บท 358: Soul Detective

"Why don't we take a short break?" Ginny proposed to Luna, her training partner for the evening.

"Wrackspurt got in your ear?" Luna asked curiously, tilting her head slightly.

Ginny simply raised an eyebrow at her in response.

She possessed memories of Luna that predated their time at Hogwarts together, and still the girl continued to mystify her. One day, she'd pick at Luna's brains in a more literal sense to see what made her tick, but for now, she had more pressing matters.

Slytherin's Locket was burning uncomfortably cold under her blouse, pulsating slowly, like a second heartbeat against her chest. There had to be another Horcrux nearby; the locket was definitely detecting the presence of one of its fellows.

Ginny's thoughts raced as she considered the possibilities.

Was this a trap of Dumbledore's? How had a Horcrux even got here in the first place?

Ginny assumed a neutral facial expression, as she began strolling about the Room of Requirement, pretending like she was watching the other students practising the Disarming Charm; instead for searching for a dark item that contained a sliver of Voldemort's original soul.

No, that couldn't be right. Dumbledore wouldn't risk his students' lives like this; the secret had to still be safe.

It had never been Ginny's intention to hunt down the main body's other Horcruxes; there was simply no need for her to do so. Even though the merging of souls had turned her into a brand-new person, she still felt no need to interfere with the original's arrangements. She did resent the original for trapping her inside a book, but she was still a Voldemort, so she owed him that much.

And yet… it seemed as though it was her fate to run across her fellow Horcruxes, whether she liked it or not. First, the locket, which had for some inexplicable reason appeared inside Sirius Black's house, and now, there was another one nearby.

She frowned; this wasn't the first time she'd been to the Room of Requirements, so why hadn't she sensed it last time? Why could the Locket detect it, but not her? Was it because it hadn't been there the last time she had visited? Was the fusion of souls responsible for her failure to sense it on her own? Or had the trauma of the soul split desensitized her?

Back at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, she'd only figured out that the locket was a Horcrux after laying a hand on it, which in retrospect, had been an incredibly idiotic thing to do…

When Voldemort had first hatched his plan to split his soul into seven, he had known that he'd effectively be sailing into hitherto uncharted territory. The realm of souls was ruled by unknown magical laws, but Ginny now believed that she may have found one of them.

The pieces of a split soul would be unconsciously drawn to each other, seeking to become whole once again. Perhaps she would call this the Law of Soul Convergence; that was a good name for such a groundbreaking discovery, wasn't it?

Ginny sneaked a glance at Harry, who was busy demonstrating proper wand movements to Neville. If her hunch was correct, then it would certainly explain her current… feelings towards Harry; not to mention that it would explain Voldemort's own strange fascination with the boy. It was impossible to verify this for now, though.

Ginny then glanced at Oleandra, before resuming her search.

She needed to give Oleandra a wide berth; she knew that the girl had a knack for detecting hidden magics, but she had no choice but to bring the locket with her wherever she went. She wouldn't trust anybody but herself with it, and she couldn't risk hiding it anywhere Dumbledore might find it. Dark Detectors like the ones Filch employed could easily be fooled, but it wasn't as easy to pull the wool over the old man's eyes.

As Voldemort's first Horcrux, Ginny had next to no information about the others, so she could only count on the main soul following the original plan of creating six Horcruxes to guess at how many he had managed to make in total.

In theory, there would be six Horcruxes and one main body, seven being the most stable of numbers.

She had tried asking the soul fragment inside the locket for confirmation, but she hadn't managed to get a straight answer out of it. She had been able to get the locket to open quite easily by speaking to it in Parseltongue, but after that…?

It's not that it was hostile; the locket was able to recognize her as a fellow fragment of Voldemort's soul, even with Ginny's half soul mixed in, but the problem was that it was difficult to communicate with it. More than likely, it hadn't been able to hang on to its sanity after being confined to darkness, with only an eighth of its total volume left.

And yes, an eighth; Ginny had been able to determine this quite easily, since half of her own soul belonged to Tom Riddle. The soul volumes within the various Horcruxes weren't divided equally; each time a new one was created, the original's soul would split right down the middle.

According to the grimoire from which Tom Riddle had first acquired the methodology to create Horcruxes, a Horcrux's main purpose was to anchor the main soul to the world of the living, allowing one to survive the death of the body. But it was also possible for the Horcrux to leave its container and come back to life as well, if the original became incapacitated; which is precisely what had happened in 1992.

There were effectively two Voldemorts running around right now!

However, the inventor of this magic had evidently foreseen such an eventuality. Seeing as only the most ruthless and evil of Wizards would ever consider making a Horcrux, there was no doubt that trust between two copies of the same evil Wizard would be in short supply— which was why revived Horcruxes couldn't disobey the original's direct orders… again, in theory.

What this inventor hadn't foreseen, however, was that someone would be reckless enough to split their soul more than one time! So, to recap, assuming that the original had only made six Horcruxes, he was now down to one sixty-fourth of his former self. And as the first Horcrux, Ginny possessed half of the original soul's volume, which was a lot more than less than two percent.

Would the restrictions that applied to rebellious Horcruxes still apply if she was more Voldemort than the real Voldemort? There was no way of finding out without trying it first!

If Ginny tried to confront him head-on… at best, Voldemort would recognize her as one of his Horcruxes, incapacitate her, and she would then be returned to artefact form to be sealed away; at worst, he wouldn't recognize her, and he would then simply kill her. Experience, knowledge, magic… A sixteen-year-old Voldemort, no matter how much of a genius she was, was simply no match for a Voldemort in his seventies.

Ginny's eyes grew cold. No, the best course of action would be to stay as far away as possible from the main body, and test out the limits of the magic binding them all together by sending a loyal Horcrux in her stead.

But first, she needed to find that Horcrux; it was definitely somewhere around here, but it probably wouldn't show itself while the Room of Requirement was locked in this particular configuration. Perhaps she'd have more luck searching for it if the Room of Requirement was in the form of the Room of Lost Things, but before its configuration could be changed, it would need to be cleared of its other occupants…