Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

There was a large space in the dark cave below, and climbing down the rope was definitely not the right way to get in here.

Looking at the nimble Hélène below, Sirius secretly admired her; few witches had such a skill.

Although she was a bit too wordy and a tad too naive, when it came to physical fitness, she was competent enough to be an Auror.

He followed Hélène, tightly tangling the rope with his left hand and legs, carefully sliding down, with his right hand stretched out, holding his wand. Although he made his wand light brighter, he still couldn’t see anything but darkness…

As he went down, the smell of rot in the air became more and more pungent.

Sirius sniffed and could quickly recognize the smell: it was the stench of a corpse.

It was not like the mummified corpses he’d seen above, but a corpse that had recently died and had not been completely weathered and rotted.

It was so strange. Why would there be a fresh dead body in this ancient castle dungeon?!!

There was also the voice of “Evan” just now, which sounded unspeakably weird. The more Sirius thought about it, the more he felt things were off. It was definitely not Evan.

It was foolhardy to come down like this. He should have questioned it more. Evan certainly wouldn’t talk like that.

“Wait, Hélène, there’s something wrong!” He hurriedly shouted down.

“What’s wrong? I’m almost at the bottom!” Hélène looked up at Sirius, her face puzzled. “There seems to be something down there. I can’t see it very clearly… it’s white… a whole lot…”

Before she had finished her words, the voice in the darkness sounded again, “You’re here… you have come to accompany me, ha ha!”

“You’re not Evan! Who are you?” Sirius shouted into the darkness and cast a Shield Charm.

“I am who I am. Come and stay with me, living. I can’t wait!” said the strange voice, coming through the darkness. “Since you’ve already made it here, don’t go; just like them, stay here with me forever… ha ha ha.”

“Hélène, let’s go back up…”

“I DON’T THINK SO!” The voice lengthened its tone and shouted, “Mary, lovely little Mary, where are you?!”

The voice just fell, and Sirius heard a sound above his head. He quickly raised his wand up.

In its light, he saw the Owl-Woman standing at the entrance of the cave, glaring at him with hatred, with a terribly dreadful expression on her face!

‘The dark creature hiding in the dark is allied with the Owl-Woman!’ Sirius’ heart sank sharply.

The next second, the rope he and Hélène were holding suddenly loosened; cut off by the monster, and they fell down.

“Ah!” Hélène shouted.

Sirius turned around and quickly sent up a magic, jumped downward, hugged Hélène, and held her in his arms.

Before Hélène could react, the two of them fell heavily on something.

Thanks to Sirius’s protection, Hélène was not injured. She only heard Sirius grunting in pain beneath her.

“Black, Sirius!” Hélène yelled, but there was no response.

She fumbled Sirius’s chest with trembling hands, and gasped.

“I’m fine… that was rough!” It took a while for Sirius to gasp and say, “I seem to have… broken some ribs. Please… get off them….”

Hélène hurried to the side. In fact, she didn’t expect him to do what he did, and now he must be badly hurt.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a hard rocky ground below; there was some sort of buffer, those white things that she had vaguely seen before.

Looking at the floor more closely, Hélène blinked twice and then flinched immediately. That was not simply something white, but human bones… a massive pile of bones!

She raised her head and looked forward. In front of the bones pile, she saw an image from hell. In the small room, iron chains crisscrossed and dangled from the high ceiling.

Many iron chains were empty, or had some strange things hanging from them, but about a dozen of them were hanging human corpses!

Some of these people were hung from their heads, and some others from their feet. Some of them had blood slowly dripping from where the iron chains penetrated their flesh. Some were just rotten corpses, and their blood had already dried up…

This was the source of that pungent odor they smelled before! Hélène felt like vomiting.

Below the iron chain, on the innermost side of the room, was a very luxurious round mirror with a faint red glow on its surface.

Hélène had never seen such a luxurious mirror. It was inlaid on the innermost wall of the room, surrounded by complex magic runes she could not understand. It was almost covering the entire wall. Beside the mirror, there was an ugly skeleton. It was looking at them, and then…

It spoke!

“Welcome to hell, living!” Its mouth opened and closed, making a weird creepy sound, the hoarse, unpleasant sound that Sirius and Hélène had heard before. “A wizard and a witch, this is a rare sight; much more valuable than those lowly Muggles. It will like it, it will torture you well, it will not let you die fast!

Of course, the two of you will eventually die. Your blood belongs to me, I like the smell.” The skeleton paused and gave a harsh laugh. “Sorry, I forgot I can’t smell. How peculiar it is that now, I feel like I almost could!”

“Monster, what on earth are you?” Sirius gasped and said, sitting up with Hélène’s help.

He now rested almost all of his weight on her, the wand in his right hand pointed firmly at the skeleton.

“Don’t use that ugly word! Like you, I am a wizard, a noble pure-blood wizard, back when I was alive,” said the skeleton, with a hint of undisguised pride in his voice. “I heard the woman call you Black. I have heard of this family of wizards in England, a trivial small family. You know, heraldry is something that must be mastered. I used to spend a lot of effort on that. Living man, although your family is very small and humble, since you are a pure-blood wizard like me, I can be kind enough to tell you something. It won’t wake up that fast anyway; we have enough time to reminisce. Ah! Reminiscing! Must be my favorite thing, aside from the flavor of blood!”

“Reminisce?!” This skeleton was absolutely mad. Sirius could not imagine what past it could have had.

“So where do we start? So much to be said, so little time… Days won’t be enough to say everything! I guess I’ll start with what’s most important… My family. You must know that my family is a branch of the Capetian family of the French royal bloodline, the oldest and noblest pure blood wizard family in Paris. The blood that once flowed through my veins was the purest and the noblest of all,” said the skeleton. “Being born with such blood obviously granted me supreme status and glory, far beyond what you could ever imagine…”

The skeleton stopped talking, awaiting a reaction, but Sirius and Hélène did not react, and seemed to be, more than anything annoyed by the skeleton’s ramblings.

“Huh… how disappointing, living; you don’t seem to understand at all… You don’t seem to know the weight of my blood… the value it holds. Forget it, let’s continue! I bet the next bit would be more interesting to people of your caliber; my love affairs while studying at Beauxbatons…”

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