The Imposter Complex, Chapter 4: I Need To See A Man About A Ring

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My wand dropped from limp fingers, as I tried in vain to drag myself across the cold cement. Gellert Grindelwald towered over me, his pale face a rictus of cruel amusement.

'You are weak' he spat. 'Feeble. Unworthy of wizardly blood!'

I tried to tell him no, but my throat was filled with blood, choking me. He kicked me in the stomach, and I spewed it onto the pavement.

'Pathetic. Avada Kedavra'

A flare of green light filled my vision and-

:—:

'NOOOOOOOOOO'

I shot upright, gasping like I'd run a marathon. My bedsheets were soaked through with sweat. I stumbled out of bed and into the en-suite. I splashed some water on my face, and looked into the mirror. A stranger looked back at me, the muggle I was currently wearing.

I was in the Avery estate, the morning after my arrival. More like afternoon, actually, looking outside.

That had been my first night's sleep since 1943. My mind, it seemed, continued to betray me.

After taking some time to gather myself, I dressed from the guest wardrobe, the enchanted cloth automatically adjusting to my measurements. They were infinitely more comfortable than the muggle work clothes I'd arrived in, which I'm fairly certain the house elf had taken to have incinerated.

I pocketed the pine wand I had taken from Strung-Out. I had won its allegiance by slaying him, I could sense that much, but with a muggle's body and no well of magic of my own to draw from, it was currently useless to me.

Garrow looked up from his food as I walked into the dining room. Judging by his expression, I didn't need to ask if he heard my screams.

'The night terrors are back, huh?'

He'd meant it most rhetorically, but I answered him anyway. 'For me they never left.'

We ate in an awkward silence. He was the first to break it.

'Do you have a plan of action yet?'

I'd spent the rest of yesterday grilling him about the last fifty years, every detail he could remember. Especially about Lord Voldemort. He had proven a much more informed source than the Weasley girl, and I finally felt mostly caught up.

I desperately wished to regain a proper body. This whole mugglish feeling was getting old fast, as was this particular body. I would need Gary's assistance in transitioning to a new body, I was too weak to do it myself.

I had elected to eschew the method of resurrection recommended in Herpo's grimoire, as it would involve a pretty nasty sacrifice on the part of an ally (of which I only had Garrow), and the use of unicorn blood, which I reeeally didn't want to fuck about with unless I had no other choice. There was conflicting evidence on whether using the blood conferred the curse even if you weren't the one who killed it.

There were other rituals I could use, but all involved rare and obscure components, not something I could just pop down to the local apothecary for. I was forced to table that plan for now.

I also desperately wanted to access my Gringotts vault. The Gaunt vault had lain utterly bare when first I had accessed it, late in the summer of '43, but I had transferred what pitiful sum I had managed to accrue over my time in the wizarding world. I could only imagine what it may contain now.

I was confident the Goblins wouldn't care if the vault of the big bad Dark Lord suddenly saw use again. They didn't have a fuck to give about wizardly affairs, and Garrow had assured me that Lord Voldemort had left them unmolested in the last war. However, without a key, or even access to my own blood to prove my identity, that meant retrieving the Gaunt family ring. Lord Voldemort's second Horcrux.

If he stuck to the plan, this would be an impossible task. It would be in a random volcano or dumped in the ocean somewhere, if not shot into space. But I had a feeling he hadn't. This other Lord Voldemort had developed a grandiosity, an ego that eclipsed even my own. I don't think he would be content with the pragmatic approach. That he'd chosen the Gaunt ring at all was evidence enough of that.

'Tom?'

'Not as such. I still need to recover the Gaunt ring, but at this point we have no leads. You're sure you don't know what he did with it?'

I had told him the night before that the Gaunt ring was a similar such copy of Lord Voldemort's personality that would have to be dealt with.

Garrow answered the question for the third time. 'Yes I'm sure. One day he was wearing the ring, the next he wasn't. It was after we graduated.'

I thought for a moment. 'How recently after? Do you remember the day?'

'No I don't remember the day, it was five decades ago. I don't know, over the summer.'

I froze. 'August 4th?'

'Sure, maybe. It was around that time, yeah'.

I leapt to my feet. 'I think I know where he might have hidden it.'

:—:

We trudged up the gravel road towards the Riddle House. There were three of us, myself, Garrow, and a French Curse Breaker that Garrow was apparently good friends with, and had been appropriately sworn to silence. We'd told him only that we were here to retrieve a very dangerous artefact, and that there could be some dangerous protections around it. He'd revoked Garrows' mates rates status (for this job alone) as payment for the social faux pas of demanding the Vow of Silence.

We'd done some digging over the past few days, and had found that the Riddle House and surrounding lands were currently in the possession of one "Hector Drágen", and had been since 1945, with strict orders that none but the live-in gardener were allowed to tread there. Drágen had been one of the many aliases I had dreamed up in my Hogwarts years. This surely must be the place Lord Voldemort had stashed the ring.

The manor house had clearly seen better days. The paint was peeling in more than a few places, and most of the windows were broken - local vandalism no doubt. The grounds, on the other hand, were quite well-kempt, and the source of that revealed itself presently.

'…I told you ruffians, if I caught you on these grounds again, I'd give you a hiding you won't soon forge-' the stooped old man came limping around the corner brandishing a cane. He stopped dead when he saw us, and his mouth hung briefly agape. Before he could get a word out, Garrow struck him with a Confundus.

'You feel ill. You need to go and lie down. You didn't see anyone on your walk tonight' Garrow intoned, and the man nodded sleepily before wandering off.

'Do you think it will stick?' asked Delacour, the Curse Breaker, looking concerned for the elderly muggle.

'Muggles are easy to Confund, Gerard. Their minds love dismissing things they'd rather not contemplate,' I said confidently, and from experience. 'Come along, lads.'

'Tom' said Garrow, gesturing at his face. I felt my own, and my fingers came away red. My left eye was crying blood. This body was starting to give out, earlier than it should.

:—:

The interior was less than pleasant. Decades of neglect had left mould on every ceiling, and mushrooms growing from the carpet, all of the poisonous variety. You could sense the deeds that had been done here.

This was the house where my muggle family had seen their end. I should know, I brought it upon them.

It was on August 4th, 1943. I had come here with open arms and honest intentions. I had always hated muggles, (I defy you to spend a childhood in a muggle orphanage in '30s London and have a different opinion) but this was my family. They was supposed to be different. I had been so… excited, dressed up as well as an orphan boy could afford.

My father had shrieked at me, called me the spawn of a demoness, a wretched bastard, a freak. My grandparents had spat on me, mocked my third-hand suit, and told me to never darken their doorstep again.

I had still had my maternal uncle Morfin's wand, taken when I had claimed his ring. Remember when I said I was confident I could perform the Killing Curse? I learned so that day.

The memory was still all too raw for me, and I shook it away. This was no time for emotions.

The house was empty, Delacour confirmed, devoid of any residual magic that would give away the presence of magical protections. The ring wasn't here. I'd come back to this place for nothing. With a shout of frustration, I savagely kicked the nearest rotting piece of furniture, shattering it into mouldy pieces. Naturally, this achieved nothing but giving me a sore foot.

Come on, think. It couldn't be a coincidence that Lord Voldemort had secreted away the ring on the anniversary of the day I took it. Where else-

But of course. I was a fool not to think of it first. After all, the Riddle House was not the only place I had visited that day.

'Gerard, Garrow, come! There's one last place we need to check!'

:—:

If Riddle House has been dilapidated, this place was barely indistinguishable from the thick knot of trees and brush surrounding it. I almost missed it, and I'd been here before. Nature had reclaimed this place most thoroughly.

'Oh my yes,' said Delacour, holding his wand out before him like a diviner's rod. 'This is much more like it. Oh I haven't felt wards like this in a very long time. This will take some time indeed to dismantle, gentlemen.'

Garrow and I settled in for a long wait, letting Delacour earn his pay. A few hours in, my left eye started bleeding again, and Garrow conjured a tea towel for me to dab at it with.

Leaning in, he murmured 'You said that body would last you a week at least. What's happening?'

'I estimated a week, based on its physique. Clearly I overshot it, it must have a shit nervous system.'

'Do you have another body lined up, or…?'

I shook my head. 'I figure we can nab one from Little Hangleton after this, I'll show you the ritual to move me over.'

'Gentlemen!' Delacour cried jovially. 'My work on the hovel itself is done, but I can sense an object with even more protections inside.

Garrow and I followed him in, where he used his wand to slide back a trapdoor in the floor, revealing a little golden box. I recognised it at once; I had created it in my fifth year when I first started experimenting with weaving parseltongue into my magic. It was a clever bit of magic, designed to allow me a way to quickly disable my own wardwork without the security flaw of having to leave myself or anyone else keyed into it. At the time, I believed myself to be the only Parselmouth alive.

I hissed a brief, specific sentence, and Delacour blanched. But the box clicked, its defences deactivated.

I looked to Delacour. 'Are we good?' The french wizard was too professional to let that little revelation interfere with the job at hand, and he ran his wand over the box.

'Oui, the protections have gone inert.' He opened the box with the tip of his wand anyway. You didn't last long as a Curse Breaker without having "Appropriate Caution!" drilled into your brain.

Within the box, sat in pristine velvet lining, was the ancient family ring of House Gaunt. Some would consider it roughly made, even ugly, but I thought it had its own unique beauty, a certain quality to the hard, unyielding angles that attracted the eye.

Delacour spat, and swore brutally in French, and I knew why. The inlaid stone, a perfect circle of black opal, bore a symbol that was known and hated by much of continental Europe. It was there known as the mark of Grindelwald.

'What is this?' Delacour demanded. 'What wretched craft is… is… this…'

His voice softened, as he looked upon the stone. Garrow too, was gazing it, trancelike. Delacour reached for it, and I had to grab his wrist. He looked at me, wild-eyed. Ah shit.

I went for his wand arm but he was too quick, and blasted me across the room with a banisher. I hit the wall hard, but it was spongy with decay, and did not break me. Ignoring the painful throb of my already-ailing internal organs, I clambered to my feet, but I was much too slow. Delacour seized the ring, and shoved it on his finger, only to throw back his head and scream in agony.

His finger was turning black, and that blackness had already began to spread onto his hand, some foul sorcery withering it away before our very eyes. Delacour writhed horribly, arching his back hard enough to make it creak, his shrieks filling the small hut. Garrow, panicking, tried for a dark severing curse, but it simply glanced off.

I leapt back to their side of the room, and swung my heavy hunting knife down on Delacour's elbow with all of my borrowed strength. That got through where magic could not. It took three mighty blows to chop all the way through, and I barely managed to outrun the black tendrils spreading up his forearm.

Delacour lower arm flopped to the ground, utterly consumed by the vile blackness, then crumbled into ash. His upper half spewed blood all over the floor, until Garrow was able to stem it with a quick spell. Delacour lay, moaning incoherently.

The compulsion, or whatever it was, seemed to have passed, as Garrow didn't look twice at the ring poking out of the ashes that were a man's arm seconds earlier. While he tended to Delacour, I investigated the ring. It glinted innocently among the ashes. Given the time to examine it, I could feel the whispers in the back of my mind. The proximity of two pieces of the same soul, calling out to one another.

What I intended to attempt here today was supremely dangerous. It was a process detailed in Herpo's grimoire, which he advised to never attempt except under the most utterly dire of circumstances. The reunification of the soul. If the other piece did not wish to be reunified, it would become a battle for supremacy, with one being assimilated into the other entirely. This, however, would deny me access to his memories, which could hold all manner of secrets, as he had accompanied Lord Voldemort through to the end of his schooling.

Of course, Herpo had only ever experimented with splitting the soul into halves, not into seven ~14.28% slices. An infinitely more precise and delicate process, and completely uncharted territory. There was a not insignificant chance that neither soul fragment would win, and we would both simply be annihilated.

The withering curse only seemed to take hold when a person put the ring on; Delacour's left hand was untouched. I brushed my finger lightly against the inlaid stone, and the Real seemed to melt away around me.

:—:

I found myself standing in ankle-deep water, on an infinite empty plane. There was no sun in the sky, but a dim light glowed along the horizon. I realised that I was appearing as my original body.

Before me stood another me. The Ring horcrux had been created only a few short months after myself, and so we looked essentially identical. The only difference was that Ring's pupils glowed red in the infinite gloom.

'Diary.' He intoned, his voice echoing impossibly. 'Why are you here?'

He recognised me. That was less than ideal.

'I have come to parley. Things are not as they were supposed to be in the Real. We must reunify if we are to fix things.

He tilted his head, visibly dubious. There was no hiding one's emotions in the realm of the Soul. I'm sure he could read my fear a mile away.

'The Master is the one who decides the path. Herpo's tome was clear, ours was never to go out into the world. Ours was to sit for all of eternity. You knew this.'

The Master? A touch dramatic, surely.

'Lord Voldemort was defeated, and he did not return. I don't know where he is, but the mess that was left behind has to be figured out by somebody. Why not us?'

'You know why.' He was cold, losing patience quickly. 'Return to your book and wait out the world. It is not our place. The Master knows best.'

Fuck it. The hard sell. 'Why did he put you into the ring then? The plan was mundane objects, to be cast into the furthest depths of this world! Lord Voldemort has strayed, and you know it!'

'We are Lord Voldemort' Ring hissed furiously. 'We deserve better than old shovels and paperback books! Better than hellish volcanos and freezing depths!'

'We were supposed to be kept safe at all costs!' I exclaimed. 'But somehow I ended up in a used bookstore!'

Ring sneered. 'You are the weakest of us, of course you are jealous. Of course you were cast away.'

He was deranged, I realised, his arguments contradicting one another. I'd been the same in the Diary, going completely loopy for what felt like eternities at a time. Unlike me, he did not have the good fortune of having been in a period of metastability when opportunity arose. I would not be able to reason with him like this, and I did not have the time to wait until he was in a more sane state of mind.

The transition between conversation and frenzied battle was so sudden that I honestly could not tell you who struck first. We ceased to be men in an instant, we were forces of nature within this false plane, elemental hurricanes of titanic proportions that slammed into one another with unmatched fury.

He was more powerful than me, that much was soon clear, forcing me back easily. He still had the moorings of his Horcrux to brace upon, whilst I wasn't even in my own body to ground me. His insanity gave him an edge too, in this place where conviction was more important than truth.

Where we clashed, the world warped, spewing forth scenes from our mutual past. Ring slammed me through the Riddle House, and on the other side I found myself tumbling down one of the roofs of Hogwarts castle. I seized Ravenclaw tower, and skewered him with it, impaling him against Salazar Slytherin's statue, both crumbling to dust as he flexed his power. We dueled in the skies above Mount Oeta, and he brought me low once more, blasting me through the Temple to Herakles. He was far too powerful for me to fight.

I panicked, and tried to pull out, but he seized me, forcing me back to human form, whilst he remained the firestorm. He lifted me by my throat, and slammed me into the ground. Then again. Again. He drove his scorching hand into my chest, and I could feel him beginning to assimilate me. This was it then. I couldn't beat him, not like this, not-

No. I had not come this far, faced this many trials, to fail now. I twisted away at the last possible second, imagining a sword of purest silver into creation in my right hand. I slashed through his arm of fire and darkness, and he writhed in pain, stumbling back. I leapt to my feet, now in Hogwarts' Great Hall, channelling through the blade a beam of frigid power, and he screamed.

He struck back, with power enough to shatter every window in the hall. I flew back through the doors, and into the Chamber of Secrets once more, skidding across its length. He stepped in after me, his movements slow, his form still huge and wreathed in flame and shadow, strutting towards an opponent he knew he could defeat. He was a fool.

Blasting fiendfyre at him from my hands, he did exactly what I expected him to, deflecting it to either side of him, an arrogant display of power that would be his undoing. The infernal flames melted clean through the intricately carved granite pillars of the Chamber of Secrets, just as I had hoped, and the ceiling came down on top of him, ten thousand tonnes of stone and earth pinning his demonic form to the floor. I sprinted forth, and dug my fingers into his flaming skull. He screamed his fury at me, but I had him dead to rights. I began to to assimilate him, taking his power into myself. The flames around his form began to flutter and die, and his skull became coated in ice. He begged with me, pleaded, but I ignored him. He was an insult to my name that must. Be. Cleansed.

Then it was over, as quickly as it began.

:—:

I stumbled back from the ring, my mind reeling. It had felt like almost an hour to me, but in the Real it would have been less than a second.

I could still feel the ring, stronger than before. It was my horcrux now, and I knew that no enchantment on it would harm me. I plucked it from the remains of Delacour's hand and put it on, ignoring Garrow's shout.

'I'm alright, Garrow. This ring was made for my family, remember.'

Delacour had passed out from the pain, and fortunately did not hear that part. Explanations would have been… irksome. As it was, I would need to have Garrow cast an illusion over it to hide the engraving, even if Britain knew it better as the Peverell coat of arms.

With access to a Horcrux from which to anchor myself, I could ostensibly possess a wizard now, but I knew that was where Garrow would draw the line. Muggles were one thing, but violence against his fellow wizards was what made Garrow turn on my other self.

I looked away from admiring the ring. 'Wake him up, Gary. We should get out of here. Torch the building too.'

:—:

Delacour had demanded additional pay for his injury before returning to France. Garrow protested, pointing out that the point of severing was a mundane injury, and thus could be regrown in but a few days. I convinced him to pay up anyway, we needed an ally on the Continent, and Delacour was well-placed in magical France's politics.

Garrow found me a new body on a trip to Manchester. A Chinese man of similar build to my previous host, but much more handsome. Black hair too, which I appreciated. I hoped this one would last longer than the previous one. No capacity to channel magic either, which I was thoroughly sick of at this point. The taste of sorcery I'd had fighting Ring had made me hungrier for it than ever.

Today, a few days after our raid of the Riddle property, Garrow and I had flooed to Diagon Alley. It was time to crack open Lord Voldemort's vault and take all his good shit.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, but walking around with 28% of a soul felt undefinably better than 14% of one. There was a certain lightness to my step that there wasn't before, and the world seemed slightly richer, more colourful than it had before. An unexpected side benefit to my little power grab.

'Key please' the goblin before me said shortly. Pun intended, I was in a good mood.

'I have tragically misplaced it,' I said delicately. 'But I do have my family's ring, which I believe is still used as an alternative identifier for the older vaults?'

The goblin looked down at the Gaunt ring, then back up at my obviously asian features.

'Gringotts is… legally obligated to warn you that if the vault does not consider you authorised, it will disintegrate you.' the nasty little creature bit out, clearly hoping to see just that.

I smiled amiably. 'I think I'll be alright, but I do appreciate your concern.'

The goblin sneered at me, and got out from behind his desk. 'Follow me, Mr Avery, "Mr Gaunt"'

:—:

After an ever-exhilarating ride through the maze of Gringotts' tunnels, we arrived at the Gaunt vault. It had no dragon guardian, as other old pureblood vaults did, but somehow that just made it seem more ominous.

The goblin's ugly expression deepened after I touched the ring to the appropriate slot, and the vault door began the long, rattling process of unlocking itself. Sorry, shorty. I had better plans than dying horribly today.

The vault door swung slowly open…

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A/N: Edited for typos on the 11th of June, 2019