"Mr. de Lin, can I still be saved?"
Harry had to summon every scrap of composure a child could muster before he could accept what was happening to him.
He couldn't even say what he was feeling. The moment he thought he might turn into Voldemort, it was as if someone had stuffed a hedgehog into his stomach and his throat were full of quills. He was sure Hogwarts couldn't possibly tolerate a Dark Lord as a student. If any professor ever found out, he would definitely be expelled.
At least, if he really was forced to leave Hogwarts, he could still study magic in the Tower of Tomes. He wouldn't have to slink back to the Dursleys' house with his tail between his legs, and he wouldn't have to go to some Muggle public school and be bullied.
And it seemed Mr. de Lin didn't think this was such a big deal anyway. He just looked thoughtful, his brows never furrowing even the tiniest bit. Maybe Voldemort wasn't actually that much of a problem. Mr. de Lin would cure him, and Harry would happily go back to Hogwarts to attend classes as usual.
Skyl took one look at Harry's anxious expression and didn't even need to use Legilimency to know the boy was worrying about being expelled from Hogwarts again.
The classic behaviour of a child who didn't feel safe.
"Harry, for you, this might not actually be a bad thing."
"But I'm still… really scared. I'm afraid Voldemort will come back through me. He'll hurt my friends."
"That is indeed a possibility," Skyl nodded. He watched Harry's face go so pale it was almost translucent, like a slice of overripe onion, and the look on the boy's face was so exaggerated it was almost comical. "Don't worry. As long as you understand how the soul is put together, you'll understand the situation you're in now."
"How the soul is… put together?"
"That's right. A person's soul isn't actually a single, solid thing. It can be treated as three parts. Just saying it like this probably doesn't mean much to you, so it's better if I demonstrate with a teaching aid."
Skyl, sitting on the sofa, beckoned to a nearby bookcase. On one of the shelves sat a glass jar filled with insect eggs, butterfly pupae, and other odd specimens—some he had collected himself in the wild, and others had been gifts from the children of Winterhold, little keepsakes of no real value.
He picked out an egg the colour of tan-brown, shaped roughly like an olive.
At first Harry had no idea what he meant to do with it, but soon he found himself watching a great wizard display his craft.
The egg floated above Skyl's palm, bathed in a dim blue magical aura. Its hard chitinous shell began to swell and soften, turning into something like flesh. The egg swelled from the size of an olive to the size of a football. Inside, the original cell fluid multiplied hundreds of times over. Through the now thin outer membrane he could see the thick, porridge-like fluid gently bubbling.
"What are you doing, sir?"
"Some medieval alchemical manuals describe a special creature called a homunculus. I'm going to use the homunculus's soul to help explain my theory." Skyl's expression remained calm, as if this alchemical feat—on par with creating the Philosopher's Stone—were nothing at all. If everything he was doing now were printed in the wizarding newspapers of World I, he would instantly be hailed as an alchemist greater than Nicolas Flamel. But to him, that would have been nothing more than stating a fact, hardly anything to be pleased about.
Harry patiently watched the birth of the homunculus.
Inside the swollen, reshaped egg, the murky cell fluid kept bubbling, almost boiling. A tiny embryo floated up and down in the fluid. As the level slowly dropped, the embryo grew at incredible speed, sprouting a heart, then viscera, bones, and muscles. At first the foetus was fish-shaped; then it curled gradually into a human form.
The red, vein-like streaks on the shell faded away, its colour turning to a translucent bone-white. When the shell became completely transparent, like glass, the homunculus could be seen clearly.
Harry couldn't help but start laughing.
"Does it look that ugly?" Skyl stared at his creation.
When he was making the homunculus, Skyl kept thinking of the human assembly lines in Brave New World, of foetuses reared in glass bottles.
He hadn't deliberately controlled the homunculus's appearance; its features had been randomly generated.
It was a big-headed baby with ashen-grey skin, a thin body, and long, spindly limbs, with no sexual characteristics at all. From its navel extended a two-foot-long umbilical cord that floated in the air; its end seemed to fade into the void and was faintly blurred. The cord was glowing, drawing in a steady stream of magic and funneling it into the homunculus's body.
It was born as a powerful magical creature.
But its face looked incredibly foolish, like a child with Down syndrome. Its two bulging eyes were pure, bottomless black, carrying a strange, unsettling hint of malice.
"It looks… nice," Harry said, forcing the compliment out. "Does it need a name?"
"No need for that yet. I have other plans." Skyl tapped and shattered the transparent shell, exposing the homunculus to the air of the Tower of Tomes. It let out a panicked wail, far sharper than a human baby's cry. "Shh—shh… quiet. This will be over soon, see?"
Harry shuddered slightly as he watched Skyl press his hand down on the homunculus's head. The creature's ugly screaming cut off in an instant, going silent like a chick with its neck wrung.
Then, from its head, something was slowly drawn out—a mass of half-transparent "air", or perhaps a "field".
This "thing" had no colour and gave off no light, but as it acted on the surrounding air molecules, the space around it shimmered and warped like a heat-haze.
"And that is…?" Harry's voice was strained.
"The soul," Skyl nodded. "This is the most primordial form of the soul. I call it the memory body. Try to remember what it looks like right now."
"It just looks like a lump of warped air."
"Don't rely on your eyes. Close them."
Harry did as he was told and shut his eyes. "I can't see anything."
"Take out your wand."
Harry drew his wand. It was finely crafted and beautiful, and it was clear from its condition that its owner treasured it. Right now, though, the tip was twitching constantly in his trembling hand.
A second hand caught the shaking wand. Compared to Harry's own, it was steadier and stronger. In that instant, it was almost as if some force flowed along the wand and into Harry's body; the trembling stopped at once.
"Remember what I said in class? A wand is the medium that links magic to the world. A wizard's magic springs from the soul, so a wand can link to the soul as well. Now, bring the wand over here."
Maybe it was only his imagination, but right now the wand felt like his sixth finger, passing its sense of touch back to him. The air was slightly cool; Mr. de Lin's palm was broad and warm as it guided the wand forward, like a towman pulling a little boat out toward the distant sea beneath the night.
All at once, the wand pushed into something, and a sensation of icy cold crashed over him.
It felt exactly like touching a ghost's body somewhere in the depths of Hogwarts Castle.
Harry knew then that the wand had touched the homunculus's soul.
In the blackness behind his closed eyelids, what the wand was sending back was not only touch, but something like sight.
"I can see it!"
Yes—Harry saw the soul. Roughly speaking it was like a mass of indistinct mist, with no clear colour, and floating inside it were countless short strokes like mayflies, scraps of yarn, or tiny strings.
As Harry focused on the soul, it suddenly grew agitated. From a vague mass of fog it rapidly condensed into a humanoid shape, and facial features began to take form.
To his horror, Harry realised that this soul was becoming very similar to himself.
"Ah!" Harry's eyes snapped open. He tried to pull his wand back, but Skyl's grip on it was iron-strong and it wouldn't budge.
Skyl sounded faintly pleased. "Don't lose focus. Right now, the primordial soul is starting to divide. The homunculus has sensed your presence and, through that, it has become aware of its own. It's mimicking you, and its own core of self-awareness is about to take shape."
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