Title: Tiber's Compendium

Character centric: Harry (no pairings at this time)

FYI - "no pairings at this time" means NO PAIRINGS AT THIS TIME!, author's note contains information about where to go to see author's preferred pairing style, do not assume that this story contains any romantic information about the Boy-Who-Lived being gay in this story, as I believe 14 is too young to fully understand romantic relations period. If I had paired him, it would be in the character profile of this story's FFnet's search engine.

MY Inspiration: Harry Potter (all media forms), Elder Scrolls "Oblivion & "Skyrim" (PS3 version, video games)

Disclaimer: This is my standard disclaimer; I don't own anything in regards to the sources of MYInspiration. All publically recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

All the characters, worlds, base concepts or general ideas are just a bit food for the writing bug. This story is pure fiction and is in no way meant to copy or reflect real life, events or people, should this happen then obviously it is pure coincidence.

Author's Note: See author profile for preferred pairing style. If you do not like stories, featuring same-sex pairings back away from any and all of my stories, without comment! I don't need the peanut gallery foisting antiquated ideas about ideal family units, especially in a time and age (is this the twenty-first century or the seventeenth century, our planet's over populated as it is and we no longer have to 'people' the world) where many children are need of many things, period!

Warning: Be prepared for unexpected pairings and lots of implications about Dumbledore and others without too many details. The author has never read, OoF, HBP or DH, but may take bits and pieces of them based on fanfiction stories that contained such spoilers or information from the web. There may possibly be some game spoilers, but since they've been out for a while judging by the walkthrough faqs, it's doubtful.

Summary: End of Year 3 & Year 4 re-write, Char. Ooc, AU/AR, still within JKR's world and then some - A book found in an ancient cavern, accessible only by a Parselmouth, leads a youth to discover alternative magic and perhaps a way to change his learning process or the magic he learns. Harry is aware of some things, also featured with a studious nature of a different sort. Not quite a super power Harry.

Speech Legend: (This is the standard by which I write most of my stories and therefore you will not see this repeated in future chapters)

"Normal"

'Thoughts'

(…Other Languages/Mind Speak/Alternate Speech Patterns like sign language…)

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

CH 1

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

Harry Potter let out a soft sigh before returning his attention to his Astronomy lesson. He'd learnt the basic constellations at his primary Muggle School when he was nine. He then had to relearn those same constellations under other names and definitions in order to fit into the Wizarding World's point of view related to them. Sure they had the regular planet names and some constellations remained the same, but others were changed, new or just different and needed to be added to his memory of them.

The Witches and Wizards believed that certain constellations held magic. The order in which they came together or the location of them in the heavens could predict the kind of life that an individual could have, if they believed in such things. Otherwise the Astronomy class was there to help the students with basic probability calculations.

'It certainly is math heavy considering I didn't take the elective in Arithmancy,' Harry thought, as he calculated the probability of "The Thief" constellation's position for his birthday month of July of this year. 'Hypothetical magical bonuses can occur to an individual's agility, speed and luck, but only if the person was born during a full 'Dark Moon' phase eclipsed by Mars.' He read from his star manual.'How odd,' he thought.'I wonder, how a person can go about figuring that out without going through a whole bunch of complicated and boring mathematical calculations?'

"All right class," Professor Sinistra called to the students. "Please study the star charts for the constellations of 'The Lord' and 'The Tower' for next class, also choose one classmate and make an analysis on whether they've been born when magical bonuses have been received. If any of you are interested to find out about ability effects for your own birth sign or whether you've been blessed by a star's position, try looking it up in the book called 'Ability Predictability by Tiberius Septim'. There are other books produced by the Septim Family, so you may be interested in looking up those as well. Class dismissed!"

"How interesting," Hermione Granger gushed, as she gathered her things next to Harry. "I should think it a good thing to know, if we've been influenced by the stars."

"Really," Harry replied. "Isn't that somewhat like Divination, like predicting the future by reading the stars, you know something similar to Muggle Astrology?"

"Well maybe," she hedged. Then she thought about all those New Year predictions and Astrology books that the muggles put out. "I'm sure that the books from the Septim Family would reveal something interesting on the matter or else Professor Sinistra wouldn't have suggested it, would she?"

"You could be right," Harry said, after a moment of thought. He didn't want to put down a Professor in front of her since her opinion of teachers was still, quite uncomfortably, close to believing that everything they said was gospel.

"Oh, you'll have to excuse me," she said. "I have some notes to trade with Martha Morningstar of Ravenclaw. See you back at the tower." She waved him off.

Harry only nodded and then he chose to wander around the area for a bit, as he had a rare bit of time on his hands free of his best friends. Ron Weasley was laid up in the Hospital Ward for Charm Class accident when he'd accidentally misspoke a spell word. He had to wait out the spell effect and had to be monitored for the rest of the entire night because of it.

The Gryffindor didn't linger in any of the corridors for too long, especially since they're patrolled by the Prefects and the Professors. Professor Snape was the most notable one for finding wayward students, particular those of the Lion House.

But on this night, several weeks before the end of the year and after Professor Lupin had resigned from his teaching position for the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, the halls seemed devoid of passersby. That's when Harry noticed that he was near the third floor girl's loo and haunting place of Moaning Myrtle the Ravenclaw ghost that he'd met the year before. Bored he shrugged to himself, knocked on the door in case the room was in use, but he doubted it and then he entered cautiously.

"Hello," he called out softly, not wanting to call attention to the ghost, but enough to ensure that he was entering the place and had properly announced his presence. He peered around the door and then quickly entered, as he'd just caught sight of the caretaker's cat, Mrs. Norris, further down the way.

He looked around the room and noticed that nothing had changed since he and his best friends had been there last year. The old cauldron was there on the floor with the congealed remnants of the Polyjuice Potion. He shuddered remembering the flavour of it. It was ghastly to taste.

"Probably should remove this or else banish it," he muttered softly. His attention was then riveted to the little snake emblem and he couldn't help himself. Curious to see if the access was still functioning, he hissed in Parseltongue, the language of snakes, (…Open…).

The sink moved out of the way and revealed the entrance, just as it had the previous year. He thought about Ginny and how she'd entered and left the place. 'There has to be some other method, other than sliding down or using brooms because she wasn't allowed a broom last year.'

(…Stairs...) he hissed. Nothing happened. (…Ladder…) he hissed. Nothing happened. Then he thought about the Headmaster's set of moving stairs. (…Elevate...) he had started to hiss the word elevator, but from the bottom of the pipe a hovering disk floated up for him to step on.

"Cool," he said.

Harry had since learned a massive cleaning charm at the beginning of the year and so he cast it down the pipe in order to clear out much of the debris. He cautiously stepped on the disc and hissed the word (…Descend…).

The disc floated down with him standing on it, secured in place by the magic in the device.

He followed the old path and soon he was before the corpse of the Basilisk that he'd killed. It was still there, preserved from the chill of the underground cavernous hall.

He didn't have much time to look around the last time he had been there. He'd been too busy with the task of rescuing Ginny and he'd had other people to think about, they had counted on him. This time he was on his own and had decided to take his time exploring the place. He had a free period in the mornings after his late night class, as per normal, so he knew he could sleep in a little later tomorrow.

Harry began with the alcove that Tom Riddle's spirit had been in just before coming forward to snatch his wand that he'd foolishly set aside in his concern for a fellow student. 'I was such an idiot to set my wand down,' he thought. 'Why don't they contact the Muggle-borns or Muggle-raised sooner, at least I'd have been able to practice holding or carrying a wand by using twigs and such, ensuring that I never let it go.'

The alcove area was framed in stone, but he turned his head this way and that until he felt that he could barely see an outline to a door. He looked around when his eyes landed on the dead basilisk, so he hissed the word (...Open...).

The bricks folded away much like the entrance to Diagon Alley.

(...Lumos...) he hissed, forgetting that he was speaking in another language.

A ball of light formed from the end of his wand and released like a soap bubble to float in the air. He stared at it because it was an effect that he'd never heard possible for the charm of light. He poked it with his wand and pushed the bubble of light into the room just ahead of him. It didn't burst either from the nudge of something pointed.

'Of course to put it out I'd have to use the counter-spell, Nox,' he thought.

The room itself wasn't unique in any way. There was a rounded desk tucked away in the far corner of the room with some arcane symbols on it. The room had a small single bed with a small nightstand next to it. There was a larger desk against a wall and a small fireplace that looked only big enough to make firecalls from.

"Odd little room," he muttered to himself. "This must have been just a place for sleeping, whenever Salazar was finished doing work out there." He looked around the room and then noticed that there was a fallen bit of tapestry behind the larger desk.

"Wingardium Leviosa," he chanted, to lift the tapestry up. He then applied a sticking charm to the back of the tapestry, at the same time that he was concentrating on holding it up. He'd been practicing small multiple spells in order to increase his ability to cast more than one spell at a time. He didn't tell anyone about it because he didn't think that it was anything special.

"I say," the tapestry portrait said. "Thank you young man, I hated being on the floor for so long."

"You're Welcome," Harry replied absently, as he started poking about in the drawers of the larger desk and the nightstand.

"What are you looking for," the man in the tapestry asked.

"Nothing in particular," Harry replied. "I just opened up the room and am curious about it." He paused and then looked at the portrait. "What's your name?"

"Tiber Septim, but most folks know me as Salazar Slytherin," Tiber said. "What's yours?"

"Harry Potter, are you really Salazar Slytherin," Harry said. He perked up at that and wondered about the dual names. "Are you related to Tiberius Septim? Did you change your name to Salazar or to Tiber?"

"That I am, young man," the portrait chuckled. "Tiberius is my grand-sire. I didn't change my name. All I'd done was to formulate an Alias that existed without everyone knowing that it was alias. My closest friends knew, of course, but only after I told them what my real name was."

"How is that possible," Harry asked, curious to know if he could change his name or gain an acceptable alias too. "Why hide your real name?" It didn't bother him that the portrait was a man that was known to hate Gryffindor or the students, because this picture looked like it hadn't mingled with the other portraits that existed in the school. The man seemed friendly in any case.

"The spell is a combination of an Alteration and Illusion Spell," Tiber explained with a huff. "What are they teaching you? I taught the last fellow that came through here the same spell, but he didn't seem interested in the any explanation of the different schools of magic. I wanted hide my true-name because the Septim Family was too famous for many things, good and bad, when I was alive, back when."

"I'm not sure that what I'm being taught is any way similar to what you've taught," Harry said. "What's an Alteration Spell or an Illusion Spell? What schools of magic are you talking about?"

Tiber's eyebrows rose and then he said, "You speak Parseltongue or else you wouldn't have been able to enter this room. Go to the corner with the round table. That's an Arcane Enchanter by the way, but I just want you to say the word 'Reveal' at it. You must say it in the language of snakes."

Harry looked at the rounded desk with the strange symbols on it. 'Arcane Enchanter,' he thought to himself. 'Wonder what kind of enchantments it can do?'

(...Reveal...) he hissed and felt a little silly since he didn't do anything, but hiss. On top of the Enchanter a large book appeared.

"Drat it's still there, but something about it looks wrong," Tiber said. "Please look inside the book and tell me that it's complete." His tone was worried.

Harry opened the book and immediately it fell open to a section of missing pages. He noticed that there were coloured tabs to index a particular subject, so he looked to the front of the book seeking the table of contents and matched the colour index to a subject. "There are no pages on the Necromancy School," he said. "No, actually there are only a couple of pages related to the subject that looks to have been left behind. It's in the section about how to fix a botched Horcrux Spell, but it looks like the majority of the Necromancy subject was removed from the book."

"Damn," Tiber swore and shook his head. He muttered, "I knew I should have destroyed the book when I had the chance."

"Why," Harry asked, carrying the book to the dusty bed. He sat down and paged through it reading about the different schools of magic. The section he was interested in was the Alteration and Illusion schools, because he wanted to figure out how to create an existing Alias name so that he could hide away too.

"How did you remove the book from the Enchanter," Tiber asked in surprise. "I've never been able to do that and I suspect that the reason for the missing pages was because the book couldn't be removed."

"I asked the Enchanter to let me have the book," Harry explained. "I asked in Parseltongue and said please too, why?"

Tiber shook his head. "I'd forgotten that it was created by an aristocrat." He looked at the youth's confused expression and smirked, saying, "They're more about social politeness than us commoners, who tend to forget it because it takes too much time. They like the social niceties of 'Please' and 'Thank yous', if you know what I mean."

Harry smirked, as he knew that kind of sentiment, since his Muggle relatives were trying to push social etiquette onto their son, which had them failing miserably because his cousin was a brat. "I see," he said. "Well, the table let me have it."

"Might I ask," Tiber said. "Do you know if the other rooms in the chamber out there are still intact?"

"Other rooms," Harry asked in confusion. "This was the first one I found when I looked. Although I came to this one because of a spirit I saw coming from this direction, last year."

"Could you look for those other rooms for me," Tiber asked. "There's a smithing chamber, an alchemy lab and a library. There should be portraits of my friends in each of them. There's a door just beside this one and two on the opposite side of the chamber with similar alcoves. Is the baby basilisk is still alive?"

Harry shook his head and said, "I killed one last year, but I don't know if it's the same one that you knew."

"That's a shame," Tiber said, as shook his head sadly. "Still it's great for alchemical ingredients. You have harvested it, haven't you?"

"No," Harry said. "I hadn't planned on it. Besides we're learning Potions not Alchemy here at the school."

"What, no Alchemy," Tiber exclaimed in shock. "That's not right. Please find the other rooms and open the doors. Leave the doors open if you can and that way I can travel to visit my friends, unless you can set up that tapestry stand...," he pointed to a set of wood pieces that seemed to be poking out from under the bed. "...out there in the main chamber?"

"I'm getting kind of tired now, but will come back later to try," Harry said. "If that's all right with you?"

"Quite, quite," Tiber said. "By the way the Alias spell is not in that book. I might let you know what it is, when you come back." He was embodying the Slytherin aspect of his personality now, since it was obvious to the young Gryffindor that the portrait was trying to bribe him into helping it out.

Harry was no slouch in that area though. "I understand, sir," he remained polite throughout his exploration. "We shall see, if and when I can come back."

The Gryffindor left quickly and pocketed the book he just shrank. He shut the door behind him, almost in a Slytherin mindset to show the tapestry portrait that things were not going to be that easy, despite the colour of Harry's robes.

Tiber Septim aka Salazar Slytherin chuckled, as he knew that this might his only chance to get out of the storage room. He'd been stashed there in order to hide, including the other founder tapestries, from access by the student population. This had been done a long time ago with no malicious intent, but as it was, the portrait had been hibernating long enough. It was time to get access to the school once more.

Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter

TBC…