Thursday, November 26, 1994 – Evening
The Chamber of Secrets had not been opened since Harry had done so in his second year. His mission on that occasion was to rescue Ginny Weasley, his then best friend’s little sister.
Now he was guiding a Greengrass house-elf into the chamber in order to survey the chamber and determine what wards protected it.
This little guy is nothing like Dobby. He is almost silent, all the time. I suppose Dobby is what he seems to be, a bit weird. Being tortured for all those years by the Malfoys would do that.
Lord Greengrass suspected that the Chamber was just outside the Hogwarts wards. None of the events of the second year had triggered any ward alarms. The Chamber must be outside the wards and the entrance was a hole in the ward scheme, set up by Salazar Slytherin himself. If that was true, then the activity of harvesting the basilisk carcass would not be reported to the headmaster.
The suspicions were proved to be correct. The chamber and the tunnels leading to it were outside the Hogwarts wards.
“The wards finish just below the bathroom entrance, Master Harry. The bathroom was built over the original entrance when plumbing was installed long ago.” Tinny gave Harry a rare summary of what his house-elf magic was sensing.
The wards did not extend below ground as far as they did above ground. This could be fixed by adding new rune stones to the ward array but ‘out of sight, out of mind’ thinking had prevented these simple adjustments from being made.
The headmaster continued to be absent for long periods. It was rumoured that Dumbledore’s position in the ICW was under threat and that he had to make extended trips to the Continent and Africa to build up his support. The Greengrass sources of information were unerringly accurate.
Once Harry had shown Tinny, the house-elf, into the chamber, the Greengrass Potions harvesting team could be brought in by house-elf side-along-apparition.
Lord Greengrass, Unspeakable Davis, Professor Dawes and the team were meeting nearly every week in the Merlin House head of house office.
“Harry, your own personal Potter accounts have been paying for Merlin House up to now. You should be compensated for that. The salvaging of the basilisk carcass for hide and flesh, bones and venom will make a considerable number of galleons for Greengrass Potions. Your reward for the basilisk now totals two hundred thousand galleons. That is more what you will spend to keep Merlin House running for years.” Lord Greengrass presented Harry with a summary of the basilisk project.
“I don’t need this much money!” Harry was amazed.
“You have been poorly advised in the past, or rather, not advised at all on what you should have been given for your victories. The exact details of what you have achieved have been kept secret. I can only speculate as to why Dumbledore wanted to hush this up. He only ever hinted that you performed some heroic deeds and let the rumour mill fill in the blanks, which has been very damaging for you.” Professor Dawes gave Harry another long serious stare.
Lord Greengrass spoke again.
“Please let us advise you on your finances Harry. The more we find out, the richer you seem to be. Don’t be guilty about having money. Money gives you opportunities to change things that you don’t like. If you were as poor as you were told you were, you would have to suffer seeing injustice all around without having the means to change the situation.” Lord Greengrass waited for Harry to respond.
Harry shrugged and didn’t say anything. He kept his thoughts to himself; I have never changed anything by using my money. I don’t see what they are talking about.
Lord Greengrass continued. “We need another week to finish the harvesting and clean up the Chamber. The basilisk venom did not leak out of the carcass, but the smell is lingering. The Chamber should then be ready to use again. We have found a set of rooms behind the big Salazar Slytherin carving.”
The Merlin House students were suddenly even more interested.
“The basilisk pen is connected by side corridors to these rooms which seem to be living quarters for Slytherin himself. There is an office there with storage for thousands of scrolls which have been preserved under stasis charms. Unspeakable Davis has examined these scrolls and has some interesting ideas about them.”
The Unspeakable hummed and then spoke. “These scrolls are all written in an unknown type of script. I am guessing that the script is really a shorthand for a spoken language, possibly parseltongue. If this is correct, we may be able to decode them and get a treasure trove of studies in magic written by Slytherin himself. Ordinarily we would be stuck right now, as the Unspeakables do not have a parseltongue speaker. But we aren’t stuck now. We have Harry.”
“I can’t read parseltongue, I can only speak it when there is a snake to talk to.” Harry responded with a glum face.
Unspeakable Davis hummed and said, “We just need you to speak a series of sentences that we have made up. They are in English. We can get you to read them to any snake, such as a common adder. We can then write out what you said in a shorthand script that we know was in use in Slytherins time. Yes, shorthand is that old. It is much older, dating back to Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek and Early Imperial Chinese times. Of course, they were different versions.”
Harry nodded, “OK. But how will that help?”
“We can match the patterns. There are many common words, magical and mundane which were used then and now. Once we start to get some key words identified we should be able to decode the parseltongue shorthand and translate it into modern English. The resulting translation would have a value beyond price.”
Harry summoned his resolve. “There is another issue that I must tell you about. My Godfather, Sirius Black has returned to Britain. He has got in contact with me. He is staying at his family home, 12 Grimmauld Place. If you remember, that is where the Locket Horcrux is located. If you agree, I can ask him to find the Locket and hand it over to us.” They all stared at Harry. That sounded too easy.
After a short debate in which Harry vouched for Sirius, it was agreed that the request could be made. Sirius would have to be told about how important Slytherin’s Locket was.
Harry didn’t notice that his word was enough to persuade all these powerful and highly educated adults.
The meeting broke up. Harry trudged back up the tower.
They seem to be happy with what they are getting out of this. The Unspeakables are getting secret knowledge. Lord Greengrass is making money. The Abbott family get their money from Lord Greengrass. The Li family also gets money from the Greengrass businesses. Susan’s Aunty Amelia must have got a big career boost from capturing Barty Crouch Junior. Lots of people were happy that Barty Crouch Senior was discredited for breaking his son out of Azkaban, which didn’t get a mention in The Daily Prophet. They are all talking to me because if they don’t, Hecate will put them in the looney bin. Why am I doing this?
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