CHAPTER 4

As I left the study I was once again greeted by the old dilapidated house. It was really annoying, I could just feel my good mood disappearing. I think its about time for me to redecorate this house.

I mean sure it’s a waste of time, but I’m only human, I can’t just keep working forever you know, I deserve a little fun every now and then. Besides everybody likes to have pretty things and some moldy, dilapidated house is neither fun nor pretty, it’s just depressive.

Obviously like everyone else I wasn’t really fond of redecorating the house in the past. I used to get so annoyed when my mother wanted to start repainting rooms, or wanted to change the kitchen, or that other time when she wanted to rip out the wooden floor and cover everything with white tiles.

I mean I normally wouldn’t really care but my dad was quite the handyman and insisted on doing everything instead of hiring a contractor. I mean don’t get me wrong, he did a great job, everything looks great and nothing is falling apart or anything, but its just a lot of work and I always had to help. The worst part was hearing him complain about everything 24/7.

But now, I am alone, so I can do what I want, plus there is no heavy manual labor because of magic. I love magic, it’s so convenient.

Anyway, the house was pretty big so there was a lot to do, but thanks to magic and my two house-elves, I should be able to finish everything in a couple of days.

Okay so the house is pretty big, I mean a whole family used to live there and I was just one person, so obviously I was not just going to restore the place, I was going to remodel it.

The house had seven floors total including the attic and the basement, so there was a lot to do.

So obviously I started with my bedroom and obviously I chose the top floor. Sirius’s and my father’s bedrooms used to be on this floor, it had the largest bathroom in the house so obviously I was going to take it.

It was a little trouble some to redecorate it as a had to take down a whole wall. Luckily it wasn’t loadbearing so in the end all is well.

Afterwards I just build myself a study under my bedroom and renovated the kitchen. Not to toot my own horn here but seriously the house looked pretty good afterwards. The best and perhaps the most difficult part of the renovation was getting rid of that horrendous portrait. I mean damn that woman was motivated, she actually used a permanent sticking charm to fix the portrait to the wall.

It’s almost impossible to separate things stuck together by that charm so I couldn’t take it down. Luckily there was another way to get rid of it. You see Sirius had also used that charm on all his paintings and posters in his room before he ran away, but when I took down the wall they just stuck to the rubble, so I got rid of them.

So, all I had to do to get rid of Walburga’s painting was to take down that wall. But here’s the problem, that wall was separating my house from the neighbors.

I’m not gonna go in too much details but the whole operation was a real pain in the ass. I mean I had to put the neighbors to sleep bust the wall, cast an illusion and spend two days repairing that hole but it was worth it to finally have some peace and quit.

After everything was renovated I went by Kreacher’s den in the boiler room and had him return all the family heirlooms he had collected around the house as well as the horcrux father gave him.

He seemed greatly displeased but as I was his master he had no other choice but to obey.

Anyway, I only have about two years before I go to Hogwarts, so I had to get started. While occlumency was still keeping me busy I also had other things to do like studying enchanting and continuing with my Animagus training.

And just like that years went by and it was finally time for me to go to Hogwarts.

A lot had happened during those few years. First of all, I finally succeeded in transforming into an Animagus. It was seriously one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. If I hadn’t places an anti-animagi ward in my practice room I would have most likely died a dozen times by now.

Oddly enough I transformed into a winged abraxan horse, it was weird, a wizard’s Animagus form is mostly decided by his blood line and personality, and the house of black doesn’t have any link to winged horses at all. Moreover, magical beast Animagus have never been seen before so it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to have this form.

although dogs have nothing to do with the house of black eather and Sirius still managed to change into a black dog so… who knows.

(okay so I can already feel a lot of readers rolling their eyes at this plot point so let me explain. I don’t know if any of you people know about pottermore but I’m going to assume you do. So basically, there is a section in pottermore where you can find out what your Patronus would be right, and my Patronus happens to be a winged abraxan horse. “but beaver animagi and patronuses have nothing in common they are totally different things” no they are not.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Your patronus is the same as your animagi transformation, but magical beast patronuses are really rare and animagi are even rarer as it is a really difficult skill to master and a lot of things could go wrong during training, moreover it is not that useful of a skill and a lot of wizards and witches think their time would be better spend on other things.

During the whole duration of the harry potter books we only saw five alive animagi, that’s how rare they are.)

I had finally mastered occlumency which made me super happy, but what made me even happier is that I had finally accomplished one of my lifelong dreams, I had finally succeeded in making a space ring!!!! I was so happy when I succeeded, it was crazy. It wasn’t nearly as hard to make the space ring, but it required a fair bit of imagination.

Okay so you know how a lot of stuff in the wizarding world makes use of space right? Like for example the room of requirement or mokeskin bags or even those tents you see everywhere during the quidditch world cup, but they all have two things in common, and that is that first of all they contain a very large space, or at least larger than the object itself, and the other is that they all have an opening where you can put things of people through. But a ring has no such opening because it’s a ring.

It took me a few days but eventually I figured out how to do it. If there is no opening to put stuff through, then I just had to apparat stuff inside and outside. Now obviously I did not want to have to do it myself because well first of all apparition needed a lot of concentration, and also it was very risky as a little distraction could lead to Splinching.

So, the solution I found was to modify the Portus charm so that it would move objects instead of people. It wasn’t easy, in fact my first few attempts failed miserably but eventually I got the hang of it and changed my grandfather’s ring into a space ring. It was the perfect ring, it was large and golden, and had the House of Black family crest on it. The ring was a family heirloom, so I could basically wear it everywhere without anyone suspecting anything.

It was the perfect place to hide, anything I am not supposed to have, if you know what I mean. I obviously didn’t put everything in there, I still had to keep up appearances, so pretty much all the ordinary objects I had were kept in my mokeskin bag.

in the ring was only the things that would potentially attract trouble like for example the Peruvian instant darkness powder, the hand of glory, a large variety of other dark artifacts, some protective charms, Salazar Slytherin’s necklace and a notebook. The notebook wasn’t particularly special or anything, but it contained very important information.

You see last year as I was snooping around Malfoy manor I finally managed to find what could potentially be the most important thing in that whole house, Thomas riddle’s journal. This was very important to me because unlike Lucius, I already knew that the journal was a horcrux. The best part was that since Lucius didn’t know what the journal actually was, he didn’t really show it any care, it was just sitting in his office gathering dust on top of one of the bookshelves.

Anyway, when I found the journal I milked it for information, obviously little Thomas did not want to cooperate, but it was not too hard to “persuade” him after all I was the only person currently alive to know about all the horcruxes he made as well as their location. So, once I made it clear that he did not want me as an enemy he quietly cooperated. He didn’t really have a choice he was just a piece of a soul stuck in a journal.

He was a bit reluctant at first but when I promised to get him back into Hogwarts in the hands of a first-year student he got a lot more enthusiastic.

I spend around a year with the journal and I have to say, I already knew that Voldemort was a genius, but I clearly underestimated him, I mean the extent of his knowledge, even at the tender age of sixteen was very impressive to say the least. The most important pieces of information I manage to get from him though are first of all how in the hell he managed to create seven horcruxes, I mean he was the first person in recorded history to ever succeed in making multiple horcruxes.

Even though I do not plan to ever make horcruxes myself, this is still very valuable knowledge. And the second and maybe the most important thing I wanted to know was what spell he used to curse Marvollo Gaunt’s ring.

I needed that information for multiple reasons first of all I had just created a space ring and I did not want anyone to use it except me, obviously I will need to modify the curse as it usually kills anyone who dares to wear it, so I had to change that. After all we can't really have some thieving students just drop dead in the middle of school, even If I didn’t directly kill them I would still be sent to Azkaban for some time until they finished their investigation and they would most likely destroy the ring afterwards.

I planned for it to petrify anyone who wears it except me, the curse would be weaker, but it would still retain the same characteristic of getting gradually stronger with time, so even if the perpetrator ate some mandrake restorative draught, or even if someone conveniently knew a counter curse, they would only be able to momentarily delay the curse.

The other reason is that well I want that ring, I mean Marvollo Gaunt’s ring has the resurrection stone, so obviously I want to have it. I mean I don’t really have anybody I want to talk to but having it would advance my research about souls by decades.

But I also need Dumbledore to be cursed so I need to leave a copy behind, otherwise the future would undergo a massive shift and I would no longer be in control of anything.

Another and maybe the most crucial piece of information I wanted to get from him was how to fuse with other magical creatures.

You see after his resurrection Voldemort looked a lot less human, he almost had a snakelike appearance.

Now nobody really knew why, I mean sure a part of it was because of the horcruxes. One of the side-effects of creating a horcrux is the "dehumanising" effect the mutilation of one's soul is said to have. The more Horcruxes one creates, the less human they become, both emotionally and physically; for example, in the house-elf Hokey's memory Tom Riddle is initially shown to be hollow-cheeked but otherwise normal, though ten years later his features look as if they have been burned and blurred, and his skin is extremely white.

So yes, horcruxes change your appearance but they make you look closer to death, Voldemort in Hokey’s memory looked more like a corpse than a snake. So there had to be another reason, I mean I know I was kind of grasping at straws here since Voldemort would spend the next twenty or so years looking like a corpse, but I was hoping he already had some information on the subject when he was sixteen.

But sadly, he had nothing, I was a little doubtful at first, but I know it’s more wishful thinking than actual doubt.

Anyway, now that everything is ready it is time for me to get my stone.