Seven Devils ★ T.M.R ★

Chapter Twenty-Three

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INTO THE STORM
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CW: Blood, discussions of non-consent
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DUMBLEDORE DREW HIS wand and threw out an arm to stop them in their tracks.

"Do not move," he said, calmly but firmly. "There is dark magic here."

He was staring firmly ahead at the Gaunt shack with narrowed eyes, his wand seemed to twitch in his outstretched hand and Marina realised that he must be engaged in some unseen battle with whatever defences Voldemort had shrouded over the ruin of his ancestral home.

A second later Marina saw something – with a delicate pop like the sound of a glowstick cracking, a fissure appeared in mid-air in front of Dumbledore's wand. Dumbledore flicked his wand and the fissure spread with long, reaching fractures through an unseeing barrier around the shack. With a shattering sound, whatever had surrounded the Gaunt house disintegrated into invisible shards, but still Dumbledore did not lower his wand. He proceeded forward slowly, wand outstretched in caution. If he was suspicious of Riddle, Marina thought, she couldn't imagine how he felt about Voldemort.

Her and Riddle followed him as he approached the ruin, and Marina saw the tell-tale skeletal remains of the snake that had been hammered above the door now lying scattered around the entrance. They stepped over the bones and pushed through the half-hanging door.

Inside, the shack was a mess. Cobwebs and leaves littered the corners, and the boarded windows let in slivers of reluctant sunlight that did little to dispel the neglected, decaying feeling of the room.

"It's hidden here somewhere," Marina muttered, holding her hand to her nose against the thick dust on the air. "It's protected – be careful."

Dumbledore nodded and his wand slashed through the air. Whatever spells he cast had no visible effect, and Marina turned her attention to Riddle as Dumbledore's search continued.

Riddle was looking around the Gaunt house with a detached disgust. He had not entered much further than the edge of the threshold, as if coming in any further would immerse him in the unpleasant reality of the place.

"So, this is the end of Slytherin's legacy," he said softly, eyes falling on the grimy table heaped with ancient rusted pots and what might have once been food but was now little more than the dusty remains of the mould that had consumed it.

"The Gaunts were blind," Marina said, joining him in his censorious assessment. "They refused to look past their own blood, they didn't change even as the world around them did."

"I suppose you think them typical wizards, then," Riddle said, looking at the emaciated remains of an armchair near the empty hearth. Soot-stains overflowed up the walls around it.

"No," Marina said frowning, forcing down a sneeze, "typical of the worst kind of wizard, perhaps."

"I have something," Dumbledore said softly, wand poised above the floor in the middle of the room.

It was enough to entice Riddle past the threshold. Dumbledore flicked his wand and the floorboards cracked inwards as if an invisible boulder had been dropped on them. With another swift motion, Dumbledore dispelled the boards to the corner of the room and a small alcove beneath the floor was revealed. They leaned forward to see a glittering golden box sitting in the middle of the concavity, squat and wide, and very ornate.

Dumbledore gingerly levitated the box from the hole and set it down on the edge of the overflowing table. The lid slowly lifted – the interior was set with plush forest green velvet, and in the middle sat the heavy looking golden ring with its strange black stone almost clumsily set into the metal. The box, and the ring inside, had an opulence that jarred ominously with its derelict surroundings.