Harry Potter and the Great Old Ones

Chapter 622 The Extinction of Humanity (Two Chapters Combined)

“Even when Tom Riddle was still in school, he was a bright, witty, and overly mature person,” Tierra said with a smile as she stood on the podium. “But at the same time, he was excessively cruel and indifferent to life; he was a born antisocial personality.”

Time quickly passed to the second Dark Magic class after entering December.

The weekend before this lesson, the Gryffindor Quidditch team had just played a fierce Quidditch match.

That was Ron's first time on the field, and he was incredibly nervous before the match, wishing he could just give up immediately—

But just like Harry did in the movie, Tyrell took out the small bottle containing Felix Felicis, shook it on the table, pretending to put the potion into his breakfast orange juice, and then had Ron pretend to drink it.

This simple psychological trick is as effective as ever.

Ron, as the gatekeeper, blocked gods from gods and Buddhas from Buddhas, like a solid barrier.

At the celebration party after the Quidditch match, just like in the original story, Lavender Brown, the muscular girl with brown curly hair, ran over and gave Ron a big, deep French kiss amidst the jubilant atmosphere of the party.

"It looks like she's eating his face," Ginny once commented expressionlessly.

Harry and Hermione, who were standing nearby, nodded in agreement. They even teased her afterward, while Ginny seemed unhappy for some reason.

Ron and Lavender Brown's kiss at the victory celebration lasted for ten minutes.

Just like they are in this class.

From the moment they stepped into the classroom and found a spot near a corner, they remained embracing and kissing each other from time to time.

And just three days after their celebratory party together, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny had already stopped teasing Ron and Lavender Brown about their kiss—

They were thoroughly bored and weary of the scene; they not only had no desire to laugh, but the sight of them kissing disgusted them.

Perhaps Ginny is right; the way Lavender and Ron kissed looked like Lavender was nibbling on Ron's face.

“Ron Weasley! Lavender Brown!” Thiella suddenly shouted from the podium, “This isn’t a hotel! This isn’t a dormitory! This is a classroom, if you want to kiss, go outside!”

Ron and Lavender were both startled, then chuckled awkwardly and opened their mouths.

“Okay, let’s continue where I left off. Oh right,” Tierra said. “Tom Riddle turned his attention to the school and gathered a group of loyal friends for himself. He had a wicked and strange charm in this group. They were a mix of all sorts of people, a mixture of the weak seeking protection and the strong seeking glory. In other words, they were the precursors to the Death Eaters, and some of them did indeed become Death Eaters after leaving the school.”

"They were firmly under Riddle's control, never having done anything wrong in public, despite the countless dirty little incidents that seemed unrelated to them during their early years at Hogwarts. The most serious incident, of course, was the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, which led to the death of a girl and the unjust punishment of Professor Hagrid," Tierra continued.

“Tom Riddle seems to be very protective of his privacy. Even with my abilities, I haven’t been able to find out more about Riddle’s memories of Hogwarts. What we know is what happened after he left the school, after a painful struggle, and after he tracked down the little-known trails of dark magic,” Tierra said. “That is, some time before or after he became the Dark Lord.”

"The Death Eaters and teachers at Hogwarts whom I found and who were willing to tell me told me that Riddle was deeply fascinated by his ancestors. This is understandable, of course, since he grew up in an orphanage and naturally wanted to know how he got there. He frantically searched for information about old Tom Riddle in all the materials he could find. Finally, he was forced to admit that his father had never been to Hogwarts. I believe it was at that moment that he forever abandoned his name and called himself 'Voldemort,' but then he began to search for all the information about his mother—his mother, I think you might remember, was someone he thought could never become a wizard, simply because she could not escape human death."

"The only name he could trace was 'Mellop,' which he learned from the orphanage owner that it was his maternal grandfather's name. Finally, through a painstaking search of ancient wizarding genealogies, he found the name in the list of Slytherin's still-living family members. That summer when he was sixteen, he left the orphanage he returned to every summer and set off to find his relatives in the Gaunt family... Now, students, come closer."

As she spoke, Tiera took out a crystal bottle containing a rotating pearly memory.

“I am very fortunate to have this bottle in my collection,” Tiera said with a chuckle, before pouring the shimmering liquid into the Pensieve.

A powerful, jet-black fountain erupted from the meditation basin, flowing gently across the classroom like an ocean or a cloud.

Everyone seemed to melt away like ice cubes into this ocean of memories.

After being dissolved by the spring of memories, everyone gained a strange perspective—

It's as if they're watching two images at the same time—

One scene depicts an ugly and dilapidated old house, with a thick layer of cobwebs on the ceiling, grime filling the cracks in the floor, and moldy and rotten food lying in a jumble of old jars on the table.

The only light in the room comes from a single candle placed at the foot of the viewer's eye.
Another scene is from the outside. They see the exterior of this ugly old house, the nearly decaying foundation of this ancient mansion that has gone through countless experiences, the doorposts covered with black mold, and the dilapidated, patched-up roof. The figures in this scene seem to be walking, slowly approaching this dilapidated old house.

Then, a hand reached out from that view and pushed open the door.
They saw a man sitting at the far end of the room, whose hair and beard were so long that they couldn't see his eyes and mouth.

He was huddled in an armchair by the fire, holding a wand in his right hand and a dagger in his left.

Meanwhile, in another scene, the door creaks open and a boy carrying an old-fashioned lantern enters. Harry and the other Hogwarts students immediately recognize him: tall and pale, with black hair and handsome features—it is Voldemort in his youth.

Voldemort's eyes slowly swept across the small room, then stopped on the man in the armchair. They looked at each other for a few seconds, then the man stood up straight, and the many empty bottles at his feet clattered and rolled across the floor.

"You!" the man roared, "You!"

He rushed toward Riddle, drunk, holding his wand and dagger high.

"stop."

"Riddle spoke in Parseltongue," the man said abruptly. He stopped abruptly at the table, knocking the moldy jars to the floor.

He stared intently at Riddle, and they sized each other up for a long silence. The man broke the silence first.

"You said that?" the disheveled man asked. "Yes, I did," Riddle said casually, walking to the middle of the room and closing the door.

Riddle frowned, seemingly quite dissatisfied with the state of the room.

"So who are you?"

"I am Mofen, am I?"

"Mofen's son?"

“I am, then…”

Morfin brushed the hair away from Riddle's dirty face to get a better look, and Harry saw that he was wearing Mylop's black ring on his right hand.

“I thought you were that Muggle,” Morfin whispered. “You look very much like that Muggle.”

"Which Muggle?" Tom Riddle asked eagerly.

“Oh, that Muggle my sister’s infatuated with, the Muggle who lives in that big house over there,” Morfin said, unexpectedly slapping the floor between them. “You look so much like him, Riddle. But he’s old now, older than you. Let me think…”

Mofen looked a little dizzy and unsteady, but he was still gripping the edge of the table for support.

“He’s back, look,” he foolishly added.

Voldemort stared at Morfin, silently assessing all the possibilities. Then he leaned closer and asked, "Riddle's back?"

“Ah, he left her, found his legal fiancée, and married that filthy fellow!” Morfin said, slapping the floor again. “He ransacked us before she got away, where’s the box? Uh, where’s the Slytherin box?”

Voldemort did not answer. Morfin himself was enraged once more. He brandished his dagger and shouted, "She disgraced us, she did it, that little slut! What are you doing here asking those questions, you bitch? It's all over... all over..."

He looked away, swaying. Voldemort stepped forward, and then an unnatural darkness descended. One of the images, Morfin's image, disappeared, while Voldemort's image continued.

Everyone clearly watched as Voldemort extended his nimble, white hands, skillfully using magic such as "Levitation," "Ephemeralization," and "Memory Alteration" to create a completely different memory for Morphin, as if he were a craftsman or a master.

Then they watched as Voldemort picked up Morfin's wand, crossed the hill, came to the other side of the hill, and used his uncle's wand to kill his own father, his father's legal wife, the eldest daughter of the Riddle family, and the youngest son of the Riddle family.

Then--

The tide of memory surged back into the Pensieve, and all the students stepped once more onto the floor of the Dark Magic Classroom.

“The memories I just showed you are among the most important memories of Voldemort’s life,” Tierra said slowly. “He altered his uncle’s memories and used his uncle’s wand to kill his own father and his father’s family.”

After that, there were no more discordant voices from the audience.

Everyone was terrified by the fear of facing the killing.

Even Harry is no exception.

Seeing Voldemort kill his best friend—

Seeing Voldemort kill his own father from his perspective is a completely different feeling, a completely different kind of shock.

The former will feel sadness, pain, anger, and hatred, but the latter—

This scene of patricide only made Harry feel fear and despair. Even though Voldemort was his mortal enemy and Harry knew that Voldemort was utterly evil, the senseless killing of his own father still made Harry feel a suffocating sense of human despair.

—All the other students felt the same way.

“My initial assessment is that Voldemort had already begun plotting his rise to power at this time, planning to become the leader of a pure-blood family,” Tierra said with a smile. “All he needed was the identity of the Gaunt family, that is, the Slytherin family, as heir, and he didn’t need his Muggle father, which was an intolerable stain on his reputation.”

“So he eliminated everyone who knew,” Tierra said with a laugh. “At least that’s what he thought. He killed his Muggle father and framed his stupid uncle, who eventually died in Azkaban.”

"At the same time, he used this killing to forge a magical item that was of vital importance to him," Tiera smiled and stopped talking.

"Alright, students, that's the end of class." Tierra clapped her hands with a smile. "Everyone, go home now."

The students looked at each other—

They all saw the same expression—

fear.

The student wizards fled the classroom as if they were escaping, without exchanging a single word with each other.

Only then did they finally realize why Voldemort made his parents afraid to call him by his name.

After the classroom was emptied, Tiera, just like last time, retrieved that wisp of memory from the Pensieve and gently swallowed it.

(End of this chapter)