Harry Finds Founders – Part 2 – EAD 2026

Title: Harry Finds Founders- Part 2
Author: Claire Watson
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Canon Divergence
Content Rating: Gen
Author Notes: This series involves personal worldbuilding as well as my own head-canon. For instance, in this ‘verse, Charlus Potter and Dorea Black were James’ parents. I’m stuck in the headspace I was in when I read the books, and I’m not particularly bothered by that.
Word Count: 3,063
Summary: Following Harry’s adventure in the Chamber of Secrets, he discovers that he can access another hidden room in the castle; one with such strong secrecy spells on it that he can’t even tell anyone else where it is.

Chapter one was posted for EAD 2025. Best to read that first.

Chapter two

The three of them left through a door on the right of the painting.

“Now, I’m going to go into this with the assumption that you don’t know anything,” said Lord Slytherin. “That way you won’t get confused.” He made a face. “Theoretically. If I forget and start using terminology I haven’t explained, just interrupt and ask. I won’t mind.”

Harry nodded.

“We should probably start with the term ‘blood wards’. I would like to make it clear that there is no such thing as ‘blood wards’, per se; there is blood magic, and there is warding magic. There are times when you can integrate aspects of blood magic into warding, but they don’t then become blood wards anymore than levitating a potion makes it a levitation potion.” He paused and glanced at Harry.

Harry nodded again.

“Blood magic by itself is too large a subject to go into in much depth, not for our purposes anyway. Blood magic, simply put, is where you use the magic inherent in living blood as a power source, rather than core magic, elemental magic, or wild magic.”

“Uh…” Harry raised his hand like he was in class. “I don’t know what any of those mean.”

“Dorkin’s balls, what exactly are they teaching then?” Lord Slytherin exclaimed. “No, don’t answer that; it was rhetorical. Broadly speaking, most wand magic is core magic. Witches and Wizards are born with a magical core, a self generated central reservoir of magic that, with training and practice, can be tapped at will. A wand is a tool that allows more finesse, especially during training. However, every student of Hogwarts has performed unwanded core magic at some point or another. It is how they’re identified; the British Isles are seeded with detectors for this purpose.”

“You’re talking about accidental magic,” said Harry, remembering the discussion where Neville had talked about his Great-Uncle knocking him off a pier and dropping him out a window to make it happen. “Neville said that if you don’t do accidental magic, everyone thinks you’re a squib. I mean, a lightblood.”

They’d already had that discussion when Harry had been telling them about Filch. None of the founders had been happy with modern terminology and its habit of demeaning any but purebloods and their magical children.

“Yes, Lightbloods still have magic in them; much more magic than an average stillblood. They can still use any form of magic that doesn’t require a core, such as potions, runeology, divination, and of course, blood magic. We never did confirm just how lightbloods came about, but the prevailing theory in my time was that it was related to fractures in family magic, caused by—” Lord Slytherin stopped mid-sentence. “Wait, we’re drifting off-topic. I’ll get onto that later. Where were we?”

“Core magic,” Harry answered. “You said something about elemental and wild magic, too.”

“Right. Well, elemental magic, as the name suggests, derives from the elements. It can be directed by wand, but works much better without them. Hogwarts was built the way it was to allow the four of us; Huffy, Ro, Goddy and me; to always have an elemental source close by. Those that can be, that is.”

“Water in the lake,” said Harry, “earth all around. Wood in the forest. Air is everywhere too. Rock or metal might be in the ground here, for all I know. Ice in the winter. What about fire and lightning?”

“Fire and lightning are oddities, as far as elemental magic is concerned. While found in nature, they are never stable, never still. They cannot be collected, not truly. Oh, you can have a fire in a grate, or light a candle, but the fire itself never stops. Due to possible future concerns as well as safety issues, it was unanimously decided that we wouldn’t locate Hogwarts on or near an active volcano.”

Harry tried to imagine what Fred and George would get up to if they had a volcano to play with, and agreed that it was probably wise. It wasn’t like Hagrid managed to keep people out of the Forbidden Forest, and a forest wasn’t inherently destructive the way a volcano was.

“Lightning is even harder to cage. I’ve heard that something close to it can be produced manually, but only natural lightning is magical. Lightning, therefore, is the hardest element to use. Along with the danger and difficulty of getting it to do what you want, the chance to practice with it is much reduced. The best school for lightning magic is far from here, or it was. It may still exist, it may not. It was at the edge of a lake that experienced lightning most days of the year; a remarkable place.”

“Wild magic…is difficult to explain. There have been those that have ascribed various forms of elemental magic as wild magic, others for whom any kind of magic they don’t understand is called wild. In truth, we aren’t much better. Wild magic is magic that doesn’t fall under any of the known and explored categories. It’s possible that magic I would describe as wild has already been categorised; my friends and I have been limited by our isolation.”

“So, what kind of magic does potions come under?” Harry asked.

“Any kind of magic that involves working with external magic, that doesn’t require you to channel magic through your body, is called passive magic. Most potions work is passive magic, with only a small sub-section that can be considered core magic. There are potions that use blood, but that doesn’t make them blood magic. The blood is an ingredient, rather than the power source.”

“So, what is blood magic then?”

“Blood magic is family magic,” Lord Slytherin explained. “It’s a pool of magic that a group of magical beings share by way of their blood relation to each other. It is both exceptionally versatile and very limiting; blood magic allows you to perform feats that an individual witch or wizard could never hope to match, but they must be done for the benefit of your family, and another family member can undo them.

“The strength of blood magic is derived from several sources. The first is the age of the pool of magic. Living magic grows stronger with age, so the older the family, the stronger their magic.”

“That’s why the purebloods think they’re better,” Harry realised. “It’s because they start with the advantage of family magic.”

“No doubt. But the age of the magic isn’t everything. Family magic benefits from many individual members, the diversity of introduced blood, and also from family cohesion.” He paused, looking at Harry’s frown, and stopped to elaborate. “Family cohesion is when the family has a sense of shared purpose and resolve. Members don’t have to desire to spend all their time together, but they must respect each other, and their place.

“Of course, the older, larger, and more important a family becomes, the harder it is to get everyone to drive in harness, so to speak. There are inevitably those who don’t want to follow the family’s direction. How those family misfits are treated becomes pivotal to a family magic’s health. When someone sharing the same well of magic is made to feel ostracised from the rest, it can create a fracture in the whole. As I said before, it’s thought that fractured family magic can be a source of lightbloods.

“Other theories are that lightbloods might result from witches or wizards with damaged cores, those that have broken vows or used too much foul magic that is inimical to life. Or perhaps it might be a result of inbreeding; in the time during which such things have been studied, newbloods have never thrown a lightblood. For all we know, it could be a combination of factors or something else entirely. The thought that it might be a sign of oathbreaking, however, has caused many oldblood families to hide their lightblood offspring, to cast them out rather than nurture them the way they should have, thus damaging their family magic futher. Eventually the family magic becomes so tainted, so stagnant, that it requires extraordinary measures to pass to new generations.”

Harry frowned. “What kind of extraordinary measures?”

“Various rituals, supplications and/or offerings to powerful entities… Of course, the least complicated way to reinvigorate stagnant family magic is the injection of new, vigorous, whole and untarnished, young family magic.”

“Like my mum.” Harry’s frown deepened. “Does that mean that my dad only married her for her blood? My dad didn’t have any brothers or sisters, does that mean that the Potter family magic had gone stale, and that’s why he married a mu-newblood?”

“There’s no way to know, short of asking him,” replied Lord Slytherin. “Keep in mind that a stagnant well of family magic isn’t the only reason for a family to have trouble having children. A more accurate indicator would be the existence of multiple light or stillblood children in a generation rather than a single, powerful child. And we’re straying from the original point again.”

“You said that there are wards, and there is blood magic, but not blood wards,” said Harry.

Lord Slytherin nodded. “Briefly, wards are like a fence. They are built with a purpose and with certain tools. What they will defend against depends on the weave of elements in its structure and how skilled and knowledgeable the builder was. Blood magic—family magic—doesn’t have the finesse for intricate work like wards. Think of it as a deep but narrow, fast-flowing river. You might be able to temporarily divert its course, but regardless of what obstacles you put in its way, the water will eventually find its way to the sea. It will never be a fence.”

“But then how…” Harry struggled to put his thoughts into words. Dumbledore had told him his mother’s love had protected him from Voldemort with the whole Philosophers Stone business. It had been a comfort the following summer, locked away at the Dursleys. “Does that mean it wasn’t my mum who helped me against Voldemort?”

“I didn’t say that,” Lord Slytherin responded gently. “A mother’s love can be a fierce and wondrous thing. What I said was that there is no such thing as blood wards, especially not ones that work the way it sounds like your Headmaster said they did. While it’s possible that your mother infused her intent into her own well of magic and then gifted it to you in the moment of her death, the moment she died her hold on that intent died with her.

“Your mother was a newblood, her family magic began with her. With your father already dead, and with you as the last member of his magical house, the only one alive who can direct your combined family magic is you. Your family magic is no doubt protective—your survival means its survival—and your parents’ sacrifice could only enhance that, but nothing anyone but you could possibly have done would make living with your relatives have any effect on it.”

Harry stared at the ground. He remembered what Slytherin had said, that Dumbledore was either ignorant, lying, or working against him. “For whatever reason, he wants me back there. If it isn’t because of blood wards, then what is it?”

“That is the question I’ve been asking myself.” Lord Slytherin sighed. “If we attempt to extrapolate motivations based on results…well. Here you are, a bright young man with a robust well of personal magic supported by a deep and active family magic, but after two years of magical schooling you are still—forgive my blunt speaking—smaller than your magical peers, you have badly healed physical injuries I can see from here, and you remain strangely uninformed about your own personal situation. One of these things could be chance. Two could be coincidence—although it would still be a stretch—but three?”

Harry had heard that quote before. “Three is enemy action.”

“There is a slim possibility that three is still coincidence,” Lord Slytherin replied. “It is up to you if you want to think so. But given the danger you’ve found yourself in since coming to Hogwarts, danger that seems to be curiously focused around you, can you really afford to take the chance?”

Harry looked up, trying to work out if Lord Slytherin really meant everything he was saying. The whole idea was just so mad. What reason did Dumbledore have to even bother doing something like that? What was the point?

On the other hand, the number of times he’d nearly died since he came to Hogwarts was alarming. He hadn’t even realised how many times his life had been in very real danger until he was telling the founders his life story and watching them hold back their fury.

No one else was fighting possessed teachers, basilisks and trolls and being sent into the Forbidden Forest at night looking for something strong enough to kill a unicorn. Sure, Ron also fought the troll; Hermione, Neville and Malfoy had gone into the Forbidden Forest, and Ron and Hermione had both helped him with Quirrelmort and the basilisk, but all of it had happened to Harry and in the end he was the who faced the danger alone.

It was all adding up.

“Why don’t we leave it there for the moment?” Lord Slytherin asked kindly. “Think it over for a while. In the meantime, I’m sure the others must be ready to join us again by now.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” came Lord Gryffindor’s voice just before he strode into view on the canvas, not bothering to wait for Harry’s reply.

“Goddy!” Lady Ravenclaw hissed, arriving on his heels. “Can you not be tactful for once in your life?”

Lord Gryffindor waved a hand. “Tact is overrated. A bit of plain speaking is what young Harry needs; fewer wishy-washy words that don’t mean anything and more cold, hard facts. Right, Harry?”

Harry nodded, opening his mouth to agree.

“Cold hard facts and tact are not mutually exclusive,” Lady Ravenclaw insisted. “Tell him, Helly.”

“Why should I bother?” Lady Hufflepuff said wearily. “Neither of you really cares if I agree with you or not. Besides, that’s not what we’re here for.”

“True.” Lord Gryffindor nodded sharply. “Well, one thing we do agree on is that you, Harry, need to be taken care of properly. Your current guardians are neglectful at best and downright criminal at worst; something needs to be done, and sooner rather than later.”

“The truth is that until your guardianship is sorted out one way or another, it’s useless to make specific plans,” Lady Hufflepuff explained. “Since that’s a primarily legal process, it’s something Sally will be best at coaching you through. He was always the best of us when it came to wrangling bureaucracy; sometimes, I think it should be considered a magic all its own.”

“Yes, well, maybe it is,” said Lady Ravenclaw. “The way he can talk people into things and out of them, how do we know that he isn’t using some kind of voice magic?”

Lord Gryffindor sighed. “This again? It doesn’t take a magical compulsion in the voice to be a good debater, Ro, you have to get over it. Having the biggest vocabulary doesn’t automatically make you the one who’ll win the arguments, no matter what it was like your family growing up.”

Lady Ravenclaw sniffed. “That remains to be seen.”

“Don’t mind them, it’s been a point of contention for almost as long as we’ve known each other,” said Lady Hufflepuff with a wink. “Now, you must be getting tired, dear. What are your thoughts on getting some rest and then coming back to see us tomorrow afternoon? We can arrange for some food and then activate the time expansion runes again and have a nice long chat.”

The other three founders were nodding, and so Harry nodded too. Now that someone had mentioned it, he was feeling a bit tired.

“Make a note of where the exit is,” Lord Gryffindor said. “I’ll set it to the one nearest the entrance to your common room. When you want to find us again, go back there and talk to Gretal, who’ll be waiting there. She’ll let you in.”

“She said I should have an offering,” Harry remembered. “Is there something I’m supposed to bring with me?”

“Normally a student desiring to learn from one of us would bring a gift to show their sincerity,” Lady Ravenclaw explained. “Don’t worry about it, she’s been told you have been granted full access at any time. If anything happens that makes you feel unsafe, don’t wait for the afternoon; just come straight here.”

Almost before Harry knew it, he was exiting the secret chamber into a small alcove just down the corridor from the Fat Lady’s portrait. He turned back to see a mirror slide into place where the passageway had just been.

He stared at his reflection for a moment, wondering if the whole thing was had been a particularly vivid dream.

His reflection winked at him, the eyes changing shape and the hair taking on a reddish tint even in the dim light. Harry jerked back and stumbled out of the alcove, almost falling over Fred and George who reached out and steadied him.

‘Steady on, old chap,” said Fred, who had a small triangle of freckles under his right eye that George had under his left.

“Curfew is still ten minutes away,” George clapped him on the shoulder. “Do we want to know-”

“-exactly what you were doing in that alcove? You weren’t trying to-”

“-sneak up on us, were you?”

“No, I was-” Harry broke off, uncertain about what he should tell them.

Fred and George exchanged a glance before turning as one and, placing themselves on either side of Harry, started walking him towards the portrait.

“Having a quiet moment to yourself?” suggested George breezily.

“Resting before heading off to rescue another imperilled housemate?” Fred continued. “Worry not, Lord Potter.  I Gred-”

“-and I, Forge-”

“-will always do our best to have your back.”

Remembering their support all school year and how they’d driven the Ford Anglia to rescue him from the Dursleys back in August the previous year, Harry believed them.

“Thanks,” he said, hoping they understood that he meant it.