16 November 1992, Hogwarts
Before the young Potter could revel in his coming victory, Riddle did something unthinkable, something that Harry would describe later as the desperate actions of a mad teenager. Tom Riddle summoned Fiendfyre in the middle of Hogwarts.
Fiendfyre wasn't technically a fire spell. Its history was honestly easy to track since the ramification of the spell were pretty big. The entire thing started thousands of years back with an ancient Greek mage called Prometheus that was studying alternate dimensions. Honestly, the study of parallel worlds and dimensions was something that countless civilizations tried to explore, and it always ended in disaster in some way. This was no different.
Somehow Prometheus had discovered a dimension of darkness and flames and prepared to open a portal of sorts. Unfortunately, he didn't have a choice. Not many know what happened afterwards, only that one day, the mage vanished, with all his research with him. Hundreds of years later, when the mage known as Vulcan discovered a trace of the research and recreated Prometheus' research. Thankfully, he didn't open a portal to the other dimensions entirely, and only a connection of sorts to enhance his forging, as the dimension tended to have a purification aspect to them. This allowed Vulcan to create wonderous artefacts that were superior to any other artificer at that age, so much so, that he was known as the god of fire and the forges.
Years later, some descendant tried to recreate the spell but wasn't able to do it. Wands had started to become commonplace, and the ancient forms of magic were often disregarded. So, after decades of study, the wizard was able to create a wanded version of the spell, which acted like an unstable microscopic portal to the other side. Unfortunately, for all the man's intelligence, his magical circuits were subpar. As such, he chose to make the flames themselves help power the portal. What he didn't expect when he cast that spell was that the flames themselves had a basic consciousness that fought back.
The wizard was quickly overwhelmed, his name lost to history, but not before committing one of the biggest disasters in the magical world's history. His flames went out of control and burned Alexandria to ash, the library included. Countless tomes were lost, hell hundreds of experts perished in that fire, unprepared to fight something of this calibre, that's not to mention the artefacts destroyed.
And it was the magical world that lost the most. By nature, Fiendfyre targeted magical energy. Theorists claim that it was some kind of ascended consciousness that somehow absorbed the magic of its dimension, becoming the sole living entity. It literally feeds on magic, and when they realized this, a massive ritual was constructed to seal and drain the entirety of ambient magic from the city of Alexandria, and the fire winked itself out eventually. It took centuries for the magical community to recover, and the library of Alexandria was rebuilt. Unfortunately, it still remains a shadow of its very self.
Of course, after a lot of experimentation, it was determined that a strong will can override the consciousness of the flames and guide it, but not completely control it.
To be perfectly honest, Harry only learnt all of this because he was curious as to why Fiendfyre could destroy Horcruxes. Now, that was obvious, the soul shard was anchored with magic. What Fiendfyre does is consume the magic inside it and that releases the soul, allowing it to pass on, hence the destruction of the Horcrux. The soul itself is unharmed, well, it's already split since, you know, it's a Horcrux, but Fiendfyre doesn't affect souls.
But that didn't matter now. What did matter was the fact that Riddle just opened a gate to what was essentially hell and released magic consuming conscious flames in a magical school, that held practically the next generation of magic.
Now, Harry wasn't Dumbledore. He couldn't just transfigure an extradimensional fire with a wave of his wand, but for all his stupefaction at the move, Harry knew how to improvise enough to buy himself some time.
So, yeah, Harry did the best thing he could think of and just conjured what felt like hundreds of ice chains. The ice magic that held it was stopping it from melting at the sheer heat that came with it. The chains surrounded the entire flames in a dome and started linking. Harry used this to conjure hundreds of small magical circles in the knots, telekinetically pushing the fire down.
It was the most stressful and tasking thing Harry had ever done. The sheer scale of multitasking alone was ludicrous, but for now, the fire was somewhat contained. The heat was being countered by the ice magic, and the fire was contained by the countless telekinetic pushes that acted like some sort of prison.
Gritting his teeth at the exertion, the Potter scion exclaimed, "Are you out of your mind Riddle? You would risk destroying the entire school, destroying yourself, just to win, to prove a point?"
The older boy looked oddly sad at that, "No, not to prove a point. For a dream, my dream. You know when I was younger, I hoped to change the world. To make it a just place, where talent triumphs over hate. An eternal existence, where no one would ever die. Imagine a world where your parents were still alive. A world without pain, without Death. My counterpart lost his way, he became a monster, an abomination that destroyed everything in his path. He focused so much on Dumbledore, it's obvious. He found out that our dreams would never be possible with the old man around and so, he started a war to stop him, and he forgot why he had done so in the first place. But I refuse. I will succeed where my counterpart began."
The pressure was slowly getting to Harry. He couldn't hold on to the magic like that, especially since a giant snake tried to attack the dome, pushing him into putting more magic in the telekinetic magic circle.
He couldn't keep this up, but he needed Riddle to keep talking, "You want a body of your own."
"You think too small, Potter. But I have to say, I didn't expect you to be able to cast something like this. And you're a second year. This magic is even something I have never witnessed before. Your family crest, I assume?"
Harry nodded, "Yes, my crest."
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