The night was moonless and starless, a perfect blanket of darkness for a secret mission. Under the cover of a powerful Disillusionment Charm cast by Dumbledore, the three of them—Dumbledore, Snape, and Ariana—Apparated with a soft pop to the edge of the overgrown, derelict lane leading to the Gaunt shack.
The air was thick with the stench of decay and neglect. The shack itself was a ruin, barely more than a pile of rotting timbers and crumbling stone, half-swallowed by thorny vines. But the ambient magic around it was immensely powerful, a complex, layered web of dark, vicious curses.
"The protections are formidable," Dumbledore murmured, his eyes scanning the ruin. "Anger, despair, and pain, woven into potent defensive wards."
"I can feel the psychic resonance," Snape hissed, his hand already on his wand, his Occlumency shields fully engaged. "It is designed to unhinge the mind before the curses even strike."
"Professor Snape will handle the psychic defenses," Ariana stated, her voice calm and clear, taking charge of the protocol. "Professor Dumbledore will dismantle the physical curses. I will remain at the perimeter and provide support where needed. We proceed with caution."
For the next hour, they worked with the grim, silent efficiency of a highly trained team. Snape moved like a shadow, his wand casting silent, intricate counter-charms that dissipated the clouds of magical despair and deflected the whispers of madness that emanated from the shack. Dumbledore, his own face a mask of intense concentration, meticulously unraveled the physical curses one by one—wards that would boil the blood, hexes that would twist the bone, jinxes that would fill the lungs with grave dust.
Finally, the air cleared. The oppressive feeling lifted. The path to the shack was open.
Inside, the ruin was even more pathetic. A single room, littered with the detritus of squalor and faded grandeur. And there, hidden beneath a loose floorboard in a small, carved wooden box, was the ring.
It was a simple gold ring, crudely made, but the stone set within it was a piece of jagged, black rock, etched with a symbol that made the air around it seem to grow cold: the triangular mark of the Deathly Hallows.
The moment Dumbledore's eyes fell upon it, a profound and terrible change came over him. The wise, strategic Headmaster vanished, replaced by a man consumed by a century of grief and regret. His face, illuminated by the light of his wand, was a mask of desperate, yearning hope. He saw not a Horcrux, not a cursed object, but the Resurrection Stone. The chance to see her again. To speak to his sister, Ariana. To apologize.
"Albus, no!" Snape shouted, sensing the shift in Dumbledore's intent.
But it was too late. Dumbledore reached for the ring, his mind completely consumed by the Hallow's lure, his immense magical defenses momentarily forgotten in his surge of personal agony.
Snape reacted with lightning speed. "Impedimenta!" A jet of light shot from his wand, but Dumbledore, even in his grief-addled state, was still the most powerful wizard alive. He deflected the spell with a contemptuous flick of his wrist, never taking his eyes off the ring.
"You will not stop me, Severus," he whispered, his voice thick with a desperate longing. He raised the Elder Wand, and with a lazy, powerful wave, Snape was bound in thick, invisible ropes and thrown back against the far wall of the shack, landing with a heavy thud.
Dumbledore turned back to the ring, his hand trembling as he reached for it.
Ariana had been observing, her mind processing the catastrophic failure of the protocol.
Dumbledore, their most powerful asset, had been compromised by his own emotional trauma.
Snape was incapacitated. The mission was a failure.
Unless she intervened.
In that split second, she made a decision. She was not a student. She was not a child. She was a combatant, and her commander had been compromised.
She moved, a blur of silent grace. "Professor Dumbledore," she said, her voice sharp as ice. "Stand down. That is a direct order."
He didn't even hear her. His entire being was focused on the stone.
"So be it," she whispered.
She did not waste time with a simple Disarming Charm. She knew that in his current state, Dumbledore's raw power was too immense. She needed to overwhelm him completely, in a single, decisive move.
She raised her own wand. A storm of silent, interwoven spells, a complex tapestry of binding, stunning, and disarming charms, erupted from it in a single, blinding torrent of silver-white light. It was not a single spell, but a dozen, all cast simultaneously, a technique that should have been impossible.
Dumbledore, startled, spun around, his own wand coming up to defend. He met her assault with a shield of golden fire. The two forces collided in the center of the tiny shack with a deafening roar. For a moment, the old master and the young prodigy were locked in a battle of wills. But Ariana was not fighting with emotion. She was fighting with cold, hard, calculated logic. She analyzed his shield, found a harmonic weakness in its magical frequency, and pushed her own power through it.
The golden shield shattered. The silver torrent struck Dumbledore. The Elder Wand flew from his grasp. Invisible ropes, identical to the ones holding Snape, wrapped around him, and a powerful Stunning Spell washed over him, not enough to knock him out, but enough to break the Hallow's hypnotic hold on his mind.
Ariana knew she would not have won if Dumbledore was lucid, but in his current compromised and misty situation, tackled by her completely focused attack, her only chance of victory was something she had grasped.
He stumbled back, his eyes clearing, a look of profound shock and dawning horror on his face as he realized what he had almost done.
Ariana, with a flick of her wand, released Snape, who scrambled to his feet, his face pale, his wand immediately trained on the now-lucid but deeply shaken Dumbledore.
"Professor Snape," Ariana commanded, her voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her. "Keep your wand on him. Observe only. Do not interfere unless he moves towards the ring again."
Snape, for the first time in his life, simply nodded and obeyed the order of a fourteen-year-old girl without question.
Ariana turned her attention back to the ring. With Dumbledore's will no longer empowering it, the lure of the Hallow was weaker. She knelt, placing her pre-prepared obsidian sphere next to the wooden box. She performed the now-familiar procedure. The anesthetic potion, the Parseltongue command to open the Horcrux's conceptual defenses, the Exsilium Animae to draw out the screaming, shadowy fragment of Tom Riddle's soul, and the final, absolute Claustrum Aeternum to seal it within its new prison.
The process was draining, but she worked with a grim, focused efficiency. When it was done, the oppressive evil in the room had vanished. She then turned her attention to the ring itself. The Horcrux was gone, but the curse Marvolo Gaunt had placed upon it remained. Using the knowledge gleaned from the Flamel's library, she began a delicate, intricate counter-curse, her hands moving in a complex dance as she wove threads of purifying magic, dismantling the deadly ward layer by layer.
Finally, she picked up the ring. It was warm, inert. The Resurrection Stone within it was just a stone, its power dormant and passive without the active desire of a user.
She stood up, holding the cleansed ring in one hand and the obsidian sphere containing the soulfragment in the other. She walked over to Dumbledore, who was now sitting on the floor, his head in his hands, looking older and more broken than she had ever seen him.
Snape still had his wand trained on him, his expression a mixture of fury and a strange, grudging concern.
Ariana handed both items to the Headmaster.
"The threats have been neutralized, Professor," she said, her voice softening now, the commander replaced by the compassionate friend.
Dumbledore looked up at her, his blue eyes swimming with shame and a century of unshed tears. "I… I am sorry, Ariana. I was weak."
"You are human," she corrected gently. "Grief is a powerful, illogical force. You have carried yours for a very long time." She looked at the ring in his hand. "The Horcrux is gone. The curse is gone. It is just a stone now."
She held his gaze, and she gave him the one thing she knew his soul craved.
"If you want to, Professor," she said softly. "You can speak with your sister now. She might be listening."