–And-the diadem?†Harry asked.
–It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree.â€
(Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows†- JKR)
In a far-off land accustomed to drastic change and upheaval, the Tree had forever remained as firmly rooted in the culture as its strong roots were in the earth below it. Borders had changed, rulers and religions had come and gone, and long-held traditions and superstitions had faded from living memory or vanished altogether, but through it all, the Tree stood and observed as the world changed before it, while it itself did not. No-one could say how long it had been there - endless centuries of wars, invasions and disease had put paid to any reliable record keeping - but, as anyone knew and would tell the uninitiated outsider, there were a great many more noteworthy attributes to the Tree than merely its age…
As years passed, ivy attached itself to the trunks of the lesser surrounding trees. Vines gradually spread upon them as wrinkles do upon a face. Eventually there was barely any brown bark left visible to the eye. All the while, the Tree remained untouched and unscathed. As if it relied on its lack of ivy coverage to stand out from the others! Where other trees bloom and decay with the seasons until they eventually perish, the Tree was forever in bloom, regardless of season. And what a bloom it was! From root to leaf, acorn and trunk, it emitted a glorious silver glow that never showed any signs of fading in splendour.
Yet the Tree crowning attribute owed its eventual discovery not to one of the many learned men of the nearby village, but rather to its eccentric, a peasant named Gulka. Having been raised by a resourceful mother in tempestuous times when food was scarce, Gulka’s childhood had been characterized by the strange meals her mother had whipped up for her many children to stave off hunger. Whether it was pine needle and nettle salad or moss soup, something seemed to have had a lasting effect on Gulka as her eccentric eating habits lasted long after the invaders had been defeated and the food shortages had come to an end. If she was aware of the whispers and sniggers around her, then she did not show the slightest sign of it, for she happily continued whipping up culinary catastrophes undeterred.
It was only a matter of time before Gulka started collecting stray acorns fromthe Tree to add to her notorious nut-bread. Considering that the bread occasionally contained small stones Gulka had mistaken for nuts, it was unsurprising that her recipes tended to only reach her own lips and she was therefore the very first to benefit from the power ofthe Tree. At first nothing much changed: Gulka continued about her business much to the amusement of the other villagers, who in the absence of any outside contact had come to rely on Gulka’s eccentricity to pass the time. That was until she started turning up to town meetings and making valuable contributions, much to the incredulity of the village elders.
These were troubled times: A mysterious foreign plague had been spreading across the land with a blanket of fear arriving long before the plague did and engulfed all in panic. The villagers would have been more inclined to whip themselves as penance for their sins and in so doing hope to be spared, but desperate times called for desperate measures and they were more open to other options to cover all possibilities. This would not normally have involved Gulka, whose eccentric ways and inedible cooking would have counted her out of any possible selection, until she baffled and proved everyone wrong when she invented indoor plumbing one morning before breakfast and had a fully functional prototype up and running by lunchtime. It may also be worth mentioning that the village elders were even more taken by the very sudden improvement in Gulka’s looks and were not adverse to listening to a woman, provided she was a good-looking one.
Thanks to Gulka and her sudden brain-power, the village went into a six-month self-imposed quarantine and survived the plague, only to be wiped out in one fell swoop by the Tree's other patrons, a colony of genius squirrels who had also been feasting upon the Tree's acorns. The Tree's secret (and indoor plumbing) died with Gulka only to both eventually be re-discovered at a later date. This time, however,the Tree's power for enhancing intelligence was not confined to one person, but rather exploited by all. When word got around that the Tree improved your brain power it was immediately striped down of every acorn and leaf. Imagine the villagers’ astonishment and glee upon discovering the Tree seemingly untouched the very next morning and ripe for further plundering.
The village did indeed experience a brief period of increased wisdom thereafter in every corner of the community, until the villagers' new-found wisdom was clouded by their overwhelming greed for more and blinded their actions. Their improved looks only served to further heighten tensions by means of multiple lust-driven affairs. The consequences were as bloody as the squirrels had been, but this time driven by their own hand. The Tree's attributes did not go forgotten this time, for its reputation had spread far across the mountains and down into the valleys below. Had the villagers’ consumption had a happier result, then there would have been a wave of pilgrims seeking to benefit from it, but being that as it was, the Tree gradually earned a mysterious reputation and any curious travellers kept well away for their own safety.
Fear prevented them approaching the Tree, but did not stop them from talking about it when village gossip was thin on the ground. Passing travellers through the village were usually keen to broach the topic and the villagers always happy to feed this interest, provided it was over complimentary drinks at the local inn generously paid for by the guest. This interest never went further than a few whispered questions uttered over a beer tankard, until one stormy night a traveller in long black cloak with an even darker purpose arrived unexpectedly at the inn looking for a guide to the Tree.
The Indestructible Oak by BehindTheVeil
Story Notes:
I see this as part background story and part fairy tale. It may well be that JKR will comment on the diadem's hiding place on Pottermore and render this information void, but I had a lot of fun concocting it nonetheless.