The day of the procedure was chosen with meticulous care. It was the day of the second task, a time when the entire castle's attention, from the students to the professors to the very ghosts, would be focused on the Great Lake. No one would be wandering the seventh-floor corridor. The castle's ambient magical energy would be distracted. It was the perfect moment for a secret, dangerous operation.
Ariana entered the Room of Requirement, and it sealed itself behind her, becoming a sterile, white sanctuary cut off from the rest of reality. On the marble pedestal in the center of the room, the locket and the obsidian sphere sat waiting.
She did not begin immediately. For a full hour, she sat in a meditative state, calming her mind, focusing her will, and extending her senses. This was not a task to be rushed.
First, she established her defenses. She did not cast a simple Protego. Instead, she spoke to the Room itself, her will meshing with its ancient, powerful, and sentient magic.
"I require a multi-layered, conceptual shield between myself and the subject," she commanded softly. "The shield will be permeable to my own magic, but impermeable to any psychic, emotional, or soul-based emanations from the artifact. Filter all hostile intent."
The very air in the room shimmered. An invisible but immensely powerful barrier of pure, conceptual magic formed around the pedestal, a one-way wall created by the Room's own innate power. She was now insulated, a surgeon protected by the very highest grade of magical containment.
Next, she approached the pedestal. She did not touch the locket. Using precise, wandless telekinesis, she levitated the vial of anesthetic potion. The potion was a more potent variant of the one used on Astoria, designed to affect inanimate enchanted objects rather than living magical cores.
With a gentle, mental command, she uncorked the vial and slowly, carefully, dripped the shimmering liquid onto the golden locket. The potion did not roll off. It was absorbed instantly into the metal, which seemed to sigh as its ancient, protective enchantments were coaxed into a state of deep, temporary slumber. The cold, malevolent aura emanating from the locket flickered and dimmed, its connection to its host vessel weakened.
Now came the most critical step. The locket was famous for resisting all attempts to open it. But Ariana knew it was not a physical lock; it was a lock of will, keyed to the soul of its creator.
She focused her own Parseltongue ability, not as a shout, but as a silent, insistent, mental command, a sliver of serpent-thought aimed directly at the now-vulnerable latch.
"Open," she commanded in the language of Slytherin.
There was a soft, metallic click. The locket, sprang open.
Inside, two glass windows were revealed. But instead of holding portraits, they held a swirling, dark, living mist. From the mist, a voice began to whisper in her mind, a voice of sweet, venomous poison, the voice of the young, charismatic Tom Riddle.
"I see you, little witch… so powerful, so alone… you do not need those lesser friends… I can give you knowledge they cannot dream of… we can be great together…"
But the voice was weak, disoriented. Its connection to the locket was severed, and its whispers struck the Room's conceptual shield and dissolved harmlessly. It was a predator whose fangs could find no purchase.
"Your offer is illogical," Ariana stated aloud, her voice calm and clear in the sterile room. "You offer nothing I cannot achieve on my own, and the cost of your companionship is a loss of self sovereignty. It is a poor transaction."
Ignoring the panicked, angry whispers that now filled her mind, she began the transference. She pointed her Elder wand at the open locket. On the floor, she had already inscribed a small, temporary runic conduit connecting the pedestal holding the locket to another pedestal holding the obsidian sphere.
"Exsilium Animae," she incanted, the spell a complex piece of her own design, though derived from the Flamel library, meaning 'Exile of the Soul'.
A beam of pure, white, siphoning energy shot from her wand and struck the dark, swirling mist within the locket. The mist shrieked, a silent, psychic scream of rage and terror. The soul-fragment fought back, but it was untethered, a parasite without a host, and it was no match for the focused, absolute will behind Ariana's spell.
The dark mist was pulled from the locket, stretching into a screaming, shadowy tendril. It was drawn along the glowing runic path on the floor, inexorably pulled towards the obsidian sphere, which now pulsed with an inviting, empty darkness. The soul-fragment, desperate for any vessel, any anchor, surged into the sphere.
The moment the last wisp of darkness had entered the obsidian prison, Ariana acted.
"Claustrum Aeternum!" The final command, the 'Eternal Seal'.
The intricate runes she had carved into the sphere flared with a brilliant, silver light. They activated, folding in on themselves, creating a permanent, inescapable, and magically silent prison. The pulsing darkness within the sphere was instantly snuffed out, contained, and cut off from the outside world.
It was done.
A profound silence filled the room. The cold, oppressive aura was gone. She levitated the now closed locket and ran a dozen diagnostic charms over it. The dark magic was gone. The corrupting influence was gone. It was still a priceless, powerfully enchanted artifact, but it was now clean. It was just a locket.
She then approached the obsidian sphere. It was cool to the touch, inert. The piece of Voldemort's soul was trapped inside, a powerless specimen in a jar. She could now study it at her leisure, learn the secrets of its creation and its destruction, without any risk to herself or others.
She had done the impossible. She had performed a successful Horcruxectomy.
With a deep, satisfied breath, Ariana dissolved the conceptual shield and commanded the Room to return to its state as her private library. She placed the cleansed locket and the contained Horcruxsphere into separate, warded boxes.
As she left the Room of Requirement and stepped back into the normal castle corridor, she could hear the distant, muffled roar of the crowd from the Great Lake. The second task was likely reaching its conclusion. Harry, she knew, would be fine.
She had her own victories to celebrate. While the champions had been battling Grindylows and Merpeople for tournament points, she had been quietly waging a secret war for the soul of the wizarding world, and she had just won a major, unprecedented victory.