The commotion outside had died down, and Amber once again sent her maid off on some errand known only to the two of them.
"Never mind, you'll work it out in time, if you want to. I have every reason to believe that, due to the haste of the ritual, the confluence of circumstances, the Dark Lord's actions, all that chaotic magic… all of it resulted in Lily Potter's soul-core being unable to peacefully leave this world, caught as it was by such powerful magic, while the Dark Lord's disembodiment added an enormous quantity of Dark Energy on top. Guess, Mr Potter, where the soul-core went, if it can't leave, and there's so much magic all around."
"I… don't know."
"Well, I think I can guess," I couldn't resist tossing my two Knuts into a story that was finally starting to clear up, though no one so much as reacted to me, which was rather sad.
"The core returned to the body. But as you understand, the core isn't a personality. It isn't even skills, reflexes, or habits. It's simply an infinitesimally small point of focus, which, over the course of a life, accumulates the rest of the soul — memory, habits, and the rest of the personality — around itself. But a bare core in an adult body is a natural absurdity. The soul and the body are bound together, so on some reflexive level, the body, being in a state of clinical death, began 'solving' the problem, using as raw material everything the magic could reach, with the magic itself — enormous quantities of Dark Magic — serving as fuel. Every artefact in the house carrying so much as an imprint of a personality, of knowledge, or the like, was destroyed — and James Potter had dragged a great many of those from his parents' house, with a dozen books on Dark Magic among them carrying imprints of knowledge. Yes, wizards of old loved to imbue pages not only with text but with such imprints too — the Peverells especially."
"Well, I've got it now," I said, smiling, only now removing the white mask given to me by Professor Hunt. "I had a similar situation myself, except in my case the soul refused to properly build itself up, forever stuck in a state like a cracked glass marble, so to speak. Magic spent years fusing it all together. Your case is clearly different, though. One could say a new personality was born, cobbled together from whatever came to hand and fixed in place by Dark Magic, in place of the one the person ought to have had. Hm… But a human body simply can't 'run' on Dark Magic…"
"Correct, Mr Granger," Amber smiled, turning her head towards me. "The body changed as well, in the end…"
Potter, it seemed, was having a hard time digesting all this, since he was simply staring blankly, first at me, then at Amber.
"…and, strictly technically speaking, I'm no longer human — hence this blindfold," she ran her fingertips along the black band over her eyes, "and this chair."
"So… wait," Potter drew everyone's attention with a decisive gesture of both hands. "So you are my mum after all?"
"No."
"But… as I understood it, the soul-core, whatever it is, is hers. The body is hers. You're her."
"No, Harry," I shook my head this time. "That's not so. I'm sure that even nomenclature magic would show that Amber isn't Lily Potter. The change to her body and to her magical essence would affect a kinship potion, and the result would be, at most, a distant relative. And don't forget — the soul-core isn't the soul itself. It's merely the personality's point of focus. Look…"
I stretched out a hand and conjured two illusory spheres with a small point inside each.
"This one," I pointed to one of the spheres, "is your soul, and the point is the core. The second sphere is my soul."
"Suppose so," Potter looked unhappy, a bit angry, and deeply aggrieved at life.
"If we swap the cores, what changes? I end up in your place, you in mine. But! Nothing of me would remain — nothing at all. I would think I was Harry Potter. I would remember your life, have your habits, your character, your way of thinking. Absolutely nothing would change, except that I would now be Harry Potter. Same for you."
I dispelled one of the illusions.
"If we remove the core from a soul, the soul carries on existing, and functionally, whatever's most weighty or significant to that soul takes the core's place. But! There's no one home inside. That soul will respond to its name, since that is its personality — it will live in the body, do the usual things, even develop. A body with such a soul could be considered a golem running an incredibly complex, self-teaching, evolving programme. But if you go and remove everything except the core… then the personality dies, in the literal sense. However, the core can then begin building up a new soul."
"I understand… But still… I dreamed so much of having a family, of proper relatives, and now this turns out to be the case…"
"Don't dwell on the past, Mr Potter — look to the future. And you can always step back from your own feelings and consider that, while Lily Potter is, in effect, dead, she now has a new, rather interesting, if complicated, life. And one more thing…"
Amber wheeled her own chair to the far corner of the tent and returned a minute later with a plainly enchanted bag on her lap, which she then handed to Potter.
"There are some of your parents' belongings in here. I collected what survived, a year after the incident — around the time I was trying to learn something about myself. The magical surge tore apart nearly the entire second floor of the house and destroyed almost everything magical, but a few things remained."
Potter opened the bag impatiently and began peering into the clearly expanded space within.
"There's…" Potter was shocked all over again. "I thought that… I hadn't even thought of such a thing!"
"I think I know what's caught your interest," Amber smiled. "Only Lily Potter's portrait is active. I can't activate James Potter's portrait, for obvious reasons. It was from her that I learned anything at all in a social sense — knowledge of magic doesn't help you live and interact with people if you fundamentally don't know how to live in the first place."
Potter hurried to pull out the painting — quite large, like many of the full-length portraits found at Hogwarts, or in the Headmaster's office. But unlike every portrait I'd ever seen, especially given the old-fashioned attire typically worn by the witches and wizards depicted in them, Lily Potter in this portrait was dressed in a long, light summer gown and an equally light blue cloak.
"Has something happened, Amber?" the painted witch's gaze fell first on Amber, and so she addressed her, setting aside a book onto the small table beside a large bookcase.
"You could say that, Lily," Amber nodded towards Potter, who was holding the painting slightly to one side, poorly within Lily's field of view.
"Oh…" Lily peered closely at Potter. "Harry, sweetheart. You've grown so much. Have you already finished Hogwarts, then, and got a place of your own?"
"Mum…" Potter gazed at the portrait with sorrow. "But, if your portrait is active…"
"Yes, dear, I died. And don't look at Amber like that — she isn't me. And don't be surprised — magic is wonderfully varied in its marvels, and this is far from the strangest of them."
"I see…" despite his evidently subdued feelings, Potter nonetheless managed to start rapidly processing the incoming information, forming the questions that interested him. "Mum, you mentioned finishing Hogwarts and having a place of your own. What does that mean?"
"Quite a while ago, I asked Amber to find out about your fate. We wanted to pass on what remained of the surviving property to you once you were able to live in a wizarding home, rather than with my sister. Given some of your prankster father's antics, Petunia and Vernon are hardly likely to welcome any display of magic with open arms."
"Oh, that's for certain," Potter smiled. "Rest assured, they hate magic with all their hearts."
"And they've every right to."
"I actually spend a lot of my holidays staying with Sirius…"
I had no desire whatsoever to listen to family chit-chat, especially since my mind, having received a couple of not-particularly-significant answers, had once again become absorbed in the idea of getting on with work on my wand as soon as possible. Quietly, without drawing attention to myself, I got up from the table and was about to head outside, but Amber stopped me.
"Would you mind, Mr Granger, assisting me in getting outside. I sense that the purpose of my presence here is extremely close now."
"Of course."
Now it was my turn to wheel her chair towards the exit.
Outside, the commotion was more or less what I'd pictured from the sounds. Wizards were running about, carrying things, doing things, and off in the distance, in a clearing cleared of absolutely everything, its ground levelled, a twenty-metre diagram of runes, lines, and other markings glowed dimly — some of which even I couldn't decipher. Beside this diagram stood Amber's maid, issuing valuable instructions to the wizards.
"Surprised?" Amber spoke without turning round, and from the direction of her gaze I understood that was exactly where we needed to go.
"I don't even know yet what to be surprised at, or whether I ought to be at all. But yes, it's at least unexpected to see diagrams of this scale being carried out by modern-day wizards."
"This is ancient magic. Naturally, modern wizards don't use anything of the sort. At least, the overwhelming majority don't."
"And what's it for?"
"Capturing magical, semi-material entities unburdened by a soul, a mind, or intellect. By my calculations, such an entity should appear right around here in the Forbidden Forest, at this very time. We've been camped here a week already, and by all appearances, our target is extremely close now."
"'Our'?"
"Mine. The others are getting decent money for it."
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