"Huh," Hodge murmured, a flicker of unease crossing his face as he glanced at Dumbledore. "Something's not right here…"
Dumbledore gave him an encouraging smile.
Hodge closed his eyes and reached out with his senses, feeling the surroundings more carefully. The air was chaotic and carried a faint musty odor; much better than the first time he'd stepped into the old Black family manor, probably because this house, despite its tiny windows, was drafty on all sides. From the outside, the building was utterly unremarkable, as if it had grown among the trees, shrouded beneath thick canopies of foliage. The dirt track that once led to it had long ago been swallowed by wild plants and stinging nettles; there wasn't the slightest trace that humans had ever lived here.
Up close, however, the picture changed entirely.
The house was in utter disrepair. Thick moss crawled over the walls, the half-black, half-green tiles and the oak beams that held the roof were completely exposed, and decades of grime coated the broken windows. Even a curious Muggle child who wandered in would instantly peg it as a bona fide haunted house.
But this was the home of Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt.
Of course, it was not the Gaunt ancestral manor. As the most famous branch descended from Salazar Slytherin himself, the Gaunts had once been exceedingly wealthy. Unfortunately, every generation loved ostentation more than the last while growing progressively dimmer. By the time Voldemort's grandfather was head of the family, the fortune was gone. They had shrunk to this place. With the brains of Merope's father Marvolo and her brother Morfin, reviving the family had been utterly impossible.
Thinking about it with his eyes still shut, Hodge's expression turned strange. In a twisted way, Merope running off with the Muggle squire Tom Riddle Sr. and giving birth to Voldemort had been the family's only possible salvation. Because, by Gaunt family tradition, once Merope came of age she would inevitably have married her own brother. Heaven only knew what kind of children that union would have produced…
Bzzz—
A low, drawn-out hum suddenly rose from the dilapidated house.
Hodge snapped alert, gripped his wand, and began slashing it haphazardly through the air. Visible magical power lingered and condensed, turning into solid sheets of mist. In moments the entire house was shrouded in smoke-like fog.
Dumbledore's blue eyes seemed to glow.
He could have located the hidden Horcrux himself, of course, but Hodge was using a different method; simple and brutally effective. It probably worked because Voldemort had been relatively young when he made this particular Horcrux. From the information Dumbledore had gathered, Voldemort had likely created two Horcruxes while still at school; the murders being Myrtle Warren and his own Muggle father.
Hodge's movements were nearing their end. Dumbledore watched with keen interest.
The interior of the Gaunt house was now completely filled with smoke-like magic. Hodge and Dumbledore could only make out each other's vague outlines… except for one small patch of air directly in front of them. When Hodge's magic reached a certain spot, it could get no closer, yet nothing visibly unusual appeared.
That was the problem. With Voldemort's level of skill, the absence of anything unusual was the biggest anomaly of all.
After another careful examination, Hodge flipped his wand so he was holding it like a dagger, then brought his arm down hard. The wand tip stabbed viciously into the center of that tiny pocket of air.
Bzzz—
Something was wrong.
"Get out; now!"
Before Hodge could react, an arm seized him. The next instant the two of them Apparated out of the ruined building. There was no time to thank Dumbledore; Hodge spun around to stare at the Gaunt house. He had just sensed an enormous surge of magic erupting inside.
Almost instantaneously, blade-sharp curses and dozens; no, hundreds; of spells punched straight through the already crumbling structure. Hodge half-expected the whole thing to collapse on the spot. Then a mass of black flames slithered out through the cracks, the dark fire licking hungrily at everything it touched.
Hodge clicked his tongue in quiet awe.
So Voldemort hadn't only set psychological traps; he could be direct too… Well, he had still been young, after all. Still, Hodge now had a decent grasp of school-age Voldemort's limits. Leaving aside the actual creation of the Horcrux, these defenses were probably the strongest magic a sixth- or seventh-year Tom Riddle could have managed.
Cutting curses, Killing Curses, Fiendfyre… all of it sealed inside a special bounded field that had remained perfectly intact for decades, practically severed from the outside world. Without Dumbledore, Hodge would have been dead or gravely injured. Of course, if he'd been lucky enough to dodge the initial wide-area cutting curses, the risk would have dropped by half. He could have Apparated away or used a Boggart defense and probably escaped unscathed.
As for the Fiendfyre, Hodge knew the counter-curse; he'd have gotten away with light burns at worst.
Hodge and Dumbledore set about cleaning up the aftermath. Working from opposite sides, they extinguished the nearby Fiendfyre. The Gaunt house was now nothing more than rubble. In the exact spot Hodge had stabbed with his wand, a soft white light quietly bloomed in mid-air. A gold ring set with a black stone lay peacefully at its center.
Staring at that light, Hodge felt almost the same pull he had experienced in front of the Mirror of Erised.
Occlumency activated on reflex.
When he came back to himself, he glanced at Dumbledore. The old wizard's expression was distant; joy, guilt, and a trace of longing flickered across his face.
Hiss—
"Whoosh!"
Hodge fired a Repelling Charm to stop Dumbledore's reaching hand.
"Don't fall for the curse, Professor."
Dumbledore's face regained its usual calm, though the slight change in his voice betrayed that his heart was anything but serene. "Thank you, Hodge. I wasn't actually bewitched; it's just…" He stared at the ring inside the white light again, his gaze clearing. "I recognized it."
"Recognized it?" Hodge asked.
"That ring…" Dumbledore said softly. "I underestimated the Gaunt family; or rather, Salazar Slytherin's personal collection. If I'm not mistaken, that is the Resurrection Stone of the Deathly Hallows."
"The Resurrection Stone? From the fairy tale?" Hodge raised an eyebrow. "So the Elder Wand and the Invisibility Cloak are real too?"
Seeing Hodge's obvious skepticism, Dumbledore gave a small, wry smile.
"The Tale of the Three Brothers in The Tales of Beedle the Bard," he said wistfully. "Many people treat it as nothing more than a bedtime story. I did too, once. The difference is that I believe the story was adapted from something real. The Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility all truly exist. The latter two were quite possibly created by some alchemist, perhaps even from different eras. You've seen Harry's Invisibility Cloak yourself. The Elder Wand most likely came from the hand of an ancient wandmaker; its documented history is the clearest, and the bloodiest."
"The legend says the Resurrection Stone can bring the dead back to life," Hodge pointed out, zeroing in on the part Dumbledore had skirted.
"Magic cannot truly bring back the dead," Dumbledore stated firmly. "No matter how beautifully it's phrased, any spell can only produce an echo, a shade of the person who was… Hmm?"
He suddenly leaned forward, studying the Gaunt ring more closely.
Hodge quietly breathed a sigh of relief inside.
So you finally noticed it; the curse attached to the Resurrection Stone…
Thank goodness he had insisted on coming along. With war looming, Dumbledore absolutely could not die here.