Duel Enrollment

Acceptance

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T.M.R ... this might be the clue he needed ...

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Severus opened the heavy wooden door to the records room in Hogwarts, "Now I don't know for sure, but considering the Dark Lord hates Dumbledore so much, speaks parseltongue, is supposedly the heir to Slytherin and people claim Death Eaters are Slytherin it stands to reason that he attended Hogwarts as a student. Why else would Dumbledore and Hogwarts be the center of much of the war?"

File after file Severus sifted through the years of students. There were two traits he was looking for ... the initials TMR and a Slytherin student that was around something like fifty years ago. At first, it seemed like a pointless quest, but then he spotted a name ...

Tom Marvolo Riddle!

It fit perfectly! According to the records and written comments from past teachers he was a brilliant Slytherin student who seemed normal until one of the Ravenclaw students, Myrtle Warren, passed away.

"The death of Myrtle must be when his soul shattered for the first time because the teachers noticed him turning to the dark arts after that. Perhaps he blamed himself." Severus commented and began skimming the rest of the information, but his eyes narrowed as he found some information was missing and almost too much in one area that had nothing to do with the child. "How very odd ... I can't find anything on his guardians or where he was staying, but there's a lot on the Gaunt family ... no one was staying with them so why is there so much here? Even if he was related to them there should only be enough to show he was living with them, which he wasn't."

The entire situation puzzled Severus so he went to get Julian's soul orb and check the Gaunt Shack ...

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"You found more! Thank you, Uncle Sev!" Julian beamed as he carefully took the orb filled with four shimmering soul fragments swimming inside and put the necklace on. Severus chuckled as the little boy smiled happily with the occamy perched on his head.

Brian sat down on the couch and grinned as Julian played with Tanzanite. "It didn't take you long to collect them." He commented as Severus sat down too.

"Once I managed to find the name Tom Marvolo Riddle in the Hogwarts records it was simple to track them down though ... it's really odd behavior. I think Tom understood that something was wrong and began taking measures to protect the diary, but the two horcruxes I found today weren't protected at all. Both the Slytherin locket and the Gaunt ring were just laying on the floor of the Gaunt Shack." Severus said as he shook some dust off his sleeve that got on him when he searched the dilapidated shack. "Tom's mind must've been suffering from severe memory problems."

"Sounds like it and this proves that he probably didn't intend to break his soul." Brian mused out loud.

Severus nodded, "Indeed ... I gave Griphook the Gaunt ring and the locket since they were goblin made and heirlooms. They'll take care of it and I was informed that there was a horcrux protocol in all Gringotts banks so if I suspect that a specific item was used the goblins could enter the vault with the orb and legally take the horcrux for me. A piece of someone's soul doesn't belong to anyone even if you own the item the horcrux is stuck to. If the locket was used I suspect the other founder items were used save for the sword of Gryffindor. Griphook is setting up an investigation to see if anything can be found ... and now that Hogwarts is out for the summer I have time to handle arrangements so Gringotts is transferring my bank accounts over to Australia."

Those pretty green eyes lit up, "Are you staying closer, Uncle Sev?"

"Yes I am and I was curious if you'd like to meet the little boy I told you about." Severus suggested as he pulled Julian into his lap making a tiny Tanzanite flutter up into the air clearly irritated with being unsettled, but quickly .