Harry waited in the still destroyed girls’ lavatory alongside the sorting hat.
The hole they’d blasted open two days ago had yet to be sealed; instead, the professors had layered a series of wards over the bathroom and forbidden entrance.
He’d manage to circumvent the wards by finding a weak point with his magic sense and short-circuiting it for a moment.
It turned out that the experience he’d gained while using Felix Felicis hadn’t disappeared completely.
While he was here with the intention of visiting the Chamber of Secrets again with the half-wits of the round table, his mind was currently preoccupied with other matters.
Namely, giving Dumbledore his memory of the events that had transpired in the chamber had once again rekindled his interest in acquiring a Pensieve.
Progress on the Book of Eibon had stalled out with the attacks, but now that the threat was over, it was time to rekindle his efforts.
“I have an infinite blank book that can copy anything it wants, provided it has enough ink in storage,” Harry muttered. “But how do I make it sort the knowledge into useful chunks?”
That was his current dilemma. Even with the word search spell, having an artefact containing the entire Hogwarts library merely granted him access past his graduation; it did not make the use of the library any easier.
“Why such a focus on a librarian?” the hat asked from atop his head. “If you left out that part, you’d be long done by now. Keeping every book you’ve ever come across easily accessible is prize enough, no?”
“If I simply keep copying, then one day the artefact will become useless under the weight of what it contains,” Harry said.
“Alright, then let’s assume you manage to create a sorting system that is somewhat intelligent, it will still be limited in its capacity, no? What if it edits out something that could have been relevant, leading you to miss a solution you would have otherwise acquired.”
Harry angrily scratched the back of his neck.
It was because of these sorts of conundrums that his research had stalled. It turned out that artefact creation was more difficult than just knowing enchanting. One wrong decision in the early stages of planning could ruin a product just as much as a lack of skill in implementing such decisions.
“It would be impossible to create a librarian smarter than me, so perhaps that issue is unavoidable,” Harry said decisively. “As for missing something every once in a while, that should probably be offset by the improvement in learning that would come from cutting out the irrelevant chunks and having a way to query the book more concisely.”
“All right,” the hat said simply. “I guess having an artefact is always better than being forever stuck on the planning stage. If you don’t like the result, start from the beginning.”
The student sighed. “Sometimes it is better to choose and put the energy saved by choosing faster into making the action one picked correct, than to agonise eternally over the right decision.”
“So, what now?” the hat asked in an amused voice.
“I need an intelligence,” Harry muttered. “There are many overlaps in the books I’m copying. I need something that can sort things together, categorise, shorten, and summarise.” He paused. “I need someone like you.”
“I was wondering when you were going to ask.”
“You said once that Godric sacrificed his ability to use the offensive part of the mind arts to create you. A ritual, no?”
He felt Chanithachuah nod atop his head. Well, as much as a hat could nod. “Indeed, and due to Godric’s rather prodigious ability in that area, a part of himself flowed into me and thus granted me a personality to go along with it.”
“Your intelligence was not the primary purpose, but a side-effect,” Harry muttered and shook his head. “Rituals. You have to sacrifice something to get something of equal value.” He’d completed a ritual while under the effects of the felix felicis. He’d sacrificed the elder wand, the resurrection stone.
What he’d gotten out of that deal, he still didn’t know. He understood his own Latin, obviously, but what did having a firm soul and all-seeing eyes truly mean? And why had he petitioned the old gods? The only thing he’d really noticed since that day was that he’d become more decisive in his real-world implementation of moral values.
Rituals were complex; he’d looked into them, and came out not much the wiser.
There were still many magical disciples unexplored...
“You have to sacrifice something, but beware of offering something of lesser value in comparison to what you want,” the hat muttered. “Magic might just take something you’re unwilling to lose to even the scales.”
“Sacrificing my ability to use legilimency would be asinine; I don’t need a book that can read minds.”
“A book that can barely read minds,” Chanithachuah corrected.
“Yes, a book that can barely read minds. But if I sacrifice my own ability to sort and interpret information, I’ll lose more than I gain,” Harry continued. “Nothing that I’m willing to lose has the equivalent value, and everything that is equivalent I’m not willing to lose. Dark rituals work on the principle of taking what one is offering from others, but magic hates a disbalance and always finds a way to punish such loopholes.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it. If you want something a lot, you have to be willing to sacrifice something you’re not willing to sacrifice. Giving something that is permanent, a part of yourself or a part of your skillset and turning it into an artefact gives you some breathing room since what you gain can be destroyed or stolen.”
“What if I sacrificed a thing, rather than a part of myself,” Harry muttered.
“Then it should be something of comparable value, but somehow connected to the concept of library or intellect,” the hat replied.
Harry picked up the artefact and ran a hand through his hair. “This really is complex.”
“Who said it would be easy?” the sorting hat replied.
Harry suddenly felt a shift in the wards surrounding the lavatory, and then immediately after, Snape walked in through the door with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m surprised you managed to crack that,” the man said briefly before leaning on his own wall a few feet away.
“I’m full of surprises,” Harry replied. “Now we just need Neville.”
“He’ll manage with the cloak,” Severus said with a clear sneer in his voice.
Harry wondered if the cloak had been a cause for much suffering in the man’s Hogwarts years, considering it had been owned and likely used by his bully.
He paused in his thinking and furrowed his brows. James had bullied Severus in the original timeline and had then gone on to bang the guy’s crush and make a kid, then died and lived on in people’s memories as a war hero. Severus, meanwhile, had become a teacher, eventually dying to protect Harry.
“How’s the wolfsbane going?” Harry asked to distract himself from the unproductive thought.
“You were right,” the man said reluctantly. “I don’t know how, considering your relative ineptitude in potions, but you identified most of the ingredients that I would assume would go into a functional anti-werewolf potion.”
“Call it a divine revelation,” Harry said.
“Bursts of genius often come on the shoulders of years of hard work and engagement in the material. You’re the most dedicated wand-waver I know,” Snape sulked. “I’ll simply accept the fact that you don’t want to share your sources.
Harry shrugged, unable to offer an explanation, since mentioning alternative timelines and reincarnation was off the table.
“So, there’s been progress,” he said instead.
“Indeed, obviously creating a potion from scratch is not a path of linear progression, but I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” the professor replied off-handedly, as if creating a partial cure for lycanthropy was hardly even straining him.
Harry narrowed his eyes as a suspicion he’d held for a while strengthened in his heart.
In the books, the wolfsbane potion had been created sometime after Lupin had graduated from Hogwarts and before he returned to teach there.
Harry had been rather confused at the lack of this potion’s existence back in his second year when Professor Potter had been teaching, but had simply chalked it up to being an invention that had come about a year before Lupin’s professorship.
Well, Lupin was originally supposed to become a professor in nine months, and there hadn’t even been a whisper of the potion existing. That meant that even if somebody submitted it for testing today, it would take many years before it became fact, rather than experiment.
Harry had looked into the creator of the potion, a certain Belby, or something, but had found no mention of the name anywhere.
His theory? Scarred by the prank in his fifth year, when Sirius had lured Snape into the shrieking shack during Lupin’s transformation, the man had created the wolfsbane potion but published its invention under a pseudonym. Likely having realised that withholding the potion from Lupin was certainly the best revenge, but that doing so would put many others in his previous position of being potentially menaced by werewolves.
In this world, due to Lily’s death, tensions between the marauders and Snape had essentially disappeared by their sixth year at Hogwarts, and Severus had left shortly after anyway, his life taking a completely different turn.
A potion that should have existed, thus, did not.
Or, of course, due to Lily’s assault, the first divergence that Harry knew of, the potioneer Belby had never lived on to finish his apprenticeship and had died before publishing his most famous work.
He hadn’t been nearly interested enough to scour the archives for a mention of the man’s death and simply contended himself with theorising.
“Fighting basilisks, curing werewolves, someone’s going to mistake you for a folk hero one of these days,” Harry joked.
Snape looked, if anything, disgusted by the idea. “I’m not a glory-seeking fool...” he muttered harshly before trailing off.
“A leader of a movement, and yet you despise the spotlight. After doing a good deed, shout it from the rooftops, you’re wasting our potential political capital,” Harry said, slightly mad that the man wasn’t taking enough initiative now that they’d tied their fates together somewhat.
The professor remained silent.
“You’re too much of an introvert to lead a movement,” Harry judged him decisively. “I guess that’s why you were waiting.”
“Which rooftop will you be shouting from?” Snape snarked.
Harry glared before shaking his head. “I’m no narcissist, but people need to know. Rumours are already spreading that it was the three of us, after all, paintings, ghosts, the fact that we slept like the dead the day after. Dumbledore isn’t confirming anything, likely out of respect for our privacy and Neville and his gang are similarly silent.” He paused. “A confirmation, a description about our exploits. It might come out in the papers this winter vacation. I already arranged a reporter.”
“You move fast,” Snape said in a surprised tone of voice.
“What, am I supposed to wait for somebody else to snatch the glory?” Harry shook his head. He wouldn’t be repeating that mistake anytime soon. “I decided to grow stronger and then use my life to do good, rather than to do nothing. A reputation will pay dividends. Why are most elections won by power-hungry zealots? It’s because power-hungry zealots are the only ones willing to shamelessly self-promote themselves to win an election.”
“Evil occurs wherever good men do nothing.”
“Exactly. I think it's time that people with a basic moral compass step forward and try to gain influence just as ruthlessly as their counterparts instead of thinking that a quiet life is the epitome of virtue in a crumbling world.”
“You’ll have to make hard decisions if you continue walking this path, deal with unsavoury people,” Snape said quietly.
“Not doing so will lead to the worst outcome. You need to trust yourself more; the fact that you’re doubting yourself already proves you have more scruples than those currently manipulating everyone in their life for their gain. After all, they likely never wondered about the morality and purpose of taking power; they simply took it to fulfil the needs of their ego. Where has that left the world? In the shitter, like always,” Harry said passionately.
“You’re very eloquent,” Severus complimented, which caught Harry off guard.
“Thanks,” he said. He would have to show Severus the room of requirement so that the man could improve his magic sense. He paused internally. Improve his mind arts skills with the help of the hat?
Harry didn’t have that many cheats, other than sheer hard work, but he should probably share what he had with a future political ally.
In this turbulent world...
“We should start coordinating the use of the time turner next semester,” Harry said decisively. “That way we can both benefit from the extra five hours.”
“I can’t,” Severus said while shaking his head. “I leave Hogwarts almost daily. I’m out of the temporal schedule. The time turner is not as beneficial as upkeeping my network.”
Harry thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Alright-” he started, before getting suddenly interrupted by a head popping out of thin air right in front of him.
“Are you talking about the time turner?” Neville asked curiously.
Snape and Harry both jolted in place from shock, the latter definitely regretting that he’d ever returned that stupid cloak.
“Warn us next time!” Snape bellowed harshly, clutching his heart.
Harry understood the reaction. It was incredibly off-putting for someone with a developed magical sense to get surprised like this. They were severely out of practice after all.
“Yes, I checked we all end up fine through the map and the time turner,” Harry said with gritted teeth and twitching brow. It was why they were meeting today. Tomorrow, the time turner would return to the ministry.
Neville awkwardly scratched his blonde head. “Sorry about that, I keep forgetting.”
“Remember,” Harry insisted. “Please...”
“Alright,” Snape suddenly spoke up authoritatively. “Let’s go, we have a chamber to explore and a basilisk to harvest.”
“How much can it even be worth?” Neville asked sceptically.
“A basilisk is a rare dark creature which has led to it being underrepresented as a potion or ritual ingredient,” Snape explained as they went towards the hole. “The venom is valuable as a tool for killing, but considering the moral implications, it can hardly be sold. The only really valuable thing would be the hide, which can be used for somewhat magic-resistant clothing, and the fangs and skull as a sort of ornament.”
“Selling those kinds of things takes connections,” Harry commented idly. “Find a clothing processor and an auction house, keep the venom yourself.”
“Split the money,” Snape said with a nod.
“I’m more curious about the secret corridor we found,” Neville muttered, obviously discomforted by the talks of the market and auctions.
“Well, be curious no longer. We’re about to find out today,” Harry answered as the trio progressed into the dark hole where the faucets had been previously.
It was time to find out if Slytherin had left behind anything useful.
-/-
AN: I feel like this story has been non-stop hype for a while, needed to calm it down a bit lol