The-Magick-Most-Vile (IV) [Chapter 228]

~~Headmaster’s Office, Hogwarts~~

Harry stepped through the portal and he immediately found himself inside the Headmaster’s office. As expected, he didn’t trigger the alarm Wards since he didn’t enter from the door or any of the windows. The portraits of the previous Headmasters immediately started to stir up due to his arrival.

“Who are…”

“How did you en…”

“What was th…”

The portraits began to speak up, but Harry simply waved his hand in the air indifferently in the air, putting the portraits back to sleep. He didn’t want to be hounded by annoying portraits or the portraits could have informed others as Harry wasn’t sure if they had other copies or not, so it was better for Harry if they fell asleep. Harry looked around at the books and Harry had to admit, he was impressed by the man’s collection.

Though Harry wasn’t interested in the books even though most of them were quite rare… So, instead of paying the books any mind, Harry made his way toward a blank wall and then he tapped the wall with the Elder Wand in some specific location. The wall rippled before it became transparent.

Nodding his head in satisfaction, he stepped through the now-transparent wall and found himself inside some kind of storeroom. The room was filled with bizarre knick-knacks, but Harry paid them no mind. His eyes were fixated on the safe, which was by the other side of the room. Harry approached the safe and unlocked it with extreme ease since he already knew the code.

He pulled the door open and inside the safe, he found something wrapped in dragon hide. Harry grabbed the object and gently unwrapped the dragon hide to reveal Tom Riddle’s diary in all its glory. Harry immediately started to feel a subtle Compulsion assaulting his Occlumency barriers, but for someone like him, the Compulsion mattered very little.

|This makes three| Harry mused internally before he once again wrapped the diary in the dragon hide and the Compulsion he was sensing disappeared. Now, he only needed to find the remaining three, in case Voldemort split his Soul seven ways. For that, he would need to have a chat with Horace Slughorn. With that thought in his mind, he grabbed the next object. It was a small notebook. All of Albus’ research when it came to Voldemort and Slughorn was mentioned in the notebook.

He put the notebook inside one of his pockets before he finally grabbed his Family cloak, which was also inside the safe. Albus was planning to give him the cloak at the start of the first year, but later he decided to keep it in his possession indefinitely as he wasn’t sure if he could trust Harry with such a powerful artifact. Harry felt something click inside his mind as soon as he grabbed the cloak and a wicked grin bloomed on his face.

The cloak could supposedly hide him from everything, even death, which was obviously a lie since he already knew why Hela created the Deathly Hallows. Death would eventually come for everyone and Hela wasn’t Death, at least technically since she doesn’t reign over the afterlife, she only reigns over Hel, but the cloak could hide him from all the Gods, including Hela, and not only that, it can even hide him from Wards.

Mortal Wards were nothing compared to true Divine Beings like the Gods, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the cloak could hide him from something mundane like Wards, but Harry could already see the chaos he could cause with the cloak in his possession…

|The cloak had so much potential, but your father only used it for his stupid pranks| Lily sighed in disappointment and there was also a trace of anger in her voice.

|Don’t blame him, Mom. His childhood was completely different from mine and he lacked the drive and resources I have at my disposal. Though he proved himself to be a man when it truly mattered… I am proud of him| Harry explained with a sigh.

|I know… I am proud of him too. I don’t blame him for anything, but ughh…| Lily groaned in frustration. |It’s just hard to explain. It feels like we could have done more, we should have done more to end the war… Now that I think about it, we weren’t fighting a war, not really. We were simply stalling| Lily laughed mirthlessly as she mocked herself for being foolish, but they were so young and naive. They believed whatever Dumbledore wanted them to believe.

After all, he was the defeater of Grindelwald and the strongest Wizard in existence… If not him, then who else were they supposed to believe and trust?

|It’s alright, Mom. The two of you were fighting for what you truly believed in and that is more important than anything| Harry decided to comfort his mother, but he wasn’t sure if it worked or not. Harry slung the cloak over his shoulder before he finally grabbed the last object from inside the safe. It was a nondescript diary, but Harry knew how important the diary was. The diary contained the list of possible Horcruxes and their possible hiding locations.

There was nothing else Harry wanted to grab right now, so after shoving the diary inside his pocket, he closed the safe before exiting the secret room. Then he pulled out the Elder Wand and waved it in front of the translucent wall and it turned solid again… Harry looked around the office and decided to raid it some other time. There were bound to be other important stuff in his office.

After that, he simply opened a portal leading to his room and stepped through. The portal closed behind his back and after placing everything on the table, he decided to start with Albus’ research diary. The first Horcrux Albus mentioned was the diary and he believed this was the first Horcrux Tom ever created. If Albus’ speculation was right, Voldemort made this when he was still at Hogwarts and he used the death of Myrtle Warren to create the diary Horcrux.

Harry didn’t know what to say… There were Dark Magic detection Wards in Ilvermorny. A student couldn’t even cast a somewhat Exploding Curse without triggering the Wards. The training rooms were obviously an exception, but some of the Darker Curses like the Organ Melting Curse, Skin Rotting Curse, Entrails Exploding Curse, and the Unforgivables were completely banned for obvious reasons.

But, a student created something like a Horcrux inside Hogwarts and nobody noticed anything? Magic like that was bound to leave traces, which meant that Tom either performed the Ritual outside the school Wards, or he performed the Ritual in a place where the Wards didn’t reach… Thanks to Lucius, Harry knew that the diary was somehow connected to the Chamber of Secrets, so Tom could have performed the Ritual in that Chamber.

Then Albus believed the second Horcrux to be the Gaunt Family ring… It was never found after Morfin Gaunt was arrested for the second time when he was sentenced to Azkaban for life after he confessed that he had killed the Riddles… However, Albus didn’t believe him to be the culprit as Morfin could not remember why he killed them or why he killed them. Even his Wand turned out to be clean, but the Ministry simply wanted to get it over with and since he confessed, he was the criminal.

Harry had to admit, Albus was right on the money… The ring was most definitely a Horcrux, but thankfully, it was destroyed.

After that, Albus wasn’t sure about the order, but he believed that Voldemort stole the Slytherin’s locket, and Helga Hufflepuff's Cup from Hepzibah Smith and this time he manipulated the house elf into believing that she was the one who poisoned her Mistress and killed her. Albus believed that he might have turned those two artifacts into his Horcruxes and the Locket was most definitely a Horcrux since it was already in his possession.

Albus also believed that Voldemort might have found Gryfinndor’s Sword, which was lost since the Founder’s demise and then turned it into a Horcrux. Considering how egotistical Voldemort truly was, he wasn’t going to put it past him… Voldemort wouldn’t use something mundane to create his Horcruxes. Then there was also a chance that he might have found Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem, which had been also lost for centuries and then turned it into a Horcrux.

It could only be either of them as Albus was certain that Voldemort’s familiar Nagini was a Horcrux too…

Nagini was simply too smart for a snake and Voldemort seemed to possess far too much control over the snake’s actions. Even a Parselmouth shouldn’t possess such a tremendous amount of control over a snake. Then the snake was also quite unnaturally large and Voldemort seemed to be way too protective of his snake… After he finished reading the conjectures, Harry didn’t know what to think.

After some pondering, he simply closed the diary and decided to locate Horace Slughorn before anything else…