Harry Potter :Diamond Heart

Harry woke up on the very cold, very uncomfortable, floor of the chamber. His cheek pressed into the stones and his arms bent oddly beneath him. Everything was blurry.

My glasses, he realised, squinting around in search of them.

The round-framed lenses were lying only a few feet from him, but when he reached out his body protested. Even Oliver Wood's infamously long quidditch training sessions had not made him as stiff and sore as he felt now.

Awkwardly he pushed his glasses back onto his nose and struggled up.

Salazar was sleeping in his frame and the runes he had so painstakingly engraved across the floor of the chamber had faded. The only signs that he had ever undertaken either ritual were his smarting muscles and the incessant throbbing of his head. Harry groaned. He could really used a drink.

Staggering rather stiffly past the snoring Salazar he bent, grimacing, to retrieve his wand. Pointing its tip into the palm of his hand he softly commanded, 'aguamenti.' His imagination was already full of the images and sound of water from thirst, so he hardly needed to focus.

The spray of water reflected of his cupped hand and struck him in squarely in the chest, soaking his robes.

Wonderful.

Harry didn't know any drying spells, which meant he had to go back to Gryffindor Tower and change. There were few places he wanted to be less than there at the moment.

'Oh,' the painting remarked with obvious sarcasm, 'you survived.'

'I feel utterly awful,' Harry ground out as a warning.

'Why are you wet?' Salazar asked curiously. 'The ritual has nothing to do with water.'

'I wanted a drink,' Harry replied obtusely.

'Your magic came out more easily than you expected, then,' the founder deduced. 'Better to get a bit damp than accidentally destroy something important.'

'I've got to go and change,' Harry sighed.

'Well take me back into the study first,' Salazar ordered. 'I've spent enough time near that basilisk already.'

'Fine,' Harry bent and lifted the portrait. His body screamed in protest at the effort, but he made it across the bridge with a few pauses to rest.

'You should really make better use of her,' Slytherin told him as Harry lifted him back up on to the wall.

'Of who?'

'My basilisk, of course.' Salazar gave him a pitying look. 'There's all sorts of useful stuff on that serpent.'

'Like what?' It was a very big snake, but there wasn't all that much you could do with a two year old, seventy food carcass.

'The venom,' Salazar responded straight away. 'The skin and the meat too, but harvesting all that is probably not worth the effort when you can't use it.'

'I'm not going anywhere near that thing's mouth again,' Harry declared adamantly 'One dose of venom was enough for me.' He vividly remembered the feeling of it burning through his veins. It was one of the few things about his first visit here he remembered clearly.

'You were bitten?' Salazar asked in a tone that implied the question, why are you still alive?

'Phoenix tears,' Harry explained.

'About the only things the ridiculous birds produce that's useful,' Salazar grumbled. 'Helga had one of the silly things; it never did anything except steal fruit and set fire to things. Snakes are far better.'

Harry imagined the founder of the serpent house might be a little biased. He was quite fond of phoenixes himself. He did owe his life to Fawkes.

'My wand has a phoenix feather core,' Harry shared, wondering if the other two founder's had had familiars as well.

'I'd bet it's a powerful, but rather limited, wand. Phoenix feather wands do not excel at some of the more delicate aspects of magic.'

'Do you know why?' Harry had always thought the feather of such a potent magical bird would make it an ideal wand core, especially after learning that Tom Riddle's wand had one as well.

'No. Helga told me it might have something to with phoenixes being of fire, which is notoriously difficult to control, but I think she was guessing.' Salazar furrowed his brow in thought. 'You should get your wand checked, really. That ritual can sometimes have an effect on it.'

'It can?'

'That's why I told you to leave it outside of the runes,' Salazar explained. 'You've slightly changed your magical core and how it interacts, inevitably that will have some affect on the conduit you use to channel magic.'

'How great an affect?' Harry was very fond of his wand. It had never let him down.

'Most of the time it's nothing, neither I nor Tom Riddle ever noticed a difference, but sometimes you might need your wand length changed, a different type of wood or even a new core, but I wouldn't worry about it. You could just have a new one made or, if you can't afford it, don't. The old one might not be a perfect match, but it will still work very well for you.'

'I see.' Harry didn't really want or need a new wand. His holly and phoenix one had been through a great deal with him.

'Well, I should leave.' The water had not really begun to dry and even the study with its warming enchantments wasn't managing to keep the cold off him.

'Visit soon,' the portrait responded, 'but take things easy for a day or two. The rituals will take some time to recover from.'

He nodded and left the portrait to nap in his study, swiftly leaving the chamber, pausing only to inspect the maw of the basilisk and method of extracting the venom without sticking the fangs into his arm again.

'Hey, Myrtle,' he called on his way past the cubicle. There was a startled squeak of alarm and the ghost swooped out to see him.

'Have you been down here all night?' she inquired, her cheeks were rather silver and flushed.

'Yes,' he admitted, 'but you can't tell anyone. I need somewhere that's just for me.'

'I won't share, Harry,' she smiled shyly. 'You're the only person that ever comes to visit and talk to poor Myrtle.'

'Thanks,' he gave her his best smile. 'I have to go change. I'm all wet.'

'I noticed,' Myrtle confessed timidly, then her face went bright silver and she fled back into her toilet.

Odd, Harry thought to himself, eyeing the closed door of Myrtle's cubicle. He shook his head when she didn't re-emerge and continued his way back to Gryffindor Tower.

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