The Sunday morning sun felt warmer than usual as it spilled through the tall windows of Hogwarts, but Sebastian Swan didn't linger to enjoy the view. He had a heavy responsibility tucked away in his lead-lined briefcase, and the castle was no place for what he needed to do next.
After a quick, private breakfast at Swan Manor—where the tea was hot and the atmosphere far less suspicious than the Great Hall—Sebastian prepared for a journey into the heart of his own secrets.
With a sharp crack that echoed through the quiet manor, he Apparated. The sensation of being squeezed through a narrow rubber tube passed, and he found himself standing in a secluded valley deep within the rugged peaks of the Scottish Highlands.
The air here was crisp and tasted of pine and ancient stone. Steep, jagged mountain walls rose on all sides, acting as natural sentinels for the hidden basin below. A perennial silver mist clung to the heather, and as the morning sun climbed higher, the fog began to glow with a soft, ethereal gold. It was a place isolated from the world of men and wizards alike.
In the center of this majestic isolation stood a small, unassuming wooden cabin. Its walls were crafted from weathered grey-brown timber that looked less like a building and more like a natural outcropping of the forest. This was Sebastian's ultimate sanctuary, a safe house guarded by the most powerful magic known to wizardkind: the Fidelius Charm.
Regulus Black was the Secret-Keeper. Even if Voldemort himself were to fly over this valley, he would see nothing but an empty clearing. To the rest of the world, this cabin simply did not exist.
Sebastian pushed open the door. The interior was dry but smelled of stagnant air and old wood. With a lazy flick of his wand and a whispered "Sweeping Vortex," he watched as a miniature cyclone of fresh air spiraled through the room, dragging the dust and mustiness out the chimney and replacing it with the scent of mountain rain.
The cabin was sparsely furnished. There were no cozy armchairs or bookshelves here. Instead, in the center of the wide floorboards, sat three heavy, silver-etched alchemy safes. These weren't mere boxes; they were masterpieces of containment, designed to suppress the darkest magical signatures.
Sebastian knelt before them, his expression shifting from casual to intensely focused. He opened the first safe. Inside, resting on a velvet cushion, was Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem. Even through the wards, he could feel the cold, calculating hunger of the soul fragment within.
"Put me on," a voice whispered in the back of his mind—a voice like silk sliding over glass. "I can give you the wisdom to reshape the world. Why stay a mere teacher when you could be a god of intellect?"
Sebastian snorted and closed the lid. He moved to the second safe. Marvolo Gaunt's Ring sat there, its cracked black stone pulsing with a sickly, rhythmic light.
"The power over death," the Ring hissed. "Think of those you've lost. I can bring them back. I can heal the cracks in your own soul."
"Old news, Tom," Sebastian muttered. He moved to the third safe, containing Salazar Slytherin's Locket. The heavy gold piece seemed to throb like a heart.
"You are a Slytherin," the Locket snarled, its voice more aggressive than the others. "You are wasting your potential guarding us like a common jailer. Join me, and we shall purge the filth from the earth."
Sebastian stood up, dusting off his robes. "Honestly, it's like listening to a broken record. Same pitch, same lack of originality. No wonder the older versions of you went mad; you're all incredibly repetitive."
He reached into his extension-charm bag and pulled out a fourth safe, identical to the others. Beside it, he laid the black notebook. The diary looked particularly drained today. After the psychological battering Sebastian had given it the night before, it didn't even try to whisper. It just lay there, a silent, defeated object of ink and paper.
"And here is the youngest of the bunch," Sebastian said, weighing the diary in his hand. "The clever one. The one who actually knows how to pretend to be human."
Without ceremony, he dropped the notebook into the fourth safe and turned the heavy alchemical lock. Click.
"Four down," he counted. "The Diadem, the Ring, the Locket, and now the Diary."
His mind raced through the remaining Horcruxes. Hufflepuff's Cup was still tucked away in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts—that would require a more delicate touch, perhaps a bit of 'unauthorized' banking later in the year. The fragment inside Harry Potter was a different problem entirely; removing it was a surgical nightmare he wasn't ready to face just yet. And then there was Nagini, currently a mundane snake in the Albanian woods, waiting for a master who hadn't yet regained his form.
"Rest well, gentlemen," Sebastian said, giving a mock bow to the four safes. "Enjoy the quiet. It's the only peace you'll ever get."
He stepped out of the cabin, the heavy wards snapping shut behind him. Standing in the fresh Highland air, he felt a massive weight lift. With the diary removed from Hogwarts, the immediate threat to the students was gone. The Basilisk was still in the pipes, but without Tom Riddle's voice to guide it, it would remain in its thousand-year slumber.
He Apparated back to Swan Manor, spent a relaxing afternoon napping by the fire, and returned to Hogwarts on Monday morning feeling like a new man.
The atmosphere in the Auror Training Class was intense. The students hadn't spent their weekend napping; they had been working like possessed detectives. They were sprawled over their desks, parchment scattered everywhere, cross-referencing names and timelines with the fervor of people who thought they were on the verge of a breakthrough.
Sebastian walked to the podium, his hands behind his back. "Alright, everyone. Settle down. It's been a chaotic few weeks, but I want to see where your heads are. What have we discovered about our mysterious 'Heir'?"
A seventh-year Ravenclaw stood up, looking exhausted. "Professor, we've tracked every student who was absent from the Halloween feast. There were twenty-four in total. Some were in the hospital wing, some were serving detentions, and a few... well, a few claim they were just 'wandering.' But we can't find a common thread. None of them have a known link to Slytherin's bloodline."
Sebastian nodded encouragingly. "Information gathering is rarely a straight line. Often, the 'redundant' data is just as important as the breakthrough. You've exercised your investigative muscles, and that is what matters. But," he paused, his eyes scanning the room, "has anyone looked at the nature of the attack itself? Not just the who, but the how?"
The room went quiet. Then, slowly, Harry Potter raised his hand.
Harry looked different than he had a week ago. The fear was gone, replaced by a sharp, focused curiosity. He had spent the last two days being treated like a celebrity again—this time for his 'business potential' rather than his scar—and it had given him back his confidence.
"Professor," Harry said, his voice steady. "I've been thinking about what I heard. Not just in the Duelling Club, but the voices in the walls."