C056 - The first Horcrux

Basilisk Venom with its property to damage the soul. The killing curse for its ability to end lives... however it did that. And fiendfyre, of course, with its all-consuming flames.

Those were the three ways I knew that would guarantee dealing with a horcrux before I started my magical education. But two of them would destroy the item, the remaining one 'blackened the soul'. I wasn't eager to do any of that, I planned to keep the Diadem, the Cup, and the Locket intact if I could help it.

Last year after I entered the Room of Lost Things once Quirrell was dead and out of the castle - because I didn't want it to be known to Voldemort that I knew the place where he stashed one of his six anchors to life - I found the Diadem of Ravenclaw.

But remembering how even Dumbledore slowly started dying because of an Ancient Egyptian curse as he touched the ring horcrux, I stayed far away from the Diadem. And, it seemed Riddle put different spells on the item because it felt like it wanted me to go away. That was different from the Gaunt Lord ring that wanted to be touched to inflict its lethal spell. It could be a misdirect, of course.

As the elves were sifting through the accumulated trash in the room, I walked toward the horcrux with my basilisk glove equipped. I didn't want to risk it and touch the cursed crown only to learn the glove wasn't durable enough and be destroyed or worse yet, the glove couldn't take whatever spells Voldemort put on it and I die anyway. It was just a safety measure in case my Occlumency wasn't strong enough despite working on it relentlessly all summer.

It wasn't long before I stood in front of the weird warlock's bust with the hidden Diadem laying in an ornate box beneath it. Not only was the diadem golden, even the box was golden in my eagle vision.

Using one of the curse detection spells I learned from a book in the Black Library, I quickly found out that something truly ancient and evil was cast on the box.

"Is it the curse on the position of the DADA professor? But, is an almost random box enough to do that? I would have thought it was some kind of powerful taboo and a cursed item in the DADA professor's office or the classroom..."

Sadly, I couldn't really investigate last year. Once Quirrell died, I couldn't just roam around the DADA classroom because 'free study' during the class' original time was done in the Great Hall. The classroom was locked and not by a spell that could be undone by a simple first year charm, 'Alohomora'.

I noticed that either the box or the diadem itself tried to influence me, the intensity of its efforts increasing by the second the longer I merely shrugged it off. With narrowed eyes, I left the box as is. I would bring it to Lupin in the future if he turns out to be as good of a professor as he was in canon. If it was indeed the item that cursed his position, he could clear it himself. A good test to see if he deserved to stay on as DADA professor.

Through mere intent, instead of casting 'Wingardium Leviosa', I pointed my wand and floated the diadem out of the box and placed it on a table nearby. It was a form of magic that I tried training all summer once the trace was lifted off of me. I didn't why I chose that moment, but I learned from a book sold to me by the hag that magic users in middle eastern countries used their foci differently - as mere extensions of their will instead of a focus for spells.

It would take a long time to become proficient in such magic, but I had the time - and knowing minor wandless magic allowed to directly step into the realm of 'being able to lift a small piece of jewelry without using a spell'.

Without my eagle vision, the diadem looked nice, but... unremarkable. No ominous dark aura was wafting of it. No shining silver light beckoned me to put the diadem on. But there was a small voice in the back of my head telling me to just put it on and become the smartest Ravenclaw there ever was. The voice was growing louder and more tempting by the minute.

"You were once probably powerful beyond what I could currently grasp, Riddle. But you butchered your own soul to become something lesser. Stop trying to influence me through trickery as a mere specter," I drawled once I firmed my mind and concentrated on my Occlumency shields.

A barely visible phantom materialized in front of me above the diadem. It wasn't as corporal as the young Riddle that came to be in the second year of canon after draining Ginny Weasley's life force. But the horcrux still stayed in the magically saturated Hogwarts for decades, and that allowed the form of Riddle to become almost corporeal.

"You know my name. You came here with purpose," the phantom Riddle said in a weak yet somehow forceful whisper. The man truly used to be charismatic, I learned the more he talked. "Tell me. What do you want most? Knowledge? Power? I grasped the secrets to immortality. I can grant you both."

"Immortality? You? A toddler and his mum's love killed the real you while a mere sliver of your being lives on in endless misery. Anchored to this world through this... vile phylactery?"

The middle-aged Riddle ghost regarded me with silent fury, but it only reached his eyes. The rest of his face continued to hold his superior sneer. He still viewed me as someone beneath him.

"Enough with the games. You talked to me with the intent to gain something. Out with it," Riddle spat, but the horcrux increased its efforts to influence me.

It wanted me angry to easier enchant my mind.

"Time was all I needed," I said as I fished out a caged rat from my pouch and finished some elaborate wand movements and pressed my focus on the diadem on a certain spot I saw in my eagle vision. It took me a while to confirm what I searched for because I didn't care to mess up.

The anchor point.

"Anima Dimitii," I intoned forcefully as I finished a chant I was reciting in my head and felt my wand heat up.

That was definitely a first - but I concentrated on the spell and kept it going. A spell from the Black Library. A spell that released souls from confinement. Something that helped against forceful possession. A very niche spell that rarely found use, I supposed. It took me hours to find in the vast Black Library.

But it worked on a piece of soul bound to a magic item. At least I hoped it would.

I obviously caught the piece of Riddle's soul by surprise as it suddenly started screaming in pure agony. It turned more and more translucent as I saw the magic getting stripped away from the anchor in the form of copious, dark smoke.

Ignoring all the threats that Voldemort hurled at me as he slowly vanished, I placed the sleeping rat I caught earlier this morning above the diadem and backed off hurriedly. Cursed to cling to anything living or magically powerful to sustain its existence, the specter of Tom Riddle was sucked up into the rat, who I had to apologize to in my mind.

It was screeching like a little mouse getting used as a chew toy by a gang of cats.

As I ignored the smoke and whatever happened to the rat and the diadem for a moment, I looked down at my hand.

The goblin silver of my wand heated up enough to leave burns in my palm. The wood smelled charred, but I saw no damage. The burn on my hand was nothing severe, but it was still painful. Thankfully, the wand remained in one piece. I'd likely have to get it looked at if there was a repeat performance.

Taking out a clean bandage, I cast the minor healing charm on my palm and wrapped it up. The bandage was a magical item that cooled wounds and kept them clean. A lucky purchase in Magical Italy as I roamed a bazaar with Flitwick after my first tournament day.

Minutes later, the dark smoke eventually vanished, and the rat stopped screeching in pain. In my vision, it was blood red now, though. So it seemed like Voldemort's soul obliterated the rat's soul and was now in charge of the body and looking to hurt me. Sadly for the dark lord, the cage the rat was in was designed for small magical creatures. Nothing it could do in this form would break it unless he could reverse animagus himself and break the cage mid transformation.

"Patrick!" I called out, and since my elf was already here thanks to the lucky circumstances of today, he popped to my side almost immediately.

"Yes?"

"The plan 'Tom in Wonderland' is in effect. Take that cage with you once you're done here and bury it in the basement I unearthed below the shack last week. Give it water and seeds, but not too much. Just enough for it to stay alive. I'll deal with it by Christmas break at the latest. Remember, use lethal measures if it ever manages to break out. The locator tag I put around the rat's neck won't help us if it is somehow smart and powerful enough to jump host."

"Patrick understands," the elf solemnly declared as he watched the rat with its malevolent red eyes staring at the two of us in as much hatred as the eyes of a rat allowed.

Keeping the soul shard alive was a risky business. If something happened and the soul piece somehow escaped and gained power, I could doom the lives of thousands. But the Black Library didn't only have that spell for lifting the soul anchor. It had tens of spells that would apply in this situation. And having the mind connected to Riddle's soul degrade in a rat's body... which I wasn't even sure was going to work - was to my benefit. Once it was weakened and feral, a particularly vicious form of Legilimency would allow me to rip out the magical knowledge of the soon to be dead rat. Even if the original Voldemort had superior Occlumency to me.

I just needed to concentrate on which form of knowledge I wanted, for example 'curses' and would rob the information from the affected party, causing the mind and soul of the target to collapse in on itself as it tried to fill the whole. The book came with many warnings and even more noted down experiences of insanity. If it wasn't for the disclaimer suggesting only very learned Occlumens should try this form of the mind arts, I would just kill the rat after sufficiently torturing its mind and soul with dark magics.

And I definitely wasn't just going to rip out all of his knowledge on 'magic' and overload my mind.

But... Voldemort spent decades going after obscure magics. It would be a disservice to myself to not at least try to use my prior canon knowledge to get ahead of everybody else at the expense of nothing I respected or valued. If it worked, I had at the very least three horcruxes I could realistically get to. The diadem, the locket since I had an in with Kreacher, and the Hufflepuff cup in my, well, my aunt's vault.

The ring was a bit of an iffy topic. Clearly, it was meant as a trap for someone who was hunting Riddle's anchors to reality. I wondered if I should just burn down the building in Little Hangleton with Fiendfire and get the Ressurection Stone from the ashes once I was done. And the diary could be anywhere now. I still wasn't sure if it was in Hogwarts this year or not.

Nagini either wasn't a horcrux yet or out of my reach in any case. And since I couldn't test on the snake, the spell I used for the diadem wasn't something I wanted to try on Harry, despite my current spat with him. I didn't want to find out if I could cause his soul to leave his body before the horcrux moves out of the way. He wasn't truly possessed yet, after all, so the rules for the spell applied differently.

So, three soul shards. After long deliberation, I decided to rip out all the knowledge the soul shards would hold on warding, enchantments, and curses. I hoped the latter of the three topics would come with the counter curses Voldemort researched. I would decide whether or not to go after another horcrux if it did.

Because, maybe it would tell me about the counter curse to use on the Gaunt ring, or it would help with the rest of the curses on the diadem and the box.

As I watched the diadem, I clearly felt that it wasn't cleared completely of all the dark magics. The soul was gone, but it was still cursed. I still couldn't put it on.

"You really did it," someone suddenly whispered behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. It took all my training with Flitwick and a good grip on my Occlumency to turn around with my wand drawn instead of screaming like a little girl and running away.

But once I did, I immediately lowered my wand.

"Lady Ravenclaw," I greeted with a solemn bow after breathing out in relief.

The ghost kept looking at the diadem with a sorrowful expression as she asked, "You know my name? I had thought it lost."

"I always thought the name 'Grey Lady' was a little... uh, redundant? Pretty much all ghosts are grey, unless they are like Peeves, who is technically a poltergeist..." I explained and suddenly stopped as I started to scratch my head, "Sorry, milady."

"You put the soul piece into the rat? You could have just allowed it to dissipate. Maybe you even should have," the ghost muttered in melancholy.

"For his crimes, all parts of him deserve a little more suffering. I don't wish to draw out his life unendingly to prolong his torture. But until I found all of his pieces, it won't matter if one piece of him is kept alive to experience more pain," I explained as I joined Helena Ravenclaw in watching the rat. "Plus, he has some knowledge in his soul that I wish to rip out of him."

That got the ghost's attention as she watched me with a small frown.

"Do tread lightly on such a path. One's mind is one's strongest weapon. Too much of another, and you become someone else," the ghost eventually advised, her gaze still complicated.

A great warning that I would follow. There was no sense in defeating Riddle only to become him in the process.

"I'd like to just claim the diadem once I got rid of the other curses, but looking at you... I'm a little reluctant to just take it. Do you have a wish of what I should do with your mother's treasure, Lady Helena?"

The ghost looked at me for a long time until she asked, "I've watched you last year. You have my mother's gift, no?"

I knew the Ravenclaw house ghost talked to literally nobody past a simple hello, so I only deliberated for a short moment before I pointed to my eyes to ask, "The Eagle Vision?"

"You call it Eagle Vision?" Helena asked in a quiet voice with curiosity dripping in her voice before she shook her head to counter, "My mother called it the God's Eye. My grandfather's father came from the lands beyond the waters in the year 873. I believe they call it Norway today. They looted and killed and then eventually settled in the east of these islands south of Hogwarts when they managed to lay their roots. Among the raiding party, my mother told me there were powerful witches who could divine the way forward when lost on the sea. Tell traitors from allies. Find anything magical with just a glance. Hence the name. They thought it was a gift from Odin, who sacrificed one of his eyes for wisdom."

I... honestly couldn't find fault in the logic. I wasn't even sure if that wasn't totally untrue, even if I linked it to a powerful bloodline ability from an actual magical bloodline instead. Though, I still wasn't sure how long ago Heimdall and his family, the ones I saw in my dreams, not the one from the myths, lived on Earth. It could be in the time of Jesus. It could be thousands of years before.

I simply didn't know enough yet.

"I did not think your mother believed in God, or gods, really," I pointed out in slight amusement. I wanted the ghost to snap out of its saddened state. Only then would I learn more now that she actually talked to me.

"My mother was very practical about it. Magic, she believed, did not have a limit. She argued that magicals could eventually become powerful enough to be indistinguishable from gods. At their prime, regular muggles would have surely believed my mother and the other founders to be gods. She said she wasn't even close to understanding what magic truly is - but someone who knew the truth would be like a god to her. To all of us, really," Helena passionately argued as her expression for the first time almost turned, well, lively.

"Unless you can tell others and make them gods, too, that sounds like a very lonely existence," I countered, and my expression grew complicated.

I, too, was choosing to be lonely at the moment.

"You'll treat it with the respect it deserves. The diadem is yours," the ghost decided and remained silent as she continued to look at it with a hundred different sad emotions.