"So how do you know all this, Victor? Even I did not know such magic existed," Dumbledore asked, watching him carefully.
Victor hesitated for a moment. "Well... I'm a Seer."
The lie came easily enough. Not entirely false, at least from his point of view. He knew what was going to happen, even if his knowledge had come from a very different source.
"A Seer?" Dumbledore repeated, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah. I know things about the future. That's how I knew the Dark Lord would return. After that, I started looking for a way to make sure he could be killed when he did."
"And you discovered his Horcruxes?"
"Yeah. Voldemort created six of them. He wanted his soul divided into seven pieces."
Dumbledore's expression turned serious. "Six Horcruxes..." He was quiet for a few seconds. "And you know where they are?"
"Three are already destroyed. Tom Riddle's diary, Slytherin's locket, and Ravenclaw's diadem."
Dumbledore stopped walking. "The diadem?"
"Yeah."
"I remember you carrying Ravenclaw's lost diadem during your first year."
Victor gave him a small smile. "So I wasn't exactly wasting my time."
Dumbledore's expression softened, though the questions in his eyes remained. "So you've been carrying this knowledge since your first year?"
"Pretty much."
He looked at the boy walking beside him, no amusement left on his face. "That is a terrible burden to carry at such an age."
Victor shrugged. "Someone had to do it."
"Perhaps. But I cannot help wondering how much you have sacrificed while carrying it."
Victor didn't answer.
"So, is one of the Horcruxes here?" Dumbledore asked, looking toward the ruined Gaunt shack.
"Yes. The Gaunt ring."
"And the other two?"
"Helga Hufflepuff's cup, and a snake Voldemort keeps close to him."
Dumbledore went very still. The information clearly bothered him, though he didn't ask another question immediately — especially given that Victor knew things Dumbledore himself had never uncovered.
"May I ask, is your father aware of what you've been doing?"
Victor sighed. "He had a problem with it."
"I imagine he did."
"So I beat him."
Dumbledore blinked. "You beat your father?"
"He didn't really have much choice after that."
Dumbledore stared at him before sighing. "I see."
"What?"
"I was merely wondering whether there might have been a less violent way of settling the disagreement."
"Probably."
His mouth twitched faintly. "At least you recognise that." He turned back toward the Gaunt house. "Come. We have rather more important matters to attend to."
***
The closer they came to the shack, the worse the atmosphere became. Victor could feel dark magic clinging to the place like an invisible layer of grime.
Dumbledore stopped at the doorway. "Do not touch anything until we've examined it."
The interior was worse than the outside — dust, broken furniture, the stale smell of years of abandonment. Beneath all of it, dark magic.
Dumbledore raised his wand. "Quite a collection of unpleasant enchantments."
"There are curses all over this place," Victor said.
"Some of them are old. That doesn't make them harmless."
A faint movement caught Victor's attention near the entrance — dark, twisted markings almost invisible beneath the dirt on the old wooden step. He pointed his wand at it. "That one?"
"Yes. Best not to—"
Victor waved his wand. The doorstep crumbled instantly into dust.
Dumbledore stared at the remains.
"Problem solved," Victor said.
"Victor, when I said we should examine the curses, I did not mean you should destroy the evidence."
"Well, it's not cursed anymore."
"That is certainly one way of looking at it."
They searched the ruined house for several minutes before Dumbledore noticed something beneath the remains of an old piece of furniture — a tarnished golden ring lying in the dirt.
He crouched and lifted it carefully with the tip of his wand. The dark stone caught the light, revealing a faint symbol carved into it.
His expression changed. "The Resurrection Stone."
He stared at it for a moment, then reached toward it almost without thinking.
"Professor." Victor caught his wrist before he could touch it. "That's the ring. The Horcrux."
"Yeah. Don't put it on. Horcruxes are dangerous — they affect your mind, and this one has something else inside it."
"The Resurrection Stone."
"One of the Deathly Hallows," Victor said. "But right now, it's also a Horcrux. Putting it on would be a very bad idea."
Dumbledore slowly withdrew his hand. "Quite right." He examined it with considerably more caution this time. "I confess, Victor, that I very nearly made a serious mistake."
"That's why I stopped you."
"Indeed." His gaze stayed fixed on the ring. "If what you have told me is true, then Voldemort chose this object for a very particular reason."
"He wanted something connected to his family."
"His mother's family, yes."
*****
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