The pitch-black mass tore free from Harry's astral chest with a sickening, spiritual rip.
Harry's ethereal form let out a soundless gasp, staggering backward in the air. The severed soul fragnt hit the floor and imdiately expanded into a cloud of jagged, screaming shadows. It darted toward the heavy oak doors, slamd violently against Dumbledore's golden containnt wards, and ricocheted back, hissing like a cornered viper.
"Watch out!" Bill yelled, drawing his wand.
The fragnt, realizing it couldn't escape the room, spun around. The serpentine face within the smoke locked its hollow, hateful eyes on Harry's unconscious physical body. It lunged, desperate to re-enter its vessel.
Ethan didn't even blink. He stepped right into the fragnt's path.
His hands flared with intense, blinding orange light. He didn't cast a shield this ti; he reached out and grabbed the shrieking shadow with his bare hands. The Eldritch magic acted like a physical vice against the spirit. The fragnt thrashed wildly, sending tendrils of dark magic whipping across the room, knocking books off shelves and shattering a glass display case.
"Burn," Ethan said simply.
He clapped his hands together, crushing the soul fragnt between two discs of hard-light magic.
A high-pitched scream shattered the glass of the Headmaster's windows. A shockwave of dark energy rippled through the room, rattling the teeth of everyone present. Then, with a sound like shattering ice, the fragnt simply evaporated into a cloud of fine, black ash that drifted harmlessly to the rug.
Silence crashed back into the office.
Up on the wall, Phineas Nigellus Black was gripping the fra of his portrait so hard his painted knuckles were white. "I have witnessed centuries of magical theory, and that was, without a doubt, the most reckless, insane display of brute-force soul manipulation I have ever seen!"
"You're welco, Phineas," Ethan said, dusting off his hands. He turned back to the center of the room. "Alright, kid. Recess is over. Back in the at suit."
Ethan grabbed Harry's floating, blue-tinted astral form by the shoulders and shoved him hard, right back into his physical body.
Harry shot up from Lupin's arms with a violent gasp, his back arching as he sucked in a massive breath of air. He scrambled backward, clutching his chest, his eyes wide and panicked.
"Harry! Harry, look at ," Lupin said, grabbing his shoulders to steady him. "Are you alright?"
Harry didn't answer imdiately. He reached a trembling hand up to his forehead. The famous lightning-bolt scar had burst open, bleeding a thick, tar-like black substance down his brow. Tonks quickly handed him a handkerchief. Harry wiped it away, wincing, but as the black ooze cleared, the skin underneath was just red and slightly irritated. The sinister, jagged edge of the scar had completely disappeared. It was just normal skin.
Harry looked up, his chest heaving. He stared at Ethan.
"It's quiet," Harry whispered, his voice full of absolute disbelief. "My head... it's completely quiet."
For the first ti since he was a year old, there was no low-level static, no phantom anger, no lingering connection to a psychopath. His mind was entirely his own.
McGonagall let out a breath she looked like she'd been holding for a decade. She placed a hand over her heart, her stern face breaking into an expression of profound relief. "Thank rlin."
"Hey, why are you thanking rlin? I'm the one standing right here who did all the work," Ethan remarked, crossing his arms.
"My apologies. Thank you, Mr. Williams," McGonagall said, the corners of her mouth twitching upward. The crushing tension in the room had finally broken. "For your monuntal efforts, I will do my absolute best to scrub that highly questionable presentation you showed us from my mory."
Ethan groaned, rubbing his face. "Hey, that wasn't on purpose. Sothing went wrong with the Pensieve extraction."
"Yeah, right," Tonks joined in, a wicked grin spreading across her face. "Though I have to say, it was quite... impressive. Sha it was just a fake illusion."
"Who said it was fake? That was all real—" Ethan started defensively, before he caught the collective smirks around the room. He stopped, realizing he had walked right into the bait. "You know what? I'm done defending my privacy to a room full of wizards."
Dumbledore walked slowly from the door, waving his wand to drop the containnt wards. He stopped in front of Ethan, his blue eyes searching the younger man's face. The Headmaster looked like a man who had spent his entire life trying to untie an impossible knot, only to watch soone walk up and cut it with a sword.
"You just changed the entire paraters of the prophecy," Dumbledore said softly.
"Prophecies are just suggestions written by people who can't handle variables," Ethan replied, leaning back against the desk. "Voldemort thinks he has six anchors left. He actually has four. And he has absolutely no idea we know about them."
Bill Weasley stepped forward, kicking at the pile of black ash on the rug. "So, what are these other four? You ntioned a cup, a locket, a diadem, and a snake. Where do we even start looking? The UK is massive, Ethan. 'A cup' could be anywhere."
"They aren't just anywhere," Ethan said. "Voldemort is an arrogant dramatist. He likes grand, historical objects, and he hides them in places that an sothing to his ego. We don't have to search the country. I know exactly what they are and where they are."
Ethan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his tone turning completely business. "The locket is sitting in the drawing-room of Number 12, Grimmauld Place, currently being hoarded by a miserable house-elf nad Kreacher."
Up on the wall, Phineas Nigellus let out a sharp bark of surprise. "In the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black? That filthy little gremlin has a piece of the Dark Lord's soul in my house?!"
"Not for much longer," Ethan said. "The cup belongs to Helga Hufflepuff. It's currently locked deep inside the Lestrange family vault."
"At Gringotts?" Bill repeated, his professional curse-breaker instincts imdiately flaring up. "Breaking into a high-security vault at Gringotts is suicide. The goblins have dragons down there, Ethan. Actual dragons."
"I've fought worse things than overgrown lizards," Ethan dismissed casually. "And the last object is Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem. It's right here. Inside Hogwarts. Hidden in a magical space called the Room of Requirent."
Dumbledore closed his eyes, letting the sheer weight of the information wash over him. Years of ticulous, painstaking research, of hunting mories, burning his own hand, and chasing ghosts—all completely bypassed in a ten-minute conversation.
"We have the locations," Dumbledore said, opening his eyes. The grandfatherly warmth was fully replaced by the sharp, commanding presence of a war general. "We have the ans to destroy them. And for the first ti in this war, we have the elent of total surprise."
"Exactly," Ethan smirked, a dangerous glint in his eye. "So, who wants to go rob a bank?"
Author's Note:
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