The Black family's ancestral home looked as though no one had set foot in it for over a decade.
As the last male heir of the family, Sirius Black had been thrown into prison—imprisoned for betraying (as the outside world believed) his best friend—thus losing the final inheritor. Naturally, the house lost any trace of its former splendor.
Even if someone did come by, they'd probably spit twice and leave, as a show of "respect."
The old manor's front door was covered in scratches. Louis hadn't guessed wrong—someone had indeed been here, and they'd come with hatred.
The marks were old: cuts from blades, gouges from sharp claws. It looked as though a deranged werewolf, filled with resentment, had vented all their fury and anguish here.
The door was tightly shut. There was no keyhole—only a darkened silver door handle shaped like a snake hanging from it.
There was also a battered old doorbell. Louis seriously doubted whether it still worked.
But it didn't matter. He wasn't here as a guest—whether there was a doorbell or not was irrelevant.
"Boom!"
With a loud explosion, the lock on the decrepit door was torn apart by brutal yet precise flames. The door burst open.
Louis stepped into the old house amid swirling smoke and dust. Ash drifted toward him, only to be blocked by a suddenly rising curtain of water formed beside him.
"Thanks, Chuan," Louis said to the water curtain.
"It is my honor," Chuan's slightly ethereal voice replied from within it.
The explosion had been loud—nearby Muggle residents could probably hear it. But they'd never be able to find this place; at most, they'd chalk it up to auditory hallucinations.
However, the blast had clearly alerted the "resident" inside the house.
"Who is it? What kind of mongrel dares to cause trouble at the Black family estate?" A shrill, piercing old woman's voice rang out, nonstop streams of filth and curses pouring forth.
The source of the sound was an old oil painting on the wall of the entryway. Neglected for years, its colors had faded badly; one could only barely make out a ferocious-looking elderly woman.
Louis snapped his fingers. A special flame—orange-red with black edging—instantly wrapped around the cursing portrait. The ferocious fire roared as it devoured the painting and the figure within.
"Fi—Fiendfyre!" The old woman in the painting screamed in agony. "Kreacher! Kreacher! You filthy, lazy thing, where are you?! Get your worthless hide over here right now!"
Her voice echoed through the old house, which felt like a haunted mansion. Soon, a stumbling, aged house-elf came scrambling out from deeper inside, rolling and crawling in his panic.
"Heavens! Old Mistress!" Kreacher let out a shriek. Seeing the burning portrait, he didn't even have time to pay attention to Louis, the uninvited intruder.
He vanished in a flash and reappeared holding a bucket of water, which he splashed onto the flames.
But Fiendfyre was not something water could extinguish. The blaze didn't weaken in the slightest.
"Idiot! Vermin! Bastard! Imbecile!" The old woman in the portrait waved a small fan at the fire, as if she truly feared being burned to death. "This is Fiendfyre! Use that elm-wood brain of yours and think of something!"
Kreacher was completely at a loss. How could he possibly deal with Fiendfyre?
Louis simply stood to the side, eyes fixed on the blazing Fiendfyre. Under his ironclad control, the flames—which would normally spread savagely—remained obediently still, burning only the magically imbued portrait to grow stronger.
Yet in the process, Louis could clearly feel the difficulty of controlling Fiendfyre increasing—like a person's ambition, swelling endlessly once fed by desire.
A faint glimmer passed through Louis's eyes. After the portrait finally fell silent, he opened his mouth—and actually swallowed the mass of flames whole.
The Fiendfyre, which faintly struggled to break free of control, was completely unable to resist Louis's devouring. Just like that, it was effortlessly reduced to food within his mouth.
"Phew~"
The warmth spreading through his body made Louis let out a satisfied breath. This sense of fulfillment from devouring Fiendfyre was completely different from consuming other flames.
How to put it… it was like meeting the right kind of fire.
"You're Kreacher, right?" Louis lowered his head and looked at the wide-eyed house-elf.
"Kreacher is a servant of the Black family…" Kreacher's body trembled as he asked, "Might… might I ask what business you have, sir?"
House-elves weren't mindless creatures. They felt fear too—especially fear toward powerful wizards, a terror carved deep into their very bones.
"I need you to do something for me," Louis said.
Hearing that, Kreacher hurriedly shook his head. "Kreacher will not betray the Black family!"
"I didn't say anything about betrayal." Louis was about to explain his request when he suddenly heard the old woman's furious curses again.
"Looks like there are quite a few interconnected portraits here." Louis raised an eyebrow and, ignoring Kreacher's frantic attempts to stop him, walked deeper into the old house.
Along the staircase walls hung many shriveled house-elf heads, dried and mounted. Normally, such a sight should have filled Kreacher with fear as one of their kind—but not only did he feel none, there was even a faint trace of envy in his eyes.
A strange race indeed.
Louis arrived at the second-floor sitting room and found the old woman, still yammering away despite having changed locations.
"Shut up! Do you want the last remaining traces of the Black family to be burned to ashes by Fiendfyre?" Louis barked sharply, and the old woman finally fell silent.
The aged Kreacher followed closely behind Louis. He desperately wanted to scold him for showing more respect to members of the Black family, but he was even more afraid that Louis would burn this place down.
If this house were destroyed, it would mean Kreacher had no home. A house-elf without a home and without work was a disgrace—one that could only be atoned for with death.
"Alright, it's much quieter now." Louis looked at Kreacher. "Let's continue what we were talking about earlier. How about we make a deal?"
"A… deal?"
The word was particularly unfamiliar to house-elves. They were long accustomed to giving, and simply didn't understand what a deal meant.
"That's right—a deal." Louis waved his hand to brush away the dust, and a water tendril suddenly appeared beside him, helping him clear it away.
Louis felt that Chuan had been acting a little strange lately—almost overly attentive.
"You know Regulus Black, don't you?" Louis asked.
"Yes. He was Kreacher's master…" Kreacher's eyes dimmed. "But he's dead…"
"Dead? I wouldn't be so sure. Inferi are a special state—who knows, he might even come back to life." Louis said casually.
"Inferi! How do you know that?!" Kreacher stared at Louis in terror.
"I not only know that Regulus Black became an Inferius, I know why he became one. I even know that you're holding something you were never meant to take."
Louis's gaze swept across the sitting room before finally settling on a dust-covered locket.
That's right—this was the Horcrux, Slytherin's locket. It hadn't been hidden at all, but brazenly placed right here in the open.
(Earlier mistake: the location of the fake Horcrux was previously confused with that of the real one.)
"It's this, isn't it?" Louis picked up the locket and looked at Kreacher with a teasing smile.
In the original story, this thing had been sitting right in front of Harry and the others, yet no one noticed it—until Mundungus Fletcher stole it, and only then did they regret it too late.
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