Chapter 118: Herpo's Dark Arts P1

Voldemort glared at Evan Rosier, making the man cower while on his knees. He could see the man was afraid that he was about to throw the torture curse, but he did no such thing.

Lord Voldemort was many things, but he was not merciful. But that doesn't mean he was not an idiot. Rosier was one of the last remaining inner circle Death Eaters he hadn't lost to Potter. He liked to keep it that way for the foreseeable future. The man was loyal enough to go into hiding instead of surrendering to the Ministry like Malfoy, Nott and the others.

Voldemort didn't consider Rosier on the same level as the Lestranges, but he valued the man nonetheless. Considering the Lestranges got caught again, Rosier's worth only increased in his mind. 

"Are you certain of this information?" Voldemort asked, settling his burning red eyes on the man.

"I'm most certain, my lord. My contacts in France and Germany can be trusted. Some of the most dangerous hit wizards have crossed our borders. It's most likely that your Death eaters are being hunted by these wands for hire."

"I see. Minister Bones is proving to be a competent one for her post." Voldemort mused aloud.

"But this is a cause for concern, my lord. These mercenaries getting contracts by the Ministry points to a powerful supporter for Minister Bones." said Rosier

"You believe someone else is working against us?" Voldemort inquired with a frown.

"Yes, my lord. Forgive me for any offence but Amelia Bones does not strike me as someone with links to the most dangerous mercenaries of France and Germany. Some of these hired soldiers have roots in Grindelwald's followers."

Voldemort leaned back in his black throne, looking thoughtfully into the distance.

"What you say makes sense, Evan. Minister Bones does not strike me as someone with connections into the criminal underbelly of our European cousins." Voldemort finally said after some thought.

"Someone with such intricate connections is backing her, and I think Damien Greengrass might be link to this foreign power."

Now, Voldemort looked at his trusted servant with renewed interest.

The Greengrass family had been a target of his for their closeness to his nemesis, but they had gone into hiding behind wards. He suspected that insufferable Fidelius charm was used as all his methods of scrying yielded no result. He had yet to find a way to break that charm, which was proving to be a real thorn in his side.

'Even Potter's home is hidden from me.' Voldemort thought with gritted teeth.

"I suppose it could not be a coincidence that Damien Greengrass now serves as the head of International Magical Relations." Voldemort said.

"I believe so as well, my lord. There is no other explanation as to why the Aurors suddenly became competent overnight to battle your Death Eaters. We have lost many of your followers in this conflict in such a short time." said Rosier.

Voldemort went into deep thought, wondering whether there was a hidden enemy in Europe that he had not taken into account and who was intent on curtailing his rise. He immediately disregarded Dumbledore as the man would never use such underhanded tactics.

'No. All of this has the markings of a new Dark Lord or a wealthy globalist wizard or a group of wizards out to prevent my rise.' he mused.

His ability to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies was being curtailed. First, it was Potter's actions at the Ministry. But now, it was someone unknown.

Voldemort didn't like any of this. If anything, it became imperative that Dumbledore's death happen as soon as possible.

Just as that thought entered his mind, he saw Severus Snape standing at the doorway, seeking permission to enter.

"Come, Severus." Voldemort said silkily while dismissing Rosier from his presence with a simple gesture. 

"My lord." Snape fell on his knees with bowed head.

"What news do you have for me, Severusss?" he asked, the words toward the end slurring into Parseltongue.

"Dumbledore spends less and less time at Hogwarts, my lord. He goes somewhere, but he does not tell me. I suspect his confidence in me wavers ever so slightly these days after Draco Malfoy's debacle."

"I see. That is not ideal, but this was expected. That blasted boy has set back my plans with his incompetency. I should've never given this task to that useless spawn of Lucius. He is as useless and bumbling as his father." Voldemort sneered.

"However, I may regain Dumbledore's trust, my lord, if you declare me a traitor and act against me. I might be unable to visit you for the duration of the year, but I might be able to finish the task you gave me."

"An intriguing suggestion, Severus." Voldemort immediately understood what his loyal minion was suggesting, "I could arrange for you to get attacked at your home. I believe you to be capable of dispatching a few of my Death Eaters."

"I am your disciple, my lord. The knowledge you've trusted with me will not fail me in fulfilling your will." said Snape.

"Good. Then go, Severus. I shall make the arrangements. I expect the news of Dumbledore's demise when we meet again."

"I will not fail you, my lord." Snape bowed before leaving.

Voldemort watched his spy in Hogwarts leave with a brisk face. No doubt the Potion Master wanted to keep his visit short, not to bring scrutiny on his whereabouts. He briefly considered using Snape to capture the Greengrass children if only to bring Damien Greengrass to come clean with him. But he immediately dismissed such thoughts.

The task he had entrusted to Severus was already complicated enough. Kidnapping the Greengrass children would only prove to be a hindrance to his plans to ensure Dumbledore's demise. The task was already difficult with Draco Malfoy's blunder.

For a moment, he considered using one of the Hogwarts students, but he dismissed that idea as well. Draco Malfoy's poor performance made him less confident about such tasks being given to children, especially pureblood children.

'The whole lot are weak, unlike Potter or myself at such a young age.' Voldemort mused.

He had reason to suspect this foreign foe was in cahoots with Potter. It would explain how fast the boy grew to such power and his closeness to the Greengrass girl. 

'Amelia Bones, Damien Greengrass, Harry Potter. They're all connected somehow.' Voldemort thought.

Finding this new threat had to wait. He could only exert his full power for a short time interval with the help of some potions. So, the first thing he had to do was to eliminate the most dangerous wizard he knew from his opposing side. With Dumbledore gone, magical Britain would lose the will to fight him.

'And that's the moment I'll strike! The world will fear the name of Lord Voldemort!' he mused while smirking wickedly at the storm he'd unleashed upon the world.

*****

"Someday, I'm going to find a spell that can permanently alter the weather in Britain." Daphne muttered as she carefully walked through the castle grounds, hand in hand with Harry.

"Get in line. Dean and Seamus were planning on launching a sea of magical firecrackers into the clouds to 'bloody murder' the rain clouds. They're very unhappy that their plans for football in the evening are consistently being blocked by the bad weather." Harry said with an amused snort.

"I distinctly remember rain being not an issue. I've seen you with them all muddy and wet after that horrible muggle game." said Daphne, her nose scrunched up in distaste.

"Hey! Football is a fun game." Harry defended.

"Maybe it's fun for you, but you smell like a wet dog after that game." Daphne said with a scoff.

"A wet dog!" Harry spluttered indignantly.

"A cute wet dog." Daphne said, patting him on his head.

"That's not an improvement."

"Oh, it is." Daphne said with a twitch of her lips, "You take care now. I have the Apparition class to attend." 

Daphne pressed a kiss on his lips and skipped away into the dungeons.

'Well, that girl has just gone bonkers with her daily dose of chocolate getting cut off.' Harry thought with a roll of his eyes.

Daphne was not the only one with a shortage of essential supplies. Dumbledore had established a blanket ban on all Hogsmeade visits, citing a security threat. The ban was not popular with any of the students. It probably was the result of pressure from parents as more and more reports of Ministry aurors and hit-wizards duking it out in the streets with Death Eaters. Just last day, he saw the Prophet report six Death Eaters captured, and two were reported killed in the middle of a raid in Richmond. There were several injured aurors on the Ministry's side, but no details were published about that, unlike the mugshots of screaming Death Eaters being hauled off being plastered across page after page.

With heightened tension running and Malfoy getting hauled off into Ministry custody, it was only natural for the parents to get concerned.

Still, no Hogsmeade visit meant less date time with Daphne, and he had to get along with a cranky, chocolate-starved girlfriend.

He put all of that behind him as he called for another meeting of the Knights of the fifth and fourth-year students. He had one free hour and thought teaching some kids a few hexes might be worth his time.

The following day started off with two consecutive DADA classes that were slightly fun. Snape had them practising nonverbal blasting curses and the standard shield charm. Despite being a douche, Snape had a knack for teaching practical spells. The man was still a nasty, unpleasant fellow with a constant sneer on his face.

But, at least for once, the lessons were much more bearable than the potion classes with the dungeon bat.

After the DADA class came the potion class, which lasted two hours.

"So…each of you may take the vials on my desk. These vials contain poison." Slughorn said grandiosely, eyeing each student with wide grey eyes, "Your task is to make an antidote to the poison within the vial."

Harry stared at the vials of colourful liquid on Slughorn's desk. He got a dark sludge-like poison when he got his hand on one of the vials. The thing even smelled like a combination of an odorous rotten egg and a dead cat.

He set up the workstation by first heating up the cauldron. While the cauldron was getting heated, he searched for ingredients. Since the poison was unknown, he had to be creative with the antidote. The entire point of the lesson was not to make an antidote on the fly. It was an impossible task to accomplish unless someone was extremely lucky.

The point was to find ways to neutralise the poison. It was also one of the experimental ways to devise an antidote. The first step in creating an antidote was determining the components that can weaken the poison and then conceiving a potion using those components.

However, there was a much more nuanced way of making an antidote on the fly. It was not commonly used because the results were not always guaranteed. It involved infusing certain components with magic channelled with the intent to heal. So long as the components selected were receptive to the magic, the chances of making an antidote for the poison were high.

Despite the low chances of success, Harry tried his hand at it. He had never done such a thing, but he had read about the method from a reference inscribed on one of the pages of Snape's potion book. Harry chanced to read that book in his leisure time and hoped to apply the theory in practice.

After noting the cauldron was sufficiently heated, he let the flame to simmer. He slowly poured the vial's contents into the cauldron parts by parts. Then he started with a revealing charm to see whether he got a resonance or special properties from the poison. He felt a distinct blend of berries of all things, which was weird, and a smell of treated asphodel root wafted out of the poison. 

Rapidly heating small quantities of the poison helped break the bonds within or as the book claimed.

So, he followed that procedure. It took him eight minutes to do this, after which he started slicing up the ingredients he took from the cupboard. He chopped them up into tiny pieces and treated them with his magic infused with the intent to heal before throwing them into the cauldron.

His potion gained an orange hue after he was done bombarding his cauldron with all the cut-up components. Then he started crushing some sea bean seeds for their pulp and even made oil from one of the seeds in a smaller cauldron. That took him more than an hour to prepare, and when he was finally done, he poured all the contents into his cauldron.

He then started the long, arduous process of stirring, heating and cooling down, which he had to repeat again and again while he grounded just five grams of powder from the root of asphodel. He mixed that with a pinch of honey and dumped the mixture into the potion once it cooled down. He gave the potion one counterclockwise stir followed by two clockwise stirs. The potion, which had turned bright red by then, lost its colour and settled into a pale silver. 

He closed the lid of the cauldron and allowed the potion to cool.

After he was finished, he settled back in his seat and looked around. A green sludge jumped from Ernie Macmillian's cauldron into the desk, making the Ravenclaw boy's eyes widen like saucers.

Harry saw a yellow foam coming out of Neville's potion while a combination of different coloured steam rose from Ron's cauldron.

His eyes then fell on Hermione, who looked a bit deranged in his eyes. His bushy-haired friend was sweating profusely while pouring over her cauldron and doing something with her wand. She was using nonverbal spells, so he didn't know what she was doing. But whatever it was, the potion seemed to have declared war on Hermione.

Harry's eyes landed on the cupboard where the potion ingredients were stored. He went there and rummaged around for more varieties of sea beans. While searching, he came across a bezoar in the cabinet. He thought momentarily before swiping the bezoar out of the cabinet and settling back on his workstation.

"Time's up!" Slughorn declared jovially, "Now, let's see who among you have done it!"

Slughorn moved from student after student with a clipboard in his hand, noting down the number of the poison vial before scribbling down something else after inspecting the potion. Slughorn was less than impressed with some of the potions, but the man kept any comments to himself even if his expression was quite telling. It was far better than the drama Snape usually engaged in.

The Potion Master finally reached his table, looking quite green after sniffing some fumes from Neville's cauldron.

"Now you, Harry! What have you got for me?" Slughorn looked vibrant and eager as Harry removed the lid and showed what he had.

"Oho! I see what you did there. Ingenious thinking… brilliant indeed!" Slughorn grinned from ear to ear, resorting to some charms to inspect the potion after a cursory visual inspection.

"Quite good indeed, perhaps a tad rushed. You should pace yourself while working with antidotes to unknown poisons, my boy. But quite the splendid work. It's not enough for an antidote, but this one would certainly ward off the worst from the poison."

"In that case, I have this Professor." said Harry, holding out his palm, which hosted a bezoar.

"Aha!" Slughorn roared with laughter. "Quite cheeky, aren't you! I can't blame you… it's only natural. You're Lily's son, after all… a bezoar is certainly enough to act as an antidote against most poisons."

While Slughorn thought it was Harry's most daring and imaginative act, the other students were less than pleased. It mostly had to do with the horrible potions that came out of their cauldrons more than anything he did.

When the bell rang, everyone in the class was happy to bolt right out of the class. But Harry stayed behind as he had another agenda.

"You'll be late, you know." Slughorn passingly mentioned that he noticed Harry dallying while cleaning up his workstation.

"I wanted to ask you something, sir."

"Oh! Ask away, my boy." Slughorn said happily.

"Sir, can you determine what kind of magic is used on this thing?" Harry asked as he produced a mokeskin pouch from his bag and deposited the content on the table before Slughorn. 

Slughorn reeled back from the charred remains of Ravenclaw's diadem with a look of horror after using a detection charm.

"Good Merlin! What is this? Where did you get this, Harry?" Slughorn asked, frightened out of his mind.

"Well, sir. You must be familiar with the work of Herpo the Foul. This is one of his contributions to the field of the Dark Arts – the magic that desecrates the soul – a Horcrux!"

*** Branch Reality ***

An excerpt from the Continental War by Marcus Slytherin

If January 7, 1663, saw the fall of Paris under the Targaryen banner, then in March of 1664, dragon fire touched the mainland of Spain.

King Titus Targaryen left Spain's conquest in the hands of Prince Jason Targaryen, who was also the admiral of the Royal Navy. Sending the bulk of the Royal Navy and four dragons to wage war against Spain may seem unnecessary, but the Spain of the 1660s was not the Spain of the 12th century. This was Spain, wholly different from the Spaniards that the Scottish Empire dealt with during its Islamic rule.

Islamic Spain held long-lasting ties with the Scottish Empire, enjoying extremely profitable trade relations. Under Islamic rule, Spain was the Scottish Empire's doorway to the Mediterranean trade in silk, spices, and diamonds for the Far East. However, the reconquest of Spain and the rise of Christian dynasties brought much strife to the two peoples.

Ever since the reconquest, Spain had asserted its naval power in the seas while the Scottish Empire withdrew increasingly because of isolationist policies.

When King Titus launched his Continental War, Spain was the most powerful naval power in Europe, and it had the largest sea empire in the world. It was also one of the economic powerhouses in Europe because of its overseas colonies in the American continent, which fielded the largest navy, rivalling France.

This is why King Titus sent his distant cousin Prince Jason to subdue Spain and crush its naval power for good. Accompanying Prince Jason were his two sons, Oscar Targaryen and Fionn Targaryen, as well as his sister, Princess Caireann Targaryen. They were accompanied by the bulk of the Royal Navy's sea and air fleets. Their mission was to crush Spanish and Portuguese sea power and contain the two global empires within Europe before the decisive blow came to topple them.

Therefore, the first attack by Prince Jason was on the Madeira and Azores islands, followed by an attack on the Canary Islands and Morocco. Within three months, the Strait of Gibraltar was under Scottish control, choking the lifeblood out of Portugal and Spain.

The initial plan of King Titus was to find support from the Portuguese court to stifle Spain. But that plan was never needed as Spain and Portugal went to war on the Christmas of 1662. The exact reasons for the war were lost to the Scottish War Council. It was assumed that their rivalry was getting out of hand and tensions flaring as the war in Europe reached its zenith this year.

Whatever the case, it was a suitable distraction that Prince Jason was all too happy to exploit. With four dragons and a massive fleet, he delivered a single blow that knocked out Spain and Portugal's American and African holdings. By March 1663, Prince Jason attacked and captured all the major ports of Spain and Portugal, leading to the gruelling land invasion of the westernmost European polities. By Christmas, most regions were pacified, with the Portuguese and Spanish armies decimated and their royal houses surrendering their crowns before House Targaryen.

But unlike France, pacifying Spain and Portugal was arduous because of fanatic local resistance. It became much more complicated as the fleeing royal house of France stirred up trouble. The rebels in both Spain and Portugal pooled their strength behind the King of France in a last-ditch effort to repel the dragons from western Europe.

Only on Christmas of 1665 were all rebellions in Spain and Portugal crushed properly with the capture and execution of Antonie II of House Bourbon.

However, Prince Jason still had the monumental task of reorganising the devastated lands of Spain and Portugal to their former glory. At the same time, the status of overseas land holdings in the Americas and Africa also became a question. King Titus' orders were only to capture Europe, but Prince Jason extended that mandate a little bit further and sought to secure all possessions of Spain and Portugal.

The war waged on in the seas as the dragons' appetite for land grew.

AN:

To read ahead of the update schedule; pat(r) eon. C (O) M/Dragonspectre

For artworks: https://discord.gg/Nw2JH25fJf