Kapitel 79: Chapter 75: Practising the Killing Curse
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In a very weird way, the clearing that Harry had created all those years by burying the remnants of his past, like the corpse that it was, had remained the only source of real stability in his life in the past years. He'd gone to Hogwarts, made friends, and met teachers. Had become skilful in several different magical and non-magical disciplines. And yet the apple tree, and the cave, and the green grass and the tranquillity of the forest that greeted whenever he entered the clearing remained the same.
He was glad that Dobby had not apparently tried to change anything during Harry's absence. The house-elf was crouched in on himself on the grass, the Sorting Hat on his head, looking wondrously at a butterfly that was fluttering about from flower to flower, collecting nectar and proving to the world that whimsical beauty was not only a realm reserved for women with weird hair colours.
"Enjoying your newfound free time, Dobby?" Harry asked as he approached the house-elf, dropping his bike unceremoniously on the floor and wiping his slightly wet hands on the green hoodie he was wearing. It was raining outside the clearing, just not in it. Here, it was as sunny always as if the forever ripe apples refused to not beckon the visitors with their red-lustre magnified by rays of sunlight.
The house-elf sprung up at Harry's seemingly sudden entry, looking for all the world as if he was about to stand at attention.
"At ease, soldier," Harry jokes, only for the quip to fly over the house-elf's hat-covered head.
"What does master be needings Dobby to do?" the house elf asked enthusiastically.
The boy tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Have you touched any of the things you weren't supposed to touch?" he asked and received a shake of the head. "Well then, it seems like you can continue enjoying your time off. I will be calling on you when I need you." He walked past the baffled house-elf, plucking off the hat and putting it on his own head. Dobby, meanwhile, sat back down, only to notice that the butterfly had flown away.
Harry walked over to the entrance of the cave, which he noted was now equipped for actual living. A rickety but solid-looking bed with what seemed like an expensive mattress. A small table was shoved against the wall. There was a letter on it addressed to Charon. He thought he recognised Narcissa Malfoy's character in the writing and disregarded the likely contract for the moment.
He looked around more, finding a bookshelf on which his five new acquisitions from Borgin & Burkes had found their place. The entire scene, oddly domestic as it was, was alighted by a ball of light at the top of the cave. There seemed to be little shapes reminiscent of fairies dancing inside of it.
The ground in which he'd buried Voldemort's Horcrux seemed undisturbed. There was a list of things that Harry needed to do, now that he'd enjoyed a weekend of teenager-like freedom in Manchester (which was not a word combination he'd ever thought would go through his mind). Might as well start with the simplest of the bunch, he decided and sat down in his newly created study corner. Hovering a hand over the letter he determined that it contained no magic that could possibly harm him, not even a teensy winsy tracking spell. It seemed that he'd made quite an impression on Narcissa if she'd given up discovering his identity. Or maybe he was simply being arrogant, and there were much more subtle methods involved. Surely, a combination of houses as old as the Malfoys and the Blacks would have several books worth of tricks on how to get one over their enemies.
Maybe not, considering how little reverence and interest old pure-blood families seemed to really hold towards the magical phenomena that was magic.
He opened the letter, pulled out a piece of parchment that wasn't overly long and started reading it. It remained oddly non-confrontational. He'd been expecting to become involved in a back-and-forth of government bureaucratic proportions.
However, it seemed like Draco's mother was prioritising the speed of the boy's instruction as much as possible, no matter the cost. All of the provisions that Harry had mentioned were described clearly in writing. The fact that he wouldn't harm or plan to bring harm to the boy unless provoked by a reason much more serious than childish ignorance. That he could decide the meeting place, and he would have access to the Malfoy library to some extent during the extent of his tenure as a professor. And, as a cherry on top, he would be earning ten galleons an hour, regardless of all the other benefits he'd already received.
Although, taking a house-elf that was as prone to misbehaving as Dobby was off the Malfoy's hands was more of a favour, really, considering how badly the little bugger would have betrayed them eventually.
Harry put the letter down, deciding that he'd sleep on it before reading the contract again, just to make extra sure that he wasn't missing anything.
He turned his attention to the Horcrux, innocently lying on the ground, unfelt by even his now quite well-developed magical senses.
It truly was a stroke of genius on Voldemort's part to hide the pieces of his soul in such prominent locations and not simply throw them in the ocean, bury them underground, or shoot them straight up into the vastness of space. Had the man bothered to do so, the fight against him would have been as fruitless as it would have been eternal. Surely boring for the Dark Lord. He'd likely made such obvious planning mistakes out of a desire to give his enemies a chance so that the contest over Britain's rule would be more fair.
Or the idiot had simply gone completely insane, his already present narcissism and megalomania becoming almost cartoonish after the doubtlessly damaging process of splitting one's fucking soul into pieces.
Having had more time to think about what to do with the Horcrux, the answer was quite obvious. It was to be destroyed, and its destruction communicated to Dumbledore. For this purpose, Harry had two options, the killing curse and Fiendfyre. Since he didn't want to risk his life against the flames of hell so far away from any help, the killing curse would do.
The decision as to the fate of the diary made, Harry wondered outside the cave to pluck the sorting hat off of the elf's head. He wanted to wear his lucky charm and mind protector for the deed, and if he was already at it, he might as well breach the subject of maybe becoming actually competent enough to teach what he'd promised to teach.
'So, you think you could start teaching me some Legilimency as well?' Harry asked, completely unprompted.
"The Malfoy brat?" the hat asked.
'I recently found someone else too,' Harry thought back and explained how he wanted to teach Tonks also.
Chanithachuah considered the information before replying. 'I understand the reason. First, you're helping a friend. Then you're leading a child away from a path of bigotry and also getting paid by one's enemies, therefore depleting their resources. What I don't understand is how you think you'll get anywhere quickly enough to teach by the time we come back from the duelling championship.'
'I'll try my best, as I always have,' Harry replied cooly. 'You can't tell me I haven't achieved great feats with simple hard work in the past.'
'I will admit that your occlumency getting to the level it is now, that of a very proficient adult, is quite inspiring. However, it took you two years to get here. Your first lesson, however, is less than in a month.'
'Well, if I start learning now, won't my first attacks be quite crude and thus easier to detect? Isn't it actually optimal to have someone learning Legilimency almost at the same rate as the other person is learning Occlumency?' Harry wondered.
Chanithachuah almost didn't have a reply to that. 'But you'll be a horrible teacher, unable to adjust your attacks for an optimal learning experience and deliver a variety of attacks to build a strong defensive portfolio.'
"I fail to see how that's my problem," Harry muttered.
'You absolute asshole,' the hat realised. 'You don't care about being a good teacher. You're just interested in getting paid to learn a skill you're marginally interested in.'
'Don't forget my motivation to turn children away from the path of darkness and help my friends defend themselves.' Harry thought innocently.
'Alright, I'll help, but first, we maybe let's first see what to do with that dark artefact over there.' The Horcrux had also been a part of the memory packet that Harry had sent over.
Harry underwent a small dilemma but quickly resolved it. The hat was, weirdly enough, the entity that he trusted the most in the world. He'd trusted it with his mind, his secrets, and, to a certain extent, his entire identity. If he couldn't tell the hat about Horcruxes, then he couldn't tell anyone. 'It's a Horcrux, we're going to destroy it.'
The hat paused. 'Oh, those things. I thought they went out of fashion, or more importantly, that all mention of them had been purged from the records.'
'You know what they are?' Harry asked, surprised.
'Of course, Godric was quite the adventurer when he was young, middle-aged, and old. We destroyed one once,' the hat said as if it wasn't anything special.
A thought suddenly struck Harry. If the hat had indeed adventured with Godric Gryffindor of all people, then maybe it could show him some of those memories. Harry also really wanted a Pensieve and ask Dumbledore for his duels with Voldemort and Grindelwald to see if he could learn something.
'How did you destroy it? Fiendfyre, basilisk venom, killing curse?' Harry asked frantically. Maybe there was a scenario in which he wouldn't have to use dark magic.
The hat sighed. 'Godric didn't want to sully his mind with dark magic at the time, so he used an obscure light spell he had created. I can't teach it since I only have his Mind Arts ability.'
"Interesting," Harry muttered. For all that he'd prefer experimenting with the killing curse without any pressure, it was still the best alternative. After all, it was a powerful weapon that could be needed in a clutch situation, and he wasn't planning on practising it enough to really get infected by the hate and the self-righteousness of thinking one had the right to simply kill other human beings. How bad could it be? He sighed. 'Killing curse it is then,' he thought dejectedly.
The hat, for all its dislike of Dark Magic, didn't have anything to say to that. 'Check if it's real first before you waste your humanity on it.'
'Now?' Harry asked, worried about the sudden implication of killing the Horcrux in his little cave of privacy.
'Why wait?' the hat replied, which was a justified response. Why wait? The more he waited, the more dangerous it became, and the more likely that through some twist of fate, the Horcrux would escape and endanger other people.
'I guess you're right. Protect my mind,' he prompted, getting a positive response.
Harry was a careful person, a cautious person, a person who wanted to stay alive. The reasoning made sense, and despite the slight fear that existed in his mind about dealing with one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, he knew it was an acceptable risk to get rid of a piece of the bastard.
He flexed his magic, lifted the ground covering up where he'd buried the Horcrux and revealed it to the fresh air once again. Harry didn't feel anything from his magical sense and frowned, pulling out his wand. Then he paused. Shouldn't he verify first if this was actually the real Horcrux? It would suck if he just killing cursed a normal book and then thought Voldemort was mortal again. He pulled the little black journal out of the ground and went to get a pen. He opened the notebook to the first empty page and wrote into it.
Hello Tom
There was no response, and Harry started to doubt himself.
Do you have anything you want to offer to convince me not to kill you? He wrote.
The magic of the Horcrux suddenly exploded, tendrils of mind magic swiping out but being batted away quite simply by the hat.
Harry sighed in relief as the dark magic signature of the book grew darker and darker. He concentrated his hatred, which was very easy when the target was Voldemort. He drew on his belief that some people were beyond redemption. Moved his wand in the requisite pattern, his pale fingers tracing the form of death into the air. His hatred became a spear of justice. He meant it. He really, really meant it. "Avada Kedavra."
A flash of green light went through the cave for just an instant. The spell hit the diary, which promptly crashed together like a black hole from a magical perspective. A shrill scream. What remained was just a simple diary with a hole in the middle.
"It was easy," Harry muttered, thinking of the ease with which he'd been able to cast the spell.
"That's the danger of it. Dark magic needs no finesse, just emotions and practice. It was designed for war, to end it. Ironically, it twists those who use it into people who create more war. An endless cycle." The hat supplemented
Harry looked down at the diary with a tilted head. It had been a soul stuck in an inanimate object, unable to defend itself from anyone with occlumency.
"Should have just buried it into the ground somewhere random in Africa," Harry muttered as he shook his head.
"What an idiot."
-/-
AN: This chapter is short but pungent. If you've been paying attention you'll see that three horcruxes have been destroyed in quick succession. The plot thickens. Not satisfied with everything this time, but it will have to do. 24 chapters ahead on Patreon
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