Ted's new Bubble Head Charm—he liked to call it the Safety Helmet Curse—was a huge improvement on the standard spell.
Unlike the original, which only filtered air and allowed underwater breathing, his version added elastic protection, like a magical cushion.
He'd gone even further.
By weaving in the Protego Charm, he'd created the Safety Helmet Curse Type II.
It covered the entire body like a transparent suit of armor. And with a touch of the Disillusionment Charm, it evolved again into the Helmet Curse Type III, giving it partial invisibility.
Ted even made it modular, like a magical motherboard. He could slot other charms into it to combine effects.
As long as they weren't enchantments that clashed, the possibilities were endless.
Waterproofing, poison gas filtration, heat insulation, sound dampening, invisibility—he'd built it all in.
This was especially for the basilisk. Snakes didn't just see with eyes; they sensed heat.
The combination of Bubble Head Charm and Protego had replaced the old Bubble Head Charm and Protego in his system, now recognized as a solid intermediate to advanced-level spell, sitting at level 2. When Ted cast it, he chanted, "Tutela arma~" in a playful twist.
Now, all of Ted's friends were encased head to toe in these transparent magical suits, looking rather like wizards in space suits.
They looked bulky but were weightless and didn't hinder movement at all.
The only problem? You couldn't hear a thing.
Ted solved that easily, setting up a psychic communication net so they could all "speak their minds" directly.
"Whoa~" Jerry marveled, flexing his protected hands. It felt so strange.
"Oi, can anyone hear me?" Ron tested it out, tapping his helmet like a microphone.
Besides the mentioned charms, Ted stacked Shield, Protection from Evil, Mage Armor, Energy Shields, Slow Fall, and even a greased feet spell for quick movement.
Finally came Arcane Intellect. After Ted and Hermione cast it on them, everyone looked around in surprise.
That sudden clarity, the slight buzzing as their thoughts sharpened—it was like feeling their brains grow.
Ron complained via telepathy, "Ted, Hermione, why didn't you use this spell on me before? I wanna know what it's like to be smart!"
Ted held back a laugh.
He didn't have the heart to tell Ron that even with Arcane Intellect, he still wasn't quite "smart."
Harley, on the other hand, already had strong natural intelligence. With the boost, she was definitely in "genius" territory.
After layering all the protections, they were finally ready.
Ted also enchanted the troll and the clay golem, mainly covering the troll's eyes so he could control it by mind without risking the creature locking eyes with the basilisk.
Not long after they began to move, they reached a huge round door carved with twisting serpents.
Neville stepped forward without being told. In Parseltongue, he hissed, "Open~."
The stone snakes shifted, gliding toward the center, and a hidden mechanism groaned. The massive round door opened slowly, like the vault doors at Gringotts.
Ted activated his Ravenclaw Wisdom card to boost his intellect even more. High intelligence and powerful psionics were exactly what he needed for the coming spells.
Through their psychic link, Ted told them, Keep close. I'll take the lead.
Then he waved his wand, adding invisibility to everyone's helmet spell, and together they slipped silently through the door.
Beyond lay a vast chamber, easily half the size of a Quidditch pitch.
As the door swung wide, rows of enormous braziers sprang to life, flooding the space with eerie light.
A stone path stretched ahead, flanked by towering statues of coiled serpents. The floor showed marks, as if something massive had once been dragged across it.
At the end of the corridor loomed a gargantuan stone face. The head was even bigger than the Dumbledore entire figure.
It was gnarled and wrinkled, with a long stone beard that twisted uncomfortably down its chest.
Slytherin, you bastard.
Ted couldn't help comparing it to the small portraits he'd once seen of the founders in the Ravenclaw hidden room.
Gryffindor was a towering blond man, broad and smiling. Hufflepuff, a kindly, plump woman.
Even Slytherin, bald and shadowy, still looked regal and composed.
But this enormous statue? Twisted by dark magic, it seemed almost grotesque, as if Slytherin's studies into the darker arts had corrupted even his stone likeness.
Now this picture of the plague-stricken old monkey is also Slytherin?
Could it be that he delved too deeply into dark magic in his later years, causing his appearance to change so drastically?
Ravenclaw's diary also recorded that, more than ten years after Hogwarts was founded, Slytherin's teaching philosophy began to drift away from that of the other three founders.
The main reason was the rampant witch hunts of the time. Most ordinary witches and wizards discovered their magic by accident and could only muster a few simple spells in their entire lives, often with little control.
Once discovered by Muggles, they were nearly always killed by angry mobs.
It was somewhat like how villagers might stab a rogue wizard to death with pitchforks.
Although the newly founded Hogwarts took in many young witches and wizards, some of the children from Muggle families couldn't bear to cut ties with their relatives.
Worse still, a few turned around and betrayed their own kind, helping Muggles hunt down other witches and wizards.
Slytherin was deeply troubled and angered by this. He proposed that Hogwarts stop accepting students from non-magical families and instead focus on teaching more powerful and lethal forms of dark magic to protect themselves.
The other three founders disagreed. They believed that, while the situation was unfortunate, it couldn't be changed by force of will alone.
In time, they hoped, relations would improve and witches and wizards could live peacefully alongside Muggles.
They argued that meeting violence with more violence would only deepen the rift and might one day spark an all-out war.
If that happened, even if some witches and wizards survived, their society as a whole might be doomed.
This was only the first of many such arguments.
As Slytherin grew increasingly aware of the gulf between himself and his friends, he built his own secret chamber beneath the castle where he could teach dark magic to his chosen Slytherin students in private.
At first, it was merely a hidden classroom. But generations later, Slytherin's descendants, branching off into the Gaunt family, rediscovered the Chamber of Secrets through Parseltongue.
As one of the school governors at the time, they seized opportunities like castle renovations to conceal the entrance with a humble bathroom and constructed an intricate network of large pipes throughout the castle.
Eventually, relentless inbreeding among the Gaunts brought ruin upon their line. But Voldemort, descended from them, stumbled upon records of the Chamber's existence in old family documents.
In his fifth year, after several years of searching, he finally found the Chamber using Parseltongue.
He was still just a teenager then, with limited ambitions. He simply tapped into the knowledge and enchantments left behind by Slytherin.
When he opened the Chamber, the basilisk within accidentally killed Myrtle with its stare.
Because Dumbledore watched him closely afterward, Voldemort did not open the Chamber again before he graduated. But he did seize the opportunity of Myrtle's death—using her murder to fracture his soul and create his very first Horcrux.
That diary Horcrux was unique. It carried Voldemort's emotions and memories, making it quite unlike the Horcruxes he would forge later.
Those were purely devices for resurrection, laced with vicious curses and protective spells.
...
Ever since stepping into the Chamber, Harley had been quietly scanning the surroundings. At last, she spotted Malfoy lying limply on the ground near the towering statue of Slytherin.
His blond hair was matted over his forehead, and his face was so pale he looked on the brink of death.
Harley's heart clenched, but she forced herself to stay calm. She couldn't risk ruining Ted's careful plan.
Though Ted and the others were still hidden under invisibility spells, someone suddenly appeared behind the statue—a boy of sixteen or seventeen.
His dark brown hair was parted neatly down the middle, his features striking and almost elegant, but there was something shadowed in his eyes.
He stood tall and composed, a faint, cold smile playing at his lips.
He was holding Malfoy's wand.
Neville, concealed by magic, felt his forehead burn suddenly. His scar throbbed with a sharp, searing pain.
"Ah, welcome. I've been waiting quite a while," the young man called out, his voice echoing through the chamber. "Now, why don't we introduce ourselves properly?"
When no one responded after a few tense seconds, his expression darkened. "I said, the girl who lived... Harley Potter, is it not you? How disappointing."
At that moment, Ted whispered urgently to Neville.
Neville steadied himself and stepped forward. As the invisibility charm lifted, he materialized in the corridor.
"I heard you were looking for me," Neville said, his voice firm despite the fear coiling in his chest.