Rehabilitation 12.2: Letting In
"Upon a wall of metal in a place where no one had come for centuries, I found written the claim that some Atlanteans foresaw their world's end, and sought to forge a device of great power to avert the inevitable catastrophe. If that device had been completed, the story claimed, it would have become an absolutely stable existence that could withstand the channeling of unlimited magic in order to grant wishes. And also – this was said to be the vastly harder task – the device would somehow avert the inevitable catastrophes any sane person would expect to follow from that premise."
-Professor Quirrell, standing behind the Mirror, HPMoR Chapter 109
"Expecto Patronum."
At the result of his attempt, he felt a sudden, biting depression...
Two depressions, actually, in his life and in his magic. Two subtractions, two dips that he knew would not naturally return.
And yet, the sheer amount of relief and exultation going through him were more than enough consolation.
After the white glow surrounding Luna faded, a warm red glow replaced it, the result of his wordless Vitalis Revelio. She was breathing again, though weakly, much like Celestia.
"Can I look now?" Twilight asked. "Did it work?"
Not yet, he thought, for there was still work to be done.
He cast a wordless tempus to note the exact time, then took Luna away to the Stone's temporary storage location, though it was not his current objective. He retrieved the Cloak of Invisibility and put it over her unconscious form.
The Cloak should be able to hide from Tirek's gaze and power, given that it already had. His first tactic will be to enter Tirek's range under a device that Mr. Potter proved capable of hiding its wearer from magic draining effects, among other things.
Riddle is unwilling to risk any other powerful devices in this attempt, just in case Tirek proves capable of draining them through the Cloak. He had once composed a list of Horcrux candidates, but that list is now useless, and he shall have to improvise. Which leaves the question of what object to use, if no powerful devices are available… what object will be the most safe…?
Earlier…
"Most ponies are filled with useless magic. Some alicorns aren't even worth the bother. Love. Ugh. What a pointless talent. Is yours?"
There was a bright flash and a surge of power in the distance.
"I think you mean to ask," his past self voiced from a ways away, "is hers."
It was only on this second pass of Twilight's ascension that Riddle finally noticed what should have been obvious to him as soon as Twilight shared the premise for her sacrificial ritual.
Unfortunately, his theory would not benefit him directly. He suspected Twilight's ritual, if performed by any other wizard or pony, would fail. Either because they do not have the Mirror's direct support, or because there is already an Alicorn of Magic now, thank you very much. Only one is needed, let alone possible, or so he suspects. Or perhaps the ritual requires the unique circumstance of wanting unlimited power, needing unlimited power, but not for any selfish desires – the key to alicorn ascension is, after all, sharing one's unique magical discovery with the world. Keeping it to yourself is an excellent way to stay at the initial alicorn level – no ethereal mane, just like Mr. Silver.
Riddle did not have much time to devote to thoughts like this at the moment, but even still, even if it was not to his benefit, he took a moment to appreciate the poetry of this potentially historical moment.
By fully eliminating her own bounds, by sacrificing them on the altar of a ritual intended to grant her the means to wield infinite power, Twilight Sparkle finally achieved what the Atlanteans set out to achieve so long ago: as Alicorn of Magic, her body can now, theoretically, withstand the channeling of unlimited magic. With that power having been instilled in a living creature bound by unbreakable Vow not to destroy the world or risk its destruction (for that, too, Twilight had requested for herself as she got further into her research), perhaps the inevitable catastrophes associated with that insane premise might be averted after all.
After so long, after so many centuries, the impossible goal of the Mirror's creators may have just come to pass.
The sharp bang drew him from his brief musings back to the task at hand. It also signaled the moment to begin.
"Was that supposed to do something, whelp? I will deal with you next."
Behind and beneath Tirek's massive frame, close enough for the ritual to take and far enough to apparently avoid detection, Riddle tried not to pay attention to the scene he'd already seen. With the whole operation invisible save the magic itself, which will hopefully be blocked from Tirek's line of sight by the overhanging roof and wall of a Ponyville cottage, Riddle wove the patterns of his great creation into the air.
"My patience wears thin. Or perhaps you do not believe I mean it. Here. A taste of what's to come, if you do not submit."
Squelch.
It was hard to focus through that, but he managed. It helped that, despite being in his pony form once more, his inner-phoenix was not objecting to what he was doing. Mi Amore Cadenza's Special Talent, on the other hoof, hurt just about as much as it helped. The pain of witnessing that past scene flared more intensely than it otherwise might have, but the soothing thought of his next act kept him calm.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
As the green death flew from his past self's horn, he focused on the Horcrux he wanted to make.
"More foolishness? Pathe-"
The Killing Curse connected, and his third great creation in Equestria was complete, and the emergency was over. But even if he had been the type to cheer, he received not a moment's reprieve.
To say that things went wrong at the moment of the ritual's completion wouldn't quite be the truth. Things went weird. Even by his standards.
Just like when he first added troll and unicorn to his pony self so long ago, he found himself forcibly relocated to the Astral Plane, accompanied by a surge of energy.
"Riddle?" asked a familiar voice, one that made his eyes snap around and meet a blearily blinking Luna, mane still a mundane blue, coat still greyer than its usual midnight black, but otherwise conscious and well. Apparently the same magic that brought him also brought her, and innervated her while it was at it.
"Why is your mane pink?" she asked. "And why does it hurt to look upon in a completely different way from your previous ethereal mane?"
After a pause of self-examination, he saw that his mane was indeed an eye-sore: a warm aurora of pulsing pink light. And unlike his last ethereal mane, the one he could only reliably see in the astral plane, this current one did look wrong to his own eyes. Like a puzzle piece jammed into another that didn't fit, the two pieces so completely different in size and color and shape and nature that it looked plain wrong. Like trying to take a piece from a three-dimensional sculpture puzzle-box and jamming it into the 'show your work' section on a math problem. Or like seeing a patch of snow-covered forest in the middle of a hot summer day. The brain automatically goes 'wrong'. 'Error'.
A glance to his (Cadence's) cutie mark showed the blue crystal heart visibly beating, now encased by an outline of a shield.
As for why they looked that way… "For the same reason your mane is not ethereal at all," he answered Luna's question.
She gasped and looked at her mane, her eyes widening in fearful shock.
"Which is to say extremely complicated reasons," he continued. He cast a mental tempus. "Come. I believe Twilight can help with this situation. Will you allow me to teleport the two of us with phoenix travel, so that we do not return to our original departing location? And follow my instructions exactly for the next few minutes? I know it may be confusing, but no matter what you hear or see or believe about the recent past, please bear with me for the rest of the day."
She met his gaze. "I have born with you for years. One day is no time at all."
"This may be especially trying," he warned. "But thank you."
"I-" Twilight Sparkle stammered. "I- I-" She broke into tears. "I'm sorry!" she said. "I- I can't be happy! Not like this! Not with Princess Celestia like this! Not with Princess Luna…"
Luna felt a desperate urge to throw back the invisibility cloak and announce herself, but Riddle had given her strict instructions of the DO NOT VIOLATE ON PUNISHMENT OF EXTREME TEMPORAL DANGER variety.
"Then cast the cutie-mark swap," past-Riddle said. "As you usually do."
Twilight complied, performing a procedure Luna had seen many times by this point.
"No!" Twilight gasped. "It's just you and Cadence! I couldn't swap out my own!"
"Wait!" Riddle said. "Cadence is unconscious. She will not experience my talent. The swap need only last a moment. Please wait."
How strange, Luna thought as she watched. She had not understood the 'temporal' part until she arrived here, floating invisibly above what remained of the war party, watching interactions that had, somehow, already happened. Her body was right there, apparently a corpse, though her past self looked perfectly intact.
"Turn around, please," past-Riddle said to the gathered watchers. "Discord, I know you'll peek anyway."
Luna was utterly hopeless to interfere because she had not interfered. So she was stuck watching real life as if it were a story.
"Expecto Patronum."
And at the play's climax, despite having her suspicions about how it would go, she was still shocked. She had half expected them to wake her sister, half expected Twilight to try again and this time succeed.
But no.
He finally did it.
"Can I look now?" asked Twilight Sparkle. "Did it work?"
Luna watched as her own past-self disappeared. She felt a nudge in her flank, the signal to 'teleport to the obvious location' as Riddle had instructed earlier. Obvious indeed.
After teleporting out of the cloak and trusting Riddle to catch it, "Yes, and yes," she said, smiling at Twilight.
"PRINCESS!" Twilight shouted, running forward to hug her.
Luna flinched at the sudden noise, her un-ascended ears not quite capable of handling the volume. "Now I know how my subjects felt," Luna said, then gasped. "Easy, Twilight, easy."
"Well that there is just plain wrong," said Applejack.
"Applejack!" Rarity rebuked.
"I don't mean the hug. That mane on him just ain't easy on the eyes. I'm feelin' all sorts a' weird and wrong just lookin' that way."
"I agree," said Riddle mildly. "Ms. Sparkle, would you mind undoing the Cutie Mark swap? Without delay?"
Twilight turned to face him, her face scrunched up in a repulsed expression, and she nodded. "Coming right up." Her mane glowed brightly. "From one to another, another to one. A mark of one's destiny, singled out alone. Does not make the stallion, does not make the mare. What makes us who we are is where we place our care. Change by magic sown, by magic be undone."
Riddle returned to normal.
Luna returned to normal.
Celestia returned to normal.
In the near distance, Tirek's body shrunk to what must have once been normal, going from a massive red mountain blocking the horizon to small ashen centaur lying in the grass.
After a brief celebration at the return of Equestria's magic, they walked up to the fallen tyrant.
"He is… unconscious?" asked Celestia uncertainly.
"No," said Riddle.
There was silence as ponies stared, some at Riddle, some at the corpse.
"What spell did you use?" asked Twilight Sparkle. "I've never seen it. And the thing before that?"
Riddle glanced around at the watching Equestrians, the Elements and Celestia and Discord. "The thing before that was a firearm," he said. "A purely mundane weapon…" He looked around at present company, which included ponies like Applejack and Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. "A non-magical device that works like shooting a spitball through a straw. Except with metal and fire instead of paper and plastic. When non-wizards wage war in my home world, that is the weapon of the foot soldier."
"It looked pretty unwieldy," Twilight remarked.
Riddle tilted his head. Then he levitated a blade of grass to his horn and transfigured it into an unloaded pistol. He walked up to Tirek's body and, careful about Luna's comments of enslaving the dead, he levitated the grip into unmoving fingers, though he did not touch the corpse with his magic. "Not for those with hands," he said. Then he cancelled his magic, letting the dead rest, now with a single blade of grass held between limp fingers.
"Is it a kind of stunning weapon?" asked Rarity.
"No."
Silence.
"And… the spell?" asked Twilight before the implications could set in.
"…If Tirek had been truly smart," said Riddle, "and I knew this at the time, he would have dodged the mysterious spell that somehow stayed intact despite his powers. Or he would have used one of his hostages as a shield. That is what I would have done in his place. That said, it's a spell with no collateral damage, unlike the stronger mundane weapons I knew about, weapons which would have endangered everyone, so it was worth the comparative risk."
Technically, he shouldn't explain further, shouldn't even have explained that much, but half of a secret is its existence. Everypony here has already seen the Killing Curse, Discord the most worrying potential blabbermouth among them. If not for Riddle's attitude of security, of preserving advantages in the first place (as a final trump card against the likes of Discord and Celestia, his original reasoning had gone), then Tirek might not have been so cleanly overcome. Riddle has a wider range of muggle weapons that likely would have worked – chemical agents and other bio-weapons, and the ultimate trump card of nuclear weapons that he did in fact learn how to transfigure, in those final days as Defense Professor at Hogwarts, after he realized his stupidity of refusing to learn the powers of muggles because he feared them.
He faced Luna. "I no longer directly benefit from hiding this knowledge, for a number of reasons." Most prominent among them that he suspects he'll no longer be able to use the killing curse against most conceivable Equus threats. He sent this thought directly to Luna's Occlumency barriers, to her apparent surprise. "But the correct military tactic is to go on preserving that advantage."
"In theory, I agree. In practice…" Luna shook her head. "No pony would be able to cast it reliably." And if you are no longer able, she had her perfect-Occlumency persona audibly think, there is hardly an advantage to be preserved at all. "Still… I think caution is correct, just in case. Do you have a contract to silence?"
It took a small amount of time to retrieve it from its hiding place. As he did, he reflected on his recent choices.
Preserving the advantage of the Killing Curse had been part of a larger game he'd been playing on Equus, a memory and habit of security and self-preservation, and he'd just thrown that game away quite literally in a fit of anger. Perhaps it was the right choice regardless; resorting to a nuclear detonation would have been revealing in its own right...
No. That's not the right thought. The right thought is that his past self would not have gotten so personally involved in this fiasco, would not have considered it his problem unless 'Harmony' failed to handle Tirek as it tended to handle so many other things. His past self would have fled, like he fled from Discord and hid in the Astral Plane. Like he fled from Britain until his strength could match Dumbledore's.
And yet, the thought of flight simply had not occurred to him this time. Not once, that he could remember. Knowledge that so easily could have been turned into an escape plan without fleeing fully to the Astral Plane – so he could monitor the affair from afar – had instead been used to keep the Stone and his Horcruxes safe.
There had been much danger in confronting Tirek personally, much danger in staying when Discord had turned, when Luna and Celestia had lost.
Through all of that, he looked back and realized he had stayed without ever seriously considering the thought of preserving himself with the least amount of risk.
He looked at the contract he'd just retrieved, written in the style and purpose of all his past beliefs, even as it violated the single most important unifying factor of secrecy.
I swear I shall not, without their consent, act upon any secrets of the one(s) who is/are having me sign this paper. I shall not reveal their secrets to others, I shall not use their secrets against them, I shall not use their secrets FOR them. Unless I am in their private company, in the company of only those who already know the secrets, or I am otherwise given explicit permission by the contractor(s), I shall act as if I am completely ignorant at all times. The contractor(s) may release me from these terms, or certain parts of it, if they choose, but they must tell me directly if that is the case.
"Here," he said, presenting it to Luna.
"Those who wish to hear more, if my fool wishes to say more, may sign this. Note that it encompasses all secrets he may disclose to you in the future, not just this one."
Applejack, Rainbow, and Rarity left, all declaring that they had to check up on their little sisters. Pinkie Pie went with them, saying that her Pinkie sense tells her all she needs to know, and it was telling her she didn't need to know what he was about to say.
The names upon the paper now read:
Keen Eye
Twilight Sparkle
Fluttershy
(; !drOCsiD (This one was written in a multi-coloured hue and covered in glitter.)
Tia Sunrise
"So… what was the spell?" asked Twilight.
Riddle's face was expressionless, as if carved from stone. And then, in a very flat voice, "The Killing Curse."
Silence befell them once more. Horrified silence, in some cases. Resigned in others. Confused in the rest.
"Killing… curse?" asked Fluttershy, not sounding like she understood.
"A curse that kills," Riddle said in a deadpan. "Only kills. Nothing else." And after that, he didn't add any justifications. Didn't try to defend his actions or himself. He's had Luna's advisement all these years, but he was curious to see what the average pony reaction would be.
"That's horrible," Fluttershy gasped.
Riddle didn't say anything, he just looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
"Not Chaotic at all," muttered Discord, who was wrapped around Fluttershy. He wrapped around her just a little tighter.
"How so?" Riddle asked the God of Chaos.
"Life, desires, conflicting wills, that's the natural cause of the universe's chaos. Otherwise it's all..." he waved a claw. "Mathematically predictable. Life is chaos. Death is dull. Any spell that causes death and nothing else is, indeed, horrible."
Interesting perspective, Riddle thought. He looked to the others. "Are you in agreement, Ms. Sparkle?"
Twilight looked like she had just been presented with an incredibly difficult puzzle. "I might have called it horrible if I learned about it any other day… and I still don't like it… but it did save my friends…"
"And you, Ms. Sunrise?" he asked Celestia. "You once said that you have never succumbed to your base desires, even in those few instances where you have hated ponies." Like Dumbledore, the Alicorn of the Sun probably qualified as one of those rare people who would never be able to cast the killing curse. "What do you think of ponies who do?"
"Not that they are evil by default," said Celestia. "A few incredibly rare circumstances can make rage justified. The important question is why you cast it. And even before that, if Tirek's actions warranted it. I was out for the entirety of the fight. Was he an immediate lethal threat?"
"Tia…" said Luna, looking at her sister. She walked over and whispered something.
"Riddle had to do what?" she asked, sounding like she didn't understand.
Luna whispered some more.
"HE WHAT?!" the day princess exploded, her mane going from bright and prismatic to flaring fire in a fraction of a second, causing even Riddle to start. He could no longer afford to be so cavalier about the destruction of his body. Though on second glance, her anger seemed to be directed at the corpse, not him.
"Calm, Tia," said Luna gently, putting her head and neck beneath her sister's. "Calm." Her mane of cool starlight seemed to wrap around Celestia like a pillow, though it shied away from the fire.
It took a while for her burning mane to return to its normal flowing rainbow.
"Well," said Celestia into the awkward pause. She looked to Riddle. "It has been many centuries since I said this, but good… kill… then. It was a clear case of defense from an aggressive, unprovoked, and imminent lethal threat. It was done in immediate response to malicious murder of a loved one. And…" she hesitated briefly, then walked forward, but Riddle stepped back. Celestia paused at his reaction, then sighed and bowed her head. "Thank you for saving my sister."
More than you know, Riddle thought. "Speaking of which," he said uncomfortably, looking at Luna. "There is something we must discuss. In private."
In the Astral Plane, where no outside items could be brought, one pony extracted a memory from the empty bookshelf. The other waited patiently.
The memory, when shown, was brief and to the point, though it was complex enough that Luna had to ask for multiple viewings.
"Very well," hissed his past self. "If you tell me flawss and help to fix them, I sshall kill no more than three ssmart creaturess in thiss new place, unless more iss necesssary for my own ssurvival, or unlesss you approve of more. Creaturess I kill will be threatss to livess of otherss, and the world will be ssafer place if they die. I further promisse not to torture, maim, or murder, again unlesss I musst for my own ssurvival. Now tell me of flawss."
For himself, he was surprised to find that he, apparently, had somewhat misremembered the spoken part of his oath. He could have sworn he promised to use those three deaths for Horcruxes... though now that he thinks about it, the exact wording, while important, isn't the only binding part of a Parseltongue promise. As with Unbreakable Vows, the intent behind Parseltongue promises also has some amount of meaning.
Ordinarily, words spoken in Parseltongue must be technically true. Deceptions are still easily possible. Oaths are a slightly different matter. You cannot make an oath in Parseltongue in the first place unless you are the type of person who is capable of committing to an oath without an Unbreakable Vow. For while Salazar could not instill at-will Vows into his language, he could at least make oaths unspeakable by any who would not truly keep them.
"Why are the words all… hissy?" asked Luna.
"I never did mention I can speak to snakes, did I?" Riddle said thoughtfully.
"No," said Luna. "You did not. Snakes can speak?"
"…That is a good question," Riddle observed. "Perhaps it is more accurate to say I can command snakes through an inherited curse that manifests as language."
"A curse?" she asked, sounding worried. "What is the drawback?"
"…Another good question. The only downside I've found so far is the social stigma attached to being seen speaking with snakes, which can be avoided by not doing so in public. Perhaps the true downside is the risk of being forced at wandpoint to speak the literal truth at any time by a more powerful Parseltongue than yourself, so that ancestors and tradition always hold power over the newest generations... yes, that sounds exactly like Salazar. In any case, while I am grateful for the distraction, we do have something more important to discuss. The key fact behind this memory is that all Parseltongue promises must be meant, in the same way that true apologies must be meant in order to be real. They cannot ever be violated. Do you now comprehend the constraints I've been working with?"
"I… think so," said Luna. "You promised Silver to make no more than three horcruxes. Those three murders would have to be of malicious dangers who threaten the world. Beyond that, unless he gives you permission, you may not kill outside of self-defense."
"Outside of survival. Which," he gestured to the surrounding astral plane, "is no longer a problem that must be solved with a Killing Curse, since I can come here at any time. Not to mention my horcruxes. Unless somepony simultaneously invents the anti-Astral-Plane jinx and counters my great creation, I am no longer able to cast a Killing Curse. Ever since I ascended, I've only been able to cast that curse at intelligent creatures when I have the intention of making a Horcrux-" or with the intention of killing Dumbledore, who was not technically in Equestria "-and my three allotments have now been made. As long as-"
"Three?!" demanded Luna. "You made your third? When?"
"Just today."
"But- but Twilight must have been watching you…"
He raised a hoof. "Will you allow me to explain, fully, before responding?"
"…Yes, of course," said Luna, with a sigh. "Speak your peace."
"The moral dilemma," he began, "was as follows. I could stop Tirek. I could stop him easily, but only if I was allowed to kill him. You said I had permission if he proved himself a lethal threat, which he did by killing you, and by threatening you before that. But my promise to Silver meant I was only able to kill if I made a horcrux from the death. If I wanted to end Tirek, which I did, the mundane methods known to me outside of the one I tried would have been messy, so the only moderately safe and reliable way to stop him without collateral damage was to kill him with the Killing Curse. But in order to do that, I had to make a Horcrux. I did not say that part out loud, but an oath's meaning must also be binding, if it is to be spoken by snakes at all, and so I was bound by that part as well."
His student had needed no instruction at all in that regard, and so Riddle had skipped over those lessons in his tutorship of Mr. Potter. The young Ravenclaw was naturally the kind of person who kept his oaths, an otherwise ridiculously implausible personality type that therefore almost certainly resulted from Tom Riddle's inherited memories, or else had something to do with some part of his scientific upbringing. Decision theory, if Riddle had to guess at which field in particular. The young Tom Riddle had required repeated lessons from Slytherin's Basilisk to become the kind of person capable of making Parseltongue oaths.
Casual Parseltongue conversations can be games of exact wordings. Deception is still possible, in all the ways that intelligent creatures can lie with a series of true statements and omissions.
Parseltongue oaths cannot be so casually played with.
And so, the exact wording of his oath to Mr. Potter contained nothing of Horcruxes, only of the deaths he might use to make them. And yet, when swearing that oath, Horcruxes had been an intrinsic part of his promise's meaning, so he ended up bound by words unspoken.
The oath he truly meant was that he shall make no more than three Equestrian Horcruxes in the ordinary course of events, and he will not attempt to manipulate those events to get more than three out of the original bargain, though he will make more if he absolutely must. He meant the other parts as well, targeting threats to the innocent and so on, but the core of his promise involved Horcruxes, even if he did not say it aloud. Seriously, what was his past self going to do with those three allotted murders? Not use them to make Horcruxes?
This, too, he explained to Luna.
"Now do you understand, as it applies to our current situation?"
Luna's eyebrows were deeply furrowed. "I believe so… you are saying your motive in killing Tirek was not to make a horcrux, just that it was a necessary step to be able to stop him, given constraints to which you swore years ago, constraints to which you are now helpless to violate?"
"Much closer, but that's still not quite right," said Riddle. "After he killed you, I did want to kill Tirek. I wanted it enough to cast the Killing Curse the normal way. Put as plainly as possible, I am saying my motive was to kill him, nothing more. I used time travel to make the most of it afterwards, and to keep my oath to Mr. Silver, as I knew I would have to, but that wasn't my goal."
There was a long pause.
"I see…" said Luna, wearing a frown.
"Am I banished?"
...
...
...
...
...
"…No," said Luna after the longest minute of Riddle's life. "Nor are you fired. You did not murder him, and your reason was not to make a horcrux. You have skirted my sanctions by the skin of your teeth. I should have expected no less."
"I did not murder him?"
"If he had been stunned, helpless before you, it would have been murder. If he had not been the aggressor, had not killed me first, it would have been murder. If you had time to stew, if the killing curse had not been an immediate response to my death, it might have been murder."
"I don't understand."
"And I am having trouble articulating it," Luna said. "I think Tia put it best. It was a clear case of defense from an aggressive, unprovoked, and imminent lethal threat. It was done in immediate response to malicious murder of a loved one. Even Tia does not condemn those who respond to such situations as nature clearly intended them to, given all the associated emotional impulses an average pony would feel. If an average, good-hearted stallion might react as you did, what's there to condemn? The best way I can describe it in my own terms is the silver rule. You treated him as he treated others, immediately and without hesitation. He cannot complain about his fate, given what he did two seconds prior. The term 'murder' implies that you were the aggressor, or that it was premeditated, or that you had better options for threat-removal, or that Tirek was innocent… and while cases involving you are extremely complex, not to mention my own heavy biases, I am going to go with my gut emotional response anyway. My gut feeling says you killed him, but you did not murder him. Speaking of your mental state and nothing else, you murdered Sombra's servant. You murdered Chrysalis. If you had been able to cast the spell, you would have murdered Sombra. You did not murder Tirek. In terms of Equestrian law and objectively observable actions, you are 'clean' in every case, given what they were capable of when conscious, and the harm they had already done. In terms of your own personal, internal motivations… killing Chrysalis was evil. Killing Sombra's servant was evil. Attempting to kill Sombra was evil. Killing Tirek was not evil, though it did come close."
"You are certain?" he asked, a strange feeling encompassing his mind. Like a clamp on his head being released, or a bubble of pressure in his mind being gently popped.
"If it was evil, I do not think you could have cast that Patronus afterwards." She wrapped her neck around his. "Yes, I am certain."
He leaned into the hug.
...
...
...
"…Is this farewell?"
"Is it?" asked Luna, turning the question back on him.
"I cast the Patronus."
"You did."
"I can leave."
Luna looked at him, but it was like she was looking through him. "As always, that is up to you."
"You're saying you want me to stay?"
"I do want you to stay, but that is not what I'm saying. Come. Cast the Patronus. Show me as you would show Dumbledore."
When he tried, and when he failed, he understood her point.
"I don't understand," he said. And he truly didn't. Perhaps if that false ascension earlier – his mane had reverted to normal after Twilight undid the swap – if it had restored his locked memories, and those memories were suddenly interfering, perhaps he would understand this failure. But his memories remained locked, so that couldn't be the cause. "The Killing Curse gets easier with use, not harder. Why is this any different?"
"The Patronus is not different," Luna said. "It does get easier for most. But you are exceptional in many ways, my fool, and what you are experiencing is not so strange to me. Life-threatening emergency has the strangest way of bringing even the most broken of families together. They'll set aside the worst abuses and difficulties. But as soon as the emergency passes, or if the emergency lasts longer than whatever threshold of time the broken family can tolerate together, or if it's mere manipulation wearing the guise of emergency, the troubles return once more. You have cast the Patronus in desperate emergency which was possibly manipulated by forces greater than any of us. To call upon that strength at will is another matter entirely. Still…" she hugged him again. "Congratulations on making it this far. Do not let the disappointment detract from your triumph."
"I don't need…" he said, but trailed off before he could say 'pity' or 'consolations' or 'false praise'. None felt quite right to the situation.
"Open your Changeling Sense," said Luna's voice from behind his ear.
He did so. By this point, he should be used to the experience of feeling more love than he'd ever felt before, directed solely at himself. But it still manages to surprise and stagger him every time.
"It is true that you have far to go, but it is also true that you have come so far already. And for that…" she tightened the hug, and her love increased even more. "…you deserve this."
He basked in the warmth for a time, content to do nothing else.
"May I inquire about the time travel now?" asked Luna a while later. "I am desperately curious."
Riddle acquiesced and explained, finishing with, "It is convenient for giving yourself an alibi."
Luna looked like she would probably need more time to comprehend. "…Like you did when you first ascended to alicorn status?"
Or perhaps not.
"Would you like to leave one of your horcruxes with me?" asked Luna after a bit more time. "You cannot move in them, yes?"
He tilted his head. "You know that cloak you were wearing?"
Her eyebrows rose.
"It belongs to Mr. Silver."
She giggled. Her fool is much better at deliberately defying her expectations-
"And it is also the first Horcrux I made in Equestria. It's how I go invisible. Yes, I would like you to have it for safekeeping. It shapeshifts at the possessor's will to anything a sheet of fabric could become. Turn it into your mattress cover and the maids will never need to wash your bedsheet again. It is impervious to all forms of grime, and you will be in contact with it every night."
"That is… one way to do it," said Luna.
"I don't want its abilities to be known."
"I understand. It will not turn my mattress invisible?"
"Not unless your mattress is alive. And keep in mind it shall return to Mr. Silver's possession eventually."
Luna nodded. "And your other Horcruxes?"
"My other horcrux is in a good place, yes." Though he didn't describe that place for standard and obvious security reasons.
"One other horcrux? As in, two total?"
He nodded.
"But… didn't you just make a third? Or did one of them get destroyed?"
Riddle shook his head. "The third is not my horcrux. It is yours."
The stars of Riddle's astral plane twinkled just a little brighter.
...
...
...
"My horcrux?"
"Mr. Silver never specified that I had to make all three for myself," Riddle pointed out. "Nor did I promise that they would all be mine."
For even when he swore that oath, even all the way back in the beginning, he had considered, briefly, that he might use one of his three allotments for Mr. Potter. He had just been informed of his 'not being nice' folly a few hours previously, after all. He had been truthfully told that he'd lost ten years of his life for failing to consider the possibility of making a Horcrux for someone else. And so, as he swore that Parseltongue oath to Mr. Potter, he did not fail to considered it the second time around, even if he mostly didn't expect it to happen. That consideration meant he was not bound to make the Horcruxes for himself, even as he was bound to use his murders to make the Horcruxes.
Ssuch iss the importance of being clear in your meaningss, even in your mind, ass you sswear your oathss, Salazar's beast had once told him.
"And before you ask," he continued, lightly tapping his forehead with his hoof a couple of times. "I chose my skull as the anchor."
"Your skull?!"
"Well I wouldn't want to lose it."
Luna just stared at him.
"See for yourself." He pointed at his cutie mark. There was a single new addition: a pony skull, above the infinity sign on the right page of the open book's centerfold. "Even Harmony agrees that my special talent is making Horcruxes."
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
"Tom."
"Yes?"
"You are, without a doubt, the most frustrating pony I have ever met in my life."
"I am the only human you've ever met in your life," he said. "Well, the only human you've truly gotten to know."
She had a hoof on her forehead, her eyes closed, her breathing forcibly regular. "Was this before or after you revived me?"
"After-"
"Was it possible to wake me up prior to Horcruxing me?"
Riddle decided to suggest, "I can abandon this body and destroy the Horcrux if you wish-"
"What I would like," she said, opening her eyes, "is for you to stop doing everything by yourself and ask. Ask others for their preferences. Please. Do not simply believe you know best for everypony else. Even those you care about. Especially those you care about. Sometimes you do know best, and sometimes the object you Horcrux has already exploded in the past, in quite the horrific and memorable shower of gore."
He hadn't considered that, mostly because a Thing of Power would trump the piercing spell. Then again, the general point of himself being a target, and the fact that he can no longer be so flippant about the destruction of his own body, that had occurred to him, and he had considered it deeply. "I don't intend to allow that to happen again," he said. "Consider this Horcrux to be my declaration that I will take this body's safety more seriously."
"I shall. But I will not be distracted from the critical ethics here. For important matters, ask. Consult. Conspire. Converse. Anything but autonomously making massive life choices for others who are grown adults with free wills and preferences of their own."
"So…"
"So," said Luna in a definitive tone. "Ask before you make a horcrux for somepony. Ask what object they would like to be their horcrux. Get informed consent. Are we clear?"
"…Yes."
"Good." She hugged him. "Now I can say thank you."
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Very intresting how the Killing Curse bypasses all forms of magical resistance, protection etc the same way a screwdriver shorting the CPUs Reset pin to ground works by bypassing all forms of motherboard hardware security.
As for the last horcrux, well, Tom was always known for using his head.
I'm not sure if lovegood's allusion to the princess is obvious now, if it isn't about what I said in that comment of mine.
Tom's skull is also probably incredibly sturdy now. Good luck if he needs brain surgery in the future
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Um... should be pretty obvious now, yeah.
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That she alluded to the princess, maybe, but I might be an idiot because I'm not seeing the 'why'.
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-HPMoR, Chapter 28
Does that help? I'm trying to spell it out without giving it away entirely.
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Not really. I don't see how Luna Lovegood having extraplanar timestream knowledge of Princess Luna's resurrection is related to a few pounds of fat piloting a flesh gundam, and why she might want to bring it up to Tom. I can't think of any context from the source or your story that might give away why the two having similar names would be relevant to anything. I doubt it's similar to harry being Tom's mind clone showing up on the magic map, and if the princess --is-- a mirror spawned mind clone of Lovegood, she'd have to be pretty damn ancient. But that wouldn't explain what the princess being brought back is a clue towards, beyond the fact that immortals can be brought back at least once.
Unless this is some kind of reference to that physics thing where given enough time a set of vibrating particles will eventually return to their starting position, and she's from a previous cycle, but that sounds stupid, because if she had the know how to survive the end of the last universe, why would she have done it with so few people? If her father participated, I mean.
I also doubt she's implying that she's having a similar childhood as the princess did
Harry: Luna, can I get that memory? I want to see it for myself.
Riddle: I will ask you not to.
first comment in this fic (I skimmed a lot of the beginning, which I'll have to fully reread at some point, though I'm mostly reading normally right now).
I just realized: Tom now actually has a way to make anyone truly immortal, at no cost save time.
It works like this: He has to kill someone (or have someone kill themselves, doesn't matter). then he can channel their death to make their OWN horcruxes while in a time-turn-enabled loop, like he did with Luna right now.
Only one difference: he needs Harry's help, as he can use the Patronus without paying a permanent cost in life and magic.
So, if they want to, now Riddle could make everyone he considers important resurrectable even in the case their brain is destroyed (and the Permanence Stone ended up no longer being enough).
Obvious targets would have to be, I think, the other princesses (Celestia, Cadance), the element bearers, and probably Shining Armor (you know, the lover of the alicorn of LOVE).
Of course it can't really be done to EVERYONE, as Tom's time is limited... but he can do it for a few people each day, when working with Harry, basically for free.
If he was willing to teach other his Horcrux 2.0 creation method this could probably be done even more easily, as Tom could then be replaced in this work... but I'm going to assume it's an incredibly difficult spell, and very few people would be able to learn it even if he was willing to share it.
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Pretty sure the human Luna is saying hi to the skull horcux of pony Luna.
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Well, that's the best theory I've heard so far. Right up Harry and Riddle's alley.
I can only really see one technical problem, and it's not an explicit mechanic, but if I were trying to be as absolutely faithful to my best guess at underlying HPMoR mechanics as possible, I suspect that when someone is sacrificed to the Horcrux 2.0 ritual, when "Great creation maintainss life and magic within devicess created by ssacrificing life and magic of otherss", as stated in HPMoR chapter 108, it seems likely to me that they become unrevivable at that point, at least so long as the Horcrux exists. Or at the very least, they need more than the mere 'spark' that the Patronus ritual offers. Because, you know, they didn't merely die, their life and magic were sacrificed, and things sacrificed to Dark Rituals are stated by Draco to be impossible to regain, though PQ demonstrates that they're merely incredibly difficult to regain, requiring power on the order of the Stone or another ritual.
What I'm getting at is that if, hypothetically, Godric Gryffindor in his prime was killed by AK in a sacrifice to Horcrux 2.0, and 12-year-old Harry (no infinite life) tried to revive him immediately via Patronus, Harry wouldn't possess enough life and magic to succeed. He'd also probably collapse in exhaustion and die in the attempt. The other way around might work, GG reviving Harry I mean, but it'd be a far greater sacrifice than standard Patronus revivals.
From a story perspective, even if I just let the mechanics work without that issue, Riddle doesn't have access to Harry's unlimited life during his redemptive stay in Equestria - he's not even explicitly expecting the unlimited life thing yet, though he'll suspect it eventually. So he's not going to make plans that rely on access to unlimited life. To work your plan, he'd need multiple ponies capable of casting Patronus 2.0 who're willing to permanently sacrifice some life, or he'd need to sacrifice a bunch of his own life, Twilight's life, Celestia's life, and/or Luna's life. And he'd also probably need to let more people know about Time Turners, not to mention the Horcrux ritual itself, which would allow for more ponies to understand the potential implications, i.e. his past murder sprees. Not unworkable by any means, there are far more potential Patronus 2.0 casters in Equestria than on earth, and Vows and contracts to silence and so on. But it wouldn't be quite as simple as your proposal.
All that said, great idea. It's the closest that anyone has come so far, unless my memory is failing me, and probably the best solution available given existing mechanics.
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I can't comment on Horcrux 2.0 limitations, as they were never elaborated on. basic horcrux was mentioned to basically use the burst of emotion from a death to basically overtake the ghost-formation process, and use it to make a ghost of someone still alive instead.
Which, by the way, kinda implies you don't even really NEED the death honestly, as the horcrux you get that way isn't really much more than a really elaborate wizard painting, if you think about it.
if Hocrux 2.0 is sacrificing someone's life as part of the cost, in a way that makes it hard to recover... well, I think there's an argument that Harry's status as the Alicorn of Life would allow him, and probably ONLY him, to overwrite that ritual cost. Especially if, you know, boosted by the Elder Wand. Though maybe not if the one to do the killing was the Alicorn of Death?
So, still doable I think, but possibly hard to scale up depending on how tiring it would be for Harry.
if the problem is that you need someone ELSE to die, and you can't use a death for the Horcrux of that same person... well, you just do as in my plan, but two people at a time, basically using each other's deaths for the Horcrux creation.
In regards to number of Patronus 2.0 casters, honestly given time I could see basically everyone in Equestria managing... at least once Twilight solves the riddle of the stone. After all, at that point, you have proof that death is not something that has to be accepted, which should make the concept behind patronus 2.0 easier to grasp.
You'd have to reveal it to people instead of letting them figure it out for themselves... but with Dementors not being a thing, and Patronus 2.0 becoming relatively common, the original worry (that you'd make Dementors basically unstoppable) would no longer be a constraint.
In Equestria, at least. you'd still want to keep the secret from Magical Britain... though, worst case, if there happened to be a horde of Dementors because someone started creating more (maybe through that ritual requiring a rope used in a hanging?), or if they just reproduced on their own, you could presumably have casters from Equestria move to Magical Britain to help.
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That is pretty simple, but I don't remember if the horcruxes are active while the main body still lives
11619083
That all sounds about right.
Thing is, though, Equestria will already have multiple (at least 5) immortality solutions by the time Riddle escapes (though some of them are just agelessness, not truly death-defeating), so any theories requiring Harry/Alicorn of Life won't be the ones that Equstria goes with prior to that point. Some of these solutions we've already seen, others are obvious and hyper in-line with standard Yudkowsky rational fiction, and another will be an as-yet undiscovered ritual.
11619155
The spell of starlight suggests that the horcruxes can be accessed even if the user isn't actively dead. But yeah, it was just that simple. Even if Luna wasn't actively monitoring the situation when Luna tapped Riddle's skull, the comment would be equally alarming/disturbing to Riddle either way.
I also like the implication that Riddle did a thing that would've gotten Cadence her glowey hair
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I wasn't even thinking of solving any specific riddle, the idea I mentioned just sounded obvious.
Here's an idea for a different ritual though. Horcrux 2.0, somehow, makes you not dependent on your body/brain for continued existence.
Basically, it either CREATES an incorporeal backup (basically a soul), or, if souls actually exist (which I don't think has actually been stated or proved yet) it traps it in the item.
In that case... what about a ritual or spell, powered by Twilight's infinite magic, that would allow someone to trap the soul of anyone who ever died anywhere? After that it's just a matter of creating a new body to put the soul in with the Stone of Permanence.
And if someone actually wants to die for real, I suppose there would be ways to "free" that soul from the soul prison.
I suppose you could sacrifice someone's ability to die, for the ability to come back? with Riddle as a backup of "actually I'm the Alicorn of Death, so I can kill you anyway".
oh, here's an idea for actually saving people!
step 1: time turn to the past with the invisibility clock.
step 2: use a slightly modified Gemini spell (the one that copies an item) on the corpse. the slight modification would be to... well, either create the copy invisible, or to delay the creation and basically store the "pattern" of the item copied, or maybe the copy is created under your cloak? something like that.
step 3: you make the copy permanent with the stone of permanence
step 4: patronus. Though not sure if it would count as the original corpse. or... what if it allows someone to create a clone?
uh. that's an interesting question. if you create a copy of a body, down to the brain, with transfiguration, and then bring it to life with a patronus, what happens?
Oh, and here's another idea, which would be pretty funny in its simplicity: what if you repaired a brain with a simple overpowered (by Elder Wand) Reparo spell? follow it up with a patronus, and that could potentially bring ANYONE back to life.
I mean, a corpse is just an item. so is a brain. why wouldn't a reparo spell work on it? Bonus points because even if someone tried in the past, there was no way to bring back the restored corpse to life. I think Riddle once mentioned a way that would restore life but not magic, but I don't remember the details.
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Reparo probably can't be cast on organic material, but Episky certainly can. Problem is, I think any attempts of overpowering an episky or a reparo for the sake of repairing corpses, or even more grandly, for your 'fix everythingus' spell, would put the fic immediately into crack territory. That sort of thing is (1) too absurdly comedic, but more importantly, it's (2) unearned, even WITH unlimited magic as the excuse. Harry is always asking himself in HPMoR "Why isn't it as easy as waving my wand and saying 'becommus Goddus'? Is it a pattern I've learned? Can I unlearn it?"
But HPMoR's underlying reality is always answering him with 'No', presumably because the Atlanteans, or whoever created the source of magic, wasn't stupid enough to let wizards do that. In this fic, for example, I've established that some spells can be overpowered by unlimited magic, while others can't. Somnium will always be invisible and weaker than armor and shields, as I conceive of it. If I were to come up with an HPMoR-esque constraint, I'd say Reparo and Episky have visualization components, like free Transfiguration, or the garbage disposal charm, in that you need to visualize how the repair-procedure looks to the naked eye, and you can't do that on the level of neurons in a brain, nor on the level of a planet-scale repair.
Worldwide spells via Twilight's Unlimited Magic might work, but you'd need Merlin's Interdict level magic to implement it, meaning (in this story) you'd need to make sacrifices on the level Merlin did when imposing his. As PQ said in HPMoR,
I usually try to keep this in mind when imagining magical exploits. Levitating Tirek's mountain-sized corpse qualifies as 'powerful' magic, so infinite-power Twilight can do it no problem, but it doesn't quite strike me as the 'greatest of magics'. A worldwide soul trap strikes me as either (1) a manual mass implementation and careful management of many various, interwoven magical devices, or (b) 'the greatest of magics', i.e. ritual magic, i.e. requiring permanent sacrifice.
Also, sacrificing negative things, in my conception, is a no-no. By which I mean 'you sacrifice your ability to die' is, like, something the source of magic would laugh at you for trying. In the words of the doctor from FMAB, "You won't die because you were ordered not to die? If immortality were that easy it wouldn't be very sporting now would it?" At the very least, there has to be massive immediate consequences or risk to the sacrifice. "I permanently sacrifice my current lack of a million dollars." Source of magic: "Lol no."
shame we never got an actual answer to what Magic is, but then again I'm not sure a satisfying answer could even be possible.
Minor typo
Awwwww~
Seems bizarre he would choose his head as her Horcrux. The only time he has "died" so far in the story is Quirrell blowing his brains out with a rifle.
11717984
I think I'll go with "Thing of Power trumps piercing spell-infused bullet, even if piercing spell-infused bullet trumps troll toughness." But the truth is, I'd been dreaming of that scene since close to the start of this story, so I wasn't going to change it. There's a lot of symbolism going on, plus it satisfies the rule of cool, plus it earned him the skull and
crossbonesinfinity sign on his cutie mark.I tried to put in the narration of that scene that he had nothing better at hand, no magical devices because of the Tirek situation, and he wasn't going to horcrux a random pebble, so he went with the thing he thought he could best protect in the long run. Though I had to convey that without spoiling what he actually horcruxed, and for whom.
That the thing he chose has ALREADY EXPLODED in the past is yet another layer to the symbolism. In this case, it's symbolic of self-assured narcissists who are absolutely confident they know what's best and therefore should be the ones who make important decisions about other people, even when there's proof to the contrary, proof that they really, really don't know what's best, no matter how smart they are, because nobody is god.
Actually, I might just go back and have Luna point that out, in close to those words. I think that's an acceptable retcon, if it's brief enough.
All Alicorn need at least one Horcrux in my oppinion.