NOVEL NEXT Chapter 37: Diadem
I would like to thank my beta, AvidReader2425, for his help in this chapter.
---------------
20th of December 1994, Hogwarts
After the first task, I kinda left Hogwarts for a while. Knowing that the Yule ball was going to be announced soon, I had to get out of there. I shudder at the thought of hormonal teenagers asking me out every time I would be in public. I'm just grateful I'm not a veela, Fleur Delacour, the poor girl, is going to be harassed for the next month, a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone.
Ignoring the whole ball thing, I still would have left; Lily and James were planning to confront me after the first task. They seem to not want to give up the idea of me being part of their family. I cannot help but pity them; for someone to lose a child is a terrible thing, but to know that they stopped loving you is so much worse for them. That feeling of failure they must bear constantly is conflicted with a desperate hope that their child would change their mind.
But I honestly cannot consider them parents or any authoritarian figure either. They're just children to my eyes and distasteful ones at that. The way they think has been so warped by Voldemort's attack, and later by my disappearance, that should I have ever wanted to return to their care and join the family, I would have ended up as a prisoner in my own home, like a girl in a tower. I snort in disdain when I think about the ridiculous fairytale about a prince charming rescuing a princess trapped in a tower. Funnily enough, the fairytale is based on a true story, a vastly different story.
It was about a king that locked his daughter in a tower and r*ped her every night. One of the knights serving the king ended up finding out about it and tried to rescue the princess. He was caught by the king, caught and executed, though not before injuring the king in his outrage. An injury that ended up killing him. After the death of her father, the princess was able to live outside but she had lived her whole life in a tower, so she was overwhelmed with the outside world and didn't know how to live outside her tower. She ended up killing herself. Truly a horrible story that parents tell their children without knowing how fucked up that is.
Now, back to the topic, I don't think I could even bother to try to pretend to get on with the Potters. It wouldn't be difficult, probably just a few decades, a small amount of time for someone of my lifespan. But it would be troublesome, and I just realized how much my age has led to apathy. I grew accustomed to the suffering in the world that it doesn't faze me anymore. I'm so old now, I used to have so much mercy.
Other than that, I didn't feel like being questioned by everyone and their mothers about the magic I used during the task. I did create it but it took me decades, even centuries to polish my technique into the formidable branch of magic it is today. Especially since I could configure them to absorb dimensional energy instead of my magic, so that it would barely cost any magic to actually cast using the technique. I try to imagine their faces when they saw what I did. To be fair, I did show off a bit to actually make them nervous to talk to me, and because I was bored and wanted to shake things up. Okay, it's mainly because I was bored.
They must have been so confused when they didn't find me after the task, a simple invisibility spell and a portal later and I was at my beach home in southern France. A lovely little place I relax in when I take a vacation. I wasn't planning on returning before January. Rose would go home for the holidays and I don't get along with anyone else in the castle. Well, except for the castle itself and I really need to take a look at the wards soon.
It's really sad how little magical Britain understood of what I actually did during the first task. The so-called experts were baffled and only a couple of runes 'masters' had any idea about a smidgen of what I did. I guess calling them masters is stretching it a bit. And don't get me started on the press, the daily prophet even said that it could be dark magic and was trying to run an angle as the dark lost twin of the boy who lived that fell into the dark side because of her parents abandoning her. Rita Skeeter was definitely a fanfiction writer in a previous life. I don't expect her to survive the year if she keeps harassing me.
It's sad that a field as powerful and diverse as runes is barely used today. They were mostly used to decipher ancient texts and scrolls. Magically, they were at most used as anchors to bind spells when enchanting an artifact. Even then they were rarely used, the enchanters preferring to use certain spells to bind the spells to the artifact instead. These artifacts would probably not last more than a lifetime.
For example, the golden egg I got from the dragon had runes carved on the outside. I had hoped that they had an effect of sorts, but I was disappointed. It was simply a hint for opening the egg, a small riddle. 'For the clue to be sung, the egg must be sunk' that was all that it said. It's pretty much the answer on the egg. I think someone was trying to be clever, probably Dumbledore, like having the answer hidden in clear sight. Whoever did it used some very obscure runes, very few ever learned them.
I wonder if Nathan would solve it by himself, it's not absurdly hard, really. Speaking of Nathan, I was really surprised to get a letter from him asking for us to meet. I thought that he was either intimidated or felt guilty about what happened to me with the Dursleys, and I left him to deal with his emotions by himself. According to Mordred, he was a good kid and her old sword had found him worthy, something impressive, considering Anduril had no wielder after Godric.
I expected Nathan to wait until the second task to talk to me, so I was pleasantly surprised when he contacted me. Even more so, when he practically poured his heart out to me when I met him. It was mainly guilt over having a happy family while I was being abused and mistreated. There was a hint of jealousy over how much I got along with Rose and Mordred, and a smidge of resentment for choosing not to accept James and Lily, choosing not to be part of the family.
Oh yeah, I had to stop my sessions with Rose while I escaped from the castle, so the night after the first task, I snuck into Rose's room and told her that I was gonna be away for a while. I left her a book I wrote about runes, ice magic and illusions. I even started her on some mental exercises as a prelude to teaching her the mind arts. Illusions and legimency do go very well together. I'm gonna test her when the holidays are over.
By the way, turns out that disappearing from the castle got people very nervous. Probably Dumbledore since he didn't think someone could sneak out of the castle without him knowing. I tried looking at the common secret passages to outside the castle and they were monitored by the headmaster. I guess he just lets people wander off if he doesn't care about them.
He must have been scared shitless when I came back after meeting Nathan and me leaving the same day. Hermione was a lot more annoying than I thought. I can understand why people don't like to hang out with her. She constantly like to correct people and seems to consider her own opinions as immutable facts. She even tried to recruit me for her elf liberation movement, and when I tried to explain to her how elves came to be and how important the magical bond they formed was, she just ignored me, treating me like I was making things up or something. She was so damn condescending that she even started to grate on my patience, trying to lecture me on magic. Who am I? Morgan fucking Le Fey, girl, you don't get to be condescending to me about magic. Other than that, she was a fine and kind girl with a heart of gold.
It was now time to do what I came to Hogwarts for, check the wards. I take my time walking up to the seventh floor and walk up to the wall that hid one of my finest creations, the room of requirements. Before starting with the wards, I feel a foul aura coming from the wall, and knowing that it must be the Horcrux, I decide to firstly contain the damn thing before it affects the wards permanently. It seems that I have caught it right in time, as it had almost succeeded in manipulating a student from outside the room.
It was then that I realized what the defense against the dark arts curse entails, the soul shard was subtly able to manipulate the wards into delicately kill every teacher in that position. The curse could have taken off the entirety of the castle if the castle itself wasn't sentient. Hogwarts was able to limit the influence from the Diadem but for some reason, the castle was severely weakened. I was prepared to find that answer today.
As I enter the room of lost things, I follow the feeling of the foul magic. I don't even need to sense the soul to know where it was. It truly felt like some vile magic. It's time like this that I regret not finding all of Herpo the foul's research when the man went batshit crazy. As I walk to the Diadem, I can feel the aura receding, afraid. It must have felt my presence and my power.
I take a look at the diadem in question and I sigh in relief because of my foresight. As soon as the founders were dead and had no heirs, I took away some of the items as mementos and replaced some fake copies of the artifacts I deemed too precious to me or too dangerous to be created. For example, I took away Salazar's true medallion and just replaced it with a long lived fake. I did the same with the diadem, I travelled until I found out where Helena hid it and replaced it with another fake. As for my cup, also known as Hufflepuff's chalice, I just pretended to give the Smith family the real cup. It was actually an invention I made because I was bored one day and Helena kept getting hurt as a kid, so as any mother does, I went and made an artifact that turns water into a powerful healing potion. Well, I transmutated the water into phoenix tears.
As for the sword of Gryffindor, I knew that the weapon would not let itself be wielded by someone it did not deem worthy. And I'm pretty sure, Voldemort is not worthy.
I hid my friends' relics and artifacts in a vault I created for my personal collection. It's a sad thing that Tom Riddle decided to create his first Horcrux at sixteen, crippling his magical potential. He had so much potential, it's a shame the guy chose to fight. However, Magic grows from the soul. A wizard's magical core feasts on the leftover life energy that exists in the soul as we grow stronger. Mutilating one's soul causes the magical development of the user to stop. It would never be better, only worse from now on. Considering Riddle wanted to stop that limitation and he ended up using a number rituals, which would definitely explain why he looks so bad and was getting progressively more unstable.
I take the fake diadem and put it in an enchanted box I made specifically to handle the Horcrux's aura and manipulation. After the diadem was secured, I went outside the room of lost things until I finally remembered why I was here in the first place, I wanted to take a look at the wards.