The Weasley twins shared their suspicions with no one. Whenever they encountered the young Earl, they looked at him with admiration and addressed him with exaggerated courtesy as Your Lordship or My Lord. They were delighted by the sheer scale of the prank and had promoted Grosvenor to the number-one prankster in their personal rankings—even though, until then, they had awarded first place to themselves.
Christmas was drawing near. Almost none of the students wanted to remain at school. There were, of course, exceptions. Chester Chelsea, for instance, had no desire to return to the orphanage and was therefore more than happy to stay at Hogwarts. Fred, George, Ron and Ginny also preferred to spend the holidays at school—going home would mean travelling with their parents to visit Bill in Egypt. For reasons of their own, they did not want to visit their brother. Percy, who considered himself above "children's games", excused his decision by claiming that he was only staying at Hogwarts for Christmas because, as a prefect, it was his duty to assist the professors.
Richard wondered whether some sort of disagreement had occurred in the Weasley family between the eldest, Bill, and his younger brothers and sister.
What was surprising was that Draco Malfoy had decided to remain at the castle as well, along with his henchmen, Crabbe and Goyle.
Richie immediately drew a connection: Riddle's diary, planted by Lucius Malfoy; the decision to leave his son at Hogwarts over Christmas... It looked as though Malfoy had set some sort of trap and was waiting for it to spring. He had no idea, of course, that the diary had long since ended up in the hands of one of the specialists from the Department of Mysteries. And he'd left his son at the castle to give himself an alibi, something along the lines of: I had nothing to do with it. If I were responsible, would I really have left my own child in danger at Hogwarts? Or perhaps Malfoy Senior was dealing with some sort of trouble that made it undesirable for his son to be at home.
In any case, Grosvenor Junior couldn't have cared less. He had a busy holiday ahead of him: the royal Christmas dinner, visits to the offices of Grosvenor Junior and Grosvenor's Workshop, and a great many other important matters.
Knowing that Harry Potter was in danger from Dobby, Richard sent Proudfoot to keep watch over him for the entire holiday. And it paid off: not a single attempt was made on Harry while he was staying with Scott.
For Richard, the holidays ended far too quickly. So much business had piled up that he never managed to deal with all of it; he could only devote his attention to the most pressing matters that required his personal involvement. There was, for example, the grand opening of the power station and the barrage of questions from journalists at the press conference held to mark the occasion. Or his meeting with Mr Bode, during which he enquired about the progress of the research.
Unspeakable Bode assured Grosvenor Junior that the research was proceeding at full speed and that preliminary results would be ready by the end of the following year.
Fortunately, Richard had other sources of information. From Donky's reports, he learned that the rune formed after exposure to a fragment of the Avada Kedavra curse—the one that killed the wizard who had cast it—was a Horcrux.
The reports Bode submitted to the Department of Mysteries contained a detailed explanation. A Horcrux was a fragment of a wizard's soul that kept the wizard's spirit anchored in the world of the living after death. With the aid of other wizards, a vessel—a new body—could be created for the soul, one into which the spirit could actually be placed, thereby granting it new life.
A Horcrux could only be destroyed by destroying its vessel. Moreover, in theory, once resurrected, the wizard whose soul had been used to create the Horcrux could exert influence over the bearer of a fragment of his spirit—for example, by sending visions.
Naturally, Richard was not at all pleased to learn that he and Harry were vessels thanks to which Tom Riddle's spirit had not passed on to the next world. What worried Grosvenor most was that the Unspeakables might well consider killing both him and Harry in order to get rid of Riddle once and for all.
To protect himself, Richie immediately sprang into action. He secretly ordered the construction of another laboratory bunker in an entirely different location. The wizarding builders were bound by strict oaths of secrecy.
Once the bunker was ready, Richard intended to send some of the wizards working with Bode there. Other wizards would join them, naturally after being made to swear Unbreakable Vows to ensure that no information leaked to the Department of Mysteries—or anywhere else, for that matter.
The objective was quite straightforward: under conditions of absolute secrecy, they would develop a way to protect him. Besides, he suspected that Horcruxes worked much like the Protean Charm. If the wizard who created one could influence the bearer of the Horcrux through a fragment of his own spirit, then the reverse should also be true. In other words, theoretically, with the right approach and specially developed methods, Richard and Harry might be able to influence Riddle in return.
Another interesting discovery was that Tom Riddle's diary—the very notebook Lucius Malfoy had slipped to Ginny Weasley—was also a Horcrux! Bode suspected that Lucius had intended to resurrect his master. For that to happen, the diary needed prolonged contact with a wizard.
If a witch or wizard began writing in the notebook, the fragment of Riddle's soul could establish contact with them and, like an energy vampire, begin draining away their life force and magical power. As the Horcrux grew stronger, it would become capable of temporarily taking control of the wizard's body.
In theory, the diary would require approximately eight to ten months of close contact with its magical host before it could seize their body completely. Which meant that, for all practical purposes, Lucius Malfoy had intended to kill Ginny Weasley.
(End of Chapter)
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