Chapter 31: The Battle at Crouch's Manor Part 1

I was in a rotten mood: awake for two days, sitting around waiting for Albus to visit Crouch Sr. The others were on a two minute standby, waiting for the go-ahead. For now, I was passing time by dissecting Aberforth's memories of Ariana's death and using them to improve Albus's personalized nightmare. And a couple of vials with Aberforth's blood would come handy as well…

Aberforth's capture went relatively smoothly. We slipped the Call of the Dead into his favorite liquor, and he never noticed the potion in the charmed bottle. He succumbed to visions of his sister and mother telling him they are alive and waiting for him at a specific address. Since no one could doubt the reality of the hallucinations created by this potion, he walked straight into a Death Eater ambush, happily dispelled his defenses and surrendered his wand.

It wasn't without complications. When Aberforth was asked to take off the pendant artifact, he complied. But as soon as the artifact left his neck, it released such a powerful cleansing spell that the potion's effects instantly vanished. Aberforth resisted and showed impressive skills in wandless magic. But when you are wandless, without pre-applied shields and stand alone against six, two of whom are Carrows, resisting does not do much good. And that was how I acquired a high-value captive. He could throw off the Imperius all day, but I cracked him with legilimency. And the Draught of the Living Death solved all other prisoner problems: how could anyone attempt an escape while unconscious and unable to control their own breathing or heartbeat?

My thoughts kept veering off to issues in no way related to the upcoming attack. I was still processing the recent past.

I partially verified Horace's account of the harm of Dark magic. The Lestranges had pre-made runic patterns for many standard rituals. I've been cutting out pieces of the floor with suitable fragments -sometimes ten rines, sometimes a hundred- and drawing the connecting runes myself… The resulting mosaic formed a "ritual circle" with 3252 runes. Parts of it resembled the horcrux creation ritual, only instead of focusing the energy into the wizard to splinter the soul, this ritual measured it. I would have never completed it without Tom's horcrux experiences.

The ritual worked for the low price of a sacrificed sheep and some human blood, so I carried out a number of experiments. The protocol was simple: perform the ritual, exert some impact on a human (for example, Crucio), then repeat the ritual and see what changed. Or more precisely, try to interpret a pile of numbers and graphs.

When muggles killed someone, no changes occurred. Or maybe I could not detect any.

With a wizard, the same scenario became far more interesting. Indeed, killing a human left traces on a much deeper level than the energy system. Every murder accumulated something I nicknamed "necroenergy." It even happened when a wizard killed without magic, for instance bludgeoned someone to death with a club.

Problem was, the mere fact of casting some spells -Antipatronus, Rotting Swarm- left behind this "necroenergy" just the same! And killing someone with a Dark spell had a larger effect than the sum of the two elements, the murder and the spell use itself!

Tne Unforgivables proved to be the absolute worst. Avada Kedavra was the "dirtiest" spell I have tested. Even casting it at the wall gave more "necroenergy" than a mundane murder, more than Fiendfyre! And killing with Avada…

The second most problematic curse was Crucio. I found no changes after torture with thumbscrews and needles- it was either clean or left too little to be detected. But torture with the Cruciatus led to massive accumulation of necroenergy… And surprisingly, the accumulation was directly proportional to the spell strength and relishing the others' pain.

The Imperius made no sense. Even when used to drive a human insane, mental magic left no traces as long as the subject survived. But there was a single exception- the Imperius. Any attempt to cast it built up "necroenergy," and successfully subduing a human multiplied the effects. The only uplifting news was that the duration of the Imperius was irrelevant, unlike the Cruciatus.

But what dumbfounded me the most was blood magic. Using own blood to cast an Expelliarmus had no negative effects. Using own blood to cast a Sectusempra resulted in the standard Dark magic effect of this particular spell. And using someone else's blood was unconditionally Dark, even when spent on a levitation charm.

In an attempt to understand at least a little, I thought up a simple analogy: Dark Magic was like firearms - each use covered hands in residue. Sometimes less, sometimes more… This residue stung, and after reaching a certain critical amount… Probably caused mutations…

Funny, Tom always mocked Albus for his "murder mutilates the soul" and magical laws "On classification of Dark magic." It turned out they held more than just a grain of truth… I thought about what to do next… Grow a beard and propagate the power of love? No, my path was my own. It was only logical: "necroenergy" both accumulated and dissipated, so as long as the influx was slower than clearance, it would be possible to, for example, kill someone twice a day indefinitely.

It would be useful to know the critical level that caused irreversible changes, but I had no time for the untold number of experiments it would take to determine. On the other hand, measuring the speed of clearance was more manageable. I have tested several captive wizards, the Lestranges, Sirius Black, and myself.

First. My speed was slightly above the average prisoner. I had no way to judge whether it was high or low.

Second. In Bellatrix, this parameter was six times lower than mine. I initially suspected the Black blood and tested Sirius. But his was perfectly average…

Third. Edward's, Rodolphus's and Rabastan's "necroenergy" dissipated three time faster than mine. I would have blamed blood purity, but then Bella didn't fit the system…

My best hypothesis so far was that the magic source acted as a sort of external stabilizer. And Bella's "partial connection" slowed her rate of "Dark magic detox." In Hogwarts, she was as sane as a Black could be. Tom first noticed her potential with the Cruciatus after she had already become a Lestrange.

In light of these new facts, the picture of the medieval magical society started to look more reasonable. The vast majority worked to feed themselves or the aristocracy. The aristocracy, comprised of the ancient pureblood lines, waged wars among themselves and against muggles with highly lethal spells- Dark Magic. To stay sane, they sat on places of power that were scarce and not available to everyone. Exceptionally enthusiastic ones like Slytherin grew insane in their old age. And when the Statute of Secrecy removed the need for a warrior caste, it sent Dark Magic into decline… Why support potentially unhinged soldiers with no wars in sight? Several centuries was enough for the masses to forget the why of it. The Unspeakables were surely aware. They probably had some artifact that read a spell formula and instantly determined wherever it was dark..

I was more concerned with the present. What do I do with this knowledge? Tell the Death Eaters? It would be suicide. The likes of Malfoy and Nott would run to Dumbledore. Idealists like Rosier or Carrows would accuse me of going soft and betraying the cause. The Lestranges would do what I say, but I could not afford to weaken my soldiers in the midst of war.

With some effort, even these news can be moulded into a shiny jewel… I found terribly top-secret scrolls in the Chamber of Secrets that explain why we need muggleborns! Their purpose is to lose their minds in our place! Why not? There were two ways to solve this: concentrate the harmful effects in one group and protect it or spread them evenly among everyone so that each receives less than the critical dosage. I felt like an engineer designing a nuclear power plant…

Unfortunately, the research was still at its infancy. All I had was an experimentally compiled chart of necroenergy accumulation for three dozen spells. It would be a great start, but it turned out that the same spell performed by me, Rabastan and a randomly chosen prisoner caused different amounts of harm to each of us! Meaning, everyone needed a personalized chart of every spell! And that was not even mentioning Dark potions, rituals, artifacts… They all had to be tested for every individual… Or at least for me.. Now I understood Albus: it was much easier to pass a blanket ban on Dark magic for everyone.

For myself, I settled on a temporary plan: kill with other people's hands. If it is not feasible, kill with something benign like accelerated rocks and do my best not to abuse the Killing Curse. I really did not want to end up like Don Quixote and attack windmills, mistaking them for giants..

My fight at Diagon must have left me with an ocean of "necroenergy" from my own spells. But almost completely abstaining from magic for a month should have cleared it out…

The problems mostly stemmed from not having a magic source. Should I tell the Lestranges to adopt me? No, magical adoption needed the new member be as young as possible, no older than a toddler. Adoption was out. Marriage? My options of pureblood women with a family source came down Carrow, future widow Black. She was rather ugly, but surgery and polyjuice have worked greater miracles… I must find Slytherin's legacy right away! So far, I only had two ideas: ransack old papers or go down to the Chamber of Secrets to ask the Basilisk where Slytherin hatched it and whether it remembered the directions…

It was beyond infuriating: I would soon face Albus and planned to rely on a slew of Dark magic because nothing else worked against him! And I had no way of knowing when to stop before overdosing…

All unpleasant thoughts were cut short once my communication artifact came to life: Barty Jr. had an urgent and very valuable message. Strange, I haven't drank Felix Felicis but already got incredibly lucky! Through his connections, Crouch Sr. learned that his home was about to be searched and he was powerless to stop it: Albus pushed the ICW for an international warrant and will personally accompany the committee. Crouch either feared stumbling into a trap or thought that Albus would instantly recognize his wife's illness. He sent his wife and son to one of their country houses. An unguarded house under Fidelius where Barty Crouch Sr. himself was the keeper…

But I did not need him to let me through the Fidelius. One Imperio from Barty Jr. - and both mother and son came to me on their own. The father's desire to hide his family simplified everything. He added one final flourish by entrusting his wife with the only illegal item they had in the manor. I never knew Crouch had a Time-Turner…

I branded Mrs. Crouch's forearm, put her under my own Imperius and convinced her she wanted to go home… But not before stuffing her bag full of artifacts that would earn an immediate Dementor's kiss if discovered.

"And don't forget to resist the search!" I gave her the last compulsion before touching Barty's Mark to summon everyone. His father's departure from the political Olympus will be very loud…