Chapter 211. The Old Man.
The tunnel turned out to be considerably shorter than Severus had initially expected, but it was dark and oppressive. What made it truly remarkable was the illusions: a staggering number of them, targeting all six senses simultaneously. He experienced none of them; they failed entirely to penetrate his mental defenses.
Anyone else in his place would almost certainly never have realized they were illusions, and would have spent an eternity wandering a passage barely long enough to matter, or simply gone mad.
And Severus was, unsurprisingly, not the first wizard to find this place. A human skeleton in a violet robe lay across the path, a large crack in its forehead, enough to confirm his earlier reasoning.
It took him just under a minute to walk the tunnel's full length and emerge before a pair of three-meter-tall iron double doors, decorated with the yin-yang symbol, with handprint recesses where the handles should have been. The sight brought a faint wave of nostalgia; he remembered the day he had descended into the Hogwarts plumbing after the Basilisk.
"I don't like this." Nagini remembered it too, the day they had nearly died in that trap, and she had been careful in moments like this ever since.
"There's nothing unusual here." He patted her gently on the head, approached the doors under her tense stare, and touched them. "Simple scanning charms. I expect that passage was only a trial, because here I feel no runes or enchantments beyond what's been placed on the entrance itself." He pressed his palms into the recesses, calmly blocked the attempt to scan him, and pushed lightly. The doors swung open in silence, flooding him with bright, warm, dark-green light. The Night Vision Potion was still active; the sudden shift from absolute darkness to light made even him wince.
The chamber that opened before Severus was small, shaped like an amphitheater, no more than four rows deep. At its center stood an altar-like structure, above which a diamond shape hovered in the air. The whole was surrounded by crystal-clear water and a ring of flat stone slabs just above the waterline.
Above the altar, lit by a pair of white crystals, drifted creatures that looked like ordinary butterflies but were completely translucent, as though they were an illusion, except they weren't. One of them noticed the visitors, detached itself from the rest, and floated over to them, or more precisely, to Nagini. Without any hesitation at the "terrifying reptile," it landed on her nose.
This thoroughly astonished Nagini, but she made no move to shoo it away, studying the strange creature with quiet interest. Severus, for his part, only smiled softly at the sight. It wasn't something that particularly surprised him.
These butterflies, like the Qilin, could perceive the soul of any creature. In his world they had a perfectly simple name: White Butterflies. They gathered only around beings of light, and around the graves of people who were the same.
This simplifies things. Though vigilance is still called for. He descended the steps, stepped onto the water, and crossed the low stone ring to stand before the altar. The butterflies drifted quickly aside. Hm. He dropped to one knee and began examining the structure, the runes in particular, and after a moment he raised his gaze to the diamond above, which was also covered in them, rendered in a script so minute it was almost painful. Interesting. Solid work. Far better than a Horcrux, or the Gryffindor locket, though it doesn't reach the level of the crystal underground.
"So you saw it." A tired voice, easy, pleasant, unmistakably old.
"I did. A very interesting creation, and a dangerous one." He stood and stepped back over the stone ring, his tone calm.
A few seconds later, a slight, elderly man with distinctly Asian features materialized beside the altar. His beard hung nearly to his stomach, his mustache was a few centimeters shorter, and the tips of his eyebrows were equally long. His expression was mildly distracted and touched with old sadness, but neither could quite hide the depth of intelligence that lay behind it all. He wore an outfit of striking simplicity: a plain grey robe with blue trim at the edges, straw sandals, and wide dark trousers. Everything about him projected ordinariness, except his eyes, which gave everything away.
"I see. Then that is good news. If you came back alive, he is still too weak to influence anything beyond the crystal." The spirit exhaled with something close to relief, hands clasped behind his back. "Which means we still have time."
"We?" Severus raised an eyebrow with a faint, dry smile. "There is no 'we' here. Dealing with whatever is in that crystal is not my concern. I have enough problems of my own."
"I know." The wizard answered with perfect composure, then looked over at Nagini with genuine warmth. "I want to ask for your help. I can see that you were once human, and while there are grey marks on your soul, it is a hundred times brighter than most." The direction this was taking stunned Nagini.
At first she simply didn't know how to respond, but after a few seconds she composed herself, studied the old man with narrowed, cautious eyes, and shook her head. He reminded her far too much of Dumbledore.
"He's too suspicious. And you always said not to trust kind-looking old men."
"Well done. It seems our lessons weren't wasted." He stroked the satisfied snake's head, and she let out a pleased hiss, as the elderly wizard looked on with mild astonishment.
"Don't you want to become human again? I know how to help you!" But instead of excitement, or even a trace of internal conflict, all the old man received was hissing. Very displeased hissing, and a dangerously narrowed stare.
"I'll translate: 'Try to bribe me with something like that one more time and I'll personally pull your beard out, even in spirit form.' More or less." He quoted Nagini with one or two additions of his own. The old man's face fell considerably upon hearing this response.
"But... why?" He simply didn't understand the reaction.
"You may possess considerable wisdom, which is evident from this altar, from the fact that your soul has not dispersed, and from the fact that your enchantments still maintain the weather within these barriers. But you don't understand people at all." The spirit's brow drew together. To be told he didn't understand something, and by a boy who hadn't yet truly lived, was not what one of the wisest wizards of his millennium expected to hear.
"Mind your tongue. Were you not taught how to address your elders?" At the dismissive tone directed at Severus, Nagini radiated unmistakable bloodlust. The old man, sensing the weight that suddenly filled the air, cursed himself silently. It was beginning to dawn on him what the young wizard had meant. "I apologize for my rashness." He inclined his head with a wry expression. It did nothing to ease the snake's anger.
"You said you know a way to restore her human form." Severus had no interest whatsoever in the old fool's words, but the offer itself was another matter. "If you do, I will persuade her to help you, and I'll help destroy whatever is in that crystal myself."
"Severus! I don't want anything from him! I'm ready to..."
He flicked her on the nose before she could finish. He looked her in the eyes with quiet warmth and spoke evenly:
"Do you think I can't see how much you want to be human again? And if it can be done, which I have serious doubts about, and not because of the cost of the ingredients for the potion, but because of the pain you'd feel from taking it, then I would be glad to use a different method instead. I consider myself fairly intelligent, but not all-knowing. And if there's something that can make you human again without pain, I will find it, even if that means going through whatever's in that crystal."
"Severus. I. Thank you. I'm so glad I found you." She pressed herself against his chest and whispered it, moved beyond words. "I. I could never repay..."
"Say the word 'gratitude' one more time and the next thing you're getting is a flick, and your scales won't save you." He cut her off without a second's hesitation. "And stop soaking my shirt."
The spirit watching all of this stared with unconcealed amazement. For a wizard who had spent his life in white magic and could read souls clearly, seeing a person with a soul as dark as this one's, with barely a flicker of gray, treat another with such genuine tenderness was simply incomprehensible. It dismantled his entire worldview in a matter of seconds. He had encountered many people with souls like that; every one of them had been a true zealot or a maniac. The young man standing before him fit neither description.
He was even starting to wonder whether his own magic, or his eyes, were failing with age.
Perhaps he's performing…?
"Old man. How do you intend to free her from the curse?" The spirit flinched visibly at his voice, but recovered quickly under the gaze of two puzzled little eyes and managed an awkward, not entirely natural smile.
"When I was very young, I loved to travel. One day I came upon the ruins of an ancient city. I was very foolish then and understood little. I gave in to temptation and took something that should never have been touched, and the ruins began to collapse. That day I lost my brother, and I kept this." The floor of the cave trembled, and a small stone rose from the water. At its center sat a strange vessel containing a glowing, transparent liquid. The moment Severus's eyes landed on it, something crossed his face: a flash of shock, immediately overtaken by anger. His knuckles itched. Had the man standing before him not been a spirit, he would have throttled him with his bare hands.
Sacred Spring water. Sacred Spring water. Sacred Spring water. He destroyed a Sacred Spring. This idiot destroyed a Sacred Spring.
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