Carefully, yet resolutely he pushed one last branch aside, and then stepped into a small clearing amongst the overgrown bushes.

The ground was covered with soot, dirt and rubble. An eerie silence lay over the scene, as if everything that once had lived there was now dead. Nothing of any colour other than deathly black or dusty grey was in sight.

To anyone else than him, this place would surely appear to be nothing more or less than a scene of massive destruction. But this man had spent a long time searching for this place. A serious amount of consideration and preparation, followed by an immense determination to find his goal for one sole reason – to destroy the deadliest, most evil wizard ever to set foot on this earth. This place held something precious. And he was going to find it.

Albus Dumbledore wiped off the small amount of perspiration that had appeared on his forehead with the end of his long, silvery beard. Noticing a twig attached to his billowing wizard robes, which today were a shade of midnight blue, he plucked the small branch and examined it with a peculiar expression.

The twig’s bark was dark, ash-grey and crumbled slightly in his grasp. The few frail branches that sprouted out from it bore no leaves, but rather left more crumbling, dusty material in his palm.

The branch was dead.

Looking around at the hedges that surrounded this secluded clearing, he noticed that all the bushes closest to him were grey, decomposing - dead.

Albus took a few tentative steps into the wreckage. Burnt-through wood disintegrated to powder under the soles of his shoes as he weaved his way through the piles of rock, stone and ruins. His alert eyes darted this way and that behind his oddly shaped spectacles; clearly, he was searching for something.

If one knew what a small object Albus was seeking, one would have thought it utterly impossible to find this amidst the eradicated debris. But the bearded old man knew what he was looking for and knew that this was the place to find it, and therefore continued his relentless search.

A sly smile spread across Albus’ weathered face as his gaze fell upon something glinting in the remains.

A simple, gold ring lay innocently upon a piece of stone, bathed in ashes and grime. It did not look much to the world, but Albus’ knew what resided in this ring. This made it far less innocent than it led its viewer to believe.

Albus towered over the golden object, scrutinizing it through narrowed eyes, weighing his choices. But it was obvious to him what must be done. Resolutely he extended his right hand.

His fingers nearly grazed the item’s surface before he hesitantly pulled away. Some sort of field seemed to surround it, a field of… power. It was almost as if a magnetic force were pushing his long, aged fingers away, averting them from the object.

Setting his mind, locking his gaze and clenching his jaw, Albus once again reached down into the rubble.

The moment Albus touched the golden ring an excruciating pain shot like a pulse up his right arm. Straightening up, he screwed up his eyes and willed himself not to drop the item now lying seemingly harmlessly in his wrinkled hand.

Albus opened his eyes, hardly able to make out the ring before him through the involuntary tears that distorted his vision. He had finally found the subject for his search, and examined it rather interestedly in his aged hand while breathing raggedly.

The ring had no visible markings, but held a large, black stone that weighed the small piece down more than expected. The faint rays of sunlight that found their way into the clearing did not reflect upon the stone’s surface; it seemed to suck in all the light, air and life in its surroundings and swallow it, leaving nothing for the viewer to see but blackness. The precious stone did not bear the sign of a single scratch, or any other material damage that could have been caused in the conflagration.

His expression hardened visibly. He viewed the gold ring, twirling it slowly back and forth between his thin, almost skeletal fingers.

He knew that this was inevitable; that he had to endure this and that there was no point in delaying it. To this ring, one had to prove one’s worthiness.

Slowly and carefully, he threaded the ring upon his right middle finger.

The ring put its bearer through the same trial as it had been forced to experience itself. It burned, flared the flame of the fiery red inferno that had engulfed the house of its latest owner. It seared through his entire body, blazing the skin around his middle finger raw. Albus hardly noticed falling to his knees in the wreckage, his teeth clenched and bared in a horrible grimace, his eyes watering with burning tears and something squeezing his heart tightly, smothering him from inside. He opened his mouth to scream, only to find that he could no longer breathe. But as the panic rose at the same pace as the thick, black fog that threatened to cover his mind, the pain suddenly… stopped.

The house of Gaunt was all burned down and deduced it to its present state. The ring left its bearer in the same dead, withered blackness.

In exhausted relief, Albus collapsed to the ground. He lay there, panting, waiting for the tight grasp to loosen on his heart. He did not know how long he lay there in a state of tiredness, emancipation and triumph.

He had passed the test. Only one who could live through the trial of being flamed and flared into oblivion, only one who defied death when being introduced to it, could touch this ring and live to tell the tale. Self-righteous and superior as he was, the man who had made this ring differ from other plain, simple rings, he had thought that the only one capable of this was himself.

Smiling slightly through his singed hair and beard, Albus looked contently upon his right hand. His skin may be weathered, battered, blackened and tenderly raw from his fingertips to his elbow, but on his middle finger was a golden ring holding a large, black stone, now utterly harmless.