//------------------------------//
// Chapter 19:  The Chamber of Secrets RW 
// Story: The Girl who Didn't Just Live 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

The walk down the entryway to the main door to the Chamber of Secrets was fairly silent- then, right when Ginny was about to give the command to open the Snake Gate, there was a sharp cracking noise.  Lockhart’s wand-light went out like a light, while Lockhart suddenly stiffened and fell over backwards with a dull thump.
“What was that?” Ginny asked.
“That’s what happens when the Curse of Reversal decides it’s time for him to lose a year of his life,” Hailey answered promptly.  “He’ll be out cold for around half an hour, and when he wakes up, he won’t remember anything from the last year at all.”  She paused.  “That Curse also protects him against concussions or other injuries brought on by the fall whenever it activates- it’s one of a set of curses that are actually designed to rehabilitate their hosts rather than just punishing them, though it is one of the more cruel of them.”
“So that’s why he…”  Myrtle stopped.  “Come to think of it, am I immune to the Basilisk?”
“Yup,” Hailey answered.  “Madam Pomfrey was absolutely gobsmacked that I managed to apply a Blessing of Basilisk Immunity to such things as ghosts and gods.”  She snickered.  “So yes, you’ll be fine.”  She then drew something out of her pocket- a small device, it looked like.  Ginny didn’t immediately recognize it, but it was definitely something muggle.  “Philomena?”
Philomena appeared out of nowhere in a burst of flames, swooping forwards to land on Hailey’s shoulder with a soft trill, then rubbed her head against Hailey’s cheek.
Hailey chuckled, stroking her feathers for a second before offering the device.  “Do you think you can take this to Rita Skeeter?”  She tapped a button on the side.
Philomena trilled amusedly, took flight, grabbed the device in her talons, and vanished in a burst of flames.
Myrtle looked at her.  “Was that a cassette recorder?” she asked.
Hailey let out a snort of laughter while Ginny, unsure what she was referring to, opened the Snake Gate.  “No, that wasn’t a cassette recorder.  Technology has come a long way since the days of cassettes.  That was a fully electronic voice recorder- and I have it on good authority that Rita knows how to use one.”
Ginny burst into laughter as they stepped across the threshold, and both of them ignored her rapidly growing Astrium setup in the corner of the Chamber, save for the little robot drone that took off from it to light the way with its floodlight.





Rita Skeeter jumped when a phoenix suddenly appeared out of nowhere in her study to offer her a…  She paused as she accepted it.  Yes, this was a voice recorder.  She had one herself; they were incredibly useful for those times and places when quills would be inappropriate.  She looked up at the phoenix, which had landed on the side of her table, and was eying the recorder.  “Ahh…  May I pull the recording from it?” she asked.
The phoenix bowed its head.
So she turned to the other desk she had in her study, at which there was a particularly confusing muggle contraption called a ‘computer’.  There was a reason she’d purchased a muggle home when she’d last moved; it had electricity in it, which was necessary to run the computer that made it easy to organize and play back the recordings from these recorders.  It was already on; earlier that morning, she’d been browsing through the various recordings she’d harvested, looking for ideas on what to dig into next.  People always commented on her having it easy, but being a journalist- especially one as famous as she- was hard work.  She plugged the data cable- what ‘USB’ stood for she had no idea and really didn’t care either- into the recorder, then opened it up on the computer and copied the files off of it.  Finally, she unplugged it, and handed the recorder back to the phoenix.  “Thank you,” she told it.
The phoenix trilled amusedly, took flight, accepted the recorder back from her hand, and vanished in a burst of flame.
Then she turned back to the computer, put on her headset…  and opened the first file.
It was time to see what she’d just been given.
“Testing, testing.”  There was a click, her player hopped to the next file, and the same feminine voice returned.  “Okay, it’s working.  Hogwarts:  A History must be wrong- not that I didn’t already know that, I’m only sitting in front of a whole server rack right now.  Anyways, hello, Rita Skeeter.  If you’re anyone else, or if anyone else is listening, I’d advise you turn the recording off- I’ve done a pretty clever curse on the data itself, and it’ll do a lot of damage- your favorite, irreparable brain damage- to anyone other than Rita if they listen far enough to learn anything important, even if the recording has been transferred to another device.
“But, back to the topic at hand.  If you ever hear these recordings, something’s happened that I think you should know about, but there are some things you might hear in them which you MUST NOT tell anyone.  Like seriously.  If you ever tell anyone that me or my friends are Royals, or phoenix-bound- which some of us are- we will cheerfully hunt your Animagus ass down and kill you.  I mean seriously, between us, we’ve got at least one death god and one reincarnated dark lord- you do NOT want to annoy us, Royal or not.
“Aside from that, I’ll be frank.  As I’m recording this, it’s about mid-September, and Hogwarts has a total population of a little over four thousand students.  From what I’m told, if that number becomes public knowledge, society as we know it will collapse- alongside our ability to uphold the Statute of Secrecy.  So, with anything and everything you learn in these recordings, other than the stuff I just forbade, PLEASE consider the repercussions of exposing it to the world before doing so- I rather expect you don’t want to see how deadly modern witch hunts can be, even to a true witch or wizard.
“Anyways.  At the moment, it’s two weeks into the school year.  If you’re listening to this, it’s probably because we’re outing ‘Professer’ Gilderoy Lockhart as the fraud that he is, and possibly using the Chamber of Secrets as a tool with which to force him to expose his true self.  But who knows; times change, and if it’s not September of two thousand twenty two as you’re listening to this, they probably have.
“So, um…  Yeah, I believe that’s all the boilerplate you’ll need.  Just…  be careful, okay?  Don’t bring the wizarding world crashing down on everyone’s heads.
“Oh, and, I’m not worried about people finding out that there’s an anonymous Royal or Phoenix-Bonded at Hogwarts, just don’t give them an identity.  And ideally make it sound like there’s only one of either, both in the same person, rather than the actual three Royals, two of which are Phoenix-Bonded.”  There was a click- and another hop between files- then a second later, it sounded like someone was banging on a door, before the same feminine voice came, though sounding a little older than before, more…  recent.  “Professor Lockhart!” she yelled commandingly, and the pounding resumed.





“Welcome to the Chamber of Secrets,” Ginny told Hailey softly, leading the way down the massive, cavernous chamber filled with an ominous greenish gloom; she hadn’t spent any Astrium on relighting the space just yet, as all of her power was still focused on expansion.  The pillars were intricately carved to resemble groups of giant snakes holding up the distant ceiling, which was invisible in the light provided by the green Everburning Flames on each pillar.  “Luna’s probably at the end.”  She scowled.  “That’s where Salazar’s statue is- and the Basilisk inside it.  I haven’t walked down the Chamber like this in decades.”
“I wonder what Salazar needed an empty room of this size for,” Hailey muttered, as they walked steadily down it.
She shrugged.  “Beats me.  Sure is convenient to have a space this large for some of our other purposes, though.”  She paused.  “I’ll have to see about lighting it properly at some point.”  As she spoke, Phoebe flew down from her perch on top of the Void Weave Drive- which was about the size of a small car- to land on her shoulder…  and Philomena simultaneously returned with the recorder, giving it to Hailey before landing on her shoulder again.
Hailey chuckled, pocketing the recorder.  “Thank you, Philomena.  Did she like it?”
The phoenix trilled amusedly.
“Hangon,” Ginny said suddenly, sending her robot skittering forwards.  A massive statue loomed out of the gloom- and lying at its feet was a black-clothed figure.
Phoebe took off moments before Ginny burst into a run.  “Luna!” she cried.  “Luna, are you okay?”  She paused, sliding to a halt next to the girl…  who didn’t react at all.  “No, of course you’re not.”  She drew her wand and tapped Luna’s forehead with it, muttering a select incantation.
The results came back quickly.  Luna was being drained by the Horcrux in the Diary…  though it was nowhere near the point where it would threaten her friend’s life, nor even the point where she wouldn’t recover entirely on her own.
She sighed.  “I thought so.”
Then she looked up sharply, at the wall behind Salazar’s statue.
Right there, at eye level if she were standing, was an inscription that definitely hadn’t been there the last time she’d visited this end of the Chamber fifty years before.  Its appearance didn’t surprise her- rather, it was more that it was written in Psychic Script…  and had the accompanying psychic investment that meant that anyone could understand it, just like Psychic Speech.



E.V.E.
Obelisk Network Access Point
Novum Level Authorization Required.
System Interface Dormant.



Ginny stared at it for a second…  then laughed, ignoring the sudden urge to activate it as her Seed realized what it was as well.
“Something funny?” Hailey asked, the tone of her voice revealing just how unconcerned she was about what was going to happen.  Rather predictably; she rather doubted Hailey had missed her Astrium responding to her commands as they passed, forming a massive, turreted interstellar weapon that was trained on the statue’s mouth, waiting to annihilate the Basilisk as soon as it appeared.
She would have trained it on the Diary, or even used it to annihilate the Diary, but she wasn’t sure if it would work to destroy the Horcrux- or what sort of effect the weapon would have on the rest of her soul.
And of course, she didn’t want Luna to be in the blast radius when it vaporized a couple hundred pounds of flesh and stone.  She could teleport out of the way, and Hailey was Hailey…  but Luna would be vulnerable.
She glanced back at Hailey, then sighed, setting Luna back down again as she rose to her feet, spying the Diary’s projection standing against one of the pillars behind Hailey, holding what looked like Luna’s wand.  “Remember last summer, when I told you my Seed was pointing me at something unknown up in this area of the world?”
Hailey nodded.  “That’s it, isn’t it?”
She nodded.  “Curse Hogwarts’ wards for interfering with the tracking signal- if it didn’t, I would’ve walked over here and found it months ago!”  She sighed.  “Anyways, he’s behind you.”
Hailey and Myrtle both turned to look.
“Fancy seeing quite so many,” Tom Riddle mused, twirling Luna’s wand in his fingers.  “And no teachers.  Has the school run out or something?”
“No teachers?” Hailey asked, raising an eyebrow.  “Have you ignored our badges, then?”
“Badges that don’t mean anything,” Riddle observed.
Ginny raised an eyebrow.  “Badges that mean that Hailey here is the de-facto Defense Professor at the school,” she retorted.
He raised his eyebrow.  “They’ve fallen so low as to use a mere student as a Professor?”
Hailey shrugged.  “It’s better than the alternative.  He’s still unconscious in the entry tunnel, by the way.”
Riddle scoffed.  “Disappointing,” he grumbled.  Then his eyes shifted to Myrtle.  “And what are you doing here?”
Myrtle blinked.  “Me?” she asked.  “What are you doing here?”
“That’s Tom Riddle,” Ginny answered.  “The boy that killed you, preserved in an object known as a Horcrux.”
Riddle scowled.  “How do you know that?” he demanded.
Hailey shrugged.  “Same way she knew where to find the Chamber of Secrets, I expect,” she mused.  “But in any case, we don’t have all day.  Why did you set up this wonderful battlefield for our final showdown, if I may ask?”
He snarled.  “As if two phoenix-born could do anything against the power of Lord Voldemort,” he hissed.
Hailey raised an eyebrow.  “You’ve forgotten Myrtle.”
“As if a ghost could do anything,” Riddle laughed.
She raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, you might be surprised.  Myrtle, give him a good slap for me, please.”
Myrtle laughed, then floated forward and slapped him.
Even Myrtle seemed surprised when her slap actually connected, rather than passing straight through him.  “What the-?” she began, then drew back a fist and nailed him right on the nose.
Riddle, evidently not expecting a ghost of all things to get violent, was lifted a few inches in the air by her punch and flew backwards, Luna’s wand spinning in the air before it clattered to the floor.
Myrtle bent down to try the wand, but her hand just passed through it.  “Huh,” she muttered.  “But why him?”
“Probably because of what he is right now,” Hailey answered.  “He’s basically drawing the line between a ghost and a body, which incidentally makes him quite solid to ghosts, even if our attacks will go right through him.”
“Cool,” Myrtle observed, as Ginny used a summoning charm to pick Luna’s wand up, then turned back to Riddle.  “Now, you’re the one that extended my torture by condemning me to fifty years of ridicule, right?”
Riddle struggled to his feet and struck first…  but his fist passed straight through her.
Her answering uppercut flipped him over her head.  “Oh wow,” she observed.  “I’m not sure if I’m strong after fifty years or you’re just light.”
This time, Riddle struggled to his feet and ran.  He fled past Hailey and Ginny, to a pillar on the other side of the Chamber from the main entryway.
Myrtle walked after him.  “Oh come on,” she told him.  “I’m not done yet.”
Riddle winced, and looked up.  “Speak to me, Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”
There was a rumble as the statue’s job slid open.
In the very next instant, a massive, blinding beam of purple energy momentarily connected the turret, positioned right in front of the Snake Gate, with the back of the statue’s mouth.  It was so bright that it lit the entire cavernous chamber to a blinding glare- and then, it was gone.
A fraction of a second later, so small Ginny was certain it was strange that she could tell there was a gap at all, the sound of the blast reached her ears- and it was deafening.
At the same moment, Ginny felt the gut-wrenching twisting feeling in the ambient magic fields from a powerful spell being shattered- it was good to know that the E.V.E. Sequence Standard Anti-Capital-Ship Disintegration Cannon could destroy enchantments.





Professor Dumbledore gasped and stumbled to the wall of his office, clutching it hard as the whole Castle shook around him.  An earthquake?  At this hour?  And this was the strongest one he’d ever felt here at Hogwarts, especially through the earthquake wards!
He prayed the Castle wasn’t going to fall apart.





As Luna- who had been forced unconscious by the Diary- bolted upright in response to the noise of the blast, her scream completely inaudible against the shockwaves, fragments of Salazar’s statue started raining down all over the place.  Not a single one hit Hailey, Ginny, or Luna- in part, Ginny expected, because of Hailey, as her psionics weren’t strong enough to stop some of those pieces.
It felt like a small eternity later when the noise finally died down, and Ginny used her psionics to boost her natural regeneration, in case it had done damage to her hearing.  She still seemed to be hearing Riddle’s incoherent gasping, though, so the damage apparently hadn’t been nearly as bad as she had expected from so loud of a noise.
“Wh-Wh-WHAAAT!?” Riddle cried, staring up at the statue.
Ginny glanced up at it, to see that not just the head was gone, but the entire body as well- and there seemed to be a crater in the wall behind where its head used to be.  All that was left was the right foot and ankle, and the left foot, ankle, and calf.  Both knees were gone, along with everything above them.
“What happened?” Luna asked frantically, looking around wildly as she rose to her feet.  “Where am I?”  Then she spotted Riddle, gasped, and stumbled backwards, against Salazar’s left foot.  “Wha-!  He-  Riddle!  He-!”  She kicked something away from her foot.
“The Diary,” Ginny nodded, looking at it.  “Thought so.  You probably don’t know, Luna, but that diary is a Horcrux- an object containing a piece of Lord Voldemort’s soul.”
“And that’s-!?” Luna began, breaking off as she looked up at Riddle- moments before Riddle was shaken from his shock by Myrtle’s fist.
“That’s him, yes.  We just killed the Basilisk dead, so no need to worry.”
“With more than a little bit of overkill,” Hailey observed, looking up at the crater.
Ginny glanced up as well, drawing Luna’s attention and eliciting a second gasp.  “Yeah, a little bit,” she agreed.
“This place is huge!”
Ginny twitched at the sudden call, and looked- but it was just Hermione walking up the Chamber and looking around, her wand drawn and in her hand.  “It is,” she agreed.
“It’s absolutely insane,” Hermione continued.  “What on earth did he need a Chamber this large for?  Was he trying to store the Black Lake down here?  Or to make enough space to build a whole castle?”
“Good question,” Hailey observed.  “Anyways, Riddle.”  She turned to where Myrtle had gotten Riddle on the floor and was cheerfully pummeling him, apparently delighted at having something she could interact with, even if it was only her enemy.  “Why did you choose this as the venue for your final battle?”
Myrtle stopped her punching, but didn’t stop pinning him to the ground with her knees; it seemed like she could interact with him when she wanted to, but not interact with him when she didn’t want to, preventing him from offering any sort of resistance.
“Wh-What?”  Riddle began.  “Can you do something about this crazy- Ahh!”
Myrtle had punched him again, completely ignoring his arms as they flailed about in her torso, trying desperately to push her off.
“Mmm, no,” Hailey decided, walking over to bend down next to him.  “How about this:  You answer my question, and not only will she not punch you, but Ginny will stop torturing you.”
“Torturing me?” Riddle asked.
Ginny raised her wand to point at the Diary.
“Crucio.”
Riddle screamed.
Luna flinched, but Ginny only held the spell for a few seconds.
“Oh wow, that was effective,” Myrtle observed.  “What was it?”
“An Unforgivable Curse,” she answered simply.  “So, ahh, mind you never use it on another human being, that’s an instant life sentence in Azkaban.”
Myrtle looked down at Riddle.  “Uh…”
“He’s a Horcrux, not a human,” she answered.
Myrtle shrugged, then knocked one of Riddle’s teeth out.  The tooth fizzled briefly before it disappeared.  “Oh hey, I can injure him!”
Hailey chuckled and looked down at Riddle.  “So, are you going to answer my question?”
“Are you asking why I set the Basilisk on three mudbloods and that squib’s cat?”
Hailey looked at Ginny, and gave a short nod.
Riddle screamed.
“No slurs like that M word on my watch,” Hailey told him sternly, as he recovered.  “And you know I’m not asking why you attacked the muggleborn.  I’m asking why you dragged a pureblood deep into this Chamber with the apparent intent to kill her.”
There was a pause.  “I-!” Riddle began.  “I had grown strong enough I could consume her and become independent,” he muttered.
She raised an eyebrow.  “And that new message?”
“Fearmongering.”
Hailey snorted.  “You really never do know when to quit, do you?  Not until you died.”  She glanced up at Myrtle, who gave him a quick one-two, forcing him to spit out another broken tooth.  Myrtle seemed quite delighted by her ability to injure Riddle, and Ginny found herself hoping the girl would channel that delight into less…  violent avenues after reincarnation.
Then Hailey looked up at Ginny.  “That’s all I wanted to ask him.  You?”
Ginny shrugged.  “I kinda hate to take Myrtle’s punching bag away from her, but this horcrux does need destroying.”
“I don’t have anything,” Hermione sighed.  “I’d say he’s not worth the effort of killing him, if he weren’t so capable of manipulating others to get his evil done.”
Ginny looked at Luna, who merely shook her head.
Then she conjured all the Raw Astrium she had stored in its energy form in her body, and morphed it into a Tempered Astrium sword with a Forged Astrium cutting edge.  She then slid her wand into its hilt, and raised it high over the diary.  “Goodbye, Tom,” she told him.
Myrtle punched his lights out.
Ginny snorted.  “Avada Kedavra,” she incanted darkly, as she thrust the blade deep down inside the Diary- all the way down to the hilt.
Riddle vanished with a faint pop…  then Ginny let out a blood-curdling scream not too dissimilar to Riddle’s under the Cruciatus Curse, and collapsed…  into Hailey’s arms, as Hailey had moved across the chamber far too quickly, forcing Philomena to catch herself from a sudden freefall.  Phoebe had a similar panic reaction, and they both swooped around to land on Hailey’s shoulders while Hailey supported Ginny in her arms.
“Ginny!” Hailey asked.  “Are you okay?  What was that?”
Ginny closed her eyes and just…  breathed for the first minute or so.  When she opened them again, Hermione, Luna, and Myrtle were all crowded around her as well.
“Are you okay?” Hermione asked.  “He didn’t curse you or anything, did he?”
She let out a weak chuckle.  “No, he didn’t,” she told her.  “What happened…  I destroyed the Horcrux.”  She paused.  “Destroying a Horcrux damages the soul that created it,” she informed them.  “Of the three ways to destroy one, the Killing Curse- it’s an unforgivable too- is the gentlest to the surviving portion of the soul…  and also safest to handle.”
“Then you could have told us about this ahead of time,” Hermione complained.  “It’d be a lot less of a surprise.”
Ginny tried to avert her eyes, but no matter which way she turned them, all she managed to do was meet another set of worried eyes.  She sighed, and settled for closing her eyes again.  “Okay, okay.  Soul damage like this can’t be magically healed, you have to let it heal the normal way- which will take a couple weeks.  If another horcrux is destroyed during that same interval, it’ll result in the collapse and death of the soul- the kind of death that even the Obelisk Network can’t protect me against.”  She opened her eyes, and looked from one concerned face to another.  “But even so, I am Lord Voldemort.”
Nobody moved.  Nobody seemed to be all that surprised- even though Luna was the only one that already knew.
“So?” Hailey asked.
“S-So?” she stuttered.
“Yeah, so?” Hermione asked, shrugging.  “I guessed that a long time ago.”
Ginny let out a sigh and looked at Myrtle.
Myrtle blushed silver.  “I, ahh, didn’t connect the dots, I guess, but it doesn’t surprise me.  And it doesn’t change anything- you’re very much not that idiot we just beat up, I don’t care if he technically shared a soul with you or even was your past or not, that’s not who you are.”
There was a pause.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Myrtle,” she muttered.  “The Lord Voldemort of old would never have even dreamed of helping you reincarnate.  Speaking of which, we’ve got an option- we’ll have a couple days to act on it if you like it.”  She looked at Hailey.  “It still doesn’t change the fact that I killed Myrtle, and your parents, Hailey.  Past life or not.”
Hailey shrugged.  “So what?”
“So what?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.  “A number of murders so large that it got reported worldwide on muggle news is ‘so what’?”
Hailey shrugged.  “There was still news to report it,” she told her.  “You’re doing a lot better than I did.”
There was silence for several seconds.
“Than…  you did,” Ginny mirrored.
“Yes,” Hailey nodded.  “You won’t find records of it; I murdered the whole multiverse long before this universe was created.  Before any of the current universes were created.”  She paused.  “Hmm…  You know, there’s a pretty well-known number, at least in muggle circles:  A total estimate for the number of atoms in the universe.”
“About ten to the power of eighty,” Hermione recited instantly.
“Yeah, that number,” Hailey agreed.  “Now, take that number, and square it.  Then square it again, and again, and again, about a thousand times.”
“That’s a pretty big number,” Hermione agreed.
“Pretty big number?” Myrtle asked, tilting her head.  “Wouldn’t it have, like…  lots of digits?”
“So many that the number of digits it has is itself a three hundred and three digit number,” Hailey informed her with a nod.  “Incidentally, that means there aren’t enough atoms in this universe to calculate or store the full number in raw form.”  She sighed.  “That’s the number of universes in this multiverse right now.”
“I’d say you didn’t do too bad either if there’s so many left,” Ginny observed.
Hailey laughed.  “Take that insane number.  Raise it to the power of itself.  Then take that new number, and raise it to the power of itself, and repeat, a few quadrillion times.”
“I’m not even going to try calculating that one,” Hermione observed.
Hailey nodded.  “A very, very big number- so large it’s not possible to properly describe its magnitude in this universe, forget the English Language.  Yet, it’s still nowhere near large enough to even hope to represent the total number of universes in this multiverse before I murdered them all.”  She paused.  “Then I happened.  I destroyed every last one of them, killed every last one of the countless lives that came from each one.  Well…  except one:  Me.”  She paused again.  “I reduced that total universe count all the way down to zero, and in so doing, became the single oldest being in the entire multiverse at the young age of eighteen.  I would know, I killed the rest.”
All four of them stared at her in silence.
Then Hailey chuckled.  “I suppose we do share one thing, Ginny.  In my past life, before I seeded the multiverse and reincarnated…  I was male as well.”  She chuckled.  “I also deliberately suffered personality death in between, though, so I’m not sure that it counts.  But anyways.  When I was first born…  I was a weak little child, with only one power, without some of what even the muggles of this world have.”  She smiled.  “Yes.  I was unbelievably weak, and fragile…  Yet, I had one power, and one power that I still have:  I would permanently gain the powers and strengths of anything I killed.”  She sighed.  “Once I discovered that…  I went on a killing spree.  Became a megalomaniacal evil overlord, sought power, and destroyed.  Did whatever I needed to to kill anything that stood in my path.
“My first god, I killed by atomizing an entire star system with a flick of my wrist.  My first multiversal goddess, I killed by shattering the universe she happened to be in.”  She sighed.  “Then of course, at the time, this was the only interesting multiverse across the entirety of the Omniverse, so all the Omniversal deities were visiting, having fun being ‘reborn’ in a particular universe.
“When I destroyed that entire sector of the Multiverse with a wave of my hand- because I was that powerful…  they were killed too.”  She sighed.  “The thing that allowed me to grow that powerful…  The next world over from my original birth world- in planets, it was a spacefaring civilization- had a unique twist to the usual ‘alpha of the pack’ concept.  That was to say, they weren’t just pack leaders- no.  These wolves- quite similar to wolves on this world- actually had two male genders, differentiated by their magic.  One of them, the so-called ‘Beta Males’, had minor magic powers.  They could use them themselves…  but on a powerfully magical world like that one, where deer were deadly, herbivorous predators, they were largely helpless.
“The other of the two, called the ‘Alpha Males’...  They could freely use the powers of any Beta Males in their pack, at double the power those Betas could accomplish themselves.  These wolves were mostly hunted to extinction before I ever got there- but there were enough left.  After that…  Every few days, my powers become about a million times more powerful, without limit.  As a result, I grew in power so fast that before the gods and goddesses realized what was going on, I had surpassed them and was preparing to kill them.”  She sighed.  “Then, in what seemed like no time, I was the only thing alive.
“As I’m sure you can imagine, I floated about for quite a while, simply getting stronger off of those wolves’ stolen powers…  and eventually, I realized the gravity of what I had done, and started trying to kill myself.  After failing so many times that you wouldn’t believe, I used a snap of my fingers- such as I could, with three hands and eight fingers each, but that was just what I was.  Anyways, I used a snap of my many fingers as a focus to curse the entire multiverse to ensure that no creature such as I would ever form again, that no one creature or even civilization would ever gain the power to do what I did.
“A second set of curses and enchantments were set to guide me to personality death and resurrection in a form that would be beneficial, rather than harmful, to Multiversal society…  then I laid the groundwork for just one single universe, then placed myself way out in the Void and isolated myself to assist with the whole personality death thing.
“Cue so many years that the words don’t exist in the English language.  That one universe went through about a hundred cycles before it collapsed and died, during which it spawned just five child universes.  Each of them went through their own series of cycles, spawned children, and died.
“And so on…  until we get to today, with the number of universes we have now meaning a whole new universe is born somewhere every few nanoseconds at the most, despite their almost stupendously long lifecycles.”  She smiled.  “I achieved personality death many, many trillions of universal cycles ago, but the magic waited to reincarnate me until now because this cycle is the first one in which multiversal civilization has appeared.”  She sighed.  “Once the said civilization appears…  it’s bound to stick around for multiple cycles, unless it kills itself or encounters something that kills it.  Each universe goes through its own cycle, after all, and they’re only rarely in sync- or even the same speed as one another, so any given multiversal civilization merely has to survive long enough in the Void to see multiple cycles.  The Multiverse doesn’t cycle, so provided nothing like me appears, any given immortal being could conceivably live truly forever.”  She paused, looking at Ginny.  “And that is why Voldemort is ‘so what’.”
“Scary,” Hermione observed, not looking scared at all.
Hailey chuckled.  “I can do scary if you want,” she informed her.  “I am, after all, a death god.”
Myrtle snorted.  “Yet you’ve never come to rule the ghosts,” she observed.
She shrugged.  “There’s a reason my ‘make a good person’ magic has been doing its damndest to keep me out of the political eye,” she informed her.  “I don’t need nor want political power.  All a political career can do at this stage of my reincarnation is destroy everything I spent so long creating.”
“So…  Have powers that could destroy universes tried to appear since, or…?”  Hermione trailed off uncertainly.
She chuckled.  “Yes.  Quite a few of them, actually- but they’re allowed to exist.  The enchantment only blocks them from falling into the possession of anything that might misuse them.  That means no civilization has ever had one, with only one exception it seems, because bureaucracy always manages to land some moron that would misuse them in power- and that very, very few builders have made them and managed to actually keep them.”  She paused.  “I think that total is zero, actually, thanks to ‘rogue’ AIs that saved the universe from their supposed masters- or ‘simple’ coincidences resulting in death of the creator and/or destruction of the device.”  She shrugged.  “It’s not many that would build an apocalypse device and not use it, and even fewer with the resources to do so.”





It took several minutes before Ginny recovered the strength to stand again.  There was a part of her that wished that destroying a horcrux wouldn’t injure her soul so much- but as she’d told her friends, a quick, clean severance by Killing Curse was the gentlest way, and caused the least damage.  Destroying the Diary with Basilisk venom would have knocked her out for weeks- and Fiendfyre, the roughest way to destroy a horcrux, would put her in a coma for as much as a year.
But, once she had stood, she’d immediately turned to the Obelisk buried in the wall…  and quirked a small smile as her Seed acknowledged its presence but didn’t try to urge her to activate it.  It had, as soon as it had realized what she was looking at earlier, infodumped all of the connection and activation information…  and also explained why it hadn’t done what it was designed to, and simply taken control to activate it automatically:  It had detected a clear and present danger.  As such, it had given her the urge to activate it, but it hadn’t actually done it, because it wanted her to make an informed decision about whether it was safe or not.
Yet now, with the danger removed, it was no longer urging her to activate it, and it wasn’t activating it either.  Instead, it was merely acknowledging its presence…  and ignoring it.
Which was strange.
Had the destruction of the Horcrux somehow damaged it?  She tried sending it the activation command- and it immediately resisted her.  Activation process may be dangerous with the present injured state, it warned her, and asked if she was sure while she let out a small snort of laughter.  It thought her weakness was physical for some reason, rather than spiritual, and believed that the movements and energies it would need to demand from her body would do potentially crippling damage, causing the activation to fail.
She felt for her wellspring…  and, just like her muscles, she could feel its full, coiled strength waiting patiently to be released, even if the damage to her soul meant that she couldn’t control either one with much strength at all…  or at all for her magic.  She was going to be completely without her magic for almost three whole days, simply because her soul would recognize that it would be too dangerous to unleash any of her magic, as it wouldn’t be able to control how much, nor the amounts that would emerge.
Her psionics were a different story.  As near as she could tell, since they’d been learned by only the parts of her that were living in her body and not split to the Horcruxes, they were still at full power, fully available to her with no restrictions and no risk.
So, whatever her Seed thought, activating her Obelisk posed no danger whatsoever.
“Girls?” she asked quietly.
“Hmm?” Hailey asked, glancing up at the Obelisk.  “Oh, is it calling out to you again?”
Hermione looked curiously between the two of them, then up at the wall, and spotted the Obelisk’s text, before blinking.  “Is that an Obelisk?” she muttered.
Myrtle and Luna merely looked between them, their brows furrowed in confusion.
Ginny let out a soft chuckle.  “Yes, that’s an Obelisk,” she told them.  “And no, Hailey, it’s actually not calling out.”  She shrugged- or at least, as much of one as she could manage.  “It thinks that activating it will hurt me- but it won’t.  Well…  unless you count the psionic backlash of connecting to an Obelisk Network that already has some eight thousand addresses; in my current state, there’s a small chance that’ll be enough to knock me out for a couple minutes, and it’ll definitely be enough to knock me down.”  She sighed.  “And to be honest, I’d like to get it over with sooner rather than later.  For one, I’ll have access to all the newest blueprints.”
“For two, you’ll have a second source of information, I expect,” Hailey mused.
“Eight thousand addresses?” Hermione asked.
Ginny sighed.  “Knowing that the very first one on the network is the zeroth address, I’ll be the eight thousand, three hundred and nineteenth.”
“So, it’s already got eighty-three nineteen addresses,” Hailey observed.  “Unless something anomalous happened.”
“How do you know that?” Hermione asked.
“Because that Obelisk, when I activate it, will reach across the worldwall- and target a very specific Fleet at a very specific point on a very specific layer of a higher-dimensional space-time continuum, and that’s how many it’s scheduled to have at that point, according to the designation number encoded into my Seed.”  She paused.  “I mean yes, it’s probably possible for it to be off by one or two, but still.”
Hailey chuckled, then reached forward to put a hand on Ginny’s shoulder.  “Go for it, then,” she told her.  “We’ll catch.”
She took a deep breath.  “Alright then, here goes.  It’ll probably look a bit weird.”  She sent the activation command to her seed, then confirmed it.
Are you really sure?
She confirmed it again.
Are you really, REALLY sure?
“Stupid triple authorization override,” she grumbled aloud, and confirmed it the third time, ignoring Hailey, Hermione, and Myrtle’s snickers.
This time, it took.
The moment it did, her mind went blissfully blank.  No pain, no thought, nothing, just calm, healing peace.
Ginny’s body was another matter.  Her Seed spent about two seconds, having her simply stand unmoving, while it took control of her psionic and magical potential as well- it was going to be using them as the communications medium with which to reach out to the Obelisk, since it lacked any sort of remote communications capability…  and the Obelisk wouldn’t be listening for any sort of wireless transmission anyways, or it’d have used the Obelisk she’d already installed before she’d ever boarded the train to Hogwarts.  As it was, it had spent almost a month after that installation restructuring itself to accept two separate Obelisks; unless this one malfunctioned for some reason, the Sequence Link duty could not be offloaded onto one that she had created herself…  and it was against protocol to allow her to link a foreign network- such as the one she’d set up at Hogwarts- with that of the Sequence without prior authorization.  Not that it believed she wanted to link the two networks in the first place- it was fairly certain she hadn’t realized this one even existed until after she’d built her own.
Finally, it began the connection process.  This started with making eye contact with the engraving and projecting her psionic and magical energies at it to power the new Obelisk.  This would have the effect of making her eyes look like purple spotlights to any outside observers- and while protocol did have something to say about such, Hailey, Hermione, Luna, and Myrtle, as her friends, were exceptions.  Besides, she had used the triple-auth override, so limits like that were ignored anyways; she was the supreme authority on that particular matter.
So with the basic matter of the new Obelisk’s operating power taken care of, it was time to actually initiate the Obelisk’s startup sequence.
“Emergent.  Virtual.  Explorer,” she spoke, in Psychic Speech.  Her voice was calm and emotionless, like a machine- but that’s what the Seed was, really.  With each word, one letter of the abbreviation at the top of the inscription glowed purple as well.
That was the Obelisk’s startup sequence complete- the device was now ready to receive instructions.  The next step was to identify itself, after which it would be able to switch to a lower level communications scheme to authenticate with.
“Eve unit eight three one nine, commencing link up,” she stated calmly.
The bottom line of the inscription glowed purple, then promptly changed from ‘System Interface Dormant’ to ‘System Interface Activated’.  Her Seed then waited patiently while the Obelisk did some internal processing- probably loading its side of the authentication handshake- before the line above it, ‘Novum Level Authorization Required’, glowed to indicate it was ready for authentication.
“Transmitting authentication codes,” she informed the room calmly.  Her Seed immediately initiated the authentication handshake by way of psionic communication; her side of it had been loaded in memory from the very beginning…  but her Seed had also been initialized over twelve years before, before it had even bound itself to her.  To an outside observer, the purple light coming from both her eyes and the inscription would seem to flicker a little, provided their senses were fast enough to keep up with it.
The authorization message in the inscription changed as well.  ‘Authorization Accepted.  Novum Level Access Confirmed.’
Finally, authorization was complete, and the Obelisk could be transported to its installation location.
“Commencing Sequence Link,” both units stated- one through Ginny’s voice, the other replacing the ‘System Interface Active’ message.  The installation went smoothly throughout the verbal statement- and, as she finished speaking, installation was completed and the Obelisk reached across the worldwall.
This handshake was near-instant, as it was by Void Tether Link to a receiver that had been expecting it rather than by a rudimentary psychic pulse designed to be detectable through any sort of interference, and her Seed released control of her body the moment it began.
Ginny collapsed.
Hailey and Hermione caught her.  “Ginny?”
Ginny blinked a few times, and shook her head a little, even as some part of her mind immediately reached into her Seed’s upload queue- it was quite long all of the sudden- and into the Sequence Database to mark almost her entire identity file as ‘Need To Know’, so nobody else would know any more than her name and appearance without talking to her, or having the authority to override or bypass her data classification.  “Huh- What?  Oh, sorry.”  She rose to her feet.  “The…  The psychic feedback.  As expected.  Thank you.”
Hailey nodded.  “No problem.  Do you need us to carry you, or…?”
Ginny paused, looking down at her hand.  “Huh?  Oh, um…  No.”  She sat down on the floor.  “Sorry, I’m…  I’m downloading a bunch of information.”
The silence drew on for about a minute, during which Myrtle knelt next to her and the other three knelt around her.
“Okay,” Ginny muttered.  “I think that’ll about do it.”  She sighed.  “Um…  We’ll probably want to wait another few minutes.  I should have enough physical strength back to look like nothing happened after as little as half an hour.  Less, if I cheat with psionics.”  She paused.  “And while we’re here, Hermione…  now that I’m connected, we’ve suddenly got tons of options as far as your biosleeve is concerned.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow.  “Biosleeve?”
She shrugged.  “That’s one of the names the Eve Sequence has applied to biological bodies other than your first one,” she answered.  “Specifically, the ones you can just slip in and out of like a sleeve- which is what I’m making for you.”  She paused.  “I can make it biologically identical to your original body except for the bare minimum to make it a biosleeve- to let you slip into it, that is.  I can also remodel the biofab with a blueprint I didn’t have yesterday and restart the process to make the whole process about a hundred times faster.  Or if you want, we can make it a cyborg.  And after what happened here…”  She glanced up at the crater.  “I think I’d rather have something smaller available next time something happens, so I’ll offer you a more…  well, combat-oriented synthsleeve right away, if you’d like.  No, you wouldn’t notice the difference, generally- unless something happened, of course.”
Hermione paused, her jaw articulating up and down as she thought.  “Let’s…  how fast could you do the biothing?”
“We’d be looking at around two weeks, including time to remodel the biofab, starting…  probably tomorrow morning.”  She sighed.  “The faster model uses a lot more expensive Luminous Astrium.”
She rubbed her chin.  “So I’d get it something like the day after the Hogwarts Express took me home for summer,” she muttered, then sighed.  “Nah, leave it.”  She paused.  “No need to change the modification blueprint either, I think.”
There was a brief pause.
“I don’t think it’s ever told you stuff that readily,” Hailey observed.
“It hasn’t,” Ginny agreed.  “And while yes, it has infodumped everything else it’s got, I now have a direct connection to a much larger database that tells me all these things if I ask.”  She smiled.  “I did notice the Seed blueprint is in there, but I don’t have access.  Locked behind Oracle rank, and there’s no chance in the universe I’m going to get that.”
“Speaking of, what’s the Novum authorization and stuff?” Myrtle asked.
“Oh, that?”  She looked at the wall where the Obelisk had been; the inscription had disappeared once the process completed.  “Novum…  was my rank in the Eve Sequence, before I found that.  But as soon as I turned it on, I got promoted to Tribune.”  She smiled.  “I’m not sure it means much, beyond data access- not that there’s much locked to anything higher than Tribune- and command hierarchy in the event of a Fleet action.”
“So…  Sequence, eh?” Hailey asked, grinning at her.
“Er…  That’s what it’s called, yes,” Ginny answered.  “Why?”
“Hmm,” Hailey muttered, rubbing her chin.  “Does the name…  Null Star ring a bell?”
Ginny tilted her head.  “The Null Star?  That’s Zero’s ship- the flagship of the Sequence.  Is that…?  What?”
Hailey didn’t stop giggling.
“I said What, Hailey.”
Hailey stifled her giggles.  “Sorry, it’s just…”  She took a deep breath, and let it out.  “Remember when I was talking about apocalypse devices, and how no civilization has ever had one, with only one exception?”
“Yeah?” Ginny asked, her head tilt mirrored by Hermione, Luna, and Myrtle.  “Why?”
Hailey grinned.  “Because the Sequence is that exception,” Hailey told her.
Ginny blinked.  “Huh?  Uh…”  She paused.  “Is it because the whole thing is like a huge family of all girls?”  She paused again.  “With, uh, a couple boys sprinkled in via the Twin Bond Protocol, but even then, they’re not technically part of the Sequence, despite…”  She trailed off, and sighed.  “You know what I mean.”
Hailey shrugged.  “Maybe.  Who knows, in the end- but the Sequence wouldn’t misuse them.  Pretty important, I suppose, since it’s composed of them.”
“C-Composed-?” Ginny gasped.
Hailey nodded.  “Yes.  The Eve Seed used by the Sequence, paired with just the blueprints in its ROMs and not counting the ones stored on the Sequence archives, is considered an Apocalypse Device.”  She paused.  “Admittedly, it’s one of the slower Apocalypse Devices out there, but it does qualify as one- and once it gets itself established by forming an Eve, it’s incredibly difficult to stop, even on its own.”
“...  Ahh,” Ginny muttered vaguely.  There was a second of silence, then she blinked.  “Oh, sorry, Mom was saying hi.  Er…  Sequence Mom.  Er…  You know what I mean.”
Hailey giggled.  “I do.”
“You have two moms now?” Myrtle asked.
“Three, actually.  Two of which are alive, and one of which is younger than me.”