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Harry Potter and the Perversion of Purity
By ACI100
Book 4: The Deadliest of Games
Chapter 16: Heart and Soul
October 1, 1994
The Library
6:23 AM
Of the horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction.
He read the strange passage for the third time and still it made no sense to him.
Godelot had detailed things like Entrail Expelling Curses and Transmogrophian Torture. There was the promise of spells that raised inferi in this old and weathered tome, yet he balked at the idea of explaining 'the horcrux'?
Wickedest of magical inventions? What could be more wicked than what was already written?
Or is he just mad? The author appeared more crazed than Bellatrix Lestrange could ever dream to be. The sloppy Middle English was more a long and drawn-out bout of rambling than a cohesive manuscript.
He can't be all mad. There's a lot of powerful stuff in here.
He had finally reached mentions of soul magic.
"The Avada Kedavra curse is feared above most others. Its potency and singularity is enough to strike fear in the hearts of men, but my master knows best. We should not fear a thing like death or mourn the loss of things like shields. We should fear the loss of what comes later and mourn the absence of what makes us whole."
Godelot was the man who first exposed how the Killing Curse functioned and explained the way it destroyed the soul. His master had told him, he had written, and he reviled the curse because of his belief in some sort of afterlife. It was Godelot's belief that, by destroying the soul, you rendered its owner unable to move on post mortem.
The more he read, the more curious he became in regards to Godelot.
And 'the horcrux'.
He looked up at the large glass windows and out over the grounds. Dawn was leaking across the cloudless sky outside. Vivid blots of pink and red were spreading across the vast expanse of grey, but the sun had not yet put in its first real appearance of the day.
It's still early. The chances were that nobody would be asking after him for almost two hours. He would have to be at breakfast early this morning; the Hogwarts delegation was set to leave following its conclusion.
But until then…
There was one way he could satisfy his curiosity — both about Godelot and about 'the horcrux'.
I have the time.
He strengthened the Notice-Me-Not wards around his shadowed corner before reaching up and clutching at the pendant dangling from the chain that had been Regulus's first gift to him.
He closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift away into a vast and restful sea.
Wind that had not plagued him seconds earlier swirled his robes around him.
He opened his eyes and found himself staring out between the bars of his mentor's prison.
Dawn had broken here some time ago; the sun was low but rising. The vast ring of mountains found their faces painted orange, and in their centre, the morning sunlight sparkled off Lake Königsee like a mirror made from smooth, dark crystal.
"This is a peculiar time for you to visit." Grindelwald was leaning back against the wall with his legs crossed and his face relaxed. Harry got the feeling he had been drinking in the sunrise before his interruption.
"Sorry," he found himself saying. "I got curious about a couple of things and realized I probably had enough time to drop in."
"What have I told you about apologies?"
He suppressed the urge to sigh. "All right, all right, I take your point."
"Good. What is it that has drawn your fancy?"
"I've been looking deeper into soul magic." His mentor's face remained unreadable, so he pressed on. "I'm convinced that it has something to do with whatever's going on with the Carrows. I'm hoping I can find some answers about them, and maybe about the way dementors treat me."
"I would advise that you proceed with caution."
He could not help but frown. "I've gotten that impression — between Dumbledore's lecture at the end of last year, the way Voldemort picks his words so carefully, and the way it's treated in this book."
"Albus has always held a great distaste for what you refer to as Soul Magic. My view is less restrictive, but it is not an area I have pursued in any great lengths."
"What's the big deal with it? I know that the Killing Curse destroys the soul and that the dementors suck most of it out, but surely you can't just destroy your own soul by looking into it?"
"Certainly not through inquisitions, but I find that, in the hands of those like us, inquisitions so often turn explorative." He had no reply for that. "Great peril comes with magic that can influence the soul. It is our sense of life and self. There is a reason the dementors leave naught but husks in the place of men whose souls were whole."
"So there really are ways of damaging my soul if I'm not careful?"
"There are ways of damaging more than just your soul if you do not tread carefully."
"Dumbledore said something last June about the choices I was making. He said that some things were beyond repair and told me I should reconsider things. What did he mean?"
"It is difficult to say. Albus often spoke broadly and this claim of his could encompass many things."
"Voldemort said something too, something about rituals. He said that you can't change the way magic is cast without altering the soul."
"He would be correct. It is among the reasons I encourage rituals whose effects are subtle and whose costs are low. There are many prices greater gifts can exact from those who ask for them. We cannot afford to pay with our souls. Do you understand?"
"I'll be careful," he said once he had churned that over.
"See that you are. Many great minds have wasted themselves away chasing things whose costs were well beyond their means."
There was a short silence. "That wasn't actually what I came to ask about." Grindelwald waited. "Do you know anything about Godelot? He wrote a book called Magick Moste Evile. It's the book I was talking about earlier."
"Godelot was a master of the Elder Wand. The fourth we can confirm beyond doubt."
The man's ravings slid smoothly into a more contextualized place inside his mind. "So when he writes about his master and how it taught him everything he knew, he was talking about the wand?"
"Whether his ravings held a grain of truth, we will never know, but yes, he was referring to the Elder Wand."
"Do you not have a guess? You had the wand for years."
"I have talked before about the Death Stick and its autonomy. That sense of self makes it impossible to say if it treats two masters differently. I do not pretend I understand the Peverells' creations. If I did, I would not be rotting in this cell."
"So Godelot might not have been mad?"
Grindelwald smiled thinly. "Godelot was mad long before penning Magick Moste Evile, but his madness does not provide us answers. Some of the most brilliant among us have been far madder than crazed, old Godelot."
He spent half a minute chewing his next words. "Godelot talks about some graphic stuff in that book, but he calls 'the horcrux' the wickedest of magical inventions and won't say anything more about it." He waited, but his mentor said nothing. "Do you know about the horcrux?"
"Yes."
Again he waited, but again, Grindelwald said nothing. "What is it?"
"It is an artifact whose existence violates the laws of nature and whose creation exacts a price much too high for us to pay. Put it from your mind. It will not serve you or your purposes."
Annoyance prodded him to snap back, but he held his tongue. Curiosity burned inside him, but he doused its flames the best he could.
There's nothing Grindelwald wants more than for his dreams to come true, and he thinks I can make that happen. If 'the horcrux' would be a boon to him, Grindelwald would not have kept quiet.
That was enough for now.
"I should go," Harry said. "I don't think time passes the same way here and I have to leave for Durmstrang right after breakfast."
"Ah yes, and so it begins."
He could not help but smile back. His excitement was so strong, it made him jittery.
I'm really gonna see it.
Durmstrang had been a second home of his back during his second year. Countless nights had been spent roaming its halls through Grindelwald's eyes. There was an odd familiarity he felt towards it, and now, he would really see it at long last.
"And so it does." He closed his eyes and refocused on the library.
The rigid posture imposed by the hard seat and stiff back of his chosen chair returned to him along with the smell of old, weathered parchment and the peaceful trill of thick and empty silence. The sun had not risen fully, but its crown could be seen above the tops of distant trees.
All of that washed over him in the space of a heartbeat, and in the next, he became aware of someone standing just behind him.
He craned his neck around as slowly and casually as he could manage. His onlooker was not who he had expected, but it explained his wards' failure to prevent her passage.
"Fawley?"
She was dressed in forest green robes and her long, brown hair was tied back into a low ponytail. "Good morning, Potter."
He threw a hasty glance around them. No one else was present and the library was silent other than their chatter. His Privacy Wards were still intact, so their voices would not drift past the nearest row of bookshelves.
"Can I help you with something?" he asked. "I wasn't expecting you this morning."
"The Supreme Mugwump asked if I could fetch you for him."
A whirlwind of emotions swept him on a rocky ride through a churning sea of varied memories.
The one he pondered most was one of the last. He could still remember his words echoing through the then headmaster's office and the cold storm that had erupted inside him at the suggestion of returning to the muggle world.
I should have expected this. He was more annoyed at himself than he had been at Grindelwald's refusal to sate his curiosity. He felt unprepared to see Dumbledore again.
I still don't know what to think about him.
He had made mistake after mistake concerning Harry, but each time, he had done his best to make up for them.
But then he tried to send me back, even though he knew what happened. Ignorance had been his defence for Harry's decade-long stay on Privet Drive, but there was no excuse for requesting he return there last June.
"Do you know what he wants?"
"He wants to speak with you before we depart for Durmstrang," said Fawley. "I don't know what he wants to discuss with you."
There's no point in putting it off. Dumbledore would get what he wanted in the end. He was not unlike Grindelwald or Voldemort in that way; men like them seemed always to get what they wanted.
At least until a few of them all want different things.
"Lead the way then," he said with a sigh, scraping back his chair and sweeping Magick Moste Evile into his bag. He wondered whether Gemma had caught sight of it. How long had she been standing there?
They walked in silence until the pair of them began up the marble staircase.
"I should probably thank you," he said when there were no portraits nearby. "What you told me last December turned out to be valuable. It was… appreciated."
"So I've heard." There was a cool composure about her words; he would never have guessed how precarious a position that choice had placed her in had he not already known.
His first impulse was to apologize, but he crushed it quickly. Grindelwald was right. There was no place for meekness in a time like this.
It's not like she never put me in a worse position. There was no resentment for the portkey she had given him back on the Hogwarts Express, but he had not forgotten.
"We'll be seeing each other more this year," she said when they continued up past floors four and five.
Where are we going? Was Dumbledore waiting atop the Astronomy Tower, or something?
"I sort of guessed that," he said. "You'll be chaperoning, right?"
She gave him a weighty look. "I wasn't talking about my capacity as chaperone."
Had Voldemort forced her to join him? Would he soon be seeing her beneath a bone-white mask?
Or is this about Grindelwald? The one-time warlord had promised to do what he could, but he had never explained what that had been.
It left him at a distinct disadvantage and filled him with temptation, but he held back. If Gemma's family had aided Grindelwald in espionage, she was probably an occlumens of admirable skill.
I'm not ready to go against someone like that.
He tried to remember everything Grindelwald had said about Gemma and the way the pair communicated.
"Conversation is a nuanced game," Lucius had told him this past summer. "The person who is perceived to understand more nuances is almost always the one who wins."
Harry conjured up a knowing smile as they walked past yet another floor. "I look forward to it." He would be asking Grindelwald about this at his earliest convenience.
The pair stepped off on the seventh floor and took a familiar path back to where the headmaster's office dwelled behind the large stone gargoyle that stood guard outside.
Well, it was the headmaster's office. Umbridge had never been able to gain access, and now, he realized why.
"Acid pops." Gemma made the phrase sound perfectly normal and looked unperturbed as the gargoyle stepped aside.
I might not know what to think of him, Harry thought as he climbed the spiral staircase and left the former Head Girl behind, but I know one thing. That old man's crazier than Godelot.
The office was unchanged. Armando Dippet's portrait still hung behind the large, oak desk, and all the whirring trinkets still rested, undisturbed, on their spindly legged tables. It was like Dumbledore had never been ousted from his place as headmaster.
The man himself was sitting just like always and wearing an expression of fond contentment as he took in the office.
"Good morning, sir," said Harry when he had stepped across the threshold.
So much had changed since their last meeting.
Here's hoping that Dumbledore knows none of it.
"Good morning, Harry. I'm sorry to have disturbed you at this time, but I know that you rise early and fancied a word with you before we depart for Durmstrang."
"Will you be with us, sir?" Whatever he thought about Dumbledore, his presence would be an unwanted complication.
It's hard enough dealing with Voldemort. The last thing I need is to be stuck between the two of them.
"I will be present for the ceremonial portions of the Triwizard Tournament. I will accompany you all to each school and will be judging all three tasks." His eyes were twinkling. "I'm sure you'll see me at other intervals here and there."
He let his smile spread across his face. That much, he could deal with. "I'm glad you're doing well, sir. I'm sorry about you losing your position here. Hogwarts hasn't been the same without you." That much he meant; for all this man's shortcomings, he was as much a part of Hogwarts as any of the ghosts.
"Thank you, Harry. I have been doing the best that can be expected, but I miss the castle very much. Your kind words mean the world to me."
Dumbledore removed his half-moon spectacles and wiped them on his robes before putting them back on. "How have these past months treated you? Our last meeting of this nature did not go the way I hoped it would."
That awkward air returned, but he ignored its weight the best he could. "I've done well, sir. I did a lot of studying this past summer and got to see the Quidditch World Cup with my friends."
"I heard the World Cup was quite the spectacle."
He let every ounce of fondness he held for Quidditch permeate his voice. "It was brilliant! I've never seen a catch like Krum's."
"Did you know that Mister Krum is still attending Durmstrang? You might well meet him soon."
Bloody hell, I can't believe he's so young. "I could probably pick up some tips from him."
"I dare say you could."
The inexorable question was coming close; he could feel it and knew that no amount of small talk would forestall it much longer.
Dumbledore must have sensed the time had come, for his expression grew more serious and the twinkle behind his eyes winked out. "There have been all sorts of rumours spread about what happened that night and I find you at the centre of them all. Miss Skeeter's tale has been eagerly consumed by some, but others have a difficult time digesting it. I wondered whether you might be able to tell me where the real truth lies."
This he had prepared for — he had known people would ask that sort of question from the moment Skeeter's article had been published.
"Draco woke me up in the middle of the night and said we had to run for it, but the forest was a long way off. We got separated — there were so many people and none of them were watching where they were going."
"So it is true that you encountered the… rambunctious crowd who had been making trouble?"
"Yes, sir." Lying would serve no purpose. Dumbledore would not be asking any of this had he not suspected his involvement. "I was trying to find the forest, but I couldn't. There were just too many people buffeting me every which way. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on top of a hill that overlooked the main field the ministry was fighting on."
Dumbledore was the perfect picture of cool, calm serenity. "And what did you think when you observed the situation?"
I was angry. I wanted blood. Wylla's shrill screams echoed inside his head. "I panicked," he said instead. "I was afraid one of them would see me. I don't think they were Death Eaters now that I think about it, but they were dressed up like how I read the Death Eaters used to dress, and I remembered what you said about Voldemort and how he would come after me if he could."
"That is understandable. What I don't understand is what happened next. All the rumours indicate some sort of magic was cast, and not by the ministry. I wonder, if you were so concerned, why not try once again to flee?"
The question took him off guard, but he recovered fast. "Because one of them saw me — at least, I think he did. It was hard to tell behind the masks, but he looked right at me and I panicked."
"And so you tried to strike him down before he could spread the word?"
He hung his head. "It wasn't meant to do that much damage. It was just the first spell I could think of. I had been reading about it in the Black Library not that long ago and I wondered if I could cast it."
"Which spell was it, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Fulgura." He had seen Ginny Weasley prattle on about lightning through her brother's eyes. If the Weasleys were a part of Dumbledore's Order the way he suspected, it was unlikely that story had not reached him.
"Ah." Dumbledore was not looking at him — it appeared to Harry that he was looking anywhere but at him. "And you, in your panic, lost control of the spell?"
"Not exactly, sir." There was, again, nothing to be gained from lying. "It hit a shield and… I don't really know what happened. I guess it was some kind of backlash or something, but there was an explosion and I… well, I panicked again, then ran off."
There was a long and heavy silence. "Had you been practicing Fulgura prior to that night at the Quidditch World Cup?"
The question took him aback. "No, sir."
"Curious. I have been wondering, for some time, what befell the Whomping Willow last June." Oh, fuck! "A lightning strike would certainly explain the damage. I had wondered whether your practicing might have grown a bit… reckless."
"I don't know what happened to the Whomping Willow." His heart thundered in his ribs. Will he see through it? He had to hope not; if Dumbledore knew he had been casting that spell all the way back in June, his story about the Black Library no longer checked out.
"How curious. I will continue to investigate." The former headmaster steepled his fingers and looked back at him. Not quite.
"I understand that emotions can run high in times of great stress, especially at your age. I forget how young you are at times, but your outburst during the last time we met alone here was a harsh reminder."
Harry lowered his eyes; there was no need to act — his lack of control back then ashamed him. "I'm sorry, sir. I just… I couldn't bear going back to the Dursleys after everything they did to me. I should never have lashed out."
"I, too, am sorry," Dumbledore admitted. "I anticipated resistance, but I should have guessed how deep some old scars ran. I have seen situations like yours before and should have known better."
Yes, you should have. He forced down the bitter anger that rose up as he remembered that night. "Thank you, sir."
"You must understand that your position is most irregular. You have a great gift, Harry, but it is not free. The burden of responsibility comes with powers like the ones you wield. I am not ashamed to say how glad I am that few your age ever gain such powers. It is a precarious position to place a young boy in. I implore you, going forward, to manage your emotions more closely and to keep them in check.
"Your Occlumency is more than sufficient for that task; I would ask that you use it to ensure no one comes to harm at the expense of an outburst. You have a good heart, but do not let it rule you at the cost of your good soul."
He did his best to look chastised while, internally, churning over Dumbledore's words.
He doesn't believe me. But neither did he think the former headmaster was suspicious. So what am I missing? How can he not believe me, but not see through my story?
He would have to tread even more carefully around Dumbledore this year.
Why is everything always so complicated?
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