Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Harry’s scar felt as though it had split open again. His true surroundings vanished: He was Voldemort, and the gaunt, skeletal old wizard, before him was looking at him with utter contempt.

“Kill me, then, Voldemort, I welcome death! But my death will not bring you what you seek. … There is so much you do not understand. …”

Harry felt Voldemort’s fury; his cold, piercing voice echoed in the small cell.

“I have already achieved immortality. I am about to become eternal.”

“No, you are closer to failure, Voldemort. What you have gained is what we once rejected.” The old man laughed contemptuously. “You have lost yourself in your pursuit of power. You think you have escaped death, but in doing so, you have given up something far more precious — your soul; you believe you have found strength, but in reality, you are so fragile and vulnerable; you have tried to comprehend endless darkness, and instead become lost within it; you made a pact with that being in the darkness, and that has doomed you to destruction.”

Voldemort’s fury broke; he stretched out his wand at the old man, and a burst of green light filled the prison room.

The old man’s frail body twisted and struggled before Harry, letting out painful cries.

The Cruciatus Curse!

The old man’s pain seemed to transfer to Harry, as though the curse had struck him too. Pain radiated from his scar, spreading swiftly through his entire body.

Harry was awakened by the pain. He opened his eyes, feeling as if every bone in his body were being torn apart.

He gasped for breath, and it took a long moment for him to gradually calm down.

Harry didn’t understand why Voldemort would torture a strange old man, or what the old man meant by his words.

By now, it was dark. Through the ruins above, Harry saw the night sky.

The night was so deep, obscuring everything, with only a few stars stubbornly twinkling in the distance.

The dim light of the torches flickered in the night wind, seemingly about to gutter out at any moment. By the flickering light, Harry realized that the ghosts he had seen when he woke up were all gone. They seemed to have finally lost interest in him, no longer circling around him, leaving him all alone.

Suddenly, a strange sound rang out.

“Ron… is that you?” Harry murmured, his lips feeling dry.

It wasn’t Ron. He saw a bird as black as shadow emerge from the night sky and gently land on a stone above his head.

It was a raven!

Ravenclaw’s emblem. But almost at once the thought struck him as odd. Was Ravenclaw’s symbol really a raven?!

He felt confused, as if after all this time at Hogwarts, he still hadn’t figured out what the symbol of Ravenclaw was. Although in official school settings, the Ravenclaw flag always appeared as a sky-blue eagle, in private, most students thought Ravenclaw’s emblem was a raven.

It was strange; the symbols of the other three Houses were always so obvious, unmistakable — Gryffindor’s gold and scarlet lion, Slytherin’s silver and green serpent, Hufflepuff’s tawny badger.

Only Ravenclaw’s emblem was ambiguous, easily confusing.

In many people’s minds, that sky-blue eagle was often replaced by a mysterious raven.

It was as if some strange magic was constantly exerting its influence on them.

How strange, Harry couldn’t help but wonder, how come he had never realized this before?!

An eagle or a raven, the blue sky or the pitch-black night — which one truly belonged to Ravenclaw’s domain?!

……………………………………………………………….

Evan tried to hold his breath. The air was thick with a rotten stench, as though something nearby were decaying, dying.

He disliked the smell, just as he disliked this place.

Before him stretched an endless wasteland, but unlike other desolate landscapes, there was not a single plant here, nor any sign that life had ever existed. The soil was a dull, deathly black, as if corroded by something. Evan opened his hand, and the loose soil slipped through his fingers, like life itself fading away.

Judging from the scene before him, it was hard to imagine that this had once been a vast, vibrant lake.

As one of the oldest centers of Wizarding settlement, the area around the lake had once been home to many ancient Wizarding families, much like Hogsmeade or Godric’s Hollow. Wizards had lived on this land for generations, including many famous families, with the Ravenclaw family being the most prominent.

This place had once been a sacred ground of magic and life, until that terrible, inexplicable catastrophe occurred. …

Evan recalled the information recorded on the map provided by Lucius Malfoy, the stench of decay in the air growing stronger.

He choked, coughing violently as if he had inhaled something unpleasant.

The world around him grew darker; the sun had already set, and night seemed to fall earlier here than anywhere else in Britain.

Behind Evan, the sunlight vanished visibly, swallowed by the advancing darkness.

Soon, blackness became the dominant color of the entire region.

According to the map provided by Lucius Malfoy, Evan was now standing on the edge of the core area of the Land of Death.

Continuing forward, he would enter the former residential district of the Ravenclaw family and many other Wizarding families, where the Dark Witch was now leading hundreds of Dark wizards in excavation. After learning the exact location of the Land of Death from Lucius, Evan had not lingered at Malfoy Manor. He sent Dobby, the house-elf, back to report, and Apparated alone to the area. He had come to search for the missing Harry and Ron, and if possible, to stop the Dark Witch’s activities.

Because of Harry, Evan knew more than Malfoy in some matters, including what the Dark Witch was searching for in the Land of Death. Malfoy, after much investigation, only knew it was related to the Veil of Death, but Evan knew she wanted to find the spell to open the Veil.

This time, his opponents were the mysterious and dangerous Dark Witch and Raven’s Claw, but Evan was confident.

After all, he had passed the test left by Lady Ravenclaw and earned her personal recognition.

But now that he had actually come here, he realized his earlier assumptions might have been overly optimistic. He knew that the information he had received wouldn’t be of much help in the current situation. In the darkness, Evan could sense an ominous and dangerous atmosphere. A sudden doubt crept into his mind: perhaps coming here in the dark wasn’t a wise choice.

Ever since he had arrived, Evan could sense an unfamiliar force ahead, beckoning him.

He couldn’t be sure what it meant; something seemed to await him, but the dense darkness and power of death radiating from within stirred a deep instinctive resistance inside him.

Suppressing the unease rising in his chest, Evan drew his wand and stepped forward into the darkness.