The Dark Legacy
Chapter Four: Inescapable Truths
The dream world was waiting for him. Harry stood in the doorway of Araeva's shack, fully grown and wearing his MOAT uniform, which he'd fallen asleep in. Araeva was waiting for him still holding the jar, which was closed. Araeva was looking younger than ever, closer to age fifty, and had shaved his face. His black eyes gazed expectantly at Harry, who stared expectantly back.
"You're making this difficult," Araeva said, raising an eyebrow.
"What do you want from me? What's happening to me?" Harry demanded. "Are you real?"
"That would depend on your definition of real," Araeva said unhelpfully.
"No philosophical bullshit, please," Harry replied.
Araeva laughed. "I knew I would like you." He nodded at chair nearby, and Harry reluctantly slunk to it and took a seat. "To answer your question, yes, I am real. You are not making me up. Your dreams are all real as well. They happened, or are happening."
"But I can't remember having met you!" Harry protested. "When I was seven, I lived with my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin, and I was miserable. I wasn't learning dark magic illegally from anybody!"
"Were you not?" Araeva asked. He twisted the lid of the jar, which came open noiselessly.
"Not this again," Harry muttered. Araeva pulled another memory from the jar and held it out to Harry. Harry took it, and was transported.
Harry's younger self was a bit older in this memory, Harry thought he remembered the shirt his younger self was wearing as one he had gotten around the time of his tenth birthday.
Younger Harry was sitting outside of Araeva's hut, holding his wand confidently, twirling it in his fingers. Araeva approached, Harry looked up and smiled.
"Come on inside, Harry," Araeva said with familiarity. "I have something to tell you."
Younger Harry hopped to his feet and followed him inside immediately. "What is it? Are we traveling somewhere?"
"No," Araeva said gently, "I'm leaving."
Younger Harry's face fell. "Did I do something wrong?"
Araeva shook his head and tousled Harry's hair fondly. "No. But soon other wizards will come looking for you, and I can't be here. Nor can you remember I was here, it will complicate things."
"You're going to take my memories?" Younger Harry exclaimed with rising panic. "But I don't want to forget I met you! My life was terrible before I met you!"
"It's necessary," Araeva told him. "I'll come back and find you, one day. I'll keep your memories safe and return them to you at that time."
Younger Harry sighed. "Will I forget all the magic, too?"
Araeva nodded. "It's the only way. You will learn new magic soon." He picked up very familiar jar, now empty, and raised his wand.
There was a flash of light, and Younger Harry found himself strolling home, after a day of playing by himself in the empty fields outside of Little Whinging.
This too faded away, and Younger Harry was gone. Grown-up Harry once again sat next to Araeva.
"You want me to believe that I was your apprentice for three years, and you wiped all those memories from my mind?" Harry asked skeptically; this memory could have been planted.
Araeva nodded. "You were about to go to Hogwarts, and it would have been immediately obvious that you had already been trained in magic. You would have mentioned me eventually. Dumbledore was aware of me, he would have recognized who I was and what I was up to."
"What ARE you up to?" Harry wanted to know.
"I've been preparing you," Araeva told him, "I'll explain in a moment. I was just going to let all these memories go and return to you over time, but you were fighting them and making yourself sick, so I had to intervene. I should have known you'd be too headstrong to accept just anything." The old man didn't look annoyed, but rather somewhat pleased.
"So what now?"
"I'll keep sending you your memories, one by one. Just watch and accept them. They are yours, this is fact. Once you have them all, you'll be glad to have them back. You were reluctant to relinquish them in the first place, if you remember."
That was true. Harry was beginning to believe what the old man was saying; the memories just seemed so REAL.
"Today when I was unlocking the puzzle-box, strange spells kept popping into my head," Harry said. "You taught them to me once, didn't you?"
Araeva nodded. "You knew dark magic that would make a grown wizard cringe, before you ever set foot into Hogwarts."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "So you're a dark wizard, then? What do you want with me?"
Araeva grinned, showing his white teeth. "Me? No, Harry, you're the dark wizard!"
Harry shook his head.
"Are you or are you not intimately familiar with the dark arts?" Araeva demanded. "If you're not now, you will be as soon as I release more memories. Some of the things I taught you will just sink back into your mind without you even realizing it. You will find yourself capable of spells that have been extinct for thousands of years, and dark magic people have never even heard of."
Harry just shook his head again. "I'm not a dark wizard," he repeated again stubbornly.
Araeva looked exasperated. "What was the first thing I ever taught you, Harry? Dark magic is a tool just like any else. All the fools in the world can be afraid of it all they want, but not you."
Harry was silent for a long moment. "I'll ask you one more time, and if you don't answer me I'm leaving, and I won't listen to you anymore," he said finally, "What do you want from me, and are you responsible for all the other strange stuff going on?"
Instead of responding, Araeva touched the tip of his own wand to his head, and pulled a glistening silvery memory free. "You really want to know?"
Harry looked at the memory cautiously. "This is the explanation?"
"Yes. You'll understand."
"Fine," Harry said petulantly, and snatched it up.
The first thing Harry saw was a blur of movement, a flash of light, and a large bang. Then everything stopped.
Harry was standing in the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Directly ahead was Voldemort and Harry himself, more than a year ago. It was the last moment of their duel; the exact second Harry had defeated Voldemort. What he had seen when he arrived was their spells colliding, and the Elder Wand rebelling against Voldemort, resulting in his death.
But why was everything frozen in place? Harry looked around, looking at the horrified faces of everyone watching, unmoving. They still hadn't yet realized what had happened and they wouldn't for a few more seconds; they expected to see Harry's dead body tumbling to the ground. For a moment Harry relived the emotions of that last duel, and shivered.
Something moved behind Harry and he turned head around. Of course— Araeva was approaching. In the true nature of a pensieve memory, Araeva didn't see him.
What's Araeva doing? Harry wondered. I don't remember him being here.
Araeva strode directly up to Voldemort, tapping him on the shoulder. Suddenly there were two Voldemorts, the one still frozen in place, and a ghostly version. The ghostly version stumbled back, looking around in panic.
That must be Voldemorts soul, or spirit, or ghost or something, Harry decided.
Voldemort saw Araeva, and jumped. "Araeva?" he said in surprise, "But I killed you!"
"Tom," Araeva greeted him calmly. "I must disagree; you did not." He smiled like a cat with a mouse in it's paws, "Unfortunately for you."
"What are you doing? You've stopped the fight!" Voldemort protested angrily, his slithery tongue lisping over the words.
"This fight is over," Araeva told him. "You died."
Voldemort shook his head. "No. It can't be. Not Potter. I defeated him!"
"No," Araeva told him firmly. "You didn't. You're dead. Game over."
Voldemort looked at Harry, and back at Araeva. "Is he one of yours, too?"
"Of course," Araeva said. "I've had this all worked out for years. It's quite embarrassing for you though: he defeated you all on his own. I didn't have to help him out at all. He doesn't even have the benefit of my teaching; I wiped it from his mind years ago. Just so you know, he was a better student than you ever were, and he was only a child at the time. Nor did he ever try to kill me."
Voldemort stared at Araeva, stunned by this flood of information.
"You were my apprentice," Araeva said. "I could have made you truly great, but you betrayed me. This is my revenge: see your successor. He will have all the power you ever wanted, and didn't achieve. Immortality is in his grasp, if he wants it, it was never in yours. You were weak, and you were exterminated. I pulled you here, to this place between moments, so that you could watch."
"NO!" Voldemort screamed.
Something was happening. A type of dark mist flowed out of the tip of the wand frozen Voldemort was holding, moving toward frozen Harry, where it enveloped him. Frozen Harry was momentarily obscured from view, and then the mist sank into his skin and disappeared.
Araeva gasped Voldemort by the neck. "Do you know who I am now?"
"Yes," Voldemort said, and let out a sound close to a whimper. Both Araeva and Voldemort disappeared.
The memory ended.
Harry was back in the chair, sitting in Araeva's hut.
"Wow," he said. "That was really something. Quite satisfying, I must say. I always wondered how Voldemort would react to me defeating him. But who are you? And what was that part with the mist? You said I would understand."
Araeva ignored the question about his identity, as Harry had half expected. "The mist was what I call the Dark Legacy."
"Explain," Harry said.
"Since magic began, there has always been dark magic," Araeva began, "And there has always been one Master of the Dark Arts. In the beginning, they taught one apprentice in their lifetime, and when they chose their time to die, the successor would take over. I call these people the Dark Kings. But after a time their role became warped, as did their way of passing on the succession. When one Dark Lord was defeated, the one who killed him would inherit his place. The Dark Lords were never as powerful as the Dark Kings, but what power they had they hoarded and abused. This became the trend for so long, that I decided to intervene and bring about the return of the Dark Kings."
Araeva looked thoughtfully out the open door, as if looking back in time. "Tom Riddle was my attempt. That was a mistake, and the result was utter failure. He had the aptitude, so I began teaching him, preparing him to defeat the current Dark Lord and be the first in my new dynasty of Dark Kings. But once I had explained what I was training him to do, he became overambitious and paranoid. He became convinced that since I was more powerful than he, I would either try to take the throne first or take it from him once he had it. He used the killing curse on me at an unexpected moment. I was obliterated, but merely reformed somewhere else. I think it always bothered him that my body disappeared.
"I was furious. I had offered him my world and everything that was important to me. I've been absorbed in the succession for generations, and he tried to steal it. I had never even told him who the Dark Lord was. Tom knew it had been Grindelwald once. He erroneously thought that Dumbledore had replaced him when he defeated Grindelwald; but Grindelwald was still alive. For years Tom tried to get to Dumbledore, to no avail, and when he finally killed Dumbledore, he expected new power to start coming to him. It didn't, and eventually he tracked the Elder Wand and the Dark Legacy back to Grindelwald. Unlike the Elder Wand, you keep the position Master of the Dark Arts until you die. Tom had been the Dark Lord of the Wizarding World for more than twenty years by the time he became the true Master of the Dark Arts. He barely had time to start assimilating his powers, because he died soon after.
"You killed him, Harry," Araeva stared piercingly at Harry, "Just as I meant you to do."
Harry gasped at this conclusion. "That's what you were 'preparing me' for?! Your Dark Legacy?"
"Yes. I'd been traveling the world, looking for a new apprentice. You had defeated Tom once already, when you were one year old, so I kept my eye on you. But it wasn't until you were seven that you showed the talent that I needed. While under duress, you managed to control the minds of your attackers. That's true dark magic. So I came and trained you, hoping you would be the one to defeat Tom and end his wretched life. I wanted you to be prepared to take over the succession. I knew that you were what I had been waiting for; I don't make the same mistake twice."
Harry stared at him mutely. He was shaking.
"Believe it Harry," Araeva said bluntly. "If you had been unprepared, or had ever seemed unwilling while I was training you, I would have spared you; but you were the perfect candidate. You've started to come into your inheritance already. Your fate was sealed the moment you killed Voldemort. It's what you do with the powers that come to you that will determine what you become… I can help you."
"What if I don't want this?" Harry asked. "I was only seven!"
"Like I said, you don't have a choice," Araeva told him. "But before you refuse to cooperate, listen to me carefully. Just because you are Tom's successor doesn't mean you have to be anything like him. He went about everything the wrong way. The Dark Kings are supposed to temper the dark arts, keep an eye on them, and give them a measure of control. Aren't you training to become an Auror? Controlling the dark is what you want to do with your life. Here is your perfect opportunity. If not you, it would have been someone else, who may have abused the power like Voldemort did. By staying alive and accepting your new role, you are actually preventing another one like him. If you embrace your new abilities, they will help you."
"New abilities?" Harry asked, then added sarcastically, "Do you mean my headaches?"
"You're getting headaches because you're once again fighting the inevitable. You're picking up on the thoughts of people around you. You don't have to listen to them, but you can't just block them. Let them run through your head, and practice sorting them out from each other. Soon you'll have enough control to silence them. You'll be able to control the minds you're reading, just like you did when you were seven."
"But I don't want to do that!" Harry protested. "I'm not going to control anyone's mind!"
"Well if you're attacked, you may find it handy."
"What about my shadow? How exactly does that help me?"
"Let your shadow go. Shadows are tricky, sometimes they come and go as they will but he's there to help you. If you give him instructions, he can sneak into places you cannot. All you have to do is close your eyes, and you can see everything that he sees," Araeva concluded with, "Oh, and if anybody were to find out what you are, they would misunderstand. The Dark Lords have reigned for so long; the time of the Dark Kings has been completely forgotten. Not only will people try to get rid of you, thinking you will become the next Voldemort, but you will get other people who know about the Dark Legacy trying to take your place. There are not many of them, but some old families pass down secrets like that, generation after generation. Now it's time for you to wake up. Things will be easier for you now that you know."
"But what does a Dark King do?" Harry asked quickly.
"Next time," Araeva said with finality.
Harry woke up.
It was still fairly early, but he wasn't tired and surprisingly he felt better than he had in weeks. Harry wasn't surprised to see Violet's bunk was empty, she was no where to be seen.
Harry could hear the murmuring voices of the sleeping trainees dreaming, and he stood up and slipped outside to find some peace.
He enjoyed his solitary moment, sitting down on one of the stone steps. It was cold, and he hugged himself to stay warm. The sun would be rising soon; there was a slight orange glow behind the horizon. It was beautiful, and for a few seconds Harry let all of his worries drain from his mind and enjoyed it.
I have a lot to think about, I need time to get used to this, he thought. Who is Araeva? He's been around for generations, since the old Dark Kings he said. I got the feeling that he'd been around even longer than that… nobody survives that long. Harry decided not to waste time making theories, Araeva had said he might tell him someday.
I believe him, I have to. Things have been too strange lately, and this is as good an explanation as any.