Chapitre 25: The Sword of Potter
*** Present
Harry and Hermione had been rushed off by Dumbledore, Arcturus and Nicolas who had all run off to Dumbledore's office and told the kids to get back to their common room.
On the way back, Harry stiffened and cursed.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, concerned.
Harry started to run in a direction, "There's a snake travelling through the walls, I can hear it in Parseltongue."
"You know Parseltongue!" Hermione exclaimed as she sprinted after her best friend.
"Yup, there's no time to go to the Headmaster's office, we would lose the snake, we have to follow the snake and send Dumbledore a message."
Hermione nodded, the idea appealing to her Gryffindor sense of excitement.
The snake led them through the castle and finally brought them to a bathroom of all places.
The Bathroom outside of which Mrs Norris had been found.
The voice disappeared into thin air and left the two kids alone in the girl's bathroom.
Harry hastily conjured and animated a piece of paper with a note to Dumbledore, sending it flying like a paper airplane, all the way to Dumbledore's office.
Harry took a moment to admire his craftsmanship before moving on to inspect the room for possible discrepancies, finding one almost immediately.
~OPEN~ Harry hissed in Parseltongue over a sink that had a snake motif on it.
The entire basin faded back into the wall, leaving a gaping hole in the floor, leading to a slide that led down into the darkness.
Harry took a deep breath and went down the passage, closely followed by Hermione.
It was a long way down and Harry found himself enjoying the slide as it took twists and turns, it was similar to a muggle amusement ride.
Hermione, on the other hand, was terrified and shrieked the entire way down.
The two landed gracelessly at the bottom and trudged forward, lit wands in hand, ready to cast.
"In the case that it is a Basilisk, we need to have reflective sunglasses to protect ourselves from the gaze of the Basilisk." Harry commented and concentrated, conjuring tinted sunglasses.
"These should do the trick." Harry said pleased.
They put on the sunglasses and continued on in a tense silence, a tenseness that wasn't alleviated by the giant shed skin that they passed.
Finally, the two ended up in a large chamber with a large bust of Salazar Slytherin on the wall opposite them.
Almost directly in front of the statue, stood a boy in Hogwarts robes, standing over the fallen form of Luna Lovegood.
"Aah, Hello Harry Potter." The figure said pleasantly.
Harry didn't let himself relax.
"What are you doing with the girl?" Harry said dangerously.
"Oh, nothing, just stealing her very life." The boy said lightly, twirling his own wand between his fingers.
Harry slowly edged towards the two, "And who are you?" he asked cautiously.
"Tom Marvolo Riddle… and you can stop trying to sneak up on me."
Harry cursed at being found out so easily.
"So what do you have to do with Voldemort." Harry asked, his wand pointed at Tom's head.
"Ah, Voldemort is my past, present and future." Tom said muttering a spell to create his name in the air and reorganising the letters to spell out 'I am Lord Voldemort.'
Harry snorted, "An anagram. Really?"
As a response, Tom snarled and sent a volley of spells at Harry who sidestepped the entire string and send one of his one at Riddle who simply stood there smirking as Harry couldn't harm him as he was still a spirit.
"Until I fully take over the girl's magic, I'm still not fully corporeal, which means you can't hit me." Tom said triumphantly.
Harry felt a feeling of hopelessness take over as he shielded himself from another string from Riddle who could attack relentlessly since he didn't have to defend.
Hermione seemed to have frozen up a bit in horror as she looked at her best friend struggling to keep up with the spirit of a school-going memory of Voldemort.
Harry had so far managed to not get hit by Riddle but, especially with the inability to hit back, Harry was struggling to weave through the spells and keep up the shield work.
Riddle smirked, "Seems like you aren't useless, shame you'll be long-dead before you can duel me on equal footing." He said and called the Basilisk in Parseltongue.
The large green snake came through the mouth of the large bust of Slytherin.
Harry cursed and looked away before the snake could petrify him.
Harry looked around for something he could use for alchemy to transform into a sword. He needed something of high magical value.
To buy himself some time, Harry conjured a large block of granite and flung it at the Basilisk, sending it flying into the wall where it attempted to slither out from.
Unfortunately, Riddle was still casting and Harry was forced to defend himself and Hermione while looking for something magical to use for alchemy.
What did he have around him.
Hermione, definitely out of the question
The girl, also out of the question
He could see Riddle's horcrux in the form of a diary, it would need to be destroyed and it would definitely work.
A goddamn basilisk.
He had an idea.
"Cover me, Hermione!" Harry yelled.
Hermione nodded shakily and started powering a magical shield of her own to stop Riddle's curses.
"Accio Basilisk teeth!" Harry roared, putting as much magic as he could to try and summon the teeth of the beast, which may have had a magically resistant hide but not magically resistant teeth.
The entire Basilisk was pulled out of the rubble as it's teeth were violently and bloodily pulled out of it's mouth.
"Accio Horcrux!" Harry yelled again but the horcrux didn't move.
Harry cursed and ran over to the diary and picked it up where it lay, to a roar of anger from Riddle.
"Don't touch that!" Riddle yelled, "Get him Basilisk!"
The Basilisk did not listen, still thrashing about from the pain of having it's teeth summoned out, it's poison dripping from udders that had previously been connected to teeth that had been ripped out.
Harry took the chance and transfigured some rubble into two knives and flung them at the beast's eyes, and managed to hit the left eye, making the beast half blind as well.
Harry laid the horcrux down on top of the teeth of the snake, careful not to touch the venom.
Very carefully, Harry closed his eyes, thinking about his alchemy training, which he had been a natural at.
While, he wasn't a master yet, the sheer greatness of the sacrifice would give the sword he was hoping to conjure a lot of power in itself and hopefully take some of the properties of the basilisk's teeth as well as destroy the Darkness in the horcrux.
With a slow chant, Harry started the alchemy, a master could probably do it in an instant, but Harry built his concentration as he had been taught, picturing the sword and muttering his magic.
With a bright flash of light, both the basilisk teeth and the diary were gone… as well as half of the chamber. Mnay of the giant stone snakes as well as a large part of the floor were missing.
Harry cursed, he hadn't been able to anticipate the amount of sacrifice he would need, and his transference rate was probably not great but he had the sword he needed.
It was a hybrid sword between a Japanese-style katana and an Excalibur-esque design. The blade was imbued with basilisk venom from the sacrifice and had a black hilt encrusted with Basilisk ivory.
With a loud yell, the figure of Tom Riddle began to evaporate and the blonde girl who had been previously unconscious began to stir.
"Goddamn you! Harry Potter! I will rise again!" Riddle screamed before he was gone from the world.
The partially recovered and very much angered Basilisk swung around blindly trying to hit the one who had destroyed it's master but did not seem to come close to Harry.
With a deep breath, hoping to all hell that he wouldn't die, Harry ran at the Basilisk and swung upwards, sticking his sword right through the skull of the giant snake.
Just as Harry's sword was going through the snake's mouth, the entrance to the chamber burst open in a shower of rubble as Albus, Arcturus and Nicolas stood ready, wands in hand and ready to go and they stood in awe as Harry put the sword through the beast's skull.
Harry took his sword back out, looking every bit the victorious hero as he looked back to see Hermione and the blond staring in awe and his three teachers standing behind in disbelief.
Nicolas was the first to recover and started a slow clap.
"Wonderfully done, Harry, did you transmute that?!" he said, once more shocked by the brilliant weapon in Harry's hand.
"Yes, from the teeth of the basilisk and Riddle's horcrux"
"As well as half the chamber." Arcturus noted.
Harry nodded sheepishly.
"Did you say that you transmuted the horcrux?" Dumbledore said.
"Yes, it should push some of the Darkness back into the void AND in exchange, it gave me the sword."
"Good thinking, Harry." Nicolas smiled before holding out a hand, "Can I?"
"Sure, the blade is imbued with Basilisk venom though." Harry warned and handed the sword to Nicolas.
"Hmm, that was probably your miscalculation, you did not sacrifice all the venom, since you kept some of it in your sword, thus the stone of the chamber was used as a substitute, you're lucky that Slytherin decided to encrust his snake sculptures with precious stones." Nicolas commented before taking a knife out of his pocked and making a thin cut on his palm, dripping five drops onto the sword before he waved his wand and the blood disappeared, instead leaving three words engraved in the sword.
Harry James Potter.
Harry smiled gratefully as Nicolas handed the sword back and sealed the cut on his hand.
"There, this sword is almost on par with that of Gryffindor's." Nicolas praised.
Harry raised an eyebrow, surprised.
Nicolas smiled, "Maybe you underestimated the worth of the Basilisk fangs, if it were in diamonds, the fangs of such a large beast would definitely be worth more than 15 kilos of diamond, not to mention the horcrux and the venom and even the heavy precious stones in the chamber… in terms of sacrifice, I would estimate that yours was at least three times greater than the goblin's, when they were crafting the sword, but they were far more professional in the crafting, thus yours is only about as good as that of the goblin's." he explained.
Harry nodded, "So I had three times as much of a sacrifice but approximately a third of the efficiency."
Nicolas nodded, proud of his student.
"It's about time we went back up, Cornelius is trying to shut down the school and arrest Hagrid." Dumbledore said gravely.
They trudged back to the slide and Harry was surprised to see steps transfigured into the steps, something he was in too much of a hurry to have thought of earlier, not that he regretted his slide down to the chamber.
Harry and co made their way up the stairs, it was a longer way than Harry had initially anticipated during his slide down.
By the time they made it up at a brisk walk, they were all huffing and puffing.
The three old men, Harry, Hermione and the strangely silent blonde went to Dumbledore's office.
Hermione attempted to make conversation with the silent Ravenclaw.
"Hi. My name is Hermione."
The blonde smiled faintly, "I can see the nargles gathered around your head…"
Hermione frowned while Harry grinned.
"There aren't any such things as nargles, Miss…"
"Luna." The blond supplied dreamily.
"Well Luna, nargles do not exist."
"Yes they do Hermione Granger, they're blinding your vision."
Hermione opened her mouth to protest but Harry nudged her and let Luna continue.
"Nargles do exist, you just can't see them." Luna said.
"But what proof is there of their existence?" Hermione burst out.
"What proof of magic is there to muggles?" Luna replied.
"But we're NOT muggles." Hermione replied.
Luna shrugged, "Doesn't mean that you can't be blinded to the existence of something."
*** End of Chapter
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone