Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 1076: Not Comparable

What Voldemort could do easily, it was simply impossible for Evan to do it.

Just thinking about it, a fifteen-year-old boy killed his father and grandparents with his own hands and blamed his uncle. How much hatred did that require?

Even if Evan was given immense power, he could never become the third Dark Lord. Perhaps he could become a Dark wizard, but he wouldn’t be as evil as Voldemort.

Grindelwald, the first Dark Lord in modern times, was no better than Voldemort. Evan didn’t know much about him, but his research on Dark Arts was intolerable even for Durmstrang, a school allowing students to learn Dark Arts, leading to his expulsion. You could imagine how evil he was.

It was not easy to turn evil. Maybe that was why Dumbledore trusted Evan…

“Yes!” said Dumbledore, sighing softly. “We have no memories to show us this, but I think we can be fairly sure what happened that night. Voldemort Stupefied his uncle, took the ancient ring and his wand, and proceeded across the valley to ‘the big house over the way.’ There he murdered the Muggle man who had abandoned his witch mother, and, for good measure, his Muggle grandparents, thus obliterating the last of the unworthy Riddle line and revenging himself upon the father who never wanted him. Then he returned to the Gaunt hovel, performed the complex bit of magic that would implant a false memory in his uncle’s mind, laid Morfin’s wand beside its unconscious owner, and departed.”

“And Morfin never realized he hadn’t done it?”

“Never; he gave a full and boastful confession. He had long wanted to do this, but he just lacked the courage.”

“But he had this real memory in him all the time!”

“He had kept it, but it took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax it out of him; and why should anybody delve further into Morfin’s mind when he had already confessed to the crime? However, I was able to secure a visit to Morfin in the last weeks of his life, by which time I was attempting to discover as much as I could about Voldemort’s past. I extracted this memory with difficulty. When I saw what it contained, I attempted to use it to secure Morfin’s release from Azkaban. Before the Ministry reached their decision, however, Morfin had died, on the grounds of their once ancestral home.”

“But…” Evan wanted to say something, but in the end he shook his head. Morfin did die unjustly, but this was what he needed. He thought he had killed the man who had tarnished his family’s honor. “What about the ring? Was that its final appearance?”

“No, I believe he carried the ring with him for a while and others saw it,” said Dumbledore. “But I didn’t get that memory. It is in the hands of my old friend. I think you and Harry might be able to get it, he always liked to associate with famous and talented people.”

Evan didn’t speak, it was that old friend again, definitely Horace Slughorn.

He was once a colleague of Dumbledore, the previous Head of Slytherin House, and had personally taught Voldemort.

As Dumbledore said, he had very important memories there, about Voldemort’s past at school, how he rose step by step, methods of making Horcruxes, and some extremely crucial details. It seemed that Dumbledore had already planned to go, looking for him!

With Evan’s involvement, Dumbledore brought out these memories earlier than planned for next term.

Their main purpose was to find Slytherin’s ring, and secondly to help Evan gain a deeper understanding of Voldemort.

Thinking of this, Evan looked up and asked, “Professor, where is the ring now?”

“There is no direct information, so we need to deduce. That’s also the main reason I showed you these two memories,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Since he once made Slytherin’s locket into a Horcrux, we have reason to believe that he also made the ring into one. He seems to have a soft spot for things left by the Four Founders of Hogwarts. From what I know of him, while murdering his father and grandparents, he must have taken the opportunity to split his soul.”

“Yeah!” Evan nodded, which was not surprising at all. Voldemort did have that habit.

Although there were no specific requirements for items to be made into Horcruxes, Voldemort’s pride and dignity made him try to find items with special historical significance to make Horcruxes. He had always been interested in things belonging to the Four Founders of Hogwarts.

With the exception of Gryffindor’s belongings, items left by the other three Founders had been found.

“After making the ring into a Horcrux, he must have hidden it,” Dumbledore continued. “From what I know of him, he wouldn’t entrust it to others for safekeeping. The diary was an exception; not many Death Eaters were honored with such trust. Although he had many loyal friends and followers, he never really trusted them. I say this because there’s no better word to describe it; well, undoubtedly, he had no affection for them.”

“Professor, do you think he might have hidden that ring in the Gaunt hovel?” Evan asked directly.

He didn’t remember this very clearly. He only remembered that the memory had caused Dumbledore a lot of trouble in the original work.

Dumbledore was injured by the curse left by Voldemort on the ring. With Snape’s help, he barely managed to seal the power of the curse into his hand, which eventually led to his death later on, of course, something he hoped would happen.

Evan was not worried that Dumbledore wouldn’t find the ring. If he could find it the first time, he could certainly find it again.

But now that circumstances had changed so dramatically, he didn’t want Dumbledore to die again.

“Undoubtedly, that place has special meaning to him. That’s why we need to collect and understand these memories, but trust me, Evan, speculating where he hid the Horcrux is only one of the main reasons. You will discover more as we go along,” said Dumbledore, without directly answering Evan’s question. “In fact, the main experience of Voldemort’s life can be simply divided into five parts. The first part is his childhood in the orphanage before he went to Hogwarts. The second part is his time at Hogwarts, when he found this ring. The third part is after he left Hogwarts until he re-emerged as Voldemort, transforming from Tom Riddle into Voldemort. The fourth part is his rise to power until his downfall, and the final part is the present Voldemort.

“Next year, I will guide you and Harry to understand some of them,” said Dumbledore slowly. “But I just said, about the crucial second part, which is his experience in school, I do not know much about it. He took special precautions against me. All I know is that during his years at school, he gained basic power, deceived many people, and began making Horcruxes. He attracted the first group of followers around him, forming a dark force in the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts.”

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