Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures - H.P.S.T Chapter 1619: The Furnace Vault

“Lumos!” Evan lit his wand.

With a faint click, the light at the tip of his wand flared to life, driving away the surrounding darkness.

Before them, the ground was strewn with glittering jewels. Piles of jewelry, necklaces, ornaments, and golden artifacts stacked all the way to the ceiling. On both sides of the vault stood two rows of tall shelves, also filled with magical treasures crafted from precious metals.

The cavelike chamber offered barely a patch of bare ground near the entrance to stand on.

As the vault door shut behind them, the air itself seemed to grow thinner.

Evan had never imagined that so many gold and silver treasures gathered in such a confined space could create such a crushing sense of pressure.

“Don’t touch anything!” he repeated. “These gold, silver, and jewelry are all enchanted.”

“Can’t we undo the curses?” Hermione asked.

“No. They’re layered enchantments, some of them irreversible. Even if we learn the incantations from Bellatrix herself, we can’t break them. And it’s pointless anyway — we can’t possibly remove the magic from every single trinket one by one,” said Evan. “That madwoman set it up this way so no one could ever take anything from here.”

From the moment those treasures fell into Bellatrix’s hands, she had clearly never intended to part with them.

What a lunatic!

Evan only now felt Bellatrix’s intense possessiveness.

“What would happen if we touched something?” Elaine asked curiously. “Is it a curse?”

“Not exactly evil magic,” said Evan. “True curses are hard to cast and require immense power; not every Dark wizard can perform them. But whatever it is, it’s definitely nasty. We can test it.”

Evan pointed his wand at Bellatrix.

She bent down to pick up a ruby from the floor, but the moment she touched it, she screamed in pain and dropped the gem in her hand.

As it fell, the ruby split, became a shower of gems, so that a second later, the floor was covered in identical gleaming red stones rolling in every direction, the original impossible to discern amongst them.

“The Gemino Curse!” said Hermione. “But why did she throw it away like that? It looked like it hurt.”

“Look at her hand!” said Evan. He had Bellatrix stretch it out.

Everyone noticed that her palm, which had just held the ruby, had been burned and blistered. The injury was severe.

“What kind of magic is that?”   

“It’s the Flagrante Curse. Touching these treasures is like plunging your hand into boiling water,” Evan explained. “But that’s not all. I also sensed a violent disturbance in Bellatrix’s mind — there must be an Unforgivable Curse layered over it.”

“You mean … the Cruciatus Curse?” Harry asked, his face full of disbelief.

“Yeah, she really does love that curse, doesn’t she? Applying it to objects, so that anyone who touches them will suffer cruel torture. This should be an improvement she made through her own research. It’s a genius idea, but also very evil,” Evan continued. “In this way, every object we touch will become scorching hot. Not only the skin, but also the mental torture will be unbearable, just like being hit by the Cruciatus Curse. It will be impossible not to let go of the jewelry in your hand. At the same time, the objects touched will quickly multiply, but the copies are worthless — and if you continue to handle the treasure, you will eventually be crushed to death by the weight of expanding gold.”

“Okay, don’t touch anything!” said Harry desperately. He stood still, observing his surroundings warily. “But if that’s the case, how are we supposed to find the cup among all this treasure? I know what it looks like, I’ve seen it in Riddle’s memory. It’s small and gold, it’s got a badger engraved on it, two handles —”

“Very detailed, Harry. Plenty of distinctive features,” said Evan.

“Maybe, but given how small it is, that’s not nearly enough,” said Harry. “It’s too dark to see clearly, and there are so many cups here — honestly, they all look the same. Wait — couldn’t we just summon it with Accio?”

“No, remember what I told you earlier about Gringotts? All the vaults are counter-charmed. Magic like Apparition and Summoning Charms won’t work,” said Evan, brightening the light from his wand. “We can only resort to the most primitive method: seeing with our own eyes! Come on, the four of us will each take one area. Check the hidden corners and the gaps between the rocks carefully.”

Easier said than done, a closer look revealed that, in addition to the treasure, the vault contained an incredible number of cups of all kinds.

Bellatrix must have been a cup lover, a cup fanatic. Who else would have so many cups in their vault?!

Of course, she did this specifically to conceal Hufflepuff’s cup that Voldemort had entrusted to her for safekeeping.

What infuriated Evan was that he’d hoped to get Bellatrix to tell him where the cup was, but he couldn’t find the memory. The only possible explanation was that she had erased the memory from her head to prevent the secret from being leaked.

That meant they would now have to search through tens of thousands of nearly identical cups to find Hufflepuff’s.

They directed their wands into every nook and crevice, turning cautiously on the spot. But it was impossible not to brush up against anything. Soon, Evan, Harry, and Hermione were all sending items onto the ground.

They winced in pain, clenching their teeth, while only the small and nimble Elaine managed to move without touching anything.

The glowing gold blazed with heat, so that the vault felt like a furnace.

“Evan, I don’t see any cup matching the description over here.”

“Nothing on my side either. It’s so hot — vampires really can’t stand heat,” said Elaine, sticking out her tongue.

“Hold on a little longer, Elaine, it’s almost over. There’s nothing in my area, Harry, have you found anything over there?”

“Wait — I think I see something.”

Harry’s wandlight passed over shields and goblin-made helmets set on shelves rising to the ceiling; higher and higher he raised the beam, until suddenly it found an object that made his heart skip and his hand tremble.

“Look — it’s there! Found it! It’s up there!”

Translating_Wizard

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