Disclaimer: Being neither British nor Japanese, it should therefore come as no surprise that I own neither Harry Potter nor Naruto, nor anything from their respective franchises.

Iruka was waiting outside the portrait gateway to the Gryffindor common room when Neville emerged on his way to breakfast. "Neville," he called out, "could you come with me for a bit? I'll have some breakfast brought up and give you a pass if it takes too long for you to get to your first class on time."

Once the two were seated in Iruka's office with tea and a breakfast spread, the chuunin addressed the clearly worried teen. "Something happened last night," he stated, "and the Headmaster and I thought it better to tell you privately rather than wait for you to find out in the Prophet." Neville tensed further, sipping nervously from a goblet of pumpkin juice. "Azkaban was attacked, and a group of Death Eaters were freed... including the Lestranges."

Juice splashed on the floor as Neville's grip tightened enough to crush his goblet. The normally placid boy practically radiated fury as he looked up, meeting Iruka's eyes with a resolute gaze and speaking in a deceptively calm voice. "I need to step up my training."

Iruka's eyes narrowed in concern; this could get problematic. "First, you need to tell me exactly why you need to train more."

"Why?" Neville's voice was nearly at shouting volume, a far cry from his usual quiet calm. "Why do you think?!"

"I think there are two possibilities," the chuunin replied firmly, "protecting and avenging, and they are very, very different. Some might say that they're almost opposed to each other, since protection revolves around keeping people safe in the present and the future, whereas vengeance is all about the past. Revenge can and often does hurt the people that protection would be shielding. We've talked already about Uchiha Sasuke, and the depths he fell to chasing after his revenge, the damage he caused. We've also talked about the Fourth Great War, where people put aside their grudges and hatreds, banding together to protect those they loved. So tell me, Neville..." he paused for a moment, looking into his student's eyes.

"Are you a protector or an avenger?"

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While the blunt and somewhat melodramatic question was a start, it still took a long conversation and more than a few outbursts and arguments before Neville finally had his head on straight. They did get there eventually, though, and agreed to step up not only Neville's training but all of S.E.N. as much as they reasonably could. Neville left Iruka's office with a newfound resolve focused on protecting the loved ones he currently had rather than avenging those he'd already lost.

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Hogwarts's rumored "Defense Curse" struck unusually early. It was just nearing the end of January when a Muggle-born Fourth-Year Gryffindor, Colin Creevey, went to his Head of House to complain about a series of detentions he'd been set. At first Minerva had tried to brush the boy off, as she had several students earlier in the year, until he managed to convey to her that the quill he was required to use when writing lines ("I must respect my betters" in his case) carved whatever he wrote into the flesh of his hand and used his blood as ink.

The Deputy Headmistress had then gone to her fellow Heads of House, and between them they'd questioned their students regarding detentions with Professor Umbridge. Over a dozen Muggle-born students, along with two half-bloods, reported the use of the cruel writing implement for their lines. Headmaster Dumbledore was informed, followed by the DMLE. Aurors searched the Defense Professor's office, and found a long, thin black quill with an unusually sharp point that matched the students' description. A quick test proved that it did function as claimed, and within the hour the pink-clad witch was arrested and marched from the school in disgrace under the glaring eyes of the staff and students.

A broader investigation yielded unexpected fruit when Aurors searching the ex-Senior Undersecretary's home for further Dark artifacts instead came upon a cheap Chinese calligraphy kit, along with marked papers that were near-perfect matches for those left at Privet Drive. Mafalda Hopkirk confirmed to the DMLE that the batrachian witch had that summer asked about Harry's warning for underage magic three years before. When interrogated, Umbridge, who at the time was still certain that the Minister would make all of the charges disappear, was goaded into ranting about how "that filthy foreigner" had too much influence on "dear Cornelius".

Umbridge's trial was quick and decisive, in what seemed to be a largely-ineffective attempt by Cornelius Fudge to minimize the public attention paid to it. Fortunately for him, the swiftness of the trial and his equally-swift abandonment of his now-former Senior Undersecretary greatly reduced the amount of backlash directed his way. Unfortunately for the Minister, when someone he appointed to teach at the country's premier school of magic used her position to torture children there was no way it wouldn't be a major story. Regardless, in an attempt to salvage the situation he tossed the foul woman to the wolves and ordered Madam Bones to assign someone to fill out the year.

Despite the support of several members of the Wizengamot who saw nothing wrong with, as one actually said it, "killing a few animals and showing a few Mudbloods their place," Dolores Umbridge was convicted and sentenced to ten years in the medium-security section of Azkaban.

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Things quieted down after that, with even the pall of fear hanging over everyone beginning to fade as none of the escaped Death Eaters had been seen or heard from. Of course, those aware of the true nature of the threat remained worried; they knew that this lack of overt action just meant that Voldemort was preparing for something. Professor Snape had yet to figure out just what that something was, though he did report that the escapees were in the process of recovering from their long incarceration. He was presently doing his best to slow that recuperation down without being caught out at it; Albus had, at the Potions Professor's request, placed more demands on his time in order to limit how much of it he could spend treating his supposed comrades-in-(Marked-)arms.

Meanwhile, the Horcrux-hunting team was preparing for their next outing. Most of the locations associated with Tom Marvolo Riddle's history had shown no sign of anything unusual when quietly checked, but the Gaunt shack in Little Hangleton was proving unnaturally difficult to locate. It might just be lingering old Unplottability spells, but given the ease with which Tom Riddle Senior and his friends had passed by (and the general lack of advanced magical skill shown by the last generations of Gaunts) it was too suspicious to ignore.

It was a cold, dreary, foggy morning in early March when the sextet arrived not far from where Bob Ogden's memory had begun. "Everyone stay close," Albus ordered, "there's some sort of confusion effect once we get into the trees, and it may attempt to separate us."

"Well," Bill said, "in that case..." He conjured a simple length of rope a few meters long. "We all just grab hold and don't let go. It's standard practice for Curse-Breakers when we encounter something like that."

It took a couple of minutes for everyone to decide on a marching order, but soon enough they each had their left hands gripping the rope. Iruka was the only one that didn't have his wand drawn in his other hand. Albus took the lead, followed by Bill, then Iruka, Sirius, Remus, and Moody brought up the rear. Together, they pushed their way through the undergrowth and into the small wood.

Almost immediately they were completely enveloped in an obscuring mist, visibility dropping to less than two meters. There were no paths to follow, just winding gaps between the trees and dense brush; easy enough for Iruka to traverse if he were by himself, but the other five weren't so lucky, so all six were forced to wend their way through.

As they came to a clearer area, Iruka felt something trying to skew his perceptions. He brought his hand up into a half-ram seal and performed a genjutsu release. At the same time, Albus halted at the front of the column. "Interesting," the Headmaster commented, "something in the guards and wards placed here just tried to convince me that I was turning right as I intended while I actually turned left. It's quite a clever and subtle means of misdirecting intruders, but of little use against a practiced Occlumens."

"Well we do suspect that this was one of the earlier hiding places," Remus suggested, "maybe he was still young?"

"Don't assume it'll be that easy," Moody growled. "The minute we figure he didn't know what he was doin' and let our guard down, that's when the real nasty stuff'll get us."

"Moody's right," Bill agreed, "I've seen a couple of tombs that used weak or obvious defenses to lull an intruder into a false sense of security before unleashing something more serious. The worst case was one where all of the outer traps were literally jokes, all pranks and annoyances, right up until the stone slab that would've crushed us all if we'd been careless. The inscription on the side of the slab roughly translated as 'Laugh this one off.'"

Resolved to caution (or "constant vigilance"), the group pressed on.

Eventually, they came upon a truly decrepit old shack. It looked like the Gaunt shack they'd seen in the Pensieve, but for one tiny detail:

There were no doors or windows visible.

"So," Iruka said, "do we try and find the door, or do we just cut our way in through the wall?"

"Unless there's magic helping hold it up, I'm not sure it's in any condition to survive having holes blasted into it." Remus shook his head. "In general, searching a building requires going inside, not just leveling it and digging through the rubble."

"I also doubt that Tom would have bothered erasing or concealing the door and windows if forcing entry through the wall was likely to work well," Albus commented as he began carefully casting spells toward the shack, soon joined by Bill.

"They're hidden, not gone," Moody commented as his enchanted eye swept over the shack, "but there's some weird symbol painted on all the windows. Nothin' I've seen before, but I doubt it's there for decoration."

"Can you draw it?" Bill asked. Moody roughly sketched a complex shape in the air with glowing lines from the tip of his wand. It was something Iruka had never seen before, in the rough shape of an inverted teardrop with four wavy spikes radiating out, though the teardrop itself was made up of several shapes, all of which were spiky and all but the lowest forming a vaguely humanoid shape.

"Doesn't look familiar to me," the Curse-Breaker stated. "Professor?"

Albus shook his head. "I do not recognize it either. We shall have to be careful, and I would prefer to properly examine whichever portal we decide to use. Entering blindly seems... unwise."

It took only a couple of minutes for the Headmaster and Curse-Breaker to dismantle the spell covering the door and windows. The moment they succeeded and Iruka looked directly at the symbols on the windows, he felt pain wracking his body, a deep, burning ache. Judging by the cries of his compatriots, they too were affected, and just looking away didn't help any.

"Bloody fucking hell!" Sirius gasped. "What in Merlin's name is that? It's no patch on the Cruciatus, I can thank dear departed mum for that knowledge, but still no picnic."

"Dark magic, that's all I can say," Moody grunted out, a bit unsteady on his foot. "Can always tell somethin's Dark when it makes my scars ache."

"So do we push on," Remus asked, "or go back and try to recover a bit? Or do we rest here for a while?"

"I haven't picked up any sort of alert wards or telltales," Bill ventured, "but then again I didn't catch this, so no guarantees."

"I believe," Albus said as he conjured a set of six armchairs, noticeably simpler than his usual work, "that we would be best served taking some rest, so long as we remain aware of our surroundings. If anyone's condition worsens, we should immediately return to Hogwarts for treatment, but for now we should rest and perhaps see if we can find a counter to this effect."

They all sat, most rather stiffly, though all kept their wands in hand and watched the area around them warily. Sirius tried to start up a conversation at one point, but they were all hurting too much for small talk.

After around fifteen minutes of everyone trying and failing to find a more comfortable position to sit in (although a couple of Sirius's attempts in both human and canine form were amusing), the Headmaster stood. "It seems that whatever this effect is," he sighed, "it won't be clearing up on its own soon, if at all. I'm afraid we should probably press forward." The rest of those present groaned but stood.

They moved cautiously (and more than a little gingerly) toward the shack. "It looks like there's one of those symbols on every window," Iruka observed, "but not on the door. Call me paranoid, but somehow I don't think that means the door's safer. Do we go in through the door, or a window? I'd suggest smashing the windows out from a distance, but with this mist and how easy it is to get turned around in it, I'm not exactly confident in my blind aim."

"Alastor and I would also have a bit more trouble than the rest of you clambering through one of those windows," Albus said with a touch of acidity. "I, for one, would rather chance the door's defenses, if for no other reason than to give us all a faster and easier means of egress should we need to leave in a hurry."

The group gathered close to the door, and Iruka's gaze was drawn to the mummified, long-dead snake nailed to the door. The moment he began to examine it, the snake seemed to spring to life, striking out at him. He dodged easily, and the ophidian corpse burst into a flash of brown light, a puff of dun smoke, and a loud whoomph noise. The others belatedly leapt back, startled.

"Huh," Sirius commented, "haven't seen one of those in a while." At the looks he was receiving, he elaborated. "Sepia Snake Sigil, an old spell my family used to load into some of the more... interesting books in the family library. It actually wouldn't have hurt anyone, just put whoever it bit into a sort of stasis - useful for keeping nosy kids out of books they're not supposed to be reading, and for keeping whoever's trying to find your Horcrux alive for easy interrogation. Funny thing is, despite the snake motif it's not Dark at all. I'd figured the spell was lost ages ago, but apparently old Moldy found it somewhere and modified it to work with that dead snake."

The Headmaster sighed. "Yet another example of Tom's wasted potential."

"Get back!" Bill suddenly shouted frantically. The others obeyed promptly, trusting that an experienced Curse-Breaker wouldn't be worried at nothing. Once they'd taken a few meters of distance, he asked, "Professor, could you try and blow the mist back a bit for a few moments?"

Albus nodded, and cast a spell that produced a gust of hot, dry wind that created a path of clear visibility to the door. The mist almost immediately began to creep back in, but while it did Bill shot a stream of what looked like tar from his wand, spraying it along the doorframe. "Nasty booby-trap," he explained as he worked, "a set of runes set up to do nothing but explode if anybody reads them. It's a trick I've seen before a couple times, specifically there to kill anyone looking for wards and traps. We've found the best way to deal with it is to just cover it up so nobody can see the runes - people tend to naturally read any text they see, so just ignoring it is a bad idea, and trying to remove the runes can set them off. Overall, it's exotic in Britain but something any Curse-Breaker that's worked abroad would recognize pretty quickly."

"Done Bill?" Sirius asked once the entire doorframe had been tarred. At the redhead's nod, he flicked his wand and blasted the door off its hinges. "I'm getting more than a little sick of this shyte," he explained at the glares he received, "plus the sooner we deal with whatever's here the sooner we can get to a nice round of pain-relief potions."

After checking to make sure that Sirius's bout of impulsive stupidity hadn't triggered or primed any additional traps, the group made their cautious entry into the shack itself. The place was, simply put, a ruin. Given that it hadn't been properly maintained for over half a century, nor maintained at all for quite a few years, it was hardly surprising that the shack's interior was a mix of rot, water damage from leaks in the roof, scattered hunks of rust that might once have been iron kitchenware, and an all-around layer of filth and dust. What was surprising given the location was the complete lack of moss or other plant life, or signs of any animal activity. Throw in the unnatural stillness of the wood outside and the pattern that emerged was more than a little ominous.

Surprisingly, no traps went off; no hazards presented themselves. The six scanned their surroundings carefully with both their senses and their wands for several minutes before Moody grunted, "Found somethin'." He pointed to a seemingly random spot on the floor. "There's a small box, couple inches across, under the floorboards, looks like it's got the ring inside." A sharp jab of his wand produced a small hovering light that hovered a hand's breadth off the floor. "Right there. I don't see anythin' in terms of traps or spells, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Constant vigilance! We've been caught with our trousers down once already today, so be careful and don't let it happen again!"

Bill and Albus moved forward, while Moody kept watch on the area. Remus and Iruka both watched from a couple meters away - close enough to get in and help quickly if needed, but far enough to not get caught up in small-area booby traps. The chuunin would have been further back but the Gaunt family's little shack was close, cluttered, and currently crowded with six people in one room. Sirius also looked on curiously at first, but as the minutes of careful investigation ticked by without anything happening, he began to fidget and stepped just outside the front door to keep watch, glancing back in occasionally to check for any progress.

It was a good ten minutes before the Headmaster and the Curse-Breaker carefully Vanished each floorboard adjoining their target one at a time, before using a levitated piece of detritus to pry up the board covering their objective. This revealed a large ring-box made of black iron that lacked even the tiniest spot of visible rust in spite of sitting on the bare earth between the floor joists for what must have been decades in a damp, mouldering old ruin of a house. Another quarter-hour of further diagnostics followed, after which the pair used several pieces of debris to flip open the box's lid from a distance.

As the two approached the ring box, Bill pulled out a pair of dragonhide gloves and slipped them on. "Do you have the fang with you, Professor?" he asked, getting no response. "Professor Dumbledore?" His voice was louder this time, with a worried edge.

Albus was staring at the ring, seemingly entranced and ignoring everyone around him. As is often the case in such situations, what followed seemed to happen both ponderously slowly and more quickly than it had any right to. The Headmaster immediately strode forward, an almost absent twitch of his wand batting away a spell from Moody before an overpowered Summoning Charm ripped everyone else's wands (including two backups from Moody) from their hands or holsters and tossed them across the room. The combination was finished by a wide-area Shoe-Sticking Charm to root the five of them in place. While Bill fought to slip out of his boots and Moody reached for some sort of trinket, Dumbledore snatched up the ring with his left hand, putting his wand away with his right, and went to slip the ring on.

Iruka had been aiming for the ring itself, but the persistent ache from earlier was still hampering him, so his desperate kunai throw instead removed the top joint of Albus's right middle finger and badly gashed the fingers to either side.

The Headmaster jolted back with a gasp of shock, dropping the ring and clutching his maimed and bleeding hand, as his severed appendage dropped into the center of the band and almost instantly shriveled and blackened. After a few moments of disorientation, he fumbled for his wand heedless of the large bloodstain this left that would undoubtedly ruin his robes, and quickly released everyone and returned their wands before using his left hand to cast a clumsy healing charm to stem the bleeding. Finally, he reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out a wooden case far larger than said pocket should have been able to hold, and passed it to Bill. "I believe that you should probably do the honors, considering," he said shakily.

Bill nodded resolutely and opened the case, withdrawing the deadly fang held within and stabbing it down into the ring. As with the locket, there was a moment of resistance before the stone cracked and the band warped as if half-melted as a screaming black mist poured out, formed a vaguely face-like shape, and then dissipated with one final wail of terror, despair, and agony.

"We need to get back fast," Moody said sternly, though like everyone else present he was clearly shaken by the experience. "That healing charm'll keep Albus from bleeding out, but he needs a proper Healer if he wants his hand workin' right any time soon." None of them were going to question that assessment from a man that was missing fingers. "Grab the ring, the fang, and the boxes for both, and we need to do something about the blood spilled. Too many Dark things somebody can do with blood."

"Leave that to me," Iruka assured.

Bill and Remus grabbed and boxed up the fang and ring, respectively, and the group hustled out the shack's front door. Sirius Transfigured a small box to hold what was left of Albus's fingertip, though he carefully avoided touching the withered flesh directly. Iruka retrieved his kunai and brought up the rear, turning just before he left. A quick sequence of seals later, and he was hosing that entire area of the room down with hundreds of liters of water that would wash most of the blood away and dilute any that remained beyond any plausible usefulness. "I figured that a fire would have been too noticeable, pillar of smoke and all that," he explained as he rejoined the rest. "This way he won't know we've been here unless he comes to check in person."

"Good thinking," Moody complimented, "now get a move on."

A/N: Yes, Umbitch was still torturing students, but not Harry. Unlike in canon, she doesn't have Ministerial carte blanche to attack and torment him, and he's still a beloved child celebrity, which means he's protected. One nasty thing about Dolores Umbridge, she only attacks targets that can't fight back. In this case, that meant Muggle-born students. She made all other detentions she gave lines as well, but with an ordinary self-inking quill, to further confuse the issue for the staff. Thus, McG brushed off the complaints with "You're complaining about being made to write lines?" not realizing that it wasn't the "what" but the "how" that was the problem. A couple of the toad's victims talked to their parents about it over Christmas break, though, and were encouraged to make a more persistent attempt to report the problem. Thus, Colin Creevey kept pushing until McG actually listened when he was telling her about the black quill. Since he wasn't paranoid about Dumbledore moving against him and invested in tearing down Dumbles and Harry, Fudge decided to distance himself from the resultant scandal by throwing Umbitch under the bus.

When doing the Gaunt Shack, I wanted to do my own set of defenses not based on any other fanfics I've read that included it, and was struggling with ideas before I realized that there was a ready source for all kinds of fun and nasty protective spells. For those that didn't catch it, every spell (save possibly for the withering curse on the ring) was from the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook (3.5 Edition), though I did make a couple of tweaks. Funny thing, there's actually an illustration of a Symbol of Pain in the PHB, which gave me something to describe (badly). Also, I decided to roll saves/checks using rough guesstimates at some points, just to make things less predictable.

The mostly-joke tomb Bill talks about is shamelessly based upon one from the novel "Sourcery" by the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett. Remus's comment is a reference to the list of "Things Mr. Welch can no longer do in an RPG". I don't know why I went on a referencing spree in this chapter.

Fic Recommendation: "Hindsight Is Not Perfect" by Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet - the first fic in a series (also available as "Force of Many Sights" by DAsObiQuiet on Archive of Our Own) in which just after his death over Endor, Darth Vader is sent back in time to his nine-year-old body. It focuses heavily on his struggles to come to terms with the atrocities he committed as a Sith and his doubts about being able to truly change things).

Posted 29 December 2019