Author: enchanted nightingale
Beta Reader: pussycatadamah
Timeline: Book 4, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Pairs: Harry/Lucius
Disclaimer: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling. I merely use them in my plot for fun.
Chapter 35 – Dead or Alive
The question Severus had posed hung in the air as the three men stared at each other. Albus Dumbledore seemed to age before Lucius' eyes, the blond soon realised. Then he recalled that the powerful wizard was actually a century and a half old but usually that fact went unnoticed. The Headmaster with the multitude of names and titles sighed.
"Alas... No."
The two former Slytherin's shuddered, equal parts horrified and scared at the revelation Dumbledore made.
"Elaborate," Snape gruffly said and the Headmaster nodded.
"Many years ago, Tom Riddle walked the hallways of this school. Before he later became Voldemort, he was already set on a bad course. As a teen, and a brilliant one at that, he was a favourite among many professors here," Dumbledore started.
"Get to the point Dumbledore," Lucius demanded.
"You both had Horace Slughorn as a Potions Professor," the Headmaster stated. "You know how he was, yet you cannot deny that Horace, despite his faults, was well versed in many arts outside Potions, like the Dark Arts. And Riddle... He was one of his favourites. And when young Tom approached him about the subject of Horcruxes."
Neither Snape nor Malfoy reacted and Dumbledore was relieved that neither man was so deep in the Dark Arts that they would recognised the name. Or perhaps, he amended, neither man cared to live forever. Severus certainly did not fear death and Lucius was probably unconcerned. With the money he had he would have access to other means of prolonging life. With a heavy heart Albus began explaining exactly what Horcruxes were and what lengths Voldemort had gone to in order to become immortal, to beat death. The silence in the office after that was rather heavy.
"Now you see that while his body was destroyed..." Albus said.
"There are still pieces of his soul scattered all around," Lucius muttered with disgust.
Dumbledore nodded.
"Unlike the year when you had the Philosopher's Stone here," Snape mused, "This time a spirit or wraith like entity did not leave the body the Dark Lord had created for himself. It is possible that, that soul piece of Voldemort is truly gone, destroyed."
Lucius, who had been contemplating everything he had learned in the past hour decided to add his opinion. "That does not stop the other soul pieces from trying to get bodies. Possession right?"
"The Soul is no simple matter," Dumbledore commented. "Voldemort split his in half when he was still a teen. Every other time he tore one more piece from the remaining soul he had. Harry destroyed the larger piece when he was twelve, down in the Chamber of secrets. Now, the smallest part of Voldemort died; the original. I believe..." He looked older now. "I believe he shredded his soul to seven pieces."
Severus and Lucius grimaced.
"So his insanity could be attested to the shredding of his soul. He was not half as insane twenty years ago," Lucius commented.
"No, he was not," Dumbledore agreed.
"We need to track down the remaining Horcruxes," Lucius decided.
Dumbledore nodded. "But first, we need to find out where each of the soul pieces has been hidden."
"And how are we going to do that?" Snape asked.
Harry was resting in his room, laid out on his bed. His head had stopped hurting him now, the prior pain nothing but a memory. He was in just his pyjama bottoms and too hot to put much else on him. There was a knock on his door. He sighed, thinking it was either Sirius or Remus again, checking up on him.
"Come in!" he said feeling frustrated.
Lucius walked into the room, dressed in fine robes and looking unaffected by the weather. Harry wondered how he did that, it could not be just Cooling charms, it was just not possible and if it was, he wanted to know the way.
"Feeling better?" the blond wizard asked the teen as he dropped his linen, outer robes on a chair, discarded his cane and then walked to the bed.
Harry scooted a bit away, making room for Lucius to join him.
"I was in a meeting, with the old coot."
"How is the Headmaster?" Harry asked even as he inched closer to Lucius, not minding the heat this once because he had wanted to see Lucius, wanted to be with the blond earlier when he was in pain.
"A wealth of information actually," Lucius replied.
The green eyed teen blinked. "That's odd," he blurted out before he could think twice.
The comment was spot on about the aged wizard and it actually made the blond wizard next to Harry chuckle. The laugh was short lived though as Lucius recalled exactly what Albus Dumbledore had revealed to him and Severus. He shuddered at the memory.
"What's wrong? What did he say?" the green eyed teen asked, sitting up so he was looking down and into Lucius silver grey eyes.
"Severus and I... we asked him if Voldemort was really dead," the former Slytherin replied, starting from the beginning and wanting to work his way up to introducing the Horcruxes. And he would be telling Harry. While the old Headmaster had heavily hinted that he and Severus were not to tell others about Voldemort's little trick on death, Lucius was not going to keep Harry in the dark. He had learned early on that secrets were something the green eyed teen loathed. It was one of the things that had driven Harry a bit apart from the Headmaster when Lucius had shared any and all information he could about the Triwizard Tournament with the Gryffindor.
Meanwhile, Harry had sucked in a breath that was horrified as he listened to the blond wizard. "What?" he uttered.
"Dumbledore," Lucius went on to say, "Replied that yes, the Dark Lord is not truly gone."
Harry paled. "How can that be?" he asked.
Lucius' face darkened. "Oh, apparently it is possible and the means to do that are... despicable. Even I have not delved this far in, into the insanity of the Dark Arts." A look at the teen's face proved just how lost Harry felt. With a sigh, Lucius started explaining about Horcruxes to the raven haired wizard. He explained about the Soul, how one despicable act, usually murder and the Killing Curse in particular, could after a preparation ritual split a Soul apart. How the splitting was called a Horcrux and how that could be stored into an inanimate object.
"Much like a diary," Lucius said and watched Harry's face pale at the memory of the leather bound diary of Tom Marvolo Riddle that had possessed Ginny Weasley and had opened the Chamber.
"That was a..."
"Horcrux? Very much so."
Harry was horrified. "And he did that seven times?"
"Your Headmaster believes that the diary was the strongest he created, half of himself. The others held less of his soul, less awareness, less cunning."
"Merlin!" Harry sat back and stared ahead.
Lucius pulled him back down and against him. "Don't think about this further. Not now. He is dead, well, more dead than he used to be in the past. It will take a lot more for him to return. The soul pieces, wherever they are right now, they must be cut off from people. It will take a Dark Wizard to specifically use them to make a body of that sliver of a soul for the Dark Lord to return. As far as I'm concerned, that will be difficult to happen. I think there are five wizards, all his followers, that might have an idea how to go about doing that, not have the actual knowledge mind you. One is dead, killed by Moody. The other three in Azkaban and completely insane. The other..."
"The other?" Harry asked.
"Regulus Black," Lucius said. "And I believe he is also dead, though they never found his body. It is believed the Dark Lord killed him years ago."
"Sirius' brother," the green eyed teen recalled. "You don't know how?"
Lucius scoffed. "No, immortality never interested me. I will live long enough, a hundred and fifty years or so. If I wish to live longer there are other ways, without chancing my sanity or my soul to get about finding Immortality. I have the money."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Could you sound more smug?"
"I could," Lucius replied and kissed Harry's temple. "Now, can we for a while forget about the old coot and dead dark lords?"
"What did you have in mind?"
In reply, Lucius kissed Harry's neck softly before paying even more attention to it, then Harry's lips and mouth again. And for a while they did forget about Voldemort's depravity.
End of chapter.