231 Chapter 231: Remnants of Gaunt

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21 July 1994, Little Hangleton

Harry knew he was being a little impulsive, but he had done his best considering the circumstances. Truth be told, he was more than a little desperate; his magic kept burning with extended use, something that was starting to terrify him. Even Arcturus looked concerned by the lack of progress regarding his position. The healers had tried to make him take ice baths every day and while they did help, they barely alleviated the symptoms let alone the disease.

Alas, his dreams gave him a way out. After the constant hints that the resurrection stone might help him, for over a month, he had to bite the bullet and give in. Nevertheless, he was going against a stronghold that a paranoid Lord Voldemort put one of his soul anchors.

He should have probably told Arcturus about what he was planning, but the man would probably try to stop him. He just instinctively felt that this was something he had to do by himself.

Harry had visited the Gaunt Shack more than a few times to test its protections, which were surprisingly few. Oh, it wasn't anything to scoff at, there were wards, probably maintained by the Gaunt family for thousands of years, however, their raw power felt more like a shade of its former self, which made sense since they were based on some kind of blood wars, and there hadn't been a Gaunt living there for decades. Did Voldemort forget that basic property of family wards?

No, the man might have slowly gone unstable near the end of his reign of terror, but he wasn't an idiot. He was probably charging them another way, but with his fall at the hands of the Longbottoms, he couldn't recharge them anymore.

Still, today was the day he was going to reclaim one of the most desired artefacts in history, a legacy of the Peverells. He had no idea what the end result was going to be, but he was following his gut, the pull of his magic.

With a groan, the bus stopped in the town of Little Hangleton. The first rule of breaking into a magical place was to not leave any traces of magic. While planning for his little adventure, Harry had researched extensively the village of little Hangleton and while it looked like any normal muggle village, it was anything but that. It was a place with a rich history full of mysteries and ancient magic.

According to muggle legends, the village of Little Hangleton has been inhabited since antiquity. In the earliest days, Celtic tribesmen built a fort on the hill overlooking the river and the rich lands below. These folk raised livestock and farmed, wove cloth, and made leather goods. During Roman times, farms were built in the valley and the fort fell out of use. Yet some people continued to visit the old fort on the hill with offerings of food and flowers in the belief that helpful spirits inhabited the place.

For centuries, this small village was spared famine and sickness. It wasn't hard to read between the lines and realize that a family of druids lived in this place, helping the community by making sure harvests were plenty, and healing the sick.

However, they were either massacred, their culture overwhelmed by the rise of wand-based magics, or they just moved away. Either way, slowly the magic started to fade away. The Gaunts' arrival didn't help matters. Long-term Druid magic tended to make ambient magic in a place more potent, and the Gaunts had discovered this and built their family home over it. Slowly, the traces of druid magic were gone, and Little Hangleton became little more than a normal town. Things turned to the worse when the Riddles had perished. They had been heavily invested in the village, tracing their lineage to the nobility that once ruled this place.

As Harry passed by the cemetery and noticed how dead Little Hangleton felt. The farms and barns are empty. There were no children playing around, just old people going about their days. The fertile land was dried up and almost barren. The very air felt dead and oppressing.

No, this drastic change in just decades wasn't normal. Harry had postulated that the Horcrux had something to do with it. The place had been soaked with magic for so long, magic that was connected to the Gaunt household, that something as abominable as a Horcrux that probably affected the very wards of the shack, in turn, affected the entire village. It was curious how the actions of a single man, something as small as just choosing a place to put his soul anchor, ruined the lives of every resident in this town, making them live mockeries of lives, experiencing nothing more than the darkness from the moment they were born to their very deaths.

Harry shook his head; he wasn't there for a history lesson. His mission was to grab the ring and return home.

It had taken more time than he liked to admit getting past the obscuring wards to locate the Gaunt Shack. Voldemort had probably cast a similar ward to the one in the diary. It was much less effective considering the size difference but using a soul shard as some kind of flexible ward control scheme was inspired. People really didn't give Voldemort enough credit; the man was a magical genius underneath all that madness and instability.

Sometimes Harry wondered what Tom Riddle could have been, had he not mutilated his soul in fear of Death. He could have done so much more, been so much more.

Still, Harry's Arcane Hearing was more than good enough to make out the wards. They weren't as good as the ones in Black Manor, but they were better than most family homes. Still, as weak as they became, through disuse, people would notice the magical discharge should anyone attempt to break them. Smirking, the last Potter put on his invisibility cloak, his family's legacy. The cloak rendered him invisible, not just in sight, but in magic. Harry strolled past the wards as if they didn't exist, wincing slightly as he examined them using his Arcane Hearing.

Yeah, Harry made a good choice of not asking anyone to come with him. Without the cloak, he would have been in serious trouble. There was a very nasty mental ward that invaded the mind of any intruder and showed them their deepest nightmares, one that rotted internal organs with every step forward, and one that slowly warped the mind permanently, where they would see suffering everywhere. There was also a marking ward that would mark the magic of whoever was able to enter the ward and escape somehow. It was something Harry had never even heard about before; it must have been one of Voldemort's creations. An ingenious way to find someone in case they were successful at retrieving the Horcrux and probably torture them until they reveal how they got their knowledge of his Horcruxes.

Yeah, he definitely underestimated their power. Was there some kind of magical dampening effect that made the wards look weaker than they were? It didn't matter, his invisibility cloak protected him from any sort of magical detection.

When he had gone past the obscuring wards, a house became visible. It was nestled in the darkness, with trunks and vines wrapped around it. Calling it a house would be generous, a shack would be more appropriate. He didn't expect much, but it was difficult to imagine anyone, let alone wizards, living in this place.

Harry walked past a detection charm that would have woken an army of inferi and walked closer towards the shack. The interior was in as much disrepair as the exterior. Calling it inhabitable would have been an understatement; broken chairs, stacks upon stacks of the Daily Prophet, portraits of family members coated in a thick film of dirt and cobwebs. Although those who once lived here were long gone, Harry could hear echoes of their songs if he focused too much, filled with madness and rage.

Alas, he wasn't there to admire the shack or judge its former inhabitants, just finding the ring. Harry remembered how the diary felt, the intense darkness and wrongness and tried to look for it. It was barely more than a whisper, but it was still there, connected to the wards, slowly spreading its corruption.

There had to be dozens of traps on the way up the stairs. Ironically enough, they were centred around snakes. Undead swarms of snakes were in the wall, ready to be activated, as well as hundreds of curses and enchantments that were meant to petrify any intruder, suck their magic dry over and over again, acting as a new power source for the wards until their inevitable deaths.

The invisibility cloak really was a curse-breaker's holy grail. Harry followed the Horcrux's song, arriving at what seemed like a normal old room. However, the wards were similar, and more alive than the rest of the shack. He followed the song until he found it, hidden underneath one of the floorboards. Its song was so malignant, so wrong, like a giant screeching sound that overwhelmed anything else.

Harry wasn't stupid enough to try touching anything by with his hands. Thankfully, since he was in a warded area, the ministry wouldn't detect any magic usage from him. Still, it would have been better to protect himself. Harry decided to use an old trick he learned years previously, slowly changing his own song to that of someone else, specifically, Alastor Mad-eye Moody.

Honestly, his choice wasn't really hard. The former Auror had pretty much harassed him during his previous year, constantly following him around like a trained hound, enough for Harry to intimately know his magic. It was obviously under Dumbledore's orders, but the man had the gall to sneak into his dorm room and look at a few of his notebooks. Harry did make sure that they were harmless notes and used the cloak, which happened to still be invisible to that eye of his.

Still, Voldemort would expect Dumbledore's top lieutenants to check out his old home. The man was already on his shit list, so Harry didn't put a giant target on someone's back, at least not one that wasn't already there.

Harry waved his wand and summoned the box. There was nothing else he could really do. Touching the thing would have cursed him, and the thing would have been immovable if it was handled with something that wasn't a living thing. Voldemort probably planned to have a snake bring it to him if he ever needed to retrieve it.

A box came out of the floorboards and floated towards him, which activated the trap connected to the box's location, and a giant wave of undead serpents appeared from the walls. Even with the invisibility cloak, one of them was bound to touch him somehow; and Harry's condition wouldn't have let him become intangible for long. Thankfully, he had expected something and created a sphere of warped space around him, turning the distance around him into miles.

With a flick of his hand, the box opened revealing the ring. It didn't look like much, just a gold band with a black stone. It would have looked like any other ring if it wasn't for the symbol of the Deathly Hallows engraved on it. Even then, Harry couldn't really sense anything from it, the wrongness of the Horcrux overwhelming everything.

Even then, Harry found himself enraptured by it. It was a legacy of his family, after all. Not only that, but it was also the key to curing his condition. He could feel his magic crest urging him to grab it, master it as he had done the cloak.

Suddenly, a small vision interrupted his thoughts, and everything returned to normal. He realized that he had taken off the cloak, his hands ready to touch it. Damn it, he had almost grabbed the damn Horcrux, one that he knew was cursed. His crest and the compulsion charm working together, urging him to put on the ring was just unfair.

Harry paled at the thought of what could have happened and decided to not gamble anything. He grabbed the Basilisk fang from his pocket and slammed it into the golden band. A pulse of magic erupted, almost sending him flying back, and a large wailing appeared out of nowhere, that made his ears hurt. The wave of magic warped the inferi serpents, turning them into a giant monster, leaping at Harry. With a wave of his hands, Harry created a pulse of telekinetic force that sent it back and then disintegrated it.

Slowly, the defences in the room started to fail. The Horcrux was gone.

Harry scanned the ring, once more, with his Arcane Hearing, and saw no traces of curses. The Basilisk Venom had neutralized any magic on the ring. He couldn't really sense anything on the stone, either, but it was the same for the cloak.

Hesitating slightly, Harry grabbed the ring with a small flinch, but it was only cool to the touch. Relaxing slightly, he put it on his finger. He could feel a small current of magic spreading from the ring and connecting to Harry's crest. Suddenly, a cooling sensation spread all over his body, relaxing Harry's magic circuits, one that he had forgotten how strained they were considering his distraction.

Harry felt his magic circuits accommodating his larger soul, and a grin appeared on his face. He twirled his wand, while still hidden under Moody's magic, and the room returned to normal. The undead serpents returned to the wall and the box floated back to the floorboard. Even the traps were set once more.

With a grin, he waved his hand and a giant magic circle appeared, one that he had been able to cast only once. He walked through it, and it made its way as if it never existed. One fraction of a second later, he found himself back home, in his room in Black Manor, with a giant grin splitting his face, "I'm back!"

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.