The Towers that Eclipes Darkshire

[Tom Marvolo Riddle]

I closed my eyes for a moment, what did I need them for? More than I liked, but for right now they… I needed ward stones, anchors made from the land itself to bind the castle to the leylines. And if it were lacking such the castle would be the point to generate such from. How at the moment… I had no idea but what I was reading on the Dataverse was beginning to enlighten me to a number of different magical methods that could be apply to such. One in particular involved nodes and something called thaumcraft.

That would have to be for then.

“I need them to collect four large boulders and align them to the cardinal points and cut them into this-“ My wand flickered into my hand and a jagged slash brought up four obelisks in miniature, borne of molten light. “-shape . I’ll carve the designs myself unless they can do detailed runic work.” Another flick and a whisper of my will caused the illusion that hung in the air to expand to mimic the landscape around us, showing the placement of each obelisk in the ground with only the tips exposed.

The aspects seemed to pick up immediately on their creator’s observations as two broke off and began to shift into the darkness. That left me the hardest part, as more of the forest was cleared in a circle around the epicenter that was going to be the heart of the castle, I could see how much I needed to work.

Where the Heartstone was going to be placed was where the main issue of my understanding of defensive magic or lack thereof; my knowledge of warding was drawn directly from Voldemort’s and only a few years after my creation. The last time my Diary was updated, he had still been working at Borgin and Burkes’. Barely more than a young man, and more devoted to the flights of fancy that were his undoing than to exploring the breadth of magical knowledge available to him. All that time and I had lingered on a shelf!

So be it. I’d have to use instinct and omnilium to make up for the lacking.

Spectral mercury began to bubble from my left hand’s fingertips, refracting what little light reached it into a prismatic spray, brighter than what had initially filtered in. With my right hand, my wand jabbed into the growing froth and sent it splattering across the bare earth. Where it did, it began to hiss as my magic shaped it. But more than pure will was needed.

“Concresso!” I sang out, the sound splitting into harmonic notes of such beauty and power that the world bent its knee to me. Grass and soil boiled into liquid stone, tones of minerals ranging from granite, marble and streaks of carbon rippled as the very nature of the ground ingratiated itself to my wants and need. A small smile flickered across my face as a sense of rightness worked its way into me.

The foundation of Hogwarts rose up, bringing the hill and us with it, transmuting earth and sand into something of a far higher quality. Stone bricks each the size of a grown man’s head were sprouting like roots of an ancient tree as I twirled my wand in each direction. Immediately though I focused on the area around us, infusing it with more of the ambient magical energy that was being generated by the omnilium I had invested so far. I needed more, Hogwarts wanted more. Who was I to not oblige?

Quartz crystal budded with its own inherent life with rich striations of golds, silvers, irons and emerald. However it was too raw still, too uncollected.

I reached out with my wand once more and the errant crystals began to bleed towards the center of my craft to form a larger structure. An obelisk matching the earlier designs hummed and pulsed, shifting the impurities into trim of sorts that adorned the molten runes that I deigned to exist in the patterns that were wanted of them. I folded it. Pushing the current runes deep into the strata, I forced more to come to the forefront until a holographic pattern began to rivet through the entire arrangement. The internal light played with them and casted them upon the shadows in al directions until it was as if the entire world had become a magical matrix of my own invention.

Bearing more of the spectral liquid on hand I moved forward towards the glowing form of the Hearstone. Something was missing something, living. Which forced me to think back to history, what might have the Founders done? Each had their skill set, though much of what it was had been lost to propaganda and ignorance.

Salazar Slytherin was after all one of the four, his blood flowed into the creation of my pages and this body was a reconstruction of the one who once was, but no longer. Dark magic also had a place in his legacy and there was one spell that I knew could create thought, and life. Fire. Fiendfyre perhaps?

Each step brought me closer to the source of heat; the flagstone I walked on was still sizzling, but not hot enough to make me fear for myself

“I need four pieces of stone, one from each of the obelisks that your others are crafting”

A rumble came from Nealaphh who had sat watching this entire time, it sounded a bit like a snicker and more of something undefinable. I could feel though what was being done, the land itself recognizing what its actions were. The four pieces I had requested we moving towards me at a pace and it was long before a hand offered them to me. The simple polygonal form of one of the aspects.

Willing the omnilium in the air, I pulled the pieces to me in an act I hadn’t been able to replicate since I first arrived. Levitation. However pallor tricks would not help me towards this first goal, more was needed even though I nearly hesitated to do what I realized had to be done.

“Ensis Umbraduro” I whispered. It had been a spell of my own construction that I had never tested out more than once, nearly killed me. Fiendfyre was like that. The fire that burned in all directions, and consumed everything. Fifty years on a shelf though taught me self-control. Twelve hours in the Omniverse gave me strength to use it

A liquid flame borne crimson and black erupted from my wand and around my hand, settling in style of that of a French rapier. I didn’t pause, that would be suicide, instead I moved to slam it down on the center tip of the Hearstone, adding the inverted light into the core of Hogwart’s primary warding anchor. I left my wand in it and fed the four stones to the coiling mass of serpents borne of light and darkness.

For the briefest of seconds I even spied the phoenix feather core than had been buried under the yew.

At my wish omnilium sealed the cap over the quartz structure and shackled the fiendfyre into place. In turn the wand and the boiling lava that had been the chips of the boulders began playing with the light that the structure had been shining with.

It pulsed, flickered and died out. Only for a moment had a shred doubt crossed my face before I heard it.

The beating of a heart rang also with a trill that resonated from the Hearstone’s surface and the light in tempo with it. My wand would never fail me though now it was far more disposable than it had ever been before. But that was exactly what it had needed. Two opposing forces working in unison to bind the Hogwarts spirit into existance.

Now I could continue fully with the support of everything I had done so far. Bringing both hands together and I meshed them further within the roiling growing wave of liquid reality that I had somehow built up since my arrival in the Nexus. Everything but me shook as the castle awoke to my mind, to my domination, to my soul. It was touched with the very nature of my being. Walls began to close off around me and Nealaphh, runes burning faster and more numerous into everything wherever the rays from the Heartstone struck it, passing through the two of us harmlessly.

I turned the wall themselves transparent, though such an effect would only be possible from within this one room and began to direct myself in earnest. Bringing about the full might of my mind in commanding the world. Hogwarts’ roots were growing deeper, subsuming the natural omnilium and transmuting it to my own. It was a fine division but more than enough for me to take advantage of.

The castle was rising up at a break neck speed and burrowing deeper equally. Four towers surrounded us; each wrought with the symbols of the Founder’s, my first break from the original mold. Four towers of equals each with their own dungeons and pinnacles rather than half of the student body being relegated to under another’s heel. As much as I identified with Slytherin, I had to think bigger. A school divided could get away from me as easily as Voldemort had been undone by an infant, as easily as I had been nearly undone by two children; one a girl who had resisted me for a whole year and another who had almost destroyed me. But I had been made better because of them, their life still existed in me. For that experience and matter came my second change, with four whole towers and dungeons for each house my will wrought out individual dorms in every available space other than the privy and common rooms, or at least the nature of such.

Magic shaped by me and bound to the burning spirit of Hogwarts would see to it that these hallowed halls would always have enough space to house whoever might find themselves here, no matter their number. Provided they had my own blessing of course. But it would mean one thing, they would all be equals.

Though I would have you sorted, you will have to see each other eye to eye. You are individuals not a mob. These rooms will befit you as such or chasten you should you see otherwise.

Gargoyles began clawing their way out of the stone siding, each made of dark obsidian, each shaped to match the house symbols, the Badger, the Eagle, the Serpent and the Lion. They served both functional and ornate use, forming the basis of an aqueduct and the cistern below us that would be the Chamber of Secrets. The beauty of them though was my main reason for their inclusion. Magic could do many functional things but the aesthetic forms of what had been my home had always haunted me, calling to me.

But this was not a place of nostalgia. Not yet, not now.

I took several breaths, fatigue starting to knot around me; I turned my focus outward as I noted that ALL the aspects had now found their place in providing lumber to the earth’s hungry maw that I hadn’t realized I had even opened. The wall I peered through magnified a spot and began work on the most important piece, the meeting room for all the houses, all the staff. The great hall, it had always had the grandeur of a muggle cathedral and none of the lesser expectations. And then magic had made it better, and in this I kept it as the original had been, save for scale. Larger, with more room to expand, the ceiling’s enchantments would pierce the mists of the Moors beyond the way the building itself could only barely restrain.

At my bidding, much of the lumber itself began pooling from crevices between the floor’s pavings as a liquid. Wooden tendrils erupting from them, latching into shape and forms as they hardened into polished relief. Seconds passed as tables and chairs began to shape and harden, soon though they were accompanied by streamers crawling up the wall. Like ivy given a carpenter’s intelligence they grew into canvas and painting frames, though largely unadorned beyond the simple polish and varnished gleams that they ended in. How they were carved into shape was magnificent enough that anymore would have been ostentatious.

The Great Hall finished with a burning wash of color, as if rain were falling in reverse and rather than water it was the night’s sky itself. Each time it hit the ceiling, an astronomer’s dream and fancy winked into existence with far more depth than any painting could ever hope to accomplish. The only sight of the mist that obscured the outside world was on the far periphery of the walls where it began to become the ceiling itself.

More still needed to be done but at this point I could feel some level of weariness and the day’s events calling me to rest. And the heat from the moving stone, friction and liquefying of various substances was starting to build. With a lazy hand I opened all the rooms and the generic structures that were still forming so they could vent some of their oppressive air.

Without even an idle thought I fell into a chair and raised another for the being who I had followed up until now. Half my mind still directed the basic generation of the castle but now that the hardest portions were done, the rest could be drawn from memory and adjusted as needed. It was time to broach a subject that I had been keeping to myself for a while now.

This place was mine, nothing could ever change that, but from what I had seen I needed knowledge of the world and the Institute had that. Keeping them within reach and able to come when needed was of the utmost importance.

“So, Nealaphh, have you had any thoughts towards what you want the Institute’s Embassy Wing to look like?” I said finally.

It was an odd feeling to go to bed one night an wake up rested, but it still being night, more so was the fact that his dormitory was now just one room, a hot one at that.

Blinking Harry James Potter opened the door and was treated to a fresh wind, someone must have left a fireplace or two going for it to be this warm in Gryffindor Tower. At least someone, hopefully the same one had thought enough to open a window. But still why had the dormitories been altered this much or at all? Sure the stairs changed and the route to the Great Hall was different this year, but as far as he was aware, everyone in Hogwarts had to share a room with those in their year. If Professor Dumbledore thought to change things why not wait until the start of the next Term?

Or perhaps the Twins were just pranking him again.

Shaking his head Harry decided it was probably best to stay up, he was too wide awake to just go back to bed now and the heat from his room was sweltering. He only tarried long enough to get his wand and his glasses before striking out into the rest of the House to investigate. Had the Heir of Slytherin struck again, was this what he meant about driving out his enemies?

Everything though was a bit cleaner than when he had gone to sleep, and the air itself was crisp with mist. The only problem with that was, winter was still clinging on. Only just February and this far up north, he imagined the snow wouldn’t be going anywhere! So really the smell of mist was quite out. Opening a few doors revealed no one else in their rooms even under his wand light. Beds were made; curtains were there, but no one else. Where had everyone gone to-?

“Harry!” someone said squeakily, loud enough to make Harry jump more than a few feet. Turning his head Harry spotted a crimson faced redheaded girl that was none other than Ginny Weasley. In a nighty no less.

With more than a little blush in his cheeks, “Ginny what are you doing? This is the boys dormitories you can’t be in here!”

That gave her pause before saying, “That- that’s never stopped Hermione from doing the same thing.” It seemed at least for the moment she had forgotten her fear of him. However Harry was more concerned as to the whereabouts of Ron and the other boys.

“S-seen anyone else?” She asked warily, to which Harry shook his head.

“No, not anyone. You’d think we’d hear Ron’s snores even from the dungeons if he were asleep.” That got a short giggle from Ginny before she seemed to realize who she was talking to.

“Same here, all the girls are gone. Perhaps we should- should find a professor?”

Sighing, Harry realized it was probably a little much to expect her to forget THAT, but she at least had a point. Hogwarts was being odd, more so than usual. A professor at least might be able to straighten things out.

“Right, have your Wand?” Harry asked, to which Ginny nodded.

“Only thing other than my clothes that I could find.”

Harry paused, why would she need to find her clothes? Best not to think too much about it either way, something told Harry his life had just changed and probably not for the better, “Let’s find Professor McGonagall.”

Ginny nodded uncertainly, but followed him as he started to make way his down a flight of stairs. Harry though could see she was uncomfortable with something, he could feel his own sense of dread filling him with each step. A hand snaked into his own causing him to nearly jump and trip down all the way down. Only reflexes honed by Oliver Wood’s training and escaping Dudley’s clutches for years kept his neck unbroken.

The hand disappeared and he heard Ginny mutter, “Sorry”

Harry shook his head and reached out to retake the her hand, “Its fine. Safety in numbers right?” For once he was glad his reddening face was hidden by the night and his wand light pointed in another direction. Ron at least would be happy to see that his little sister was being taken care of. Though it was only an afterthought that Harry realized this was the most they had ever even spoken to each other.

Perhaps it was necessity.