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Chapter Forty-Eight—Obsessive Decisions

"Tarquinius, I need you."

Tarquinius despises the way that his body immediately and obediently jerks into motion, standing up from the chair in front of the fire he's been occupying for the last hour and walking across the room to Lyassa. But at least there is part of him that can feel that way, now. He lets the idiotic smile take over his face. "Yes?"

"There's a book in your library that Harry needs, and this letter says that only you can retrieve it from the bookshelf for him."

"What book, my love?" Tarquinius asks even as his spine jerks straight.

"The Book of Gathered Stones."

Tarquinius screams in his mind. That book is sacred. It is not to be touched! How did Potter learn—how did—

The answer comes to him like a tide washing sand ashore.

Theodore. Of course. My dearest son told his dearest friend of the book, and now Potter wants to look at it.

It only calms Tarquinius a little to know that Potter won't be able to actually use the book. He would need the blood and flesh of a Nott for that, and he is too much of a sentimentalist to skin Theodore and wear that skin over his hands as gloves. It's the only thing that keeps Tarquinius sane as he nods happily, stupidly, like a puppet, and goes to fetch the book from the shelves.

He takes it down, caressing the cover. That's not something Lyassa ordered him to do, but it's also not something she said he could not do, so he thinks the motion ought to pass muster. He turns and holds it out to her with a jerk.

The cover is a swirling blue-grey, the color of a pond under a spring sky. The title stands out in hard raised letters.

He will not be able to see what is inside it. He will not be able to touch it.

"Tarquinius?"

His body turns around and walks back to Lyassa, holding out the book. She doesn't attempt to touch it, which says that she knows better from Potter's owl. She considers it for a long moment, then nods. "Go to the Owlery and send it to Harry."

"Yes, my love." Tarquinius doesn't try to stop his mouth from forming the words. He has more important battles to fight, and he is turning inwards to fight them even as he trudges up the stairs to the Owlery.

He doesn't try to keep himself from fastening the book to the leg of Albion, the largest eagle-owl he has, either. But he does pause, and hold the pause until his strength runs out and he has to go back to binding the book with twine.

The pause does what he wants it to do, however. He can resist. He can pull himself subtly from under the blanket of Lyassa's control, and she never notices.

He only need be patient now, Tarquinius repeats to himself as he watches Albion wing away, casting a shadow that darkens the tower as it flickers across.

I shall have my revenge.

"Expecto Patronum!"

Pansy holds her breath as she watches the silver mist form into a delicate creature. She never thought she would have what appears to be an antelope for a Patronus.

Then again, she never thought she would be able to cast the charm at all.

Pansy knows she's a weak witch, weak in moral character and courage and knowledge and magic—all the things that are supposed to make someone strong in Slytherin. She never thought it would matter that much, though. She had her family's reputation to protect her, and their wealth. And she didn't have any ambitions that would require more than that. She believed she'd get through Hogwarts following the strong, mostly Draco Malfoy, and pandering to them, and later on she would be able to get a good enough job.

All she's ever wanted is to be "good enough."

But instead, she somehow ended up following Harry Potter, and he didn't listen when she told him she wasn't strong enough to cast some of the spells the study group was learning. He just taught her the Patronus along with everything else.

The silvery antelope prances towards her and lowers its head to nuzzle her palm. Pansy gives a shaky smile.

It's beautiful, something she knows she's not, either. But she wants to see if it can be strong.

She closes her eyes and calls on the flames of the Potter Gift. That was one thing she did learn faster than some of the others. Potter gave her a long look when she managed to demonstrate it.

"You'll do well against some of our enemies, then," he said.

Pansy doesn't know if she liked the reference to our enemies, as if she would be fighting at Potter's side on the battlefield instead of just using him for protection. But she was proud to succeed with the flames.

Now she breathes out the flames over the antelope, and watches breathlessly to see if it will change like Potter's stag Patronus.

Her antelope tosses its horns and shudders. For an instant, it grows thicker in the shoulders, and a little taller, but that seems to be all. Pansy swallows disappointment. It's not going to be as ferocious as some of the other Patronuses, then, not even—

Then her antelope turns and looks at her, and Pansy almost drops her wand.

It looks wicked. It has red eyes, the way Potter's stag did after its transformation, and it lowers its head in a long sweep as though carving something invisible with its horns, and then it turns and leaps into the air.

Pansy tilts her head back to watch it soaring, straight up and up. Her breath is coming quickly. She thinks it looks unnatural, as if it's perched on an invisible broom, but that's a good thing. Other conversations in the Room of Requirement are stopping as people turn around to stare at her.

Pansy can feel her cheeks warming up, but if she gets noticed for something powerful for once, that's all to the good.

The antelope crashes to the floor abruptly, landing on top of one of the human-shaped targets that Potter attached to the far wall. It tramples and rips the thing apart, striking out with its hooves and horns so aggressively that some of the other students are backing away. Pansy claps her hands.

Her antelope turns and trots over to her when it finishes the target. It rests its muzzle in her hand for a long moment, and Pansy can feel the touch of insubstantial but sharp teeth.

"Well done, Parkinson."

Pansy starts. She didn't realize how much concentration was essential to the creation of a Patronus; the minute she looks away from the antelope and towards Potter, the antelope dissolves. But Potter saw it, obviously, from the narrowness of his smile. He has his own wicked-sharp stag at his shoulder, tossing its antlers, eyes fixed on the place where Pansy's antelope was until a moment ago.

"I really did manage it," Pansy says, not wanting him to think she didn't. Or maybe she wants him to confirm it.

"Yes, you did. The first one to manage a full-fledged battle Patronus." Potter looks around at some of the others and snorts a little. "Well, what are you all standing around gaping for? Don't you have better things to do than that?"

People spin to face their practice partners again, and Pansy smiles as she sees more than one bright red face. If they think it's strange that weak little Pansy Parkinson managed it first, then they aren't saying so.

"Well done, Parkinson," Potter repeats, and then walks away to help Luna Lovegood with something. Whatever she's doing, it looks like chains of silver light in the air, not a Patronus.

Pansy wraps her arms around herself. She can't stop smiling.

It feels good.

Harry learned a fairly simple charm to keep the blood that Theo spilled for him fresh, and now Theo doesn't need to do anymore. He still gave Harry a long, thoughtful glance before leaving him alone with The Book of Gathered Stones.

Harry wonders if it's because of lost memories or because Theo is feeling a conflict between his old loyalties and his newer ones. But if so, it would be the first time.

"You will find out things about our enemies in that book?"

Harry tilts the book a little so Lion can see it better, mindful of the fact that even though they're alone in his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, the leopard might be listening from any shadow. "More about how to get rid of the Horcrux in me."

"Do you think you will stop being a Parselmouth if you get rid of the Horcrux?"

Harry grimaces. It's something he's thought of. "Maybe. I don't know."

"I do not want you to stop being a Parselmouth."

"No, neither do I," Harry says absently, as he flicks past another page and waves his wand to dry the smear of Theo's blood on the new page. "But there may be some other solution in here."

Lion curls close to Harry's neck and peers down at the printed pages of the book, although he doesn't have a hope of understanding them. To be fair, Harry doesn't feel much different, at least not when it comes to this particular tome.

It's full of frankly disgusting rituals and ideas. The idea to cover your hands with a Nott's skin or blood to turn the pages is tame compared to them. Harry flinches a little as he flips past the illustration of a screaming skull pinned to a wall, animated by the captured spirit of its original owner. The book suggests it's a fitting revenge for your enemies.

Harry can't imagine anyone he would want to do that to, not even Voldemort. Not even Pettigrew.

He finally finds the reference to a living Horcrux, or what Theo thought might be one, near the middle of the book, and painstakingly copies it down. The paragraph is rambling and full of hints about necromancy and the like, but when Harry finally leans back and reads it, he can feel a hint of hope quickening his heart.

To place more than one soul in a living body, first secure the soul that animates it. It may not fly, or you will not have the protection that it conveys and will be left trying to fasten your own soul to a corpse.

Harry wonders idly how Voldemort managed to avoid losing Harry's soul when he attacked. Then he swallows as he remembers the protection on his hands that made Quirrell's skin crisp and blister in his first year.

Maybe it was his mother who made that particular preparation, not Voldemort himself.

Harry shivers and looks down to continue reading.

You must then cast the spell that will make the body's first soul a protector of your own, rather than a destroyer of it. You must hold your shard inviolate.

Harry narrows his eyes, wondering if the fact that he can speak Parseltongue means that Voldemort's soul-shard has blended with his soul instead of staying separate. It's a disgusting thought.

But he doesn't really know that's the case, so he just draws a little mark by the sentence and keeps reading.

You must ensure that your soul-shard does not enter the first soul. Otherwise, you will have a competitor for immortality.

And that's it. That's all. The paragraph ends there.

It's still enough to make Harry sit and stare at the page for a long time, with his stomach trying to crawl up into his throat. He manages to swallow it back down before he chokes or gets sick, and begins to scribble on the bottom of the page, hardly listening to his own thoughts, just letting them flow out his quill instead.

Is this talking about something like what happened with the diary? That it started to possess people and tried to create a new Tom Riddle who would have competed with the original Voldemort? But the diary wasn't a living container, and the shard inside me hasn't managed to possess me.

What does it mean when it says a competitor for immortality? I already knew the Horcuxes were keeping him immortal.

Why is it so bad to let the soul shard blend together with the original soul? Would that mean—

Harry falls still, so still that Lion stirs on his shoulder and hisses a sleepy question. Harry takes a deep breath and shakes his head, reaching up with one hand to stroke Lion. "You can go back to sleep," he murmurs.

He waits until Lion does before he writes down what sounds like the inevitable conclusion, even though Lion can't read.

Does it mean that a living Horcrux would become immortal, or does it mean that the soul shard dies when the living container dies?

Harry closes his eyes. It's a bloody good question, and one that he has no idea how to answer.

Ron has been aware that a thought, a theory, is building in the back of his mind. But he's been ignoring it. In his experience, whenever he reacts too eagerly to it, it bounds away.

It reminds him of the way that he learned to play chess, frowning at Bill across a board filled with incomprehensible pieces. Bill smiled at him then and taught him the names of the pieces, probably thinking he would get bored.

Ron didn't get bored. He learned how to hunt down the pieces, to see the strategies that could let him win chess unfolding invisibly across the board, and Bill was first astonished and then impressed.

But Ron couldn't see those strategies forming right away, and he can't force the idea in the back of his head to reveal itself now. So he goes through classes and practice sessions with the study group and doing homework and playing chess games in the common room while it builds and grows like boiling water in a kettle.

It comes to him, fully-grown, when he's watching Harry drill with Blaise on a particular spell that's supposed to set up a shield of flames between you and the enemy. It's hard to do, has a long incantation, and is pretty violent. Harry is the only one who's mastered it, but Blaise isn't far behind.

"Why are you trying so hard to learn that one specific spell?" Pansy Parkinson asks when Harry and Blaise take a rest. Blaise is pouring conjured water into a glass and gulping it. Harry just leans against a wall and looks tired but also impossibly alert.

If he weren't already my best friend, Ron thinks, I'd think he was too cool to approach. Kind of like other people see Bill and Charlie.

Harry smiles at Parkinson. He doesn't look unpleasant, just sharp, the way he always has been since Theo got cursed. "It can protect you," he says, "but it can also cage an enemy. Just about any enemy, even one who knows a lot of high-level magic. It's a good idea to keep them in place, that." He swings his wand between his fingers thoughtfully.

"I want to try."

Ron looks a little askance at Malfoy, who he has trouble trusting, even now that he and Harry seem to have made up.

"Do you?"

Harry is coiled like a real snake, not just a Slytherin, and Malfoy blushes a pale pink, but he stands up with his head lifted high. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do."

Harry studies him, and then he smiles. It's not a nice smile, but he lifts his wand and makes a slow and obvious motion. "All right. This is the beginning wand movement. Then you have to follow it with the incantation—"

"I can speak that at least, Harry, I just watched you and Blaise doing it a dozen times."

"All right…"

Ron watches Harry lead Malfoy through the steps to cast the spell, and he knows. He doesn't know why he knows, or why it feels like a shower of cold water all over him—surely Harry knows what he's doing?—but he knows.

Harry is planning to use the flames to trap someone. Something. It can't just be an ordinary enemy, or there would be no reason for him to be practicing that spell, over and over again. Even now, he's almost left Malfoy behind to practice on his own, and his eyes are fastened to the wall of flame in front of him, which is leaping higher and higher.

Malfoy says something, and Harry starts and turns back to help him. His own flames turn a sharp black-red color at the tips, and then collapse and die.

But Ron knows. He's sure that Harry is going to try and face Voldemort, and—

Well, Harry has told them about a few of his dreams, but those dreams didn't turn out to be real. There were no burning magical villages or real attacks. Voldemort was just sending those dreams to torment Harry.

Which means he wants to trap Voldemort for something else, some reason that's more important than just hunting him down and killing him off to improve the world in general.

What's driving him now except his attempts to cure Theo?

Why would he bring Voldemort into this when Voldemort would never cure Theo, and no one except the caster of the curse can brew the potion anyway that—

Unless there's a way to make Voldemort cure Theo that's different than that. Something he wouldn't have any choice in.

Like a sacrifice.

Ron begins to shiver, and he can't stop.