Chapter 19: Clues at Last

The next day Harry pulled out the 'Invisibility Cloak' file again while Hermione continued to search the house for any other clues. Going off Harry's luck she went upstairs to what appeared to be his mother's sewing room and began to rifle through the mounds of paper that littered the shelves. A few times she found the word 'horcruxes' on a piece of paper and she would come and show it to Harry. It seemed clear that his mother had indeed been doing some research on horcruxes for one reason or another the problem was that everything appeared to be very unorganized, at least to the ever logical Hermione.

Harry, meanwhile, was digging deeper and deeper into the many pages of notes that were in the file. Mostly they contained different tests his father had done on the cloak and attempts to trace where it came from. From what he could tell it had been passed on from parent to child for generations but the first mention of it seemed to come from an Ignotus Peverell. Since he knew that Hermione was the master of all things history he asked her about the name. "It sounds familiar," she said as she searched the reaches of her mind. "Let me check a few of my books." So she went out into the living room and pulled out her mobile library.

In the meantime Harry grabbed hold of the snitch and took a closer look at it. Again he tried everything he could think of to try and open it up. Since what made them special was their flesh memories he decided that shooting magic at it wasn't likely to have much of an affect. So instead he focused on what he could do while physically touching it. He turned it, twisted it, put the whole thing back in his mouth and again nearly choked on it but nothing more seemed to happen other than, 'I open at the close.'

He was just about ready to start jumping on the thing out of frustration when Hermione squealed, "Here he is." Harry jumped up and ran over to sit next to her on the sofa she was sitting on. "Ignotus Peverell was a well-known and highly regarded magical manufacturer in his day," she read. "He is credited with the creation of many magical items most notably the flying carpet," she continued. "Together with his two brothers they formed the highest grossing magical manufacturing plant in the 13th century before their untimely deaths."

"He had two brothers?" Harry asked excitedly.

"Yes," Hermione said as she continued to look through the book. "Antioch and Cadmus. They all worked together until Antioch was murdered in his sleep and Cadmus committed suicide…" she said trailing off.

"Hermione that's them. That's the three brothers from the story."

"Harry I don't know," she said cautiously.

"Oh come on look. They were magical manufacturers so they might have been able to create objects like the hallows. One brother was murdered, another committed suicide and the other lived out his life. It all fits," he exclaimed.

"Harry look at this," she said pointing at a small table listing some basic facts about the Peverell brothers on the side.

"Buried at the cemetery of their family's hometown Godric's Hollow," Harry read aloud. "This is them Hermione, I'm sure of it and Ignotus is my great, great, however many times grandfather. This is his cloak," Harry cried holding up the invisibility cloak. "And the stone is in there," he continued pointing at the flying snitch. "And if we can somehow find the elder wand then we'll be the 'Masters of Death'."

"Yeah but Harry, even if they are and we do what does that even mean, 'Masters of Death'?" she asked.

He went to keep right on arguing but found himself stumped. Finally he said, "Well I don't know. But when you face death as often as we do I feel like being the masters of it can't really be a bad thing can it?" he asked with a slight smirk.

"You may have a point there," Hermione said with a grin. "Come on 'Master of Death' let's have some lunch," she said as she stood up and put the book down on the coffee table. Harry smiled and took her hand and she led them into the kitchen where they had a pleasant lunch.

After they ate they both went up to the sewing room and tried to figure out some sort of organization to the madness. After laying out all the papers that had the word 'horcrux' they found that many of them where written on the same yellow colored paper. They went back through the rest of the piles and found the pieces of yellow paper and laid them all out. Together they were slowly able to piece together some semblance of an order that his mother had been thinking. "She heard Snape talking about them," Hermione said as they combed through the many pages.

"Well that would make sense," Harry replied. "He went to school with my Mom and Dad and I'll bet you he was already talking to Riddle before he even left school. And if Dumbledore's right then there's a good chance he had already made a few of them before my parents and he were out."

"Yeah," she said still reading on. "It looks like your Mom was thinking the same thing. It looks like she had seen him three times and each time she said he looked less and less human and she was trying to figure out why."

"Yeah that's what started Dumbledore looking into it as well," Harry mentioned.

"It looks like it may have been your Mom that turned him onto the idea," she said. "Look here she talks about sharing the information with him."

"Wow yeah," Harry said while reading over her shoulder. "Seems she had the idea first."

"Harry it looks like this conversation with Dumbledore about them happened not long after you were born. That means there's a whole year before she died while she and your dad were mostly in hiding. Maybe she figured out more that she didn't tell him. There's got to be more here somewhere," she said as they flipped through more papers.

"Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are mentioned several times on this light pink colored paper," Harry said while searching for a connection.

"You're right," Hermione replied as they grabbed a few of the other pieces. So again they went through the process of finding all the light pink paper and trying to organize it. "Yeah look here. She made the connection to the founders like Dumbledore told you about. She found out that the only known relic from Hufflepuff was the goblet and that there wasn't anything known to have survived from Ravenclaw."

"Yeah but we already knew all that from Dumbledore," Harry said getting a bit frustrated.

"But not this look," she continued. "'The Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw,'" she read. "Supposedly the key to all of Rowena Ravenclaw's smarts. It disappeared centuries ago but rumors are always flying around about people supposedly finding it."

"Well that would certainly fit Riddles MO for his horcruxes, small, mobile, magically important," Harry said.

"Hold on there's more," Hermione exclaimed. "Look," she said holding up what appeared to be an old clipping from 'The Daily Prophet.' "'Gringotts Claims To Be the Most Secure Place in All the World'" Harry read looking at the title of the piece.

Hermione read on, "A Gringotts spokesgoblin claims that due to several new top secret security measures that their bank is now the most secure building in the entire world. 'Due to the recent dark times we have put into place several new security measures that would make it next to impossible to break in,' the spokesgoblin claimed. 'If anyone is looking for a place to keep their valuables completely safe Gringotts is the place.'" Hermione read. "And look when the article was written, 1946, right about the time when he was working for Borgin and Burkes and if Dumbledore is correct, right about the time he made the goblet into a horcrux."

"Hagrid mentioned something like this when I first met him. He told me that Gringotts was the safest place in world except maybe Hogwarts," Harry replied.

"And think about how special Riddle would feel if he was able to hide something like that right under the noses of everyone. Right in the heart of our world," Hermione mentioned.

"You're right," Harry said. "Well great, now all we have to do is figure out a way to break into a place that in our lifetime has only been broken into once and that time they didn't get away with anything. Oh and did I mention we have no idea where in Gringotts it might be," Harry said shaking his head.

"We should be there and back by dinner," Hermione said grinning.

"Why in the world can't we just have one easy part to this whole stupid thing?" Harry asked exasperated.

"It could be worse," Hermione replied. "It could be in Hogwarts."