Again and again I retrieved the spell history from Salazar's wand copy. Every protective spell that referenced specific coordinates went on a map. Once I discovered he used Hogwarts as the starting point, the map of Great Britain gained three new marks where Slytherin had created multiple wards.
One pointed to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I wouldn't set foot anywhere near it.
The second led me to a wild forest. I walked around, cast revealing charms - all to no avail. Maybe it had once been his lab or summer cottage, but now I, Pandora, my shaman and house elves found nothing.
The third site was the most promising of all. At first glance, it appeared to be an ordinary clearing next to a swamp. But when I approached it, something felt off. This area was cursed.
The nearly imperceptible curse enveloped a couple of acres. I heard faint whispers in the wind, felt tingling throughout the body and ever so slight energy drain. It all vanished the moment I stepped outside the curse's range.
Hearing voices was a bad sign even in the magical world. It was foolish to suppose somebody jokingly cursed a patch of land in a way that stumped a Dark Lord. And it didn't end there. I regularly measured my necroenergy levels and noticed an inexplicable jump. I hadn't killed anyone or used Dark magic in over a day… Only visited a swamp…
Pandora saw nothing but insisted it was "an evil place." An uncannily cursed piece of land with no traces of a source of power… If the magical world had Nobel prize, I would have won it.
As the saying went, even a rabid hippogriff is good for some spit. If the whispers bored into my head, they should drive average wizards insane or turn them into a bloody mess. It was worth untangling this curse's structure to adapt it to my own use.
But I couldn't detect it! How to study something undetectable? Observe its effects on test subjects, of course. I sent in a variety: muggles, wizards and werewolves, conscious and not, with and without magical protections. A few hours later I returned only to find them all in the exact same condition as before. Nobody heard any voices, felt any pain or gained any necreoergy.
Muggles had tales of ethnic weapons. Could magic actually accomplish it? Something harmless for one group of people but deadly to another? What were its target criteria? Dark magic users? Specific genes?
I wanted to throw in the towel and leave it be, but a curse that affected me exclusively was too concerning. What if Albus learned its workings?
Tom had some experience in curse breaking from his days at Borgin and Burke's, but this here was no cursed antique. He had run into the combination of voices and magic drain only once, when removing the Lestranges' family curse.
To throw away the irrelevant fillers, that curse worked fairly simply: their magic source provided progressively less to every family member. It became especially noticeable over the past two generations, when the effects escalated to phantom whispers and constant pain. The whispers then grew into distinct voices. Everything the Lestranges had tried to fix it failed.
When Edward's wife committed suicide and his parents and grandparents all died from the same "neurogenic shock" diagnosis, he knew that the curse had to be removed by any means possible. A hypothetical Dementor's kiss was infinitely preferable to certain agonizing death. And so, he asked his school friend Tom Riddle for help.
Through trial and error, they found that certain rituals reduced the symptoms. Dozens of corpses and broken minds later, everything stopped. The Lestranges' curse had been lifted. Or at the very least stopped affecting them.
Tom Riddle was a great wizard, but he reminded me of a seventeenth century Dutch shipwright - yes, they had mighty ships, but they built by eye when the British were already using draftsmen. Tom solved the problem without ever establishing its cause. Yet another sliced Gordian knot.
I struggled to understand how an entire family could be cursed. No, cursing a bloodline was perfectly doable. But that didn't explain the death of Edward's wife, who was not a Lestrange by blood. A sexually transmitted curse? I could do that too, albeit with a limit on the number of people it would jump before running out of juice. Problem was, the Lestranges had also lost a magically adopted infant to the curse. I knew for a fact that no one slept with him.
I scoured through books looking for common threads, for any mention of entire families hearing voices. The same picture emerged over and over: a once powerful Dark family dies out when the descendants go insane or denounce their blood.
I only had one outlandish explanation: someone, somewhere had found a way to curse a magic source. Then, every family member received an ever-intensifying curse, akin to daily drinking from a poisoned well. Breaking it was as simple as cutting all family ties and running away.
Whoever created this deserved admiration. A perfect weapon against old families! The instances popped up in different countries throughout many centuries and were incredibly rare. Many predated Flamel. I could blame it all on "the Order of Death," but it was unlikely that simple.
The most puzzling spells I pulled out from Slytherin's wand all dealt with magic sources. Since I didn't have one of my own, I just recorded them and moved on. Now I took a closer look. They ranged from clunky to brilliant, the only common thread being Dark magic and human sacrifice near the source. Barring the thought of an exotic hobby, what had he done and why?
I stared at the reconstructed ritual schemes, recalling what Edward and I had done to break the Lestranges' family curse. In principle, some of those rituals canceled out Salazar's efforts… But he wouldn't have spent years deliberately cursing his own family, would he?
I stood next to Edward, looking at the Lestrange family source - a fountain of magic pushing against a nondescript slab of basalt. What could a wizard possibly do with one? Channel it to attack enemies, power the wards… No, that wasn't it, none of that required Dark magic.
A source helped replenish the family members' magic. Force it to share more? No, that wasn't it, either. Forcing too much magic through a person would quickly leave them a burned out invalid.
There was one more option. One Tom knew nothing about: necroenergy. How great would it be to force a source to absorb more, leaving you free to kill and torture to your heart's content!
I had already tried using necroenergy to cast spells and forcing others to do it. Tried funneling it into humans, undead, accumulator stones, artifacts, Dementors and unicorns. Tried to craft a specialized accumulator. All for naught. I could not sense or manipulate it. The only option I hadn't tried was directing it into a source. In hindsight, it made perfect sense: if it accumulated in wizards, why wouldn't it do the same in magic sources that were for all intents and purposes wizards with no body or mind?
Was it possible that Slytherin knew about necroenergy? Absolutely. Back then, laws didn't discriminate against Dark magic, yet Slytherin stayed sane remarkably long for a Dark wizard of his reputation. He didn't get kicked out of Hogwarts for experiments on children of questionable blood until the very end of his life. Could he have done something to his family source to increase its necrenergy absorption? Absolutely.
It would also explain his bigotry. If he believed that draining necroenergy into a source solved all problems with Dark magic, he truly had no use for muggleborns. The rest of the Founders must have taken a more modern approach, limiting Dark magic or denouncing it altogether. Of course purebloods would resent the policies that demonized their inborn advantage.
Whatever Salazar had done, it inspired copycats. Maybe his students, maybe enemies who analyzed his spell work. Or someone put his wand through reverse spell like I had. Some didn't know what they were doing, some believed they would be dead before any negative effects appeared. But they all got a surprise: the consequences struck not their person but their family source. Quite a gift for the descendants.
The Lestranges… They toyed with Dark magic and probably attempted something similar on a much smaller scale. There must be some "critical level" of this necroenergy for both humans and their family sources that caused negative effects.
I asked Edward to bring me parchment and some artifacts to help with calculations. We drew runes with his blood around the basalt slab. After a day of subjective time, the answer was ready: the speeds a source was absorbing and processing necroenergy were constant. And by default, they were equal.
As I now understood, the rituals we had conducted temporarily inverted their connection, forcing their source to pour excess Dark magic waste back into the three surviving Lestranges. It returned to below critical level in a few peaceful years and started working properly. Sonthe stereotype of purebloods torturing for fun and performing daily human sacrifice was an outright lie. Mostly. The Lestranges, at least, had done nothing to deserve prison before that incident.
It was probably not a good idea to tell purebloods they cursed themselves…
The important question was, what do I do with all this?
Yes, I had found Slytherin's home. As soon as I stepped foot there, it reached out to me bestow his generous heritage with a free bonus of pain and voices. The feeling I interpreted as pressure and magic drain was the source's desperate attempts to absorb necroenergy. Since it was already full, it pulled what it could: magic from me and my charms.
Accepting such a legacy was nothing short of convoluted suicide. I felt like a hero of post-apocalyptic science fiction, where instead of a beautiful blue planet I inherited a steaming pile of trash. It would be easiest to forget it like a bad dream. But the prize beckoned, and an opportunity to research necroenergy was too tempting to pass up.
The curse's effects didn't afford me the luxury of time to spend on research. I wouldn't dare step near it again until I know exactly what to do… So how could I practice without risking my own neck? Find another tainted source! In other words, a "cursed family."
… The Malfoys? No, theirs was a bloodline curse.
The Blacks? Very possible. It would explain their "eccentricities" and the young generation's drive to ditch their kin or commit a heroic suicide. But the Blacks were not yet accessible, and neither Sirius nor Andromeda showed any symptoms.
People rarely divulged their family weaknesses, but I had heard of one line recently destroyed by a "horrific hereditary curse." The Princes.
I snatched Snape after his training with Lily and took him to the remains of his ancestral home. Wizards had long since erased all of its traces in the name of the Statute. It was now a muggle village.
As we walked disillusioned, I tried to use legilimency on Snape. He put up no resistance, but knowing him, it meant nothing.
"Your mother's family once lived here. Does this place stir any feelings?"
They likely lost the family place of power to their ancestors' games with Dark magic. By the time Snape's mother thought to run, she must have already suffered irreparable damage. The funny part was, she probably believed that fleeing the magical world saved her.
"No, my Lord."
If he was affected in the same way, he must experience the same symptoms. I thought of walking around with him and then measuring his necrenergy, but then Albus might notice…
"Do you not regret that muggles stomp over the remains of your family legacy?" I persisted.
"I have never laid my eyes on that house, my Lord."
"Do you feel any impact on yourself or your protective charms?"
"No, my Lord."
And again I sensed no lie. Except, I had excellent magical sight and was watching Snape through a myriad of detection charms. His protections were getting drained. By a negligible amount, but they were nonetheless. And if he had this symptom, he was bound to have the rest.
"Crucio! I am a powerful legilimens, Severus. Quit lying. Apart from magic drain, do you feel slight prickling pain throughout your body?"
"Yes… Forgive me for trying to lie… I am exhausted from training Elena and didn't want to complain…"
"Is there anything else you wish to tell me?"
"No, milord."
Not a hint of dishonesty. I had grown so reliant on legilimency, so easy to deceive without it…
"Crucio! Severus, hearing voices is never a good sign. If your level of occlumency can't block it, the situation is grave. I understand your reluctance - what use does the Dark Lord have for a rambling lunatic? But you never need to lie to me. You are not insane. This site is suffering from the Prince family curse."
"I've- I've been here before… Shortly after graduating… It felt the same then. I resolved to never return,' Snape stammered out his explanation.
"A wise decision. But I am afraid the curse will continue spreading until it reaches you, just as it did your mother. You have no escape. And don't bother asking Albus, this is beyond his abilities."
"Milord?"
"I am going to help you again. On credit."
My plan came down to practicing curse breaking. Once I hone the method, I'd remove the curse from the Slytherin source - that is, force it to filter the excess necroenergy within, then check on it in a decade or so. And the Princes' one.. What did it matter? It might perish for good or stay the same. Snape's mother had renounced her heritage before his conception, so it didn't affect him one way or the other. The key point was keeping Albus from suspecting him. But it wasn't as if I planned on butchering people right here!
"What is required of me?" he asked.
"Hardly anything. Ingredients for creating homunculi."
"You could have taken them without my consent."
"Obviously. But Severus, to achieve the best results you must kill your homunculi yourself. And besides, this will mark the beginning of your lessons. Are your ready?"
I had a thought - maybe Slytherin planned to unload necroneregy into Hogwarts, to redistribute it among the children? But it failed, and he went down in history as one of the Founders… In any case, working alongside Snape needed utmost caution. I didn't mind sharing the knowledge of homunculi, but necroenergy was top secret. As for cultivating my image of a charitable mentor… teach him a few highly lethal combat spells, in case Albus ever let his guard down…
"Yes, my Lord."
You have no idea what you signed up for.
"Let your loyalty never waver,' I said with maximum pathos.
I'd gain my own testing grounds, and Snape would owe me for training him. My student… Albus constantly pestered him for inside information. He'd get his wish. As Snape would soon report, the Lord took interest in homunculi and forced the poor potions professor to assist. Why? Gosh, I don't know, Albus. Maybe because Voldemort is a murder-happy psychopath? Developing new heinous tortures for Horace Slughorn and Aberforth Dumbledore?
What would the court say to the evidence of an Order member experimenting with homunculi? And Albus Dumbledore defended him!