Hazel looked around the shack. According to her map, a Horcrux was lurking around here.
It'd been the second day on the quest, the first spent on Hazel shadow-traveling the trio of her, Leo and Piper to a deserted area in Europe. She'd been out for five hours, so by the time she was awake it was dark out. They'd eaten tofu tacos - thanks to Leo Valdez - and got a room in a nearby hotel with the help of Piper's charmspeak. In the morning, at around seven, the three demigods walked on foot to the small shack named the Gaunt Shack.
Now, if her research was correct, Tom Riddle's maternal bloodline was the Gaunts. Hazel figured that was why a Horcrux might have been there.
The house was a mess. It looked abandoned, which it was, since there was no one there. Piper and Leo were in another room, searching for the Horcrux there. They had no way of knowing where the Horcrux was, except for the map and Hazel's daughter of Pluto Horcrux sensing abilities.
Annabeth had said that the object would hold meaning for Riddle, so it was unlikely that the piece of rotting wood she just threw over her shoulder was what they were looking for.
"Hazel," Leo called from the other room, "you know how Horcruxes have a specific way of being destroyed?"
Hazel took a breath, wondering where Leo could have been going with this. "Yeah, I guess?"
She could practically hear his smile through his words. "Then if I set everything on fire, the only standing thing left would be the Horcrux! I doubt the Gaunts fireproofed their house."
"We're not here to destroy the Gaunts' shack, Leo. It'd be rude to burn a house down." Piper chastised.
"There are no more Gaunts, though," Leo shot back.
Hazel stepped into their conversation. "If we burn the place, Riddle would know what we are up to, making the quest way harder."
"Oh well," Leo sighed, as he kept digging through the mass piles of junk.
Hazel looked around, she couldn't see or feel anything worth turning into a Horcrux. As she walked past a certain place, a sudden red light shot at her. Hazel dodged, but ended up activating another red light shooting. She decided to stay still. On the other side of the spell shooting was the only area they hadn't explored yet, and since it was guarded, Hazel was sure there was something up over there.
Hazel had deduced that the red lights were some spell, and she should avoid it at all costs. She wasn't sure how she'd make it to the other side without dying. "Piper! Leo!" she called.
They came rushing over, and Hazel told them to stop right before they activated another spell.
Leo poked the air, causing a flashing red light to zap only inches away from her head. "Motion activated spells," he gasped, "if these weren't magical, I'd probably be able to disarm them." Then he reached in his belt and widened his eyes. "If I set them all off, you could tell where they are and get across!"
He pulled out a bunch of material and created a robot. Leo sent it through the area. "Go!"
Hazel maneuvered herself so she didn't touch any of the places that triggered a spell and made it to the other side. There was a weird sensation, like a very bad headache, a searing pain shooting through her head, but there was also a tingling feeling in her fingertips. Was it a Horcrux?
Before Hazel could have an answer, she felt a bit lightheaded.
"Hazel, are you all right?" Piper held onto Hazel's shoulders tightly so Hazel didn't collapse. Hazel hadn't even noticed her friends coming over.
"Horcrux," she muttered, explaining her state of consciousness.
"Stay with us, Hazel, stay with us," Piper told her. Hazel was sure she was charmspeaking, because she was up on her feet again.
Hazel started walking around, feeling out where the Horcrux could be. The tingling feeling, she thought, would get stronger if you moved closer to the Horcrux. This meant she was going the wrong way.
Hazel walked over to the other side of the area, where there was a tiny nook. It was there. She could feel it.
"It's there," she told her companions. She pointed to a small ring with a black stone in the middle. Hazel reached out to take it, but pulled back at the last second.
"Let's get it and get out of here now!" Piper urged her.
Leo fiddled around with the small items in his hands. "She can't."
"Why not?"
"The ring is cursed, I can feel it. It's like the cursed material I used to pull out of the ground. It's not just a Horcrux." Hazel explained.
"Then destroy it here," Piper told her, "you can do it."
"I don't know, it's not that safe in here, I'm going to collapse and-"
Piper grabbed the younger girl by her shoulders. "You can do it. You will. Leo and I will be here to back you up if anything happens."
Hazel nodded and composed herself. She remembered Nico's words about the soul banishing process. Closing her eyes, Hazel pushed the Earth into two different directions, creating a chasm. Using her powers to control the ring, she pushed it underground, visualizing the Fields of Punishment, where she hoped it would end up. Hazel had managed to adjust the ring right above the deep abyss, and she let go.
In a split second, the ring dropped into the ground, the crack closing up afterwards. Hazel let out a breath and collapsed backwards.
"You did it, Hazel," Leo smiled, catching her mid fall. With her head against his chest, Hazel let out a sigh of relief, the last thing she remembered before passing out.
Nico di Angelo regretted the Horcrux he chose to go after. Out of all the locations they could have gone - a tropical island, a very nice five star restaurant - no, this one was in the middle of nowhere, in a mansion called the Riddle Mansion. To make matters worse, Nico, Will and Annabeth quickly figured out that the place wasn't abandoned, but that the Dark Lord himself resided there.
Nico kept his eyes on the map all the while channeling his shadow powers to hide all three of them. The map told him that the Horcrux was always on the move, making it seemingly very difficult to kill.
Every time the trio approached the Horcrux, they wouldn't see an only object, like Annabeth had predicted. Instead, they would face the one and only Voldemort with his pet snake. Annabeth guessed that maybe Voldemort felt he had to keep the Horcrux on him at all times, so it was somewhere in his long cloak.
It was their second night out, the first being relatively unsuccessful. The trio managed to camp out in the little hut in the property, a hut probably meant for the gardener or housemaid. Thankfully, the person in question wasn't home, but their stuff was collecting a year's worth of dust.
It was dark again, and Nico just wanted to go back to camp, but that would just waste his energy.
As they rounded the corner, the Horcrux stopped moving. In the hallway in front of them, there were three doors. Nico consulted his map again, then looked up to point at the middle door.
One by one, they left the safety of the shadow Nico had created. The three walked over to the opened doorway.
The first thing that caught his eye was Voldemort's pet snake. Then he scanned the room. It was completely sealed so there were no windows. The room was a square shape, with no furniture except for a small desk in the corner. There were no drawers, no cupboards. The room was stripped of Horcrux hiding places.
"Are you sure it's here?" Will's voice tickled his left ear.
"Yes," Nico nodded. He could feel it. The sharp burning pain in his head, but it felt muted. He frowned. The only way pain was suppressed was if he suppressed it himself. Nico couldn't subdue pain he hadn't known before. Shaking his head, he turned over to face Annabeth. "Your plan?"
Annabeth thought for a minute. "Sneak in, find the Horcrux, destroy it and leave."
"That would never work," Will scoffed.
"We play it by ear," Annabeth proposed, running into the room before the other two could argue. Nico just shrugged and went along with the strategy. It was the best they'd got. Will followed around, but he kept his eyes on the snake.
The three patted the walls and the ground down for any hiding spaces but found none.
"Nico, for the umpteenth time," Will looked at Nico, who was glancing down at his map, "are you sure it's in here somewhere-"
The snake in the middle of the room woke, pouncing on Will, the source of sound.
Will let out a muffled scream of terror. Annabeth raised her knife, intending to slash the animal up into pieces. Nico kept his gaze on the map.
The snake drew closer to Will, backing him up against the wall. Annabeth tried to distract the beast to give Will time to ready his arrows. Despite the snake baring its fangs at him, Will managed to point the tip of his arrow down its throat.
"Nico?" Annabeth called out. "A little help, please?"
"No, I've got it," Nico connected the dots.
"Got what? Honestly," Will sounded exasperated, "can you wait until all of us aren't about to be eaten before celebrating what you've got?"
Nico had the sudden urge to slap his forehead. "How could I have not seen this before? The snake, it's always with Voldemort when we sneak up on him, and it's in this room! When you triggered the snake to follow you, the Horcrux on my map moved. The snake, it's-"
"It's the Horcrux!" Annabeth smiled widely. "Nico, banish it!"
Nico took a deep breath. He exhaled rather shakily. He held his hands out in front of him and willed the ground to follow his command. It was a good thing they were on the ground floor.
The earth beneath the snake split and the ground consumed it whole. The snake turned to face Nico and hissed at him.
"I banish you into the depths of the Underworld. The soul of this snake, a piece of Tom Riddle's." Nico hated the thought of killing the snake, but it was Voldemort's personal pet and the host of Voldemort's soul. After the ground closed up, Nico sat down on the floor. His questmates ran to his side.
"Nico, that was brilliant! You did it!" Will squeezed his arm, then frowned. "Are you okay?"
When he didn't answer, Annabeth tried shaking him. "Nico?"
He tried not to overthink it, so it was a split second decision when he decided to shadow-travel the lot back to the hut.
Nico, from his sitting position, collapsed on the bed. The action caused a cloud of dust to rise up, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He tuned out at the sounds of his friends. When he woke up again, he realized they weren't in the same place as before.
Ginny's map was confusing. First, it kept telling her that there was a Horcrux in America- in New York, actually. (She couldn't tell its exact location, the map was stubborn, telling her to find another Horcrux first.) She had no idea what Voldemort's Horcrux would be doing outside Europe.
Another glitch in the map was that it kept insisting there was a Horcrux in a nonexistent place.
Ginny knew she was quite late; her siblings already got a Horcrux each, leaving four. Aside from the one in America and the one in the nonexistent place, there were two more. Two that Ginny clearly knew the location of.
One was in Gringotts and the other in Hogwarts.
It was going to be very difficult, almost impossible.
Ginny decided to go to the more impossible Horcrux first. The one with no location. As far as she knew, the neighborhood was a muggle neighborhood, so there shouldn't be open magic.
It took Ginny, Frank and Reyna two shadow-travel trips - one ending up a bit too far north - and a one hour break. In the end, they ended up on a street with a name she couldn't read.
"So… this is the correct place now, right?" Reyna glanced down the street, wary of what she saw.
"Yes." Ginny trudged forward, her friends following behind. "It should be…" she stopped in between two tall houses. "Here."
"Where? That house there?" Frank pointed to the one to the left. "Number eleven, Grimmauld Place?" He read the address from the mailbox of the said house. Ginny once again thanked the gods they had allowed one half-blood who wasn't dyslexic.
"No. Between number eleven and that one, number thirteen." Yes, Ginny could read numbers. No, she did not understand where number twelve was, but she was certain the Horcrux was in it.
Reyna frowned. "Usually, people skip number thirteen because of bad luck, so number twelve and fourteen are next to each other."
Ginny racked her head. It must be magic, that much was obvious. Magic was hiding number twelve. Then she realized whatever was hiding it, it probably doesn't let outsiders see it, but people on the inside could see out. They wouldn't take too kindly to seeing three teens gawking at their front door.
"Come here," she beckoned the group to a bench across the street. It was close enough to keep tabs on the house but far enough it doesn't look suspicious. "We need to look normal. Normal travelers, sitting on the bench," Ginny muttered to her companions under her breath.
Frank and Reyna sat on one side of the seat and started animatedly talking about the weather.
"Yes, yes, and the clouds are definitely going to clear up," Frank was saying.
Reyna smiled widely and gave an uncharacteristic squeal. "We could go visit that park later!" she gushed.
"Okay guys, tone it down, I'm thinking." Ginny loved their cover, but it was too much, as she had said.
She toned out of her friends' conversation and focused on the missing house. Then, a woman with bubblegum pink hair walked to the area where they were just standing. Ginny quickly looked away and joined in the small talk.
The topic kept switching and it was about five minutes afterwards before Ginny deemed it safe to go back to focusing on the house.
It was concealed… concealment charms, maybe? But they were probably NEWT leveled or something. Even if she figured it out, there would be no way to break in.
Ginny shook her head. She was thinking like a witch! She was more. She was a demigod. The wizarding world's magic comes from Hecate. Hecate, Ginny's stepmother's attendant, a servant in the Underworld. One in many aspects of the Underworld.
Hypothetically, Ginny should be more powerful than her, despite being half mortal. She was the Queen of Darkness and Souls to most residences in her father's domain. The nickname was a long story that was beside the point.
Hecate was the goddess of the Mist. The Mist alters stuff, conceals things, keeps mortals sane by blocking their mind on certain points.
Maybe some parts of wizarding magic came from a wizarding version of the Mist. That would explain a lot.
If her theory was correct, though, that would mean she could penetrate through the barriers. Sure, her Mist abilities weren't as strong as Hazel's or Lou Ellen's, but she was pretty decent.
Ginny was sure the Mist would be stronger than this wizard Mist and the efforts of her, Frank and Reyna combined would probably let them through.
"I've got it." Ginny inhaled sharply.
"Got what?" Frank stopped their conversation to listen to Ginny.
"See, some variants of magic might come from the Mist, which is what I think might be hiding the house," Ginny explained.
Reyna looked thoughtful. "So to break into the house, you have to clear the Mist and see it for what it truly is?"
"Exactly." Ginny raised a finger. "But it's not going to be easy, of course."
"What's the catch then?" Reyna sighed and Ginny had to agree. Why can't the quest just be straightforward for once?
"The catch is that the 'Mist' doesn't only conceal it, but keeps the place a secret." Ginny gestured to the house. "In theory, no one should know it exists, save for some people."
Frank nodded. "So let's try our combined efforts and see how that goes. If it doesn't work, we'll think of something else."
The other two girls nodded.
"I think going to stand in front of the house would be pushing our luck," Reyna countered.
"We don't have any other choice, do we?" Ginny got up. "Once we can see our location, I'll shadow-travel us in. It'd be easier than using the front door."
Reyna nodded. "I'll lend you my power."
"I want to do it myself-"
"It's not a question of want, Ginny. Your power is more crucial, a power neither I nor Frank can do. You are the only one who can destroy the Horcrux." Reyna put her foot down.
"Fine. But just this once." Ginny sighed. "Mist first."
They walked over to the house. The objective, if they did this right, was that the three of them would know the house exists and see the house as well. With their efforts combined, they broke the magical barriers in less than ten minutes.
The house looked almost identical to the neighboring ones, with a dull colored grey painted over the whole building, three stories tall, and had only one window.
What Ginny wanted to know was why a Horcrux was here and protected in the first place.
"Now that we've cleared the Mist from our minds and can think straightly, Ginny, shadow-travel?" Frank looked satisfied at the outcome.
Ginny nodded and grabbed her friends' hands. The shadow from the house would be enough, she thought. With a side glance to Reyna, who looked back with determination, Ginny visualized what she saw through the tiny, lone window.
As quickly as it started, the three ended up in a room which unfortunately had many people in it. Reyna started to collapse beside her and Frank picked her up, putting her over his shoulder. Ginny willed the shadows to obscure them.
"-I was saying," a man spoke, "Dumbledore asked us specifically to address the disappearance of Harry Potter at this meeting."
Ginny took a good sweep across the room, counting twenty people - give or take - sitting at a dining table. She bit her lip when she recognized some of the people.
Her father.
Her mother.
"Wasn't Hermione with him last?" Another man asked.
The first man nodded. "That is why she has joined us here today." A wave of mutterings shook at the table. The man silenced them. "Dumbledore has given his approval for Ms Granger. She is not part of the Order, but here as a silent supporter."
Granger nodded. "Yes, Professor Moody," she squeaked.
Moody frowned. "I am not your professor, nor have I ever been your professor. Now, tell us what happened."
The girl named Granger looked not much older than Ginny herself, only a year or two maximum. "We were walking out of the platform nine and three quarters, which was first recorded in history in the nineteen fifties, as a project of the minister of that current time, Minister Evangeline-"
"We know, Granger. Get to the part where you and Harry separated." Moody tapped the table in impatience.
"Sorry, Professor- I mean, Mr Moody." Granger apologized and got on with the story. "I think… yes, Harry and I were walking over to an open area and his aunt and uncle picked him up. Then I left to go find my parents, which, after searching for them, it turns out they were waiting where Harry got picked up."
Ginny was impressed by the story the Mist had spun in her head. Nico had told him about the hydra a while after the trip.
Moody grunted. "Well, your version is off. We interrogated the Dursleys and they told us - under the influence of veritaserum - that they were to pick up Harry three hours after the train reached King's Cross. They hadn't seen Harry since last year."
Ginny inwardly doubted they would have cared either way.
Granger looked like she was panicking. "That's what I remember, I swear," she sobbed. Mrs Weasley put her arm around Hermione's shoulder.
"Your word? I wouldn't want to waste veritaserum on you. If we find out you were lying intentionally, you would be regarded in the same way as we regard Death Eaters." Moody stared at Granger with both his eyes, looking at her as if trying to see through her lie.
"Don't you think that may be a bit too much?" Mrs Weasley asked.
"No," Moody replied, "and she'd be high on my list as she knows about the Order."
Frank tapped Ginny's shoulder. She turned around, startled. Frank tilted his head towards a door, signaling her to go find the Horcrux. Ginny nodded. Still manipulating the darkness, the two of them (plus a passed out Reyna) walked through the halls.
Finally, when they were sure they were out of earshot, Frank asked, "what was happening in there?"
Ginny gave a little sniff and buried her face in Frank's side. Frank wrapped his free arm that wasn't stabilizing Reyna around her tightly. It was true; he gave the best hugs. And that was what she needed right now, after all those years of not seeing her former parents, she felt fresh anger, pain and agony of the betrayal and hurt they had inflicted on her.
Frank tried to amend, "hey- it's okay, you don't need to talk if you don't want to-"
"The two redheads? They were my parents."
Frank didn't say anything about the confession but just held her. After a while, he piped up softly, "do you need a panda? I could be a panda."
Ginny gave a watery laugh at his statement. Her face was dry, but she was closer to crying than she'd ever been since she'd turned five. She'd rather take on ten monsters at once than face her parents. They reminded her of all the times she was wrongly punished and discriminated against. "No thanks, Frank, I'm better now."
"Oh- okay."
"Thanks though. I really needed that."
"Anything for a friend." Frank gave a lighthearted smile that Ginny returned to him.
"What are you two softies whining about?" Reyna groaned from Frank's other side. "Time for some Horcrux hunting."
