The manor looked rather dilapidated now, but it was easy to see that it had once been very grand. Rhys could even imagine how it must have looked in its prime: white walls and red tiles, bright and spotless windows, with the surrounding lawns spreading out like velvet. Situated on the hill, the manor overlooked the entire village of Little Hangleton.
This was exactly the kind of residence Rhys had once envisioned.
'This should be the Gaunt family's ancestral home,' he thought.
From Rhys's perspective, the guess seemed quite reasonable. After all, the last descendant of the Gaunt family had already been thrown into Azkaban. Wouldn't their house naturally fall into ruin?
He had never expected the Gaunts to decline to such a miserable state, because the "inheritance" he had left behind back then had actually been quite substantial.
When Rhys arrived outside the "Gaunt ancestral home," he discovered that the place was not entirely abandoned. There was still an old gardener tending the yard.
The gardener was slowly fussing about in the flowerbeds. But in Rhys's eyes, everything he was doing was futile. Judging from the surrounding environment, the old man clearly could not stop the weeds from creeping closer and closer.
Perhaps sensing Rhys's gaze, the gardener turned around and stared straight at him.
"What do you want?" he asked stiffly.
Rhys had no intention of arguing with a cranky old man. He simply asked whether this place was the Gaunt family's residence.
"Gaunt?" The gardener frowned, as though some long-sealed memory had been stirred. But those memories were so badly "rusted" that he could not recall them for the moment.
"This isn't the Gaunt family's place. This used to belong to the Riddle family. After that, it changed owners a few times. Who knows whose manor it is now?" Seeing that Rhys was not there to cause trouble, the gardener's attitude became a little friendlier.
He rambled on, telling Rhys about various old stories from the past.
Rhys had no interest in those trivial tales of bygone days. The only thing that caught his attention was the name the gardener had mentioned—Riddle.
This uncommon surname reminded him of the young man named Tom Riddle—though the man himself preferred to be called Voldemort.
"Please tell me more about the Riddle family. Oh, and you can call me Henry," Rhys decided to have the old man in front of him reveal a bit more information.
He extended his hand to the old man. After hesitating for a moment, the gardener reached out his calloused hand and shook it.
"I'm Frank, the gardener here." Frank glanced at the half-tended garden he had been working on and decided to move somewhere else to chat with "Henry" at length.
He invited Rhys into his home—a shabby little cottage beside the Riddle Manor.
"The story starts back when I was young…" Frank rambled on for more than an hour before finally explaining the whole sequence of events to Rhys.
When Frank was young, he had participated in the Second World War. Early in the war, he lost the use of one leg and became a cripple. But misfortune brought its own blessing—he no longer had to remain in the army fighting the Germans.
After leaving the military, he found work as a gardener in the village of Little Hangleton and lived a quiet life with little social contact—until the Riddle family suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Since Frank possessed the key to the back door of the manor, he became the primary suspect, but he was eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence.
When Rhys learned that the Riddle family had not been harmed by poison, sharp weapons, or gunfire, and had not been suffocated either, he immediately understood who had been responsible.
The family had died from the Killing Curse, and Voldemort was the prime suspect.
Thinking back to the identity Voldemort had confessed in the Chamber of Secrets, Rhys felt that he had already grasped the truth of the matter.
"Have you ever heard of Tom Riddle?" Rhys asked. After estimating the age briefly, he added, "Possibly a son or grandson of this family."
The old gardener nodded and then told Rhys that Tom Riddle was one of the deceased.
Rhys: ???
He quickly realized that the deceased was most likely Voldemort's biological father.
"Actually, on the day it happened, I saw a boy I didn't recognize," Frank said. "The boy had black hair, a pale face, and was about your age."
"The Tom Riddle who died—he must have had a child, right?"
Frank shook his head, but then hesitated, because he vaguely remembered hearing a bit about Tom's "romantic affairs."
"He might have had an illegitimate child…" Frank slowly told Rhys the story of how old Tom Riddle had abandoned his fiancée and eloped with a madwoman.
"Oh right!" Frank suddenly slapped his thigh. "That madwoman's surname was Gaunt! Not long after she ran off with Riddle, he came back alone. She disappeared after that, and no one bothered to look into it."
Rhys nodded. All the clues had now been linked together.
The daughter of the Gaunt family had eloped with old Tom Riddle and given birth to little Tom Riddle—Voldemort.
After growing up, Voldemort had found a way to uncover his own origins. Enraged and humiliated, he killed his father's entire family and framed the Gaunt family, who lived in the area.
After uncovering Voldemort's past completely, Rhys said goodbye to the old gardener and, following Frank's directions, went in search of the Gaunt family.
To be honest, it was not easy to find, because Voldemort seemed to have used a spell to conceal the Gaunt house.
But once Rhys focused his attention and observed carefully, nothing could remain hidden from him.
"What an exquisite spell. Even after several decades, it still functions perfectly," Rhys remarked with admiration as he stood before a patch of tangled shrubs, marveling at Voldemort's "masterpiece."
In his view, Tom Riddle's magical attainments were indeed quite impressive.
But in front of him, they were still a bit immature.
Rhys waved his wand and easily dispelled the spells Voldemort had left behind.
A small cottage covered in vines appeared before his eyes.
Rhys stepped forward two paces, and a crisp crack sounded beneath his feet. Looking down, he saw it was the skeletal remains of a snake.
It seemed that the descendants of the Gaunt family truly believed they were the heirs of Slytherin.
Rhys entered the nearly collapsing cottage, wandered around the rotting floorboards for a while, and soon fixed on a particular spot.
He broke open the floor, revealing a box made of gold.
Driven by magic, the protective spells on the box dissipated at once. The lid sprang open, and a gold ring set with a black gemstone appeared before his eyes.
On the black stone was engraved a distinctive symbol.
Looking at the design composed of a triangle, a vertical line, and an inscribed circle, Rhys narrowed his eyes. It seemed that by accident, he had found something that might be one of the Deathly Hallows—the Resurrection Stone.
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI