So as I'm writing this, I still haven't updated Chapter 28. Fanfiction won't let me. Don't ask me why. But at least I'm on schedule.
Chapter 29
Regulus Black
Viktor had started searching for him frantically after about twenty minutes had passed and Harry didn't return from the "bathroom." It was nine o' clock when Harry emerged from the passageway behind the tapestry, and half the school was in an uproar. When he reappeared and everything finally calmed down, Viktor asked where he had been.
He told the truth; he had found the original meeting place of Durmstrang's founders. He just didn't tell the whole truth. He said nothing of the small, golden chalice deep in his pocket, pressing against his leg. His hand was clutched around it, unwilling to relinquish its hold on this thing, one of several that had half-occupied his thoughts for an entire year.
One step closer.
As Harry lay in bed that night, the goblet still in his pocket, he reached out again and again for the magic in the air, in the stone, in the wood of his bed. It was faint, not nearly as potent as it had been on the path to the Horcrux, but it was there. He tried using it as he would his Inner Sanctum—to perform a spell like silently summoning his glasses from his bedside table—but he couldn't seem to do it. He felt the power, but he could not harness it, and he could not use it. It was beyond his ability to control.
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"Mr. Potter."
Harry glanced towards the source of the voice. He was sitting in the immense library, far bigger than the one at Hogwarts. It was the last night of his stay at Durmstrang, and he, Viktor, and Polikoff were together trying to get the hang of using the magic of their surroundings, but none was having much success.
There was a girl standing beside him, looking rather nervous. "The headmaster wishes to see you, sir. He's waiting in his office."
Harry glanced at Krum, then stood up and followed the girl out. "Did he say why?" he asked the girl.
She shook her head.
"Thank you. I'll be back," he said to Viktor, "unless Holinskii intends to murder me when I walk in."
The girl, who looked frightened, turned away, and Harry found himself trying to find his way through the corridors. After taking two wrong turns and having to ask directions from a surly-looking boy, he finally climbed the spiral staircase that led to the headmaster's office.
"Come in," was the response to his knock.
Once again, Harry was struck with how familiar the voice sounded, but he couldn't quite place it. He pushed the door open and waited respectfully in the doorway.
"Please, sit down," Holinskii invited, not looking up from something he was writing. A long roll of parchment dropped off the desk with a few feet sitting on the floor, all covered in a neat, small handwriting. Harry sat down in one of the chairs opposite his desk.
He finished his sentence, capped his ink bottle, and looked up to face Harry.
"So," he began, "rumor has it that you discovered the original meeting place of the founders."
"So I've heard."
"Is it true?"
"I believe it to be," Harry answered.
Holinskii leaned forward, a strange glint in his eyes. "I know it to be."
Harry looked at him strangely. "You do."
"Indeed. I've been down there myself."
"How often?"
He shrugged. "Once every few months. I go in an attempt to retrieve something."
Harry felt his hand in his pocket tighten around the goblet that he had kept there since he found it.
"I take it you found the Horcrux?"
Harry looked at him incredulously. "How did you…"
Holinskii laughed. "How did I know? Ever since I first walked past that tapestry, I felt the magic aura of the Horcrux in the air. It took me a year to figure out how to open the wall, but when I managed it, I was sure it was down there. But there was always something guarding it."
"The demon."
"Indeed. I did research. Read every book I could find. But I found nothing on this particular djinni, nothing that would give me power over him. As often as I went down there, I could never defeat him."
"Is he that powerful?"
"I think that Lord Voldemort bestowed him powers that were beyond his normal scope of things. He had greater power because of something the Dark Lord did, not because of any merits of his own. In essence, I was confronting a rather weaker Voldemort. Him I could never defeat.
"And yet you, a man—hardly a man—of seventeen, with six years of schooling, you waltz in here and in half a week, you've opened the stone, found a way to defeat the demon, and retrieved the thing I've worked for years to get."
"I didn't defeat him," Harry said. "I negotiated with him."
Holinskii looked surprised, and then began to nod slowly. "What were the loopholes?"
"Voldemort hadn't forbidden him to write his name, and I promised him Voldemort's own birth name and an oath that I would destroy him if I could have what he guarded."
"What if Voldemort isn't destroyed? What if he continues to live and take over the world? The djinni will have every power over you because you did not honor your oath."
"If Voldemort doesn't die, then I will."
"You seem certain."
Harry didn't answer. He was certain.
"You are an extraordinary being, Harry Potter."
Again, Harry remained silent.
"What was it?" Holinskii asked softly.
Harry hesitated a moment. He didn't know if this man could be trusted. But how could telling him was harm anything? With a glance at Holinskii, he withdrew the goblet from his pocket. "It belonged to Helga Hufflepuff."
Holinskii stood slowly and limped over to him, kneeling in front of him. He reached out his left hand to hold it.
But as he did, his robe slid down his left arm and Harry caught a glimpse of something that made him snatch back the goblet, jump away from Holinskii, and withdraw his wand.
"You're a… you're a Death Eater," he said, breathing hard. His wand was pointed firmly at Holinskii, and he drew up his Inner Sanctum to have his magic ready.
"I'm not," Holinskii said wearily, getting to his feet.
"Don't move," Harry snarled. He knew he should not have been surprised. This was a school of the Dark Arts. The previous headmaster had been a Death Eater. What had made him think he could trust this one?
Holinskii stopped. "You know what?" he asked after a moment. "I wouldn't be afraid of any other seventeen-year-old, even if he were as powerful as you. No other seventeen-year-old would actually have the courage to hurt me."
"Be quiet," Harry said. He didn't know what to do. Holinskii was a powerful enough wizard to counter anything except perhaps very harmful spells, and Harry was not in agreement with him; he didn't believe he had the courage to do anything if Holinskii decided to charge him. Nothing that would hurt Holinskii, at least.
"Harry, listen to me."
"No," Harry said. "You're a Death Eater. You have the Dark Mark. I can't trust you."
"I only ask you to listen. Here," he took his wand out of his robes and tossed it to the floor at Harry's feet. He looked at Harry shrewdly, then sat down. "Sit down, please, Harry, it's a long story."
"I'll stand," he said, keeping his wand trained on Holinskii.
"As you please." His leg seemed to be hurting him more than before. He sighed. "Where to begin?"
"The beginning would be a good place."
Taking a deep breath, Holinskii began.
"My parents were very loyal purebloods, and they raised my brother and I to be that way. My brother read a lot, and he realized very early the stupidity of the pureblood, half-blood, and Muggle-born nonsense. He distanced himself from me and my parents, and he left home altogether when he was sixteen. I, however, was not as smart as he. I didn't see through their brainwashing prejudice. I hated anyone who was not pureblooded, and I was intent upon wiping them out. I'm British by birth, as I'm sure you can tell by my lack of a Russian accent, and I went to Hogwarts. As soon as I finished school, I joined up with Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters."
"See?" Harry demanded.
"Of course that's true," Holinskii said scathingly. "I have the Mark, don't I? Let me continue. No one ever suspected how far in I got. My brother eventually found out that I was a Death Eater, but he thought that I was a pawn, a trivial player that Voldemort used for his own ends. He was more or less right; we were all chess pieces, and Voldemort was the chess master. He threw us away when it suited him. There could be no one his equal, no one his confidant. However, there were some of us more powerful than others. Some of us were rooks, bishops, even queens. I was… a knight, per se. Higher than most, not as high as some. But he trusted me with a special assignment."
His eyes clouded over with a distant, old ache, and he suddenly looked fifty instead of thirty-five. "In December about a year before you were born, I went to the house of a man by the name of Gideon Prewett. He was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. I got past the defenses he had laid on his house—everyone had defenses back when Voldemort was in power before—and I entered. At wand point, I told him that he had to swear allegiance to the Death Eaters or die, long and slowly. I'll never forget what he said in those final moments of his life.
"'You don't know what your master is, do you? He's the epitome of evil, the subject of loathing. Do you know what he's done? He's ripped his soul in pieces so that he would be immortal, putting them away so that they might never be found. His body may live on forever, but no matter what point you're arguing from, tearing your soul apart is destroying it. He's decimated his self worth as a human being. He's not human, Lord Voldemort. Unless you realize that and get yourself out, he's going to bring you down with him.'"
Harry suddenly realized where he had heard the name Gideon Prewett. Mad-Eye Moody had pointed him out in a picture of the first Order of the Phoenix. He had been blown to bits…
He looked at Holinskii. His face was the face of a man who could barely live with himself, who hated himself for some crime that he could not change. "I killed him then," he said softly, "after I tortured him. His brother came and… and I killed him, too."
Harry took a step backward, horrified and appalled, but feeling a deep pity for this man. No one had every looked like he suffered more for the guilt of his actions. His head was hung in shame, and when he spoke, it was in a quiet, hoarse voice. "Then I realized what I had done. As much as I hated half-bloods and Muggle-borns, I had never meant to kill. Not really. And so I ran.
"Voldemort's pawns chased me halfway over the world. I went to America, seeking refuge, but they found me. I went to Australia, Greece, Egypt, and finally I found myself in Russia, taken in to Durmstrang by a small, kind boy who had left the school for a solitary walk. The headmaster—it wasn't Igor Karkaroff back then—let me in, let me stay and learn, and, eventually, teach. When he died, Karkaroff got the job—I would think Karkaroff killed him on Voldemort's orders, except that he was too much of a coward—and then when Karkaroff ran after the Triwizard Tournament, I became headmaster. I was better at the Dark Arts than anyone, see, and that's what's prized around here…. If only they knew how much I despise them.
"I remembered, vividly, horribly, what Gideon had said, and so I began researching. What did he mean by tearing his soul? The only answer I could find was that of Horcruxes. How Gideon came to know about them, I can only guess, but now I knew too, and it made perfect sense. And when I walked past that wall, I knew there was such a powerful object in there that it had to be either a Horcrux of the very center of magic itself, because I'd never felt such power except around one person."
"Who?" Harry prompted softly.
"Albus Dumbledore."
Harry sat down, the weight of what he was hearing crashing down on his shoulders. "Your name's not really Holinskii, is it?"
He smiled slightly. "Of course not. My most recent Russian ancestor died in about 1121 AD."
"Then who are you?" Harry knew, knew somehow, that he had seen this man before. Or maybe not this man, but at least someone very like him. "What's your name?"
He raised his head slightly.
"Regulus Black."
