CHAPTER {333-335}

****THE-FOUNDERS-AND-SECRETS (III)****

"...Are they really Gods then?" Rowena asked with a frown after she finally managed to recollect her wits. "I mean they could have been mortals with extremely strong Magic" Rowena suggested before hurriedly adding more. Rowena was a woman of facts and she didn't want to believe that there were real Gods out there. "Through my studies, I have discovered that ancient Wixen used to be way stronger than us-" Rowena paused as she started to pace.

"-Like Thor could have been a strong mortal who was extremely adept in lightning Magic or how Loki could have been a mortal extremely adept in illusions?" Rowena suggested frantically, grasping at straws. Harry simply stared at her before finally shaking his head in amusement. He could understand why Rowena was acting like that. It was hard for humans to accept that there were really Gods out there.

"Now, you are just grasping at straws…" Harry said with a hint of amusement in his voice. "You see, at first, I also wondered the same, so I asked her…" Harry paused, trying to act a bit dramatic. "I asked her, what is the difference between us mortals and Gods…" Once again, Harry stopped speaking as he wanted Rowena to speak up.

"Wait!? You have met her?!" Rowena asked in a surprised tone.

Harry was taken a bit back by her question. "That is not the question I was expecting you would ask" Harry admitted with a weird look on his face. "And as for the question, of course, I have met her or how would I know so much about her?" Harry asked in return, once again leaving Rowena completely speechless.

Now, Rowena had so many questions… From what Harry had told her, Rowena had managed to deduce that Hela was an extremely cruel Goddess, so why was Harry still alive? However, there was something else she was dying to know even though she was already dead and this time, she wasn't going to be distracted by another question. "Alright… Alright… So, what's the difference between us and the Gods?" Rowena finally asked as she calmed her raging mind.

Harry finally smiled at that… "The answer is Divinity" Harry answered smugly.

"Now, you might be wondering what Divinity is…" Before Rowena could say anything, Harry began to speak again. "You can think of Divinity as something like an authority or representation. For example, Thor is the God of thunder and Lightning. He can call upon them any time he wants. We can do that too, but we would use our Magic, but Thor simply wills it to happen and it happens" Harry finished excitedly.

For the first time, he was openly talking with someone regarding Magic, of course, he was excited. "That is Divinity. Then if someone prays to Thor, that prayer also gives him power and that is Divinity" Harry finally finished and once again, Rowena was left dumbstruck by his words.

"Are all the Gods like her, like Hela? Do they really kill humans for amusement?" Rowena asked. It was still hard for her to accept that humans, who were supposedly on the top of the food chain, would be treated like amusement.

"Not everyone is like her, however, from what I have managed to learn, Gods are mostly callous… They don't see us as equals and why would they? We humans don't live for long compared to their almost eternal lives, so it would be kind of useless for them to care about us" Harry finished with a dismissive shrug. "Now, I believe that should be enough for you to get going, right?" Harry asked and Rowena dumbly nodded her head.

Harry clapped his hands with a smile and pulled out the diadem from the dragonskin pouch, earning a gasp from Rowena… The ghostly woman hurriedly floated down in front of the table to get a close look at the object. "Where did you find this?" The woman looked up at Harry and asked. There was no way she wouldn't recognize the diadem since she had been obsessing about the damn thing since the day she died.

However, that was why she could also tell that there was something different with the diadem even though she was nothing but a specter. It could have been due to the passing of time or it could be something else, Rowena wasn't sure, but she was certain that something felt off and different…

"I found this inside the Room of Requirement or the Come and Go Room as the elves like to call it" Harry answered and Rowena simply blinked at him owlishly.

"Room of what?" Rowena asked, looking as confused as a person could.

"...There is a room at Hogwarts, the Room can change according to the user's wish? It's on the 7th floor? Ring any bells?" Harry tried to explain as the best he could and a look of understanding finally dawned on Rowena's face. 

"Ohh… You are talking about the Imaginescape" Rowena nodded her head. "We wanted a place to relax after a long day, away from the rest of the world, far from all the responsibilities and the pressure, a place just for us. So, my daughter hid the diadem in there?" Rowena asked as she glared at the diadem.

"No, your daughter hid it somewhere else, but a Wizard named Tom Riddle finally coaxed the information out of her ghost and found the diadem and he is the one who hid it inside Imaginescape" Harry answered and Rowena grimaced at his words.

"So, my daughter turned into a ghost?" Rowena asked, looking disheartened. Harry gave her a nod and her face turned solemn. "I never loved her, I cursed her every moment after she stole the diadem, but I never wanted her to experience such a fate" Rowena shook her head sadly. "Can you help her pass on?" Rowena requested all of a sudden as she looked at Harry.

"I don't even know her… I have no idea how to help her pass on or if ghosts could pass on to even begin with" Harry answered, earning a weird look from Rowena.

"Wait! You don't know how to exorcize ghosts?" Rowena asked with a weird look on her face and Harry finally realized that something was amiss. A thousand years weren't enough for such knowledge to simply disappear, especially when people didn't even know that ghosts could pass on in the first place. There were only two groups he knew of who would do such a thing for the safety of the world and stuff like that.

"Tell me more" Harry urged her with an excited glint in his eyes…

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****THE-FOUNDERS-AND-SECRETS (IV)****

"Well…" Rowena trailed off, wondering where to start. "I was only 14 when I came across a ghost for the first time and since then I wanted to learn more about them, but they are just so annoying. It is really hard to hold any conversation with them without them going off on a tangent. So, I gave up by the time I turned 17. However, everything changed when Patricia was killed" Rowena sighed sadly.

"Patricia?" Harry asked curiously.

"Yes, Salazar's wife. She was the best diplomat I have ever seen in my entire life and it was her job to deal with Muggle Royalties and Nobles. Then one day, Patricia left to visit one of the Dukes of Great Britain along with her guards, but never returned. It didn't take us long to realize that something must have gone wrong and we were right. Apparently, the Duke she was visiting had connections with the Church" Rowena spat.

"The Duke had invited them inside his castle and offered them hospitality and used that as a guise to poison Patricia and her guards. Later, they were crucified in front of their castles and burned alive" Rowena explained bitterly. "We obviously had our revenge and held the funerals, but a few days after the funeral, Patricia's ghost appeared near the dungeons" Rowena paused to get a look at Harry.

"At first, Salazar was happy to have her back even though she looked like a charred corpse, but soon he realized that it was more of a curse than a gift. Patricia was no longer the same woman and her charred visage started to haunt him. He couldn't keep watching her like that and it was obvious that Patricia was also disturbed by her own existence" Rowena continued to explain with a complicated look on her face.

"Soon Salazar also realized that keeping her on the mortal plane was doing more harm than good, so he decided to help her pass on. None of us had any idea how to do so or if it was even possible, but Salazar was determined to see it through" Rowena smiled softly at the memory.

"At first, we were helping him, but soon the others started to leave due to the lack of progress even after years, after all, we had our own projects to work on. The loss of our support plunged him into a pit of despair and soon he started to channel his frustration into hatred. He started to hate Muggles and Muggleborns, but we decided to leave him be because we knew where he was coming from" Rowena finished tiredly.

"However, it was probably a mistake on our part… Soon, he started to delve into dark and forbidden Magic. He started to experiment with Necromancy and he completely withdrew himself inside his lab. We were worried about him, but none of us wanted to face him. We knew that he had gone too far, but none of us wanted to believe. An error we would soon realize" Rowena muttered, looking down at her hands.

"You see, the reason we failed at first was because we didn't know much about ghosts or how they came to be. To solve that problem, Salazar decided to come up with a way to make ghosts. It took him years, but he succeeded and used it on a Muggleborn student. He failed, but we knew that Salazar had crossed the line he shouldn't have and he needed to be dealt with" Rowena took a deep breath.

"We finally confronted him and we even managed to kill him, but we never thought that he would make a phylactery. We destroyed his body, but he escaped" Rowena finished sadly.

"He made a what?" Before Rowena could continue, Harry asked.

"A phylactery" Rowena answered with a nod. "You see, Salazar had extracted his own Soul from his body and placed it inside an object, so even though we killed him, his Soul remained anchored to the mortal plain" Rowena explained with a frown. She could have given him the details, but decided not to because she wasn't sure if she could trust the boy in front of him with the knowledge of phylactery creation.

"A Horcrux?" Harry asked and Rowena's eyes grew wide in shock.

"You know about them?" Rowena asked in a low whisper only to receive a nod from the boy. "Is Horcrux common knowledge nowadays?" Rowena asked with a weird look on her face. No matter how she looked at him, the boy was no older than 16 and she couldn't imagine the adults allowing a 16 year old to delve into the records of Herpo the Foul.

"No, it isn't, in fact, the knowledge is pretty scarce, but I have my sources" Harry answered cryptically and after thinking for a bit, Rowena decided to drop the matter. She was already dead, so it wasn't her place to moderate his education.

"I see…" Rowena mumbled before she decided to get back on topic. "A Horcrux is nothing like a Phylactery. To make a Horcrux, the person would need to rip a part of their Soul and place that part inside an object whereas to make a Phylactery, the person would need to extract their whole Soul from their heart and place it inside an object, but the object needs to fulfill some conditions" Rowena explained the differences.

"Conditions?" Harry asked and Rowena started to explain again after giving him a nod.

"Yes, the object can't be indestructible, the object can't be too small and the object cannot be stored too underground or inside a large body of water" Rowena answered.

"Aren't the conditions too weird?" Harry asked with a confused look on his face.

"Yes, they are, but it has something to do with balance. Rituals are all about balance and Phylactery Creation is basically a Ritual" Rowena finished with a shrug.

Harry nodded his head in understanding before he decided to ask the next question. "You said our Souls reside inside our hearts?" Harry asked and Rowena simply shrugged with an unsure look on her face.

"That is what Salazar said, but I do not know for sure" Rowena answered lamely and Harry simply hummed at her answer. According to Hela, there was a reason why he couldn't make a working heart even though he could make a working brain, but she never told him why, but maybe, he couldn't make a working heart because it needed a Soul?

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****THE-FOUNDERS-AND-SECRETS (V)****

"For years we didn't hear anything about him except for some snippets here and there" Rowena continued to tell the story from her perspective. "-But then out of the blue, we received a letter from him. It would be an understatement to call it a letter, it was more of a book. It was basically his journal" Rowena added, looking conflicted.

"The journal was filled with the records of his experiments and his findings. After years of trial and error, he was finally able to turn a person into a ghost. It was horrifying to read the records… The atrocities he committed to reach his goals were… horrific" Rowena finished with a painful look on her face.

"However, that was the turning point in his research. After that, he dedicated his very being into unraveling all their secrets. He discovered that unsolved resentment or grudge were the main reasons why a person would turn into a ghost. The amount of resentment and grudge may vary from person to person, but those were the main ingredients" Rowena clapped her hands as she floated toward the window.

"He also managed to discover that ghosts were anchored to a place that had a significant impact on their lives and only Wixen could turn into a ghost. It took him a couple of years, but he finally managed to come up with a way to exorcize ghosts. However, none of us celebrated his achievement" Rowena shook her head, looking dismayed.

"Thanks to his journal, we knew all about the atrocities he had committed and he admitted that at the end of his journal, but he refused to apologize. He said he would have done the same if he got to choose again, however, he begged us to exorcize his wife for him. That was what he wanted from us" Rowena finished with a smile.

"He said that he would have done it himself, but he didn't want Patricia to see what he had become and he was certain that he was being chased by someone. He was insistent that someone was after him and his research. Apparently, that was why he chose to send us all of his research instead of just the method of exorcizing a ghost" Rowena finished with a scowl.

"Obviously, we were skeptical of his reasons… We could understand that he didn't want Patricia to see what he had become, but not the other reason. When we couldn't find him, how could anyone else? That's what we thought. However, we still decided to carry out his last request. We exorcized Patricia" Rowena said with a nod.

"She wasn't the only one we exorcized though. We exorcized all the ghosts we knew about. The three of us started to go around the world and exorcize any ghosts we could find. We still didn't like the path Salazar took, but we were glad that his work was doing good. That was when my daughter stole my diadem and ran away" Rowena shook her head bitterly.

|That's why there are no ghosts from the era of the founders!| Lily exclaimed loudly inside Harry's mind as she reached the conclusion and Harry also agreed with her.

|Yes, that's probably why| Harry internally nodded in agreement. He had access to knowledge from all over the world, but he was yet to come across anything from the era of the founders. Knowledge from eras older than the founders' era was still available, but that era was kind of blank. It was like someone had intentionally erased all the knowledge from that era.

"By the time I returned, she was dead and her killer was too" Rowena mumbled solemnly. Then I stopped going around the world like Godric and Helga and decided to dedicate all of my time to my research, but a few moments later, news arrived that Gordic had fallen sick. The Healers couldn't figure out anything, even Helga had no clue and she was the best Healer of our time" Rowena blurted out, looking frustrated.

"I decided to go and meet him for the last time… The whole thing was sad and forlorn, so I decided to drown myself in research to get over his death and Helga decided to travel around the world. She wanted to spend the last of her years healing and helping people" Rowena smiled at the memory before a dark look appeared on her face.

"Another year later, I also fell sick and it was the same illness that claimed Godric. That was when I realized that it wasn't an illness, it was poison… I tried to contact Helga, but apparently, she had fallen ill too a few months ago and passed away before she could write to me. I mean what are the chances of three of us contracting the same illness between such gaps?" Rowena asked as she chuckled mirthlessly.

"So, Salazar was right. Someone was after him and his research" Harry pointed out with a nod of his head.

"That is exactly what I thought… I realized that someone did not like what we were doing and decided to get rid of us. However, I wasn't willing to go out that easily. That is why I made copies of his research and placed it all over Hogwarts as I was too ill to travel too far from Hogwarts, but considering how nobody found that knowledge in the last thousand years, I believe they managed to get rid of them too" Rowena sighed sadly.

It hurt her physically to think that so much knowledge was simply gone…

"Did you place a copy in the imaginescape?" Harry asked, earning a nod from Rowena.

"I placed them everywhere I could" Rowena answered. "Do you think that copy is still there?" Rowena asked when she noticed the thoughtful look on Harry's face.

"I can't say for sure… I will take a look as soon as I can, but if that someone had been that through with you guys then I am not going to hold much hope" Harry answered and Rowena nodded her head as she could understand where he was coming from.

"Now, can you please send me back… I feel kind of weird. There is a sense of wrongness" Rowena requested almost pleadingly. She had been feeling uncomfortable for quite some time, but she ignored the feeling because she was engrossed in their chat.

"I still have questions" Harry pointed out.

"You can call me later and I will answer all of your questions, but now I need to go" Rowena requested and this time she was genuinely pleading, so Harry decided to send her off. He could have kept her, but he didn't want to ruin their relationship and Rowena had been extremely cooperative unlike Morfin and Marvolo, which was good in his books.

Harry managed to learn quite a lot from Rowena and he also managed to unearth quite a few secrets. The venture was far from fruitless, Harry decided, which was always a good thing in his books…

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