Prompt: Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter 13: The Tell-Tale Soul
I know what you're thinking. I've gone mad. That using things made by the dark arts is just as bad as using the dark arts. You're wrong. Do you know how magic came to exist in the first place? No one does. Do you think for a second that something as powerful as the magic we weld came about by happy circumstance? If you search yourself, you can't say it's not okay to use something if you don't know how it came to be. The meal you had last night, do you know where it all came from? Was something killed to give you sustenance? We do this our entire lives. Give and take. We balance the weight of everything and decide what produces the most good with the least evil. Starvation or food. Risk or safety. Where you draw the line today might change tomorrow. My tomorrow is today. The weights on my balance are different from yours.
You think the horcrux made this choice for me. You're wrong. It has no power over me unless I allow it. I weighed this decision and chose this path. Granted, I didn't know it was a horcrux until this very moment. The darkness was always there. Offering me a choice. I always refused. Until I didn't. I don't mean to say I grasped the situation in my youth. Something in me would tell me the injustice of life at the Dursley's deserved retribution. I never agreed. I didn't want to be as miserable as them. I do think that was the horcrux, testing my resolve. Now, you and I both know I've allowed the horcrux in before. The visions from Voldemort. We know where those came from.
Hermione knew. Even when she didn't she still knew. Her insistence that I not allow the connection to his mind to continue, that says something. She didn't know it was a horcrux until last summer. She couldn't know that opening that door would invite the horcrux in. Until she did. So you'd say she didn't want that for me and so she wouldn't approve of doing it for her. Well, you got me there.
I can put it back to how it was. I have tested it. It doesn't exert power until I allow it. That's the point of dark magic though. One doesn't stumble upon such power. One enters into the notion willingly or it has no power. I used to think it wasn't right that a person could weld the killing curse over and over on something they barely knew while the only defense could be the sacrifice of unconditional love. That cost of the two appears wholly unbalanced. Until you take into account that the killing curse can only be used if you mean to use it. Really use it. That does its own damage. On the other hand, did my mother know a spell or a ritual to protect me? No. That's the difference. Good doesn't need to know what to do, it just needs to do and the universe understands the what.
That's the extreme scenario. I can't trust that the universe will get this one right. Choosing good doesn't mean the ones you love will be protected. In my experience, just the opposite. Even now, I know Ron has lost his mother and a brother. Remus lost his wife, Teddy lost his mother. Those losses are on me. If they never forgive me, I'll understand. I'll never forgive me. They didn't have to fight. Maybe I should have snuck out in the night.
They're running into the manor. For me? For Hermione? Or for the war to end? I think we all know everyone fighting today will end up dead if we don't win this. So why am I willing to hand over the one weapon we have to ending it all for good? For Hermione. If we win and I lose her, that's defeat. This will be a temporary set back. The other can never be undone.
No one will know. He'll want this to be a secret too. Maybe even more than I do. He's told no one what he's done. There is no one he trusts enough. Maybe if he had someone to trust, he wouldn't have lost so many horcrux's in the first place. I guess that's not entirely true. He trusted Bellatrix. And that horcrux was completely out of reach. Until he stopped trusting her. It's inside the manor. He made her remove it from the safety of the vault. He'll take the cup and the diadem and hide them away where no one will know. I can know though. My connection into his mind doesn't depend on him anymore. That's the key. The fragment in me is unshackled. I'll see where he goes. Eventually.
What's important now is getting Hermione. You can disagree. You can think I'm mad. I've never seen things more clearly.
He's there. You see him? Sneaking out a secret passage. You can't see him. He's using a disillusionment charm. I can see him. Not his physical form. I see him like a bat sees in the dark of night. The vibrations point me in the right direction. Better than eyesight. Keep watching. I'll get her back and I'll end this war.