Two days later.
Late at night, with the clock striking eleven, a figure in black robes moved through the cold, dim corridors of the school. Lit only by small steel candelabras, he made his way toward the staircase leading to the fifth floor.
"My lord, the Headmaster has begun to move. He is heading toward the exit of his office."
The voice echoed in his mind, but Severus did not break stride. He rounded the corner and stepped onto the first step.
"Understood. Keep watching him and inform me if he moves in my direction," he ordered. He climbed the stairs and moved along the fifth-floor corridor, heading straight for the spot where Rowena Ravenclaw had presumably hidden her library.
"Yes, my lord."
He was fortunate tonight. The full moon would occur at exactly eleven, when all students and staff were already asleep and no one would be around to interfere. Filch, who normally patrolled the castle at night, was occupied with his cat. Severus had prescribed her vitamins under the guise of medicine, making it unlikely Filch would venture far from his office. McGonagall usually joined the patrol, but her shift fell that night, and she had examinations to grade, so she had left everything to Filch.
But what does the old man need at this hour? A suspicion had already formed in Severus's mind that Dumbledore knew about this place, but...
"My lord, the Headmaster has left his office and is heading toward the staircase."
The voice belonged to Pettigrew, the personality imprint left within the artifact he had taken from the Marauders. Severus's expression tightened slightly.
"What's wrong?" Nagini asked, puzzled by the change in his expression.
"Dumbledore has left his office and..."
"My lord, he has come down to the seventh floor and is continuing to descend."
A few seconds later, Severus stopped before a large window with a fine view of the night sky and the moon, whose light fell perfectly on the section of the castle wall where four lines intersected.
"...already on the sixth floor..." He opened a pocket watch engraved with the emblems of the four houses and checked the time. "Two more minutes..."
"Perhaps he knows about this place?"
"Perhaps he..." But before he could finish, the tracker's voice reached him again.
"My lord, he is descending to the fifth floor and... he has left the staircase and is heading in your direction."
...does. He's coming straight for us." Severus glanced toward the source of the quiet, steadily approaching footsteps, clicked his tongue in displeasure, and looked back at the window. "One more minute..."
A moment later, the spot where Severus had been standing was empty. The faint glow of the candelabras lit the figure of an old man as he stepped into the corridor and looked thoughtfully around the area near the window.
"Hmm... I must have imagined it," Dumbledore said with a weary sigh.
The past few weeks had taken a toll on the Headmaster. He had not gotten a proper night's rest. After Hagrid was bitten by an Acromantula, Ministry officials and the Board of Governors had descended on the school and given him no peace ever since. As a result, Dumbledore had been forced to use his connections at St. Mungo's to keep the gamekeeper there for a while longer. Hagrid's nature was far too gentle; he might not have withstood that pressure, and he could easily let something slip about the spiders, whose numbers had multiplied in the forest largely because of him. If that happened, Azkaban would be the best-case outcome. The worst would be the Dementor's Kiss, since breeding dangerous magical creatures classified at the same threat level as Basilisks and Dragons was strictly prohibited, permitted only with Ministry approval under specific conditions, and only after receiving full authorization from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.
Beyond that, difficulties had begun in the Wizengamot, where Albus had spent a very long time building influence, and none of this accounted for Voldemort, who required constant watching. The combined result was that Dumbledore looked utterly drained, as though he had aged ten years overnight.
Smiling with visible effort, Dumbledore ran his palm along the brick wall.
"Perhaps I should give this up..." he murmured, watching the moonlight grow brighter with every passing second until, all at once, symbols of every kind began appearing from top to bottom across the empty brick wall, filling it from edge to edge. "What was it you wanted to tell us, founder...?"
Dumbledore had learned of this place from his predecessor. Armando Dippet had stumbled upon the message within one of the Ravenclaw chambers purely by chance. After nearly two months of effort, Dippet eventually traced the source to this exact spot. However, the inquiry ended there. Dippet had managed to translate sixty percent of the runes over the course of nearly ten years, yet he encountered symbols absent from any book. Consequently, it was impossible to understand what Rowena Ravenclaw had intended to say.
Dumbledore had also attempted the task, enlisting the aid of his old French friend, Nicolas Flamel. Together they deciphered another ten percent, as Flamel happened to possess an ancient volume in his vast collection containing translations for certain symbols. That was where they reached an impasse. The remaining thirty percent were scattered throughout the text, making it impossible to derive any complete sense from them.
Dumbledore still could not fathom why Rowena had left behind something so complex that it defied translation entirely. At times, he even wondered if she had simply wished to torment those who followed in her footsteps.
Another weary sigh escaped him. Shaking his head slowly, he watched the runes fade with something akin to longing in his eyes. He visited this location every month at the full moon, hoping something might have shifted. Yet every month he departed with the riddle still unsolved.
Once Dumbledore had finally disappeared around the corner, Severus leaned out from the right side of the window frame. He pulled back inside and stood quietly, studying the symbols pensively.
"I underestimated her. She was far cleverer than I gave her credit for..." he muttered, a crooked smile touching his lips. What he was looking at was not ordinary runes at all, but the script of his own world, though somewhat unevenly formed. "No wonder I could sense nothing. This is not paint but a mineral worked into the bricks. It held no magic, no scent, only becoming visible under bright moonlight."
"Well? What does it say?" Nagini hissed, impatience coloring her tone. Severus rarely wore that expression, but when he did, it meant he had found something genuinely interesting.
"A rare type of rune... very rare indeed." Severus smirked and glanced at her. She returned his look with a hint of displeasure, as if she already knew he was holding something back. "Very well. Let us go to one last place." He patted her head and headed for the staircase.
Meow.
"You may join us." He smiled, glancing sideways at Lucky, who had been lurking in the shadows, then shifted his gaze back to Nagini and added, "Do not be upset. I promised I would tell you everything, just not right now. Allow me to keep this to myself a little longer."
"Hmph." Nagini let out a displeased snort and turned her head away, though she still permitted him to stroke her. Even with the human soul residing within her, it brought her immense pleasure.
They did not go far, only two floors down, on the opposite side of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, in a corridor where lessons were almost never held. Still, there was one thing Severus genuinely could not comprehend.
"Why does everyone have this obsession with placing entrances to significant locations right next to the girls' bathrooms?" he muttered, his eye twitching slightly as he glanced at the entrance barely a meter away. "Very well." He pushed aside the distraction, walked up to the wall, and calmly began counting bricks from the bathroom door until he stopped at the fifth. He pressed it, and the stone shifted back almost imperceptibly, barely a millimeter. Next, he pressed the brick two spaces above, followed by the center of that same brick, then downward, left, and right. Now he needed the answer to the riddle, written in the script of his world.
The message back on the fifth-floor wall had been addressed to the "young Ravenclaw" who had come this far. It praised the progress made and urged caution, subtly suggesting that he revisit the initial stage at the end and give it slightly more attention than the others.
Severus had needed none of that. His eyes had locked onto the familiar symbols the moment he saw them. He knew them as well as his own name. Hidden within them was the next location, the exact sequence of bricks to press, and a riddle that was surprisingly simple, almost childlike. The answer was "book," though it had to be written in the script of his world, which posed no difficulty whatsoever.
Finally, after tracing the last symbol, he erected a barrier around the wall. It shuddered a moment later, then, with a grinding screech, began to slide open, shedding what appeared to be centuries of accumulated dust. A passage opened before him, revealing a staircase leading down.
"And there's our library... hopefully..." After the past two weeks, he found it hard to believe that what he sought was actually down there, but he had no choice. He raised several barriers around himself, since there was no telling what to expect, and began his descent. The passage closed slowly behind them, just like the doors in those TV movies they used to watch whenever the heroes stumbled into a trap. It unsettled Nagini slightly. Lucky was entirely composed, looking about with curiosity as they wound their way down the spiral staircase.
Several minutes later, when the staircase finally ended and Severus stepped off the last step, a plain wooden door materialized from nothing directly in front of them. An eagle was engraved on a blue background, but there was no handle.
"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." A plain book appeared in his hand, and a moment later a recess opened in the stone wall beside the door. Severus placed the book inside it.
The bolt slid back. A click. The door began to open slowly.
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Chapters on Patreon progress: Currently at;
1. Harry Potter: Satan? Nah, Just My Family Crest = CHAPTER 274
2.Marvel: Cosmic Forger of Infinity = CHAPTER 191
3.Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World = CHAPTER 275
4.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = CHAPTER 118
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