Chapter 41: Lion Statues. Part 2. Godric Gryffindor
Standing before the last statue, beside the long and rather battered bridge that linked the clock tower to the hillside clearing, Severus placed his palm on the lion's head and clenched.
The head shattered, showering the ground in marble.
"Last one." He bent, picked up the badge, and turned it over with mild curiosity. Same as the others: a strange fragment of a pattern, and nothing more.
"So now what?"
"Simple." All the badges shot from his hand simultaneously and hung in the air before him. "It is a genuinely interesting artefact to construct. Difficult as well. Besides runes it incorporates Transfiguration, illusion magic, mind magic, and even soul magic."
"You said earlier you had no idea what it was or how it worked."
"I did not, until the eighth piece was in my hands and I could feel him." The badges began rearranging themselves, trading places, until in one moment they flared with a rust-orange light and aligned in a single row. "I should have put a barrier up in advance."
"I did not expect the one who gathered them all to be a Slytherin." The voice that rolled through the air was stern, but it carried no menace: only a curious steadiness, and something oddly bright beneath it.
The badges shifted again, becoming assemblages of small clockwork mechanisms that began to merge with one another.
Above them, a transparent luminescence took shape, brilliant and spilling outward, forming into the figure of a man around forty: a full, wavy mane of ginger hair and a matching beard. There was something in the whole picture that reminded Severus, not pleasantly, of barbarians: proud, hard, and utterly certain of their own worth.
"Why the hostility?" the figure asked, catching Severus's expression.
"My apologies. Your appearance reminded me of something I would rather forget. Though I suspect you are not entirely unlike them, only considerably more intelligent: what you built here was not simple. People may describe you as decisive and fair, but history belongs to whoever survives to write it. I will never know the truth."
"You gathered every piece of this artefact and woke a fragment of my soul, Godric Gryffindor, simply to. criticise me?" Displeasure was clear.
"No. You asked; I answered." Severus gave an apologetic half-smile. "Honestly, I had no idea this would let me speak with you directly. I was only looking for your sword."
"And why do you need it? And how did you even know about the statues?"
"Salazar told me. Though I had to apply some pressure to his portrait before he cooperated. As for the sword: I fence. Good blades are difficult to find, and you understand that better than most. My relationship with the goblins is not a warm one. If I went to them, they would show me the door."
The soul fragment stared at him for a long moment, and then, despite itself, burst out laughing.
"That is the most absurd thing I have heard in several centuries." He stopped abruptly, eyes going wide, staring past Severus at the scorched, dart-pocked portrait that had just been drawn out. His old friend stared back at him with the same expression. "Salazar?"
"Pitiful sight, Godric," Salazar said.
"You are the one talking. You look no better."
At Godric's mocking grin, Salazar nearly forgot himself, but Severus clamped a hand over his mouth, rolled the portrait up, and put it away.
"I am hoping you will tell me where you left it."
"And if I will not?"
"I will find it myself. There is always the Sorting Hat. I doubt it would take long to work the information out of it."
"You lay so much as a finger on her and I will drag you back from beyond the grave personally." In less than a second the open, almost genial figure was gone, replaced by something considerably more dangerous. Godric looked entirely capable of making good on the threat.
"All right. I will not touch it."
He backed down so quickly and cleanly that Godric went still. A few seconds passed while he worked out what had just happened.
"'If you want to know a man, provoke him, and he will show you his true face.' My teacher said that. Now I understand what kind of man you are: decisive, loyal to the people who matter to you. You despise cowardice: when I retreated, I saw the disgust on your face. You are patient as well, if you are willing to listen to a Slytherin at all. But that edge underneath tells me you do not flinch from killing. If you had a body right now, I have no doubt you would have tried."
"All right. You have made your point." Godric raised a hand and shook his head. "You win. True Slytherin."
"Glad to hear it. I still hope you will tell me where the sword is."
A shrug, entirely careless.
"I genuinely have no idea. This fragment broke away in the eighties. How long the rest of me went on after that, I cannot say."
"I see."
"Where does that disappointment come from? Perhaps you want to know something else. You may be a Slytherin, but you still found every badge."
"You cannot teach me anything useful. And other than the sword, I do not need anyth." He stopped. "Actually. If you tell me about Rowena and Helga."
"I will not betray my friends and colleagues!" Every word was clipped clean.
Severus sighed.
"You are completely useless. I have wasted my time."
"Then let us go," Nagini agreed, poking her head out and giving Godric a look of pure contempt.
"Apologies for dragging you into this. I thought it would be worth the trip. Apparently not." Severus stroked her head, turned, and started back toward the castle.
"Wait! You genuinely do not want to know anything? In my time I was acknowledged as the strongest wizard alive. Anyone else in your position would have considered it an honour just to ask me a question!" Godric stepped directly into his path, theatrical fury barely contained. A commonplace student had spoken rudely to him and simply turned his back, as though his entire legacy amounted to nothing.
"You are irritating. Fine." Severus stopped and looked up at him. "Tell me about Maledictuses. And whether the curse can be lifted."
"Hm." A harder question than he had apparently expected. But Severus's expression was blank and patient, and Godric cleared his throat and continued. "The short version: Maledictuses are women whose bloodline carries a curse. By thirty, almost all of them have fully transformed into animals, body and mind both. The curse is next to impossible to remove. The only way to slow its progression is if the cursed individual can master Animagus magic."
"As I suspected." Nagini was fortunate, then, that she had once had exactly that. Severus looked at her with a quiet warmth. "Do not worry. I already know how to remove it."
"Young man." Godric studied Nagini with sudden attention that she clearly hated. "Nagini? And you are genuinely saying you know how to lift that curse?"
"I know a ritual capable of removing any curse. The more I understand about its specifics, the more precisely I can calibrate it. So." Severus pulled a chair from his wallet, sat down, and looked at Godric with patient expectation.
Godric's eye developed a visible twitch.
Two hours later, Severus walked through the castle's dark corridors toward the dungeons, turning a gold pocket watch over in his hand. The back bore the engraved emblems of all four Hogwarts houses.
I got a reasonable amount from him. Though almost all of it was already in the Grimoire. Still, a good artefact, and one useful lead on who might know where the sword ended up. Not a wasted evening.
"What is that watch?" Nagini asked, still puzzled about why he had taken it after initially refusing.
"A fairly rare artefact for storing a soul. Consider: Godric's soul fragment sat in there for nearly a thousand years without deteriorating. It may be useful one day."
Nagini was quiet for a moment.
"Ask."
"About what he said to you just before his soul dispersed."
"We will see what happens. I made no promises. But if I ever encounter them, I will not simply walk past." He smiled as he went down the stairs. "I am not completely without conscience."
"I never called you that!" She immediately panicked at his expression. But when she saw the smirk and the narrowed eyes, she switched to poking him firmly with her tail, which was the closest she could come to expressing proper indignation. "Stop baiting me!"
"My fault entirely. You should not take everything quite so personally."
"You heartless creature!"
"That is genuinely unfair."
Nagini gave him a contemptuous look, turned away, and sighed with irritation. She was not actually angry, only mildly affronted.
Ugh. I also need to think about how to get into the Headmaster's office without setting off every detection charm in the building. The portraits alone are a problem, and the phoenix. I need a proper plan.
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