88 Chapter 88: Pendulum

If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

31 October 1992, Hogwarts

Well, Harry had to admit that the man was good. But he needed to get to the common room before anyone would notice that he was away. He needed to plan, but this wasn't the time for it. After all, it was Samhain, and he would be foolish not to use such an important magical event to give himself an edge. He had a ritual to prepare for.

In the stupor provoked by the mysterious attack on Argus Filch and Mrs Norris, none of the other students had even noticed that Harry had left. Honestly, he probably wouldn't figure out something that he didn't already know. Riddle wasn't sloppy. The only clue would be the message, which happened to look like perfect letters in a high up position. Theoretically, any adult would be able to do it, so, assuming that the older student wouldn't let such an obvious clue slip. Tom had obviously enchanted a brush or some paint to do it.

So, as callous as it might seem, there wasn't much Harry could figure out from the scene of the attack. His time was better spent on other pursuits, like figuring out how to best use the Samhain Ritual to prepare himself. As far as he could tell, the best clue would be to use it to 'upgrade' his magical crest. It was very powerful and filled with countless spells and magics. Magic that he could use against Riddle.

He didn't really know what the results of his plan would be, which made sense since magical crests were personalized and varied greatly between families. Harry had read the incantation in the book the Room of Requirements had given him about magical crests, the one that he translated. He had to say, it was a far better read now that he had a good understanding of old English.

Still, it was an incantation that was supposed to enhance your connection to your crest. It commonly prompted visions of remnants of past users of the crest, and sometimes people ended up with new skills, but that was a rare event.

It wasn't something that was commonly known. Harry had discreetly asked Daphne, but she said that any magic regarding the Greengrass magical spell was recorded and that they usually left them alone until a scion's thirteenth birthday, but the last Potter wasn't that patient.

Honestly, the magical circles that the crest was slowly teaching him were already hard enough, and versatile enough for Harry to be busy for the rest of the year. No, the issue was Riddle. He needed an advantage because he was losing quite badly in their little game of shadows. The scales needed to be even once more.

Still, it was a risky maneuver but then again, Harry was preparing to fight a fucking Basilisk. There wasn't anything riskier than that, really.

When he returned to the common room, the atmosphere was oddly subdued. Preparations for the Samhain ritual aside, the Chamber of Secrets being opened was a big deal for the house, and it wasn't for a good reason.

People don't really realize that the blood purists in the house of the snakes were a loud minority. Sure, there was a little discrimination, but the actual number of purebloods in the house wasn't that much higher than in the other houses. The only difference was that the rest was filled with half-bloods, and there weren't any muggleborns. The chamber of secrets being opened was like a shining light on the house, and every single Slytherin was going to be watched even more carefully than they usually were.

Of course, that asshole Malfoy didn't help matters. Yelling out that the 'Mudbloods were next' was not a good look at the house as a whole. It seems like the entire house of the snakes would have a few uncomfortable months, especially since the attacker killed Mrs Norris.

Still, all things considered, it wasn't time to start pointing fingers. Harry was sure the Slytherin Court was going to need to address the entire house about something. They don't normally talk to the house needlessly, so that would be the first time that Harry would see the mysterious group that is pretty much in charge of the entire house.

Deciding to focus on the ritual instead, Harry slowly walked towards the hidden ritual rooms. Harry put on his ritual robes and mask and ignored the weird feedback from his arcane hearing of the ambient magic sliding off the robes. He saw the first years follow a prefect towards the general ritual room. Harry followed them from behind and took a place in the large circle around the room. Harry didn't really have the resources to start a ritual of his own and honestly, he didn't need to. Unless he was planning something fundamentally different instead of the standard ritual, like using human sacrifices or something that disturbing, there wasn't really a reason not to just use the general one.

The moment he stepped into the room; Harry relished the silence that came with it. In a castle full of magic, his Arcane Hearing was always hit with endless noise. He had done his best to ignore it, but it was still this little noise in his head that just wouldn't go away. It was far worse in sections of the castles that were obviously added afterwards. It didn't mean that the enchantment didn't work properly, only that it was fundamentally different, and to Harry, it just sounded like two different songs playing at once, instead of it integrating into one larger song instead.

The room itself was illuminated by completely non-magical candles, and like last time, there was a large stone, a monolith, really, in the middle of the rune, filled with what Harry recognized to be Celtic runes. The Potter scion didn't examine everything, but from the looks of it, it was a prayer for the Morrigan, the Celtic Goddess of Death, asking for peace of those who are beyond the veil. Whoever had set this up had pretty much copied an already working ritual the Celts had designed and were commonly using. Finding and sharing that ritual was impressive, but there was no originality in it. It was like a set of instructions were followed. It worked, but Harry couldn't help but feel disappointed by the fact that very little originality and ritual design were actually used.

Of course, the animal sacrifice thing happened, powering the ritual like the previous time. The candles were blown, plunging the room into darkness, other than the glowing runes on the monolith of course. And alongside this change in scenery, the primal magic that Harry had felt the previous year enveloped the room. Harry still couldn't make heads or tails of it. It was just multidimensional, on a plane that Harry just couldn't perceive. The song that it tried to convey was so complex, so beautiful, even in his limited perception of it. The magic was so fundamentally different from anything he had felt anywhere else.

It was deep and raw magic, the type, which was practised thousands of years ago, when humanity was young, and science was not even a whisper. A time when magic ruled sovereign and was present everywhere in the grass and the rivers. A time which did not exist anymore today.

As far as Harry could theorize, this was the closest thing he felt to True Magic. Wizards simply could not conceptualize the entire thing and decided to implement only facets of it. It was probably why this raw magic was so potent and complex, while magic cast by humans was easily three-dimensional. Our magic is humanity's interpretation of the Source, which is incomplete. The magic itself was filled with Darkness, with Death. After all, it was the day of the dead, and a life was sacrificed for this magic. It was oppressive yet welcoming. It was mostly peaceful.

With that realization, a small sense of clarity appeared to Harry, and he could finally hear something else in the raw death tainted magic of the ritual. There was something hidden inside the Death energy, something powerful. It was so much bigger on the inside than from the outside somehow. It was very hard to explain but it was a beautiful concept, complicated yet so sad. Life. Harry instinctively understood what this was. As a person who has experienced Death, he knows what Life feels like. It was beautiful, just amazing, filled with possibilities and choices. But it always ended the same way, with forgotten memories and tears, thus the sad. After all, everything's got to end sometime. Otherwise, nothing would ever get started.

The question was why there was so much Life, on a ritual based on a day of death. Or perhaps it was the Dead celebrating life in a way. When Harry focused even more on the feeling of life, he could almost hear a familiar melody that resembled his own. It was so full of wonder and love that it surprised him. He had never experienced such fiery passion before and he closed his eyes, trying to hold back the small tears just from the feeling. He had never felt anything more beautiful than this. Was this what his mother felt towards him? It certainly couldn't be anything else.

And just as he was going further and further, the raw magic practically dissipated, and Harry realized that he has been absorbing the death energy all this time without realizing it. His magical circuits were filled with magic that he knew exactly what to do with them. As the prefects were unlocking the magical crests of the first-years, Harry murmured an incantation, "Middland þu earfe mine foregane, ic ræġað þū, þæt þu þære me wisan. Aide and mestere me þā bēode þā fiercen stofne."

It meant 'Legacy of my ancestors, I call upon you to show me the way. Aid and advise me to weather the coming storm.' It was a small incantation in old English. There was a reason why people moved away from Latin and Old English. Words have power, and somehow these languages shaped magic, in a way. It was why the entirety of Europe which use wands, still use Latin spells. It was just more potent than any other common language to shape magic. Old English was the same, but since it was connected more to druidism than wand casting, it isn't really known.

As he expected, Harry's crest started to burn slightly, and it slowly absorbed the magic that he had gained from the ritual. It wasn't really painful, but the feeling of losing that much raw energy was uncomfortable.

Suddenly, the ritual room disappeared, and instead, Harry found himself surrounded by a land of shadows. There wasn't a sun in the sky and yet there was this glow that made Harry see shapes at the distance. No, the darkness was illuminating the path somehow. That paradox almost gave the Potter scion a headache by itself. The shadows themselves seemed alive, more akin to floating fluids, than reflections of light as they were in the mortal world. Harry followed the illuminated path until he saw a withered tree that didn't have a single leaf. There was no life around. Honestly, if that was the inner representation of the crest, then it definitely looked threatening.

Movement! Something was moving up on the tree. It was a raven. It cawed and floated down to the ground and shifted to a carbon copy of Harry but with silver eyes.

It was odd, seeing this imperfect reflection of his own face. The man's silver eyes were glowing like full moons, but there was something else bothering Harry about them. Ah, yes, they were old eyes, wise eyes, that just didn't look right on someone his age.

Deciding to take the initiative, Harry calmly asked, "Who are you?"

"My name is Ignotus Peverell, young Potter. And I believe we have much to discuss."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.