Ch 29 Unraveling The Past Part 2

"It wasn't long before my father heard about my brother's feats, and, as you can imagine, he was livid and ashamed. He felt it was a humiliation for a Dark Lord to be born into a prestigious family like ours. In his arrogance and stupidity, he immediately set out to put an end to my brother and kill him, believing that since he brought him into the world, he should be the one to end him," Herpo explained.

"I bet that didn't turn out so well for him," Sirius commented wryly.

"No, it didn't," the voice replied ruefully. "In his hubris and rage, my father failed to realize that he was a healer, not a fighter. And the one he was going to kill wasn't a boy he could just smack around anymore. Instead, he was a cruel Dark Lord that had been fighting and killing since he became an adult... The outcome was clear from the start."

"My brother didn't kill my father immediately; instead, he captured and tortured him for days until he got bored and sent his head to our family as a gruesome gift," Herpo recounted. "Many in my family wanted revenge, but I forbid it. They weren't accomplished fighters, and I had learned about my brother's formidable ability in the Dark Arts and duelling. There was no way a family of healers could defeat him."

"So I left him alone thinking that he would have been satisfied with killing a father and having gotten his revenge, but I was wrong," the magical ball flickered rapidly as anguish and grief filled Herpo's voice. "When I returned from a trip to heal someone in the next town, I found... my whole family butchered. He showed no mercy, killing everyone from children to elders in the most gruesome manner... leaving behind just a message that he would leave me alive for a year just to suffer before he would finally come for me to grant me the mercy of death,"

There was stillness for a few moments and Sirius didn't interrupt as he didn't think he could ever understand what people who lose their whole family in an instant could feel.

The voice started speaking again after a while, "...I knew from the start that I wasn't a match for him in the offensive arts and that there wasn't any chance for me to win against him in a fair fight... but what my brother didn't know or never bothered to find out in his arrogance was that I was talented and proficient in more than just the healing arts. I was also a world-renowned expert in Warding,"

"The number of people who came to me to get their homes warded wasn't any less than they came to be healed. I was as in tune with the warding field as I was with the healing one and there were few wards around that would be able to stump me and that I couldn't break given enough time,"

Sirius was starting to get impressed with this Herpo, not only was he good at warding and healing, but seeing that he was talking to him from the past he could say that he wasn't a slouch at divination either so being an expert in so many fields... he was like a Dumbledore of his era.

"And after losing everything... my only goal in life became to bring down my brother and I went at it with a completely rational and well-thought approach,"

"What did you do?" Sirius asked leaning in.

"I Stole,"

Herpo replied, and Sirius could almost hear the smirk in his voice. "Knowing my brother's pride, I knew he wouldn't let anyone get the better of him. So, one night while he was away, I sneaked into his home—or should I say lair. Breaking into his wards was child's play for someone of my calibre. He probably thought no one would dare enter his lair willingly."

"I took everything I could," he continued gleefully, "From all the tomes that contained years and years of his research and hard work, all the artefacts that he had spent years making and all the gold that he had stolen from the people he had killed over the years...I even ripped his toilet just to mess with him and just like him all I left behind was a letter, letting him know exactly who had outwitted him," he finished vengefully.

"He responded a lot more quickly than I had thought. While I expected him to be angry, I didn't anticipate he'd act so irrationally, failing to consider the possibility of a trap like anyone with a lick of common sense would," Herpo said.

"You took the guy's toilet," Sirius murmured to himself, "No one's going to stay rational after that."

"Anyway, not long after, he found this castle," the voice continued, pleased. "Without any hesitation or dialogue, he immediately attempted to break in."

"He was also an expert in Wards?" Sirius asked sceptically.

"As if! Someone of his intellectual competence could never hope to unravel my wards," the voice said disdainfully. "But he did go at it exactly as I expected—trying to forcefully break in. And if it was anyone else they wouldn't have been able to get inside in a hundred years but my brother had something that no one else did, the Deathstick, the strongest wand in the world, and probably the most useful if you want to destroy a powerful ward,"

"What? He had the Elder Wand?" Sirius exclaimed, surprised to learn that Herpo the Foul was also a wielder of the legendary wand. He hadn't come across any historical accounts mentioning this fact. And if he was then it was easy to see how he would be able to destroy that ward as Sirius knew from the books about its ability to break through wards since it was only after Voldemort acquired it that he was able to break through Hogwarts, he didn't even think of trying that before it.

"Is that what they call it in the future?" the voice mused. "Anyway, with the Elder Wand, it didn't take him long to break through the defensive ward surrounding my castle. He had a triumphant smirk on his face as he approached the door, likely believing that he would finally kill the last of his kin and become the sole heir of our famed clan."

"But the moment he touched the door, he fell into my trap," Herpo said with satisfaction. "In a stroke of irony, he was struck by the very curse he had created, a curse that is almost undetectable until it gets you, a curse that slowly and painfully sucks the life out of you, a curse that he knew had no cure... The Withering Curse,"

"The scream of his agony when he realized what had happened to him was pure music to my ears. Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—he didn't die immediately. He managed to slow the curse's spread for a while, but he knew he didn't have long," Herpo continued.

"So, of course, in his anger, the first thing he thought of was to kill the one responsible for his suffering. He turned his wand to my castle but, to his dismay, he found a second ward, multiple times more powerful than the first. He couldn't easily destroy it in his weakened state, without spending enough time, time that he didn't have—"

"Wait! That's not right," Sirius suddenly interrupted, shaking his head. "I know someone who was afflicted with the same curse, and they managed to survive for almost a year."

"Did they?" the voice said in wonder. "Maybe there have been some advancements in the future. Because the only way I know of would be to regularly use life-prolonging potions made using the rarest and the most expensive of herbs and this potion would require the amount of expertise in potioneering that very few in the world possess, definitely not something my brother could do."

"Oh! Alright then," Sirius said, as even if he didn't want to admit it, he knew that there were few in the world who could claim to be Snape's better in Potions.

"Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Unable to break the ward, he ran away, knowing I would seize the chance to kill him while he was weakened. For a while, I thought it would be the last I would see of him, but no, how could my brother leave it at that," he spat hatefully. "He came back, bringing along the vilest creatures in the world—his pets. He left them around my home, casting a powerful charm to prevent anyone from finding me. He wanted to trap me here for eternity, ensuring we both suffer the same fate."

"Wait a second," Sirius interrupted again, "I thought he had a Horcrux. Why didn't he use it to create a new body for himself?"

The voice burst into laughter, "Haha...Haha...H-He couldn't use his Horcrux because he couldn't get to it,"

"Why?" Sirius asked, tilting his head in confusion.

"Because fate also wanted my brother to die," the voice said gleefully. "You see, there was a reason he was so desperate and angry when he came here. When I was looting his home, I inadvertently took something vital to him, hidden among his artefacts from his lair... Can you guess what it is?"

"His Horcrux," Sirius said, shocked at the unfortunate turn of events.

"Haha... the pure despair upon his face when he realized that I held the only thing that could extend his pitiful life was just delightful... Sadly I didn't get to begging for me to return his trinket as it seems that he still had a bit of pride left in him," he finished regretfully.

The more Sirius thought about it the more he felt that he was missing something essential here, something on the edge of his mind that he just couldn't get to, "Oh! right, you didn't exactly explain why no one has any knowledge about you,"

"That was my brother's last shot at me and my family. Before he left me in my prison, he promised me that he would take away the last thing I had left, my fame," the voice said with a sigh, "He wanted to wipe any trace that we ever lived and ensure that the only thing people would remember about our family name was that 'Herpo the Foul' emerged from it, while all of us disappeared from history. He spent the rest of his short life creating a powerful curse that would place a taboo on our family's name. No one could speak our name, and thus, no one would remember that a family like ours ever existed."

Suddenly, it clicked in his mind as he started to mumble, "A Taboo... The withering curse... The Horcrux..." Immediately a shiver ran through his whole body he suddenly realised what had happened.

He suddenly jumped to his feet and took out a map of the surrounding area and asked the voice in an urgent tone, "Can you tell me where exactly your brother's lair is on this map,"

"Hmm... this map is a lot different than I remember, but if the surrounding mountains haven't changed much over the years, then it should be somewhere in the area named... Albania," the voice replied.

"Ah! Shit!" Sirius cursed as he realized what Voldemort had been doing in Albania during his youth.

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