Dumbledore strode into the Hogwarts library. It was after hours and he was here to investigate that book that Hermione Granger had found. Nothing that dangerous should have been out of the restricted section. And she hadn’t been lying about finding it, Dumbledore’s legilimency had verified that. After she had left, he had remembered where he had heard that name before. James Kensit was the name the imposter Auror had given to Harry Potter when the boy first went to St. Mungo’s. If the man had written a textbook on self-replicating curses… then maybe he was the one behind the boy's curse as well.
Dumbledore flicked his wand and frowned when his spell came back blank. Any written mention of James Kensit in the library should have returned a result. The book must be enchanted against those kinds of spells.
Dumbledore sighed. Finding a good book was harder than you would think. It must be a wandering tome. Certain powerful books were known to search out libraries and reside there for a while before moving onwards, only revealing themselves to those they found worthy. It seems that Ms. Granger was one of those people.
Dumbledore first cast a series of spells to seal the library from the rest of the castle. The book couldn’t be allowed to escape once it realized it was being hunted.
Then, Dumbledore began to go to work. He would have that book in his grasp in not time.
— — —
After about two hours, Dumbledore finally had the book still and open in his hands. The thing had only taken about fifteen minutes to catch, but its enchantments were primed to self-destruct the book if they detected tampering, so accessing it while avoiding the defenses was difficult. There in red letters on the tan cover was the title ‘Ascension Beyond the Flesh’. In tiny letters below there was more, ‘by James Kensit’. Dumbledore did not dare to dispel any of the enchantments, given it was a book on self replicating spells. Of course the author would incorporate such concepts in their enchantments so a simple dispel would be useless in unlocking its contents.
Unlocking the doors to the library, Dumbledore retreated to his office and started reading. He quickly found the spell that young Hermione had learned. The explanations of the concepts were indeed superb. Dumbledore could see how she could cast the spell with such excellent guidance.
He kept reading and the curses began getting nastier and nastier. No matter how many pages Dumbledore flipped there were always more and he was no closer to reaching the last page. It must be some advanced form of an extension charm. The spells grew even more and more complex as the book continued until even Dumbledore had to pay some attention to the spell diagrams before understanding things.
Finally, Dumbledore froze as he saw the next spell. It was one of the most complicated things he had ever seen and the lines of the diagram shifted on the page as he watched. The author's ravings on the mysterious ‘Ascension’ grew more and more unhinged between the spells as Dumbledore read onwards, and he had begun ignoring them. But he needed more context before trying to decipher this spell. Dumbledore read the pages before the most recent spell diagram.
‘The Ascension! It beckons to us all, to strive beyond the meat we were given at birth. I was recently in Egypt and I have become fascinated with their ability to complete half of their animagi transformation seemingly at will. No matter how forceful I was, none of them would tell me the secret to it. I must discover the secret for it for myself.’
There was some illegible writing for several paragraphs, words overlapping with each other like the author had written pages and pages of text all overlaid on each other. Dumbledore was struck at the author’s account. The animagi of that description ruled Egypt around 1000 BC. Was the author of this text an immortal? Like Nicholas Flammel? Albus kept reading below the block of overlapping text.
‘The enchantments on my journal distorted without my knowledge. Years of work, not recorded for the future! Well, there are results now. I will summarize the last few years of work. I attempted to infuse my most advanced self-replication charm with the blood of the subject. The results were interesting although unexpected. There was some reaction I do not understand and the curse was ripped from my control and mutated into something new.
The subjects grew long fangs and gained vastly increased physical strength and speed. They seem to crave the flesh of others and starve if not given fresh meat. They are failures, humanity must improve not trade strength for weakness…
One of them managed to surprise me with their claws and nearly killed me before I was aware of their physical enhancements, so they will have some use perhaps. The curse replicates through bites and sharing of blood as expected, although I will have to adjust the failure rate of the transfer.
‘They spread far faster than I had expected. After releasing them on Asia, I had to personally track down and slaughter them before they finished killing or infecting the population within a fifty mile radius of the first subject released. It only took them three days to grow to that extent. The vampires had spread to nearly a thousand strong by the time I started purging them.’
‘Unfortunately, they appear to weaken in sunlight. No matter how I modify the curse this portion seems intrinsic to the binding process to the blood. A process that is still disturbingly opaque even after all these years of study. It seems this method is a dead end for now at least.’
‘Most of my work now is in limiting their strength. I wish for enough of a population to observe mutations, but not enough to taint the human population for any future improvements I may develop. The Ascension must be perfect, and I know I will improve. I have all the time in the world after all.’
Dumbledore felt something tickle the back of his neck, but could not look away as he kept reading.
‘Even with my artificial restrictions, my experiments are wreaking havoc after I released some around the world to start a small self- sustaining population. The people have called them by many names. But I enjoy the term Vampire personally. I’ll make sure any new subjects know to use that name if I ever have to reseed their population when they go extinct again. Dedicated muggle and wizard vampire hunters are already popping up, and I’ve had to repopulate Africa at least four times now, the people there are becoming quite adept at rooting out the vampire dens before they can spread farther.’
‘Now to the spell, inheritor. This next spell is very special, and I must verify that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. It is the culmination of these last few years of study. I believe I will move onto new pursuits soon. If you have read this far then you have the intelligence and knowledge to be great. But do you have the will to do what is necessary?’
Suddenly the pages of the book went blank and Dumbledore leapt back as a single dark splotch of ink began spreading from the center of the page. The book lifted into the air and faced its open pages towards Dumbledore as he began frantically casting every protective spell he knew on himself. If he knew this was an artifact of an immortal wizard before then he would have been far more cautious. He hardened his Occlumency shields as firmly as he could, wary of any more spells from the book.
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The ink splotch bulged out and a toddler age boy made of black ink crawled out and fell to the floor. His head bulged out first, then the arms, until the rest of his body rolled out of the ink blot and fell to the floor. The boy stood and took a few steps to the side before freezing in place, as still as a statue.
Next a little girl in a swirling dress crawled out, maybe eight or nine years old.
What must be the mother and father crawled through the splotch one after another, following not soon after.
All four of them were composed of dark swirling ink and stood there passively, their heads pointed towards Albus. He took a step back even as he began casting more spells and activating Hogwarts wards. He didn’t think he would like whatever test the mad wizard had laid out for him.
The inky man suddenly raised his arms and charged at Albus without another word. Albus cast a restraining curse, but the inky man simply flowed through it, his hardened portions held by Dumbledore's spells dissolving and sinking back into its form. Albus cast various other spells, and ice slowed it down, but the ink still continued forward. Eventually Albus sighed and cast a lethal severing curse at the inky construct.
The inky man fell to the ground and clutched at his throat that was spraying black ink all over the floor as his life blood spilled out in great spurts. The scene was disturbingly realistic. After a moment the man’s form went still. His limp body dissolved and gathered into a floating ball of ink that flew back into the book and was absorbed into its pages. The book went blank for a second before a large message in James Kensit's handwriting inked itself on the pages.
‘You can take a life in self defense. The woman does not know it, but the next person she touches will wither and die in a most painful death. All she desires is to hug, to be loved… Can you kill to stop a threat, even when the perpetrator is innocent?’
The ink woman immediately began to run to the door to the office and tugged at the door to the office. The book floated to follow her, but the doors were locked. The inky woman turned back and looked at Albus. Her jaw shifted but no sound came out. More writing appeared in the book, but this time in a loopy and large font. Another hand was writing this.
‘Please, sir let me out? It’s just so dark, and I know I can go out there and help people. Everyone deserves a hug every once in a while. I don’t know what’s going on, but please don’t kill me. I won’t do whatever that horrible book is saying, I just…’
It was with a heavy heart that Albus raised his wand and sent a lethal curse that struck the woman’s throat before she could speak further. Albus had had to make such hard decisions before, and he knew he could not let a student of this school die due to his own mistakes.
The inky woman fell to the floor and thrashed on the floor in her death throes, her inky blood coating the floor. Albus looked on with distaste at the sadistic nature of James Kensit at making the inky creatures deaths so prolonged. The spell collected the woman’s ink back into the book after she was completely still after a minute or so of twitching.
The book floated back to the center of the room, and Albus felt bile rise in his throat as he looked at the two still children composed of ink.
The book’s blank pages filled with more writing.
‘You can take the life of an innocent to serve a larger goal. Will you squash future threats before they are strong enough to defeat you?’
The boy stepped forward. The writing on the book grew sloppy and the large letters spoke of a school age boy unused to forming them or writing much at all.
‘I promise not to do anything, even though you murdered my parents. Even though my heart burns with revenge. Please don’t kill me, I’ll study and be a good boy. I'll be the greatest wizard in the world some day. I'll create wonders, but I won't forget the one who spared me.’
The boy stood there and Albus pointed his wand at the boy, but his hand was trembling. Was this the wizard he wanted to be? Was this the person Grindelwald saw in him all those years ago? That spell represented lost knowledge like the world hadn’t seen in millennia. All he would have to do was sacrifice the last of his morals to do it. He teetered on the precipice, disgusted with himself that he even had to debate. But he couldn’t bring himself to bring his wand down.
The boy slowly grew taller as he aged into a man over the course of five minutes. The inky figure looked at Albus silently.
Nothing happened as the former boy’s words in the book faded away after the inky figure appeared to stop growing. The inky figure was now the same as the father had been. The pages were blank again, and Albus sweated as he pointed his wand at the man. Suddenly in a burst of speed the inky figure's hands shifted into sharp claws and it charged Albus faster even than a fully grown vampire.
Words appeared on the book, but Albus was too busy casting a series of spells to defend himself. His shield charm barely repelled the figure and some non-lethal charms again proved useless. Finally, Albus sent another series of slicing and lethal charms into the inky figure slashing at the shield with wild abandon. The inky figure fell into several pieces, its inky blood spreading below it.
Albus looked at the book. There was only one word written there across both of the blank pages, deeply carved like the writer was pressing with all their might, trying to carve the pages like stone, 'DIE!'
Albus stared at the words and felt the anger behind them as the pool of ink in front of him continued to spread across the floor. Eventually, the man's body dissolved and was reabsorbed by the book, leaving the floor clean like the pool of ink was never there.
‘You can not snuff a future threat, even when necessary. This is a failing, but not a critical one. There is one final test to redeem yourself.’
The little girl of ink stepped forward. The book kept writing in James Kensit's handwriting.
‘In the center of her chest cavity is a scroll containing the key to the spell you seek. She has no desire to harm anyone nor will she. She need not die. But she will feel the pain when you cut her open just as a human would. Can you ignore her screams as you do what needs to be done?’
Albus was breathing heavily, but this was a much easier decision. He lowered his wand.
The book was written in a much neater and tighter script than the boy's, but still amateurish. The writing was by the inky girl’s hand presumably.
‘Why don’t you do it, mister? I’ll only be in pain for a short while, while the knowledge is forever. I won’t like it, but I don’t want to be a burden for the short time that I exist. Isn’t it best for me to suffer just for a short while for a chance to improve the world?’
Albus answered verbally to her.
“No. Despite everything I’ve done, I won’t do that. I refuse.”
The girl of ink nodded and the book wrote again in her handwriting. Albus could see her jaw shifting silently as she silently spoke along with the words appearing in the book.
‘I’m sorry, I wish I could help you more. The last few inheritors weren’t as kind as you are. Few men can be both great and kind, and our creator is not one of them. I hope you can do better.’
With that the girl of ink dissolved and was absorbed by the book. The old text came back in James Kensit’s handwriting, and Albus gritted his teeth. The girl's last words struck him. Was he being great or kind over these last few years? Sometimes it was hard even for him to remember what was an act and what was genuine compassion.
The book finished writing.
‘Inheritor, you have failed to pass my standards. But you have made it far. Congratulations for the knowledge you have already received, and may it serve you well.’
Suddenly the book snapped shut and in a burst of magic disappeared. Dumbledore felt the Hogwarts wards attempt to stop it, but it just slipped right through and ignored the wards blocking the apparition attempt somehow. Dumbledore stared at the place where the book had been. To think that young Ms. Granger had been reading through an artifact as dangerous as that…
Dumbledore went to his chair and collapsed into it, feeling like he’d aged a decade or more. After checking himself thoroughly for any lingering curses of course. The book’s twisted scenarios still plagued Albus’ mind. The ink constructs had felt so real when the book had activated them. He analyzed all of his actions over the years through the lens of the four tests. All the hard decisions he had to make over the years danced in the back of his mind despite his best efforts. Haunting him.
Even hours later Albus’ eyes were wide open as he lay in bed, unable to sleep. But he still did his best, he had duties as headmaster to attend to tomorrow after all. And the lesson with young Ms. Granger as well... was he giving those lessons to be kind... or to be great? Even he didn't know.