41 Devour and plans

It was late November, and the weather was getting colder by the day, looking outside the window the once vivid colourful castle grounds were now covered in white. It was as monotonous as it could get, no change, no other colour except white.

Not that I minded, somehow, I never really felt cold, I even asked Drak about it since even as a kid I never felt the biting cold others described. I did feel cold before but the older I got the less I felt it until now where I could be completely naked in the snow and not feel it.

Drak said it was due to his influence, a sort of passive ability brought by his powers. A devouring ability of sorts, meaning it could devour anything, and add it to his host's assortment of abilities. This included knowledge, blood talents and stuff like that. He kept it vague but told me that it was much more in-depth than I thought it to be. He's annoying like that, always giving me half the information and leaving the rest out.

Shaking my head, I walked towards transfiguration class and sat in the front row with Hermione as always. We had been doing great in class recently, Professor McGonagall even praised us which was rare for her and even rarer for it to be directed towards me. I have grown to accept the fact that she seems to not like me very much.

We did however find something interesting in class. The Professor noticed the difference between Hermione and me when it came to transfiguration. It seemed that Hermione was more calculative and worked well with numbers but had a limited ability when it came to imagination which set her apart from me who leaned more towards imagination. McGonagall said that I was more closely related to Dumbledore in this area whereas Hermione leaned towards McGonagall.

She said that like Dumbledore, I didn't rely upon calculations and numbers and the sort in order to transfigurate things and only about 20% of my transfiguration required it and the rest was at the mercy of imagination, visualization and creativity. She said that I would probably have an easier time learning elemental magic since they had a correlation as well where visualization was key.

It was an interesting concept nonetheless, but I soon found out something else. Drak said that I had a natural affinity for elemental magic due to his existence within me at an early age. It would not happen if the person inherited their dragon when they were older as their body would have already matured. He said that since he had been with me from an early age and due to my talent, my affinity for elemental magic soared above normal.

It seemed that it had something to do with Drak, as well as my innate visualisation capability which was a pleasant surprise.

I found it fascinating and also not out of the expectations since there was a lot of mystery around Drak and the pact he made with my family. He would often stay quiet and read my memories to entertain himself, like watch movies or watch how I played games in my past life which consumed a lot of my time early into my teenage years. But he did chime in from time to time, which was helpful, he was more of an advisor and parental figure than anything else.

The days went by like this and day after day we spent it between classes, the library, and the classroom where we practised our magic, especially the protego spells that I was teaching her to master. I seemed to be a natural at it and learned it at a very fast pace, probably due to having read and seemingly copied the memories of the target and assimilated them into mine.

I knew that this wasn't due to legilimency which attracted my attention heavily. I asked Drak about it and once again it had something to do with his influence on my body and soul. It seems that since his powers had something to do with devouring, it had a correlation. He only said that I didn't cause harm to the kid and that he was fine which was the most important part.

But it did enlighten me to a possibility. "Drak, if I was to, let's say, use your devouring ability on Voldemort's Horcrux in the chamber of secrets would I be able to obtain his knowledge on magic in the process?" I asked. It made sense, if I was able to implement his ability and add the knowledge that Riddle put into the diary then it would be a huge boon. All the knowledge a genius Hogwarts student had accumulated over the course of his school years would be incredibly useful for my future endeavours.

[It is possible, and you could do it now but you would also ingest the negative effects of the diary, which would alter your personality and warp it into a mixture of yours and the Tom Riddle stuck in the diary,] he said simply.

I was shocked, I didn't know there would be a side effect. This would be a big turn off then, if I can't keep my soul intact then it is not worth it. After all, unlike Voldy the Baldy, when he mutilated his soul to an unrecognisable degree, he also severed his power. If his soul was intact, he might have been strong enough to beat Dumbledore. But he was dumb enough to go after immortality which sealed his own fate.

I thought about immortality a lot and the concept of it, and I found it to be a funny thing. On one hand, you have all the time in the world if you make it work to a desirable degree. But, on the other hand, you lose the drive and purpose you once had. It's a funny thing, you gain something, but you must forfeit something of equal value, in this case, you gain infinite life but lose your meaning.

What makes life special is that it is limited, making each moment as precious as the last, knowing that your time here is short. Death runs on its own clock and eventually it will run out and that is precisely what gives us meaning and the drive to push us forward. It reminded me of an interview Neil deGrasse Tyson once did which explained the concept. Very insightful stuff I must admit, I bet he would love to know my story if he knew I ended up here even after death. I chuckled as I walked along the big corridor that echoed with the footsteps of students.

"There must be a way to overcome this flaw, right Drak?" I asked optimistically.

[ There is, and that is to increase your control over my power, why else did I tell you to inform the knights about Hawaii. It is so that you can increase your control, I have already thought about many plans in the event that something like this comes up. You need to grow at a faster pace, Voldemort although weak is still a threat to you. I believe that after this trip to Hawaii you will be able to absorb the diary's knowledge without side effects, after doing so you can go and search for the other Horcrux and do the same, there is the diadem of Ravenclaw in the ROR after all, so we can go after that at some point as well. But the last part is my conjecture, I have no clue how strong the Horcrux inside the diadem is.] he said.

I was shocked at his planning, I seem to have really underestimated this old farts ability, he seems to have been thinking about all these plans for a long time. Well, when you have so much time on your hands what else can you do. I thought about other things I could use this ability on and Drak confirmed it which really excited me.