The world contracted to the sound of my own breathing.
I apparated without fanfare — a single, cold syllable and the world rearranged itself around me. Concrete, metal, fluorescent light. The Muggle prison smelled of disinfectant and fear, a thin, sour scent that stuck to the back of my throat. Guards passed in the corridor like ghosts, unaware of the coil of intent already pulled tight behind my ribs.
"Your business?" one of them asked, idly, as I stepped through the metal door.
"Visiting," I said. The single word closed the conversation; he moved on. They never looked me in the eyes. Ordinary people carry ordinary presuppositions about what a visitor looks like. I had learned how helpful those assumptions can be.
I walked the corridors slow enough to make no one suspicious, then quicker enough so that when I turned it was too late for the few who glanced up. The cell was at the end of a dead hall — a single occupant, alone with his thoughts and the hum of fluorescent lights. He looked up when I entered and squinted, confused, trying to name me. He was small, mean-eyed, a life reduced to bar routines and bitter habits. He had nothing of me in him. He had everything I needed.
"Who are you?" he rasped.
"Someone who prefers efficiency," I said. I let him fumble for a reaction he would never have. He tried to stand, then sat again. The world narrows in that moment before a curse — sounds dull, the light brightens like a coin pressed to your eye. I felt it the way I felt the currents of magic in the manor: precise, inevitable.
It took a fraction of a breath, and the curse was there, a green blade without sound. He fell forward like someone finally relieved of a long weight. There was no scream, nothing vividly awful — simply stillness settling over the cell like dust.
I stood above him and felt, for an instant, the old fear I always measured the cost against. Then I knelt, as calm as if preparing a potion. Ritual is not drama; ritual is geometry and consequence. I set the Sword of Gryffindor on the floor between us and spoke low, arranging the cadence of my intent as I always had with a spell: not incantation, but will. The blade accepted the catalyst I offered it — not only venom or flame this time, but the sliver of soul I wrenched out and sent into its hungry metal.
Pain lanced through me like someone else's fist. It was immediate and surgical, a tearing at a place I'd only ever felt in nightmares. I doubled over, hearing my own breath stutter. The world blurred; the fluorescent lights streaked. I tasted iron and the familiar hollow that followed splitting. It hurt in a way that was not merely physical: a raw hollowing of the self, and for a moment I wondered if I had miscalculated, if any heal would truly be whole again.
My hands worked without trembling. I had prepared for this, obsessively. Three vials were cupped in my palm: one to tend bone and body, one to steady the soul, one to pour magic back into the hollowed channels. I tipped the first to my lips. Heat washed through me like hot water; the physical ache eased, the muscles knitting with a slow, furious efficiency. The second touched my tongue and the world narrowed to the pulse of my heart; the hollow throbbed but was soothed, a bandage forming inside the part that had been torn. The final draught — the one that fed raw power back into me — sent a shiver through my veins as magic poured, rushing to refill the emptiness.
I felt the sword hum. The metal under my palm was suddenly colder, tighter, as though the blade had swallowed a night. When I opened my eyes the world was steadier. The pain lingered like a bruise; a new note vibrated in the marrow of my bones — the small, absolute knowledge that a portion of me now lived in the blade.
Mimsy's quiet voice at the doorway startled me. "Master… are you well?"
"Fine," I lied, and stood. I wrapped the amulet of carved crystal at my throat, feeling its promise like a talisman: one enchanted fracture between me and oblivion. It would not make me invulnerable; it would buy me a chance. I was not reckless.
I sheathed the sword and the metal sang against my palm as if recognizing a new weight. I had planned obsessively for the aftermath — the rituals to bind, the wards to seal the memory of the act, the occlusions to hide it from curious eyes. The Dark Mark would not be needed for this, not yet. This was quieter work than marching followers under black banners. This was a precise and surgical step toward endurance.
I sat and breathed, cataloging the costs aloud to the empty cell.
"One anchor," I said. "No more. One piece of the soul. One shield against the abyss."
A thin, private part of me — the part that still measured legacy and taste — noted the irony. A Gryffindor blade, forged to honor valor, now cradled the fragment of my darkness. The sword's goblin-forged nature had been the point: it grants strength to what it takes. The weapon would be harder to destroy for having absorbed that wound; it would be more venerable, more lethal.
There was no exultation in that room, no ecstatic laughter, no fall into madness. There was only the methodical, cold clarity of a man who had decided to trade a piece of himself for time. I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling the small scar there throb like a heartbeat. The magic inside me rebalanced slowly as the potions' effects washed through nerve and mind and will. My reserves steadied. My thoughts reassembled.
Outside, the prison corridor hummed unchanged. I stood, straightened my robes, and left the cell the way I had come — practiced, unhurried, indifferent to the moral grammar of the place. No one stopped me. No one knew. That was the point.
Once clear of the building I allowed myself a moment of private calculation. The sword at my manor would never be easily taken. It would gleam in its place, a small and terrible sentry. The Horcrux was not a vanity; it was a preservation.
Back in the safe silence of my study, I laid the Sword of Gryffindor on the table and watched it glint. The metal felt different in my hands now — heavier with responsibility, lighter in a way, as if part of my burden had been moved into it. A single anchor. An exacting, surgical salvation.
I did not expect applause. I did not expect forgiveness. I expected time.
"Good," I told the sword. "Be useful."
Mimsy set down a cup of tea with a level of concern only house-elves could muster. "Master, you look tired."
"I am," I admitted. "But necessary work is seldom tidy."
She did not ask what I had done. She did not need to. Her trust was simple and practical: cleanliness, obedience, care. She would see to those things. I had work to do that no one else should see.
Night folded around the manor. Somewhere outside, the world went on — children played, markets sold bread, laws did their small work. Inside the study, I traced the small scar on my palm and felt, beneath everything, a curious steadiness. It was not triumph. It was a ledger closed and another opened.
One horcrux. One measure taken. One calculation advanced.
When sleep finally came, it was thin and watchful. Even in my dreams I catalogued contingencies — protections for the sword, countermeasures against discovery, methods to ensure that if the blade ever met destruction it would mean something far greater than a single man's end.
I had chosen a path that would make me monstrous in the telling. I chose it deliberately. The cost was exact, and I would pay no more than necessary.