Chapter 81

In the dead of night, a noiseless shadow moved along the gloomy corridors of the castle, which after a few seconds stopped in front of a painting. 

The shadow waved its palm, setting a transparent dome over itself and the picture, and then tickled the pear, and it began to laugh and turned into a green pen. 

The unknown did not immediately enter the room, but, pointing its palm at the handle, the shadow whispered something, and a dark blue aura burst into the kitchen. Exactly one minute later, the shadow walked in.

There was deathly silence in the room, and several house elves lay on the floor.

"You're just like that ninja from the movie!" An excited hiss sound came from under the shadow's robe, and then a snake's head popped out, examining the elves lying on the ground with interest. "Don't hiss, we shouldn't attract the attention of other house elves, and their shift is already in an hour, we need to have time to check the whole room," he said calmly, strengthening all five of his senses. 

"Still, it's very inconvenient to look for something in a place where magic rushes from all cracks…" That "unknown person" was of course Severus, who, a few days after exploring Hufflepuff's living room, finally decided to check the kitchen, but before that, he had to observe for about three days before proceeding with the action. 

He decided to start with Helga Hufflepuff only for the reason that there were only two places where the founders "treasures" could be hidden: the drawing room of the House and the kitchen, in which she(Helga) usually spent a lot of her time, according to Salazar, after all, the woman simply adored cooking and personally took care of the students' breakfasts, lunches and dinners. 

And besides that, the lady was plump, and Snape doubted she could hide her belongings far. 

Moving around the hall, he examined every brick and corner, pushed back the cabinets, and even the ceiling was not deprived of attention, but, to his disappointment, thirty minutes later Severus still did not find anything. 

'Did I make a mistake in my calculations?' Severus thought gloomily, looking around the room. 

"She loved to cook…" The Slytherin looked at the wooden table, then at the food cabinets, and finally stopped at the large oven. Stroking his chin thoughtfully, he watched the burning flame. 

"Why does the fire burn in the oven at night?" Nagaina asked him with interest. "Well, it doesn't consume a lot of magic, it also illuminates well and spreads heat around the room.

"There are torches right there, " she pointed with her tail at one of them. "And isn't it warm in the castle anyway?"

"Why are you asking me about something I don't know. Maybe they like the fire from the stove, after all, the house elves are rather strange creatures," Snape replied indifferently, sweeping his eyes over the stove, until in an instant it froze abruptly. "Flame…"

"Mm?"

Quickly approaching it, Severus put the fire aside without any problems, and then looked at the soot-covered back wall and touched it. In the next moment, it began to flake off and disappear… 

"I'm an idiot…" Severus couldn't help but laugh sincerely and stroked the perplexed snake on the top of her head with a smile. "Thank you, you helped me a lot again," running his palm over the smooth bricks, he felt a slight hollow on one of them. 

Lighting up the wall, Snape saw seven more of these signs, and then looked up to see three more. 

"Runes, and of two types at once. So the entrance is here, but you need to find out the correct sequence…" The young man chuckled, and a Grimoire appeared in his hand. 

Opening it, he took out a pen he had bought from the Muggle world and wrote down the runes. 

"Collect a word from them and exclude everything that does not apply to cooking and Hufflepuff," and three words appeared on a blank page: "Marzipan", "Honesty", "Loyalty". 

"Hmm…the last two are House selection qualities, and the exception among them is 'Marzipan', which just doesn't fit in, which means…" and he just started touching each brick in turn, forming the word 'Marzipan'. As soon as his finger touched the last rune, all the bricks shone simultaneously and began to move apart, forming a passage leading to a dark room. 

"Hmm…" Snapping his fingers, he created a bright light that illuminated a small part of the room without any problems, and then it split into several dozen parts that flew in all directions and shone even brighter. 

It was a large dusty room, almost as large as the previous one. In the centre of the room stood one long steel table, on which lay pots, pans, knives and other kitchen utensils. There were cupboards to the right and left, not the simple pieces of wood that were in that room, but magic wood, with carvings, glass doors and enchantments that should increase its strength, as well as temperature control. 

At the end of the hall were three ovens, the size of which was in no way inferior to the one outside, and that's not to mention the two refrigerators standing at the entrance with the spell of invisible expansion, which were still in working condition. 

'I'm not afraid to call this a kitchen, and if you activate all the spells and runes, then it will again go into a working state' looking up at the ceiling, Severus nodded thoughtfully. 

"Not bad," but Snape had little interest in all this, because he had already found what he was looking for. 

It was a simple-looking door.

"It's pretty cozy here." Nagini hissed from under his robes.

- Agree. Better than Salazar and Dumbledore," Severus nodded calmly, looking at the books and shaking his head in slight disappointment. "Most of it is just about cooking." After that, he shifted his gaze to the table with a pot, from which a small green sprout grew, and next to it lay a thick book.

"From this dust, you can say for sure that no one has been here for a very long time, but ... how did this thing even survive?" Severus muttered somewhat surprised, but at the same time thoughtfully, coming closer to it. 

"Although if I remember correctly, there are plants that only need magic to live, but if it has grown only a little over so many centuries, then it means that the magic that is generated in the air is simply not enough, and I was guessing , why is there so little of it here ... " shifting his gaze to the book, Severus took it, and blowing off a centimetre layer of dust, he almost immediately copied it into the Grimoire, and then he put it away in his purse, and his eyes fell again on the pot. "Should I take it or not?"

"Why do you need it?"

"If this plant has been growing here for more than a couple of hundred years, and after that only a small sprout appeared, then there is a good chance that some good thing will grow out it, and Hogwarts has a very rich magical background. It's strange that it hasn't grown yet." Severus replied.

"What makes you think it will be something good? What if this is something terrible, some kind of cannibal flower?" She looked suspiciously at the plant. 

"Well, that would be nice too, an extra line of defence for our house will definitely come in handy, but I think that since Helga raised him, then this is most likely some kind of ingredient. You didn't forget that she loved to cook, did you? I doubt that she will grow something dangerous, or maybe she herself did not know what it was?" After staring at the pot for a few more seconds, he nevertheless took it. "Okay, I myself was already interested in what would come of it," and placed it in a necklace.

 Nagini did not comment on this, although she still considered it rather dangerous to keep this sprout with her. But the snake understood that Severus still couldn't be persuaded, unless, of course, you didn't get him whining for a couple of days, and even that wasn't a fact. 

But Snape didn't stop there: he also took non-cooking books from the office and some other things that caught his attention, and finally the Slytherin approached the painting, and pushing it aside, he saw a completely smooth wall, if you do not count the illusion hiding the hole, the shape of it was identical to Hufflepuff's Thicket. 

Severus didn't think much because he didn't feel any danger from this mechanism, and he just took it out and put it in. Nothing happened for the first few seconds, until runes flashed on the bowl, and after a few seconds the wall trembled, drove back with a loud rattle, and then split into two parts, which parted in different directions. 

And at the same moment an unpleasant smell hit the nose of Severus, from which his face twisted and he rather quickly created a thin film around himself, and Nagaina clamped her mouth very tightly, because snakes, especially magical ones, have a highly developed sense of smell, but they only perceive smell with the tongue. 

"You can relax, I put up a barrier," he looked at her with a smile, tapping his finger on the transparent dome. 

"A terrible stench, as if something had rotted and lay for a couple of years in a closed space …" Nagini said.

"You directly described our situation," he pointed towards a "small" greenhouse with dried plants and some vegetables that were already hard to distinguish from the rest of the mass . 

"It's a pity… the local founders were kind of stupid. They died, they didn't say anything, and this is what came of it, aren't they idiots?"

"Maybe they didn't die a natural death and in general were going to live another hundred more years?"she suggested, looking around the dark, dusty, and very smelly room. "And God knows, but for me they are still those imbeciles, if they didn't tell anyone about their rooms, at least they should've told their students or descendants."

"That's all right, but how could they not think of making an automatic system for watering and collecting herbs, or, in extreme cases, put a trusted person to look after this entire garden." Snape said, looking around.

The room also had a corral with skeletons of unknown creatures, a desk, a closet next to it, and another door that led to a small room where there were various jewellery; gold; artefacts, the spell on which has already been dispelled, and a dozen books that were definitely a couple of thousand years old. In general, nothing particularly interesting, except for books …  Severus left the "treasury" a little disappointed. 

After all, although Severus did not expect mountains of gold, myriads of books, and the like, he did not imagine that everything would turn out to be so meagre, and after all this, Sevsrus' fuse to look for the rest of the founders' caches also decreased. 

After all, if there really was a garden with all kinds of herbs, then, most likely, it had already completely wilted. 

Snape did not close the passages, but left them as they were, to be found the next morning. 

Still, it was a rather difficult time now, and almost all the galleons were spent on suppressing the "rebellion", so the school was not funded enough. This could easily be seen when comparing the rich tables overflowing with food in the first year and now, when the food was still the same, but simpler. 

The same brooms that changed twenty years ago, while according to the training manual they are required to be changed every fifteen years, and a simple "Reparo" is not always enough to restore their original functionality, a lot has already been said. 

Severus also didn't touch the "treasures" and only took the books. He, of course, did not care much about Hogwarts, but some seventy thousand Galleons would not enrich him, who already had more than one and a half million in his account, and they could help the school a little ….

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