The Imposter Complex, Chapter Thirty Nine: Gravity Don't Got No Hold On Me.

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If the builder of Tech Mell had had any sense of gravitas, he would have made the crystal sconces to know when to grow dim. But unfortunately, Ignatius Longbottom had been more moon-mad than theatrical, and so it was always under bright and sterile lighting that the Order of the Phoenix conducted our secretive meetings.

It seemed foolish, to me, that we would hide valuable information from our own allies. Sure, there was the risk of spies among the Aurors, but wasn't there just as great a risk of spies among us?

Case in point, Snape was giving us his latest report. He'd risked it all going back to Lord Voldemort's side once more... or had he? Just how much of a trap had Azkaban truly been intended to be? Dumbledore always had been cagey about just why he was so sure Snape was loyal...

'-to say the Dark Lord is furious is a monumental understatement.' Snape twitched then, as if momentarily caught by a wretched memory. 'He was already demanding answers for how precisely Riddle attacked him from afar last week, and now his loss at Azkaban has almost unhinged him.'

'That's good, isn't it?' one of the Weasley twins said cheerfully.

'We've got him on the run!' said the other.

Bill gave them a sharp look over Fleur's head. 'What? Did you forget about the Death Eaters kidnapping Ollivander or something?'

The twins' smiles dimmed a little, and Snape sneered. 'It is not good. These personal defeats have made Dark Lord look weak, or at least I believe he sees them that way.'

He met my gaze. 'I believe he will strike at you personally, in force. He must, to retain his image.'

A thrill of fear zipped through me, though I did not let it show on my face.

'He can try.' I said with confidence only half-felt. 'My house is a fortress.'

'Aye, and so was Veidthall.' said Mad-Eye Moody, who still regarded me with deep distrust. 'Voldemort left it a smoking crater, and that was before he had those terracotta scrotes.'

I scowled, the throbbing at the back of my head making me snap. 'The Crouches built that place eight hundred years ago. Sorry to remind you what century it is, but warding's come a long way since you were in nappies!'

'Be that as it may,' Dumbledore interjected before Moody and I wound up in another of our frequent pissing matches. 'It would not hurt to be more cautious, Tom. Is there anything further you can tell us about Voldemort's plans, Severus?'

I slumped back in my chair, and drew a phial of silvery-blue potion from my coat. I downed it, grimacing at the taste, but the migraine receded a little. I saw Dumbledore giving me a concerned look out of the corner of my eye.

Snape had made a face, the expression stretching the livid scar that still bisected his face. 'Very little. Aside from his fury at Riddle, the Dark Lord has become more insular in recent days. I do not think he suspects me, I have seen him be equally dismissive of Malfoy, and of the Carrows. He has been spending a great deal of time privately interrogating Ollivander...

'However, I can say that he is no longer hiding the Terracotta Army; they have been heavily garrisoned at headquarters. One can no longer go anywhere in the complex without a soldier looking over one's shoulder.'

'The headquarters you still say you can't lead us to...' Sirius taunted, and Snape looked immediately furious.

'If you are so eager, Black, to be pulled through a Fidelius and butchered by clay monsters, you need only to say the word.'

Sirius sneered, but didn't continue needling him. Snape regathered himself before continuing.

'There is one other thing, though I am uncertain of its significance. The Dark Lord's headquarters is located near a muggle road, and over the last few days I have noticed vehicles dropping off and picking up wooden crates from a point not far away. Late at night, the Soldiers have been moving them into the Dark Lord's private study and taking others out to be sent off. I have yet to be able to discern their contents without arousing suspicion, but I will attempt to.'

'You can't follow the trucks?' I asked dubiously.

Snape scowled again. 'They have... eluded me, through unknown means. They bear the name "MacCuil Transporters".'

Kingsley piped up from beside Dumbledore. 'Rufus still has me assigned to guarding the Muggle Minister. I may be able to get them investigated.'

Dumbledore nodded. He looked deeply troubled, and I understood why. Once again, Lord Voldemort using muggle methods in ways he never had before. It could just be a means of obtaining funding that couldn't be tied to Malfoy (whom we still could not legally prove was an active Death Eater, the sly bastard). Or it could be something rather more sinister.

I was distracted for the rest of the meeting. There was something here, something I was missing. But I did not know what.

:—:

They dragged me from my bed, jagged iron hooks thrust right though my ankles. Out into the yard, where the deep and open grave lay. They cast me in, carelessly, without ceremony. I could not make out their faces, but their expressions were grim.

The first shovel of dirt struck me in the face, and I staggered back. More shovels followed, and already my feet were beginning to disappear beneath the soil. I threw myself at the sides of the hole, flailing helplessly for the edge, more than my height again out of reach. Iron chains bound me to the ground, and I could do naught but howl as the dirt reached my waist, then my chest, until I was struggling to keep my head uncovered. Then that too was buried, and I could not breathe, I was choking, earth was filling my lungs, and I-

I shot awake in a shock, biting back the scream that was trying to claw its way out of my throat. My eyes were wild, whipping about the bedroom. Nothing. I was alone.

I shuddered bodily. It had been a while since my night terrors had visited me so vividly. I pulled myself out of bed, fumbling for my wand to splash water on my face. Ugh, I felt like I'd run a mile or three. I slid open the drawer of my bedside table to check on my emergency weapons. My old larch wand lay within, and the two singularity grenades were still where I'd placed them, their starry-black hides glimmering at me.

Dawn was starting to peek its way through the gap in my curtains, poking at my bleary eyes. Trying to get a little more sleep wasn't worth the effort. Besides, I'd remembered what was happening in a few hours' time, and it sent a shock of energy through me. Today, I would fly.

Maybe.

:—:

Sirius set the final quill to parchment, the enchanted feather standing perfectly upright when released, like the dozen others that encircled our little testing area. He nodded to me, and I spoke.

'Beginning trial of Ritual of Flight, test one dash one. The date is October twenty sixth, nineteen ninety six. Time is ten forty... two in the morning. The weather is lightly overcast, wind speed is currently negligible. Temperature is a crisp nine degrees centigrade.'

We were in York, near the edge of Sirius's land. I could just make out his manor house in the distance. I stood in the centre of a runic circle, painted in ethically-sourced human blood. It was mostly Atlantean glyphs I could barely make sense of, with sections of emeg̃ir filling more than a few gaps. Suffice to say, that did not exactly fill me with an overwhelmingly degree of confidence.

In one hand, I held a flask of translucent blue potion, prismatic patterns glimmering within where it caught to light. Bringing this particular brew to completion had been by far the most fiddly task I'd ever completed in my potionmaking career, and had required Sirius's assistance due to my busy schedule. But it was done, and it seemed to precisely match the description in Lord Voldemort's guide. Of course, the only way to find out for sure was through trial and error.

'Why do you get to try it out first again? I'm the one who bled for it.' Sirius complained. He was looking a little pale, even after the blood-replenisher he'd quaffed.

'Because I'm immortal. You are squishy.' I said bluntly. 'You'll get your turn Sirius, don't worry about that.'

He grumbled quietly to himself, and I chuckled. I could understand the frustration. Even if this worked perfectly, it would take at least another week to create another one of these potions.

I closed my eyes, and arranged my thoughts appropriately. I downed the whole potion in one smooth motion, and raised my wand above my head. The concoction tasted vile, enough almost to make me gag, but I held myself together. My wand traced a careful pattern, and I incanted slowly and precisely, in what I could only assume to be Atlantean.

'Dhéǵhōm, sleǵso apóh pōd-hmene deh-us-wé! Dyḗus-phtḗr, kapweĝh hmegi enhweh-nto!'

My wand came down in a great arc, and the runic circle burst into life, shining with the same prismatic light as the potion. I felt a quickening come over me, a staticky buzz that put all the hair on my body on end. The sky began to rumble above me, and I looked up sharply but saw nothing. Around me, soil was slowly beginning to drift upward, as if becoming weightless, yet I remained very much rooted to the ground.

I heard Sirius laugh. 'You look like somebody rubbed a balloon all over your head.'

I flicked two fingers at him, which only made him laugh harder. The buzzing sensation was beginning to intensify, until I could hear it in my ears and my vision vanished into a haze. Rising, rising to a crescendo until a thunderous crack cut through the noise, and suddenly I was hot, and hurtling, tumbling through the air at great speed!

I slammed into something yielding that collapsed against my force, but the impact was still enough to blow the wind right out of me. I felt dirt pressing in on me from all sides, and that morning's night terror shuddered through my mind. I was buried.

My eyes flew open, and I writhed in a panic. I forced willpower through my hands in a surge, and the earth exploded up around me, casting several tonnes of soil two dozen feet into the sky with a mighty thoom!

Sky. I could see sky.

I shook the cobwebs from my mind, getting my bearings. I had struck a once moderately-sized hillock, of which little now remained. A sharp crack let me know that Sirius had caught up.

'Fuck me. Tom, are you alright?'

I spat, several times, the dirt that fallen into my mouth acrid upon my tongue. At least it tasted better than the potion. 'Yeah, I'm all right. Just a little dizzy.'

'After careful consideration, I have decided that I am comfortable with letting you do the testing from now on.'

I laughed sorely. 'I thought you might be. Did you manage to catch what went wrong with it?'

'Yeah, it looks like one of the emeg̃ir sections caved in. I dunno what that bit said though.'

I grunted. We'd have to pour over the notes to see what went wrong, but I wasn't surprised that it was one of the patch-jobs that crumbled. As it turned out, reverse-engineering Atlantean alchemy was not an exact science. Maybe I should drop old Nick Flamel a line. If he didn't know how to help, he'd probably know someone who might.

:—:

I appeared with a thundercrack, Welsh grass rippling in the wake of my arrival, in momentary defiance of the night wind. Before me lay a ragged coast, jagged black stone persisting in open defiance of the eroding waves that crashed endlessly against it. I had been putting this off for too long already. It was time to reclaim yet another piece of my soul.

I knew this place, once. A long time ago, before I'd even know of the Wizarding World, or the birthright flowing in my veins. The orphanage had brought us here in the summer of '37, one of the four or five times in Cole and Wool's lives that they'd spent their money on the orphans instead of themselves.

I'd felt the power of this place, even in my youth. When I had gone exploring, I'd brought some of the other orphans along, in the hope that I could show them... I didn't know what then. Something exciting.

Instead, what we found had scarred us all, them far more than I. It almost broke them, their muggle minds unable to truly fathom it. Another sin to make up for I suppose, even if it had been unintentional.

There were no muggles nearby, though the lights of the little seaside town that Cole had taken us to could still be seen in the distance. I cast my eyes around cautiously once more, before flicking up a Notice-Me-Not charm, pulling my peacoat a little tighter around me, and casting myself off of the cliff.

'Waiwhano kohatu' I murmured as I fell the hundred feet or so to the sea, and when I landed the water below me held fast, strong and stable as stone beneath my feet.

It took a moment to get used to the sensation, the sea continuing to shift normally beneath me despite refusing to let me fall in. Then I strode across it, making my way towards the hidden fissure in the rock, which none but the most expert of muggle climbers could hope to reach, and which they would not perceive even if they could make the trip.

I could almost see my younger self, clambering across that treacherous stone into the fissure, the other two children reluctantly following my path, not able to notice that the handholds they clung to did not truly exist.

Finally, my feet met true stone again, the lapping waves giving way to rough-hewn steps leading into a deep inky blackness. I summoned fire in my hand, cyan flames licking at my fingertips, and the darkness receded only barely. This, I knew, was no natural shadow.

My first surprise met me: The way was blocked. Not by rubble or the like, but by flat unbroken stone, blending seamlessly with the way before me. I frowned. In a way, this was a good sign. Someone - presumably Lord Voldemort - had seen fit to block the way with magic.

That meant that my hunch - in truth borne of little more than flashes of memory from the other Horcruxes - may have paid off. There was definitely something of note here.

I passed my wand across the non-archway, murmuring detection spells. What I found only raised more questions. A blood sacrifice was needed, and the stone would vanish. Odd that Lord Voldemort would select something so crude - and something which no truly capable wizard would find even a mild barrier to entry. That was suspicious.

After a moment, I deduced it. It wasn't intended to be a true barrier to entry. It was a sign-in book, allowing a record of every person who passed through. Or perhaps a two-step identification process; if anyone but Lord Voldemort passed through, it would activate some trap.

I smirked. Luckily for me, I would certainly count as Lord Voldemort for all that magical sensors would be able to discern. Hell, I was certainly closer to our original body than the serpent-face he was currently riding around in. A small cutting charm sent a spattering of blood across the stone, which faded away immediately, leaving a black chasm behind. I moved through confidently, and no traps, if they were there at all, sprung out at me.

Black sand began to crunch beneath my loafers, and ahead I could faintly make out greenish light glimmering against the rocky walls. That was new.

My breath caught in my throat when I turned the corner, even though I had seen it before.

A vast underground lake lay before me, stretched out further than I could make out. It was bathed in mist, and ill-lit by a dim, sickly emerald light, emanating from the middle of the cave. The perfectly still waters were like black mirrors from this angle, but I already knew what lay beneath. Bodies. Bodies beyond all counting.

I knew not from whence they came, and still don't. But they were not of Lord Voldemort's doing. They had been there even when I was young. The light had not.

I eyed the edge of the lake cautiously. When Dennis Bishop had touched the water... the dead had risen for us. If not for my younger self's fledgeling talents, we all would have died here. Joined the horde.

I shivered. I had seen and done far more gruesome things since that day, but for some reason this earliest of supernatural encounters still got a rise out of me. No matter, I reassured myself. If the inferi got in my way, I would destroy them all.

The light, I surmised, was my destination. All that remained was how to get there. It was too far to leap, even with my strength. I had no doubt that the cave was enchanted against brooms. Conjuring a boat and disturbing the water seemed a poor plan. Lord Voldemort, of course, could simply fly under his own power; I'd seen him defy the anti-flight charms at Azkaban. I doubt he'd have intentionally left a means of traversing it in another fashion.

Climb across the ceiling perhaps? I glanced upwards. The cave roof was so high as to disappear into mist. I would be unable to see where I was landing.

Perhaps it was time to take a leaf from the Dark Lord's most recent book, and turn to more mugglish methods. With a flick of wand and will, a long and wide stretch of cloth billowed out before me on the little beach. A crude parachute. I pulled the four corners together, and sealed them into a handle. I swung it up over my head with one arm, raising my wand with the other.

'Ventus!' I declared, and the winds obeyed. A great swirling gust blew forth out of my wand, catching the parachute and filling it, forcing it upward and I was yanked up along with it.

I had seen muggles do this before, with great fan engines instead of wands. It became immediately obvious why it was not used among wizards.

What I had not first realised was how powerful it would be. My little contraption rocketed roofward at a terrifying pace, and I almost lost my grip to fall into the lake below. The mist above soon gave way to jagged stone, and I scarcely managed to throttle back the wind before the parachute crashed into them.

I breathed a sigh of relief, as I began to slowly drift back down, a trickle of wind still billowing up enough to slow me. Controlling direction was clumsy at best, and more than once I nearly sent myself careening into the water, close enough to see dead blank faces staring up at me.

But, with a lot of caution, I made it, swaying over the little island in the middle of the lake from thirty feet up. I released the parachute, and vanished it as I fell. My feet slammed down into the island, little craters poofing up in the black sand.

The only other object on the island was the source of that sickly green light. A pedestal basin, almost altar-like in appearance, spewing forth radiance like a miniature sun, only it did not hurt the eyes to gaze upon. I approached it cautiously, wand-first.

A potion lay within, one which I recognised. I had first learned it from the grimoire of Herpo the Foul, but he hadn't invented it. He had called it the Drink of Despair, but it was better known as Ten Thousand Sorrows. A notably vindictive bit of protective magic.

I jabbed at it with my wand, unsurprised when I felt resistance. The only way to touch this little brew was if you meant for it to be drunk. There was little other point in trying to wriggle about it. Instead, I investigated the pedestal, then cursed under my breath. It was enchanted too, a more powerful array of invulnerability charms than I was able to unravel, rooting it to the ground for at least a hundred feet straight down.

I rocked back on my heels, thinking. It was kind of a pathetic defence, when one got down to it. A couple of months ago I would have just gone and fetched a sacrificial muggle and come back, there was really nothing to this. Surely this couldn't be Lord Voldemort's best effort, right?

Still, this potion would need drinking, and I'd be damned if I were going to do it. I'd wallowed in my own self loathing more than enough of late without a potion to help me along. But something in me now simply rejected the idea of subjecting any living thing to this potion.

I cast my eyes about the cave, looking for something Lord Voldemort may have passed over. But all I could see was mist and lake. Hmm.

I raised my right hand in a fist, and focused my will. The Resurrection Stone lit bright with a swirling deathly green on my finger, a subtly different hue from the potion. A bolt of emerald lightning sparked forth from it, towards the water's edge. Unlike true lightning, it did not interact with the lake at all, piercing straight through it and striking a corpse on the chest.

The corpse rose from the water, disturbing the lake's tranquil surface not one iota. It was ancient, but not nearly as decomposed as it should have been, given that its rough tunic seemed to place it around the Viking age. Waterlogged flesh sagged around milky eyes as it stared blankly at me.

I willed it forward, and had it open its mouth. Time to see how picky this potion was. With a conjured goblet, I scooped up as much of the potion as I could in one go, and poured it down the inferius' throat. It shuddered a little, but had no other reaction. Looking back to the bowl, the liquid had not replenished itself. I grinned.

Four goblet-fulls in, the inferius started to display an adverse reaction. To my surprise, it actually seemed to recoil away when next I raised the goblet to its lips, leaning as far away as it could without shuffling back. I squeezed my right fist a little tighter, and the inferi went stiff and upright again.

By the time the basin was empty, the inferius was shaking apart at the seams, involuntary quaking at war with my iron grip over it. I scooped up the locket, and then let the inferius crumple at my feet. It did not move to slither back into the lake, it simply lay there juttering.

Looking down on it, I couldn't help but feel a pang of pity. It was a misplaced feeling, I knew. The soul that had once piloted this body had to have left it centuries before Hogwarts was even built. But still. Some portion of its brain must still have existed, to be reacting to the potion like this. Something in there could be reliving something awful. I re-killed the thing for my own peace of mind, crushing its skull with a swift spell.

Then I turned my gaze on the locket, and my brow furrowed deeply. This was not the locket I had seen in a flash of vision. Not even close, it was far smaller, and had no emeralds encrusting it. I stowed my wand, and took the locket in both hands. The flimsy locking mechanism snapped immediately when I went to pry it open, and a little piece of paper fell out onto the sand. What in Merlin...

I plucked up the note, and read it carefully.

To the Dark Lord

I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.

R.A.B.

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A/N: Almost at 40 chapters, hard to believe. I had initially planned this story to be forty chapters long at its end, but it has grown in the telling.

I do apologise for the unplanned hiatus. The story is beginning the arc towards its conclusion, and so bringing all of those strings I've tossed into the aether back together is proving much more challenging than anticipated. On the plus side, chapter 40 should be out some time tomorrow as well, as it is only a bit of polish away from being done.

Updates will likely be coming slower in the coming months, but I hope to be finished by year's end.

Please follow and review.