"I'm not doing any rituals," he stated.
"Why ever not?" he demanded.
"Only because they are evil! The current dark lord underwent many rituals and everyone knows how sound his mind is!" Harry retorted.
"Boy, what did I tell you about magic? You won't engage in any sacrificial actss involving living beingsss! Instead, you will sacrifice some dead thingss and your goal will be to improve yourself, so you can sssurvive and have a future!"
"Explain to me, where do you see the malevolence in that?" he questioned sharply.
Harry didn't reply as he couldn't deny the older man's logic.
'Am I being close-minded again? If Salazar had more time we wouldn't have to resort to rituals, and I'm the only one to blame for my utter incompetence…'
"Is there nothing I can do that will stop your portrait imprint from fading?" he asked, a flicker of hope in his flashy green eyes, making Slytherin sigh.
"If there is one, I don't know of it," he replied, crushing whatever optimism Harry managed to concentrate.
"Please, listen to me Harry and understand what I'm saying… This portrait is dying and it will soon cease existing. I don't have enough time to prepare you to face this world and teach you the required magic to do that. Undergoing a ritual will gift you abilities, hopefully powerful enough to make a difference. You have to survive!"
Salazar's portrait would feel dirty during his remaining life for saying his next words, yet he had to make sure that the teen in front of him saw sense.
"Didn't you tell me that your parents died saving you? Does their sacrifice mean so little to you? They died so you would live Harry Potter. Perform the rituals, grow stronger and survive."
The "parents card" hit home and even though Harry knew why his forefather pulled it, he again found himself unable to disagree with his words and quite annoyed.
After pondering on the older man's words for a minute, Harry shook his head in defeat.
"Fine. Where do I start?" he asked, his voice barely louder than a whisper.
"That'sss my heir. First of all, you'll have to continue your story. I'll devise a ritual based on the events that led you here," he hissed excitedly while stroking his magnificent beard.
And so Harry started, albeit reluctantly, recounting the chapters of his life with a mixture of anger and sadness. He began with the abusive days of his childhood, making Salazar stop him many times so he could recompose himself.
"…I stabbed him through his mouth with Gryffindor's sword but one of his fangs burrowed its way deep inside my forearm. Then, I suddenly started feeling the dizziest I've ever felt in my life."
"You should be dead!" shouted Salazar in incredulity, seemingly uncaring about the fact that the person in front of him was the one who killed his old familiar and also the reason for his portrait's slow demise.
"It's good that I happen to be the boy who lived then!" Harry shouted back.
He didn't appreciate The parselmouth's words.
"As I was saying… I took the fang out and moved towards the diary I told you about earlier; it was lying on the floor near the redhead girl. The younger version of the dark lord boasted about how his memory was preserved in the diary and how the poison from the tooth was killing me. At that moment, I remembered that the ink from my pen was absorbed into the book and an idea popped in my mind. I guessed that the diary would absorb the poison as well and I went for it. As everything turned out alright in the end, I was probably right."
"Are you going to tell me how you survived a basilisk's bite?" Salazar spoke over Harry again.
"Bloody hell, and I thought that I was the impatient one… If you will let me continue?" Harry muttered in exasperation.
After getting a nod from Slytherin, he sighed and continued.
"The phoenix made a reappearance and flew over to me. It leaned over my forearm and cried on the bite mark. It was incredible! The mark disappeared in seconds and all the dizziness vanished."
"Implausible! A phoenix cried for you?" he asked, disbelief having taken over him yet again.
'An anomaly. This boy is an anomaly,' he chanted in his head.
"Yes. Why is that so surprising though? I've heard that phoenix tears are rare but that they also sell for a lot of money. So they can't be that special, can they?" the dimwit asked.
Salazar laughed.
His laughter filled the ginormous room they were currently in, even reaching as far as the chamber. Had the other founders heard him, they'd be astonished. It wasn't often that Salazar Slytherin laughed.
"Oh, thisss iss the best, the besst," he whispered, slipping in parseltongue.
Harry had to shout to get back the man's attention.
"My morning classes start soon and unless you want to explain why you started laughing like a maniac, I'll be off," he informed the older man, annoyed at his antics.
"It's good to see that you are taking my bits of advice to heart. If you want to start skipping classes you should at least have a solid plan on continuing your education. But I digress," he said, happy that his words weren't ignored.
"I'm sure you've wondered about how your dark lord still lives, even though he should have died. Considering the possession of your defence against the dark arts teacher in your first year and the diary possession in your second year, I'm very confident that you are dealing with horcruxes," he stated.
Before Harry could voice out his ignorance, the man continued.
"In halfwit terms, a Horcrux is created by a dark wizard or witch to achieve a form of immortality. To create a Horcrux, the mage must first damage their soul. The most common and crude way this could be achieved is by committing a murder, a true, deliberate and conscious act of murder against another person without any regret or remorse. Then, the person would sever the damaged portion of their soul and encase it in a designated object. They would also have to act in haste, as the soul will heal itself fast. The object used to contain the soul fragment could be just about anything, even a living being could be made into a container. As long as that object remained intact, the soul fragment inside it would live on, keeping the maker anchored to the living world, even if their body were to take fatal damage."
Suddenly, one old conversation came to Harry's mind and a feeling of primordial horror washed over him.
Flashback
"Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure..."
"Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?" Harry asked, thunderstruck.
"It certainly seems so," Dumbledore replied.
End of flashback
Harry was feeling very self-conscious about a certain scar on his body.
He put his hand on the world-famous lightning bolt and opened his mouth to ask a question whose answer he didn't want to know.
"Am I a Horcrux?"
"Bearing in mind that your scar hurts when near the bastard, I'd say so. However, fret not. There's a spell which you could cast to find out," Salazar said merrily.
Salazar's tone was in deep contrast to Harry's feelings at the moment.
He felt despair.
'I house the soul of the monster that killed my parents and I'm one of the reasons that he still lives.'
Breath after breath, Harry managed to regain a semblance of control.
"What's the incantation?" he asked numbly, thinking that if Salazar was happy, not all was lost.
"Well, you could try Homenum Revelio, though I'm not sure if it's appropriate for a Horcrux, no. Anima revelio should be your go-to since it reveals every kind of soul there is, though it may take some time to get it right. Tenebris anima revelio is easier to cast and will also work as it reveals only the tainted souls," Salazar offered.
"Wand motion?"
"A V and an equilateral triangle respectively."
Harry didn't waste any time and got to the casting.
He thought back to the only lesson about magic that he had with the Slytherin Lord as of yet, where he explicitly drilled into him that when casting a spell, one must be very precise in the desired outcome.
He intended to find any tainted souls in his vicinity and chanted the incantation.
"Tenebris anima revelio!"
He felt something swoop low over him, immersing his body in its shadow and then he felt it.
A tingling sensation from the magic itself, showing him that it had indeed found a tainted soul as asked, made Harry fall to his knees.
Needless to say, the sensation was on his forehead.
On his scar.
"I'm a Horcrux," he murmured.
'This is it,' he thought, discarding any previous optimistic frivolities.
He quickly understood what being a dark lord's horcrux meant.
'Sooner or later I'll die, so the monster can be put down and Dumbledore knows.'
"EXCELLENT. TRULY EXCELLENT MY HEIR," he shouted delightedly, baffling Harry.
"Screw it. Can I eat the portrait?" Ash requested from his arm.
(Last edit: 16/07/2024)