In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Chapter 413: Ingest the Castle

"A balance maintained only by a brief verbal agreement will not last long at all, neither will I as well as my other self will maintain it, so with me unable to control him and him unable to control me, we must find a way to resolve the situation at hand, or else we will only end up making it easier for Dumbledore if we keep fighting internally like this."

Voldemort said in a loud voice.

What came out of his mouth remained the same vocal sound as Draco's, but the accent and tone of it was something that Draco could never have uttered.

"So I chose to take a step back and leave my body to him, who had long been eyeing it, while I found another way out for myself."

He looked over at Jon, with a teasing look on his face.

"Now that I've said that, can you guess what kind of way out I have in mind next?"

Jon turned his head to look at the Triwizard Cup behind the wooden door, the matter was obscure but not really that hard to guess when combined with the cause and effect.

"After you are separated, even if there is no more conflict for a while, you will not be as strong as when you were fused, so you must want to keep your strength from diminishing, or even be able to advance it further. But I don't think this fusion of souls is just some random merging of two different souls, otherwise, you wouldn't have tried to devour your other self instead of finding someone else, combined with the fact that you had done so much in Hogwarts castle before and that Hogwarts castle had a consciousness of its own"

Jon looked deeply at the man standing in front of him who was talking to him using Draco's appearance.

"You were preparing a backup as early as you took control of this school, planning to conquer the castle if you didn't succeed in devouring yourself in the end."

"Ah aha!"

Voldemort let out a laugh and snapped his fingers.

"Very true! I'm sure Dumbledore will have a headache when he finds out that I've been trying to become the true owner of this castle all along. He would wonder what the hell I was trying to do by doing this; because according to normal thinking, this castle would be of no use at all even if it did belong to me."

A wide smile appeared on his face, an expression that had never appeared on the previous Draco.

"A castle where countless bits of magic of young wizards have been gathered and influenced for thousands of years to form a consciousness. It's a meal that's bound to be very tasty, isn't it? Jon, if I can manage to stomach it, who cares about my other self? That short-sighted fool who split his soul and is now brought back together by me cannot see such long-term benefits! Magic is emotion and emotion is soul! Dumbledore keeps emphasising the love within the soul, because to his perception, he only understands that love is the strongest emotion, and he ignores the power of the soul itself! So what if there is no love! As long as my soul is strong enough, as long as I can ingest this one consciousness that has been gathered for thousands of years! I am a god!"

"Throughout the whole world! Whether wizard or muggle, earth or sea, a God of all things!"

His emotions were high, yet he gave no semblance of ridiculousness or madness.

For he expressed himself with such seriousness that his words were not too fast, not too slow, speaking methodically, telling Jon everything he had done, everything he had prepared so that Jon would understand how terrifying this Voldemort before him really was.

He had been preparing for his own defeat in advance since more than ten years ago, starting to restrict this castle bit by bit, preparing it for the failure of the fusion of his two selves later on, and at that time, Dumbledore hadn't even formed Witching Horizon yet, and Jon himself hadn't even crossed over yet, and at that time he was as great as the sun in Britain and even in the whole of Europe.

Now that all his setups had been used and everything had come to its final step as he had planned, even if Jon had guessed ahead of time that it was him in Draco's body for one or another reason, there was no way it would have made one more bit of difference to the situation at hand.

"But devouring the castle's consciousness isn't that easy, if it was that easy you would have just done it instead of using it as a reserve fallback."

Jon took a deep breath.

"So you had your eye on me, and apart from the fact that the Triwizard Tournament was something you wanted to stall for time, it also had the purpose of pulling me into your devised game."

"You're absolutely right."

The better Jon performed now, the happier the look on Voldemort's face became.

"The only reason your name was chosen in the Goblet of Fire was because I had it thrown in. After learning that you were the one who tore up that pact of mine and killed Rabastan, I chose you, Jon. Bella and Rodolphus were just an add-on to try your luck and strength, and if they did kill you, it would prove that you were nothing more than that, and I would have to choose another candidate, whereas if you managed to kill them back, it would be a great surprise. It means you're a perfect choice, but again, I need to prepare more for you to be the perfect candidate."

"I was going to make a series of illusions to make you and Dumbledore think that I was actually trying to kill you for real, that way not only would I win this Triwizard Tournament outright, but I would also put an end to it. That's why there was that dragon riot, that's why I agreed to that beauty ploy that Barty planned, I put myself in your shoes and thought what you would think, I had to not hold anything back and do my best to kill you, it was the only way to fool you and that wretched old man who was not easy to fool."

"Not only that, but I have to lead you to discover what I have set up in the castle, Dumbledore cares more about this castle than anyone else because he was the one who lost it in the first place and became the biggest sinner among the headmasters of all time, so this is rather easier. All I have to do is pretend that I have made some oversight and let you discover the secrets of the castle, and you will think that I care about the castle and infer that I care about the final outcome of the tournament because the castle is one of the stakes, and only then will you do your best to win the tournament and complete the puppet show that I have personally set the stage for you to perform in! "

Voldemort's spread his arms wide and seemed to be in a pleasant mood.

"So, wise and witty Mr. Jon Green, can you guess what it is that I have gone to all this trouble and effort to set this up just so that you can think that you have won this tournament after all the hard work and by your own efforts?"

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