Chapter 30: Creative?

(October 31st, 1992)

 (General POV)

 "Free at last!" Godric cried out as he plopped down into his seat at the end of the Hufflepuff table, the section having been claimed as the section for him and his friends. Unlike the other tables which probably would have thrown a fit at the intrusion of the other house members, the Hufflepuffs didn't care. So long as everyone was respectful and kind, they were happy to have company. Hell, it made them feel as though they were the cool table that the other houses longed to sit at.

 "You're finally finished your detention, huh? I thought there would be more of a punishment for attempting to murder a Ministry official than just two weeks of detention." Helga said, kind of surprised at how lax Godric's punishment had been, given the crime he had committed.

"Hey, Savrin didn't even care about what I did at the Ministry. In fact, he laughed when Professor Callahan told him what happened. Still, though Amelia and Professor Callahan suspect it was me, since there was no proof, I got off with detention." Godric said, acting like what he had done was no big deal.

"I just wish I could have been there to see you being used as the test dummy for the sixth and seventh-years practicing their human Transfiguration. Wouldn't that have been something to see?" Salazar said dreamily as he imagined turning Godric into a flea before he crushed him beneath his foot.

 "Yeah well, detention is now over, and I no longer have to sit in as their practice dummy. For such a nice guy, you wouldn't think Professor Callahan would punish an innocent student like that." Godric said, looking thoughtful at their History Professor sitting at the head table.

In response to his last comment, Susan began choking on her food and almost died trying to dislodge it from her throat. Godric glared at her, feeling as though she was secretly mocking him. Looking around at his friends, Godric noticed how every one of them were staring at him with blank expressions.

There were even a few Hufflepuffs sitting nearby who had heard what he said and were also staring at him with funny looks on their faces. Even Neville and Harry were looking at him like he had just said something ridiculous, and he wondered if he should feel insulted.

 "Anyway!" Godric said as he decided to change the topic. "Are all of you going to come watch the Quidditch match next week? Harry and I are going to demolish the Slytherin team!" Godric stated, looking at Harry who nodded his head happily. They had been practicing a lot lately, and they were both fairly confident that they could win.

"Of course we'll all be there. We need to support Harry." Rowena said, throwing a jab at Godric at the same time. "I think I'm going to be sick that day, so I don't think I'll be able to make it. But good luck all the same." Salazar said, having not the slightest bit of interest in Quidditch.

"Come now, Salazar. If you don't like the game that's fine, but you could at least come to support your friends." Helga told him, hoping to convince him to change his mind. "If they're my friends as you say, then they'll understand that I don't want to subject myself to stupidity just to cheer for them." Salazar said, not budging on the fact that he had no intention of going to the game.

 The rest of the Halloween feast was rather pleasant, with everyone telling jokes and laughing about a number of other things. By the time everyone headed off to bed, they were well and truly stuffed.

 ---------

 The week flew by in a blur and before they realized it, it was Saturday. It was a muggy sort of day with a hint of thunder in the air, but the Gryffindor team looked ready for anything. They had practiced in the rain a few times since the beginning of the year, and even had countermeasures in place in case things got too bad.

Already they were wearing goggles which Godric had charmed with the Impervius Charm, which would repel water and mist. With the goggles, it would also make it so the team wouldn't have to worry about anything getting in their eyes, something which their captain, Oliver Wood thought would give them an edge.

He had almost kissed Godric when he had given him the idea, but Godric had been too fast and escaped behind Harry for protection. One thing he would say about Wood, as nice as he may be, the guy was a fanatic when it came to Quidditch, something which wasn't always a good thing.

 Wood gave his usual pre-game speech to motivate the team, then everyone walked out onto the pitch, their scarlet Gryffindor robes billowing in the wind as they did. As they entered the field, a roar of noise greeted them: mostly from their fellow Gryffindors, but Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were cheering too.

Even though Ravenclaw had won the cup the previous year, no one wanted to see Slytherin win again, so naturally between the two competing, everyone cheered for Gryffindor. Some Slytherin students up in the stands booed and hissed towards them, but no one on the team paid them any sort of attention.

 Madam Hooch, the Quidditch teacher, asked the two team captains, Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood to step forward and shake hands, which they did while giving each other threatening stares and gripping rather harder than was necessary. "On my whistle" said Madam Hooch. "Three… two… one…"

 *Whistle!*

 With the roar from the crowd to speed them upwards, the fourteen players rose towards the leaden sky. While Harry rose higher than the rest of them so he could get a good vantage point to spot the Snitch, Godric had gotten hold of the quaffle and was maneuvering his way through the Slytherin team.

When he was near enough to the Slytherin goal posts, Godric tossed the quaffle into the air and faked a kick towards the right hoop, but the quaffle fell below him where Angelina was already waiting and kicked the ball into the left hoop which was now completely open. The game proceeded like this for almost forty-five minutes where the Gryffindor team dominated the Slytherin team.

Even though Godric was younger than most everyone on both teams, he was more muscular from rigorously training his body daily, and was able to pretty much bully his way through the Slytherin team to steal the quaffle from them.

Godric had taken the quaffle, but rather than try to throw it through the hoops to score his house more points, he threw the ball at Marcus Flint's head and knocked him off the broom, then grabbed the quaffle again before anyone else had the chance to grab it.

He repeated this action on both of the Slytherin Beaters, making so their team had no one to defend them against the two bludgers flying around which gave Gryffindor a massive advantage in the game, at least until the beaters got back on their brooms, which is when Godric would fly around them and hold their focus to the point where they didn't see the bludgers flying at them, and again they were knocked off their brooms.

It was unsportsmanlike to be sure, but nowhere in the rules did it say you couldn't throw the quaffle at someone else. Godric knew this after all, because he had checked the rule book a few days prior.

 At some point after getting back on his broom, Marcus Flint had taken one of the beater-bats from one of the Slytherin Beaters and tried to hit the bludger into Godric, but Godric had flown in a loop-d-loop around the Slytherin team's Seeker and the bludger had knocked him off of his broom and most likely given him a concussion. Funny enough, the Slytherins were more mad at Flint than they were at Godric for that one, and it looked as though there was going to be a mutiny.

 Currently Gryffindor was in a commanding lead with the score being 190-20, and it didn't look like they had any intention of stopping. Even as they were pelted with rain, Godric, Alicia, and Angelina were unstoppable as they ran circles around the Slytherins.

Godric was seconds away from throwing the quaffle to score another point when the sound of Madam Hooch's whistle reached his ears, at which point he pulled his broom higher to see what was going on. Looking back towards his own goal posts, he saw Harry holding the golden snitch high into the air with his right hand.

It was about that moment when Lee Jordan could be heard over his speaker system shouting, "HARRY POTTER HAS CAUGHT THE SNITCH! GRYFFINDOR WINS 340-20!" The crowd went wild at Gryffindor's commanding victory, and a number of students rushed the field to celebrate.

 Godric flew over to where the rest of his team were gathering around Harry, all of them congratulating one another. There would be a party in the house common room later tonight, and Godric couldn't help but think this was exactly what the world needed. More excuses to party.

 ----------

 While the rest of the school had been watching the quidditch match, Salazar had made his way to the Chamber of Secrets to work on a project he had been thinking about since that night when he had entered the bathroom on the second floor and discovered the entrance to his beloved chamber.

It had taken some work, but eventually he had pried the fangs out of the basilisk's mouth and had shaped them with Transfiguration to look like the style of wand he was most accustomed to, giving him two wand shaped fangs he could experiment with. Because Savrin had destroyed the body of his basilisk, Salazar wasn't able to use its heartstring for the wand core, but that didn't mean he couldn't substitute it.

 Only wanting to experiment with one of the fang-wands for now, Salazar went inside the small chamber in the giant statue's mouth. Already he had cleaned it and re-shaped most of it for his own liking.

There was an office with a fancy desk. A shelf where all of his personal books were placed, and a pensive Savrin had given him. Savrin had helped a lot with giving him things he asked for, never denying anything outright, at least not without a reason.

Walking to the desk, Salazar placed the spare fang-wand inside of the top drawer, then grabbed one of the other three wands that were resting inside. They were some of the wands that they had found in the Room of Requirement, and Savrin had been kind enough to let him have them after he said he wanted to experiment with them.

 Taking the old wand he had just pulled from the drawer, Salazar sat down at the desk and began to carefully remove the outer pieces of the wand until the Dragon-heartstring inside of it was plain to see. Salazar had already prepared the fang-wand for the core, and after moving the heartstring into its new vessel, he sealed it inside, however he didn't immediately close it. On the contrary, he hoped to do something that no one had yet to achieve in this world, which he also hoped would make him just a little bit stronger.

 Taking a small vial of blood he had gotten from the basilisk, one of hundreds of vials actually, Salazar bit his index finger until it started to bleed, then he mixed his blood into the vial of basilisk blood. He waited until there was just as much of his blood in the vial as there was from the basilisk, then he carefully swished it around until it fully mixed.

Once that was done, he took the vial and poured its contents over the dragon-heartstring resting inside the fang-wand. He watched the heartstring absorb the blood with a smile, knowing he had succeeded in at least one part of the test.

Salazar waited until the blood was fully absorbed into the heartstring, then he carved a rune onto the inside of the fang. Next he took off the Mithril ring with the sigil of his house that Savrin had made for him.

Already the same rune he had carved into the wand was inscribed on the inside of the green serpentine gem, only there were two additional runes as well, something which Savrin had done last week when Salazar had come to him and explained what he was trying to do. That was when Savrin had told him everything should work out in theory, and that he was on the right track which did wonders for Salazar's mood.

 Taking three drops of basilisk blood and three drops of his own blood, Salazar mixed them like before, then poured them onto the rune inside the ring and inside the wand, at once causing the two runes to begin glowing together as they absorbed the blood. Only after the runes stopped glowing and the blood was completely absorbed did Salazar close the wand up and seal the heartstring inside of it.

 Picking it up, Salazar did the final thing he had to do to complete the runes and the wand. With the ring on his right index finger and wand in hand, Salazar channeled magic inside both of them, causing both items to begin glowing a bright red color that lasted only a breath.

Leaving his little office, Salazar went to the little dueling area he had created beforehand where a wooden puppet stood nearby that shared a remarkable resemblance to Godric. 'Moment of truth.' Salazar thought, then raised his wand and cast a spell.

A giant blast of magic impacted the wooden dummy and blew it to smithereens. It was instant, and the power of the spell had been stronger than anytime he could remember before. 'It was almost as if the wand was welcoming my magic!' Salazar thought in triumph.

 Heartstrings had the power to absorb blood to make them stronger, but Salazar's reasoning had been to closer sync the Dragon-heartstring with the fang of the basilisk by having the heartstring absorb the monster's blood. His own blood had been added in the hopes of making the wand accept his power easier, and hopefully make any spell he cast stronger.

It also had the potential benefit of making it so no one but him could use the wand, but that was yet to be confirmed. As for putting the rune inside of it and the ring, well, Salazar was about to put that to the test right now.

 Looking closely at the wand, Salazar thought back to Savrin's explanation and tried to enforce his will upon the wand. It took two failed attempts before Salazar was finally able to accomplish what he wanted, which was to have the wand disappear from his hand and get stored into the ring.

The identical rune carved into the ring and the wand linked them together, but the two runes carved into the ring were what made storing the wand possible. One of the runes created a tiny pocket of space which was barely large enough to fit the wand, if he had read the notes in Savrin's books correctly at least.

The second rune was what pulled the linked item into the space, which made sense in a way. The blood of the basilisk and himself helped bind the wand to the ring further, while binding the ring to him. Now only he could use the ring to summon the wand.

The way the books described it, without the linked rune for the two items, anything the caster was touching could be forced into the tiny pocket of space, be it the clothes they were wearing, to the bed they were sleeping on. If one tried to store something that was larger in volume than the space they were trying to put it in, well lets just say the explosion would be terrifying.

As for why he needed to make it so only he could use the ring, well that was self-explainable. He didn't want Godric to get a hold of the ring and try and fuck with him by stealing his wand.

'Come to think about it, this rune would be perfect to use as a prank on Godric. Inscribe it onto something he cares about, then steal it from him without him ever knowing where it disappeared to.' Salazar thought evilly, already plotting ways to fuck with his friend.

 With the wand stored inside the ring, Salazar tried again, and after a few seconds his wand appeared in his hand. 'With a little practice I could do this instantly without ever having to move my hand!' Salazar thought excitedly.

He practiced bringing the wand in and out of the ring a few times until he could do it without messing up, however he would still need a few more days of practice to work on the speed at which it appeared in his hand.

Next, Salazar conjured a pillar of stone that was about waist high, then he placed the wand on top of it before taking a few steps away from it. When he was about ten feet away he raised his right hand towards the pillar and willed the wand into the ring.

He watched as the wand seemingly turned into a tiny motes of light and disappeared while at the same time the gemstone of his ring glowed ever so slightly. Taking a breath he willed the wand to his hand, and sure enough it appeared just as it had before.

 Laughing excitedly, Salazar put the wand on the pillar again, only he got further away this time, moving a hundred feet. Raising his right hand, he saw the wand disappear and the ring glow which only caused him to smile wider.

Wanting to test the limits even further, Salazar once more put the wand on the pillar before he headed off to the end of the chamber and even exited through the door that sealed the chamber shut.

'The notes never said whether or not objects hindered the recall, so if this works then that will be awesome. If it doesn't, I might have to try it with the door open.' Salazar told himself, then leaving his hand to his side, he willed the wand to come to him.

Again there was a faint glow of his ring, and before he even realized it he burst into laughter. The wand appeared in his hand as he hissed {Open} then he strolled back over to the dueling area.

 He conjured, transfigured, charmed, hexed, and did anything else he could think of to test out his new wand, finding everything just felt right. If before his previous wand felt like a weapon perfectly fit for him, this wand felt like an extension of himself.

On top of making his spells more powerful, the wand essentially couldn't be stolen from him, and he no longer had to worry about carrying it around on any part of his body where he couldn't easily grab it. There was also the added benefit of having the ability to make it appear back in his hand if someone disarmed him with Expelliarmus. That little ability was a game changer in combat.

 Wanting to test things a little more, Salazar placed the wand once more on top of the pillar before he left the Chamber of Secrets entirely and made his way up to the Great Hall. When he arrived he saw the Gryffindors shouting and cheering at one another while most of his own house looked rather annoyed as they watched on from their table.

'Quidditch is so stupid.' He told himself as he continued towards the doors. "Hey Salazar!" Godric shouted to gain his attention. Turning an annoyed look towards the redhead, Salazar waited for Godric to come on over and say whatever he needed to say.

"Where have you been? You missed the match." Godric said, not angry that Salazar had disappeared, but slightly disappointed at the least. "Experimenting. Didn't and still don't care about that idiotic game." Salazar answered curtly, wanting to end this conversation sooner than later.

"Well, you like feasts and having a good time. You should come celebrate with us." Godric said hopefully. "You want me to celebrate you beating my own house in a game I don't care for in any way shape or form? I'll see you later, Godric." Salazar answered, then left the Great Hall.

 Being only a second-year, Salazar knew he wasn't allowed to leave the school grounds, but he didn't really care. He was testing the limits of his work, and sometimes rules had to be broken in the pursuit of magic.

Leaving the grounds and heading down the road to Hogsmeade, Salazar was about halfway to the town before he decided this was far enough. Taking a breath, he turned so he was facing the direction the castle was in, then raised his hand as he channeled magic into the ring. Unlike all of the other times, the ring did not glow.

Frowning, he began to make the trek back to the castle while channeling magic into the ring the entire time, focusing intently on it so he would know when the wand appeared inside of it. When he was only about fifty meters or so from the gates to the school, the ring began to glow, signifying the wand had recalled to it.

 In his head, Salazar tried to calculate the distance between where he was standing and where the wand had been inside the Chamber of Secrets beneath the school, and if he was right then the ring's maximum distance was about seven-hundred and fifty meters.

'I'll have to ask Savrin if there is a way to increase the range, but so far I would call this a success.' Salazar told himself as he made his way back into the school grounds. He had just entered through the gate when he noticed a weird-looking bottlecap necklace on top of the fountain's statue.

Feeling as though he had seen the odd necklace before, Salazar summoned his wand before he levitated the necklace over to himself. "Strange…" He mumbled as he tried to place where he had seen the necklace before, knowing it was too familiar to not have seen it.

Unable to remember, Salazar put the necklace over top of his head and tucked it inside of his robes before continuing on his way. Though it looked funny, he thought it was kind of cool, and the fact that it seemed familiar to him made him want to wear it.

 It wasn't until later that night when Salazar was laying in bed that he suddenly remembered where he had seen the necklace. Throwing the covers off of himself, he moved quickly to the end of his bed where his trunk was placed, and after pulling the necklace from it, he moved over to the bedside table and opened the top drawer before pulling out a picture of a little blonde-haired girl.

"Lumos!" He lit the room with the lighting spell, and looked carefully at the picture of the little girl and it was then he noticed how she was playing with a necklace. It was the same necklace he had found on the fountain.

"Are you haunting me?" He couldn't help but ask aloud, thinking he was being cursed by a ghost from his past.

 ---------

 Over the course of the next few weeks, Salazar had pushed his magic further in the trials and had taken the top spot in every trial except for Astronomy and Transfiguration, which Rowena and Godric still held firmly in their grasp.

Rowena was a little miffed that he had taken over the trials, and had been studying her History of Magic so she could at least reclaim something back from him. Godric on the other hand, was more than a little miffed, he was downright annoyed when Salazar had claimed most of the number one spots.

He had tried to convince Helga to go take the potions trial and rob him of his position, but Helga wasn't nearly as competitive as the others were and had refused to play their game. She was always a stick in the mud like that.

 The next Quidditch match came and went with Ravenclaw dominating Hufflepuff with a score of 200-70, and everyone was already betting between either Ravenclaw or Gryffindor to take the Quidditch cup this year. Godric was pumped because he was rather looking forward to the coming games, all though he was annoyed that there were so few games per year.

"Seriously, I think we could do a bit better than six games a year!" He argued to no one at their table one evening. "It's a possibility, but I doubt it. Rowena and I are pushing for house dueling competitions next year, so there might not be any time left for quidditch." Salazar said, shutting down the idea of more quidditch.

"Oh yeah? Well lets-" Godric began when suddenly Susan and Hannah gasped, drawing everyone's attention. Looking over to what they were looking at, Godric saw they were staring at him with wide eyes while covering their mouths. Looking down at himself, he saw that he wasn't wearing any clothes except his underwear.

"Oh for the love of-! Why does this keep happening?!" Godric growled angrily as he looked under the table and around the bench to see if there was any sign of his clothes.

 "You mean this has happened before?" Helga asked curiously as she scooted a bit further away from Godric. "Oh yeah. It happened twice earlier this week during class." Godric said, not the least bit embarrassed about being almost completely naked in front of most of the school.

"Only last time everything disappeared, Godric gave us all a show." Rowena stated with a laugh. "Oh well, I'll find them later." Godric grumbled as he sat back down and continued eating his food.

"A-A-Aren't you umm… aren't you going to go get some clothes on?" Hannah asked nervously. She tried to keep her gaze focused on her plate of food, but every few seconds her eyes would dart over to Godric and look him up and down.

"I will after dinner. If I leave now the food will be gone before I can get back." Godric answered uncaringly. "Mr. Gryffindor! I hope you have a good reason why you don't seem to have any clothes on!" McGonagall barked angrily from behind him.

Without turning to look at her, Godric answered, "Well, Minny, I wish I could tell you. Right now my only theory is that my clothes want to share my greatness with the rest of the world."

 The deputy headmistress seemed to open and close her mouth like a fish as she tried to process his words, but she was failing miserably. After more time than it should have, McGonagall pointed towards the door leading out of the Great Hall before she cried, "My office! Right now!"

Sighing in defeat, Godric got to his feet and faced his head of house. "If you wanted me alone, you could have just asked. Anyway, my safe word is apples." Godric said as turned to say good-bye to his friends, only he was stopped from doing so when McGonagall got a firm grip on his left ear and began to drag him away. "Apples! Apples!" Godric cried, almost shouting at the woman as he followed along.

 After Godric was dragged out of the door, Neville broke the silence by looking to everyone else before asking, "What's the safe word for?" Everyone else besides Harry seemed to go red in the face because they knew exactly what Godric had meant when he said it.

Harry on the other hand was still quite ignorant about what went on in the bedroom, but he could guess from the way Godric said it that it wasn't quite appropriate. He lamented himself to wait a few more days and ask Sirius when he went home for Christmas.

 While Helga attempted to explain to Neville about why someone would need to have a safe word, Salazar was sitting at the end of the table with his hands covering most of his face as he struggled to contain his laughter at what had just happened.

'That was even better than the last two times!' He thought happily, quite enjoying how everything turned out. No one had noticed the golden ring with the small brown gemstone on his left hand glow in the seconds before Godric's clothes had gone missing, and even now no one even suspected he was the cause of what was happening since he hadn't done anything out of the ordinary in days.

It had been a few days prior when he had snuck into Godric's room under the illusionment charm during Gryffindor Quidditch practice and had put the recall-rune on a set of his clothes. He had wanted to put it on all of his clothes, but then every piece of clothing would disappear and he would have to sneak back and put them in his room or he would just get new ones.

Godric and everyone else didn't understand how the clothes disappeared, nor did they understand when the clothes were found the next day in seemingly random locations, and Salazar had no intention of revealing that little secret anytime soon.

 Sparing a glance to the head table, Salazar saw Savrin staring at him with an almost imperceptible smile as he raised a golden goblet into the air towards him, letting him know that he knew exactly what happened and who caused it.

Thankfully however, it seemed that Savrin didn't care what he did so long as he kept it all in bounds. Of course he knew he couldn't have done it to any other student and gotten away with it, but Godric was fair game, so Salazar most likely wouldn't even receive a talking to for this.

Salazar knew Godric had no shame and wouldn't care for something like this, but to do it to any other student and that would be bullying at its finest, and would most likely traumatize whoever it was done to. Salazar knew he would need to make sure none of the other students tried to do something like this otherwise he might actually get punished just so there would be an example. 

'Godric had it coming anyway.' Salazar consoled himself as he thought back to all of the times Godric pranked everyone else in the school.

 After Godric's departure the room was quite a bit more lively as everyone gossiped about what had just happened, but talk about the Christmas holidays was at the front of everyone's mind.