Hello, guys!
Because of the holiday season, I want to celebrate with you in two ways.
The first is that, starting today, Monday the 22nd until Sunday, January 4th, I will publish daily chapters so you have plenty to read during these holidays.
After that date, I will return to my usual schedule.
The second surprise is that, starting December 24th, I will activate a 50% discount on all tiers of my Patreon.
The promotion will be active for 2 weeks, ending on January 6th.
If you wanted to read the advanced chapters, this is your chance.
Merry Christmas!
Mike.
Patreon / iLikeeMikee
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Chapter 35: The Failure of Fanon
The following weeks turned into a routine. His life, now that he had found the balance Dumbledore had advised, was divided into three operational zones: the main castle, where he acted as a model student and maintained his social "anchors"; the London libraries during the holidays, where his Archive consumed Muggle knowledge; and his private nest, the seven-compartment trunk.
But now, a fourth place had been added to his rotation, one that combined practice, research, and resource acquisition: the Chamber of Secrets.
His visits became methodical. Twice a week, after curfew, he would don his cloak, activate his stealth spells, and head to the second-floor girls' bathroom. His presence didn't even provoke Moaning Myrtle anymore. The ghost, realizing that this silent boy wouldn't pay her any attention, neither to mock nor to pity, simply stayed in her toilet, sobbing with resentment.
He would approach the engraved sink, hiss the password his Archive provided, and slide down the tunnel into the darkness.
Tonight, as he entered the vast main chamber, the air was cold and still. The colossal statue of Salazar Slytherin watched him with empty stone eyes.
~"You are late"~, echoed a hissing voice from the shadows of a pillar.
Timothy didn't even flinch. He saw the massive coiled form of Ophion, the Basilisk, her car-sized head resting on her own coils. Her milky eyelids were closed, as always.
~"I was in the library"~, replied Timothy in Parseltongue, his voice sounding strangely natural in the silent cavern. He set his messenger bag on the floor. ~"I had to finish an essay on the properties of Moonstone for Snape. A waste of time"~.
~"You smell of books... and deer"~, hissed Ophion, her forked tongue tasting the air.
Timothy smiled. "Steak and kidney pie, actually. Dinner". He rolled up his robe sleeves. "Now, business".
This was his new routine: payment for services. Fulfilling his part of the deal was fundamental to maintaining the trust of his... "partner".
He turned toward a pile of stone debris he had left from a previous visit. He concentrated. His wandless magic was now much more refined. It was no longer about the brute force that had failed with lead; now it was controlled, precise. He accessed his Archive, not the magic section, but the Muggle biology section he had copied from the London library. He searched for the blueprint of a Sus scrofa. A wild boar.
He extended his hand. The stone shook. With a sickening, wet sound of matter reorganizing, the rocks swelled, limestone transmuted into keratin, calcium, and muscle tissue. In less than a minute, a half-ton boar, complete with curved tusks and coarse hair, lay dead on the floor, transfigured to perfection.
~"Dinner is served"~.
Ophion uncoiled with terrifying speed and devoured the offering in a single, brutal movement.
While the thousand-year-old beast ate, Timothy sat, cross-legged, against the base of a serpent pillar. He pulled out his own work: a roll of parchment and a quill. He lit a Lumos that floated above his shoulder, and began to write. This was the true value of these visits. The Chamber was the only place in the castle, other than his trunk, where he was absolutely, totally, and completely alone. He could work.
Ophion, having finished her meal, glided across the chamber floor and coiled lazily about twenty meters away, watching him.
~"What are you writing, Speaker-Scholar?"~, she hissed, her voice now a sleepy, satiated murmur.
~"I am designing a new charm"~, replied Timothy without looking up. He was working on the theory of his Archive Aspectus, trying to refine the focus so it could copy an entire shelf of books at once, rather than one by one. ~"I am trying to get my Archive to copy remotely. The 'intent' part is difficult to stabilize"~.
~"Books"~, hissed Ophion. ~"You smell of them. A dry smell. The Master [Salazar] never brought books here. He said books were for weak minds. That true knowledge was in the blood... and in the stone"~.
Timothy looked up, his interest sharpening instantly. "In the stone? What do you mean?".
~"He... sang to the stone"~, said Ophion, almost wistfully. ~"And the stone obeyed him. This chamber. He built it with his voice. Without tools. Without a wand"~.
Timothy put down his quill. 'Conceptual magic. Sound magic', he thought, his Archive mind buzzing. 'Arcane engineering of a level that Flitwick wouldn't even believe'. He realized that these conversations were as valuable as the snake's venom. Ophion was a living repository of ancient magic, a witness to methods that had been lost a thousand years ago.
He spent the next hour interrogating the snake, not like a master, but like a scholar, archiving every answer, every fragmented memory of Salazar Slytherin. He was, in his own way, hanging out with his only real friend.
As Ophion digested her transfigured meal with a reptilian laziness, Timothy stood up. The social and research part of the visit was complete; now came the commercial part. His relationship with the millennial serpent was symbiotic, a logical deal that benefited both parties.
~"Ophion. You have shed again since my last visit. Where is the waste?"~, hissed Timothy.
The snake's massive head turned slowly toward him, her milky eyelids closed. ~"Waste... Yes. The stone nest is full. Follow my trail. But be careful not to get lost, Speaker-Scholar. There are tunnels even I do not remember"~.
Ophion slid from her position, her colossal body moving with an oily silence. She guided him, not down the main aisle, but toward a dark archway in the side wall that Timothy hadn't noticed, hidden by the shadow of a serpent pillar. The tunnel was narrower and older, the air drier. After a few minutes, it opened into another cavern, as large as the Great Hall above.
Timothy stopped at the entrance, his wandless Lumos illuminating the scene. His mind, rarely impressed, had to pause to process the magnitude of what he was seeing.
It wasn't a pile. It was a mountain.
Generations. Centuries of shed skins lay piled in the center of the cavern, one atop another, forming a colossal mound of pale green that almost reached the ceiling. Some lower layers were dark, almost black with time and dust, while the upper ones glowed faintly with residual magic.
'My God', he thought, his logical mind making quick calculations. This wasn't a "fortune". A single intact skin could fund a Ministry. This... this was a nation's gold reserve. It was the most valuable resource on the planet, and Salazar had been using it as compost.
~"Take what you wish"~, hissed Ophion from the entrance, seeming bored by Timothy's interest in her trash. ~"It is just old skin. It crunches"~.
Timothy didn't answer. He approached the mountain, his heart beating with the cold euphoria of a conqueror claiming a continent. He spent the next hour with methodical efficiency. He selected the ten largest and most intact skins from the upper layers. Using his wandless magic, he levitated them, cleaned them of a thousand years of dust, and, with intense concentration, applied a series of complex folding and shrinking charms.
The skins, each over a hundred feet long, folded in on themselves like impossible origami, shrinking until they became dense green cubes, the size of school trunks. He opened his seven-compartment trunk, enlarged in the tunnel, and stacked them neatly in the "Raw Material Storage".
Satisfied, he returned to the main chamber, where Ophion waited patiently.
~"Efficient"~, she hissed. ~"Now, the second part of the payment"~.
He pulled a rune-reinforced glass vial from his bag, the size of his forearm. ~"As we practiced, Ophion. Gently"~.
The beast, now completely accustomed to this strange ritual, lowered her head. ~"Hurry, Speaker-Scholar. The taste of glass is unpleasant"~.
Timothy approached the colossal head, his Occlumency a wall of ice against the overwhelming smell of ozone and ammonia. Ophion opened her jaws, revealing sword-sized fangs. With a delicacy that belied her size, the snake bit the reinforced rim of the vial.
A thick liquid, dark and sickly green, welled from the fang. Basilisk venom. Timothy watched as it filled the vial in seconds.
~"Enough"~.
The snake retracted. Timothy sealed the vial with a non-verbal charm and stored it carefully in a magically isolated section of his trunk.
Mission accomplished. His operation was funded. But he wasn't finished.
He turned back to the main chamber, his gaze directed past the giant snake and toward the colossal statue of Salazar Slytherin dominating the gloom. The skin and venom were resources, they were money. But the real treasure, the only thing his Archive truly craved, was knowledge.
His memories of the original story were clear, but the stories his mind had consumed in his past life—the vast and creative world of fanon—were even more detailed. They spoke of a secret library, a personal study where Salazar kept his personal grimoires, the secrets of Basilisk creation, ancient blood magic. It was logical. It was efficient.
~"Ophion"~, hissed Timothy, his voice quiet and commanding.
The snake's massive head lifted lazily. ~"Speaker-Scholar? The food has been consumed. The venom has been given. What else?"~
~"The rest"~, said Timothy, his gaze sweeping the vast statue of Salazar. ~"I have kept my part of the deal. Now, tell me the truth. Where is his study? His private library? The vault of grimoires he hid here?"~.
Timothy waited, his Archive ready to absorb the revelation, the final puzzle.
Ophion tilted her colossal head, a slow movement that sent ripples through the stagnant water. Her milky eyelids blinked, and a low hiss, not of threat, but of genuine confusion, filled the chamber.
~"Library?"~, repeated the beast. ~"...Books?"~
The snake's confusion was palpable.
~"The Master... was a Speaker. He was knowledge. He sang to the stone and it obeyed. He did not need... marks on paper. Study? This... is the Chamber. This is the glory. It is the Nest. The Master built this. There is no... 'library'. There is nothing else"~.
Timothy's calm faltered. A pinprick of irritation. 'Impossible. She must be lying, or forgetting. Or it is a test'.
~"Think, Ophion"~, insisted Timothy. ~"A small place. A hidden door. Where the Master worked alone"~.
~"The Master never 'worked' here"~, hissed Ophion, this time with a touch of reptilian impatience. ~"He came. He fed me. He spoke to me. Then he put me to sleep. The memory [Riddle] was the one who spent time here, hissing at the walls, touching everything. But he found nothing. Only me. Only the stone. There is nothing else"~.
Timothy frowned. The snake's answer was too consistent. She wasn't lying; she was simply stating a fact his own mind refused to accept.
'No', he decided. 'She is a guardian, not a librarian. Salazar was paranoid. He wouldn't have told his pet about his most valuable possession'.
His obsession, which had been satisfied with the harvest, now had a new and frustrating focus. He refused to accept that his premise, based on the fanon of his past life, was incorrect.
He spent the following weeks in a methodical and increasingly exasperating search.
He returned to the Chamber twice a week, under the pretext of feeding Ophion and continuing their "conversations". The snake seemed to enjoy the company, but Timothy was working. He refused to believe Ophion. He began his own investigation.
First, magic. He stood in front of the colossal statue of Salazar, the most logical place to hide a door. "Archive Aspectus", he murmured.
The pale blue beam swept every inch of the stone face, every fold of the rock beard, every inch of the pedestal. His mind was flooded with data... about granite composition, structural engineering, preservation runes. But there was nothing else. No hidden cavities. No illusions. No opening runes. The statue was exactly what it appeared to be: an absurdly large statue.
Then, he tried Parseltongue. He stood in front of the statue and hissed dozens of command passwords his Archive suggested, based on Riddle's psychology.
~"Secrets"~. Silence. ~"Knowledge"~. Silence. ~"Library"~. ~"Study"~. ~"Grimoire"~. ~"Legacy"~.
Nothing. Ophion watched him from her pool, her head resting on a coil, probably thinking the new Speaker had gone mad.
Finally, frustrated, he resorted to physical methods. He spent hours feeling the stone walls of the main chamber, channeling small pulses of his own magic into the rock, feeling for resonance, looking for a hollow, an echo, something.
He found nothing. Not a single loose brick. The Chamber was conceptually airtight.
After his fourth fruitless visit, the truth finally set in. He was exhausted, covered in thousand-year-old dust and slime from the damp walls. He stood for the last time in front of Salazar's colossal stone face, looking into the darkness where the eyes should have been.
There was no hidden mechanism. There was no riddle to solve.
The truth was inescapable. There was no library. There was no hidden study. There was no vault of grimoires. Ophion was right. Riddle had searched and found nothing. And he, with all his Archive and his genius, had found nothing either.
Because there was nothing to find.
He let out a long sigh, the sound surprisingly loud in the silent cavern. The frustration wasn't anger, but a deep, deep intellectual disappointment.
"Damn fanfics", he muttered to himself aloud, the words of his former life sounding strange in Salazar's tomb. "Fanon altered my expectations".
His entire search for this "grand prize" was based on a false premise. A story someone made up on an internet forum in a world that no longer existed.
"It is just a cave", he said, his voice echoing. "It is just a big cave with a snake and a stone face".
He dusted himself off. It was a frustrating setback, but his logic prevailed. The real treasure wasn't the books (he had already copied them all from the Hogwarts library), but the resources: Ophion's skin, her venom, and, most importantly, the knowledge of the Chamber's arcane architecture itself.
And all that, he already had. The search for Salazar's secret library was a failure, but the expedition to the Chamber was a resounding success.
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If you liked the chapter, please leave your stones.
Mike.