That afternoon, Harry was hiding silently in his room, staring sorrowfully at Cho Chang's photograph.
Sirius quietly opened the door a crack.
Looking through the crack at his godson's despondent state, he shook his head with a touch of helplessness.
How could James's son be so foolish?
If Harry had inherited even half of James's skill in poaching someone else's partner, he wouldn't have fallen to his current plight.
How great was the affection between Snape and Lily back then? Didn't James steal her away all the same, and successfully at that?
Of course, it was also somewhat related to Snivellus bringing it upon himself by calling Lily a Mudblood.
Just as Sirius was about to push the door open and pass down a few techniques James had used when poaching Snape's girl, knocking sounded from the entrance hall downstairs.
Bypassing an umbrella stand made from a severed troll leg and treading through the deep, gloomy hallway, Sirius pulled open the door of the Black ancestral home.
Kyle, dressed in casual clothes, was standing at the threshold.
Seeing that it was Kyle, a warm smile surfaced on Sirius's face. "Kyle, how did you get here so quickly?"
Sirius hadn't received a reply from Kyle. He knew Kyle usually stayed in France during the summer holidays and had assumed Kyle's reply was still halfway across the sea.
He hadn't expected Kyle to be here already.
Stepping aside from the door, he said, "Come on in, Harry's upstairs."
However, Kyle didn't immediately step inside. Instead, he rubbed the back of his head and offered a somewhat shy smile.
"Um... Sirius," Kyle drew a jingling bag from behind his right back where he had been holding it, "I have something to tell you."
"Whatever it is, let's talk inside," Sirius replied, not quite understanding what Kyle meant.
He glanced at the bag in Kyle's hand—what was the idea of carrying a bag of money when coming over as a guest?
"Fair enough." Kyle walked inside while handing the heavy money bag into Sirius's hands.
Before Sirius could speak to decline, Kyle took the initiative to explain: "You remember the Gringotts robbery a while back, right? What's inside this bag is the property from your Black family vault."
"Oh, I see." Sirius froze for a second, then dumbly took the bag.
Two seconds later, he finally reacted, his voice jumping twenty decibels higher than before: "What did you just say!?"
The Gringotts robbery?
The Black family's property?
So the gang that robbed Gringotts back then were Kyle's subordinates?
And Kyle himself might have even participated in it?
Sirius stood frozen on the spot with a face full of utter bewilderment.
Fortunately, he was a true Gryffindor; his tolerance for such immensely shocking news was relatively high.
He quickly recovered from his shock, his expression shifting into one of gloating amusement.
He remembered that when Gringotts held their press conference earlier, they had published the list of families that suffered heavy losses.
The vast majority of the families on that list had once followed Voldemort; although they had all turned into double-dealers after Voldemort's fall, that didn't change the nature of their families originally belonging to the dark evil forces.
It was easy to get stained black, but not so simple to wash clean.
Setting aside those families that followed Voldemort, the only ones left who suffered losses were the Dumbledore family and the Fudge family.
No, wait—if Kyle was the mastermind behind the great Gringotts robbery, then the Dumbledore family's situation could only be called an asset transfer.
The Fudge family was the one that suffered actual losses.
In any case, Minister Cornelius Fudge wasn't a good person either; though he hadn't followed Voldemort, he was birds of a feather with those Death Eater families.
At this thought, Sirius couldn't suppress the smile on his face no matter what.
How on earth did Dumbledore sire a son like this? This was truly...
Sirius burst into laughter and clapped Kyle on the shoulder. "Bloody brilliant job!"
Facing Sirius's praise, Kyle humbly expressed that it was all thanks to Dumbledore's excellent teaching.
If Dumbledore were to hear Kyle's words right now, he would absolutely ride a phoenix over to beat him to a pulp, roaring as he thrashed him: "Did I teach you to blow up castles? Did I teach you to rob banks? Did I teach you to commit murder, arson, and attack the Ministry of Magic?"
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two sat down in the living room, and Kyle raised the purpose of his visit to the Black ancestral home with Sirius.
"There's something I need Harry to help me with."
At this moment, Harry was still upstairs grieving over Cho Chang's matter; even though Sirius had raised his voice by twenty decibels out of shock earlier, it hadn't managed to wake Harry from his little world.
"What is it?" Sirius asked, making to stand up to call Harry downstairs.
Kyle gestured for Sirius to stay calm and not rush to call Harry down just yet.
"Don't call Harry over yet," Kyle shook his head slowly. "Some things aren't suitable for him to know just yet."
Seeing Kyle's expression so solemn, the optimism on Sirius's face vanished as well.
Kyle crossed his hands and looked at Sirius, speaking deliberately: "Harry and Voldemort might share a certain special connection—you should know about this, right?"
Hearing Kyle's words, Sirius fell silent for a short moment.
"He mentioned his dreams to me before; he seems able to see fragmented images regarding You-Know-Who in his dreams."
"Harry... he might be a living Horcrux of Voldemort," Kyle said softly.
Sirius silently repeated the term in his mind, and upon remembering what kind of Dark Magic it was, his face suddenly turned deathly pale.
"On the night Voldemort attempted to kill Harry, the Killing Curse Voldemort cast rebounded onto himself."
"At that moment, a piece of Voldemort's soul was blasted off and attached itself to the only living soul in the collapsed house," Kyle explained in a calm tone.
"Then what does that have to do with the favor you need from Harry?" Sirius asked, somewhat bewildered.
Kyle didn't answer directly. Instead, he pulled a glittering golden cup from his pocket. "This is Hufflepuff's Cup; it was turned into a Horcrux by Voldemort."
"Before this, we have already found and destroyed three of Voldemort's Horcruxes," Kyle shrugged helplessly. "But we don't know exactly how many Horcruxes he has in total."
"So, you want Harry to use the connection between him and You-Know-Who to locate the whereabouts of the other Horcruxes?"
Sirius instantly grasped Kyle's intention. He gritted his teeth. "I'll go get Harry to try it."
"Please don't let Harry know about this just yet," Kyle sighed. "The time isn't right."
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