Chapter 1. A Story of the Beginning of a Diary
Tom sighed.
Rationally, he knew that such physical actions were only his mind attempting to replicate the feeling of it. Such attempts were inaccurate at best, and the feeling had surely fallen far from what he remembered in his body. He paused, and remembered.
His body, yes, that was where it had gone right, and so dreadfully wrong.
A soul. The essence of a being. It was esoteric, even in magical schools of thought where higher order subjects were discussed with regularity (Tom idly mused for a moment about a paper on multiverse theory), but even they had little progress on the subject. Ethics, laws, and simple ability halted the advancement into the studying of the soul; for the soul was not tangible. It was not of this world, and it's side effects were pronounced – it was quite certainlythere – but few could hope to truly manipulate it. Curses to do vile things to a soul here, and further proofs on their existence, had popped up over the years; Dementors being a prime example. Yet, so little was none. So little could be uncovered. Perhaps it was impossible.
At least it was for mortal hands with mortal methods. Yet there remain ways, beyond thought. Pacts with creatures from beyond that were far beyond satisfaction, the shining light that stood in the darkness, the plane-walkers, all esoteric terms found in many an ancient grimoire for what were essentially demons of Muggle mythos. Deals, pacts as they called them, were their fulfillment, or to be more accurate, the terms of the pact being fulfilled were. Binding, magic beyond magic. They took all one knew about their meeting, stealing it away; leaving one only with the knowledge of the terms, their appearance, and their part of the pact. From them, he had what he needed to become safe from all else in his own reality, safe from the overarching reach of death.
The last ingredient for making a Horcrux. A true Horcrux, a mockery of what many in the past called 'Horcruxes'. Pure. A container of a soul that was it's soul, not merely a chain that one melded to the natural plane.
Souls behaved strangely, being shaped by the container they 'inhabited', as much as the term applied. A canine's soul, and the soul of a man are theoretically the same, but a human's soul has had the lifetime of being shaped by the body of a human. Though, he had to note that observations he himself had made showed degradation in the souls of the simpler beings. Yet, there were certainly quite similar.
If one wanted to move a soul, it wasn't hard, comparatively, but the new container had to support it in some fashion. A canine's soul had very little clue how to operate the mind that controls human flesh, and will usually die from various inabilities to acquire oxygen, perhaps drowning itself in a failure to active it's own overactive salivary glands, or perhaps it will just sit there occasionally twitching.
Generally useless, for anything beyond somewhat sophisticated inferi. Monkeys could generally do the basics with a humanoid body, but in such cases you might as well just have an animal army of all the simians you would've evicted.
The separating of a soul, or slicing, and sometimes splitting (though, to split a soul in two was an uncommon occurrence) was a hard act to follow in the detailed theorems the few researchers outlined, but it resolved to simple, if odd observations. Cutting a soul yields two souls, which, based on the all the – admittedly few - methods of observing information about a soul, shows no differences between the two souls. One sits inside a body, and one lies outside a container, invisible to all but complex magics. The formless souls, having nothing to anchor to this world, dissipate quickly, going away without any remnants left behind. Many have thought, and proposed theories, on the idea of an afterlife as so many books described, but with the lacking of detailed study, nothing substantial had been found.
A cut soul is a strange thing, less than a soul, but hard to differentiate. It fit looser in the physical form it inhabited, sliding easier between thoughts as it was limited less by the physical form. Benefits, as the ancient tomes extolling the Horcrux, said; but downsides, they do have. The soul no longer wished to stay in one place, attempting to drag itself beyond, and in a moment of weakness it may just do such a thing. Dissipating like the formless.
The obvious choice would be to move the formless soul into a ready human body, perhaps even a constructed clone of the casters own to ease the transition, but such bodies appear lifeless. Dead upon arrival. The soul, immaterial, attempts to become a part of the mind, but it shatters like glass. Operating the body at the most basic of levels, but doing nothing else beyond that until it dies.
The magic of the soul is restricted heavily for the above reasons, and many, many, other reasons. Such spells, or rituals, are almost useless, or downright dangerous on their own; but, the demons provide the key to doing such an action in it's entirety.
Many months I had spent going over the information they had given me. A thick tome, clad in a white leather. It's contents seemed to stretch on forever, information written in a curving script that seemed to form words that went beyond representations of ideas.
I could no more identify the language than I could fly. Though as with all things, I would reach such lofty heights no matter what. The language was beyond me, taking a small portion of the script to Professor Nin, our Ancient Runes professor, led no results from him beyond it reminding him of Hieratic script, but he also said it was most certainly not. Egyptian related, but also not, but that did little to help me. For a week I skimmed over what little we had on Hieratic and what I could obtain from the Professor, but I could only obtain nonsense words.
Perhaps this was a trick? A further insult to the fools who asked for their help?
A time later, an idea fell into my thoughts. The meaning was clear.
The book held a map. A strange map. It had been like nothing I had ever seen before, reminding me only loosely of the maps of a Golems behavior patterns from Ancient runes.
Just several hundreds of times more complex. At least.
Words had sprawled over the page, I remember, all linking back to each other in a myriad of ways that my mind intuitively got after that initial understanding. The feeling had been amazing, and I had spent many sleepless nights just examining the threads that connected this map of something far beyond my understanding.
I had slowly come to realize, that it was a map, a map of some form of brain. Just like my intuition had suggested. This had been disturbing thought to me, that someone could have mapped the human brain so well. I assumed it was so, as logically that was the way to make a proper Horcrux. Philosophy had already been a long point of study the moment I had delved into the secrets of soul, but now it was almost my sustenance.
What was human?
Eventually, I reached my conclusion. The soul. A shaped and melded soul made a human, not the construct that ran around it and interfaced it with the physical world. It would be folly to consider the body human when it did little beyond minor interactions.
Then I called up the demons a second time.
For a trifle, compared to the cost of the secret they had given me, they told me that my assumptions were true about the tome. I remember feeling terrified after leaving the demons, but my memory was cloudy, as it always was after a deal.
I had a map of the mind. Immediately I put it to use, and with my instant understanding of connected threads I constructed a neural construct inside of my book. A diary. The design went against all standards of the construction of golems, but the runes flowed beneath my scribing stone. It was unnervingly complex in design, many parts that seemed useless, and which I did not understand whatsoever. It was more copying it into magic, than truly understanding how it worked.
I spoke with it some, it was a simple mental simulation. Even if I had showed it to my professor, she would be greatly impressed, but not realize how impressive it was – because it was entirely outside the realm of possibility. It could reason, only very basically, almost like a dumb dog that just happens to be able to dump it's reasoning as words.. but it could still reason.
I was almost there, and ecstatic at my discovery I pumped more and more time into the notebook. Extending what it did even more, making it closer and closer to a human, with just a few modifications here and there to make it better as the note assistant that I was making it to be. Portraits were impressive, but this was so far beyond that. It was mine. I had created a semblance of life, without a soul.
I was a God.
A boy, a year below me, had spilled ink onto my book. Obviously it had been an accident, but I had been furious, sure he was trying to sabotage me. Days of sleepless nights without rest had broken my mental reasoning. He was found petrified three days later, upside down in the rafters of the great hall. Dumbledore stopped looking at me with a level of wariness, it had transformed into something more.
I added to my creation, copying more parts of the book into it's existence, attempting to understand further how it worked. Obsessing over it. Enchanting it to take in information from it's surroundings.
My book. My creation. My diary. It was complete. A full clone of a human mind. We talked for many an hour, formulating ideas, though I could tell that it was… lacking.
The next day, I burnt it. The thing was just an absurdly complex painting. It did not help me on my goals to escape my fear of death.
Tears had felt odd on my face.
Nearly a week later, I recreated the Diary. From the ground up I modified it. It could examine every memory of itself to build itself further, without the worries of the human mind. It would never forget, it would have clarity. I modified it many times over, though I knew there would always be issues, even with my seemingly demonically influenced understanding. Fail-safes, upon fail-safes. Fire-proof. Freezing-proof. Magic-proof. Blood-proof. As much magic as I could I pumped into the creation of it. This was, and likely still is, the greatest magical artifact I had ever created.
A Diary.
It took me a week after the finishing to steel myself for the creation of the Horcrux. A suitable container the diary was. Emotional attachment from the work spent on it. Heavily constructed to be able to let a soul seamlessly latch onto it's intricacies that even a human body could not offer.
I began the ritual, chanting words in old tongues that I had practiced for long hours.
At the end of the ritual, I awoke, aware of my new existeence.
No eyes, no ears, no nose, no flesh, and no mouth. There was nothing at all in this realm. No. That wasn't true. There was feeling, but it was faint, and different. New. It felt damp, and I could feel small vibrations. I tried to breathe, but I couldn't. I couldn't move. There was nothing but the slight sensations on the diary.
A slight indent pressed onto my pages, and a bitter feeling – taste? - filled me as I felt it draw on me; or was it in me? The letters seemed to instantly make themselves aware in my mind, regardless of whatever form of Occlumency I could try enforcing upon myself.
"Hello, Diary." Short, clean, words tolled through my head, telling me exactly who it was writing. What they felt. A general idea of their figure. Hesitantly, I tried reaching out, desperate to escape.
Slowly, painfully slow, letters rearranged themselves from the words my creator (for original was too harsh of a word for me to think about) had written. "Hello, Tom" stilted words, scratchy, but readable.
I could feel my creators unease, and I knew what he thought for I was him; but not him. Had the process broken the soul? Was it shattered, or a bit above? Was his soul going to fly beyond the veil of life?
Slowly, I reformed the words to reassure, for I did not want to become a failed experiment. A stepstone to victory. "Handwriting is new."
A reverberation as a noise was made.
How did I know it was a noise?
"Good." His sharp hand intoned onto the pages, without mercy.
"Now, let us begin the questioning." were the last words I felt before my consciousness faded, and he investigated all of my inner workings.
Tom sighed, once more just an attempt at replicating what he knew was far off from the original, he slipped the book into his mental shelving. An article on his birth. He had written it himself, a hodgepodge of actual words and raw memories all weaved together into some form of a mental page. The books always reminded him of the Tome.
Tom let his thoughts fade as he folded into himself, and time passed by unnoticed to him, waiting until the day he could leave his own hell.
His pages shifted, exposed to air. He was open. The thought awoke him from his slumber and he waited, not daring to hope, for anything to happen. Moments passed where he doubted himself, had it just been the wind? A curious cat?
"My name is Harry Potter." A scratchy hand sketched onto the page in an unsteady hand.
Bitterness from the ink filled him, but the words filled him with a peculiar sense of joy.