Chapter 298: The Old Man in the Portrait (2 in 1)

Chapter 298: The Old Man in the Portrait (2 in 1)

The Death Eaters were confused, and Jon was just as confused as everyone else at this point.

He stumbled on his feet and almost fell straight to the ground, taking several steps forward before he could barely stand still.

And by the time he was on his feet, the bronze door that now stood behind him slammed shut!

The dull thud of the door slamming shut woke up Jon, who was still in a daze.

Gabrielle also heard that sound and poked her head out of Nick's horrified face with a confused look on her face.

"We. Got inside the door?"

Jon didn't answer her question immediately, because, at this very moment, he was observing his surroundings carefully.

It was a different place from the cold environment outside the door, surrounded by solid walls built up instead of permafrost that didn't melt in a million years.

The space behind the door wasn't small, but it wasn't very wide either, but it was obviously more like a foyer of sorts, and there was a pathway winding forward directly in front of Jon, leading to the deepest part.

Jon looked around and noticed two ancient candelabras set on the walls on either side of the door.

The candelabra were designed in a sort of serpentine shape, with the serpent's tail embedded in the wall, while the serpent's tongue that spat out of its mouth was lit with an eerie blue flame.

The flame seemed eternal, and it had been burning all the time before Jon entered.

By the appearance of the flame alone, Jon could recognise what this cluster of flame is.

Gubraithian Fire, an eternal flame of brightness that could burn forever and required a very high level of magic to produce.

But as precious as this fire was, it was not so precious that Jon's attention was drawn to it. He gazed intently at the candelabra located to the right of the bronze door, with a thoughtful face as if he was remembering something, and looked at Gabrielle with some uncertainty and asked.

"Do you remember; when we were outside the door earlier, the place where we found that gem at that time seemed to be in the position of this candelabra, right?"

Hearing Jon's words, Gabrielle recalled it for a moment with an uncertain look on her face, then the little girl nodded firmly.

"Yes! I remember that gem was pretty, it was on our left-hand side when we were outside the door, and now that we're in, it's on our right!"

Gabrielle's words of certainty gave Jon even more confidence, and with a fist pump, he went over to the candelabra on his right and proceeded to first try to see if he could pull it right out of the wall.

After a failed attempt, Jon raised his wand again and used a severing charm on the spot where the candelabra was embedded.

The wall behind the door was not as invulnerable as the door itself, and with a severing charm, the stone wall with the candelabra embedded in it revealed a thick spider web of cracks.

Then, with two hands clasped around the serpentine candelabra, Jon pulled it out of the stone wall with a sudden push that might have rendered this candelabra worthy of a relic of the magical world broken!

The serpent's tongue jumped vigorously for a few moments before stabilizing in Jon's hands again.

And Jon's eyes, which were already burning with excitement, did not look at the candelabra, which would have fetched thousands of gold galleons in any magical region outside, but fixed on the end of the serpentine candelabra!

There was an inconspicuous blue diamond-shaped gem reflecting an eerie blue fire!

The gem was pulled out by Jon!

Now he finally understood why whoever had been outside the door had not been able to remove the gem, which appeared to be embedded in the ice.

It was simply an illusion!

The raw material that had been used by Adrien to create the ring's gem was part of the serpent's tail of the candelabra that had somehow found its way outside the door in that part of the ice where he had been able to perfect the gem on the spot, but there was no way to get it from outside.

Because the gem was something that existed inside the door, and the only way to get it into his hands is after entering the bronze door!

Jon looked at the serpentine candelabra with excitement, and soon his eyes turned to the identical candelabra, located to the left of the bronze door.

It was hard to say what came to his mind after that, but he didn't want to travel here in vain; if the serpent's tail of this candelabra could be made into a ring's gem by Adrien, then the other candelabra must be extraordinary as well.

The old man also looked like he wasn't about to delve into the fact that the young man nowadays even stole the candelabras, and instead reverted his gaze to Jon's face with an elderly expression.

"Hiss, hiss, hiss."

An unpleasant, shrill, snake-like tone that Jon couldn't even understand spat out of the old man's mouth.

Looking at Jon as he just stared at him with wide eyes, instead of being disappointed, the old man looked as if some sort of doubt had risen.

"You're not part of my bloodline?"

Jon had taken the cloak of invisibility off his body by now and had some startling suspicions in his mind, but still blinked outwardly in an act of some uncertainty.

"What is your name, Sir?"

The old man held his hand out as he introduced himself with narrowed eyes.

"Salazar Slytherin."

Although he had expected to hear this name, he couldn't help reveal his shock upon actually hearing it.

He looked at the old man in the magical portrait and struggled to retrieve the knowledge of the history of magic in his mind.

After the four founders of Hogwarts had once founded the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the four people who were originally close to each other had a violent disagreement over the criteria for recruiting students.

Even though Gryffindor eventually contributed his hat offering to select the students they wanted according to each founder's own needs, Slytherin, who had an overwhelming belief in the bloodline, was still not satisfied with the result.

He even turned against his former best friend Gryffindor for this, and clashed with the two witches, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, eventually choosing to build a chamber in Hogwarts Castle and hide a basilisk inside, so that when his successor discovered it he could unleash the basilisk and kill those students who studied in the castle but could not meet his own requirements.

So, he came here sometime afterwards?

Did he build this labyrinth under the ice?

And that one basilisk too, had it been kept by him earlier?

Many questions rose in Jon's mind in a row, but his gaze, as he looked at the elderly Slytherin's face, did not stray.

As he was looking at the Slytherin, Slytherin also continued to scrutinize him.

"You're not pureblood either?"

"Not from my bloodline and not a pureblood, yet you managed to get in here."

He examined it, before suddenly uttering a snicker.

"According to that fool Godric, that means you perfectly fit the qualities I require in a student, have my approval, one who is 'proud, cautious, clever, determined and ambitious'?"

At the very end of his sentence, a loud 'bang' suddenly sounded in the bedroom.

The two candelabras that weighed quite light were hard enough for Gabrielle to carry, and while Jon and the Slytherin were talking, she accidentally dropped one of them on the floor.

Both Jon and Slytherin redirected their attention to the candelabra that wasn't supposed to be there and combined with what Slytherin had just said, the atmosphere once again fell into an eerie silence.

Gabrielle, obviously aware that this slip of the fingers was a little too untimely, and looked like she was about to burst into tears, hastily hauled and grabbed the candelabra that had fallen to the floor with her before re-hiding behind Jon.

As if the theft of the candelabra had never happened.

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