The afternoon library was so quiet that only the soft rustle of turning pages disturbed the stillness.
Sunlight poured through the towering stained-glass windows, turning drifting dust motes into floating gold. Lucian sat at the most isolated long table in the corner, an open copy of Paradoxes of Medieval Soul Studies spread before him.
A shadow fell across the page.
Lucian didn't look up. His finger continued tracing the obscure runes.
"If you're here about citation format for the Transfiguration essay, Madam Pince keeps a detailed guide at the desk."
"It's not about homework."
Hermione Granger's voice was tight with strain. She pulled out the chair opposite him and sat—movements stiff, as though she were facing a Blast-Ended Skrewt that might explode at any second.
She pushed a neatly folded handkerchief across the table toward him.
It had been washed immaculately; a faint scent of lavender soap clung to the fabric. All trace of blood was gone.
"Thank you for the handkerchief. And…" Hermione drew a deep, steadying breath, staring at Lucian as though trying to peel back the calm mask and see what lay beneath. "And for what you did to me in the girls' bathroom."
Lucian finally lifted his gaze and closed the book with a soft snap.
"I don't recall casting any spell on you in the girls' bathroom, Miss Granger. Slander is actionable in wizarding courts, you know."
"It wasn't a spell!" Hermione leaned forward, voice dropping to an urgent whisper. "It was the feeling… the sudden clarity. When you gave me the handkerchief, that strange compulsion in my head—the one insisting I had to be grateful to Harry and Ron, had to fit in, had to belong—suddenly just…"
She bit her lip and forced out the fear that had kept her awake all night:
"That voice kept telling me it was friendship. But looking back now… it felt more like… forced suggestion. You broke it, didn't you?"
This little witch was sharper than expected.
Lucian leaned back, fingers interlaced.
"An interesting hypothesis. Rejecting your own emotions in pursuit of logical consistency is very un-Gryffindor."
He neither confirmed nor denied—simply turned the question back on her.
"But have you considered, Miss Granger, that perhaps there was no magic at all? Perhaps it was simply that relentless brain of yours—always chasing logic and truth—finally refusing to stomach the charade any longer. Perhaps what you felt was nothing more exotic than reason reasserting itself."
Hermione froze.
"If you believe it was suggestion, then it was suggestion. If you believe it was false, then it was false."
Lucian reached out and tapped the handkerchief once, lightly.
"What the world shows you doesn't matter. What matters is what you choose to see. Since you've already spotted the crack, why come to the person who made it asking for answers? Don't you already have a conclusion in your heart?"
The words offered no direct path—yet they illuminated the truth Hermione hadn't dared confirm.
Yes.
She didn't need Lucian to admit anything.
The fact remained: only in his presence did she feel that cold, script-free version of herself—real, unscripted, untouched by the honeyed compulsion.
"I understand." She snatched the handkerchief back and stuffed it into her pocket; the motion was decisive now, no hesitation. "I won't let myself be drowned in that feeling again. Whatever it is that's pulling the strings."
She stood, clutching her books to her chest.
"I'll find the truth. My way."
Lucian watched her stride away—back straight, steps firm.
Good.
The seed had taken root. Now it only needed time to break through the soil.
A Hermione Granger who followed the Savior around cleaning up messes was useful, but predictable.
A Hermione Granger filled with doubt—even hostility—toward the script itself?
The variables she could introduce were orders of magnitude larger.
"Struggle well."
Lucian gathered his books and rose.
…
Eighth floor, opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being clubbed by trolls.
Lucian paced the blank stretch of wall three times, thinking clearly: I require a place completely isolated, capable of dissecting the essence of a soul.
The door appeared.
Inside, a dissection table floated in the center. Restrained upon it writhed a furious knot of dark-red mist—struggling left and right, snarling in voiceless fury.
This was the fragment he had from Quirrell during class.
More precisely: a sliver of Voldemort's soul-shard, fused with the last dregs of Quirrell's own life-force.
"Hiss—kill… kill you…"
A twisted face flickered briefly within the red mist, shrieking on the soul-plane alone.
The sheer malice would have shattered an ordinary wizard's mind.
To Lucian, it was merely the bluster of something cornered.
He raised a hand. Gray magic closed around the red mist like a vice.
Sizzling corrosion filled the air.
The once-mighty Dark Lord's remnant smoked and shrank.
Deconstruction.
Layer by layer the gray peeled away until the deepest core lay exposed.
At the center of that pitch-black soul fragment coiled a single golden thread.
It was fused so deeply with the shard that it had become part of Voldemort's very being. It radiated grandeur, authority, inevitability.
The scent of world-will.
"So that's how it is…"
Lucian had always assumed Horcruxes were Voldemort's blasphemous bid for immortality—peak Dark magic, the ultimate defiance of death.
Now he saw the joke.
That golden thread proved the "undying" state was a privilege granted by the world itself.
The grand stage required a sufficiently terrifying, unkillable villain—one who could never truly die, no matter how many times he was struck down—to temper the Savior across seven long years.
For the epic to continue, the script refused to allow Voldemort's final death.
Even if the soul were shredded into breadcrumbs, as long as the plot still needed him, the world-will would stitch those golden threads through the rotting remains and keep the carcass upright.
"So this is the truth of Horcruxes?"
Lucian regarded the still-thrashing red mist with something close to pity.
"Tom Riddle… you thought you conquered death? No. You were simply locked onstage by the script—denied even the mercy of an exit."
And conversely…
If he could seize control of these Horcruxes…
If he could erode and subvert the golden threads that tethered them to the plot core…
Couldn't he turn the tables—hijack the entire direction of the world by controlling the villain's life and death?
The fragment seemed to sense the thought—something even blacker than itself—and began to tremble violently, desperate to flee this madman.
"Too late."
Lucian's fingers clenched.
The gray threads split into countless fine tendrils that plunged along the golden line, burrowing deep into the soul-shard's core.
"Since you are the 'immortality anchor' the world itself installed…"
"I will make you my anchor."
The walls of the Room of Requirement shuddered.
The entire castle seemed to tremble at the blasphemy of rewriting a fundamental setting.
And somewhere above the unseen river of fate, the once-clear future grew suddenly opaque—shrouded in impenetrable fog the moment this new anchor point shifted.