Chapter 220 - 219. The Founders’ Strange Fixation.

Chapter 219. The Founders’ Strange Fixation.

An hour after he had unpacked and changed out of his school robes into something lighter, the castle was warm enough. He left his room and, on his way out of the common room, ran into Regulus and Leila returning from breakfast. He talked with them for a while, sharing the latest news from the wizarding world, then left them to their own devices, promising Regulus he’d check on his progress after lunch.

There was one specific reason for returning to Hogwarts this early, and no, it had nothing to do with Severus having developed any particularly warm feelings for the place.

While he was traveling, Nelly had not simply been brewing potions. She had also been studying, attending evening sessions with Slughorn, who had become genuinely curious to see how far she could progress. Beyond that, the little elf had been talking regularly with her fellow house-elves, gathering every piece of information about the castle she could find: rumors, ghost stories, the lot. After her sessions with Slughorn, which ran until curfew, she would go out and check each lead in person.

House-elves were simple, credulous creatures by nature, which meant she could get almost anything she wanted from them. Severus had personally been working with her on this skill. While she was still far behind humans in terms of cunning, that was due to the ingrained servility older elves had instilled in them from early childhood. Against other house-elves, however, she ran circles around them.

From one of them, she had extracted information about a room the elf had stumbled into accidentally while still learning to Apparate some thirty years ago. He remembered almost nothing of what was inside. Only one thing had stayed with him: a small floating red crystal at the center of the room, radiating magic. He had fled at the sound of an odd rustling and never returned.

Nelly had located the place, or, more precisely, the entrance, working from the clues her informant had provided. But she hadn’t gone in herself, concerned about detection charms she might not notice. And Severus, when giving her the assignment, had been explicit: do not act alone; report immediately if you find anything unusual.

The mysterious location was, of all places, in the castle’s dungeons, only three turns from the Slytherin common room. But the moment he saw what was two meters away from it, his eye twitched.

"Do all of them have this peculiar fixation? Putting the entrance to secret rooms next to the girls’ lavatory?" Nelly tilted her head with genuine puzzlement, not sure what her master meant. Nagini, on the other hand, understood completely. She had been with him in every one of these places and still remembered perfectly well where the Basilisk’s chamber had been, and where Rowena Ravenclaw’s portrait library was. "Never mind. I’m thinking about the wrong thing." He exhaled with quiet resignation, pressed a hand to the wall, closed his eyes, and extended his awareness through it, pushing his magic outward in all directions. And then: "Hm?" He frowned. Nothing. Absolutely nothing on the other side, as though there were nothing there at all. That genuinely surprised him. Even at his current level, he could detect nothing whatsoever. "How did you find this place?"

"I-I realized after an hour of searching that the detection charms you taught me weren’t picking up anything. P-please forgive me, Master! Nelly is terrible! Nelly said that the charms Master taught her were useless! I—" The little elf’s eyes widened in alarm and she dropped to her knees, still pleading.

He’d thought he had finally broken her of this habit. He pressed two fingers to his forehead, exhaling tiredly, then said, "Have you forgotten what I told you about going to your knees, that it irritates me?" He fixed her with a cool look, which made her tremble all over again.

"I beg your forgiveness, Master, I—"

"It seems you’ll need some extra lessons on this matter, and the other two will need a reminder as well. Get up." She was on her feet in an instant, but couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, keeping her gaze fixed on the floor. "We’ll discuss your behavior this evening. Now, tell me how you found this place." He snapped his fingers, and a transparent dome formed around them. A few seconds later, they heard girls’ laughter. A group of three witches with green ties came around the corner, chatting brightly.

"I heard Carter found herself a boyfriend and he’s in seventh year."

"That can’t possibly be true! Have you seen her face?! Who would ever go for someone like her?"

"I know, but it’s a fact! I saw her holding hands with some boy at the Astronomy Tower myself!"

"Maybe it wasn’t her?"

"No, it was definitely her. My eyesight is perfectly—"

But Severus didn’t hear the rest, as the girls pushed open the bathroom door and it closed behind them.

"All right. How did you find this place?" He turned his attention back to Nelly.

"I used plastic balls to search the area Dimpy described, pushing them through the wall. If there was no sound of them landing, it meant the ball had been crushed and the space was solid, but if..."

"Hm? Not bad at all. Well done." He gave Nelly an approving pat on the head, and her face lit up. She continued:

"And only in this spot, I heard the sound of a ball bouncing off a stone floor, and the sound faded into the distance. Then I used your spell and realized I couldn’t sense anything beyond it, so I came straight to you, Master, because you had told me to report anything like this immediately."

At that moment the bathroom door opened again, followed by the voices of the fifth-years:

"Could it have been Douglas? He’s blond too."

"Hardly. Even he wouldn’t go out with our Carter, and he doesn’t like half-bloods anyway."

"That’s true, I completely forgot. But then who could it be?"

"I’ll bet fifty Galleons it’s Freeman!"

"Twenty on Murphy!"

"Agreed!"

Severus watched them go, then turned back to studying the wall.

"It seems this isn’t the right time to investigate properly." He clicked his tongue with mild frustration, having entirely forgotten that other students also lived in this castle; he hadn’t expected another secret room to turn up beside a girls’ lavatory, and this close to the Slytherin common room. I should have asked about the location in advance; then I could have continued with my work and simply come to Hogwarts in the evening.

"Should we come back at night?" Nagini suggested, as though reading his thoughts. In the distance they both heard the sound of more footsteps approaching.

"Agreed. Nelly."

"Y-yes, Master?" She still hadn’t dared look up at him, feeling guilty both for not warning him about the location in advance and for her earlier behavior.

"You did well." He patted her on the head again, and her eyes immediately lit up. "But it doesn’t excuse you from the lesson. For now, rest. Tomorrow evening I expect all three of you in my room for an additional session on how to conduct yourselves during conversations with me, and on what not to do."

"Yes, Master." She exhaled with relief and nodded quickly, though at the same time she felt a fresh wave of guilt for Gorby and Toby, whom she had inadvertently dragged into this, having completely forgotten what their master had taught them.

"Dismissed." Nelly gave a silent bow and vanished. Severus turned and headed back toward the common room, the barrier still in place, and around the corner, another small group of female students walked past a few seconds later.

Until lunch, he continued working on the ritual, adjusting it to Nagini’s specific situation. The experiments with true dragon blood had revealed several gaps, along with flaws requiring correction, all of them connected to the problem of expelling excess magic from the body.

By Severus’s design, the two curses would destroy each other, and if one proved stronger, the dominant draconic bloodline would finish what was left. But even then, the dark magic could potentially lodge itself somewhere in Nagini’s body, which was precisely why he was refining the ritual now, to eliminate it entirely in the aftermath.

But a second problem had also emerged: the soul. A small portion of it had already been restructured into a serpentine form, and the curse was continuing, slowly, to reshape it further.

Severus had learned this by examining Nagini’s soul through the Qilin’s eyes. The difficulty was that removing the corruption from the soul was considerably harder than removing it from the body or the blood. He was already working on that as well, though the already-altered portion might prove beyond repair without a Great Archmaster who specialized in souls, and no such person existed in this world.

He could, in theory, wait until Bambi grew old enough to help cleanse the soul through his light magic. Severus was reasonably familiar with white magic, and Li Er could assist. But by that point, Nagini’s entire soul would have been restructured. She would lose her mind, and the changes would be irreversible. He would lose her permanently.

There was one idea. Extremely risky, up to and including the destruction of the soul itself. But it was the only option he had at the moment. To carry it out, he would need to significantly refine his control over black flame and use it to burn away the curse.

Black flame was neither Dark nor Light magic in itself. It was a combination of three elements: darkness, light, and fire, a genuinely different element, one that had no business existing at all. Freely controlling it was highly difficult without the crutch of specific spells.

For that reason, Severus considered it extremely dangerous to use this method on a soul. If any alternative presented itself, he would take it without hesitation. But he resolved to prepare for the worst regardless.

He stayed in his room until lunch. Afterward, Leila left him with Regulus and went off to talk with her friends. The two of them returned to Severus’s room, where Regulus, as usual, demonstrated his progress. After Severus corrected a few things, the questions about spells began, followed by requests for new ones. The usual pattern. It stretched on for another hour.

Two weeks wasn’t enough for dramatic progress, but Regulus was moving in the right direction. If he kept at it, the Master rank wouldn’t be far off given his talent.

After Regulus left, Severus continued his work. He said nothing to Nagini about the soul for now; he didn’t want to worry her. The fact that she had regained her human form in the Qilin’s vision didn’t allow him to relax, either. It meant only one thing: that it was possible. And he couldn’t afford to slow down.

A vision nearly always reflected a genuine future up until the moment it reached the hands of the person it concerned. Once it did, even if the same path was followed, the future would be different. That was precisely why he had reconsidered his plans about the Necromancer: he would not kill him. He would wait and see what came of it instead.

And so he continued working on the ritual until dinner. Three hours after dinner, when the clock struck eleven, he left his room and made his way back toward that place.

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