CHAPTER 11
Another Ghoul
No. It couldn't be. If there was no afterlife… If ghosts were the only thing that could remain of someone after they died… Then…
Then his parents…
His parents really were…
This moment of horrifying realization was interrupted as Harry heard hurried footsteps and grunts that were all too familiar. Another House Ghoul? The creature was nowhere in sight. In fact, the sounds seemed to come from the room above his own. Other sounds managed to get through the ceiling: a raspy voice casting spells, furniture being knocked down, explosions.
Suddenly, the raspy voice yelled: "Sprengstoff!"; a noise louder than anything he'd heard before followed, as well as a blinding flash, and when he looked again, there was a hole in the ceiling. On his bed, among the rubble, lay the House Ghoul. Its coarse and warty skin was a rather disgusting shade of green, but Harry noticed that it was wearing a delicate necklace. That was rather odd, contrasting with his otherwise rough clothing (a dirty rag folded into a loincloth). The other remarkable feature about this House Ghoul was that it was apparently missing an arm; the wound did not bleed (magic could be thanked for that) but looked recent.
Before the boy could do anything, the tall figure of Voldemort floated down into his room. Once he had landed, the wizard looked at the House Ghoul, then at him.
"Boy? What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Nothing. Nothing." Harry said quickly, feeling as though he was being accused of something.
"Sweet Salazar, I'd not realized your room was down here. Ahem. As you may have noticed, it would appear another ghoul assassin has popped up. You see, I was checking my mantlepiece, to check how much the Floo system has been fiddled with, when out came… that creature. I did not immediately Stun it, because I wanted to check if my wards did work. Unfortunately, they did not, and that split second was enough for the ghoul to run away. I'd been chasing that pest for a few minutes when the German Blasting Hex I most foolishly cast tore through the ground. And here we are. Now, if you will forgive me…"
Harry stepped aside, and Voldemort approached the ghoul. As soon as he noticed the necklace, something in him ticked.
"No. It can't be." he muttered as he turned the Ghoul around to undo the necklace. He stared at the locket, then closed his eyes. "Oh, no."
"What's going on, sir?" asked Harry.
"This… There's no use hiding it, boy: this is one of my Horcruxes. I have no idea how that ghoul found it, or why he brought it here, but I am in great danger."
The Dark Wizard did look appropriately thoughtful and worried for someone who had just realized somebody was trying to round up his mangled soul and destroy it. Pacing nervously, the necklace in his hand, he asked himself in a voice that could not help but scare Harry a little:
"Why… why did I not sense it had been taken from its haven? How could anyone find it, let alone steal it? Are all my protections mere nuisances? And ghouls, of all things! The most pathetic, slow, witless beings of the wizarding world!"
He was now looking at the ghoul with his feverous blazing eyes, and, suddenly, he drew his wand, yelled a word; a blinding green light shot through the air, too fast for Harry to even move to protect the creature — and it was dead.
Both humans stood as still as the dead ghoul for one fleeting moment. Harry was too stunned to speak… for this deadly flash of green, so dark and so blinding, so silent to the ears and so loud to the soul, he had seen it before, long ago, in the most painful of moments, and now he remembered it. He had as good as seen the same scene play out again — the same man, the same wand, the same spell. It had even happened in Harry's bedroom, though not the same one.
Voldemort's mind was far from worries of upsetting the boy; in fact, he'd almost forgotten the boy was there. He had preoccupations of a much more urgent kind at present, and while his mind raced to determine a course of action to save himself from Death once again, a discreet feeling of doubt was gnawing at him, the certain knowledge that he had made an important mistake, one unworthy of his House, his ancestry and his ambitions. But he oughtn't worry about that yet.
There was a certain pain he always felt around his Horcruxes, a sort of tearing at his very core; it was the pulling of his soul, yearning to patch itself together once again even though the powerful spells of Salazar Slytherin held it apart. Why hadn't he felt that while he was chasing the wicked little creature? Only magic as powerful as the Great Slytherin's own ritual could have shielded him even further from parts of his own self…
"Sir…"
Drats. The boy again.
"I think…"
"What?"
"Don't you think,… I'm sorry if what I'm going to I say sounds stupid, but… Maybe if you… hadn't… killed that ghoul…"
"Oh, not again!"
"…maybe you could've interrogated him?"
"What?! I… yes, yes, I could have! How could I have been so stupid!… Well, it's too late, now… Now leave me alone, boy. I need to study whatever enchantments were placed on this Horcrux."
"Sir? Shouldn't you be going away? I mean, you are in my room…"
Voldemort, who had already begun casting spells at the locket under his breath, looked around, confused, before nodding:
"Ahem. You are correct. I shall trouble you no further."
And he walked out of the room.