In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter - Chapter 519: The Lost Gem

Regarding Draco’s matter, of course, there was no need for Jon to worry about it, Dumbledore would naturally have his arrangements.

The entanglement between Snape and Lily was also between the two of them, and Jon could not be so overly intrusive even if he wanted to enjoy some drama.

So in the period of time after that, he was idle.

In fact, it couldn’t be said that he was idle because he still had some personal matters of his own that needed to be done.

According to the memory of Lucius taking him there once in the original world, Jon found the address where Adrien had once lived in England.

The world had taken a turn for the worse after the night Voldemort had killed Harry’s parents, and Adrian had become seriously ill before that, so the fact that he was no longer alive should have generated little change.

The purpose of Jon’s trip was to see if Adrian in this world had worked on things like gems and ring as he had in the original world.

If that hadn’t changed, then that meant that the ring was still in Slughorn’s hands, and the location of all the other gems hadn’t changed either.

But when he first arrived at Hogwarts Castle, Jon had been to the forbidden books section of the library once, but he hadn’t been able to find the notes that Adrien had once left behind or the gemstone that was characterised as a spell-breaking gem in its original location.

What had gone wrong in the middle, Jon wanted to find out, and this house might just give him the answer.

When he found the place, the address wasn’t veiled by the Ministry of Magic as it had been, with a seal of Auror.

The Lucius Malfoy of this world hadn’t been the head of the Auror’s office and didn’t have that much power to be able to do such a thing, so Adrian hadn’t suffered much of a wanted manhunt when he had once stayed in England.

It was because of this that Jon judged that there might be something more valuable left in this house.

The door to the house was locked, but not protected with magic, Jon just used a simple unlocking charm to enter the house.

Although the furniture in the house was covered with a thick layer of dust, and it could be seen that it hadn’t been taken care of for at least a decade, the furnishings and arrangement of the furniture were enough to see that the house had been properly tended to before its owner left.

Jon didn’t mess around with anything else, he went straight to the spot where he had once got the gem, and as he did, he tried to use the ring as a key to try and see if he could make any discoveries, but in the end that place was empty.

Just like the missing notebook in Hogwarts Castle, the gem here was gone!

Instead of much disappointment and frustration rising in Jon’s mind, he was lost in thought.

He vaguely remembered the time when that note was written, it was when Adrien, who had been a professor of the Defence Against the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts Castle, lost a bet to Slughorn and left the note and the gemstone in the library’s forbidden book section.

And that time frame was obviously before Voldemort travelled through time and changed the history of the magical world.

What occurred in this current house was rather after Voldemort travelled through time, so it was normal for there to be a deviation here, but why would there be a problem with that note in the forbidden book section as well?

There were only two possibilities he could think of.

Either during the time after Voldemort had already travelled through time when Adrian was seriously ill and not yet dead, there was some kind of behavioural deviation between him and his original self from that world, and the gem in Hogwarts Castle had been taken away again and put somewhere else or put to some other use.

Either that or someone who was affected by Voldemort’s disappearance showed up, and he took both that notebook and the gem from the library.

If it was the second possibility, then the person who took the notes and the gem could only have been the person who owned the ring, and who that person was that would surely be self-evident.

Horace Slughorn, Jon’s teacher and the one who passed the ring on to him.

And if it was the first possibility, then the person who knew the inner workings of this must also include Slughorn!

After figuring this out, Jon did not hesitate and left the house to return to Hogwarts, he found Dumbledore, if there was anyone who knew where Slughorn was hiding right now, it was only him.

While talk of Voldemort being completely dead was dominant in this world as of today, Slughorn, who had personally informed Voldemort of the existence of such magic as the Horcrux, surely knew better than anyone else that Voldemort could not be dead in any way until the Horcrux had been discovered and destroyed.

In the absence of more information, he would not have guessed that Voldemort had travelled through time to another parallel world, so to this day he has been hiding in some unknown place, fearing that his once most favoured pupil would kill him, the only person with knowledge of the Horcrux.

Dumbledore naturally did not refuse Jon’s request and gave him a letter stating that it could help Jon to explain his identity.

So on the next day, Jon took the letter and followed Dumbledore’s hints to find this small Muggle village where Slughorn was hiding, the village of Budleigh Babberton.

Slughorn was obviously hiding and didn’t want to be found, even though Jon had entered the house, where he was staying hidden from people just as he had been when Dumbledore had found him with Harry in the original story, apart from the fact that the place was clean and tidy, it looked as if the owner of the house was out of the house on a temporary trip.

Jon wasn’t fooled by such an illusion at all, he plunged his wand straight into the armchair beside him and the next moment the chair let out a scream.

“Ouch!”

There was no way for Slughorn’s magic to be maintained any longer, and he transformed back into his human form while looking at Jon with a mischievous face.

“Breaking and entering is a great offence you know, little one! I will-”

However, before he could voice any of his harsh words, his eyes lowered slightly, and he saw the Elder Wand in Jon’s hand.

Having been the Slytherin Head at Hogwarts for decades, he could certainly recognise what this wand actually was, and without being able to resist, his pupils jolted, and the tone of his voice began to shift.

“Did Dumbledore send you?”

Jon pulled out the letter that Dumbledore had handed him.

“Good morning, Teacher, perhaps it would be better if you read this, and then we can communicate.”

Slughorn took the letter, and just as he opened the envelope’s seal, a cloud of green powder floated out of it, and then as if they were somehow guided, they flew into a fireplace that had been extinguished for who knows how long ago in the summer.

A green flame then flared up in the fireplace, and Dumbledore’s head appeared in it.

—-

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