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RoR, Hogwarts
–Damian Hawthorne–
"Hmm," he exhaled in frustration, looking at the Diadem held aloft a Sword made of Goblin Silver, with the sword itself stabbed into one of the ruined cushions, creating a platform of sorts that allowed him to examine the whole thing without directly interacting with it using his magic.
Oh, he knew he would win. This fragment of Tommy Boy, from when he had just graduated, was nowhere near strong or insidious enough to get the drop on him, but he would much rather have his magic never touch the Horcrux, thank you very much. Just being near it was enough to make his magic revolt in disgust.
It was as if the Horcrux and the means to make it were something that was universally disgusting, even if you had no idea what it was. Magic itself tried to get away from it, which made sense if you knew how magic behaved when used by wizards.
See, according to Tommy Boy and many other Dark Wizards in the past, magic itself was neutral. It was all dependent on the caster, the will of the caster decided the nature of the magic. Be it healing, fire, water, Dark, Light, whatever. Magic was just a tool, and the way it was used defined its properties.
That understanding was flawed and based on outdated principles. Magic might just be a tool for most people, but it was also alive in a way that was hard to comprehend or define. That alive-ness of it also realised the way magic was twisted and, in some ways, killed for something as vile as a Horcrux to be created.
It was not like Dimensional Energy, completely neutral, without any affiliation whatsoever. You could use Dimensional Energy to perform the worst of atrocities, and people had done it, and you could still use it the same way any other morally upstanding, non genociding Sorcerer could.
Powerful wizards like Voldemort could still wrangle magic into submission and use it as they preferred, but that same act would also warn other magic users of their unnaturalness, a blinding warning to every other wizard. It might manifest as fear, disgust, and even awe in some cases, depending on the wizard themselves.
Ofcourse, none of that helped him right now, which was figuring out a way to check if, beneath the sludge of Dark Magic, there existed any remnant of the original enchantments done on the Diadem. He was sure it was not going to be some ground breaking artifact, especially when compared to current enchantment standards, but he still wished to see what the genius of the era that gave birth to something like Hogwarts could do.
Alas, after an hour of continuous examination, he had to write the entire thing off and slate it to total destruction, just like the Ring from the Gaunt Shack. If he was not wrong, there was yet another Horcux that was about to come to Hogwarts, just next year, with Ginny Weasley, if he hadn't butterfield it away as well.
That diary too was useless to him, and he wouldn't feel any regret if it was destroyed before he even set his sights on it. Alas, there was one potential wrench in his plan to get rid of the Horcruxes one by one.
Tommy Boy was potentially still out there, roaming some forest in Romania, waiting for something or someone. He had debated going out and getting rid of that shade as well, but that wouldn't change things in the end. According to the Prophecy, he will come back since it wasn't Harry that had killed him.
The thing with Horcruxes as a whole was that they were barely mentioned in any written media, be it in the small library of the London Sanctum or even in any Dark Magic books he could get his hands on. Even the dozens of books he found that would have him instantly sentenced to Azkaban for the crime of possessing them, did not have anything on the Horcruxes, except a small mention of that being one of the ways that wizards damaged their souls.
It was not even mentioned that doing so gave them pseudo immortality, whilst stripping them of their sanity. Even the Sanctum books only gave instructions for destroying them, with the first step being bringing any such object to Kamar Taj and having them use a Holy spell to destroy the object. They didn't even list magical items like the Sword or the Basilisk poison, which could destroy a Horcrux.
He was planning on using either one of those two to destroy them, but that was not the problem here. The problem here was the risk. The risk of some shade of Voldemort figuring out that the Horcruxes were being destroyed and doing something drastic and stupid to prevent that. Aside from that, admittedly, small risk, there was also the risk of him butterflying the ideal scenario out of existence.
Shaking his head, he stood up and stored the Horcrux in the specific container he'd built for such things. Popping the kinks out of his back, he grabbed a book called Enchanting for Housekeeping, which was riveting to him, having built an entire living base using enchantments, and began pacing, not keen on sitting just yet.
As for the Horcrux and the risks of destroying them so soon? They were already put on the back burner of his mind. After all, if worst comes to worst, he could just let Voldemort get his body back, destroy all the Horcruxes on his own, beat Tommy Boy to an inch of his life, and then have Harry sever his head clean off.
If that didn't satisfy the Prophecy, then, too bad, Volde boy will have to deal with living in the Mirror Dimension, along with all his Horcruxes. A bit of an exaggeration, especially since Fate was involved somewhere, but he was not going to waste valuable time here, thinking of the what-ifs.
___xx___
–T'Chaka–
"I believe we are making a mistake, Father," He sighed upon hearing the one sentence he had feared hearing from his son. The reason he had sent T'Challa away, with the excuse of hunting down someone who was probably not responsible for the deaths but most likely had some clues, was because he wanted to keep T'Challa away from the impending change in the ruling structure.
As a direct consequence from that attack, his handling of said attack, their failure in apprehending the culprit responsible for over a dozen dead Wakandans, magical Wakandans, the Magic Tribe had suddenly begun to take a more active role in Wakanda's decision making, an active role that they had forsaken generations ago when they had peacefully withdrawn themselves to live below the Giant Mound, where they safeguarded the Mound and the Mound alone, with their magic, with the tacit understanding that they will come to Wakanda's aid should its existence be threatened.
Now that the Magic Tribe, whose numbers were already very small, compared to the other Tribe, had lost a dozen of their young-ins, they had decided to come out of exile and apparently, hold him accountable for that loss. Sure, it was going a lot better than he expected, with them only asking for a change in the ruling structure and an early retirement, with his son taking over, with no demands whatsoever of one of their own members taking the throne, but that in and of itself was a problem for him.
The attackers, whoever they were, had taken down some of the shields, taken over their bases below the sham city they built to fool the world, shut down the civilian communications network, and had only been rebuffed from accessing the Royal Palace, the Hangars, the Great Mound, the Bunkers and more, because of the work of the Magic Tribe, who, recognising the threat, came out and dealt with the attack.
Wakanda as a whole was in debt to the Magic Tribe, and he couldn't even fault them for the delay because they did not have a direct communication line between them, an obvious failure on his part.
Because of that, he couldn't deny their request, not that he was in any position to do so. Despite only the younger members coming out of exile, they had pushed back technology that was clearly alien, and had identified aliens who had assumed the form of trusted members of the Wakandan Border Tribe and infiltrated many places, which was something none of the other Tribes could do. Shuri had some theories on how they could try, but nothing was concrete on that front.
All of this was without their Elder coming out. Not the one who was elected by their members to act as their envoy to the annual meeting. No, the real Elder, the Elder of Magic, the one who even Kato fears, the one who trained Kato to be the fearsome wizard he was now, the one who Kato, to this day, acknowledges as being vastly superior to himself in terms of magical might.
The same elder who had not been seen since the time of his great grandfather, yet they all knew she lived, because she came out, or rather, a shining blob of purple energy came out whenever a new King was chosen. That magical aura, that might alone was enough to leave the entirety of Wakanda in awe.
He had no intention of letting things progress to the point that the Elder had to come out, because at that point, he had no way of knowing what she would do.
That meant he had a very short window to not just prepare for his abdication, but also remove some people he had already marked for removal by the end of his term. Some of them he had cultivated himself, but had grown out of control, and would not leave peacefully, creating further problems down the line, for his son's rule.
That was one part of the equation that was well underway, especially with the help of the Magic Tribe members, who were all too thrilled to help, if it meant him stepping down sooner. The other part was T'Challa himself. As much as he had put his son through harsh training, he just was not ready to become King yet.
The Black Panther? Sure, but not the King. His son had power in spades yet lacked the mindset to properly use it. Case in point, this conversation. He knew that sending him with Kato, and two members of the Magic Tribe, all to hunt down a magical, would rankle at his pride.
Because, one, they were going there under the umbrella of the British Ministry, with all the rules that came with them, which meant following the lead of Dumbledore, who was a formidable wizard in his own right, and two, it meant following the lead of people he had scarcely interacted with before.
Still, just to humor him, he asked, "What mistake, T'Challa?"
T'Challa replied, scowling in reply, "We are wasting time, here, Baba. Kato has ordered us to stay put for the night and begin our work from tomorrow. The faster we can–"
"Kato is at his position for a reason, T'Challa," He had to nip this in the bud before more headaches began assaulting his mind. Kato was not the kind to coddle royalty. He fully expected T'Challa to spend an extended period of time subdued and jailed, if he tried to interfere in Kato's work.
"There is a reason I sent you with him," He then continued with a softer tone, "You are going to be King, T'Challa. This is a learning opportunity for you. It will soon be your job, to figure things out, in an environment where you might not necessarily have the biggest stick."
With that, he hung up the call, and looked up as the doors to his personal chambers were opened and the bleeding, dying form of the Merchant Tribe Elder was flown in, with no blood hitting the flooring.
"He has confessed," The member of the Magic Tribe, whose name he had yet to ask, bowed lightly at him and informed him of the task well done. He had always known about his transgressions and had dismissed them in favour of maintaining unity but with T'Challa's reign coming soon? No more.
"Wake him up," He resolved to get on with this. He had over a hundred people on the list, to sentence, before his day was over.
A/N - Kato, and the Magic Tribe references from Ch.40.
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