CH 31

Do the rituals,' he suggested again. 'The first is more of a risk if you carry it out before your magical core has finished growing, but its benefits will be greater. The second is virtually risk free when done properly. The ritual was a common practice in my time, all but a rite of a passage. It will encourage your body to improve itself more quickly, though that is a very simplistic explanation. Neither will bring you incredible power, but they will help close the gap between you and the others. Tom Riddle profited greatly from these, though he took them many steps further afterwards on his own.'

Harry did not want to follow in the footsteps of Tom Riddle. The idea alone was nauseating. The man had become more a monster than anything human, if he had not been born one to begin with.

'Intent is the most important part of magic,' Salazar reminded him, watching his internal struggle.

He needed to be stronger, but Harry knew that nobody would understand, they'd think he had betrayed them and gone dark. He'd be dubbed the next Voldemort swiftly enough.

He was about to refuse, fearing the reaction of the school and his memory of the time when everyone considered him the Heir of Slytherin, but then he remembered the cold, hostile faces in Gryffindor Tower and the disappointment of his teachers. They already thought he had betrayed them. Salazar had alone had trusted him. Harry should do the same in return.

'I'll do it,' he decided.

There were very faint footprints on the ladder up to where Salazar had informed the books about the rituals were. The feet were too large to be Ginny's, about the same size as Harry's own, but he had never climbed the ladder.

It was with a slight chill that he realised Salazar's comment about following in Tom Riddle's footsteps had come very literally true. Harry scuffed the marks away with his feet.

'First two in the book,' the portrait told him as he jumped off the ladder. 'They're not very complex, just dangerous if you do something wrong.'

Harry placed the two battered looking books down on the text on top of a very dusty copy of Secrets of the Darkest Art. It was a large, black, leather-bound tome with sheafs of parchment sticking out of different pages.

Tom Riddle's homework, no doubt.

He picked up his rituals books and retrieved his wand.

'Am I likely to do anything wrong?' Harry inquired. This was not exactly the best time for Salazar to be encouraging any of his reservations.

'Not with me here,' the painting assured him. 'Now take me out into the chamber. You're not drawing runes all over the study.' Harry sighed. He hated carrying the painting. Whomever had cast an anti-levitating charm on it, probably Salazar himself, was a sadist of the highest order.

Salazar Slytherin was a perfectionist. Harry was made to completely erase and redraw both sets of runes several times before the ancient portrait was satisfied and allowed him proceed.

'A little blood, only a few drops, at each of the points,' he instructed, gazing critically across the shapes Harry had etched into the floor with his wand.

The runes were a bright violet, the enchantments arrayed in an asymmetrical seven-pointed star that spread out around him, and simpler triangle for ritual Salazar assured him would improve his body.

Harry drew his wand gently across his palm, splitting the skin with a wordless cutting spell. A thin line of red welled up and tricked down his palm.

'What happens now?' he asked the founder dubiously, spattering a few drops of blood on each of the corners of the two shapes.

'You stand exactly at the centre,' both Salazar and his snake indicated the middle of the star, 'and channel a little magic. It will increase the potential of your magical core by a very small fraction, but more importantly it will alter the ease with which you can wield your magic.'

Harry didn't move.

'Fine,' the founder sighed, 'I'll embellish. Think of your magical core as a bubble. As you grow towards your majority the bubble gets bigger, taking in magic from outside. This ritual, to use a limited metaphor that doesn't require centuries of study to understand, changes the consistency of the bubble. Very slightly more natural magic is taken in and your magic can be pulled out swifter and more easily, relative to before.'

'And if something goes wrong?'

'Your runes are perfect, so unless you are interrupted,' Salazar gave him a pointed look to remind exactly how impossible that was, 'nothing will happen.'

'Humour me?'

'Your bubble changes too much and bursts,' Slytherin told him flatly. Harry flinched. 'It is a virtually non-existent possibility.'

'And the other ritual? Any nasty surprises there?'

'If you drew the triangle incorrectly or unevenly the effects might only be limited to certain parts of your body, but even if that happened you could simply redo it to correct things.'

'Will it fix my eyesight?' Harry fingered his glasses.

'No,' the portrait shook its head. 'It allows your body to make better use of what it's given, developing more quickly and easily, but won't affect pre-existing problems like that. It will likely only give you the body of an athletic fourteen year old and perhaps speed up puberty.'

That was a shame. Harry hated it when his glasses fell off in the middle of something important. It almost always happened. They'd fall off and he'd have to scrabble around blindly for them, usually in the presence of something highly dangerous.

'I don't have to be naked do I?' It was cold in the chamber. The study had warming charms placed all over it, but out here, directly below the back lake, there was nothing to stop the cold filtering in.

'Only a very precise and advanced ritual would be affected by clothing like yours. Fortunately for both of us these two are neither.' The snake, which had rather insultingly hidden beneath Salazar's robe at his question, slithered back out of the founder's sleeve and curled about his arm. 'You should probably leave your wand outside, though, just in case.'

Harry carefully placed his holly and phoenix feather wand outside the edges of the runic star. He felt rather vulnerable without it.

'I suppose I had best get started,' Harry said. He felt surprisingly light, unburdened by emotion. His fury from earlier had left him and nothing had come to take its place.

I won't turn back, he declared, as the glyphs began to glow more brightly, pulsing frenetically on the floor around him. I won't even look back.

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