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 sat a round gemstone the same shade as the cover, catching the light whenever it turned.
If someone in this world found out how I am creating this artifact, they would call me a Dark wizard and throw me in Azkaban, or they might hand me the Order of Merlin. 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 the smiling Severus with pure malice. The fragment remembered who had dragged it out of the diadem and stuffed it into another object, a place where it could not release even a single 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 hold back its anger. It glanced down and saw a round pentagram glowing red beneath its feet, then looked back up at the book hovering near Severus.
"I only have one question for you. Are you ready to submit completely to my will and serve me?"
"Serve? You?" A cold, contemptuous smirk twisted the soul fragment's face. "Who are you that I should lower my head to you?"
"The one holding your life in his hands. I offered you a choice only because I need an intelligent artifact, not a brainless one. But even if you refuse, the second option is not bad either, and you will still end up useful."
At those words, the spirit narrowed its eyes and released an invisible wave of force, trying to smash through the barrier and reach the arrogant bastard who had dared to trap it in an artifact.
"You think I will agree to this?"
"If your life is dear to you, then yes. I give you ten seconds to think, and then 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, pulled the book toward himself, and opened it. "Ten. nine." Cutting his finger, he began drawing symbols on the page. "Eight. seven." The fragment only snorted in contempt. "Six. five." The pentagram beneath it flared and began shimmering with a darker red, and that finally made its resolve falter.
"You cannot do this. Better bow to me yourself, and then 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 into the book. Severus lifted his eyes, openly mocking. "Two." At last the Dark wizard felt real danger. Panicking, it slammed its fists into the barrier with all its strength, but it did not budge under the hail of blows. "One."
"Stop! I." The vortex intensified, and as it watched its legs begin to dissolve and be 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 word 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 will not need to force you to accept." Severus smiled, mockery sharp on his face. "And now, Lord Voldemort, heir of Slytherin, you are my slave." The vortex did not 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 did not 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 I would actually have to stuff an empty shell into the Grimoire," Severus said, pulling the book toward himself and opening 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 form 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 flared with light. "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 like 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 with full responsibility, within the established deadline. Fourth: the Grimoire must."
And he did not stop. For the next hour and more, Severus kept listing rule after rule. With each one, Voldemort's soul fragment turned into a. into a good 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. Exceptions are those I designated in the forty-seventh point. That is all. I hope we will get along."
In his previous life, Alan had owned a Grimoire that did not require such sacrifices. Its foundation had been a particle of his own soul and a crystal he had obtained only with great difficulty, after spending an entire fortune and even taking an extra year of work 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 inside an ordinary Grimoire. The rules forced it to obey and not contradict its Master, while not limiting the artifact's ability to think. That made it far more useful. It could advise, calculate, and plan. And for things like that, 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. The core and soul could both be damaged, leaving the wizard stuck at the rank of Master forever. Voldemort had squandered all his potential for the empty hope of eternal life, and he considered him a fool for it. That was exactly why he would not repeat the same mistake.
When the glow faded, Severus opened 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. Immediately after my birth, my mother died in an orphanage."
"So, an anagram. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Lord Voldemort. Interesting."
"I lived in the orphanage until I was eleven, until Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore came to me and told me about the magical world, and that I was not the only one with such power."
At that time, if I remember correctly, Dumbledore was still a professor at Hogwarts, so there is nothing suspicious about sending a professor to a boy who knows nothing about magic to explain what he needs to know. Nodding at his own thought, 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 to study information about him, using only one clue, my grandfather's name, after whom I was named, Marvolo, I learned that I was his descendant through the maternal line." The Grimoire then began describing feelings, how disgusted Tom had been that 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 second eleven written pages became seven and a half. "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 a pure-blood, nearly erasing every mention of the Muggle part of him. 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, killing Myrtle by accident. 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 a powerful venom.
The way the case had been closed so easily, by accusing an innocent, made Severus sigh tiredly. How blind did you have to be to blame petrification on a simple spider? Still, he was not especially interested in this. He only felt sorry for Hagrid, nothing more.
He also finally understood why Slughorn had reacted the way he had 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 became a monster and 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 tried to get a job as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but the headmaster at the time refused him, saying he was too young. Tom suspected Dumbledore had pushed for it. Still, Tom did not despair. He took a job at Borgin and Burkes, a shop in Knockturn Alley that traded in artifacts.
There he gained new connections. He also obtained two more founder artifacts: Hufflepuff's cup and Slytherin's locket. He charmed and killed their owner, and both items became Horcruxes. One from killing the owner of the artifacts, and the other from a vagrant who had the misfortune to catch his eye.
After that, Tom quit and left the country, traveling and learning the depths and subtleties of Dark magic. Along the way, he gathered his old school followers again and founded the Death Eaters. Other aristocrats in magical Britain began to join, and even some wizards from other countries where the Dark wizard had been.
During those travels he hid one of his Horcruxes, Salazar Slytherin's locket. In Albania, he created another. That one was Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, and he learned its location from Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost of Ravenclaw's daughter. He had charmed her with the mask of a pleasant, charming young man back when he was still in school.
And so it went until 1958, when Tom returned to Britain and almost immediately came to Hogwarts to apply again for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post. Dumbledore had replaced the previous headmaster by then, and Dumbledore refused him. Tom had expected it, but he still wanted to try. His true goal was the room where Severus later found the diadem.
That was the end of what the soul fragment knew. Everything Voldemort did after that was outside its memories.
Of course, Severus did not stop there. From the Grimoire he learned the locations of two more Horcruxes besides the locket: the diary, which had been given for safekeeping to one of their mutual acquaintances, and the Gaunt ring, which was currently gathering dust in the Gaunt house in Little Hangleton.
The Grimoire also hinted that at the time Tom had been thinking of hiding the cup at the bottom of the sea in a chest, or in Gringotts in someone's vault, because Tom did not have his own vault. The bank's defenses were at the highest level.
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 drop out because Lucius already has your diary, which means only the other two remain." Severus thought for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. "Now I understand why Bella did not care about her fiance, and why the engagement was not canceled even after I openly flirted with her at the ball. It is not only about their families, it is also about the pale hand of a noseless snake. It is the perfect match: loyal followers who will not betray him, and neither is the last in their family. 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 am even interested in how this will end, who will win this 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."
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