The Last Horcrux/Hogwarts/History of Magic Lesson 1
Your first lesson of the day is a boring lesson on the History of Magic. You came to Hogwarts to learn about using magic, not who discovered a certain spell hundreds of years ago. Lily and some of the other girls are paying attention diligently, but the only person who actually seems to be enjoying the lesson is Hermione Granger. Every time the teacher asks a question, her had shoots up and she gasps in desperation to answer it. The poor girl can’t see that being an insufferable know it all is not endearing her to her fellow students, not even to her fellow Gryffindors, who grumble and roll their eyes every time she answers a question.
Then a strange thing happens. Even though you are bored, the lesson is new to you. You shouldn’t really know many of the answers at all, beyond the most basics of magical history. Whenever the teacher asks a question though, you find the answers just tumbling into your head. Then you realise, you didn’t know these things. You still don’t. The Monster knows them, and whenever the right question is asked, his mind opens up to yours like a library. It’s as though all his memories are like books, filed away on dusty bookshelves. You can’t just find anything you want though, you have to know what books there are, and just like you don’t know every book in Hogwarts library, you don’t know what you might find in the Monster’s mind without knowing the right questions to ask.
You imagine yourself walking through the library of the Monster’s mind, and have the curious sensation that you are actually in a building of some sorts. You see in your mind’s eye a series of dusty corridors in an endless and abandoned mansion.
He built this you realise to yourself he made this place, inside his mind, to store his memories. The expression Memory Palace comes to mind. The technique was developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, to store memories for later retrieval. Now, just as the Monster lurks inside your soul and inside your mind, he can’t stop you from wandering inside his mind. Normally, you wouldn’t dare to do so, but with the Monster sleeping for so long, you feel less afraid, and decide to see what you can find.
Losing track of yourself and your surroundings, you find yourself wandering down dusty empty passageways, long overgrown with weeds and strewn with detritus. The only sound is that of your own heartbeat. You don’t even need to breathe.
The memory palace seems to continue in all directions, stretching on endlessly. You walk down corridors and past abandoned rooms. There is no one and nothing, and the building continues forever. For a terrifying moment, you wonder if it really is infinite, if you could walk these corridors for an eternity and never find your way out.
You are startled by the sound of footsteps. A small child is running along one of the corridors. Your heart jumps into your throat to realise that you are not alone in here. You hear the footsteps getting closer, and suddenly a small child runs out in front of you at a cross section in the corridor, only to vanish as soon as he appeared, running on further into the endless maze.
You try to follow the footsteps, terrified of what you might find, but also deathly afraid of becoming lost in here, alone for all eternity. You start to chase after the receding sounds of the little boy, only to hear your own footsteps echoing throughout the impossible mansion. You lose track of him, and release that by now, you have become hopelessly lost in this place.
You are drawn to the sound of voices. Behind a door, you hear the sounds of a man and a boy, talking to one another. The door is closed, but you press your ear to it, and manage to hear some muffled snatches of their conversation.
“I was in the library the other day,” the boy says, “in the Restricted Section, and I read something rather odd about a bit of rare magic. It's called, as I understand it... Horcruxes.”
You leap back from the door for a moment. You realise you are learning things the Monster would never want you to know. If he found out what you were doing… the though does not bear thinking about. You pluck up your courage, and press your ear back to the door again.
“…and how does one split his soul, sir?” The boy asks.
“I think you already know the answer to that, Tom,” the Man answers him.
“Murder,” the boy simply replies.
Your blood runs cold, and you turn tail and run.
Somehow, you know that the door is opening behind you. You don’t look back, but in the distance you can hear the boy laughing at you, a hideous inhuman laugh full of hatred and insanity.
You flee down one of the corridors.
You continue, until you hear more sounds. This time, it is a whimpering. A woman’s voice, but whether she is crying, or in pain, you are not sure. You can hear that the sounds of her moans are coming from a nearby room, and this time, the door is open.
You creep up slowly, and release that her gasps and moans are something else. A sexual rhythm, but not one of a tender act of love. Someone is hurting her, and hurting her badly. You reach the doorway, and release that if you look inside, you’ll never be able to un-see what is within. Steeling yourself, you look around the doorway, and see your Aunt Bella, as a teen only a few years older than you are now. She is naked on the bed, and the monster is straddling her, forcing himself on her, his hands around her throat. Her face is a mess of tears and ruined mascara, and her cries are of pain and fear rather than pleasure.
“Bella!” You cry out, feeling destroyed by what you’ve seen.
The girl Bella turns and looks at you helplessly, and then the Monster turns his head and sees you, fixing you with his Snake like eyes.
“Assassin!” He hisses in Parseltongue, “Assassin! Assassin!”
He leaps up from the bed and charges toward you. His skin is white as death and his fingers are snakes reaching out to devour you.
You turn and run and run and run. Deeper into the labyrinth, desperate to escape the things you have seen, even if it means you are lost here forever.
You slow to a walk. You realise you haven’t a clue how to find your way out again. You walk on past empty rooms, dusty bookshelves and crumbled statues. There are empty stone fountains full of rubble and leaves, and strange spiral patterns of darkness on the floor that make you feel sick when you look at them.
At one point, you hear the notes of a violin being played. It is a haunting, twisted melody, one that curls it’s way inside your mind but doesn’t fit there properly. You know that if you hear this music for too long, you will utterly lose your mind. You feel the music, heading even deeper into the labyrinth. Just as the music stops, you hear the little boy’s footsteps again, as he runs toward you. He’s coming closer. You can see him now, a little boy, except it’s not a little boy, it’s a hideous twisted thing in a shape that is almost a boy, it’s face misshapen and warped. It’s coming toward you and you know that it’s embrace is something worse than death.
“Emily?” You hear Lily’s voice in your mind.
You flee again, not caring which way your run, and you come to a corridor that is a little cleaner than the rest. You tear past a room containing a handsome young man, holding a violin, but you don’t stop. You run on and on until you reach a hallway. Within the centre of the hallway is a kind of box. A box that contains the essence of the monster, a massive inhuman sleeping face.
It opens its eyes.
“Emily!” Lily says to you in your mind, “Emily! Wake up! You’re having a dream! It’s not real, it’s a nightmare!”
The Monster opens its mouths revealing row after row on inhuman snake-like teeth. It prepares to devour you when you feel Lily reach down into the mansion and grab you by the shoulder, pulling you out of your nightmare in an instant and back into the classroom.
You collapse out of your chair and start to scream and scream. All of the classroom are stunned, but Lily and Lavender and Hermione are with you, hushing you and telling you it’s ok.
“The Monster…” you whimper, “the Monster…”
“It’s Ok Emily,” Lily says tenderly, “you just fell asleep. You were having a nightmare, but I pulled you out of it.”
You are lying on the floor. All the students and your teacher are looking down at you. Hermione is holding your hand, and your head is in Lavender’s lap. She strokes your hair and tells you it will all be ok.
You sit bolt upright. The girl! The damned girl is fucking everything up. You have to reassert control. You have been sleeping for too long and the girl had started to think she could do as she wished.
“Are you ok Miss Lestrange?” Your Professor asks you.
“Im fine,” you snap back indignantly, “Someone has hexed me. A nightmare hex.”
The Professor, whose name you can’t remember, incants something under his breath and waves his wand, causing you to glare at his impudence.
“I can’t see a hex affecting you,” he says, puzzled, “in fact, I can’t see anything magical about you, apart from your ring.”
You glance at your Ring of Protection, which would protect you from any fool who dared to actually try and hex you.
“Im fine,” you repeat, returning to you seat, “some fool hexed me is all. And when I find out who did it, I will be most displeased.”
After a while, the lesson continues. You notice that the girls you are sitting with are looking at you in concern, and even a little fear. Malfoy is smirking, and Harry and Ron look terrified. You glower at Potter and he winces in pain as a headache assails him. You have to stop though as it starts to get you too.
The bell soon rings, and you exit the class, heading toward a bathroom. Lily and the others try to come with you but you dismiss them with an aggressive wave if your wand.
You need to talk to the girl, and alone.
Other Soul Fragment?
Inside Extended Luggage Suite
Books Life Magick of the Celts and ancient Britons, Wiccan Blood Rituals, A Primer of Magickes of Imperial China, The Fragmented Soul, Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts, Love Potions, Sexus, Serpentes et Magicae Voluptatis, The Daughters of Hecate, A Secret Guide to Hogwarts, The Oneirocritica, Tom Riddle’s Diary (Horcrux).
Magic Items Sofia Lestrange’s Pensieve, Enchanted Tarot, Guardian Statue, Self-Writing Quill, Wizard’s Chess Set, Mother’s Broomstick, several sets of shirts, skirts and underwear with protection from minor charms, jinxes and hexes.
Other Items Clothes, text books, blankets, towels, food, medicines and various supplies
