Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Unlikely
April 14th, 1997
Trois-Pont, Belgium. Thirty minutes west of the Behemoth/Leviathan border, by rail. Fourteen minutes from Hogwarts, if one went through all the approved international and cross-country apparition and portkey points.
“Our contact has been retired for almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Voldemort explained as they stepped up to the flat. “I can’t imagine that he will be very happy that we’re bringing the war to his doorstep.”
Harry noticed that Voldemort did not look heartbroken by this.
“But I hope he has realized that the war is coming with or without my presence,” Voldemort added.
“Really?”
Voldemort tapped his wand on the door, producing knocks far louder than the stick of wood would have made without the aid of magic. “They had better. I design my plans to proceed even in the event of my untimely demise.”
Harry looked up at him. “When do you intend to die?”
“The day after tomorrow— and if you ask me the same thing tomorrow, I’ll respond the same.” His shoulders sagged but for a moment, but Harry caught it. “But I can’t expect to escape death forever. It will swallow me up as it did Grindelwald.”
The door opened slowly, revealing a haggard, scarred man clad in fine robes. “You won’t take no for an answer.”
“I only want a few of your stories, Gilderoy.”
The man— Gilderoy— snorted. “You can’t break into my mind, so you decide to go the nice route. Don’t think I don’t know your games, Riddle.” He turned to Harry. “I retired from Britain for a reason, and it’s standing on my doorstep now.”
“Gilderoy, Gilderoy…” Voldemort murmured soothingly.
“Lockhart to you!”
“Lockhart, then” he corrected. “A story? Just one. Besides, don’t you notice my spectacles? You have nothing to fear.”
If Voldemort’s wand twitched just so, before Harry noticed a curious glint in Gilderoy’s eyes… No, Harry couldn’t be sure. But possibly.
Gilderoy set them up in a common room for entertaining guests and set out tea and waffles. “Only the finest, I make them myself, no house-elves or spellwork at all. Chocolate and raspberry filling, you’ll notice.”
Retired shut-ins, Harry decided then and there, made the best cooks.
“Vo— Headmaster Riddle didn’t explain to me why you had retired,” Harry said, trying to jumpstart conversation.
“I was a traveler. And a right good one. Traveling scholar, like the sophoi of old Greece. But better, what with magic at my hands. And if I had to get into a fight or ten or slay the odd werewolf, then that was how things went. But… it wears on a man.” Gilderoy shook his head and looked to the side, at one of the bookcases lining the walls. “I carry curses in me. Many of them very dangerous.”
“In you? What do you mean?”
“There’s many a spell that even I couldn’t negate the effects of, but I could halt them in their tracks.” He gestured to an area around his liver. “Here, I was hit by a curse that started to turn my fat to some kind of acidic jelly. A long, painful death that would be. But I keep them contained. Except that it makes any other magic very dangerous to use.”
“If Gilderoy disrupts the enchantments and charms woven through his body then any one of those curses might start again to work its way through his body,” Voldemort explained.
“The fat-acid spell,” Harry said. “How does that work? A transfiguration base, I assume, but where do you go from there?”
“You think that I know how to work it?”
“I’m sure that you know more than the wizard that cast it at you. I can’t imagine just leaving a spell like that in me if there were half a chance that some book somewhere might hold the key to getting rid of it.”
Gilderoy’s smile almost seemed to reach his ears. “Yes, and I searched for awhile, I’ll tell you. I went to Rome first. My attacker, you see, had been hired by a man working in one of the appendage bureaus of Milan…”
Voldemort had been right: Gilderoy loved to tell stories. He was good at it, too. Harry didn’t feel impatient at all as he and Voldemort took turns asking just the right questions or making such-and-such a comment that turned the conversation down another lane, until finally they arrived at the Elder Wand. The Wand of Destiny, as Gilderoy liked to call it.
Gilderoy came back with more tea before he continued.
Harry wondered if it was just something about the light, or if the man looked the slightest bit crestfallen upon his return. Or just before he left for the tea, the tea that he now held carefully near his mouth even as he spoke, the tea that he drank so slowly, as if it were an elixir of life.
He spoke of how he had come into possession of the wand, a sequence of events with which Voldemort was most familiar with, and then how he had lost it. Voldemort himself filled in details afterward and together, between what the two of them knew of the shifts of history, it seemed that they knew who now had the wand. Harry found it hard to keep up, the conversation starting and going in fits and starts, turning down paths he couldn’t fathom and its sentences being started by one and ended by another— or interrupted, as the other completed it in its head and went on to the next.
Gilderoy finished the dregs of his tea only as Voldemort finished talking. He looked at Harry. He looked at him most oddly. “You’re a good girl, Harry. A good listener. I’m glad to have made your acquaintance.” He swallowed. “Don’t remember me as a fool who couldn’t tell when a story was being drawn out of him.”
“What?”
“But I thank you for the opportunity for one last round of campfire stories.” He rose from his chair, struggling as he did so. He threw one arm out for balance. “You’d best be going, Mr. Riddle.” He groaned and leaned on the arm of his chair. “He’s coming. Soon, or sooner.”
Riddle nodded. “Do you want me to do it for you?”
“I took a potion in my tea. It should be enough to destabilize the magic in my body.” He looked at Harry. “There’s no escape for me. I know too much. But I had a fun time, didn’t I? Maybe you’ll find out when they… when they declassify me…” He shook his head again. “But better this than torture. The Eternal Kaiser can keep any man alive, they say. Now there won’t be pain.”
“I could make it painless,” Voldemort offered.
An explosion rocked the flat, nearly throwing Gilderoy to the floor. He shook his head. “Let them do their job. I killed everyone who ever tried to kill me.” He shuddered. “Ohh… So I’ll be a good sport and let some of them get what they wanted.”
Gilderoy slowly lowered himself to the floor, his back against the chair. “I won’t be dying in bed after all. Haa…” His laugh slowly turned into a moan of pain.
“Let’s go,” Voldemort said.
“But Gilderoy—”
“Will die a hero’s death. Alone,” Voldemort replied. “As heroes do. Apparition would kill him just as easily, and running will take us only so far.”
Harry spared him one last glance, biting his lip as GIlderoy shut his eyes, and then followed after.
Outside, the war had come. Outside, Hell had poured out its mouth.
“We run,” Voldemort said, taking in the sight. “We run, and the moment that I tell you to, you grab my hand. I’ll dismantle their blocks as we go.”
Harry looked at him.
“I intend to die, but only the day after tomorrow.”
“Their blocks?”
“You didn’t feel the anti-apparition wards come up?”
Behemoth’s war-wizards seemed to be faceless. Rather than robes, they wore what looked to Harry to be like carapaces, carapaces that flowed like water and bent like light, but hard and unyielding to harm. Less like individuals and more like a cloud they moved, all together, acting, reacting as one.
And if a cloud, then it was a storm that they unleashed upon all in their path, a storm of spells, with wands and things that were not wands.
Fire charms and blasting curses only barely held them off, but the things that fell from Voldemort’s lips, that fell as Behemoth soldiers fell before them, were words that Harry was loathe to hear, let alone repeat. Things that hurt him just to listen, and which he knew must have wracked Voldemort’s body with every syllable.
Blood pounding in his head like a ceaseless drum-beat, down, down, down, he was barely able to keep aware of anything but the pounding of his feet and his heart and the sound, all around, all around, the screams and explosions as the city tore itself apart. And through it all Voldemort continued to lay down disenchantment spells, struggling to find a sensitive point from whence to unravel a hole in the wards.
Harry barely noticed when Voldemort pulled out a muggle handgun and fired it at one of the soldiers. And again, at others. Barely noticed, but still did, and noticed his grin, the grin that he had held since the killing had begun.
Down, down, down… into fire, into the maelstrom, like watching Ahab as he lanced every whale and turned the whole ocean red.
What was behind him? What was behind those eyes, that open smile?
“Harriett!” Voldemort cried, and Harry came to his senses again.
Voldemort’s arm was outstretched, held out in front of Harry. And before him, before the both of them, was another wizard, clad in black streaming carapace armor but mangled and twisted, fallen upon his knees, suffering the aftereffects of a curse that Harry hadn’t noticed Voldemort utter.
Just as he hadn’t noticed the soldier’s spell.
“Riddle…” he muttered. Voldemort’s arm was beginning to blacken from a center point, spreading and spiraling from where, Harry surmised, the spell had hit him.
“Don’t bother about it,” Voldemort told him. “I can contain the curse.” He looked away, scanning for more enemies. Or simply trying not to meet Harry’s eyes. “But the body you are in belongs to my student. She can’t return to her people if you’re harmed.”
“Of course.”
“It’s almost time to go. I have an exit nearly built.”
The apparition only took them a few dozen miles.
Trois-Pont, Belgium. Thirty minutes west of the Behemoth/Leviathan border, by rail. Fourteen minutes from Hogwarts, if one went through all the approved international and cross-country apparition and portkey points.
“Our contact has been retired for almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Voldemort explained as they stepped up to the flat. “I can’t imagine that he will be very happy that we’re bringing the war to his doorstep.”
Harry noticed that Voldemort did not look heartbroken by this.
“But I hope he has realized that the war is coming with or without my presence,” Voldemort added.
“Really?”
Voldemort tapped his wand on the door, producing knocks far louder than the stick of wood would have made without the aid of magic. “They had better. I design my plans to proceed even in the event of my untimely demise.”
Harry looked up at him. “When do you intend to die?”
“The day after tomorrow— and if you ask me the same thing tomorrow, I’ll respond the same.” His shoulders sagged but for a moment, but Harry caught it. “But I can’t expect to escape death forever. It will swallow me up as it did Grindelwald.”
The door opened slowly, revealing a haggard, scarred man clad in fine robes. “You won’t take no for an answer.”
“I only want a few of your stories, Gilderoy.”
The man— Gilderoy— snorted. “You can’t break into my mind, so you decide to go the nice route. Don’t think I don’t know your games, Riddle.” He turned to Harry. “I retired from Britain for a reason, and it’s standing on my doorstep now.”
“Gilderoy, Gilderoy…” Voldemort murmured soothingly.
“Lockhart to you!”
“Lockhart, then” he corrected. “A story? Just one. Besides, don’t you notice my spectacles? You have nothing to fear.”
If Voldemort’s wand twitched just so, before Harry noticed a curious glint in Gilderoy’s eyes… No, Harry couldn’t be sure. But possibly.
Gilderoy set them up in a common room for entertaining guests and set out tea and waffles. “Only the finest, I make them myself, no house-elves or spellwork at all. Chocolate and raspberry filling, you’ll notice.”
Retired shut-ins, Harry decided then and there, made the best cooks.
“Vo— Headmaster Riddle didn’t explain to me why you had retired,” Harry said, trying to jumpstart conversation.
“I was a traveler. And a right good one. Traveling scholar, like the sophoi of old Greece. But better, what with magic at my hands. And if I had to get into a fight or ten or slay the odd werewolf, then that was how things went. But… it wears on a man.” Gilderoy shook his head and looked to the side, at one of the bookcases lining the walls. “I carry curses in me. Many of them very dangerous.”
“In you? What do you mean?”
“There’s many a spell that even I couldn’t negate the effects of, but I could halt them in their tracks.” He gestured to an area around his liver. “Here, I was hit by a curse that started to turn my fat to some kind of acidic jelly. A long, painful death that would be. But I keep them contained. Except that it makes any other magic very dangerous to use.”
“If Gilderoy disrupts the enchantments and charms woven through his body then any one of those curses might start again to work its way through his body,” Voldemort explained.
“The fat-acid spell,” Harry said. “How does that work? A transfiguration base, I assume, but where do you go from there?”
“You think that I know how to work it?”
“I’m sure that you know more than the wizard that cast it at you. I can’t imagine just leaving a spell like that in me if there were half a chance that some book somewhere might hold the key to getting rid of it.”
Gilderoy’s smile almost seemed to reach his ears. “Yes, and I searched for awhile, I’ll tell you. I went to Rome first. My attacker, you see, had been hired by a man working in one of the appendage bureaus of Milan…”
Voldemort had been right: Gilderoy loved to tell stories. He was good at it, too. Harry didn’t feel impatient at all as he and Voldemort took turns asking just the right questions or making such-and-such a comment that turned the conversation down another lane, until finally they arrived at the Elder Wand. The Wand of Destiny, as Gilderoy liked to call it.
Gilderoy came back with more tea before he continued.
Harry wondered if it was just something about the light, or if the man looked the slightest bit crestfallen upon his return. Or just before he left for the tea, the tea that he now held carefully near his mouth even as he spoke, the tea that he drank so slowly, as if it were an elixir of life.
He spoke of how he had come into possession of the wand, a sequence of events with which Voldemort was most familiar with, and then how he had lost it. Voldemort himself filled in details afterward and together, between what the two of them knew of the shifts of history, it seemed that they knew who now had the wand. Harry found it hard to keep up, the conversation starting and going in fits and starts, turning down paths he couldn’t fathom and its sentences being started by one and ended by another— or interrupted, as the other completed it in its head and went on to the next.
Gilderoy finished the dregs of his tea only as Voldemort finished talking. He looked at Harry. He looked at him most oddly. “You’re a good girl, Harry. A good listener. I’m glad to have made your acquaintance.” He swallowed. “Don’t remember me as a fool who couldn’t tell when a story was being drawn out of him.”
“What?”
“But I thank you for the opportunity for one last round of campfire stories.” He rose from his chair, struggling as he did so. He threw one arm out for balance. “You’d best be going, Mr. Riddle.” He groaned and leaned on the arm of his chair. “He’s coming. Soon, or sooner.”
Riddle nodded. “Do you want me to do it for you?”
“I took a potion in my tea. It should be enough to destabilize the magic in my body.” He looked at Harry. “There’s no escape for me. I know too much. But I had a fun time, didn’t I? Maybe you’ll find out when they… when they declassify me…” He shook his head again. “But better this than torture. The Eternal Kaiser can keep any man alive, they say. Now there won’t be pain.”
“I could make it painless,” Voldemort offered.
An explosion rocked the flat, nearly throwing Gilderoy to the floor. He shook his head. “Let them do their job. I killed everyone who ever tried to kill me.” He shuddered. “Ohh… So I’ll be a good sport and let some of them get what they wanted.”
Gilderoy slowly lowered himself to the floor, his back against the chair. “I won’t be dying in bed after all. Haa…” His laugh slowly turned into a moan of pain.
“Let’s go,” Voldemort said.
“But Gilderoy—”
“Will die a hero’s death. Alone,” Voldemort replied. “As heroes do. Apparition would kill him just as easily, and running will take us only so far.”
Harry spared him one last glance, biting his lip as GIlderoy shut his eyes, and then followed after.
Outside, the war had come. Outside, Hell had poured out its mouth.
“We run,” Voldemort said, taking in the sight. “We run, and the moment that I tell you to, you grab my hand. I’ll dismantle their blocks as we go.”
Harry looked at him.
“I intend to die, but only the day after tomorrow.”
“Their blocks?”
“You didn’t feel the anti-apparition wards come up?”
Behemoth’s war-wizards seemed to be faceless. Rather than robes, they wore what looked to Harry to be like carapaces, carapaces that flowed like water and bent like light, but hard and unyielding to harm. Less like individuals and more like a cloud they moved, all together, acting, reacting as one.
And if a cloud, then it was a storm that they unleashed upon all in their path, a storm of spells, with wands and things that were not wands.
Fire charms and blasting curses only barely held them off, but the things that fell from Voldemort’s lips, that fell as Behemoth soldiers fell before them, were words that Harry was loathe to hear, let alone repeat. Things that hurt him just to listen, and which he knew must have wracked Voldemort’s body with every syllable.
Blood pounding in his head like a ceaseless drum-beat, down, down, down, he was barely able to keep aware of anything but the pounding of his feet and his heart and the sound, all around, all around, the screams and explosions as the city tore itself apart. And through it all Voldemort continued to lay down disenchantment spells, struggling to find a sensitive point from whence to unravel a hole in the wards.
Harry barely noticed when Voldemort pulled out a muggle handgun and fired it at one of the soldiers. And again, at others. Barely noticed, but still did, and noticed his grin, the grin that he had held since the killing had begun.
Down, down, down… into fire, into the maelstrom, like watching Ahab as he lanced every whale and turned the whole ocean red.
What was behind him? What was behind those eyes, that open smile?
“Harriett!” Voldemort cried, and Harry came to his senses again.
Voldemort’s arm was outstretched, held out in front of Harry. And before him, before the both of them, was another wizard, clad in black streaming carapace armor but mangled and twisted, fallen upon his knees, suffering the aftereffects of a curse that Harry hadn’t noticed Voldemort utter.
Just as he hadn’t noticed the soldier’s spell.
“Riddle…” he muttered. Voldemort’s arm was beginning to blacken from a center point, spreading and spiraling from where, Harry surmised, the spell had hit him.
“Don’t bother about it,” Voldemort told him. “I can contain the curse.” He looked away, scanning for more enemies. Or simply trying not to meet Harry’s eyes. “But the body you are in belongs to my student. She can’t return to her people if you’re harmed.”
“Of course.”
“It’s almost time to go. I have an exit nearly built.”
The apparition only took them a few dozen miles.
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