Voldemort followed the three sets of prints into a tangle of woodland. The trail ended at churned grass and spatters of blood. The bent stems were striped in arcs, as if thrashed by a whip.
A man who'd lived too long with snakes knew the sign at once—death-throes.
"No—Nagini!" His strangled roar tore through the trees.
…
Nagini, meanwhile, was very much not dead. She lay trembling in Arthur's Zen Garden, watching him dress a freshly caught python for supper and trying very hard to look inedible.
Arthur ignored her for the moment and worked. Ranni and Hermione watched from the side; the latter seized the lull to ask what had been nettling her.
"Cousin, you said that snake might've been a person?"
"Literal," Arthur said. "A Maledictus—blood-curse on the family line. In her case, human to serpent, memories washed away as the curse set."
Hermione nodded, then frowned. "And that house really had someone living in it?"
"Of course." Arthur lifted a hand; a stack of black diaries drifted out of his storage and hovered for her to take. "Exhibit A: Tom's teenage angst and adult villainy."
Ranni skimmed one, promptly lost interest, and focused on the far more pressing business of supper. By the time Arthur ladled the stew, she had already made heroic inroads; Hermione hurried over before the Princess could claim everything by eminent domain.
After the meal, Arthur set his bowl aside and drifted to Nagini. "Right. Dinner's settled. Now you."
Nagini shuddered and shook her head so hard her scales rasped.
Arthur brushed her mind with his. Panic flooded back along the link.
Don't kill me don't kill me—please don't—
Who said anything about killing you? Arthur's voice sounded in her thoughts.
The snake froze. You… can hear me?
I can. And your name is Nagini, yes?
Yes. My master gave it to me. Respect, submission, habit—old grooves in the mind.
Not a name from when you were human?
A master told me so, but… there is no memory of that.
Which fit what Arthur remembered: a Maledictus who'd finally tipped all the way into serpent, humanity shed like a skin.
He was curious about the blood-curse. Blood was a language; since absorbing Mohg's power he could read parts of it. Given time—and a patient, living sample—he might even reverse-engineer the thing.
Two choices, he told her plainly. One: I kill you and study your corpse. Two: you forget your "master," stay here, and cooperate. You'll live—and you'll be safe.
Nagini hesitated—old loyalty tugging hard. Even when she'd failed in Godric's Hollow, the Dark Lord had not punished her as he did others. But she was no fool. In this garden, Arthur was gravity.
I will stay, she sent at last.
"Good." Arthur tapped her head; the bindings fell away. Hermione edged close, curiosity bright in her eyes, and prodded a scale with one cautious finger. Nagini didn't so much as breathe wrong.
"Hard to believe she used to be human," Hermione murmured.
"You've seen stranger," Arthur said dryly.
"True. So—what now? Where does she live?"
"Here for now. I need her for the blood-curse work." Which, Hermione reflected, meant Nagini was never seeing her old master again. The Zen Garden was getting lively: Claudia the unicorn, Loris the cat, a basilisk shoved into the accelerated-growth zone, arguably Rya… and now a Maledictus. Biodiversity up, peace of mind down.
She soon wandered off to play with Claudia; a cowering viper wasn't much fun to tease. Arthur left Nagini to acclimatise and turned to the real reason they'd come to Albania: the forest's secret. Voldemort's bolt-hole had been a bonus. The puzzle that had broken Lockhart's magic mattered more.
Night had fallen outside. Arthur decided to rest and skim a few of Voldemort's nastier tomes. As for the Dark Lord himself? Let Dumbledore fetch him. Man wanted Horcrux-hunting duty? Splendid. Have a Horcrux-maker, half-alive and angry, hand-delivered. Also—convenient vacancy for Headmaster Snape.
Back at Hogwarts, Dumbledore sneezed, dabbed his nose, and sighed about the indignities of age.
…
At dawn, the flying carpet lifted from the treetops. Arthur kept his mind spread wide, tasting for anything wrong. Far behind, Voldemort still scoured the hills like a headless fly, convinced the thieves must be nearby.
They didn't rush. The day unspooled in green and birdsong—until Arthur felt it: a drag in the air like syrup through a reed.
He guided the carpet into mist. It thickened step by step until sight shrank to seven or eight metres.
"This feels… wrong," Hermione whispered.
Arthur sampled it properly, swore under his breath, and wrapped Hermione in a thin veil of his power. The fog carried a particulate—something that inhibited magical flow, and, in excess, blocked channels outright.
So that's where Lockhart had blundered through.
He'd also sensed something else—not magic. Not wizarding magic, anyway. Closer to the prayer-energies of the Lands Between. Incantation-adjacent. He wasn't expert enough to be sure.
They pressed on. Out of the white rose a medieval chapel, squat and grim, ringed by low defensive works. Ivy gnawed the stone; grass had taken the yard. Abandoned—long ago—but not unguarded.
Arthur's mind skimmed the old earthworks. Some traps still lived. He tickled one, and a fan of white-lit arrows snarled out of the fog. He raised a ward; shafts rang and scattered across the flagstones.
He bent to one and felt it again: that prayer-power—clean, purifying, and imperious.
So the stories of the Church weren't all smoke?
He shook off the thought and led them to the door. Beside it, a weathered plaque read: None may enter save those devout to the Lord.
He reached for the handle. A wash of the same white force flared, slapped his fingers away. Up close, he caught its flavours—sanctity, ablation, command.
He grinned. "All right. If we can't finesse it—"
He drew a magical shotgun—the very model Hermione had once seen on the iPad in 20 Minutes Till Dawn—and began to pump shells of condensed force into the seal. Boom by boom, the light bled out; the oak buckled and blew inward.
Hermione's eyes went wide. "Is that the one from 20 Minutes?"
"It is."
"May I—?"
He weighed the risks, then handed it over. "Mind your muzzle. Friends first, walls second."
"Got it," she said, reverent.
They stepped into cool shadow. The dome above was painted with saints and scenes—Madonna, Christ, the stations of a story. Grey-and-white marble tiled the floor. A statue of Jesus stood at centre.
Everything else was wreckage—pews splintered, tables overturned, wood long since rotted or torn apart by hands in a hurry.
And silence. Only the mist breathed through the broken door behind them.
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