This is an A/N chapter.
This chapter was updated 15 Dec 15.
Progress:
The last chapter of Book 2 is now posted! (Immediately prior to this AN Chapter.) If you would still rather a PDF version for some reason, PM me with your email address (*make sure you use the word instead of the 'at' symbol, or add spaces or something so this site doesn't censor/remove the address!*) or drop me a line at pseudoleigha at gmail dot com.
I am, in fact, working on Book 3, but it's going a bit slowly compared to the first two, partly because it's even more canon divergent (so there's more stuff for me to make up as I go along) and partly because I need to pretend to be a functioning adult in the real world, instead of writing all day every day. It's also likely to be a good deal longer than the previous books. I've finished five chapters out of 22 (about 90 pages, so I guess the book will top out around 400 pages? The first two were 270 and 280 respectively). I will not post the beginning of book 3 until it's mostly done (I have enough stories on hiatus already) so it may be a few months before it starts posting.
WHEN I START POSTING BOOK 3, I WILL ADD A NOTICE TO THE END OF THIS STORY.
Responses to reviews:
Hi, everyone, thank you for reviewing (and thanks also for reading to those who have followed/favorited this story, but not reviewed).
Revision to Chapter 22 (Moving Right Along) – in response to Jodic's comment, the following tangent has been added to the conversation between Snape and Mary:
Mary, who had more or less just been letting his words wash over her while she tried to figure out when Riddle graduated, and wondering whether she dared ask if Professor Snape would teach her to fend off mind magic like Riddle's compulsions, scrambled to answer. "Mind magic is like divination mixed with compulsion, which is kind of like some forms of wandless magic, especially the one Riddle practiced. Magical theory is a lot more connected than Professors Flitwick and McGonagall make it sound like in class. And Riddle may have published on a radical theory just out of school just to irritate Dumbledore. Did they not get along, then?"
"Before he left school, I believe. And no. Tom Riddle's first month in Slytherin was not unlike your own, though you may be reassured to know that he actually had his snake bite his Malfoy, not just threaten to do so. Dumbledore legilimized him, almost certainly without his permission. From what I've gathered from the Records, their relationship deteriorated from there."
Mary considered the implications of her solution to her situation in Slytherin being so similar to the young Tom Riddle's, and then, deciding that that was an uncomfortable avenue of thought, decided that she did dare to make her request. "Umm…"
"Dark Powers, don't stutter."
Mary bit her lip, then said very quickly, "Could you teach me mind magic? Sir?" she added belatedly.
"What, precisely, would you want to know?"
"I, erm… that is…" The professor raised an eyebrow at her inarticulate, half-started request. "The compulsions, sir," she finally said. "You said Riddle put compulsions in my mind, and I really, really don't want that to happen again."
"No."
"No?" Mary had not expected such a flat refusal. "Why not, sir?" she tried to keep her tone from becoming whiny, but she wasn't sure if she succeeded. It just seemed terribly unfair of him to flat out refuse to teach her something that would be so useful to know.
"For one thing," he said wryly, "Your personality is decidedly unsuited to Occlumency. I doubt whether you have any natural talent for the art at all. For another, you are nearly thirteen, and the beginning of puberty is precisely the worst time of life to begin studying the mind arts, as it is the time when your emotions will be least under your control. Thirdly, it is highly unlikely that you will ever meet anyone besides myself and the Dark Lord who are capable of compelling you so subtly that you are unable to recognize and therefore disregard the compulsion regardless of your capability in mind arts. It would be a waste of your time and my own to go to the trouble of teaching you solely for that purpose. Need I go on?"
"No, sir," Mary sighed. She still thought it would be good to know. She definitely wasn't going to tell him that she wanted to know Occlumency so she could get away with things like the Veritaserum Conspiracy more easily.
Silence fell around them again, and Mary looked at the timer: Six minutes to go. She gracelessly attempted to re-start their previous conversation. "So if you were researching mind magic, you'd be a healer of sorts?"
Professor Snape rolled his eyes at her impertinence, but he did answer. "No. I have some skill at healing, and especially cursebreaking as it applies to healing, which is more like Dark Arts than any other legal discipline, but I would prefer to focus on the advancement of techniques, not on the problems of the individual."
Lightning king (Chapter 22) - Hermione is my favorite canon character, followed by Snape. She is probably the second most likely to seem Mary-Sue-ish in this series, after Emma... and that's only because I'm closer to Emma's stage of life than Hermione's. That said, I am aware of the problem, and I'll be avoiding it in the long term over the course of the series.
You are absolutely right that Hermione doesn't have great magical power or any creative imagination to speak of. She's a child prodigy in a technical sense of the term - quick to learn anything anyone is willing to teach her, with an adult-like grasp of complex theoretical concepts - but not a genius. Any spells she creates and the solutions she comes up with are a product of a good mind for synthesis and the ability to extrapolate the next logical step to build on an existing idea. She has an eye for detail, and a very good memory, but she tends toward overly-complex solutions which integrate her latest pet project than something simpler and more effective.
She has what I consider some realistic personality flaws as well which will become more evident as Mary grows up enough to notice that just because Hermione is her first friend and practically a sister, that doesn't automatically make her a great person: She makes token efforts toward being a 'nice' or 'good' person that only serve to annoy her friends, especially because she doesn't really take their opinions into consideration when making big decisions, and is unintentionally offensive to most people when she first meets them; she is highly amoral when it comes to pursuing a goal she thinks is important (normally knowledge, sometimes catching the Heir of Slytherin) and runs roughshod over everyone else's rights and opinions (self-righteousness is not just for Gryffindors. SPEW is a product of both of these flaws, in canon); and as we saw at Mabon, she's an elitist, no matter how much she tries to deny it. She is also downright bad at prioritizing, has a habit of assuming she is always right, and is an enormous hypocrite when she complains about wizards having no common sense.
Book 4, I think, is when Hermione will hit her peak compared to most of the other characters and seem VERY Sue-like, though she plays a very significant role in the conflict at the end of Book 5 as well. By the end of Book 4, almost everyone else will be on-par with Hermione in terms of power, and post-OWL, other students are going to be old enough that they start performing similarly academically. By that point, Hermione performing better than any other character would simply be a matter of extra experience due to time-turning, and a very good memory, not any real advantage in native intelligence or power.
If anyone wants to talk about different characters' abilities, magical specialties, or their probable direction of development throughout the series, PM me. As lightning king is now aware, I will happily talk your ear off about it.
Hermes6034 (Chapter 18) – Now that this chapter is posted, I think it's safe to say that yeah, my original thought was that this would just be a short-lived red-herring for Tom, but then I decided that they did have enough in common, and, well… it was just too tempting. Regarding any other plot twists, saying just about anything would be telling, wouldn't it? I have told other people though, that Tom will be back eventually. What he does when he returns is still up in the air.
Lightning king (Chapter 19, 20, 21) – I've already responded to these via PM, but the short version, for anyone else who is wondering, is that unfortunately Mary doesn't currently remember any of the truly awesome stuff that happened in the Chamber. I considered it, but it would have accelerated the plot way too much to give her that kind of knowledge this soon.
Mary is supposed to be learning Latin and French already, but they're not really her thing, and she's been slacking. Akkadian is Cuneiform, which will show up in Ancient Runes eventually, and Sirius may suggest that her lessons as a proper Society girl have been lacking lessons in Gobbledygook as a magical language.
Hermione and Ginny will become friends (kind of. It's a very unhealthy, unequal friendship). This does not necessarily mean that Mary and Lilian will also be very good friends with Ginny. Hermione is still a champion of the underdog, and since she knows how elves feel about their situation in this story, you get Ginny instead of SPEW. She will become less of a wet blanket over time as she recovers from this experience.
Mary will be very good at some things, and not at all at others, rather than being completely average at everything. Snape firmly believes that kids get into less trouble if you tell them everything you don't actually have a reason not to tell them. This goes double for nosey brats like Hermione, Lilian, and the twins. Ginny and Mary have a right to know what really happened simply because they were victims of the whole ordeal. He also has a very bad sense of what it is appropriate to tell children: case in point, telling a bunch of 12-15 year olds how horcruxes work.
Jodic – Thanks! The idea is that I'm trying not to let any character be a one-dimensional pastiche, including the professors. Luna/Tom is one of my favorite conversational pairings, because he's trying so hard to be circumspect, and she's just wandering around not giving a single fuck. I'm glad that the compulsions explained the cooperation a bit. My beta had the same objection, thinking that it seemed weird that everyone just went along with everything Tom told them to so easily, but I couldn't think of a way to work it into the Chamber chapters that he was manipulating their thoughts by magic as well as by being charming and funny and teaching them stuff.
I hadn't really considered Mary looking into Legilimency and Occlumency until her fourth year. As far as she knows, she hasn't really had it used on her much. When Snape used it in questioning all of the Slytherins and after the Chamber, he did it in a way that was more noticeable than Dumbledore's twinkly-eyed spying. But you're right, she would at the very least have asked Snape how to avoid compulsions like the ones Tom used on her in the future. I'll have to re-write the chapter I just posted when I have a bit more time, and work that request in.
Belial666 (Chapter 20) – The short answer is that Snape is only in his thirties. He has a lot of experience for the average thirty-something wizard, but he doesn't know everything. While he's very well read in Dark Arts, his experience in that realm is much more with battle magic, curses, and defense against them than any kind of ritual magic. On the other hand, if they gave Masteries in Mind Magic, he would certainly qualify for one, so he tries that first. His experiences with Voldemort, Bellatrix, and Lily, and later seeing different holiday rituals at Hogwarts mean he has seen more ritual magic than most, and he knows a few forensic and Dark Arts spells that can detect the type of magic that was used on a person or object, but he still has little insight into how rituals and the Powers work. He will certainly do some reading and try to reconstruct the rituals that most likely happened in the Chamber, but all he knows is that Mary was a voluntary participant, and it required her blood, which leaves a lot to the imagination.
The longer explanation of why someone other than Snape doesn't just interrogate the kids' souls involves a discussion of consciousness, some specifics on Mind Magic and Obliviation, a re-interpretation of the chapter Priori Incantatem from Canon Book 4, the soul, the afterlife and how it all works with the Powers. But there is a reason. I'll PM you.
Part of the reason I answer reviews here is so that if anyone else is curious after reading a question in the reviews, they can find the answer here. So if anyone else wants the details, let me know and I'll PM you, too.
Laissankari (Chapter 21) – Thanks! No worries about your English, it's much better than any of my second languages :)
Lynxreader (Chapter 20) – At least Worm is an openly dystopian portrayal of a failed state (well, city, since it's really just Brocton Bay that's fallen apart completely). Hogwarts is made out to be some kind of fairy tale, especially in the beginning, and you have to dig into it to see how corrupt and twisted it really is. Like, yeah, it's great that Harry never got into any real trouble at school, but neither did anyone else, and they definitely deserved to. I'm thinking of Sirius Black with the werewolf incident, the Weasley twins leaving Montague in a broken vanishing cabinet for weeks and testing their products on students, Hermione making restricted potions and using a time turner to help a convicted felon escape the law, and that's not even counting all the bullying and hazing that crosses the line into assault and battery. Just because almost anything can be healed, doesn't mean it's okay to casually inflict serious injuries… compare that to my high school where the cops were called if one kid punched another and it's just mind-boggling. I actually think the punishment Snape handed out for the Veritasserum incident in Chapter 21 (Debriefing) seems a bit light, given what they actually did, but I'm writing Book 3 now, and he's going to make those detentions hell.
Belial666 (Chapter 19) – There are several reasons that Tom bothered teaching Mary (and the twins) unnecessary things: Portraying himself as a teacher puts him in a superior position over the students and makes them more likely to obey him; Offering his knowledge in (false) reciprocity for their help fosters a sense of trust which he needs in order to get them to do what he wants (if they chose not to participate, he could deny them food and water until they died, but he would still be without a body; this may be further clarified in the next couple of chapters); and he was actually being honest when he said he didn't mind answering Mary's questions. He's a bit of a know-it-all, it's been ages since he's had a good conversation, and he really wasn't thinking much past finishing the ritual.
Golems vs. homunculi - Golems are easier to destroy by magic, and homunculi need to be taken care of in very specific ways, so they're easier to destroy through neglect or plain screwing up. A golem is technically any constructed body that is animated and controlled by an outside consciousness. Homunculi like the one used in canon book 4 are most often necromantic constructs with a relatively short shelf-life, created specifically for the purpose of being possessed by a demonic entity (ie, controlled by an internalized consciousness), which may or may not have magic of its own (this is based on Silently Watches' description of homunculi in… whichever Princess of the Blacks book Voldemort comes back). I suppose the difference would really be that homunculi have a life-spark that sustains them without external animation (however tenuous that life might be) while a golem has to be animated through a series of complex enchantments (kind of like an AI, but instead of mimicking higher thought processes, the "pseudo-spark" as Tom calls it mimics the basics, like walking and, in more humanoid golems, autonomic functions like a heartbeat, breathing, and digestion; the controller or possessing entity controls the voluntary muscles and decision-making).
A blood golem specifically is alchemically produced by creating a primordial soup (all the lipids, proteins, and assorted other biochemical compounds necessary to construct a human body… most easily acquired by dissolving a human body), blood is used as a blueprint to extract the "essence" of the target's physical form (DNA), and transmuting the soup into the desired form following the target's DNA. It is then further enchanted with the "pseudo-spark" of animation, and often protective enchantments, since it has no magic of its own other than what sustains its animation. (Bio-Alchemy is one of the Greater Dark Arts, and nearly as illegal as Black Arts rituals. Some people would say it's a greater perversion of magic than the Horcrux, since it's concerned with making life from non-life. Alchemy as a whole is a terrifying conceptual area. If Dumbledore was willing to use what he knows of Alchemy in a less-than-ethical way, he would be much, much scarier).
Tom's body is somewhat like a hybrid of a golem and a homunculus, because it was created like a golem, but houses his consciousness, magic, half a soul, and the basilisk's life-spark, rather than just the magic which was used to create it and the enchantments to run it. Theoretically, the presence of all the elements that make up true life in the golem will allow it to develop its own, integrated magical fundamental identity eventually, but it may take decades to apparate or resist transfiguration as well as a real person. Tom will need to use part of his own magic to maintain the golem once its seven-year life-span expires (which may become increasingly difficult over time), and he will need to actively resist any transfigurations or charms cast on the golem in order to maintain its original form (though this will become easier over time as it develops its own fundamental identity). He's also entirely mortal again, and can't make another horcrux because horcruxes depend on the connection between life-spark and soul to anchor a consciousness, and Tom no longer has that connection.
Further complications may occur if I feel Tom is having too easy a time of it when he reappears in the series. These may range from the relatively silly, like consciously having to blink (because snakes don't, so the basilisk's life-spark wouldn't provide that instinct), to relatively serious, like the combination of basilisk and human blood used in its creation causing an accelerated and exponentially greater breakdown of the body, so that he has to somehow create a new one before all of his magic is tied up in sustaining what amounts to an increasingly unstable transfiguration.
Lynxreader (Chapter 19) – Mary definitely has not been upgraded to the point of needing Diary!Tom as a foil. Mary's upgrades over Harry have been largely in the realm of making her less trusting, and simultaneously giving her friends and allies who share information effectively (and who lead her to study more, instead of loafing around and goofing off). Sharing information alone circumvents at least half of the canon plot-points, and her actions and choices have a significant ripple effect. Her adversary is still Voldemort, mostly because he won't leave her alone. Voldemort is still the same idiot who repeatedly fails to kill a kid, and could potentially be killed (eventually) by more or less getting lucky and stumbling into it.
If anything, Mary and Voldemort's conflict is probably going to end up looking like a side-plot by the end of the series, because they are surrounded by much more competent characters who have bigger goals than just one murder. Their conflict is still the driving force behind events, which must be resolved in order to move forward, but Mary herself is more of a catalyst than a heroine in this series.
Diary!Tom is also not necessarily as powerful as he seems in these last few chapters. He is able to pull this ritual out of his arse, basically, because he spent the first five years or so in the diary corresponding with his older self about horcruxes and re-embodiment rituals, as they continued to explore the concept of escaping death. He knows a lot more about Dark Arts and magical theory than he would have when he was created because the Original!Tom would have taken advantage of the fact that he had a captive audience with his own mental abilities with whom to discuss such things, but his knowledge is very focused on those few topics. Generally his level of competence is a happy medium between chasing roosters around the Chamber to vanish them and godlike wandless magic.
As for what Diary!Tom is going to do, that would be telling, I think. He'll be off screen for at least a couple of books, but will come back eventually.
Re: Basilisks, Mary doesn't know that Slytherin was using the basilisk as a 'heat sink' for the school. She won't remember anything she was told after the basilisk was killed. The kids were able to find so little information on basilisks that seemed legitimate that she doesn't realize they're actually sapient and would make an excellent familiar (but yeah, they totally would). Fun fact - that is how Voldemort broke the basilisk in the first place. He used a Familiar ritual to bind her to himself, and when he lost his mind, she did too. Nagini is a post-discorporation acquisition.
Belial666 (Chapter 18) – He didn't consider it before the Basilisk was dead. He didn't realize how much magic it had been containing (and it's more than sufficient for the ritual he's now thinking to use), so he was sticking with his original plan to kill off whatever idiot he could snag with his horcrux and use their life and magic to regenerate. Now that the basilisk is dead and the chamber is flooded with magic (which has ruined his first plan), he's realizing he has more options than he thought.
Lightning king (Chapter 18) – It's not done yet. There are still six more updates: two in the Chamber (both of which I just posted), two the aftermath of the Chamber, and two which cover the last couple months of the year and tie up a few loose ends. One of the aftermath chapters explains a bit of why Tom and Mary (and the twins) are acting somewhat out of character in the Chamber. Rest assured, if Tom is acting like a nice guy, it's only an act. As for the twins and Mary, I'll address that further after they get out of the Chamber. I wouldn't say they're friends after, but Mary's not as vindictive about the whole situation as one might expect (for what you may or may not consider to be a good reason).
Chisscientist (Chapter 18) – I'm afraid it only gets odder from here…
6tailedninja (Chapter 18) – If it's wrong to like Diary Tom, it's probably very, very wrong to be the person who likes writing him… The horcrux thing was clearly shocking enough that he responded without thinking, but it probably wasn't as startling as her pegging him /as a diary/ as the Heir.
Robert Smith and Anaisrosemunde - I would love to send you a PDF, but I didn't quite catch your email addresses (this site does terrible things to anything that looks like a web address or special character). If you drop me a line at psuedoleigha at gmail dot com, I will send you the book as a response.
Belial666 (Chapter 16) – The Conspirators did consider starting with younger students, but decided it would probably take some time to locate the Chamber of Secrets, and older students were more likely to have had time to find it. They had already decided on this when Tom (via Luna) suggested that their Heir had had help to find it. They are also modeling their interrogation strategies on Snape's, and he started with older students and worked down to first years.
Alibis might not have been accepted by the professors. They were never tested. Dumbledore, of course, already thinks it's Tom somehow, and he told Minerva, but they don't know how he's doing it. The Slytherins think it would be better to have an alibi than to not have one, and it's their excuse for using a buddy system without admitting they're just as afraid as everyone else.
Most people can't speak Parseltongue properly, even under the Imperius, because part of the meaning is communicated via scent and sounds that human vocal tracts just can't make. It would be like trying to speak English without using a key letter like 'E'. The word for 'open' can be pronounced, but complex instructions would be out of the question. Magic makes up the difference for parselmouths. I have to admit, I'd never heard of Corvinus Gaunt until you mentioned him, because I don't follow Pottermore. (You may have noticed, for example, that the layout of the Slytherin dorms is completely fabricated.) I don't believe that Slytherin would only have left one entrance to his chamber. The house of the cunning would have a back door.
I doubt any charm Slytherin put on the Basilisk would have lasted so long. If he did include such a precaution in the beginning, there's a very good chance that his descendants failed to keep it up over the centuries. Why were the students certain that roosters (or transfigured roosters) would kill it? A) Youthful overconfidence and B) any excuse to feel like they have some control over their own safety. The primary reason to have a basilisk in the first place was not for defense, but because basilisks use ambient magic as an energy source. They can eat, but they don't have to. The Chamber and the basilisk serve as a magical heat-sink for Hogwarts. It may have also been used as a weapon of last resort in case of invasion, but that wasn't what Slytherin was thinking at the time.
Security arrangements vs. anything - the Headmaster is in charge of the defense of the school, and the Board has come to trust Dumbledore's judgement over the decades. His apparent indifference to the threat is something I don't have an explanation for. I'll think about it, but it may end up written off as just a mistake in judgement on his part. Society as a whole is not concerned because it's only muggleborns.
Whatweareafreaidof – I don't hate Ron, and I'm not intentionally writing him as a jerk. In this scene, he's a scared, angry kid. In canon, he contributed just as many good ideas to the trio in their first couple of years as Harry or Hermione, and had a realistic blend of strengths and flaws. But he never liked Slytherins and the Gryffindors all saw them as a united front led by Malfoy. He and Mary personally don't have good history, and it's as much her fault as his if not more. She lied to him the first time they met about who she was and then became friends Morgana Yaxley, blatantly dismissing the history between the Prewetts and Yaxleys. She's also allies with the twins, who treat Ron kind of like shit. Colin may have over-exaggerated, lied, or misinterpreted the situation at Quidditch trials to set Ron off, but Mary walking away scot-free while he got a backfired slug vomiting curse wouldn't have endeared her to him, and there are reasons to think that she's the Heir. She doesn't even really try to deny them. So his gut reaction when she's present after Percy is petrified is that she probably had something to do with it.
Re: food - The way I'm looking at canon (just the books) is that what we 'know' about magic is what Harry sees, and he's an unreliable narrator – people lie to him, intentionally and through their own ignorance, and we don't see the technical details of how magic works, because most of the time it's not pertinent to the story. If you use magic to add milk to your tea, for example, are you conjuring it from nothing, transfiguring some of the tea into milk, casting an illusion to make it taste like there is now milk in your tea, or transporting milk from a known location to your teacup? I'm assuming that magic is impermanent, so the first two options have the potential to cause major problems at a molecular level depending on how long the transfiguration/conjuration lasts (LessWrong's HPMOR discusses this idea in depth). I'm trying to keep things internally consistent, though I admit that I may someday reach a point where I've written myself into a corner and created a completely illogical/incoherent statement or facet of magic that I can't explain (like, above, why Dumbledore wouldn't have put greater precautions in place to help protect students after the first attack).
Arthur is the kind of guy who goes to pawn shops and gets totally taken advantage of. Yeah, the car was basically a beater, but he also likely has a shed full of kitchen gadgets and electronics like radios and a record player and a television that he overpaid for because it's clear that he hasn't the foggiest idea what he's doing in the muggle world. He doesn't know the value of money or the things he's buying, because it's all interesting collector's junk to him.
Sktheiss (chapter 16) – Over the course of the first year, the Grangers neglected to renew their Daily Prophet subscription. As Emma pointed out in the first book, it's really more like a small-town paper than a daily national, and they didn't feel like they were missing out on anything by not reading about all the little trivial announcements every day. They've been focusing instead on the theory behind magic and fulfilling their intellectual curiosity about their new world. Of course, that means when there's big news, they don't hear about until Emma's one witch friend mentions something over tea. One of the reasons that Emma was upset in the first draft of the Howler was that she now would have to renew her subscription to the daily rag because she can't trust her own daughter to tell her when there is some mysterious monster stalking the halls of her school. I cut it because it felt like a forced explanation.
Re: Tom & Luna – Tom finds Luna exasperating because yes, he can see that she's incredibly bright, and he can even follow her sideways leaps in logic most of the time, but she's so different from the people he's used to interacting with and manipulating that he's never sure where he stands with her. This also makes her very interesting, and he would like to get to know her better, but not as much as he would like to get a body back. Luna is far less interested in Tom than Tom is in her. She thinks of him as an enchanted curiosity of a sort, maybe like a pensieve. I expect there will be a funny scene in year three where someone explains that, no, actually, it was a horcrux all along, and Luna's reaction will be something along the line of: *shrugs* Well, I did know he was a liar…
Belial666 – Thanks! I'm glad it comes off as realistic, but bear in mind that this is what Ginny knows and tells Tom. There's probably a lot we didn't see, including everything that Molly actually does over the course of the day while the kids are off running wild. And on the flip side, if wizards don't need to spend a lot of money on most things they use in their daily life, but Arthur spends quite a lot of money on muggle stuff, I'd say he's playing a big part in their financial difficulties as well. I'm going to write a much longer response and PM you, because I've just started reading 'The Brightest Witch in the Darkest House,' and I want you to poke holes in my worldbuilding. It probably won't happen for a few more days at least because the end of the semester snuck up on me.
I'm actually deliberately avoiding the fan-trope where Tom's entire personality can be explained by saying horcruxes drove him mad. Arguably, of course, Tom was already mad to actually consider making one in the first place, but the point is that wizards don't know any more than muggles about the essence of a person. A hundred different authors will tell you they know, but it's all unfounded philosophical musing. The 'soul' that is split in the horcrux ritual is probably not the same sort of immortal soul that defines the essence of your being and theoretically goes to heaven. It clearly exists, because it can somehow tether you to the rest of the world if you put part of it in an object, it hurts in ways that are otherwise unimaginable to break it and separate it, and if you rip it out entirely via Avada Kedavra, it causes instant death (possibly from shock), but it doesn't seem to actually… do anything when it's in place.
Jana - You're welcome. Thank you for reviewing.
Sktheiss – I think you're really going to like the chapter I just uploaded, then ;) As for Fudge, yeah, he's incompetent, but at least he's not Umbridge.
PS, heliopaths = propaganda writers.
Miko Road – I'm not sure how much I can say without running the risk of spoilers, but I think it's safe to say now (after Chapter 8 is posted) that the plot advances quickly compared to canon. The plots are a bit more elaborate, and everything just comes to a head sooner. There is also about three times as much ritual magic in this book compared to the first :)
Sktheiss – Yeah, Zacharias really doesn't appreciate being condescended to in that first lesson, especially since Lockhart's such a useless professor. He volunteers for all the things Harry got roped into in canon, specifically with the aim of making Lockhart look like a fool. Also, apparently Sinistra is a feminist as well as a Slytherin and Snape's friend with benefits – who knew?
Epsi10n – The Slytherin Quidditch team encourages a more active seeker's role, at least when they have a seeker who is good enough to pull it off. Mostly because just circling the pitch all the time seems like it would be terribly dull.
Papilokaze – I'd like to think that this is a logical universe, even if it does contain some very illogical elements ;)
Lightning king – IDK, I'm kind of hoping for more reviews when it's complete, or at least after the climax. I think people review works in progress more often when they think authors need encouragement, or think their input might have some effect on the outcome of the story. Which admittedly it won't for this one, since it's done, but I do really appreciate the sentiment, and the encouragement and enthusiasm for the next book already!
Akane Mosoa – Thanks, but I can't take all the credit for this one. I'm not sure where, but I know I have seen the idea that elves' magic is too powerful for them to handle and needs to be subordinated to humans' before. It was something about house elves being like brownies, with a tendency to 'boggart' if they weren't tied to a family. I just added the infernal parasite twist to explain the tendency to completely shun elves who do not conform to the cultural expectation of the happy servant.