? Is it code?" If it was, I couldn't crack it.
"Well if it is, I don't know how to break it. It doesn't follow any of the sequences I'm aware of." She leaned forward, looking at the parchment now in front of me. "Well there are patterns, none of the letters grouped together exceed a length of three. Then on every third line there is a greater than sign. Also on the fourth line the numbers show up. Wait…could these be initials. "
She looked down at the parchment with a wrinkled nose for about a minute more and then sunk back into her chair, covering her face with her hands. She must have been tired; she was at these translations nonstop since she got the parchment.
I looked down at the piece of parchment, "So what, is this his class register or something."
She pulled her hands away from her eyes slowly; she snatched the parchment up, "That's it…that's why the third column has no measurements."
"What?"
"You're right, it is a class registry. If you were Salazar Slytherin, and you had to separate a class into three groups…how would you separate them?"
That was easy, "Pureblood, half blood and muggle born."
"The third column is empty of measurements because none of his students would be muggleborn. He could easily know the names of the muggleborns but Nott had said something about Godric not letting him near them."
"Well technically none of his students would be halfblood either, he only wanted purebloods."
"Yes Harry, but what do we know about Slytherins, half of them claim to be purebloods when really they're halfbloods. But there's no way to prove that they are purebloods or halfbloods without having some form of family history."
She grumbled in frustration, we were going nowhere slowly. I looked down at the parchment, trying to see a pattern, we relied on this parchment having the answer for too long for it to just be some class register. "Hermione, this is weird. In the first column, there are two names that show up like three times, MMS and VAS. And another two that show up twice, PV and CV. And in the second column, that same name that showed up three times in the first column, MMS, shows up twice. I mean, it is weird right." I guess I was clutching at straws; she took the parchment and looked down. She looked back at the original parchment.
"Shit."
"Hermione?"
"I made a mistake. That wasn't a rune. It wasn't supposed to be translated, it isn't a greater than sign." She grabbed the parchment and started writing furiously. I looked down at what she amended.
"The tips of the greater than sign start at a name, the point where the lines meet, another name."
"Like a family tree. Like parents and a child." I looked at the first column, it wasn't eighteen names, it was six children with their parents' names. That's why every three names had the same last letter, they shared the same surname.
"That's why the two names in the first column were repeated three times." Hermione pointed out the VAS's and MMS's.
"Same parents, of three different children. And the other two names that show up twice," I looked at the PV and the CV, "are same parents of two children."
"But look at the second table, the father's names are here, AHM and MMS twice, but the mother's names are different. This was his proof that the children in the second column were halfblood, the fathers were purebloods and the mothers probably muggles or muggleborns. Probably products of affairs as they all seem to have taken their mother's surnames."
"But why would he even care about keeping track of all of this."
"Salazar Slytherin believed purebloods were superior to muggleborns…these measurements…."
"Was he somehow measuring the magic…that the child had? That's impossible right?"
"Well we don't know, people don't usually measure magic by a numerical figure, but by skill. But if he was measuring this magic quantitatively Harry…look at the numbers next to the names. Try to find a sequence."
"The only thing I can see is the first number has the number one next to it, the second number has the number seven and the second number is always bigger than the first. Except for these two people. BV in the first column and AF in the second." I pointed out the names. "They have four numbers next to their names. The first two has a one next to it in brackets; the second two numbers have seven in brackets. Why are one and seven in bracket? One and seven…one and seven," I muttered as I stared at the parchment,
"First year! And seventh year. He measured their magic when they first arrived and again when they left. Look at the numbers with the ones next to it…they're all similar, maybe a difference of five this way or that." I heeded her words and saw that most of the numbers with the one next to it were in the sixties.
"But the second numbers, although greater than the first, are all different. Some are much higher." I frowned down at the parchment, "These names with the four numbers are disturbing. It doesn't have the same pattern as the others. And why did he place an asterisk at just one of their names, why not both. They both have four measurements, doesn't that make them both special. And how can you even measure magic, what did he do?" This is just getting more confusing by the minute, Hermione's face was frozen in contemplation, my babbling not breaking through her fortress of thoughts.
"Litrons…litre. The litre measures substances liquid in nature." She muttered to herself, "But magic isn't a liquid. It's not something that you can pour out and measure. There isn't some physical property within us that we can measure our magic; it's not like the blood that can be measured as it flows…" Her eyes lit up. She turned to me, "Flow! Flow!" She jumped up, Ron growled in his sleep but didn't wake up, "Accio Spellmans Sylabary." The book floated to her, she caught it, stared at the closed book for a moment with saucer sized eyes and then threw it back on the desk, jumping up and down, "This is it Harry. Oh Slytherin is a genius! An absolute genius!"
"Hermione?" I didn't understand a word she was saying, her face was pink with excitement, she paced up and down, turning suddenly and grabbing the parchment, "Four quantities…four. Two and two…"
"Hermione?"
She looked up at me, her eyes unfocused; I could tell she wasn't really paying attention to me. Slowly her eyes dimmed and they focused on me, "Flow Harry. Do you remember the first time you held a wand, the right wand? The wand that chose you. It was like a flow of energy, a zing down your spine. After using magic so often I don't think we really notice the flow, but the first time…the first time you feel it. Slytherin somehow managed to work out a way of measuring that flow of magic within a wizard. The second measurements, the larger ones. Those are done in the seventh year. And it makes sense, of course the flow will be greater when you get older and you're more experienced. Except AF…this doesn't make sense. How can the flow of her magic in first year be more than that in seventh year…KY! That's what! The four measurements! The four measurements!"
"Hermione, please stopping skipping sentences and explain."
"This of course is gross speculation but…I think…maybe…AF and BV are like Ky. That's why they have four measurements. There are two flows in them. One flow measurement I can only presume is for their magic and the other for their psychic ability. But AF's second measurement decreased from first year, but look at her magical ability, it's higher than anybody else by over two hundred. When I was researching Vikadel it said that it destroys the ability to make psychic bonds, which is mostly how true seers see. It destroys the conscious in charge of clairvoyance but it's so rare and it was only documented to be used twice, in both cases the person lost their ability to see but their magic and health were fine. This means the clairvoyant flow and the flow of magic are not related. Separate entities that grow apart from each other like we see in BV…but think about Ky Harry. Think about all the amazing things she can do, learning three years of syllabus in a matter of weeks, picking up spells on the first go, even her psychic ability. I think Ky's flow's are not separate entries. If we think of her abilities like two rivers flowing parallel to each other, in the normal case they would never meet. But what if Ky…has some sort of 'bridge' within her. A bridge that allows her to borrow flow from the other river. So when she needs to do magic, the seer river flows across the bridge to the magic river and vice versa. This fuels her, allows her to wield magic with greater power. That's why Slytherin highlighted AF! When he measured her she must have been using her magical ability, almost all the flow from the seer river went there. Look how low her second reading measurement is. A mere twenty. The opposite must have happened for Ky, just before she was in the cave-in she spoke to that stranger, the stranger we think is a vision. Her magical flow must have been pulled over the bridge to the seer river, and Liam had disarmed her. She never used magic in the whole cave-in and she was in the hospital wing the rest of the time. When she took the vikadel-"
"All her magic was in the seer part of her river…and was destroyed…" We just found the proof that Ky had lost her magic…she really lost her magic...
"No! Not all her magic. Some magic must have remained in its own river. That's how she could still make potions. But this bridge is allowing the Vikadel to cross over from her seer river and mess up her magic river."
I looked on horror struck, "And if the Vikadel is going into her magic river…it really is going to destroy her magic."
"Only if we let it Harry. Can't you see! We've been doing it all wrong! Ky shouldn't be laying down, trying to deal with the effects of the Vikadel, waiting for some magical cure. If we wait for it to wear off it would eventually destroy her magic by that time. But look at this, look at ATS under the pureblood column, she came in with a magical ability as low as 51 and she left with a magical ability almost ten times that amount. Ten times. It doesn't matter how little Ky has left, she has to work on it, make it stronger, even if it pains her to do the magic because if she just waits around…it's gone. And no matter how hard she tries, if her magic goes right down to zero…to nothing…no amount of hard work can increase her magic has nothing times nothing is still nothing…we can't let her reach nothing…we can't."
A/N: I hope this chapter wasn't too confusing. I worked on it loads and hopefully it came across OK. This also explains a lot about Ky's magic, why she is so powerful both magically and even in her psychic ability. If you have any questions don't be afraid to PM me or drop a review, it is a very confusing chapter.
Please review
Kalina