SD: CH174 - FRACTURES

After extrapolating over every bit of minutiae about Crouch Jr, the Triwizard and potential ways to acquire information, I decided to send Hermione back to Hogwarts. Like Hestia said, Hermione wasn’t a Lord, and didn’t share the benefits I did. Maybe she had gotten prior permission from the teachers, it could be arranged, but definitely not like this. Quite naturally, she had to return before anybody spotted her absence.

Luckily, Narcissa was willing to enchant a portkey for Hermione to use. It would take her to the Shrieking Shack, from which she could squirrel out of the hole beneath the Whomping Willow and get back to school without anybody noticing. My invisibility cloak was useful that way.

Given how she might need to repeat the process several times in the future, Narcissa had enchanted it to be permanent too.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Portkey creation is mandated by the Ministry. It’s true, but like everything else in the books, it’s not the complete truth.

Fact is — anyone that’s skilled enough can make a portkey. And by skilled, I meant a mastery in Charms, or at least, a solid understanding of spatial mechanics. The Portkey office mainly exists to manage travel into secured, warded, or governmental areas. Sort of like a licensed tandem apparition. Legality is tied to destination access, not magical difficulty. And so long as the portkey remains in a magically rich environment, it can be charged up to repeat its function multiple times, which is what they call a permanent portkey.

Since Hermione would be portkeying to the Shrieking Shack and back, none of the legalities applied to her. So long as she wasn’t stupid enough to be seen by some Ministry official, that is. And Narcissa, our resident Charms mistress, could whiff up a portkey in her sleep.

But I digress. With Hermione gone, and everyone else busy with their delegated tasks, I started hunting for Amelia. Unsurprisingly perhaps, I found her alone in the armory room. 

Okay, I know that sounds superficial, but when you have too many rooms and too little to do with them, you start coming up with all sorts of ridiculous classifications. I literally had a room labelled BLACKMAIL, where Hestia had gathered files and dossiers on a variety of people in and out of Wizarding Britain—half of whom I was sure I didn’t even know by name. Some came from Order records, some from the Ministry via gold-and-silence exchanges, and the rest were courtesy of Narcissa Black and the skeletons she unearthed from the Dark families in the Wizengamot.

After all, those who won’t respect me should at least fear me. And didn’t someone say it’s better to be feared than respected?

Merlin. I was already starting to think like a Dark Lord.

Mark him as his equal indeed.

Back to the armory.

I found her  standing in the center of the room, sweeping her gaze over racks of modifiable wand grips, rune-blades, cloaks that shimmered across visible spectrums, and dozens of compact devices stacked in neat, almost military precision. It’s a reversal of what happened at Bones Manor, where she showed off that fancy quaffle-bashing machine of hers.

She didn’t look up when I entered.

“I almost didn’t sense you getting in,” she said quietly. “You’re getting good.”

“I’ve been practicing,” I replied, stepping in. “Also, the door likes me.”

I sensed her smile. 

She picked up a flat silver disk etched with runes. “This is Runesteel’s Mirage Plate. Ministry rejected it five years ago after it induced hallucinations during training.”

“Version Four,” I said. “No more combat psychosis. Mostly.”

She set it down and moved to a slim holster marked with unfamiliar sigils. “This one... I’ve only ever seen blueprints. Never made it to field testing.”

“Didn’t,” I said. “Only ten were ever crafted. All prototypes.”

She arched her brow. “By Morgana’s laces, how did you get these?”

I smiled. “Hestia.”

Amelia blinked. “She got you Ministry prototypes?”

“No, she just emptied the bin outside the Procurement Board. You know, all those defense contractors that keep sending pamphlets about their latest magitech? Only for the Procurement board to bin it for ‘budgetary concerns’ while claiming it’s frivolous?”

“Defense contractors aren’t legally allowed to sell to unaffiliated private buyers.”

“True, but they do love sending prototypes for Ministry demo purposes. Once rejected, the items are filed as ‘scrap assets.’ All I had to do was register myself as a magical salvage operator, file the right forms, and poof—‘scrap’ acquired. At a discount too.”

“...I’m not sure whether to be impressed or aggravated.”

“Go with aggravated,” I quipped. “If the Ministry really wanted to keep it secure, maybe they should’ve given Procurement more than a shoebox-sized office and three overworked interns.”

“Inconceivable,” she muttered. “Absolutely inconceivable that they’ve been binning enchanted military —” She paused, and picked up a wand grip that adjusted to her hand and tested the balance. “Still. They’re just prototypes. Likely unstable.”

“Some, yeah. But that’s where Clearwater and the rest of Moonforge’s crew comes in. They break them down, reverse-engineer the viable parts, and either upgrade or adapt them.”

“That’s black market enchanting.”

“Not quite. They don’t sell finished products. They isolate the component spells, strip proprietary matrices, and catalog them for R&D purposes. And the purchasing company is a shell. Half of what they buy ends up marked as ‘ritual detritus’ or ‘unstable flux testing material.’”

Amelia gave me a flat look. “That’s legally murky.”

“Only if you can prove it.”

She took a slow breath and turned toward me, arms folding over her chest.

“You do realize what laws you’ve dodged, right?”

I raised a brow. “Dodged?”

She ticked them off on her fingers:

“Circumventing Magical Defense Distribution Protocols. Salvaging restricted enchanted items under false categorization. Possession of enchantments meant solely for state use. Utilization of shell corporations to obscure magical procurement trails. And my personal favorite—Intention to reverse-engineer magi-tech covered by international enchanting copyright.”

I blinked. “That’s it?”

She gave me a long look. “Harry, that should be enough to get your entire operation shut down, you imprisoned, and your firms blacklisted by the Ministry and the ICW.”

“Should,” I repeated. “But nothing I’ve done is technically illegal. I followed every rule, filed the right paperwork, and went through official Ministry channels. I even logged everything under the Department of Magical Waste Management.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, shook her head slowly, and muttered, “Of course you did. You walked through five violations with a smirk, a filing charm, and a legally defensible supply chain.”

Then she looked back at the prototypes. At the organized racks. At the modified spells she hadn’t seen anywhere else.

“Merlin help us,” she murmured. “You’re running a private black-ops wing, and somehow it’s all sanctioned by bureaucracy.”

“My lawyers and accountants assure me we would survive any audits or scrutiny,” I grinned. “See? That’s the real magic. Paperwork. Though… if you’re interested, my company would not be averse to a… private offering of shares. To a very, very limited specific class of investor. Though convincing the board to do so would require… heated negotiation.”

Amelia snorted. “And now you’re offering to have hot monkey sex and let me have a share of all this.” she shook her head, about to deny the offer, but then reconsidered. “I mean, the idea of using the bureaucratic restraints against it does feel appealing…”

“As I said, very heated negotiations. And it can go on until both sides are equally satisfied, a hard thing to ensure but I’m sure we can try our best…”

“And now I’m not even sure what you’re insinuating anymore.”

“Pick your top five and we can start from there.”

Amelia laughed. “I both admire and utterly hate that I have to admire this. Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d assume you were trying to take over the world.”

“No! I mean yes — well, no!”

“...I think I should perhaps be alarmed that you have trouble answering that question.”

I decided, right then, not to mention that Moonforge had also been building normal Muggle machinery using transfiguration, and then selling them off to the Muggle world through the shell companies Lucius had set up while acting as Regent Black. Turns out that once transfigured, metal tends to stay in that form, so long as it is physically stable, even after the magic is de-enchanted out of it.

Broderick, meanwhile, already had plans to tap into the ornamental and medicinal plant business, using growth potions to amplify yields exponentially. The motive was simple: silver and gold. Muggle currency might be meaningless to goblins, but precious metal could always be exchanged. For the right fee, you could get galleons, sickles, and more—no questions asked.

And all that was ignoring how the finer delicacies of market arbitrage were absolutely lost on goblins. Their system was so crude and insulated, one competent hedge fund could probably own the wizarding economy by Tuesday. I’d filed that idea under ‘Break Glass in Case of Bankruptcy.’ Or boredom.

The only real issue was this: you couldn’t just melt down a galleon or a sickle. One of our researchers tried, under a containment ward, no less. All he got was a searing-hot galleon and an angry owl from Gringotts barring him from their services for thirteen months.

Honestly, a part of me wanted to pursue the economic conquest route. It would’ve been easy, fun, and financially glorious. But unfortunately, I was currently busy establishing my dominance over magic itself. Compared to that, becoming rich felt… mundane.

“This.. wasn’t what I expected when I hired Miss Jones as my secretary. I expected to use her to keep an eye on —”

“Me?”

“Can you blame me?” She retorted dryly. “Look at all of this. One little under-the-table deal with me, and you’ve gone habitual.”

“Oh, we’re still talking about this. And here I was imagining wild, kinky sex between the two of you, with me watching.”

“Of all the improbable —”

“Not really, all you’d need is a pair of mirrors. They’d have to be placed right and either of you would have to be on top of the other…”

“Okay, stop, stop!” said Amelia, embarrassed and flustered. 

I snorted. “You expected her to act as relay between us, get me the intel that you legally cannot share. Have her pursue leads I can acquire through private sources. Oh, and keep an eye to keep me from gallivanting away. But here’s the eye-opener. She’s my Lilim. Job or no job, she’ll always be on the lookout for anything that serves me. Everything else comes after.”

“Yes,” Amelia murmured. “I can see that. And I’m not sure how much of that is herself and how much of a result of your charm.”

And there it was. The doubt. The suspicion. The ever-present debate about free will and choice. 

“Harry, are you certain you aren’t —”

“Aren’t what? Influencing Hestia and the others? Sure I am. But not the way you think.”

“Is it? Last I checked, people are not that altruistic.”

“Really, you think Death Eaters are pumped full of altruism then?”

Amelia opened her mouth to retort, but couldn’t.

“It’s really not that different, you know. Every Death Eater that willingly accepts the Dark mark, willingly binds himself — or herself — to Voldemort and his whims. There might be far more to that, but the foundations are the same. Yes, I might have charmed them to begin with, and yes, there is sex and pleasure and similarity of agenda involved, but trust me, the basic concept is the same. Hestia isn’t devoted to me because she's Lilim. She's Lilim because she’s devoted to me. You have reversed the concept.”

“And what does she get in return for the devotion?”

“You mean apart from nights of endless pleasure?” I tried to joke, but her expression told me she wouldn’t be having any of it. “Well, there are perks. Lilims are connected to Lecherous Shrine, my metaphysical place of power, which grants us two-sided communication. Granted, I haven’t truly tested that bit yet. Also, I am reliably certain they cannot be compelled, or imperiused. At least, without me being compelled or imperiused first. Sort of like a set. Only, the more lilims you add to it —”

“The more the set resonates, and strengthens itself, becoming greater than the sum of its parts,” Amelia surmised.

“....Yes,” I said.

“And?”

I was pretty certain Amelia was going to curse me for what I was about to say next. “Eternal youth.”

“..Excuse me?” there was something dangerous in her tone.

“Eternal Youth,” I repeated. “It’s part of their transformation. Hestia will age until she reaches a certain maturity and then not anymore. So long as she’s alive at least. But yes, she’ll die from a curse just the same.”

Amelia closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath. “And this applies to all Lilims?”

“Yes, it —” I paused, and narrowed my eyes. “Amelia, by any chance, are you able to see… a floating screen, or something like it, with your own magical affinities listed on it? Something… that others can’t?”

“You mean,” said Amelia casually. “Like my status window?”

I froze.

“Your expression tells me you didn’t expect me to have it.”

“I — I thought only Lilims would have it. And me, for that matter. If you don’t mind, can you tell me what your window looks like?”

“I’ll do you better,” she said, and flicked her wand. A parchment came flying out of nowhere. She focussed her wand at its center, and passed magic through it, and an elegant diagram of a status window began to form over it. On it was written —

LYCTOR – AMELIA BONES

Age – 37

AFFINITY

Transfiguration — 61%
Charms — 35%
Martial Magic — 63%
Dark Arts — 47%
Psychomancy (Occlumency) — 71%
Psychomancy (Legilimency) — 28%
Magical Sensing — 49%
Magical Analytics — 33%

Incarneum — 21%

Fleshcrafting — 41%

Osteomancy — 29%

Hemomorphics — 31% 

PERK — GRAVESUTURE

You do not heal like a living being. No scab or scar. You knit.

Your blood listens, flesh obeys. Your bones remember what they were. Wounds remain, but never linger. Your body is your weapon — and your responsibility.

“...Well,” I said finally, mouth slightly open, “that’s morbidly elegant.”

“I thought you’d appreciate it,” she replied. “Although I admit, I didn’t expect your reaction to be surprise.”

“You’re not a Lilim. You weren’t supposed to have access to the status window at all. And yet… you’re categorized, ranked, perked.”

“Which implies,” Amelia said carefully, “that the system doesn’t revolve around you. Or at least, not only the incubus in you.”

That hit like a low-grade curse. Because she was right. And the worst part? I’d suspected as much. The system of Tethers and status windows was available to every path I had access to, and I meant every path. Amelia might not be a Lilim, but she was a Lyctor, a component of whatever set-like existence the ‘necromancer Me’ would sooner or later construct around myself.

Myself? Himself? Damn, having multiple pseudo-identities certainly made pronouns tough!

Still, that got me thinking. The scar-horcrux had claimed Amelia as a lyctor and Hermione a necro-beast. If Amelia had one, did that mean Hermione had one too? But if she did, would she — my Hermione — hide something this relevant from me?

Suddenly I was not so sure I wanted the answer to that question.

“Incarneum, Osteomancy, hemomorphics…” I murmured, “that’s quite an addition to the roster.”

Amelia’s reaction was to scowl and vanish the parchment altogether. “Now you know why I’m so against you experimenting with my psyche? That twisted, evil power doesn’t just flow through me. It’s part of me. There is no saying what it can make me do.”

I studied her face. “Is that why you are so insistent on letting me delegate everything to others instead of tackling things yourself?”

“I trust your judgment,” she said. “I trust your instincts.”

“No, you don’t,” I accused. “Truth is, you don’t trust yourself. And that’s the problem.”

A flicker of something—anger, guilt, fear—crossed her face. She sighed.

“I’m compromised,” she said. “We’ve known that since you brought me back. We just didn’t know how.”

“You think you’re a sleeper agent.”

“Am I not? All these skills… fleshcrafting, osteomancy — those aren’t mine. There’s… Merlin, it’s like I am a freaking puppet in my own body. Or a cursed time bomb. Or a ghost in borrowed skin. Pick a metaphor. And all of this… is your fault.”

That threw me off! 

“Mine?”

She turned away from me. “You should have left me dead, Harry.”

I flinched at the coldness of her voice, but stepped forward. “I couldn’t.”

“I was gone.” Her tone was flat, final. “My soul had already started breaking away. You had no right.”

“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t. But I did it anyway.”

At that, she turned. Not fully—just enough for me to see the edge of her expression. Not grief, but fury disguised as calm.

“You brought me back wrong.”

I exhaled. “Yes. But not in the way you think it is.”

She glowered. “Explain.”

“You are not an extension of his will, Amelia. You are… how do I put it? A reconstruction. I rewrote your magic to accept the logic of death. To accommodate the kind of architecture necessary to bring you back. You didn’t inherit those skills from Voldemort. They aren't.”

“Then whose are they?” She hissed.

“Yours,” I told her. “I rebuilt you using necromancy. And I —” I paused. “I used a framework that was… partially informed by his power.”

“So he did resurrect —”

“Merlin, no!” I half-screamed. Gosh! This was difficult to explain. “Look, I took some knowledge from our connection, yes. That’s it! I fueled the ritual using every lingering essence in that battlefield.”

Amelia’s lips parted slightly, but no sound emerged. I knew this was probably going to get me cursed six ways to Sunday, but I had to risk it.

“I churned them, Amelia. The dead. The ones that were just dying. I shredded them, their memories, their identity, everything that made them people — and turned them into raw fabric. I used it to knit your soul to a body that was already healed — I reforged you.”

The silence that followed could have crushed steel.

“These… souls, what happened to them?”

“Gone. Used in your forging. There is no great adventure waiting for them. No afterlife.”

Her hand rose before I saw it. The slap came sharp and quick, snapping my head to the side. My cheek stung, but I didn't flinch.

“You — you told me you had resurrected me. That I was still… me.”

“You are,” I said, quietly. “You’re still Amelia Bones. But you’re also something else now.”

Her fists clenched. “Yes. A monster born by the sacrifice of those people. Those… souls. I robbed them off —”

“Not a monster, a Lyctor,” I said firmly. “And nothing in this world is free, Amelia. And you know what? I’d do it again, if I had to. A million times. A billion times. Because every time the choice comes between you and the world, I’d choose you.”

I was panting now. My throat hurt. My fists ached.

Amelia didn’t speak. She turned back to the balcony, hands resting on the rail. Her shoulders rose and fell in slow, careful movements.

After what felt like forever, she said, “I can’t undo it, can I?”

“No,” I said. “And you wouldn’t survive trying.”

She nodded slowly. “Then I’ll learn to live with it.” Looking up to meet my eyes, she asked. “But I want you to promise something to me, Harry. If I ever — If I ever lose control and become the demoness I fear I will, then — then I want you to be the one that kills me.”

Something in me broke at her words.

“Amelia —”

“Promise me, Harry.”

I promised her. She nodded.

“Are you… certain that I am not compromised? I mean, I was influenced —”

“That… was a special situation, one that I doubt is going to happen any time soon. And even if it does, we’ll be ready. But trust me Amelia, I have tested you. You’re clean.”

The silence that followed wasn’t comfortable. It was the kind that rearranged perspectives.

Amelia was the one to break it. “Have you considered talking to Albus about it?”

That was a surprise. “Dumbledore? No. Absolutely not. Might as well just blabber everything I told you and the others.”

“Chances are he might already know,” she countered. “Enough to suspect you at the very least. If — and if that’s a big if, I know, but if we have him on our side —”

Just the suggestion triggered a sensation in me, and it wasn’t terribly pleasant.

“Been there, done that,” I said frostily. “Not a fan!”

Damn! Guess I’m not going to be free of Living The Role’s passive effects anytime soon.

Confused? Here, let me explain. Living The Role isn’t just faking being somebody else. I was already doing that from the moment I found myself in Harry Potter’s body. This is more like being three steps ahead, where to the point that every and any action, ability, and word I speak would be attributed to Harry Potter’s in the end.

It was like having two different narratives arising out of one single body. The first is of course, myself — Outlander, a faker, a pretender to the name and claims of Harry Potter. The second, is the Role I had undertaken — a time-travelling Harry Potter that had fought Voldemort, his demon army, his death eaters, and experienced all the horrors, before finding himself miraculously back in time to wage a war he had fought all his life.

And the shocking part was — it means I can’t, or won’t commit any actions, that go completely against a time-travelling war-struck Harry Potter’s desires in the end. Or if I absolutely have to get something done, it has to be in a way that this Harry would likely not object, if not agree.

If this wasn’t Fate and Destiny wanting to enforce the Prophecy by pulling my metaphorical ears and thumbs, I don’t know what it is.

“Dumbledore is a chessmaster,” I said slowly, carefully. “He’s a strategist, not technologically adept. And Amelia, this thing doesn’t exist. And before you tell me — no, the Department of Mysteries isn’t an option either.”

“So we have to discover its tweaks by our —” she began, when the door opened from my right.

Emmeline stepped in. Her eyes swept between us, registering tension, curiosity, and the unmistakable shimmer of something new in the air.

“Am I… interrupting something?”

“No, we were just pursuing a dead end.”

Emmeline gave me a skeptical look. “Well, good, I suppose. In that case, you won’t mind helping me out.”

“About what?”

“Crouch,” she said. “Someone, likely Rookwood, implanted a second, hidden mind inside him. Likely the thing that is the true Death Eater instead of Junior himself. But the defenses are… unconventional at best, and dangerous and time-consuming at best.”

“What are we dealing with here?” asked Amelia. 

“His mind’s fragmented completely,” Emmeline said bluntly. “I tried everything. There are redundancies being overwritten. Like someone patched in a new personality over a failing core.”

Amelia frowned. “That sounds like… a sleeper shell.”

“Exactly.”

Amelia’s expression hardened. “Then we’d better get to him before it solidifies.”

“Exactly,” said Emmeline, looking at me. “Harry, what you suggested to me, back then… is it possible to use it on Crouch? Create a dream labyrinth and draw this hidden mind into it?”

“Wait, what dream labyrinth?” asked Amelia.

I exhaled. Really, it was just one thing after another. “Something I’m not willing to discuss until Emmeline runs a deeper scan on you. Mind getting Hestia to order something from the Burning Brownie for dinner? The Abbotts own it.”

Amelia nodded curtly and left with Emmeline.I smiled until the door was closed, but as soon as they were gone, the smile dropped and I allowed my frustration to rise.

Damn it! What a fool I had been! Thinking that things would be so damned easy! That trapping and sealing Voldemort away for good would put an immediate stopper on trouble and let me focus on the more relevant things, like gaining seven Lilims and fully unlocking the Lecherous Shrine and coming into my full power as the Incubus Lord. I had plans for using the Triwizard as my ticket to international fame, only this time, it won’t be because of something that happened because of a magical fluke, but because of sheer power, will and talent.

Instead I had… this.

The entire revelation about drawing power from Voldemort through the scar had come dangerously close to the topic of horcruxes. Amelia might have even grasped it, if not for her emotional breakdown. But regardless of whatever I told her — she was right. I used necromancy to resurrect her, and I grasped that knowledge from the horcrux. There was no saying exactly what sort of backdoor the horcrux might have inside Amelia’s mind — something that could lead me into a heap of trouble sooner or later. My own solace was that the real Voldemort was hidden safely away for good.

Unfortunately, it left me at a crossroads. Focus on understanding, taming or at least, bargaining with the horcrux in my head, and see how much I could extract from it — and gain seven Lyctors to achieve the path of the Twilight Walker?

Or just give it up and focus on destroying the horcruxes… starting with the one in my head?

Ambition claimed the first, while self-preservation voted for the second.

Also, there was no saying what would happen if I just let myself be hit by the killing curse, and be rid of the horcrux — like in canon, how it would affect Amelia. Or Hermione, for that matter. Knowing the prophecy, sooner or later, Voldemort would rise back up, and I’d be damned if I let them be turned into his puppets.

No, for better or worse, I’d need to gain control of the horcrux in my head first. Ascend to Necrolord Primus, and control it, before it was too late.

The horcruxes could wait for now. With Voldemort trapped, they were going nowhere.