0461 Weird
Instead of climbing out of his suitcase in this office room from where he'd entered, Adrian activated a different portal function, one that allowed him to redirect the exit point.
With a careful adjustment to the runes around the suitcase's opening, he climbed out and found himself standing in the back alley behind his shop in the Muggle neighborhood.
The shop itself was exactly as he'd left it. The Muggles in the neighborhood largely ignored it, their eyes were sliding past it without registering much detail thanks to the notice-me-not charms into the building.
Adrian unlocked the back door and stepped inside, immediately feeling the some concerns settle more heavily on his shoulders.
This was his primary vulnerability, the weak point in his defenses that had been troubling at his mind since yesterday. The portal door in the back of this shop provided direct access to his plantation, which meant that if Voldemort discovered this location, he could bypass all the wards that protected the plantation's main boundaries.
He could simply walk through this door and emerge directly in the heart of Adrian's plantation.
The shop's interior was dim and quiet. The front area was filled with muggle and magical plants like a botany. There were also some genuine antiques that Adrian had collected over the years. Some were magical items with their power, while others were simply interesting Muggle artifacts.
But Adrian's attention was focused on the back room, where the portal door stood at the end of a short corridor behind a bookshelf now.
He spent the next forty-five minutes carefully examining every inch of the shop's protective enchantments.
The wards here were different from those at the plantation, they had to be subtler, and less obvious, capable of deflecting Muggle attention while still providing robust defense against magical intrusion. Adrian checked each spell in turn, verifying that none had been tampered with or weakened.
Everything appeared intact, but that didn't ease his worry.
Voldemort was extraordinarily skilled at dark magic, capable of things that might evade even careful detection. He could have been here and planning to exploit some weakness Adrian hadn't considered.
After much pondering, Adrian made a difficult decision. He drew his wand and began placing a new set of enchantments around the portal door in the back room—not wards to keep people out, but rather a complex locking mechanism that would seal the door completely from this side.
Once activated, the door would become blocked, cutting off this route to the plantation entirely.
It was a drastic measure. If he sealed this entrance, he would lose quick access to the plantation from this location. He would have to rely entirely on the portal in his suitcase, which was less convenient and more energy-intensive to use repeatedly. But the security trade-off seemed worth it.
Adrian didn't activate the seal yet, he might still need this entrance over the next two days. But he prepared everything so that with a single spell, he could trigger the locking mechanism and render this vulnerability useless to any attacker.
He was just finishing the final preparations when he felt a sharp, sudden ring of alarm from the head tracker.
Adrian abandoned his work and rushed to the portal door and stepped through.
He emerged in the plantation to find Dobby standing at the northern boundary, his small body was tense with alarm. It was staring out beyond the wards, his large eyes were fixed on something in the distance.
"What is it?" Adrian demanded, hurrying to Dobby's side. "What's wrong?"
"Master, look!" Dobby pointed with a trembling finger. "Something is out there. Beyond the wards. It's been there for five minutes now, just watching!"
Adrian extended his magical senses, pushing past the boundaries of his protective spells to feel what lay beyond.
There was a thing which was dark and cold and undoubtedly malicious. It wasn't trying to breach the defenses, wasn't attacking or even moving. It was simply there, standing at the very edge of perception, like a predator studying its prey before the strike.
Adrian's breath caught in his throat. He could feel the malice of that presence.
"Can you see it?" Adrian asked Dobby quietly.
"No, Master. Dobby can only feel it."
Adrian focused his vision, casting a subtle enhancement charm on his eyes to let him see farther and more clearly.
The plantation's boundary was marked by a slight shimmer in the air where his wards created an invisible barrier, and beyond that, the land grew wild and untamed. Fifty feet past the barrier, partially obscured by tall grass and scrub brush, stood a small figure.
It was a child. Or rather, something wearing a child's form.
As Adrian's enhanced vision brought the details into sharp focus, he saw a boy who appeared to be perhaps eleven or twelve years old. The child had stood perfectly motionless in a way like a statue or a corpse.
John. Or rather, what remained of John Selwyn's body, now a failing vessel for Voldemort's fragmented soul.
Adrian's hands clenched into fists at his sides.
This was the boy who had seemed so quiet and studious, who had fooled everyone at Hogwarts for months. But John himself had probably died long before the school year began, his body his identity were erased by Voldemort's possession.
The small figure raised one pale hand in what might have been a wave or might have been something more sinister.
Then, as Adrian watched in horror, the boy's form began to deteriorate before his eyes.
Fine cracks appeared across the visible skin, spreading like a porcelain doll developing stress fractures under too much pressure. The cracks branched and multiplied with terrible speed, and through the breaking surface, Adrian could see something dark moving underneath.
The boy's face cracked along one cheek, the fracture was running from jaw to temple.
One eye had gone completely white, the pupil and iris vanished behind a milky glaze. But the other eye, the other eye remained focused on the plantation, on Adrian, burning with intensity despite the failing flesh.
And through it all, the small, breaking figure continued to stare.
"Boss!" Dobby whimpered, pressing close to Adrian's leg. "What is that thing?"
Adrian didn't answer. He was observing everything and was stunned by the sight of Voldemort's borrowed body failing, the stolen flesh was unable to contain the powerful, fragmented soul within it.
This was what happened when someone tore their soul apart and tried to exist anyway—eventually, the vessel couldn't hold. Eventually, everything will break down.
Then, abruptly, the figure turned and walked away. Despite its obviously damaged state, it moved with unsettling fluidity, disappearing into the vegetation.
Adrian stood at the boundary for a moment after the figure vanished, his heart was pounding in his chest. That had been a warning.
Voldemort knew exactly where the plantation was, and it seemed an attack was really coming. The only question was when.
But Adrian already knew the answer to that through the prophecy.
Tomorrow. The danger would arrive tomorrow night, when night had fallen and departed for the third time since Ronan's warning.
"Boss?" Dobby's small voice was trembling, pulling Adrian from his thoughts. "That was the Dark Lord, wasn't it? The one who killed Harry Potter's parents?"
"Yes," Adrian confirmed ears. "That was Voldemort."
"But he looked so small," Dobby whispered. "The stories make him sound much bigger, and terrible."
"That body is failing," Adrian explained, turning away from the boundary.
"The soul inside it is too powerful, and damaged to be contained properly in stolen flesh. It's tearing the vessel apart from inside. But don't let the pathetic appearance fool you, Dobby. A cornered, desperate Dark Lord is the most dangerous kind. Desperation makes people willing to take terrible risks."
He looked down at Dobby, and saw the fear in those enormous eyes.
"Listen to me carefully, Dobby. Tomorrow night, Voldemort will attack this place. I'm certain of it now. He probably wants the Tree of Wisdom and probably wants its soul to use it and absorb its power to repair his own shattered existence. We can't let that happen. Do you understand?"
"Dobby understands, Boss!" the house-elf said with more courage than Adrian had expected, straightening his small shoulders. "Dobby will fight to protect the Tree! Dobby will protect Master Adrian's sanctuary!"
"I know you will," Adrian said gently. "But remember—if things become too dangerous, if the defenses fail, I want you to flee. Save yourself an signal the charm I gave you. Don't try to fight him directly."
"Dobby will do what must be done!" the house-elf insisted stubbornly.
Adrian decided not to argue further. He knew from experience that house-elves could be remarkably brave when protecting those they cared about, and Dobby had proven his loyalty many times over.
He spent another hour making final adjustments to the plantation's defenses, adding redundant layers to the most critical wards and establishing several fallback positions where he could make a stand if the outer boundaries were breached.
By the time he finished, the afternoon sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon, and Adrian realized that he'd completely missed his fifth-year class.
That would require explanations later, but right now, he had more urgent concerns.
Adrian decided to make one final stop to the Forbidden Forest, to warn Bart and the other Treants about the danger that was coming.
Adrian emerged from the plantation through his suitcase portal, then used his wand to Apparate from the third-floor storage room to a quiet clearing just at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
The sun was lower now, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, and long shadows stretched across the grounds from the castle's towers.
He entered the Forest directly as someone who knew these paths well and who was known in turn to the Forest's inhabitants.
The Treants had claimed this territory after their elimination of Aragog's acromantula colony, it was a brutal but necessary purge that had taken several weeks and had left the Forest noticeably quieter and safer.
Now the Treants maintained a peaceful coexistence with the centaur herd that occupied the deeper parts of the Forest.
Adrian didn't have to go far before he encountered the first Treant. Flick appeared from behind a massive oak, his smaller, more agile form was moving with the fluidity that had earned him his name.
Flick was derived from a willow rather than an oak like Bart, which gave him a more flexible, almost liquid quality to his movements. He was also the most mischievous of all the Treants, the one most likely to play pranks.
Flick was waving his branches and throwing stones in the distance.
Adrian understood what he wanted to say.
It was something along the lines of:
'Is that Toad trying to invade our territory again? I'm ready this time—I've been practicing my throwing technique!'
Adrian couldn't help but smile despite his worry.
The incident where Flick had thrown Umbridge from the third-floor window remained one of the more memorable events of the school year, even if it had caused considerable chaos.
She had been attempting to interrupt the students' Defense Against the Dark Arts study group, trying to force her way into the room where Harry and his friends were practicing spells.
Flick, who had been standing guard outside the door and stopped or from entering had taken matters into his own branches and launched the shrieking woman clear through a window.
"No, nothing involving Umbridge," Adrian assured him. "I need to speak with Bart. Is he nearby?"
Flick waved and melted back into the trees to call Bart out..
Within minutes, Bart appeared, his massive tree form was moving through the Forest.
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