Gaunt ~ Book 2

Epilogue

"All Hogwarts staff, please report to the staffroom immediately," boomed Dumbledore's voice through Hogwarts. "This is an emergency."

Staff members dropped what they were doing and ran toward the staffroom.

"Has a student been left behind?" Pomona Sprout asked.

"Is the Monster of Slytherin back?" Minerva McGonagall demanded.

"Has someone else been found attacked in a place that we never thought to look?" Severus Snape questioned.

"None of those things," said Dumbledore darkly. "Something far worse. A student has been found dead, murdered."

"By Slythern's monster?" asked McGonagall. "By the Heir of Slytherin?"

"No," said Dumbledore. "This death is recent. It is of a student I remember seeing at the end of term feast."

There was a collective gasp.

"Who died?" Madam Pomfrey said in a whisper.

"A Hufflepuff by the name of Hannah Abbott. I have already alerted her family and they are coming to collect her body."

There was a silence, an awful silence, a silence weighed upon by death itself.

Dumbledore sighed, swallowed, and continued, "From what I was able to figure out from the deceased, she was murdered by magical means, an unforgivable curse."

There was a collecting shudder.

"The murderer is either a staff member — which I highly doubt — or a student," said Dumbledore. "I do not know which student is capable of killing but one has."

"We have to investigate," Snape said. "Her family will blame us, the staff, when we just have to find who's guilty, and expel them! We are fully capable wizards and witches, and they are merely a student enrolled in our school."

"I agree with Severus," said McGonagall. "We will find this student and they will suffer the consequences of murder."

"Good," said Dumbledore. "We must start immediately."

The Hogwarts staff stormed out of the staffroom, veins pumping with adrenaline.

Marvolo Gaunt didn't know what changed him. Was is the basilisk poison, sliding ever closer to his heart, or was it what Riddle had said in the Chamber of Secrets? Was he finally becoming a Gaunt? Was he finally becoming who he was meant to be?

Well, whatever was happening to him, it felt good. It felt good to be powerful, it felt good to have actually done something, not just sitting around letting his cousin do the work. He was Marvolo Gaunt, descendant of Salazar Slytherin, nothing was ever getting in his way.

Not even Harry James Potter and his lightning scar.

Marvolo smiled a wicked smile, and set down his horcrux, ready for dinner.

THE END

Word count: 54010