Chapter 159
Snape silently looked at him, perhaps wondering whether to pursue the conversation that Harry had abruptly dropped, before he silently nodded, picked up his quill, and signed his name on the slip.
Ping!
Quest Success!
Convince all of the Hogwarts teachers to sign your permission slip
Reward,
10,000 Exp
Legal permission to build your game
Somehow, Harry wasn't feeling as happy about completing this quest that he'd thought he would.
Meanwhile, in a chamber deep underneath the castle of Hogwarts, deeper than the deepest of the dungeons, a massive serpent lay curled up and rested on the floor with its eyes closed, as a red-eyed girl moved in a circle around it waving her wand around and chanting a spell.
The Fidelius Charm was an extremely difficult, multifaceted and potent charm that could be used to conceal a secret inside an individual's soul.
One of the many interesting things about the Fidelius Charm was how malleable it was in terms of its capabilities. Lord Voldemort had dismissed the charm at first glance since apparently, its usage required complete trust in another person, a thought that was repulsive to the Dark Lord, and because he didn't have enough time in between the war to modify the spell and make something usable out of it.
Tom Marvolo Riddle, however, had much more time on his hands. However, he did have a couple of problems that he had to get through in order to use the charm the way he wanted to.
The first problem was that the charm usually demanded that the Caster and the Secret Keeper be two different individuals.
Tom had managed to bypass this without even trying.
At the moment, he was using Lisa's magic to cast spells and do magic. But his soul was still inside his diary. That meant that the spell recognized Lisa as the caster and the Diary's soul as the secret keeper, making it possible for him to hide the secret inside his own soul in the diary.
He took extra care to voice the secret in Parseltongue to avoid any problems with his host.
But there was yet one more barrier that had to be bypassed before he could use the spell for what he needed to. And this one wasn't as easily solved. The spell wasn't designed for moving subjects.
However, he did have access to Lord Voldemort's knowledge and skills, which allowed him to do the difficult Arithmancy needed to get around that little problem.
"Enchantre Fidelius!" the girl finally cast, and with a flash of turquoise light, the spell was complete.
He had successfully modified the Fidelius charm into the most powerful movable concealment ward ever to exist.
Standing back, he took a second to marvel at the work he had just done.
Linked to the beating heart of the ancient magical snake, which was its wardstone, the ward hid the serpent in the most complete of ways. Sight, sound, smell, and everything else. The serpent could be a centimeter in away from someone and they would never know it. Furthermore, the ward made it impossible for anybody to figure out what the Beast of the Chamber was. They could research their hearts out, but would never even realize that the Beast was a basilisk, despite any clues in front of them.
The beast itself had the choice to open its secondary translucent eyelids order to kill its target. Since the Basilisk's magic required physical eye contact, and the Fidelius was all mental, the two magics wouldn't impede each other at all.
The ward didn't come without its weaknesses, but it was still worth it.
Suddenly remembering something, Riddle turned to the basilisk and asked the question that he had on his mind.
"You do still have that weakness for the roosters crying don't you?" he hissed at the Slytherin serpent.
"Unfortunately so" it hissed back.
"Very well then" he hissed, before he cast a deafness curse on the massive serpent, and tweaked it to allow only a Parseltongue's voice to pass through it, protecting the basilisk against its biggest weakness.
"And now, King of Serpents, you shall travel through the halls of Hogwarts unhindered, and honor the will of Salazar Slytherin's blood."
The massive snake bowed its head slightly, acknowledging its mission.
"What is your command heir?" the Basilisk hissed.
"Avoid people in groups and do not harm the students until I command you to," he instructed.
If people died in large groups, then that would lead to the school closing down and Auror attention, both of whom would be incredibly detrimental to his plans.
Then there were the weaknesses in the modified Fidelius.
It would not function properly if more than seven people would notice that something was off around them, and actively try to look for what was off. That meant that if a group of people with more than seven people were to see one of their number drop dead, then they would start looking for what caused the death, and the spell would shatter.
This happened because the spell had to sacrifice its structural strength to compensate for the mobility, but in Riddle's opinion, it was well worth it. The basilisk knew hundreds of secret passages into the pipes in Hogwarts, and could easily avoid crowds.
Putting Lisa's wand back into her bag, he commanded the Basilisk to follow closely behind him. It was time to let the beast reacquaint itself with the Halls it hadn't seen in decades.
He walked out of the chamber through the main entrance and rode the basilisk up the pipe which lead out into the girl's bathroom. Dismounting the basilisk in the bathroom, he walked out, with the beast slithering closely behind him.
Barely a quiet second of walking had passed when suddenly, he heard a cat's yowl from behind him. Almost instantly, he felt the Basilisk's head move, and the yowl cut off with a start.
Looking back towards the way the sound had come from, he saw the cat lying on the floor, looking stiff as a board. He walked over to the cat.
A grin spread across his face as he realized what had happened.
The grimy looking cat must have had some immensely high amount of luck, because it had only caught sight of the basilisk's glare indirectly through the reflection of the water on the floor, and gotten petrified instead of dying.
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