Chapter 60. Grimoire
A violet book hovered in front of Severus, radiating a dark glow. Intricate golden patterns ran along its edges, and in the center was set a round gemstone the same shade as the cover, catching the light whenever it turned.
It all depended on who found out first. He thought with a smile as he picked up the gold watch on the table, the one engraved with the symbols of Hogwarts' four houses. "Come out. Stop taking up space in my artifact."
The watch sprang open, and a shadow burst out. A moment later it took the form of an attractive young man with thin, aristocratic features, dressed in a black suit with a green tie.
Cold red eyes fixed on Severus with pure malice, even as he continued to smile. The fragment remembered who had dragged it out of the diadem and forced it into another object, a place where it could not release even a thread of its power. It was a real prison, one it could not break no matter how it strained.
"Who are you?" the spirit asked gloomily, trying to restrain its anger. It glanced down at the glowing red pentagram beneath its feet, then looked back up at the book hovering near Severus.
"I have only one question for you. Are you prepared to submit entirely to my will and serve me?"
"Serve? You?" A cold, contemptuous smirk twisted the soul fragment's face. "Who are you, that I should bow my head to you?"
"The one holding your life in his hands. I offer you a choice only because I require an intelligent artifact, not a mindless one. But even if you refuse, the alternative still has merit, and you will still prove useful."
At those words, the spirit narrowed its eyes and unleashed an invisible wave of force, trying to smash through the barrier and reach the arrogant bastard who had dared to trap it within an artifact.
"You think I'd agree to this?"
If your life is dear to you, then listen. I give you ten seconds to think. After that, I will destroy your consciousness, and this soul fragment will become an empty shell. Severus looked indifferently at Voldemort's face as it twisted with anger, then pulled the book toward him and opened it. Ten. Nine. Cutting his finger, he began drawing symbols on the page. Eight. Seven. The fragment merely snorted in contempt. Six. Five. The pentagram beneath it flared and began to glow a darker red, and its resolve finally faltered.
"You cannot do this. Better bow to me yourself. I will accept you as my servant, but you will have to."
"Four. Three." The pentagram blazed even brighter, and now a dark vortex spilled from the crystal set in the book. Severus raised his eyes, his expression openly mocking. "Two." At last the dark wizard felt real danger. Panicking, he hammered at the barrier with all his strength, but it did not budge under the barrage of blows. "One."
"Stop! I..." The vortex intensified, and as its legs began dissolving and being dragged into the book, terror flooded it. The soul did not want to disappear. It feared death more than anything. That was why it had split itself in the first place to live forever, and if its personality was erased, it would be the same as dying. "Stop. I agree." The last words came with particular difficulty, because in all its life it had never bowed its head to anyone. The disgrace gnawed at it from the inside.
Good. Then I won't need to force you to accept.
Severus smiled with sharp mockery on his face. And now, Lord Voldemort, Heir of Slytherin, you are my slave. The vortex didn't calm. It only grew stronger. Become a good artifact and serve me faithfully and truly. You cannot do otherwise now. You have already given your consent.
"Did you really..."
It didn't get to finish. The fragment was sucked into the book completely. The Grimoire slammed shut, the vortex vanished, and silence fell over the room.
"That was simpler than I expected. I thought it would be much harder, and that I would actually have to fill the Grimoire with an empty shell," Severus said, pulling the book toward himself and opening it to the first page. Words began appearing. Many words. He smiled crookedly. He had never heard so many curses aimed at him. "First rule: I forbid you to insult or curse me and the people I care about. You must treat me with respect and address me formally." The text vanished at once, but another appeared, polite in tone and still full of wishes for a quick death and worse. "Looks like I really will have to tell you about The One Hundred Forty-Seven Golden Rules of a Good Grimoire."
"?"
"You will find out now." With a warm smile, Severus touched the edge of the book, and it glowed. "You must follow every rule I list. First: the Grimoire must answer every question honestly, express its thoughts correctly, and never lie. Second: the Grimoire must address its Master as Master, with a capital letter. Using pronouns such as his, him, and so on instead is forbidden. Only that. No shortcuts, no little tricks. Third: the Grimoire must carry out every order of its Master and meet every established deadline. Fourth: the Grimoire must."
And he did not stop. For over an hour, Severus kept listing rule after rule. With each one, Voldemort's soul fragment transformed into something else, into a proper Grimoire, step by step. It was part of the artifact now. It could not disobey, and with every passing second the Grimoire felt its despair deepen.
And finally, the one hundred forty-seventh rule: even after my death, you are forbidden to tell anyone anything about me. The exceptions are those I designated in the forty-seventh point. That is all. I hope we get along.
In his previous life, he had owned a Grimoire that did not require such sacrifices. It had been founded on a particle of his own soul and a crystal he had obtained only with great difficulty, after spending a fortune and working an extra year as a mercenary. But these one hundred forty-seven rules had been invented by the Magistrate, one of the darkest organizations in the world, to take complete control of the soul within an ordinary Grimoire. The rules forced it to obey and not contradict its Master, without limiting the artifact's ability to think. That made it far more useful. It could advise, calculate, and plan. For such purposes, the stronger and wiser the soul had been in life, the better the Grimoire became.
Of course, he could have used his own soul, but he considered that a stupid waste of potential. A wizard's strength when advancing to the rank of Archmage depends on three things: core, soul, and body. If the second is damaged, there is a high chance the fusion of all three will fail. The wizard might die for nothing, or worse. Both the core and soul could be damaged, leaving the wizard stuck at the rank of Master forever. Voldemort had squandered his potential on the empty hope of eternal life, and considered himself a fool for it. That was exactly why he would not repeat the same mistake.
When the glow faded, Severus opened the book to the first page. Text appeared:
"I am 'glad' to greet my Master. I 'hope' that you will live a 'long life.'"
"So many quotation marks, and I hope that too," Severus drawled with a smile. "Tell me your story from beginning to end. Do not leave out anything important."
"Yes, Master. I, Tom Marvolo Riddle, was born on December 31, 1926. My mother was the pure-blood witch Merope Gaunt, and my father was a Muggle, Tom Riddle. She died in the orphanage immediately after my birth."
"So, an anagram. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Lord Voldemort. Interesting."
"I lived in the orphanage until I was eleven, when Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore came to me. He told me about the magical world, and that I was not the only one with such power."
At that time, if Severus remembered correctly, Dumbledore was still a professor at Hogwarts, so there was nothing suspicious about sending a professor to a boy who knew nothing about magic to explain what he needed to know. Nodding to himself, Severus returned his attention to Voldemort's story.
On September 1, 1938, I was sorted into Slytherin. There I learned that the founder of my house could speak to snakes, as could I. Continuing my research using only one clue, my grandfather's name, Marvolo, after whom I was named, I learned that I was his descendant through the maternal line. The Grimoire then began to describe his feelings, specifically how disgusted Tom had been to learn he was named after a Muggle and that Muggle blood ran through his veins.
Spare me your feelings. I am not interested in your whining," Severus said, and in the same instant, eleven pages shrank to seven and a half pages. "To the point." The text shortened again, down to six and a half pages. "That is better."
What followed was a description of Voldemort's school years. How he grew. How brilliant he was, the best in school. Who joined his circle, by name and by year. How he deceived everyone into believing he was pure-blood, nearly erasing every mention of his Muggle heritage. How he accidentally discovered the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk within. How he met a portrait of his ancestor, and how that only intensified his hatred of Muggles and Muggle-born wizards.
By his fifth year, Tom was already a textbook Dark wizard. He created his first Horcrux, accidentally killing Myrtle. She had been in the bathroom at the wrong time when he summoned the basilisk. At sixteen, he split off a piece of his soul and used a spell to place it into his diary. He pinned the blame on Hagrid, who had a pet Acromantula, a spider the size of a chair with powerful venom.
The way the case had been closed so easily, by accusing an innocent person, made Severus sigh tiredly. How blind did one have to be to blame petrification on a simple spider? Still, he was not especially interested in the matter. He only felt sorry for Hagrid, nothing more.
He also finally understood why Slughorn had reacted as he did to his questions about forbidden ingredients. Once, Slughorn had made the mistake of telling Tom about Horcruxes, and ever since then he had considered himself guilty that his student had become a monster and had started this civil war.
That same day, after tasting murder, Voldemort killed the entire Riddle family during the holidays, created another Horcrux from the Gaunt family ring, and framed his uncle Morfin Gaunt. Tom knocked Morfin out and implanted memories, as if Morfin had done it all himself.
After graduating from Hogwarts, Tom applied for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but the headmaster at the time refused him, citing his youth. Tom suspected Dumbledore had been behind the refusal. Still, he did not despair. He took a position at Borgin and Burkes, a shop in Knockturn Alley that dealt in rare artifacts.
There he forged new connections. He also acquired two more Founder artifacts: Hufflepuff's cup and Slytherin's locket. He charmed and murdered their owner, turning both items into Horcruxes. He created the first from that murder, and the second from a vagrant unfortunate enough to cross his path.
After that, Tom resigned and left the country, traveling abroad to study the depths and subtleties of Dark magic. Along the way, he reunited with his old school followers and founded the Death Eaters. Other aristocrats in magical Britain began to join, along with some wizards from other countries he had visited.
During those travels, he concealed one of his Horcruxes, Salazar Slytherin's locket. In Albania, he created another. This was Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem; he had learned its location from Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost of Rowena's daughter. He had charmed her by posing as a pleasant, charming young man during his school years.
And so it went until 1958, when Tom returned to Britain and immediately applied for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts. By then, Dumbledore had replaced the previous headmaster, and he refused the application. Tom had expected as much, but he had still wanted to try. His true goal was the room where Severus later found the diadem.
That was all the soul fragment knew. It held no memories of what Voldemort did after that.
Of course, Severus did not stop there. From the Grimoire, he learned the locations of two more Horcruxes in addition to the locket: the diary, entrusted to a mutual acquaintance for safekeeping, and the Gaunt ring, now gathering dust in the Gaunt house in Little Hangleton.
The Grimoire also hinted that Tom had considered hiding the cup in a chest at the bottom of the sea, or in another wizard's Gringotts vault, since he did not yet have one of his own. The bank's defenses were formidable.
Still, the way Tom had hidden some of them made Severus sigh in disappointment.
I see. Thank you for the valuable information, and I think I know where you might have left the cup. You only have a few truly loyal comrades: the Blacks, the Lestranges, and the Malfoys. The Malfoys are out because Lucius already has your diary, leaving only the other two." Severus thought for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. "Now I understand why Bella did not care about her fiancé, and why the engagement was not canceled even after I openly flirted with her at the ball. It is not only about their families, but also about the pale hand of a noseless snake. It is the perfect match: loyal followers who will not betray him, and nor is the last of their line. One is even an heir. Thank you for opening my eyes.
Severus looked at the open Grimoire with an enigmatic smile. The text had vanished again, and a question appeared on the page:
"Are you going to destroy the remaining Horcruxes?"
"No, that would be boring. I'm even interested to see how this ends and who wins the war." Severus closed the book and headed for the exit. "But just in case, I should play it safe. Who knows what else might get into that creature's head, and how many more it could have made in the last twenty years."
//=================//