Chapter 12: Chapter 12
"Why didn't you tell me that before the ritual?" Harry yelled out his question. He had a piercing headache ever since he underwent the Blood Ritual, and the information he learned from Rowena made him quite angry with her.
"I didn't think it's important?" Rowena played it off.
"What do you mean? You died because of a Blood Ritual, but you made me do it either way? How can it not be important?" Harry bellowed.
"Technically, it wasn't due to this specific Blood Ritual," Rowena answered him.
"Technically?" Harry was pacing back and forward in frustration.
"Well, you see..."
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Two days ago, when Harry returned from Diagon Alley with Ryze, he went into the ritual room. With the ritual dagger in hand, he pierced his arm and started pouring his blood into the triangles. After filling three of them, he took a Blood-Replenishing Potion and continued with the rest. Once all of them were filled, he took another Blood-Replenishing Potion before using a Healing Charm (Episkey) to knit up his wound.
Harry then set up an alarm for 12 hours later and would return to the Chamber of Wisdom once it went off. Rowena had assured him more than once that the Blood Ritual was safe, that he will only get benefits from it, but he was still apprehensive about it. Getting runes carved onto your head by an eagle of all things, sounded dangerous if anything else.
While he had been waiting for the timer, Harry had checked a few of the books about runes, more specifically the ones Rowena told him about.
Ingwaz has a few meanings, such as; fertilization, the beginning of something, and the actualization of potential. It is the rune of the concentration of creative power just before its full appearance. It's supposed to increase the potential of his brain.
Uruz, the rune of the inner strength, the perseverance, and the energy, It symbolizes the indomitable strength of this primitive bovid, the infinite power of the universe. It's supposed to increase the strength of his will and the processing power of his brain.
And finally, Eihwaz, strength, stability, unity. It's the most important out of the three. The rune symbolizes the emergence of an indestructible link, such as the link which unites the rider and his mount. Not only will it connect the other two runes, but Eihwaz also symbolizes the journey. It will open up new paths for him. Paths that he wouldn't have been able to walk previously.
Harry had also found information about one other rune, Sowilo. After Voldemort had attacked him as a baby, the Dark Lord left a scar on him in the shape of a lightning bolt, which looked identical to Sowilo. It represented the Sun, the Illumination, the power of Light.
Harry wondered if the rune had anything to do with the Phoenix coming to him and choosing him as her Avatar. He wasn't sure about that, but the scar on his forehead had faded with time, and when he was in second grade, he had it completely healed. It was nothing some good ol' non-magical medicine couldn't deal with, and he definitely didn't have it fixed because the kids at school were making fun of him for it. There is no proof of that!
Non-magical may not have the same potions as wizards and witches, but they've made tremendous advancements with their technology. An example being laser treatment, which is how he got his eyesight cured. It had probably been costly, but he would pay back Xavier in time. Harry could always get him a potion for hair growth, but he was thinking of curing his legs. He would have to find out what caused his disability first, however.
Now though, he was about to undergo a Blood Ritual. His blood had convolved around the Ritual Dagger. Three blood-like veins had formed on the black metal, making it look even eerier. Harry left the room with the Ritual Dagger and gave it to Eclipse. He took a Pain-Numbing Potion and sat on the ground. "Let's get this over with."
Eclipse comically held the Ritual Dagger in his claw and began the carving. Harry would have laughed at the eagle in any other situation, but he didn't dare make even the slightest of movements. Eclipse making a wrong line, would only end up with Harry in a lot of pain at best.
Ingwaz was carved on the left side of his head, Uruz on the right, and Eihwaz on the back. The moment the last rune was done, the blood-like veins flew out of the dagger. Each sipped inside a rune and entered his head, closing the wound in the process and healing the scar, as if it had never existed.
For a few moments, he felt nothing. Rowena had warned him that he will experience a headache for a few days, but Harry had taken a Pain-Numbing Potion and wasn't sure if that would occur. Just as he thought that it happened.
At first, he felt a throbbing, Harry's head started pulsating as if he formed another heart there. His head felt like a balloon just about to burst, and in a second, his mind felt sluggish, and a piercing headache followed afterward. His head hung loosely, and his eyelids closed on their own. He was tired, exhausted, and felt weak.
"The ritual has been done. Go rest now, my Heir," Rowena told him, but Harry was already moving towards the exit of the Chamber of Wisdom. He wanted nothing more than to rest his head on his bed.
With each step, the headache intensified even more, and by the time he reached his bed, he couldn't stay on his feet. Weakly he fell on his bed like a sack of potatoes, and sleep overtook him in an instant.
Harry slept through the entire next day, the day the rest of the kids returned to Hogwarts. His friends were worried since none of them had seen him on the train, nor had they seen him in the castle. They had asked the Professors if Harry was there, but they couldn't answer what they didn't know.
"Three sets of three. The..." Harry woke up with a groan. His head hurt, and he didn't even get a nice sleep. He kept hearing a cold female voice repeating the same thing over and over. The worst of all, he wasn't even able to hear past the first few words. Harry raised his head. The first thing he noticed was that he was looking at his room from a higher vantage point.
'Did the ritual make me taller or something?' He thought before he realized that his bed was floating. And so were all of the objects inside his room. His telekinesis had been at work without even him realizing it, and it felt so natural. There wasn't even any strain on his mind, except for the headache, but that was due to the ritual he thought. He lightly shook his head and gently placed all the furniture on the ground.
Harry weakly stood up from his bed. His head still pulsated, and he was still tired, but his stomach was growling. He pulled out whatever fruits he had stored in his Mokeskin pouch and started eating them as he entered the Chamber of Wisdom.
Without saying a word to Eclipse or Rowena, he entered the time room and used the Time-Turner. Afterward, he entered the ritual room, transfigured the table and chair into a bed, set up an alarm for 12 hours later, and went to sleep once more. The Time-Turner, a magical artifact of incredible power, able to turn back time, and Harry used it to get some more sleep.
"Three sets of three. The..." Harry woke up to the same phrase. The cold female voice kept repeating it over and over, but he still couldn't remember the rest of it.
"Stupid dreams, nasty headache, and now I have to deal with classes. Joy," Harry complained as he got up and face planted into the ground since his bed was floating once more.
"Oh, and my powers are out of control," he grumbled. "Anything else?"
"No?" Harry got up from the ground after nothing else happened. Sluggishly he left his room and entered the common room of Ravenclaw.
"Harry?" Padma said when she saw him. "When did you get here? You weren't on the train, and no one had seen you in Hogwarts."
"Cause I didn't want to be seen," Harry grumbled.
"Why? What's wrong?" Padma asked in concern.
"My head hurts, and talking is hard," He answered while leaving the common room.
"Are you sick or something?" Padma was worried. Wizards and witches have a stronger immune system compared to Muggles since their magic kept them safe, but that doesn't mean they can't get sick. Plus, some magical diseases could kill within a few days or less.
"Nah, I just have a headache," Harry waved his hand as he answered.
"Have you visited Madam Pomfrey? Maybe she could get you something or at-"
"It's okay, Padma. I already tried with a potion. The headache would be gone in a few days at most," Harry cut her off and finished with a quiet. "I hope."
Similar questions followed as his friends met him in the Great Hall, and he deflected them all. He wasn't planning on telling anyone that he had done a Blood Ritual and had runes carved on his head. That was something he would keep to himself. He wasn't going to mention it to Dumbledore or even Charles. They didn't need to know he had done a Blood Ritual.
Classes didn't go too badly. Harry was already far ahead compared to the rest, so he didn't have to try too much. Between classes, he used the chance to take short naps.
The next day passed much the same, but Harry was feeling slightly better. He still had a headache, but it was more manageable. So, after classes finished, he decided to have a talk with Rowena and get to know her better.
According to the books, she had fallen fatally ill and died shortly after. However, it wasn't stated what the illness was. And that's how Harry learned that it wasn't some kind of sickness that led to her death. No, it was a Blood Ritual.
"Well, you see, all four of us had undergone a few Blood Rituals. The one you went through wasn't the reason off my demise. It was a different one that caused it." Rowena paused for a moment and closed her eyes.
"Salazar, he was a genius when it came to Blood Rituals. He was the one that created and devised them specifically for us. They boosted the advantages that we already had, but we got greedy. We wanted more."
"That wouldn't have been a problem. Blood Rituals are not harmful unless done incorrectly. One specific one, however, was different. Salazar had devised a Blood Ritual to extend the life of someone. On paper, it should've given us 100 to 200 extra years. For him, it worked perfectly fine. For us, it came with a price. It corrupted our blood."
"Why did it work differently for him?" Harry asked. "What made him different compared to you?"
"Salazar had a gift of his own, just like the rest of us. I'm not entirely sure about the specifics, but it was blood-related. He was able to control and manipulate his blood. Which is why he got into blood magic. That wasn't all, however, and his... mutation as you call it, always kept his blood pure. While ours got corrupted after the ritual."
"It made his blood pure?" Harry asked. He remembered reading about that. "Didn't he leave Hogwarts due to something about Pureblood?"
"Yes, it happened after I fell ill, and Salazar learned about it. He had done the life-extending ritual and had no problem undergoing other rituals after it due to his gift, but he hadn't taken that into account when he offered us the same. Salazar had done over a dozen rituals after it, one of them gave him the ability to talk to snakes, he wanted to copy Merlin's ability to talk to Dragons, but he was unsuccessful. He did manage to tie it to his bloodline, though, which was a great achievement."
"I was the first to do another ritual after the life-extending one, and I fell fatally ill due to it. My life force was sapped in exchange for the gifts of the ritual since my blood was corrupted. Salazar and Goldric got into a fight over that. Goldric blamed him for my death. Salazar blamed himself as well, and he ended up leaving Hogwarts. He couldn't stay in the castle knowing he was the reason I was going to die."
"So, I won't die from this one?" Harry asked to make sure.
"No, unless you do the life-extending ritual and another one afterward," Rowena shook her head. "It should be fine if you don't do any other after it, but I will advise against that. I'm not sure if there are other problems with it."
"Okay... that's good, I guess," said Harry and asked afterward. "So, Salazar wasn't a Muggleborn-hating supremacist then?" That's how the history books described him.
"No? Why would he hate them?" Rowena said, clearly confused why he would ask that. "Without them, how were we supposed to continue our lines? And Muggleborn still carried the same blood as them."
"Them? What do you mean by them?" Harry asked.
"Salazar was a researcher by heart, he wanted to know what made wizards and witches magical. He wanted to know what gave us the inherent ability to use Magic. Salazar managed to find that we were the descendants of something or someone. He hadn't found the answer to whom before my demise."
"What I know is that most of the Blood Rituals he created were meant to bring us closer to our ancestors. Our minds, our souls, our bodies, our lifespan, all of them are inferior compared to our ancestors, that's what Salazar discovered. I wonder if he managed to find out who are our ancestors."
"So, someone or something mated with humans and magicals popped out?" Harry asked.
"That, or humans were experimented on, like how we've experimented on creatures and turned them magical. We could just be the end result. Or maybe there is another alternative, which we are not even considering. I cannot be sure, Salazar would know more about this."
"And Merlin probably knew the exact answer. That man was an enigma. He would do strange things that seemed random at first, but then a few months or even years later, they would make perfect sense. Merlin was the one that pushed Salazar towards this. He gave him the hints," Rowena concluded.
"He was able to see into the future, possibly the past as well," Harry blurted out.
"Merlin wasn't a seer if that's what you are implying," said Rowena.
"No, not a seer, but he was able to see into the future," replied Harry. "I met some Strange-dude who also called himself Sorcerer Supreme. He was able to look into the future and answer my questions before I asked them. He promised to teach me sorcery but said he can't teach me how to look into the future. I'm still trying to figure out how he does it, but I'm guessing both of them are using the same method."
"That certainly seems plausible," said Rowena. "It would explain most of Merlin's oddities. My best guess would be the stone he used to create the time room and the Time-Turner since seeing into the future seems like a time-related ability. I would've loved to study such an incredible magical artifact."
"That does make sense," Harry replied. They talked for a bit more before he decided it's time for another nap.
Harry left the Chamber of Wisdom with a lot of new information. He learned that Salazar wasn't the Pureblood supremacist from the history books. Rowena's death wasn't caused by an illness but by the life-extending ritual. Dr. Strange possibly used a magical artifact that allowed him to look into the future. Wizards and witches were either the offspring of some race or an experiment. And most importantly, he wouldn't die because of the Blood Ritual.
The next day, Harry's still had a headache, but he decided it's time to check the Room of Requirements and see what's so special about it. He didn't want to share the information about it to his friends yet, so he made an excuse and left on his own. Harry was trudging his way towards the seventh floor when he heard someone call out from behind him.
"Stupefy!" A red light hit him in the back, and Harry unconsciously slumped down on the ground.
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firechicken
firechicken This should've been uploaded yesterday, but I also had a bad headche. It kinda turned into an info dump, I guess, sorry bout that. I tried giving a backstory to two of the founders plus wizards and witches. I hope it made sense to you guys.
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