Revelation of the Forbidden Book
Jason Carter had spent almost an hour staring at the ceiling - long enough to see the error of his ways; long enough to make a plan of what to do next.
I’m not going down with Reggie. I can’t let him sink me.
He waited until after Gregor had interviewed him to make his move. Thompson and Reece had been sent to bed, as had some of the Hufflepuffs, but Gregor had wanted him and Jones to stick around in case he had further questions. The four prefects, Wren, Felwich, Clark and Quillan were standing together and talking. Covenshire stood by MacDougal, her arms crossed over her chest, yawning.
Carter caught Clarke’s eye, and the prefect came over. “What?”
“I have to pee.”
“Go on, then.”
Carter entered the common room and used one of the bathrooms on the first floor. It was the main one for the boys, and it could be accessed by two different doors. He entered through one door and left through the other. He returned to his room and got his heavy cloak. Out in the hallway, he could see no one watching or waiting for him. They’ve forgotten about me, he mused.
He quietly exited the common room. He turned and went in the opposite direction of the straight stairs, down a corridor to another, older stairwell. This one was seldom used, as it was narrow and winding. He climbed as quietly as he could, up the stairs to the Entrance Hall. The wide hall was dimly lit. No one was there.
He crossed the hall and slipped out the front door. Down the stairs he went, the wind and cold biting him as he walked. He trudged heedlessly through the snow, towards the wall. If they find the book, they’ll bust Reggie for sure, and they’ll bust me, too, ‘cause I knew about it and didn’t say anything. Well, they won’t find it. I’m going to get that book, and I’m going to burn it!
Around him it was pitch black, but the snow reflected an eerie light upwards. At any rate, he knew the way. He headed right across the lawn, straight for the wall. As the stone wall drew close, he could feel the book, a cold quite separate from the winter chill. He cast a beam of light from his wand and saw the covering stone sticking outward from the wall. He pulled the stone away and tossed it behind him.
As he stuck his hand into the crevice, he felt the evil magic of the book reaching out towards him, entering him, assessing him. He clutched the leather pouch and pulled it free from its hiding place. He uncinched the opening and shook the book onto the ground. He tossed the pouch over the wall.
Holding his wand before him, he gathered all the magical energy he had within him and then shouted “Incendio!”
Absolutely nothing happened. He shouted again, “Incendio!” Not even a wisp of smoke rose from the book. He began throwing the spell down upon the book over and over, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Incendio! Incendio! Incendio!”
Behind him came the voice of Jim Clarke. “Expelliarmus!” Carter’s wand flew out of his hand and somersaulted over the wall, out of sight.
Two wand tips glowed like eyes back at him. “Accio Wand!” The wand flew back over Carter’s head, into the hand of Claire Quillan. She pocketed it. “What were you doing there, Carter?” she asked.
“Whatever it was,” said Clarke, “it didn’t work.”
Q stepped beside him and then bent down to pick up the book. Jim shouted at her, “Claire! Don’t touch it!”
It was the sudden use of her first name that made her flinch and then back away. Jim strode forward, pushed Jason out of the way and picked up the book. He opened to the frontispiece and shown his wandlight down on the words, “Wicked Vengeance – Curses for Unfaithful Women.”
“This is it,” said Jim. “This is the book Gregor told us about, the one we tore the castle apart searching for last summer.”
Jason, tears running down his face, said, “I didn’t know he would really do it. I didn’t know he was going to attack Pauline.”
Q put her arm around him. “That’s okay, Carter. We’re going to tell Gregor that you’re cooperating, now. That you led us right to the book.”
“Which you did,” interjected Jim.
Q, added sternly, “And then, you’re going to tell him everything you know!”
Jim shoved Jason in the direction of the castle. “Go on, now. It’s late and we’re freezing our asses out here.”
At the castle steps, Liam and Morwena were waiting for them. “Where on earth did he run off to?” asked Morwena.
“We have the book,” said Jim. “Carter went and found it for us.” He smacked Carter on the side of the head.
“You found Wicked Vengeance?” asked Morwena. “Bring it to Gregor, straight away. He’s down at DeVere’s classroom interviewing students.”
Down at DeVere’s classroom, Gergor and Potter questioned Dennison, while Longbottom held back, observing. The lights were still low, and the large room was full of shadows. Their voices echoed off the stone walls.
Other boys might have been cowed in such a place. Dennison looked delighted to be the center of attention. There was no remorse in his eyes, no doubt in his mind that his actions had been correct.
Instead of waiting for a question from the adults, he started with one of his own. “Is anyone investigating who struck me with the Cruciatus Curse this evening? I’m no expert on the Unforgiveables, but that must have been what it was. It hurt like hell.”
No one had yet mentioned this to Gregor, and at first, he doubted its veracity. “We will deal with that matter separately,” he said. “What curse did you use on Pauline Langlet?”
“I don’t know what it was called,” said Dennison.
Gregor: “Why did you curse her?”
Dennison: “She needed to be taught a lesson. And she splashed me with scalding water, so she doubly deserved it.”
Potter: “Only after you harassed and threatened her.”
Gregor: “Why did you use this curse? This specific curse?”
Dennison: “If you must know, I thought it high time someone made an example of her.”
Potter: “Why this girl? Why did you target her?”
Dennison, nodding towards Gregor: “He knows well enough.”
Potter: “I want you to say it.”
Dennison, with a sneer, relented: “Because she’s a Mudblood. Because she threatens the pure bloodline of every wizard in Slytherin House! Well, this spell fixed that, didn’t it? He said it would.”
Gregor, sharply: “Who said?”
Dennison: “The book.”
Potter raised his voice in anger: “Do you understand the predicament that you’re in? You need to start cooperating with us. Who was your partner? Who has been teaching you how to throw curses like this? Enduring malignant curses are advanced level magic. Someone taught you how to cast this curse, and you need to tell us who it was!”
Dennison stubbornly held his ground. “The book taught me.”
Potter was about to chastise him again when Gregor held up his hand. “As strange as it seems, Mr. Potter, that is exactly what my source has been telling me. ‘The book is teaching him.’ And the book suggested the specific curse? Which, as you well know, is called The Barren Curse!”
There was an evil light in Dennison’s eyes. “The curse will make her infertile. It will keep her from making bastard Mudblood children.”
“We will overlook these disgusting terms for now,” said Gregor. “Where is the book?”
“You will never find it,” said Dennison, smugly.
Just then, the door creaked open, and Ron Weasley stuck his head in. “Sorry to interrupt you, Professor, but the prefects are here. They say they have the book.”
Finally, Dennison’s confidence faltered, for he knew he had been betrayed. Gregor gave him a triumphant look before striding up the stairs to the door.
Jim handed him the book. Gregor opened to the frontispiece, his face grim, then snapped the book closed. “Claire, did you touch this thing?”
“No sir.”
“Did Morwena or any other girl touch it?”
“No sir,” said Jim, firmly.
Gregor let out a long, slow sigh. “Send everyone to bed. I will conduct further interviews in the morning.”
Gregor returned to the table. He skimmed quickly through the pages until he found the entry for the Barren Curse, with its poignant picture of the woman weeping beside her bed. Pressing the book roughly down on the table, with the picture facing Dennison, he said, “This is what you attempted to do to Pauline Langlet.”
Dennison said nothing, but his face glowed in triumph.
Potter spoke. “Professor, we have established that this boy cast a Dark Magic curse with intent to cause great bodily harm. On top of that, we have possession of a Dark Magic artifact on school grounds. It’s enough for an arrest. I can remove him from the school at your command.”
“Do it,” said Gregor, solemnly.
“Alright, young man, let’s go.” Potter took Dennison by the arm and led him up the stairs to the door.
Neville, who had been watching in quiet fascination, asked, “Franz, what’s the answer to the riddle? How did the book teach him? Who is this ‘he’ Dennison kept referring to?”
“I had my suspicions,” said Gregor. “Now that I have touched the thing, I know. I can feel it. Still, let us wait. McGonagall will be here soon.”
Everyone downstairs had been sent to bed. Morwena and Liam, however, lingered in the Entrance Hall to greet the Headmistress when she returned. They watched silently as Harry Potter escorted Reginald Dennison to the door. The door opened, and there was McGonagall. Her gaze was stern and cold.
“I promised you, Dennison, that if you harmed a female student again, I would expel you. I will commence that process in the morning.”
Dennison was undaunted. “Fine! I’ll go to Durmstrang.”
“The time for that has passed,” said McGonagall. “They will not take you once you’ve been expelled.”
“The only schooling you’ll be getting,” said Potter, “will be in juvenile prison.” He took Dennison by the arm with a firm grip. “Come now. Let’s go!”
Morwena was quivering with rage. Liam offered her a hand, and she clutched it tightly. “I could give you a report, Professor,” he said, “but my news is a few hours old. You’re better off speaking with Professor Gregor.”
“I have been in touch with him, thank you,” she said. “And with Madam Pomphrey. I will check on Pauline first before I see my deputy.”
Morwena spoke, her voice in anguish. “Professor, can I see her?”
There was a rare note of tenderness in McGonagall’s voice. “Of course, you may. Come with me. You may go to the threshold, at any rate. The Hospital Wing is Poppy’s domain. What she will allow you to do from there is up to her.”
As they climbed the stairs, McGonagall continued in a gentle, amused voice. “By all reports, when the cry for help went out, the Hufflepuffs sprinted to the scene, Liam Wren in the lead.”
“That we did, ma’am.”
McGonagall briefly touched his shoulder. “I shan’t forget this.”
Up in the Hospital Wing, McGonagall took in the latest information from Pomphrey. McGonagall slipped inside the curtain and gazed down at the sleeping face of Pauline Langlet. To Pomphrey she gave one last instruction: “Send the Hufflepuffs to bed at some point, Poppy. They’ll stay here all night if you don’t.”
From there, she went to Gregor’s office. Longbottom was there, too. She shook her head when she saw the slim volume bound in black leather sitting on his desk. “That’s the book, isn’t it?” she asked. “It was right at my feet at the stone floor, and I didn’t see it.”
“Minerva, had you picked it up off the floor that morning, seventeen months ago, you would have received a terrible curse,” said Gregor. “Behold!”
He waved his wand over the book. Rising up out of the black leather came little glowing symbols – some red, some purple, some ghostly white. These were the charms and curses set into the book as defenses, including charms to protect the book from water damage and from fire, both ordinary and magical.
“That red X there, cutting through the female symbol, it would have given you, or any woman who had the temerity to pick it up, a nasty jolt,” continued Gregor. All the symbols together made a cloud of light. Gregor began dismissing them one by one with his wand.
McGonagall’s eyes settled on a white charm in the center of the cloud of symbols. Longbottom saw it, too, and spoke, his voice in awe. “Professor! The symbol there at the center, the upside-down crucifix. Is that …?” His voice trailed off, afraid of even speaking the word aloud.
“It is indeed, Neville,” said Gregor. “The symbol of a horcrux.”
“The book was teaching him,” said McGonagall. “That’s what Lara told us. We didn’t understand. Maybe we didn’t want to understand the significance of what she was telling us.”
“We presume that the term horcrux is not within young Guishar’s mind,” said Gregor. “Only recently, did I come to suspect what she might have meant. A soul, or a piece of a soul, hidden within this copy of Wicked Vengeance, was instructing Reginald Dennison, building upon the corrupt teachings of his own family. This rare volume, with hand-drawn colour illustrations, is a collector’s item. It was long in the library of the Kane family. It passed to Roger Dennison shortly after he married Renata Kane, and he has held it in his library ever since. How his son came by this book, we do not yet know.”
“Whose soul is held within?” asked Longbottom. “Is there any way to know?”
“There are ways, yes,” said Gregor. “I will leave that to the Aurors. But I have my suspicions. It has long been said that the illustrator himself, Christian Dethlake, had prolonged his life by the use of a horcrux. When they were both in their early twenties, his fiancée, whom he abused and who tried to leave him, died suddenly. It was thought that he struck her down with one of these curses.”
Longbottom, remembering the stories Harry Potter had told him, said, “So, if you’re correct, the precious object within which Dethlake hid a piece of his soul, was his own book?”
“That is my guess, a hypothesis that will soon be tested. Perhaps I sent Potter away too quickly. Now, I will have to summon another Auror.”
“It’s best that you didn’t give it to Potter,” said McGonagall. “Reginald Dennison should not come near this book again.”
Neville asked, “How is Pauline?”
“She lives,” said McGonagall, “but it was a near thing. Only because Harkenborough was there, and quickly summoned Lara Guishar to his side, did this evening not end in tragedy. As things stand now, Pauline may never fully heal. If she is ever able to bear children, only time will tell.”