They Apparated with a whipcrack into a stretch of trees just outside a forgotten village.
Little Hangleton.
Ben blinked against the sudden shift in light and temperature. Gone was the snowy sparkle of Hogsmeade Station; Little Hangleton looked as if it had been cursed with apathy. The streets were empty, the houses either bland or sagging, and the air was thick with that special kind of damp you could only get in the middle of nowhere in Britain.
Ben knew it, though he hadn't been here before. He'd seen Riddle murder his grandparents and father in the manor on that hill overlooking the village.
"This way, we are quite close. The Gaunt shack lies just beyond this path." Dumbledore said softly, already walking.
Ben followed, eyeing the trees around them. "Am I supposed to just ignore the fact we popped across the country like we were nipping down to Honeydukes?"
"When the destination is unpleasant enough, the journey hardly matters," Dumbledore said, stepping carefully over a root as the thicket closed in around them. The forest was growing darker, more twisted. Every branch seemed to lean closer, like it was listening in.
The air felt heavy. Wrong. Like magic had seeped into the ground and gone bad.
Ben muttered under his breath. "Yeah, maybe for you."
He brushed a branch aside and glanced at the man beside him. "What are we even doing here, Headmaster?"
The question came half out of habit, half out of unease. For the first time, Ben was seeing up close what centuries of dark magic did to a place. The trees looked like they'd grown angry with time, gnarled and half-warped. The air clung to his skin like cobwebs.
"You volunteered, Benedict," Dumbledore said, completely unbothered. "I thought it best to accept your help."
Ben brushed a low branch out of the way. "Yeah, I remember offering. I just don't recall signing up for the scenic murder-forest tour. This forest looks like it chews owls for fun."
He yoinked a snake dangling from a tree before it could strike at his face. It hissed, clearly offended. "Behave, serpent," he hissed back, flicking it aside. "Why couldn't you just Apparate us closer to the shack?"
"I didn't want to risk your safety," he said at last, voice low. "This place is deeply corrupted. Old magic. It lingers on, twisting its surroundings."
Ben kicked a stone off the path and stepped over a fallen branch. "Yeah, I can see that. Lovely spot for a picnic. Not exactly a subtle place to stash a Horcrux, though. But then again, Riddle was never really one for subtle."
They broke through the final row of trees, reaching a low, half-collapsed stone wall. Just beyond it, there it was—the Gaunt shack.
It squatted in a tangled garden of thorns and bramble, its roof half-caved in, its stone walls laced with creeping vines. The single window stared back at them like an empty eye socket. Even the wind seemed to avoid this place. The place reeked of old magic, heavy and bitter.
Ben made a face.
"Charming," he muttered, eyeing the landscape with all the enthusiasm of someone arriving at a cursed estate on a rainy Tuesday — which, judging by the gloom, wasn't far off. "You know, for a man of refined tastes, you really do pick the worst holiday spots."
Dumbledore offered a smile that barely moved his beard. "One rarely chooses such places for leisure."
He couldn't help but let out. "So. This is where Voldemort's delightful grandfather beat his mum, drank himself stupid, and hissed at snakes in a house held together by curses and spite."
Dumbledore nodded grimly. "The Gaunts were the last direct line of Salazar Slytherin. Proud of their blood, blind to their decay. This place is soaked in their madness."
Ben let out a low whistle. "You know, I'm suddenly quite grateful for my gambling ancestor. He at least left behind a cottage and didn't marry a cousin, so... points for that, I guess."
"Do not underestimate this place. If we can be sure of anything, it's that it's likely riddled with traps," Dumbledore said, giving his wand a sharp wave.
The door creaked open, and a wave of rot and filth rolled out like the house had been holding its breath.
Ben recoiled, coughing. "Lovely. The Dark Lord's cologne." He quickly cast a Bubble-Head Charm before his stomach got any ideas.
Dumbledore's nose wrinkled. "The Gaunts believed themselves superior to most things. Cleaning was one of them."
"It shows."
They stepped inside, wand tips lit, the darkness folding in around them.
The shack was even worse up close—if it could still be called a shack. Ben had seen homeless tents in better shape. The place looked like one strong wind would flatten it, but it held itself together out of spite. And probably dark magic.
Doxies chittered somewhere up in the rafters. Something with too many legs disappeared under the hearth. And from the walls came a slow, steady hiss.
Of course, there were snakes in the walls.
Dumbledore didn't react to any of it. He stepped closer to the far wall, eyes moving over the carvings — messy spirals, scratched deep into the wood, like someone had spent years going mad in here.
Ben raised his wand a little. "Great place," he muttered. "Real fixer-upper. Interesting aesthetic—interior design by Dark Arts Weekly." He nodded at a crude serpent symbol carved into a cupboard door. "Not exactly what you'd call warm and inviting."
Dumbledore didn't smile. He ran a hand along the carvings. "It's Parseltongue. Morfin must have done these before Azkaban. Toward the end, I doubt he used any other language."
He moved to a crooked little shelf nailed into the stone. "This is warded."
Ben blinked. "Wait. You can write in Parseltongue?"
Dumbledore gave him a look. "It's rare. But possible."
He muttered something under his breath, and a faint shimmer ran across the shelf.
A drawer slid open with a soft click.
Ben leaned over. "Oh look," he said. "A family heirloom. Probably cursed. Almost definitely bites."
It was a blackened locket. Empty.
Dumbledore frowned, levitating it closer to examine. "A decoy."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Pretty lousy one. Bit of scrap metal and wishful thinking."
Dumbledore gave a small smile. "You'd be surprised how often that's enough."
They searched more. Dumbledore lingered at a shattered frame. What little was left of the portrait had peeled and curled with age, the subject long lost, but a faint magic still clung to the wood. "Morfin's father, perhaps," he murmured.
Ben nudged a cracked jug near the hearth with the tip of his wand. It wobbled, then tipped over with a soft thud, spilling out a tangled mess of fur and hair—matted, greasy, and stuck to something slimy. Rat tails poked through the mess, along with bits of cracked bones.
He took a step back, wrinkling his nose. "Yeah, no. Whatever that is, I'm done guessing."
Dumbledore gave it a brief glance but didn't move closer. "Residual enchantments. Possibly a focus for something unpleasant."
"This whole place is a focus for something unpleasant."
He turned in a slow circle, squinting at the walls. The hissing he'd heard earlier hadn't stopped. If anything, it was louder now. Moving.
Ben frowned. "You know what? Enough poking around." He cleaned his wand tip at the edge of his robes. "It's time we asked the locals."
Without waiting for a reply, he hissed out a few low words in Parseltongue. The noise in the walls changed. Grew sharper. Curious.
A few seconds later, three small snakes slithered out through a cracked baseboard. Pale, thin, and twitchy. One of them blinked at him like it was offended by the light.
Ben crouched down, speaking with them in short, sharp hisses. They flicked their tongues, circled a bit, then began nosing toward a warped patch in the floor.
He straightened, nodding once. "There. They say something's buried under the boards."
Dumbledore joined him with a quiet hum. "You speak it well."
Ben shrugged. "Honestly, it's easier than French. Snakes don't judge your accent."
-To be Continued...
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