Chapter 62

[HORCRUX No. 5 — Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem]

The story is as tragic as it is ridiculous.

Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw, stole her mother’s diadem because she envied her.

Yes. Envy.

Seriously?

'What an unfilial daughter,' Ryan thought as he read what he’d written. 'Your mother is one of the founders of the most important school in the wizarding world, and you decide to betray her out of jealousy. Very mature and Ravenclaw of you.'

The diadem supposedly made its wearer wiser. Doubtful, but not entirely impossible.

Maybe it made your mind a bit clearer or something like that, something that gave the appearance of greater wisdom and intelligence, but your IQ stayed exactly the same.

Helena fled and hid the diadem in a tree in Albania, believing she could escape her mother’s legacy.

Rowena, sick and dying, sent the Bloody Baron to find her, wanting to see her daughter one last time before passing away. The Baron, who was in love with Helena, accepted the task.

And here comes the best part:

When Helena refused to return, the Baron stabbed her. Then, horrified by what he’d done, he stabbed himself.

Ryan remembered seeing him more than once wandering the halls of Hogwarts.

“What the hell?” he jotted in his notebook. “Did he have some kind of inbreeding issue or just anger management problems because he was rejected? And then he kills himself? Pathetic.”

Thus ended a Shakespearean tragedy with little magic and a lot of ego.

Both became ghosts haunting Hogwarts, and so began the mystery of the lost diadem.

Centuries later enters the charmer of specters:

Tom Riddle.

He courted the spirit of Helena, now going by the melancholic title of the Grey Lady, ghost of Ravenclaw House.

“Courted by Tom? Another one? What’s wrong with everyone?

He’s a sociopath, not a prince!

And she gave him the location just like that? Of the bloody diadem she stole from her mother?

Magnificent protective instincts, Lady Ghost!”

Ryan couldn’t help but smile faintly and shake his head as he reread that part of the story he’d written himself.

He remembered the Grey Lady well: a true beauty, with an icy gaze, regal bearing, and almost queenly presence.

Silent, elegant, always gliding as if gravity itself didn’t dare to touch her.

But when you know the real story, her image crumbles: a traitor. A daughter so envious of her mother that she stole her legacy and fled like a coward.

Rowena died with a broken heart.

And then…

She lets herself be courted by a seventeen-year-old student?

A centuries-old ghost seduced by a boy barely out of school?

'Ma’am, please… get your priorities straight. You’re centuries old, act like it,' Ryan thought with a grimace.

Riddle traveled to the Albanian forest after leaving Hogwarts, recovered the diadem from the hollow tree where Helena had hidden it, and turned it into his fifth Horcrux, murdering some random Albanian peasant.

One more for the statistics.

Where did he hide the diadem?

Hogwarts.

Yes, he returned to the castle when he was already forcing his followers to call him Lord Voldemort, asking for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

Dumbledore, with his usual gaze that saw far more than it revealed, denied him the job.

And Voldemort took advantage of that night to hide the diadem in the Room of Requirement, in its form as the “Room of Hidden Things.”

'A logical move… if it weren’t for the fact that he thought he was the only one who had discovered the room. Is he an idiot?' Ryan thought.

The room was literally filled with magical junk that had piled up over centuries.

Hundreds of objects hidden by generations of students.

You didn’t have to be a genius to deduce that others had already used it. Hogwarts had over 500 students, not to mention all the generations before them.

Did he not think some parent or grandparent might have told the secret to their children or grandchildren?

He left the Horcrux buried among mountains of forgotten objects, unguarded, untrapped, uncursed.

Voldemort’s arrogance was his most glaring blind spot.

And thanks to that, the diadem was now completely accessible. Ryan knew how to enter and find it. The only thing missing was a way to destroy it.

That was the real challenge. He had no basilisk fangs. The Sword of Gryffindor had not yet absorbed the venom that would make it lethal against Horcruxes.

And he couldn’t just throw it into the sea and hope saltwater killed it.

He needed fire, but not just any fire.

Cursed fire.

Ryan closed the journal and set it aside.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as if the very idea were floating above him.

“This is insane,” he murmured.

But not impossible.

Cursed fire was one of the most destructive spells in the magical world.

Fiendfyre.

Fire that couldn’t be extinguished by water, that devoured both matter and soul, that took the form of living beasts and consumed everything in its path.

An elemental force impossible to control unless you had absolute mastery over your magic.

'Although… if that orangutan-brained idiot Vincent Crabbe managed to cast it…' Ryan thought, raising an eyebrow. “Well, not cast it properly, of course, the spell went out of control, and he ended up incinerated by his own stupidity. But still. He did it. For a few seconds.”

Crabbe wasn’t even a competent student. He was more muscle than brain, with the reflexes of a sedated troll.

And yet, he summoned it.

Ryan wasn’t Crabbe. He was meticulous, far more talented, and unquestionably smarter.

If anyone could master such a volatile spell, it was him.

Of course, he’d have to train. Practice with normal fire. Study its limits, the spell’s behavior patterns. Develop an escape method in case something went wrong.

There was risk, but also reward. Because if he managed to master it, he’d have a way to destroy every Horcrux.

It would even serve as a highly destructive offensive spell for future battles, though using it with allies nearby would be… difficult.

He needed to research more.

“Can it be extinguished once conjured?” he wondered, drumming his fingers on the table. “Or does it only stop when there’s nothing left to devour?”

Because if it couldn’t be stopped, then it wasn’t a weapon. It was an elegant suicide.

And that’s when he thought of the second option:

The Chamber of Secrets. Home of the Basilisk. A mythological monster hidden beneath the depths of Hogwarts, one of the few living beings with venom capable of destroying Horcruxes.

'If Harry Potter could go in and kill it at twelve… why couldn’t I?' Ryan thought.

Of course, Harry had the Sword of Gryffindor.

And also the power of the plot.

And the protagonist’s halo.

And an indecent amount of narrative luck.

Ryan snorted through his nose, sardonic.

“A skinny second-year kid, no training, no useful offensive or defensive spells… and he’s facing an ancient monster. And he kills it? Sure, makes perfect sense,” he muttered.

The real miracle wasn’t that he survived.

It was that no reader ever questioned how a twelve-year-old with the emotional range of a brick and zero combat skills managed to slay a centuries-old basilisk.

But Ryan did have skills, a sharper mind than twelve-year-old Harry Potter, and tools.

He could cast Protego; he didn’t know if it would withstand a basilisk’s tail swipe, but it would at least soften the blow. He had decent offensive control too, from Diffindo to Confringo, passing through Expelliarmus and Bombarda.

Sure, Expelliarmus wouldn’t do much against a giant snake with sword-sized fangs, but the others…

With luck, yes. He should probably learn Bombarda Maxima, a seventh-year-level spell at Hogwarts.

Besides, he didn’t plan to walk in there armed with nothing but a wand and hope.

His cloak was enchanted, five automatic Protego charges, programmed to activate against immediate threats he couldn’t block in time.

He could increase the number of charges, though that might overload the cloak, he’d probably need to study and practice repeatedly to push it past five.

And that wasn’t all. He had his explosive rune marbles, he could bombard the damn serpent from a distance and see how much punishment it could take.

He also had his rune talismans, dense mist for cover or concealment, and another that emitted a flashbang-like burst of light straight out of Counter-Strike.

He could go in prepared, even bring a broom to keep a safe distance, dozens of meters above the ground, and rain bombs on the basilisk until it died. Though he wasn’t sure how resistant it might be to explosives.

He’d also need exit plans, contingencies in case things went wrong and the creature’s strength exceeded the books’ portrayal.

Ryan rested, jotting notes in his journal as he thought.

When the clock struck midnight, it was time for the final session with the storage ring.