HP/LOTM: Visionary - 426

Chapter 426: The Fidelius Charm, Tom’s Next Move

"James, what happened?"

Lily was no fool. She knew there had to be a serious reason for her husband to turn down Eleanor’s invitation.

"The prophecy about July. Do you remember it?" James asked, looking at her gravely.

"The one the Prophet mentioned a while back?" Lily said, thinking of the paper Eleanor had just brought her.

"It’s pointing far too clearly. In the whole Order, the only families with children born in July are us and the Longbottoms," James said, frowning.

"Do not worry. Dumbledore will have made arrangements," Lily said, brushing her knuckles lightly against the furrow between his brows.

"Yes. He will be here soon to lay down protective magic. We will have to stop going out for a while," James said, lacing his fingers through hers. They stood there, close and easy together.

"Oi. I am still here, you know," Sirius, the human lamp-post, said in protest.

"Maybe you should find someone of your own. Drifting about forever is not good for you," responsible adult Lupin said, sliding straight into the role of nagging parent.

"Do not just pick on me. What about you, Remus? Thought of finding a lady werewolf?" Sirius said, half joking.

He had not meant to hit a nerve, but Remus’ face shut down at once. An awkward silence fell.

"It is getting late. I had better go," Lupin said, rising and leaving in a hurry.

The others all traded looks, then turned as one to stare at Sirius.

"That might have been a bit much, Sirius," Peter ventured.

"Peter, you little…" Sirius hooked an arm around his neck, then sighed. "Fine. I will go and apologise."

"Good," Lily said, nodding.

Before long, someone knocked at the Potters’ door again. They opened it with care and found Dumbledore standing outside in the falling snow.

"Professor," James said at once, ushering him in.

"Ah, dreadful weather," Dumbledore said, shaking the snow from his beard.

Sirius and Peter both got to their feet to greet him.

"Well then, no time to waste. If I do not get back to the school soon, Minerva will have my head," Dumbledore said, pulling a rueful face.

"I am going to place the Fidelius Charm on the Potters’ ancestral home. That requires a Secret-Keeper," he said, looking between the three Marauders as he explained.

"Neither caster nor those being protected can serve as Secret-Keeper. So, who will you choose?"

"It is a shame the Potters’ old Secret-Keeping contract is lost. Otherwise, we could have kept it in the family," James said, scratching his head.

"Do not worry, mate. We can be your Secret-Keepers. Right, Peter?" Sirius said, clapping him hard on the back.

Peter flinched and mumbled something that might have been an agreement.

"I am going to start casting. Who is it to be?" Dumbledore asked, turning to James.

"Sirius will be the Secret-Keeper," James said at once.

He looked at his oldest friend and, without a flicker of doubt, put his home and family in his hands.

At that moment, a swell in the Sea of Collective Subconscious brushed across Sirius’s little island of thought, dropping a better idea into his mind.

"All right," Sirius said, nodding.

Dumbledore drew the Elder Wand and swept it in a broad arc. Magic surged out, wrapping the whole of the old Potter home and compressing every scrap of information about it into an orange sphere of light.

"Hide this secret well," Dumbledore said, handing the orb to Sirius.

Sirius took it and tucked it into his soul. Dumbledore, satisfied, took his leave.

As soon as he was gone, Sirius turned back, eyes bright.

"What do you say to making Peter the Secret-Keeper?" he said.

"What? I…I cannot," Peter protested at once.

"Not publicly. We can do the old vanishing-cabinet trick," Sirius said, flicking a look at James.

"You mean you stay on paper as the Secret-Keeper, draw the Death Eaters onto you, and we put the real secret in Peter?" Lily said, following his train of thought.

"Exactly. Clever as ever, Lily," Sirius said, snapping his fingers and pointing at her.

"All right," James said, without a second’s hesitation.

They had grown up together. He trusted Sirius with his life. So the three of them quietly shifted the Secret-Keeper from one friend to another.

Another little gear in the prophecy clicked into place. The great machine of fate began to turn.

……

Elsewhere, Tom from the future had launched a far larger search. Having come back to the past, there was only one person she truly wanted to erase: the Prewett who had caused her so much trouble.

"Idiots. You still have not found the Prewetts’ address? I already told you they are in Byberil village," she snapped.

"B–but, my Lady, we have combed the whole village. There is no sign of any wizard presence," one Death Eater said miserably.

"You dare question me?"

She spread her hand. Her shadow billowed out behind her. A black, gelatinous tendril studded with teeth rose from it, chewing as it dragged the protesting Death Eater down into the dark.

The others swallowed, too scared to make a sound.

"Perhaps I should go myself," Tom said, rubbing her chin as she stood.

A wand spat out of the seething shadow. She caught it, then Disapparated to Byberil.

Unfortunately for her, two Manipulators on the Visionary Pathway had already prepared a grand welcome.

The instant she stepped into Byberil, a massive alchemical array bloomed to life, covering the whole village. Channels like the traces of a circuit board lit outward from the centre.

Sigils so intricate that a single glance would set strange thoughts cascading through the mind rose into the sky. Under the command of a power greater than magic, the power of the mind, every event in the village fell under the two Manipulators’ control.

The gentle ambient magic of the air flared, turning into a searing, invisible fire. The atmosphere became a furnace, locking all that heat into a narrow space.

"Miss Tom Riddle. Long time no see," Arthursi said, stepping forward.

The woman in front of her had teamed up with another to plot against her family’s precious cabbage. A queen’s wrath had been building for a long time.

Now, with the array leveraging the blood of the world itself, magic, and backed by the overwhelming mental strength of two Visionary Pathway demigods, they would smelt reality and rewrite it.

Light burst from the earth. Under the suppressing pressure of the two Manipulators, not a ripple showed on the surface. As Tom’s projection died, Arthursi felt a faint tremor from the Protocol.

"Just what I was waiting for," she said with a cold snort.

The array roared up to full power. Light laced with pure intent to destroy speared toward the source of the disturbance.

Boom.

The explosion flattened a hill in an instant, but most of the force was shunted into the Sea of Consciousness, taken on by the Thirteenth Protocol lurking in the dark.

As the storm in the Sea of Consciousness faded, Arthursi and Lada began their search.

"Tch. She slipped away," Arthursi said through her teeth.

The killing aura spilling from her made the small, weak and very put-upon little cat edge hastily out of reach.