Where are your clothes?' The portrait remarked, suppressing its laughter to an entertained smile.
'They had an accident,' Harry replied ambiguously. He did not want to explain exactly what kind of accident to his ancestor, the memory of Fleur's hands burning through his clothes and hers was private, very private.
'Why didn't you conjure or transfigure something?' Salazar asked, continuing to press the subject with the same soft, amused smirk.
'I did in the morning, but it's easy to change here when I'm apparating back anyway,' Harry shrugged, pulling on a fresh set of school robes. 'You might want to take a look at your neck,' Slytherin sniggered, revealing his agenda at last. 'Had a close run in with a toothless vampire, did you?'
Harry flushed red and used Sirius' mirror to check. Now that the founder had so delicately reminded him he did remember Fleur's lips and teeth on his neck and shoulder on several separate occasions.
A vivid crimson mark, dulling to purple at its centre, sat proudly under his jaw line, while a scatter of similar, smaller ones trailed along his collarbone underneath. Harry stared at them, torn between scowling and smiling. He liked the marks, enjoyed the visible proof that he was hers, but it was rather too visible to everyone else as well.
Fleur had to have seen it in the morning, when they were talking, but she hadn't said a word about them to him. Not that that particularly surprised him, she would enjoy knowing that she'd left her mark on him to show the world he belonged to her.
He raised the tip of his wand to his neck, the incantation to remove and heal minor injuries on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.
He conjured himself a scarf instead, wrapping it gently around his neck to conceal the bite mark while Salazar laughed uproariously at his decision to keep them behind him.
'That does explain why you didn't come back to speak to me,' he smirked, still eyeing Harry's neck. 'Do Fleur's parents know what you've deflowered their daughter?'
Harry smiled a little at the play on words, but his amusement vanished with a groan upon realising that the marks must have been visible the entire time this morning, including when he had thanked Fleur's parents for letting him stay.
At least Gabrielle wasn't there, he consoled himself.
'I'll take that as a yes,' Salazar smirked.
'It isn't funny,' Harry grumbled. 'How I am I supposed to look either of them in the eye now? They'd only just started to accept me.'
'I'm sure that you'll manage,' the painting commented, still amused. 'Now what did you learn from Gringotts?'
'The fortune of my family was mostly spent in the war with Voldemort by my father,' Harry said bluntly. 'The vaults that I might have been able to claim from connected families do not exist, save for one under your name, but I received the impression it is a meagre amount.'
'Were there any alliances, agreements or such?' Slytherin asked. 'Gold can be earned, stolen or won. Your word is more important. It can often only be kept.'
'None that are still binding,' Harry smiled.
'That is good,' Salazar smiled, petting his serpent in good humour. 'You are free to carve out your own path.'
'Once Voldemort is dead,' Harry reminded him.
'Well, yes,' the founder agreed. 'There's no avoiding that, but you have come so far from the weak, thin child who first came into my study and couldn't even recognise his most famous ancestor.'
'I'm still not strong enough,' Harry disagreed. Salazar laughed. 'You are powerful, you are driven, you are fast, you are cunning and you are ruthless when it is required. In two years you have transitioned from a child to a wizard that any opponent would have to take seriously to survive. You have another two years before your magic reaches its peak, Voldemort will not wait, but he will underestimate you, and when he does you will be there to bring his delusions crumbling down around him.'
'You're very confident,' Harry remarked, not half so sure of his victory as the founder seemed to be.
'You underestimate yourself as much as your enemies, Harry,' he said proudly. 'There is no reliable scale by which to compare wizards and witches, but I can assure you that there are few who are as talented in so many different branches of magic as you are.' He pulled a vaguely amused expression at Harry's disbelief.
A silence fell over the study as Harry extricated the Marauder's Map from under his cloak, and studied it briefly, searching for one particular name.
'Fudge will be desperate now,' Harry murmured aloud, still scrutinising the map. 'He'll act as soon as he can if he thinks it might save him from having to resign.'
'Fudge?' Salazar looked every bit as mystified as Gabrielle had when he'd explained that Fudge was a person, and that Britain's Ministry was not run by animated confectionery. Not that you'd be able to tell the difference in some places.
'The Minister for Magic, he's clinging to power by a thread, but determined not to let go at any cost from what I know of him. The moment Umbridge gives him hope of a lifeline he will seize the rope with both hands.'
'You intend to hang him with it?' Slytherin inquired.
'I do not care what happens to Fudge,' Harry shrugged. 'His desperation makes it the perfect moment for me to act, and the chaos of his dismissal will cover the few traces I leave. Nobody will be looking very hard for an unpopular former undersecretary when Voldemort has just returned and war looms.'
He finally spotted the name he was searching for, the girl was walking towards the Owlery. Harry would be hard-pressed to catch her if she didn't dally, but he couldn't have chosen a better place to come across Marietta Edgecombe if he tried.
'I'm leaving,' he decided, tucking the map into his robes, and turning on his heel to sprint up to Myrtle's bathroom. 'Clearly,' Salazar replied distantly and dryly.
Harry cast every charm he knew that would conceal him, as he ran up the stairs to the entrance, hissing at it to open. Silencing spells to hide the sound of his footsteps, the Disillusionment Charm to render him invisible, and a weak compulsion to encourage students to step away from him and clear his way.
He banished the water on the floor across the bathroom with a flick of his wand as he hurtled across the floor and into the corridor. Harry didn't need to be leaving disembodied footprints behind him.
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