AN: new chapter up, enjoy.

Chapter 48 - Curse of the Damned (1)

After fixing the destroyed outer wall of the Shrieking Shack, Harry and Fleur went back inside the dilapidated building.

"Do you 'ave a plan? 'Ow were you going to catch Gaunt?" she asked.

"I do. I've been closely following and watching him and the Minister over the past three weeks."

Her pointed stare left no doubt as to what her feelings were in regards to him having kept that a secret from her.

Taking out his fir wand, Harry murmured the chant of a spell:

"Serpensortia: Asmodeus."

At his summon, a small green snake appeared on the dusty floor of the Shack's living room. It was curled up into a ball and its larger-than-average head tucked in between its coils. Although its eyes were open - snakes do not have eyelids - Harry and Fleur had no illusions in regards to what was the snake doing.

"Was that 'ow you kept a watch on Gaunt?" Fleur asked, trying her hardest to keep a straight face.

But seeing Harry's thunderous expression, her poker face broke. She started giggling. Big Head... ...he was asleep.

"You had one job and you still screwed it up! Wake up!" Harry hissed and the snake suddenly sprung up as if there were springs beneath him.

"W-What are you saying? Who's asleep? What are you talking about, master?" Big Head said quickly.

"...You still have drool on your mouth." Harry deadpanned.

"I don't have anything!" Big Head denied, all the while discretely rubbing his snout on the scales of his body, trying to wipe away the evidence.

"...Now you smeared your drool all over your body."

"Just because I was sleeping you think you can make fun of me? I don't drool!" Big Head said angrily.

"So you were sleeping!" Harry said accusingly.

Realizing that he had just admitted that he had been sleeping on the job, Big Head became as silent as a grave.

"My God, this snake. Why do I keep putting up with him?" Harry said, this time in English, and rubbed at his forehead to calm his irritation.

"What is 'e saying?" Fleur asked, amusement clear in her voice. She could not understand Parseltongue but it was easy to tell from his face that he and the snake had gotten into an argument, like usual.

"I gave him a task, to spy on Amelia Bones' house. It was a simple job but he still messed up. He was sleeping with no care in the world. Now, this guy is telling me he wasn't sleeping, all the while trying to wipe the drool from his mouth."

Harry was not the most patient person around but the sass of his snake would have irritated even a saint, much less someone as cranky as him. Big Head was caught in the act yet he still had the gall to deny it, all the while trying to get rid of the proof under his very eyes. Inwardly, Harry was torn between being annoyed and being amazed at Big Head's shamelessness.

"Aww, don't be so 'ard on 'im," Fleur said and bent down, taking the tiny snake in her arms. "You're always scolding 'im for the smallest reasons."

"Smallest reasons? He was supposed to watch over Voldemort!"

Big Head wasn't stupid. Although he couldn't know what she was saying, her affectionate gestures did not go unnoticed. Understanding that she was taking his side, he flicked his forked tongue out, licking her fingers a few times.

Harry squinted at him so hard that his eyes became slits.

"Just you wait till we're alone," he hissed so quietly that only Big Head could hear it.

Realizing that he might be living on borrowed time, Asmodeus stopped fooling around and said meekly:

"Don't be angry at me, master. I've been watching over that house as you have ordered me, I swear. I can tell you that there are 4 humans in there at the moment, two males and two females. Two of them are asleep. But master's enemy and his female partner are awake. Normally, they all fall asleep around midnight and wake up shortly after sunrise.

"You mean they were awake when you fell asleep," Harry said, not missing the chance to jab at him for not doing his job properly.

"...Yes."

The two of them fell into momentary silence before Big Head asked:

"Master, I have a question. Are humans in heat during autumn?"

Harry looked at him taken aback.

"What?"

"You see, master's enemy and his female had been fornicating every night for the past 3 weeks."

Harry facepalmed himself.

"I didn't need to know that."

But Big Head wasn't done, this time sounding as if he was speaking to himself:

"No, this isn't correct. Master and Mistress are mating every day, not just in autumn. Maybe humans' mating cycle lasts all year? Oh wow. Humans are so nasty! Who knew?"

The tiny Anaconda swallowed his words when he saw Harry taking out his wand, a murderous look in his eyes.

"Haha. Joking. Master, I was joking!" Big Head said quickly and snuggled deeper into Fleur's arms to take cover.

It had taken Harry some time and some coaxing from Fleur to stop his urges to beat up the snake to a pulp but he did calm down after a while. Big Head's shenanigans aside, Harry did find out all that he needed to know.

Due to the Bones family home being well-protected by powerful spells, there was no way for him to spy on them. Sending his snake familiar to do it in his stead was the only solution because nobody would think about warding their home against non-magical animals.

'Except for Bella. She's probably the only one nutty enough to do something like that.'

Nevertheless, it had worked in his favour. Gaunt was currently at the Bones family home and that was all the information that he needed to know.

Returning to the castle with the snake and tow, Harry and Fleur headed towards the West Tower. Before Big Head could react, Harry grabbed him from Fleur's hands and held him from the base of his head. It was just as the Owlery appeared in their sight.

"I usually let your cheek slide but you've gotta learn that actions have consequences," Harry hissed at Big Head.

Harry's words and the sight of the Owlery at the end of the corridor - putting the two together, the snake's eyes widened in horror.

"No, master, please, Big Head promises to do his job properly next time! No more sleeping! No more making fun of master's mating habits either!"

Harry was momentarily stupefied. Big Head was panicky enough to even stop putting on airs and calling himself Asmodeus, referring to himself as Big Head. Yet, even at a time like that, while terrified out of his scales, Big Head still managed to sneak in a barb aimed at him.

'Is he a pathologic trash talker?' Harry asked himself in wonder. It looked like Big Head wasn't even aware half of the time of what he was saying, it was as if his mouth had a mind of its own.

While he was holding the struggling Big Head by his head, Harry could not help feeling distracted.

'A wand that acts jealous and throws tantrums, a pathological trash-talker anaconda snake, an owl that listens to Fleur more than to her owner, a House Elf who wants to become a sculptor, a serial killer girlfriend, and a paranoid nutcase for mother/sister/friend... what the hell is going on with my life?' (1)

It suddenly came to him that he was surrounded by weird people and weird things from all sides. It was weird even by Wizarding World's standards.

But he did not dwell on that thought for too long; he turned his attention back to the matter at hand, specifically, to the struggling snake in his grasp. If snakes could cry, Big Head would be shedding crocodile tears at that moment.

A nonverbal spell suddenly hit Big Head and he froze up completely. It was a Full-Body Binding Charm.

"I would normally send Bella a Patronus Charm message in the morning and ask her to summon you back to the Blackthorn. But you don't deserve it," Harry hissed at the immobilized snake, still pissed at the fact that he had caught Big Head slacking off instead of watching Voldemort's moves attentively.

Then, speaking in English, he called out:

"Hedwig!"

One second later, a snowy white owl landed soundlessly on Fleur's shoulder instead of his.

Harry: "..."

Fleur giggled at his reaction while she petted the beautiful owl on the head lovingly. It was not that Hedwig did not like Harry, far from that. It was just too hard for him to compete with Fleur for Hedwig's affection when Fleur was a snowy owl Animagus herself. Harry was just the master; meanwhile, Fleur's Animagus form was Hedwig's best friend.

Too tired to even argue anymore, Harry conjured a tiny rope that he used to tie the snake securely in several places before coming to Fleur and tying the rope to one of Hedwig's legs.

Harry rarely punished Big Head for his transgressions but he did have to stop the snake's head from getting too big once in a while. That said, it was not the first time Big Head was going to be punished in that manner.

"Deliver this idiot to the Blackthorn. Make sure to shake him good on your way there. You also don't need to hurry up, take your time. Let Big Head enjoy his travel. Do it well and all my kippers tomorrow morning are yours."

Harry found that gaslighting Big Head was far more effective to keep him in line than threatening him with bodily harm. Big Head would not dare even fart in his presence in the next three or four weeks - the snake was terrified of heights.

⁂

The sound of Apparition shattered the silence of the night as two silhouettes appeared seemingly out of thin air. It was a man and a woman in their early twenties. Short brown hair, brown eyes, average height and weight, and wearing ordinary Muggle clothes, Harry and Fleur had adopted the same appearance that they had had during the Birmingham incident.

Only a few hundred feet ahead of them, a large mansion, larger than Bellatrix's Blackthorn, was shining brightly in the darkness due to all the artificial lights showcasing its Jacobean architecture. In Harry's eyes, the Bones family's mansion was not as fancy and as beautiful as Bellatrix's Blackthorn but that was a very high bar to reach. The Blackthorn was a gem of the gothic architecture.

Closing his eyes, Harry extended his senses, feeling the magic of the spells protecting the house and its courtyard. He could not tell exactly what kind of warding spells had been cast without interacting with the warding stones buried into the ground but just from the feeling out process, he discovered that there were at least six different kinds of warding spells protecting the mansion.

"Amelia Bones has been the Minister of Magic for a while and she's good friends with Bella too. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of warding spell that will alert the Aurors once the wards are attacked," Harry said after opening his eyes.

"But 'ow are you going to break them?" Fleur asked doubtfully.

She knew that Harry was a skilled and powerful wizard but breaking into a pureblood family's home of centuries was not something that could be done in a minute or two.

"Breaking the wards is the easy part, just leave that to me. The difficult part comes after that. According to Big Head, besides Gaunt and Amelia Bones, Susan's parents are also in the house too. We need to separate them. Once I break the wards, we'll probably have 30 seconds or 1 minute tops before we get surrounded by Aurors from all sides. Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix will be here soon too."

Hearing his words, Fleur's palms got sweaty as she understood the magnitude of the situation: they were about to besiege the Minister of Magic into her own home and then they would have to survive under the assault of the elite wizards of the Ministry and the Order of the Phoenix as well... ...that sounded almost like suicide.

"This is crazy..."

"It's still not too late for you to go back," Harry said, noticing her trepidation.

But she replied instantly:

"It's all the more reason for me to not leave you by yourself. You'll need all the 'elp you can get."

"Okay."

He did not say any other unnecessary words. Both he and Fleur were adults, decisive people who had gone through all kinds of tribulations in their lives. They weren't as fickle as to easily change their minds once they had set a goal.

"It shouldn't take more than one spell to destroy the wards," Harry said. "Once the wards are down, cast the Human-Presence-Revealing Spell. Your task is to incapacitate Susan's parents as quickly as possible. At the very least, stop them from interfering with me and Gaunt."

"What about the Minister?" Fleur asked. "From what Asmodeus said, she seems to be obsessed with Gaunt. She won't just sit and watch you attack 'im."

"As long as Gaunt doesn't try to use her as a hostage, she's irrelevant. With or without her, it won't matter."

"And if Gaunt tries to use 'er as a 'ostage?" Fleur asked.

Harry was silent for a moment.

"I will try to save her," he said after a while. "She is a good person, I don't want to harm her. But, between saving her life and capturing Gaunt, my choice is clear."

He took her hand and squeezed it a bit.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes," she said and squeezed his hand back.

He held her hand for a few moments longer, seemingly unwilling to let her go. Although he acknowledge her strength, he was still deeply worried for her safety.

But once he let go of her hand, his expressive face lost all emotion. It was in times like these that his mastery over the mind arts showed its usefulness. His worry for Fleur disappeared from his mind as all the disruptive feelings and thoughts were occluded away.

Bringing his hand into the chest pocket of his jacket, Harry took out a stick no longer and thicker than his index finger.

"Ala, Goddess of Earth, grant me your blessing!"

As he chanted the activation incantation, the finger-sized stick started glowing with a yellow light and then it grew in size until it was a bit over 3 feet tall and as thick as a man's arm. Countless symbols had been painted on it, covering it entirely. It was a totem, the totem of the African Goddess of Earth, Ala.

Letting go of the totem, he watched as it started levitating and flew high up in the air, above the manor, well beyond the upper extremity of the warding spells protecting the mansion.

Once the totem was in the right position, he chanted:

"Earthbind."

Fleur watched in fascination as a curtain of dirty yellow light flowed down from the totem in the shape of a dome and encapsulated the entire courtyard of the Bones family's home. After the curtain of yellow light hit the ground, it became invisible to the eyes.

When she turned her attention back to Harry, she noticed that he had taken yet another totem out, one painted in crimson red, also covered with countless Ancient Runes.

"Ogun, God of War, grant me your strength! Bloodlust!"

When he said the incantation, the Ancient Runes on the Totem of War glowed and Harry's body was engulfed by a red light. Fleur was not particularly adept at sensing magic but when she looked at Harry, her skin involuntarily broke into goosebumps. Magic power was rolling off from him in waves. It was to the point that it left her breathless.

"I'm going to start now. Prepare yourself," Harry said.

In spite of how fierce he looked at that moment, his voice was calm and composed. Taking out his fir and dragon heartstring wand, he cast his self-created spell:

"Ballista!"

⁂

When an incredible explosion rocked the mansion from its foundations, Amelia Bones jumped to her feet instantly. Gaunt was also startled awake and quickly stood up from the bed as well. With her wand in her hand, Amelia rushed to the window to see what was happening.

Outside the courtyard of the Bones family's home, two shadowy silhouettes could barely seen in the darkness of the night. But then, a deep red light engulfed one of them and Gaunt and Amelia Bones could finally see the appearance of their attackers: they were a man and a woman in their early twenties. Short brown hair, white skin, average weight and height, and wearing ordinary Muggle autumn clothes - they were the kind of people that could easily be lost in a crowd.

However, the spell that the man cast next made them understand that, at the very least, his magic power was far, very far from ordinary.

His body engulfed by a blood-red light, the young man raised a gnarly-looking wand in front of him. The illusory image of a giant crossbow appeared above his head as he spoke the incantation of his spell:

"Ballista!"

⁂

"Damn. I told you that you're not strong enough for it!" Harry said in annoyance as he put his fir wand back into its holster.

At the request of his feisty wand, he had used it instead of the Elder Wand to break the wards. However, his first spell had not been powerful enough. Even with the incredible boost in power from the Totem of War, the fir and dragon heartstring wand had not been able to overwhelm the warding spells protecting the Bones family's mansion.

As his fingers wrapped around the handle of a gnarly wand, a shiver went down his spine and a familiar coldness travelled through his veins.

"Ogun, God of War, grant me your strength once more! Bloodlust!"

For a second time that night, the Totem of War glowed and his body was engulfed by a red light. Pointing the Elder Wand at the flickering wards of the Bones mansion in front of him, Harry cast his Ward-Breaking Curse one more time:

"Ballista!"

A blinding bolt of red light burst from the Elder Wand and a tremendous explosion boomed. The mansion shook once again from its very foundations and deafening sounds of glass breaking rang in the silence of the night as the warding spells were obliterated.

"Now! Go!" Harry shouted towards Fleur before breaking into a run towards the mansion.

Following the information obtained from Big Head, Fleur and Harry knew roughly the location of the two couples living in the Bones Mansion in the present. Casting the Human-Revealing-Presence Charm was just for the sake of pinpointing their exact location.

Noticing that Fleur had transformed herself into her Snowy Owl Animagus form, he let out a sigh of relief. At the very least, Fluer could escape through flying if things went south.

With a mental cast of 'Homenum Revelio', Harry needed no more than two seconds to spot the man and the woman watching him from behind the closed window of their bedroom.

Due to the Totem of the Goddess of Earth, be it Apparition, be it Portkey, be it Phoenix travel, be it House Elf Apparition, all forms of teleportation had been cancelled. Nevertheless, it was not like Harry had no other ways of catching them without Apparition. A long and thin whip-like membrane of blue light burst from the tip of the Elder Wand and smashed right through the window of Gaunt and Amelia Bones' bedroom, ultimately sinking into the wall. The membrane of light suddenly contracted and Harry was pulled into the bedroom above at a breakneck speed.

"Amelia! RUN!" Gaunt suddenly yelled and pushed her out of the way, just in time to dodge Harry's body as he burst into the room.

The wall cracked as he crash-landed into it but a spherical Shielding Charm had protected him from harm.

"Who are you?" Amelia Bones screamed, her wand aimed at him. "You dare attack the Minister of Magic? Even Azkaban would be a light sentence for your crime! I'll-"

Her words were drowned by another explosion as a blue beam of light blew the wall behind her to smithereens. It was a simple Exploding Charm but the spell's travel time had been so short that she had not seen anything more than a blur with her peripherical vision. Instinctively, she turned to look at the devastation behind her but that had been a grave mistake: the very moment she looked away, an overpowered Flipping Jinx blasted her out of the bedroom, into the courtyard.

A scream and grunt of pain followed as Amelia Bones was sent flying from the second floor before she crashed into the ground below. Then, it was silence. She fell unconscious.

From the moment he burst into the room with his grappling hook-like spell to the moment when he blasted the outer wall of the room and sent Amelia Bones flying, less than three seconds passed.

Gaunt's eyes were wide with surprise and a serious expression appeared on his handsome face as he looked at their attacker.

"Who are you?" Gaunt asked in a low voice. He was supremely confident in his power and skill but he was not blind to how formidable the man in front of him was.

But Harry did not deign his question with an answer. There was no time for chit-chatting, not when a squad of Aurors and Dumbledore himself might appear in less than a minute from now. In his mind, he was counting down the seconds.

'Twenty-one,'

A Severing Charm shot from the Elder Wand but Gaunt batted it away. He was about to retaliate with a curse of his own but he recognized his opponent's wand movement and, instead of returning fire, he hastily conjured a golden shield in front of him.

When Harry's second spell hit the golden shield, a deafening boom rocked the mansion to the core and all the windows of the house were blasted to pieces by the shockwave.

'Twenty,'

The strength of that spell had made Gaunt's back break into a cold sweat.

"Defodio."

When he heard his opponent say the incantation of his spell out loud for the first time, Gaunt instinctively threw himself in desperation to the side. The Gouging Charm was a spell that Harry not only mastered but had taken to an entirely new level. In his hands, that spell had become something else. It was the very spell that he had used to kill Voldemort in the second war of his past life, in 2009.

Gaunt's heart drummed as if to jump out of his chest when he saw the spell's aftermath. His attacker's Gouging Charm had pierced through the entire mansion, any wall that it had clashed against appearing no different than wet paper. No regular Shielding Charm would have been able to stop that.

'Nineteen,' Harry continued to count in his mind as he cast a Finite on the piece of furniture that Gaunt had animated to attack him.

Gaunt suddenly let out a scream and Harry found himself forced to say the incantation of his spell out loud in order to protect himself:

"Protego Maxima!"

An overpowered Banishing Charm made Harry's strongest Shielding Charm ripple violently. While his spell did hold out, that was not the case for their surroundings. The still-standing walls of the bedroom and even the floor and the ceiling were blasted apart.

Even as an entire wing of the Bones mansion was demolished from Gaunt's Banishing Charm, as he was falling to the ground, Harry twisted his body in mid-air and, with a flick of his right hand, he cast a wandless Shielding Charm on Amelia Bones' unconscious body to protect her from the deadly debris pelting the courtyard like meteorites from the destroyed house.

'Eighteen,'

Waving his wand in a wide arc, Gaunt let out yet another shout of exertion as all the debris from the half-destroyed mansion flew up in the air. Jabbing his wand at his enemy as if he was performing a stab, the debris was launched at him like a rain of meteorites.

"Arresto Momentum!" Harry shouted and the terrible amount of debris in the air froze as if time had stopped.

'Seventeen,'

Then, as if they could read each other's thoughts, Gaunt and Harry screamed at the same time:

"DEPULSO!"

"DEPULSO!"

'Sixteen,'

Skilled wizards normally did not need to say the incantation of their spells out loud. However, words had power. And power did their spells have... When the two Banishing Charms clashed, the debris caught in the middle was pulverized! Chunks of walls, pieces of furniture, broken concrete pillars and roof tiles - everything was reduced to fine sand.

In the momentary lull that followed the devastation of their clash of spells, Gaunt suddenly pointed his wand above his head and screamed:

"Finite Incantatem!"

'Fifteen,'

But in the next moment, his body twirled and Gaunt tumbled to the ground temporarily dazed. He had tried to break through the Anti-Disapparition Jinx and Apparate away. However... ...there was no Anti-Disapparaition Jinx in the first place. Gaunt's Finite had been a complete waste of time. No, it was more than that. With his experience and viciousness, it was impossible for a war veteran like Harry to not capitalize on Gaunt's mistake.

Dazed as he was, Gaunt was late to react. Several sharp spikes burst from the ground and Gaunt howled in agony as eight of them pierced through his arms and legs. His biceps, his forearms, his thighs, and his calves were completely pierced through, with the bones of his limbs shattered as well.

'Fourteen,'

The blinding pain made Gaunt's body seize and his wand fell from his hand. In a battle between two apex fighters, one mistake was more than enough for the result to be decided. In a battle between two vicious killers, one second was all they needed to obliterate the other. Now there was Gaunt, delirious from pain, impaled like a sacrifice on an altar of spears, blood flowing like a crimson river from his mutilated body.

'Thirteen'

Stepping closer to his dying opponent, Harry waved his wand over his wounds, putting him in suspended animation with a Statis Charm.

'Twelve,'

Harry's purpose had never been to kill Gaunt tonight. His purpose was to capture him.

'We've only found the Diary so far. We don't know how many more Horcruxes he had made. We don't know what objects he had used to make them or where he had hidden them either.'

He was planning on picking his mind apart, piece by piece until none of his secrets was left unveiled. He had never doubted the outcome of this fight - in his past life, in his last battle against Voldemort, Harry had fought alone against the Dark Lord and two dozens of his followers at once. (2) He knew that he would defeat Voldemort, but he had not expected their duel to end that quickly.

It was when he was about to count down to 10 in his mind that several Apparition sounds rang from outside the perimeter controlled by the Totem of Ala, the Goddes of Earth. At first, it was just a handful of people - just a bunch of Aurors that had been present at the Ministry for night Guard Duty. However, as seconds passed, more and more cracks of Apparition rang.

From the moment when Harry had fired the first Ballista at the Bones Mansion's wards until the first wave of Aurors Apparated, only 20 seconds passed. Twenty very long seconds in which a lightning-fast duel between two incredible wizards had taken place. With the element of surprise on his side, Harry's ambush had put Gaunt on the backfoot from the start. What had sealed the deal, however, had been Gaunt's mistake in attempting to dispel a non-existent Anti-Disapparition Jinx and trying to Disapparate - that had been his downfall.

Harry's feelings of elation at having quickly defeated Gaunt did not last because, in a matter of seconds, more than 10 Aurors created a loose circle around him, all of them no closer than 50 feet away from him, keeping a safe but still threatening distance.

"Freeze! Put down your wand!" one of the Aurors shouted and all of his colleagues also aimed their wands at Harry, a red light glowing at their tips. It was a tell-tale that they were about to fire a volley of Stunning Charms.

AN: You, the readers, know that Voldemort had not created any other Horcruxes after the Diary because he did not want to lose his sanity. However, Harry and the rest do not know that - that's why Harry's purpose was not to kill but to capture Gaunt and squeeze the information out of him through any means necessary.

(1) After seeing Harry carving his totems, Bella's House Elf, Niki, took a liking to sculpting as well. It is a tiny, unimportant detail so I thought I'd give you a reminder. It is mentioned in chapter 33.

(2) You can find the scene in Chapter 31.

To be continued~