Splitting One's Soul

The Hut at the End of the Garden

~ chapter contains slightly darker themes ~

The pillow next to you was cold when your hand landed on it, you peeled your eyes open and discovered that his clothes were gone too. A glance through the open door didn't help either and so you got out of bed and wandered through Tom's place, he was nowhere to be found but there was a note in the kitchen laying on top of a book, informing you that he would be gone for the day and asking you to do research on valuable artifacts in Albania, nothing specific was mentioned, just anything you could dig up.

With a sigh you skimmed through the book, he had a habit of just disappearing and then returning spontaneously throughout the day. Weirdly, the book was less about factual knowledge and instead a collection of legends, stories told amongst villagers living in the Albanian forest, a highly unusual read for Tom who couldn't care less about fictional stories. You, however, found it rather enjoyable but since you were uncertain what Tom wanted exactly you had no idea what to look for and ended up just taking note of everything that hinted towards having magical abilities.

Halfway through you decided to take a break and instead take a look around this place, you had been over countless times by now but never got the chance to admire Tom's own collection of artifacts apart from the usual quick glance when heading to the bedroom and so you waltzed into his living room with the countless books and worked your way along the shelves, pulling a book out here, inspecting some interesting object there. Some of them looked very valuable, others seemed too ordinary to be of interest but over time you noticed that Tom tended to collect things, like an old tin box filled with scraps of parchment, placing a value and meaning on them when there was none to everyone else. It was endearing and one of his many traits that made him stand out.

There were simple rocks inscribed with runes amongst artifacts you've never even heard of, a carefully carved mask that looked like a skull made out of white wood that had a soft glow to it, a vial filled with some silvery substance that looked like a mixture between liquid and gas, flowing around in odd patterns within the vial. It was fun to look through everything, even more so to find an artifact you had traced in the past and now you knew where it landed, right on Tom Riddle's shelf, meaning your paths could have crossed much sooner if you hadn't tossed the case whenever it turned out the desired object was already privately owned. Next you checked out his books, something that could probably consume days but you just scanned the book shelves, only stopping when something stood out to you, the especially big ones or shiny new ones.

You noticed a book that was far more worn out than the other books and you pulled it from the shelf to see what it was about. The title read Secrets of the Darkest Art, the spine was a bit bent and when you opened the book you landed on a short chapter on Horcruxes. You've never heard of it but you weren't surprised, especially in regards to the dark side of magic Hogwarts wasn't the place to teach any of that, Durmstrang maybe, but Hogwarts tried to keep students away from those topics as much as possible, with the exception of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

This chapter must have been read a lot of times, you got yourself comfortable in Tom's armchair and started reading, wondering what could be so interesting to him about it. The further you came however, the more you were both fascinated and disgusted. There have been countless witches and wizards over the centuries trying to achieve immortality through different means, a Horcrux was the most evil form, splitting one's soul through murder and a spell, then binding that soul fragment to an object. Your gaze drifted through the room, scanning the various artifacts once more and a shudder went through you. No, Tom had a huge interest in the dark arts but it was purely academic, he did want to become a professor after all. You read on, luckily there were no clear instructions, the rest of the page merely described what happens to the soul upon being split. You read about how splitting the soul goes against nature and therefore causes side-effects like dehumanization, leaving the person without emotion, and instability of the master soul as the book called it.