The summer days stretched languorously at Malfoy Manor as Harry settled into his new surroundings. Gone were the dreary confines of Privet Drive and the disdainful sneers of the Dursleys. Here, among his best friends Draco, and his family, Harry felt a profound sense of belonging.
He and Draco passed the sunny afternoons exploring the vast grounds of the manor, talking and laughing as they had back at Hogwarts. But there was an undercurrent of seriousness, of weighty matters still left unspoken between them. Too many secrets and dark revelations from the past year hung in the air, creating an unspoken tension.
When evening fell, Harry often found himself retreating to the labyrinthine depths of the Malfoy library. Among the hushed towering shelves and that faintly musty scent of ancient knowledge, a strange peace settled over him. He could lose himself for hours in the leather-bound grimoires and cracked scrolls, filling his mind with arcane lore and spellcraft.
The books from Salazar Slytherin's hidden library smuggled out of the bowels of Hogwarts, proved especially intriguing to Harry. Their dusty pages seemed to thrum with an unsettling power, like the faintest echoes of a sinister heartbeat. He poured over the dense text on bloodline curses, masterfully encoded dark rites, and oblique references to Riddle's unfathomable ambitions.
Despite Voldemort's downfall when he was just an infant, Harry could feel the Dark Lord's spectral presence looming ever larger in his life with each passing day. The more he read, the more details and disturbing connections seemed to materialize from the shadows...
Sometimes in the dead of night, when even Draco slumbered peacefully, Harry would steal out of the manor on quiet footsteps. He pulled a Death Eater's mask over his features, the skull-like visage grinning soullessly back at him in the mirror's dim reflection. Under a deep hood and cloak, with his identity utterly obscured, Harry would apparate to the clandestine meetings on Tom Riddle's shadowy orders.
He pressed in among the tight circles of hooded figures, their rasping breaths and muttered invocations chilling him to the bone. Harry kept to the outskirts, silent and watchful, as Bellatrix Lestrange and others performed foul rites over sacrifices both animal and human. Bloodletting, curses of agonizing intensity, unspeakable acts of violence...all part of Tom Riddle's grand design to restore pureblood supremacy and uncover the ancient keys to immortality.
At every meeting's conclusion, a lone Death Eater would approach the disguised Harry, manifesting from the darkness with eerie silence and deliberation. Severus Snape - his most trusted spy within the Order. They would exchange the barest of coded words and gestures, just enough for Snape to communicate whatever critical intelligence Riddle bade him share. Then they would vanish back into the night, their horrible work done for the time being.
Back at the manor, Harry kept his clandestine activities utterly concealed from the Malfoys. Young Draco remained blissfully unaware of just how deeply involved his best friend had become with the Death Eaters and Riddle's machinations. And if Lucius or Narcissa noticed Harry's increasingly pale, haunted demeanor over the summer weeks, they mercifully did not comment.
The demure mother and imperious patriarch seemed to sense that Harry walked a delicate line - one they dare not push him over, no matter their private misgivings. They maintained their hospitality, allowing the boy full access to their treasured library and ancient knowledge. For they knew in their hearts that Harry Potter held the key to the destiny of the wizarding world itself, whether for good or ill.
So the days drifted by in a miasma of choking darkness and fleeting light for Harry that fateful summer. Revelations and shadowy rites bled together with laughter and innocent joys in a steadily blurring haze. All he knew was that when the Hogwarts letters arrived heralding a new term's start, his path forward would be utterly and irreversibly transformed.
For his upcoming solo pilgrimage to Gringotts promised to shatter what few illusions about his very identity remained...
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The Fall of Dumbledore: The White King
Fiksi PenggemarThe Boy Who Lived is a well-known tale. Because that's what it is, a tale. The boy who lived never actually survived Voldemort. He never existed in the first place. The boy known as 'Harry James Potter' is actually 'Hades Evan Snape.' A product of h...
