The Smell of Sulphur

"I've got it!" shouted Orpheus a while later, after having finished his skimming of "Control Spells. A Practical Guide". He grinned. "We infuse Hermie a Love Potion to make her fall in love with one of us and then, out of sheer amorousness, she does what he asks her to do."

They all laughed.

"An excellent idea," chickled Roy, who had just closed Sulphangel's booklet, "provided one of us puts up with Hermie following him to the dormitory."

"Oh, I could imagine worse things," Julian joked. "She's not quite my age group, but she still looks damn good. So, I think I would sacrifice myself."

"Me too!" shouted Orpheus and Ares at the same time.

Arabella looked up to the ceiling and groaned: "Men!"

But then she had to giggle, too.

"No doubt the idea has some appeal," Roy mused, "I mean the appeal of originality," he added quickly after catching Arabella's gaze. "However, before you start indulging in fantasies in which you're Hermie's lovers, I've to tell you it won't work: A Love Spell is recognizable by the fact that the person bewitched seems to be slightly stoned. The very moment Hermie is starting an affair with one of us, of all people, she'll be sent to St. Mungo's, and there, they'll get the Love Spell out of her very quickly."

"What a pity!" called Orpheus, Julian and Ares the same time.

"Well, but I think I've found something," Roy comforted them and was now getting serious. He first read them Sulphangel's introduction.

"Sounds interesting ", Julian said, "read on".

Roy read out the most interesting parts:

By nature, every human being has a certain innate basic knowledge about himself and the world and is in particular able to distinguish between good and evil. This knowledge is rooted in his soul. The part of the soul that is able to distinguish good from evil is called our conscience. A mentally healthy person is one whose mind and soul are in harmony, the mind, including the conscious will, being subordinate to the conscience. In an ideally mentally healthy person there is no gap at all between mind and soul: between, on the one hand, what he has identified as the good and, on the other hand, what he is doing or striving for.

Certainly, this is an ideal that is rarely achieved. Most people are more or less far from it, and hardly anyone, if they are honest, will be able to completely absolve themselves from doing not only what is good and right, but also what is evil or wrong, at least sometimes. Almost everyone will find reasons in individual cases to disregard the voice of their soul, their conscience, their real Self. But even criminals, as long as they are not pathologically predisposed, know that their actions are evil. They need to look for reasons of self-justification, no matter how flimsy, and this is what shows that their conscience is basically intact. However, the mere search for reasons to disregard one's own conscience is certainly problematic in itself. It means no less than that the mind is trying to emancipate itself from the soul.

In a certain sense, human beings feel bothered by their own souls with their inherent knowledge of what is good. It is the soul who prevents them from giving in to their greed, their craving for recognition and power, their vanity, envy, anger, and animal drives. They perceive their conscience, i.e. their own souls, not as a part of themselves, but as a rigorous governess, and this precisely to the extent that the aforementioned vices occupy their minds and, in general, their active existence and experience. The active, conscious Ego is always in danger of losing contact with the ontologically given Self of its soul, in which it is rooted. The larger the gap between the two Selves is becoming, the more the individual is turning into its own enemy. The freedom it is seeking is freedom from its own soul. In the pursuit of unconditional autonomy, which it hopes will make him entirely identical with itself, the individual is actually increasingly distancing itself from itself, in extreme cases to such an extent that it will never find his way back.

A healthy person is like a fortress into which the Evil cannot penetrate because the cracks between mind and soul are too narrow for it. A Dark wizard trying to subjugate the soul of such a person would have to resort to raise her love through deception in order to smuggle himself in like hidden in a Trojan horse. But even if he is successful in this, he will be exposed the moment he drops the mask, and the soul of the person concerned will oppose him with desperate resistance. To avoid this, he has to deaden his victim's consciousness. In this case, the victim will do what he or she is told, but in the manner of a puppet, without wanting to and without later being able to remember what he or she has done.

The Dark wizard can save himself this effort by penetrating people in whom the gap between mind and soul is wide enough for his purposes. He is then able to take root in this gap. From the mind's perspective, the orders it receives from the Dark wizard are coming from the very same direction from which those of the conscience would otherwise come. Thus, the mind is confusing the Dark wizard's soul with its own, and his orders with those of his own conscience. The persons concerned are not aware that they are increasingly being subjected to an alien will, and this is why they do not offer any resistance. On the contrary, it feels pleasant: While their conscience previously stubbornly countered their evil desires by constantly repeating its "Thou shalt not", the new "conscience" is now saying: "You may do what you want to, and you even should." The conscious Ego is increasingly considering good what his soul by nature would recognise as evil, and this to the extent that the person is lost contact with his real soul, the latter being replaced by the alien, evil soul of the Dark wizard.

This is not an overnight process. The ties are gradually established, the intruding wizard is weaving more and more threads to connect him with the mind of his victim, and in return is gradually cutting those that link the mind with the real soul of the latter. Once the last tie between the victim's Ego and Self, between mind and soul has been cut and the wizard's soul has established itself as the new "soul" of the person, a desperate death struggle is about to begin for the victim's true soul. Being cornered more and more by the wizard's hostile soul, it is ending up locked in a hopeless, increasingly narrow dungeon from which its cries for help no longer reach anyone. The soul's resistance is fading away until its final death.

For the victim's fellows, the entire process is almost impossible to understand:

On the one hand, because it is gradually taking place in small steps and the person affected therefore is retaining traits of its real nature for a long time, at least as long as its soul is not yet completely cut off from the mind and the Dark wizard is limiting himself at first to directly steering the behaviour not consistently, but only selectively and in individual cases.

On the other hand, because this kind of control spell, in contrast to the Imperius curse and the "Trojan" intrusion, leads to far less drastic, visible changes in behaviour, the trick being precisely to encourage the victims to behave in exactly the way that they would like to behave of their own accord, but usually refrain from as long as their conscience – their own conscience – prevents them from doing so.

From an outside view, hardly more is noticeable than a growing hardening and ruthlessness, for which, however, the minds increasingly "freed" from the ties of conscience will always find plausible, logical reasons. They will do so all the easier the more the motives and goals they are referring to meet with approval among said fellows with whom they have close contact. From their point of view, only the means to achieve them could appear morally questionable.

The missionary attitude and self-confidence of the persons bewitched, even growing through their "liberation" from conscience, will often even win them the admiration of their fellows who adore their dynamism and determination, for they do not see through the fatal mental illness the bewitched owe their determination to. They are developing a kind of dark charisma, fascinating even those people who are not bewitched themselves, but who are also revolting against their own conscience and therefore secretly glad that the sick charismatic leader is providing them with the reasons and excuses for behaviour that they would shy away if they had to decide autonomously.

The Dark Lord's core team, the true Death Eaters, consisted exclusively of people whose minds had already been subdued to the Dark Lord to the point of complete submission, but who, for that very reason, were able to fascinate others without having to resort to control spells. A few managed to maintain thin ties to their actual Self, however for most them, their souls were already isolated in their prisons, whereas for very few, I believe today, their souls were completely dead. They could not survive the death of their master because their false substitute soul that had kept them alive died with him.

It was just a matter of course that Voldemort who was obsessed with his lust for power would target souls who, for their part, took pleasure in the exercise of power. It would have been quite pointless to focus on people whose flaw was, for example, their greed or horniness. Of course, he also used this kind of people for his goals, but they did not belong to his inner circle. The many criminals who worked for him during his reign were allowed to wear the mark of the Death Eaters, but neither they themselves nor Voldemort ever deluded themselves into seeing this relationship as anything but a mutually beneficial business relationship that would end when one of the two sides no longer needed the other.

Since his strategy was based on exploiting actual characteristics and flaws of his victims for his purposes and encouraging them to cultivate these features, he needed victims whose vice was the lust for exercising power. This kind of victims was much more likely to be found among idealists than among criminals. It is crucial to see that vulnerability to the intrusion of evil has nothing to do with whether the respective ideals are intrinsically good or evil. I now believe that there is no such thing as good ideals, at least not if an ideal is meant to be a certain concept of how society should work. Once you consider such an ideal to represent the Good – whatever ideal you may imagine –, you cannot help but supposing your opponents to represent the Evil, fighting them and forcing your fellow men – if necessary by means of violence – to pursue or join the supposedly good cause.

Apparently altruistic goals, i.e. goals that do not seem to serve the idealist's immediate and obvious self-interest, are even a particularly suitable pretext allowing them to override their conscience, and to do so even if there happens to be no Dark wizard waiting for a chance to intrude them. These goals enable him to delude himself about his own lust for power, possibly also for killing and destruction. The supposedly good goal will then justify any means, even the most criminal, and the only remaining problem the idealists have to cope with is how to silence their own conscience. As we have seen, this very constellation is the ideal precondition for the intrusion of the Dark wizard.

I am not going to reveal more details about the magical technique that Voldemort used to penetrate his victims, in order not to help possible imitators. Such imitators will exist as long as there are potential victims, which means forever.

Roy shut the book.

"Sounds like aimed at Hermie," Julian commented. "Yes, this could be what we are looking for." He thought. "But we still don't know really much. Especially not enough to develop a counterspell. The author knows more than he is telling us. We would have to track him down to find out more."

"If he really was part of the Death Eaters' inner circle," Roy said, "and he escaped Potter's Aurors for almost twenty years – how can we find him? We don't even know his real name, he himself says it's a pseudonym."

"May I?" asked Orpheus. Roy handed him the book. "Tresodor Sulphangel, hmmm." He mused. "Roy, you pronounced his name Sulp-Hangel. I think it must be Sulph-Angel."

"Sulph-Angel?" asked Roy, puzzled. "Sulphur Angel?"

"A highly evocative name." Orpheus smiled delightedly, he loved playing with words. "Sulphur, the devilish substance, associated with an angel. The devil – the fallen angel. Pretty suitable for someone who has committed crimes out of idealism. Or vice versa: The former devil is purifying his soul to become angelic again."

"And Tresodor?", Roy wondered. "Theodore is familiar, but Tresodor?"

"Maybe," Julian, who was fluent in French, now suggested, "it's French. For example, a contraction of trésor d'or, gold treasure. Or perhaps Très odeur? Err – very odour? Hmm. The strong-smelling sulphur angel? The angel smelling strongly of sulphur?"

"It's a possible meaning, even if the grammar is poor," said Orpheus. "Strange, though: He doesn't call himself 'Tresodeur', but 'Tresodor'. First name more or less French, last name kind of English. Why this mix of two languages ..."

He lowered his voice and in the end only muttered. "The letters are given ..." said Orpheus more to himself than to the others, who, however, were careful not to interrupt his flow of thought, for Orpheus was a genius – "... an anagram ..."

Orpheus pulled out his wand and waved it to magically write the name on a sheet of parchment:

TRESODOR SULPHANGEL

"Let's turn it around ..." he murmured.

RODOSERT LEGNAHPLUS

"The PH is to be spoken as an F, so it has not to be reversed ..."

RODOSERT LEGNAPHLUS

"Let's swap two syllables ..."

RODOPHLUS LEGNASERT

"Rodophlus?" whispered Orpheus, staring at the parchment. Then he slowly raised his head to stare at Julian, flabbergasted. "I know who the author is," he whispered, "and indeed, he has a name of French origin."

He wrote it down. Then he said: "The grandson to whom the book is dedicated is you!", and handed the sheet to Julian:

"RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE"

Julian's jaw dropped. He shook his head. "That's impossible," he finally said. "The book was published seven years ago, but my grandfather has been dead for almost twenty years!"

"Is that certain?", Roy now wanted to know. "I mean, have you ever seen his grave?"

Julian gave him a bitter smile. "Do you really think my old man would tell me where his grave is? Like his wife, he's said to have died in the Battle of Hogwarts. That's what they say."

"If not, his name ought to be on a wanted list of the Ministry. Be that as it may, we are invited next Sunday to someone who should know. You could ask Potter, for example, if he knows where your grandfather's grave is." Roy had already told his friends in the morning about the night encounter with Harry and his invitation.

"Do you really think he'll tell me?" asked Julian doubtfully.

Roy nodded. "If he knows – why not? You are Rodolphus' grandson, you have every right to know. On the other hand, if they're still after him, Potter has no reason to keep this from you."

"Well, but we have yet another problem," Julian reflected. "You surely want to show him the book, don't you?"

"That's what I had in mind, yes," Roy replied, "what's the problem?"

"The problem, my dear friend, is that Potter could find out the name of the author just the way Orpheus could. I'm sure there are decryption experts in the Auror's department. If my grandfather was still alive, this would be the way to let Potter know. And then he would intensify the search for him, which means we would have sent my grandpa to his doom. This is something I definitely don't want!"

"All right," said Roy after a pause. "We won't tell him."