Disclaimer:
I don't own anything in relation to Harry Potter except for my own copies of the books. This was written just for the enjoyment of writing and I make no money off it.

Chapter Summary:
Having a few hours to kill before Gringotts open, Harry decides to take care of a little errand. However, he does not realise just how important this 'little' errand actually is.

Author's Note:
To all those that have review, I thank you. The amount of people who have said what a good job I have done have spurred me on to write this quickly. I have also taken some of your suggestions into mind. In this chapter, there is no violence or gore. This one is just really a filler chapter that continues an important part of the plot. Hope you enjoy it because I sure enjoyed writing it.

Chapter Three
A Little Errand

It was a small town, which no one would say was worth to visit. It was situated between two hills having but a handful of small shops and a pub. There were some sparse houses and atop one of those hills was a graveyard and atop the other was a large house. The locals still called it the Riddle House.

Down the lone road that cut through the village of Little Hangleton where most of the buildings lay surrounded there was a man. He was surveying the street with dark emerald eyes and rubbing his hand to his lightning shaped scar. Harry Potter had come to Little Hangleton.

"Where are we?" asked 'light' Harry.

"We are in Little Hangleton" answered 'dark' Harry, the dominant one at the moment.

"What the hell are we doing here? This is where Voldemort was reborn."

"I know but there are still some hours left until Gringotts even opens, let alone the other stores down Diagon or Knockturn Alley. That withstanding, I suppose now is as good a time as any to complete an errand."

"An errand? What do we have to do here of all places?"

"Some time ago, I have gained the ability to sense a high concentration of magic. There is a source of magic here that is very strong and very dark. It is similar to ours and the only other time I have sensed magic like this was from Voldemort but our scar tells us he's not near here at all. There is something here that is very suspicious."

"Okay… let's go check this out then, Nancy Drew."

"Really? I see us more as the Hardy Boys in this situation. It's up in that house upon the hill, the Riddle House." Harry began the slow climb up the small hill and came up to the large two story house.

Upon entering the dilapidated manor, Harry passed by the dusty staircase and stopped in front of a door that seemed to fade into the wall. It actually seemed to be designed to not be noticed but there was also a small feeling in the back of Harry's mind that he should overlook this door. "There's something not right about this door."

"Not only does this door seem to be designed to not be noticed but it seems to be spelled that way as well. There seems to be muggle repellent charms, notice-me-not charms and camouflage charms on it. Some pretty strong ones, in fact. It just seems to scream 'There are secrets in here.' Who are we to deny a request, huh?"

"Oh great, now we can communicate with doors. Wasn't snakes enough?"

"Relax, I was joking. I don't really hear what doors say. I just wanted to break the tension. Come on, let's check this out." Placing a hand on the rusted doorknob, he turned it and the door opened up with an eerie creak, exposing a small stairway.

Going down it, Harry found himself in a simple basement. It was an average box shaped room with nothing in it. The walls were falling apart and there were cobwebs everywhere. Moving to the centre of the room, he stopped and looked down. "It's right below us."

"Well, how the hell are we going to get down there?"

"Where there's a huge amount of explosive magic." He held up his hands a football sized sphere of a shiny black liquid that had just formed. He continued, "There's always a way." Throwing it as hard as he could against the wooden floorboards, he found the centre of the room collapse to reveal a gaping fissure which Harry was now falling down.

After falling the thirty or so feet through the dark chasm that he had just uncovered, Harry stopped after he impacted the tiled floor. He was now kneeling in a newly formed crack in the floor of a large circular room. "Yeah… We'll going to feel that in the morning and it's definitely going to be painful."

The circular room he had found himself in grandly decorated. There were dark obsidian pillars lining the walls and the floor was covered by coloured tiles that formed a mosaic of a serpent. The earlier blast had dislodged some rocks from the chasm and there were now some piles of rumble strewn across the room. There was one door out.

Taking the only exit Harry found himself walking along a long dark corridor. After a few minutes walking along it, he emerged in a small chamber that seemed to have been hastily carved out of the ground unlike the previous room. There were flaming torches on the wall. In the centre of the room on a pedestal lay what seemed to be a huge block of ice that encased what seemed to be a small golden cup with two finely wrought handles. There was a badger engraved into it.

"Hey, that's the symbol of Hufflepuff. Man, I never would have believed that something Hufflepuff would be a big source of dark magic."

"It's not just that Hufflepuff's cup seems to be giving off a lot of dark magic but I think the more important fact is why is a relic of Hufflepuff doing under the Riddle House, a house that belonged to the father of the awfully proud Heir of Slytherin. You remember Malfoy, another proud Slytherin; 'Imagine being put in Hufflepuff, I think I'd rather leave.' They obviously don't think highly of them. This is definitely weird."

"Well, let's try to actually get this thing first and then we can work out these conspiracy theories."

"Very well then." Taking out his black wand, Harry pointed it at the block of ice and sent an 'incendio' at it. The ice cube was engulfed in fire and after a minute, it went out. The ice block however had not been affected at all. "Okay, this may be a little harder than I last thought."

Moving towards the ice block, he placed a hand on it and traced it along the smoothe surface. It felt exactly like ice but it wasn't cold at all. It was actually quite warm. "Okay, this doesn't seem like ice at all."

"Well, I think it was rather obvious from our last attempt that we weren't dealing with just regular ice. Heat is not going to work on this thing. I think we need to pour pure magic into it and I suggest using yours."

"Mine? Why does it have to be mine?"

"Well, there is the fact that you will not be able to use your store of magic until we get back to Hogwarts and Dumbledore removes your block. So I don't think it would be that big a sacrifice to use some of your magic."

"Okay then, just hurry up and do it." There seemed to be white steam pouring off his body and forming into a large orb of white liquid in his right hand about a metre wide. Aiming his arm at the ice block the orb began to move towards it. At contact, there was a deafening hiss and blue smoke began to fume. A quick Bubblehead Charm later and Harry was protected from the toxic gases that were emitted.

After the ice was fully melted, Harry took Hufflepuff's cup in his hands and examined it. "Can you believe I had to expend the whole of your magical reserves to melt all of that? Let's just say that we're lucky that we have the whole summer to let it recover. I think I know how to dispose of this."

"Really, how will you do that?"

"The same way we got rid of Bellatrix" answered 'dark' Harry, a small smirk appearing on his face as he reminisced. The air seemed to grow cold again and the torches that lit the room dimmed and flickered. A black and white mist started to come from the cup which Harry breathed in. After that was done, the room returned to normal and Harry was holding a cracked cup.

"You know, that wasn't the first time I felt something like that. This cup seemed oddly familiar to Riddle's Diary. This is definitely strange. This is just something else that doesn't make sense in this conspiracy. Well anyways, now that this is disposed of I guess there is nothing else..."

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"There's something else. Not as strong as this one but still quite powerful. The cup's magical signature must have been enough to mask this other source. It seems to be quite close as well, maybe only a mile away. We have to get out of this place first before we can apparate there because the wards around this place are strong enough to stop even us."

As he was walking back down the corridor Harry continued, "You know it was actually quite easy to get to that cup. You would have thought that someone would try to make it harder for us, wouldn't they?"

And as if an answer to his question, a large bolder was headed for Harry who dodged. Looking into the tiled room, he saw a bulky figure that seemed to be made up of random chunks of rocks. "Oh great, a golem. That's rather ingenious actually; a person would have to expend a large amount to magic to get to the cup and would probably not have enough to fight off a golem on the way back. Too bad, they didn't plan for us to have two magic cores."

Running quickly into the room, Harry stood facing the golem who was now in the process of lifting up another large boulder. It was massive, about the size of Hagrid, roaring with its stony mouth: its black eyes of rock glaring at Harry. "It doesn't look that bad. This shouldn't take too long."

"Not that bad, have you seen the size of that thing? How the bloody hell is this not going to take long?"

Harry jumped out of the way of the thrown boulder and took his time aiming his wand at the golem. Just as it was about to throw another boulder, Harry fired a 'reducto' that shattered one of the rocks that was on the golem's chest, which caused the rest of it to avalanche, reducing the menacing giant into a pile of rubble. After blowing on his wand gunslinger style Harry simply stated, "That's how, you have to remember that any creature made of rock will always have a keystone. I would expect a magically exhausted wizard wouldn't have been able to handle that easy-to-dispose-of golem though."

"Show off!"

Levitating himself back up to the basement, Harry promptly left the Riddle House and apparated away. He now found himself in the middle of the road and he could spot Little Hangleton in the distance. Passing a sign that read: 'Great Hangleton, 5 miles' in the opposite direction and: 'Little Hangleton, 1 mile' in the direction they were going, Harry walked along the road a bit finding himself going down a steep downward slope. Harry however veered off the road at a point and traveled through a gap in the hedge that outlined the road.

Harry was now on a narrow dirt track boarded by higher and wilder hedgerows than those he had left behind. The path was crooked, rocky and potholed, slopping downhill like the road, and it seemed to be headed for a patch of dark trees a little below him. As Harry got there however, he was able to notice a building half hidden among the tangle among the tangle of trunks. Its walls were mossy and so many tiles had fallen from the roof that the rafters were showing in places. Nettles grew all around it, their tips reaching the windows that were thick with grime. On the front door was nailed the remains of a dead snake. All that was left was the remnants of its skin.

Approaching the house, Harry suddenly fell to the ground at ten feet away from it as ghostly voices started to scream in his head, reminiscent of the effect the dementors had on him but there were none around.

"Lily, it's him. Take Harry and run…"

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry."

"Stand aside you silly girl…"

"Kill the spare!"

'-it's too late Harry.'

'There's nothing you can do, Harry… nothing… he's gone."

"Kill me now, Dumbledore…"

"If death is nothing, Dumbledore, then kill the boy…"

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Pushing aside visions of green lights and the dialogues yelling in his mind, Harry crawled towards the door, inch by agonising inch. When he finally reached the door, it all stopped and only the sounds of the forest could be heard. Harry was lying on the floor gasping for breath.

"Well that sure was a low blow: using the one thing that truly affects us. That was horrible; it felt like there were hundreds of dementors here." Harry was now lifting himself from the floor using the wall of the house to help him.

"Well, it's not going to stop us. Well, there are obviously a lot of magic in the air around this house. That could have helped weaken the amount of dark magic from the source, enough for it to be masked by another."

He almost fell over when the snake nailed to the door started hissing and turned to face Harry. It hissed, "A warning to those who seek what is inside: be you not worthy to step inside the House of Gaunt like a tainted mudblood you will not be able to enter without experiencing excruciating pain. You will be wishing death before the end. Just a little warning for you who can not even begin to comprehend it."

"Please, just open up" asked Harry in parseltongue.

"Ah, you are someone with the noble gift of Salazar Slytherin. You are indeed worthy to enter but heed this. The Dark Lord does not take kindly to those who seek his secrets without his permission. If you are not powerful enough you will not survive to escape this house. So leave now if you are a weakling squib."

The door opened on its own accord with the customary creak. Inside, the house was in the same condition as the outside. It looked like nobody had used this house in decades. The house seemed to contain three small rooms. The largest of them however was the only one that interested him as Harry saw a roaring purple fire in the middle of the room. In the middle of the flames, he could see a ring: an intricate coat of arms engraved onto its gem.

First trying a simple water charm on the fire, he found once again that the normal way of going about things was not going to work. "I think we have to just put our hand in the fire and pull out the ring. I think that this was meant to judge if you were worthy enough."

"What would happen if we were not?"

"Oh, I don't know. The flesh could be burnt from our arm and we would be left with a withered one. In any case, we may still get the ring." Taking a deep breathe, Harry plunged his left arm into the flames and scooped out the ring. His arm was unaffected.

"Well, I guess we were worthy then?"

"I don't know. It might be the fact that our magical signature is so close to Voldemort's. I mean the snake outside did say this was one of his secrets. This is rather mysterious indeed. When will the conspiracies end?"

"Calm down. Just dispose of the thing already and let's get out of here. The Sun has already risen and I believe it is past seven now. The shops should be opening now. Also, this place creeps me out." Taking the ring in his hand, he sucked out the magical (and perhaps spiritual) essence from it the same way he had did for the cup and Bellatrix.

Then after putting the ring on his left ring finger, he departed the house. Having gotten far enough away, he then apparated without a sound to his next destination, never to return to the area of Little Hangleton again. The snake nailed to the door was watching him the whole time.

"Farewell Dark One" hissed the snake and then it fell limp against the door, looking as lifeless as it had done before this day. He would be disturbed sometime later this summer by a tall wizard with a long flowing white beard and sparkling blue eyes behind half moon spectacles. The snake would definitely enjoy it when this particular wizard realises that he had come a little too late.

Author's Notes:
So there you are. Please note that some of the references on this chapter have come directly from the books. So I took out two Horcruxes with one Chapter. I tried my best to think of effective obstacles and challenges. I hope they were good and this chapter was interesting to read. Now, there is more room later in the story for other things like more bouts of violence and gore or actual romance (gasp). Please, review because they actually are a lot of help to me and give me a motivation to go on and write. All suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks.