28 Chapter 28
Holding a sheet of paper in his hand, Slughorn looked at Severus thoughtfully.
"I don't even know what to say, I can't say for sure whether it is true or not, first you need research, which will take a lot of time, as well as Galleons, and this is not a couple of thousand, but tens, not to mention that you also need permission from the Ministry of Magic for this, and three more unknown ingredients …" stroking his temples, the man shook his head. "Better give it up: it's simply impossible, no matter how many years you spend studying, and I'm not underestimating your talent in any way, but even I can't do it."
"Professor, I'll still ask you to help me get these ingredients, and you don't have to worry about Galleons: I recently opened a small shop and I can earn enough ... although not officially ..." he added embarrassedly, and Slughorn sighed tragically. "And why is it that almost everyone I personally teach is on such a slippery slope, first Tom, and now you, Severus..."
"Who is this 'Tom'?"
"Ahh what? What do you mean? Which Tom? Maybe you heard wrong?" the man spoke quickly, causing the Archmage's right eye to twitch.
"Professor, you don't know how to lie ..." Slughorn childishly looked away and began to peer into the cauldron with terrible interest.
"But I won't demand that you tell me your story, maybe someday you can trust me and tell me yourself ... I-I...I should go anyway now…"
"Wait… eh… I've always tried to be a law-abiding citizen…" Slughorn muttered sadly, taking out his wand, and then waving it, and a bag appeared on his palm.
"If someone finds this from you, I can't do anything." Seven small glass bottles with various plants appeared on the ground, and two of them contained eyes and a heart that was still beating.
"Did someone talk about being a "law-abiding citizen"?" Severus said while looking at his head of the house.
"Hm! I am a potion master and I have every right to carry such ingredients with me," the man chuckled, raising his chin, which made Severus unable to restrain himself and he laughed out loud, embarrassing the teacher a little.
"Thank you professor, I will never forget your help and I swear that I will not use these ingredients for any dark rituals or cursed potions, only for good," after putting everything into his wallet, under the professor's puzzled look, he took out four different types of potions, two copies of each, and put them on the table.
"This is…?" Slughorn asked.
"I worked on them during the holidays and would like to show you…"
At that moment, there was a knock on the door and a childish voice was heard. "Professor, will there be a lesson today?"
"Oh! I forgot, wait one minute!"
Severus kept them and said "I'll come back to you in the evening and you can tell me your assessment then, as I'm also late for the class, until the evening, professor," and he quickly headed towards the exit.
"Goodbye Mr. Snape," Slughorn glanced at the eight potions and quickly put them back into the pouch, then looked towards the door where the first years were staring at him. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, come on in..."
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Severus did not rush to the Runes lesson only because the teacher herself was not there yet, because at the moment, according to Wormtail, she was in the headmaster's office.
"I thought you wouldn't talk about me." Nagini said or hissed.
"I wouldn't, but I still need his support, and I have confidence in him, he is the only person I can trust in this place."
"And the Headmaster, he seems to be not bad ... in appearance …" Nagini looked at him with her head raised.
"Perhaps he is not bad, but I don't like his look ... too good-natured, but I don't even want to imagine what is hidden behind this facade." Severus said, shaking his head.
"I think so too… " Nagini agreed with him. "For some reason, I did not like him at first sight, as if something inside me was screaming not to approach him. Maybe animal instinct?" she added, puzzled, thinking about something.
"It may well be that he is still a rather powerful wizard, and fear of him is a normal reaction," Severus did not deny her words, although he had a completely different opinion, which he nevertheless decided to keep to himself for now.
A few minutes later, they reached the sixth floor after a bit of rolling up the stairs.
Hogwarts was not a simple place, but a school where they taught magic, so the stairs there were unusual, because they could at their own move in a certain space, connecting the various floors of the castle.
Therefore, the prefects led freshmen to the living rooms at the beginning of the year to explain how such places work.
Finally, as he approached the room in which Rune class was held, Severus saw two groups of students standing a few meters apart.
'Slytherin and Gryffindor… I'll probably never understand why they put two warring subgroups in the same study group at all: they'll just bite each other, but if the teaching staff is trying to force them to make friends in this way, then this is a losing plan in advance… though…why am I even thinking about it? I have much more important things: for example, the Basilisk, which I must quickly kill, then help Nagini, and without the first I cannot do the second, so I need to hurry with this, but only when Dumbledore is not here. I have to make sure that Dumbledore do not interfere with me at anypoint, and if the information that I have collected is correct, then at the beginning of each school year at the end of the week he leaves school for exactly one day, and this day will be this Saturday, that is, I need to somehow open the chamber …' A malicious gleam flashed in Severus's eyes for a moment.
'I'll just blow up the entrance, that's it, and with the spell of silence, no one can hear anything, not even the Basilisk itself, but now I just don't need to draw special attention to myself…' And, coming out of his thoughts, he immediately met with the eyes of his classmates, who looked at him with amazement, and if the guys were just interested, then the girls were already examining his body with much more ardent glances.
"Oh! I apologize for being late, you shouldn't have waited for me at the entrance, you could have just gone into the office" an old woman in glasses with large thick lenses approached the students, a rather cheerful-looking old woman.
"Come in quickly, we don't have much time anyway, I hope there's more than enough material…!"
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The next forty-five minutes passed unnoticed by Severus personally, yet the professor knew how to present even such a boring subject as Runes in an interesting way, and each student, of course, listened to her very carefully.
Even the Archmage himself was quite interested, because even though this subject was present in the school curriculum before, the runes themselves, which were taught, were very simple and almost did not carry any power in themselves, but were only part of the older Futhark*, and indeed it was mainly so that young Wizards understand what runes are and whether they want to continue to study them.
Runology was a very dangerous direction both for the student himself and for his environment. After all, the runes made it possible to interact with the primary magical power and were quite often used to create ancient artifacts and spells, and this already explained how dangerous they were.
Yes, they give tremendous power, but with the slightest mistake in writing them, the consequences are simply impossible to predict. But, if you become a master in this direction, huge prospects open up for the Wizard, he would be welcome in any country, because the masters of this direction can be counted on the fingers ...
And although Severus is unlikely to use them, he still decided to study the local runes in order to better understand the strength of his future enemies if he had to face something like this in the future. And most of the artifacts had only local runes, so in order to better understand their power, he would still have to study them. After the end of the lesson, the Archmage went towards the stairs in order to go down to the first floor and visit someone.
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Opening the door with the inscription "The toilet does not work", the young man raised an eyebrow in surprise, because he did not feel anyone.
"Why did you go to the women's restroom?" sounded the perplexed voice of Nagina, leaning out from under her shirt and looking at him with a strange look, as if asking: "Maybe you are a pervert?"
"It still remains a mystery to me how you can show emotions with your snake face, but I will have to disappoint you: one of my friends lives here."
"In the women's restroom…?"
"Well, she's not human either," the Archmage replied, going up to the shells.
"Okay, we can look for the entrance now, you, too, come on, let's stop wasting time already!" Poking her in the "nose", he leaned over and began to examine the space under the sinks, and Nagini, hissing with displeasure, began to check the sinks and taps.
A few minutes later, the young man looked up at the snake, staring thoughtfully at the faucet and spinning it with its tail.
"Water comes out of the rest, and this one, no matter how I turn it, only creaks, and that's it, and this sign ... it's not on the other taps. " she pointed to a small snake adorning the faucet on the right side.
"And the truth, apparently, this is somehow connected with the opening of the passage, good fellow," stroking her on the top of her head with a smile, he opened the sleeve, and she quickly crawled inside. "Hmm… now we need to think about how this mechanism works…"
" Maybe just say: "Open"?" Nagini hissed jokingly, but in the next moment something happened that made her freeze with her mouth open... a large rounded passage appeared, and finally, when that same shell with the sign of a snake plunged into the floor, the Archmage went to the edge of the pit and began to peer with surprise into the darkness through which it was impossible to see anything. "Nagini, did I say that I adore you?" Severus said with a wide smile, looking at the snake that had finally come to its senses.
"No… I said that as a joke… " she answered, embarrassed by this.
"Now we don't need to blow up anything, although it would be better to close it for the time being ..."
"Tail?" Severus questioned Wormtail.
"Sir, there is no one nearby, and no one is walking in this direction, the Headmaster is in his office."
Severus, praising him in his mind, turned his gaze to Nagini. "Let's close it."
"H-how…?" Beginning questioned, still bewildered by the fact.
"As you opened, try to say: "Close" - or something like that."
"Okay …"
"Close!" and, strange as it was, the room began to shake again, and the shells began to return to their places.
"It's still well thought out, it's unlikely that anyone would have guessed that the entrance is here, and even if they had guessed and found a tap, they still wouldn't have opened the passage without knowledge of the snake language, and the chance that the passage would have been found by parseltongue, almost zero…" But, while the Archmage was in his thoughts, he heard a surprised voice, with notes of disbelief "Snape…?"
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