In just two hours, Harry and the others turned Safe House Four into a fully functioning research station. Far from her response to Harry's previous request, McGonagall allowed Harry and Hermione to take anything from the Restricted Section that even vaguely touched on rituals and magical absorption. The former archives of the Black Library, which had been moved to the Ministry, were restored by teams of Aurors who spent nearly three hours bringing back full of dozens of books to the research room, where shelves had been built to surround the room.
Finally, Malfoy brought the contents of the Malfoy Family Library to Safe House Four, having shrunk them so that they fit in his pocket.
The process was simple. Everyone would take a book and begin reading. Anytime they saw any sort of reference to ritual magic or absorbing the magic of others, they marked it down. When they were finished with the notes, they turned the book and their notes into Hermione or Malfoy, who would go through the book and see if the information was worth spending time on.
If they did, then it was compiled and at the end of the day, Harry, Hermione, and Malfoy sat down and went through the notes, seeing if they could make sense of any of it. For nearly a week they did this and it had gotten them almost nowhere. They certainly had a better understanding of how ritual magic worked, but there was nothing to be found on absorbing the magic of others and especially nothing on how that could be used to transform yourself into something like what Legion had become.
In the meantime, Harry had been working from Safe House Four with the Aurors. Elaina remained at the Ministry, communicating with Harry hourly, and executing his orders from there. Since the incident in the Forest, the Aurors had been pulled off every other case onto this one. Teams of Aurors scoured the country, Apparating from point to point in a grid that Elaina had designed. This would allow them to scan the country for Legion. Eventually, they would nail down where Legion was hiding.
Harry could only hope that they would figure out a way to reverse the ritual before then.
It was late one evening when Harry found himself on the balcony on the second floor that overlooked the square in front of Grimmauld Place. Below where he sat, a few Muggles, most of them coming home for work, walked down the street in silence. Other than that, the night was still. The air was still and even the sounds of the city seemed subdued for the moment.
It had been a rough couple of days. While the work had kept his mind busy, his thoughts still returned to Ron and Neville in the evenings. He had barely slept since the services, both because he was working almost non-stop and because when he laid down, all he saw was the look on Ron's face when Legion's curse hit him.
"Harry?"
Considering how late it was, Harry was surprised that anyone else was up. But when he turned around and saw that it was Teddy, he was even more surprised. Arthur and Molly had moved into Safe House Four with Teddy the day after Ron's funeral. They argued that there was no way they could protect Teddy at The Burrow.
At least here, they would have reinforcements if it came down to it.
"Teddy, what are you doing up?" Harry asked.
"I…."
Teddy hesitated and then suddenly started crying. Immediately, Harry jumped from his chair and raced to Teddy, kneeling down in front of him and wrapping his arms around Teddy. Teddy responded by wrapping his own arms around Harry's neck and sobbing into Harry's shirt. Harry held onto Teddy until his crying started to slow down. Then, he scooped up the boy and returned to his seat, sitting Teddy in his lap.
"What's the matter?" Harry asked as Teddy wiped the tears from his eyes. "Bad dream?"
Teddy nodded sadly.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Teddy looked at Harry for a moment and then shook his head. Instead of speaking, he simply leaned down against Harry's chest. Harry wrapped his arms around Teddy, squeezing him tight to make him feel as safe as Harry could.
A few minutes later, Teddy spoke up again.
"I miss Grandma," Teddy muttered. To be honest, Harry wasn't certain that Teddy was even talking to him, but he was going to try to talk to him anyway.
"I'm sure you do," Harry whispered. "I miss her too. Was there anything special that she did when you had a bad dream?"
"No, not really," Teddy replied. "I just miss her."
Harry and Teddy sat in silence. Within just a few minutes, Harry could tell that Teddy had fallen asleep. However, Harry refused to move until he knew that Teddy was well and truly asleep. So, he sat and listened to Teddy's breathing and felt his heart beat against Harry's chest. Over the last few weeks since Andromeda's death, Harry hadn't been able to spend as much time with Teddy as he would have liked.
But this time, this moment right here, reminded Harry just what he was fighting to protect. If Legion got through Harry, there was no doubt in Harry's mind that Legion would come after the rest of the world at large, starting with those closely associated with Harry. Harry wasn't arrogant enough to believe that he was the only one capable of stopping Legion.
But he was one of the few. The odds decreased drastically if Harry wasn't the one to stop him.
The next thing Harry knew, the sun was shining in his face and he was being poked by someone else. Harry blinked his eyes open, having clearly fallen asleep in his chair. Somehow, Teddy had slept the rest of the night in his arms. It couldn't have been particularly comfortable for either of them, but Harry guessed that Teddy had needed Harry last night just as much as Harry had needed him.
Harry looked up to see Hermione smiling down at the two of them.
"Sleep well?" Hermione whispered.
"Well, I slept, so by that metric, yes," Harry replied. "Is everyone working?"
"They started two hours ago," Hermione said with a smirk. "It's nearly eleven."
Harry had never been one to sleep in much and certainly not until eleven. Harry moved to get up before remembering that he still had a ten-year-old asleep in his lap.
"Relax. You've had a long couple of days. You needed the rest."
"Everyone has had a long couple of days. No one else slept until eleven. What makes me any different from them?" Harry asked.
"Because you're you, Harry," Hermione smirked. "You do need to get up though. Abbi tried to use your mirror about twenty minutes ago."
"Did you respond?"
"No. I just saw her picture on it."
Harry checked his watch for the date, November 16, 2008. Immediately, Harry looked down at Teddy and shook him gently.
"Teddy, it's time to wake up."
At first, Teddy didn't move so Harry shook him again. This time, Teddy stirred.
"Grandma?"
Harry's heart fell. He knew what it was like to wake up expecting to see someone who was no longer there. It was the worst feeling in the world.
"No, Teddy, it's Harry," Harry replied sadly. "We need to get up."
"Harry, what's the rush?" Hermione asked.
"Today is an even numbered day. That means that Abbi was on the search team."
Hermione instantly understood Harry's meaning.
"She may have found it?"
"She may have found it," Harry repeated as Teddy slowly sat up. Once Teddy was upright, Harry lifted Teddy and sat him on the chair next to him.
"Teddy, I have to go out for a little while. You'll be alright here with Hermione and the Weasleys."
"Is everything okay?" Teddy asked nervously.
"Everything is just fine. In fact, things are great and they're only going to get better," Harry said with a smile. "Now, why don't you go take a shower?"
"Once you're done with that, I can make you some pancakes," Hermione said excitedly. Teddy immediately looked up at Hermione and then back to Harry, a nervous look on his face.
"I think I'll have Mrs. Weasley make me something," Teddy said uneasily.
"Hey, you're going to have to get used to Hermione's cooking," Harry replied, although he couldn't help but smile.
"Is she moving in with you?" Teddy asked.
"You know, we haven't quite thought that far ahead," Harry admitted. "Once all this is over, we'll figure that out. Is that alright with you?"
"As long as I can use Hermione's library, that's fine with me!" Teddy said as he raced off to take a shower. Harry chuckled as the young man ran away, finding amusement in both Teddy and Hermione's reaction to him.
"I think he and I will get along just fine," Hermione said with a smile. "I mean, I have no experience being a mother, but we'll figure it out."
"You aren't the only one lacking experience in that arena. We'll both need to figure some things out, but I have confidence in us," Harry said, kissing Hermione softly on the cheek. "Now, I've got to see if Abbi found something for us."
Harry raced to the other bathroom in the house and quickly showered before finding his magic mirror. When Abbi's face appeared on the other side of the line, he saw that she was surrounded by trees and appeared to be quite nervous, looking left and right.
"Abbi?"
"I think we found him," Abbi said, her voice a rough whisper. "From the moment we landed here, the sensor has been going off."
"Where are you?" Harry asked.
"Grid marker D24, somewhere in north Ireland," Abbi said, referencing the grid sheet that Elaina had drawn up to coordinate the Aurors' effort to search the country for Legion. "We've activated the Portkey feature on your mirror so you can use that to Apparate directly to us."
"Great," Harry said as he gathered his things. Once he secured his wrist holster, Harry picked up the mirror and turned on the spot, landing in the middle of a forest. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was a team of three Aurors led by Abbi Edison.
"Where is he?" Harry asked once he had gotten his bearing.
"There's a house about a mile that way," Abbi replied. "We'll have a bit of a hike to get close enough to see it."
"Why did you have me Apparate so far away from the house?"
"Because we didn't want him to be able to sense us. Based on what you've told us, Legion has abilities that we can't even truly comprehend. Plus, the sensor is….well, look at this."
She pulled out a small dial with a single hand on it, like a broken clock. Then, she turned and pointed it at Harry.
"For reference sake, when I point this in your direction, it reads here."
The dial shifted from its point at the top of the circle to a spot somewhere around where a seven would be on a normal clock.
"That's high for most of us. I clocked in at a four and one other Auror marked down a five. There had been no sixes."
"That's great. Why does that matter?"
"You'll see," Abbi said as she turned in the direction that she believed Legion was hiding in. The dial dropped from roughly a seven to roughly a four.
"I don't get it," Harry said.
"Legion is a mile away and this is what that sensor is reading," Abbi explained. "This dial works directionally and its range isn't all that good. That's why we've had so many grid points to hit."
"So you are saying that from a mile away, it reads like an Auror is standing directly in front of you."
"Exactly," Abbi said as she stowed the sensor in her bag. "Now, let's get moving."
It took them nearly an hour to get from their location to the house. The terrain was rough and had clearly never been settled by civilization at any level. The trees were dense and the land uneven which made traversing the land nearly impossible. On more than one occasion, Harry nearly slipped, only to be caught by Abbi, who seemed far more at home in the woods than Harry did.
"You go hiking a lot, Edison?" Harry asked as they walked.
"Not too much anymore, sir," Abbi replied. "It hasn't exactly been easy to get time away from the office."
"But before that?"
"My sister and I lived on a farm that had a small grove of trees in that back of it. The land was rough, but it was ours and I memorized every inch of it."
"Sounds nice."
"It was," Abbi said and it was clear that was all Abbi wanted to say about that.
It was another twenty minutes before anything of any real importance happened. Harry was walking along when he suddenly felt magic in the air around him.
"Wards?" Harry said.
"They surround the house," Abbi confirmed. "At least three layers of them. However, the wards don't prevent you from being able to see the house. Look there."
Off in the distance, Harry could just make out a house, although house was hardly the word for it. It was essentially a small castle, complete with a single tower in the center. It was also ancient and clearly decaying as if someone hadn't taken care of it in nearly a thousand years.
Of course, if this was Legion's home, warded so that no one could infringe upon it, then it was likely that no one had been maintaining it for the last millenium.
"Three layers of wards? How long would that take to remove?"
"Almost no time at all if we had the right person, but it appears that one of the wards is an alarm of sorts."
Harry should have expected that. Any attempt to manipulate the wards in any way without muttering the proper spell would destroy the wards but immediately set off alarms inside the house. The element of surprise would be out.
"However, the top layer of the ward doesn't appear to be connected to that, only the one that prevents people from entering the property."
"What does that ward do?"
"It prevents you from scanning the house for numbers, sir," one of the Aurors behind Abbi piped up.
"Numbers?"
"With the ward in place, any magic that detects if someone is present or how many people are present would fail."
"Now, you remember what the sensor looked like an hour ago, right?" Abbi asked as she pulled the sensor from her bag. "This is what it looks like now."
She held the sensor up at eye level, facing the house. Instantly, the dial started moving. Only it didn't stop at four this time. It didn't stop at seven either. In fact, it didn't even stop when it got to the top.
It just kept spinning. Five times it went around before it finally stopped where the three would be.
"We've scanned most of the Aurors. Like I said, most of us come out at around a five or a four, assuming we're using the clock analogy. If you added all that up, it would equal roughly sixty-three or-"
"About twelve people," Harry replied. "Legion is as powerful as twelve people put together."
"That's how it appears, sir."
"Is it possible that the house is registering some of this magic? Or the wards?"
"It only reads magic from natural sources."
Harry stood for a moment, staring at the castle on the hill. The magic of twelve people: for some reason, that sounded familiar. It's almost as if there was a picture in his head, already drawn but smudged, so that he couldn't see the whole image.
"Let's remove that ward. Before we start panicking people, I want to know that Legion is alone in there."
Immediately, the Auror that had spoken up stepped forward and got to work on removing that layer of the wards. Within seconds, Harry felt a twinge of magic in the air and he knew that the ward had been removed.
Harry drew his wand and raised it towards the house, casting a spell that would tell him how many people were in the house. Harry wasn't surprised when he got his answer: one.
"One person," Harry replied. "If that truly is Legion, and I can't think of anything else it could possibly be, it is alone in there."
"Would you like me to prepare the briefing room, sir?"
"No, Abbi, thank you," Harry replied. "I'll be taking this to the team first. I'm certain that I will enlist some Aurors to assist."
Abbi looked wary of such an arrangement, but was smart enough not to protest. Instead, she nodded.
"Of course, sir."
Harry took one more look at the castle. He knew that someday soon, he would be back here and he hoped that on that day, they had finally taken care of Legion once and for all.
Harry and the three Aurors took an hour to walk away from the wards before Apparating back to the Ministry. Harry quickly updated Kingsley on what was going on and then returned to Safe House Four.
At the end of the day, Harry called everyone back into the research room so that he could go over what his Aurors had discovered. In just a few minutes, Harry told them all about his journey through the woods. He told them about the castle that seemed like as likely a place as any for Legion to be hiding out. He told them about the massive power that Legion was registering on the sensor and he told them that Legion seemed to be alone.
When Harry finished, it was Percy, newly recruited to their project, that spoke up.
"That's all well and good, Harry, but we don't have a way to stop him yet, do we?"
"You're not wrong," Harry admitted. "That's what we need to figure out. I know that everyone is tired. I know that you've all worked long days staring at books and that you want nothing more than to go back to your safe houses, make dinner, and go to bed."
"But we need to figure this out," Arthur said, finishing Harry's thought for him.
"We do," Harry admitted. "It seems that Legion takes time in between his attacks. The longer we let things wait, the more likely it is that Legion comes and takes one of you before we can even figure out how to reverse the ritual."
"Harry?"
That voice came from the back of the room where Gabrielle Delacour sat. While she had come to assist, she had been unusually quiet. It was obvious to everyone that Ron's death was weighing heavily on her. But unlike everyone else, she only had one person that was truly her family in the room and Fleur had been working around the clock.
"Yes, Gabrielle?"
"What if the ritual can't be undone?" Gabrielle asked. "What if there's nothing we can do to stop it?"
It was a legitimate question. It was just unfortunate that Harry didn't have a good answer for her.
"Then, we'll have to figure something out," Harry replied. "We know there's no way to get Legion to come back to the Ministry on its own. I suppose we would have to figure out a way to make the Arch mobile if that's even possible."
"But you don't have a plan for that?"
She wasn't exactly questioning Harry's leadership, but she was skirting the line.
"I know that we want to plan for everything," Harry replied calmly. "But if we plan for everything, we'll end up planning for nothing. We'll have contingencies in place for as much as we can, but we focus on one thing at a time right now. Are we all clear on that?"
Harry looked around the room and saw some surprised faces. Of course, Harry forgot that he was talking to his friends and family, not his Aurors.
"Look, just trust me, okay?" Harry added. "I know that I haven't exactly been at my best recently, but that's because we were playing from behind. If we can figure out this ritual, then we can turn the tide, make Legion react. If we can do that, we can take him."
"You're sure of that?" Charlie asked.
"I'm sure of nothing," Harry said honestly. "I'm sure that if we have all the pieces to the puzzle, then we have a chance, which is all we've ever needed. We only had a chance to beat Riddle and we made it happen. Together. That's the only way this happens: together."
Harry looked around the room. Everyone was nervous and doing a poor job of hiding it. He couldn't blame them. An immortal god was hunting them and Harry was telling them that their best chance of defeating him was undoing a ritual that they hadn't even discovered.
But no one walked away, no one spoke up again. They were all there, for better or worse, and they were going to see this thing through to the end, even if it killed them.
Hell, it could kill them all.
"Good. Now, the only way to get Legion back to the Arch is by reversing the ritual. So, let's sit down and go over what we have. Maybe we'll come up with something."
Harry could tell that they were tired. He could tell that this was the last thing they wanted to do. But they knew that they had no choice. Nothing could wait, everything needed to be completed as quickly as possible.
And that meant sitting down and rehashing everything they had read in the last week.
"Now, Malfoy, what do you have for us?" Harry asked as he looked to the far end of the table where Malfoy sat opposite him.
Malfoy pulled a pile of notes out of his bag and set them in front of him.
"This is everything we have that even remotely relates to magical absorption or manipulation," Malfoy explained. "Magical manipulation seems like the more likely candidate for this particular ritual."
"What's the difference?" George asked.
"It's difficult to explain," Malfoy said with just a hint of a sneer. While everyone appreciated the fact that Malfoy had been helping them, that didn't make him everyone's best friend. Harry knew that if he didn't interrupt, things might get ugly.
"Try us," Harry ordered.
"Fine," Malfoy said and although he didn't balk at the order, Harry could tell that he didn't like the tone that Harry had used. "Both are forms of Dark magic because they deal with taking magic from other sources and pulling them into yourself. In terms of magical absorption, that basically means that you take the magic and then once you use it, it's gone."
"And magical manipulation is not that?" Hermione asked.
"Think of it more like using that additional magic to unlock yourself. You might not necessarily be more magical, but you might have access to kinds of magic that would seem impossible."
"But Legion is both incredibly powerful and has access to impossible magic," Harry argued. "How is that the case?"
It was Luna who answered Harry's question.
"Maybe that has something to do with who he was before the transformation?"
"What does that have to do with it?" Malfoy snapped.
"Let her explain," Harry barked from one end of the table to the other. This kind of behavior was Harry's largest concern with Malfoy leading the room momentarily. For the most part of their working relationship, Malfoy had been well-behaved, knowing that one slip up would likely end his career. But he still occasionally had issues with talking down to those that he believed to be inferior in one way or another.
In Luna's case, Malfoy couldn't let go of the fact that Luna had once been seen as...well, as a person who believed in...alternative facts.
"Harry, you believe that Legion is actually the Norse demigod, Odin, is that correct?"
Almost immediately, about half of the room groaned. While Harry had been careful not to bring his theory up too often, he had made it clear when he explained the situation to everyone that this was exactly what he believed.
Harry nodded in confirmation, urging Luna to continue.
"Well, there are stories from Odin that date back well over two thousand years. Yet, we know that Legion was captured just over a thousand years ago. If we operate under the assumption that Legion is Odin-"
"Which he is not," Percy replied.
"If we operate under the assumption that Legion is Odin," Luna repeated sharply, glaring at Percy, "then it's logical to assume that he was doing something to keep himself alive prior to turning himself into Legion. We know that magical people can live to be old, but not a thousand years old."
"And if Legion is Odin," Hermione said, which garnered another round of groans, "then he would have already had to be incredibly powerful prior to his transformation. Norse mythology doesn't refer to him as Legion, it refers to him as Odin. That means that he was powerful enough while still on the continent to become a legend himself. It was only after he came here that he became Legion."
Harry considered all of this information and could only come up with one truth.
"He was using something to keep himself alive for years before he completed the ritual," Harry thought aloud. "What if the ritual is just a more advanced version of that?"
"Not only that," Hermione added. "What if Legion is still doing that today? Harry, you literally had your magic drained by Legion. You watched him do it to Teddy. You said that he was hurt and then when he drained the magic from you, it seemed to restore him."
"Yes, and?"
"What if, even before he became Legion, he was draining magic off of other people? What if that's how he lived so long in the first place and what if the ritual itself is just a more developed form of that same kind of magic?"
Malfoy suddenly stood from his spot at the end of the table and started pacing. Something was clearly on his mind. Harry watched him for a moment before he stood and walked the length of the table towards him.
"Malfoy, what is it?"
Malfoy waved a hand at Harry as he continued to pace. He paced in silence for nearly a full minute before turning back to the room. When he spoke, he never looked up as if meeting the eyes of someone else would break his concentration.
"There is a ritual that fits that description."
Immediately, the room exploded with sound. After several attempts to silence the room, Harry literally drew his wand and cast a Silencing Charm over everyone but himself and Malfoy.
"Is there a reason that you neglected to share this information until now?" Harry asked as the rest of the room continued to silently curse at Malfoy. In turn, Malfoy turned to one of the bookshelves on the back wall and removed a book.
"Because the ritual doesn't say anything about manipulating the magic of another person," Malfoy said, holding the book aloft. "It simply says a source. When I read it, I dismissed it, thinking that for most magical objects, there simply wouldn't be enough magic to drain. Even enchanted objects are barely magical. They just bear the imprint of magic upon them, a reflection of the enchantment that has been cast on them."
"Speak English, Malfoy," Harry snapped.
"What if the source in this ritual wasn't an object, but another person?" Malfoy suggested. "Plus, part of the other reason that I neglected to mention it was because the ritual involves storing that magic in a phylactery."
"A what?"
"A magical storage device. Like a Horcrux, but whereas a Horcrux stores part of a soul, a phylactery stores raw magical energy. The phylactery allows them to access that extra magic, giving them the ability to draw on massive amounts of power. It would need to be something that the person would have to carry on them at all times. If they lost it or if it was broken, they would lose access to the extra magic almost immediately and whatever abilities that extra magic granted them would fade away."
Harry slumped back in the chair next to felt like they were closing in on something worthwhile, something that was close. Maybe this ritual wasn't exactly it, but it seemed close.
The only problem was this idea of a phylactery. Harry couldn't remember any sort of object that Legion always had on its person. Of course, the thing that always immediately popped into Harry's mind when he imagined Legion was its wicked smile. Beyond that, nothing much really mattered. Harry wracked his mind, thinking of every form that Legion had taken, trying to see if there was anything that fit the description.
Then, Harry had a flash of a memory, something from The Riddle House.
"What kind of object could the phylactery be?" Harry pondered aloud.
"Anything really. When I say the magic is stored inside of it, that's mostly poetic language. In truth, it's more likely that the item would be imbued with the magic."
"Could it be a necklace?" Harry asked.
"Sure," Malfoy said. "Why?"
Harry waved his wand, releasing the room from the Silencing Charm that he had cast on the others.
"When Legion took Andromeda's form, it wore a necklace, a necklace that I had never seen before. The rest of its attire matched what Andromeda was wearing when she died. But I've never seen that necklace before in my life."
"Maybe you just forgot?" Bill suggested. "I mean I doubt you spent much time looking at Andromeda's jewelry."
"This was...different," Harry said. "It was strange, huge, gaudy, a big, black bird that hung around her neck."
"A black bird or a blackbird?" Malfoy asked.
"A black bird, I guess. What's the difference?" Harry replied.
Malfoy turned and looked at Hermione and then at Luna before looking back to Harry.
"In Norse mythology, Odin used ravens as his messengers, one named Thought, the other Memory."
The room sat in silence for several seconds. For those that believed that Odin and Legion were one and the same, this was more proof. But for Bill and the others who doubted, this was just another coincidence which Bill immediately pointed out.
"Harry, Odin isn't real. He is a myth. Even if Legion was from that area originally, it's more likely that he simply took the name as his own."
"You're right," Harry replied. "I know that it doesn't matter one way or the other. It doesn't change what we do or how we do it. But if this is truly Odin, the Father of Norse Mythology, then that changes what happens when we remove the ritual."
"Why?"
"Because Odin is a myth," Harry answered. "He's a legend, a story told to children as a way to pass their history. If this man is the beginning of all that history, that means that even if we remove the ritual, it's still very possible that we're dealing with a wizard far beyond any of us."
Once again, the room fell silent as everyone considered what Harry just said. Harry knew that he wasn't helping anyone feel less afraid, but that wasn't his job. His job was to prepare everyone for the worst and the worst case scenario is that they would undo the ritual and still face a wizard well beyond their capabilities.
"There's one thing I don't understand," Hermione said, a sentence that rarely came out of her mouth. "Say that he was draining people of their magic. That wouldn't keep him alive forever. Even if the Arch stopped or slowed his aging, Legion seems to be under the belief that it is immortal."
"So he used the ritual to keep himself alive?" Bill asked.
"Yes, but you'd need an infinite source of magic…" Hermione said, her voice trailing off as she suddenly raced to a bookshelf behind Harry, scanning for something.
"What are you looking for?" Harry asked.
Hermione ignored him until she found what she was looking for. The book was ancient with a black leather cover and nothing to mark it as anything out of the ordinary.
"This is a book on theoretical magic," Hermione explained. "Basically, it goes through the fundamental theories on magic, including the theory of where magic comes from and how it works."
Hermione opened the book and began flipping pages rapidly until she found a spot about three-quarters of the way through the book. Once she stopped, her finger pressed against the page and she scanned for the exact passage she was looking for.
"Magic is found in all life," Hermione read aloud. "Even Muggles, who seemingly possess no magical abilities, possess latent amounts of magical energy. They simply have no way of using it. Witches and wizards possess just enough magic that we are able to manipulate it, but we are not considered magical creatures in the same way that a dragon, whose scales reflect magic due to their magical properties and not, as is commonly suggested, because of their density."
"If it was possible to collect enough magic in a single being, it has been suggested that there is a threshold that, if eclipsed, would allow you to have constant access to increasing levels of power. Effectively, this would give the being in question the ability to generate its own magic at will. It is uncertain what this would mean for the being in question, but it is likely that, should such an experiment succeed, we would see a new form of magical creature, one capable of accessing the very nature of magic itself."
Hermione looked up at Harry, a look of combined horror and fascination on her face.
"What if Legion took that ritual and used it not once, but several times?" Hermione suggested.
"A dozen times," Harry replied. "When we used the sensor, it read as if he were twelve people."
"So, what if he figured out a way to alter the ritual so that he would absorb the magic of a dozen incredibly powerful magical beings at the same time?" Hermione asked. "What if Legion, in order to gain access to more magic, took the magic from twelve other beings and, in the process, became what he is today?"
It was an insane proposition. They were dealing with the very edges of magical knowledge and diving firmly into magical theory, a field that only Hermione and Malfoy seemed to know anything about. Still, the information lined up. The line wasn't straight and there were still some questions that needed to be asked, but it made sense.
"Then the only way to stop him would be to remove his access to that magic," Harry replied. "We would have to destroy that necklace."
"We're not even sure that this is even a remote possibility," Arthur countered. "If you go in there and this isn't how the ritual is undone, then we all die."
Harry had to admit that Arthur had a point. While there would come a point where they would be forced to act, regardless of the amount of information they had, they weren't quite at that point yet.
But Harry had an idea, a way to confirm at least part of their theory.
"Hermione, Malfoy, get me everything you have on this theory," Harry ordered as he stood. "I want it on my desk in an hour."
"What are you doing?"
"Well, I only know of one Pensieve in the world and I need to use it."
