I own nothing from this story
AN: Welcome to the second chapter! I've made some minor changes to the first one, I hope they were for the best. I also added a few warnings about some content this story may have. They're on the AN from the first chapter, you should take a look at them.
Enjoy!
Chapter 2. The abandoned house
My walk to the church the following day was a bumpy ride. I always started preparing myself to say my story, which wasn't a nice one. I thought about how I was going to show how powerful I was without causing them to try and fight me back because of fear or whatever. Then, came the matter of how I was going to convince them that I wasn't a Horcrux anymore before they tried to find it by themselves. That led me to remember Greengrass' reaction to the news. It gave me hope, but then, everytime, I ended up thinking of Daphne.
It was always this cycle, over and over again, and it was turning me mad.
Yes, she was beautiful, and yes, she seemed to be quite powerful, although I'd have to test that myself if everything went how it was supposed to. But that was all of it. So why did I have this fixation with her? I've been with powerful witches during this year, and I've been with even more beautiful ones, too. Although not a single one of them had the two qualities at the same time, to be fair. 'She was your first crush'. There it was, again. That annoying little voice inside of my head, so sickenly sounding like Sirius'.
But, what could have I done? A mistreated boy, who's never had any friends, finds, while looking alone for a compartment in a train to a magical school, this beautiful little girl with long, blonde hair and blue eyes, sitting by herself in a compartment. Crush. Obviously, he ran the hell out of there. Later that day, that boy discovers her name, at the same time she is sorted into the house he had just decided he didn't want to go because it was full of bad wizards. But that only made that name to be even more engraved on that eleven year old's simple mind. Even when he was 25, he'd been in jail for eight years, on the run for a little more than a year, with part of the soul of a crazy man in his body during all of his shitty life… It didn't matter. That name was still there.
This train of thought came to an end when the aforementioned woman came to my view. They were already here today. 'How things have changed, huh?' I chuckled to myself.
-"Hello, Davis, Greengrass. It's good to see you again." - It really was. I'd lie if I said I was sure they would come today.
-"I wish I could say the same, Potter." - Ouch. Frosty as always. - "I really hoped someone would have told us they didn't believe us, or that we were crazy, when we told our little encounter from yesterday. But, as it seems, when life is hell people become less impressionable." - Greengrass finished.
-"Believe me, you won't say that when I'm finished." - I said.
-"We're going to take you with us, but our people won't be recognizable. They'll be wearing enchanted masks, so their voices are altered and you can't see their faces. They'll be seated, so you can't see their height. And you'll give us your wand, of course." - Said Davis. I gave it to her without complaining, after I had nodded at everything she had said. They still didn't know I could take it back whenever I wanted, after all. Wandless magic was very uncommon, and it was even more limited. You could only perform simple spells with it, that being with my very high amount of power, but Accio was one of those spells. They wouldn't be expecting it, if needed. - "Only when you're finished, if your story convinces the majority of us, you'll be let in our group." - I nodded again at that.
-"But, if you're full of bullshit, if you are making us lose this much time, or if you try anything suspicious, believe me, you'll regret it." - Threatened Greengrass. I should be used to it by now.
-"I know, I know. That won't happen. Are we going or not?" - I wanted this to go as fast as possible. The less time they had to think about it, the better.
Reluctantly, Greengrass extended her arm, so I could take her hand. It was soft and warm, totally opposite to the look she was giving me. But I didn't have much time to think about it, because she took Davis' hand and apparated us immediately. Once there, she dropped my hand as if it burned her, and both of them went to sit in their respective seats.
I took my time watching my surroundings. I was in an abandoned house, you could say it because the sitting room we were in was completely destroyed, save for the chairs. There were seven people forming a circle and I was at the center of it. That way I was really exposed, with the two exits from the room blocked by two more people standing. These two had to be disillusioned or under an invisibility cloak, because I couldn't see them. I only felt their magical auras. I'd have to let that out at some time. The rest, the five ones seated, were masked, as Davis had said. They were wearing wolf masks. 'A pack of wolves surrounding their prey?' I felt the anti-apparition ward the next. 'Yep.'
-"Interesting…" - I murmured. They had really prepared for this. - "First of all, thank you, for letting me speak in front of all of you. Let me introduce myself. As all of you may already know, I'm Harry Potter, your ex-classmate, probably. As you can see, I'm not a delusional monster who's become another Dark Lord like some people have tried to make the Wizarding World believe."
-"We're still not really sure about that, are we?" - said one of the wolves.
-"You could say that, so I hope to change that opinion."
-"Did you kill Bellatrix Lestrange?" - asked another one. Straight to the point, it seemed.
-"Yes. You could say I was rightfully imprisoned, back in that time. If it weren't for the hypocrite bastard who imprisoned me… But, yes, I used the Avada Kedavra curse on her in that battle. She had just killed my godfather, Sirius Black, and I had part of the soul of our esteemed actual Minister inside of me, so I didn't think twice about it."
-"Sirius Black, the murderer traitor of your parents, was your godfather, for whom you used an Unforgivable? Are you expecting us to believe that?" - came from behind me.
-"Actually, he didn't do any of that. He wasn't the secret keeper. It was another of their "friends", Peter Pettigrew, who had that honor. He didn't even die by Sirius' hand, he cut himself a finger and transformed into a rat. He was an unregistered animagus. Sirius didn't have a trial, he was directly imprisoned. Does that sound familiar to any of you?" - I asked, ironically.
-"We could confirm if it's true he didn't have a trial. But I don't mind that right now. You said "I HAD part of the soul of our Minister". How can we trust this is in fact true?" - said the one directly in front of me.
-"First. I hope any of you can remember how my scar looked back in my Hogwarts days. You can see the difference between then and now, it has almost fainted completely. You can confirm I'm not wearing any glamour charms if you want." - I said. It was Greengrass who took out her wand. She just nodded to the group when she finished. "Also, I have this." - And I took out what looked like a simple pen. - "May I give this to someone for a moment? I know this looks just like a muggle pen, but trust me. When you take this, you'll feel it." - I passed it to the one who had asked about the Horcrux, because he got up.
-"What the hell…? What's this?" - He almost threw it to the floor. The rest started to mutter with the ones at their side.
-"That…is a Horcrux. In fact, that Horcrux contains the part of our Minister's soul that was inside of me." - The murmurs intensified.
-"That's supposed to be impossible." - Said Greengrass. - "Explain how you got rid of it "without destroying the vessel", now."
-"I don't exactly know." - I said. She was preparing to argue, but I cut her off. - "But I have a theory. I hope you're prepared for a long story." - 'Here it begins…'
-"We have to fall back to the day I was incarcerated. I was angry. Very angry. I had just been betrayed by the man who was supposed to be my Guardian and by the only friends I've had. They didn't do anything to stop it. They just obeyed what Dumbledore said. Our Minister had broken into Azkaban previously, so Dumbledore sent me to Nurmengard, just like he did with Grindelwald. He knew I was a Horcrux, and he thought I had been consumed by His soul, so he was trying to keep me safe while he tried to end the war by himself. Then, he would come and kill me when the time was right."
-"But he died mysteriously." - Davis interrupted.
-"He died because he was a fool. But I'll tell you that story some other time, if you want. As you may remember, I was very affected by the presence of Dementors." - I heard a light chuckle from one of the doors, but I gave it no mind for now. The rest tried to make as it had not happened, but I caught Greengrass', although very brief, naughty glance in that direction. - "That was because of the Horcrux. I didn't realize it back then, but I didn't see my worst memories when I fainted. I saw what the Horcrux showed me."
-"Explain that" - another interruption. This, from someone masked to my left.
-"Look, when you are near a Dementor, what do you feel?" - I asked, looking in that direction.
-"Depression." - Was all he said.
-"Okay. When you faint, you see your worst memories, like it's the worst nightmare possible, over and over again. If you have a lot of bad memories, you see all of them while the effects last. It's like a spiral, taking you farther and further down to madness. Are you following me?" - I asked. It was important they understood this part. A general nod was all I got. - "In my case, it wasn't like that. I know, mainly in Slytherin, there were a lot of people who thought I was a pampered prince. In reality, I was a boy who was abused all of his childhood by his muggle, magic-hating relatives. Believe me when I say I had a lot of bad memories from that time. But when I fainted in the train in our third year, or in the quidditch game, I only saw one memory. The one where the Minister kills my parents and then tries to kill me. As I said, I didn't think much of it back then. I was told that was a really bad memory, so it was normal.
But, and now we're back in Nurmengard, what do you think happened to me, a person who a simple Dementor took to put him in that state, when put in a place full of them, 24 hours a day? Well, I saw that memory, but then I saw the one in the graveyard, when Cedric Diggory died in our fourth year, and then I saw the one from my first year, when Professor Quirrell died. Then, back again to the first one. When I came to THE conclusion… I didn't even know how many days I had been unconscious, but I woke up." - I paused, both to pick some air and to give it some suspense.
-"Tell it already." - Greengrass almost shouted, and I chuckled.
-"I didn't see those memories from my perspective, but from His. It seems simple, but it wasn't. I was present in all of the memories, so they could have been perfectly mine, they were all very traumatic, and I was in such a state I don't even know how I could think, because of the Dementors. But I did it. I was overjoyed. It was such an excitement I wasn't even aware I was awake. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I had been unconscious for days. Thoughts about what other things could I see from his mind came soon. It didn't even cross my mind that maybe it couldn't be done. In my fifth year he had been sending images to my mind about the Department of Mysteries, so it had to be possible to see other things appart from "bad memories", and, somehow, the Dementors accentuated this connection we shared via the Horcrux.
However, my joy didn't last much. As much as I tried to do it, I couldn't pick what memories to see, they were always the same. But I had hope. This "mission" gave me a motive to keep conscious, to not lose my mind, to keep trying. It was probably my only chance at surviving at this place. With the passing months came new memories. I still couldn't choose them, but they were different. Memories from Him alone, memories where I wasn't even born, memories from Tom Riddle, not from the Dark Lord."
-"Tom Riddle?" - asked someone.
-"Tom Marvolo Riddle. That's His name. His Halfblood, pre-Dark Lord name. When you give me back my wand, I can show you something that will prove it." - As the murmurs became voices I had to shout to gain back control. - "Listen! Yes, he's a Halfblood, but you can't let that misguide you. That's not the point of this, it's irrelevant. What was really important was one of the memories that came to me, where Tom was studying Occlumency. He was frustrated, to say something. He didn't catch it properly."
-"That's not a bad memory. Why did you see it?" - interrupted Davis again, but I smiled lightly. They were paying attention.
-"Well, you could ask what happened in that memory to the ones that interrupted his meditation exercises, but I don't think they'd be able to get up, at all. Even if they resurrected. You need your legs attached to your body to do that." - That silenced her. - "It was from that memory that I understood what I lacked in my lessons about Occlumency: meditation." - Memories of Snape telling me: "Clear your mind" came to me. He wasn't exactly wrong. Life was a little, playful bitch sometimes. However, what dear Snape didn't tell me in our lovely sessions was that meditation was a key factor for beginners. You were supposed to meditate and relax yourself right before you were tested, not in your bed, at night, after you'd been mind raped.
It was the basics of Occlumency. You had to be able to calm yourself and your emotions, to be able to control them and your thoughts. You had to be one with all of yourself: mind, body and magic. That was what Tom was trying to do in the memory. He was relaxing, calming himself, in order to access his inner him, if that made any sense, to clear his mind. I didn't know if that memory came to me because of the fact that, in a way, Snape was right, and that was a torture in itself, or it was because of the poor blokes that entered the room Tom was in and interrupted him. Meh. I'd never know, I guessed.
-"With that new bit of information, I started my only possible hobby in jail, a job that took me almost eight years to complete, the one that has given me all the knowledge I have now about our dear Minister. Occlumency made me able to select the memories I wanted. With the Dementors helping me to "connect" with the Horcrux plus Occlumency, bad memories weren't a restriction anymore." - I finished.
-"That means…" - tried to say Greengrass.
-"That means I know every bit of magic the Dark Lord knows, every dirty little secret he has. It means I know where all of his five remaining Horcruxes are, and the protections they have. It means…" - I couldn't be sure because of the masks, but, at that moment, I'd swear on my magic that they were all with their mouths open, just like Greengrass and Davis were. - "...I know how they work and what they had planned up until last week, when I removed the Horcrux in me."
-"You're yet to explain how you removed that." - Greengrass remembered, being the first to come out of her shock.
"True. With all I know about Horcruxes now, I know I wasn't intended to be a vessel. He wanted to make a Horcrux with my death, true, so the preparations to split the soul were done, but not the ones with the vessel. That needs to be done after the murder. So when the spell rebounded and "killed" him, his soul split and latched to me, the only other living thing there. You could say I was partly a Horcrux, not a completed one. That's why I remained myself with that thing inside of me, why He couldn't control me. So I thought: "What if I make a Horcrux myself? Maybe I could split that part of his soul, given it's not completely latched to mine". And there you have it." - I pointed out the pen the person I had given it to still had.
-"And you're sure it worked?" - again, Greengrass asked.
-"I can't enter his mind anymore, so I presume it worked. But, there's only one way to find out definitively." - I left it there. It was their decision what to do with it now.
-"Why didn't He kill you? I mean, you could enter His mind, so He could enter yours too, couldn't He? If He knew you were gaining His knowledge…" - Davis said.
-"There are two things that kept Him from doing so. First: He's the most arrogant bastard that has ever lived. Yes, I was gaining his knowledge and He knew it, but He, to this day, still thinks He'll beat me in the end. Because of that arrogance, He didn't even enter my mind as much as He should have. Second: I wasn't worth it. Although He now rules magical Britain, as things stand right now, He can't leave the island freely. He's yet to gain power in Europe to do that. It's the only good thing Dumbledore has ever done for me. Besides, I was keeping Him alive, so why rush things?" - He was in for a surprise, though, I thought.
-"When you say you have His knowledge in magic… You mean, like, all of it?" - Someone from his right said.
-"I mean that. It means I could take my wand back right now…" - some of them got up and took a defensive position, with Greengrass going next to Davis, who had the aforementioned wand. - "...if I wanted to. But I haven't done it, have I? - It was a tense moment, I knew this was going to be the worst of the reunion. I continued nonetheless, they had to know everything. - "It means, I know there are nine people here, not seven as you want me to believe. It means, I could still beat almost everyone here without my wand." - My eyes went to Greengrass saying this. I think she understood that "almost" was just because of her, because her eyes, expressive as they were, opened a little bit more. - "But, again, I haven't done it." - I finished, finally, everything I had to say.
There was a long, tense silence, with everyone probably deciding if they believed what I had said or not, or if it was worth it finding it out. I was confident, though. Well, I tried to seem confident to them. The anti-apparition ward was a big problem without my wand, but I still had my chances. In the end, I think I managed it, because nobody tried anything.
-"If you're oh so powerful, why on earth do you want to work with us?" - Came a voice from one of the doors, breaking the tense atmosphere. It was the same one who had chuckled with the Dementors thing. I had to admit it, I didn't expect that voice here, as it wasn't altered, but it explained a lot of things.
-"Because, Malfoy, as powerful as I am, I admit I'm shit at planning, and I know what this group is capable of. So that's what I offer: my wand and my knowledge. In exchange, you plan and organize everything. With you, I promise we can end that bastard. Forever." - There was a long pause, where everyone looked at each other. After a few seconds, all looks went in one direction.
-"I have to be crazy, but I accept you, Potter. However, there's something that needs to be done first." - Said the one with the Horcrux, who got up. He had to be the leader. - "You said you aren't 100% sure if the Horcrux in you is gone. How could you find out if it actually is? I can't risk telling you who all of us are if there's the possibility He is looking."
-"We'd have to destroy it. If part of his soul is still inside of me, I'll feel it."
-"Is it wise to destroy it, then? If you'd know, He'd know too, wouldn't He? He could change the protections set on the rest, or the place where they are." - It surprised me he thought of that immediately. I chose the right people.
-"He'd know, but He won't change anything. They are already together, in the most protected place in Britain right now." - I got some audible sighs. - "Yes, they're in Hogwarts, so, at some point, we'll have to enter there. And no, I wouldn't destroy it now. It might be useful to get to where the other ones are." - If what I thought worked, He was definitely in for a big surprise.
-"So, we keep having the same problem. Is it secure to be around you, or will we be on the "Most Wanted" lists tomorrow?"
-"I'm sure if I can't see anything from Him, He can't see anything from me either. I could give an Unbreakable Vow on that if you wanted." - I needed them, so, as they say, desperate times call…
-"Tracey, take his hand." - Was all he said. And she did, even though she seemed quite reluctant.
-"Will you, Harry Potter, answer the whole truth to the next question I ask you?" - as he said it, two flames came out of his wand, doing circles around Davis' arm and mine.
-"I will." - I answered, and both flames latched onto us. This, apart from the obvious, was a full trust test. Unbreakable Vows of this type were very tricky. If he didn't ask the question clearly, it would be impossible to answer it with "the whole truth". I was basically putting my life in his next few words. He could also make a question completely out of context, whatever he wanted, and I'd be obliged to answer it truthfully. I could still choose to answer nonetheless, but our collaboration would be broken forever.
He knew all of this, and he didn't even hesitate to do it. For my part, I didn't know why, but I trusted this man.
-"Have you been able to look into the Dark Lord's mind since you made this Horcrux?" - He asked. Again, I was glad I chose the right people. I could feel the tension coming from everyone else in the destroyed room.
-"No, I haven't." - I answered, looking directly into his eyes. They were all silent for over a minute, waiting for something to happen. It didn't.
-"Well, it'll have to suffice for the moment. Welcome to our group, Harry Potter." - said Blaise Zabini, as he took off his mask.
AN: I'm sure you've noticed. Harry never mentions "Voldemort", and it's completely intentional. I think the taboo is a very Voldemort thing to do, so I kept it for my story.
Finally we discover what happened to Harry during his imprisonment. The Horcrux is the reason for his newfound knowledge, but also for his change in personality. He's been eight years in the mind of Tom Riddle, via the Horcrux, so he has ended being a little bit like him.
"I didn't see those memories from my perspective, but from His." Here, I'm taking advantage of one of the most famous errors from the movies. The memory of his mother's death is always seen in 3rd person, so...why not?
For the next chapter Harry gets to meet the whole group properly, but it will be specially focused on one person in particular. Any guesses?
'Till next week! (I hope)