Chapter 48: Harry Potter : Chapter 47: Cause I
Riddle left the classroom that had been commandeered by some older students with a faint smile on his face and triumph singing in his eyes: the fool purebloods that were part of the Duelling Club had dared to mock him at Slughorn's party, they had doubted his worth, his skill, his might. They no longer will.
Elegant word-play and subtle, but deep, understanding of magic weren't enough to place the poor orphan Riddle where he deserved to be, not when those that by right of age and birth somewhat 'ruled' House Slytherin, those respected scions of ancient families that could barely distinguish one end of the wand from the other.
So Tom had simply led those brutes -their enjoyment of the Duelling Club and inflated sense of worth made them easy to manipulate- into accepting a 'friendly' spar.
The memory of the fools being battered around with no hope of victory made Riddle briefly touch his wand, feeling the triumphant exultance that thrummed through him, warming up his blood and making him luxuriate in the certainty of his ever-growing power.
He strode purposefully across the hallways and the corridors, exchanging perfectly nice smiles and well-practiced 'Hellos' while he slowly brought his heart to a manageable rate.
The wild triumph that he felt could hardly be expressed publicly after all: he had never participated in the Duelling Club as he had no need nor wish to advertise his skills for the whole school to see, but that almost made it too easy to trick those fools at Slughorn's party to fall for a challenge that he had never actually voiced.
And those idiots that so strongly believed in the might of their wands, those that thought themselves atop the laughable food-chain of Hogwarts, would now need to reevaluate their principles.
And Tom had made sure to place himself as the only one capable of showing them a way to remain at the top, using spells that few of those fools had ever heard of to magnificent effects. I sowed, now I simply have to wait for the harvest.
The people he had elegantly humiliated had already been thinking about retaliation, he knew that much, even if it had been easy to show just how of their reach Riddle actually was: wielding their beliefs about pureblood-dogma against them had been even easier.
The cognitive dissonance that he could taste of the hot-headed duellists had been a delight, and the implicit insinuation that he was above them because of his blood, secret as it was, had been a mere bonus.
A part of Tom was already tasting the next steps: how would they try to reclaim their broken ego? Would they ambush him? No, not after his display.
They'll likely try their hand against someone they despise and that they don't fear. With a shrug, he left behind the well-lit corridors and started to wade through the slightly damp dungeons, walking areas of the castle that had been ignored in many a generation, until he reached the now-familiar access to the Chamber of Secrets.
With a couple of silent charms to ensure he wasn't being followed, he slid away from the glum corridor and entered the Chamber that he had discovered, that he had gained access to by blood and by might.
Soon he reached the main room, and without stopping he walked up to Salazar's face and above the black pitch that was the -now empty- resting place of the Basilisk.
With a certainty to his step that he was careful to conceal in any other environment, he almost prowled to the series of studies and private chambers that were secured beyond the reach of anyone but the Heir of Slytherin, and he sat to a desk that he had claimed as his favourite, books that he had left ready opening for him at the desired pages after a twitch of his pale wand.
A self-satisfied smile blossomed on his features and his dark eyes widened in the eagerness to devour every slip of knowledge available to him, he started to wade through the pages of impossible squiggly lines that were not a direct phonetic translation of Parseltongue.
Differently from what he'd have suspected if he had to imagine writing in the Noble Tongue, the alphabet used wasn't phonetic, as the English one, but each small line of ink carried with it a separate significance, only to form shapes with a precise, and oftentimes complex, meaning.
By reading those out loud however, Riddle had discovered that his tongue moved almost knowingly, lips and throat accommodated the unnatural sounds with the ease that a fish had in swimming, and that his mind, once he heard what he said, understood exactly what his ancestor had written.
Tom had never stopped to think about the difficulty inherent in reading thousand years old books when he had discovered the private collection of his ancestor, but learning that Parseltongue almost acted like a key to unlock the knowledge in those tomes had made him ecstatic: and everything in Parseltongue to him sounded like common English.
Truly, it was a marvel of magic with uncountable applications once he managed to figure out the reasoning and symbol behind it.
The only downside was the need to read out loud, because for some quirky need of the magic involved, his mind was not able to directly understand the symbols on the pages.
He understood snakes because he could hear parseltongue, and he could speak to them because he was a parselmouth. Slowly, producing sounds that could have sounded like skittering glass over bare bones to the ears of anyone else, he began to read.
"To exchange and object with another is to 'swap' their nature, and while that can be accomplished easily with things similar in nature, a wizard that knows deeply every element of what his magic attempts to influence, can push the limits of..."
Hours later, the immense basilisk slithered into the Chamber from one of the many tunnels that led to the pipes running into the castle, its thick scales almost grinding on the wet tiles under its immeasurable weight, and Tom closed the book he had been perusing with a self-satisfied quirk of his lips, a twitch of his yew wand enough to bound the notes he had been putting together as he rose from his seated position.
Since he had managed to access the true secrets of the room, by Parseltongue, Magic, and Will, Riddle had found what had to be the private rooms of his fabled ancestor, and while the sleeping arrangements would require much work to become viable -Tom was hardly interested in menial work- he had been in awe at the collection of knowledge now available to him.
Images and instincts were blurred together in the written form of Parseltongue, and the talent that Riddle had been born with was the only key capable of unlocking that trove of knowledge.
Riddle walked out of one of the private rooms of his ancestor with a slight swagger to his pace: it was hard to contain the pride he felt.
He had proved himself worthy of the Chamber by being able to open it, and the Basilisk recognized Tom as her master, as it was right.
-Master- The hiss had the underling, rumbling tone of an uninterested wind, but Tom could hardly take offense: snakes didn't have a human's perception of hierarchy, there was no possible brownnosing, no uncertainty.
The Basilisk was King of all Snakes, and the line of Slytherin, who had hatched the female specimen that now was roughly a thousand years old, was its rightful master.
The salutations that the wizard exchanged with the ancient creature were more recognition of each other's presence than an excuse to establish and confirm their places on the command ladder.
Much easier than the small-time politicking implicit in the 'Hellos' I have to exchange with the others, if nothing else.
...
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