The next one found us over London looking down at Gringotts. I sighed. Hufflepuff's cup in the Lestrange vault. That would actually be the most troublesome to deal with, so we picked another.
This time we ended up in the air over a forested area with a graveyard and manor house nearby, a sleepy little town a bit further away, and a dilapidated shack filled with magic directly below us. The Guant shack, location of the Death Stone.
That one I actually want, if only to potentially give to Harry or at least keep out of Dumbledore's clutches seeing he currently has two of the Deathly Hallows. Studying it would at least be interesting and potentially lead me to the physical location of the river styx if the legend is believed. Or somewhere else entirely. Who knew? Point is, I want it. So I'm not going to bomb this place like I did Malfoy Manor.
At least not entirely. Searching out the wardstones when I can see magic isn't hard, likewise with keeping the wards from affecting me by pushing the magic away with my own. A bit of minor localized destruction saw the wards brought down and several bits of nastiness set loose in the form of snakes. Many many many snakes. Very poisonous, often conjured, or at least commandeered by Voldemort's pareseltongue ability.
Wiping them out wasn't too hard. I didn't want to leave an unexplainable crater though so I took out my sniping wand. Activating it for a few seconds created a stream of magic that finally spit out a particularly deadly projectile that I could direct about by pointing the wand in the direction I wanted it to go. Once it got near to an enemy, the built in homing and teleporting modifiers would take care of the rest.
It wasn't quick. There were a lot of snakes. But it was eventually taken care of and with a minimum amount of destruction to the landscape. I did have to put out a few fires here or there though. Afterwards I caused the projectile to fly up to me and I caught it with my magic and dismantled it manually. Otherwise it would just fly about destroying whatever it happens to get close to forever. That's fine for where I was, considering there was nothing but enemies and empty space anyway, but here, that's not quite so great.
With the defenses dismantled, I floated down with the Dementor following to the shack, which was a little on fire. And by a little, I mean a lot. Oops.
Eh, I couldn't help myself. I did at least prevent the flames from spreading though.
Dismantling what few wards were left, I floated the box containing the horcrux and the Deathly Hallow. I idly wondered for a moment what a Deathly Hallow being in such close presence to a horcrux might do to Voldemort generally if anything. Having death so close to his method of immortality when Voldemort fears death so much is more than a little ironic. Makes me wonder if my point of Harry being marked by death might actually have more to it. What if Harry is Death's chosen for taking down Voldemort, and that's why the killing curse didn't hurt him beyond a scar marking his forehead? If that's the case, Harry becoming Master of Death and gaining the Hallows might just be his given gifts or tools of the trade for doing so.
But that's just conjecture at this point and I can't really confirm it. Yet. Shaking my head of my distracting thoughts, I tore apart the wards protecting the box at the magical level, siphoning the magic from them being the easiest method, and then tore away the box itself and let it fall where the flames would take care of it.
What was left was a ring, the band of which was the actual horcrux, with the death stone inset as the gem, along with some fairly nasty curses. I held it up with telekinesis for the Dementor and it promptly sucked the Horcrux out of the ring, and I dismantled the curse on it and dropped it into one of my few open inventory slots that would keep it safe and protected. I did make a mental note to get an equivalent bag of holding to store it in and put that into the slot instead. That was my last slot. I'd be a fool not to get something that would effectively increase my storage capacity to something akin to infinite capacity. That'd leave me one storage slot and three quick slots for quick usage of whatever item I store into it at the time.
It's too bad I can't just have infinite slots though. Even the number of slots I have for spell components for my wands are finite and I often find them to be far less than I need. At least I don't have to worry about littering spell components everywhere anymore. Atomizing one with the vanishing spell is now an option and I can always get more with my Persistence powers. Sure it costs gold, but I have infinite of that anyway.
As for the Death Stone itself, it was with great effort that I put the stone into my inventory without analyzing the thing. From what little I'd already seen of it, I knew if I allowed myself I'd end up spending the next who knows how long doing just that, potentially lose track of time, and not be available for Harry or finish up here, and there's not much of the night left. I might have to leave a few of the horcruxes for the next night if I don't hurry up.
Some quick spells to keep the fire contained so that the shack, and only the shack, burned itself down to ash, the Dementor and I continued on.
The next place turned out to be a housing complex in London. Grimmauld place. For some reason I was expecting a town house in a fairly affluent neighborhood. Not this rundown grim old place. Why would the Black ancestral home be here anyway? You'd think they'd have a manor house like the Malfoys or something. Why a building with several homes, most of which contain baseline humans? It doesn't mesh with what I know of the Blacks.
But still, there's #12, sans the Fidelius thanks to it not being the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix yet. There's still plenty of wards though, and I imagine the baseline humans still don't see anything there, much like they see nothing when passing the Leaky Cauldron.
The wards here are different from the Malfoy's wards, and in some cases far nastier. It matters very little to me though. What does matter though is that this is still Sirius Black's property. And unlike the Malfoys, this place is empty of anything but a few paintings and a slightly crazy house elf surviving off of the magic of the wards and the tenuous connection to the currently living Black family, so I'm not quite as inclined to destroy it wholesale, or even damage it overmuch. I'm tempted to renovate a little, but that's assuming Sirius even comes back here. I very much doubt he will. I'll have to ask him what he wants to do with the place when I see him later on.
With wholesale destruction out, not the least of which due to the connected housing and it being someone else's property who isn't my enemy, I had to consider how I wanted to do this. Wards set up would stop me from warping in unless I overpowered them. There's still the option of circumventing them, but that's untested.
I considered my options for a moment, then decided to simply try seeing what would happen if I pushed the effects of the wards aside with my own magic. I'd have to keep it up though as while some wards are a dome shield, others are a dome field so I'd have to keep it up for the entire time I'm inside it. I did it once already at Hogwarts to prevent Albus from detecting me. If it would let me pierce wards in general, well…
Best not to let such a technique become known, I decided as I successfully pushed the wards aside and floated through, leaving the Dementor behind with a temporary notice-me-not on him so no mages would see it. I didn't have to worry about the baseline humans since they wouldn't be able to see the Dementor anyway, though I did have it hover a bit higher so it's fear effect wouldn't touch them.
Once inside, I looked around until I found the locket. The Black family brownie named Kreature was currently wearing the thing around his neck. Stunning and healing him, I took the horcrux and took it up to the Dementor. Once it was horcrux free, I took it back to Kreature with a note telling him that it was destroyed. Whatever would happen after that was for Sirius to decide.
Still, passing the painting of the Lady Black, I couldn't help myself and drained the portrait of magic, freezing the woman in the position of smiling rather unpleasantly at nothing in particular. Sirius could do whatever he wanted with the now normal portrait as he liked, considering it would simply come off the wall rather easily now.
Returning to the Dementor, which indicated only three left, we continued onwards and found ourselves at Hogwarts for the second time tonight. Right, Ravenclaw's Diadem. In the Room of Requirement. Turning myself invisible and pushing through the wards, I landed on one of the tallest towers, which from the various telescopes and star charts located here and there and in the supply closet would make this the Astronomy Tower. The couple necking in the corner rather gave it away as well.
Deciding to leave them be, I pushed my magic to place a notice-me-not effect on the door and dispelled it once I was through. From there, with no map, it was a bit troublesome figuring out where to go. I rather expect it would've taken hours if I couldn't see through the walls, even if seeing behind some of them gave me some disorientation from the space folding causing some locations to overlap depending on from which angle I looked at it.
Eventually though I did find my way to the grand staircase and floated my way to the seventh floor, found a hallway practically glowing with a nexus of magical energy across from a tapestry of, if the plaque is to be believed, Barnabus Barmy attempting to teach trolls to dance the ballet. Who on earth would paint such a thing? Unless this is supposed to be historically accurate, than I have even more questions!
Shaking my head, I requested of the room my desire for the room of lost things where I would find Ravenclaw's Diadem, watching with interest the way the magic shifted and reacted to my presence as I passed the location of the magical nexus three times, causing a door to appear. Fascinating. And unless I miss my guess, part of what I'm looking at would allow me a limited form of telepathy, at least in picking up the desires of a person at any given moment. Certainly not a bad thing for my information gathering purposes, but one I already had a limited form of in regards to what a person felt about me currently. Now knowing a person's current desires in general would be useful, assuming I use the magic to check. I have the unfortunate feeling I'm going to end up forgetting half of the stuff I'm able to do until it specifically comes up somewhere down the line.
Shaking my head, I entered the room of lost things and happily followed the glowing arrow to the diadem and blocking its magic from affecting me just as easily as the others. I then turned and used the door I'd asked for that would open out onto the grounds. A few moments later and the diadem was no longer a Horcrux. Five down, two to go! The cup in Gringotts, and…
Hm… Harry, then the diary, ring, locket, and diadem in that order… Now just the cup, and… what? What's left? Not Nagini, Voldemort's not created… that… yet…
Voldemort. That's the last piece the Dementor's sensing. Well I'll be darned. I guess it makes sense. I wonder how he's doing, what with having a good chunk of his soul now damned into the guts of a Dementor? At least half of it has gone on to wherever. Or at least disappated. Should Voldemort himself be next, or should that be left to go on too?
Technically all that's required to finish this is the cup. If I can get Gringott's to hand it over, then the wraith may just disappear. I wonder what merry havoc that's playing on the prophecy about Harry? Or hell, any prophecies for that matter? I'm an out of context problem after all. Would this verse's magic have even factored me in at all before I showed up?
Perhaps I'll find out later. I'd rather this be done before the sun comes up. There's not much of the night left anymore. Already the sky is beginning to lighten up. Pre-dawn.
Warping over to Gringotts, I ordered the Dementor to stay up in the sky and dropped down and entered into the bank. Stepping into line, I requested a meeting with Ragnok. Considering my current status with the Goblins, my request was granted fairly quickly.
Things weren't quite as smooth sailing as I'd hoped though. I explained the situation and while the Goblins would gladly help me with offing the Dark Lord, or any wizard for that matter, they were bound by treaty magically to uphold the sanctity of the vaults. While a Goblin could lead me to the vault and use a loophole to stop the dragons from attacking, and yet another loophole to open the door, if I actually entered the vault and they could prove it, with even a flicker of suspicion, and this meeting itself counted, then the Goblins would be bound by treaty to immediately mark me as an enemy of the bank and treat me as such.
I hummed and wondered if doing that wouldn't just default my account to the Goblins and forfeit the blood gold I'd already given them, in which case wouldn't it have been more profitable for them to just let me stumble upon that little clause so they could just take what they want?
Ragnok at that point gritted his teeth and seemed to be sweating a little before admitting while that might have been an option if I had anything less than a premium account, they wouldn't for a combination of factors. One being, I do have a premium account, so like all those who did, which generally meant certain purebloods and the Ministry, required them to be honest and act with good faith by magically enforced treaty.
Another being, they had already run out of their previous source of blood gold a long time ago, and I'd already implied that I had more, so unless they wanted to lose potential access to that source, it would actually not be profitable to betray me or simply attempt to get the rest from my corpse.
And lastly, they were not fools. While I regularly blocked most magic from affecting me, in general I hadn't stopped my magic from radiating outwards except in certain cases involving certain wards, so the Goblins had already felt my magic, and their magical sensors and runes had been triple checked to be sure, and agreed that if they went to war with me, they would be risking species suicide alla Noita. The only reason it wasn't a guarantee rested solely on how merciful I was feeling at the time. Considering the amount of blood gold I had given them and how much more I potentially still had, they figured the chances of that weren't very high.
I thought about that for a moment, then agreed they weren't wrong. Especially considering they'd already heavily implied that if I weren't so powerful or they bound by treaty, they would have backstabbed me for my blood gold and quite happily at that already.
Ragnok looked to actually be in pain before admitting that I wasn't wrong.
Which rather left us at an impasse.
I knew of course, what they'd have done to Harry later on, which was why I asked those questions in the first place. Ultimately I'm left in the position of needing to decide what to do with a race of beings just as bad as their namesake and only barely held in civility thanks to a number of treaties and forced into the role of bankers of all things. While the status quo is held, this whole situation is a timebomb waiting to explode, and I can either leave it… or I can do something about it.
The question is, what?
A few minutes of thinking didn't yield me an answer, and Ragnok continued to watch, visibly nervous if the beads of sweat on his forehead are any indication.
I need more information, I decided.
"You know, I was going to leave it, but there's something I've been fairly curious about for a while now." I said, leaning back in my chair. "I'm not a local. By any context of the word. And as far as I'm aware, blood gold is from my neck of the multiverse and shouldn't be available here. At all. And yet, your goblin teller in the lobby recognized it instantly. Implied that you lot had a source of it a while back that you'd since run out of. Curious that, don't you think?"
Ragnok, if anything, looked even more nervous. "Yes, very curious."
"Hmmm…" I studied the Goblin before nodding and standing up. "Good news, Ragnok. I've decided to hold off on slaughtering your race. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go fetch something from the Ministry. Shouldn't take me a moment. I'll be right back."
I turned around and started to leave.
"If I may… Noita… What do you plan to go get?" the director of Gringotts asked.
I paused at the door, with it halfway open and looked back over my shoulder with a smile. "Why, a time turner of course."