Chapter 42: If You Know, You Know


Sunday, 25th June 1995.

Tom Riddle woke with a start.

The first thing he noticed was pain. Not quite the same pain that he had felt that night so long ago. He doubted anything could ever compare to that pain. But his new body ached all over. All except for his wand arm.

He raised his head, ignoring the pain that the movement added and looked at his arm. Or what was left of it.

The terror that had subsided as he lost consciousness returned in full. At first, the boy had seemed so weak and useless. Simply twitching in agony. Not even paying attention to him as he had explained his newest victory to his assembled followers. And then, Voldemort had threatened the girl.

Potter had broken free of his bindings so violently that it surprised him. And the boy had even managed to give the mighty Lord Voldemort a challenge for a few moments. It had been thrilling. To finally have an opponent worth his time, however short it proved to be. And for a moment he considered that there truly may have been some truth to the prophecy that had led him to Godric's Hollow so many years before.

Fear had driven him then, and it had seemed to have proven true. His body had been destroyed and he was left abandoned by his supposedly loyal followers for a decade.

But then the boy had been captured and subdued so easily, by a pair of the simplistic morons that tied themselves to him for power. After the stories his spy had sent back from Hogwarts, he had expected better.

And then the boy had stood up once again. The second time he had survived the Killing Curse. And Tom had felt true soul-deep terror when he turned and saw Potter standing there. After all of his many efforts to cheat death, had his prophesized enemy found a way to actually achieve it?

He closed his eyes and saw the events again in his mind. The way the boy had fired off immensely powerful spells. As if the little duel they'd had when he threatened Potter's girlfriend had been a mere warmup for the child.

Voldemort could feel his fodder falling behind him as they pitifully attempted to intervene, and then the girl joined out of nowhere. That had allowed Potter to focus solely on him, forcing him to reduce his focus to the boy as well.

A mistake that had cost him dearly. The girl's flame whip had nearly hit him. But the boy's destructive curse had hit him. Destroying not only his loyal wand, but most of his arm as well.

The only saving grace appeared to have been that whatever spell the boy used had not left Tom bleeding wherever he had landed.

Ignoring the pain and the memories, he glanced around to try and figure out where he was. Somehow, these walls seemed familiar.

Tom stood, glancing through the nearby window and he was filled with disgust as he recognized the view. Even if it had changed substantially in the last fifty years.

He was in Tom Riddle's old room at Wool's Orphanage.

A growl of anger ran through him as he turned from the window and noticed a child asleep in the nearby bed. They had not woken at what must have been his sudden and noisy arrival. But the child only held his attention for a moment.

What truly piqued his interest was the slender length of wood sitting on their side table. A wand.

It angered Voldemort even further that this horrible place still played host to magical beings. That the muggles still tossed them aside, as his own parents had done to him. That nothing had changed in the muggle world in the past half-century.

He hated them. Pathetic insects playing at power while those with true power hid themselves away.

Stepping over to the side table, he grasped the wand with his left hand, feeling his immense magic quickly subdue the new link the child had forged with it. They must have only recently acquired the wand, by the feel of it. And while not as good a match as his true wand had been, this would suffice for now.

Tom tried to focus himself on the magic he now needed to cast. Something that had been so easy the night before, but that now needed actual effort on his part.

He raised the wand to eye level before he closed them once more and channelled his magic carefully. This could only ever be done once, and therefore must be perfect.

The great and powerful Lord Voldemort could not be seen to be broken and fallible.

Slowly, he swept the tip of the wand over his right shoulder and down the length of what remained there. Continuing past the point of jagged torn flesh. Feeling the magic flow out of both the moving wand and the ragged, torn flesh that had been left behind. Slowly but surely covering the wound.

Further down the wand moved, and the magic shifted and flowed into the new construct from both sides. Past the wrist and onto the hand, he felt the fingers forming at the end of the new 'flesh' he had created. Only stopping once the very tips of the fingers had solidified.

Opening his eyes, he looked at the construct. The marbled flesh shimmered even in the dull light of this awful room. He clenched the fingers and watched as they precisely obeyed his commands. As he had intended, this construct had truly replaced his missing limb, as Lucius had witnessed last night when he had been gifted a similar prize for his efforts in returning his master to a proper physical form.

Though Lucius had been given a gift that befitted his nature. A true silver tongue. It amused Voldemort to think of the man wielding its intense power against those who would stand against him. Strengthening Malfoy's already wicked abilities to convince lesser minds of Lord Voldemort's cause.

But most of all, Voldemort had enjoyed the sounds of the man's screams as Macnair had ripped the original from his mouth. It filled him with joy to see how eager his followers were to brutalize at his instruction. And he sorely needed to return Bellatrix to his side.

She had a true gift for brutality that few others could hope to match.

Leaving behind such thoughts, he noticed a pair of eyes were now watching him closely. Flicking from his face to the impressive construct at his right and then to the small wand in his left hand. The child had awoken.

"What are you… that's my wand, mister." The tiny child said, sounding both awed and scared at the same time.

They must have woken in time to witness his incredible feat of magic. A chance to see a true wonder. Watching as Lord Voldemort weaved the greater magics of the world in front of them. A gift that not many could claim. But one that also needed to be balanced.

For life was not full of wonder. It was hard and cruel unless one managed to bend it to their will.

"Not anymore. Avada Kedavra." Voldemort replied in a cold voice as he flicked the tip of the wand at the pathetic child's face.

Pleasure ran through him at the feeling. To see the pitiful life flee the shocked body as his magic ended their existence for good. Something he would need to practice before attempting it on Potter once again.

As his thoughts returned to the boy once more, Tom realized that he lacked something vital in this battle. Severus had been caught that night before he could acquire the complete wording of the prophecy. Meaning that there was quite possibly important information contained in those words that he lacked.

It was the only explanation for how the boy had survived two attempts on his life by the most powerful sorcerer in existence. Something Lord Voldemort would not allow to happen a third time.

He would need to have the full prophecy, and there were only two places he could get such information. He seethed as he considered that after the disaster of last night, both would likely be equally as difficult for him to achieve. But the Ministry would still be the easier goal.

He would just need more fodder in order to ensure success.

Meaning he needed somewhere to recover and recall his forces. He would need to carefully consider his options. But he had a few places he could check for suitability. And one he would need to be careful checking if things had gone as poorly as he thought they had.

But before he could do even that, these four walls needed to come down. Permanently.

Tom looked around the pathetic place that had once been his home. A place where he had learned the truth of the world and all its vicious cruelty. A place where he had uncovered his true power. A place that others might seek out in their efforts against him.

A place that must burn.

He grinned maliciously as he cast the spell at the bed, watching the hungry flames take his most recent victim in their ravenous embrace before they spread quickly to the walls, growing in power as they went.

Not being a truly magical location, they would burn out rather quickly. But Voldemort figured he had forced enough of his own considerable magic into them to destroy this horrid place for good.

Switching the newly acquired wand to his true wand hand, Voldemort turned in place and left behind the destruction he had wrought.

He had work to do.

ϟ

The large double doors closed and Harry plonked down on the loveseat that Hermione had conjured for them, facing Professor Moody in his own simple wooden chair.

"Right, you two. Start talking."

"What would you like to know?" Hermione asked, a smile on her face.

Both of Moody's eyes fixed on her and Harry laughed at the look on his face.

"We asked one of the house-elves for somewhere out of the way to hold a gathering. They told us about this place." Harry explained.

Moody's gaze flicked between them both. "That simple, eh?"

"It really was." Hermione continued. "We asked, and they told us where to find it. Once we used it the first time, I realized it was something quite unique. I've returned several times since Christmas, inspecting it. Trying to learn all I could about it. Though, I will admit to occasionally becoming distracted."

Harry held in the laugh that built as he recalled the five times he'd had to pop into the room and physically remove his girlfriend who had become lost in the reading of some esoteric knowledge the Room had provided her. Which she had learned could not be taken from the Room itself. Ceasing to exist if they were removed.

Instead, he just snuggled tighter to her.

"Quiet you! Anyway, the Room provided quite a lot of detail once I knew what to ask for. But I was still curious, and began trying to see if there were any rooms stored in it somehow."

"And how exactly does it work?" Moody asked.

"Ah, to tell would take a lifetime," Hermione replied, and this time Harry could not hold in the laugh. "Stop it. There are runes from about thirteen different sources. Layers of arithmancy done in five different forms of math. Levels of transfiguration and conjuration that would give the most well-versed professors at this school a headache just to consider them. I will not pretend to understand 'how' it works, yet. Just that it does. And I have isolated some of the ways that it was built. To understand how it all interacts safely and smoothly…"

"Right. So assuming that, given we're all sitting in here, it works... what is this place?" Moody asked, gesturing to the room around them, piled high with junk in every direction.

"The ghosts and elves I have asked refer to it as the Room of Hidden Things. The elves often use it to dispose of damaged items the school refuses to just get rid of for some reason or another. Judging by the few personal effects I can see from here, students have been using it to hide their shame for some time as well."

"And this?" Moody said, making his wand ping as it sat on his lap, resolutely pointing into the depths of the Room itself.

"We didn't know that was here," Harry said, turning to Hermione.

He'd felt her make some connection before they had suddenly left the Manor. Something that they would likely be firmly reprimanded for later on, regardless of the quick Patronus message he'd sent off before entering the Room. But he didn't know exactly what she had figured out.

"When we found this Room, and on each of my subsequent trips to it," Hermione explained, "I felt new magic around it. It wasn't until this morning that I recalled what you had said last night. That you 'tracked it to the seventh floor, but couldn't narrow it down further than that'. Knowing what I do of this room, I knew that if it wasn't open when you were searching, your efforts couldn't lead you to it.

"Being that it somehow resides within the exterior wall, the results of your spells most likely lead you to the nearest tower facing towards this one." She finished with a smug smirk.

Moody seemed to consider their location for a moment before he nodded. "Yes, actually. The south tower was where I lost track every time. Eventually, we erected the ward across the entire floor. Took meself, Albus, Minerva and Flitwick four days to cast it."

"And that is why you remain after three years," Harry stated plainly. They'd researched the supposed Defence Against the Dark Arts curse of the school before choosing to attend. Wanting to be sure it could not affect Harry. "No one has lasted more than a year teaching the subject before you erected your ward."

"And even with it up, you were probably looking at a nasty accident happening sooner rather than later," Hermione added.

Moody seemed to consider their logic. Before he tapped his wand again and another ping sounded. "Then we should stop woolgathering and find this blasted thing."

He stood, vanishing the conjured chair. Harry glanced at Hermione, who nodded and stood, vanishing their seat with a snap before they summoned their wands once more and prepared to enter the detritus of a thousand years.

"Onward," Moody said.

ϟ

Cornelius Fudge was pensive as he watched the three figures opposite him arguing back and forth.

Matters were as dire as they had ever been under his tenure in this office. Two of his Department Heads, those involved in the farce that the Triwizard Tournament had become, had both disappeared last night.

Albus and the Potter boy were insisting that You-Know-Who had returned, and while not parroting their belief in the same, Amelia was certainly trying to garner his approval to throw the book at every single person still alive after last night's incident in Little Hangleton.

Which, he was told, was a disturbingly small number of those that had supposedly been present.

Dolores was being her typically abrasive self and was the cause of most of the arguing, simply refusing to consider that You-Know-Who could ever hope to return to the living. And wanting to hold the boy responsible for the destruction of seven Dementors under the command of the Ministry.

Not to mention the injury to her body and ego. Only one of which had been righted since then.

And even with all of that resting on his mind, all Cornelius could see when he closed his eyes were those enormous spectral jaws descending slowly towards his face. He'd never felt such powerful magic before in his life, being a rather average caster himself.

Even the few cases of incredible magic he'd had the opportunity to see from Dumbledore or the Unspeakables had been nothing like this. That patronus had weight. Not only physical weight, that had held him down to the floor, but magical weight that had pressed on him heavily.

Had the boy so desired, last night could have been the end of his life.

Normally, when he felt this adrift on a matter, Cornelius would reach out. Dumbledore's argument was well known, but he no longer had the more moderate opinion of his long-time friend.

No, Lucius Malfoy now resided in the morgue at St Mungo's. His entire upper torso ripped apart by a single spell if the healer's report was to be believed. Vengeance for a man he had trusted so long was not to be had either. Amelia had tested every single intact wand found in that graveyard.

Every single one of the masked figures' wands had cast the Unforgivable Curses last night. On a pair of teenagers not even past their OWLs.

Cornelius was no bigot, he cared not for someone's heritage, only their strength of will and whether they could help him further his own aims. He was proud of his Slytherin sorting. He had made the most of his ambition, reaching the highest seat in the British government.

But to willingly torture and murder children… It disgusted him utterly.

And yet, overtly supporting the Potter lad worried him too. It was very clear to Fudge that he could not hope to control the boy. Last night's demonstration had cemented that in his mind. Powerful things seemed to happen around the child, and Cornelius was unsure if he wanted to be anywhere near any of them.

"Would you SHUT UP!" Amelia said firmly, directing her words at Dolores, who had turned red.

"Dolores, please. Everyone, quiet." Cornelius said, unsure of what they were currently debating, but knowing his Undersecretary as he did, he was sure she had said something vile to so upset the DMLE Head.

Albus was infuriatingly silent as he stared at Cornelius. His habit of seeming to look right through him annoyed the Minister. He wanted nothing more than to ignore all of this and go back to the normality of his role. War was not something he ever wanted to revisit.

His time during the previous war in Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had been bad enough. Some of the things he had seen gave him nightmares still to this day. He never wanted to see such horrible sights again. And yet, that is exactly what Albus was promising was inevitable with You-Know-Who's supposed return.

"Are you certain?" He finally asked, the question aimed at Albus.

"Certain? No. I was not present, Cornelius."

"That was Voldemort's wand in the graveyard," Amelia argued, and Cornelius hated that he flinched at the name.

"How can we be sure? It is utterly destroyed." Dolores rebutted.

"I took the pieces to Garrick Ollivander this morning for identification," Amelia stated. "He has confirmed beyond any doubt that this is the wand belonging to the terrorist known as Voldemort."

Fudge twitched again but tried to hold his focus.

"Then obviously the boy stole it for his theatrics," Dolores argued.

The three others turned to regard her before Albus spoke. "You truly believe that a fourteen-year-old boy managed to infiltrate this building, all the way to the Auror office on the second floor. Stole a wand mounted on a wall in plain view of the busiest room in the department, completely unnoticed, and snuck back out.

"Arranged for a group of fully-grown adults with their own free will to dress up as the very Death Eaters they were once accused of being, every single one that was found 'innocent' of said crime during the last war. Tricked them into attending a graveyard in Northern England during the time of the final task of the Tournament. Convinced Ministry officials in charge of said Tournament to redirect the Triwizard Cup portkey to this graveyard, and somehow knew he would beat all three of his rather talented competitors to this Cup in order to attend this farcical event so he could then murder a number of them in cold blood?"

"This is the conspiracy you believe this child facilitated?" Amelia asked, a broad grin on her face having it laid out so clearly.

Dolores went even redder and Cornelius knew he needed to end this here. He drew his wand and cast a silencing charm at the woman. "Enough, Dolores. Seeing events laid out like that, it seems improbable in the extreme for anyone, even someone of Potter's fame, to arrange such an occurrence."

"Well," Amelia said, looking a bit embarrassed herself. "Someone did manage to steal that wand from our Department. I double-checked last night. They left behind a replica."

Dolores seemed to smirk as though part of the events of her fiction were proven true.

"But even if Potter could be linked to the theft, how would he ever convince people who manage to avoid prison time for their alleged actions once to behave like Death Eaters now?" Amelia finished.

"There is only one reasonable explanation for all of the evidence before us," Albus said simply, still looking at Cornelius.

He wanted to rage against it. To deny the possibility. But the more the others spoke the more the truth became undeniable.

"Perhaps the…" Cornelius paused, "Death Eaters," he finally admitted, even to himself that some of those he'd been associating with were truly evil, "arranged events. You identified a few of their number as members of the Ministry did you not?"

Amelia looked surprised at this turn of the conversation from him. "Yes. Walden Macnair was the highest placed within our ranks. But a few more were regular visitors of the Ministry."

Cornelius was thankful she did not elaborate on who or why they visited.

"I suppose that it is possible for one of them to have exchanged the wands during such a visit. While it is a well-travelled room, I have not assigned a staff member purely to watch a display piece."

"So it is possible that this was a Death Eater plot to enact revenge on the child who lost them their prestige at the end of the previous war." Cornelius offered, desperate to find an answer that did not mean that war was at his doorstep.

"Cornelius…" Albus said.

"Please, Albus. He can't be back."

"I have had little interaction with Harry Potter since his return. You witnessed our first encounter after the events that orphaned the boy yourself. He has no love lost for me. But he came to me last night to confess the return of a man who could plunge this society into a dark age the likes of which we have never seen before. As much as I wish it were not true, we had lost the last war. Had Voldemort not attacked the Potters, and failed... none of us would be here right now. I am certain of that."

"Worst case scenario, Minister." Amelia added, "We prepare for a return of this Dark Lord, and it turns out he has not resurfaced?"

"Panic at the least. No one will want to believe this sort of thing. He was dead."

"Voldemort was never dead, Cornelius," Albus argued, the flinch once again irking the man. "He claimed numerous times to have conquered death before his defeat. But defeat is not death."

"There was a body!" Cornelius argued.

"And Dementors remove souls from bodies all the time. We have the unfortunate knowledge that a body and a soul are not so permanently tethered together as the muggles seem to believe. There are several foul magics in this world that can allow a soul to remain once disconnected from its body."

Cornelius sagged in his chair. He considered his options for a moment. Relishing in the quiet as the others allowed him time to think.

"What if…" Cornelius squeaked, sitting taller in his chair and clearing his throat. "What if I met with him?"

"Potter?" Amelia asked.

"Yes."

Albus sighed heavily. "I may not be able to arrange such a meeting, Cornelius. As I have said, the boy does not seem to trust me."

"I can," Amelia noted. "But it will need to be somewhere the boy feels safe."

Her eyes flicked to Albus for a moment and Cornelius considered his options. He would have preferred to have the boy come to him, but if he was going to sort all of this out and decide how to proceed, he needed to speak with the source of the information.

"It's not that I don't trust his word, or yours, Albus. But what you are asking…"

"I ask nothing more than you prepare for the possibility, Cornelius. We cannot refuse to act. As Harry said last night, if we do not act, we hand the country to Voldemort."

Fudge closed his eyes at the name, only to see those jaws once again.

"See what you can do, Amelia. I will reserve judgment until then."

Dolores looked appalled that he was even considering this, and he knew that he would be listening to a long and irritating rant from that quarter soon. But the evidence was compelling.

And he would not go down in history as the man who allowed… You-Know-Who to conquer his country without a fight.

ϟ

Harry looked about excitedly at some of the 'junk' that had collected over the centuries as Hermione inspected some closer, Moody standing impatiently behind them as they paused yet again deep in one of the many alleyways.

It was a goldmine of hidden gems.

Ancient brooms that appeared to be in pristine condition. Tables and chairs of so many ages past. Piles of old potion ingredients that had long since gone off. Or worse, that had snuck free of their jars and begun to grow in the depths of the piles.

"It's fascinating," Hermione mumbled, inspecting a piece of equipment used by healers about three hundred years prior that like most in here, had been summarily dumped once its usefulness had vanished.

"I'm sure it is, but we've got a task to be finished," Moody grumbled.

Harry could feel Hermione's eye roll, even though he wasn't looking at her. He found it amusing as this little field trip had been her idea. And he doubted that, even with them having sent off a Patronus message indicating that they were fine and at Hogwarts, the Family would refrain from tracking them down for much longer.

They'd been gone for hours now.

"He's got a point, Hermione. We were here to find something specific." Harry noted but did not push the girl to finish up.

She sighed heavily before she stood and waved her wand over the spot, leaving a bright marker high above the pile. The third such one she had prepared.

"Fine. But we're coming back to check more of this out."

"You've been able to summon this room for months now. Are you telling me you never actually explored within after doing so?" Harry enquired as they once more began to follow Moody through the pathways.

The occasional ping from the man's wand was the only sound for a few moments. "We were always busy with other things. I figured I didn't have the time."

Harry smiled at her and vanished his wand, taking her hand in his own. While their present location and company weren't exactly what most would consider romantic, Harry found simply being in her presence was more than enough. And when she pouted at the loss of a chance to learn, Hermione was utterly adorable in his eyes.

"Stop that and focus." She whispered, tightening her grip on him in direct opposition to her statement.

"If you two are done," Moody said dryly. "We're close."

Harry glanced up and saw the man double-checking a massive troll towering above them. Harry could see the poorly hidden seams where it had obviously been taxidermied. He really hoped the creature had been dead at the time, but with magicals, you never could quite be sure of such things.

"This way." The man said, turning right and continuing as the ping became louder again.

Harry released Hermione's hand and summoned his wand back. The moment he had stepped past the troll, he felt it. The room had been so massive, and their target so deep within its maze, he had not been able to sense it until now.

But Moody was right. There was a shard of Riddle's soul nearby.

He sped up, quickly coming even with the professor, before ducking ahead of him at a light jog. His senses were sickeningly covered in the sensation and he wanted to find the cause so that, this time, he could end it for good.

"Down here," Harry said at the next intersection, pointing down the left path before rushing forward again only to be stopped a moment later by Hermione popping into place in front of him.

"Slow down. We'll find it and destroy it. But do not rush off alone. If what the others said is true, this thing could be extremely dangerous." She said, looking into his eyes.

He glanced past her as she turned and noticed a low but wide cabinet in front of him that appeared to have been attacked by acid. He took a few steps closer, but his senses were drawn, not to the cabinet itself, but to something else nearby.

Turning on the spot, he traced the ickiness of the feeling washing over him and paused as he came to stare at the pile opposite the cabinet. Sitting a few feet from the bottom was a tarnished tiara with a large blue gem in its centre. Looking for all the world as if it had been simply discarded with a flick of the hand as its former owner had wandered down this alleyway.

"Step back, kids," Moody said, joining them cautiously.

Harry stared at the item and began to notice some of the beauty of it. It was shaped like a bird, the central stone being the body with a head raised above and draped wings making the body of the decorative headpiece. And yet, to Harry, it could never truly be beautiful again. It had been befouled in the most atrocious manner.

"Riddle is a monster," Hermione whispered, staring at the item in disgust. "That's the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw. And he corrupted it."

Her anger was clearly evident in her voice. And Harry brushed his arm against her own in support.

"You were right. That's what the curse is tethered to. So..." Moody paused as if considering how to deal with it now.

Harry did not wait for him to puzzle it out. He raised his wand and swished it downwards through the air, a thick and powerful cutting curse passing through that air between them and the pile, striking the diadem dead on before rebounding backwards at them.

Hermione had a shield in place in the blink of an eye and the reflected spell clanged loudly against it.

"Guessing you've made up yer mind," Moody said, his wand up but surprise still evident in his eyes at the two spells that had been cast before he had noticed, given his focus had been on the cursed object before them. "One moment though. Are we sure havin' a second one won't help find the others?"

"Perhaps, but it doesn't matter," Hermione said firmly. "It is a shame, having to destroy such a wonderful artefact, but it has to go. We can't risk anyone else but us seeing it. They'd likely be too tempted to preserve the historical artefact."

"You don't want to keep it for yourself?" Harry asked, cheekily knowing her penchant for learning outstripped his own by some margin.

Hermione turned to face him and leaned in for a chaste kiss. "I need nothing in this life but you."

"Focus," Moody growled.

"Alright, but yes I'm sure," Harry replied, answering Moody's question more firmly. "Not only is it the tether for this curse, but it contains some of Riddle's soul. For either reason, it needs to be destroyed. It will never again hold its true magic. He has ruined it for all time." Harry growled, now angry at the monster once more. "Now how do we do this? I put a lot into that curse."

"Step away, and use that shield of yours again, girly," Moody said, backing over to the pile opposite and adjusting his pose.

Hermione shuffled back and conjured a powerful shield ready to deal with whatever spell Moody was about to bring to bear. Harry just watched the diadem, sitting there silently, resolute.

A cone of bright blue flame shot from Moody's wand and caught the diadem at its centre, washing over half the pile, and spreading outwards for several seconds before Moody ended the curse. Harry quickly used his own wand to contain the flames licking at the far side of the alleyway. Quickly suppressing them everywhere but around the impact point.

But as the nearby flames grew dark, all three of them could still see the diadem, now looking even shinier, as if the flames had cleaned it instead of damaged it.

"Bugger. This could be tricky."

"I have an idea," Harry said, flicking his wand at the junk under the diadem, dislodging it and causing it to fall to the stone floor of the walkway at their feet. "Conjure us some stone above it." He said to Moody, stepping around the object and pulling Hermione with him so that they now stood looking down the alleyway at Moody on the other side of the diadem.

"You think the same will work on this too?" Hermione asked.

"The snake was resistant to magic like this. Presumably, Riddle cast those protections on both. It was enough to end her." He said, though the very memory of what he'd had to do sickened him. "And I will feel no guilt over doing so here. But I reckon that it will take both of us to get this hot enough. Living flesh versus solid silver. You're not going to want to look at the stone once we're done." He finished, directing the final warning at Moody.

Moody nodded, swirling his wand in the air for a few seconds as stone began to coalesce out of nowhere, as though assembling from some unseen, microscopic gravel in the air itself. As it did, Harry and Hermione grasped their respective wands with both hands.

The pair began to gather all the magic in their bodies in preparation for their next act, even though it was not a spell in the traditional sense.

"If this doesn't work, run the other way, fast," Harry warned once more as Moody stopped moving his wand and simply held the now small boulder of conjured stone aloft, directly above the sinister artefact. Harry estimated it to be about two feet across as the professor nodded once, the man's eyes not leaving the diadem.

"Seriously, professor," Hermione said. "Look away."

Moody glanced up at them as the pair snapped their wands forward, channelling every ounce of energy now in their bodies into the stone.

For a moment, it remained a dull grey colour, before it quickly seemed to shimmer in place. A dull red glow began to emanate before it quickly shivered as the molecules within the stone became more and more energetic as a result of the power the two magicians were pouring into it. The air above the stone began to haze as it too was heated rapidly by the escaping thermal energy.

Without warning, the dull red burst into a bright glaring red before it moved upwards into orange and soon was glowing a yellowish white.

Harry had to turn away, but he continued to push energy into the conjuration. He could feel Hermione had ceased feeding the object and had instead cast a powerful tinted shield between them and the stone, lessening the light and heat that was searing their bodies even at this distance.

He could see the colour of the light searing across the pile of garbage pass from the blinding white into an even more powerful blue.

Had it not been for Hermione's shield, they'd have been at risk of catching alight themselves. Harry heard a splat as the now molten substance dropped as Moody lost control of his spell before Harry heard something underneath shaking. Walking even further away from the intense heat and light, Harry cast a second shield spell between the burning object and them and he finally felt a level of relief from the intensity of the molten mass.

"Ow." He said plainly to Hermione, both resolutely avoiding looking anywhere near the mass in the centre of the alleyway. Though, even the reflected light bouncing off the other dull and dusty gathered objects still hurt.

He conjured two pairs of thick sunglasses, handing one to Hermione and the pair placed them on, reducing the intensity of the light to the point where they weren't in pain, even with their eyes shut.

Harry could hear some of the nearby pile catching alight under the intense heat radiating off the pool of rapidly cooling matter dowsing everything nearby with intense levels of light and heat pouring off the molten stone.

"Do you think that will have done it?" Hermione asked as the light began to dim once more, the energy in the stone being impossible for the small object to retain for very long.

"I certainly bloody hope so. I don't want all of these things to be impossible to destroy. Even this is a somewhat unreasonable method."

Suddenly, there was a loud pop and Harry glanced back towards the mass, squinting even with the two dense shields and the glasses. He could see a space in the centre of the molten mass where something had built up a bubble within. The bubble had popped and now some of the molten material was splattered about, some of it sliding down their shields and he was very grateful they had been there. The liquid stone still looked extremely hot and would have done some serious damage to their flesh if it had hit them.

But most importantly, he did not see a solid outline blocking the material still on the stone floor. And the dirty feeling that he had felt since passing the stuffed troll diminished.

The diadem underneath had been destroyed by the intense heat. He sighed with relief and raised his wand again, conjuring a stream of water in the air above the mass and sending a geyser of steam into the air as it poured down over the site.

Hermione quickly joined him, casting hers over the right side of the pile, dowsing the many burning items now sloughing slowly down the angled mass as they lost integrity.

They were both relieved to see a third effort covering the left-hand pile, indicating that they had not incinerated their Defence professor by accident. The resultant heat and light the stone had given off were far more intense than Harry had expected, but he supposed that he and Hermione were both extremely powerful in their own right, and they had put a lot of energy into that tiny mass.

When at long last, the sound of boiling water finally stopped, Harry lowered his wand and waited as the water lapped at the edge of Hermione's shield. Trapped between the two ruined piles and the magical barrier.

"Professor?" He called over through the air that was no longer full of the sounds of rebelling natural forces, even if they weren't natural in origin.

"I'm alright, Potter." Moody's voice came from the now immense dark of the room. "Just stay where you both are for now. Once this steam clears, we can vanish this water."

Harry simply sighed in relief as Hermione conjured a new love seat, and the pair dropped heavily into it, snuggling tight together in their exhaustion after such immense effort. Soon, they would see whether it had all been worth it or not.

Though Harry was optimistic, given how much cleaner the air already felt.

ϟ

Alastor raised his wand, noting the clearly burnt skin on the back of his hand that would warrant a trip to see Poppy afterwards.

He cast the spell silently and watched as the air currents that he was conjuring began to push the mass of steam held between his own shield, and the one he knew the other two must have conjured, upwards and away into the depths of this fascinating room.

He was still trying to digest what the pair had done. He'd never felt anything that hot in his life, and he'd been near a few moronic dark wizards that thought they could control Fiendfyre in the middle of a battle.

Not one of them had needed to be taken into custody afterwards.

The oppressive heat in the air began to lessen as the steam cleared and Moody quickly checked over his other extremities. Noticing that his face felt particularly warm to the touch. How much energy had they pumped into that stone that he felt like he'd been sunbathing in the tropics for a week after only a minute or two of exposure?

The air around him finally cleared of steam and Alastor vanished his shield, allowing a rush of water to flow out from behind the barrier. A quick upward slice of his downwardly angled wand had the hot water part around him as Moody took a few steps closer.

He focused his magical eye on the pile of cooling slag sitting in the middle of the walkway. He could detect no magic within the remnants lying there, though he could see the occasional glint of melted silver amidst the still-cooling stone.

"You two alright back there?" He asked, still not able to see the pair as the other side of the walkway became too dark to see a few feet from the slag.

"Yes. Do you want us to vanish the water yet?" Granger asked.

"Suppose that we could." He replied, lifting his wand again to try before several loud snaps came from the darkness and the water almost entirely vanished.

Several items that had been at the waterline in the piles fell the rest of the way to the floor. Moody just shrugged as the darkness down the walkway vanished and he realized the pair had cast their shields to be opaque, obviously as protection from the heat and light that bloody thing had put out.

He smirked when he noticed that their skin was bright red, just like his own. But otherwise, the pair appeared to be fine.

Alastor focused his attention downwards and he cast the same spell he'd used several times that morning. Only this time, there was no response. The curse on the Defence position had been destroyed along with that bloody headpiece.

"Nicely done. That's one less thing ter worry about heading into the coming trouble."

"It worked?" Potter questioned.

"No more curse," Moody replied happily.

Potter closed his eyes and seemed to be trying to feel for something in the air. Eventually, he opened his eyes and smirked.

"Yep. The only soul shard left in this school is the one in that idiot's office." His voice darkened as he ended the sentence and Granger stepped closer, grasping the lad's hand.

"So, what now?" Moody asked the two. Ignoring the blatant dig at Albus. Even if the man had gotten his shit together, he'd still made many mistakes, even recently.

"Now we go home and face the music," Granger said oddly.

"You really do need to stop and explain sometimes," Potter said, prodding the girl with a smile.

"I know." She replied, blushing. "Thank you for your assistance, professor." She finished with a nod before the pair just vanished into thin air once again.

Moody could not stop a hearty chuckle from escaping after the pair. They were an absolute riot of fun. And had made this a year to remember. He pulled his flask from inside his jacket and guzzled the sweet cool liquid within. That too, brought a smile to his face.

People had been theorizing for years about what he kept inside of it. They would be surprised to learn that it was nothing more than water that he gathered himself. Just to be sure that there were no surprises snuck inside.

Couldn't be too careful when dealing with criminals, or the Weasley Twins. It had only taken two weeks for him to learn that they were a pair that needed careful watching. Not that he did anything to stop their antics, only to keep himself from ever being their target. Most of the time, they were quite amusing.

Alastor shook off the memories and looked around at the damage from their efforts. He certainly hoped that none of the other anchors were going to be this difficult to sort out. But as his eyes drifted over the piles of garbage, he found himself wondering how he might utilize this wonderful room for his classes next year.

It just might come in very handy.