From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 176 Memory
"The effect is really good! You must be Professor Snape's best student, right?" Madam Pomfrey, the head nurse, looked at the steam coming out of the little wizard's ears with satisfaction. She turned around and praised Ivy, "Ten points for Slytherin. No! Twenty points! Sorry, child, this is the most I can offer."

Ivy used the magician's hand and the automatic crucible to brew a lot of refreshing potions and sent them to the school hospital. At that time, Madam Pomfrey was worried about the cold patients occupying all the beds.

Her stimulant was running out, but the little wizard lying in the hospital bed needed her care, so she was too busy to brew the potion. Ivy, who came with the stimulant, was undoubtedly a timely help.

Ivy opened the Destruction Grimoire and found that his experience points had increased by a tiny amount. Compared to the experience points that could be obtained from campus missions, his character level was already too high.

He nodded to Madam Pomfrey and was about to take his leave when he heard a commotion in the corridor.

Madam Pomfrey put down what she was holding and walked out angrily: "Please be kind! The patient needs a quiet rest environment - God! What happened to him?"

The door of the ward was opened again, and several professors walked in one after another. Snape and Dumbledore were in the front, followed by Professor McGonagall. Filch, covered in blood, was floating in the air.

"Attacked by Potter," Professor Snape replied briefly.

"Severus!" Professor McGonagall shouted in dissatisfaction, "We don't know the truth of the matter yet. Mr. Potter is just a suspect."

Professor McGonagall's voice became lower and lower because she noticed many pairs of curious eyes looking out through the gaps in the bed curtains.

Dumbledore directed Filch to float to a bed and explained to Madam Pomfrey, "The wound has been healed with distilled essence, but he is still in a coma, probably due to excessive blood loss. If he wakes up, please notify me immediately."

"Okay, Headmaster." Madam Pomfrey nodded and began to check on Filch.

"Mr. Doom? What are you doing standing here?" Professor McGonagall noticed Ivy standing by the door.

Ivy glanced at the injured person on the bed and replied, "Professor Snape asked me to help make a refreshing potion before. I just brought it over."

Professor McGonagall looked at Snape, who nodded, agreeing with Ivy.

"Minerva, Severus, I'll leave Mr. Potter to you." Dumbledore had already left the bedside and turned to say to everyone, "Come with me, Ivy. I just happened to have something to talk to you about."

----

"How did Filch get injured?" Ivy asked while sitting in Dumbledore's office.

He raised his head to look at the old and ugly phoenix Fawkes sitting on the branch. This big bird was about to be reborn from the ashes, and its current appearance was one of the few ugly days in its long life.

Ivy thought this year would be a peaceful year, but he didn't expect that bloodshed would happen on campus just one month after the start of school. Usually, the first person to suffer would be the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but this year it was the old Squib Filch, which was really unusual.

Dumbledore sighed: "Harry said that he was bitten by 'ominous'. But no one except himself has ever seen the 'ominous' he mentioned."

Ivy frowned and thought, "Could it be that Sirius Black really escaped from prison? But shouldn't Ron's pet rat Scabbers be the one to suffer in that case?"

The plot of the dog catching the mouse was supposed to happen in the third year. Will it happen this year?

Ivy suddenly thought that it was not impossible for Sirius to escape from Azkaban, because he just lacked the motivation to escape, not the ability to escape. Sirius, who could transform into an Animagus, could avoid the senses of the Dementors, and he could escape at any time as long as he wanted.

If he suddenly realized that rotting in prison could not be considered as atonement, and that Harry, who lacked companionship and family affection while growing up, was even more pitiful, then it would not be without reason for him to leave Azkaban.

If Sirius really just came to Hogwarts to see his godson, then it is very likely that he has not yet discovered the existence of Peter Pettigrew.

Ivy frowned and thought for a while. Should he catch the mouse now? He was going to use it to lure out Voldemort. If Sirius accidentally found it, the mouse might not survive.

"Ivy!" Dumbledore called softly, "Have you thought of anything?"

Ivy came back to his senses, shook his head and replied: "No... I just don't quite understand what is going on. Did Harry summon the 'ominous', or did the 'ominous' find the people around him."

"I don't understand either." Dumbledore smiled, "But my experience tells me that sometimes all you have to do is wait, and the truth will surface on its own."

"Well, that's not why I came to you." Dumbledore changed the subject. "If Voldemort really made many Horcruxes, where would he keep them?"

Of course, Ivy knew where these Horcruxes were right now, but he still pretended to be listening attentively.

"Is it possible that his followers, the Death Eaters, possess one or two of these items?" Dumbledore put his fingers together. "Professor Snape reminded me of this."

A gold cup and a diary, exactly two items.

But Ivy remained calm and asked, "Then this Death Eater must be deeply trusted by Voldemort. After all, this is like handing over a part of your soul to someone else."

Dumbledore frowned and looked up at Fawkes's bare buttocks: "You are right, he must trust this person very much..."

"I doubt whether he has ever trusted anyone." Ivy said slowly, "He has been on the run as a wandering soul for more than ten years, but he has never appeared in front of any Death Eaters. Instead, he chose the cowardly Quirrell."

"Or maybe... it's because all the Death Eaters he trusted were imprisoned in Azkaban." Dumbledore's eyes lit up. "It just so happens that I plan to visit someone in Azkaban."

Dumbledore hadn't said who he was going to visit, and Ivy had no idea it wasn't some Death Eater still loyal to Voldemort.

"Do you need me to go with you?" Ivy volunteered. He also needed to confirm whether Sirius Black was still in prison.

"I'm afraid not, Ivy," Dumbledore replied. "I'm afraid Fudge would not be willing to see a young wizard who is not on the visiting list."

"Okay then. I'll wait for you to share the good news with me." Although a little regretful, Ivy didn't show it on his face at all.

The old principal laughed again: "I just came to share something with you - some memories."

Dumbledore stood up and walked to a shelf full of small bottles. The silver substance that was floating in the bottles was the memory extracted by the wizard using magic. Ivy knew that most of those memories were about Voldemort. Ever since he first wreaked havoc in the wizarding world, Dumbledore had begun to try every means to figure out his past.

Dumbledore picked and chose from the shelves, finally selecting a bottle.

"I think I may have found one of Voldemort's Horcruxes." He shook the crystal bottle with his slender fingers, and the silver memory spun back and forth in it. "This memory belongs to Morfin Gaunt, Voldemort's uncle."

It was the Resurrection Stone. Ivy immediately thought of the answer.

No, to be precise, it is the heirloom ring of the Gaunt family, and the Resurrection Stone is just a decoration on it.

Dumbledore poured the memories from the bottle into the Pensieve and took out his wand and put it in to stir it.

"It is thanks to Merlin that I was able to collect this memory. Morfin Gaunt was imprisoned in Azkaban for some crimes. I had just obtained these memories from him when he died and was buried next to the prison." Dumbledore made a "please" gesture to the Pensieve.

Ivy stepped forward and put her face into the stone basin.

It was as if he was falling from the void, and it took a long time for him to stop. Ivy looked around.

The ground was dirty and messy, and it was dark all around, as if there was no lighting at all.

A few seconds later, Dumbledore also landed: "This is the old Gaunt house, located in Little Hangleton."

This place was even dirtier, messier, and worse than Ivy had imagined. There was mold everywhere, and the ceiling was covered with cobwebs. Perhaps because of this, there were few flies in the room.

A man was lying on the only relatively intact armchair in the room, rotting along with the entire room. Ivy noticed that he was wearing a gold ring on his hand with a black gem on the ring face. The gem was engraved with the Peverell Crest, which is the symbol of the Deathly Hallows. The triangle represented Harry's Invisibility Cloak, the circle inside was the Resurrection Stone, and the vertical line represented Dumbledore's Elder Wand.

"That's Morfin Gaunt." Dumbledore's voice was accompanied by a heavy knock on the door.

Morfin Gaunt woke from his sleep and grabbed his wand and dagger from his side.

The tall, black-haired, handsome young man named Voldemort walked in. If it was just a rough description of his appearance, Ivy found that he was almost the same as himself.

But those who have really seen them know that they are two completely different people, with very different facial features. Voldemort's appearance makes people feel that he is arrogant and sarcastic, while Ivy is more willing to show his confidence and calmness.

The two people in the room began to talk in Parseltongue.

From his uncle, Voldemort learned that his father was a Muggle and his mother was a pitiful woman who stole treasure and ran away from home. The two broke out into a quarrel, and then a darkness came.

Ivy and Dumbledore's bodies flew into the air and returned to the headmaster's office in the blink of an eye.

"The Imperius Curse?" Ivy asked.

"My guess is not much different from yours. Whatever magic it was, Morfin Gaunt lost his memory afterwards." Dumbledore sat back in his chair and asked curiously, "Can you understand Parseltongue?"

"Not just snakes, I can communicate with all animals." The Strixheim Apprentice feat gave Ivy the ability to choose a 1st-level spell from the Bard's table, and talking with animals was Ivy's choice. Although he did learn Parseltongue through the Tome of the Rule of Monsters, there was no need to tell Dumbledore about this.

"Amazing talent." Dumbledore exclaimed, and then said, "I suppose you must have noticed the Slytherin locket in their conversation?"

Ivy nodded. In her memory, Morfin Gaunt accused Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt, of stealing Slytherin's locket when she ran away from home and eloped with a Muggle.

"That is the heirloom of the Gaunt family. Marvolo Gaunt, the father of Morfin and Merope, values it and another treasure very much." Dumbledore continued to explain the relationship between them. "It is on Morfin's finger, a gold ring of the Gaunt family."

"When Morfin woke up the next morning, Voldemort had already left the Gaunt house and took the golden ring with him."

"A murder occurred in Little Hangleton. Three people died, including old Riddle and his parents. Investigators from the Ministry of Magic found Morfin, and he confessed to the crime he had committed. Through the detection of the Flashback Spell, the Ministry of Magic determined that Morfin's wand released the Killing Curse, which was the murder weapon that killed old Riddle's family. So he was thrown into Azkaban and eventually died there. The only thing that made him uneasy was the gold ring that was taken away by Voldemort."

Dumbledore's hint was obvious, and Ivy felt that he should say something: "So, you think that ring is Voldemort's Horcrux?"

"Obviously." Dumbledore groaned for a moment. "A murder of three people is enough to make a Horcrux. But I'm not sure... Voldemort was still in school at the time. I didn't expect him to be exposed to such evil magic so early."

Dumbledore, who had not seen the diary, could not believe that Voldemort was so crazy when he was still in school.

But that golden ring was already the second Horcrux made by Voldemort.

"What do you want me to do?" Ivy asked.

"Let's go to Little Hangleton, the old Gaunt house, and Riddle House to see where the murder took place. Perhaps we will find something." Dumbledore sighed. "It doesn't matter if we don't find anything. At least we still have a lot of time."

"Are we leaving now?" Ivy asked again.

"There's no need to rush," said Dumbledore. "Just pick a weekend after I get back from Azkaban."

"I don't have class right now," Ivy reminded.

"Oh! I forgot about that." Dumbledore laughed. "Then I'll wait until I, a poor old man, have time... Once you become famous, you'll always have endless paperwork to do..."

"Like Lockhart who wrote back to his fans?" Ivy raised his eyebrows and quipped.

Dumbledore laughed. "Indeed, a large part of my time in the office is taken up by my ceaseless correspondence."

(End of this chapter)