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Harry Potter and the Perversion of Purity

By ACI100

Book 4: The Deadliest of Games

Chapter 19: The Hour of the Wolf

October 1, 1994
Durmstrang Institute
11:48 PM

The night was dark and moonless. Cold seeped through the stone walls and left an icy chill hanging in his room. A wolf howled somewhere close outside. The hour of the wolf has come…

Fawkes let out a long, forlorn trill that trembled through every inch of space inside his master's modest chambers. The chill retreated whilst that note hung in its place, deeper and darker than the yawning blackness out beyond his window.

It was hard to believe that, just that morning, he had been seated behind his desk and across from Harry.

Fawkes let out a longer, sadder note. "I know, my friend," he muttered into the empty silence left behind when his close friend's music faded. "I know."

Hollower words, I have never spoken. It felt like he knew nothing these days. The old, wise wizard, stumbling blindly through the dark.

Tom would have laughed if he could see him now. I'm sure he's already laughing, just for all the wrong reasons.

It was among the only mercies left to him. However lost I am, Tom must still be more so.

The difference was that Albus knew his plight whilst Tom could never hope to imagine that scraps of truth still lurked beyond his knowing.

It is no advantage so long as it remains unused.

Fawkes's next trill was short and shaky. A question. Long, hard years had taught him how to read those trills.

"I don't see that many choices have been left to me," he answered without really answering.

It would have amused him on another night. People had, for years, griped about his propensity for non-answers, yet Harry had evaded each and every probe more skillfully than he could ever have.

Does he know? That was the question that had plagued him so often lately — the same question concerning so many things.

Did he know how the way he lied was so much like how Tom had lied at the same age? Did he understand, in the faintest way, the truth behind his final warning?

There are too many questions.

Fawkes cocked his head and studied him with dark, narrowed eyes. The next shrill was sharp and shrill.

"You're right, of course," he muttered. "What choices do I have left?" His lips twisted into a scowl that did not suit him. "The things we must do for the greater good."

Fawkes leapt off his plinth and Albus held out his hand. There was a flash of orange bright enough to blind him. He closed his eyes and held his breath until the heat dispersed. He drew in a short lungful but kept his eyes pressed shut. An eerie stillness greeted him.

"It is strange to see the wand again. I am glad you still possess it."

He had not realized that the accursed wand was out. He had been twirling it through his fingers without thinking. "It is a burden I must bear."

Opening his eyes took a great amount of will. They adjusted slowly to the darkness, but he could see the shadow huddled in the cell's backmost corner. His imagination filled in the rest.

There was a smile on his old friend's face once his eyes had, at last, adjusted. "We all bear burdens for the greater good. The best of us must hold aloft the heaviest of them all."

On that, my friend, we can agree. "This one is not too heavy. It is comforting to know that mine will not be the hand that slays Tom Riddle."

"You take comfort in the strangest things. I could never sleep if my world teetered atop the shoulders of a boy."

"I am happy in my warded tower, far away from power and all of its temptations." His gaze fell to the dark wand clutched between his fingers. "Few temptations command a stronger pull than this."

"It amuses me that you, of all people, should put so much faith in prophecy."

There are no choices left to me. "I am older now. Still a fool, perhaps, but a wiser one."

"You remember what I told you when you first asked about this prophecy? You cannot bend the whims of fate. There is no crueller mistress than destiny herself."

We all do what we must. "I have been reminded often as of late."

There was laughter in those pale blue eyes. Gellert had always found things like this amusing. "Has he returned, then?"

He could feel his shoulders tense. "He has."

"Fascinating."

"I have proven the theory you proposed the night that Harry vanquished him."

"Are you certain?" There was unmasked interest in his old friend's expression as he leant forward. Gellert had never been able to let things lie undiscovered. "Creation of a horcrux is not something that can easily be proven."

"I held his horcrux in my hands." And a vile feeling it had been. "It had been destroyed by then, but I have no doubts a horcrux is what it once was."

"How can you be sure? If it was already destroyed…"

He reached into the pocket of his robes and withdrew the tattered diary. "See it for yourself. I think that you'll agree." Gellert took it like a vial of potion that might explode at any second. "The diary possessed a pair of girls."

Gellert muttered something underneath his breath. It sounded, for a heartbeat, like he had said 'the Carrows', but that could not have been. The day had frayed his nerves.

"Tom manifested from this diary — sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle, tangible and sapient."

"Incredible."

His distaste scrunched up his face. "Vile is a better word."

"Oh, it is the peak of madness. I almost never put forth the theory. It was difficult for me to believe that a man would maim his soul this way. I was skeptical of the writings pertaining to horcruxes and their existence in the first place until I uncovered writings I believe to have belonged to mad Herpo himself."

"But I am correct?" A worried edge dug into him despite his certainty. "You understand these arts in a way I doubt I ever will."

"Oh yes, this was a horcrux. There can be no doubting that." Gellert looked slowly up from his inspections of the diary and weighed him with his stare alone. "So the madman is now mortal?"

It felt like a mountain rested on his shoulders. "I think not."

A frown marred Gellert's withered face. "I beg your pardon?"

"I believe there is at least one more."

True shock showed plainly across his old friend's face. I would be smug if this was any other night. All it did tonight was scare him. "What makes you think this?"

"I admit I'm only guessing, but I do believe I'm right." He chewed his next words thoroughly. Gellert waited quietly.

"Tom was the most obsessive boy that I have ever known, but not in the ways that you were. It was the details that he was hung up on. The loathing he felt for the commonness of his name is what drove him to take the moniker of Lord Voldemort. The thirst to know where he came from was what led him to opening the Chamber of Secrets.

"Among the most finite of his obsessions was the need to understand Arithmancy. It was not enough for Tom to hear that three and seven were such magically powerful numbers. I remember, in his seventh year, he did his utmost to prove why. I believe that is what led him to his later innovations and I do not believe that fixation would allow him to settle for a two part soul."

Gellert's face was unreadable. "You have described this man to me before. Rash, arrogant, hasty, and often thoughtless, but you have stressed that he is brilliant."

"Oh yes. Tom is the brightest mind I have ever seen come through the halls of Hogwarts." He paused and remembered all the hours shut up last year with a different boy. "Harry may soon revise that judgement, but you understand the principle."

"I cannot imagine anyone so obsessed and so brilliant would maim their own soul twice. That obsession would have led to research. He cannot be unaware of the risks attached."

His soul still wept for poor Tom Riddle. "You underestimate how single-minded Tom's obsession was. It would not allow for other avenues until it had been sated. I cannot stress enough how deeply he loathed the thought that, one day, he would die. He scoffed at his mother's death when he was a boy. He told me she could not have been the witch among his parents because she had died. His opinions only strengthened as he grew older, as did his fear."

"You put a great deal of faith in your assumptions."

"I have been searching for proof these past months." The saliva inside his mouth turned sour. "I have had ample time since I was ousted from my post as acting Hogwarts Headmaster."

Gellert bowed his head. "I am sorry, Albus. I know how much that post meant to you."

"I don't plan for this absence to be permanent, but that is another matter altogether. I have uncovered things these past months that strengthen my argument."

Gellert studied him. "You did not come here to ask me about horcruxes. You are sure about them already."

"Not beyond a single question. How many parts do you think the soul could be torn into?"

"You believe the boy split his soul six times, don't you?"

"I am not discounting the possibility."

Gellert waited for a long time before he answered. "I would guess that six might be the upper limit. Seven is the most powerfully magical number, but it would be lunacy. The price it would exact…"

Oh, it has taken much from him. His heart went out to the boy who had been Tom Riddle, even now. No one deserved what he had put his poor self through.

"Tom lost his smooth good looks years ago. He was a twisted thing back before his downfall — more snake than he was man."

"It… might be possible. I, at least, cannot prove that it is not."

Guilt twisted his stomach until it made him feel sick, but he persisted. "There is… a connection between Tom and Harry. It was forged the night his curse rebounded."

"Rebounded?" Gellert watched him through suspicious eyes. What could he possibly be suspicious of? "When we met that night, you told me that the curse had failed. You mentioned nothing about rebounding."

"Harry's mother died to save him. Her protection was enough."

Gellert's eyes had grown colder than the harshest winter wind. "You understand that this changes everything?"

Sorrow sank its teeth deep into the weakest vessels of his heart. "I know, already, that the rebounding spell connected them. I do not, as of yet, understand the nature of that connection. Which is why I have come to you."

"There is no telling." It looked like Gellert was running all the numbers that had ever been observed. "It is too esoteric. It is unprecedented. There is no saying what a connection like theirs might look like."

Something made him hesitate. Why would I hold back? Gellert will never leave this cell. Something just felt off to him — the day had really done its worst — but he pressed on.

"Harry catches glimpses of him sometimes. Often when asleep. I wondered… well, you said yourself the maiming of one's own soul would exact an awful price. I wondered…" He could not say it. He hated himself for it, but he hated himself so often nowadays.

"You wonder if the boy has become another horcrux?" The frankness with which he said it made him wince with phantom pain.

Oh, how it hurts. How badly it hurts. "It… had crossed my mind."

"It is impossible." His own agony must have been overcoming him. Gellert could not possibly sound angry. What about this could make him angry. Is there anything that can make him angry? Did damned men ever feel angry? "The soul is autonomous in ways we still don't understand. Its will is too strong; it could never coexist alongside another."

Emotions whirled inside him. Relief for Harry's sake, fear of the unknown, worry at the unravelling of tentative plans he had been nursing, and a healthy pinch of skepticism. "Are you sure? I had been researching and had become quite confident."

"I am as sure as sunrise." Gellert met his eyes. His were cold and hard, but inviting in a way he could not describe. He probed his old friend's thoughts and was allowed to examine them for five long heartbeats. He found only one thing there. Complete and total certainty.

"Very well." He was unsure what to think. He had come for answers but had more questions now than he had earlier that evening.

I should ask the most important question. "Could Tom use the connection, whatever it might be? Could he… possess him?"

"It would be dangerous for him. Magic does not give endlessly. Any link between them runs both ways. Possession would leave him vulnerable and with the state of his soul the way you propose that it must be…"

"Tom might not know that, and if he does, I doubt he would consider it. It is not in his nature to view a schoolboy as a threat to him." That must be his downfall, but how?

The first step is ensuring Harry's free of him. "Is there anything that could be done to prevent Tom's… advances?"

"Not if the link runs that deep. Not unless the boy fights back and discourages Riddle enough to cease advancing."

Not likely. The boy was gifted, but he would not best Tom in that arena.

I must find another way. "Thank you, Gellert. Your insight has been invaluable."

Fire flashed around him yet again and the tower cell was gone.

Back at Durmstrang…

The adorable, red-haired boy smiled at her over his stack of papers. The freckles stood out stark against his cheeks, but all they did was make her smile back at him.

Then she was leaning forward, and so was he. Gemma could feel his lips before they touched, smell his breath before it reached her, see…

Nothing but a burst of golden light that burned away all else in sight.

Black smoke poured in through the golden light and contorted into a coiled serpent, hanging in the golden sky like a midnight-coloured sun.

Smaller snakes coalesced around the basilisk that was hissing down at her. They were like dozens of tiny emerald stars clustering around that midnight sun.

One caught her eye. Red, not green, moving in unison with all the others until it broke ranks and struck against the basilisk.

"YOU MUST INFILTRATE HIS RANKS!"

The voice was like a field of cracking stones, but a hundred times louder and completely inescapable. It was everywhere — humming from the golden light and screaming inside her own skull.

She would have screamed had she been able, but she was frozen; suspended in that golden light as the snakes dispersed and were replaced with the vague and shadowed outline of a face that blocked out the sky.

"WE MUST KNOW WHAT HE KNOWS OF THE CONNECTION! THIS IS IMPERATIVE — WHAT DOES HE SUSPECT ABOUT HIS LINK TO HARRY? WE MUST KNOW!"

That strange sky shattered into a thousand glowing shards that stained her vision gold.

The sheets were plastered against her back when she sat up in bed, panting and gasping as she clutched desperately for Occlumency. It was like her mind had shattered with the sky; it was hard to move, hard to think, hard to do anything but sit there, panting.

It took five minutes of intensive self-reflection before she could put coherent thoughts together.

What… what was that? Had she not mastered Occlumency long ago, that nightmare might have landed her in St. Mungo's for the remainder of her days alive.

It was so… intense. Never had she felt anything like it — the fear and panic in that voice had bled into her in a surging rush that had torn her mind asunder.

That voice…

She had never heard its tones before, but she knew whose it must have been.

But it makes no sense.

He had never spoken to her like that before — she had been under the impression that the vague, abstract images he had used to guide her in the past was the extent of how she could be reached by him.

Why now? Why talk now? Why not before?

A connection… something about a connection. Merlin, her head hurt — everything hurt! It was difficult to think — maybe this was why he had stuck to vague and abstract hints until now.

"WE MUST KNOW WHAT HE KNOWS OF THE CONNECTION! THIS IS IMPERATIVE — WHAT DOES HE SUSPECT ABOUT HIS LINK TO HARRY? WE MUST KNOW!"

The words came back to her and she pulled the blankets up against her chin. So much fear… so much panic.

What could make him, of all people, so afraid?

That scared her worse than anything in years.

Breathe. Her Occlumency was a lifeline and she clung to it with desperation. All that she could do was move forward and do as she had been commanded.

Infiltrating the Dark Lord's ranks and uncovering what he knows about… something. Some kind of connection he shared with Potter?

It was more daunting than her goal to one day reign as Minister for Magic, but it scared her far less than hearing Gellert Grindelwald afraid.

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