The Cup

July 29th, 1994

London, England

Wake up, Harry.

Harry jerked awake as the train ground to a halt on the English station, and Harry looked around for who talked to him. No one was immediately obvious, but Harry couldn't afford to linger. He needed to get back to the chantry, to his mistress. He left the train and walked down the platform, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking around as he did. He had things to do, and Flamel's words couldn't intrude on that, no matter how much Harry wanted to think about them. Harry wrote it off for the time being. He could deal with it later.

"I hear you've been quite productive the past month," came the voice of Albus Dumbledore, and Harry stopped and looked to his right. The headmaster was standing next to one of the pillars, his hands interlocked in front of him as he looked at Harry, then sent a glance at the ground next to him.

Harry looked around at the many muggles passing them by, and he sighed very faintly as he stepped into the shadow of the pillar. As he did, he felt like he stepped through a curtain of lukewarm water, and he noticed that the sounds around him muffled, as though he was underwater.

"Privacy spells," Harry said and looked for the invisible barrier he had just stepped through.

"Indeed," Dumbledore said. "Quite handy when having a conversation with muggles about."

"I bet."

"I am pleased that you delivered the stone as I asked."

"You didn't leave me much of a choice, Headmaster," Harry said and leant against the opposing pillar to the one Dumbledore stood by. "If I didn't do it, you'd be one step closer to expelling me."

"Perhaps," Dumbledore. "But you are quite unlike any of the other students, are you not?"

"I'm quite unlike any student in the world," Harry shrugged. "I don't hear a lot of other children boasting that they survived the killing curse."

"Not even yourself, either. But that wasn't what I was talking about, and I know that you know that."

"Are we really going to play 'I know that you know', Professor?" Harry asked and looked at Dumbledore. "Because it could become a damned long one."

"Humour me, then," Dumbledore said. "Just for a few rounds."

Harry let out a long exhale as he looked at Dumbledore with tired eyes, and the same calm, vacant expression.

"Fine. I know that you know that I'm not human."

"Entirely human, Harry," Dumbledore corrected him. "No entirely human. You are still human. And I know that you know that Voldemort isn't truly gone."

"But he is dead," Harry countered. "For now."

"I'm not so sure about that. I presume you're aware of methods of attaining extended life. Would you mind telling me which you know?"

"Longevity philtres," Harry sighed, "vampirism, lichedom, enchantments, body-enhancing rituals, repeated possession… mummification?"

"Mummification?"

"Someone told me something about mummies sometime in the past… five years, I think," Harry shrugged. "Something about ancient Egyptian sorcerers performing magic that lets them… reincarnate or something, I don't know."

"Hmm," Dumbledore hummed with a curious expression on his face. "Interesting. But more interesting is what you know about lichedom."

Harry studied Dumbledore for a few moments before he replied. Something about the way he asked was suspicious.

"The witch or wizard places their soul, or at least a part of it, in a phylactery, which anchors them to the earthly plane. As long as the phylactery remains intact, their soul cannot pass beyond the shroud between our world and the world of the dead. That gives them to find a new body, or have minions create one, that they can inhabit. A form of pseudo-immortality, really."

"Good," Dumbledore nodded. "In our society, we call such items horcruxes."

"And you think that's what Voldemort has done," Harry said and looked out at the muggles passing them by, resting his head against the wall. "He's created a phylactery."

"I do," Dumbledore said. "But there are other things I must learn before I can say anything for certain. And I have some… forebodings."

"Like?" Harry said and looked at Dumbledore again, though this time with a tight-lipped smile, his lips folding inwards. He looked quite bored.

"A former Death Eater I know – Voldemort's old followers," he added at Harry's questioningly raised eyebrow, "is telling me that his Dark Mark, a magical marking on his body, is growing ever so slightly darker by the day, and has begun feeling again. It suggests that Voldemort might be getting closer to his physical body once more."

"I thought it was blown to dust in the attack," Harry countered.

"Like you said, his followers could be creating a new one for him," Dumbledore countered Harry's counter. "If that is the case, then I am quite certain that something will happen, sooner rather than later."

"What will happen?"

"I haven't the faintest," Albus said. "But it is something."

Harry lifted his left hand and rand it across his face and up through his hair.

"Why're you telling me this?" Harry asked.

"I would like you to–"

"Another errand?" Harry interrupted him.

"You don't have to do it if you don't want to," Dumbledore sent Harry a look that Harry couldn't read. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that with the darkening of Voldemort's brand, old Death Eaters might begin to reappear. The ministry is hosting the Quidditch World Cup in two weeks' time in Dartmoor, Devon. With that many potentially muggleborn present, it could prove too much temptation for the old guard. If you go, and if you capture one of them, you might be able to learn more about what is happening on Voldemort's front."

Harry still studied Dumbledore closely. It was clear to him that Dumbledore could tell a lot about Harry, like Flamel could. It wasn't mental intrusions giving him information, however; ever since his time in Dumbledore's office, Harry had made sure to ward off his mind every morning when he woke up and every evening when he went to sleep. But Harry also knew that Dumbledore probably wasn't like this most of the time. He at least was somewhat aware of how Harry was, but he didn't necessarily know what Harry was; a killer. The old man… he was clever, damned clever. Too clever by half, in Harry's opinion. He knew that he had to use a threat or personal incentive to drive Harry to do something; there was no use in appealing to Harry's humanity – whatever that meant – or compassion. Harry just didn't care, and he knew that Dumbledore knew that; the way he had positioned both the task of delivering the incomplete philosopher's stone and the idea of going to Dartmoor, indicated that quite clearly.

"Oh, by the way," Dumbledore said, "the ministry has sent me an army of owls. Apparently, you've been using illegal underage magic quite prolifically in France."

Harry's heart sank. But the way Dumbledore worded that…

"Of course, I could tell them that you were receiving private tutoring from an old friend of mine in order to catch up with two years of magical education that you missed…" he trailed off, looking up at one of the clocks.

"You bastard," Harry said as his eyes narrowed, and Dumbledore's head turned to look at him with a curious stare. "Are you ever going to stop blackmailing me? You don't exactly look like the typical 'good guy' from my point of view, Dumbledore, or you wouldn't have stooped so low to begin with."

"Sometimes, Harry," Dumbledore said and turned his body towards the young man, "we need to do things that sicken us to our very core in order to serve the greater good." Dumbledore's eyes were ablaze with something Harry couldn't recognise. "I hope you will learn one day exactly what sacrifice means."

"I know sacrifice!" Harry almost shouted.

"Do you?" Dumbledore asked, and while his eyes hadn't dimmed the slightest, his voice and face remained perfectly calm. "Do you truly understand sacrifice, Harry? The very deepest depths of it, from which you can never go back?"

Harry was about to retort, but it got caught in his throat. He felt the many small scars on his hands, arms, and torso heat up in his anger, but for some reason, he couldn't find the words he was looking for. Because he had the distinct feeling that Dumbledore wasn't talking about the sacrifice of wounding yourself to gain power. And if not that… then what sacrifice was he talking about? Sacrificing one's life for another? That was just an exchange; a life for a life, prioritising which was more important.

Harry was broken out of his thoughts, however, when Dumbledore suddenly vanished with a soft 'plop'. He sighed, irritated. He knew Dumbledore would expect him to go; otherwise he wouldn't have confronted Harry. But the whole situation was annoying, especially because he had even read it before; just like Bellerophon, he was being sent places by others with no real agency of his own. And the worst part was that Harry knew he was going to Dartmoor in two weeks; Dumbledore had stirred that damned curiosity and will to defeat Voldemort Harry carried around. If he could really gain information from a Death Eater, a follower of Voldemort, it was an opportunity he couldn't reject.

"Son of a bitch!" he shouted and punched the wall.

About a dozen muggles around him stopped in their tracks and looked at him with shocked, wide eyes. Harry growled, and then stuffed his hands back in his pockets and stalked off angrily.

Fucking Dumbledore! Argh!

•••

Harry entered the tall, circular room that was the main room of the chantry, a building beneath an abandoned church that was once a stronghold of the Tremere clan in England. The walls were covered almost entirely in hieroglyphs no taller than the length of Harry's thumb. It had likely taken a decade, if not more, to carve them all. The architecture did remind him a lot about Hogwarts on the inside, though, and for a moment he felt the anger at Dumbledore swell inside his chest. But he let it go as he opened his inner third eye to the veritable fortress of magic, and let the feeling of home and love enter him. He could almost laugh at the sensation, and a few tears rolled down his cheeks. It was home, and he had felt so empty without it for months.

"Care to explain where you've been?" he heard the strict and angry voice of his mistress from behind him, and he turned mid-air as he jumped from being startled by the aura of anger rolling off her.

Harry looked at her for a mere moment before he knelt down before her.

"Forgive me, mistress," he said hurriedly. "The man I delivered the package to trained me in using my magic until his wife could come back. He's old and frail, and I offered to stay and do chores if he would teach me."

"What if someone had seen you?" she asked quite coldly, her anger barely contained. "What if you had been dragged before the prince, if you even survived a sighting?"

"I took great care, mistress," Harry said. "I never ventured out at night, and I always occulted myself before going out at day. I took every precaution I could, and no one saw me. No ghoul could have perceived me."

He held his head low and stared into the floor as his heart thundered in his chest. Keeping his breathing calm was difficult to say the least, as he felt like he was running a marathon at twenty kilometres an hour. Meerlinda was harsh in punishment, even if it was rarely dished out.

"Look at me."

Harry looked up into his mistress' eyes, and her brow furrowed.

"You should have come home sooner, or at least stopped by before leaving," she said. "You need to shave."

"Shave? I don't grow a beard ye–" and then he realised what she was talking about. His gut lurched. "Is the enchantment failing?"

"Not yet," she said and looked at him. "Your growth is slowing down again."

Harry then reached his hand up to his chin, and felt the hair pushing out of his face. It was continually growing rapidly, though after a few seconds, he felt it stop.

"You were lucky, but you should have noticed yourself," Meerlinda said and walked off. "Next time, it will happen quicker."

Harry stood and felt his beard, a few centimetres long. He rushed into his room, adjacent to the entrance hall, and into his bathroom. He stared into the mirror, and saw that his hair had grown a good ten centimetres or so, and he was sporting a somewhat light beard, though the hairs grew darker the closer to his skin they got. He then looked at his shirt, and noticed that it was very slowly stretching tighter around his chest.

"Shit," he muttered and grasped the sink, taking deep breaths.

A ghoul's life was a potentially eternal one; a regularly-fed ghoul didn't age at all, and so could theoretically serve his or her domitor, or master, forever. But Harry hadn't drunk Meerlinda's blood in years; instead, she had devised a ritual which linked the two together whilst they were in the chantry, which Meerlinda very rarely left. As long as they were both in the chantry, their blood was continually exchanged; Harry didn't need regular feedings to sustain his ghouldom and all his blood became vitae so that he could sustain himself indefinitely, and Meerlinda was continually given Harry's constantly-regenerating human blood so that she didn't have to leave the chantry and feed. It was a mutually beneficial system – a symbiotic relationship, one might say.

However, if a ghoul wasn't fed after a month had passed for whatever reason, their body would start to rapidly age to their true age. A ghoul could hold this off for a month by using a little of the blood they already had, and it was generally accepted that ghouls who were completely suffused with their domitor's blood, like Harry was, could sustain themselves in this manner for somewhere between six months and a year. It would seem that Harry had been away for just a little too long, and his body had started to age to catch up to him, which wasn't something he could afford inside this chantry.

The ancient hermetic that had trained Harry had placed a spell on the chantry, a powerful one; inside the chantry, time passed by quicker than in the outside world. That meant that Harry would have almost a year for every real month he spent inside the chantry. But that also meant that Harry was quite old. Around a hundred to a-hundred-and-twenty years old. If his ghouldom was to fade now, he would age beyond his natural death and turn to dust in a matter of hours. In some ways, really, he was in the same boat as Nicolas…

"The red stone is made from vampire blood, isn't it?" Harry called out.

"What?" Meerlinda asked as she entered his bathroom not a second later. She was the Chantrymaster, and so she could move instantly to any place within it with a thought.

"The red stone to create the philosopher's stone," Harry looked at her. "It's made with vampire blood, isn't it?"

"Yes," she said and absentmindedly stroked his beard lightly. "Why?"

"Just a thought," Harry said. "Do we have anything to shave with?"

"Of course," she said, and suddenly a cabinet door behind him swung open. Being Chantrymaster must be quite neat. "You think I didn't know you'd grow a beard one day?"

"Of course you did," Harry sent her a glance as he turned and grabbed the razor and shaving cream from the cabinet. "I just didn't know if you'd thought of it."

"Of course I did," she said, and then disappeared.

Harry smirked slightly and took off his clothes. He could use a bath, as well, now that he was at it. Looking at his body, he was a little surprised, though the nigh-instant beard had been a real shock. His chest and shoulders had grown and broadened. His arms and legs had stretched, and he actually heard a 'pop' and felt a tightness in his back as his torso stretched quite quickly for just a moment. He winced at it, and then wet his face, beard, and razor, letting the water run as he covered his face with shaving cream.

"I need to be more attentive," he muttered.

"YES YOU DO!" he heard a call from deeper in the chantry.