The Elder Wand
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe and all the characters in it belong to J.K. Rowling. This story is a work of imagination and is directed solely at readers of this website. No infringement of any rights is intended and no criticism of J.K. Rowling or her work should be considered to be stated or implied.
Author's note: Sorry for the mix up on Ch 2, which didn't load the first time that I tried. I hope that it doesn't put too many of you off.
Part 4. Slughorn
As he had expected, Harry found Horace Slughorn hiding away in the Potion Master's office. The office looked much as Harry remembered it from his sixth year at Hogwarts, appearing more like a cosy sitting room than a place of work -a far cry from its appearance when Severus Snape was in occupation. Almost every inch of the walls was covered by Slughorn's trophies - photographs of him with various celebrities and other former students. Harry was disturbed to notice that pride of place, above the fireplace on the far wall, went to a picture of Harry and Slughorn together. He also saw a picture of Slughorn with Hermione close by. In the picture, Hermione was smiling and looking radiant, a far cry from the care worn girl who Harry had left only a few moments before. He couldn't help reflecting that Hermione's suffering during the whole business with Voldemort had been almost as great as his own; another bond between them.
Slughorn's comfortable winged armchair still occupied the centre of the room, facing the fireplace but positioned at a slight angle. It was surrounded by smaller straight-backed, upholstered chairs, where his favoured students would perch during their meetings. Against a wall, to one side, was a dark wooden desk. A few papers were strewn carelessly across the surface and perched on one corner Harry could see an open metal tin, lined with waxed paper, containing a bright yellow confection, which he supposed was crystallised pineapple, a particular favourite of the Professor.
Slughorn was slumped in his armchair, staring blankly at a roaring fire and evidently oblivious to the figure now standing in the doorway. He was still dressed in the ridiculous bright green pyjamas and maroon dressing gown that he had worn during the fighting that had taken place. The dressing gown had clearly once been quite stylish with a shiny velvet collar and cuffs, but was now becoming threadbare in several places. Slughhorn's bald head looked even more like a creased, pink egg than usual and the sparse semi-circle of wispy grey hair that stretched from ear to ear was sticking out in all directions. His face was flushed, he was perspiring and he was in the process of imbibing a steaming, yellow potion from a glass beaker, presumably in an attempt to calm his apparently shaken nerves.
Although Harry could only guess at his emotions, inwardly Slughorn was almost in a state of shock. He had always attempted to "collect" future heroes as his acquaintances but he had never harboured any desire for personal heroism. The thought of himself standing toe to toe in battle with Voldemort, albeit in conjunction with Professor McGonagall and Kingsley Shacklebolt, now that the desperation of the moment had faded, left him feeling so nauseous that he could almost vomit.
"Professor…"
The sound of Harry's voice seemed to startle Slughorn and the glass beaker rattled briefly against his teeth before he set it unsteadily down on a small occasional table next to his armchair and glanced up towards the sound.
"H-..Harry," Slughorn stammered, composing himself. "There's no need to be so formal. You're not a student now you know. Please call me Horace." He was almost babbling and Harry could sense his unease.
Harry attempted to form the sound of his old Professor's first name but the idea of addressing this rather pompous elderly man in such a familiar fashion seemed to defeat him.
"I think that I would rather stick to Professor Slughorn, if you don't mind," he muttered in embarrassment.
"As you wish, dear boy. As you wish," Slughorn now exuded an air of forced joviality, "but what on earth can I do for you?"
Harry said nothing for a while, gathering his thoughts, before beginning to speak in a serious, questioning voice.
"Why did Tom Riddle come specifically to you to ask about Horcruxes?" he asked.
Slughorn was visibly shaken by the question and his thick, silvery moustache seemed to droop but he struggled to regain his composure quickly.
"What a strange question to be asking at a time like this," he stalled, a false smile beginning to form. "Well, I suppose that it was because I was his Head of House. Who else was he likely to turn to?"
Harry was prepared for Slughorn to be evasive. He had been rehearsing his approach since he had the sudden epiphany just before he had reached the Gryffindor Common Room and he thought that he already knew the true answer to his question.
"You've always sought to form friendships with those of your students that you perceive might achieve great things, haven't you?" Harry said thoughtfully. "I suppose that being associated with such people, even perhaps after your death, could be considered to be a form of immortality, couldn't it?"
Slughorn just stared at him, wide-eyed, horrified at the direction that the conversation was taking, and made no attempt to reply.
"I'm willing to bet that when you were younger, mortality might have been a concept that troubled you quite a bit," Harry continued in the same measured tone.
"What you are suggesting is quite preposterous…" Slughorn finally managed to bluster.
"You know the symbol for the Deathly Hallows, don't you; a circle, divided by a line, nestling inside of a triangle?" Harry appeared not to have heard Slughorn's attempted interruption. "Well, there's a symbol for a Horcrux as well isn't there?"
Slughorn sank back into his chair looking defeated.
"Horcruxes represent one of the most extreme examples of Dark Magic and so they are mostly of interest to those who practice the Dark Arts - pureblood families like the Blacks," Harry reasoned. "The last time that I was at Grimmauld Place, I found an interesting photograph. It had been taken in the family library and showed Sirius and Regulus as young boys. Sirius was waving a thick, ancient-looking book gleefully at Regulus, who was cowering and appeared to be frightened - a typical picture of an older sibling teasing a younger one with a scary story. There was a symbol embossed on the spine of the book - a square sitting inside of a circle with its four corners touching the circumference. The square was bisected by a jagged line. That's the symbol for a Horcrux isn't it?"
It was clear that this was a rhetorical question but Slughorn couldn't help nodding weakly in agreement as Harry continued speaking.
"I looked everywhere in the library for that book, but I couldn't find it, although I was sure that I had seen that symbol somewhere before. With everything that has happened since, it went completely out of my mind. Then, just a few moments ago, I suddenly remembered where I had seen it. It was in the memory of your meeting with Tom Riddle. A book exactly like the one in the photograph was sitting in a pile on your desk. I remember that my attention was drawn to it because it was on the very top of the pile and it looked as if it might topple off at any second. I think that Tom Riddle must have seen that book sometime when he was visiting your office and that is why he sought you out." Harry paused, looking directly into Slughorn's watery eyes. "You've made quite a study of Horcruxes, haven't you Professor? You are a bit more of an expert than you like to make out. In fact, you probably know as much about Horcruxes as anyone alive, don't you?"
Slughorn leaned forward, his face becoming suddenly animated.
"Things aren't what they seem, Harry. You must realise that I never had any intention of making a Horcrux in the conventional sense," he gabbled. "I just wanted to understand the process better; to see if it might be possible to overcome mortality without taking anyone's life. My study was all perfectly innocent, I can assure you."
"Look Professor, I'm not interested in what you've done in the past or in your motives," Harry reassured the worried older man. "I just want to pick your brains because there are many things about Horcruxes that I don't really understand and they could be important."
Slughorn appeared to relax slightly and his expression became calmer.
"I'll be happy to help if I can. Ask me anything, anything at all," he enthused desperately.
"Well, for a start," Harry began, "Voldemort made Horcruxes to gain immortality and yet, after his own Avada Kedavra curse rebounded on him that night at Godric's Hollow, he endured a virtual non-existence for over 12 years and even then he needed a great deal of help and some powerful magic to get a proper body back. Is that really how a Horcrux is meant to work, because if it is, then I am not sure why anyone would take the risk involved of being left in some sort of limbo?"
Slughorn visibly brightened at the seemingly benign topic that was of interest to Harry.
"That's a very intelligent observation Harry but you must remember that Voldemort's example is far from typical."
He brought his hands together in front of him, in a thoughtful pose, and proceeded in his most scholarly manner.
"When a wizard or witch dies, their soul becomes irretrievably separated from their body. Now, normally this is a fairly passive and gradual process. However, if they are murdered or perhaps involved in a violent accident, the soul can literally be ripped from the body and in this process a great deal of corporeal energy is released - there is actually a mathematical formula that relates the amount of energy released to the violence of the assault involved. If they know the appropriate Dark Magic, a murderer can use this energy to split their own soul and encase the unattached half in some inanimate object as a Horcrux."
Slughorn paused briefly, as if checking that Harry was able to follow what he was saying.
"The important point is that if something happens that would normally result in the death of the originator, then they can't die because their soul cannot be fully separated from the body since an external link to the Horcrux still remains. A rudimentary life form is left behind, just like Voldemort when you first met him, and if it can attach itself to a less powerful living wizard, it can force their soul to leave and take over their life force; a very unpleasant experience for the wizard concerned."
"But when Voldemort joined with Quirrel, he was able to control him but he didn't use him to regain his own body, did he?" Harry interrupted.
"Well, it was never intended that anyone should attempt to split their soul more than once. Voldemort had made his soul so unstable that he probably found that he couldn't use this option to regain his body any longer and that must have frustrated and angered him greatly."
Slughorn was silent for a short time, but then he appeared to be compelled by conceit to reveal more of his knowledge.
"There is another way in which the originator of a Horcrux can regain their body. If something happens that would have normally resulted in their death, then the Horcrux becomes activated and the part of the sole that resides in it can also then take over another individual if it can form a close emotional bond with them. Under those circumstances, the wizard will take on the form that they had at the time that the Horcrux was made. This is very unusual, however, as the Horcrux will generally be hidden away somewhere for safekeeping and is therefore unlikely to gain sufficient proximity to a suitable donor."
"Is that what almost happened to Ginny?" Harry asked suddenly.
Slughorn looked surprised. He hadn't expected any comment from Harry and he had no idea what he was referring to. His mouth opened and closed with no sound emerging. Harry noted his discomfiture and quickly added some further explanation.
"Voldemort's first Horcrux - the one that he made soon after that conversation with you - took the form of a diary. Dumbledore thought that was unusual as it seemed as if Voldemort wanted it to be found so that everyone would recognise that he was Slytherin's heir because the Chamber of Secrets had been opened again. He supposed that since Voldemort had already decided to make six Horcruxes he wasn't too concerned about the risk involved. Anyway, Lucius Malfoy made a major error of judgement and passed the diary, which Voldemort had left in his safe keeping, on to Ginny Weasley. Tom Riddle came to possess her through it and was on the point of resurrecting himself when I discovered them and managed to destroy the Horcrux."
"Well, that's amazing." Slughorn seemed to be horrified by what he had just heard. "I never realised that. If Riddle had succeeded then what remained of Voldemort would have been absorbed and there would have been no need for him to try such desperate measures as he eventually had to take. He would have never taken in your mother's blood protection and would probably have been able to kill you. What an awful prospect!"
"But if things were too unstable for Voldemort to take over Quirrel," Harry pondered, "how could the Horcrux have almost been able to take over Ginny?"
Slughorn scratched his ear and his forehead creased in concentration.
"That's a tricky one, but I can hazard a guess. As I mentioned, it was only ever intended that a wizard should make one Horcrux and so the magic involved simply divides the soul into two. Just because Voldemort had decided that he wanted extra insurance doesn't mean that he could divide his soul into seven equal parts. The first Horcrux would contain 50% of his soul, the second 25% and so on. That is why Voldemort gradually began to look less and less human as he continued to divide his soul; he had so little of it left within his body. So, I suppose that it was only when the second Horcrux was made that things started to deteriorate. That first Horcrux was probably perfectly stable and would have been activated as soon as Voldemort was hit by the Avada Kedavra curse at Godric's Hollow. After that, it would just have been waiting for someone to open the diary and start to use it."
Harry and Slughorn remained silent for a while as they both contemplated the implications of this new piece of conjecture.
"There's something that I still don't understand," Harry eventually said, a puzzled expression on his face. "Voldemort accidentally turned me into a Horcrux and there was a connection between us that we could both sense, but there didn't seem to be any connection between Voldemort and the other Horcruxes. He didn't notice when one of them was destroyed, for example. Why was that?"
"Another interesting question, Harry and I can only guess at the answer," Slughorn replied. "I think that it is just the difference between an animate and an inanimate object. One can establish a mental connection with the former but not the latter. But don't run away with the idea that the originator isn't connected to their Horcruxes because they almost certainly are. It is just that the connection does not usually reach a conscious level."
"But once the diary was destroyed, there wouldn't be any lingering connection with Ginny, would there?" Harry asked, thinking of what Narcissa Malfoy had said to him.
"I doubt it, but if, as you say, she was nearly completely taken over, then I suppose that some link might still linger on and feed back to the originator, but obviously that will have disappeared now that Voldemort is gone."
"But if such a link did exist, would Voldemort have been aware of it?"
"Well, it's possible, but only if he came into close contact with Ginny at a time when she was in a highly emotional state. Why? Might that be significant?"
"I'm not sure. I just need to think about it."
Harry stood, looking down at his feet, a frown creasing his forehead. Slughorn heaved himself out of his armchair and walked across to put a consoling hand on Harry's shoulder. His breathing was heavy but he seemed much calmer than he had been when Harry entered. Harry raised his head and smiled reassuringly at him.
"Thank you Professor. You've been very helpful."
He squeezed the older man's hand and then turned and walked through the open door, leaving Slughorn staring after him with a concerned and thoughtful expression on his face.
Harry didn't go far before he stopped and leaned back against the wall, his hands pushed deep into his pockets. He closed his eyes and tried to think. He knew that Voldemort had been able to use their connection to deceive him when he had conjured up the image of Sirius being tortured in the Department of Mysteries. Was it possible that he had fooled him again and toyed with Harry's emotions to try to separate him from Hermione? That same ill-fated trip to the Ministry had also brought Ginny and Voldemort into reasonably close contact. Could a tenuous link, still surviving from her possession by Tom Riddle, have come to Voldemort's attention at that time and if so, had he used it to manipulate Ginny's behaviour? Ginny had certainly seemed far more confident and self-assured when she returned to school the following year.
Harry knew that he definitely felt different now that Voldemort was gone; he could think of Ginny without the excited pounding in his chest that he had experienced over the past two years. Would Ginny's passion also have cooled when he was finally alone with her again?