118 A dark lords struggle

Voldemort had also not been having a very good time at all recently as the sudden escape of Grindelwald caused the security around where he was sure the stone was hidden to be tightened harshly. At first he had assume that he could take his time to dismantle the defenses around the stone but Quirrell's body was starting to reject his soul and getting damaged. This put him on a deadline that made him quite unhappy but he happened to know several ways to deal with this problem. For now though he needed to trick that fool Hagrid into telling him the Cerberus's weakness.-

Voldemort would admit that the reveal of the talented boy Nicholas Iron's heritage caught him off guard but it also thoroughly started cause him to dislike the boy as well. The grey lady's constant presence around the boy made Voldemort nervous that she may tell him about the diadem which would be rather bad. This proved to be a pointless fear however as not only was the diadem undisturbed where he had left it but the boy had thoroughly separated himself from that old fool in charge of the school.-

It was amusing to see the reaction the old man had at the vicious retaliation on the boys part , a marvelous blow in his not so humble opinion. Severus had to be commended however for the way he handles the situation in having the Weasley boy read out the results. At first glance no one noticed that the Iron boy was moments away from directly cursing the Dumbledore and had merely been angry at the old man , right fully so too. Severus had taken a gamble that whatever was written on the papers would protect the boy from any repercussions and he won too.-

The title of "heir and lord to founding house Ravenclaw" was no small shield to be hidden behind in any circle. The boy had taken a bit of revenge for the invasion of his privacy on Severus's part but he clearly didn't hate his servant over it so it was fine. Voldemort had decided to leave the boy alone for now as he would be distracted by the political super storm he had found himself in for quite awhile , rendering him a non threat for now. Grindelwald's presence was much more of a concern in Voldemort's mind as having another person on his and Dumbledore's level out and about was not good for his future plans.-

No , in fact it could honestly be said to be the worst possible thing for his plans as the previous dark lord clearly wouldn't have the moral limitations that Dumbledore did. That had always been the way that Voldemort had managed to clash with the old man in the past , using the lives of others as tools to suppress the old fool. Grindelwald on the other hand would likely just laugh at him if he tried to use that trick on him.-

'I can still take care of the Potter boy as I work to regain my previous glory.' the dark lord thought while remembering the upcoming quidditch match involving the Potter scion. Nick meanwhile was debating with himself over the pros and cons of ripping the soul shard in the diadem out once Helena finally told him about it. Clearly she felt that his ability to physically touch spirits would come in very handy in purifying Rowena Ravenclaws diadem. She wasn't wrong exactly as he could in theory directly pull the shard off the item without any trouble , but that would in turn expose his own soul to the shards corruptive influences.-

Nick wasn't arrogant enough to assume that he was impossible to corrupt with dark magics of this type which led him to his current mental turmoil. On one hand it would all but remove the need to deal with this very same problem later but at the same time he was really uncomfortable with the idea of touching such a foul thing with his own spirit. If he knew enough about souls he would simply create a ring that devours the shards on contact but he was woefully lacking in this regard.-

The "ancient" section of the library also wasn't very helpful either as he had only found a single book on souls in his search and it was so horribly complex and high level that he couldn't get past the first paragraph. Nick was stuck between a rock , a hard place and a hungry dragon and he knew it. Do it , don't do it or put it off , those were his options and frankly speaking none of them were very attractive. Other than that however was the destructive option to use basilisk venom on the Horcrux and totally render the diadem unusable.

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