The next day I rested, but the thoughts of the Hallows didn't let up. They entrenched so deeply in my mind that when I practiced occlumency with the Mirror of Erised, it showed the accursed invisibility cloak.
I decided to visit Lily for a thorough legilimency session and finally get some answers. Potter should have mentioned the cloak at some point in their two years of marriage. Not to waste any more time, I apparated right into her house and found her playing blocks with Harry in the sitting room.
All right, why didn't she flinch this time? It seemed I forgot to remove my concealment…
"Hello, Lily."
"My Lord… this is so unexpected.." She fumbled for words, but her thoughts couldn't be more straightforward: where to hide Harry and what I wanted from them.
"I've come to give you a surprise occlumency exam."
"Mummy, who's this?" Harry ogled me curiously.
"I am your mother's employer," I said, entering the child's mind.
Using legilimency on young children was some treat - on a par with dredging through thoughts of mentally retarded. Everything felt slow and viscous, over-saturated with emotions like sugary syrup. Very few distinct words, but every word triggered a corresponding picture. Since the night I took them in, Harry had matured and started thinking much more coherently.
It'd be easiest to send him to bed. But we were not in the habit of searching for easy ways. To advertise the benefits of legilimency to Lily, I found what the boy wanted right this moment. Following a wave of my wand, the blocks rearranged themselves and started lighting up in tune with a silent rhythm.
What else do you want… A deer?
I sunk a bit deeper. The sight of his father turning into a stag impressed him. It'd be a simple task to transfigure him anything from a toy to a live deer, but Lily might mistake it for me mocking her husband… So, the boy received a heap of plush bears instead. I thought of convincing him they were deer but got bored.
"Tony!" I called.
The elf appeared. As far as I knew, Lily always had him put Harry to bed as soon as I step foot into the house. I was curious why he didn't.
I looked into the creature's eyes. There was not a hint of resistance.
Very interesting. Since Bella no longer trusted the Lestranges' elves, she asked Gaby to help her settle in her new rooms. Gaby left to follow her orders and called Lily's elf to cover the work in my house. But I never gave them any such orders. Gaby must have seen me with Bellatrix, put two and two together and went to cozy up to the new mistress. While working there, they missed my appearance here…
"Go play with the child, the wizards need to talk."
"Yes, Master!" the elf exclaimed excitedly.
I turned to Lily. To my surprise, she was tracing her wand around the toys with scanning charms. Everything returned clear. She then checked the boy. I breathed with silent relief that I stopped before convincing him to see the bears as stags.
Lily's mind buzzed with incredulity from a broken paradigm, complete with an analogy to Hitler breaking into a synagogue and giving out presents to the children.
"My Lord, what did you do to Harry?"
"Checked his thoughts and gave him what he wanted, to make him happy and less motivated to distract us from our lesson."
"It's possible? To read a child's mind and understand what he wants?"
"If there is a mind, legilimency can access it. Lily, it's alright. Leave Harry to his playtime. I need to check your progress."
We walked into another room.
"The usual program: I enter your mind, you resist. Relax, I won't use any excessive force. Ready?"
She nodded.
"Legilimens!"
Strictly speaking, I was not teaching her in good faith. What if she had the talent to fool me like Snape did? I wanted her to learn to stop intruders all the while keeping the fact that she was hiding something glaringly obvious. As with any training, the best results came from practicing on the edge of personal ability, pushing the limit time and time again. What we did here was two laps around the house in place of a marathon.
But she had accomplished much even at this pace. I'd feel confident letting her outside without mind-protecting amulets. She had already learned to sense wandless legilimency and could briefly halt the intruder or look away - unless, of course, it was a mastodon like me or Dumbledore. A very respectable result for four months of work. Defending against conventional legilimency didn't come as easily, but she would hardly miss somebody pointing a wand at her.
I worked gently, taking care not to overwhelm her with energy… Met her shields and retreated, sometimes circumvented or broke them, explaining what she did right or wrong in the process. I always selected neutral memories as targets. Here was our visit to her sister and nephew… That boy looked fatter than Neville! Here was Lily giving orders to her house elf…
I was fully capable of more than one simultaneous attack and usually did just that. While we were watching her mundane memories together, I looked through snippets featuring James, the Order, and Dumbledore - everything not protected by Albus's block.
Like any other mind, it was scattered with trash: sex scenes, fights with her sister… By the way, did Dumbledore have the right to correspond with Petunia? Note to self to check it later… Her sister's husband yelling at the TV over some steroid scandal… Why did they decry doping in sports? Personally, I'd love to see half-cyborgs pumped full of latest wonders of pharmacology run a hundred meters in a second or throw a javelin across a mile… Toss the idea to Rookwood or Rosier…
Lily never heard of the Hallows. Did she know the Potters' cloak was in any way special?
I rifled for anything related to the cloak. James bragging, James playing with the cloak to amuse Harry… But nothing close to "Lily, this is our top-secret family artifact, drop some of your blood here and here."
The cloak could have easily been a handcrafted gift from his father. They had been, after all, a family of artificers. Or perhaps it truly was the last Hallow. The Potters traced their lineage centuries back, who knew what relics got passed down through generations? Maybe they didn't realize what they had. Or James's father died before telling him…
I refused to give up. To somehow narrow the search area, I looked for memories tied to the invisibility cloak, James, bloodline and secrecy.
And found one, to my own misfortune.
Her seventh year of Hogwarts. Sneaking out after curfew on a date with Potter… Watching the stars from the top of some tower. Wandering around Hogwarts under his cloak. James promising to show her something interesting… On the seventh floor, before them appeared a door.
"Look, Lily! There's so many neat things stashed here!" Potter beamed, toying with some junk.
With gut-wrenching horror, I recognized the room where Tom had hidden the Ravenclaw Diadem.
"What is this place?" asked Lily.
"The house elves call it the Room of Requirement. It's wicked! Watch, it turns into anything I want!"
And I nearly dropped my wand from slackened grip. Tom thought himself so special to have found and opened Ravenclaw's Secret Room that bent reality at his whim… He stashed a horcrux in a room accessible to absolutely everyone!
I looked around for my precious diadem. Could someone have already stolen it?
But they never did much exploring. Potter again professed his love and kissed her. Kissing led to cuddling, cuddling led to stripping, the Room added romantic lighting and a bed…
James, there was this thing called a contraceptive charm. Unless you drank a potion in advance… It was none of my business, in any case. And Lily was a virgin at the time… Well, it explained how I landed here: James, invisibility cloak, blood, secret. Who could have guessed this to be her most fitting memory?
I watched it all at the edge of attention, feeling panic rise from deep within. Tom left a horcrux in a room frequented by droves of house elves and horny students… I thought his defenses at the inferi cave were a grand failure, but this… Two mistakes out of five…
I wasn't a violent person. I avoided Cruciatus whenever possible and only lost it once, while retrieving the Slytherin locket with Snape. But now, that same fury returned. Blazing and all-encompassing. I wanted to kill someone. Anyone. Everyone.
My concentration must have slipped because Lily realized I was watching her first time with James.
"My Lord… It's personal…"
Shut up, ginger cunt! I'm trying to decide here whether to kill you all or a long Cruciatus would do.
Outside of combat, I always tried to follow one simple rule: when faced with an urge to kill, count to ten, then kill; if the urge is unbearable, count to one hundred and don't do it.
What was the point of punishing her? If anything, I should reward her for finding a critical flaw in the horcrux defense! And I had yet to reward her for Horace…
What did I have to fear? If people used that room for sex, they'd be too distracted to look around. The horcrux would hide or defend itself from the rest of the wandering idiots… And if someone smart stumbled in? Smart people obeyed the first commandment of the magical world: no touching strange objects. If school-level diagnostic spells failed to identify something, it was best to stay away… What if Albus came into the room? No, why would he? I had to get the horcrux out as soon as possible…
"My Lord, please stop!"
Lily and I were still watching the same memory on a loop. She did fairly well in her attempts to throw me out, compared to her usual blundering.
"Enough for today," I said, canceling the spell. "You've progressed some but are still lacking. Your enemies will not care what you don't want them to see. Every single one of your memories is a potential weapon against you."
At her nod of understanding, I apparated back home, under Fidelius. Thoughts raced at mad speed. The urge to kill everybody transformed into an overwhelming drive for action. I was genuinely considering storming Hogwarts… But even putting aside the practical difficulties, why? With the horcrux already gone, it would be pointless. With the horcrux still there, it would be rash and excessive. And the possibility of it being stolen right this moment… Minimal at best. No reason to panic. It was most certainly not being stolen right this moment.
But the need for action didn't ease up. I had gotten a record burst of adrenaline.
The last operation still burned fresh in my mind. There was no room for another failure. Such spontaneity belonged in the bedroom, not in a pivotal assault… Now, this was a great idea! It would at least calm me down.
"GABY!" I shouted as if volume made house elves appear faster.
"Master called?"
"Bring me Bellatrix! This instant!"
The house elf disapparated as soon as I said the last word and reappeared with Bella in tow a second later.
"My Lord, are you injured?"
"Everything is fine. I missed you. I want you here and now. Gaby, go away."
"I love you too, Master," she replied.
No, for the first hundred times or so it was amusing to hear her say "Lord" and "Master," but it soon turned grating. It reminded me of work, of constantly watching over my shoulder and weighing my every word just to avoid getting hit with dozens of Avadas at once - in the face by the enemy, in the back by my own. "Master" also conjured up associations with house elves, who didn't fit my criteria of beauty. But Bellatrix wouldn't understand if I told her to drop the honorifics… No need to get busted over details.
"I'd like something different today. Can you quickly turn your hair red and straight?"
Instead of an answer, she dispelled her shields and made two jerky wand gestures. I decided not to say 'let's play Dark Lord and captive mudblood' out loud.
I had a very special kind of woman - one who knew how to wandlessly cast the Cruciatus but not cosmetic charms. I again accidentally glimpsed her thoughts: "As long as it's not blonde. " Ever the jealous one…
Now to relax. I overreacted. So much garbage kept coming to mind: collect Lily's memories of masturbating and sell them to Snape…
Meanwhile, the two house elves chatted about the latest events.
The Dark Lord was a good master, and a house elf could ask for no better fate than pleasing a good master. When Master brought Bellatrix closer, they decided to fulfill her requests as long as they didn't contradict Master's orders.
They just saw Master get into Lily-Elena's head, then immediately run to make love to Bellatrix. Master was a good man, Master was free to do anything he wanted… But to be safe, they agreed to treat Lily-Elena with more respect and to avoid looking Bellatrix in the eyes.
The next day found me relatively calm, continuing my projects with the Time-Turner and thinking about ghosts.
Ghosts… As far as I understood, the human soul survived for at least a short while after death. It moved on or whatever it was that souls did - dissolved, got reincarnated, or loafed around the void. Very determined wizards who died near a place of power could linger on as ghosts. I had no clue how they persevered in that pathetic imitation of life. Losing all physical sensation, magic and the ability to interact with the world would have driven me insane in less than a decade. It wasn't even a semblance of immortality: ghosts could fade on their own, be deprived of their place of power or simply banished with illegal spells. Or with perfectly legal banshee-banishing ones.
The most intelligible explanation of the ghost phenomenon I found in literature was that a soul suspended between life and death cast a shadow onto the material world. What happened to the soul after the ghost's banishment remained an open question. For all we knew, they moved on like every other soul after death.
I fruitlessly took apart yet another Dementor. How did it extract souls and what did it do with them? My understanding of the soul was fuzzy at best, but the wizards' inability to sacrifice it pointed to immeasurable potential.
Any ordinary wizard could accomplish many interesting things with the life and body of another human at their disposal. It was chilling to imagine the power of sacrificing a soul. A being capable of consuming souls should easily wipe out squads of wizards. The Dementors who had gorged for centuries should have been a global threat to humanity. Yet in reality Dementors didn't show a thousandth of a fraction of power one would expect from a soul eater!
One of the more interesting projects was forcing the Resurrection Stone to work. This latest attempt ended without casualties. Well, almost.
Not finding any proof that the Potters owned the other Hallow was disheartened me, but their relation to the Peverells, Dumbledore's interest in the cloak and the goblin's ignorance of its existence all suggested there was more to it than met the eye. Dumbledore needing this cloak was plenty of reason to steal it. If only I knew how…
However, today was a momentous day. The Ravenclaw Diadem was too perilous to leave lying around, and I planned to retrieve it. The discovery that literally anyone could enter the room made this incredibly simple!
I met with Selwyn and gave his son's house elf a two-way mirror. The elf entered Hogwarts with a perfectly legal and reasonable artifact to watch over her master's son. She then used the mirror to listen to the orders I gave in Selwyn's guise. She reached the seventh floor and entered the Room of Requirement. It took another hour to find the Diadem. Then came the shakiest part of my plan: the elf picked up the diadem with a cloth. If the horcrux put up a fight… the elf would lose. We had no chance to sneak an isolating container into Hogwarts without arousing suspicion.
But the diadem showed no signs of life. It either didn't feel threatened or it too was a wrong sort of horcrux. Not that it would have made a difference to the castle wards, they sensed and probably detained everyone trying to cross them with a Dark artifact…
The house elf focused all her thoughts on finding a safe way out of Hogwarts. Thinking, thinking, thinking… Until a tunnel appeared before her. Hopefully it wouldn't lead into the lake… In the end, the elf emerged in Hogsmeade and apparated straight back to Selwyn. Another house elf walked back into Hogwarts through the same tunnel with a small box.
I'd hate to kill Selwyn, so I had him lie unconscious with disabled sensory organs. It couldn't be helped. I'd bring him back none the worse for wear.
"Drillie, you have done an excellent job. How would you like to become my house elf?" I asked the creature.
"Drillie is only wanting to serve Master Selwyn!"
As you wish. Then we will at once commence the "Dark Lord's most trusted servant" award ceremony. I reinforced the wards against house elf apparition, then simply broke her neck with telekinesis, burned the body and vanished the ashes.
In a short while, the other house elf reached the room and opened the box. It was so very tempting to smuggle in a fission bomb… An explosion from the inside cared nothing for the castle's defenses and space-bending games… But why? It would surely kill everybody except Dumbledore, the exact opposite of what I preferred.
The house elf pulled out a plain cabinet. The newfangled "vanishing cabinet" worked just like the Minoan Sphere. In essence, a permanently coupled portal created without Dark magic. Having to remove all protections and hunch over was a small price to pay to travel undetected.
The two house elves entered and exited through our artifact. No one at Hogwarts raised alarm. Splendid, everything worked as planned!
In another half-hour, I finished cleaning the remaining traces and brought Selwyn back to consciousness.
"Everything worked out perfectly. We have a hidden passageway into Hogwarts. Your three house elves went into the ritual. I will reimburse you double their cost."
Soon, very soon Albus would embark on a scavenger hunt for my "horcruxes." If he doesn't die or receive a fatal injury on the first trip, he'd run into another surprise right at the school. In the meantime, I better get back to the Diadem.
Everything about it seemingly matched the other horcruxes. But something about this particular soul vessel put me on edge.
Ever since Dumbledore denied Tom the Defence teaching post, no one held on to it for longer than a year. Problem was, Tom never cursed anything at Hogwarts. He'd done nothing other than hide a horcrux.
The simplest hypothesis would be Albus deliberately sabotaging the children's education. I refused to believe it. He'd do it in a heartbeat with the Dark Arts, and something about his History of Magic program did smell fishy, but he would never harm a subject he deemed worthy.
Tom knew a great deal about curses. One could curse the Defense classroom, the key that opened it, the paper of the job contract, the quill that signed it. Many things could be cursed, but it was impossible to curse crime and remove the need for law enforcement or curse stupidity and get rid of schools. It was impossible to curse a name, a collective noun, an abstract concept or a collection of sounds- or I would have cursed the Order of the Phoenix. The Taboo charm came close by turning sounds into a protection-piercing beacon, but it would take me the Ministry's resources to set up. Albus was right to tell everybody not to fear the name Voldemort.
Although… He did try to disembody me by name… But even there, the name only guided the spell!
Still, there were facts and consequences. Fact: Tom left a horcrux at Hogwarts when he was denied the Defense teaching job. Consequence: no one kept the job for more than a year ever since. Could the horcrux have done that? More importantly, how to repeat it on Dumbledore?
Let's see what happens to this year's teacher… Albus probably suspected Tom had something to do with this "curse." If the teachers stopped suffering the usual misfortunes, he might assume the underlying cause disappeared… We should remove them every year through the Board of Governors or tragic accidents.
Four out of five Tom's horcruxes were already in my hands. I'd find some use for them sooner or later. They were almost assuredly the smallest pieces of a human soul to ever exist. Muggles once believed atoms to be indivisible. When they split them, they created nuclear weapons. Wizards believed in the indivisibility of the soul. The most erudite knew better. Maybe I too could gain something from this knowledge and studying samples?
One last ex-horcrux left to recover… Well, Alecto was already pregnant. Soon enough, I'd personally deliver Walburga her grandson. For now it was time to get back to work and see how much necroenergy built up from killing a house elf.