Chapter 6: Puppets

Earlier that day

The necromancer's office was an eerie sight, bathed in a spectral glow. The walls, floor, and ceiling were bone-white, surrounded by bookcases filled with musty scrolls. Colorless roses lined the shelves, exuding a saccharine fragrance that hung in the air.

A mangled, burnt corpse laid in the middle of the office like an altar and two men stood beside it, inspecting it from above.

"I sense some presence of mind," murmured the taller man. His posture was erect, stiff, and he closed his eyes, tuning into his magic.

"Julien. You know that's impossible," responded the other — Nex. His irises were pale gray, matching the decor, and they moved around slowly as if suspended in another reality.

"Is it?"

"Practically."

"I'll try to extract something."

Julien bent down, flicking his wand toward the corpse. He didn't move for a few seconds, deep in concentration, but then his countenance shifted, betraying his astonishment.

"Get me a Pensieve."

Nex obliged, summoning a large marble bowl that hovered lazily toward the ground. Frowning in concentration, Julien siphoned a wispy strand from the corpse's head, dropping it into the bowl.

"Watch," he said, gesturing to the bowl. Nex crouched, dipping his forehead into the liquid. When he emerged a few moments later, he looked dazed.

"What are these, instructions? That wasn't even a real memory," His milky eyes roved over the corpse, eyebrows furrowed. "Who is The Dealer?"

"I don't know. Never heard that name until now," Julien said, rising up and crossing his arms over his chest.

"I've never seen this in an Inferius before. How bizarre."

"Strip the glamours. Let's see what it looks like."

Standing and taking a step back, Nex raised his wand and chanted something softly. The corpse glowed blue before disfiguring into something resembling a yellowed skeleton, its face hollowed with a jagged grin. Strips of rotten flesh and muscle hung to the frame, filling the air with a suffocating stench.

The men grimaced simultaneously, turning to each other.

"Well, it looks the same as any other Inferius," Nex said, dismay in his voice. "How boring."

"I'll take it from here, then."

"I can get rid of this guy in the Veil. You still want him?"

Julien didn't reply immediately, staring at the rotting skeleton as if he hadn't seen it clearly before, his expression growing in disgust.

"Just a second," he muttered. Eyes glinting, he drew his wandless hand back, collecting power in his fist before shoving it forward.

An earsplitting crack echoed in the room as the Inferius splintered into microscopic bone fragments, ricocheting through the room.

Nex drew a hasty Protego around the both of them, watching Julien quizzically. Julien didn't notice, the look of resentment lingering on his face. The fragments hung in the air for an extended second before collecting into a neat pile at Julien's feet.

"What the hell did he ever do to you?" Nex spoke up first.

Julien shook his head, breaking out of his trance.

"Sorry. You can toss him in the Veil now."

Julien and Ginny sat across from each other at her oak dining table, mismatched mugs of chamomile tea in front of them. Ginny cradled her head in her hands, struggling to keep up with the stream of new information.

The man who had attacked her had not been a normal human. That much was crystal clear.

He had been an Inferius. But he hadn't even been a normal Inferius.

Julien had seen the report on Ginny's attack and immediately requested the body be brought to him for examination. The body, which the Aurors were hours away from cremating, brought several disturbing things to light.

Usually, Julien explained, you couldn't use Legilimency on a dead person — their mind would not exist for magic to penetrate it. However, to his surprise, he was able to access the dead man's mind.

Normal humans had layers to their thinking, but this man had only one. The only thought in his mind was a set of instructions to get information from Ginny. If the questioning failed, the man was to bring Ginny to someone named "The Dealer".

It wasn't clear exactly who "The Dealer" was, other than a crazed figure with a penchant for adopting dramatic names. But it was clear that The Dealer had a well-planned system, delegating explicit instructions to not-quite-human puppets so that he — or she — could never be caught.

"I'm not an expert on necromancy, but I brought the man to the Unspeakable who is. His form was indeed one of an Inferius, lying under countless glamours," Julien said grimly.

"So why wasn't he affected by my accidental magic? I was burning him, but he kept coming after me."

"That's the most important thing I found," Julien said, leaning forward. "The instructions in his mind included a layer of magical protection. The Dealer must have somehow weaved it in. There are two entities there you would need to destroy — the body with fire, and the mind with magic. That would explain why, when the Aurors came and Stunned him simultaneously with your accidental fire, he instantly collapsed."

"He didn't just collapse," Ginny said. "He died."

"He was already dead," Julien explained. "The Aurors were checking for pulse, for breathing, for the physical diagnostics of death. But the whole time, he never had a pulse. His body was animated through necromancy and his mind through Legilimency. The Stunners along with your accidental fire killed both the mind and the body, which brought him back to his original state. Dead."

"So, even if I had my wand and fired a Stunner instead of the accidental magic, it wouldn't have done anything to him? I would have had to do both at the same time?"

"Right. This is in line with the reports from the Auror incident involving Ron. Ron and Harry couldn't bring down the attackers because they needed at least two spells for that, one of which had to be fire-based."

Ginny buried her head in her hands again, staring down into the wooden table, her heart pounding a kilometer a second as she digested the information. Julien had been doing some serious digging. Some of it sounded almost ridiculous, but Julien's somber face betrayed no hint of a joke. The hexes and spells that Ginny had learned in school didn't hold a candle to this arcane, Dark conjury.

So… they were up against someone proficient at Legilimency, someone who could create puppets from the dead to do their bidding, and whose puppets were only defeatable by multiple spells.

This was no half-hearted neo-Death Eater.

"What do my episodes and the diary have to do with this?" Ginny asked, her voice finally betraying her shakiness. Julien's gaze landed on her, heavy with thought.

"Inferi usually don't have minds, but your attacker did — he was even able to wield a wand. This kind of Inferi could only be created with a powerful object as a vessel." Julien said. "That vessel could be Tom Riddle's diary."

"And… my episodes are connected to the diary. When the diary is being used to create the puppets, that's probably when the episodes happen. Like right before Ron and Harry's attack."

"Right. The Dealer must have been creating multiple puppets. He or she must have interacted with a tremendous amount of magic from the diary."

Ginny gasped. "I also had an episode just a few days before my attack! I was showering, and I was out for half an hour."

This was the first time Ginny had seen Julien betray a hint of surprise.

"Yes, that could be it," Julien murmured, taking his chin into his hand. He leaned his elbows against the table, studying Ginny pensively. "The Dealer is using the diary, and there could still be a piece of the diary in you, of the mind-magic variety."

Ginny's mind was spinning. "The horcrux took control of my body when it possessed me with soul magic. The episodes are draining me in a different way because it's mind magic. Like they're draining my mind."

Julien pushed his chair away from the table, rising. "That's exactly it. To create the puppets, the Dealer has to use a vessel — that must be the diary — and some source of consciousness — that must be you."

Ginny's gaze rose to Julien and they shared a knowing glance.

"We need to find the diary," she murmured.

Never before had Ginny had to process so many ridiculous, morbid discoveries at once. A hurricane had just torn through her drought-ridden search, flooding her brain and uprooting any sense of order.

The Dealer. The diary. We get rid of them, and my episodes will end, the attacks will end, and everything will be fine again.

Julien was scribbling something on a notebook, his dress-robed form leaning down onto the table, looking quite out of place in her flat strewn with bohemian pillows and half-eaten snacks. Now that she was out of words to say, she looked around, looking for something to do, but her gaze kept returning to the man in front of her.

Stop ogling him, Ginny.

But it was hard. Engrossed in his work, the Unspeakable had become even more interesting to watch. His rapt gaze on the notebook, brow furrowed, deep in concentration. His arms, well defined in cuffed white sleeves, darting across the pages in steady, precise strokes. There was something about the intensity, the control, the conviction he possessed that made Ginny's heart beat faster.

Don't forget, this guy just scared the living shite out of you while you were drunk, she reminded herself, trying to quell the thoughts she most definitely couldn't have. A rude arsehole, that's all he is. Ginny scoffed out loud and Julien looked up, eyebrows up in a silent question.

"I was thinking about how you decided to scare the hell out of me so I wouldn't wander off alone again," Ginny remarked, shaking her head. "How ingenious. Your originality knows no bounds."

"Hmm," a hint of amusement slid onto Julien's face. "Originality, unfortunately, I can't take credit for. My mentor at the Department of Mysteries did that first to me when I was training for my role."

"Why?"

"He wanted me to stay on guard at all times. He attacked me dozens of times. Unlike today, he didn't immediately reveal who he was. He had a glamour on. For an entire month, I lived with a mysterious Legilimens out there hunting me down at every chance."

Ginny chortled in surprise. "Ah, so I should be thankful you're not him. How did you manage to figure him out?"

Julien's lips tugged upwards. "I finally went on the offensive. It wasn't easy, since he was very powerful."

"Where is he now?"

"He's gone."

And just like that, an icy, expressionless mask took over his features. There was a story there, something raw, something painful.

"I'd best be going. We should meet tomorrow to formulate a plan of action to get to the diary," Julien said, collecting his things and grabbing the mugs off the table.

"You don't have to put those —" Ginny started, but Julien was already walking toward her kitchen. She picked up the teapot and followed, setting it down next to the mugs in the sink. "Thanks."

"I suppose it's the least I can do, after what I put you through tonight," he said with a dry chuckle.

Ginny stood close to him in her compact kitchen, feeling self-conscious for the first time in her thin, slinky dress. Julien's gaze flitted down her form quickly, so quickly that she barely noticed, and she felt her skin flush in response. The silent moment stretched with tension, the two of them locking eyes, something passing between them without words. Julien's expression sobered, seeming to darken as he spoke again.

"You don't know how much you scared me today," he said, his voice lowering into something just above a whisper. "Don't do that again."

"I — I won't."

He nodded, gaze hovering over Ginny for another second. She felt a prick of disappointment when he turned away, opening her door and stepping out into the muted moonlight.

"Goodnight, Ginny. I'll see you tomorrow."

His silhouette strode with purpose to the Apparition point as Ginny watched through the peephole. Reaching the end of her yard, he paused in his step and glanced back at the door for a brief moment. Did he have something else to say?

No. He seemed to reconsider, shaking his head and walking back into the night.