Chapter Five. Ritual
In his first year, Tom Riddle decided not to approach or interact with the hapless descendant of Slytherin, either directly or indirectly. If the boy had been "led" from the orphanage itself... or perhaps the Game had begun much earlier... then during his first year at Hogwarts, his immediate surroundings would be scrutinised particularly closely. Then, of course, it would continue, but not as thoroughly — psychology, damn it...
Simply put, if I start making contact with Tom now, I'll be checked especially carefully. So far, my screening has been superficial: a natural Occlumens; pure-blood, but not noble; intelligent, but "weak"... I'm not even officially listed as an heir! So I just have to keep up the "mask" until the end of the year... then it will be much easier.
I feel sorry for Tom — he's not exactly an outcast at Slytherin... but he's close. And it's not even that he's listed as Muggle-born, the boy is very proud, intelligent and... it seems very likely that he already has mental predispositions, because for an experienced Legiliment, especially one with a medical/psychological bent, certain inconsistencies are obvious. And these inconsistencies prevent him from perceiving the situation without distortion. So he will either break down or become embittered.
I have already earned a reputation with Yolu as a smart guy and someone not to mess with, despite my low level of magic. No, nothing serious, but... I have much more life experience than my current peers. So most of the situations that would offend a normal eleven-year-old boy simply didn't affect me. And my responses were much more sophisticated.
Nothing serious, believe me: just the usual childhood self-assertion in the Hogwarts pack. A few times I "showed my teeth" in the form of readiness to use my fists or wand, a few minor "retaliations" in the form of chewing gum in someone's hair or a fart pillow from a Muggle joke shop... That was enough for first-year students — especially for "The Raven," who had come up with a new and interesting pastime. Later, towards the end of the first year, or even in the second, more serious "showdowns" would begin: the newbies would get their bearings, and then there was puberty with all the testosterone...
By the end of winter, I had visited the Manor several times — I had to perform some rituals and try to clarify how I ended up here. The rituals went well, and there were no questions. The main thing that tormented me was how I ended up in the past in my own body, being the ninth generation of the Rod family, when my father wasn't even born yet! And not only that, none of my relatives were alive — so how did I come into this world?
The answers to such questions are not easy to find: I had to create a sacrificial stone and shield it from the ministry's observers. It took a lot of strength... But now the energy of the sacrifice will not scatter throughout the world, signalling to everyone who understands what has happened. Instead, it will go entirely to the right cause, and with even greater power.
The sacrifices...
"What a cute boy," says a well-dressed gentleman with an overly dapper... friend, lifting my chin with his cane. He is clearly not from the lower classes and will not stay on the streets for long.
His "friend" bends down slightly and strokes my face, his movements are... dirty. And only then, instinctively using Mental, do I understand WHAT they mean! I grab my "friend" by the thumb and twist it, breaking it — this action takes no more effort than a seven-year-old boy. He falls to his knees with a short, guttural groan, and a gold watch on a chain falls out of his waistcoat. Thoughts of the trophy flash through my mind, and I manage to grab not only the watch but also the bulging wallet. And then I'm out of there!
I got away, although I had to spend two days in a kind of hibernation in the attic — the police were looking for me, and they weren't the only ones. But the loot — the watch, which I sold for twenty-five pounds, and the wallet, which contained almost seventy pounds — was a LOT of money in the 1930s. Actually, that's what helped me get to the manor.
Since then, I've hated sodomites! I didn't like them before, but only in a detached way. But when I myself almost became their victim... let me tell you, it was invigorating. So when the need for a human sacrifice arose, I didn't even hesitate — especially since, albeit very superficially, I had read some facts from his mind... They wouldn't have let me live anyway — there was a whole club of them*.
So when the need for human sacrifices arose, there was no particular hesitation. And I know very well, like many Bloodline Mages, that Mother Magic accepts such sacrifices particularly willingly — it's like a purification of the Human Race.
A ritual blade made of obsidian slit the throat of the first bound sodomite, and his blood flowed, washing away the complex system of runes and magical signs. The soul? Who knows, only a magician or a human being can sacrifice a soul, but now it's just the life force that's being taken away... The sodomites were fully conscious, having just been bound and gagged, so their moans were very expressive. But it didn't bother me... I threw away the bloodless body, placed the living one on the stone with Leviosa, and again cut his throat... My lips uttered complex words that came from times so distant that it was difficult to imagine. And finally — a response...
My ancestors or Magic responded not with words, but with a series of images. Here are my great-grandfather and grandfather — pure-blooded but unknown magicians who wanted to elevate the family. They study hard, perform the required rituals, but... Most of the Places of Power are already taken. To establish a proper manor, not just an estate closed off from muggles, you need a lot of money and even more connections. The young Rod has neither...
Another option is to become a vassal to the powerful, the Blacks, for example. Rod has something to offer them, but... The Ministry prohibits magical vassalage. Secretly? No way — the Blacks were among those who signed the document surrendering to the cursed goblins, so the Family Tree in Greenngotts would quickly tell all the green-skinned dwarves, who would simply pass the information on to the Ministry, which is effectively subordinate to them...
European mages had very little chance of becoming Lords of Magic in the twentieth century — Secrecy Status, occupied positions of Power, and the prohibition of many necessary rituals. But they wanted it! And it wasn't just the Tally family who wanted it. So they first joined the "Tule" society, and then smoothly merged into the Anenerbe. They engaged in all sorts of activities, including some that were not very good, even by the standards of someone who had recently sacrificed people.
But they stopped at the brink of "blackness" solely thanks to the wife of their great-grandfather, who was the bastard of one of the Russian magical clans. And when the Ahnenerbe began to "indulge" in sacrifices and experiments on "normal" (read: not sodomites, not crazy, not criminals) people, smoothly transitioning to Slavs, my great-grandfather put the brakes on.
He slowed down primarily because he understood that there would surely be repercussions for such actions, because if he had tolerated experiments on the French (even if they were normal) with some difficulty, then the Russians... Not only would his beloved wife not like it, but he could also earn a backlash — there could be distant relatives of his wife among the prisoners, and Magic doesn't like that... They also understood that they would not be allowed to reap the fruits of their labour anyway — the ordinary executors would still get the backlash, as the experiments were becoming more and more risky and "black".
Leaving was not an option, even though they were ordinary executors, they knew quite a lot, and by that time their families were living under the "wing" of Herr Grindelwald and his Order of the Common Good. But even if their relatives were in low positions, it was primarily because of their foreign origin and relatively recent "registration" in the Order. They had enough brains.
They created an amazing ritual during which they captured the monstrous powers from the mass sacrifice of the Ahnenerbe shortly before the Battle of Stalingrad and... directed them to the Chronoworst Ritual. "Rolling back" in their minds to more than thirty years ago, they did not join any "Tula" or other Orders. But the knowledge they gained was enough to create a full-fledged manor, and later - to open the World.
However, such mockery of Reality did not go unpunished — even with ordinary chronoworths, you can get into serious trouble, and with such a thing... Well, they got into trouble — the new Reality rejected them, and NOTHING helped. Therefore, another ritual was performed (which they developed themselves!), which was called "The Last Hope." Then the Rodovichs (almost forty people) VOLUNTARILY sacrificed themselves, correcting the disruption in Reality.
I confess that, despite my very good knowledge of rituals, I did not understand ANYTHING here. The only thing that was clear was that the ritual somehow corrected both their service to the Anenerbe and their tampering with time and Realities. As a result, I came into being — without a mother, without the participation of my father's seed. Magic brought me into being from the Power of the Tally Clan...
It turned out that I myself, by performing the Purification ritual, after which I found myself in the past, and even in a new Reality, attracted the attention of Magic. I did everything right, and if an ordinary magician had been in my place, he would have achieved exactly the result I was striving for at the time — that is, a banal Purification. It turns out that I took the "vacant" place that appeared after the Last Hope ritual. That's how it was...
Coming out of my trance, I thought for a long time... My relatives' actions during the Anenerbe service were unpleasant, but... they atoned for them. SUCH a death atones for EVERYTHING — especially since that Reality ceased to be. But the fact that I was an Embodied Force changed a lot. Similar beings, the Sidhe and the Alva, had appeared in their time... In short, I was only human in a very limited sense.
This changed me, if not completely, then very much. So now I needed not only to change some of the problems of Magical England in the form of goblins and their human servants, but also to radically change the situation with restrictions on magic and discrimination against magical races... The latter, as you understand, is particularly relevant.
And extend the Rod. More precisely, not even the Rod — the RAS! Can you imagine the level of responsibility? Yeah, I got chills too... No, the Sids, Alvs, and others exist in other Worlds — they originated on Earth, then created and raised their own, and when all this nonsense with monotheism and persecution of the Others began, they left. But my Branch is a separate matter, and there's nowhere to go yet — the world of the Tally Clan/Race is less than ten square kilometres, so I can live independently, separate from Earth, but there's a risk that such a small world could simply "die out" without constant contact with the mother world.
The question of continuing the family line? No, there are no problems here — a woman who carries a sid or alva child becomes a sid or alva herself — her body changes. The father only needs to perform a certain ritual, without which the woman's chances of dying in childbirth or at least losing her magic greatly increase. This ritual is also important for the child, otherwise it will be born as a kind of "under-sid" with weak magic, whose children will no longer be "normal" sids, but half-breeds, and their blood will gradually dissolve into human blood. The descendants of such half-breeds have certain advantages, so magical clans have often resorted to the services of sid "inseminators" to strengthen their bloodline.
The question may arise: why didn't the magicians want their descendants to become sid? Well, they... we... have many advantages, but there are also plenty of disadvantages, such as the problem of adapting to the purely human world... And our thinking is different, magic, long development... Right now and for the next ten to twenty years, I am "normal," and I will live that long thanks to my long past life. Or lives in the past reality? And then... Lagwoods with their eccentricities are a model of normality compared to adult sid. They... we think differently, feel differently, our organs of vision are structured differently, we see magic and streams of probability... But that's later, not anytime soon... and even then, if you believe the fragmentary information.
There was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the magic of the sid — mostly fragmentary information and a few surviving rituals. And a number of human rituals and spells were borrowed from... us. The main Power was not in powerful spells, which were in no way superior to the abilities of a mage — a NORMAL mage. It seems that the Sids were famous for their rituals, their ability to see magic flows, and... Probability Steps. Ancient legends clearly stated that members of my race could glide through Probability, and the most powerful ones did not even need "ordinary" magic, as they could change Probability even if they needed boiling water in a kettle. So what? All you had to do was step into Probability, where the water in the kettle had just boiled, and take it...
With all these problems of the Rod and the Race, I got very confused and began to resemble the notorious Luna Lovegood, delving deep into Probability Theory — in the Sidov version, of course. My classmates laughed, but respectfully — saying that I was a real "Raven," tackling some global problem in my first year. Representatives of other departments were not so loyal, and by the end of the year I had to solve a number of problems related to the tarnished reputation of one of the informal leaders of the younger students.
A whole club*" I would like to remind you that information about such "entertainment" among the British "elite" has repeatedly surfaced even in the British press. And I am not only talking about the widespread prevalence of "normal" homosexuality and paedophile homosexuality, but also about the numerous deaths of boys. And yes, I mean clubs. However, in essence, the entire English upper class is such that it is difficult to call them normal people. Or even just people.
"Thule"**" an occult and political society whose views largely formed the basis of Nazi ideology. One of the society's ideas was the theoretical possibility of learning the occult knowledge of ancestors through mystical rituals. In this case, we can talk about prophecies and visions, as well as necromancy.
Anenerbe***" translates as "Ancestral Heritage." It was also an occult society, but it was also involved in "real" science. After the war, most of the information never became public knowledge, but it can be said with certainty that they achieved considerable success. For example, modern medicine owes a great deal to Anenerbe. There are a number of interesting engineering solutions, all kinds of psychotechnics, etc. — and that's just what has leaked out.
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