Rowena's Quill

Rowena was sitting at the work desk, unconsciously stroking the end of her quill, and barely taking in the conversation around her. Professor Dumbledore was visiting, updating them on the latest sightings of Voldemort for the next edition of The Quibbler. In the years since Voldemort's apparent defeat, most people had become complacent. "Constant vigilance," as advocated by the likes of Alastor Moody, was considered a need of the past at best and sheer paranoia at worst. But wizards like Moody and Dumbledore did remain constantly vigilant, so The Quibbler kept going, reporting to those few wizards who were still interested, which wasn't many. For the Lovegoods, it meant lean times. They had been living off Rowena's inheritance and maintaining the paper with it. It wasn't going to last forever.

Rowena sighed. She knew she oughtn't let it bother her. She had paid a relatively small price in the war against Voldemort. The Longbottoms had paid with their sanity, and the Potters with their lives. She was serving a worthy cause. She could not regret it.

In addition to reporting about Voldemort, The Quibbler also followed Death Eater trials. Many were cleared, claiming to have been under the Imperius Curse. After watching so many of them walk free, Leonard and Rowena became convinced of vast corruption in the Ministry, and every issue of The Quibbler contained several articles about it.

Professor Dumbledore had a different take on matters. He was not at all naive about Ministry corruption, but he was more inclined to accept the innocence of some of the accused Death Eaters and the genuine repentance of others.

"Tom always did pin the blame for his crimes on other people," he said with a sigh. "The Imperius Curse took it to the next level. This way, people actually did the physical act of carrying out his crimes. As a matter of fact, I would not be the least bit surprised if the spell was Tom's own invention."

"Who's Tom?" asked Leonard and Rowena simultaneously.

"Tom Riddle is Voldemort's real name."

"That's odd," said Leonard. "It's so ordinary."

"Yes, I am certain that is why he changed it," said Dumbledore.

"Tom Riddle," Rowena repeated. "Funny, it sounds familiar."

"Your mother might have mentioned him. He was her favorite student."

"It can't be!"

"Precisely what she said when she saw what Tom became."

"But how could she like him?" asked Rowena in a tone of disgust and incredulity.

"Oh, he was quite charming in his way, and a conscientious Runes student. Your mother appreciated that."

Rowena sat stunned, trying to take this in.

"Do you now see how many good witches and wizards he hoodwinked?" asked Dumbledore pointedly. "Well, I must be off. Excellent articles this month. Thank you both for tolerating these very late visits."

"It's an honor, sir. You know that," said Leonard, rising from his seat.

"Yes," said Rowena faintly, rising too. The two saw him to the door, and when he was gone, Rowena walked around as though in a daze.

Leonard reached out for her hand. "Are you all right, sweetie?"

"Mmmm . . . "

"You oughtn't let it bother you. As he said, hundreds of wizards were taken in. We've made similar mistakes ourselves, you know. We grew to like Sirius Black."

"It's not that," said Rowena. "It's just . . . I think I remembered how I recognized the name. If you don't mind, I think I need to write a little."

"When inspiration hits, far be it from me to stand in the way," said Leonard. He kissed her goodnight.

Rowena sat down at their desk, picked up her quill, and wrote out, "The Crumple-Horned Snorkack."

Familiar with the code of its own creation, the quill spelled out Lord Voldemort in the Celtic alphabet.

Rowena then wrote, Tom Riddle.

The quill shook itself from her grasp and wrote, Tom Marvolo Riddle. And then, the letters swam on the page and reformed themselves into I am Lord Voldemort. It was like a speedy game of Rack 'n Rune being played on parchment instead of tile. And as if this weren't unusual enough, in the next moment, the quill began to write more: Heiress of Ravenclaw, the Heir of Slytherin has vanquished you.

"Heiress of Ravenclaw?" wondered Rowena. She supposed that as the owner of the quill, that was her title, but her mother never had mentioned it, perhaps because it sounded so presumptuous.

Rowena seized the quill and wrote Who is the Heir of Slytherin? though she already suspected the answer.

I, Lord Voldemort.

This was perhaps strangest of all. Rowena had used the quill for years, ever since her mother had given it to her as a graduation gift. It had helped her with Runes, and had written many of the articles in The Quibbler. She knew it had a vast memory for languages, but never once had it referred to itself as "I."

She seized the quill again.

You are not Lord Voldemort. You are Rowena Lovegood's quill.

And the quill wrote back: I am Lord Voldemort's Horcrux.

What is a Horcrux? Rowena wrote.

A home for my soul for all eternity.

I don't understand, she wrote. Please explain.

And then the quill stopped writing, which was something else she had never experienced. Until now, it had always obeyed her.

She needed to find out what a Horcrux was. She and Leonard had an extensive library. Though they had been forced to sell many of their valuables to make ends meet, neither could part with the books. Putting down the quill, she went to her bookshelves.

All night long, she pored through book after book, but with no results. She was still up searching in the morning when both Leonard and Luna came in, ready for a family breakfast. Rowena hastily conjured up three bowls of cereal.

"Up all night?" asked Leonard. "That must be quite an article you're working on. Or have you got an idea for some dazzling experiment that will teach Tim-Tum to hoot in Gaelic?" He tossed the owl a treat as he passed.

"Mmm hmm," answered Rowena distractedly.

"Looks like a wrackspurt caught Mummy," said Leonard. "Can you feel it? The room's full of them!" He swatted the air, and Luna giggled. "Be a good girl today," he told her. "Mummy was up working all night."

That snapped Rowena out of her reverie. "Luna is always a good girl," she said. "But where are you going?"

"To cover the Crouch trial, remember?" said Leonard. His tone became more serious. "You must be really upset about it to have blocked it out this way. I thought you were happy he was finally being brought to justice after all these years."

"No, I am happy - if you can call it that. And thank you for going instead of me. I don't think I could bear to listen to what he did to Alice and Frank. It'll be bad enough reading about it."

"The war is over and the worst is behind us," he said, kissing her forehead. He sat down to breakfast, and so did Luna.

"How long are you going to be gone, Daddy?"

"I don't know, sweetie. It's rather an important trial. It might go very late."

Both Luna and Rowena looked crestfallen.

"Ahh, good for a man's ego to have a fan club like this," said Leonard.

Neither of them cheered up.

"Would you like to hear the centaur story before I go?"

"Yes, please!" cried Luna, perking up.

Rowena and Leonard smiled at her and then at each other.

"A long time ago," began Leonard, "when Mummy and I were students in Hogwarts, a nargle stung Mummy rather badly. Now getting stung by a nargle tends to muddy people's thinking, and that is exactly what happened to Mummy. She was running toward the forest, which can be a very dangerous place full of deadly magical creatures."

"But it has good creatures, too," Luna interrupted.

"That's true, but it can still be dangerous. I saw what Mummy was doing, and I was afraid she might hurt herself, so I followed her."

Rowena slipped her hand into her husband's as he continued. "The trouble was, I wasn't thinking quite clearly either. I don't know what I would have done if Mummy had met up with anything dangerous. But luckily, she didn't. Instead she met a -"

"Centaur," Luna finished for him. It was her favorite part of the story. She loved repeating it. "And he told Mommy, 'The path to your destiny is clear but short.'"

"And then I walked a short path," said Rowena. "And there was your father - my destined one."

"I owe so much to that centaur," said Leonard, finishing the story the way he always did. "Without him, I would have gone one admiring your mother from afar, never believing she could ever like me enough to marry me."

Rowena's eyes welled with tears. "I owe him so much, too."

Leonard hugged and kissed her, then did the same to Luna, went to the doorstep, and apparated away.

"Back to work," said Rowena. "Scourgify!" she said over the breakfast dishes. She was eager to get back to her research.

"Mummy, a wrackspurt's got me, too."

"Oh?" Rowena forced herself to pay attention. It was time to be a Mummy no matter what big ideas had taken hold of her.

"I didn't tell the whole story because I knew Daddy had to leave, but didn't the centaur say that you would bring some of his knowledge to people?"

"Yes, he did say that."

"Then why haven't you ever tried to find him again?"

Rowena chuckled. "Centaurs share their knowledge with humans only if they choose to. Many a human has tried to seek advice from the centaurs, but with no meaningful results. I am sure that when the time is right, the centaur will find us. Daddy thinks he will grant me an interview for The Quibbler."

"Oh, Mummy! I can hardly wait!"

"Shhh. It might happen in a very different way than we think it will. In fact, I think it is absolutely certain that the centaur will take us by complete surprise."

Luna considered this, and nodded.

"Any other wrackspurts?" asked Rowena.

"Yes," said Luna readily. "You said Gran has gone to be with Grandfather in a happier place, and you said one of the doors to get there is in the Ministry building. What if the Ministry blocks the door?"

Rowena looked down at her daughter with a mixture of pride for her insight and sadness at how much both of them had lost.

"The Ministry can't block the door," she explained. "Nobody can. It contains power far greater than any wizard's. It's not in the Ministry's control. Do you understand?"

Luna cocked her head to the side as though giving it deep thought. After a while, she nodded to show that her curiosity was satisfied, at least for the moment.

"Why don't you go play outside? It's a beautiful day."

"I want to stay with you. I'll be quiet. I'll play Rack 'n Rune." And Luna ran to get the game, settled herself on the floor with it, and set it all up manually, playing a strictly unmagical game.

Rowena went back to the sofa, which was still piled with books, and wondered what prompted Luna to ask about the portal. She and Leonard were more open with her than many other parents she knew, but they certainly never told her what happened at a full court trial like Crouch's. Perhaps it was just a simple matter of Luna missing her grandmother.

And then the idea dawned on her. Father's unpublished manuscript! If anything would have the answer to what a Horcrux was, it was the book he'd been working on before his death, The Secrets of Eternity. Contained in a sealed box at the top of the corner bookshelf, Rowena summoned it to her work desk. She read through each page carefully, every moment amazed at how wise a wizard he must have been. She had been told as much her entire life, but somehow, she had never felt it as strongly as now, reading through his work. She chided herself for not having looked into it sooner, but she supposed that now that she had lost her own mother, she understood him more deeply than she might have previously.

After an hour and a half of reading, Rowena found what she was searching for.

The Horcrux is a heinous magical invention of undetermined origin, which allows a wizard to sever his own eternal potential, that is to say, his soul, and thus circumvent death. The caster achieves this by committing a murder. He then conceals the soul fragment in an object of his choosing. As long as the piece of the divided soul remains within the object, the caster cannot die.

Needless to say, this is an unnatural state of existence, and the eternity it offers is illusory. The cruelty required to sever the soul necessarily precludes the soul's entry into the natural eternal state in the realm beyond. Furthermore, if the Horcrux is destroyed, the caster will die like any mortal, but his afterlife would not be ordinary. Though it is of course unknown what precisely would happen to a fragmented soul after its death, it can be assumed that a soul cut off from life in the earthly realm and barred from entry into the next would suffer excruciating pain and deprivation.

Rowena looked up, her mind reeling with what she had just read. A dreadful feeling came over her, but she had to discover the truth. Taking up her quill again, she wrote: Heir of Slytherin, the Heiress of Ravenclaw demands to know whom you murdered to create this Horcrux.

She let the quill go, and it wrote, the Unspeakable wizard, Rowan Rockrimmon.

Rowena shook with rage. So this was the cause of her father's mysterious death, leaving her mother with a lifetime of grief that overshadowed her own childhood. And for what? So that Voldemort could protect his own life while causing death and destruction in the wizarding world at large?

"Not with my father's soul," thought Rowena. She knew what she had to do.

"Luna, go outside," she said.

"But Mum, I'm being quiet."

"You're being very quiet, but I'm going to try an experiment and I don't want you hurt. Now go out."

Luna obeyed, but she planted herself by the window to watch. Rowena regretted her use of the word "experiment." Now Luna was hoping to see her try to make Tim-Tum talk or watch her invent some other frivolous spell, but what she was doing now was anything but frivolous. At least Luna was standing at a fair distance.

Rowena put her father's manuscript back in its box, along with all other papers on the desk, and sent the box back to its place on the shelf. Then, with only the quill left on the desk, she cried, "Incendio quill!"

The quill and the desk exploded into a tremendous fireball, far greater than Rowena had intended or expected. And then, as though by magnetic force, Rowena felt herself being pulled into it. The flames enveloped her and she collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain. For a moment, she lost consciousness, and in the next, Luna, with eyes as wide as saucers, was standing over her with an empty pot. Luna had put the fire out, but the pain was still excruciating. Then Luna ran out of her sight.

Lying on the floor, Rowena was relieved to see that all that remained of the quill was its golden nib and that too was melting into a puddle.

Luna knelt down beside her, her voice shaking with fear. "I sent Tim-Tum to get Daddy!"

Rowena put her hand on Luna's. She hadn't the strength to tell her what a good and brave girl she was.

Rowena felt her mother beckoning her from the other side. She longed to enter her warm embrace and leave the pain behind her, but the sight of Luna kept her in the earthly realm. Somehow, Rowena would try to hang on until Leonard got home.

And then, a strange thing happened. Sounds seemed to fill the room, hundreds of voices all speaking different languages, but none intelligible over another. Above it all was a cold, cackling laugh, but that was the first to die out. After that, the chorus of voices lowered into a hum. Then a new voice rose, a melodious lady's voice, and it sang:

Ephemeral justice, elusive truth

take time to be uncovered,

but truth wills out in many years,

and all has been discovered.

When the song ended, Rowena passed to the other side, where she was greeted not only by her mother, but by a celebration. Future generations would live because of what she had done.

Luna collapsed over Rowena's body, howling. Rowena cried for her, and called to her to console her. "Sweetie, you'll see me again in the better place. It's peaceful here. I'm fine."

Leonard apparated in, looked over the scene, and then he too fell to the floor, holding Luna and sobbing alongside her.

"Oh, Leonard, darling Leonard," said Rowena. "Take good care of her. I love you both so much!"

"Did you hear Mommy?" Luna asked through her sobs.

Leonard nodded.

"She said she's in the better place," said Luna. "It's closer than I thought."

"Of course it is," said Leonard, and he clasped his daughter to himself, holding her tightly. Rowena hovered over them, gently humming words of comfort.