Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures - H.P.S.T Chapter 1601: The Dark Witch and the Door of Death

In the flickering firelight, Harry turned around. He focused intently, about to see the person speaking with Voldemort.

Who was this person named Natalia? And why were they trying to open that archway hidden deep within the Department of Mysteries?

All of it was a mystery. Harry had thought the answers would surface once he saw the person’s face, but he couldn’t make out anything — only a figure cloaked entirely in black. He could not discern her features, the dark cloak blending seamlessly into the shadows, until it all became an endless, engulfing darkness.

That darkness engulfed Harry, and he sank into it.

Moments later, with a sense of emerging from deep water, Harry drew heaving breaths and opened his eyes.

He lay spread-eagled on the cold black marble floor, with Evan, Hermione, and Elaine looking at him with concern.

“Are you alright, Harry? You should be closing off your mind,” said Hermione worriedly. “You can’t keep going on like this.”

“You connected with him again?” Evan asked. “What did you see?”

Harry had been acting strangely earlier. He was terribly pale, and had just stood up when he collapsed.

It must have been Voldemort’s changing mood that had caused him to connect with Harry again.

Ever since that night a few days ago, when Voldemort initiated the connection, their communications had become increasingly frequent.

Voldemort’s soul was becoming increasingly unstable, and he might no longer be able to control himself.

“They were in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. Vold—, the Dark Lord, and someone else. I didn’t see her face clearly, but he called her Natalia.”

“Natalia?!” Evan narrowed his eyes. The unfamiliar name was not a pleasant one.

Three years earlier, in the dangerous underground cavern where the Cyclops was hiding, Evan and Sirius had subdued a Dark wizard from a Doomsday cult called The Raven’s Claw, and that man had mentioned this very name.

This group of lunatics had sought to harness the power of the Cyclops to summon a sealed ancient demon, and they had nearly succeeded.

The Raven’s Claw were a sinister cult devoted to an evil god, scouring ancient ruins across the world in hopes of summoning that god into reality to destroy everything. Their origins lay centuries ago at Hogwarts, when a few wicked wizards discovered a description of an evil god left by Lady Ravenclaw. Somehow, they managed to establish contact with one such void-dwelling entity, and gained immense power from it. From then on, they treated the god’s words as sacred truth.

They believed that, before long, the evil god would break free from its prison and return to this world, ushering in a new order.

This process, known as the Doomsday, would see the Dark wizards of the Raven’s Claw reborn.

When the evil god descended, they expected to receive the promised rewards — perhaps even to become the sole survivors.

In short, in Evan’s view, they were a dangerous bunch of lunatics, mentally unstable, possessing immense magical powers.

With the evil god’s aid, they were stronger and more wicked than ordinary Dark wizards, harder to fight, and capable of far more horrifying deeds.

After Voldemort’s resurrection, many Dark wizards and evil organizations outside of Britain pledged their allegiance to him, including the Raven’s Claw, unwilling to be left out.

So when Harry mentioned Natalia, Evan thought of this high-ranking member of the Raven’s Claw.

Three years ago, under the influence of Veritaserum, the Dark wizard captured by Evan and Sirius had revealed all his secrets about the Raven’s Claw. At that time, he mentioned the Dark witch Natalia, a high-ranking member of the Raven’s Claw, a witch active in Italy over seventy years ago.   

More precisely, she was the most notorious Dark witch in modern Italian Wizarding history.

She had once been a supporter and close ally of Grindelwald, committing countless evil deeds. In Britain and Northern Europe, few had heard her name, perhaps mistaking it for a common Slavic one. But in Eastern Europe and around the Mediterranean coast, the name of this Dark witch was almost as feared as Voldemort’s.

At the height of her power, as a supporter and ally of Grindelwald, she had ruled over the entire Italian Wizarding world and the surrounding regions.

However, after Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, Natalia vanished from sight.

No one knew where she had gone. Some believed she fled into hiding out of fear of Dumbledore. Others thought she was already dead — after all, she was of great age; even before Dumbledore’s rise, she had already been a renowned witch.

From the many stories and rumors that survived, it was said Natalia had once been a strikingly beautiful witch. She was born into an ancient pure-blood family in eastern Germany, displaying extraordinary magical talent from childhood, and graduated from Durmstrang with exceptional marks.

Shortly after graduation, she obeyed her family’s arrangement and married another pure-blood wizard.

However, her husband soon died on their wedding night.

But this wasn’t the end; it was just the beginning of a terrifying nightmare.

It was said that in the years that followed, Natalia, leveraging her stunning beauty and clever cover-ups, married the only descendants of twelve ancient pure-blood families, eliminating them all without a trace, earning her notoriety.

Inheriting her late husband’s fortune, she quickly became one of the wealthiest women in the world.

Despite her ill-gotten reputation, many wizards were drawn to her beauty and willing to serve her.

Even before Grindelwald’s rise to power, she had already amassed considerable influence.

After joining Grindelwald, she quickly gained recognition and became his most important supporter.

Not long ago, Voldemort himself traveled to Germany. Evan assumed he was going to uncover the secrets of the Elder Wand and seek out the wandmaker Gregorovitch, but it now appeared that this wasn’t Voldemort’s sole purpose. He had also sought the assistance of the Dark witch Natalia.

A foremost disciple of an evil god, and a Dark wizard who longed to become one himself — what the two of them planned to do together hardly needed saying.

With the Raven’s Claw now involved, matters seemed to be taking a far more interesting turn.

Evan briefly explained what he knew about the Dark witch Natalia and asked, “Harry, you just said they were in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry. What are they planning to do?”

“They’re trying to open that door — the huge stone archway inside the Department of Mysteries, the one draped with a veil… with voices speaking from beyond it.”

Translating_Wizard

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