Dragon-hide gloves could block a certain amount of magic, and the reason was simple: dragons themselves had extraordinarily high magical resistance. Ordinary spells barely affected them at all, so gloves made from dragon hide naturally carried some of that protection.
Only after putting them on did Tyler dare touch Ravenclaw's diadem. The diadem had been made into one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, and no one knew whether Voldemort had left any dangerous dark magic on it beyond the soul fragment itself.
With Voldemort's character, it was not merely possible—it was likely. In the original history, even Dumbledore had been caught by the curse on the Gaunt ring, and Tyler had no intention of repeating that mistake over a piece of tarnished metal.
Tyler carefully lifted Ravenclaw's diadem from the ugly stone witch's head. Beside him, Jamie had already opened a specially prepared box, its interior engraved with layers of magical runes designed to isolate and suppress outside influence.
Tyler placed the diadem inside with great care. The moment it settled into the box, Jamie snapped the lid shut, cutting it off from the outside world and trapping whatever dark magic might be clinging to it.
"Let's go," Tyler said. "There's no reason to stay in this room now."
Their main purpose in entering the Room of Hidden Things had been Ravenclaw's diadem. Now that they had it, lingering in a place that looked like centuries of magical rubbish piled into mountains felt unnecessary and more than a little disgusting.
They left the room and returned to the corridor outside the Room of Requirement. Once the door closed behind them, it vanished once more, leaving nothing but a blank wall opposite the tapestry.
Tyler stood before the wall and focused his thoughts. I need a lounge, he repeated silently as he walked past the hidden entrance three times. I need a lounge. I need a lounge.
The wall shifted again, and a new door formed where solid stone had been moments before. Jamie and Tyler pushed it open together and entered a comfortable lounge far better than anything an ordinary hidden room should have offered.
Soft sofas faced a warm fireplace, shelves lined the walls, and there were even beds tucked neatly in a side alcove. A low table stood in the middle of the room, polished and waiting, as if the castle itself had prepared a private meeting place for them.
"What are you planning to do with Voldemort's two Horcruxes?" Jamie asked. He placed two sealed boxes on the table, one containing Ravenclaw's diadem and the other holding Hufflepuff's cup.
The cup had come from the Lestrange family vault, taken before Voldemort's protections and plans could properly unfold. Like the diadem, it was one of Hogwarts' founder relics, and like the diadem, it had been polluted by a fragment of Voldemort's damaged soul.
"If possible, I want to eliminate the soul fragments without damaging the artefacts themselves," Tyler said. "Both Ravenclaw's diadem and Hufflepuff's cup are precious magical items with their own power. Destroying them outright would be too much of a waste."
Destroying the soul fragments would not be difficult if they cared only about the Horcruxes. A strong enough Fiendfyre could burn them clean, but the founder relics would be destroyed along with Voldemort's soul.
Jamie looked at the sealed boxes. "The problem is how. Even Dumbledore could not purify a Horcrux safely."
Tyler reached into the pouch at his waist and withdrew a forbidden book. The pouch had been expanded with an Undetectable Extension Charm, so most of the things they needed could be stored inside without trouble.
The book was Secrets of the Darkest Art, one of the darkest texts in the magical world. Hogwarts no longer kept a copy openly in the library, and if the school still had one, it was almost certainly locked away under Dumbledore's control.
Tyler's copy had not come from Hogwarts. He had found it in the ancestral home of the Black family, where generations of pure-blood Dark magic had left behind more than just portraits, heirlooms, and dust.
After Sirius Black had been imprisoned, the Black family home had been left with little more than an aging house-elf and a mountain of dangerous old possessions. Tyler had visited it specifically to collect forbidden books, and among the treasures hidden there had been Secrets of the Darkest Art.
"According to this book, splitting the soul makes it extremely unstable," Tyler said, opening to the page that discussed Horcruxes. "The only known way to make a soul whole again is remorse."
"Remorse is an emotion," Jamie said thoughtfully. "So does that mean remorse can injure Voldemort's soul fragment, or even purify it?"
"That is what I suspect," Tyler said. "Not only remorse, either. Other strong emotions—happiness, grief, love, despair—might also affect a damaged soul if they can be properly directed."
Jamie frowned. "But emotions are intangible. They have no shape, no substance, and no edge. How do we turn them into an attack?"
"Do not forget where we are," Tyler said. "This is a magical world. Memories are also intangible, yet wizards can extract them, store them, and view them in a Pensieve."
Jamie's eyes sharpened. "So if memory can be extracted, emotion may be extractable too."
"Exactly," Tyler said. "And if emotion can be extracted, then it can possibly be shaped, concentrated, and used against a soul fragment."
The two of them looked at each other and smiled. No one understood Tyler better than Jamie, and no one understood Jamie better than Tyler, because they were both one person and yet completely independent minds.
"Speaking of Dumbledore," Jamie said after a moment, "at the Sorting, he saw both of us and did not even try Legilimency. I thought he was supposed to be a master at reading minds."
"Do not think too badly of him," Tyler said. "Dumbledore is different from Voldemort. Voldemort has no bottom line, and he will use magic on anyone, including his own Death Eaters, whenever it suits him."
"Dumbledore is not like that," Tyler continued. "He has limits, and his self-restraint is strong. He will not use Legilimency on people for no reason, especially not on children who have just entered Hogwarts."
Jamie did not argue. He still distrusted Dumbledore, but even he understood that Dumbledore and Voldemort were not the same kind of dangerous.
"Actually," Tyler said suddenly, "I just thought of another possible way to purify the Horcruxes."
He reached into his expanded pouch again and took out a second book. This one was the Sacred Codex, an ancient magical text that recorded spells and arrays tied to light-aspected magic.
"The Sacred Codex contains light-aspected spells and several light magic arrays," Tyler said, placing the book on the table and turning its pages. "Light magic naturally restrains dark magic, especially curses and corruptive forces."
He stopped at one page and tapped it with his gloved finger. "For example, this spell—Divine Purification. It is meant to cleanse objects contaminated by dark attributes. There is also a light-aspected purification array here that may achieve a similar effect over time."
Jamie leaned over the page and read for a while. His expression grew more serious the longer he studied the requirements.
"These spells require the caster to transform their magic into a light attribute," Jamie said. "But once that transformation is complete, they can no longer use dark-aspected magic freely."
"Light and darkness oppose each other," Tyler said. "That is expected. Light-aspected magic naturally cannot carry dark-aspected spells in the same way."
He looked at the two sealed boxes on the table, then back at Jamie. The answer was already clear between them, even before he spoke it aloud.
"So I think we should divide the work," Tyler said. "I will cultivate light-aspected magic, and you will cultivate dark-aspected magic."
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