CH 138

'Still not silent,' she teased.

'It will be eventually,' Harry defended, 'you have an advantage with your special magic, I have to work harder for it.'

Fleur huffed, sparks dancing across her fingers. 'You are envious,' she decided, 'and your magic is not normal either, is it, you have a very unusual wand.'

'True,' he conceded, 'but I still don't have, how did you describe it, soft magic.'

'It would not make sense to you,' she told him, slightly serious, 'you are not veela, you can't feel it. Gabrielle can feel everything about a piece of magic if it is strong enough, but I can still feel enough to identify whose it is if I know them well enough.'

'Oh,' that caught Harry's interest, she had not mentioned it before.

'The maze was blanketed in your magic,' she told him by way of explanation, 'I knew it was yours, Gabby told me it was roiling, hot and angry. She said it was like boiling water, but hungry,' Fleur laughed throatily at his scowl. Gabrielle made his magic sound like a cup of tea.

'Well I was all of those, except hungry,' Harry responded.

'I'd love to know what spell you used to give off such an aura,' Fleur eyed him speculatively, 'but I don't think you'll tell me.'

'It's a secret,' Harry repeated, worried, but still sounding playful.

'You're just afraid I'll do it better,' she decided.

'It's a fire spell,' he told her, 'I know you'll be better at it, not that you need it,' he grinned, nodding at the sparks she was still absentmindedly conjuring over her finger tips. 'True,' she echoed back at him.

Fleur's face fell.

'I have to go now, Harry,' her toes curled reluctantly into the ground, 'but I'll enchant something and send it to you as soon as I can so we can come back here.'

'I could spend forever with you here,' Harry told her, more than slightly sad. He planned to, one day. Harry had spent all summer making plans and thinking things through, just to try and make sure he came back here in the end.

'I know.' She kissed him again, for longer than usual, pressing herself against him to remember how he felt, just as he pulled her into him, then she gave him one last smile and flickered away without a sound.

Just to rub it in. Harry took one last look around at the tiny world he wished he never had to leave, then with a soft snap the world spun, and he stepped into Slytherin's study.

'You're back,' the portrait noted, as Harry checked himself over.

'All of me,' Harry decided, not finding anything missing. He hadn't splinched himself since apparating to Diagon Alley last year, but it paid to be careful.

'What are you planning on learning today?' Everything was planned now, even when they fell apart there were more plans underneath. Five words had become five thousand and it had become second nature to perceive the world around him as the rippling actions of others. Harry had come to realise that it was easier to create the ripples than weather them unaware. Salazar had dubbed it his true character, proud of his heirs eventual adoption of his mindset, and attributing the brainless Godricness to Dumbledore's influence.

'There's not too long before the welcoming feast,' Harry informed him, 'so nothing complicated.'

'The welcoming feast,' Salazar mused, 'already, but you're not even halfway through what you wanted to learn over the summer.'

'Well-'

'You told me that you expected to have finished all the OWL level work in the subjects you feel behind in last year by now.'

'I'm ahead of where I wanted to be with my study of Occlumency, I caught up from last year, and I'm already well past OWL level in some subjects,' Harry countered. 'And you should know what day and time it is, I bought a clock for you, it was the first thing I did.'

'It broke,' Salazar told him matter of factly.

Of course, Harry remembered. The magic here would interfere with the electricity.

'My point still stands,' Harry continued, mentally planning the purchase of a more antique time-keeping device.

'It's a good point,' Slytherin said acidly. 'You excelled in an area that we have always been exceptional at, and forgot about everything else.'

'It was the most important area,' Harry reminded him.

'Of course,' the painting continued as if it hadn't heard, 'if you hadn't spent every second you could in France you might have had another year to learn about the more interesting fields of magic.'

Salazar was taking it a little too badly for everything to be as it should be.

'What don't I know?' he asked.

'Enough about magic to survive or stand a chance of defeating Voldemort,' the portrait retorted sharply. 'You'll get stronger naturally as you move towards your majority, or if you decide to keep moving through the pages of the books on rituals, but knowledge is a part of power, Harry, and he has decades more of it than you.'

'I don't have decades,' Harry replied a little tartly.

'Which is why you can't afford to waste time.' He shook his head when Harry's eyes narrowed. 'I'm not saying spending time with her is a waste, I know better than most how valuable time like that truly is, but don't forget about everything else.'

'I won't,' Harry assured his ancestor. 'We have a plan,' he reminded the painting, 'several, in fact.'

'I suppose you can learn about the more important areas of magic in our time down here,' Salazar decided. 'Legilimency is what we should start with. Riddle was, as all our family is,' Harry winced, 'talented at the mind arts. You need to be able to keep him out, and use the skill against his followers.'

'I have no safe way of testing my prowess,' Harry shrugged, 'not without provoking Dumbledore to go rooting through my head.'

'That's a bad idea,' Slytherin agreed, 'and you can't exactly learn how I did.'

'Why not?' Harry demanded. 'I learnt from a sphinx,' he said simply. Harry blinked.

He has a point.

'Did it test you?' Harry asked curiously,remembering the sphinx in the maze

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