Chapter 4:
Voldemort's Evolution
"Well, not you two in particular," Voldemort corrected himself. "But when somebody has been a member of the Ascendants, they know you always work in pairs. With me gone, that must make things difficult."
"Opposite, actually," said Xavier. "Good old Nick and Perenelle are their own pair. That left eight people to partner up for missions. Now perfectly even."
Voldemort's face grew further out of the deer's neck, with a human neck of its own. He had an inquisitive look on his face.
"That would mean the mummy must be coming down off of his throne to take part in some dirty work," Voldemort said. "I would have liked to have seen that. Any new clues on who he was or why the Goblins saw fit to give him the Ghengis Khan treatment?"
That was their only clue to the identity of their oldest member. Goblins drown thieves in molten Goblin silver. This permanently mummified them, trapping their souls in a permanent state of torment on Earth. How he regained the ability to move at all, let alone escape Gringotts and their special vaults for said thieves, was yet another impossible mystery to solve.
"Still no developments on that front. We are all still as curious as you. But I think you know why we are here." Xavier turned the topic back to the situation at hand.
"Ah, yes. You have replaced me with a new member," Voldemort said.
"Not officially. We can't without your membership ring," Dorcas said. "Hence why we were able to wield her like a flaming sword. Ostentatious, conspicuous, and out in the open. All without a risk to us."
"But we do need the ring back from you. You have failed to participate in the requisite number of PTA meetings, nor have you paid the mandatory HOA fees. So if you would kindly return the ring to us," said Xavier, cheekily.
Voldemort chuckled, a strange sound coming from his current form.
The tail of the mutated and rotting stag grew and straightened before growing scales and curving. The head of a viper appeared at the end of it, and when it opened its mouth it was to reveal his membership ring like an engagement ring box, with its fangs bared and dripping venom.
It then grew another pair of fangs from the bottom. Then more from the sides.
"Come and take it," Voldemort invited.
"Cute," Dorcas groused.
She took to walking around the meadow, staying clear of the burning sunlight which fully enveloped Voldemort.
As she circled around him to better box him in, a new head grew straight upwards out of the stag's back. It was the head of a golden eagle.
Xavier had already been baffled by Voldemort's showing off of his ability to perform self-transfiguration without a wand. As a disembodied shade, he must have been possessing animals ceaselessly for the last thirteen years now for the physical manifestation of his soul to be able to shape-shift like that. He would have had to possess and consume dozens, no, hundreds of snakes and eagles and presumably stags to achieve this evolution. Now he was operating as something similar to an omni-animagi—a true one, capable of transforming or partially transforming into any animal—as opposed to Mirabella's affinity to ocean life to the exclusion of land and air-based animals.
But it was wrong. An animagi can partially transform, sure, but only the body part in question with the synonymous body part of an animal. So an omni-animagi could turn his right arm into a duck wing, his left]leg into a stag's hoof, and head into that of an eagle. But to sprout any body part of any animal from any place in his body? This was something Xavier had never seen before.
Not to mention, if he had a phylactery, as he had told them when asked about his form of immortality, why would he do all of that? He could have simply built for himself a new body, or one of his servants could have.
Perhaps the ending of the Statute and the resulting societal changes also lost him his supporters? Without the problem of Muggleborns in their society refusing to integrate, and bringing their braindead modern politics with them, what need was there for Voldemort? Xavier had thought their resorting to the nuclear option of a genocidal maniac was a bit premature, to be sure, but he understood their reasons.
The more obvious answer was that he had remained as a shade in order to also remain hidden. If he regained his body, he would have been much easier to track. As a disembodied spirit possessing random animals, he could move unnoticed by wards, spies, or their other resources. He could go anywhere in the world, and probably had over the last decade and change.
This begged the question. What other animals had he absorbed the souls of and incorporated into his being?
"Wait a minute," Xavier said. "That doesn't add up."
"What doesn't, Peeves?" Voldemort asked innocently.
Xavier ignored the moniker of his secret identity.
"If you had created a phylactery, then the you that is here now would just be a mind," he said. "But you are living a parasitic existence feeding on the souls of animals, but not people. A mental construct without a soul cannot do that... you created a horcrux!"
Voldemort laughed. That high-pitched, victorious, and humorless laughter he always made.
"Oh. None of you can fathom the lengths I have gone to for immortality. All of your methods are so... surface level," Voldemort boasted. "I have delved further than any of you."
Xavier knew he was being vague on purpose, and that he wouldn't get any more out of the abomination opposite him. But this meant he wasn't only excommunicated, he was never a full member to begin with. In order to join the Ascendants one had to reveal all they knew about their form of immortality—among other requirements. If he lied about it, then even their unanimous vote to eliminate him was moot. His membership was null and void from the start.
That made things significantly less complicated.
"You seem rather confident that you can take us?" Dorcas, who by now had circled completely around and was standing behind him, said.
"Well. I have three advantages that you don't seem to appreciate," Voldemort said.
He grew a monkey's hand out of the shoulder of the stag and began listing fingers.
"One. It is a beautiful, summer day near the Mediterranean," he said, raising the first finger.
"Two. You both know little to nothing about my new abilities," he said, raising a second.
"And third, I know all about yours, stagnant and satisfied with your current level. Unwilling to delve further. Unwilling to evolve!" he declared, raising a third.
He then paused and considered his next words.
"There is also the small matter of you being the weakest members of the Ascendant anyways," he finished.
Xavier let loose a blade of diluted antimagic directly at Voldemort's face. One percent antimagic to ambient magic. He aimed at the human one, and his transparent blade was tall enough to reach the highest leaves of the trees, slicing right through where it had been.
The bizarre chimera of his body split in two before the blade reached it. One half was the deer head leading all the way to the viper tail, the other held Voldemort's head, one leg, and the eagle head sprouting from the back.
Xavier focused on the form of Voldemort, now hopping in place like a will-o'-wisp.
This turned out to be a mistake, as the deer operated autonomously. The open and exposed flesh and organs of its form erupted into hundreds of new, slithering snake bodies. Vipers, cobras, rattlesnakes, mambas, and more all swarmed towards him, fangs bared.
He recalled Voldemort's earlier boast of having contingencies for them, and so he retreated from the wall of snake heads despite the venom posing no threat to him beyond pain and a long recovery. This also proved to be a mistake, as the snake heads continued to multiply like a hydra as they pursued him. Their numbers must have been in the thousands, for he could see nothing in front of him save the soft pink of their gaping mouths.
Xavier decided to up the ante then and there. He placed both hands in front of him as if pushing back a boulder and let loose a 10 percent pure blast of antimagic like a wave in front of him.
The pulse blew right through the wall of serpents, and the internal, normal magic, of living things inside of them annihilated against his antimagic. Much like when matter and antimatter met. In fact, exactly like that, but lessened by the deliberate impurity of his blast.
The explosion of bone and viscera was temporary, as the force of it was so great that the friction of protein and liquids against the air ignited within a millisecond of the reaction. The force and heat obliterated the forest around them for hundreds of meters.
Him? Oh, he was fine. Being incorporeal had its benefits. Unlike with ghosts, he did still feel the heat and force of it, and was knocked onto his ass so hard he was buried three entire meters into the ground. But pain for him was an illusion, so he merely ignored it and floated back up through the hole he had just dug on accident.
The flash heat of the blast, instead of igniting a forest fire, merely charred every surviving tree into black charcoal and turned much of the ground to glass. Little pockets of flame did sprout from the broken remains of what trees surrounded the two hundred meter crater he had created, but they wouldn't prove too great a risk to the surrounding nature preserve.
He flew out to the epicenter. There, he found the ring encased in charcoal. Charcoal that had once been the flesh of the autonomous construct of animals that Voldemort had created.
He looked around for the will-o'-whispomort but saw no sign of him. Had he been vaporized or blown too far away to spot? Even with the ring recovered, letting him escape was unthinkable.
He reached down and retrieved the ring from the still open viper mouth. It was entirely unharmed, though hot to the touch. "Thanks a lot, Xavier!" he heard Dorcas' voice yell out.
He turned his gaze northward, where, in the treeline barely shaded from the sunlight, stood what looked like a woman's corpse, charred as thoroughly as the stagmera he was standing over.
"I quite liked that body!" she bemoaned.
She then opened her mouth to reveal those rows of anglerfish-like teeth. Her mouth opened wider. And wider. And wider still, until her body was bisected by a gaping maw of needle-like teeth.
She spat out a charred, human heart, which disintegrated when it hit the ground.
Her mouth-body then sealed shut like a zipper, before her burned form reshaped itself. The wide hips of the Thai harem girl she had consumed to masquerade as became narrow. The narrow shoulders widened, and her bodacious chest shrank inwards, then grew sideways. She now wore the body of an African man. A Dinka tribesman by the looks of it.
This was the other reason they were so often paired together. She was the only member of the Ascendant that could just walk off damage like that.
"So funny story," he heard Voldemort's voice call from above.
He looked up to see the one-legged form of Voldemort now flanked by six wings, flying above them. His body was now encased by a sea turtle shell, his head atop the long neck of the same.
He also noticed the hoof of the deer foot coming from where the tail of the turtle should be had been replaced by a bear paw. He didn't know why that stuck out to him when the man was clearly trying to emulate biblical descriptions of an angel.
"You know how snakes have their own form of magic only available to parseltongues called parselmagic? Well, turns out all animals do! Each their own brand of magic only available to wizards through potions or abilities like parseltongue," Voldemort monologued. "Allow me to introduce you to ursidaemagic!"
All of a sudden, the gravity around Xavier amplified a millionfold, and he was crushed. As was the earth around him. Were he of flesh, he would have been liquefied by the force of it. It lasted all of a split second, and when he picked himself up from the ground, it was to discover himself in a mini-crater within the crater he himself had made. The crushing force of the strike had been so great that the earth beneath him had been compacted into sandstone.
When he finally stood completely up, he saw the shape of the crater.
It was a pawprint. A bear paw print.
Voldemort goaded further from above him.
"I have had so much time to learn them all, but never to test them fully. I so look forward to seeing what you make of these new and interesting magics," he said.
New? No. Interesting? Yes.
They had come here expecting a battle between three people bereft of wands, and incapable of using spells. Yet Voldemort had all of the spells of the animal kingdom at his disposal.
This significantly re-complicated things.
Notes:
Okay. So, I have some explaining to do.
First, neither Quirrel nor Wormtail ever found Voldemort. So he remained disembodied, parasiting off of animals for an additional four years. (This story takes place in the summer after 4th year.) That extra time made him accustomed to this state of existence, and allowed him to begin experimenting.
As for animal magic, that is easier to explain. The mutation that makes Muggles give birth to witches and wizards is not unique to humans. Animals go through it all the time! And when two of them mate, you get a new magical species. But as with human magic, the magic is unique to each animal. Human spells are very suited to human needs or nature. Snakes' magic is unique to them, suited to venom, antivenom, shedding and repairing skin, and all kinds of stuff like that. But being animals, they don't have these advanced human brains to really harness and master this magic, using it instead instinctively as defense mechanisms.
Now, Voldemort stumbling across these "wizard animals" and possessing their bodies? He can. He hasn't yet, but he could. He is already a master of human magic and parselmagic. It's like an instrument. Once you master one, learning a second is much easier. After that, a third is easier still.
Thanks as always to my patrons whose continued support allows me to keep writing. And of course to readers like you, whose continued feedback keeps me motivated.
This chapter was edited by chatGPT.