Troll: 55. In which Blaise cocks it up. (Patreon)

Chapter 55: In which Blaise cocks it up.

Blaise ZabiniHogwarts, Great Britain

Days passed and I moved through the week like a zombie. My brain had officially tendered its resignation and was now boycotting all my efforts to be productive. Classes felt like a dull haze and I could barely care enough to feed myself. 

My fears had come to pass: Despite my foreknowledge, I’d somehow made things worse. The diary horcrux was active. There were now two Voldemorts running around the castle.

Or, there would be soon enough. Because trusting the mental fortitude of a fourteen year old girl sounded like an even worse decision than trusting her sense of good judgment. As circumstances had endeavored to demonstrate, I’d come to learn that the latter was already a terrible idea.

I dodged out of the way of a stinging hex. It was all but instinct by now. I saw light. I moved away from light. I would have been happy at the near automatic response, had my mind not been otherwise occupied.

“Okay, we’re done here,” Cheryl said as another two hexes found me, each positioned to make dodging them all impossible.

“Ow… Sorry, I’m… I’ve had a lot on my mind recently,” I said sheepishly.

“I can tell. You’re usually a lot harder to hit than this. What’s up with you?”

“I… I just realized I messed up something important.”

“So? I don’t know how it is for you, Mr. Seer, but people mess up a lot. All the time. Most of us just apologize and move on.”

“Not really something I can apologize over.”

“Is anyone dead?”

“What? No!”

“Sounds like they’re still alive to hear the apology then,” she said, shrugging. “You firsties tend to make mountains out of molehills.”

“I didn’t wrong anyone. I just… failed to account for something,” I replied carefully. Cheryl was a good person and a solid teacher, but ultimately uninvolved.

“You? Must be pretty big if you’re still moping. On a scale of one through ten, how screwed are you?”

“It’s… hard to say. Seven? Eight? Yeah, at least eight, with the potential to break the scale altogether.”

“Huh… Need some help?”

“Help? From you?”

“Hey, no need to sound so skeptical,” she said. “I don’t want my sparring partner to wander around looking like an inferi. People might think I’m bullying a firstie.”

I laughed. It wasn’t very funny, but I appreciated the attempt. “No, it’s not something you can help me with, Dupree.”

“Alright, suit yourself. Either way, I think you’re done for the day. Go for a walk. Think things through.”

“You might be right.”

I left Cheryl to practice on her own for the day and went for an evening walk. It was… nice. The chill of a Scotland January didn’t magically grant me new insight, but I found the fuzziness in my head starting to clear. I considered my options.

Could I steal the diary away from her?

Unlikely. Hogwarts did not typically punish rule-breaking severely. Slytherin, even less so. The rule of the house was “Don’t get caught,” not “Don’t do bad things.”

That said, the separation of sleeping quarters by sex was one that even Professor Snape took seriously. Considering my inability to scry Lyra or her dorm, I could only assume she kept the diary in her trunk. I couldn’t get in there to steal it and getting caught would be… ruinous.

Since that was the case, could I bribe her into giving up the diary?”

No, obviously not. My initial plan had been basically this, to bribe Lucius with a shit-ton of gold. Lyra believed the diary was a grimoire. By now, she probably believed “Tom Riddle” was a guardian spirit tied to the book or some shit like that. She’d never give it away.

I also considered putting pressure on her by telling Lucius, but that obviously wasn’t going to work. He undoubtedly knew by now; he wasn’t actually an idiot. No matter his demands, she’d already chosen to ignore her father.

Truthfully, even if I could acquire the diary from her, I wasn’t sure if that’d be wise. The horcruxes were shown to have minds of their own, with limited abilities to affect their hosts and the world around them. Their limits were never fully defined and I didn’t want to learn them through personal experience.

If I took the diary, could it influence me? My brand of occlumency was best at hiding, not fending off a powerful legilimens, and I was untested besides. Or, would I find that it had mysteriously vanished from my trunk, only to end up in Lyra’s hands once again? Or worse, in the hands of someone else? That’d just make me go hunting all over again.

For a moment, I briefly considered going to Dumbledore. He… He wasn’t a bad man, just an old man who’d been worn down by time and too much responsibility. At the end of the day, he was the authority figure over Hogwarts. He was busy, especially now with Lord Black’s return and the start of the Wizengamot sessions, but surely he’d pull his head out of his ass to get involved.

And yet, even in my moment of weakness, I didn’t seriously consider him as an option. He was busy, but that wasn’t why. Right now, there were two active horcruxes, and that posed a significant problem: If we went after one, the other would go to ground.

Realistically, we really could only go after one at a time. I didn’t know how skilled Quirrell was, but it was fair to say Voldemort could take over his body any time he chose. Confronting Quirrell with anyone but Dumbledore was a horrible idea given none of us had Violet’s plot armor. And there was no way in hell a confrontation between staff could be kept quiet.

Which meant the diary would vanish. Lyra would hide it, throw it away, or even send it somewhere else by owl or elf until she reclaimed it once the heat died down. Hell, it wouldn’t even necessarily be Lyra making that decision. For all I knew, the diary had enough agency to make itself scarce now that Tom’s spirit was awake and active.

Going after Lyra first was potentially even worse. Quirrell had to be watching the movements of the staff. There was the chance that Dumbledore or Snape could confiscate the diary before Quirrell found out, but any hint of a “dark artifact” associated with the Malfoys could tip him off. After all, Voldemort knew what he’d done with his own horcruxes.

Worst case scenario, Voldemort abandoned Quirrell after learning that Dumbledore had somehow found out about the horcruxes. Canonically, he didn’t know about Harry’s mission to destroy the soul fragments until about midway through the seventh book, when he heard about the Gringotts robbery. Harry didn’t finish his scavenger hunt because he was competent. Harry won because Voldemort didn’t know they were playing that game.

No. Absolutely not. There was the possibility of taking out the diary quietly, but the risk of tipping off Voldemort wasn’t worth taking. Otherwise, I feared we’d learn that he made another horcrux and tossed it into the bottom of the sea or something.

My thoughts jumped back to Lyra. If Lyra was the host Tom had chosen, then… then it might actually be better to leave it in her possession for the moment. Tom’s goal was to open the Chamber of Secrets. He’d use it as a secluded location to eventually drain Lyra.

Unlike Ginny, he wouldn’t even have to possess Lyra completely; she’d probably leap for joy at the chance to “discover” our founder’s legacy. Maybe it was cruel of me, but knowing his motivations made her predictable. Given I couldn’t scry the diary at all, that was worth more than gold right now.

That was also the moment to strike. If Dumbledore took initiative to deal with the horcrux, then Voldemort would naturally grow wary. But if the horcrux made itself known and then failed its programmed mission, then… then that wasn’t Dumbledore’s investigative skills. That was Lucius being irresponsible with the diary.

I’d have to get in the basilisk’s way if it came to that. It’d be hard, and dangerous, but the snake wasn’t immune to scrying; I checked. Hell, under the assumption that she cooperated with Tom willingly, I could even ambush her in the Chamber quietly, away from Quirrell’s prying eyes. It’d just require a bit of language tutoring from Violet.

Willing partner or possession victim, it didn’t matter. Her first move would be to slaughter all of Hagrid’s roosters. That was the basilisk’s reverse scale, the real reason they were so damn rare. When the crowing of a rooster could kill, they really weren’t worth the hassle to raise at all.

I owed Cheryl. She was right; a bit of air got my head spinning the right way again. There was also the question of Quirrellmort, and how exactly this would align with his attempt on the philosopher’s stone, but this was a first step.

I needed the vivarium.

X

Finding the vivarium was easy. It turned out to be as simple as asking the Room of Requirement. Unfortunately, I was left with a rather significant conundrum: I knew fuck-all about chicken farming.

The space inside was perfect, though. Enchantments I could not comprehend curled around the vivarium’s perimeter, enclosing an area about the same size as a quidditch pitch. The terrain was no different than the Scottish highlands one could find for miles outside Hogwarts. Lush grass, gentle breeze, and considerably warmer than it was outside.

Hell, the Room even built me a rudimentary chicken coop out of what looked like old plywood. It was raised two feet off the ground and had individual nesting boxes for hens, not that the hens were my main concern here. It looked like an exact copy of the ones Hagrid used.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely. Whether the castle was alive and conscious enough to listen or not, seeing the rickety coop made me think that I wasn’t out of options yet. “May I speak with Tubby the house elf, please?”

There was a loud pop and my little friend from the kitchen arrived. He wasn’t actually fat, so the name didn’t fit him well. Apparently, he got the name because he used to be in charge of the tubs of butter. “Mr. Blazey! What can Tubby be doing for you?”

“Hey, Tubby. Do you know where we are right now?”

“Wes be in the Come and Go Room, Mr. Blazey. Mr. Blazey knows about the Come and Go Room?”

“I do. I asked the Room for a place to farm chickens. I think it’s a bit too much space for what I had in mind.”

“Mr. Blazey is interested in farming?”

“Just chickens, and just for a few months, hopefully,” I said. I was loath to include yet another thing on my schedule, but if I could leave this to the elves, then… “Say, do you know where we can get chickens? You know, a few roosters and the like.”

“Hensies be the ones laying eggsies for her feathery majesty, Mr. Blazey,” Tubby said. And that right there was why Minerva liked him; he showed her the respect she thought she was due.

“They’re not all for Minerva. How about we raise enough for the whole school to have fresh eggs? How many chickens do you think we’d need?”

His eyes widened with shock. Then, surprise turned into delight at the thought of more work. Truly, house elves were the single greatest helpers a man could ask for. “T-Truly? The whole castle?”

“That’s right. I know Hagrid has his own coop, but he really only raises enough for himself. And, it’s winter. I was thinking that maybe, this vivarium could keep things warmer so we’d get more eggs.”

“That can work, Mr. Blazey. To feed everyone in the castle, we needs one… two… no, five hundreds hensises.”

“F-Five hundred? That many?”

“Theres bes more than three hundred students in the castle. With the professors, owlsies, and elves, we need that many to get eggs, maybe even more.”

I looked out at the field. Suddenly, the size of a quidditch pitch didn’t seem like it’d be excessive. “Huh… How many roosters would we need?”

“Cocksies?”

“Yes… cocksies…”

“Cocksies don’t lay eggs, but they make hensies lay eggs faster. One cocksie for ten hensies is good, Mr. Blazey.”

A slow smile spread across my face. What I was hearing was that I would soon have fifty roosters to throw at “Slytherin’s monster.” “You know, Tubby, I’m so glad I asked you. You elves are so good at prepping for an entire castle.”

“Tubby is happy to help, Mr. Blazey,” he said. The wonderful thing about him was that that wasn’t empty platitude. He truly was delighted to talk to me about chickens. Then, he looked down in thought. “Only, we don’t have chickensies…”

“Money. You can’t buy that many chickens without Headmaster Dumbledore’s permission.”

“Tubby is sorry–”

“No, none of that.” I pulled out a sack of galleons. If there was one thing I had in spades, it was good ol’ moolah. “Here, take this. Buy five hundred hens and fifty roosters. No, buy even more, as many as you think will fit here comfortably. You don’t have to do it right away, just in the next week or so. I’ll drop by once a day or so to help out.”

“No! Mr. Blazey doesn’t needs to be helping! Mr. Blazey gave Tubby the idea to help the castle!”

“Ah, but I called you because I wanted to learn about how food was prepared, Tubby. This is a part of learning,” I said gently. “You wouldn’t take a student’s learning opportunity, right?”

“W-Well…” he looked around with a conflicted expression before surrendering. “Tubby understands.”

“Good. You’re a wonderful elf, Tubby. And, can you not tell anyone about the vivarium? I want it to be a surprise.”

“Tubby understands. No one talks to elves but Mr. Blazey, anyway.”

“Thank you for this. I appreciate you.”

I left the Room of Requirement with a skip in my step. It was a shame, but Norberta wasn’t going to be staying in the vivarium. I could hardly let the metaphorical fox into the literal henhouse, after all.

Unfortunate, I would have loved to raise a dragon alongside Hagrid, but what did I really know about dragons, anyway? For all I knew, Norwegian ridgebacks like Norberta needed a true dragonflight, with older members of her species to teach her and prey to challenge her. 

The next step was to get roosters to crow on command. That… I didn’t know of any such charm, but it sounded like the kind of nonsense charm a trollish wizard would make just to piss off his neighbors. Perhaps Professor Flitwick would know something like this. If not him, then possibly Madam Pince or that joke shop in Hogsmeade.

But if I couldn’t find one, I’d have to return each day at the crack of dawn to do a bit of operant conditioning. A bit of patience and positive reinforcement could get me an army of fifty, crowing shitheads that never shut up so long as the snacks kept flowing. As for the snacks, I remembered seeing bugs in the owl treat catalog.

There was a lot of work to be done, but I was feeling pretty confident about my first move. Prep time was my superpower and I’d make sure to abuse every minute.

X

Quirinus Quirrell

Following the Dark Lord was never easy. My few moments of peace were when he fell dormant. I did not know if it was true sleep, or if souls needed sleep at all, but for those few hours, my body was my own.

And yet, this too was not a mercy. My body was my own, but my time belonged to Hogwarts. Being a professor was a thankless job, one I knew all too well. Even before I met the Dark Lord in the forests of Albania, I was the muggle studies professor.

I graded parchments, assigned homework, and brushed up on a subject I knew nothing about. Muggle studies was not defense against the dark arts. The two had zero overlap. And yet, here I was, stumbling through a curriculum I hadn’t studied since my own student days. This wasn’t what I imagined my life would be like as a dark wizard.

To make things easier on myself, I had all seven years learning about vampires. NEWT-level classes were learning counter-curses to the unique blood magics of the older vampire houses. Fifth years were studying for the OWLs. Third and fourth years were studying their mannerisms and ways to tell them apart from afar. First and second years were to write essays on their orally transmitted curses.

There were natural standouts in every grade, but first years held the Dark Lord’s interest. There was Violet Potter of course, but she was a comparatively mediocre student. Not stupid, but she put in no more effort than necessary. Compared to her, three others stood out to me.

The first was Leontes Granger, the mudblood know-it-all. He had an academically perfect parchment that simultaneously read like a call to action. It seemed he fully intended to embrace the mission of equality.

A doomed cause, if I ever saw one. There were just as many vampire “nobles” who considered humans to be little more than food as there were purebloods who saw vampires as evil monsters. 

There was Blaise Zabini, of course. It was the castle’s least-kept secret that he used his divination to assist him, though to what extent exactly was up in the air. I made a small game of pinpointing which parts of his essay were drawn from books that weren’t part of the first year syllabus. 

To both mine and the Dark Lord’s surprise, the third was Lyra Malfoy. Her work hadn’t been anything special in the first term, but that had changed recently. She participated more in class, demonstrated a great deal of knowledge, and wrote with polish she lacked. Other professors had noticed as well; even McGonagall reluctantly praised her newfound dedication.

That… That wasn’t right. Such a sudden rise in competence was unlike her. Her personality was too bombastic, too haughty. She was too self-assured of her own superiority to put in more effort. And like many children her age, she craved attention and validation. Had she always been this competent, she would not have hidden it.

The Dark Lord agreed. Her parents had been much the same in temperament. Lucius was competent, but by no means an academic genius. Narcissa was much the same, the prettiest of flowers, but no scholar.

‘Curious, is it not, Quirinius?’ the Dark Lord’s voice hissed in the back of my mind. His words had a sibilant undertone that promised immediate agony should I displease him in any way.

‘M-My lord? You are awake?’ I found myself stammering even in my thoughts, such was his presence.

‘I am. Now, where does this sudden spark of genius come from?’

‘She is suddenly far more intelligent than before. It could be that someone, perhaps Zabini, is cheating for her.’

‘No. What I feel from her is dark magic. Ah, what a fascinating girl she is. Just a first year, and already dabbling in the forbidden. Perhaps her ambition is greater than I first expected.’

‘Then, should I imperious her? Taking her as your thrall would be a fine way to announce your return to Lucius.’

‘Perhaps. Or perhaps, she will be a worthy servant, as her dear aunt had been. Dear Bella had always been so wonderfully cruel.’

‘What is to be done with her, my lord? The stone–’ I winced as a mind-numbing headache assaulted me.

‘The stone comes first. Lucius’ daughter is but a minor curiosity. There is no need to spend too much effort on her. However… call her in.’

‘As you wish, my lord. What shall I say to her?’

‘’Give her a permission slip to the restricted section of the library. Place a monitoring spell on it. I am curious to see what spelling she is learning.’

‘It may tell us what drives her as well. Her interests can be shaped upon your return, my lord.’

‘Yes. Let us see what she makes of this opportunity.’

‘I hear and obey.’

X

Lyra Malfoy

I left Professor Quirrell’s office with a permission slip in hand. Tom was right. With the right motivation, I could easily become the best in my generation. Soon, I’d prove myself worthy of the Dark Lord’s secrets.

And here was proof: Even Professor Quirrell recognized my progress and gave me permission to enter the restricted section. It would have been more meaningful had it come from Professor Snape, but I’d take it.

Tom said I was progressing quickly. Soon, he would tell me how to open the Chamber. I could only imagine the secrets long lost to history. And once I claimed it for myself, father would see that I’d been right to steal the diary. Something so precious belonged with me, not Zabini.

Author’s Note

Yes, we’re doing this. The vivarium is going to be filled with hundreds of chickens just so Blaise can plausibly get his hands on an army of roosters.

Voldemort can’t sense his horcruxes specifically. We know this because he didn’t know they’d been destroyed until Harry & co. were almost done. What he’s sensing in Lyra is the constant dark magic practice that Tom’s been spoonfeeding her.

Animal Fact: Roughly eighty percent of a sperm whale's diet is colossal squid. I know that I’ve talked about sperm whales before, but I wanted to mention this again because the implications are so wild to me.

Sperm whales are the biggest toothed whales, and arguably the biggest conventional predators on the planet. Any bigger and you have baleen whales that fill up on krill out of necessity. And, as best we can tell, these guys are fed almost entirely off chungus calamari.

Which means there are actually a fuck-ton of those things down there. Problem is, it's so dark, so cold, and so heavily pressurized that we just can't get any reliable equipment to film them. To this day, we've never filmed a live colossal squid. No fun fact paints a better picture of just how undiscovered the ocean really is than this to me.