Fate was quietly shifting without anyone realizing it.
After Harry left, John's fingers tapped against the golden locket, one beat at a time.
"Slytherin's locket. Ravenclaw's diadem. Is this really just coincidence?"
He closed his eyes, lost in thought.
It was far too coincidental.
The two hardest Horcruxes to find had both been delivered to him—by two boys born at the end of July.
"The Chosen One?"
John had heard far too many stories about saviors.
Strictly speaking, the first Horcrux to be destroyed had been by Harry's hand.
That diary had been destroyed by Harry's sword.
According to the original course of events, Harry was meant to be the one who faced the Dark Lord in the end.
Then this Horcrux, too, ought to be destroyed by Harry.
"Fate is changing—prophecies included, and more besides...."
John opened his eyes. Inside the locket rested a fragment of Voldemort's soul.
With it in hand, John could now confirm one thing.
"Have Horcruxes truly lost their allure to you, Tom?"
He picked up the golden locket, watching it sway before his eyes.
Horcruxes were a crude solution—trading pieces of one's own soul for immortality.
It was a laughable approach.
The damage caused by a fractured soul far outweighed the benefit of extended life.
Which was why, upon seeing a new path, Voldemort had abandoned that foolish method without hesitation.
"Powerful as he is, he's still not a qualified alchemist."
John smiled faintly. "Equivalent exchange—and yet he wanted to dodge the price."
Putting the golden locket away, John activated Voldemort's doomsday countdown.
With the final Horcrux now in his possession, Voldemort no longer had a second chance.
Once his soul was restored, Voldemort's strength would increase. In that light, giving away a powerful wand hardly seemed like a bad deal to John.
"Still, what happened at the Burrow was a reminder. When facing dark creatures, we'll need even greater power."
The outline of a plan began to take shape in John's mind.
The next day arrived.
John went to class.
In Care of Magical Creatures, Hagrid watched as John busied himself tinkering with a suit of armor.
Come to think of it, that armor had been a gift from John to Hagrid.
Goblin-crafted armor was already impressive to begin with, but after John's modifications, it looked like a treasure only nobility could afford.
Golden patterns ran through the silver plates, leaving Hagrid staring in stunned amazement.
What surprised Hagrid even more was that, before he'd even begun his plan to train Grawp as an assistant, Grawp had already become John's helper.
John placed a wedge near the neck area of the armor and issued an order to Grawp, who was holding a wooden club wrapped in iron plating.
"Strike."
Boom! Grawp swung the massive club and brought it down with full force.
Dust and dirt exploded into the air, yet the armor only caved in at a single point.
John adjusted his stance and gave Grawp another instruction.
Grawp seemed to have found enjoyment in the monotony of the task, a grin spreading across his broad face.
By the time the class ended, the large suit of armor that belonged to Hagrid had only been engraved with less than one-tenth of those strange symbols.
"Strange,"
Hagrid said as he put the armor on to try it out. He rubbed at the beard caught in the collar and muttered, "It feels lighter somehow. I'm not sure."
He patted his belly, and the plate there rang out with a metallic clang.
"That's a hardened protection charm," John said, pointing at the script Hagrid couldn't read. "Each engraving makes it even tougher."
At the beginning, John had been able to engrave it himself. Later on, he'd needed Grawp's strength to finish the work.
It was only about one-tenth complete for now, but the hardness was already astonishing.
Hagrid asked in confusion, "Why strengthen it? I mean… am I supposed to wear this out and about?"
"There'll come a day," John said casually. "Don't forget your duties. Whether it's dangerous creatures or dangerous wizards, having this won't hurt."
Hagrid was convinced.
Never imagining that one day, he would wear it and hold off an entire army on his own.
After reinforcing the defenses of his human-shaped tank, John glanced at his timetable.
Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions.
Today's classes were bound to be lively.
Sure enough, once Defense Against the Dark Arts ended.
The students were all discussing ways to deal with Inferi.
Sirius, who had narrowly escaped death, put aside his rivalry with Snape. He had realized that those Inferi surrounding the Burrow could one day appear at Hogwarts as well.
All he could do was teach every lesson properly, so that when that day came, the students might survive it.
Of course, the indispensable Gryffindor house-point segment was not skipped.
With Harry's firsthand experience fighting Inferi, Gryffindor gained twenty-five points.
Then came Potions class.
Harry seemed distracted. He listened to Snape's occasional barbed remarks while constantly flipping through the old copy of Advanced Potion-Making, hoping to find some clue as to whether the emerald-green potion John had given him could truly neutralize the poison.
Unfortunately, he found nothing.
Harry, who had come to treat that book with near-superstitious faith, felt increasingly uneasy.
The potion had been sent to St. Mungo's earlier that morning.
If the potion turned out to be flawed—or ineffective—he would be overwhelmed with guilt.
Even Snape's familiar, cutting sarcasm ringing in his ears failed to stir any reaction from him.
Snape deducted twenty points from Gryffindor, nearly wiping out everything they had earned in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
This lesson required them to brew an antidote based on a given poison.
Because Harry wasn't paying attention at all, he randomly grabbed a bezoar from the cupboard and turned it in. Snape described him as a baboon who couldn't understand human language.
Another ten points vanished.
When class ended, Hermione and Ron found Harry clearly out of sorts.
"What's wrong, Harry?" Hermione asked.
Harry absentmindedly jabbed at his plate three times, still failing to spear the stubborn sausage.
"I went to see John."
The moment he said it, a fork clattered to the table.
Hermione's eyes widened, desperate to know what had happened.
Ron chewed his sausage gloomily. "Mate, you didn't go and do something stupid with him, did you?"
Harry couldn't help bristling. Did they really think he was some reckless idiot who never thought anything through?
He snapped back, "I went with Dumbledore."
Then Harry told them everything he'd done the day before.
When they heard that Harry had used the locket in exchange for a chance to save Mrs. Weasley, Ron said emotionally, "Thank you, Harry."
"No need to thank me. He didn't accept the deal."
The moment Harry said that, Ron flared up. "So he thinks my mum isn't worth saving?"
"No—no," Harry hurried to calm him down, afraid Ron might storm off to confront John. "He told me she's Percy's mum. He wouldn't use a friend's family as bargaining chips."
Realizing he'd overreacted, Ron shut his mouth and obediently went back to chewing his sausage.
When Harry finally mentioned that he'd traded for a new wand, Ron couldn't help complaining, "You should've made him pay more."
"That was already more than enough!" Hermione shot Ron a glare and said wistfully, "John is still just as gentle as ever."
"I gave John's potion to an owl," Harry said, still worried about whether it would actually work.
"You should've tested it with the Spongify Revealing Charm," Ron muttered, earning a kick from Hermione under the table.
Ron made a gesture of zipping his mouth shut.
Despite all the worry, Harry soon learned it had been unnecessary.
Bill wrote from St. Mungo's to tell them that Mrs. Weasley was out of danger.
After waking up, Mrs. Weasley was full of energy. The healers told Bill it was simply because she'd gotten far too much rest.
With the Burrow gone, Mr. Weasley brought the family to stay temporarily at the Black family home.
Without that shrieking portrait, the house was so quiet it felt almost like a haunted manor.
Mrs. Weasley, brimming with energy, thoroughly cleaned the Black family home from top to bottom, inside and out.
Which left Kreacher, whose work had been stolen, deeply disgruntled.
When the trio saw the news, they finally let out a sigh of relief.
Ginny was delighted as well.
Harry watched her bouncing around happily and found himself staring for a moment.
It wasn't until Hermione reminded him that he managed not to let the drool fall.
Holding Advanced Potion-Making, Harry felt a wave of disappointment.
He realized just how vast the gap between himself and John truly was.
John's level had long surpassed everything recorded in that book. While he still had to rely on this book of unknown origin to "cheat" his way through lessons.
Shame and embarrassment welled up inside him, and Harry felt the urge to stiffen his resolve and throw the book away.
But thinking of how the knowledge inside had not only improved his Potions grades, but had also helped him save his godfather with one of its spells, he ultimately chose to keep it.
In the blink of an eye, time slipped into February.
The snow around the school slowly melted, replaced by a bleak, damp chill.
Grayish-purple clouds hung low over the castle. The ceaseless cold rain made the lawns slick, leaving trail after trail of muddy footprints in the entrance hall and corridors.
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