Quirrell's trunk did not have a book on basilisks and how to kill them, to Hermione's disappointment. One thing it did have was a book on Herpo the Foul, who had created the first basilisk. It was one of the books that had been bound shut, which made Hermione pause.
Most of the books bound shut with belts were books that looked to be obviously jinxed. Hermione could guess that Curse Creation for your Enemies was particularly nasty, as probably was Undetectable Poisons and Potions. But a biography…
That seemed odd and out of place.
Hermione eventually decided to risk it, casting a couple detection charms on the tome, before mentally shrugging and removing it from the trunk. After completing all her homework (busywork or not) to her usual expectations and ability, Hermione settled into a nook in the Slytherin common room to read, a book sock camouflaging the cover.
Herpo the Foul, Hermione learned, was a particularly nasty fellow. Born in Ancient Greece, he was one of the first Dark Wizards ever, and he helped pioneer the field of the Dark Arts. It seemed an odd phrase to use, that he was a 'pioneer' of such an evil field with such terrible and lasting effects. 'Pioneering' a field usually held a positive connotation. It was like saying Joseph-Ignace Guillotin had been a pioneer in the art of killing people more efficiently.
Though, technically, he had been, Hermione supposed.
Herpo the Foul was born a Parselmouth, and he spent a lot of time speaking with snakes. He apparently discussed curse creation with them, and they offered opinions on what they thought would be most the painful and most evil. Particularly nasty curses he'd come up with included the Blasting Curse (which made anything it touched explode), the Disintigration Curse (which caused things to burst into millions of tiny pieces), the Entrail-Expelling Curse (which did exactly what it sounded like), and the Cruciatus Curse (one of the three Unforgivables, which caused excruciating pain in the victim).
As part of his constant experimentation and pushing the boundaries of Dark magic, Herpo managed to create the first basilisk, by hatching a chicken egg under a toad. The theory he'd been working off of was one of manipulating conflicting life-giving energies. Failed experiments before the basilisk had included a blind, legless dragon that could scream but not fly ('Wyrm'; a duck's egg under a snake; abandoned in Eastern Europe), a horrifying, spiked reptile creature that drank the blood of livestock and could reproduce on its own ('Chupacabra'; a dragon's egg under a chicken; disposed of in North America), and an enormous, subterranean winged snake with a venomous bite ('Kumcharangi'; a snake's egg under a toad; hidden in Australia). The basilisk was what he considered his only true success.
Herpo had managed to control the basilisk through his Parseltongue, which Hermione found to be rather lucky. He used the basilisk to guard his dark manor. When it was young, it Petrified all those who came to try to stop Herpo or take him in, and when it was older, its gaze killed them all.
Hermione imagined sort of a horrifying version of Medusa's garden, with a dark, forbidden fortress with statues scattered on the garden, only with the statues still somehow horrifyingly alive.
Through his cross-breeding and other creature experimentation, Herpo became interested in the nature of sapience and the soul. Some animals, he'd discovered, were intelligent, and he could tell in his cruel experiments on them. Others, however, were not. Herpo continued to do experiments on creatures, trying to classify where the line lay between the two. He eventually came to the conclusion that there were four types of 'energy' that could be possessed by things that were alive:
The first was 'life', which simply meant a thing was alive, grew, and could die. Examples he had listed in his notes included plants, trees, molds, and fire, which Hermione found rather interesting to include.
The second was 'spirit', which meant a thing had some form of will or self-preservation. Most animals fell in this category: insects, fish, small birds, and rodents.
The third was the 'soul', which meant a thing had a greater awareness of itself and its place in the world. Herpo listed humans, clearly, but also included snakes, large cats, wolves, and birds of prey.
The fourth was 'magical', which was what truly separated man from the beasts. If a being did not have magic, it was not human. Only wizards possessed the ability to magically exert their will upon the world, which defined their experience as people within the world.
It was like reading the most corrupt ethics paper ever. Hermione was horrified as she read, realizing Herpo would have classified muggles as 'non-human', but the reasoning, though twisted and obviously wrong, was fascinating to read, and she couldn't stop.
It was when talking with a Runespoor, a type of magical three-headed snake, that Herpo had learned something interesting.
On a Runespoor, each head had a different function: the left was the planner, the middle the dreamer, and the right head the critic. Oftentimes, the left and middle heads would band together to bite off the head of the right when the right's criticism became too much to bear. This left the Runespoor still alive, but incomplete. They tended not to live much longer afterwards.
After such an event, though…
The Runespoor would be alive, but left with only two-thirds of its soul.
Herpo was fascinated by this discovery, that a creature could split its soul into pieces. He experimented with Runespoors, trying to keep the third head alive immediately after being bitten off, to no avail. Frustrated, he turned back to the Dark Arts, where theories on the best way to split people open were prevalent, and immersed himself in theory and research for years, hiding all his notes and research from everyone.
When he emerged from his lair years later, he had created a process to split his soul. And in following the process he had laid out and through performing the corresponding ritual, he was able to split his soul in two and contain one part of it in an object: his lyre, which he used to help compose his Dark chants. This way, if he were killed, his soul would be incomplete and tethered to the earth, so his soul would linger and remain to seek out a new body. He would never truly die.
Herpo called the object a Horcrux.
And it was here Hermione paused.
This, Hermione felt, was why the book had been bound.
This was the most evil thing, and this was why Voldemort did not want her reading this book.
Her eyes scanned the next few paragraphs, her mind whirring. The biography did not detail what the ritual process he followed was, only mentioning that the creation of a Horcrux was considered the supreme act of evil and the worst of the Dark Arts. Very few books would even dare mention what a Horcrux was, and only one known book in existence, Secrets of the Darkest Art, had detailed information on the method and consequences of creating a Horcrux.
This. Surely this was what had kept Voldemort alive, after his body had been destroyed.
Voldemort had been vanquished, but his soul had lingered, being incomplete. He had sought out Quirrell to possess, and he had been after the Elixir of Life to help him gain a new body.
All the pieces fit.
She wondered if Dumbledore knew of such evil magic.
Hermione wouldn't be surprised.
Despite his Horcrux, Herpo had died, however. He had been slain in a duel over rights to a nundu. His guardian basilisk, confused at the loss of her master, had tried to seek him out. She had been drawn to the magic of him she felt that remained, his lyre, and curled up with it in her sleep. Her venom had dripped onto the lyre, her teeth sinking into the wood in her sleep, and the venom destroyed the Horcrux from the inside-out.
Hermione thought it oddly fitting.
With both parts of his soul unbound, the author theorized that Herpo could no longer remain on the mortal plane and had well and truly died, moving on to wherever the dead moved on to. The author continued, however, noting that there were recordings of people's interactions with the Horcrux over the years prior to Herpo's demise. Herpo had liked carrying it around, showing off his evil accomplishment to unknowing witnesses.
There were stories of the lyre being left in public, in alleyways, and someone hearing the lyre begin to play. The listener would be drawn to the lyre, despite no obvious magic allowing it to perform, and would be trapped in a trance state until Herpo found them. Herpo enjoyed seeing people under his power and control and reveled in it, though he let most of them go, only capturing 'a few' of the poor listeners to try out new curses on.
And that…
That sounded awfully familiar.
An evil object, containing the personality of the person who created it, with the ability to manipulate the people around it?
She daresay she knew one of those.