1005 Purgation Ⅳ

Pausing only to collect her bag and despite it being mid-day, Rowan closed her and checked her mapscape before teleporting to the hidden quarters within the Chamber of Secrets. "Lumos," she mumbled holding her wand high to lighten the room, before turning on the portable battery-powered lanterns and flashlights. The cold stone quarter instantly brightened to reveal a laboratory with giant vats filled with basilisk ingredients and other rare ingredients having been acquired from her trip to Bellatrix's vault.

"Nox," Rowan muttered as the light at the tip of her wand goes out. For a moment, she sways and feels ill from the blistering pain in her head. She all but trips into an armchair and blindly reaches for a pain potion in her school bag. Gulping down the entire potion, she grimaces in pain and waits for the potion to take effect.

The cool air in the hidden chamber feels rather nice against her aching flesh. Slowly the mind-numbing pain eases until Rowan can stand up again. Feeling a bit dizzy still, she carefully crossed the thick rug-covered floor to the large bookshelf filled with rare and ancient volumes. She slowly begins to read the titles lest she worsened her headache now that it had begun to ease.

Soon enough Rowan spots the only children's book among the volumes on the third shelf. She reaches for the book when a memory comes to mind of the last time, she saw this same volume. It had been a dream at the Gaunt Shack and the serpent, (a Fenny snake) had led her to a ruined bookshelf that held the same book.

"Did you see?" The serpent had asked as its forked tongue flickered in the air impatiently. It had even more impatiently gestured for her to read the cover only for Rowan to see old handwriting that read, "Not all tales are fiction, and monsters are very much real," with a faded signature underneath that read as Beedle the Bard.

"Indeed, I finally begin to see," Rowan muttered out loud before retreating to the safety and comfort of her armchair. Settling down, she pulls the volume up until the tale of the Warlock's Hairy Heart.

"There was once a handsome, rich, and talented young warlock, who observed that his friends grew foolish when they fell in love, gamboling and preening, losing their appetites, and their dignity. The young warlock resolved never to fall prey to such weakness and employed Dark Arts to ensure his immunity."

Rowan paused and solemnly stepped out of the box to think. "Hydra or rather the second apprentice of Herpo, the Foul saw the foolishness of those around him. The mortality of wizards and muggles alike even that of his own master, Herpo the Foul. As such, the second apprentice resolved to never fall victim to inevitable whims of mortality like those around him."

In the tale, the warlock's family knew not what he had done and promised that things would change when he met the right maiden. The warlock took pride in remaining untouched even when his parents perished. In the end, he became the object of envy. Yet eventually the Warlock's pride was injured when a servant remarked that he had no wife nor offspring.

Rowan frowned for a moment. "Perchance, a side product is that Hydra can neither truly love nor bear offspring once a vessel is possessed."

And it certainly made sense considering the fact that none of the vessels that Charlus Potter Jr. and Alphard Black had investigated had ever children. And the vessels that had only produced children early in their marriages and never later nor with mistresses or second wives. It correlated with the time period; Hydra would have made them into a vessel.

Furthermore, the proof lay in the fact that Professor Zephyr had never produced a child nor those she had confirmed at Slughorn's party, Linus Gamp, Murtaugh Burke, and Devante Nott. Considering, Devante Nott's promiscuity, he should have by all accounts sired a child out of wedlock. And yet there existed no wild sown seeds. Somehow despite having perfectly healthy bodies the act of possessing or creating a vessel magically made a vessel sterile.

Rowan pensively furrowed her brow and returned to the tale. The proud warlock sought out a witch with great skill and beauty. The warlock courted the great beauty, but the maiden remained unconvinced and requested to see proof that he had a heart. The Warlock then took her into the depths of his castle to reveal his greatest of treasures, a beating heart encased within an enchanted crystal canker. Yet the maiden paled and became utterly terrified at the sight of the heart, for it had shrunk, and was covered in long black hair. The maiden cried out, "Oh, what have you done? Put it back where it belongs, I beseech you!"

Rowan paused and found it almost impossible to believe that Hydra would be capable of love. But then again desire or lust is not an impossibility, why even Voldemort in Potter's time had the sufficient sexual desire to have sex with Bellatrix and sire a child. In the decades that Hydra had existed, it was probable that Hydra had even met a witch powerful enough and worthy of their attention. Yet in the end, Hydra was not capable of siring a child with her as he was and agreed to temporarily change back to being a mortal.

With that thought in mind, Rowan resumed the tale. In order for the Warlock's plan to come to fruition, he removed the heart and opened up his chest to return the hairy heart to its place. But the heart had grown strange during its long exile, blind and savage in its desires, it had grown powerful and perverse. In the end, the maiden lay dead upon the floor with her heart cut open, while the Warlock tried to interchange hearts, but his hair heart refused to relinquish its hold upon its senses or return to the coffin. In the end, the Warlock took in his life vowing to never be mastered by his own heart.

Rowan stopped and reread that entire ending, before setting down her book with a glance. There is an issue with Hydra, it was split into two sides. Rowan would call them, the Heart and the Head. The Head is the Horcrux's ability for Hydra to exist and continue to reproduce, the hive so to speak, the collective. A combination of everything or everyone that had ever been.

On the other hand, the Heart is the actual core remnant of the second apprentice of Herpo, the Foul. This is the true heart of Hydra, the true mind if you will, the Hive Queen, who still desires immortality. However, he may not desire the same as he did in eons past.

Sitting straight up, Rowan's eyes move wildly in thought. That would explain why Hydra's actions do not always line up. Why is Hydra rational and calculating at times and yet in the next breath is raging and irrational? It did not make sense for an existence that had lived so long to be so impatient and clouded by emotions. Frankly, it was unnatural. As if, there were multiple personalities at work.