章節 125: Chapter 122

Nicholas nodded and started speaking again "Good. Now be careful-"

"FULGURIS!"

A blinding flash of light filled the room, almost blinding Harry and knocking him off his feet and right onto his arse.

As his eyes cleared, he saw the screen in front of him.

Spell learned!

Fulguris

This spell is used make a highly focused blast of electrons. In other words, it produces lightning.

-120 MP per use

Annoyed, he mentally closed the screen and took the Nicholas's extended hand.

"As I was about to say," Nicholas said with a chuckle, pulling him to his feet and checking his eyes, "be careful for your eyes."

"Sorry about that." Harry said sheepishly. He looked at the spot he'd been aiming for, and saw that it was now a charred black.

"Don't worry. At least you can cast it just fine. For now, your assignment with this spell is precision and accuracy," Nicholas said before he conjured up a white feather on the table and used his wand to wet it using a bit of water.

He then pointed his wand towards it. "Fulguris" he cast, and unlike the bolt of lightning that had come out earlier, only a small wire thin lightning joined the feather to the wand.

Harry's eyes lost focus for a second.

When Harry refocused on the feather, it was dry. He gaped. Nicholas had dried the feather…using lightning. There wasn't a single burn on it.

"It took Albus a year to fully reach that level of control. With you being able to control magic so well since your early life, I expect you to do it by Christmas day. With all three spells. If you do, you get a special reward. If not, you get a punishment. A bad one"

Still marveling at the sheer level of control that Nicholas had over his magic, Harry wondered if he had finally bitten off more than he could possibly chew.

Good night Tom, Lisa wrote in her diary before falling into her bed. Holding the diary close to her chest, she fell asleep.

Six months.

Six months he'd spent waiting for the girl to get out of Dumbledore's radar. Six months it had taken him to collect enough magic to make tonight's plan possible. He knew it would be hard, but it was what was necessary.

A few years after he'd been created by his Prime soul piece, the Prime had written into him a single dark potion recipe. The Draught of Restoration, a potion capable of giving a proper body to the Horcrux. No faint apparitions, no half corporeal mockeries that he could make by pulling on a host's magic, but a full proper body, capable of performing feats of magic that only he, Lord Voldemort could perform.

It was a plan that was supposed to be put into action if the horcrux ever came to know that the Prime had somehow been defeated and destroyed. And all the information he'd collected suggested that now was the time to put the plan into action. With more force than he'd ever used, he grabbed onto Lisa's consciousness.

With a twist and a pull, his own consciousness snapped right out of the diary, traveled through the many lines of compulsions he'd weaved and settled into Lisa's head.

Pushing the feeble consciousness of the weak minded girl out of the control of the body with a small tendril of the book's magic, Tom Riddle took control of her body.

A pair of eyes snapped open in the small room, blood red.

Quickly changing into some robes and putting on a cloak with the hood, Tom headed down the stairs of the house and out of the main door. The mother was working tonight, nowhere around to interfere.

He threw the hood up, walked over to the pavement and extended Lisa's wand out onto the road, listening for a second…and waiting.

There was a deafening BANG, and something massive stopped a few centimeters from his extended hand. It was a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled The Knight Bus. Tom took a second to reminisce the days of the orphanage, when this bus was his only way into the wizarding world, before he turned his attention to the conductor in a purple uniform who had leapt out of the bus and begun to speak loudly to the night.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening."

Stan Shunpike finished his speech and peered at him. "Why you wearin a cloak in summer?" Stan said, looking a bit suspicious.

"I've come down with a small bout of Laufey flu. Need to keep warm."

"You don't seem to have no blue skin," Stan said, growing slightly suspicious, "Would ya please take the hood off? Just ta make sure."

"I just want to be on my way," he said, cursing in his head. The red eyes that would show up on Lisa's face would be difficult to explain away.

"Then you wouldn't mind taking off the hood li'l miss would ya?"

Pushing down a small spike of frustration, he slowly moved Lisa's hood out of her face, keeping the red eyes trained on the floor. He simultaneously bent a small amount of magic and cast a small illusion around Lisa.

Stan peered for a second before he lost his suspicion. "Well sorry to inconvenience ya miss, but can't have too shady customers on the ride. Where you headed?"

Handing the shabbily dressed conductor a few sickles, he said, "To the Charing Cross Road."

Marasmus Borgin had inherited his fifty percent share in the Borgin and Burkes shop from his father, who had established the shop with Caractacus Burke in the late 1800s.

His father's knowledge of dark artefacts and potions ingredients great exceeded any other, and under his tutelage, Marasmus had learned just as much. Today, he had just finished ringing in the day's purchases and hiding all the stashes under the ridiculously complicated wards that Borgin the First had weaved when he'd started the shop.

The Burke in question was on the other side of the shop, grumbling about the rising meat prices. Borgin tuned him out, having no wish to know anything about how much a muggle's ribs cost. The older partner's hag mother had passed on too many genes for Caractacus to eat anything else other than human meat.

Suddenly the bell hanging above the shop door tinkled. Borgin looked up, and saw a small hooded figure coming in and going over to where Burke was cleaning up the potion ingredients on the wall.

"We're closed." he heard Burke's oily voice say.

"I just need a few ingredients please." With some surprise, Borgin noted that it was the voice of a girl. A young one at that.

"Apothecary's out in the Diagon missy. Get outta here if you know what's good for you."

Borgin winced. That didn't bode well for the little girl. Burke was giving out warnings, and he did that only when he played with his food. But those were muggles. This girl was a witch, surely he wouldn't dare risk the attention of the Aurors. Surely not.