Growing up Pureblooded

Find The Wards

Aries's body remained seated comfortably on the floor of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, but his mind sailed far away along its invisible connection into the hidden recesses of Voldemort's mind. Aries was floating in a coracle, a large black cobra resting on his shoulders. He didn't know why he had the snake with him, but it felt familiar, as though it had always been there. They drifted in their small boat on a vast, stormy sea, filled with innumerable islands: some small and stony, others large and forbidding. On the edges of each island Aries could make out faint wisps of memory, and it took every ounce of self control Harry possessed to keep himself from exploring. He sensed that if once he lost sight of his purpose, he might never manage to get out of Voldemort's mind again.

His mission was clear and simple: discover a way to break through Voldemort's wards. Aries concentrated hard on finding them, but it was difficult for him to see through the stormy waves of the Dark Lord's mind. Lightning flashed all around him, and Aries sensed that the only reason he himself had not yet been struck was that somehow Voldemort's mental defenses failed to perceive him as a threat. As it were, something about Aries made him belong there. Aries wondered if it had something to do with the snake. "I need to find the wards to Riddle Manor," Aries repeated under his breath in Parseltongue. "I need to find the wards to Riddle Manor."

Suddenly there was a flash, and Aries found himself very close to the shore of a large rock that burst majestically out of the sea. On the shore, he could see a dark-haired boy, just a few years older than himself, standing in the elegant dining room of an large manor house. Three adults were just sitting down to dinner when the boy drew his wand and murmured the Killing Curse. One after another, the adults dropped to the floor, dead. The boy smirked coldly. Aries felt his coracle drifting closer and closer to the rock. "The wards," he thought in a panic. "I need to find the wards."

Another flash came, and Aries found himself standing on the shore of a heavily fortified island. An enormous castle rose up into the sky from foundations of solid stone. The wind and rain beat furiously against its walls, but its parapets stood in proud defiance of the elements. Aries thought the castle strongly resembled Hogwarts. The front gate was guarded by terrible creatures in long black cloaks. A feeling of gloom and despair hung around them. Aries shivered. "Dementors," he moaned. He would have to find some other way inside the fortress.

He crawled up the rocks around to the back of the castle, barely keeping his grip on the slippery stones. Whether it took him hours or seconds, he couldn't tell. All he knew was that whilst he was climbing, he thought he'd never reach the end, but once he reached his destination, it seemed that it had taken him only the blinking of an eye. Aries shivered again. If he spent too long here, he felt sure he'd go mad.

On the other side of the castle, Aries found a small slope that led down to the dungeons. He tripped on a pebble, and skidded along the sharp rocks to the bottom, cutting and bruising himself along the way. He winced. For an illusion that was being projected by his and Riddle's mind, it was pretty painful.

At the bottom of the slope, Aries found a small wooden door in the wall. It was truly minuscule – it looked rather like something that had been designed for house elves to use. Aries reached for the handle, but the door refused to budge. He pulled and pulled, all with no effect. Finally, he stared at the door and narrowed his eyes.

"Open," he hissed in Parseltongue. The snake around his shoulders hissed along with him, and, to Aries's relief, the tiny door opened. Aries crouched down and paused. He was certain he would be too big to fit through. The blood potion had given him Sirius's broad shoulders and solid build, and, unlike Sirius, Aries had never suffered the emaciating effects of Azkaban. To his surprise, however, as he approached the door, he realized that his shoulders were much narrower than usual, and he was a good bit shorter and thinner. He fit easily through the door and found himself in a stone corridor, on the other side of which hung an enormous antique mirror. Aries gasped when he saw his reflection, a reflection he hadn't seen for six years.

He looked just like James Potter, but with Lily's green eyes. He was much taller and stronger than he had been as a little kid – he didn't have that half-starved look – but he was a few inches shorter than he was used to. His chest and shoulders were narrower, which didn't particularly please him, but he noted with satisfaction that his stomach was a bit leaner. He wore glasses, and he had James's messy black hair.

Aries didn't understand how this could be. This was all an illusion, after all, a construct to help him navigate the Dark Lord's mind. There were no bodies here at all, only minds. He could only suppose that perhaps he was catching a glimpse of his own soul here, some indication that, underneath all the deception, he was still Harry James Potter.

The strangest thing about the reflected-Harry, however, was that, unlike the Harry of six years before, he had no lightning-shaped scar. His forehead was perfectly smooth – well, if one discounted a couple of spots. The snake, however, remained firmly coiled around his shoulders, though in the mirror it seemed to glow with an eerie black light. It reminded Aries of the aura that had briefly appeared around their fireplace when Aunt Cassie had activated the wards. "The wards," Aries whispered, immediately returning his focus to the task at hand. He tore his gaze away from the mirror with difficulty and began to walk down the corridor.

Just as in the real Hogwarts, the staircases shifted from place to place and doors seemed to appear and disappear at random. Only his single-minded determination to find the wards kept him from getting lost. He rose higher and higher, until, in what ought to have been the Charms classroom, he found what he was looking for.

The intensive study of warding had been a critical part of Aries's and Draco's home education, and Aries knew enough to appreciate the simple elegance of Voldemort's approach. There was nothing fancy about his wards: they were mostly Wilberforce Webs and Goethe Grids laid out in a Suleiman Square. A fifth-year could probably have taken down any one of them individually. Their ingenuity was to be found in the way Riddle had set them up to interact with each other. Every part of the system was linked inextricably to every other part, and in such a way as to create a rippling effect. If one ward fell, the release of power would only strengthen the next, which would feed back into yet another, which, when it reached a certain level, would trigger the original ward to reactivate, even stronger than before. These weren't the nasty sort of wards that would detain an intruder and slowly kill him over a period of several years, but Aries doubted that even Dumbledore would be able to bring them down. There were no holes in the system, and the ends were tied up in Riddle himself.

Aries was grateful that the wards were so simple – they required virtually no effort to maintain, and Voldemort clearly felt no need to pay them any mind once he had erected them. Otherwise, Aries highly doubted that he would have been able to find them so easily. He knew, however, that Voldemort's attention would shift very rapidly the moment Aries interfered. He had to act quickly and decisively, and hope that the others were in a position to seize the moment. There was no way to untangle the wards or create a gap without alerting Voldemort. The wards were bound as tightly as the Gordian knot. That meant, of course, that Aries had to find a way to cut through them.

Aries reached out with his mind and grabbed hold of the wards. He summoned all his magic as though he were going to cast a very difficult curse, and then released it directly into the wards. The effect was instantaneous. The wards overloaded and the castle went pitch-black. Aries only had time to grin with satisfaction before the castle vanished and he found himself standing on the edge of a tall cliff, staring directly in the blazing red eyes of Lord Voldemort.