Chapter 497 - Little Hangleton Ⅲ (1/2)
Making her way through the thick grass and thorns, Rowan winced more than a couple of times, but finally managed to make it to the front door. Debating whether the door had a spell on it or not she finally decided to just enter through the rafters which made her kick herself. Had there been any need for her to suffer?!
The roof was mostly gone as Rowan floated into the dusty murky cottage. The remaining furniture was broken and in various stages of decomposition. Mice and other creatures made their home in the shack scurried away at her presence.
”Should have just down this from the beginning instead of walked through the grass,” Rowan grumbled to herself. Ah, logic, sometimes it fails to come through at times. Then again, it might not be fair to blame logic, blame her lack of common sense. She clearly had been around wizards for far too long.
Still floating just above the floorboards, Rowan is about to start removing the boards one at a time, when something can clearly be seen in her right eye. She blinks and sees a boxlike thing enveloped in a twisting sickly puke green magic. Come to think of it, she had never walked around Prince Manor nor seen anyone with her right eye. Could she possibly see magic with her right eye? If so, then this might just prove useful for the future.
Putting that thought out of mind for now, Rowan points her wand in the direction of the floorboards and pries them off. Reaching into her mokeskin pouch she reaches for her handy dandy murky vial and pours it over the golden box. Floating back, she patiently waits for the golden box to dissolve. There is a loud hissing like snakes until the sound finally fades away.
Cautiously floating back, Rowan peeks into the hole in the ground to see a heavy, thick looking gold signet ring with a glittering black stone. The glittering black stone eerily calls to her and suddenly she can clearly hear her father's voice in her ears. Like a whispered temptation on the wind, she hears, ”Sorry, my almond.”
Rowan's hand trembles in hesitation as she forces herself to ignore the voice. Her hand tightly grips the vial as a part of her fiercely resists her actions. It was that tempted childish part within her that still remembered the loving father who used to toss his children into the air and catch them in his arms and smothering them in kisses. And she certainly was no saint and was not above temptation, and especially even now.
Forcing herself to remember the ending of Albus Dumbledore, Rowan grits her teeth and uncorks the second milky white vial and pours it directly over the ring, before blasting off into the night sky. She finally stopped a good distance in the air as loud, angry screaming can be heard down below as a blast of wind emerged and smashed the stark remains of the Gaunt Shack into pieces.
Even from where she is floating at, she can still feel the blast of magic that sends her flying backwards for several meters. Once the screaming is over and the magic residue is gone, Rowan quickly floats to the ground and sits down on a flattened patch of grass. Taking a deep breath, she waits for the death surge to begin. It was not even a moment later, when the energy began pour into her as she channeled the voracious energy through her body pathways.
Since the Gaunt Ring Horcrux was formed with the death of three family members, Tom Riddle, Mary and Thomas Riddle, there was quite the punch this time around. But thankfully her channels had expanded ever since the previous time before and grown since then. The energy was eagerly absorbed until all of it was slurped down in the fastest time yet. Quite a bit had already been digested, which frightened her more than she cared to admit. And especially as she knew that said power had already begun to poison her mind and body.
Rowan glanced warily down at her innocent looking elder wand, before shaking her head and sighing. Rising to her feet, she grits her teeth in pain as she finds that her leg is stiff from sitting on the hard ground. Rubbing the pain out of her leg, she finally hobbles forward into the blast zone.