All my thanks to Jared, Joe, and Kuilin, who beta-ed this chapter.

Chapter 27.

The Search, Part IV, Sacrifices

10:44 am, June 28th, 1993

In a small circle of privacy in the headquarter office, Harry, Hermione, Draco and Madam Bones were all focusing their attention at a newly installed large two-way screen.

The screen showed the hastily-emptied transfiguration research room, where only the stone platform to perform experiments on was left. Lucius stood on the platform, pondering something with a temporary wand in his hands. Mad-Eye Moody stood on the side of the platform, quite ready to throw a number of interesting hexes on the ex-Lord Malfoy if the blond man dared to do anything extra. In the meantime, Severus was looking back and forth between the rat in the cage besides Lucius and the blond man with unreadable eyes.

Harry also took a great interest in Lucius' demonstration on two different levels: Can Lucius' great invention actually work? If so, what does this mean for the current war?

Lucius took the Patronus stance, and twisted his temporary wand in two circles and one slash in the middle. As if putting his life and magic into the wand, Lucius shouted, "Protego Vitamaxima!"

A bright white-blue shield sprang out from Lucius' wand's tip. The shield was brighter and more solid than any shield that Harry had ever seen, which should be impossible considering Lucius' impaired magical level.

Then Severus pointed his wand at Lucius' shield, but away from Lucius' person. "Reducto!"

The blasting hex rebounded off the powerful shield as expected.

Severus went one step up with the curses. "Sectumsempra!"

The powerful cutting hex invented by Severus himself was blocked by the shield as well.

"Crucio!" Severus shouted.

This time Lucius' shield cracked a little, and the blond man became a little whiter, but the curse was still blocked.

"I think it would be best if we put it to the ultimate test soon, for my magic may not last long." Sweat began to show on Lucius' forehead.

Mad-Eye sneered, stunned the rat, transfigured its face into something resembling Voldemort's snake-like face, and put it on top of the cage.

Lucius then tilted his shield to be more on the rat than himself, and nodded to Severus nervously.

The dark-haired man slightly closed his eyes, then focused on the face of the rat.

Harry knew that it was difficult for anyone with level-one knowledge of the killing curse to hate a rat enough to cast it, which was why Mad-Eye had transfigured the rat's face, helping Severus trick his mind.

The ex-spy cast. "Avada Kedavra!"

A bolt of green light exited Severus' black wand, hitting the bright-blue shield. Some green light was shattered while the shield cracked, dimmed, and winked out. At the same time, both Lucius and Severus began to scream upon the contact of their magic, both instinctively dodging to avoid the scattering green light. Then, both ex-Death Eaters threw away their wands as previously instructed by Harry.

The scream and twitching of the two ex-Death Eaters became subdued after their wands were out of their hands, while the high-pitched desperate shriek of another animal became quite obvious.

The rat on top of the cage was clearly tortured, but it was still alive.

Everyone looked at the tortured rat with amazed eyes. Severus groaned, "The pain I endured was just a bit worse than Crucio, but the residual magic that passed through the shield was not even enough to kill a rat."

At any other time, Harry would be absolutely delighted by Lucius' great insight that could block the killing curse, which was a great step in the mission of conquering death. Harry might want the Wizengamot to give Lucius an Order of Merlin for it, and might even argue for a one-hundred-year reduction in prison time for Lucius. However, at this moment, Harry could only ask one question: is Lucius really the inventor of this spell? If not, in the name of Merlin, what happened?

About twenty minutes ago, when Severus heard Lucius talking about the stance, gesture, and incantation of the proposed spell, he sneered: "Lucius, you do not become a charms master on par with Albus Dumbledore or the Dark Lord the moment you feel the need for a new orientation in life, even if your life depends on it. Guessing the secret behind a powerful spell or ritual, maybe. However, working out the stance, gesture, and incantation within the time interval of searching one pipeline? It is simply impossible, even for the likes of Dumbledore! Or are you claiming yourself to be -"

Severus stopped in mid-sentence, and instead asked Lucius to perform the spell. The moment the dark-haired man saw a seemingly solid white-blue shield, he called for help from Alastor Moody. When Mad-Eye answered that he couldn't turn back in time, Severus apologized, threw all the binding spells he could on Lucius, before dragging the white-haired man to the transfiguration research room.

After Mad-Eye rushed to the room, he frisked Lucius with all the diagnostic spells and trinkets he could think of, finding nothing abnormal. Then he proposed a final test result that could only show up once during Lucius' current life span, anytime between 12:45 am and 6:45 am this June 30th.

"If there is no Time-Turner involved, the ex-Lord Malfoy would be completely fine until about 6 am, June 30th. If any symptoms show up before that, well, I guess we know the result. So, Lucius, you'd better tell us all the truth," Mad-Eye snarled viciously.

Lucius was properly panicked by the test that Mad-Eye proposed, and protested loudly, "You have promised to use the Stone on me after twenty-four hours, not forty-eight! Am I supposed to believe that this is not a scheme of yours to simply kill me? I know you want to. How am I to know if your transfiguration is timed well enough?"

Harry knew the test Mad-Eye proposed was a good one to know whether a Time-Turner was involved in Lucius' case. However, there were multiple questions involved: first, Mad-Eye is a perfect occlumens who can't speak Parseltongue, so there is no convenient way to know whether Mad-Eye is telling what is perceived by himself to be the truth, such as how many hours the transfiguration was supposed to last; second, even if Mad-Eye is telling the truth, the Confundus Charm and memory charms, along with a number of other things, are still a danger; third, nobody has tested Mad-Eye's transfiguration precision besides himself, and it is known that people tend to exaggerate their own abilities in their own minds; fourth and most importantly, the test subject, one Lucius Malfoy, is in lethal danger, and he objects the test with good grounds.

Therefore, Harry proposed another test: just let Lucius cast the spell he thought might block the killing curse along with other hexes. If the shield failed, it could be a highly-unwise whim of Lucius, but if it was successful like now…

Harry had no choice but to consider some sinister explanations.

Lucius had claimed in Parseltongue that he didn't know that anything abnormal had happened - there just might have been a slight disorientation, but that could have been caused by the fact that he hadn't had any breakfast that morning, and then he had crawled in pipelines for three hours with an empty stomach.

To Harry, the slight disorientation strongly suggested a Time-Turner and memory charms, though Lucius himself might prefer the other explanation. The blond man argued that since the remembrall handed to him hadn't glowed, and he had invented a hair-smoothing spell when he was fifteen, and a robe-shaping charm when he was sixteen, therefore this new spell must be his own invention.

-Because everyone would like to believe themselves to be a genius. Acquiring the ability to figure out details of a powerful spell takes years of hard learning. Even after that, it would take much longer than a few hours for most wizards who are as brilliant as Dumbledore to do it.

Harry didn't need to say this part, because Mad-Eye said it for him. "A remembrall is such a weak magical item. I have a dozen ways to fool it, I'm sure Voldie has at least that. I wouldn't be surprised if you formulated a conspiracy to overthrow the Wizengamot in half an hour, but crafting a spell? Pfft. Are you suggesting that you are as smart as your previous master? If so, why don't you go and hunt down the bastard, and give us his head in exchange for the use of the Stone?"

"How could the Dark Lord possibly conjure up some spell involving the Patronus charm?" Lucius argued reasonably. "Moreover, why am I alive? Why are you alive? Why is Draco unscathed?"

Mad-Eye snarled, "Perhaps you defected back to the Dark Lord, and told him everything about the Patronus charm."

"And you think that he would let me go just because I told him the secret behind a spell that he couldn't cast?" Lucius rebutted sarcastically. "Not even Dumbledore would let me go unscathed. I wonder how you became delusional enough to believe the Dark Lord suddenly became a saint."

"Maybe he plotted to get to Harry through you, and this great spell was only imprinted to your memory because he wanted Harry Potter to observe the effect himself. Probably there is some trigger that would only be activated by the presence of Harry, or Hermione, or something on their body, etc. Good thing that Severus directly dragged you here. You can claim your innocence all you want in Parseltongue now, but when the time comes, you will bring disaster the moment something is triggered, you vile snake!" Mad-Eye stopped, and his lips twitched. "Maybe he would want you not only to bring him Harry Potter, but also the new Lord Malfoy. Then, he will let you torture your own precious son to death yourself, or let you torture each other to death."

Lucius' face turned a shade whiter when he heard Mad-Eye's proposed scenarios.

Harry knew what Mad-Eye proposed was entirely possible for the Voldemort the old Auror knew, but now Harry had another explanation: Voldemort is practicing being nice.

-A Version 1.0 Patronus is impossible for Voldemort, because that psychopath probably can never be happy enough to cast the Patronus charm; the true Patronus is impossible for him as well, for he doesn't value the lives of others. However, a Version 1.5 Patronus may actually work for him, because Voldemort may be able to think how great it is for himself to live while rejecting his own death.

Harry cursed himself again for being too slow for the uptake, being too loose on important secrets, and -

-Hermione didn't stop me, because she wanted everyone to have the maximum probability of survival as I do; Draco might have seen the danger, but he didn't stop me, because he wanted to increase his father's chances to live.

Oh, are you trying to blame your friends for your mistakes? What kind of hero are you? Hufflepuff chided Harry. I thought we had all agreed on the heroic responsibility thing. And it is neither Hermione nor Draco's responsibility to prevent world destruction, but we dragged them into it.

-I am just stating the facts, not blaming them.

That rebuttal won Harry a sour face from Hufflepuff and a sneer from his internal-consistency checker.

Somewhere in the back of Harry's mind, he could imagine Professor Quirrell's cold sardonic laughs: when the Dark Lord does something nice, the "good" people just quarrel amongst themselves more!

"I can see why." Madam Bones spoke gravely. "The Dark Lord is using a good person or multiple good persons as pawns. In the Azkaban breakout, I thought he had told some extensive lies to a good, clever, and powerful person to deceive him or her into rescuing Bellatrix Black, because that person subdued Bahry without killing him, and that person used transfigured water as rocker fuel so that the Aurors wouldn't be badly hurt when the transfiguration wore out."

-Although we know what really happened in Azkaban, Madam Bones' idea is another possibility. Voldemort might have used some good and powerful wizards as pawns. For example, Voldemort took on the identity of Alexander Chernyshov. It is reasonable to believe that some of his followers back then were genuinely good people, and they were absolutely loyal to him. He might even have taught some supporters some powerful magic to keep up appearances. Voldemort could have easily gone to supporters like that. He could tell them the sole reason he had disappeared for so long, was that he was killed and remained as only an incorporeal ghost, sustained by a horcrux he made when he slayed an evil enemy. He might have told his supporters that Lucius was his enemy for some made-up reason - Lucius wasn't a good person anyway - and told his supporters to get Lucius' blood. Or, he might have told his supporters that he needed Lucius' blood for some good reason, so his supporters would do it more willingly.

-And one of Voldemort's powerful supporters might have felt sorry for taking Lucius' blood and mind-charming him, so he or she left a cue of a recently invented powerful protection spell to Lucius. And he or she might think letting giant spiders kill each other was a good thing to do as well. Or the last part was Professor Quirrell's act.

-As for flesh from a servant, that's no problem for Voldemort at all.

-Father's bone, hmm, maybe Voldemort had cut his father's body into pieces, and buried the pieces over a wide region near Earth's surface.

-At any rate, dementors are probably no longer a powerful weapon against Voldemort. Or, is that another bluff on Voldemort's part, like the time that he tricked us to doubt the Hogwarts wards?

As Harry began to think about the Hogwarts wards, he started to miss the Map that could show everyone's name within Hogwarts. When the Aurors burned everything besides Professor Quirrell's body, the Map was burned as well. At the time, Harry had considered it rather convenient, fearing someone else might find out that the Hogwarts wards considered him to be Tom Riddle.

Therefore, when Mad-Eye included the true-name system of the Hogwarts wards into the protection on the Room of Requirement, Harry made no suggestion as to try to make another Map to cover the entire range of Hogwarts, but rather he made a mental note to himself not to go anywhere near the Room of Requirement.

-Now, if we had the Map…

No, Harry needed to stop blaming himself, because that could wait. He needed to think of something useful.

-If I were Voldemort, what would I do?

Harry started to model Voldemort in his mind.

-Blood purity is nonsense, since I, a half-blood, am the most powerful wizard in the world, so I wouldn't need Lucius' blood for its purity. Lucius is not a powerful wizard, therefore his blood is inferior. I would definitely need something better.

-For example, I would need Hermione Granger's blood, since she is quite powerful on her own accord, and her blood contains the power of a unicorn and a troll.

-On the other hand, I may also have some powerful enemies in some other parts of the world. Their blood may also suffice.

-I would still want the Stone. Hmm, the nice version of wanting the Stone would be to use a false identity, fake some dangerous condition, and let the healers send me to the Hospital. I have ample time to do that before Bellatrix's body decays, or even after her body decays, because I have other loyal servants who would die for me without any questions being asked.

-Plus, confusing my enemies, showing my omnipotence, and being nice in the meantime are rather fun.

"I think this is a backup plan for the Dark Lord," Harry said grimly. "He wouldn't be satisfied by anything less than Hermione's blood."

Harry could see that Lucius wanted to sneer but quickly caught himself, and Hermione gasped slightly before her hand covered her mouth.

"I think Voldie would prefer yours, but the Girl-Who-Revived's might barely do," Mad-Eye pondered.

-No, there is the magical resonance thing, so he wouldn't use my blood for his revival. Plus, he wouldn't risk himself with me again, not until he got all his power back.

Harry didn't say it, because other dark wizards might have wanted his blood for some unrelated evil ritual, and continued to model Voldemort.

-What would I do after I obtained a lesser enemy's blood, and had everything I need for a lesser revival ritual?

-I might obtain more blood from lesser enemies. I have quite a bunch of them all over the world. And I would need a plot to get the best blood I can, of course.

-Moreover, the Stone. I would need to obtain the Stone. And I would need to kill the younger Tom Riddle.

-Or better. If I threatened the younger Tom Riddle with world destruction and promised not to destroy the world myself, my younger self might steal the Stone for me and kill himself. Yeah, the world would be safer with the younger Tom Riddle dead, and I would be doing a nice thing. However, the boy might pull a trick on me again, so this would be just another backup plan.

-The world might be boring without my younger self, so I may throw him into the Mirror and save him for my later entertainment.

-Oh, the Mirror!

Harry had a grim smile on his young face. He now knew what he should do. All the time, he always knew what he should do, he just avoided thinking of it because it was just too painful.

-I can invoke the ritual that Dumbledore used, which he left some instructions for in the secret room in the Headmaster's office. I can lock myself and all other Tom Riddles in Time. With some maneuver, I may even be able to get Dumbledore out in the process.

-I should give this thing a countdown clock as a dead-man's switch, where I need to periodically send a signal to reset the countdown within a certain period of time, or otherwise the Mirror will lock all Tom Riddles in Time. No, it should be a combination of positive triggers and negative triggers.

-Since dementors work on expectations, incorporating them in the ritual as remote controls would be a good idea. And since Voldemort only guessed how dementors worked after he killed MacNair, the current Horcrux Voldemort probably doesn't know.

-To be safe, I need to figure out multiple ways to trigger this ritual. A brainstorm with Mad-Eye, Severus, Hermione, and Draco may produce some.

-The disappearance of one good person together with potentially many other evil ones, and a much safer world. Just what a hero in a story should do.

-As for my other projects such as conquering death, Hermione and Draco might be able to do that. And after Hermione has lead sapient beings to conquer far-away galaxies or other universes, she might release all Tom Riddles from the Mirror, save me, and blast the ancient Earth plus the Pioneer plaques - no, the Milky Way Galaxy for safety precautions.

-That's definitely a working plan, which actually fits the Prophecies indicated by Dumbledore and Voldemort.

With a scarily bright smile on his face, the Boy-Who-Lived happily said, "Madam Bones, Mr. Moody, Professor Snape, Draco, and Hermione, I have something to talk about with each of you in private, and maybe some of you in groups."

8:14 pm, July 2nd, 1993 (local time)

A balding brown-haired white man in wizarding robes floated invisibly in the middle of the air, looking downward with cold and calculating eyes.

Beneath him, hundreds of Muggles in festive clothes were densely packed on a river boat decorated with a 20-foot tall pagoda, cheering happily, and thousands more were cheering for them on the river banks, for this was a well-attended local holiday on this heavily populated island.

The man drew out a brand-new black wand, and made a slight gesture.

A holiday firework shooting out from the river bank made a small departure from its original path, and took its aim at the holiday boat. Some people on the boat saw the stray firework that was shooting toward them, and tried to move away, while other people who couldn't see the rocket were pushed to the other side of the boat. The shift of the center of weight of the boat, with the help of some timely wind on the top of the pagoda, tilted the barge. As some cracking noises from the boat were heard, the mass on the boat became panicked.

With a wave of his hand, a large piece of parchment and a quill invisible to the crowd below appeared in front of the man in the middle of the air. As Muggles fell into the river like cherries falling into a washing pan, the calls from Muggles took a sudden turn from happiness to panic, the man occasionally twitched his wand and murmured something low in an ancient language.

As men, women, and children who were good swimmers their whole lives found themselves unable to keep themselves afloat in the warm July water, the quill in the middle of the air would note down something on the parchment.

The balding man frowned: hmm, drowning doesn't work so well. Do I have to build a gas chamber myself?

When a hint of blackness began to form over the river where hundreds of people were drowning, the brown-haired wizard instantly gathered his quill and parchment, and apparated away.

-It seems that the formation of dementors are another concern of this method, but this surely proves that massive deaths of Muggles do have some magical effect. Did Grindelwald use some method to prevent dementors from forming, or did he use some method to channel the magic elsewhere, or did he use someone with a Patronus to help him? Hmm.