The Gray's Secret: Scene 11 (Patreon)

Zero Days before the Wizengamot Weekend: 1:00am

Clare dreamed. And in her dream, a giant padlock floated before her. She wasn’t sure what the padlock was and had no clue how to open it. Although some part of her — a small part that remembered something her current employer/guide/teacher/lord/crush(!) had once said about memory charms — reflected that maybe she didn’t want to open it, even if she could.

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Zero Days before the Wizengamot Weekend 3:00am

Susan dreamed. And in her dream, her Aunt’s London apartment, practically on the Ministry’s front door-step, wrapped around her like an enchanted warming blanket. In the apartment Library, the refuge for her dead parents family collection, she put down the latest book she’d been reading, feeling that she was nearing the limit of what her occlumency-induced lucid dream would handle for one night, and made a quick detour down the main corridor, towards where normally one might find the cloak-room. Instead of the cloak-room wooden door, though, there was instead a massive vault door, locked with enough magic to make a war-ward blush. Susan bit her dream-self lip as she looked at it. She was pretty sure that, with her current occlumency skill, if she started now, she could maybe break the lock, in say, ten years. But that would go against every lesson every noble child was taught about memory charms.

To be memory charmed as a noble meant that you had voluntarily removed your noble house ring for the charm to be applied. Everyone knew this. Such actions almost always came with magical contracts with clauses explicitly requiring that the memory charm not be tampered with and the consequences of breaking such a contract could be quite terrible.

Susan knew all this and wasn’t going to even start on trying to break the lock. That didn’t mean she wasn’t curious though… Curious and more than a little worried.

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Zero Days before the Wizengamot Weekend: 5:00am

Harry dreamed.

And in his dream, the fortress prison of Azkaban rose around him, both a comfort and a curse. Behind him stood a mental portal, leading to which ever of his girls he’d entrusted the dreamscape pendant too, still flickering from his recent exit.

Hermione was doing well with her independent studies.

She’d soon be ready to start exploring the Aether Unpacked properly.

Walking away from the portal, Harry made his way through the corridors of Azkaban, reflecting on the quiet and emptiness — a reflection that was somewhat ruined a few moments later as a dementor glided through an intersection up ahead. There was no fear or soul-sucking depression though. These mental constructs guarded his mind at his behest, not at his enemy’s.

Continuing on, he briefly stopped to look in on the dirty little cell he’d been kept in for upwards of a decade. It seemed incredible, looking back, that such a thing had held him for so long. Since being jail-sprung by his benefactors, he’d built such a position for himself that the prospect of ever finding himself in such a state was highly unlikely, even if a part of his mind—one that he kept an incredibly close eye on—still jabbered in terror at the thought.

Moving on from the grubby little jail cell, Harry hesitated.

But, no, there was no reason for him not to continue.

Walking slower now, each booted step calm and measured, Harry walked up the line of cells until he arrived at one quite unlike any of the others. Instead of metal bars, jagged bolts of lightning crackled and ran up and down the space where in the other cells, a door would have been — green bolts of lightning.

Harry stood outside the lightning door with his hands behind his back.

Inside the cell, lay what could only be described as a burnt-out desiccated corpse. As Harry continued to watch, the corpse rose its head to meet his gaze. “FREE ME,” it rasped out in a whisper loud enough to shake the stone.

“No,” Harry answered.

“I CAN GIVE YOU EVERYTHING.”

“I have made everything for myself.”

“POWER.”

“I am a lord of lords at the age of twelve.”

“GOLD.”

“I will soon have more gold than anyone in Magical Britain.”

“WITCHES.”

“I have two in law and three more in heart. And they are not mere concubines to be. All my girls could stand by themselves as terrible sorceresses in their own right.”

The corpse cackled. “AS I’D EXPECT FROM THE BABY THAT DEFEATED ME.”

Harry said nothing.

Eventually, the corpse rasped, “WHAT NEWS FROM THE WORLD OUTSIDE?”

Harry shrugged. “Still trying to find a way to end you that doesn’t kill me.”

The corpse hissed. “YOU WILL NOT BRING THAT MUGGLE NEAR ME AGAIN.”

“You are in no position to make demands.”

“OR THAT MUDBLOOD HYBRID ABOMINATION.”

“If you want protection from the likes of Virgo, you know what I wish in return.”

The corpse glared. For the briefest of moments, its eyes flashed with a blood-red glow. “GIVING UP MY POWER TO YOU WOULD DESTROY ME AS SURELY AS A JOINING WITH MY OTHER SELVES.”

“But am I not a more pure expression of what you strive for than your other selves?”

“NO!” the corpse roared and the lightning bolt bars sizzled and flickered for a moment before snapping back to their original shape.

There was another silence beat before Harry replied, cooly. “I am your lord, Tom Marvolo Slytherin.”

For the first time in the conversation, the corpse’s expression twisted into something approximating a smile, albeit one that was all teeth and perhaps occasionally found looking up from the bottom of abandoned wells, tar pits, or collapsed mine shafts that have taken months to dig out. “THEN WHY NOT FREE ME, MY LORD? I COULD SERVE YOU WELL. WHO KNOWS, I MIGHT EVEN DIE IN YOUR SERVICE.”

“The cost is too high.”

The corpse burst into laughter that sounded like burnt meat being fed through an industrial grinder. “THE COST IS TOO HIGH,” it said in a mocking voice. “IS THAT WHY YOU TRIED TO DESTROY ME WITH THE MUGGLE THE MOMENT YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD, DESPITE KNOWING THE COST WOULD BE THE SAME?”

Harry said nothing.

“NO. YOU DO NOT FREE ME BECAUSE YOU ARE AFRAID THAT YOU COULD NOT CONTROL ME. EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE MY LORD. YOU ARE SCARED OF WHAT I MIGHT BECOME. SCARED LIKE A LITTLE BOY — LIKE A LITTLE BOY ALL ALONE AND TRAPPED IN A CELL, THROWN AWAY AND ABANDONED.”

Harry still said nothing.

“WELL? NOT GOING TO SAY ANYTHING, LORD SLYTHERIN?”

Harry turned away. “What is there to say?” He shrugged. “You are right.”

And with that, he walked away, not stopping until he was out in the main prisoner gallery, where fresh-faced inmates would have been marched before the few human guards decided which wing they were to be thrown into.

Harry took a deep mental breath. It had been a while since he’d last visited the horecrux, and he never enjoyed doing so. The thing got under his skin. It made him feel Ikie, like not bathing for a week — time to regularly bathe and relax being another luxury he’d gotten used to. Mmm… maybe after the Wizengamot Weekend he should think about taking Daphne out on another date. He’d probably need time to unwind. Yes, actually, that sounded like a great idea!

Seeing the barest hints of the morning sun start to illuminate the sky outside, Harry decided it was time to wake up and begin his day. It was going to be a busy one.

When something stopped him.

Harry frowned. Something about his mental palace felt… off.

It wasn’t something he’d have otherwise noticed, but after his talk with Voldemort’s latest soul fragment, his senses were on edge in his own mind in a way he normally wouldn’t be.

Following the sense of what he could only describe as ‘unease,’ he made his way through the corridors of his mindscape until he reached, of all things, the prison kitchens. Inside, a few dementors were floating around the work counters, one tossing an omelet in a frying pan, while the other wore an apron reading, “Kiss the cook.”

“Out!” Harry commanded.

Once his mental guardians had left, he looked around the otherwise completely normal setting, and sniffed the air. He frowned. Getting down on his hands and knees, he peered under each of the magical kitchen appliances. When he got to a cupboard full of cooking supplies, he sucked in his breath and stared. There, was something there. Something magic. Only the most skilled of occlumens would have ever noticed it, but he was that and then some.

Gripping hold of the magic firmly, Harry gave an almighty tug.

Like a child’s fold-out book, one whole side of the kitchen inverted itself, appliances, shelves, and freezing cupboards folding away, to reveal something massive in the wall that made Harry suck in his breath.

Polished goblin silver sparkled under so many cartoonishly large chains and locks that what he was looking at might as well be more chain and lock than door.

But that’s still what this was. A door. A vault door, specifically.

It was a memory charm.

A memory charm that Harry had no idea existed in his mind, nor how, why, or even when it had appeared.

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