Chapter 389 - 390: A place forgotten by the world

After watching the young wizards leave the Owlery and waiting until their footsteps had completely faded down the spiral staircase, Sagres silently intercepted the letter.

He broke the wax seal and read it carefully, only to find that it was nothing more than an ordinary family letter.

A Slytherin student was writing to his parents to explain that, because of the recent unrest, he had decided to remain at Hogwarts over Christmas.

"It seems I was overthinking it," Sagres murmured softly.

He resealed the letter and allowed the owl to deliver it.

Back in his office, Sagres tied up Professor Samdron, who had tried to take over his office, hid him inside a drawer enlarged with an Undetectable Extension Charm, and then decided to investigate the crypt in Little Hangleton.

Sagres chuckled slightly at his own joke, then became serious again.

He wanted to know whether the crypt had already existed more than five hundred years ago and, if so, what secrets it had held at that time.

Sagres transformed into the shadow of a raven and soared from the Hogwarts tower towards Little Hangleton.

After crossing rolling hills and dense forests, he was quite surprised by what he found upon reaching his destination.

This was nothing like the graveyard he remembered.

Instead, there was a sizeable Muggle village, with dozens of simple thatched cottages scattered among the hills and thin trails of smoke curling into the air.

The villagers, dressed in coarse linen, were working in the fields. Several children chased after a twisted bamboo root, their laughter carrying across the village.

The fence surrounding the settlement was badly worn, but it still showed that the villagers remained wary of the outside world.

The chapel in the distance was still relatively intact, but compared with the tall, elaborate building that would stand there five hundred years later, it was little more than a simple stone chapel.

Sagres landed in a grove outside the village, cast a powerful Disillusionment Charm on himself, and then moved quietly between the cottages, searching for anything that might be connected to the crypt.

Using his memory of the future terrain, he made his way to a secluded patch of land at the edge of the village.

It was now an abandoned vegetable garden, overgrown with weeds and standing in stark contrast to the carefully tended fields nearby.

In one corner of the garden, an ancient beech tree caught Sagres's attention.

The tree did not exist in the future.

He approached for a closer look and found a stone entrance almost completely buried beneath the soil between its thick roots.

The entrance was narrow, wide enough for only one person at a time, and a flight of stone steps descended into the darkness below.

"It seems this is the place," he murmured, a faint glow appearing at the tip of his wand.

To his surprise, there were no protective enchantments at the entrance, as though the place had long since been forgotten by the world.

Sagres stepped inside cautiously and began descending the damp stone steps.

A familiar ancient, decaying smell gradually filled the air.

The carvings on the stone walls were still relatively clear, and the structure itself remained largely intact. The bone-deep darkness was exactly the same as it would be five hundred years later.

Sagres continued down the steps, the faint light from his wand flickering through the narrow passage.

The air was thick with dust, and every step he took left a clear footprint in the heavy layer of ash covering the floor.

The interior of the crypt was wider than he had expected, but it had clearly been abandoned for many years.

Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like tattered gauze. Although the carvings on the walls remained visible, their edges had been worn smooth by time.

As expected, a stone coffin stood in the centre of the crypt, identical to the one he would see in the future.

But at this moment, the lid was open and resting against the side of the coffin.

Out of caution, Sagres approached slowly, his wand ready at all times.

When he leaned over to look inside the stone coffin, he unexpectedly met a pair of wide-open eyes.

A twisted creature lay within.

Its skin was greyish-white and covered in rough stitching scars, while its four arms were crossed unnaturally over its chest.

Most disturbing of all was its head.

It had no mouth and no nose, only a pair of unnaturally large eyes like glass beads, now staring directly at him.

After the initial surprise, Sagres keenly noticed the flash of malice in those eyes.

He activated Legilimency instantly.

It was like striking a stone wall.

Not because the creature's defences were too strong, but because it simply had no soul at all.

Just as the flesh-and-blood creation tried to lunge at him, Sagres's wand traced a sharp arc through the air.

A precise Cutting Curse swept through the air, and the creature's head fell off, rolling several times along the bottom of the stone coffin.

No fresh blood gushed from the severed neck. Only a small amount of dark-brown, viscous liquid slowly seeped out.

Sagres's expression remained unchanged as he began meticulously searching the entire crypt.

He brightened the light from his wand and carefully examined every corner, tapping each stone slab in turn, but found nothing else.

Returning to the coffin, he bent down and carefully studied the dismembered creation.

Under the stronger light, he could clearly see the crude sutures and the traces of different-coloured skin forcibly stitched together.

The muscle tissue in several areas was unusually developed, clearly enhanced by magic.

"Crude flesh magic," Sagres murmured, gently prodding the remains with his wand. "It looks like some Dark Wizard's experiment."

Judging by the construction method, the creator's skill had been extremely crude, more like a wizard who had only just ventured into a forbidden field and was blindly experimenting.

The materials used were also very ordinary, consisting entirely of common biological tissue without any precious or rare magical components.

Sagres straightened and looked around the dusty crypt.

Other than this failed flesh-and-blood creation, there were no further clues of value.

"So close to the church..." he muttered thoughtfully. "Could someone from the Church have been trying to create so-called 'angels'?"

He shook his head and stopped letting his thoughts wander.

Sagres waved his wand, and the heavy coffin lid leaning nearby slowly moved back into place, sealing the stone coffin once more.

But just as he turned to leave, Sagres's rebellious streak suddenly flared up.

More than five hundred years later, when he opened this coffin, this very corpse had been lying inside.

So... had his actions just unknowingly completed the course of history?

No.

Since his actions supposedly had no effect on the future, he would deliberately do the opposite in this trivial matter.

At the very least, it could serve as his small act of defiance against the inevitability of history.

His wand moved again, and the coffin lid flew open with a clang.

A cluster of pale Fiendfyre erupted from the tip of his wand and instantly engulfed the creation inside the coffin.

The flames danced merrily, and in the blink of an eye, the twisted flesh-and-blood body, along with its crude sutures, was reduced completely to ash and vanished from the world.

Sagres nodded in satisfaction and turned to leave.

___

o(*≧▽≦)ツ💫 Read up to 12+ chapters in advance on Patreon/DarkDevil1