Rise Of House Falken (Harry Potter Fan Fiction) - Chapter 45

My plans for this year were to continue the mastery studies that I had started last year. Once that was over I could move on to Healing, DADA and Duelling mastery studies.

One of the things I lacked was the experience battling in dangerous situations. This year provided a good opportunity to correct that.

With Voldemort hunting for Unicorn Blood in the forbidden forest, I could use this opportunity to hunt and clean up the Acromantula nest in the forest. Voldemort will be blamed for the hunt by Dumbledore and he would not search for the hunter. Acromantula were XXXXX rated beasts and very dangerous in large numbers. The large Acromantula nest so close to the school was a disaster waiting to happen and needed to be eradicated. The hunt would provide me with the experience battling in dangerous situations while also providing me with hundreds of thousands of Galleons worth of Acromantula parts. Acromantula parts, venom and silk were highly priced items. Sherry could easily sell the parts and web while I killed the spiders.

The next thing on my list was to prank the hell out of Quirrell to annoy Voldemort. I am going to make Voldemort regret coming to Hogwarts. The best idea was pouring a bottle full of pungent perfume on his turban every week. I think Voldemort will enjoy the smell. The DADA classroom was filled with heavy garlic odour and the perfume countered it making it somewhat bearable to sit inside the class. Marauders will not be involved for the pranks so others would think this was the work of some new pranksters since the marauders have always pranked in the open.

I also had to acquire the philosopher stone from the Mirror of Erised and keep it away from Dumbledore. I did not think he was mad enough to destroy something so valuable and it was possible he would keep it for himself. I was not planning on intervening in any of the events involving the Golden Boy and was going to let it play out like the books. It was my test for Harry to see if he was able to notice the manipulations in his life.

That is all what I had planned for the year.

So the days passed like any ordinary year. With Voldemort and Dumbledore roaming inside the castle I had to find another method to hide myself. They could easily see through disillusionment charm. I found a old worn out invisibility cloak in the Room of Hidden Things and started repairing it. The cloth material was still in good condition but the runes were damaged. It is good thing that I was near Master level in the subject. I redid the old runes and added some more runes to improve the functionality of the cloak. I added runes for anti-summoning and runes that made the cloak hide from Homenum Revelio charm. I also added runes that hid the magic under the cloak to hide myself from magic seeing eyes and glasses. After I was finished the cloak was perfect for me to sneak around the castle.

One day during my DADA class I took a great risk and tried Legilimency on Voldemort when Quirrell had his back towards me. I was overjoyed when I saw that in the spirit form his shields were very weak and I could easily bypass them. The memories were still neatly arranged in a mindscape and I could look through them easily. From then on my time was spent going through the vast amount of knowledge that Voldemort had acquired during the course of his life. By watching his memories in the same manner as I watched the educational Youtube videos in my past life, I was learning at a much faster rate. So now my DADA classes were the most fruitful time of my year.

Most important things to go through were his knowledge on Legilimency and Flying without a broom. I did not need the flying skill due to my animagus but I decided to learn the method since I wanted to know how he did that. I also went through and copied his wide knowledge of Dark arts and Rituals for future use. The process was lengthy and time consuming as I had to watch his memory of his practice and from that I had to understand the topic. Therefore I had to carefully pick the topics that were useful for me.

I also went through the memories of his life to know more about him. He lived in a poorly maintained orphanage and his early years were tough. The bullies liked to make his life difficult as he was an easy target due to his lack of friends or support from caretakers. The bullying went on till he found magic. It was accidental at first but after a few events he started using his magic to harm the bullies who made his life difficult. This made the children fear him and hate him more and led to more attacks on him. So he had to watch his back every time he was in the orphanage in fear of attacks.

When Dumbledore came and told him about Hogwarts he was overjoyed and thought that he would be able to escape the orphanage and his life would get better. But he was disappointed when after getting sorted into Slytherin he faced more bullying due to them not liking muggleborns. The bullying at school made him look into magic that could help him retaliate and protect himself. He quickly learnt spells and retaliated against his bullies. What he did not know was that Dumbledore was watching him every day ever since he had learned about his deeds at the orphanage and after he saw him retaliate against the bullies, Dumbledore called him in and reprimanded him.

This event made him paranoid. He found that Dumbledore was against him and Dumbledore along with the pureblood children together were a tough foe for him to face. This led him to research into ways to make him become stronger quickly leading him to the field of Dark magic. From then on as the years passed and his paranoia increased he started delving deeper into dark magic. He did not know the side effects of dark magic due to the absence of books on the topic at Hogwarts. Those books were hoarded by the purebloods and a muggle raised orphan like him could never get his hands on them. So he delved into dark magic and dark rituals without proper precautions. The side effects of dark magic made him crazy and more paranoid which caused him to fear of his life. He thought that Dumbledore was after his life and to avoid he delved into research to safeguard his life and avoid death. This led to him to Horcruxes.

The dark path could have been avoided if someone had taken him out of the difficult environment. But no one cared for him and did not hear his complaints about his difficult life at the orphanage. After making the first Horcrux in his fifth year, he became more evil and there was no going back after that. His life was now on a dark path forever. I did not feel too sorry for him. It were his decisions that made his life hard. He could have had a good life if he had faced the difficulties using different cunning decisions but he gave all that up due to his paranoia. Maybe it was the lack of good environment or the Gaunt family blood inside him that led him down this path but since he had become evil, he had to be killed.

I also searched for the positions and protections of his Horcruxes to make sure it was same as in the canon. The positions and protections were same but the protections in the cave and the shack were a little difficult. Since I knew the protections I could find ways to bypass them in a few months otherwise it would have taken years. I could bulldoze through them but that would alert Dumbledore and Voldemort about my actions. He did not know about the soul piece inside Harry’s scar. I stored the information away for future use.

He lacked good knowledge in fields other than Dark Arts. He was just above NEWT level in other fields. He had spent most of his life learning obscure dark magic from various countries and nothing else. So the knowledge I could gain from Voldemort was limited.

The days passed quietly without any incidents and soon it was the night of Halloween.