Night, forest, camp, campfires burning, tents pitched — lovely.
Around me, at a respectful — I'd even say extremely respectful — distance stood wizards who'd already recovered from the shock of the magical pressure resulting from mine and Amber's little "hello." I myself stood there, looking at Potter, who wasn't in any particular hurry to get up off the ground, at Amber, calmly seated in her improvised wheelchair, at her maid… And thinking.
My thoughts were simple — do I even need any of this?
On the other hand, thanks to my sharp and excessive enthusiasm, thanks to this psychological revelation, I'd lost my composure, become more irritable than usual. Perhaps disclosure, or simply obtaining information about the situation unfolding right now, would lift some veil on the mysteries of the past, or maybe even clarify something in the present. I was, after all, deeply doubtful that this group of wizards — with Amber herself among them, no less — had come here at night to gather herbs, and had gone and pitched a camp besides. And the camp was clearly not a one-day affair.
"You're plainly mistaken, Mr Potter," Amber replied with a faint smile, looking at the shocked Potter.
"No, no, it can't be!" Potter deigned to spring up off the ground, drawing himself up to his full height. "I know Mum's face exactly… The Occlumency lessons with Snape brought back memories of—"
Talking about this sort of thing wasn't his strong suit. Still, he shouldn't be blamed for it — Potter was, after all, just a sixteen-year-old boy.
"Mr Potter," Amber tilted her head slightly to one side, "what do you know about how you survived that night?"
"Dumbledore said that Mum's love—"
"Ha-ha-ha!" Amber laughed so hard that several wizards, having recovered and gone back to their tasks, flinched. "Ha-ha-ha!"
Once she'd finished laughing, Amber gave an imperceptible hand signal, and the maid wheeled her chair towards one of the tents.
"Follow me, Mr Potter. And you too, Mr Granger. I think you'll find some knowledge and understanding useful."
Potter looked stunned, shell-shocked, but, gathering his robes off the ground, he strode confidently after Amber. I decided to take up the invitation too, both to learn the details of this odd business with Potter and to find out what Amber had been doing in this forest — I really don't like it when something's going on around me and I'm not in the know.
The tent, naturally, had Undetectable Extension Charms on it, so the space inside was like a large flat with several rooms and a central hall serving as a sitting room. Furniture, various odds and ends, sparse décor — it all created an impression of austere comfort, however odd that might sound. But it was clear at once that none of it was especially expensive, which wasn't surprising, really — the tent had to be something one wouldn't mind abandoning, or losing everything from, if the charms collapsed.
We were invited to sit at a small table, but no one offered drinks. We sat on one side of the table, Amber and her maid, standing behind her, on the other.
"And what, Mr Potter," Amber began, folding her hands before her, "do you know about your scar and this 'power of love'?"
She couldn't quite suppress a smirk on that last phrase. Potter, it seemed, had begun to get at least a little hold of himself, and he glanced at me for a moment, as though hinting that this was really none of my business at all.
"Mr Granger will be staying," Amber's tone didn't so much as suggest a theoretical possibility of argument.
"Well…" Potter began voicing his thought process, carefully maintaining a mask of seriousness behind which he hid his confusion. "Dumbledore said the scar is a mark left by Voldemort's Killing Curse, and my mother's love and her sacrifice created a blood protection on me. That's why I was sent to the Dursleys for the summer holidays — my aunt is my mother's own sister."
"The power of love," Amber smirked again. "Well, for certain reasons you'll understand by the end, I spent several years working out precisely what Lily Potter did, and how."
"So you're—"
"Don't interrupt."
With nothing but her tone and a couple of words, Amber once more nipped in the bud Potter's desire to ask questions that were, at present, inappropriate.
"In ancient times…"
I assumed there was about to be a history lecture, but I was slightly wrong — it was just a passing mention.
"…various highly complex magical manipulations were carried out by means of rituals or the inscription of intricate diagrams. Often these were Dark magical manipulations, but that was simply a cost of those eras. Every sufficiently old family has something from those times, sometimes even too much. The Potters were no exception, and given the family they can be said to descend from, that's hardly surprising."
"Family?"
"Ugh," I sighed. "You really ought to dig into your family history, Harry. I think I've told you that before. I take it," I turned my gaze to Amber, "we're talking about the Peverells?"
"Precisely. Look up the various historical particulars yourself, if you're interested, but ultimately the Potters inherited certain knowledge from the Peverells, a line nearly extinct by that point. They were superb artificers and experts in Dark magic, without which there was simply no getting by in those times. And while the Potters had little interest in the Dark arts themselves, various forms of 'inventiveness' — that's another matter entirely."
Outside, some quiet commotion had started up, quiet enough that Amber sent her maid off, with an imperceptible hand gesture, to check on the situation, while she herself continued her train of thought.
"The moment Lily Potter learned her son might become a target of the Dark Lord, she immediately set about securing protection. For instance, visiting her husband's parents' house and taking a couple of old books that had never drawn interest before, owing to their complexity, their age, their thoroughly Dark orientation, and so on. Guess, Mr Potter, what resource was plentiful and easily accessible in ancient times. Before the Statute."
"Er… People, I suppose," at the thought that people were merely a resource, Potter's face twisted slightly in distaste.
"Precisely. The purposes could be anything — mass healing or a curse, leprosy, plague, offensive magic for storming a neighbouring baron's castle. Or, indeed, protection. I know for a fact that many old wizarding family homes, built before the Statute or even earlier, have powerful wards based on sacrifice — an easy and accessible way to obtain a great deal of magic."
The maid returned, said something inaudibly to Amber, who simply nodded and continued her account.
"Lily Potter found one such protective scheme. Previously this was, for me, merely the most likely hypothesis, but now I can see I was right. A ritual that uses an attacker's own magic to create protection from him and his loved ones. But it requires a sacrifice to activate. As I understand it, that sacrifice was James Potter — and voluntarily, at that. I can't say why, but if you think it through, it seems quite likely that James decided to make his sacrifice place the protection on you, without it being necessary for Lily herself to sacrifice herself as well. But, as is always the way with ancient Dark magic, if the wizard doesn't have vast experience in using it — something goes wrong."
Harry sat listening intently, looking now at his hands, now at the table, now at Amber.
"Lily Potter set off a second ritual, this time sacrificing herself, but it was a somewhat reworked ritual. Such complex and powerful Dark magic — it's not Protego, you can't just layer two of them on top of each other. So Lily Potter used, as the energy source for the sacrifice, her own soul. Fortunately, the soul is a far more complex substance. Any expert in this sort of magic will tell you there exists an indivisible and indestructible part, the foundation of the soul. That which makes a living being itself, while everything else merely accumulates around that core over the course of a life. I expect Lily Potter read something of the sort in the books, which is why she saw no problem in such a sacrifice."
The commotion outside kept building, and from the sound of it, it resembled preparations for something. Something important.
"But even here, things didn't go entirely without a hitch, as tends to happen when carrying out a spontaneously devised plan."
Had it not been for the thick black blindfold over Amber's eyes, I could have said with confidence that she was looking at Potter expectantly.
"At the moment the Dark Lord — I don't recommend saying his name, on account of the magic laid on it — cast the Killing Curse at Lily Potter, the second ritual activated. Both rituals did indeed protect you, Mr Potter, though not in full — there were consequences. First, the extensive working of magic on the soul affected the Dark Lord, whose soul was already critically damaged from numerous experiments. He, incidentally, like many before him, had absolutely no understanding of what he was doing."
"I suppose…" Potter fell into thought with the expression of someone personally responsible for everyone else's problems, "…that this has something to do with the scar."
"Precisely. There's a ritual of rather dubious value — the creation of a Horcrux. Are you familiar with it?"
Potter shook his head, and Amber turned to me, waiting for an answer.
"I've come across mentions of it," I answered indifferently. "A pointless thing, if immortality's the goal. A strong-willed wizard can keep his soul from flying off without resorting to such nonsense."
"An interesting notion," Amber smiled faintly, turning back to Potter. "Your scar, Mr Potter, is a spontaneous Horcrux — and an incomplete one, at that. That day, amid the chaos of magic, the ritual of Lily's, the energies of the soul and all the rest, at the moment of the Dark Lord's disembodiment, a fragment of his soul broke off and landed in you, as a source of powerful magic."
"So… " Potter rubbed his scar. "That's why I can sometimes sense his thoughts… And the scar hurts when he's near? And why I speak to snakes…"
"Yes, but had the protection been cast correctly, had the necessary time passed for it to fully unfold, none of this would have happened. Even a stray fragment-of-a-Horcrux sticking to you, Merlin help it, wouldn't have been able to influence you, and so there'd have been no consequences at all, and no Parseltongue."
"You know, Amber," I decided now to clarify a couple of points, while Potter was mulling something over, judging by the blank look on his face, "as I said, I've read about Horcruxes. I also believe you can't fully split a soul, given its indivisible core. I can allow for the possibility of chipping off a piece, or binding one's soul to an object so as to be, in effect, in two places at once — but what's the point? And does a Horcrux really allow one to preserve one's life?"
"The mere fact of a Horcrux — no," Amber shook her head. "However, because of the damage to the soul, because of a wound of that kind, the spirit of the dead Horcrux-owner becomes rather like a ghost, until it heals, and only then can it move on. But healing such a wound makes the wizard sufficiently strong-willed — even if unconsciously — that after recovering, by exerting force and will, he may choose not to leave the world after death at all. Hence the mistaken belief, both of the ritual's creator and of the results of many experiments. Although a properly created Horcrux can be used as a very powerful defence against anyone eager to lay hands on things that don't belong to them."
"Wait," something dawned on Potter. "You said Mum used her own soul… So does that mean she's actually dead? But you're an exact copy of her."
"There's something about a soul that can't be used, can't be twisted, broken, split, or altered in any way whatsoever — the core. For instance, if one makes a Horcrux, splitting off a part of the soul and placing it there, that fragment won't contain the core, and it will have to 'wrap itself' around something else instead. A powerful emotion, say, or a life's purpose that broke off from the foundation, or a task set by the wizard. You've encountered Horcruxes before yourself, haven't you, Mr Potter?"
"I suppose I have," Potter agreed, but didn't elaborate.
"Now, if one were to take a soul and remove only the core from it, to an outside observer nothing would appear to change — the person would carry on living as before, and perhaps, in time, would develop some idée fixe or something concrete that becomes their new foundation. But for the person themselves, they'd die the instant the core — the indivisible, infinitesimally small particle of the soul — is extracted, because they themselves are the core. Do you understand?"
"Not really."
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