Second Interlude
Power The Dark Lord Knows Not
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and friends belong to J. K. Rowling. Arithmancy, or at least the version of it depicted here, belongs to Pythagoras.
Author's Note: So I'm kind of bummed out a little, readers—once again, the site is telling me I've received absolutely zero hits on the last two chapters, despite the fact that they've gotten plenty of reviews. It's a little discouraging, not getting to see how many interested visitors I've got following my latest updates. So if you have the time, please review—for now, it's my sole way of judging how much interest the story is generating!
Once more I'd like to thank my regular reviewers—I'm eternally grateful for your opinions, guys, and I'm always writing with you all in mind.
Soundtrack Note: In Noctem, from the Half Blood Prince soundtrack.
"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
-Leonard Bernstein
He stood atop a grassy hill just outside the property, gazing down at the manor, taking a moment to appreciate the sight and sound of the trees swaying gently in the wind. It was dark out, and through gaps in the mostly overcast sky you could see the stars. They were far more brilliant than he had remembered. Perhaps that was just another part of it, he thought introspectively.
Everything else seemed clearer to him now as well.
He had nearly given into his despair, that night in the tent, after she'd gone. Nearly given up on his dream. It was impossible, he had told himself. Dumbledore himself had told him so, as had her shade, when he'd consulted it in the Forbidden Forest, before setting out on this quest. He had always been destined to fail.
There was no force more powerful than time.
He enjoyed the feel of the nighttime breeze against his skin, feeling his cape flutter in the wind behind him. He had traveled, after that night. Wandered far and wide, seen the world, while the boy and the girl began the cycle anew, exactly as they had before. He had stood atop the Himalayas, felt the molten heat of the volcanoes of the Pacific, trekked across the Sahara and the Mojave deserts, roamed the frozen wastes of the northernmost Canadian tundra…
He had visited dozens of the continent's greatest cities, taken in a hundred centers of culture, learning and history. Rome… Naples… Paris… Barcelona… Lisbon… Athens… Argos… Munich… Dublin… The list went on and on. He had perused the shelves of a hundred different libraries, both magical and Muggle, the oldest and largest he could find. She was with him always, now, but he had felt particularly close to her, standing in those hallowed book halls, surrounded by the written word… the sum total of all of humanity's acquired wisdom all around him…
He thought back, to what she had told him one night, shortly after he'd first heard her tell him how much she loved him. She'd tried to explain Arithmancy to him, pique his interest in that, her favorite of subjects… and by the end of the night, he had indeed wished he had taken it at Hogwarts, not so much because the subject itself interested him, but because of the passion with which she had gone on about it…
Arithmancy, she had explained, revolved around the premise that All Is Number. That everything in this world, from its stars and planets to its plants, animals and people, could be reduced to numerical values, each with their own traits and attributes, numbers that could reveal the true nature of a thing, or of a man.
The noble art traced its lineage back to Pythagoras, around whom a veritable religion of number had sprung up. Pythagoras had preached about the mathematical nature of the cosmos, explored the natural perfection of the angle and the circle, given the theorem which to this day bears his name to the infant science of geometry…
He had invented a whole mode of musical notation, observed how the heavens moved in an orderly, predictable fashion and postulated that the harmony of the universe reflected the Music of the Spheres, the primordial, ethereal pattern of proportion and interval that all creation stemmed from.
Most important of all, he had taught how numbers were reducible, that the progression of values emanated from a singular source and naturally returned to it all at the same time, that every number was composed of its base components, and could be broken down until you reached the Whole.
Everything had a value, more than one, actually; everything about a person could be assigned a number, from the date of their birth to the clothes they wore or what they had eaten for breakfast. But one of his earliest lessons at Hogwarts had been about Names, and the Power that a Name held. Tom Riddle had learned that lesson well, and had chosen a new name for himself, a new value, one full of fear and loneliness, going on to become the sad, misguided wretch he was today.
Harry James Potter became 8 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 7 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 5 + 1 + 7 + 6 + 2 + 2 + 5 + 9 = 77.
7 + 7 = 14.
1 + 4 = 5.
The number Five represents the senses and freedom, she had taught him. Individuals with a value of Five are courageous and impulsive, adapt well to their circumstances and prone to taking dangerous chances. They are also attractive to the opposite sex, she had told him, her cheeks turning a delicate shade of pink.
That was about the extent to which he'd learned about Arithmancy that night, but he had had all the time in the world as of late, and had read up on the subject during his travels, mapping out further equations.
Hermione Jean Granger became 8 + 5 + 9 + 4 + 9 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 1 + 5 + 7 + 5 + 9 = 106.
1 + 0 + 6 = 7.
Seven is the number of perfection (Of course she would have been a Seven, he thought with a smile). Sevens seek perfection in all they do; whatever task they set for themselves, they seek to be the best at it. They are analytical and deep-thinkers, and can be aloof and unreasonable. They may be of a nervous or skeptical disposition, but wield great inner strength and wisdom.
5 + 7 = 12.
1 + 2 = 3.
The number Three is the value of the Triad, the Creative Force, the supreme expression of love—Two who find one another only to become Three, but also Two who seek each other that they may become One.
Two is the value of the Dyad, the numerical representation of all duality, all opposition. Hot and cold, good and evil, black and white, male and female, beginning and end… but these are all merely two sides of the same coin, two reflections of the same Whole.
In the end, it can all be reduced to the Whole. The Monad, from which all others issue forth. The Source. The Origin. God. The Universe. The One.
He imagined now that he could catch a glimpse of it now, see his part in it all, see how his Five fit into the equation. The illusion of separateness beginning to crumble, the realization of unity filling him with a new sense of peace, a new sense of purpose. He almost felt as if he could hear it, now, hear the Music of the Spheres, the thrumming melody through which all of Creation moved, the equation solving itself.
He began to hum along with it.
He had never been the Master of Death, he knew. No, before she had died he'd only ever united two of the Hallows, and afterwards… Dumbledore had explained it all to him already, he should have known better…
In that space between life and death, his old Headmaster had told him how he hadn't been worthy of possessing any but the least of the Hallows, the Elder Wand… that his weakness had been power, and that if he had united the three he would have been consumed by his own selfish desire…
He had been told all of this, and still he had fallen into the exact same trap.
The true Master of Death is not one that seeks to conquer Death, to oppose it…
It is one who, like his ancestor Ignotus, greeted Death as an old friend and strolled with it, unafraid, into King's Cross Station…
He had sought to deny Death, to clutch Hermione back from its jaws. And that was where he had gone wrong. Death could not be refused, for Death waits at the end of all things. Death came in an instant, and lasted an eternity; could wait for an eternity, and lasted for only an instant. Like Time, it could not be overruled or tampered with by force.
Death was Time, and thus was beyond reproach.
He knew all of this now, and understood. The Music of the Spheres flowed through him, and he had tasted a glimpse of enlightenment.
He had not been the Master of Death, not until this very moment.
The trees swayed in the wind, and below him lay Malfoy Manor. The hour was approaching rapidly. Even now the boy would be howling at the cellar door, about to be rescued by the noble House-Elf. Soon the Dark Lord would come.
Time to set out, then.
He strolled down the hill at a leisurely pace, humming as he walked, the Elder Wand twirling in the fingers of one hand, the Resurrection Stone held lightly in the other, the Invisibility Cloak trailing out behind him in the winter air. He cut through the Malfoy family wards like wet tissue paper, detection spells and anti-intruder jinxes crumbling before him, the tall iron fence around the property glowing a fiery orange and melting as he approached, securing him passage onto the estate. He felt only calm, only serenity; fear, pain, regret, they had all been washed away from him, variables that the Music flowing through him had solved and annihilated.
One must yield to Death, if one desired for Death to yield to them… One must yield to Time, if one expected Time to yield to them…
He recalled as he walked the words Dumbledore had once spoken to him, long ago, on the night he had for the first time revealed the full text of Trelawny's Prophecy.
"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all."
There was indeed a force more powerful than Time, more powerful than Death.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The equation had to be balanced if it were to be solved. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. For every addition, a subtraction.
It was time to rejoin the Whole.
After all, it was only from One that Two could emerge…
