Following the path forward, this was what could be seen.
The setting sun had sunk behind the beech trees, and the remaining light dyed the whole farm a deep, dusky yellow.
The farmhouse's limewashed walls took on a warm gray in that light. Smoke rose from the chimney, dark and sooty, blending into the burning red sunset.
From the cowshed came the low mooing of cows. It was milking time—already, the hiss of milk pouring into iron pails could be heard, one stream after another, rhythmic and steady.
After all, the world needed only three insignificant things:
milk squeezed from cows into buckets;
green grain growing across the earth;
and thread guided by the hands of skilled women.
"I see it."
Sirius's voice was very low, but he could not hide his excitement.
The three of them stood on the grassy slope, watching something rustle and slide through the dark field toward them.
It was a giant snake, at least twelve feet long.
Its body undulated like waves, leaving a broad, winding trail in the grass.
Lupin drew his wand, alert to their surroundings at all times.
"It isn't a Horcrux."
Sean seemed to let out a breath of relief, yet his expression also grew more solemn.
"You said—what?"
Sirius felt his face stiffen.
"It isn't."
Lupin stared at the approaching snake. After a brief silence, he added the same judgment.
Sirius's expression shifted uncertainly. He looked at the snake, then at his old friend beside him.
"Mr. Green, perhaps we should—"
Lupin said something hard to understand, but he knew the respected Mr. Green beside him would understand.
"There is a better way, Mr. Lupin."
Sean paused.
"Can you restrain it?"
"As you command."
Lupin suppressed his curiosity and exchanged a glance with Sirius.
Capturing a giant snake was not easy, but with a wand, the matter was different.
In any case, when they left the eastern farm, there was an unconscious giant snake inside Sean's Wizard's Book.
"What are you planning to do?"
When they reached the entrance of the Hanged Man pub, Sirius could not resist asking in a low voice.
"She suffers from a blood curse, Mr. Green. You know that is an irreversible curse—"
"Only for wizards."
Lupin interrupted him.
Sirius's eyes flickered, and he stopped asking.
Did Sean truly have a way to solve a blood curse?
He was not very certain.
He was sure it was a curse involving soul transformation, but how to remove such a powerful and strange curse was something wizarding history had almost no record of.
The only thing Sean knew was that there had once been wizards who cast such a powerful transformation spell: they transformed an entire enemy family.
According to legend, two wizarding families once lived on the distant Isle of Drear:
the McBoon clan and the McClivert clan. They had a blood feud.
One day, the heads of the two families, Dugald McClivert and Quintius McBoon, held a drunken wizard's duel, and Dugald McClivert was killed.
To avenge him, members of the McClivert clan attacked the McBoon clan and transformed every one of its members into Quintapeds.
However, the McCliverts soon realized that the original McBoons had been very poor at using magic, but the monsters they had become were unquestionably much more dangerous.
The McCliverts tried desperately to turn the McBoons back, but all attempts failed.
In the end, those Quintapeds transformed from the McBoons killed every member of the McClivert clan on the island.
The truth of this legend could no longer be verified, because neither the McClivert nor McBoon families had any survivors left to tell Sean what had truly happened to their ancestors.
Quintapeds could not speak and fiercely resisted every attempt by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to restore them to their original form.
Therefore, one could only assume that if Quintapeds truly were transformed members of the McBoon family, then they must have been perfectly willing to remain Quintapeds.
But what about Nagini?
Was she willing to become a cold-blooded animal?
Sean guessed that she was not.
So Sean was willing to try for her.
The evening bell rang just like that. The Hanged Man pub was full of drunken patrons.
They generously said things no one cared about, and from time to time downed an entire bottle of butterbeer in one go, waiting for the surrounding people to cheer.
"To the Riddle house."
Sean searched the pub for that figure, but did not find him.
It seemed they would have to go to the small hut in the garden of the Riddle house.
Night.
The Riddle house.
Many years had passed, but the villagers of Little Hangleton still called the house "the Riddle house," even though no Riddles lived there anymore.
The house stood on a hillside, from which one could see the entire village.
Several of its windows were boarded up, tiles were missing from the roof, and ivy sprawled wildly across the entire building.
The Riddle house had once been a handsome mansion, the broadest and most impressive building for miles around, but now it had become damp, desolate, and long uninhabited.
The villagers of Little Hangleton unanimously believed that the old house was "creepy."
Half a century ago, something strange and terrible had happened there. Even now, whenever the older villagers had no other topic of conversation, they still liked to drag it out and talk about it. The story had been retold so many times, with so many extra details added, that no one could say exactly what the truth was. But every version began the same way:
Fifty years ago, when the Riddle house was still well kept and magnificent, at dawn on a bright summer day, a maid walked into the drawing room and found all three members of the Riddle family dead.
The maid ran screaming down the slope and into the village, waking as many people as she could.
"All lying there, eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still dressed in their dinner clothes!"
The police rushed to the scene, and the whole village of Little Hangleton erupted.
The villagers claimed to be shocked and curious, but everyone could see the excitement they could barely suppress.
No one bothered pretending to be sad for the Riddle family. That household had long had a terrible reputation in the village. The old couple were extremely wealthy, but snobbish and cruel. As for their grown son, Tom—hard as it might be to believe, he was even worse than his parents.
What the villagers truly cared about was who the killer was. How could three seemingly healthy people all die perfectly quietly in one night?
That night, business at the Hanged Man pub in the village was booming, as if the whole village had come to discuss the murder.
The villagers' decision to leave their own hearths had not been wasted. The Riddle family's cook burst in and announced to the suddenly silent drinkers that a man named Frank Bryce had just been arrested.
"Frank!"
several people cried.
"Impossible!"
Frank Bryce was the Riddles' gardener. He lived alone in a shabby little cottage on the estate. After returning from the war, one of his legs had gone stiff and difficult to use, and he had developed a strong dislike for crowds and noise. Since then, he had worked for the Riddles.
The people in the pub scrambled to buy the cook drinks, desperate to hear more inside information.
"I always thought there was something wrong with him,"
the cook said to the villagers leaning in with eager ears after draining her fourth glass of sherry.
"Cold as anything. Didn't like talking to anyone. I'd have to ask him a hundred times before he'd agree to come in for tea. He never liked dealing with people."
"Well, that's not quite fair,"
a woman at the bar cut in.
"Frank fought in a terrible war. We've no reason to blame him for wanting a quiet life—"
"Then tell me, who else had a key to the back door?"
The cook raised her voice.
"I remember it clearly. There was always a spare hanging in that gardener's hut of his! Last night, no door was forced, no windows were broken. All Frank had to do was wait until we were asleep, then sneak into the main house—"
The villagers silently exchanged glances.
"I always did think there was something particularly unpleasant about him, honestly."
a man at the bar muttered.
"If you ask me, the war made him strange."
said the pub owner.
"I told you, didn't I? I never dared offend Frank, did I, Dot?"
an excited woman shouted from the corner.
"Bad temper, that one."
"That's right,"
Dot nodded furiously.
"I still remember when he was little—"
By the next morning, nearly everyone in Little Hangleton believed it: Frank Bryce had killed the whole Riddle family.
However, in the dark and gloomy police station of Great Hangleton, Frank stubbornly repeated again and again that he was innocent.
He said that on the day the Riddles died, the only person he had seen near the house was a teenage boy he didn't know, with black hair and a pale face.
No one else in the village had seen such a boy, and the police concluded that Frank had invented him out of thin air.
Things looked very bad for Frank, but then the coroner's report on the Riddles' bodies came back and changed everything.
And so now, Frank had been able to keep looking after the mansion for the Riddle house's new owners.
The mansion was dark. Frank generally did not light the hearth inside it.
But today, there was a faint glow there.
Frank believed it was those troublesome boys again. He looked toward the house, his face sour, and picked up the walking stick leaning against the wall.
Normally, he would not have been willing to go inside, but today, he clearly had to drive out whoever was causing trouble.
Inside the Riddle house, low, oppressive voices sounded in waves.
"Tell me more about the boy—"
This was a sharp voice, like a bitterly cold wind.
"Yes, my Master—that is an especially extraordinary boy, oh, a most respected boy—"
an obsequious voice answered.
"He truly is astonishing—from the very beginning, he was. He is talented, everyone at that school knows it. They see him as the greatest wizard of the next age, perhaps even this one? In any case, he is most respected—"
"Oh?"
The sharp voice seemed to gain a trace of idle interest.
"You cannot possibly be unaware. No one has ever seen such a wizard at that age. They say he is destined to become greater than Dumbledore. He has fanatical followers everywhere. Dumbledore is even pleased by this. He is willing to help him build his influence. Those wizards investigate every inch of the castle day after day just to express their fanatical devotion to him—he has the largest club in Hogwarts history, with more than half the students in it—"
The flattering voice went on.
After hearing the words "Dumbledore" and "help him build his influence," that sharp voice seemed to become even colder.
"So Dumbledore believes he will become stronger than me?"
"That can—ah—"
The flattering voice seemed to suffer terrible pain. Then came the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.
"Wormtail, you seem… very concerned about him."
A cold, teasing tone appeared in the sharp voice.
"He is our greatest obstacle, Master!"
Wormtail shouted from the floor, face flushed red.
"Then what about Harry Potter—"
The cold teasing tone became even more obvious.
"How can he compare to Mr. Green?!"
Wormtail shouted again.
"I understand."
The sharp voice sank lower.
He whispered,
"Wormtail, tell me, where can we find a loyal servant?"
"I am a loyal servant."
Wormtail said, with a trace of panic in his voice.
"Loyal? You are only cowardly. If you had anywhere else to go, you would never have come here."
The sharp voice sneered.
"Go, Wormtail. Find me some milk."
Wormtail, who had been stammering and speaking incoherently, immediately fell silent.
Then came the sound of light footsteps.
"Loyal?"
Inside the room, the sharp voice spoke again, very softly, like a hiss from deep in the throat.
It was at that moment that old Frank went upstairs.
He entered the dark, cavernous kitchen downstairs, a place he had not entered for many years.
Still, although everything around him was pitch-black, he remembered where the door leading to the hallway was.
He felt his way over, and a rotten smell struck him.
He pricked up his ears, catching every footstep or murmur overhead.
He reached the hallway, where a little light seeped in through the tall mullioned windows on either side of the front door.
He began climbing the stairs, thinking that it was fortunate the stone steps were thick with dust, muffling the sounds of his feet and walking stick so they would not be easily noticed.
Only when a wand glowing green was pressed before his eyes did he realize there were two men standing in front of him.
"Who are you?!"
Frank trembled violently.
"People here to send you away."
A lazy voice said.
"Sirius—"
The other man beside him looked gentle.
Under Frank's terrified gaze,
he "died."
At least, that was what the residents of Little Hangleton later said.
Old Frank was not young anymore, and he had illness in him besides.
One morning, he woke up and simply breathed his last.
Several people who claimed to be his "nephews" took him away to be buried. Of course, the residents of Little Hangleton preferred to believe those people had come for the inheritance.
Even though none of them knew what inheritance Frank could possibly have.
But that was what the villagers of Little Hangleton believed, because making them believe things was that simple.
As for why none of the villagers had seen Old Frank's corpse?
No one cared.
What the villagers did not know was that a dead man—a war veteran tangled in rumors for many years—had been saved by rumors that day.
By now, Frank had already boarded a train to Dorset.
There was a farm there waiting for him to run.
And the people who had given him that farm—oh, those strange but kind "nephews" of his—had long since vanished.
"How do I have nephews like that?"
Old Frank muttered in confusion.
But he could not hide his excitement.
A farm of his own to run. A quiet, comfortable, self-sufficient life. His dream for his later years had suddenly come true.
Old Frank kept feeling as though he were in a daze.
Because of that, he felt even more goodwill toward robed people today.
For example, the likable boy standing before him now.
"Where am I from, young sir?"
Old Frank revealed a rather alarming smile.
"Dorset, of course. Where else would I be from? Little Hangleton?
What sort of place is Little Hangleton?"
"Then I can rest easy. I wish you a pleasant life, Mr. Frank."
the young boy in robes said.
Frank's mind could not quite turn the corner. He couldn't understand what Little Hangleton was, nor how the boy knew his name.
But soon, he forgot those questions too.
As though he had never met the boy at all.