Something Better Than This

Chapter 16: Time, and Time Again

"You all right, mate?"

Harry finished rubbing his eyes and looked up at Ron as he stretched out on the bed. They were still sharing a room. The Founders looked askance when Hermione visited it, but hadn't tried to stop her yet. "Fine."

"Does that mean you're actually fine," Ron asked pointedly, "or do you just want me to stop asking?"

Harry blinked and sat up again. "No, I really am fine," he said. "I mean, still worried about getting rid of Voldemort, but I don't think I have any new problems." He paused. "Do I look like I'm not fine?"

Ron shrugged. "I don't see a lot of you lately. Either Hermione and I are working on the spells, or you're Merlin knows where, or both. When you do make it down to the Chamber with us, you keep yawning." He waved off Harry's guilty look. "What I want to know is, what have they got you doing that's got you so knackered?"

"Godric's teaching me Legilimency and trying to teach me to use a sword. Sometimes both at once." After a moment's thought, he added, "The Legilimency is going better."

"I didn't think that worked too well before. 'Course, that was...." Ron trailed off.

"With Snape." Harry scowled at the thought. "Besides, that was Occlumency. We tried that here too and it didn't go all that well, but Legilimency's... different." His expression lightened a bit as he looked over at Ron a bit sheepishly. "Still kind of tiring, though."

"Yeah, I got that from when you fell asleep when I tried to tell you how the spell was going."

Harry looked at him blankly. "When?"

"Last night!"

"I don't even remember," Harry said bemusedly. "Must've been half asleep already."

"You think?" Ron said, laughing.

Harry's eyes narrowed suddenly in thought.

All three of them were operating on a slightly odd schedule. Their work with the Founders -- three of them, anyway -- was by necessity outside the Founders' usual duties to their own students. Salazar seemed to have plenty of spare time, but he also seemed to find things to fill it, and not all of them involved trying to get Harry to practice giving orders to the grass snakes. (He had given up on getting Harry to spend more time with Urraca, for which Harry was grateful.)

Harry and Ron and Hermione had started taking at least some meals with everyone else, and it was true that between the physical and mental demands of his particular lessons Harry seemed to be sleeping more than the others, but now that he thought about it, that didn't account for everything. So where was everybody? "I don't spend all day asleep, you know," he said. "Neither do you. What have you and Hermione been doing while everybody else is busy?"

To his surprise, the tops of Ron's ears turned pink. "Well, we have been working on the spell without them...."

"Er," Harry said, "if the rest of it's anything like you did with Lavender, you don't have to explain disappearing. I doubt the Founders would like their younger students watching."

Ron's ears turned downright red, and he said, "It's better than with Lavender." He paused. "That's not going to bother you, is it?"

"Only if you can snog her and fight with her at the same time," Harry said solemnly. "Anyway, I think Godric is expecting me to marry your sister."

Ron blinked. "What brought that on? I mean, why were you talking to him about Ginny?"

Harry thought about that for a moment. "I don't think I did, actually. He might've seen it in our lessons. Or Salazar could have told him. I, er, brought her up when he started hinting about Jakinda."

That made Ron stop and blink more. "Marrying Salazar Slytherin's daughter would be weird," he said fervently.

"It'd be even weirder if her father had to hang around and translate," Harry said drily. He paused, thinking about talking to Ron about Dementors and death. Maybe another day. If he tried it now, neither of them would get any sleep. "So. How is the spell coming?"

"Almost done," Ron said, skipping the eerily Hermione-like explanation he'd launched into the last time Harry remembered discussing the subject. Ron hadn't been nearly as huffy as Hermione about being asked to trim it down, though. "We should be ready to try it in a few days."

-----

The spell was ready.

It was untested, of course, because there was no real way to test it.

"I don't suppose you can send a rock or a rat or something a few minutes ahead in time and see if it comes in all right?" Harry asked.

"We did that," Hermione said. "They were both fine. But Harry, that's... that's not really the same spell at all. The important one depends on returning us to the future we left. Preferably not before we left it, or very long after." She wrung her hands. "I did my best with the changes I remembered being made to the calendar."

Ron patted her shoulder. "It'll work," he said.

Harry gave him a curious look. That didn't sound like he was just saying it. It sounded like real confidence.

The air seemed to crackle as they approached the Chamber that night. The electrical feeling might have had something to do with the blue lightning crackling around a weird twisted spiraling ribbon of sand.

"It's a Moebius strip," Hermione whispered.

"Oh," Harry whispered back. "Is that good?"

"It's the part that's supposed to make sure we land close to the time we left."

"Oh," Harry said. He supposed that was good.

Jakinda was sitting well out of the way, unconcerned by Urraca's restless prowl around the floor near her feet. She absently stretched out one foot toward the basilisk, who after a moment shifted and began rubbing her head purposefully against Jakinda's toes. Harry decided it must be time for a new skin.

The four Founders were gathered around the spellworkings, muttering to each other. Harry half expected Ron and Hermione to go join them, but apparently their role was done.

Hermione tugged on his arm. "We've got to go stand under the sand," she said. "We should be touching each other, probably. The spell treats us as a magical unit."

"What's that mean?" Probably that they all had to go together, but he'd guessed that.

"It happens sometimes," Ron said. "Usually to wizards or other magical beings, but I hear it can happen with Muggles too. If you think of yourselves as a group, as part of the same thing, sometimes spells can treat you that way too."

"Usually in groups of three or four," Hermione added, stepping up under the crackling sand and turning to face them. "Actually, three is generally a more powerfully magical number than four, but you need four as well if you're to get to seven or twelve, so fours certainly have their place and the Hogwarts Four are one of the most impressive examples. Trying to deal with more than thirteen individuals as a unit will get ridiculously complicated, though. Very confusing. Thirteen actually presents some particular complications and twists of its own -- some Arithmancers have been driven mad by it -- and there is a certain sort of instability and a tendency to break down into twelve and one, almost as if it's radioactive. But after that the calculations just become unmanageable in themselves. You can work through some of them by breaking down the numbers into factors or smaller groups you can add up, and there have been particular properties of various prime numbers discovered, but it's really challenging and generally not very efficient if you can't find one of those patterns. Although looking for new ones is very interesting!" She stopped for a breath. Harry wasn't sure whether she'd had another one since she started. "Anyway, that's one of the reasons wizards set up so many things in slightly larger prime numbers... eleven and up. It cuts down on magical interference."

Harry blinked. "What does it mean to be treated as a magical unit? And do they count?" He nodded at the Founders as he and Ron tried to find a position where they could all stand touching each other and still talk. Holding hands in a ring hadn't been quite what he had in mind, but it worked well enough. He peered past Ron. "Even though Salazar left?"

"Apparently. Anyway, usually it means that you're more effective together than apart, or sometimes that if one of you is affected by something then you all are -- though of course that can just be because you won't leave each other alone! -- or very often that there are certain types of spells that need something from all of you or have to affect each of you in order to affect any."

Harry frowned. "That sounds kind of worrying, somehow."

"Suits me," Ron said. "We already said we're in this with you, didn't we? Anyhow, it's kind of fuzzy. In this case, if it's true, it mostly means we got here... er, now... together and it'll be safer and less complicated to send us back all at once instead of separately. Which is what we wanted to do anyway."

"Prepare yourselves," Salazar called, and Harry relayed it. And then laughed a little at Salazar's expression when the other three Founders, instead of simply casting the spell, all went up to say goodbye. He joined them after a moment, gripping Harry's shoulder. "You have been worth knowing," he said at last.

Godric shot a penetrating glance at his old friend before looking into Harry's eyes. "Perhaps he can't bring himself to say he wishes you success, given whom you have to fight, but I can." Bright laughter in his eyes, though it didn't come out in his voice. "And I can say I'm glad to have you in my House. You've been a good student, and you do me honor."

Harry felt as if his brain was tongue-tied, but he felt Godric understood him well enough.

The Founders stepped back and raised their wands; Harry and his friends drew together. This was flashy magic, unrefined; the wand motions were swoopy and intricate, the light waving from them in multicolored braids. The lightning in the sand flashed blinding white. Thunder cracked.

When Harry's vision cleared and his ears stopped ringing, the Founders were still standing there, frowning and speaking to each other with considerable agitation. Ron paled; Hermione gave a small cry of dismay and ran down to join the group. Ron followed her after a moment, leaving Harry feeling rather ridiculous.

He had just decided to go down and join them when the group broke up again. Salazar was swearing vilely in Parseltongue, which didn't seem like a good sign.

Hermione hurried up to him with Ron beside her. "Harry," she said, then shot an agonized glance back at the Founders. "The spell wants Salazar and Jakinda to come with us."

"What?"

"They're what's missing. It must be..." Hermione faltered. "They must not have existed, in the time between now and then. From the perspective of where, I mean when, we want to get back to, they did disappear off the face of the earth right about now. So for us to reach our future... for it to exist... he can't exist in between. That's why nobody knows Salazar Slytherin came back to Hogwarts and was reconciled with the other three Founders. That's why there's no record.... It has to be a secret. He has to come with us. And Harry... I told you before, remember? There's no record of Salazar Slytherin coming back to Hogwarts."

Harry turned in a daze to Salazar, but evidently the first shock had worn off; he was embracing his three dearest friends, and when that was done, he turned to Harry with a crooked smile. "I suppose I'll see for myself that Hogwarts is to last more than a thousand years." His eyes kindled, a green glint in their dark depths. "And come to think of it," he said with the smile growing fierce, "if we're to join your time, then I fully intend that both Jakinda and I will outlive this madman you're planning to kill. He shall not be the last of my line living after all."

"You'll come, then?" Harry stared at him. "You'll leave everything here and come with us?"

"I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to it... but it appears that from your end of history, I already did."

After explaining the situation to her, Salazar took the pendant from Jakinda's neck and gave it, looking somewhat reluctant, into Godric's keeping; after all, they knew it had been passed on to his other descendants, and trying to take it along would probably just choke the spell and make them have to start over a third time. While Jakinda hugged the other three (even Godric), Salazar crossed the Chamber to the basilisk, who now lay along the wall and was making the most mournful noises Harry had ever heard out of a serpent.

"Ah, sweet one, my huntress," Salazar whispered to her. Harry felt as if he shouldn't listen; no one else in the room could eavesdrop, but he had no choice. Parseltongue was peculiarly penetrating. "I'd take you with me if I could, you know, and preserve you from the fate the boy says you have in store. The spell wouldn't work if I tried to bring you... in their past, I left you here. Twice, it seems. It won't even do any good to warn you against listening to any descendant of mine who set you against Hogwarts itself -- you won't listen, or you'll forget, somehow. The blood spells hold too well. I thought my line would be the only ones to speak to you, but I thought they'd be worthier. I'm sorry, Urraca."

Harry thought about the feel of a sword hilt in his hands and didn't look at either of them.

The five of them, this time, all stepped into the field of the spell again. Salazar held Jakinda's arm; she looked pale enough to fall over.

Only three wands rose this time. And this time when the spell began, over the basilisk's sorrowful hiss of goodbye there rose a mad and rushing wind.

When the flare and thunder ended, they stood in the Chamber of Secrets still, but it was damp and dark and smelled of dead basilisk and the centuries left behind. Salazar bowed his head.

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