Atlas raised an eyebrow, waiting silently for Ethan to continue. He had a suspicion about what Ethan wanted to talk about, so he observed him to see if he could find any signs of Ethan putting on an act.
“Eventually, Voldemort knows that Harry’s touch can kill him. Eventually... maybe... he knows everything about this world that I know,” mumbled Ethan, quite ashamed and embarrassed and obviously guilty.
“What do you mean he knows everything you know?” yelled Atlas and was glad they had used a silencing charm, or the whole castle would have heard him. It wasn’t that he didn’t know that Voldemort knew, but he needed to keep up the act. That he was genuinely surprised that Ethan even talked about it naturally helped a lot. He also tensed a bit because he needed to know exactly what Voldemort knew or if Ethan knew about any more changes.
“I was stupid, okay. I didn’t take a few things into account, and he used legilimency on me to search all my memories, including the ones about the movies.” mumbled Ethan quickly and barely audible to Atlas, looking more on the ground than in his direction.
At that moment, Atlas had an intense desire to punch Ethan. How could one screw up so much that the greatest villain of the story gets to know about the future, making him unpredictable? Especially if one took into account that reading someone’s memories would take hours, depending on the amount, it could even take days or even weeks. Sure, Voldemort might be able to glimpse at Ethant’s thoughts if Ethan was not careful, but to say that Voldemort knows everything, would mean that Voldemort must have captured him and interrogated him for a long period of time. The chances of becoming a vegetable afterwards were also extremely high, unless Ethan cooperated with Voldemort.
Atlas clenched his teeth in anger and asked him if he knows about his system too and why he was still alive.
“I don’t know why he didn’t kill me, but he knows everything, up to the time a few weeks ago when he was ill or something.” Ethan apologized.
“Okey, give me a moment. I need to think and calm down,” said Atlas, walking up and down in the bathroom while Ethan stared at him like a bullied child waiting for his bully to decide how to torture him today.
After Atlas stopped getting upset about Ethan's stupidity, he thought about it for a bit and realized that it wasn’t really that bad. On the contrary, it was quite good that Voldemort did know about Ethan’s capabilities so that he would have an easier time killing him if he really wanted to kill him. He didn’t know why Voldemort let him live until now because he would have guessed that Voldemort would kill someone like Ethan, who had the potential to become more powerful than him immediately. But maybe there was a simple reason for that. Something that he had overlooked. Did he need Ethan for something so that he needed to let him live, or was it just that he didn’t want to draw Dumbledore’s attention to himself? What could Voldemort need that Ethan could give him, despite his knowledge? Could he maybe try to steel the system? Unlikely but possible. Could he try to use Ethan against Harry or Dumbledore? Perhaps, but the risk would be too great.
“Did Voldemort or Quirrell say something to you or let you do something?” asked Atlas, trying to figure out the reason why Ethan was still alive.
"Yeah, but just some small things. He made me brew a few basic potions, sometimes not even till the end. Sometimes I just had to set up the water for the potion. And…” explained Ethan, but looked awkwardly at Atlas.
“And what. Spit it out, what did you do?” asked Atlas, a little annoyed. Since Ethan knew he was a reincarnator too, he looked far more insecure. Maybe that’s how he really felt because he knew just how much he messed up. But in the end, if it weren’t for Atlas, Ethan would probably still find a way to beat Voldemort, even if it was just by hiding himself for some time and grinding his skills, even if another war broke out, so he couldn’t hope that Voldemort would be naturally able to do the job.
“He wanted that I get close to Hermione and made sure that she stayed away from Harry. At least he put a suggestion or compulsion charm on me that made me do that. I think the professors would have noticed an imperius on me or something like that, which is the reason he chose this way, even though it didn’t really work that well. Then, after I noticed that you were together with her, he just wanted me to add you and her to my group as close as possible but exclude Harry.” explained Ethan, and he looked a little relieved that it was out now.
Atlas was a little surprised. He just thought that Ethan was someone who thought he deserved a harem or something like that, which made him interested in Hermione, but it appears there was more to it than that. But something didn’t add up for Atlas.
“Okey, we will ignore the fact that Voldemort obviously wanted to isolate Harry by letting you go after my girlfriend. As far as I know, the suggestion charms only work if they align with what you could already imagine doing. But the charm needs to be regularly reapplied. Why did you give him so many opportunities to mess with you? Why didn’t you just stay low and avoid him? With your system, you could probably beat him in a few years. Does he have something to blackmail you? Why help him at all if you could have talked to Dumbledore? I mean, he would have protected you and maybe even destroyed the horcruxes before Voldemort could even revive,” asked Atlas, genuinely confused about the situation.
“I would have, but he replaced my memories with fake ones. I couldn’t even remember that Quirrell had Voldemort on the back of his head. Even memory potions didn’t help against that. The only reason I realized that something was wrong was because the memories he planted in my brain were not as detailed as the rest. It’s not something you would realize immediately if you weren’t really looking out for it, but little things like the clothes lacking the fading smell of your lunch or the like gave it away. It would have been something I would have noticed within a week, but he reapplied his charms far too often. Almost after every lesson. He also put a suggestion on me to grind my skills and not upgrade them, because he feared that one of the spells would have been able to counter these memory changes. Turns out he was right to fear that, because when I had some time to become clearheaded and realized that more and more memories of mine were strange, I upgraded a skill, and every memory came back. After that, I naturally avoided him as much as I could. I was always the first to leave the lessons, and when he summoned me to his office, I always had someone with me so that he couldn’t do anything. It angered him a lot, but he also couldn’t do anything more against me in Hogwarts as long as Dumbledore was here.” gushed it out of Ethan.
It was a lot for Atlas to take in. First of all, and that was probably the most important, he could almost certainly rule out the possibility of Ethan being allied with Voldemort, unless Voldemort had changed his memories too, and knew about the marauder’s map, and knew that he had seen Ethan leave so quickly. But that was so unlikely, because the effort they would have put in, just to make him believe that Ethan was an “ally” would be far too great. The second thing is that Ethan could apparently upgrade his skills in some way, which empowered them in a different way than just grinding the skills, and the last one was that Ethan surely had a memory skill that not only gave him quite detailed memories but also prevented that someone changed his memories, and Voldemort knew about it too. Nothing that was immediately useful, except that he should assume that the same applied to his running and breathing skills, which might give him unnatural abilities in these areas. As he didn’t plan to drown Ethan, he wasn’t worried about the breathing skill, but the running skill might be problematic if Ethan wanted to escape. Luckily, the room where the mirror and the stone are only has a single entrance, and this entrance is blocked by a black flame. One that can only be entered after drinking a special potion. At least if it was like in the books and not in the movies. But even in the movies, Voldemort would seal the entrance with fire to prevent Harry from leaving.
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“Is everything alright?” asked Ethan, a little worried as Atlas was just blankly staring at him.
“Yes, yes, sorry, I just had to think about something. Do you think it's possible that Voldemort played with my mind too? The very idea that someone did something like that to your mind is frightening,” answered Atlas, now focusing on Ethan again.
“It is frightening, and I’m glad I will never have to experience that again. But if you are really worried, I can give you a potion. While it won’t delete the changed memories, it will recover all lost memories.” Said Ethan and pointed his wand at his bag, and with a quick flick, a potion vial came up.
“Here, but be careful; it’s quite potent if you take it for the first time. It would be better if you lay down before taking it. But don’t worry, it’s still just a memory potion and won’t really harm you. It's just so potent that it’s a lot to take in at once if you have never taken it before." said Ethan, who gave him the brown bottle with a toad insignia. “Okey, I will take it later then. For now, we should plan what we do tomorrow. I think we should talk about the trials and how we face Quirrell.”
The discussion that followed was just a confirmation of Atlas' plan. Ethan didn’t have a chess skill, and they both agreed that it would be better if they had Ron with them. To his surprise, Ethan didn’t want to take Leona and Amy with them out of fear that Quirrell would just kill the “unnecessary” people first and that he wasn’t confident in protecting them while fighting Quirrell if it came to that. He also wasn’t confident that they would listen to him if he told them that he would fight alone or just with Harry and him. Ethan was also really worried about him, as he didn’t have a system or something like that and wouldn’t be able to keep up with Quirrell. He even asked him if he really wanted to risk it. In the end, he said that he would go with him but warned him that he would take out Hermione and Ron and bring them to safety after the chess trial. The only real change in his plan was giving up the poisoning. Ethan said he had already prepared a lot of potions and said they were much more potent than anything someone else could brew. He even gave Atlas a big load of the potions he had prepared. Potions Atlas would probably test on a rat before drinking them.
After reuniting with the others, they went for one last but short training session, where Atlas tried to find out more about Ethan's actual combat potential, but with the exception of having an absolute defence and the habit of finishing them off with petrificus totalus, he couldn’t find out anything. Well, except maybe a few things that he would normally have taken for granted. A smokescreen, for example, would still hinder Ethan's vision, and Ethan would still sweat if one fired enough fire spells to increase the room temperature.
They finished early because Ethan wanted to spend some time with Amy. He was probably also nervous about the next day and wanted to use the time too. They had agreed to talk again the next day, and Ethan would then pitch the idea that Quirrell would steal the stone for Voldemort that day because Dumbledore would be away till the next day.
It would also give Atlas enough time to drink the potion and, in case his memories were affected, react to that and, if necessary, inform the others or change the plan.
A few hours later, he sat with Hermione, Ron, and Harry in the common room near the fire. The room was bustling with other students revising their notes as well, and Atlas, to his disbelief, could even see the twins studying. Harry still looked like he hadn’t slept well in recent nights and was reading a book for defence against the dark arts from the third year. He hadn’t mastered the second year curriculum yet, but except for the expeliarmus charm, he thought that the spells weren’t really that important to learn and that he should focus on the more useful spells. Ron, on the other hand, groaned because he was exhausted from all the studying and training and lamented that preparing to fight evil was taking all his spare time.
Seeing Harry like that made it painfully clear to Atlas that they would be putting their lives on the line. It made him feel strange, because he didn’t want anyone to die, but at the same time, he knew that the only time it would actually matter if someone died would be when he failed his mission. He asked himself if Hermione would feel as guilty and sad as Harry did because of Neville or if the letter he wrote her would make her hate him.
“Mione, can you come help me with something?” he asked quietly, signaling her with his eyes that he wanted to be alone with her.
Dean and Seamus saw them when they entered the dormitory, but didn’t even question them. It was more of an open secret to his dormmates that Hermione stayed there occasionally, and Seamus seemed too tired to tease them with it, even if Seamus looked like he would try to do so in the next few days.
On his bed, he opened his suitcase and summoned a few potions, herbs, and a bezoar.
“Ethan gave me this potion, and while I have tested it on an animal and it didn’t cause any serious harm, I don’t want to take any risks. If anything looks strange, give me this antidote,” he said, pointing to a vial with yellow liquid, “and then put the bezoar in my mouth.”
“I don’t understand. What is that potion, and why do you think Ethan would give you a poisoned potion, and why do you take it if you think it might be poisonous?” asked Hermione, worried.
“Ethan told me that someone changed a few of his memories, and this potion helps to recover the original memories if that is the case, and if Ethan really got manipulated like that, I won’t think it's impossible for this potion to be poisonous. So, are you ready?” asked Atlas, and popped the memory potion open.
“Wait what? Who manipulated Ethan? Hey stop!” said Hermione, but it was too late, as Atlas had already gulped down the potion.
The amount of information was overwhelming, and Atlas felt a splitting headache. He suddenly remembered the day he was born in his first life and every single day after. Every breath he took, every word he read, every flower he smelled, every injury he ever had. Everything came back at once. He could even remember every dream he had. He could even remember the sounds around him while he was asleep.
The pain was quickly over, and he needed to organize these memories. A task that was difficult even with his occlumency, as the amount of information was just a tad too much.
He had tears in his eyes as he had to rewatch his old parents trying their best to give him a happy childhood, even at the cost of their own happiness. He could see them slowly die again, he could see Lily die again, but this time these memories filled him with as much anger as sorrow because he knew the reason why it happened.
He went over every critical moment in his two lives, and it basically tore him apart to know that he could do nothing to see the people he had lost again and that soon the list of these people would only get longer because he needed to fulfill his mission. The saddening realization was soon overshadowed when he realized that there really was a memory that shouldn’t be there. Something he was sure he would have remembered because it was so important.
“This fucking asshole! This fucking son of a cunt! For the Greater Good my arse, I will…,” He began to curse in anger but stopped when he saw Hermione’s shocked face. She had never seen him that angry before.