Disclaimer: obviously I only own the idea of my story and not that of the original author of this series.

'Other language thoughts'

"Other language speech"

'English thoughts'

"English speech"

This method is reversed in flashbacks

Not even gonna try putting French accents into the English portions

Chapter 26: Learning

Hadrian stared out into a place that should have been a mass of solid magma. Instead there was what equated to a cage with walls made out of runes. The tunnel that led to the viewing room had led him deep into the volcano. It was at the point where the walls were just starting to become cylindrical in shape and as such the cage wasn't large enough to completely block off the flow of magma to the top. The cage was in a circular shape that had every inch covered in runes. Another set of runes kept enough magma out of the way so that the viewing room had unobstructed sight of the cage, further compounded by the ones on the outside of the observation room to keep it cool and indestructible.

Hadrian tried to decipher the runes that were all around the place and was able to understand small bits of it, but nothing to decipher the exact details of it. He could assume the general function of the runes though, that of a prison, if only in a rudimentary sense. It didn't seem like it was doing a great job of containing all the it needed to hold. Although that did answer the pressing question that had been bugging him since his arrival onto the island. The runes were nowhere strong enough to keep all of the power contained within, so the islanders had made it so that the magic was redirected back down into the earth. It then hit a leyline and spread and was the main reason that the islands had so much natural magic. It wasn't natural magic in the strictest of definitions, but the true natural magic around the islands merged with it and cleansed it enough for anyone to be able to use it.

Hadrian gave a small laugh. It was so much easier to find the reason for things if you had all the pieces of the puzzle. He only had to assault some government officials to get the information. 'Speaking of which, I should probably go cover my tracks.' Hadrian thought. He had planned for the trip to be a quick in and out, but now he wasn't ready to leave. He wanted to figure this out and with the amount of magic in the observation room, either almost no one actually came in here or the people who do had about the same control over their aura as Hadrian did. Hadrian was going to bet on the former. With the amount of rituals the natives did, it was a lot harder for them to suppress magic that wasn't theirs.

He made his way back up the cavern to the surface. He opened the door to the sight of the still bound and unconscious guards. He stunned the both of them again for good measure. He then grabbed the guards' wands and other magical items from beneath the rubble where he had left them. Hadrian put everything back where he remembered them being on their persons. It was a little tough with the both of the still having their disillusionment charms on them, but he managed. With surgical precision Hadrian went into their minds to implant memories that covered the past ten minutes. It was a much easier task when you didn't have to make hours of fake memories to have it be believable.

He shot off an incomplete patronus that had no form. It raced off to give Sirius a massage about what he was doing and to not wait up for him even if he was gone for a few days. He then propped both of the guards up on the wall and walked back into the mountain. Where he let the magic keeping them knocked out fade away. He made his way back down the tunnel and into the observation room. With the obstacles that could possibly alert anyone to his presence out of the way, he went back to studying.

Hadrian put all of his focus onto the rune cage. The amount of magic being funneled down into the earth was astronomical. He tried to track how far the influence carried. It was obvious that it spanned at least the large island. He quickly put himself into his elemental state and felt for the flow of the magic being funneled. He quickly picked it up and started following it. He passed the outer perimeter of the island and kept following, feeling it still going strong even after passing over a couple of the smaller islands. On and on it went until it was going out into the ocean. His senses maxed out somewhere in the middle of the Pacific in a place that was surrounded by nothing. It was still flowing extremely strong and he didn't think it ended there.

It was then that a thought hit him, hard. The ring of fire. A huge area that spanned the majority of the Pacific and had many active volcanoes within it. If the source of that was in front of him, or even just an enhancement to it, then this ran serious. He could see why it was being kept out in the middle of the ocean. If it was mishandled and the magic somehow reacted and exploded, it could take out a portion of land the size of half the U.S. Needless to say, that made Hadrian a little more nervous, although it had held for however long it had been here.

Hadrian went to study the actual runes that covered the cage. He quickly identified a patchwork on top of the original runes. It seemed as if it was what had made the cage into a funnel instead of a complete prison. He then got started on the main portion of the runes. He began the grueling process of deciphering the hundreds of not thousands of runes.

The inside of this room gave Hadrian no concept of time. It was just him and the gently flowing lava. Every once in a while, he would see a flicker within the cage, but it would disappear before he could get a better glimpse. At some point, hundred of runes into the study, he started to see a similar pattern to something he had seen previously. The gates to the market had similar runes and structure as that portion of the puzzle of runes had. He finally had his answer as to why they didn't use their own language of runes. They had obviously learned from this and used it as a template.

Hadrian put his full focus into figuring out the puzzle in front of him. Minutes turned to hours and hours to days. He would grab some food out of his reserves from his chest when he was hungry and would conjure a toilet then vanish it after his waste was out of his body. He would only sleep for a few hours at a time before waking up and getting back to his self-imposed task.

After what was most likely days or even a week after starting, Hadrian finally got to the point where he had figured out all that he could at the current time. He had figured out about ninety percent of the runes and was able to draw a pretty accurate picture from it. It was like looking at a nearly complete puzzle. You could still make out what it was, even if some of the finer details were missing.

He was able to make out the main function of the runes, which was to be a stasis field for whatever happened to be on the inside when it was activated. The problem with this whole setup was that it was multiple people working to create it, four if he was reading the difference in styles correctly. It seemed that one of them was not up to the same standard as the others. The ones that had been mixed up had been the differences of stop being replaced with remove and one that caused the runes to create a pocket dimension to put the contents rather than create a dimensional freezing of its contents. The rune creating the pocket dimension had also gotten smudged, adding even more unknown factors into play. Just from observing what was happening, Hadrian assumed that it had created countless pocket dimensions and was passing around what was in stasis back and forth endlessly between the pocket dimensions.

All of these discrepancies and slight errors had culminated into the functioning but very unique work of runes that were displayed before him. If his assumptions were correct then he could see why no one was trying to destroy the thing. Beyond it being a good power source, even if it was a potential weapon of mass destruction, it would be catastrophic if the source of power wasn't in their current dimension when the runes were destroyed. All of the pocket dimensions would collapse and cause the source to explode. Then all that power would be directed at the only available remaining space, right where Hadrian was standing and then it would expand.

Hadrian was also almost entirely certain he knew what the source was but couldn't be 100% certain. To do that, he would have to either disable the runes or ask government officials to disclose what was in the rune cage. The former option was off the table due to the obvious risks and asking a government official would mean admitting what he had done. That meant neither of those options were viable to confirm his suspicions. It wasn't too hard to put it together though. MACUSA hadn't had anything newsworthy happen that contained anything close to this level of power output in any recent history and the only event that held a candle was centuries ago. The event corresponded with the time he saw the record of the islands getting their agreement with MACUSA.

With his research now finished, Hadrian decided to pack it up. He put all of the notes and necessities back into his trunk and vanished any of the leftover things. He then activated the cloak and made his way towards the exit. Hadrian stopped before opening the door and used his senses to tell where the two guards were stationed. They were two different guards from the time that he had entered based on their auras. He used his connection with the water in the air to get a picture of the outside. He created two large ice blocks on either side of the two guards and then launched them at the guards. Both of the guards reacted in time to the magic and turned to their respective ice blocks to shield against them. This was all the distraction Hadrian needed to open the door and send out a stunner from each hand. They both hit their targets and the guards dropped like sacks of potatoes.

He quickly wiped their memories of the attack and then activated his cloak before wandering off after he set the spell to wear off after a short period. He slipped past all of the various traps that were laid out as he made his way to the edge of the ward line. He stopped just after he passed the ward line and took one look at the rising sun before disapparating.

Hadrian arrived back at the house. He opened the front door and made his way up the stairs towards his room. As he passed Sirius' room, he heard light snoring coming from beyond the door which indicated that he most likely didn't have company. Disregarding that thought as inconsequential, he went into his room only to faceplant into his bed. He planned to have a long rest after the weird sleep cycle his body had been on. It wasn't long before his vision went black and he succumbed to sleep.

The sun was coming streaming in through the window when Hadrian woke. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and groggily made his way downstairs to the kitchen. He walked to the pantry to go look for something to eat and heard the door to the backyard slide open. In walked a slightly damp Sirius, obviously coming from the beach. The man seemed a little surprised at seeing Hadrian in the house, but didn't let that stop him.

"So, you're finally back." He stated.

Hadrian, still in his half-asleep state, replied with a little more sarcasm than he usually used with Sirius. "Noooo." He dragged out the word. "I'm a ghost that's come back to haunt this house." Hadrian said drolly. He continued to rummage through the pantry, looking for something to sate his hunger.

"That would make more sense. Seeing as how I got a message from you telling us not to wait up. I expected this to mean a couple of hours. Imagine my surprise when it's six days later, with no updates, that my godson finally decided to show up." He replied with a small amount of bitterness in his tone.

Hadrian gave a small sigh. He guessed he had put some amount of stress on the man who considered himself Hadrian's guardian and protector, even if it wasn't necessary. "I'm sorry for worrying you Sirius." He apologized to the man. "But I'll probably go off to do things without your supervision or your knowledge at points in time." He told the man. He could see the man about to argue. "I'll try to keep you as updated as possible, but I will forget at some times." He tried to mollify the man. Hadrian could see that Sirius didn't completely agree with it, but knew it was the best he was going to get.

"Fine." Sirius agreed. "Did you at least find what you were looking for?" The man asked.

Hadrian nodded his head. "Yeah, I found the reason why the islanders use more ritualistic magic than other countries and more easily." He told the man.

"And?" Sirius probed him on it.

"They have a large source of fire attuned magic being created and sent into the ley lines below the islands. This makes the magic mix with the nature magic and makes the ambient magic more abundant and more easily malleable." Hadrian explained.

Sirius accepted the answer and didn't push for more. He didn't have the desire to understand magic as Hadrian had. He just seemed to want to know what Hadrian was doing and had gotten all the information that interested him. "Are you going back there?" Sirius asked.

"I don't think so. First of all because there isn't much more that I can learn from it. Secondly, it might have been slightly illegal for me to even have been there." Hadrian told him.

Sirius gave Hadrian a deadpan look. "At least tell me I'm not going to have people swarming here and taking away my beach house." He said with some exasperation.

"No, I'm in the clear. You don't have to worry your head about losing your beach house paradise." Hadrian said with a little teasing, secretly happy that Sirius had started to loosen up after the initial part of the talk.

"If that's the case then let's enjoy the rest of our vacation." Sirius said with an upbeat attitude.

The days started to slip past. Hadrian had started to just stay in his elemental state. The level of connection he could feel for the things around him was incredible. One thing that he noticed now that he was in a place with non-magicals was that his connection to the water inside living things was distorted for magicals. He could control non-magicals blood to give them a slight itch under their skin with relatively no effort. He had tried to do it on an unsuspecting magical when they were out to dinner and nothing happened. When he tried to move the man's blood, it resisted him. Hadrian didn't really want to ramp up on tests and have it backfire. He also had no desire to have someone more attuned to magic realize what he was doing.

He then went to test his theory on some animals. He had found a gecko and froze the thing completely inside and out with only a small amount of effort put into the action. He then found a fire salamander and started with the same amount of power to try and freeze it. There was no observable change, physically or magically. Hadrian started to raise the amount of power he was trying to put into controlling the salamander's blood. He kept ramping it up until he could start to see the flames upon the back of the salamander start to wane. The flames were a couple seconds away from going out before releasing his control over the salamander.

Hadrian pondered on the issue as the salamander scampered off as fast as physically possible, trying to escape the terror that it had just been put through. 'The salamander's elemental alignment could have been what was halting my power, but the wizard at the restaurant didn't have anything that was fire about him. Most likely a person's or creature's magical field their body produces is what creates some sort of barrier around them. It can be overcome with enough magic put into trying to overpower it. Although, if it took that much effort for a creature that barely has any magic within itself, how much would be needed to break through the natural field of an average wizard. Not to mention someone in the leagues of Albus Dumbledore or Voldemort.' He thought to himself.

He then remembered something he had done over a year ago. 'Touch acts as a way to push past that barrier.' He thought to himself, remembering the young hitman he had frozen solid. 'That means close combat is in my favor.' He concluded. He would have liked to continue experimenting upon his theories, but he had no expendable wizards around him currently that he could experiment on to try to find out how much he would have to exert himself to break through their natural magical fields. He would be able to continue his tests once he had found someone who truly deserved to be punished.

Many of his journeys back into the market place led him to the back portion of the sprawling, and more specifically to the necromancer's stall. It was hit or miss if the lady would be there when he showed up. It seemed to be that way for most of the stalls in the back. Many of the younger stall owners wanted to still explore the world as well as further knowledge of their field. The older that a shop owner was, the more likely that their shop would be in the market place consistently. The older shop owners had amassed large amounts of knowledge and also weren't as spry as they had been to go into potentially dangerous situations or experiments that their fields might hold.

It was closing in on Yule when he found himself once again at the necromancer's stall. While the items within the stall were labeled, they did not have a description of the functions for the items. The stall owner expected the shopper to know what the items did and how they worked. It was her way to ensure that the person at least had some idea of what they were buying and then functions that the item had. It had taken looking up around twelve obscure items before he found one that sounded like something that would be useful in his circumstances. It was called a seelensauger.

It was an object that looked like a bugle horn. It was about eight inches long with an opening on one end that was about three inches in diameter. It then led into a small tube that opened into a small cage which was covered in runes. The item was one way that the ministries of the world kept a measure of control over dementors. It was made to suck loose souls out of places that weren't its original body and would destroy them and send them to the afterlife. It was a way to make sure that souls that had been tormented by dementors didn't stick around and inflict their pain onto others. It was also how they made it so that people who were wrongly kissed, incidental or otherwise, were freed from there imprisonment. Hadrian could think of something else that it would be very helpful in removing souls from.

He spoke to the necromancer who was the head of the shop. "How much for the seelensauger?" he asked the woman.

She looked at the item and then at Hadrian in contemplation. "1200." She told Hadrian.

Hadrian balked at the price "1200 galleons?" he asked just to be sure. She nodded. Then Hadrian thought about the fact that she gave him a look before giving the price. He decided to see if she was playing a game. "That's an absurd price. 1200 is a little steep. I'll give you 400 for it." he gave his counter offer.

"That offer is an insult to what you think of my skills." The woman said. "How about I lower it to 1100 for you?" she gave a counter proposal.

"1100? I'm not trying to pay for a kid." He told her. "500." He said.

"1000."

"600."

"900."

Hadrian was okay with that price point, at least with one added stipulation. He knew that the price for a seelensauger usually sat around 700 to 750 galleons. "900, and an oath of silence about this transaction." He stated. Most countries tightly regulated necromantic items, the one they were in not being one of them. Although, even if a specific item wasn't illegal, the people who owned them were forced to register them with the government of their residency or citizenship. This was most definitely a banned item in Britain and the extra gold was well worth the ability to not be hounded at all points for the ministry looking for the item if he ever went back. "I also need the deal to extend to tomorrow so that I can get the gold." He said to her. There was no way he was pulling out his trunk in front of all of these people.

The stall owner stuck out her hand. "Deal. No later than tomorrow or the price goes up to my initial offer." She gave a stipulation.

Hadrian grabbed her hand and gave it a firm shake. He then left the market and went home where he grabbed a bag and enchanted it to be feather light and put an extension charm on the inside. He then took of his trunk and pulled out the necessary coin before locking it back up. He left the bag in his room and made his way downstairs.

He was greeted to the sight of Sirius reading the profit. On the backside of the page, Hadrian could see the scores of some quidditch games as well as some of the authors thoughts about how the players did in the games. Hadrian decided to interrupt the man's unusual reading habit. "Anything interesting happen?" Hadrian asked, not really expecting an affirmative answer.

"Interesting and harrowing." Sirius replied without looking up.

Hadrian perked up a bit and walked around the table to look at the front page that Sirius was reading. The big picture on the front page was of a home burning with the dark mark hanging above the house. It seemed like something was going on.

"The Diggory residence was attacked, though only the father died." Sirius quickly gave him an overview of the story. "From what I can tell, the death eaters have been mobilizing and becoming more brazen ever since the night of the third task. Many people have been able to put together the pieces between your story and their increased activity, but Fudge is trying to deny the fact that Voldemort is back. He is trying to play it off as individuals trying to cause terror in Britain by themselves rather than by a unifying factor. Dumbledore has been trying to get Fudge to act and give funding to the necessary departments as well as giving those departments increased freedoms, but Fudge won't hear of it." Sirius informed him.

"And the general masses?" Hadrian asked.

"Eh." Sirius gave a non-committal answer while shaking his hand. "People are split between a few factions. In the first you have the people who don't agree that Voldemort is back, or at least deny that he is back with fervency. This includes Fudge and his group. You then have people who don't want to admit he's back, but know that there is a good likelihood of it being the case. They would rather not have to admit it for as long as possibly so that their lives don't have to change. The you have the people who believe that Voldemort is back and are actively trying to get the country into a position that it might be able to protect itself. This group contains Dumbledore and his followers. This group has also been heavily hindered by Fudge, who wants to discredit anyone saying opposing views and believes that Dumbledore is after power within the country." Sirius broke it down for Hadrian.

"That man is an idiot. If he thinks Dumbledore needs to go through him to obtain more power, he is sorely mistaken." Hadrian stated with confidence. Dumbledore was a member of the ICW and held one of the most important positions within the legal arena as well as the head of the place where children learned the rights and wrongs of their world. He had much more power than Fudge wanted to admit.

"Quite right." Sirius chuckled. "Speaking of which, Fudge put someone at the school to curtail the old man, as if that would truly do anything to stop what he does behind the scenes. Fudge has been trying to give his undersecretary more power within the school, but he doesn't have the complete backing of the board of directors. He had enough to get her appointed but not enough to give her more meddling power within the school. Apparently, she went off on a rant at the divination teacher. She called her a crackpot and a hack among other things. Told her to leave the premises because a teacher should actually have something valuable to pass on to her students. Made the divination professor run off crying. Delores, the undersecretary, then got torn a new one by McGonagall I've been told. Funniest thing happened a couple hours later. The school locked on its own for an hour or two." Hadrian perked up at that. "People seem to think that it was the castle saying that the teacher should stay and it caused a consensus among the board that the teacher should stay." Sirius finished telling Hadrian about recent events

Hadrian highly doubted that the castle, or more likely Rowena, locked the castle to protect the divination teacher. From the stories he had heard while he was at Hogwarts, the divination teacher was a crackpot. There was a possibility of Rowena protecting the teacher but he highly doubted it. There was most likely something unknown to most that went on within the school. Something that was small and out of the way, else the students would have known about it.

"Keep me informed if anything else major happens." Hadrian said as he went into the kitchen to finally grab some food after his time in the market.

"Will do." Sirius replied.

Hadrian waited for the next day before going to pick up his purchase, happy to have a reliable way to remove horcruxes. Rowena hadn't had the time to teach him about runes and soul magic, which meant he could remove it through those means and fiendfyre would never be conjured by him for obvious reasons. He could go basilisk hunting or just order some venom, but to be honest the fact that there were horcruxes that needed to be destroyed until he had seen something with the functionality to do so. At that point, he would rather get something that wasn't limited by finite uses.

The days rolled by into March. Hadrian and Sirius were out in the town looking for a place to have dinner when Sirius grabbed Hadrian and pulled him over to an alley. Hadrian allowed himself to be led and then looked at Sirius with a questioning gaze.

"See that man? The one with the short black hair, almost bald." Sirius asked while pointing to a specific person on the street.

Hadrian followed Sirius' finger to a man in what looked like the most muggle looking wizard robes the man had. "I see him. Who is he?" Hadrian asked.

"Dolohov. One of Voldemort's inner circle. I wonder what he's doing here?" Sirius rhetorically asked.

"Let's find out." Hadrian stated before disappearing from view.

"No, wait, Hadrian." Sirius spluttered to now empty air.

Hadrian levitated himself above the throngs of people walking on the sidewalk and followed his target. He knew anything short of Voldemort being there would mean that Dolohov would be caught. Still, he scanned around to see if he could feel the faint feeling that he could from the dark mark now that he was aware and looking for it. Finding none, his eyes roamed the area ahead of the target and set himself up a few hundred feet ahead in an alley and placed a notice me not around the alley. Hadrian waited with a stunner sitting in his hand. A few seconds later he saw his target approaching and grabbed the man's shoulder as he was at the entrance to the alley. The man slumped the instant of contact and Hadrian dragged him into the alley.

Hadrian quickly apparated back to the house before taking the man into the ritual room in the basement. He conjured a table and straps then restrained his prisoner. He then divested the man of any magical objects as well as wrote some runes upon the man's arm to block any communication from the dark mark. He then left the house to go get Sirius and apparated into the alley they had been watching from without a sound. Sirius had left from behind the wall and Hadrian faded back into view. He walked back out into the street and saw Sirius walking to where he had abducted Dolohov. Hadrian quickly closed the gap between the two of them.

"Sirius." Hadrian called out.

Sirius spun around at his name and Hadrian could see the man's wand slipping back into his holster upon seeing Hadrian, but still being ready to be used at any moment. "Where's Dolohov?" he asked upon turning around.

"Home. Come on, I came to get you." Hadrian said before making his way to the alley he had just apparated in from.

Sirius' hand landed upon Hadrian's shoulder. "You can't just go about abducting people." Sirius said in a serious voice. It seemed as if he was currently against what Hadrian had done.

"Are you saying I should have let the man go free? You said he was a member of Voldemort's inner circle which means he must have done some horrific things in the past. Should a man like that really be walking the streets?" Hadrian asked the man. He could see the argument dying in Sirius' eyes. While he might not like the abducting part, he liked a murderer on the loose much less.

"Fine. Let's go see what the man was doing." Sirius said and quickly disapparated, with Hadrian following suit soon after.

They both walked into the house and Hadrian led Sirius into the ritual room to a still unconscious Dolohov.

"What have you done to him?" Sirius asked in both curiosity and apprehension.

"Nothing yet, he's just stunned and bound. Hadrian replied.

"Well then, what are you going to do to him?" Sirius asked with more morbid curiosity this time.

"I need to test the limits of something I recently discovered. He will get to be the lucky man who is going to help me with that." He told Sirius

"Do I even want to stay and watch?" Sirius asked.

"You probably won't even be able to see anything happening. It will cause a lot of screaming though." He added as an afterthought.

"I'll stay then. This man has taken out a couple of the people I went to school with. The least I can do is see him suffer." Sirius said. He then conjured a chair and sat before disillusioning himself.

Hadrian doublechecked the binding and Dolohov's person before rennervating the man. The man's head groggily lift off of the table.

"Morning, sunshine." Hadrian said in a happy tone.

Dolohov's head snapped over to look at Hadrian and took second before saying "Peverell" in a gravelly voice.

"Now, what would such a fine, upstanding member of the wizarding community such as yourself be doing all the way out here?" Hadrian asked the man with a heavy amount of mockery.

"Kiss my arse." The man replied. The room just settled into an uncomfortable silence. Dolohov wanted to break it, but also wanted to reduce the likelihood of being hurt. He knew he was in a vulnerable position currently. He was more surprised when no more questions came out. It was about a minute later that he felt a slight discomfort from his left buttock. It quickly became a larger discomfort before he started screaming as it felt like his left arse cheek was on fire. The intense burning sensation went away, but Dolohov could still vividly feel the lingering pain.

"Kiss your arse? No, no I don't think so. I can help boil it off if you want to." Hadrian said menacingly. "Now I'll ask again. What are you doing here?"

"Go to hell aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh." He screamed once more as his right arse cheek started to boil. He kept screaming as the agony continued. If one were to take his pants off to look, they would find blisters covering the majority of his right arse cheek and the center of the left one. Hadrian kept it going for a couple of minutes before releasing his control.

"One last time. It won't stop soon if you pass this opportunity up." Hadrian stated with cold malice.

"When my Lord finds you, it will be you who knows the meaning of suffering." Dolohov said with no small amount of spite.

"That's rather disappointing. Don't say I didn't warn you." Hadrian said before the screaming started, and this time it didn't stop until fifteen minutes later and that was only because the man had started to scream himself hoarse.

Hadrian was trying many different things upon the man. Boiling, freezing, controlling the flow of blood and making it go the wrong way through organs, messing with the man's inner ear. He went through all of these and more. He went past the point of the man begging for mercy, past the point of necessity. To cause pain to such a despicable human being was a small pleasure Hadrian was partaking in. After an hour, Hadrian finally ramped down his actions. Dolohov was whimpering and shaking from the pain he had just gone through. No doubt he would be in the fetal position of he wasn't being constrained.

"Oi, no going to sleep on me." Hadrian told the man as he slapped him a couple times. "You don't want this to happen again do you?" he asked the man. The man shakily shook his head as he whimpered. It would probably take months of physical therapy and healing sessions before the man was going to be able to walk again. "Good, then this is you last chance for the day. We still have a couple of hours left before I want to go to bed tonight. If u want, we can use that time in a similar way as the past hour."

The prisoner whimpered and shook his head more fervently. "Then tell me why you are here." Hadrian demanded. He used legilimency to read the man's surface thoughts to tell if he was lying. It was much easier than normal as the man's mind was in disarray due to the extreme pain.

"You." The man answered in a quiet voice. "The Dark Lord has been looking for you. One of his business contacts told him that he saw someone matching your description. I was sent to investigate." The man spluttered out. "He's not happy you took the Peverell Lordship. He believes it belongs to him. He intends to take it back from you. I'm supposed to report back so that we can send reinforcements to come take you if the information was correct." The man spilled to Hadrian. He couldn't find deception within the words. It was interesting to think that him and Voldemort were potentially related, even if it was most likely extremely distantly.

Hadrian patted the top of the man's head. "Thank you for telling me this. You are free to leave." Hadrian said. Hadrian heard the chair scrape against the floor as Sirius stood up quickly from his chair as a "What" followed. He also saw Dolohov's eyes light up with hope. "This body." Hadrian finished as a knife made of ice quickly materialized in his hand as it flashed down to slit the man's throat. The man struggled to gather breath as blood gurgled out of the gash in his neck. Hadrian just looked down into the man's eyes dispassionately. "I hope that wherever you go, the torment never stops." He told the man as the light left his eyes.

Sirius walked up to the table and took in sight of Dolohov covered in blisters as well as limbs twisted at odd angles. He seemed to be stomaching the sight well. "What now?" he asked Hadrian.

"Now, I deliver upon my threat." Hadrian stated ominously.