(Theory on the Unforgivable Curses and the Danger of a Fourth)
It was after my encounter with the Keepers and my battle against the Goblin Rebel Leader, Ranrock, that I came to understand just how unforgivable the Three truly were. And just what it is they do. Each is so much more than simply controlling one's mind, torturing someone, or killing someone. And it is from my observations that I've observed if one were attuned to a specific magic, a fourth Unforgivable could be created. One, in my humble opinion, far above the original Three. And it pertains to my predecessor in my… unique magic. Isadora Morganach. A woman who had an exceptional magical prowess, due to her connection to an ancient form of magic. Soul Magic. While normally confined to the fabled families; I've learned, through my own experiences, that one could be born with a small connection to the ancient form of magic. To date, only myself, Morganach, and a former professor in Percival Rackham have been known for this.
How I came to discover the Ancient Magic I wield was Soul Magic was inferred as I learned of the old fable of Soul Magic, and Morganach's own actions throughout her life. She witnessed her future teacher, Professor Rackham, using this Ancient Magic to help with the drought her hamlet was going through. But her troubles didn't end there. A disease ravaged her hamlet, her brother being an unfortunate victim to it, leaving her and her father grieving, and her father unspeaking and near unresponsive to the world around him. Morganach wanted nothing more than to help her father, and like all good intentions, walked down a dark path.
Years after she first saw Professor Rackham, she explored her magics to degrees he hadn't. In her attempts to help her father, she managed to remove the pain within his heart. What she did not know, was what she was truly doing. Based on my observations on the memories of the Ancient Magic Keepers, and Morganach herself, coupled with the knowledge of the Soul Magic families, I've deduced exactly what this spell does. It's more than just removing pain. It is shearing someone's soul asunder. Removing crucial elements of what makes us whole. We need both our pain and elation for our lives to have meaning. Our pain makes the elation all the more satisfying, and the elation, makes our grief that much more understandable when we see it in others, and when they see it in us. Pain lets us know we're alive, and though some pain may be unbearable, we must push through it. Even as a Slytherin, I understand needing to take a Gryffindor's approach to this. As my wife will constantly hound me for admitting, being a Lion herself.
Morganach was able to shear off the portion of the soul that houses pain. Imprinted in our memories, and carried in our hearts. By removing the portion meant to experience pain, elation has no meaning. Those affected by the spell would seem alright at first, but would soon be reduced to hollow shells of their former selves, much like those I've heard of in the Forever Room of St. Mungo's. Morganach did not stop at her father, I'm afraid. During her time as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, she used this spell on her students as well, and recruited a goblin to create repositories to house these sundered souls, much like the theoretical Horcrux, but with a much heftier outcome. Being contained in goblin silver, meant that the very repositories themselves would never be destroyed. And Morganach planned for just that after she discovered what could be achieved after the extraction spell. She began taking in the pain she'd pulled from others into herself, twisting her magic and increasing her strength beyond what it was beforehand, at the expense of her sanity.
It is through this discovery that I've learned of this potential Fourth Unforgivable. But to do that, I must relate it to the original Three, of which I've become proficient due to my needing to know them in order to protect myself from the dangers against me during my premier year at Hogwarts. Allow me to start with Imperius. Most relate this to simply taking over the mind of the victim, forcing them to do things they would never do based on your commands and own will. But it is more than that. As you may have surmised by my own accounts of Morganach, each Unforgivable Curse has something to do with the soul. With the case of the Imperius, you are essentially using your own soul to command that of the other. One with an exceptionally strong will may fight through this, but with difficulty, making it the weakest of the Three, but still dangerous for what you can make the other do. Turn on their allies, entrap themselves in a tomb, even commit suicide all as your own soul commands theirs.
Next, I shall cover the Cruciatus Curse. Through this curse, one can send the victim into an insurmountable fit of pain. Through my observations of my own victims in Ranrock's Loyalists and immoral poachers, as well as feeling it myself and recounts from my wife who protected me when we were children the same year I started, the Cruciatus distorts and malforms the soul of the victim, leaving them in such a state of agony, they cannot defend themselves for as long as it ravages their body. I've only ever used this curse when in a spot of trouble, needing my opponent to be helpless while I was outnumbered. Being on the receiving end myself, I know the agony they were in. The soul is twisted, burned, frozen, and torn all at once and restored to normal only to be done so again instantly. It is unbearable and seemingly endless while you are under it. It is definitely the most cruel of the Three.
Where the Imperius controls and the Cruciatus contorts, the Killing Curse rends and is, in my opinion, the most merciful of the Three. It instantly severs the connection of one's soul to their body. There is no pain in the victim, only in their close loved ones. I learned this curse, as well as the others, from my friend, Sebastian Sallow, and have only ever used it once on a particularly nasty and dangerous troll terrorizing a hamlet a brooms ride away from Hogwarts, outside of public view of course. I've only ever told my wife about this. It caused a slight rift between us, one I've been working to mend for years and will continue to do so. But I can honestly say this. I understand why Avada Kedavra is Unforgivable, and not just for the fact it cannot be stopped with conventional magic. While there is no pain, the effects are instant and regrettable. One must truly mean the results of the spell for it to truly work, and that goes for all of the Three. One must truly want to control, torture, or end a soul on the receiving end. Such actions can never be taken back, and for a spell like Avada Kedavra, that can be theoretically used to kill multiple opponents in one cast, that can leave a vile taint on your own soul should you cast it.
All that said, there is a spell, at least in theory, that can put all three to shame. Morganach's endeavors were the first bastion to this discovery and my understanding of the Unforgivable Curses, as well as my own Ancient Magic, have led me to this conclusion. One can use a spell to sunder the souls of a victim, tearing a part of them away and consuming it for themselves. It is a truly horrendous spell and can truly be classified as a curse in every sense. Not only are you subjecting your victim to the experience of two of the Three, you are also dooming them to an empty existence. Living with a partial soul is, I'd imagine, a hollow experience. Knowing that it was absorbed into another to strengthen themselves and weaken you, is unbearable. In theory only, this thought could be used not only to increase one's strength, but can also be used to extend one's life if you somehow manage to absorb an entire soul.
I do hope against all hope that this report is only observed by my fellow Unspeakables for research only. I cannot stress enough that attempting to extend one's life by absorbing the soul of another is a sin beyond any that the original Three can leave on your own soul. There is no telling what would become of someone who attempts to do this. All attempts of extending one's own life has been met with one price or another. From the drinking of unicorn blood to the creation of a Horcrux, even the creation and use of the fabled Philosopher's Stone is to be met with some unknown price Nicolas Flamel has yet to divulge to Unspeakables anywhere. This file must be locked away under the greatest protections the Ministry, nay, the ICW can come up with. I fear for us all if someone does attempt to create a Fourth Unforgivable.
J.C. Garret, Junior Unspeakable for the Ministry of Magic, 1919.
Harry Potter handed the note back to the woman in front of him. "What am I looking at," he asked.
"Someone broke into the Department of Mysteries," said Daphne Greengrass after sipping her coffee, nervously. "An enchantment over the place makes a parchment appear in the Stolen Artifacts Office detailing anything taken from the department without authorization. My office. And seeing… this…" She waved to the parchment. "Means we have an obvious problem on our hands. If someone is trying to make a Fourth Unforgivable, we need to stop this. With no sanctions on a spell like this, it will get out of hand quickly. And we cannot allow whoever is working on this to continue, let alone succeed."
"And you brought this to me because?"
"You defeated Voldemort. You're the Golden Child of Gryffindor, the Boy-Who-Lived, and the Returned Victor, if you truly did return from Death like I saw back then. Can't think of anyone else more qualified for this."
"Voldemort defeated himself. His own hubris and misunderstanding about his own power being what did him in."
"But it was still against you." She reached out and placed her hand over his own. "Please, Potter. I can't even trust the other Unspeakables with this. Any one of them could be the one attempting to create a Soul Stealing Curse. We cannot afford anyone using this spell and becoming an even bigger threat than Voldemort was. I read what he did, what you spent what should've been your Seventh Year hunting for. Imagine if Voldemort had learned this spell instead of creating Horcruxes. For all we know, it would mean he'd be truly immortal. If he took in the lives of everyone he killed, he'd have truly been an unkillable threat. If the Carrow's, or even Bellatrix Lestrange had this, we'd never have made it out of Hogwarts alive."
"Aren't you Pureblood like them?"
"That does not mean I subscribe to their same philosophy. We're not all alike. I thought you would've already known that, given that night in Glasgow." Harry cleared his throat, pulling his hand away and sipping his own coffee as she smirked at his discomfort. "Flirtations aside, there's no one else I can turn to right now. I joined the Unspeakables to try and lift a curse afflicted to my sister. I cannot rest until it is gone, and I cannot stop it while worried I may end up being used as a fuel source for someone else. Please." Harry stared into her vibrant blue eyes before sighing.
"Fine."
"Thank you."
"Where do we start? I assume if you're coming to me with this, you don't want involvement from other Aurors?"
"No, I don't. And if we're going to start anywhere, it'd be Knockturn. And someone I trust to give me the info we need."
"Who? Davis?"
"No. I don't blame you for not paying attention with everything that was going on, but Tracey died during the Battle. Saved my life from a stray curse from Lestrange."
"You weren't escorted down to the dungeons with the rest of your House?"
"No. We hid with the Hufflepuffs and were trying to run away when the wards came down. We got caught up in the fighting."
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, there's no need. No, who we need is someone who keeps their ear to the darker aspects of society to boost her own position in both business and status."
"Oh no…"
"We're going to the Scorched Snitch, Potter. Parkinson awaits."
(Author's Notes)
Hey, everyone. Sorry it's been so long since I've uploaded anything Harry Potter related. It was bound to happen, but I burned myself out after week to week updates for over a year. Hence the massive breaks between chapters and stories. But with Hogwarts Legacy being released recently, I've gotten a second wind after going through the story. As I played, I couldn't help but notice similarities to the Ancient Magic and my Soul Magic, with some differences here and there, like the lack of identifiable markers that sets Elijah and the Nine apart from the rest of the Wizarding World. But both give the users a unique connection to magic, allowing for unheard of feats, a particular connection to magic, and the ability to see traces of magic as well. I could even write a potential for anti-magic given the Ancient Magic techniques can burst through shields with throws or the finishers. Hell, it's even capable of affecting creatures like trolls and dugbogs who are heavily resistant to magic. The combat abilities alone are phenomenal when you use them, and given gameplay only shows a little bit considering the starting time of the New Student, I doubt we've seen the fullest extent of their abilities and hope we get a sequel to fully expand upon Ancient Magic and what else it can do. We're still in the dark as to exactly what it does besides some dimensional properties and the manipulations of the soul. We can guess it has something to do with how quickly the New Student can learn spells, but for all we know that's just for gameplay purposes. If it's not, then that's another quality it shares with my Soul Magic as it is. If y'all want me to do a story following my character, J.C. Garret, feel free to let me know. But until I feel up to writing the adventures of J.C. Garret, please enjoy For Hearts and Souls. Until next time, Y'all!