Countless flickers of light and shadow swam chaotically before Bryan's eyes, dizzying him with the familiar violent disorientation and yet only a single second later, the soles of his feet had already met solid ground once more.
A powerful force of will held back the vertigo that Apparition inevitably presses upon the body over such a distance; the lingering discomfort of appearing after crossing so great a span of land was dissolved between one steadying breath and the next.
Turning to look at Dumbledore beside him, Bryan couldn't help a flicker of quiet, genuine admiration.
Dumbledore, well past his hundredth year, looked just as entirely unruffled by the journey as Bryan himself, carrying no visible weight or discomfort from the crossing at all, his robes were settling around him as though he'd simply stepped through a doorway.
Cool evening air rushed into Bryan's nose, sharpening his mind after the disorientation, and he let his gaze wander freely across the vast, darkening expanse of open land and sky before them.
On the horizon, a pale-yellow moon hung low in the gathering curtain of early evening, still climbing toward its full height.
"I'm afraid we'll still need to walk a fair bit further from here—"
Dumbledore seemed genuinely in good spirits despite the coming exertion. He let out a long, contented breath and, smiling relaxedly, took the first step forward.
The thick moisture in the air had already soaked into the surrounding soil underfoot; every step the two of them took left a clear print behind in the softened earth.
Bryan followed Dumbledore up a short, gradual climb, and as they rounded a cluster of tall, overgrown shrubs blocking the view ahead, the surrounding landscape sharpened all at once.
They stood together on the ridgeline of a gently sloping range of hills, the open, unobstructed view laying the full surrounding scenery out plainly before Bryan for the first time.
In the direction where the moon was steadily rising, perched on the distant ridge of a mountain range running roughly parallel to the one currently beneath their own feet, stood a great, imposing house that left Bryan momentarily speechless at the sight.
"Little Hangleton?"
Bryan narrowed his eyes at the old, distant house, a distinct note of real surprise creeping unmistakably into his voice.
"Indeed it is. That particular house belongs to Tom Riddle Senior, as it happens. You've been here before yourself, Bryan?"
Dumbledore was looking steadily at the same distant house as well.
He smoothed down the long, silver beard that curled up occasionally into his own line of sight, and asked in a low, considering voice—though he himself didn't seem terribly surprised by the answer already forming—
"Before last year's World Cup—"
Bryan said. "I was tracking Cliodna's whereabouts through the forests of Albania at the time. Following a scattered trail of clues, I ended up, rather to my own surprise, all the way out here in this particular corner of England—"
Bryan drew his gaze back from the distant house and looked at Dumbledore instead. "I've actually been inside that house myself, as it happens."
"Yes, and I don't imagine Tom would want his precious Horcrux resting anywhere inside a Muggle house—least of all one that belonged to the father he's ashamed to even mention—"
Dumbledore said it with an easy, knowing smile. He'd already understood Bryan's unspoken implication perfectly well. "But it's not his father's own old home that I actually mean for us to visit tonight."
Bryan blinked at that clarification, and once the fuller implication settled properly into place, his own interest only sharpened further at the prospect.
"Well worth a proper look then, Headmaster Dumbledore."
The two of them set off together toward their destination.
Along a narrow country lane hemmed in tightly on both sides by tall, tangled hedgerows grown wild over years of neglect, the two of them walked briskly, entirely unwilling to linger unnecessarily in the cold, biting wind still gusting atop the exposed hillside.
Passing an old wooden signpost jutting out at an angle from a thicket of overgrown brambles, its lettering long since faded past easy reading, Dumbledore and Bryan began making their way carefully down along an unremarkable, unmarked path branching from the main lane.
It was still relatively early evening—far too soon, by any local reckoning, for the surrounding village to have properly settled in for the coming night.
Below the hill, spread out across the shallow valley, the scattered lights of Little Hangleton village glowed warmly from every occupied house like the strands of some dense, illuminated spiderweb, and the faint, indistinct murmur of ordinary village voices could be heard drifting occasionally up through the still evening air toward the two of them.
"I once bought a round of drinks for a few of the local villagers, at the single pub the village supports—"
Bryan said with evident relish.
"They still remember it, even now, generations later—the murder that happened up at the Riddle house, half a century ago. It seem to be a local legend by this point."
Dumbledore's own answering laugh carried a certain gentle weariness of long age. "For the residents of a small village tucked away in the middle of nowhere like this one, there isn't genuinely a great deal else worth remembering, one imagines, across so many quiet decades. Well then, I believe we should go this way—"
Dumbledore led Bryan off onto an inconspicuous, largely overgrown side path branching away unexpectedly from the road leading down the hill.
Compared to the properly maintained road they'd just left, this narrower path was considerably rougher going—pitted with old ruts and winding unpredictably between obstacles, and the hedgerows pressing in on sides grew taller and considerably denser as they progressed.
Beyond the simple chill of the evening, there was now, unmistakably, a touch of something eerie creeping into the surrounding air as well.
Bryan looked up instinctively, and found the moon that had been hanging clearly in the sky moments before had entirely vanished from view behind the closing canopy; only a few thin streaks of fading orange showed now through the dense, tangled gaps in the overhanging branches above them.
Both of their steps grew more careful as the path narrowed further. Bryan had little choice, in the end, but to draw his own wand and clear away the wild, aggressively overgrown branches blocking their path along the narrow trail.
"It seems no one's come this way in a great many years."
Bryan observed, working his wand through another tangle of growth, and Dumbledore nodded in agreement beside him.
"That's good news, for our particular purposes tonight."
After rounding a bend shaped roughly like the letter "<," the downhill path suddenly turned considerably steeper without warning, and under the sudden pull of gravity, both Dumbledore and Bryan found themselves breaking naturally into a light trot to keep their footing.
Fortunately, the fierce, grasping hedges that had been lining the road disappeared entirely at this same point, opening the way somewhat.
"I believe we're almost there now—"
Dumbledore caught his own breath after the brief exertion, gazing ahead at a stretch of low woods bordering the dirt path stretching out beneath their feet.
"Let's hope our own luck tonight proves at least a bit better than poor Mr. Weasley's has been lately. Poor Mr. Weasley—he wanted, apparently, to borrow that small vial of luck-enhancing Felix Felicis from Miss Granger, hoping it might help see him properly through the upcoming Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts—"
Bryan glanced sideways at Dumbledore with faint amusement and gave a slight shake of his own head at the small anecdote.
"Felix Felicis won't be of any particular help to us tonight, I'm afraid, Headmaster Dumbledore, whatever it might do for Mr. Weasley's chances at Keeper."
Pressing steadily forward into the dark, increasingly uncanny woods, and advancing for several further minutes through what might, have been the low, distant growl of some unseen creature moving parallel to their path, the old Gaunt family house came finally into view before the two of them, rising out of the gloom.
Walls thick with accumulated moss still stood, stubbornly bearing up what remained of the main structure of the old house, dense climbing plants having colonised nearly every available surface over the passing decades. Almost all of the original roof tiles were long gone, exposing bare, decreipt rafters open to the sky here and there across the collapsing structure.
Thick, unruly nettles grew dense and hostile all around the house's foundation, rising as high in places as the lower windowsills themselves, and the windows—tiny and mean to begin with, by any original design were coated now in a thick, undisturbed layer of years upon years of grime.
Faint rustling sounds drifted out steadily from the pitch-black windows—clearly, more than one creature had long since taken up permanent residence somewhere within this all-but-collapsed, abandoned house.
"Heh—"
Bryan stood before the edge of the nettle patch, studying the ruined house carefully, his own breath leaving a pale, visible trace in the cold night air.
"In a certain way, this makes an excellent place to hide something valuable—even the local village children wouldn't dare try to break into a house sitting this close to full, final collapse."
Gazing steadily at the ruined old house sitting silent in the darkness, the deep violet whirlpools swirling in Bryan's own eyes turned slowly, bathing his entire visible presence in an aura of unsettling mystery.
His piercing, focused gaze cut straight through the house's crumbling walls, already riddled with holes and structural gaps, and settled with sudden, unmistakable precision on one particular direction within the ruin.
The lingering tension in his lips eased at what he found there as a trace of a smile began to touch the corners of his mouth. "It seems we've had rather better luck tonight than poor Mr. Weasley managed, Headmaster Dumbledore. Mr. Riddle used some genuine magic here, once. Frankly, rather clumsy magic—"
"Yes."
Dumbledore said simply.
Bryan waited a few further seconds for something more substantive to follow but heard no additional thoughts offered from Dumbledore's direction.
Faintly puzzled by the uncharacteristic silence, he glanced sideways toward the man standing beside him, his own gaze sharpening slightly with fresh attention.
Dumbledore, too, was staring fixedly in the exact same direction Bryan had just been looking—he had, evidently, already noticed the same irregular, telltale current of old magic lingering there himself.
Only, that aged face didn't show anything remotely like the joy and relief Bryan had privately expected to see cross it at this particular moment of discovery.
There was, indeed, a distinct flicker of anticipation somewhere in Dumbledore's own dim, ancient eyes but alongside that anticipation lingered something else. Something that looked, disconcertingly, almost like fear.
"What's wrong, Headmaster Dumbledore?"
Bryan's own eyelids twitched faintly at the observation, a fresh thread of real wariness was rising somewhere inside his chest at the sight of that unexpected fear on such an usually unshakeable face.
"Oh, it's nothing serious. Just looking back, for a moment, on an old memory of my own, Bryan—"
Dumbledore stirred from his own distant, wandering thoughts, pulling himself back to the present moment. He composed his expression carefully and let out a soft breath.
"Clumsy magic—yes, you're quite right about that. But it's no great surprise, when you think it through properly. I suspect it's simply because, at the time Tom chose to hide something within this house, his own skill in the Dark Arts hadn't yet reached the considerable mastery he would go on to achieve in the years that followed."
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