CHAPTER 16
Ava had put Icarus down and let him investigate. She told him to not go too far away in case he found trouble.
After cleaning the bathroom to a state it was sanitary once again. She went to find where Icarus was. She looked everywhere and when she went into the kitchen, she saw a sight you can only see once in a lifetime. It was a glimpse of a rare moment.
Icarus was hanging on to the hem of Kreature's pillow case he was wearing and was sliding on his butt or back feet like he was skiing or being pulled like a sled. Kreature did not even act like he had a kitten sliding around being dragged behind him. As Kreature turned, so did Icarus. Ava had her mouth open. It was like her funny fuse broke for a moment. She had both hands to her face over her mouth.
Sirius and Harry walked up and stared at the cat and house elf and started dying in laughter. It broke Ava from her trance and they laughed until they cried. Ava walked up to Kreature and said, "Excuse me, Kreature. You could have stopped Icarus, my kitty, from being dragged behind you?" Kreature just looked up at her, so seriously.
He said, "Kreature thought he needed a ride for a while. The kitty didn't seem to mind Kreature being his friend." She giggled and kissed Kreature on his forehead.
"Thank you for entertaining him. It was very sweet of you." He looked up at Ava.
"Kreature likes Lady Ravencraft-Blackstone. She treats, Kreature kindly." She patted him on the shoulder.
She went into the sitting room and Sirius asked, "What the hell did he say?"
"He thought he needed a ride for a while and the kitty didn't mind being his friend. That was the funniest thing I have ever seen." She started laughing again, setting Harry and Sirius both off again laughing.
Sirius was smiling and said, "Harry and I are going into town for food and supplies. We'll be back afterwards ok? Unless you want to go?"
"No, no it's fine. I'll be ok here. I'm going to explore a bit." She told him. They both left out the door.
She went exploring the house looking in and around everything. The elf heads mounted in the wall were fricking horrifying. The creepy artifacts were from the Gothic era. Yes, the Black's we're strange people in their decor.
As she was looking around she went up in the attic and was poking around. She felt an odd vibration coming from under a tarp. It was dark and felt uncomfortable, evil. She lifted the tarp and felt it coming from a small box. She picked it up and found a locket inside, it was a feeling like pulsing or a heartbeat. The sickening feeling coming off it was dangerous and she wanted Dumbledore to take a look at it. He was wiser than her. She just wanted to protect Sirius and Harry from something so evil in the house. She took it and went down stairs and put it in her purse. She continued on her walk through. The house was filled with doxies, dead puffskein nests, a boggart in a roll-up desk rattling to get out. Eww... There was much cleaning to be done.
Icarus came running and jumped up on the couch and was mewling like crazy. "Icarus, what did you find, honey? Show me come on."
She followed Icarus and had her wand ready. He was leading out the back door on the porch in the corner was a nest of sorts and a little tiny white kitten was no more than a few days old making little squeaking noises. She scooped it up and took it into the house with Icarus following her. She thought, 'What is this deja vu?'
She wrote a note and left it on the coffee table and gathered up Icarus, her purse and the tiny newborn kitten. She told Kreature, "Tell both the of the boys when they get back, that I had a newborn kitty to save that was on the back porch and I will be at Hagrid's. If you don't want to tell them, just give them the note I left on the coffee table." She kissed his cheek and left out the front door. She apparated to Hagrid's hut.
She knocked on the door. Hagrid answered and said, "Well how are ya doing Ava? Whatcha got thar'?" She showed him. "Well I'll be, you shore know how ta find em', don't ya?"
"Hagrid I was helping Sirius clean up his house and Icarus found this little baby on the back porch abandoned. He led me to it. Can you help me out?" Ava asked.
Hagrid chuckled, "Of course I can. Ya still got the bottle?" She nodded yes. "Then if ya still have the charmed bottle to store the milk in I can fill it with what I have still. She handed him the baby kitten and ran off to the castle.
When she walked in the main doors she ran into Dumbledore and stopped, "I have something I need to give you it is dangerous and I only entrust it to you." She reached in her purse and pulled out the box. She unshrunk it. "I will stop by your office in a little while to explain. I need to go get my kitten baby bottle, I found another orphan on Sirius' back porch. It's at Hagrid's and I need to get the pouch too." He took it from her and said Ok. He was headed to his office. She ran to her room and grabbed everything she needed.
When she returned to Hagrid's, they settled down and she fed the baby. He told her how to do a diagnostic spell and it showed the kitten was in good health and a female. Icarus was sitting on the table watching the tiny kitten. It was kinda cute. It was like he was it's little guardian. She told Hagrid about the house elf pulling Icarus around the kitchen. They both laughed. She apologized but said she had to go to see Dumbledore. She thanked him for everything. She slipped the newborn kitten around her neck, put Icarus on her shoulder and the milk bottles in her purse. She went to go to Dumbledore's office.
She knocked on his door and went in. He was sitting with Severus looking at the locket. She said, "I found it at Sirius', 12 Grimmauld Place. The guys went off to the store and I was exploring the house to see what condition it was all in. I felt it. It has a heartbeat pulse I felt. It's evil and has….. a soul. Its a weird feeling like it's alive and very dark. I brought it to you because, I know you are more aware of what forms of dark magic things can take, than I am."
Dumbledore said, "No, I'm glad you brought it to me and if you ever find anything else like it again, you bring it to me."
"Albus, what the hell is that?" She asked him.
"It's a horcrux, Ava. It embodies a fragment of a soul in it. I believe it belongs to Voldemort." Dumbledore said.
"What the hell was it doing at Sirius' place, I wonder? Do you think his brother put it there for some reason? He told me his brother was a death eater." She glanced at Severus then back at Dumbledore.
"It's possible. Regulus Black has been dead for over 14 years. This must have been stored there all this time." Dumbledore told her.
"Can we destroy it? It's really nasty. I can feel it crawling around me. I got a faint feeling like this once before." She said musing out loud.
Bother Snape and Dumbledore heads snapped up and said at the same time, "Where!" She jumped.
"Umm… on the seventh floor in the left corridor across from a tapestry of some guy teaching trolls ballet." She told them.
"Can you take us there?" Snape asked. She nodded.
Once they arrived Dumbledore asked her, "See if you can feel where you sensed it the strongest?" She proceeded to walk up one side and down the other until she was walking back and forth along the wall trying to sense where she felt it the strongest. When suddenly a door appeared and shocked her. She looked at them both and turned the knob.
She opened it and they all walked inside to find a vast and endless room filled with tons and tons of stuff in great massive piles and walkways between them. Snape asked, "What is this place?" Dumbledore didn't answer but just looked around.
She held up her hand to silence him. She pointed in a direction and started slowly walking until she found a huge pile in front of her. She consintrated like she was listening to feel for the heartbeat direction. She handed Icarus, her kitten in the pouch and her purse to Dumbledore. She started to climb the mountain of furniture and stuff. She was almost to the top and stopped and felt it coming from a box. She opened the box and saw an old fashioned tiara. She closed the lid and started climbing back down.
Once she was down she handed the box to Snape and took Icarus, the pouch and her purse back. "I think that's another one. It feels really disgusting the same way as the other."
"It's Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem. The locket is Salazar Slytherin's locket. They both have been defiled by Voldemort." Dumbledore stated. They started to walk to the exit.
She stopped suddenly, as if in a daze, in front of a cabinet and aimed her wand at it and blasted it until it disintegrated. Both men looked at her puzzled. She commented, "It had to be done for some reason, though I don't know why." and kept walking to the exit. The loud noise caused the to kitten start crying she scratched Icarus and petted the newborn to claim it down.
She picked up the conversation where they left off. "It's a damn shame. I hate to see them ruined by such a filthy excuse for a human being." She shook her head. "Have you ran across others he created like this?"
"One other last year and Harry destroyed it. It was his diary when he was a young man." Dumbledore said.
"Well there is three so far can we destroy them now? I ask because it's like a headache by a bunch of pins pricking my brain." She said to them.
"Let's figure it out in my office." Dumbledore said. They closed the he door and headed to the office.
They all sat down in Dumbledore's office discussing the horcruxes and Ava said, "Well you said Harry destroyed the diary with a basilisk fang. Can we get another fang or something that kills a basilisk? If it's strong enough to kill a basilisk, maybe it can kill a horcrux?"
Dumbledore snapped his head up and looked at her. "Say that again?" He told her.
She repeated, "I said that either get another fang or get the thing that killed the basilisk." He got up and took the sword of Griffindor from the wall of his office. He put the diadem on the floor and smashed it. The horcrux let out an ear piercing scream as it died. She looked at Dumbledore in surprise. She started calming her cats again.
"You are one very brilliant person, Ava. You figured it out for us. The sword of Griffindor is what Harry used to kill the basilisk, but he used the basilisk venom to destroy the horcrux. The sword is goblin made silver, it absorbs that which makes it stronger. It has basilisk venom in it. It is the perfect horcrux destroyer." Snape looked completely surprised.
Snape said to Dumbledore, "We should have figured that out."
"We should have, but she led us there through logical thinking. Just like she saved us finding two horcruxes." Dumbledore said proudly.
Ava said, "If you follow the pattern of logical thinking, Albus, then if he wanted to defile the houses by it's represented items, the Hufflepuff item should be one also. Did he ever have an item he kept close to himself also?" Dumbledore smiled big at her.
"Yes, but where to look? He did have a family ring he wore for a while and suddenly one day stopped. Funny, I just never noticed that before." Dumbledore said thinking out loud.
"Well…" she said, "to keep it hidden, it would have to be in a secure place. It would have to be in a place he would think of nobody to look for it. Somewhere like a bank or a in someones home that's not accessible, or a room unreachable. Do you think he could have involved the death eaters in some of this because, Regulus Black had the locket. Do you think maybe he would have involved others in squirreling away horcruxes too?" Dumbledore looked at Snape questionably.
Dumbledore said, "Lucius Malfoy was suspiciously thought of by myself and Harry to have planted the diary on Ginny Weasley in the bookstore."
Snape said, "Bellatrix Lestrange is the only one who was in his upper echelon to have had anything entrusted too. She would lick his feet if asked." He shuddered saying that.
"Does she have a bank vault?" Ava asked. Both men looked at each other, then back at her. "What if, just hear me out." She paused. "What if the goblin's were told that a dangerous piece of dark evil magic, a horcrux, was being kept in Bellatrix Lestranges vault that is detrimental to their well-being. Just say it's in the form of a cup. What if they went in there and removed the object to destroy it or, at least looked into it. If it's not there, it's not there. What harm would it do?" They both nodded.
Dumbledore got out a quill and wrote a letter to Gringott's Bank. He gave it to Fawkes to deliver. Her head went down and hung. Dumbledore glanced at her. Her head snapped up. She looked at Dumbledore in the eyes with a distant look. Her eyes were dialated huge almost black. Dumbledore asked, "What is it child?" He tilted his head sideways looking at her questioningly.
She said in a faraway voice, "No, Albus… you must not go there to the shack alone… You must take me with you to the shack… You must never hunt for it alone without me… Your temptation is too strong there… I can protect you… It will cost you your life, if you leave me behind… You will die… the curse is black, of the hand." Her head goes down and she closes her eyes and slumps forward.
Snape was looking at her with his mouth hanging open, listening to the exchange between them. "What is she talking about Albus? Is she in a trance? She knows where you want to go, doesn't she?"
Dumbledore nods his head and says, "It's just a hunch I have to find another one. Yes, she is in a trance."
Severus asks, "You will bring her with you?"
"I will, of course. I wish I knew what she sees ahead of us." Dumbledore muttered. "We need to keep her close to us. She may be the key to stop this."