23

You know, I can't say that bringing Voldemort back to life was an easy decision. I had my doubts, because he had done some pretty bad things, some downright mad things. But I wanted to make sure that his mind was clear, that he was not under anyone's control.

So when I performed the ritual, I reassembled the fragments into a complete soul, and then examined it and the anomalies associated with it. And found something.

His soul, or rather the shell of the soul responsible for the mind, was woven with an almost invisible thread of scarlet, which I realised, to my shock, was a general curse. And a very damaging one at that. It begins to affect its wearer from adolescence, literally driving him mad and creating a true homicidal maniac.

After researching the Gont archives, I was shocked to learn that by the early ninth century, virtually every member of this bloodline of black magicians had gone insane, turning into the most bloodthirsty monsters the world had ever known. Amazingly, in the fourteenth century, one of the descendants of the family had not gone mad, and had even cleared his family of all charges. He proved that his family had an ancestral curse of enormous power that drove every member of the family, male. But when asked why he hadn't become a sadistic serial killer himself, he pulled up his robe and shirt, revealing to the court his body, almost entirely covered in tattoos of runes that flashed brighter with each beat of his heart. It seemed to be a protective tattoo, created by his mother to protect the wearer from the curse of the rod. True, the price of his pure spirit was the death of his mother after the ritual.

Since then, every boy born in the clan has been an orphan, at least on his mother's side, for she gave her life in childbirth for the integrity of his spirit. Fortunately, for reasons unknown, the first child was always a girl. That's why the Kin didn't die out in the seventeenth century. Though greatly diminished by the authorities' hunt for witches and sorcerers.

Another price to pay for the lack of influence over the mind was that the clan was drawn to dark magic from birth.

But when Thomas Riddle was born, something went wrong. Everything was fine at first, but then, at the age of twelve or so, someone got into the boy's head in a very rude way, and then also irradiated him with a negative flow of magic, which damaged the protection. And it gradually weakened, driving Thomas insane. When his mind is completely shattered, he is given a book about the lost knowledge of the dark cults, and finds a hint that there is a way to lift the curse. But to do so, he must find the right knowledge and become a Master of the Dark.

What do you think a man will do so that he does not go mad, so that he can sleep, so that he does not try to kill because of the demands of the voices that torture him? He will, of course, cling to them with all his hands and feet. Well, or kill himself. And as it turned out, Tom did try to kill himself. Threw himself into bombed-out areas to be killed by shells. Hanged himself, but was saved by Dumbledore. Shot himself, but for some reason the gun didn't go off. And there were many other times when he failed to kill himself. This was explained by the fact that he was the last Gont and magic itself was trying to save him. It also explained his magical power. For all the ancestral magic of the Gont family had been infused into him since his birth, as the last representative. He developed magically by leaps and bounds.

After all attempts at suicide had failed, the desperate boy surrendered to the will of the voices and became Voldemort, the One Who Must Not Be Named.

In the end, when he realised what this guy had gone through, that he had created Horcruxes not to live forever, but to die when they were destroyed, and that they were eager to be destroyed, he had no doubt. After all, he had deliberately become the most feared wizard in modern Britain. But it was all in vain because of the politicians, their desire to use this terrible leverage over the people to achieve even greater heights in their political careers. In the end, instead of destroying the Horcruxes, they hid them in various places.

Incidentally, the last Horcrux, which was in Nagaina, was the most sensible and pure of all the Horcruxes. And Tom thought that after his short life, the snake would die and take him to the Grey Beyond. But it turned out that his soul, though a shard, continued to be infused with Gont magic, saturating the snake with magic as well, making Nagaina's lifespan much longer than it had been. And Tom's plan failed.

I purified Riddle's soul with Dragon's Breath, which burned away the curse, helped him regain consciousness, and then put the finished product into the body of a comatose boy who would never have awakened anyway.

I have given Tom Riddle a new life. A life without pain or madness. Without blood and murder. Let's see how he uses what he's been given...

****

You know, when Ron came up to me in the common room at breakfast and invited me to visit Hagrid at his house, I almost hit my head on the tabletop, forgetting that I was trying to negotiate with the woodcutter for a supply of rare ingredients for normal money, not the pittance Dumbledore was giving him. Honestly, when I found out how much he was cheating the naive woodcutter out of, I wanted to shake the old senile and greedy man's neck really hard. Hard, until his vertebrae cracked. I'm certainly no angel, although in some worlds... well, let's not talk about other shards. Yes, let's not. But I like to work honestly. I do not cheat those who allow me to enrich myself with their labour. Why not? Suppose I buy unicorn hair from Hagrid for, say, five shekels. And resell the same hair for two galleons. What's in it for me? A profit, but when Hagrid finds out how much I've cheated him, he'll probably stop selling it to me, and I'll be left with nothing. What's in it for me? I'd rather buy the same hair from him for one and a half galleons, at wholesale, and turn it into a finished product in the form of potions, wands or artefacts, and if I invest one and a half galleons in the hair, I'll sell the same potion for twenty galleons. The net profit is fifty percent of its value. And that's even cheaper than the market value. I'll end up with a lot more money and an honest deal with Hagrid, who won't be offended and won't turn his back on me for lying. That's how you do business, gentlemen. The goblins are still shocked that my way of doing business makes it profitable, even very profitable. They'd all taken Hagrid for a fool and taken advantage of his naivety, but not for long. And I contracted for years of steady profits and preached fair play. But I'm not gullible, and I always know when I'm being taken for a ride. In the end, I will pretend to buy it, but at the end of the game, the one who tricked me will be the fool and the one tricked. And no money. That's how I play. And I believe that my approach at least does not disadvantage my partners. Although there have been people who have taken my partners away from me by promising them large sums of money, in the end all the partners who had left me came back to me because others had cheated them in some way.

Visiting the ranger was not so easy, nor was it quite like visiting the canon, for with the change in the school came a change in the ranger's property. He had been given much more land and many buildings and outbuildings had been built for breeding and keeping animals. I heard that the ranger was overjoyed. However, he still found plenty of time to grow his monstrous pumpkins and his hobby of making muffins, which are as hard as stone for anyone who is not a giant.

When we arrived, we knocked on the door of his house and there was a barking sound from the other side and it was as if there was a hard bang on the door from inside. Ron and I jerked involuntarily to the side. And then we ran away, where I noticed smoke billowing from the chimney above the half-giant's house, even though it was already warm outside.

Soon, after only fifteen minutes, the hut doors swung open and a wolfhound the size of Hagrid came running out, tongue hanging out. What kind of steroids had he been on?

The dog didn't charge us, but trotted off towards a large rock in the giant's garden, marking it pointedly.

- Harry! Ron! You decided to come to my house after all? Come in, don't stand outside! I'll make you some herbal tea, it's delicious! And my muffins. Don't be shy, come in! - and we went into his house, looking around at the dog, who was sniffing around with an important look on his face.

Where it was surprisingly hot. His house inside reminded me of an old life where my host had a grandmother who lived in the country. She also had all sorts of herbs, bones and the like hanging all over her house. But there was a difference. My grandmother had an ordinary stove, but Hagrid's was an enormous fireplace, with flames roaring in it, no less. I noticed something in there that drew me in like a magnet, but the Forester managed to distract me by giving me and Ron a muffin that was really stone, but I didn't really listen to the half-giant and Ron's conversation, wondering what was in the fireplace that was drawing my attention. I only woke up when I saw Ron and Hagrid's stunned expressions.

- What?" he asked, looking from one to the other.

- Well, actually..." the woodcutter hesitated, but Ron did not.

- How did you manage to eat that muffin-shaped rock? - I looked down at my right hand and saw the remains of a muffin.

- Ah! So I soaked it in the tea. It's a big cup and it fits perfectly,' I shrugged, improvising as I went. - Soaked, I ate it.

- Aaah! - Hagrid pounced.

- You're lying! - Damn it, it didn't work with Ron. - I tried soaking him too, but it was no use! I've had him in a mug of tea for half an hour now, to no avail!

- Have you? Maybe you have a particularly hard copy? - I answered immediately. Ron sighed and pointed to the three other mugs in front of him that I had just noticed. All three contained tea and muffins. - Well, what can I say... you're not exactly lucky, Ron.

- Blimey! You have the softest muffin..." Ron lowered his head to the table, almost hitting his forehead on it. And I decided to take the conversation elsewhere.

- Hagrid, what's so round in your fireplace, hmm? - At this question, Hagrid made a strange fuss, remembering that he hadn't fed the hippogriff or milked the unicorn or anything like that, as he covered the fireplace with his broad body. And he succeeded quite well, it's really huge... but there was no stopping me now. What was burning in the fireplace beckoned to me, beckoned to me, and it was like... crying...

I don't know how I ended up at the fireplace, literally knocking Hagrid out of the way, probably using chakra to amplify and accelerate, and the giant himself, literally ramming into the wall because he wouldn't let me through to the egg. Yes, the egg. A black one with red spots. It was in the middle of the fire in the fireplace. I immediately threw myself into the fire, not knowing what I was doing, and Hagrid tried to stop me again, but he couldn't as I knocked him out with a right hook and he slid down the opposite wall, Ron watching with his mouth hanging open.

He extinguished the flames with one hand, pulled a barely warm egg from the embers and held it to his lips, hissing at Ron and the Ranger, who was beginning to come to his senses. I thought I was being driven by my instincts, screaming at me to save the child from the clutches of these barbarians who knew nothing of child rearing.

My hiss sent the Forester and Ron recoiling towards the exit.

- Harry, what's the matter with you?! - Hagrid shouted, and Ron just went white, unable to move, but he spoke anyway.

- His eyes...

Sensing that the giant was about to do something, he immediately used Hiraishin and kicked the door out of the way. How I ended up in the dungeon, I do not know. When I woke up, I was lying there in the shape of a dragon, feeling a round object in my belly that I wanted to protect with all my being.

I curled up and covered myself with the white leathery wings and breathed a jet of flame onto the egg, feeling the magic fill it and warm it with the warmth of my fire, which made me hear a happy child's laughter...