62 Bound Soul

With everything prepared, Harry levitates the now conscious man over to him, placing the limbless body in the centre of the circle while readying the blooded knife. "I hope you enjoy this, I put a lot of work into it so I'd hate for you to find it inadequate." Harry explains while standing over the man.

"You're sick, child... That creature, it's the cause, isn't it? The one who tainted your young mind..."

Harry smiles, "No, I was like this way before I summoned her... I think I'd be worse without her presence, actually. Maybe thanking her will hasten your suffering?"

The man sneers despite not being a threat at all, "I will die, and continue on to the next great adventure. While you will be stuck here, stewing like a pock-ridden corpse, you have my pity, boy."

"And you have mine old man, because you won't be going anywhere once you die." Harry states before raising the knife up and bringing it towards the man's eye.

*Sliii*

"Hgggggrrkk!!" the man quietly growls as Harry begins the procedure. He slides the knife down into the side of his eye, cutting around it and creating a magical suction to pull the eye free of its socket. The man screams in absolute agony of course, but it's ignored as Harry slices away the connection between the back of the eye and the brain.

He does the same with the next, ignoring the blood pooling from the wound and bathing the circle below. The circle glows with ominous crimson light, making Harry aware that all was going as planned.

With both eyes carved, he moves onto the mouth... An efficient flick of his wrist pries the jaw open, and another pulls the tongue and presents it to Harry, who reaches inside with the knife and slices the base of it to remove the oral organ.

The man coughs and splutters as blood fills his throat from the loss of his tongue, but Harry allows it, letting the man drown in his own blood as he wouldn't die until the ritual was finished, the circle made sure of that.

Next, he carves a swirling symbol into the man's forehead, deep enough to scar bone.

"Kali, the eyes." he asks and Kali carries a tray next to the circle, not entering it.

Harry levitates them over and places the now cloudy orbs into the man's empty eye sockets, replacing his original ones. He does the same with the tongue of a liar, sticking it to the bottom of the man's mouth to prevent him from swallowing it.

"Enjoying yourself yet? You can't answer but I'm sure you'd say something irritating like 'Your mind is poisoned, child.' or 'You can still find salvation'... Don't worry, your end and beginning is near." he says, stroking a hand through the man's thin hair and raising the dagger.

*SliiK!*

He slams it down into the man's heart, causing him to gasp in air and blood, his body trembling in its death throes. The carving on the man's forehead glows brightly, and his body suddenly starts decomposing.

Flesh melts away, then muscle, then sinew, revealing organs and then, bone. All the bones below the man's head also begin disintegrating, leaving nothing but a skeletal skull with glowing green lights in the eye sockets that almost matched the colour of Harry's own eyes.

*SHHHKOOSH!*

The ritual circle turns to dust and blows away with a nonexistent wind, nothing is left behind, not even a single drop of blood from the man's body.

Harry picks up the skull and looks into its eyes as if he were Shakespeare talking to poor Yorick's skull. "Speak, what is your name?"

"Grindelwald. Gellert Grindelwald." the skull says in a deep, low, reverberating tone.

"Grindelwald...? Why were you being held prisoner?"

"The atrocities I commit against both Muggle and Magical beings, starting World War II with Adolf Hitler and facilitating his extermination of the Jewish population. My rebellion failed and they feared me, that is why I was imprisoned."

"Hm... I wonder how powerful he would have been with a wand?" Kali idly comments.

"I would have annihilated you, the boy, destroyed my prisoner, and rekindled my rebellion." the skull states in a dull tone, but with the confidence to go with it.

"And how would you rank yourself in comparison with the rest of this world's 'Witches and Wizards'?" Harry inquires.

"Few could defeat me, even in my weakened state. Those alive that I suspect could compete with me are Voldemort, Nicolas Flamel, Aleister Crowley, Yang Jiayi, Kitwana Tinibu, and Albus Dumbledore."

"Dumbledore? Tell me about him." Harry presses, instantly locking onto the name.

"Albus Dumbledore, my former lover. A paranoid man with similar ideas to my own, preserving Witches and Wizards against the Muggle threats. He saw the way the tide moved, and decided to take his chances elsewhere, ambushing me and stealing my greatest weapon, my wand."

"Your wand?"

"The Elder Wand, otherwise known as the 'Death Stick', an incredibly powerful artifact supposedly created by Death itself. It enhanced any magic cast through it, making even an average wizard stand above the rest."

Harry looks to Kali, "Do you know anything about this?"

She shakes her head, "Unfortunately not, though, if 'Death' was the originator of this wand then we will have to be careful with how we tread. The concept of Death isn't unknown even to Demon Gods, after all."

Harry nods and turns his attention back to skull, "Why would Dumbledore imprison and restrain me, forcing me to live with my abusive relatives?" he asks, leaving the skull ample room to speculate.

"Unknown. Albus Dumbledore is fearful, fretful... After the supposed 'death' of Voldemort, he will be jumping at shadows... He displays himself as morally upright, doing things to show his followers his 'superiority', he would not do anything 'cruel' without reason."