Chapter 12

The Department of Mysteries was unlike any of the contracts he had taken or 'personal projects' he had taken on before. For those he could watch the target to get an idea of patterns, when there were guards there and when there weren't. He could covertly analyse their wards so he knew how long it would take to break them and scout the location to find a safe place to do so from. He could bribe a lowly clerk in the ministry or just use compulsion charms and to get a copy of the building plans so he had a predetermined exit and places to hide if he needed to. He knew the route to and from where he needed to go. Now he had none of that.

The Department of Mysteries wasn't heavily guarded like Gringotts was, in fact he doubted they had any guards at all, but he assumed it was just as well defended. He was sure it was covered in layer upon layer of wards, defensive charms, detection charms and identification charms that would be harder to crack then any manor.

Obviously there had to be a gap in the defensive spells at the entrance, but that still left all the other spells to deal with. The department had been there since long before the Ministry was even founded in 1707, Edgar said it had been there when he was alive in 984. Then it had been the research centre of the British wizarding world and he had actually been there once to work on a runic array with a group of other wizards, creating what would evolve to become the muggle repelling ward.

According to Edgar the entrance chamber was circular and lined with doors that led to various rooms but the wall spun rapidly when someone entered, making it impossible to tell which door was which or even which one you entered through. So he had a little information, though it was over a thousand years out of date, but he doubted they would have changed it, or at least he hoped they hadn't. So they had spent hours trying to figure out a way to know which doors went where or at least mark the one he came in from. They would have been stupid not to make the doors impervious to magic so he couldn't just mark the exit with a colour changing charm.

In the end it was Salazar who came up with the best idea. The room would only start spinning once he fully entered, so he could reach his arm around and spray a subtle smell on the wall next to the door. When he wanted to come back out all he would have to do is conjure a snake and tell it to follow the smell. It would be unnoticeable to any Unspeakables that came past so it wouldn't get him noticed, but a snake would easily be able to follow it with its superior sense of smell.

That fixed his exit problem, but it didn't help for the rest of it. He would try it but he somehow doubted he could just use the point me spell to guide him to the prophecy room. Essentially he was going in blind and there was nothing else he could do about it.

It wasn't long ago that he was at the Ministry claiming for the basilisk; the headquarters of the ICW were made secret after their previous offices were attacked by Grindelwald, killing hundreds of employees, politicians and aurors. As such, he had to contact them through a Ministry that was part of the ICW and then be issued a portkey. The claim of a basilisk had got him an audience in front of the full panel, having to consciously resist the urge to kill Dumbledore when he saw him.

It had gone very well minus the glares for the gift of Parseltongue when he had shown the pensieve memory once swearing a magical oath that it was genuine, but he had expected that. Not everyone glared, but most did, even those he knew followed the ideology of Grindelwald. The irony amused him slightly, that they would condemn him for being able to speak to snakes when they followed the ideology of their false image of Salazar Slytherin, the man who had made the gift famous. The ICW representatives were elected by the Ministry of the country they were representing, and it was always the bigoted purebloods that were in control.

He had shown the memory up to when he stopped removing air and then when he walked around the dead basilisk, missing out him calling his house elves or apparating. That would show he was in control of the wards, and that would bring only trouble. When he had been asked how he found the entrance and he had told them about Myrtle the entirety of the panel stared harshly at Dumbledore for a few seconds, and Ares immensely enjoyed the look of embarrassment on his face. The old man had tried to question him about the missing time, probably in an attempt to link him to Slytherin, to which Ares had replied that if he wanted to watch a box with a dying basilisk in for the rest of the day then to go ahead. He had shut up after that.

He had managed to claw 20 million galleons from them after a healthy dose of 'debate', citing the historical precedent for it and getting a goblin report that showed the inflation. The ICW hadn't been happy, but they didn't have much choice. Legally he should have received more, but he had decided to lower it as a 'compromise'. He had given them the number of one of his many vaults that he held under a different name, and then the gold had been pushed through hundreds of other accounts. He really did love the goblins and Slashjaw had been well rewarded for his efforts.

So it was in late April that Ares apparated into the Ministry atrium wearing plain robes and at utterly forgettable face and unhurriedly made his way towards the elevators. At the desk he handed over a wand he had taken from a drunk in Knockturn Alley the night before to the bored looking wizard behind the counter, not even listening to his disinterested reply before taking the wand back and walking away. It gave him a horrible feeling to even hold the wand, as if the magic inside it was dying, and he knew that if he were to perform magic through it the spells would not be as powerful as even his wandless magic, but it served its purpose of not drawing attention. His own wand was far too distinctive and far too personal for him to hand it over to anyone.

He had chosen to come during a Wizengamot meeting so that the aurors who would usually be patrolling the ministry for suspicious activity were instead controlling the reporters and others who were watching the session. With so many rich purebloods in one room it was a prime target so high security was demanded.

The elevator was empty when he stepped into it and he pressed the button for Level two, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He needed an excuse to be in the ministry; if the theft was ever discovered and they checked the visitors log and found that he had entered, done nothing and spoken to nobody before leaving hours later then they would have a lead. It was not much of one, he looked nothing like he truly did, but he was unwilling to leave even that.

So he was going to report a few of the crimes he had overheard in various seedy corners of Knockturn Alley over the previous few days, things that were not bad enough to warrant his personal attention but bad enough he wanted the perpetrators gone.

When he stepped out of the elevator it was not into a long corridor as he would on any other level, instead he entered a wide, brightly lit room with duelling platforms and dummies taking up the majority of the space, several aurors duelling against either a dummy or between themselves. The wall on the left seemed to barely be there at all, only rising a few feet before cutting off to show rows and rows of desks, most of which were strewn with loose parchment and broken quills as aurors hunched over them scribbling out reports.

He walked slowly towards a small booth at the very back of the room, observing the aurors duelling as he did so. Auror training programmes were pretty much the same in every country so he knew just how they fought, but watching them duel when he wasn't the one fighting allowed him to hopefully find a few more weaknesses, not that he thought they were short on them. They never used anything more dangerous than a stunner except for in a few eastern European countries where crime was much more prevalent and much more violent, and he didn't see anything worse than that here even against dummies. That was a big reason why so often aurors died or the target escaped; because they were always hopelessly outmatched in terms of spells.

As he approached the counter a young looking witch looked up from whatever she was doing, a bored expression on her face.

"How can I help?" she asked, visibly stifling a yawn as she did so.

"I need to report a crime, a few of them actually."

"Through to the desk area, take a seat on one of the chairs to the right. An auror will be there shortly to take your statement." She said, her head already slumped forwards again.

Silently he turned and walked where she had said, dropping into a seat gracefully as he thought on his task. In theory the Department of Mysteries would be heavily warded, but he had seen and exploited the arrogance of wizards and their misguided belief that old meant strong and faultless. Hopefully the Unspeakables had fallen into the same trap.

"Hello, apparently you want to report a crime, or 'a few of them actually'?"

The familiar voice snapped him out of his mind even as it simultaneously ground to a halt. Out of every possible auror who could get sent over, it was her. Short dark pink hair, a sharp face that rounded slightly at the corners, pale skin and the familiar brown eyes that he remembered sparkling in mischief as children. His gut clenched even as his fingers twitched and his wrist began its twist to snap his wand into his hand before he wrestled back his control.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice sending another spike of unidentifiable emotion through him.

"Fine, you just reminded me of someone I used to know." He replied, his voice empty and his voice expressionless. Keeping them that way was one of the hardest things he had ever done, and he didn't even know what he would do if he allowed himself to lose the stranglehold he had over his emotions; he had no idea what exactly it was he was feeling.

"Right," Tonks said, her face clearly showing her scepticism, "just follow me to my desk and I'll take your statement. It shouldn't take long."

With that she started weaving through the chaos and ducking under the various memos that glided around the building, Ares following a few steps behind. The desk they came too was cluttered with piles of reports and empty inkpots and she quickly flipped a few photos face down before he had a chance to see what they were. He was far too distracted to even notice.

He recited his planned report almost mechanically, having to put more and more effort into controlling himself and his occlumency as time went by. All the while Tonks was giving him strange looks, ranging from suspicious to questioning, even with a spark of recognition when he started tapping his leg distractedly with his fingers. By the time he was done there was a maelstrom of different emotions swirling around his chest and he left as soon as he could, moving swiftly to the elevator with a muttered thank you.

Tonks continued to watch his back for a few seconds as he left, lost in her own mind. He had been seemingly at ease before she came over, but that had changed almost instantly. At first she had assumed he was one of the bigots who couldn't imagine a woman being an auror, disregarding the fact that the Head of the DMLE was a woman. But there had been none of the snide comments or glares when he thought she wasn't looking, in fact he had avoided looking at her at all. The whole time his face and voice had showed nothing, yet there were split seconds where his control would slip and something would flash across, far too quickly for her to begin to decipher. It was strange.

But it was the tapping that had caused her to retreat into memories of her childhood. Harry had tapped that exact same rhythm every time he was nervous or just bored to the point that she could almost hear it in her sleep. No one knew where he had even heard it before, but it had always been the same beat and now she remembered it as well as she remembered his voice. She allowed a sad sigh to escape her throat and her hair to darken to her natural black as she reached over her desk and stood the photos back up, photos that showed her and Harry smiling and laughing before he had died.

As he reached the elevator and began his descent to the Department of Mysteries, transfiguring his robes into a black hooded cloak as soon as he was out of sight, he finally analysed what it was that he was feeling.

There was the rage, the pure anger at their betrayal. There was the hurt and the resentment that they had left him. But there was also longing, and his anger spiked even further once he identified it. They had left him to animals, thrown him away as if he was nothing and yet he missed them? He had become more than they would ever be, but he still wanted their approval. His face twisted into a snarl underneath his hood as the elevator shuddered to a stop and he almost wanted to get caught, just so he could curse whoever it was that found him. But he pushed it down to deal with later; now was not the time for unpredictable emotions. There were more pressing matters to attend to first.

The corridor he stepped into once the doors of the elevators slid open was covered in pure black tiles, the walls unadorned but for the torches that provided sporadic light that flickered off the floor. On the left there was a set of stairs that descended downwards to the Wizengamot's judicial chambers, practically unused since the Death Eater trials over a decade ago. At the end of the long corridor was the plain black door that led to the entrance chamber and he stepped slowly out of the elevator towards it, pushing his magic outwards in all directions to detect any spells present. Up until the steps that led to Level ten he found nothing, but once past it he felt a few jolts indicative of spells.

Immediately he stood motionless and withdrew his wand, casting gentle detection charms across every inch of the walls and ceiling. He had no idea what spells were present or how sensitive they were, so he would have to limit the power in his spells and increase them slightly if need be. He found several detection, identification and alert charms that were all tied into one another, clearly so that they could work together to determine if the person approaching was an Unspeakable or not, and if they weren't alert whoever was in charge. They were extremely subtle and not very well known; most intruders would have missed them even if they were looking. Fortunately, Ares was not most intruders.

A few minutes of his wand carefully twirling through the air disabled the spells and he carried on moving, still looking for any further charms. He found several more charms and wards but nothing any more difficult than the first set, the Unspeakables clearly having expected those he had already bypassed to catch any intruders – another example of the hubris of wizards. He had expected layers upon layers of obscure charms and ancient wards but had found nothing more difficult than would be found at a shop that sold expensive and illegal artefacts. That was not to say they had not once been there, he could feel the remnants of them but they had crumbled until they were almost gone.

The door opened soundlessly and Ares withdrew a small bottle from his pocket before reaching around the doorframe and pouring its contents down the wall, casting a wandless charm to prevent any reaching the floor. Snakes were still animals and he didn't want it getting confused by multiple sources of the smell when he tried to leave.

When he entered the room he almost immediately had to close his eyes against the disorientating effect of the walls spinning, the light of the spinning torches searing a continuous streak of blue through his eyelids and into his retinas. When he opened his eyes a few moments later the torches were stationary once more and he blinked away the stars in his vision as he quickly laid his wand against his palm. He wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible; he didn't want to get caught by an Unspeakable.

"Point me Prophecy Room" he whispered. He didn't expect it to work and it didn't, his wand remained still against his palm, but he heard the click of a door opening behind him. Swiftly he turned on his heel, his wand ready to fight the Unspeakable that he assumed had come through the door, but there was no one. Just an open door.

He quickly made his way towards the door, his mind whirring. Was the entrance chamber voice activated? It must be, his spell hadn't worked, but it did seem to defeat the point of the whole defence if you could just say which room you wanted. At that thought he stopped in his tracks and cast another set of detection charms on the door to find more spells, these much more lethal, spells he disabled as he had before. There must have been more charms and wards over each of the doors.

The room he entered was vast and dark, the only light coming from the endless rows of glowing orbs that went as far as he could see. Surely he wouldn't have to search through every row; that would take weeks even for an Unspeakable to find what they needed. So he looked around, a ball of light appearing in his palm with barely a thought, and saw an old desk on which lay a thick leather bound book pushed against the wall, as he had expected there to be. When he flipped it open each page was filled with columns, each telling the year a prophecy was made, who made it, who it was made to, who each one was about; each row a different prophecy. He had no idea when the one that could concern him was made or which Seer had made it, though he had an idea who it was made to. But he did know one of the people concerned.

A twitch of his finger cast a searching charm and the pages flipped as if blown by a great wind before they came to a stop, a single entry glowing slightly.

S.P.T to A.P.W.B.D 18/7/1990 TMR and AN Row 97

Shit. It was about him then. Honestly he wasn't completely sure how he felt about that; chances were it said that he would have to kill him, and if it was Jack Potter's name in that book then the kid would probably get himself killed. Besides, he had already decided he was getting involved, he wanted Riddle dead. The man was an abomination, you had to be to consider making even one horcrux, and he killed indiscriminately and for sheer pleasure. He had to be put down like the rabid dog he was, and the old man was clearly unable to do so.

All that was left was to find out what the damn prophecy said.

He moved through the rows with long strides, glancing at each label as he passed until he reached Row 97. There, right on the corner, sat the prophecy that had ultimately turned him into what he was. Without it Voldemort would never have attacked, he would have never been sent away, he would never have suffered, he would have never met Olivia and never lost her. He would have never have become Ares Nightshade, he would just be a normal wizard.

And now it would determine his future as well as his past. How fitting.

He grabbed the small orb and dropped it into his pocket before he conjured another orb, identical to the one which he had just removed. It would not stand up to any test or analysis, it held no prophecy or magic beyond that which was present in all things, but when an Unspeakable walked past they would notice nothing amiss. There would be no gap on the shelves where there should not be.

Faint footsteps broke the still silence and Ares became smoke, rising into the endless shadows of the ceiling just in time to see an Unspeakable weaving through the shelves, walking straight past his conjuration. Several seconds later darkness coalesced into man once more and he walked back the way he had come into the entrance chamber, enabling the spells on the door as soon as his back cleared its frame. The room span as it had before and he didn't bother using Salazar's ingenious exit plan, instead simply asking for the exit. The door swung open.

As soon as he moved past the disabled spells he flicked his wand to allow the charms to work once more and reversed the transfiguration on his robes as the elevator sped back towards the atrium, leaving no evidence that he had ever been to the Department of Mysteries.

When the elevator doors pinged open there were countless people milling around the atrium, some with quills and notepads or cameras, some wearing expensive robes that were worth more than the journalists interviewing them would make in a year. Clearly the Wizengamot had let out, undoubtedly after discussing something utterly trivial.

Quickly he slipped through the crowd towards the apparition point, barely eliciting a passing glance from anybody. As soon as his feet touched the gravel he was striding up the path towards his home, the prophecy orb pressing coolly against him through his pocket with every step. He took a deep breath as he walked down the stone steps towards the training room that his 'tutors' had called home for years, pushing down his anxiety at the contents of the prophecy. All of them looked at him enquiringly when he entered, though only Rowan said anything.

"What happened?"

"It was easy, they have become arrogant. A few subtle charms and wards; that was it. There were remnants of ancient wards that even I would have been unable to identify, though they have decayed and broken long ago. I would assume that meant that the spells were lost or deemed 'dark' and so they did not renew them, and didn't add any others of their own. The prophecy was about me, though I have yet to hear it." Ares answered as he withdrew the blue orb from his pocket. They didn't need to know about meeting her.

Each of the portraits looked at him expectantly, their eyes darting between him and the orb, so he channelled a sliver of magic into the orb and it glowed brightly to form a ghostly image in its centre of a thin woman with frizzy hair draped in a shawl, her large bug like eyes clouded behind thick glasses. When she spoke it was in a strange, guttural rasp that made his hair stand up on end.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches
Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies
And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not
And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

After several minutes of silence all of them had a contemplative look on their faces, though Henry voiced what Ares himself had been thinking.

"If this prophecy is about you, why does it say 'born as the seventh month dies' if you were born in November?" he asked, murmurs of agreement coming from the other portraits.

"Prophecy is notoriously vague and not always literal," Salazar spoke up, "in this case I believe the word 'born' is not to be taken in the literal sense, but the symbolic one. Ares, your parents sent you away just days before your birth brother's birthday, thus setting in motion the events that led you here. Your blood adoption, also, could be seen as your rebirth so to speak. However, I do not believe that is what the prophecy is referencing." Here his voice became softer and apologetic, as if he knew what he was about to say would cause pain but he would say it anyway because he knew it was true.

"I believe that the prophecy is referring to the day Olivia died as the day that you were truly born; if she had not you would not be what you are and you would not be here. You would not have had the rage and the pain that drove you for so long, you would instead have ended up as kind and normal wizard, though a powerful one."

Stiffly Ares nodded his head in agreement with Salazar's theory, battling the pain that always came with the reminder of her death even as it melded with the emotions he had forced down earlier. It wasn't as bad as it had been; at first he had been unable to even think about her without feeling like he was drowning, but now he could think of the good times without being crushed by grief.

A further hour of discussion followed, trying to work out what was meant by each part. They thought that the unknown power may be his wandless ability or his ancestry that gave him access to countless tomes of unknown and powerful magic, though they couldn't really be sure. The mark Salazar thought was the emotional mark left on him by the attack, shown in his initial fear of being enclosed even though he no longer had it. It was thin, but it was all they could come up with until they found out more about Riddle, his childhood in particular. The attack set events in motion which eventually led to him being abused; maybe Riddle suffered a similar childhood.

It was the fourth line that took up much of their time though: "and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives". The first part was obvious – one of them had to kill the other. But the second part was more complex. It couldn't be literal, the fact that Voldemort wasn't dead and Ares was alive proved that, but it was also unlikely to be metaphorical. Ares could quite easily ignore the prophecy and move to one of his other properties in another country and be completely unaffected by Voldemort; he would continue living just as he was now. In the end they had come up with no credible answer for what "neither can live while the other survives" reallymeant.

One thing was clear though; he really had to find those Horcruxes.

He had been trying but had been having trouble because they had no idea where he would hide them and Riddle had been quite thorough in destroying all of his records in the Ministry archives. There was no mention of Tom Marvolo Riddle anywhere in the muggle records either, but he had hired a muggle private investigator to look anyway in case Riddle had missed something or they got lucky and something had been misfiled. Ares and all the portraits did agree, however, that he would not just throw them into the sea as he would if he wanted there to be no chance of them being destroyed. He was arrogant, to him pieces of his soul would have to be kept somewhere that he felt was good enough for them and meant something to him personally.

Ares did have a few ideas about what would he would use though. The diary had been a weapon, yes, but also likely incredibly personal to him at 16 years old. Salazar said he was obsessed with his heritage as Salazar's descendant much to the founder's dismay, so Ares theorised that he would use something linked to that. The only artefact that Salazar was known for was the locket that he wore in his portrait, and if he had found it Riddle would surely have used it. From that they thought he would have attempted to find a desecrate artefacts of the other three founders as well, an idea that filled Salazar with anger. That took the total to five, so it was likely there was at least one more they had missed.

He did have one possible place in mind though. At first Ares had concentrated on the name Riddle in an attempt to find Voldemort's birth family but it was not a pureblood name and was quite common in the muggle world. After a few weeks of trying he had finally realised that his middle name was a better bet, and kicked himself for not doing so sooner; it was much more distinctive and middle names were normally chosen after family members. It had barely taken him a day of looking through the family trees of pureblood families to find it; the House of Gaunt.

The Gaunts were well known for their claim of being Slytherin's descendants, as well as their insanity and tendency to marry their own siblings. Unfortunately Riddle had also destroyed every mention of the Gaunt home at the Ministry, only intensifying his suspicion that he had hidden a horcrux there. When he looked into the family, however, he found that Morfin Gaunt had been sent to Azkaban for the murder of several muggles, all named Riddle. That had led him to the village of Little Hangleton where he was sure the house was located but he had yet to check; the prophecy had taken priority. Now though he had nothing more important to do.

~Scene Change~

Silently he appeared on a hill at the edge of the sleepy village, the sun glinting off windows off small windows below him. Casting a charm that measured magical concentration he set off down the hill towards the woods that gave off a dark aura even from a distance, to those sensitive to magic it seemed to dim the morning sun. The light seemed to shy away from the forest as he approached and the branches of the trees reached eerily downwards, the feel of magic becoming stronger with each step. By now he had his wand out and cast detection charms every few paces to make sure he didn't miss anything until he came to a seemingly empty clearing, though he could tell there was something there but hidden behind powerful concealment charms.

His wand twirled in intricate patterns as he delicately analysed the wards, finding powerful wards covering the entirety of the clearing. They were all carefully tied together into a single base ward, which would make it near impossible to manipulate the threads without tripping any of the various alarms and curses that were embedded within them. He would have to break each one of them individually and hope that Voldemort didn't check before he had found the others.

Luckily there was not a ley line anywhere near Little Hangleton, otherwise it could take hours of constant work to break them. As it was Riddle must have ward stones which he powered up individually himself, probably pushing his magic into each one until his vision blurred judging by how powerful they were, and then relied on the natural magic that ran through everything on Earth to keep them running. Theoretically that would mean he could just overpower them, but he was nowhere near powerful enough to do so. It would take at least four of him to do it.

Taking a deep breath, he conjured a small seat and set some repelling wards of his own before he began to unravel the wards. There were wards aimed to incapacitate, to kill or even just to delay. Wards cast normally and wards cast in Parseltongue, some cast in both, and wards so obscure that very few people would even know about them.

By the time the final wards came crashing down morning had become afternoon, the sun beginning its descent below the horizon, and he rolled his shoulders as he stood up. Breaking wards, especially ones as powerful as these, was always draining and he doubted that was all there was defending a portion of the monsters soul.

As he started walking up the small path toward the rotting shack that had appeared in the middle of the clearing he caught the slight shifting of grass out of the corner of his eye, turning just in time to incinerate the snakes that were about to strike in a bout of black flame. Casting more detection charms and keeping his head constantly scanning for any more physical traps he continued walking, noticing the skeleton of a snake stuck to the door. He found no more magical traps; clearly Riddle had thought that anyone skilled enough to get through the wards was unlikely to miss them, thus making them pointless. Or he was just overconfident.

A slight rotting curse caused the door to crumble and he entered, immediately wrinkling his nose at the smell of decay. The shack was small and dilapidated, every surface covered in a thick film of dust and dirt with windows so covered in grime that no light even entered the building. With a twitch of his hand a ball of bright light began floating in the centre of the ceiling as he vanished all the dust in the room, needing several spells to do so.

There was a feeling of abject evil radiating from a floorboard in the centre of the room, yet he found no charms or curses protecting him from removing it. Why would he not put all the defences he could on it? He soon found out; as soon as he levitated the floorboard away to uncover the Horcrux his mind was assaulted with a compulsion stronger than he thought possible barring the imperius, but he thought he would be able to withstand it normally. But the compulsion was compounded by another, so very different to any he had felt before, and he didn't even notice he had approached before he was snatching his hand away, bare inches from the ring that held a portion of Tom Riddle's soul.

Hastily he backed away and cast Fiendfyre as soon as he was far enough away, an agonised scream accompanying the loss of the compulsion from his mind. The calling, however, was still there and beckoning him towards it insistently. The feeling was almost… longing. Somehow, he knew that it wasn't dangerous, so he slowly approached and peered into the crater where the wood had burned away, reaching inside and pulling out a small stone. It was near black in colour and gave off a pulsing energy that felt older and more powerful than magic itself, one that throbbed in time to the heartbeat he heard pounding in his ears.

As he twisted it slightly he noticed an engraving in its centre and he nearly dropped it in surprise. He recognised that symbol: a triangle, a stick and a circle. The Cloak of Invisibility, the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone.

He was holding one of the Deathly Hallows.

He knew that according to the Tale of the Three Brothers the stone would call back the spirit of the dead, but he had read about rituals that did something very similar. They were awful rituals that should never be attempted involving sacrifice of a family member, but it still did pretty much the same thing. But this was the Resurrection Stone, one of the legendary Deathly Hallows. Maybe it did more than the story said, maybe he could truly resurrect someone into what they were before they died. Maybe he could finally have her back.

He left the shack in a haze and apparated back to his home, his mind already swimming with scenes of his past and of the reunion he now believed was within reach. When he entered the basement training room he barely heard the enquiries of his ancestors about the Horcrux, as if they were speaking from far away, and came back to his senses after several seconds of silence.

The expression on his face when he looked up from whatever was grasped in his hand had all the portraits both concerned and intrigued; his expression was a mixture of awe, excitement and longing that was more exposed than they had seen him in years.

Instead of speaking he simply approached them and held up a small black stone in front of them, causing a few moments of confusion until the centre of the stone caught the light. All six portraits gasped lowly when they saw the symbol engraved on the surface; they were supposed to be a myth. Once they had gotten over their shock they immediately understood what was going through his head; he wanted Olivia back. The stone was the Hallow he would crave; had he found the wand he probably would have continued to use his own, had he found the cloak he would think it a useful tool and nothing more. But the stone, that was his wildest dream made tangible.

"He made it into a Horcrux, he made the Resurrection Stone into a Horcrux. And it was calling to me. It wants me to use, I can bring her back. The stone does more than the story says, it must do, it must." His voice became faster and more energetic as he spoke until he sounded like a small child again, his eyes bright with unrestrained hope.

"Ares, what if it doesn't? What if it does exactly as the story says?"

"It won't."

"But what if it does?" Salazar pressed.

"It just won't, why would it call me to it if that was all it did?" He said stubbornly.

"Because it wants you to follow the path the second brother did? Or maybe because the Hallows were said to be given by Death himself to the Peverell brothers, a family with which you share blood? The Peverell family was an offshoot of our own and the last brother joined with the Potter family. You are a Peverell in all ways but name!" William answered, frustrated by Ares sudden regression to a child. The stubborn look never left his face though, and all the portraits knew there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop him. It was not that they did not understand his want to use the stone; they just wished he would at least consider the risks as he normally would.

Ares angrily turned away to put his back to his ancestors, could they not understand what this meant to him? He concentrated on the desperate desire to see Olivia again and turned the stone three times in his palm, joyfully watching an otherworldly glow appear in front of him that coalesced into Olivia, but it was not what he had truly wanted. She was still a spirit, a ghost, and while he was happier than he had been since the day she died at the chance to talk to her, she wasn't really back. The portraits had been right.

She must have known what he was thinking as she always had done, a sad yet bright smile playing around her ethereal lips.

"Hi little guy."