Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

“This woman is trouble. We shouldn’t let her join us!” Sirius whispered to Evan.

At this point, they had just finished searching the room and were walking down the stairs.

“I know, but she’s also an Auror of the French Ministry of Magic. If we don’t let her follow us, what are you going to do? Tie her here? Or Stun her and throw her on that bed? I mean, I thought you said that isn’t your thing?” Evan asked back, looking at Sirius. “After we catch that owl monster, she could be helpful when dealing with the subsequent formalities.”

“OK, but if she drags us back, I think we should…”

“Gentlemen, whispering is not befitting of… gentlemen! Since we are partners now, we should …” Hélène paused and tried to find a word, “Yes… we should be honest, with no reservation between each other. Are you two from Britain? What are your names? “

“Yes, we are from Britain. My name is Evan Mason.” Said Evan, “and this is Sirius Black.”

“Oh, my God, Sirius Black! I know your name! I’ve heard all those stories!” said Hélène in surprise, looking at Sirius in disbelief. “Did you really spend 13 years in Azkaban for a crime you didn’t commit?”

Her words made the mood even more awkward. That was a topic Sirius did not want to talk about. He didn’t answer, but Hélène continued.

“I’m a big fan of yours. I bought all the articles about you on the market. What you did for your friend James Potter and his son Harry, tracking down the Death Eater and going to Azkaban for atonement.” said Hélène, looking at Sirius. “How to say… I think those actions are noble and very courageous. Most people would never do what you did, you …”

“I’m not as noble as you said. It was my foolishness that led to the death of James and Lily, and then I deserved everything that happened to me,” said Sirius. “Now please shut up and keep quiet. You’re affecting me.”

“Is he always so terrible?” Hélène whispered to Evan, keeping her distance from Sirius.

“He’s not usually like this. Maybe he’s not good at dealing with girls,” said Evan, changing the subject. “Miss Lorraine, have you found any other clues we might need to know? Also, why are you the only one here?”

“Oh, it’s just that the Ministry won’t pay attention to this matter at all. They dedicate all their resources to Paris and other big cities, not to a small city like Dijon. I am the only one who insisted on coming to investigate,” said Hélène. “This case is very complicated. I think this is an opportunity to prove myself. There are no such opportunities in Paris. Before you came, I had searched the house and found something really remarkable.”

“What is it?”

“Well, how to say it? Mary, the last owner of this house seemed to have a unique hobby. I found hundreds of dead owls in the store room downstairs, all of them skinned and thrown there…”

Hundreds of bloody owl bodies were piled up in a small room, a purgatory!

This further confirmed Evan’s guess, as the Dark magic he saw on the wall had this process drawn.

Mary, the owner of the house, might be the owl monster. She killed herself, sacrificed her life to this “devil”, and became a terrible monster. The owls were her medium of choice.

Perhaps, she took the feathers peeled from them and transplanted them to herself with dark magic…

With the Owl Fortress right outside the city, her picking this animal was only natural.

Now the question was: where was the monster? And Ariane, the woman that had appeared in the mirror, what was her real purpose?!!

In the dark, the three returned to the ground floor and came to the corridor full of house-elves’ heads.

“The woman who appeared in the mirror told you that someone has hidden something in these heads?” said Hélène, who had just learned about it from Evan. “I didn’t expect I’d have to search there… Disgusting!”

“Really disgusting!” Evan nodded, looking at the dry heads of the house-elves and their big ugly noses.

He had to admit that hiding something in them was a brilliant idea. Maybe he should go back to Hogwarts’ kitchens and have a good look at the heads there as well…

“When the house-elves died, the habit of hanging their heads on the wall is said to have originated from the old Black family, which was later adopted by other pure-blood wizard families in England and eventually around Europe. It has continued to this day,” said Sirius ironically. “It seems that one of my ancestors really made a great contribution to the development and progress of the wizarding world. One, two, three… The eighth one on the left should be our guy.”

The one Sirius pointed at was a house-elf with brown dry skin. During his lifetime, he seemed to have been ill and had some kind of mutation. His whole face was deformed, with plenty of his flesh beginning to rot. He was staring at the front with his big bulb-like eyes.

It was quite the sickening sight.

“Let me do the dirty work!” said Sirius. He stepped forward, opened the elf’s mouth and looked inside.

Hélène looked at Sirius with a half-shocked and half-admiring expression, and watched his hand reach into the mouth of the house-elf. He took out a small bottle of dark red blood, covered in sticky liquid, and handed it to Evan.

Evan opened the bottle and smelled it. It smelled like blood.

He was not a vampire, and he couldn’t tell whether it was the blood of a unicorn, a Chimaera, a phoenix, or something else. But that didn’t matter. Now that they had it, there were no other valuable clues in this house.

Evan talked with Sirius and Hélène, and the three of them directly Disapparated to the Owl Fortress outside the city.

As soon as he appeared, Evan saw a huge, gloomy black outline appearing above the valley in the distance. That was a huge castle built entirely of dark brown stones that were arranged into the shape of a massive beast.

Unlike Hogwarts, that castle was built on a hill, looking like a medieval fortress. It looked desolate and silent, surrounded by nothing but black stones on the ground.

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