The information hit the room like a physical shockwave.
Harry staggered back, hitting the edge of a bookshelf. He looked sick, his green eyes wide with a horrifying realization. The soul of the man who had murdered his parents, who had terrorized his entire life, was quite literally grafted onto his own.
"He's... he's in me?" Harry whispered, his voice cracking. He looked at his own hands as if they were suddenly covered in venom. "I have to... I have to die, don't I? To finish him."
Up on the walls, the painted residents of the Headmaster's office were no longer pretending to sleep. "Merlin preserve us," whispered Armando Dippet from his gilded frame. Phineas Nigellus Black sneered, pacing in his canvas. "A living Horcrux. The boy is tainted. This is a disaster of unprecedented proportions!"
"Silence, Phineas," Dumbledore commanded, his voice carrying a soft but absolute authority. He stepped forward and placed a steadying hand on Harry's trembling shoulder. "Calm down, Harry. You are not going to die tonight. We will find a way to navigate this."
"Albus is right," McGonagall said, her voice shaking slightly but her posture fiercely protective. "There are other Horcruxes out there. We will deal with those first. We can isolate Harry, protect his mind, and figure out the rest when the time comes."
"Yeah, about that," Ethan interrupted, destroying the warm, comforting moment with clinical pragmatism. "We actually have to deal with Harry first."
Tonks stepped in front of Harry instinctively, her hair flashing a defensive, aggressive red. "What exactly do you mean by 'deal with', Williams?"
Lupin's eyes narrowed, his wand hand twitching. "If you think we are going to sacrifice—"
"Because," Ethan said, speaking over them loudly, "the mental link goes both ways. Harry sees Voldemort's visions, which means Voldemort can see through Harry's eyes if he tries hard enough. The second we start destroying his soul pieces, the Dark Lord is going to feel it. He's going to panic, he's going to look through Harry's mind to see who's doing it, and he's going to see all of our faces and all of our plans."
The Order members froze. The excuses and defensive strategies died on their lips. Ethan was right. As long as Harry was a walking broadcasting tower, they couldn't make a single move without Voldemort knowing.
"We can use Occlumency," Bill suggested desperately. "We can lock him in a warded safe house..."
Ethan sighed, rubbing his temples. "Guys. Calm down. You're overthinking this."
He stepped away from the desk and walked toward Harry. "I never said we had to kill the kid to destroy the Horcrux. I just said we had to deal with it."
Dumbledore's eyes locked onto Ethan, a glimmer of desperate hope breaking through his stoic facade. "Mr. Williams... do you know of a way to separate a soul fragment from a living host without killing them?"
"Of course I do," Ethan said, rolling up the sleeves of his leather jacket. "Soul manipulation might be top-tier, forbidden dark arts in your world, but where I come from, Astral Projection is prerequisite stuff you learn in your first year."
Ethan gestured for Harry to step into the center of the room. "Dumbledore, seal the room. Put up every containment ward you know. I don't want this thing escaping into the castle."
Dumbledore didn't ask questions. He raised the Elder Wand, chanting rapidly in Latin. Golden runes flared across the doors, the windows, and even the chimney. The room hummed with an impenetrable, suffocating magical barrier.
"Alright, Harry," Ethan said, standing directly in front of the terrified teenager. "Take a deep breath. And whatever you do, don't freak out."
"Don't freak out about wha—"
Ethan didn't let him finish. He channeled a burst of golden energy into the heel of his palm and struck Harry squarely in the center of his chest.
It wasn't a physical blow. There was no sound of impact. But the result was instantaneous.
Harry's physical body went entirely slack, collapsing backward into Lupin's waiting arms. But at the exact same moment, a translucent, glowing, blue-tinted version of Harry stumbled backward out of his own physical body.
"Sweet Circe!" cried Dilys Derwent from her portrait, throwing her painted hands over her mouth. The rest of the former Headmasters gasped in unison, crowding to the edges of their frames to watch.
The Order members stood paralyzed in shock, watching Harry's glowing astral form float a few inches off the ground, looking down at his own unconscious body with wide, ethereal eyes.
But they didn't have time to process the Astral Projection. Their attention was immediately drawn to the second thing Ethan's strike had violently knocked loose.
Tethered to the center of Harry's glowing blue chest was a parasitic, writhing mass of pitch-black energy. It was screeching—a high-pitched, agonizing sound that echoed only in their minds. As it thrashed, fighting the separation, the black tar-like substance temporarily took the shape of a disfigured, serpentine face.
Voldemort's soul fragment had been evicted.
Author's Note:
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