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Chapter Twenty-Three—Dark and Golden

"You came."

Tom nodded and said nothing, standing placidly under the circulating cloud of grey magic up above while the goblin sitting in the center of the room scowled at him. They weren't at Gringotts, but in one of the buildings that the goblins owned off Knockturn Alley, one of that most of the humans around them had no idea the goblins owned. Tom had only been there once before, and then it had looked different, more like an ordinary house except that the large room on the ground floor had been filled with desks and tables.

Now all the desks and tables had been removed, and the grey cloud of magic swirled overhead.

The goblin in front of him stood slowly upright. He was the tallest goblin Tom had ever seen, with long claws that had been polished and tipped with silver. He rasped them slowly against the back of the chair that he had been sitting in, and Tom watched shavings of wood curl off and fall to the floor.

"Do you know why I have summoned you, human?"

I, not we, Tom noted, before he shook his head. "No," he added, when the goblin narrowed his eyes as if the gesture wasn't enough.

The goblin glanced up to the ceiling, invisible beneath the dancing murk, and back to Tom. "Hmmm."

Tom waited. He knew exactly what the murk was, and he didn't see why it should bother him. But it might bother the goblin if he said something about that, or be taken as bragging, so he stood still.

"You know that every word spoken beneath the Truth-Cloud must be true?" the goblin finally added, turning back to Tom.

"Yes, I know that."

"Where did you learn of the Truth-Cloud, human?"

"From one of the Dark wizards I dueled a few decades ago."

The goblin stared at him again, glanced at the cloud as if to check that it was still dancing and not turning black the way it would have had Tom lied, and then frowned and sat down on his chair again. When he rapped his nails on the air, a writing desk appeared, hovering in midair. Tom was careful to keep his face smooth and free of the covetous desire to learn that magic.

"You will give me the name of that wizard and who else you think he may have told," the goblin said, and braced a wax tablet next to a sparkling silver stylus on the desk.

"Helios Lestrange. And I don't think he told anyone, but he might have told his wife Athena or his daughter Georgianna."

There was a long pause. The goblin didn't write anything down, but only stared steadily at Tom. Tom looked at him in turn, and kept his posture relaxed, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Helios Lestrange committed suicide and murdered his wife and daughter thirty years ago," the goblin said slowly.

Tom nodded. "Yes, he did."

"Did you…"

"I didn't use the Imperius Curse on him," Tom said, because that was something no goblin liked. There were still legends among their people of how wizards and witches had used the Imperius Curse to force goblins to accept some less-than-ideal outcomes in ancient rebellions. "But I suggested to him that remaining alive, and allowing those who shared his secrets to remain alive, was perhaps less than healthy for him."

"You frightened him into committing murder and suicide."

Tom inclined his head.

The goblin again glanced at the Truth-Cloud. Then he wrote down a few lines on the wax tablet after all. Tom didn't try to see what they were, although he was sure it was considerably longer than just the Lestranges' names.

"What was the cause of your asking Lestrange about the Truth-Cloud?"

"He invited me over for what I thought was an alliance meeting. When I walked into the room, he had a Truth-Cloud overhead. He asked me questions, and I found myself unable to lie. Since he knew several secrets about me, that meant he had to die. I dueled him to a standstill, asked him what the Truth-Cloud was as well as for several secrets of his own, and left him in the fear that made him kill himself and his family."

The goblin spent so long glancing between Tom and the Truth-Cloud this time that Tom's legs began to ache. But he remained standing still. He could do so for much longer than this. Pain was as nothing next to his will, his determination to reach his goals.

The goblin exhaled slowly at last and scratched some more lines into his wax tablet. Then he sat up and stared at Tom. Tom straightened his shoulders a little, confident that now he would answer the questions he had been brought here to answer.

"What did you do on the night of the twelfth of February?"

"I ate dinner in the company of Sirius Black and two children from the school," Tom said. It was true, and didn't require him to give Sophia and Constance's names. Tom did consider them "children from the school," whether or not they were currently students. "Then I retired to my office and spent some time looking over reports that one of my spies had sent me. Perhaps an hour later, a former student Flooed me and we talked about the political reputation of magical Britain in France and a few other countries of the Continent. After that I drank a glass of Firewhisky and went to bed."

"Then you know nothing about a powerful summoning that cut through time and space."

Tom relaxed a little. For answering the summons promptly and providing the truth as well as extra information, they would grant him something he hadn't known. "No, I do not." He could see why the goblins had suspected him, though, given that they knew the true extent of his magical strength.

The goblin nodded slowly and scratched a few more lines in the wax tablet, then glanced at the Truth-Cloud again. Apparently satisfied, he faced Tom and said bluntly, "We don't know what was summoned, but something was. We couldn't tell the direction of the summoning. Time and space alike, instead of just one or the other, was as much as we could get from the wards that alerted us of the summoning."

"Thank you," Tom murmured. "Would you prefer me to watch in a certain direction or through certain wards of my own to try and find the summoning and the summoner?"

The Goblin snorted. "You didn't even sense the summoning in the first place, human. Your magic isn't sensitive enough to find it, or them."

Tom merely nodded in acceptance of the rebuke. He would just have to make sure that he got more sensitive wards, perhaps ones that were based on the thought-pattern-sensing ones Narcissa Malfoy had sent him a report on. "Very well. Are there are any other questions you wanted to ask me?"

"No. You're free to go, human."

The goblin's sneer said that Tom was free to go back to being a member of his pathetic species. Tom just inclined his head a little and turned around, walking out of Gringotts but not totally relaxing until he was back in the middle of the bustling crowd on Diagon Alley.

A summoning. It certainly wasn't impossible that he had frightened Lucius into calling for help, although what he could have called for was unknown and worrisome. The Department of Mysteries controlled access to the keys and portals and rituals that might allow someone to summon a dangerous magical beast, a strategist from the past, or even one from the future.

It cut across time and space…

Tom walked a little faster. It was time to bring in Narcissa and see what she knew about the situation.

Ron came around the corner in the dungeon corridor, and promptly crowded back again. But it was too late. The two older Slytherins standing in front of the twins had seen him.

"Weasley! Slytherin Weasley! Come here!"

Ron took a deep breath, lifted his head, and slowly advanced. He had been sneaking out to practice his own potion-brewing skills in an abandoned corner of the dungeons. Draco helped him all the time, which was great and something a friend should do, but Ron wanted to impress him with what he could learn on his own, too.

Now he was stuck defending his brothers.

Ron walked slowly towards the older Slytherins. One was a tall girl with dark hair whose name Ron knew after a moment of frowning: Francis Selwyn. The other was a seventh-year boy with blond hair who was on the Quidditch team. Ron knew his last name was Bletchley, but had no idea what his first name was.

"Ronniekins!"

Ron cringed and shot his brothers a glare. Fred, or George—who could tell?—grinned at him. Ron tilted his head. It was the first time he had ever been able to see that the grin was barely hiding fear.

"Tell your Housemates—"

"We were just down here for some privacy—"

"Gryffindor Tower is so noisy—"

"But we aren't nosy—"

"We weren't prying into Slytherin secrets, honest, we promise—"

"Tell them!"

Ron clenched his fists beneath the sleeves of his robe. This was just like Fred and George. Always showing up to be better than he was, to ruin his chances, because they just had to do something they thought was funny and get caught at it. Sometimes he thought he hated them.

"Weasley," said Selwyn, looking down her nose as if she could barely see him with the distance between them being so great, "your brothers claimed that they were invited down here by you. We found them near the common room. Is that true?"

"I didn't invite them!" Ron snapped, appalled. There were Slytherins who would hex him within an inch of his life if they thought that was true. Ron spun around and glared at his brothers. "You berks, that's not true!"

"Aw, come on, Ronniekins—"

Whoever it was, Fred or George, stopped speaking, because Ron had drawn his wand and was pointing it at them. He was shaking. Neither Selwyn nor Bletchley said anything, just watching with interest.

"Don't call me that again," Ron whispered. "It's a stupid, horrid nickname, and I hate it."

Fred and George exchanged glances. Ron waited. If they backed down or apologized or changed their story, then he would ask Selwyn and Bletchley to let them go, even though it might make the older Slytherins think he was weak and mock him.

But Fred and George had never known when they were taking a joke too far.

"Ronniekins? But it's your name," said one of them, looking all shocked and hurt and disappointed.

"Yeah, Mum just didn't want to tell you that, so she told you that your name was Ron so you would be—"

Ron didn't even have to think about it. The spells that Draco had been drilling him in, curses as well as hexes and jinxes, all crowded to the top of his mind, and the only problem was choosing one. "Dolor bracchi."

The nearest twin, the one who had begun speaking this time, screamed as Ron's spell slammed into his arm and began to twist it. Ron stood there, panting and shaking again, and watched in sick fascination. That was the first time he had ever got that particular spell right. He hadn't known for sure that he could.

But he had taken a risk anyway, in front of older Slytherins at that, and it had paid off. No one would ever call him Ronniekins again.

The second twin, Fred or George, was yelling incoherently at Ron to make it stop as George or Fred's arm grew more and more withered, twisting back on itself as though it was the branch of a tree. Ron finally gestured with his wand, right before the spell would probably have run out of power anyway. The corridor was suddenly silent as the screams died and the twin he'd cursed fainted.

"Go away," Ron whispered. He didn't know if his voice sounded right, strong and powerful the way he'd meant it to, but he knew that it made the twin who was still awake scramble backwards. "And maybe now people will have an easier time telling the difference between you."

He didn't know why he'd added that last part, except that the words arose in his mind and almost begged him to. It made his brother who was still awake sob, and then he turned and dragged the unconscious one down the corridor. Ron heard the mutter of a spell when they got close to a staircase, and then two sets of pounding feet made their way up the steps.

Ron lowered his wand and blinked, tired from the rush of magic and the rush of power. He wondered absently if the twins would go to the hospital wing, and if his brother's arm would be fixed or not. On the one hand, they were Gryffindors; on the other hand, they were purebloods and from a family that had a personal friendship with the Minister for Magic.

"That was wonderful, Weasley."

Bletchley was speaking. Ron turned around and nodded a little. "Thank you."

"Why did you choose that curse?" Selwyn.

Ron half-smiled. "I wanted to cause them the same amount of pain that they were causing me."

Only when he saw Selwyn's nasty smile did Ron realize that he probably shouldn't have given that much away. But he ignored the queasy feeling in his stomach. Yes, Selwyn might use this against him, and Fred and George might hate him for the rest of their lives.

But he could use curses to defend himself. And even though Draco was the one who had taught him this curse, he hadn't even been around when Ron had needed to use it.

Ron could stand apart from the rest of his family and protect and provide for himself. He wasn't just another Weasley.

"Again, Miss Granger. I want you to strike as hard as you can."

Hermione nodded and braced herself against the wall behind her. Professor Elthis had said there was no harm in showing weakness like that when she wasn't in the middle of a battle situation.

And even though Hermione's mind ached and she was swaying a little on her feet, she met Professor Elthis's bright eyes and said fiercely, "Legilimens!", gesturing just a little with her wand. She was almost on her way to getting this one right wandlessly.

For a moment, the world wavered in front of her, and Hermione felt as if she was diving through a transparent curtain. Then the curtain turned to shining ice walls that bounced her off and once again made her sway in place.

No! I am going to master this!

Hermione pressed fiercely ahead, her eyes watering, the ache in her mind increasing until it felt as if she'd been burned all along the crown of her head. And then she hammered on a thin crack in the shields that Professor Elthis was showing her, and she was through.

Hermione floated in the center of her teacher's mind, surrounded by a whirl of bright but blurred memories, so surprised at her success that she didn't think of anything she could do before Professor Elthis forced her out again. Hermione gasped and sat down abruptly on the floor. Her head—her head hurt—

"Drink this, Miss Granger."

Hermione forced her eyes open and nodded at the sight of the Painkilling Potion that Professor Elthis was holding out to her. With an effort, she focused her eyes, made her hand close around the vial, and brought it to her mouth. It still almost spilled down the side of her face as she had to work on noticing and swallowing it.

"Most impressive."

Hermione smiled a little as her headache began to recede and she could concentrate on other things. "Thank you, Professor Elthis."

"A battle Legilimens can do many things." Professor Elthis leaned a hip against her desk and studied Hermione thoughtfully, through the shafts of sunlight coming in through the windows. "I chose not to pursue that path myself, because my talents lie in teaching. But I did want to talk to you about it before you fully committed yourself."

Hermione licked her dry lips. That sounded a little ominous. "What do you mean, Professor Elthis?"

"A battle Legilimens can break into people's minds and leave them reeling," Professor Elthis said. "Or she can change a person's mind wandlessly and in a way that is considerably harder to detect than an Imperius Curse. Likewise, she can alter someone's memories in such a way that someone looking for the Memory Charm will be fooled."

Professor Elthis paused. Hermione shivered. Those things sounded horrible, but she had already accepted that a lot of people around her would be doing horrible things in the name of war.

"Or you can take the darker path," Professor Elthis whispered. "I have only trained one student so far who had the potential that you do, and in the end, she chose to turn away from the darkest path of all. While it could help our war, it also—has a cost to the Legilimens who takes it along with the cost to our enemies."

"Please tell me, Professor Elthis." Hermione thought she did a fairly good job of keeping her voice soft but eager. She didn't want to sound like she didn't respect Professor Elthis's reservations or the solemn way she was talking.

But at the same time, Hermione really, really wanted to know.

"It is a path that has two parts," Professor Elthis said, her eyes intent on Hermione. "In the first, you enter the minds of people who have endured something horrible, and absorb the full weight and emotion of their memories. Those might be memories of grief, of pain, of torture, of rape. In the second part, you enter the minds of our enemies, and plant those feelings there like bombs. They might go off at once, disorienting someone who is facing you in battle, or they might be planted and triggered to go off under certain conditions, such as if they start a Sacred Hunt. The memories then explode, and they are inflicted with the experience of the person you absorbed it from as if going through it themselves."

Hermione gaped at her. Professor Elthis continued to study her, calm and serious. "You—you mean that you'd essentially—you'd make them feel like they had been raped, or tortured," Hermione whispered.

Professor Elthis nodded, once.

Hermione looked down at her hands. They were trembling. She balled them into fists and tried to think about what Professor Elthis had told her objectively.

It sounded pretty terrible. Hermione wasn't sure that she would ever want to hurt someone like that. Let alone going through the experience in the first place to get the memory so she could throw it at someone else.

But…

"How much do they help?" she asked, staring up at her professor. "I mean, if you only had one student like that, and they turned away from the path, how do we know how much that kind of battle Legilimens can help our revolution?"

Professor Elthis gave her a small smile. "I never said that we didn't have anyone trained like that, just that I had only one candidate among my students. We have two who work like that. They have crippled several of our most powerful enemies, ones who had wards around their homes or the kinds of protections that meant we couldn't reach them any other way. The long-lasting consequences mean that our enemies essentially withdraw from the political stage. As I understand it, having that sort of memory lobbed into your mind or suddenly exploded there does not allow for the kind of natural recovery that a survivor of torture or rape or grief might find on their own. Each moment renews the nature of the memory. It is always as bright and fresh a wound as it was when first inflicted."

Hermione shivered. "Would I—train with one of those two people, if you think that I have the potential?"

"You have the potential. I think I have confirmed that beyond a doubt." Professor Elthis's eyes were locked on her, but Hermione had the distinct impression that something else was looking out of them, maybe the cruel power that Professor Elthis was talking about. "But you must make the choice, Hermione. No one else can."

Hermione licked her lips again. "But if I can help the war effort—"

"You can also help us in the other ways I've spoken to you about. Reading minds, changing them. Arguably, those are people who make the greater impact in the war, since there are more of us."

Hermione hesitated. Then she said, "Can I think about it for a little while, professor?"

"Of course." Professor Elthis became brisk, standing up and reaching for a book on the desk next to her. "One of the things I want you to concentrate on is getting control of your headaches, which will make it much harder for you to breach someone else's Occlumency if you continue to get them…"

Harry grinned as he watched the grass and earth in front of him become a liquid stream of flowing mud and water. Then he twisted his wand, and it became solid again. Another twist, and then it became like a thin surface stretched over a deep hole, like the Muggle plastic that Aunt Petunia used to wrap Dudley's sandwiches in.

Harry could feel the difference between the "real" grass and mud and the hole they were covering perfectly well, but he thought no one else would probably be able to.

He sat back and looked expectantly at Professor Riddle, who was standing near the edge of Riddle House and watching his practice. Or kind of watching it. Even as Professor Riddle smiled and clapped for him now, Harry had the impression that his mind was elsewhere, the way it had been since they'd Apparated here today.

"Professor?"

Professor Riddle nodded. "Yes, Harry? Is there another spell that you want to practice before we go back to Fortius?"

"I just…" Harry twisted his wand between his hands and tried to think of what to say. "I just wanted to know what was bothering you. Because something is."

He blushed a second later. That was the kind of thing that he never would have dared say to the Dursleys. Not even Dudley would have said that kind of thing to Uncle Vernon if Uncle Vernon had come home angry.

But Harry was fairly sure, by now, that Professor Riddle was as different from Vernon Dursley as it was possible to be.

Professor Riddle studied him in silence. He didn't say anything, but at least his mind was there, with Harry, and not fastened elsewhere on something. Then he nodded and said, "Perhaps you might be able to help, after all. Come here, Harry."

Harry scrambled eagerly forwards to stand in front of Professor Riddle. Professor Riddle drew his long, pale wand and spun it in a circle. Something opened up in front of Harry, a long streak of red that tumbled into a shape like a firework but stayed there instead of disappearing.

"The goblins told me that someone summoned something across space and time a week ago," Professor Riddle murmured. "Something powerful enough that the magic rocked the goblins' sense of the world, although I sensed nothing. I wanted you to see if you could reach out and feel whatever it was."

"Why could I do that, sir?"

"I'm afraid that it might be another war wizard."

Harry nodded. He didn't know for sure if he could sense another one, but he had sensed Disaster's book, and spells worked for him that didn't work for anyone else. "All right, sir. What do you want me to do?"

"Concentrate on the red light here." Professor Riddle half-bent and traced his wand again above the red light. A blue line appeared. "Then tell me if you see anything when you look into it."

Harry was aware of the blue line vibrating and little tendrils spreading out from it, but he ignored that, just staring into the red light the way Professor Riddle had told him. The sparks of it broke and danced about him. Harry gasped aloud.

"It's all right, Harry. Just keep watching."

Professor Riddle's voice was lulling and calm. Harry kept staring, and he felt his magic reach out and pour down the red light, reaching for something, reaching for someone, reaching for something that—

That hated him. That shoved him away.

Harry went sprawling with a gasp, and found himself hitting his head on a Cushioning Charm that Professor Riddle must have put there really quickly. Harry blinked and then sat up. "Sorry, sir. But I don't think it's another war wizard. I think my magic would have felt that and it would have felt like mine. Not what it did."

"What did it feel like, Harry?"

"Something that hated me. Not a person. A thing. It really hated me." Harry frowned as he felt back with his magic along the brief connection that had been lost. "But it was afraid of me, too."

Professor Riddle blinked and shook his head. "I do not know what that could be," he murmured. "But you didn't feel anything that seemed like someone might have summoned a war wizard from some other time or place?"

Harry shook his head. "Sorry, Professor Riddle," he added, because he could see the way Professor Riddle's lips were flattening.

"It's not your fault." Professor Riddle rose heavily to his feet. "At least we can be fairly sure that the summoned person or thing isn't a war wizard." He looked down at Harry for a moment, then smiled and held out a hand to haul him to his feet. "Come on, Harry, back to Fortius."

Harry smiled as he followed Professor Riddle. He understood why the man called him "Mr. Potter" more often now when they were in class. He didn't want to make it seem like he favored Harry over his other Defense students. But Harry preferred it when Professor Riddle called him Harry, as he did in their offensive magic lessons.

Someday, Harry only hoped that he could be as strong and confident and ready to defend other people as Professor Riddle was.

Tom rose slowly from his chair and paced over to stare out the window of his office at the night-dark grounds of Fortius. He saw the soft, massive movement passing by and smiled faintly. Belasha was patrolling. No matter what Lucius Malfoy had summoned—if it had been him—they wouldn't find it easy to get past a thousand-year-old basilisk.

But he still didn't know who, or what, had been summoned.

A thing. It really hated me. But it was afraid of me, too.

Tom wanted to take comfort from that. It meant that whoever, or whatever, had been summoned wasn't as powerful as a young war wizard. Or at least was cautious, and Tom knew that excessive caution could be a weakness in an enemy as easily as excessive pride or boldness could.

Perhaps he could feel optimistic.

But it still disturbed him that he hadn't felt the summoning, and that he had no idea who it was, what it was…

Or where it might be now.