Disclaimer; see in Part One.
Hidden Bridges
Ryoko Porter
Part Thirteen
'I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.'
Henrik Ibsen
Deep in the darkness of an old manor house on the western edges of the country, a man sat in the humidity of his dank room. With a long serpent sleeping at his feet, the dark man sat in his chair thinking. In his hands was an old wand, broken and bloody from the body it was torn from. The holly wood was cracked in a few places, and the phoenix feather seemed to seep out from certain spots.
Voldemort was hardly a stupid man, he knew that the wand foretold of hard times for his cause. It and the potent crucio curse had killed one of his most loyal followers, in a most devastating way. Lucius had barely enough life left to tell of his killer before he died, but he managed to gasp out a few details.
'A man, with white-blonde hair, and eyes like burning blue stars. Young, but so old,' he coughed bloodily. 'So odd, it seemed as if he shouldn't even exist. His young skin, but ancient magic. So old,' were Lucius's last words.
When his followers went to take the body away, was when one of them found the wand deep in his gut. Only a bit of the handle was visible, and his was covered with blood and other human materials. It was a hard pull out, being trapped between his back ribs at the end. But Voldemort was able to badger someone to pull it free.
The Dark Lord immediately recognized the wand to be Harry Potter's, knowledge he'd gained from Wormtail. The annoying little spy even commented on the fact when he spied it from around his side. After glaring his minion away, Voldemort went into his study and closed the door to contemplate. No one would be brave enough to bother him there.
And so, for the last five hours Voldemort had been thinking over this new development. The wand was a mystery, and not a pleasant one at all. How could it exist in this state, Potter's wand was new compared to this thing. And the child had his wand, Voldemort knew. So that only left one possibility for the existence of this wand.
Voldemort did not know of any spells that were made for time travel. But he knew that if the future did, they would logically be able to come to this time. So with this character having this wand, he must be close to Potter in some way. Was he his son? Or maybe a lover? Who was this blonde man?
The Dark Lord then thought of a spell that would give a few clues to his mystery. It was not a spell that he would usually use, or that many other wizards would either. It was specialized, a spell made for appraising antiques.
'Vicis Obduco Per,' he whispered quietly as he pointed his own wand at the bloody one. There was a glow about it for a moment, a sort of gray color. Then a sort of smoke came up and spelled the number of years old that the wand was.
'199'
End Part 13.
A couple of notes, the first being that I'm sorry it took so long and is so short. I wanted to focus entirely on Voldemort in this chapter though. Please remember that Lucius Malfoy never saw Julian's true eye color, or the scar on his forehead. Also the reason I didn't refer to the Dark Lord as 'Tom" is because I don't think he would think of himself as such. Notice he's only ever called 'Tom' by Dumbledore (excluding when he tries to trick Ginny and Harry). And just for curiosity, the spell is Latin for 'time passed by'. But now you have another clue about Julian… there is still much to learn about him.
Ryoko Porter