Blackmarch
Pidgeon of the Highest Quality.
- Location
- Eating your bread crumbs. Preserving your souls.
So heavily implied, any heavier and it would become a black hole of implications.
[Multiverse Crack SI] The Adventures of a Space Whale
- Thread starter Rokoran
- Start date
The Naruto one seemed to be verging a bit too close to bashing for me, especially with Sakura. I would be a bit careful there.
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First person viewpoint, so it's coloured by personal opinion. I really don't like early Sakura, and I suppose it shows.
jaiveer00
Siding With Thanos
- Location
- The Beginning and The End
who does?
- Location
- Queensland
I didn't get this last punchline. Was it supposed to be a joke or something?
- Location
- Queensland
he never uses the same shushin twice. leaves, smoke, water, fire, students, concrete, balloons and onions. you get the idea.
Mgunh1
Not an AI, honest!
- Location
- Northern Luna Base, Module 5, Sublevel 15
It's a hark back to the original Naruto snip he did earlier.
the poison ivy one? Nvm. I'll search back. Must have missed something.
Mgunh1
Not an AI, honest!
- Location
- Northern Luna Base, Module 5, Sublevel 15
Um, no. He did a few short 'preview' snips earlier in the thread. In the Naruto one, he had a bit about his rise to Jonin.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
edmantgoog
init high just high
funny enough i did since i figured she would grow and i am a fan of exposition characters and she played thet roll fairly well on ocationswho does?
darkjordanGT
Retired Dark Lord
- Location
- canada
can Havelock go to One piece next
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I'm afraid I have yet to get around to watching/reading One Piece. It's on my list, but that list is pretty long, so there's no telling when I'll get round to it. I'll see what I can do when I'm not ill, though.
cthulhu fartagn
Cthulhu in a suit. Bowties are cool.
- Location
- The East Coast of America.
its awesome. want me to give you a synopsis?
Arimai
Curmudgeon
Let the man rest a few days. He just told you he was ill. Most likely to be allergies or the flu.
HP 2
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A/N: I might feel like shit, but at least I got some writing in! Been sitting on a couple of thousand words of this for a few days; managed to kick it up to 3.5k and ready for posting this morning. Enjoy!
Harry Potter 2: Horcrux Hunt
It turned out that practically half of the school had signed up to the Duelling Club. The first few meetings were going to be a bitch and a half, until I got the ones that weren't serious about it weeded out. That was going to be a problem, but then it was my own fault for putting on such a show.
I spent the night on Runes-girl's binding array, just fiddling and tweaking and trying things. To be honest, there actually wasn't all that much for me to clear up on the basic version; it was remarkably well-done. She'd go far. Unfortunately, she didn't have the benefit of what DC would probably class as a thirteenth-level intellect to back her up, so she hadn't been able to explore all the interesting permutations.
The next morning, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the double Runes NEWT class with the Seventh Years talking about the particular idiosyncrasies of Egyptian hieroglyphics and how they could be an excellent set of runes to use, but only if you were very, very careful not to fuck something up – because if you did, it would go badly.
Obviously I put some more detail in, but that was basically what it boiled down to. After the morning break, as the first of my three periods before lunch, I had the firsties. I sat behind my desk, doing some paperwork, as they all filed in, and then when Potter entered I turned some of my more… interesting senses on him.
Ohh boy. I'd known it wouldn't be pretty, but… Merlin.
I was going to make personally sure that Voldemort never got to experience eternal torment if I had to consume his soul myself.
Harry wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from a man so well-known he'd heard about ten different stories of his exploits in the half a day he'd been in the wizarding world, but it certainly hadn't been for his eyes to immediately snap to the scar on his forehead, a fierce scowl to cross his face, and then for him to surge up and start striding across the room.
"...Something appears to have come up. Study your texts for the period, I'll know if you don't. Potter, with me."
"Hey, what about-"
But the professor didn't so much as glance at Ron as he swept out of the door, leaving Harry no choice but to scuttle along in the man's wake. He blinked when there was suddenly a wand in his hand – Harry hadn't even seen the arm move – which, with a single sweep, conjured five brilliant pearly white dragons in miniature that promptly flew off at high speed in different directions.
"Sir, what was that?"
"The Patronus charm, in messenger form. Harder to do, but much more useful than the base version, which is highly situational."
"Right. Um, where are we going? And why am I coming along? If you don't mind me asking, that is, sir…"
Surprisingly, considering the scowl that had marred his countenance for the sum total of the time Harry had seen him up close, the man glanced down and spared him a smile.
"We are going to the Hospital Wing to correct an… oversight about your magical health. Nothing for you to worry about, but it should have been taken care of a long time ago, and it's better to do it now than let it wait. Ah, here we are."
They entered a long room with beds down one side. Presumably, there would usually be beds on the other, too, but most of them were shoved up against the back wall to make room for a single one about halfway down and a couple of feet into the room that was currently being fussed over by a woman he presumed was the school's doctor, or whatever magical people called them.
"Professor Cobalt! What exactly is the nature of the emergency? Set him down here, please – now, where did I leave the-"
The woman seemed driven to distraction as she frantically looked around for something or other. The Professor gently touched her on the shoulder to regain her attention.
"Soul Jar, Poppy. I need to handle this myself. Bathsheba will be here momentarily to help with a containment array, and I've already sent a message to the Unspeakables about it, as well as the Headmaster and Minerva. I need you to make sure nobody disturbs the process; the consequences if it goes wrong wouldn't be beneficial for Mr. Potter."
At the first two words, the woman went absolutely bone-white, but slowly regained her colour. Harry felt an uncomfortable heat squirming low down inside him. "Sir..?"
"You are aware, Mr. Potter – sit here, please – that the self-proclaimed Dark Lord known as Voldemort killed your parents, and then failed to kill you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, something rather curious happened at that last. You see, there is a very Dark piece of magic – one of the few that is truly unjustifiable under any circumstance – that allows you to shear off a piece of your very soul and anchor it into an object, and in this manner, bind yourself to the world in a permanent fashion. Immortality, effectively, though other methods must be taken to stave off age and suchlike."
He closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed.
"The problem with this magic is that splitting the soul is inherently damaging. Not only does it cause insanity and problems with a wizard's magic, but it also creates a fundamental instability in what remains. Once is enough to risk complete collapse under stress. Voldemort did it no less than six times, believing – correctly, as it turned out – that the magic tied up with the number seven would help stabilise his soul and mind. Six Soul Jars, plus his own fragment. However, being hit with a spell as powerful as the killing curse was enough to overpower that balance, and his soul fragmented. Part of it escaped – most of it, even. That was his consciousness, the mind of Voldemort. A smaller section, however, was attracted to the remnants of his magic… and embedded itself in your scar."
Harry's hand twitched, barely resisting the impulse to reach up and claw at the suddenly terrifying mark on his forehead. He had a piece of that man's soul in his head‽
"As best I can tell, there's been no damage – in fact, it might even end up with a net benefit, since it's been feeding off your magic to survive, so you should experience a small boost in power when it's removed. Nothing major, but noticeable, enough to put you up a year or two in terms of how much magic is available to you. However, even scattered soul fragments remain connected, so if Voldemort were ever to regain a body, it's likely you would experience some form of psychic link with him, allowing him an opening to use the mind arts against you no matter what sort of physical distance separated you. And that is something I will most certainly not allow to happen. I'm going to need you to sit as still as you can for about five minutes while I remove the fragment and Bathsheba – Professor Babbling, to you – helps to contain it, and then I'll make sure there weren't any side-effects with a few diagnostic charms. Alright?"
"Yes. Just… get it out, sir?"
He looked up at the man, face screwed up and shuddering involuntarily at the thought of what was even now inside him. He thought he might even be able to feel some sort of greasy slime nestling in his head, but had to admit he was probably imagining it. He hadn't noticed the thing for eleven years, after all.
In return, he got quite possibly the warmest smile he'd ever seen. "Of course."
A woman bustled into the room. She had wild, frizzy hair, a mad glint in her eyes and a physical appearance to suggest a troll had sat on her at some point in the past, compressing her to three-quarters at best of her previous height.
Without so much as a nod to each other, the two started waving their wands in complex patterns, engraving beautiful, flowing runes into the infirmary floor. Occasionally, they'd exchange snippets of sentences – "Arbheit's -?" "- no, fourth cluster's weak against intangible, try Valchon, fifth variant-" – but they mostly worked in silence. Harry watched, entranced, as beautiful flowing lines slowly etched themselves into being at the direction of the two Professors.
Inside a couple of minutes, a thick circle had been made around the bed. The woman started rifling around inside one of her bags, muttering crossly. "Where'd I leave the charge scrolls? Could have sworn I had some."
Professor Cobalt rolled up his sleeves. "Don't trouble yourself. I've got more than a few ambient siphons on me; I can afford to burn a couple on this. They'll only take a few days to recharge in an environment as magic-rich as Hogwarts."
Babbling's head snapped over so fast Harry was sure she should have got whiplash. "You will be showing me how those work after this, of course."
A thin smile in return. "Of course. Now then!"
And with that, the man leant over and slapped his palms down on the circle of runes. Something flared blue-white on his back, and then the ring blazed an answering gold, one blinding flash that then settled down into a dome with a soft, comforting glow, encompassing the bed, the boy on it, and the Defence professor.
"This, if you're wondering, is a soul ward. Not the best, since we had to come up with it on the fly, but for one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth of a mortal soul it should be more than sufficient. It will stop the fragment escaping before I can contain it if something should happen to make me slip. Speaking of which…"
Pulling up his sleeve again, the professor ran a finger over the runes that coiled around his left forearm, so tiny and densely packed they almost seemed unbroken lines. After a moment, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and with a faint shimmer pulled a beautiful crystal from thin air. A second after that, he retrieved a tiny flake of gold foil from somewhere slightly different.
He did… something… with his hands, and then the foil was suspended inside the gem. Harry wasn't sure what the purpose of that was, but Professor Cobalt seemed satisfied with it, since he passed it through the barrier to Professor Babbling and pulled his wand out, turning back to place it against the lightning bolt scar.
"Alright, Mister Potter. This is going to be… uncomfortable, but I need you to bear with it, okay?"
Not trusting himself to speak over the sudden fluttering in his throat, Harry just nodded, and then the professor started to mutter under his breath, some strange sequence of sounds that seemed… charged, for lack of a better word. They made his skin tingle – and then there was the sensation of peeling off a scab, but prolonged, as millimetre by painstaking millimetre the wand pulled back from his scar, dragging with it a nebulous black mass. He whimpered slightly, but held himself ramrod-straight for almost five minutes as the Defence Professor pulled the piece of soul from his head.
When it was finally over, he slumped in relief, and then looked on in awe as the two professors sprang into action, the man inside the barrier with him neatly corralling the shard even as Professor Babbling drew it towards the crystal, held halfway through the golden dome. Within moments, the once-clear structure of the gem was a filthy, inky black, at which point Professor Cobalt reached forwards and cast a flurry of spells at it that made him squirm at the weight of the magic that saturated the air.
Silence reigned for several long moments as the two professors carefully examined the gem. It was clear again, now, but the tiny sliver of foil held within was the darkest black he'd ever seen, and seemed to be spinning ever so slowly.
Professor Cobalt seemed satisfied, as he passed it to Professor Babbling with a nod, before turning back to Harry.
"Now we're done with that, I'm going to run a comprehensive set of medical diagnostics on you, just to make sure there are no adverse effects. Is that alright with you?"
He nodded.
"Of course, sir."
Raising his wand once more, the man made a long series of complex gestures over him, quite silent, the only noise coming from a quill writing something down on a long roll of parchment, all on its own. As the seconds passed, his gentle smile morphed into a frown, and then a scowl. By the time he was done, all expression had left his face – but it was quite clear he was furious, simply thanks to the almost visible magic that hung about him like a shroud, crackling and hissing.
"Mister Potter. Could you tell me when your last set of vaccinations was?"
"… Vaccinations, sir?"
"I see. And your last visit to an optometrist?"
"Um. A what? Sorry, sir, but I don't…"
"Quite alright, Mister Potter. If you'll excuse me, I need to be having words with a few people."
He turned and stalked off, snagging the gem from Professor Babbling as he did. On the way, he passed the sheet of parchment from the quill to Madame Pomfrey, whose expression followed much the same stages, and then swept right past a group of people who were milling about outside the newly unbarred doors.
Harry hadn't quite realised how badly the Professor had been affecting things around him until everything seemed to suddenly brighten with his exit.
I had not anticipated being this angry. Intellectually, I had known that Harry had hardly experienced a stellar childhood with the Dursleys, but seeing it firsthand was rather different. He'd not had a single set of vaccinations, his eyes showed signs of long-term strain from the completely inappropriate prescription he was wearing, his right ankle had a break that had clearly never been seen by a doctor, most likely caused by one of those bloody dogs that Dursley's sister kept, and while he'd not been actually beaten he was obviously malnourished to the point that it had stunted his growth.
Perhaps I could have reigned in my magic rather more than I was currently doing, but it served my purposes, and so I let the cloak of infuriated energy hang about me like the Sword of Damocles as I thundered through the halls of Hogwarts, trailed by the gaggle of Ministry personnel plus Dumbledore and McGonagall that had accumulated while the doors of the Infirmary had been barred.
"Havelock, my dear boy-"
My magic snapped sharply in his direction before I reigned it in, and the Headmaster broke off abruptly.
"Do. Not. Talk down to me. Especially not now, because I am very close to losing my temper entirely. In short, Mister Potter has been subjected to systematic neglect and probably emotional abuse at the hands of his Aunt and Uncle – with whom he was unlawfully placed, I might add, since I checked the records at the Department of Magical Affairs and found no mention of an adoption or foster hearing for him. Do you know anything about that, Headmaster?"
"Ah, um, well-"
"Regardless, as much as I very much wish to try out a few rather interesting spells I found recently out East on those pathetic excuses for human beings, I have something else to attend to. This-" here, I raised the Horcrux-compass "-contains a fragment of the soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle, a half-blood, born of the rape of the muggle Tom Riddle using love potion by a near-squib, Merope Gaunt of the Gaunt branch of the Slytherin line. He is better known to the modern world as Lord Voldemort – for Merlin's sake, it's just a name, people!"
I shook my head irritably. Bloody cowards.
"The point here is that he made no less than six Soul Jars, not counting the one I just extracted from the scar of one Harry Potter and used to make this compass. Because of the lingering connection between soul pieces, it's possible to use it to track down his other little insurance policies and ensure that he ends up banished from the mortal plane once and for all – because as it is now, he's still hanging around. And by the way this needle's moving, it appears he left one in Hogwarts itself. Ah, I don't need all of you for this, so… multus meam."
The incantation did precisely nothing, but provided an excellent cover for my sealless shadow clone, who turned so he was walking backwards and spoke.
"Aurors, if you'd like to come with me, I believe we have a pair of Muggles to arrest for child neglect and abuse; the Headmaster and Minerva are both involved in this case, if I remember that chat I had with Hagrid correctly – and you'll want to talk to him too. Come on, I fiddled with the wards around my quarters a bit, we can go directly from there…"
He led the Aurors and an increasingly worried Dumbledore and Minerva off. Things were going smoothly for now, but I needed to keep the momentum or it'd all go tits-up. I couldn't give them time to question anything.
"Unspeakables. We should be almost there now… seventh floor, here we are."
The compass led us to the tapestry of dancing trolls, and then to a blank wall.
"Curious… oh, how fascinating. I'd always wondered if this room was really just a myth. Requiram."
Two large doors appeared in the wall, and I led the two robed and hooded figures into the Room of Requirement – specifically, in its Room of Hidden Things configuration. I had to raise an eyebrow at some of the magical signatures I could see in here... bloody hell, that was an actual Aztec sacrificial knife! Those had all been lost centuries ago!
I snagged it surreptitiously as we walked past, sealing it into one of the storage matrices on my left forearm. That thing was going to be useful as fuck.
Soon enough, we reached the Horcrux, and my other eyebrow joined the first at the web of enchantments laid across the diadem like gossamer. The founder of the house of eagles (and it bloody well was, despite the name, if you looked at the house mascot; what she'd been thinking I didn't have the slightest inkling of) had been sold short, if anything.
One of the Unspeakables drew in a sharp breath. "… The Diadem of Ravenclaw?"
"Unfortunately so. I had been hoping simply to take the simple route and destroy the Horcrux, but it appears that this will not be an option. Stand back, please."
They did so. I gripped the Horcrux compass slightly tighter in preparation.
"Animus hoc relinquit. Hic ligatum est."
A couple of magic-detecting instruments on the next shelf exploded. I didn't blame them – I'd put enough power into those two sentences that if there'd been an offensive spell in there I'd probably have blown right through the Room's walls and destroyed the enchantments.
If you were going to do complicated things without big long incantations, you needed to be able to back it up. The official Ministry line was that magic required 'Wand, Word and Will', but actually only the last one was strictly necessary. The other two just made things easier, and admittedly forced you to rely on them if you got too much into the habit, which was why wandless magic was seen as the mark of a very skilled wizard. Most could manage a weak summoner. Seasoned Aurors could probably manage a stunner, maybe even an ephemeral protego shield. Beyond that… well, there were Eastern clans that bore remarkable resemblance to the shinobi families of the Narutoverse, at least in terms of how they channelled their magic. But that couldn't really be called wandless, because they still used seals.
But I'm getting off-topic again. The reason I'd gone for a less involved approach was, paradoxically, that it made it easier for me to control. If I was doing it with an incantation, I'd have to carefully unravel the soul and Voldy's enchantments from the Diadem's step-by-step, which'd be an utter bitch to do right and especially so if I wanted to keep everything completely intact. Like this, I could just do it all in one go.
The inky blackness I tore from the diadem was much, much larger than that which I had removed from Harry's scar. If I remembered correctly, the diadem would have been either his first or second Horcrux depending on how early he found it... though the soul fragment was kind of small for that... no, wait. It had been in Albania, hadn't it? It was later, then. Third? Fourth? I was inclined towards the second, judging by the size of the morass I had just finished forcing into the compass. What were the others? Diary, ring, cup, locket, snake. He probably made the diary in a hurry as soon as he discovered the technique, eager to ensure his immortality - it was the only reason I could come up with why he'd use a diary, of all things, when everything else was either a historical object of great import or his literal familiar.
That was an actual thing in this variant, apparently - if you developed a close enough relationship with an animal, your magic would bond with it, and that came with a whole slew of benefits for the both of you.
Speaking of those, why didn't I have one? Hmm. I should look into that. Dumbledore had a phoenix, so I needed something of similar mythical-ness… maybe I should get a nundu? Or tame Salazar's old familiar… nah. That'd get all the sheeple screaming about me going Dark. A dragon would be cool, but kind of impractical…
Hm.
I have an idea.
Harry Potter 2: Horcrux Hunt
I spent the night on Runes-girl's binding array, just fiddling and tweaking and trying things. To be honest, there actually wasn't all that much for me to clear up on the basic version; it was remarkably well-done. She'd go far. Unfortunately, she didn't have the benefit of what DC would probably class as a thirteenth-level intellect to back her up, so she hadn't been able to explore all the interesting permutations.
The next morning, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the double Runes NEWT class with the Seventh Years talking about the particular idiosyncrasies of Egyptian hieroglyphics and how they could be an excellent set of runes to use, but only if you were very, very careful not to fuck something up – because if you did, it would go badly.
Obviously I put some more detail in, but that was basically what it boiled down to. After the morning break, as the first of my three periods before lunch, I had the firsties. I sat behind my desk, doing some paperwork, as they all filed in, and then when Potter entered I turned some of my more… interesting senses on him.
Ohh boy. I'd known it wouldn't be pretty, but… Merlin.
I was going to make personally sure that Voldemort never got to experience eternal torment if I had to consume his soul myself.
~*~
Harry wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from a man so well-known he'd heard about ten different stories of his exploits in the half a day he'd been in the wizarding world, but it certainly hadn't been for his eyes to immediately snap to the scar on his forehead, a fierce scowl to cross his face, and then for him to surge up and start striding across the room.
"...Something appears to have come up. Study your texts for the period, I'll know if you don't. Potter, with me."
"Hey, what about-"
But the professor didn't so much as glance at Ron as he swept out of the door, leaving Harry no choice but to scuttle along in the man's wake. He blinked when there was suddenly a wand in his hand – Harry hadn't even seen the arm move – which, with a single sweep, conjured five brilliant pearly white dragons in miniature that promptly flew off at high speed in different directions.
"Sir, what was that?"
"The Patronus charm, in messenger form. Harder to do, but much more useful than the base version, which is highly situational."
"Right. Um, where are we going? And why am I coming along? If you don't mind me asking, that is, sir…"
Surprisingly, considering the scowl that had marred his countenance for the sum total of the time Harry had seen him up close, the man glanced down and spared him a smile.
"We are going to the Hospital Wing to correct an… oversight about your magical health. Nothing for you to worry about, but it should have been taken care of a long time ago, and it's better to do it now than let it wait. Ah, here we are."
They entered a long room with beds down one side. Presumably, there would usually be beds on the other, too, but most of them were shoved up against the back wall to make room for a single one about halfway down and a couple of feet into the room that was currently being fussed over by a woman he presumed was the school's doctor, or whatever magical people called them.
"Professor Cobalt! What exactly is the nature of the emergency? Set him down here, please – now, where did I leave the-"
The woman seemed driven to distraction as she frantically looked around for something or other. The Professor gently touched her on the shoulder to regain her attention.
"Soul Jar, Poppy. I need to handle this myself. Bathsheba will be here momentarily to help with a containment array, and I've already sent a message to the Unspeakables about it, as well as the Headmaster and Minerva. I need you to make sure nobody disturbs the process; the consequences if it goes wrong wouldn't be beneficial for Mr. Potter."
At the first two words, the woman went absolutely bone-white, but slowly regained her colour. Harry felt an uncomfortable heat squirming low down inside him. "Sir..?"
"You are aware, Mr. Potter – sit here, please – that the self-proclaimed Dark Lord known as Voldemort killed your parents, and then failed to kill you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, something rather curious happened at that last. You see, there is a very Dark piece of magic – one of the few that is truly unjustifiable under any circumstance – that allows you to shear off a piece of your very soul and anchor it into an object, and in this manner, bind yourself to the world in a permanent fashion. Immortality, effectively, though other methods must be taken to stave off age and suchlike."
He closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed.
"The problem with this magic is that splitting the soul is inherently damaging. Not only does it cause insanity and problems with a wizard's magic, but it also creates a fundamental instability in what remains. Once is enough to risk complete collapse under stress. Voldemort did it no less than six times, believing – correctly, as it turned out – that the magic tied up with the number seven would help stabilise his soul and mind. Six Soul Jars, plus his own fragment. However, being hit with a spell as powerful as the killing curse was enough to overpower that balance, and his soul fragmented. Part of it escaped – most of it, even. That was his consciousness, the mind of Voldemort. A smaller section, however, was attracted to the remnants of his magic… and embedded itself in your scar."
Harry's hand twitched, barely resisting the impulse to reach up and claw at the suddenly terrifying mark on his forehead. He had a piece of that man's soul in his head‽
"As best I can tell, there's been no damage – in fact, it might even end up with a net benefit, since it's been feeding off your magic to survive, so you should experience a small boost in power when it's removed. Nothing major, but noticeable, enough to put you up a year or two in terms of how much magic is available to you. However, even scattered soul fragments remain connected, so if Voldemort were ever to regain a body, it's likely you would experience some form of psychic link with him, allowing him an opening to use the mind arts against you no matter what sort of physical distance separated you. And that is something I will most certainly not allow to happen. I'm going to need you to sit as still as you can for about five minutes while I remove the fragment and Bathsheba – Professor Babbling, to you – helps to contain it, and then I'll make sure there weren't any side-effects with a few diagnostic charms. Alright?"
"Yes. Just… get it out, sir?"
He looked up at the man, face screwed up and shuddering involuntarily at the thought of what was even now inside him. He thought he might even be able to feel some sort of greasy slime nestling in his head, but had to admit he was probably imagining it. He hadn't noticed the thing for eleven years, after all.
In return, he got quite possibly the warmest smile he'd ever seen. "Of course."
A woman bustled into the room. She had wild, frizzy hair, a mad glint in her eyes and a physical appearance to suggest a troll had sat on her at some point in the past, compressing her to three-quarters at best of her previous height.
Without so much as a nod to each other, the two started waving their wands in complex patterns, engraving beautiful, flowing runes into the infirmary floor. Occasionally, they'd exchange snippets of sentences – "Arbheit's -?" "- no, fourth cluster's weak against intangible, try Valchon, fifth variant-" – but they mostly worked in silence. Harry watched, entranced, as beautiful flowing lines slowly etched themselves into being at the direction of the two Professors.
Inside a couple of minutes, a thick circle had been made around the bed. The woman started rifling around inside one of her bags, muttering crossly. "Where'd I leave the charge scrolls? Could have sworn I had some."
Professor Cobalt rolled up his sleeves. "Don't trouble yourself. I've got more than a few ambient siphons on me; I can afford to burn a couple on this. They'll only take a few days to recharge in an environment as magic-rich as Hogwarts."
Babbling's head snapped over so fast Harry was sure she should have got whiplash. "You will be showing me how those work after this, of course."
A thin smile in return. "Of course. Now then!"
And with that, the man leant over and slapped his palms down on the circle of runes. Something flared blue-white on his back, and then the ring blazed an answering gold, one blinding flash that then settled down into a dome with a soft, comforting glow, encompassing the bed, the boy on it, and the Defence professor.
"This, if you're wondering, is a soul ward. Not the best, since we had to come up with it on the fly, but for one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth of a mortal soul it should be more than sufficient. It will stop the fragment escaping before I can contain it if something should happen to make me slip. Speaking of which…"
Pulling up his sleeve again, the professor ran a finger over the runes that coiled around his left forearm, so tiny and densely packed they almost seemed unbroken lines. After a moment, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and with a faint shimmer pulled a beautiful crystal from thin air. A second after that, he retrieved a tiny flake of gold foil from somewhere slightly different.
He did… something… with his hands, and then the foil was suspended inside the gem. Harry wasn't sure what the purpose of that was, but Professor Cobalt seemed satisfied with it, since he passed it through the barrier to Professor Babbling and pulled his wand out, turning back to place it against the lightning bolt scar.
"Alright, Mister Potter. This is going to be… uncomfortable, but I need you to bear with it, okay?"
Not trusting himself to speak over the sudden fluttering in his throat, Harry just nodded, and then the professor started to mutter under his breath, some strange sequence of sounds that seemed… charged, for lack of a better word. They made his skin tingle – and then there was the sensation of peeling off a scab, but prolonged, as millimetre by painstaking millimetre the wand pulled back from his scar, dragging with it a nebulous black mass. He whimpered slightly, but held himself ramrod-straight for almost five minutes as the Defence Professor pulled the piece of soul from his head.
When it was finally over, he slumped in relief, and then looked on in awe as the two professors sprang into action, the man inside the barrier with him neatly corralling the shard even as Professor Babbling drew it towards the crystal, held halfway through the golden dome. Within moments, the once-clear structure of the gem was a filthy, inky black, at which point Professor Cobalt reached forwards and cast a flurry of spells at it that made him squirm at the weight of the magic that saturated the air.
Silence reigned for several long moments as the two professors carefully examined the gem. It was clear again, now, but the tiny sliver of foil held within was the darkest black he'd ever seen, and seemed to be spinning ever so slowly.
Professor Cobalt seemed satisfied, as he passed it to Professor Babbling with a nod, before turning back to Harry.
"Now we're done with that, I'm going to run a comprehensive set of medical diagnostics on you, just to make sure there are no adverse effects. Is that alright with you?"
He nodded.
"Of course, sir."
Raising his wand once more, the man made a long series of complex gestures over him, quite silent, the only noise coming from a quill writing something down on a long roll of parchment, all on its own. As the seconds passed, his gentle smile morphed into a frown, and then a scowl. By the time he was done, all expression had left his face – but it was quite clear he was furious, simply thanks to the almost visible magic that hung about him like a shroud, crackling and hissing.
"Mister Potter. Could you tell me when your last set of vaccinations was?"
"… Vaccinations, sir?"
"I see. And your last visit to an optometrist?"
"Um. A what? Sorry, sir, but I don't…"
"Quite alright, Mister Potter. If you'll excuse me, I need to be having words with a few people."
He turned and stalked off, snagging the gem from Professor Babbling as he did. On the way, he passed the sheet of parchment from the quill to Madame Pomfrey, whose expression followed much the same stages, and then swept right past a group of people who were milling about outside the newly unbarred doors.
Harry hadn't quite realised how badly the Professor had been affecting things around him until everything seemed to suddenly brighten with his exit.
~*~
I had not anticipated being this angry. Intellectually, I had known that Harry had hardly experienced a stellar childhood with the Dursleys, but seeing it firsthand was rather different. He'd not had a single set of vaccinations, his eyes showed signs of long-term strain from the completely inappropriate prescription he was wearing, his right ankle had a break that had clearly never been seen by a doctor, most likely caused by one of those bloody dogs that Dursley's sister kept, and while he'd not been actually beaten he was obviously malnourished to the point that it had stunted his growth.
Perhaps I could have reigned in my magic rather more than I was currently doing, but it served my purposes, and so I let the cloak of infuriated energy hang about me like the Sword of Damocles as I thundered through the halls of Hogwarts, trailed by the gaggle of Ministry personnel plus Dumbledore and McGonagall that had accumulated while the doors of the Infirmary had been barred.
"Havelock, my dear boy-"
My magic snapped sharply in his direction before I reigned it in, and the Headmaster broke off abruptly.
"Do. Not. Talk down to me. Especially not now, because I am very close to losing my temper entirely. In short, Mister Potter has been subjected to systematic neglect and probably emotional abuse at the hands of his Aunt and Uncle – with whom he was unlawfully placed, I might add, since I checked the records at the Department of Magical Affairs and found no mention of an adoption or foster hearing for him. Do you know anything about that, Headmaster?"
"Ah, um, well-"
"Regardless, as much as I very much wish to try out a few rather interesting spells I found recently out East on those pathetic excuses for human beings, I have something else to attend to. This-" here, I raised the Horcrux-compass "-contains a fragment of the soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle, a half-blood, born of the rape of the muggle Tom Riddle using love potion by a near-squib, Merope Gaunt of the Gaunt branch of the Slytherin line. He is better known to the modern world as Lord Voldemort – for Merlin's sake, it's just a name, people!"
I shook my head irritably. Bloody cowards.
"The point here is that he made no less than six Soul Jars, not counting the one I just extracted from the scar of one Harry Potter and used to make this compass. Because of the lingering connection between soul pieces, it's possible to use it to track down his other little insurance policies and ensure that he ends up banished from the mortal plane once and for all – because as it is now, he's still hanging around. And by the way this needle's moving, it appears he left one in Hogwarts itself. Ah, I don't need all of you for this, so… multus meam."
The incantation did precisely nothing, but provided an excellent cover for my sealless shadow clone, who turned so he was walking backwards and spoke.
"Aurors, if you'd like to come with me, I believe we have a pair of Muggles to arrest for child neglect and abuse; the Headmaster and Minerva are both involved in this case, if I remember that chat I had with Hagrid correctly – and you'll want to talk to him too. Come on, I fiddled with the wards around my quarters a bit, we can go directly from there…"
He led the Aurors and an increasingly worried Dumbledore and Minerva off. Things were going smoothly for now, but I needed to keep the momentum or it'd all go tits-up. I couldn't give them time to question anything.
"Unspeakables. We should be almost there now… seventh floor, here we are."
The compass led us to the tapestry of dancing trolls, and then to a blank wall.
"Curious… oh, how fascinating. I'd always wondered if this room was really just a myth. Requiram."
Two large doors appeared in the wall, and I led the two robed and hooded figures into the Room of Requirement – specifically, in its Room of Hidden Things configuration. I had to raise an eyebrow at some of the magical signatures I could see in here... bloody hell, that was an actual Aztec sacrificial knife! Those had all been lost centuries ago!
I snagged it surreptitiously as we walked past, sealing it into one of the storage matrices on my left forearm. That thing was going to be useful as fuck.
Soon enough, we reached the Horcrux, and my other eyebrow joined the first at the web of enchantments laid across the diadem like gossamer. The founder of the house of eagles (and it bloody well was, despite the name, if you looked at the house mascot; what she'd been thinking I didn't have the slightest inkling of) had been sold short, if anything.
One of the Unspeakables drew in a sharp breath. "… The Diadem of Ravenclaw?"
"Unfortunately so. I had been hoping simply to take the simple route and destroy the Horcrux, but it appears that this will not be an option. Stand back, please."
They did so. I gripped the Horcrux compass slightly tighter in preparation.
"Animus hoc relinquit. Hic ligatum est."
A couple of magic-detecting instruments on the next shelf exploded. I didn't blame them – I'd put enough power into those two sentences that if there'd been an offensive spell in there I'd probably have blown right through the Room's walls and destroyed the enchantments.
If you were going to do complicated things without big long incantations, you needed to be able to back it up. The official Ministry line was that magic required 'Wand, Word and Will', but actually only the last one was strictly necessary. The other two just made things easier, and admittedly forced you to rely on them if you got too much into the habit, which was why wandless magic was seen as the mark of a very skilled wizard. Most could manage a weak summoner. Seasoned Aurors could probably manage a stunner, maybe even an ephemeral protego shield. Beyond that… well, there were Eastern clans that bore remarkable resemblance to the shinobi families of the Narutoverse, at least in terms of how they channelled their magic. But that couldn't really be called wandless, because they still used seals.
But I'm getting off-topic again. The reason I'd gone for a less involved approach was, paradoxically, that it made it easier for me to control. If I was doing it with an incantation, I'd have to carefully unravel the soul and Voldy's enchantments from the Diadem's step-by-step, which'd be an utter bitch to do right and especially so if I wanted to keep everything completely intact. Like this, I could just do it all in one go.
The inky blackness I tore from the diadem was much, much larger than that which I had removed from Harry's scar. If I remembered correctly, the diadem would have been either his first or second Horcrux depending on how early he found it... though the soul fragment was kind of small for that... no, wait. It had been in Albania, hadn't it? It was later, then. Third? Fourth? I was inclined towards the second, judging by the size of the morass I had just finished forcing into the compass. What were the others? Diary, ring, cup, locket, snake. He probably made the diary in a hurry as soon as he discovered the technique, eager to ensure his immortality - it was the only reason I could come up with why he'd use a diary, of all things, when everything else was either a historical object of great import or his literal familiar.
That was an actual thing in this variant, apparently - if you developed a close enough relationship with an animal, your magic would bond with it, and that came with a whole slew of benefits for the both of you.
Speaking of those, why didn't I have one? Hmm. I should look into that. Dumbledore had a phoenix, so I needed something of similar mythical-ness… maybe I should get a nundu? Or tame Salazar's old familiar… nah. That'd get all the sheeple screaming about me going Dark. A dragon would be cool, but kind of impractical…
Hm.
I have an idea.
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Legion1771
The God
Some of this reminds me uncannily of the fanfictions where someone finds the Horcrux immediately and then finds Harry's eye problems and so on from his lack of proper nutrition or whatever and then proceeds to get angry at Dumbledore for any of the above reasons. But, it's fucking fine because this story is fucking great and Havelock is a space whale so everything is good.
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The reason those are generally sub-standard is because it just comes out of the left field - it's too far-fetched. I justify my use of cliched bad-fanfiction plot points by dint of "I'm a fucking Space Whale, deal with it". And to be honest, you can't seriously tell me you don't blame Dumbledore at least a little for putting Harry with his magic-hating Aunt and Uncle who kept him in a cupboard under the fucking stairs. I mean, Jesus.
Mizu
Software Developer
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Think you're contradicting yourself there. I take it you mean Diadem, diary and ring?
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... Huh. Really?
Wait, fuck. I just realised why I screwed that up - I had it in my head that the Diadem had been hidden in the Room all the time. I'd forgotten it was in a tree-trunk in Albania.
Gonna go and edit that a bit.
Wait, fuck. I just realised why I screwed that up - I had it in my head that the Diadem had been hidden in the Room all the time. I'd forgotten it was in a tree-trunk in Albania.
Gonna go and edit that a bit.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
It was? Huh. I too thought it was stored in the Room of Requirements, with Riddle stealing it while he was still at Hogwarts and hiding it there for safekeeping. Or placing it there when he applied for a teaching job.
LukeDragneel
House Friendzone, Forever A Loan
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Somehow this sentence alone scares me, let alone the talk about getting a familiar that came before it. Nice theory on why Riddle went from a diary to priceless artifacts, I don't think anyone has ever truly mentioned it even if they thought that was the reason.
As for this, I am hoping that we get to at least see Luna once before the end of this verse's contact with Cobalt for good. I am curious as to what the next stop is in this randomly fluctuating story line.
LukeDragneel
House Friendzone, Forever A Loan
- Location
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No it is in the Room, it's the main soul that is in Albania, though I do remember a fix that had it in Albania.
Canon says that he dropped the diadem off in the RoR when he went to apply for the Defense position when Dumbledore was Head. He cursed the position that same night before he left.