No More Than a Means

PART ONE

Harry Potter raised the cup to the Headmaster’s mouth, flinching along with Albus Dumbledore as the older man swallowed, the poison almost automatically beginning on its path through his veins.

To be honest, Harry wasn’t quite sure how he ended up in that cave in the first place. Dumbledore had insinuated that it was important that he play a part in the destruction of the Horcruxes about which he’d spent the better part of that year enlightening Harry. The Headmaster of Hogwarts had never before led him astray, exactly, though Harry would certainly have liked to have known long ago about the prophecies and soul separations and such that Dumbledore had finally seen fit to unload on his shoulders throughout the last several months. However, the fact remained that Harry still felt as if he should trust the older man. Anyway, surely anything that could potentially rid him of Voldemort’s looming shadow was worth attempting.

At least, that was what he had thought before. He could barely believe how naïve he had been.

Now Harry was in a situation were he had to unwillingly poison the man that he was trying to help. When Dumbledore had told him the dangers of what they were doing to help prepare him, Harry had never expected anything like this. Imminent peril to his own life, Harry could deal with. Having to betray the only real mentor he had ever known more and more with each lift of the cup to his mouth was something else all together. Harry could tell even as he told Dumbledore that another swallow would make the hurt go away that he would always remember this as one of the worst moments of his life. Well, add it to the ever-growing list of such things, he supposed. It was probably a good thing that he was no longer that still-somehow-innocent child who had first met the Headmaster upon entry into Hogwarts; he hadn’t been able to lay claim to that kind of pure virtue since he was eleven years old and had inadvertently killed a man. Talk about a permanently damaging event.

That didn’t make it any easier to push himself to keep going, though.

So it was that the Headmaster had finished, barely having enough wits about him to grab the locket and clutch it to him as he begged for water. No water would come by magic, though it wasn’t for lack of trying on Harry’s part. Just hold on for another minute, he silently begged the Headmaster, and I swear I’ll find a way to help you. How ironic did it seem, that there was what seemed like miles of water surrounding them, and Harry couldn’t even manage to procure a single gobletful to quench a wounded – and perhaps dying – man’s thirst.

Dumbledore had warned him zealously against disturbing that vast expanse of water, but there was nothing else for it.

He didn’t even have time to turn about and give Dumbledore that mouthful of water that thankfully didn’t seem to be disappearing before he was assailed by bodies. Inferi, his mind supplied helpfully, though perhaps that knowledge would have been a little more helpful had Harry ever had the presence of mind to properly research defences against the creatures. He vaguely remembered Dumbledore saying something about light and warmth earlier, but he found himself unable to come up with a spell that would create either condition in sufficient amounts so as to scare the creatures away. As it was, he was stuck vainly waving his Lumos-lit wand defensively at them, shouting curses that seemed to have no effect on them at all.

He was so screwed.

His only real hope seemed to be Dumbledore, and the man himself looked just as close to being smothered, as if the poison had taken the last of whatever fight he’d had left in him since being injured before the school year began. He felt so guilty. If only he hadn’t kept making the Headmaster drink … If only he’d been able to get the water to him in time …

Harry didn’t want to die. That was the whole reason he was trying to track down the bits of Voldemort’s soul in the first place; so he could live on. He hadn’t, since Dumbledore had first told him about the prophecy, considered that he could possibly be taken out of the equation before he ever got to actually face down Voldemort in the first place. Didn’t he feel more the fool now?

It was a stroke of luck – whether bad or good luck, Harry wasn’t certain – that someone else was in the cave. They called out a string of words, probably a spell of some sort, or perhaps even something like a safe word that Voldemort had installed into them. Was it even possible to tamper with a corpse’s mind? Harry would have said before this year that it wasn’t possible for corpses to attack people, so he really wasn’t sure.

It really was a pity that Harry’s mind couldn’t quite process the phrase that stopped the Inferi fast enough to make it out, but that didn’t seem to matter so much when the Inferi seemed to loosen their holds on him. They didn’t quite fall away. They just … stopped. There was no more pulling of his body toward the water, where they presumably had intended to drown him, assuming that Inferi could intend anything at all. They seemed to in an instant become the corpses that they truly were. Harry wasn’t certain whether they looked more unnerving when they were moving about as if alive, or when they just sprawled there like that, eyes glazed and unseeing.

Harry had seen dead bodies before. He just hadn’t ever seen quite so many at once. He shuddered and tried to shake grasping but limp hands away from him. He wanted to be sick at the thought of them touching him.

“I see that you have managed to find trouble once again, Mr Potter.”

Harry knew that voice. He was extremely surprised to hear it under these circumstances – though perhaps he shouldn’t have been, considering that he was in a trap of Voldemort’s devising – but he knew it nonetheless.

He had heard it, among other times, the only time he’d visited Knockturn Alley, and when Harry had been hidden under his invisibility cloak in Hagrid’s hut as Dumbledore was banished temporarily from the school, and trying to explain his actions to the Dark Lord during Harry’s unwilling visit to that graveyard the night of the Triwizard Tournament’s third task.

Harry pushed the immobile bodies away from him with a shiver and whipped his wand around to point in the direction of the Death Eater’s voice, across the other side of the water, though he could not see him in the darkness. However, even as he tried, repeatedly, to shoot off hexes, disarmament spells, anything, he was stopped mid-word every time. Legilimency, he realised. The man was performing Legilimency on him. He knew what spell Harry was going to perform as soon as he thought of it, and thus was able to stop the spell before it even materialised. Yet another foe Harry didn’t quite know how to fight.

Harry really was having a truly horrible night.

There was nothing for it. He lowered his wand, defeated, and the Death Eater thankfully didn’t take the opportunity to curse him. Instead, he only used his wand to create light enough for Harry to see him, though it was still by no means easy to do so.

Nonetheless, Harry glared at Lucius Malfoy with nothing short of hatred in his eyes, as the other man just smirked right back at him. Neither said anything for what seemed to Harry like forever, as if they were unwilling to end their silent stand-off in favour of actually just getting on with it. A small gasping sound from his left reminded him that Dumbledore was hurt and needed the assistance of probably half a dozen well trained Healers, and soon, if he was going to survive through until next week.

This was no time to be going along with Malfoy’s mind games.

“You were in Azkaban.”

Lucius shrugged gracefully, and for one insane minute Harry was envious of the fact that a prideful and smarmy individual like Lucius could manage to exhibit poise with such a simple gesture. It made him a little angry, truth be told.

“I was. The Dark Lord released me so that I might be here. It didn’t make the papers, of course. The wizarding world has traded one incompetent and frightened Minister of Magic for another, I am afraid. We’ll all be so much better off when my Lord appoints someone more worthy to the position, don’t you think?”

Harry pointedly chose not to respond. “So why are you here?”

Malfoy’s smirk only seemed to deepen. “What, no humble welcome from the great Harry Potter? I feel slighted. I am here, of course, because I have been waiting for you to arrive.”

Harry would have liked to have replied with something witty. He really would. Unfortunately, Harry could admit that he’d never been the best person at thinking on his feet. The only thing would come to mind was, “Huh?”

“You took rather a bit longer than I expected, too,” Malfoy continued regardless. “I admit to being a little disappointed. The Dark Lord dropped the location of this place to Dumbledore through his spy days ago. We expected he would come as soon as he knew. But, of course, he had to prepare, I suppose. He had to update his will and wait for a time when he could bring you along, because he knew he couldn’t do it himself, not this time. Not when the curse placed upon him when he destroyed the last of the Dark Lord’s trinkets that he found was already on the verge of finishing him off.”

“No,” Harry objected, though he found that his voice was not as strong in its denial as he would have liked.

“No?” Lucius responded with a disbelieving chuckle. “Are you really so idiotic as to not have figured out why your beloved Headmaster was suddenly telling you about a mission that he had kept completely quiet up to this point? He knew he was going to die, and that you would have to carry on without him.

“And look! He here is, dying, and it was you who helped him on his way. Bravo, Mr Potter.”

“No!” Harry said again, and was happy to note that he sounded much more vehement this time.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Lucius contradicted, though for all that his tone was adequately mournful to suit his words, his face seemed far too gleeful. Harry growled at him, though he wasn’t sure that Malfoy could hear the low sound across the body of water that separated them, echoing though the cave may have been.

“It was for nothing, of course. The locket that fool Dumbledore is cleaving to so tightly is useless to you, as it is not the original. It is a cheap imitation of Slytherin’s former possession, and it was left there many years ago to be found by the Dark Lord, as a taunt of sorts, if you will, by a man named Black, one of the Dark Lord’s former servants. It is not one of his Horcruxes. And yes,” Lucius continued, seeing the flicker of surprise on Harry’s face, “we are well aware that you know of that word and it’s meaning in relation to the Dark Lord’s interests. You forget that the Dark Lord can enter your weak mind whenever he pleases, and you need not even know he was ever there, if he wishes it so. He knows exactly what you know. That’s why he knew that you would escort Dumbledore here when he came, and why he prepared for that eventuality.”

Harry was silent, not willing to admit that he didn’t really understand what Malfoy was telling him.

“You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the Dark Lord is less powerful and all-knowing than he is, an opinion I’m sure Dumbledore has drilled into you over the years. You should be far more afraid of him, Harry Potter, because he, on the other hand, is entirely right about you; the wizarding world certainly must overestimate your intelligence and your abilities if you still can’t see what’s going on here. However, we don’t have all year, and the Headmaster certainly doesn’t have that long, so I’ll put it in terms that even you will understand.

“The Dark Lord is not the fool you seem to think he is. When he returned, he knew that there was a possibility that some of his Horcruxes may have been found during his absence. This led him to check on those that it was convenient to visit, and to find that this Horcrux – the true Horcrux, at least – was missing. He believes that it is not destroyed, and so he has searched for it. He came to the conclusion that it is in a place protected from his and all of his follower’s entrance. However, he believes that the same might not be true for you; he thinks you may have the means to go inside, find his item and return it to him.”

“And he thinks I actually will?” Harry scoffed with false bravado.

“Of course. You see, as long as you refuse, there are only two options. The first is that I kill you. Believe me, I’d be only too thrilled to comply. The second is that we continue with this … enlightening chat until either your Headmaster passes on due to lack of medical aid, or I kill you to end the sheer boredom of it all.”

“And what,” Harry said, “you’re going to look after him while I’m off on your little quest? Somehow I can’t see you as the fluffing the pillows behind his head type.”

Lucius shrugged. “Not look after him, exactly – I am not a Gryffindor, concerned with the well-being of an old meddler who has more than earned the pain he is in now – but he will not be killed by myself or any other Death Eater. If he dies, it will be from that poison you shoved down his throat, and you would have my word on that.”

“Your word?” Harry repeated incredulously. “You expect me to trust the word of a Slytherin? A Death Eater? A Malfoy?”

Malfoy raised an eyebrow gracefully. Were the situation not so bizarre, Harry might have taken a moment to begrudge the Death Eater the fact that he could be so smarmy and still project the air that he was the epitome of high-class pureblood dignity.

“I was actually thinking of making an Unbreakable Vow, not that I expect you to know what that is. The Dark Lord is deadly serious about laying hands on his property once more, you see, and I, as his devoted servant, therefore must be willing to lay my own life on the line in this way for the cause. It is the way of things in the adult world. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll live long enough to encounter such things, boy.

“The Vow, to cure your ignorance, binds two wizards to their promises to the extent that they will die if they go against their word. I would volunteer the Headmaster to be our Bonder as a small mercy to your sensibilities, such as they are, but as he looks to be on the verge of unconsciousness, it’s probably just as well that I have a back-up. Bellatrix, won’t you come over here?”

Harry could only gape as Bellatrix Lestrange entered the cave, her mad eyes gleaming in the light of the Lumos charm beaming out of her stolen wand. The hand not holding her wand was dripping blood, which she didn’t even seem to notice as she approached Lucius’ side. Harry imagined that, like Dumbledore, she had had to shed blood to enter the cave. He would have thought, though, that even an insane person wouldn’t leave the wound to bleed, thus further weakening herself. Perhaps it was a show of self-confidence. More likely, it was just thoughtless. She didn’t seem like the brightest beam of light, after all.

“Not her,” Harry breathed.

Other than possibly Voldemort, Harry could not claim to hate anyone in the wizarding world quite as much as he despised Bellatrix. She was the first person to ever escape Azkaban prison, and had done so at the beginning of his fourth year at Hogwarts. Harry blamed Cornelius Fudge for that entirely. The Death Eaters had appeared at the Quidditch World Cup and the Ministry had panicked, ordering for her and several other key Death Eaters to receive the Dementor’s Kiss. Her escape had stopped that plan in its tracks. Dumbledore had mentioned to Harry that her sister, Narcissa Malfoy, was suspected of having helped her escape so that she would not have what was left of her wicked soul sucked out, but there was no evidence to charge her with.

Of course, Harry had to be fair. Bellatrix was actually the second person to escape Azkaban. However, the first had been written off as a death and not publicised in the way that the Lestrange situation had, and it wasn’t until nearly a year after Bellatrix’s escape that Harry learned the truth behind Barty Crouch Jr’s disappearance. Had it not been for Bellatrix, Crouch would never have escaped his father’s control, and would never have been able to infiltrate Hogwarts. Harry wouldn’t have been transported to the graveyard that had housed the Dark Lord’s return. The Dark Lord wouldn’t have returned, period, because he wouldn’t have had anyone to assist him.

And then, of course, Tonks wouldn’t have died were it not for Bellatrix. Harry had liked Tonks quite a bit; she was like an older sister, and had become probably the closest thing Harry had to family outside the Weasley’s themselves when he’d stayed at their house in the summer before his fifth year, with Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt as their guard. They had been the logical choices, with both of them being active Aurors as well as members of the Order of the Phoenix, and thus, as the impostor and the real Moody would both have put it, constantly vigilant in their protection. However, Tonks had gone above and beyond the call of duty. It had been her that had shocked him out of his depression after Voldemort had returned and the world seemed to have turned against him, and nobody would tell him anything of any worth – his ‘teen angst’, as she had teasingly called it, though Harry knew that she hadn’t really begrudged him his irritability under the circumstances.

That had all ended when, that February, barely half a year after he had met her, Tonks and a few other Aurors had been sent out to a location where Bellatrix had been sighted to capture her.

Only one of the Aurors had emerged from the fight alive, though not unscathed. It hadn’t been Harry’s newfound confidant.

If there hadn’t been a substantial distance and a large lake between them, Harry fancied that he might have bodily lunged at Bellatrix. The wave of rage that swept over him just the sight of her was almost overpowering. As it was, Harry summoned forth a glower that, had he been able to see himself, he might have deemed to rival even those that Snape generally reserved just for him.

“What trouble has the baby gotten into, now?” she cooed at him.

“The kind of trouble where I make you wish the Dementors had finished you off instead,” Harry returned as calmly as he could manage.

Lucius smirked. “Now really, Potter, you ought to show better manners. Bellatrix, after all, is only here to help.”

“As if she’d know how,” Harry muttered to himself, but he said nothing more to the insane woman who was manically laughing for apparently no reason. She really wasn’t worth it anyway, he postulated.

“Now,” Lucius continued, “I think that you should take that boat you travelled across in and return over to this side of the lake. No!” he snapped immediately when Harry went to collect the Headmaster, who was still gasping in short, laboured breaths, and attempted to help him to the boat. “You will leave him exactly where he is.”

Harry intensified his glare, if that was possible, but did as Lucius said. After all, it was the two Death Eaters who held all the cards. Harry would have to endeavour not to forget that, lest he should do something that caused them to choose Alternative No. 1, as Lucius had earlier presented to him. Getting himself killed now would obviously do neither himself nor Dumbledore an ounce of good.

The crossing of the water seemed to take, at once, forever and a mere second; while each extra moment that he could do nothing to help Dumbledore dragged, he had no particular desire to be any closer to the Death Eaters, and so, of course, it happened all-too-quickly. Harry stepped out onto the narrow bank, still a reasonable distance from where Lucius and Bellatrix stood side-by-side.

“If I agree,” Harry began grudgingly, “then will I be told where I’m meant to be going?”

Lucius laughed a full-bodied sort of laugh that indicated real amusement. “Of course not! The Dark Lord, while he wants the locket back in his possession, is in no rush for you to return. You will have to rely on your own intelligence. That should be interesting, I believe, as Severus has left us with the impression that you have been lucky to pass the majority of your school subjects over the years.”

Harry wanted to react to the familiar way Lucius spoke of Snape, and the fact that Snape had obviously been spending his time sharing stories about him, Harry, instead of retrieving much-needed information for the Order. However, cursing Snape to a painful death in his imagination would have to wait for a more appropriate time, if Harry actually lived to see one.

He merely scoffed, “Right,” and approached Lucius and Bellatrix as cautiously as he could make himself, so as not to fall into the water, while still being mindful of the fact that Dumbledore couldn’t really afford for him to be taking his time.

“So, Potter, this is how it works. You and I will join hands, and Bellatrix shall place her wand atop them to bind us to our words. I will ask, under the Vow, whether you agree to your part of the terms and you will reply, “I will.” You will then state your terms, such as the necessity for me not to hurt your Headmaster, and I will agree. And then you will leave, and go about your task. If you refuse to do so, you will die. It is as simple as that.

“Now, Bellatrix, if you please?”

Lucius gestured towards the floor, addressing Harry. “You will need to kneel, Potter.”

Harry’s breath caught. “You want me to kneel before you? Are you mad?” he choked out.

Malfoy rolled his cold eyes. “Don’t be overly dramatic, Potter. I will be kneeling as well.” As if to demonstrate this point, Lucius went to his knees.

It felt oddly satisfying, to have the high and mighty Lucius Malfoy at his feet. Harry regretted that this was not a situation during which he could revel in that. Instead, he followed Lucius’ lead, having to concentrate very hard on not flinching away when Bellatrix came to stand over them. She seemed to find it difficult to stand alongside them on the thin band of rocks, and Harry found himself hoping that she would fall into the water and someone arouse the Inferi back into action. This, unluckily, was not the case, and so Harry was not treated to the sight of Bellatrix Lestrange being attacked. He felt supremely disappointed, and then wondered what that said about his sense of mercy.

Lucius extended his hand and looked imperiously at Harry, fully expecting him to accept it without qualm.

“I’m not stupid,” Harry said, ignoring the hand for the moment. “I won’t be Bonded to go Horcrux-hunting before you are Bonded into not hurting Dumbledore. You will go first, or we’re not doing this.”

Lucius finally seemed exasperated, and Harry took a second to be glad of it. He hated it when his enemy never seemed particularly moved by anything that he said or did.

“Fine. Let us proceed before the Headmaster expires and the deal becomes worthless.”

Harry eyed him warily, but took Lucius’ hand nevertheless.

“It needs to spoken formally,” Lucius informed him as Bellatrix’s wand settled over their joined hands. “‘Will you, Lucius Malfoy, do this’ and the like. And don’t try to throw in any extra bits and pieces, since I’m under no obligation to agree.”

Harry nodded curtly. He needed to phrase this properly, so that there was no way that Lucius could find a way around his words without actually breaking the Vow.

“Will you, Lucius Malfoy, swear on behalf of yourself and all others in affiliation with Voldemort or his followers that Albus Dumbledore will not be handled in any way that causes further harm to him?”

“Put a time limit on it, Potter, or I won’t agree.”

Damn, Malfoy was smarter than he had hoped.

“Fine. Will you, Lucius Malfoy, swear that neither you nor anyone in league with Voldemort or his followers will in any way cause harm to Albus Dumbledore until he has been returned safely to either Hogwarts castle or St Mungo’s hospital?”

Lucius seemed to consider the request for a moment, as if verifying that Harry was not attempting to fool him again. “I will.”

Harry would have nodded in satisfaction were it not for the sight of flames spilling forth from Bellatrix’s wand and wrapping around their joined hands. He attempted to pull his hand back away from the fire encasing his hand in panic, but Lucius held fast.

“Will you, Harry Potter, retrieve the Dark Lord’s true Horcrux, Slytherin’s locket, from its current location and return to this cave to hand it over to myself or one of the other Death Eaters occupying the cave, not mentioning the events that occurred in this cave or the mission I have set for you outside this cave until you have completed your task?”

Harry hesitated, because what if he couldn’t find the thing? He didn’t want to die because Voldemort had guessed that the Horcrux was in the wrong location, or even because he had somehow managed to let the details of this encounter slip without meaning to. But then, there really was no choice. The options were to take a chance, or to resign himself to Dumbledore, and probably himself as well, dying slowly and without hope of being saved.

“I will.”

A second flame shot out to form a spiral that looked curiously like the strands of DNA on the charts that Harry had been shown in his science classes before learning he was a wizard. After a few moments, Lucius allowed Harry’s hand to fall away from his and in seconds all evidence that there had ever been strange, red-hot fire anywhere within the cave had disappeared. All that was left was the vaguely greenish glow of the cave, and the far-away glow of Dumbledore’s Lumos charm, which had yet to fail. At least he was strong enough and conscious enough for that, Harry thought thankfully, though that was small comfort when Harry could still hear the echo of the Headmaster’s wheezing, even across the lake.

As Harry cast a lighting charm, he looked beseeching at Lucius. He didn’t want to have to beg, but …

“Couldn’t you at least give him a glass of water, so he can breathe? As a gesture of good will.”

It was Bellatrix that laughed uproariously, while Lucius just looked mildly amused, but mostly just calculating.

“Run along, little baby,” the woman crowed. “You’ve obviously forgotten who you’re dealing with. Best that you leave before I remind you what the Dark Lord’s faithful servants can do to little half-blood boys like you.”

Harry glared. “Bitch,” he cursed, and forced himself to walk away before he could do something for which he would be made to feel sorry.

“Don’t dally, Potter,” Lucius called after him. “My Lord informs me that the poison isn’t generally fast-acting, but with someone as old and weakened as Dumbledore …”

Harry tried very hard to ignore this as he rubbed one of his many grazes, trophies of sorts from his scuffle with the Inferi, against the stone and so that the archway once more allowed him through. He didn’t look back, for he knew that if he had to see Dumbledore’s prone body in amongst the Inferi once more, he’d forget all about the danger, the Vow and plain common sense and rush back in there.

Fire, Harry remembered as soon as he stepped outside. Dumbledore had told him that fire would have driven the Inferi back. Again, he was half tempted to turn back and test the theory, but it wasn’t just Inferi that he would have to get past now.

When he reached the Apparition line, he hesitated. Use his intelligence, Lucius had said. That meant that it had to be somewhere that Harry actually knew of, surely. Somewhere he had access to and Voldemort didn’t …

* * * * * * * * * *

He had never hated the anti-Apparition wards around Hogwarts more than at that moment. He didn’t have the time or the energy to run from Hogsmeade to the castle, and he didn’t have any other form of transportation. But he hardly had a choice, did he?

He Apparated in the middle of the main street in Hogsmeade and was just about to take off on the road towards the school when he heard a gasp. Then someone called out, “Harry Potter!” and Harry turned around to see Madam Rosmerta rushing down the street. “Thank goodness you’re safe, boy!”

“What?” Harry asked, uncomprehending. He took in her dishevelled appearance – obviously she’d been ready for bed – and wondered what could possibly have prodded the witch to run around outside looking like that where anyone could see her.

“You mean you don’t know?” Rosmerta gaped. “I thought you must have somehow gotten out, gotten past the Apparition lines and come here to escape from them.”

“From who?” Harry demanded.

“The Death Eaters! I saw the Dark Mark, over the school …”

Harry looked in the direction she was pointing and immediately felt himself go even colder than he already was standing out in the chill of the night. There, over the castle, loomed the snake and skull combo that meant that there were Death Eaters inside the school … killing people inside the school. His friends were probably in the corridors still.

What had he done?

Harry turned panicked eyes back to the woman. “I need to get there! Now!”

It was Rosmerta’s turn to look completely confused. “Of course not! You need to stay here! They’re probably there looking for you. Dumbledore will –”

“Dumbledore’s …” Harry began, and then remembered that the terms of the Vow meant that he couldn’t tell anyone the details of exactly where Dumbledore was. “Dumbledore’s away from the school. He won’t make it back in time to help. I have to go.”

Rosmerta seemed stunned. “Away? But how could he be away now, when the school needs him more than ever?”

“Look, do you have a broom that I can borrow, or what?”

She nodded, looking terrified. “Behind the bar. I can –”

“Accio Rosmerta’s broom!” Harry cried out.

It only took a few seconds for a broom to smack into his hand.

“But the school is warded against broomsticks!” she informed him as he hooked a leg over the broom.

Harry turned to look at her. “There are Death Eaters in the school; I think it’s safe to say that the wards probably aren’t working. Look, go inside and get word off to the Ministry, if you can, just in case no one else has been able to. And I’ll be fine,” he assured her when she gave him a worried look.

Harry kicked off the ground and took off in the direction of Hogwarts and the Dark Mark.

Strangely enough, it would appear that the wards were very much intact, because something was slowing his flight to the point that it would almost have been quicker to get off and run. He imagined that somewhere, probably in Dumbledore’s office, there was some kind of alarm sounding to let the Headmaster know that the school’s wards were being breached. This slowing down would then give the school ample time to set up a defensive front against the would-be intruders. Of course, the school already had much worse intruders than Harry, and the Headmaster wasn’t exactly around to hear any alert that might sound, anyway.

Harry could now see that the Dark Mark was suspended above the Astronomy Tower, and he angled his broom towards it. When his broom finally breached the external wards, which ended somewhere near the edge of the Forbidden Forest closest to the school, Harry – as he had suspected – wasn’t greeted by anyone trying to stop him from entering. The teachers all obviously had other problems to deal with.

When Harry flew onto the ramparts, he dismounted and tossed the broom somewhere behind him. Wand withdrawn, he started towards the stairs, but even as he reached the door, it flew upon and a disarmament spell was shot at him. Harry tried to duck aside but wasn’t fast enough, and his wand flew out of his wand, disappearing over the edge of the battlements. He was royally screwed, now.

“Potter?” a surprised voice asked.

Draco Malfoy came through the door, then, and Harry had a strange sense of déjà vu. It hadn’t been more than twenty minutes ago that he’d seen Malfoy’s father in the dark, his face lit by nothing but the green light of a far-off basin. Now here was the younger Malfoy, with a greenish tinge cast on his paler than normal complexion by the Dark Mark hovering above them. Which Draco himself had probably sent up, Harry realised. He rather hoped that Malfoy was the only Death Eater in the building. A sixteen-year-old Draco Malfoy on a power trip was much more manageable than dozens of fully-grown Death Eaters storming the castle.

Then Harry heard a shout drifting up the stairs and past Malfoy, and his hopes left him. He was in real trouble.

“Where’s Dumbledore?” Malfoy demanded.

“Not here, obviously,” Harry replied. He was rather surprised that Malfoy wasn’t shooting curses at him, considering that Harry was unarmed and couldn’t fight back. However, the other boy was either too distracted by the fact that Dumbledore wasn’t here, as Malfoy had obviously expected him to be, or was waiting for the right time to strike. Either way, Harry wasn’t game to attempt to attack the other boy physically or even to grab the broom and get the hell out of there, as that would probably provoke an all-out duel. He really didn’t have time for this.

“Where is Dumbledore? Don’t think I won’t kill you, Potter!”

With those words, the déjà vu of earlier was gone. Because Harry knew that if Lucius Malfoy had said those words, Harry would actually have believed him. With Draco, it sounded like nothing more than an empty threat by a scared boy. His wand was even shaking as it pointed at him. Harry gave him an unimpressed look.

“He’s not in the castle, Malfoy. If you’re doing all this to get to him, then you’ve got piss poor timing.”

Malfoy looked something of a mixture between disbelieving and devastated. “Not … oh, fuck. So he’s still in Hogsmeade? What, hasn’t he seen the Mark?”

Harry admitted in his own mind to being thoroughly confused. “Hogsmeade? He was never in Hogsmeade.”

Draco cursed, something that sounded very much like, “Fucking Rosmerta. ‘Just going for a drink’, she says …”

Harry blanched. “Rosmerta’s a Death Eater?”

Draco glared at him. “Why should I tell you anything? And where the bloody hell is Dumbledore, since you seem to know so much?”

Harry shrugged. “’Fraid I can’t say. Since, you know, I’d die if I told you. Since that’s not really on my to-do list today …”

Malfoy just shook his head. “You’re either completely barmy, Potter, or you have a definite death wish. Or both, I suppose. Somehow I’m not even surprised.”

Again Harry shrugged. “You’re probably right. But I really can’t tell you anything, even if I wanted to. Now, I’m in a bit of a hurry to get downstairs, because I can hear a mighty ruckus down there, so if you wouldn’t mind stepping back –”

Draco laughed. “Yeah, right. I’ll just let you go down there and fight, is that what you think? You are mad.”

Harry would have liked to have replied, but at that moment the door flew open again and Malfoy was jostled out of the way. Harry half expected to see Hogwarts teachers. He was, however, disappointed, because it was four unknown faces that greeted him, one of which was covered, particularly around the mouth, with blood that didn’t look to be his, as they all appeared largely uninjured. Death Eaters, then. Harry didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or cry, because unlike Draco, these people likely wouldn’t hesitate to cast a quick Killing Curse on him. Two words and he would be dead. No more Harry Potter. No more prophecy. And the world would keep spinning regardless.

For the second time in only a few hours, there appeared to be a very good chance that Harry was about to die. How did he get himself into these situations?

“What’s this then?” the sole female Death Eater asked, sounding affronted, as if Malfoy and himself had cheated her out of something. “That’s not Dumbledore!”

“No,” agreed the man with the bloody face.

Malfoy’s attention was brought to him and Harry could see the recognition in his eyes. “Greyback,” he whispered.

Greyback, Harry’s mind repeated. The man was Fenrir Greyback, who was a werewolf, and who had obviously been biting people, probably Harry’s friends. Oh yes, there was the hysteria that he’d been waiting to hit him.

“It’s not Dumbledore,” Greyback continued. “But it is Harry Potter, all alone and unarmed, which is probably nearly as good.”

“That’s right,” another one of them said. Harry thought he looked like he must be related to the woman. “The Dark Lord will reward us just as well when we bring Potter to him, especially if we can find Dumbledore as well. Well done, Draco.”

Malfoy didn’t look particularly pleased at the praise. “Dumbledore’s apparently disappeared, according to Potter. Normally I wouldn’t believe him, but that the Headmaster hasn’t turned up yet would seem to speak for itself.”

“Well then, Potter, where is he?”

“As I already told Malfoy,” Harry said irritably, knowing that he wasn’t doing himself any favours with his tone and yet somehow not caring, “I really can’t talk about it.”

“Oh, just kill him and we’ll go look in Hogsmeade for him,” the woman suggested. “As Draco says, he’s obviously not here in the building. With any luck, he’s already dead.”

At that moment, there was a large noise just outside the door, and in came Snape, whose dark eyes seemed to take in the situation in an instant. Harry would have been a lot happier to see him had he barged in with curses blazing. The fact that he and the Death Eaters weren’t attacking each other didn’t spell good news for Harry.

“Where is the Headmaster?” Snape asked in a deadly cold voice.

Greyback grinned, and Harry could see blood coating his teeth. And was that a piece of flesh stuck in his teeth? On second thought, Harry really didn’t want to know. He felt sick enough already.

“A bit late in joining the action, eh, Snape? Potter claims he’s not at the school and won’t tell us where he is. We were just about to kill the little runt. I was planning on ripping his throat open and letting him bleed out – he’s a bit older than I like them, but he’s still got that delicious innocence about him – but now that you’re here, Snape … well, we all know how much you hate him, so if you’d like the honour …”

You just try it, Harry thought, but he didn’t glare at Snape the way he would have liked to as the man looked at him, his expression closed.

“Er, you know …” Harry began doubtfully. “Well, I don’t want to tell you your business, or anything, but it’s probably not a good idea to kill me right now. Your master wouldn’t really like it. A few days from now maybe, but –”

“Do shut up, Potter,” Snape barked. Harry fell silent without meaning to do so. That was just a measure of the gravity of the situation, really, wasn’t it? He was even taking orders from Snape with the sliver of hope that it might get him out of here, alive.

“For once in his life, the boy is actually telling the truth,” Snape said after a moment. “You all have heard the Dark Lord’s orders; Potter is for him and him alone. None of you will touch him.”

“So we take him with us,” the woman suggested instead, her voice impatient.

“No. The Dark Lord had another plan running parallel to this one, one that he didn’t think would work. But I can see the knowledge in the boy’s mind that it has worked quite well indeed. Dumbledore is unable to return, and Potter is right to say that the Dark Lord will be displeased if he is killed, for he’s right in the middle of a trap as we speak. The Dark Lord will deal with the boy in his own time. But right now, we need to leave.”

“What?” one of the Death Eaters said. “But we’d have accomplished nothing by coming here!”

Snape scowled, and everyone in the room seemed to try to put just a little more distance between him and themselves, as if in fear. “We were nothing but a back-up plan, because the Dark Lord was sure the other plan wouldn’t work. If you wish to question his orders, feel free to do so in his presence,” Snape suggested. The other Death Eater seemed to shrink under his glare. “Suffice to say, we aren’t needed here now. So if you want to see tomorrow, you need to leave, before that lot downstairs regroups. We are grossly outnumbered, especially if you count the students who insist on getting in the way.”

“Let’s go,” the woman said after a long moment in which Snape and the others seemed to be in a silent stand off, with Draco simply glancing back and forwards between them, as if contemplating who would win.

The Death Eaters, including Draco, seemed to all head for the door at her command.

Greyback looked back at Harry before he left and said, “I look forward to coming back and sinking my teeth into you, little Chosen One.”

“Bite me,” Harry choked out.

Greyback cackled. “Next time, I promise.”

Then there was just him and Snape, who looked very much like he wanted to beat Harry to a pulp with his bare hands.

“You left him there!” Snape accused once the others were out of earshot. “The Dark Lord had very little faith in Lucius’ plan, because he didn’t imagine for a moment that you would actually have left him there. He’ll be dead before you go back, you idiot. He has barely a day, I’d say, and you’ll take much longer than that. No, idiot child,” Snape growled when Harry opened his mouth, “don’t talk about it! Do you have a death wish?”

Harry shook his head, ashamed. He was definitely going to get himself killed one of these days.

“You should have killed him yourself, Potter, to put him out of his misery and then made a run for it before Lucius could rope you into his little game.”

Snape whirled and took off, leaving Harry dumb-struck.

“Is that what you would have done?” he whispered angrily, but could not bring himself to go after Snape and demand an explanation, and not just for fear of breaking the Vow and getting himself killed. He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to know the answer to the question he’d just posed.

Then Harry remembered where he was, and that there was a fight going on downstairs, and that Dumbledore was running out of time. There were too many things that he needed to do at once. He was getting a headache.

He was down the stairs in what seemed like an instant, not even thinking about the fact that he had no wand to fire spells with. He didn’t care, because if the Death Eaters were hurting his friends, he would happily physically attack them if he had to.

It occurred to Harry that Draco had been right; he was very mad indeed, at least at that moment.

However, Harry and the rest of the Order were in luck, because the Death Eaters who’d fled from the top of the tower only a minute ago had obviously called for a retreat. There were a few still about – McGonagall looked to be almost pleased that the female Death Eater who’d been up on the battlement wasn’t able to manage a quick escape and was presently tossing her about in a duel, and Harry saw Snape just disappearing from sight, as if it had taken a moment to get through the crowd – but by and large, the Death Eaters had either fled, or were on the ground, unconscious. Or, at least in the case of one he could see just down the hall, probably dead.

He could see most of his friends were safe, though Neville looked particularly pale, and Ginny had actually broken out in a sweat, as if she’d been constantly dodging curses. Hermione and Luna were nowhere in sight. He wondered whether Snape had done anything to them for a moment, but it really wasn’t the time to worry about it right at that moment. Snape was on their side; he was fairly sure of that, after what he had said to Harry earlier. If he wasn’t, surely he would have just fled with the others.

Ginny raced over to him and embraced him.

“Harry, when did you get back?” she whispered. Harry ignored her words, simply letting himself be held until he felt the uncomfortable need to retreat, to get as far away from her as he could. He broke away.

“A while ago. But I have to leave again. Right now.”

“What? But Harry –”

Harry ignored her completely, walking swiftly away.

It occurred to Harry that he hadn’t really thought his plan through properly. He had thought, since Voldemort was afraid of Dumbledore, that it might have been Hogwarts to which Harry but not Voldemort had access. But now he realised that Voldemort thought that Snape was his agent, whether or not it was true, and that the Dark Lord had actually had access to the castle, as he’d so eloquently proven tonight.

Even if that hadn’t been the case, surely Dumbledore would have known that the Horcrux was in the castle, if it, in fact, had been. Harry was old enough now to realise that Dumbledore was not omnipotent, but he’d lived in the castle for many decades and knew it well enough, and had enough access to house elves and portraits and such to be aware of an object that had been there for years. Or, at least, Lucius had made it sound as if the object had been gone for years. It couldn’t have been too recently, as it sounded like the person who’d stolen had either died or simply left it behind long before Voldemort regained power.

However, Lucius had said to use his intelligence. And, thinking back, there was one place that made perfect sense. Neither Dumbledore nor Snape had access to it, and nor did anyone else presently living apart from Harry and Voldemort. Voldemort had, in fact, probably spent a lot of time during his time at Hogwarts there. Except, since it was inside Hogwarts, Voldemort didn’t really have access to it anymore either. So that left only Harry, which meant it made a lot of sense.

Even so, Harry wasn’t exactly happy to find himself back down in the Chamber of Secrets, scouring every corner of the place for traces of magic. It smelled a thousand times worse than it had the last time he’d been there, for on top of the stench of plumbing, stale air and the occasional small animal that had been mostly eaten, there was now also an extremely large rotting snake carcass adding its own pungent aroma to the air. Harry felt vaguely sick.

There was nothing magical in the cave apart from the Basilisk and the large door that lead into the cavern in which the Basilisk had found its final resting place. It was a shame not only because it meant that Harry had to come up with more ideas, but because this one had been so perfect. Slytherin’s locket in Slytherin’s chamber, from which only Harry could help Voldemort retrieve the Horcrux.

But then, it occurred to Harry as he climbed back out of the cave that it had been too perfect, for he had not thought it through. It hadn’t been Voldemort who had moved the locket to its current location, but another man all together. Black, a former Death Eater, had been the one to place the locket. He could not have entered the Chamber of Secrets any more than most other witches and wizards could. Harry sighed in frustration. He’d wasted an hour down there, and had nothing more than slimy clothing to show for it.

But there must be somewhere else, there had to be. Harry didn’t have access to that many places. There were public places, like Diagon Alley, that Voldemort wouldn’t really be able to go – not without a large-scale panic and being attacked by Aurors – but many of his Death Eaters were not restricted in the same way. Then there was the school, which he’d ruled out. The Weasleys’ house was well-warded, but without the Aurors guarding it as they did while Harry was there, it wouldn’t be anything like impossible for Death Eaters to break in. The Order of the Phoenix Headquarters, Harry had never visited …

But he did have access to it, didn’t he? Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper, and Dumbledore himself had told Harry the location, just in case Harry found himself in need of a quick hideaway. Dumbledore had said he hoped it never came to that, but Harry knew that the Headmaster had liked to be prepared. He’d even thoroughly prepared for the eventually that he was currently facing, that he was going to die before the Horcruxes were found. Most witches and wizards were lucky to draw up a will at some point, let alone keep it constantly updated and make sure that those they’d be leaving behind knew the important things that needed to be shared. No one seemed to believe in their own mortality in the wizarding world, or, at least, they didn’t want to believe in it.

Harry wished he had that luxury.

* * * * * * * * * *

The old abandoned warehouse that the Order had made into its Headquarters was one of the last places any self-respecting wizard would want to go. When Harry had been told as much by the Order members who had actually spent time there, he supposed that that had been part of its initial appeal. After all, the Death Eaters were all supposedly self-respecting, or at least extremely arrogant, which would presumably have the same effect.

The building was surrounded by a lower-class Muggle neighbourhood and was extremely old and decrepit looking. The Muggles, of course, didn’t know this, because they couldn’t see it. Although its looks alone might have scared away self-respecting Muggles just as well as their wizarding counterparts, Dumbledore hadn’t wanted to take the chance that someone might try to squat in the house, only to be repelled by obviously magical wards.

Then, of course, once the Order actually moved into it permanently, Dumbledore had decided to perform the Fidelius Charm on top of the seemingly countless wards already on the house, so it didn’t matter anyway. No one who Dumbledore himself didn’t inform of the location of the place could see it, Muggle or not.

So, of course, Voldemort didn’t have access to it, while Harry did. In theory, it fit the profile. Harry couldn’t imagine how the locket could possibly have gotten there, given that it had been taken long before the Order of the Phoenix reconvened, and longer still before this place had been selected for the Order’s use.

However, Harry thought that it would be extremely stupid not to check. It wasn’t as if there were a lot of places the thing could be hidden in the large but fairly empty building, so it wouldn’t take long for someone who knew what they were looking for to check through it. He would rather be sure and waste half an hour than to waste days looking for the locket only to eventually find it somewhere as simple as this. It would be too late by then.

So it was that Harry Apparated into a building that was similarly abandoned – though obviously nothing like so heavily warded – just down the street from the Order Headquarters. Dumbledore had also told him about this place; it was used occasionally by Order members who could not arrive in a less conspicuous manner for one reason or another.

No one seemed to notice him emerge from the building despite the fact that no one should have been inside and it was the dead of night, and thus the whole thing was more than just a little suspect. Or if they did notice, there was certainly no sign of it. Apart from Harry himself, the area seemed deserted, and all was quiet. But then again, though Harry had never lived in a neighbourhood like this, he had heard stories of gang violence and such. It was probably the case that a sixteen-year-old boy wandering around in the dark was neither the strangest nor the worst thing that could happen. He shuddered to think.

It was the work of only a minute or two to walk down the street and enter the warehouse. Harry had heard jokes about how the entire Order was more likely to be wiped out by the building collapsing around them during a meeting than by Voldemort and his followers, but he had thought them to be exaggerations of the truth. After all, it had been Fred and George who’d said such things. Now that he could see it for himself, he realised that there was at least a bit of truth in it.

As he neared the door, he thought he could feel the wards accepting him. Dumbledore had spoken earlier about being able to recognise individuals one knew through their magic. Harry was fairly sure that he could feel something residual and familiar in these spells, and he was convinced that it was something like Dumbledore’s essence. It was comforting, as much as was the presence of the spells themselves. For, after all, though Harry was fairly certain that the Fidelius did not fail after the Secret Keeper’s death – that would make it a bit too simple to get around, really – that was not true of all of the other wards. At least some of the weaker ones should have fallen, had Dumbledore already died. Their continued presence was something like a beacon of hope, if Harry felt like getting poetic about it.

He didn’t, of course. This was no time to be lyrical and sensitive. He had a job to do.

From the minute he actually entered the house, he felt a bit worried for his safety. The floorboard that kept squeaking even when he wasn’t standing on it in particular seemed terribly loud and ominous. It couldn’t possibly be stable. Harry stepped as lightly as he could manage, tempted to leave his shoes at the front door just to get rid of their weight, as if that would help. But then he remembered that Hagrid was an Order member and had come to this place for meetings, so obviously the floor was sturdier than it seemed, to hold up a half-giant’s weight. Perhaps Dumbledore had used a spell to reinforce it. Harry wouldn’t have put it past him, he was himself the ultimate example of the saying ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’.

It wasn’t hard to find the main room that the Order used. It was the largest area, and was the only place in the whole building where the furniture – which, incidentally, only consisted of the biggest table Harry had seen outside the Hogwarts Great Hall and three dozen or so chairs – wasn’t covered in about a foot of dust and grime. It was more than a little disgusting, Harry thought, but it would certainly make his search simpler. After all, if the dust was disturbed, obviously someone had been there, and the Order members really had no legitimate reasons to go into those other rooms.

Of course, the dust looked very well settled in each room. Harry sighed. It couldn’t have been that easy, could it?

There were, of course, spells that could stir up dust and let it settle out again after a wizard left the room so that it would not be obvious that they’d ever ventured inside, so Harry knew that he couldn’t assume that they hadn’t been entered. It called for a more thorough search than Harry would have liked, but there was nothing for it, really.

Sometimes he hated the fact that other people actually had brains, especially since those sometimes a lot sharper and more active than his own. It made life so much more difficult for him.

There was no sign that the locket was, or had at any point been, in the building. He couldn’t see it, obviously, though that was hardly the deciding factor. He cast spells and felt about for that magic that surrounded some objects – or, in fact, all objects, if Dumbledore’s explanation of how he found that boat earlier was anything to go by, though Harry certainly wasn’t powerful enough to have felt that – to no avail.

He hadn’t really expected much, though he was still more than a little disappointed. Though it had been a long shot, there had been a small hope that it could have been here. After all, Lucius had said that the person who had taken the locket, Black, was a traitor to Voldemort. He could very well have been a spy for the Order. Or, as an alternative, he could have failed in destroying it and planted it on an Order member without their knowledge, figuring that that would be the safest place for it, and perhaps even hoping that it would find its way to Dumbledore without the having to reveal his identity.

There could have been any number of explanations, but it was pointless to think too hard about them, Harry decided, as none of them were relevant. There was nothing like a Horcrux here. Harry was now positive of that.

It had been several hours since he’d left Dumbledore. In a few more hours the sun would be rising, now that summer was coming on and sunrise was getting quite early. Harry tried not to panic at the thought. He still had time, surely. Lucius had said that the poison wasn’t fast-acting. And though he had also said that Dumbledore’s condition beforehand made it particularly bad, Harry had faith in the Headmaster’s strength. He had to, so as not to go crazy thinking about how, at any moment, Dumbledore could succumb to the poison.

Yeah, it was definitely time to move on to the next possible location.

* * * * * * * * * *

To say that the Dursleys weren’t impressed at being woken up by someone incessantly knocking on the front door of Number 4 Privet Drive long before the crack of dawn was an understatement. When they found that that someone was their nephew, whose presence they had thought they still had at least a week or so without, it was lucky that the whole neighbourhood wasn’t awoken along with them at the volume of Vernon Dursley’s yelling.

“Look, I just need to look around the house.”

“What, and put your grubby paws all over our good things?” Aunt Petunia scoffed.

“Bad enough that we have to put up with you on your holidays, boy,” said Uncle Vernon, “but there’ll be none of this turning up early – and in the middle of the night, no less – and asking for free reign. You’ve got some nerve –”

Harry glared at him, and Uncle Vernon actually seemed shocked at this display of independence, or of defiance, as he undoubtedly would see it. Harry could hardly blame him. His answer to everything was usually yes, Uncle Vernon, just to keep away from unnecessary trouble.

“It’s a matter of life and death, all right? I can’t afford to waste time waiting for your permission.”

Even as Harry went to move past them, his uncle grabbed him by the collar and shoved him back to where he’d been standing.

“If you’re being chased about by that – that freak who wants to kill you, then you can definitely just get out now. You’ve already done enough damage. Setting those Demonoids after Dudley –”

“Dementors,” Harry corrected quietly, though he doubted Uncle Vernon had taken a long enough breath to hear him; certainly he couldn’t have, if one judged by the redness of his face. Harry wondered what he would do if his uncle died of suffocation right in front of him. He’d probably be blamed, with his luck combined with his aunt’s hatred of him.

“– and then telling us that some lunatic could come and kill us in our beds at any minute because of you!”

“That’s not true!” Harry argued. “The things that protect me while I’m here protect you, too. Or, at least, they will until I’m seventeen,” Harry said thoughtfully. “I don’t really know what happens after then. But, you know, if you see people in black robes and white masks wondering around on any day but Halloween – or even Halloween, really, I suppose, since it’s not like they take the day off –” his uncle’s thunderous expression reminded Harry that he was getting off track. “Well, then you’d probably want to move.”

“MOVE?” Uncle Vernon boomed. “How dare you suggest –”

“Or, you know, feel free to stay here and be killed, if that’s what you want,” Harry added angrily. “I’m only trying to help.”

“Then help us by leaving!” Vernon demanded.

“Not going to happen. Even if I have to use magic to keep you out of my way, and yes,” Harry said when Uncle Vernon looked like he would object, “I can use magic, since it’s still technically the school year, I will eventually find a way to search this house. It would be easier if you just let me do it. After all, the quicker I start, the faster I leave. I’ll be out of your hair for another week, assuming I come back.”

“Fine, boy, we’ll make a deal,” Vernon stated. “You can look around the house and such as long as you’re gone before I have to leave for work; I’m not leaving you here alone with my wife while you’re able to do your hocus pocus on her.”

As if the man could do anything to stop him while he was there to 'protect' her, if that was actually Harry’s intention. He rolled his eyes. He was about to agree, though, since he had no intention of being here more than an hour or two anyway, when Vernon added another stipulation.

“And as long as you don’t come back for the summer.”

Harry had to stop and think about that. Dumbledore had told him that he would need to go back until he was seventeen … that there was no other way to be certain he would be safe until then …

But Dumbledore could be dead even now, Harry reminded himself. Dumbledore would die if Harry couldn’t find the Horcrux. That was his main concern. What happened after seemed a lifetime away.

“Fine.”

His aunt was the first to step aside. Uncle Vernon eyed him in a predatory manner for a few more moments before Harry walked around him, this time unimpeded. Harry was about to head to his cupboard to start there – after all, it was likely that the object might have come with him when he first arrived, if it had been a number of years since it was replaced with the fake, when he realised that if that was the case, it wouldn’t have been left with him. He turned around, this time to face his aunt.

“When I first arrived here, was there anything with me? It might have been some kind of small object, particularly a locket, but anything at all, really.”

Aunt Petunia pursed her lips at him as if she was going to refuse to answer, but Harry saw her head shake slightly in denial nonetheless. “There was nothing but a note, telling us who you were and why you were here. It would certainly have been nice if there had been anything of worth left to pay for you, but nothing like that could be expected from your kind, I suppose.”

Harry rolled his eyes again. “Right.” Once again, it couldn’t have been as simple as that. Nothing ever was.

It took Harry about an hour and a half to thoroughly search the whole house. Well, he actually finished nearly two hours after he started, but that was because Uncle Vernon had interrupted him twice; once when he wanted to go into Dudley’s room, because how dare Harry think that he could besmirch perfect Dudley’s things, and again when he tried to enter their room, because he had no right to go about looking at, and likely trying to steal, their private possessions. Harry ignored Vernon as well as he could – just as he devoutly tried to ignore any particularly suspect things he found in his aunt and uncle’s bedroom – but it added at least twenty minutes, probably more, to Harry’s search.

He didn’t find a single magical item or even any kind of sign that magic had at some stage been performed except for a quill with a self-sharpening tip that he’d accidentally left behind. He pocketed the quill in order to avoid Uncle Vernon’s wrath, should he leave it there. Vernon, of course, was watching his every move, refusing to allow Harry completely free reign of the house in case he suddenly decided that this was as good a time as any to burn it down or otherwise destroy it, having failed to do so for the past decade and a half.

Harry was half tempted to do it, just because his uncle seemed so certain that he would. It would serve them right, anyway. They were lucky he wasn’t anything like as evil as they seemed to think he was.

* * * * * * * * * *

It wasn’t quite light outside when Harry left the Dursley’s house. The sun hadn’t risen above the horizon yet, for it was still quite early in the morning, but there was nonetheless a soft, faded sort of early-morning light projected over Privet Drive. Harry, considering the last twenty-four hours, felt extremely grateful that he would live to see the sunrise. That was presuming that he wasn’t hit by a car, or mugged, or killed in some other completely pointless way between then and the actual rising of the sun. He hoped that Dumbledore could say the same, though he knew that the sunlight couldn’t possibly enter the penetrating darkness of that cave.

That was rather a pity, Harry thought, for the sight of the sun had always suggested hope, to him at least.

Dumbledore was the strongest and greatest person he knew, Harry reminded himself. He was still alive. He had to be. For how long, though, Harry didn’t know. He didn’t have any thoughts about where else he could look, either, in order to keep Dumbledore alive. He was out of ideas. Lucius had definitely been right about his intelligence, he guessed; it wasn’t all that it could be.

He wished he could look around Mrs Figg’s house, just to be sure, but he saw no reason for it to be there. Although she had been the one to look after him when necessary, it still remained that she was only a squib. He hated having to think about it in such derogatory terms, but the truth was that many wizards would die before allowing a dark and powerful object fall into the hands of a squib, all of whom were largely considered to be lower than Muggles, and lower even than dirt, to fanatics like Voldemort and his followers. After all, they didn’t really fit into either world, which was somehow worse than just fitting into a different world, like the Muggles did. At least the Muggles didn’t pretend that they were like wizards; most of them didn’t have a clue that magic existed in the first place.

And then, he didn’t really want to see Mrs Figg at five o’clock in the morning. He feared that a sight like that could well give him nightmares, if it was anything like what his imagination was supplying for him.

So what he had to do was leave the area once more. However, since he wasn’t sure where his next destination could possibly be, that made the whole thing a little more difficult.

He might as well head back to the place to which he’d originally Apparated. He hadn’t been able to Apparate straight into the Dursley’s house, of course, since they would either have died of fright or killed him when they realised who he was – he knew how well Aunt Petunia could aim when throwing dangerous items such as frypans and cheap mugs, after all. The only place where he knew that no one could conceivably be about to witness his appearing seemingly out of nowhere at this hour of the morning was a good five minutes walk away, somewhere close to the tiny local shopping village.

When Harry looked down the road in the direction he had to travel, he was stunned to see a black dog sitting near the bushes that divided the Dursley’s and the next-door neighbour's yard. He’d seen the dog on his way to the house. It had been hard to miss, after all, hulking mass of muscle and fur that it was. He was just amazed that it was still there. Who in their right mind, animal or not, would stay anywhere near the Dursleys’ house longer than they had to, anyway?

Added to that was that it had scared him a little, initially. He’d heard something rustling around near the Dursley’s house and had half expected Death Eaters to jump out at him, despite Snape’s insinuation that he was going to be left alone until he found Voldemort’s Horcrux for him. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, exactly, but the darkness made everything – every sound, every movement caught out of the corner of one’s eye – much more real and portentous. Even once he’d established that it wasn’t Death Eaters, Harry hadn’t been sure how comfortable he was standing prone out on the street with that enormous animal only a few feet away. He’d been very glad to get inside the Dursleys’ house. It occurred to him that that would be the first and hopefully last time he had ever been even slightly pleased to cross his relatives’ threshold.

In the half-light of the early morning, though, the dog didn’t look even half as menacing as it did before. Its tongue lolled almost happily out the side of its mouth at the sight of someone to keep it company. It probably just wanted a pat, poor thing. It was rather a pity that Harry didn’t have time to indulge in such harmless simplicities.

He was quite surprised when the animal padded along behind him once he’d started walking. What was it doing? Did it want to eat him after all? Was it a Death Eater in disguise? If only he’d bothered to learn the spell that made an Animagus revert back to its human form.

The dog, luckily, proved to be harmless. After it had followed him for a few minutes, it came right up to him and brushed itself against his leg in a friendly and rather cat-like manner. Its tail waved back and forth so fast it seemed to blur. Harry smiled grudgingly. The rest of his walk would probably be unimpeded if he just gave the animal a moment of his time now, he supposed. Surely that was excuse enough for the fact that he found himself reaching down and scratching it behind the ears. The tail seemed to quicken in motion, though Harry had doubted that that was possible.

The dog seemed to collapse onto the ground, rolling over to show Harry its belly. Harry laughed softly. That was the first time he’d felt even remotely happy or amused since before he’d left the school with Dumbledore at his side. Harry reached down and stroked the dog’s abdomen. His eyes drifted off absently as he did so, coming to rest on an open store.

He was a little surprised that anywhere in the small shopping village he was currently standing in would be open this early. However, since his stomach was fast moving toward the stage of growling impatiently at him, he couldn’t claim that he was at all disappointed.

Harry went to enter the convenience store to buy something to eat, but he realised that he was in Muggle territory with no Muggle currency. He half-growled in annoyance. Why hadn’t he thought about that before? He couldn’t just go wondering around the Muggle world without a single coin on him. His wizarding money was low as well, come to think of it. What if he got into an emergency, or found the Horcrux in a place from which he would have to purchase it? He’d be screwed, that’s what.

He was going to have to visit Gringotts.

He supposed that he could Apparate, but he had no idea whether one was able to Apparate into the Leaky Cauldron or the Alley itself, and he didn’t know enough about the surrounding area to pick out a safe place. He really was going to have to pay more attention the small simplicities of how the wizarding world worked if he wanted to be able to live in it after he finished at Hogwarts. As it was, he’d likely end up at Hermione’s side every two seconds asking stupid questions that he should, after six years in the wizarding world thus far, know the answer to.

He obviously couldn’t Floo, either, since he had no idea where the nearest fire connected to the Floo network was, or even if there was one at all within miles. He supposed Mrs Figg might be hooked up, being a squib and something of a stop-over for the Order members who’d been watching him during the holidays since Voldemort’s return. He doubted it though, somehow. It wasn’t like she could use it herself, and who would want their lack of magic rubbed in their face like that.

So that left, Harry supposed, the Knight Bus. He didn’t particularly like travelling that way – that one time he’d done so with Tonks and Kingsley on the way to the Weasleys’ had been enough to put him off for life – but there was, on this occasion, little choice left to him.

He raised his wand arm in the air and moments later the giant purple bus appeared out of thin air with a crack similar to the sound of Apparition. The dog jumped and let out a low yelp of surprise. The two or three Muggles on the street within viewing distance of this occurrence, though, seemed not to notice anything out of the ordinary. They saw what they wanted to see, Harry thought to himself with a bemused smile.

“I’m going away now,” Harry said quietly to animal as the door of the bus opened, and a familiar pimple-filled face appeared. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

“Welcome to the … Harry Potter!”

“I’m going to the Leaky Cauldron,” said Harry brusquely, “and I’ll pay extra if you get me there as fast as possible and without talking to me more than is absolutely necessary.”

Stan seemed a bit put out by this. “Awright. Express to the Leaky. That’ll be a Galleon.”

Harry thought that this was rather steep, but stepped onto the bus and reached into his money bag nonetheless. He’d better be the very next stop, for that price.”

“Oy, you’ll have to pay another five sickles for the dog, though!” Stan said. “Pets annoy the other passengers, ’specially one’s not caged up. Can’t be letting him go wild with nothin’ innit for us!”

Harry frowned and turned to look where Stan was wildly gesturing. The large black dog was there; his front legs were propped up on the bus step and his hind legs still on the sidewalk, as if waiting for Harry to move further into the bus so that he could get fully inside and follow him.

Harry was about to say that the dog wasn’t his, but then he saw the dog’s big, almost pleading eyes. Puppy eyes, indeed. Well, he admitted that it was unlikely the dog was actually pleading him since it wouldn’t really know what was going on, but still, it wouldn’t slow him down too much, surely. Harry thought he would like to have some company. He felt so alone at the moment, unable to tell anyone what he was going through. He couldn’t tell the dog either, just in case ‘anyone’ applied to non-human individuals who couldn’t understand him anyway, but it would be nice just to have someone around to make the silence seem less pronounced.

“Fine,” Harry said and fished out the extra coins. His money bag now lighter (and he was very glad that he was going to Gringotts straight afterward), he allowed himself to be shown to a bed.

“Got ’ere just in time for a bed,” Stan said. “Be changin’em into chairs in a half hour or so.”

Harry glowered at him. “No talking to me, remember?”

Stan looked somewhat angry for a moment, but he said nothing in response to Harry’s words, and he seemed to have been cowed at least a little. He probably didn’t want to upset famous Harry Potter. Harry wasn’t exactly in a good enough mood to be grateful that his fame had worked in his favour for once.

The dog jumped up and curled on the end of the bed as the bus shot into action. Harry had to grab onto the nearest pole to keep from being flung backward. He pulled himself onto the bed. The dog rested his head on Harry’s thigh and let out a huffing noise much like a sigh. Harry echoed the sound.

“I wish that I had some idea what I’m doing,” Harry whispered. The dog lifted a paw up onto his chest in a comforting way, though of course the dog could hardly know that it was so. Harry smiled sadly and ran a hand through the fur on the dog’s back, hardly caring that it felt more than just a little dirty beneath his finders. The dog’s tail beat against the bed a few times before stilling itself. Harry settled in for the ride.

* * * * * * * * * *

A few odd looks and hasty manoeuvres through early morning rushes later, Harry stepped outside Gringotts with a bag full of a mixture of Muggle and wizarding money. He was surprised to see the dog where he had left him, sitting patiently outside the grand goblin-made building. He’d expected the animal to go off with someone else, or just plain get distracted by the hustle and bustle of wizards going in and out of the bank to exchange money before work and wander away. Instead, there it was waiting for him, rising from its sitting position when it saw him approach.

“If only you were a cat, I’d have to say you were part kneazle,” Harry murmured.

It was intended as a joke, but Harry did have to wonder whether the dog could possibly be entirely normal. Since neither he nor the Dursley’s had ever owned a dog and they weren’t allowed at school, though, Harry wasn’t all that sure about dog behaviour. Perhaps this was normal. Certainly, Harry didn’t mind that the dog liked him enough to become so overly attached to him. It was a good feeling, to be liked unconditionally.

It was equally nice to sit outside a small coffee shop scoffing down pumpkin pasties and occasionally slipping portions to the dog. It looked like it was even hungrier than he was. Perhaps it had been out on the streets of Little Whinging for a long time. Maybe it didn’t have an owner anymore. It could have been abandoned, or its owner could have died, or it might have run away from a nearby town, where its owner had given up on it. Regardless, Harry thought that they might have been meant to come across each other.

Or they would have been, if he believed in fate. After his rather unfortunate experiences with Divination of all sorts, especially prophecies, he wished fervently that he didn’t.

This little slice of normality that he’d enjoyed over the last hour or so, though, came to an abrupt end once Harry had escorted the dog back through the Leaky Cauldron. The dog’s presence became less welcome. Harry didn’t know what he was doing, or where he was going. He was going to have to Apparate somewhere eventually, and so he’d have to leave the dog then. He couldn’t even afford to have it slowing him down even slightly in the mean time. Better to leave him now, really, rather than suddenly disappear seemingly into thin air in front of it.

“Look, I don’t have any treats, or anything, and as much as I like your company, I’ll get along fine without you. Unless you know anything about Slytherin’s locket – which, by the way, contains part of the soul of Lord Voldemort the evilest wizard in living memory, just so you know – or about a man named ‘Black’, you can stop following me about.”

Much to Harry’s surprise, the dog suddenly grabbed his trousers with his teeth and attempted to drag him away from the Leaky Cauldron.

“Hey!” Harry said angrily, “get off! I have few enough pairs of pants without you ripping these to bits.”

The dog let go and went behind him, nudging him persistently in the same direction as he had been trying to drag him. When Harry refused to move, the dog gave up and walked purposefully in that direction, turning around and looking at Harry as if he should be following.

Harry sighed disgustedly. “You want to go that way? Fine. Not like I have any better ideas, is it?”

Actually, it occurred to Harry not long after he’d begun trailing after the dog as if it actually knew where it was going that walking aimlessly about London was actually helping him clear his mind so that he could actually think straight.

There was the Weasley’s, where Harry had unlimited access. It was conceivable that Arthur had brought the locket home from work, thinking that it had been a Muggle artefact cursed by wizards for Muggle-baiting, or that one of the Weasley children – probably Fred or George – had stumbled across it somewhere and held onto it. However, the Burrow wasn’t exactly particularly well-protected. Certainly, Voldemort himself could easily walk in there. Whoever was home would Apparate away, thinking he was after them, and Voldemort would be left alone to search for his missing Horcrux. Harry would be able to accomplish such a search more easily than Voldemort could, certainly, and there was always the chance that the whole Ministry could sweep down on him while his location was known. The only thing that could possibly make that risk seem so high that Voldemort would rather go through the effort of getting Harry to do it, though, would be if Voldemort had reason to believe that one of the Weasleys had it on their person. It was unlikely, but as a last resort it was better than nothing, Harry supposed.

There was even Godric’s Hollow, where his parents had lived until they died. Dumbledore had informed Harry, when he asked about it, that the house had been in danger of being ransacked by disgruntled followers of the Dark Lord or exploited as a tourist spot after Lord Voldemort had fallen there. The Ministry had, therefore, deemed it necessary to put protection on the house. While Harry would be able to enter the house if he wished, others would have less success.

Harry, however, wanted to avoid going there as long as possible. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the house, though he wasn’t exactly overjoyed at seeing where his parents had died. The problem was that Harry was sure that as soon as he saw the place, he’d be distracted by the fact that his parents had lived there. Some of their things were probably still there. He didn’t have time to look around and bask in their presence right then, but he feared he would have no choice in the matter should he go.

So there he was, out of any viable ideas, being led by a dog he’d never seen before that morning into … the Muggle Underground? But how would a dog that he’d found hours away from London know where to find this specific stop?

Harry looked suspiciously at the dog as it sauntered toward the ticket counter. It looked to Harry as if it was trying to look innocent, as if it knew exactly what it was doing and didn’t want Harry to know so. Maybe the dog was some kind of intelligent magical creature they hadn’t covered in Care of Magical Creatures. Its owner might live in London, and so of course it would know where the nearest Underground station to Diagon Alley was situated. It didn’t really explain how the dog got to Little Whinging, but Harry had learned that his life rarely made sense.

So perhaps the dog was leading him to its owner. Perhaps he was imagining that the dog had any idea where it was going. Either way, it hardly mattered. He could Apparate from wherever they ended up as easily as from their current location, and it would give him time to think of a better idea than his current ones.

* * * * * * * * * *

Nearly an hour passed, with Harry madly trying to concentrate on his predicament while inattentively stroking the dog’s fur – which must have looked rather odd to anyone else on the train, since Harry had cast a Disillusionment Charm on the dog so that it could ride the Underground without any hassle.

When they got off the train, Harry led the dog off into a corner so that he could counter the spell and be able to see it again. Then the dog once more sprang into action. Harry sighed and followed. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before the dog turned in towards a large manor-like house. It sat itself on the doorstep and looked pointedly at Harry.

The house was dirty and slightly decrepit looking. It was no wonder the dog had left, if this was indeed where it lived.

“Is this where you live?” Harry asked. Of course, he got no reply. He was rather hoping that the dog had actually led him somewhere in particular. He was tired and stressed, and he would like to have not completely wasted over an hour and a half following the animal about. Even if the entire purpose of the trip was just to get rid of the dog in good conscience – he didn’t want to be plagued by thoughts of the thing getting completely lost and getting hit by a car or something in the probably unfamiliar city Harry had brought it to – that would, at least, make Harry feel a little better. It would be nice to know that he was good for something other than putting people into danger.

Harry knocked several times on the dilapidated door, to no answer. The dog, however, reached up and scratched its paw on the door, and it immediately sprung upon. Harry couldn’t help but smile. Magical indeed. The dog obviously did live here, and the door was magically keyed to let it in.

“All right, then. I’ll just leave you here and be on my way,” Harry said. The thought of never seeing his silent companion again was disheartening, but it had to be done.

The dog, on the other hand, had other ideas. It grabbed Harry by the trousers, much as it had done when it had attempted to bring him here.

“This had better be important,” Harry muttered, and followed the dog through the house. It was a rather creepy sort of place, with snakes and such displayed all over the place. Obviously it was a Slytherin’s house. Harry kept expecting to walk into some Death Eater, who would then manage to forget Voldemort’s orders and shoot a quick Killing Curse at him. Game over for both him and Dumbledore. The thought was not comforting.

As Harry walked through the hall, two things caught his eye. One was a portrait of a rather severe woman, who seemed to be asleep. Though there were other portraits around the place, this one seemed to stand out. It shone, in a way. Harry decided that there must be a house elf somewhere around here, and that either it or the owner of the house must particularly love that picture. The other was the tapestry beside her. It was spread out proudly across the wall, though it's tattered state made it look more like something that ought to be hidden away. Several holes appeared to have been scorched through it in seemingly random places. However, Harry looked closer and saw that it was an extremely large and detailed family tree, and the holes only appeared where it looked like there should be names.

Harry’s eyes lifted up to the top of the tapestry – the thing was so big that the top resided somewhere near the roof – and by standing on his toes and squinting through his glasses he was able to make out the words, ‘The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black’.

Harry dropped back down to the flats of his feet, nearly falling down entirely in shock. The dog, appearing to have noticed that he was no longer following it, had stopped as well. It was sitting near to him, giving him a rather curious look.

“Black,” Harry whispered. He stared at the tapestry a while longer, and a strange sort of smile spread, unbeknownst to him, across his face. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Harry would have preferred not to believe in fate. He didn’t want to acknowledge that there was a prophecy out there that predicted that he would have to either kill or be killed, and probably fairly soon if current events were anything to go by. He didn’t want to think about the idea that he didn’t control even an instant of his own life himself, because his every step was already somehow preordained. He certainly didn’t like the idea that even something as simple as his finding a stray dog was solely intended to lead him to exactly what he was looking for.

When Harry searched the house, he did not find the locket. He found something that looked like a master bedroom, which – unlike the rest of the house – was relatively clean and dust-free. Up the end of the hall was something that Harry would have assumed to be a guest room, for all that it looked devoid of any personality. However, there was a note on the table. Harry skimmed it then stopped, feeling vaguely like he was invading someone’s privacy. The note sounded like it was written by someone around about his own age, who was apparently named Sirius if the name at the bottom of the letter was anything to go by. It was a goodbye note, letting his parents know that he was leaving and never coming back, and good riddance to them. Harry wasn’t sure who he should feel sorry for, the boy or his parents. After all, he had no idea what life in the Black house had been like.

Directly across the hall was a room that seemed to have been left the way it was the last time he was in the room. Unlike in Sirius’ room, there were possessions sprawled on the floor, as if the owner of the room had been looking for something (or perhaps as if he had been packing). The bed was unmade. Dust had settled over every item, furniture or otherwise, in the room. On the desk was a lone item, as dust-covered as the rest and utterly unremarkable except for the fact that it had been carefully placed. However, Harry’s eyes had been drawn to the book. It was the one sign of order in a room of absolute chaos. It seemed intentional. When Harry picked it up, he saw two things of interest. Inside the cover was a name, Regulus Black. Also inside the cover was propped a folded piece of paper that stuck slightly out the top of the book, so that it could be seen only by those who looked extremely hard. After the guilt he’d felt at reading the last note, Harry was unsure if he should read this one.

Curiosity, though, eventually won out.

The note was written in jagged, uneven script, as if the penman had been in a hurry when writing it. Perhaps he had been packing, after all. It read:

‘If you are reading this, congratulations. You may be one of the few people who have ever entered the house of Black who is not entirely evil and self-serving. I say this because the letter you are reading is spelled to only be able to be seen by someone who wishes harm on the man who goes by the title “The Dark Lord”. It is an idea inspired by an item of unmentionable value I came across during my time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

‘This, believe it or not, is not a digression. In fact, it brings me to my point. I, Regulus Black, have discovered the Dark Lord’s Horcrux. I intended to destroy it and thus make him mortal enough to be killed. However, I have thus far been unsuccessful, and my time is running out. I do not expect to live long enough to discover the secret to destroying it. Therefore, I must hide it.

‘Since you are obviously a person who would like the world rid of its Dark Lord, you will be interested in what is hidden in Ravenclaw’s reflection. Incidentally, though I don’t understand how it could be possible for him to have more than one and still live, I have reason to believe that this item may itself be a Horcrux. I suspect a third, as well, though I do not know where it is held.

‘If you are unaware of the meaning of this note, I beg for you to take it to Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts. He will know what to do.’

Harry sighed. Dumbledore would know what to do. It was rather unfortunate that Harry couldn’t rely on his advice, since he wasn’t available to give it. He would have to work out this puzzle on his own.

Luckily, Harry did have some idea of what Regulus was speaking in relation to the idea of Horcruxes – more than Regulus himself did, in fact, if his disbelief that there could be two or even perhaps three Horcruxes was anything to go by – and had an idea of where to start.

If it was something to do with Ravenclaw, the best place to find answers would be at Hogwarts.

Harry looked at the dog, who was patiently watching him read. “I don’t know what just happened today. I don’t even know how to thank you, especially since I’m not entirely sure that you can understand a single word I’m saying. I do know, though, that you don’t deserve to be left here. This house is filled with dark magic. The owners are probably Death Eaters. It’s no wonder you ran away.

“So, you’re coming with me. We’re going to have to go outside and find some kind of deserted area so that we can Apparate out of here. I’m not particularly good at Side-Along Apparition, so pray that we don’t splinch ourselves.”

The dog seemed to understand. It got up from where it had been lying on Regulus’ messy bed and strode toward the door. Harry followed it out of the house and raised his eyebrows when it led him directly to a small empty side-alley barely a block away from the house.

“You certainly do know your way around. It’s no wonder you somehow managed to find me all the way down in Little Whinging.”

He knelt down slightly and grabbed the dog around the middle.

“Hold on tight,” he whispered.

* * * * * * * * * *

The reaction to Harry and his enormous dog in the Leaky Cauldron was nothing compared to the mixed welcome of shocked expressions and knowing looks when he finally strode into Hogwarts. He was exhausted, he could admit it. He would be willing to bet that when they looked at him, they saw a boy – or maybe even a man, for he certainly no longer felt like a boy – who was dead on his feet. Coupled with the fact that it was nearly a day since he’d first left the school, it was definitely a talking point.

Harry ignored it, though, and led the dog up to Gryffindor Tower. He would have liked to go straight to the Headmaster’s office and ask Dumbledore what was meant by ‘Ravenclaw’s reflection’. However, since Dumbledore wasn’t there, he was going to have to do the next best thing.

Ask Hermione.

“Harry, where have you –”

“Not now, Hermione,” Harry said as he entered into the common room. “You and Ron have to come with me.”

They didn’t come quietly, but they did come. Ginny tried to tag along, but Harry told her in no uncertain terms that it didn’t concern her. He knew that she was hurt by this, but he really didn’t have time to be worrying about that now. It had been about eighteen hours since Dumbledore had drunk that poison. That meant he'd been through eighteen hours of Death Eater guards, agony, and knowing that he was slowly inching towards death.

When Harry finally led the other two Gryffindors, trailed by the dog, into the Room of Requirement (this is where Malfoy spent all his time planning to attack the school, Harry thought bitterly), he was once again pelted by questions.

“Where have you been?”

“Why did you come back yesterday and then leave again without telling us?”

“Where’s Dumbledore?”

“Why do you have a ruddy enormous dog with you?”

Harry raised a hand.

“I literally can’t tell you what you want to hear. I can’t answer any questions about the last twenty-four hours, and I’m sorry for that. It just has to be that way. So don’t ask questions. One day I might be able to answer them, but not right now. You’ll just have to live with what I can tell you. And that’s, you know, the usual: the world is in danger, you’re the only one who can help me and that Ravenclaw’s reflection is the key.”

Hermione and Ron both looked supremely confused.

“Um, Harry? Ravenclaw’s reflection doesn’t generally fit into the ‘usual’,” Hermione said tentatively.

Harry smiled self-depreciatingly. “Yeah, well, I’ve taken to relying on the word of a dog – who obviously can’t even speak in the first place, by the way – to guide me in such matters, so ‘usual’ has taken on a new definition lately. No, you still don’t want to ask.”

After a long silence, Ron piped up, saying, “It really does look like a rather smart dog, at least.”

Harry smirked. “You don’t know the half of it. So anyway, the only thing I can tell you now is that I need to find something that could be referred to as ‘Ravenclaw’s Reflection’. There’s something hidden in it. I can’t tell you what or why. Also, there’s a possibility that Ravenclaw’s reflection might be a Horcrux. I just need your help in figuring out what it could be.”

Since Harry wasn’t struck dead, as he was half expecting to be, he guessed that he was allowed to talk about Horcruxes and things pertaining to his mission as long as they weren’t directly part of what had taken place in the cave. Good to know.

Ron and Hermione were both silent for a long moment. Finally, it was Ron who spoke.

“All right, Harry,” Ron agreed. “If it’s that important, we can help you without asking questions. But we expect answers eventually.”

Harry nodded. “Sometime in the not-too-distant future, I should be able to give them to you. But I’m really in a rush right now, so let’s get on with it.”

All three of them nodded to each other in agreement.

“Ravenclaw’s reflection,” Hermione repeated thoughtfully. “Well, let’s just think about what could cause or be referred to as a reflection. There are the obvious things that reflect like mirrors, windows, even water. There are portraits, which can be referred to as reflections of the person painted in them. Ravenclaw could certainly have one of those, though I’ve never seen it.”

“Probably in the Ravenclaw common room,” Ron chimed in. “Just because we don’t have one of Gryffindor, doesn’t mean other houses don’t have portraits like that.”

“Or it could be in the Headmaster’s office, I suppose,” Hermione added.

Harry shook his head. “No, if there is one, it’s not there. I’ve spent enough time in Dumbledore’s office to say for sure that none of the founders have portraits in there. The Headmaster and Headmistress portraits only began being added a couple of hundred years ago, I think. There aren’t enough of them to span the whole thousand years that Hogwarts has been around.”

Hermione lightly slapped her hand to her forehead. “Of course. How could I be so stupid? ‘Hogwarts, A History’ even says that the portraits were started in 1643, when the new Headmaster felt that he needed the expertise of the last and it was decided that a collection of such expertise should be available in the future to the Heads.”

Harry nodded. “So, Ravenclaw Tower, or nothing.”

“Come to think of it,” Ron said slowly. “It could be the Tower itself, couldn’t it? I mean, you could say that the Ravenclaw house is a reflection of Ravenclaw herself.”

Harry groaned. “I don’t think I can search the whole Ravenclaw dormitories. It would take more time than I’ve got. Besides, the thing that’s hidden could have been there for a long time. It would have to be somewhere stable, where it couldn’t just be picked up and taken out of the school at any moment. And besides, the person who did the hiding couldn’t possibly get into Ravenclaw Tower.”

Even if Harry hadn’t seen the Slytherin crest on the school clothes littered the floor of Regulus’ room, the fact that his house was filled with snakes and he was, as Lucius had said, initially a Death Eater would have been a pretty big clue that he probably hadn’t been just some over-ambitious Ravenclaw.

“Who –” Hermione began, but then closed her mouth quickly when Harry glared at her. She remained silent for a short time.

“Well, the same thing goes for a statue as for a portrait. They can be reflections, but I’ve never seen one, and it’s unlikely that it would be outside the Ravenclaw dormitories on the improbable chance that it existed at all. I’m just not sure what else it could be.”

Harry nodded slowly. “So, earlier you said mirrors, windows and water. Windows can’t hide anything as big and obvious as what I’m looking for, since they’re transparent. Water probably can’t be a Horcrux, since it’s a liquid and it would be really difficult for the portion of soul to anchor itself. Water’s also transparent, same as the windows, and it would be too easy for the thing that’s hidden to be found and moved, since it wouldn’t be anchored down either.”

“Could be a potion,” Ron suggested. “A lot of them aren’t transparent.”

Hermione shook her head. “No. Even if there’s no problem with Horcruxes and liquids, there are problems with putting foreign matter in almost all potions. They end up exploding or corroding the item. The person hiding it would have to be stupid.”

“And he wasn’t,” Harry agreed. Black might have been a lot of things, but from what he had accomplished in what were probably his dying days alone, Harry would never have thought to call him stupid. “So then there's the idea of a mirror.”

“There are hundreds of mirrors in Hogwarts,” Ron groaned. “How can we possibly test all of them?”

Harry shrugged. “We don’t have to. It can’t be just a bathroom mirror. Voldemort goes for items that are important in and of themselves. If it’s going to be a mirror, it’s probably something that Ravenclaw owned or made.”

Ron frowned. “So, something like a hand mirror?”

“Maybe,” Hermione said with a similarly perplexed frown. “But it would really make more sense for it to be something less common and ordinary. Something that was used for less mundane things.”

Harry nodded. “Right. He wanted Gryffindor’s sword, which is used for dramatic events. He used Hufflepuff’s cup, which possesses powers of its own. So if it was Ravenclaw’s mirror, it would have to have some sort of power beyond the usual ability to tell you look dreadful when you use it.”

“What kind of power could a mirror have?”

Hermione sighed. “Ron, you never pay attention, do you? Mirrors can have all sorts of powers. They can show the future and the past, though a lot of that’s a rather foggy sort of Divination. They can show you your enemies, like a foe glass. They can work like a telephone, or the Floo, so that two people can talk to each other when they’re physically separated. And remember the Mirror of Erised? It showed a person’s deepest desire. That’s not exactly child’s play.”

Harry nodded emphatically. The Mirror of Erised had indeed been powerful. He could half imagine a young Tom Riddle sitting in front of it, staring for hours at a mirror that showed him his desires. Perhaps his mother, through whom he had received that all-important pure Slytherin blood, or just himself becoming more powerful and wreaking destruction on the Muggle-born witches and wizards of the world.

“Oh Merlin,” Harry breathed, realisation dawning on him. “The Mirror of Erised.”

Both of his friends stared blankly at him. Then Hermione’s eyes widened as well.

“Of course! I mean, I wondered what they were doing, putting something dangerous like that in a school, unless there was a real reason to keep it here. But it makes sense, really, if one of the Founders was the one who created it, or if she was its last owner. And, of course, Voldemort had obviously seen it before when he and Quirrell found it, since you told us that he knew exactly how to get the Stone out of it.”

And he had, in fact, been rather emphatic when ordering Quirrell not to break it, as if it was important. It was certainly capable of hiding items, as Harry had found out in his first year. It all seemed to fit. Harry’s mind drifted towards the letter Regulus had left. He’d given Harry all the clues, yet Harry had missed the obvious truth.

Regulus had written of how he’d gotten the idea of the spell on the parchment from a powerful item at Hogwarts. The Mirror showed you something only if you truly desired it; in the same way, the letter showed you how to rid the world of Voldemort (or so Regulus thought) only if you desired that the world should be Dark-Lord-free.

It seemed so obvious, now that they knew.

“I don’t know where it is, anymore. Dumbledore may have moved it from the end of that obstacle course we were led through to get to the stone.”

“It’d be a pretty good place to start though, right?” Ron said. “It’s not like it would take long to check, since they would have dismantled the protections by now.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

He climbed up and went for the door. Hermione stopped him.

“It’s nearly dinner time, Harry. Take a break and have something to eat. You look like you haven’t had sleep or food for a week.”

Harry tried to argue, but he could see that Hermione wasn’t going to relent without a good reason. Harry would likely become suddenly deceased if he tried to give her one, unfortunately. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the dog licking his chops at the mention of food. His own stomach growled.

Harry sighed. “Fine. But we eat fast and then go straight there. We don’t have time to mess around.”

Harry and the dog started towards the door simultaneous. Harry scratched it behind the ears as he opened the door and left.

“Someday,” Ron muttered, “he’s going to tell us how on earth he managed to adopt a dog in the first place.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Looking down through the trap door that led towards where he’d had his first face off with Voldemort – the first that he could properly remember, at least – Harry groaned.

“I feel like I’m right back in the beginning, being here again. It’s as if we haven’t progressed at all since first year.”

Hermione frowned, “Well, of course we have. Think of all the magic we’ve learned, all the things we’ve done.”

Harry shrugged. “Yeah, but not everything is about knowledge. I’m still no further along in defeating Voldemort than I was in my first year, and that’s the real test of how far along I’ve gotten, really, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Hermione huffed, “in that case, nothing else that anyone in the wizarding world has done has been worthwhile, or will ever be worthwhile in the future, because only you can defeat Voldemort. Is that right? Do you think that Ron and I aren’t worthwhile, either?”

Harry looked wide-eyed at Hermione, not sure what he should say. Eventually, he burst out with, “Merlin, Hermione, of course not! You always take everything I say literally. All I meant is … well, my whole life seems to have narrowed down to getting rid of Voldemort lately, and any of my other accomplishments just don’t seem as important. Sometimes I feel both really ancient and very young all at once. Like I’m stuck in the future and in the past and can’t seem to merge. That can’t be normal.”

Ron snickered. “I think they call that a split personality. Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if you, of all people, had one.”

Harry rolled his eyes and turned his gaze back to the drop. “Me first again, I suppose,” he suggested with a wry smile. “We’d better be careful, though. There won’t be a soft landing this time.” He looked at the dog. “Go back to Gryffindor Tower. Someone will let you in, I’m sure. They’ve all seen you with me.”

“You think he’ll actually understand that?” Ron asked.

The dog seemed to huff at him and then trotted off as if to prove just how well he understood.

Harry smiled. “I’d be dumbstruck if he didn’t, actually.”

The landing was indeed anything but soft. Harry fell onto his feet, but his legs gave out and the second part of his landing involved a close encounter between his tailbone and the stone floor.”

“Ow!” Ron echoed his sentiments precisely.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. Hermione dropped down after Ron with only a muffled and undistinguishable noise as she impacted the ground. She, the only person in the group who didn’t play Quidditch, was the only one co-ordinated to stay on her feet. Talk about irony, Harry mused silently.

“Come on,” Harry grunted aloud. “We have to get moving.”

The passage was a lot more pleasant when they weren’t stopped every few feet by another roadblock. There was no Devil’s Snare. Flying keys still drifted about near the ceiling, but though the door was closed to them, it was unlocked this time around, so they didn’t need them. No chess pieces moved to stop their progress, though the table and pieces still sat lifelessly in the shadows. The following room still smelt vaguely of troll, which Harry blamed on the lack of air circulation in the area, but there was no actual troll to be found. The next room, however, still contained a table on which sat a group of potions.

“I guess they left them behind, as well,” Hermione said softly.

They weren’t the only thing that had been left behind. As soon as they were in the room, flames shot up on either side of them.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Harry groaned.

Ron looked around interestedly. “Snape’s managed to be an insufferable bastard twice over using the exact same trick. Imagine that.”

Harry plaintively agreed. “I’m going to have to go on alone.” He turned and looked at Hermione. “So, do you still think we’ve progressed since first year?”

Hermione gave him a small smile of encouragement. “Well, we have. I don’t know about some others I could mention. Hang on while I make sure the riddle hasn’t changed.”

When Hermione was satisfied that the logic puzzle was the same, Harry took the smallest bottle and went to gulp it down, but stopped.

“Couldn’t you both go out and then come back in a minute. I mean, obviously the tasks reset themselves once someone passes through, or Quirrell would have given us a free walk through the first time around.”

Hermione shook her head. “I don’t think it works that way. I don’t think the same person can face the same task twice, especially not straight after they’ve failed to pass through it.”

Harry looked pointedly around the room. “Well then, why is this task here? We’ve faced it already.”

“But I haven’t,” Ron interjected. “Maybe not all of the other traps have been dismantled. The chess board was still there, wasn’t it? And so was the room of keys. But because all three of us have already proved ourselves, the magic recognises us and let’s us pass. I mean, they had to get rid of the more dangerous tests. How long can a school safely house three-headed dogs, entire rooms full of Devil’s Snare and enormous trolls? But the rest of the tests are only dangerous if you actually try to pass through. They aren’t likely to break out and attack students. Snape’s was the only test they left here that I hadn’t faced, so I had to prove myself to it.”

Hermione nodded. “Well, that would explain how Dumbledore managed to get to Harry and out again so quickly. I thought that it must have been because he was Headmaster, or because he put the whole thing together. This really does make more sense, though. Of course he would have faced all of the tasks. He had to test them, after all.”

Harry sighed. “Fine, whatever. I’ll see you both back out there.”

Harry downed the potion, leaving his friends to split the round bottle, and passed through the wall of fire with nothing worse than a tingle.

“Bloody Snape,” he muttered.

But as Harry went to stand near the Mirror of Erised – which was, in fact, still exactly where it had sat five years before – Harry decided that it was probably better that his friends weren’t here after all. How would he have been able to justify not destroying the mirror if it did turn out to be a Horcrux and he couldn’t get the locket immediately out of it? They would have asked him questions and expected some kind of sign that he trusted them. He did trust them, but it was impossible to prove so now, when his very speech might kill him if he took the explanation too far.

Harry circled the mirror, gazing at it speculatively. Before he stepped in front of it so that it would show his reflection, he peered more closely at the frame.

There it was. Small enough for anyone who didn’t know exactly what they should be looking for to mistake for an entirely different sort of pattern, there was a continuous line of very small, very thin eagle-shaped carvings tracing the frame the whole way around. Harry had always been too interested in what the mirror showed, as well as the much larger words that also were carved on the frame to pay much attention to anything as intricate as the actual pattern of the frame.

Like the cup and the locket, the mirror came with the sign of its owner ingrained upon it. That meant that an artefact of Rowena Ravenclaw had been sitting largely unused within Hogwarts itself for centuries. Harry couldn’t believe that Tom Riddle had been the only one observant enough to realise what it actually was. Or rather, he had been the other one to recognise it and actually use that knowledge.

Harry moved to stand in front of the mirror. One day, when Voldemort was defeated, he wouldn’t have minded standing in front of this mirror and seeing how his deepest desires had changed since he was eleven. Did he still crave family quite so much, now that he had had a taste of it with the Weasleys? Or would it show him dreams and ambitions for the future? Now was hardly the time to speculate, he supposed. And if it turned out to be a Horcrux in itself, he’d be too busy breaking it to bother with anything as insignificant as finding how what his heart’s desire was.

“Who’s the most idiotic of them all?” Harry muttered, looking into the mirror.

The mirror, of course, was more interested in answering the unasked question of what his deepest desire happened to be at that moment. Harry was surprised to see himself holding up two things instead of the expected one. The first was Slytherin’s locket, dangling from his right hand. The other was some kind of goblet or cup, which his other hand was holding by one of its large handles. It looked to be as antique as the locket, and possibly made of gold. The mirror Harry looked somewhat expectantly at it and raised it toward him, as if to give him a closer look, or perhaps to toast him. The light caught on the engraving of an animal, a badger.”

“Hufflepuff’s cup,” Harry breathed. “Don’t tell me they’re both in the mirror?”

There was no reply, either in sound or in Harry receiving either of the two Horcruxes. The mirror version of himself reached his hand up and dropped the locket in the cup, looking pointedly in Harry’s direction.

“But I don’t have the cup,” Harry fumed quietly. “It doesn’t help me to have the locket put in the cup if I don’t have the cup.” Harry shook his head in annoyance. Then it dawned on him finally. “Oh, I need the cup. Of course. I can’t get the locket unless I bring the cup with me.”

He turned away from the mirror, contemplating. “But I don’t know where the cup is.”

Despite finding two of the remaining four Horcruxes, it was with a heavy heart that Harry returned to his friends. He didn’t quite understand how the fire had disappeared and let him through again, but he hardly had time to question it. He had a whole new Horcrux to find, after all, and no clues this time as to its location.

He had to go see a man about a Horcrux, he supposed.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I need more time,” Harry announced when he arrived back at the cave in the cliff.

Lucius himself was there. Harry assumed that he didn’t stay there twenty-four hours a day and that it was chance that had found him there both times that Harry had visited. He was accompanied for the moment by Rookwood. Dumbledore was still across the lake. Harry could see his profile moving slightly in the green glow. He breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t too late yet. There was still a chance that he could do this.

“And why should I give you that?” Lucius asked with a smirk.

Harry narrowed his eyes. “I have located the Horcrux in question. The problem is only that I have to find one of the other Horcruxes, Hufflepuff’s cup, in order to free it from its current location. The deal was only that I find one and give it to you. That deal was misleading. I need you to give Dumbledore to me now, so that I can get him to the Healers. I’m still under a Vow to get your Horcrux to you, so it can hardly make a difference now.”

Lucius shook his head. “It would make a difference to how quickly you would endeavour to carry out your task. I gave you as much time as you deemed necessary only because there is currently a time limit. Your haste only really exists until he dies,” Lucius said, gesturing toward Dumbledore in the back. “After that, or if he is freed, I imagine that you won’t actually do your job. You could leave it until you were on your deathbed, and then you would be dying regardless. Don’t be foolish, Potter. I refuse to be.”

Harry gritted his teeth. “Fine. So tell me where Hufflepuff’s cup is so I can get back here in time to save him and be bothered to give you what you want. It’s a mutually advantageous deal, tell Voldemort that.”

Lucius laughed. “Dear Mr Potter, I do believe you’re being rude. Let me make your position clear to you. You should be being as sycophantic as possible towards me right now. Do you know why?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Harry grumbled.

“Yes, Potter, I am. It’s because, much like I failed to do, you did not actually qualify everything that you perhaps should have in what you made me Bond myself into. It was never required in the Vow I made that I release your Headmaster when you delivered the Horcrux.”

Rookwood laughed uproariously in the background, but Harry barely heard it for the ringing in his ears.

“What?” Harry whispered. “I did! You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie? The Vow would hold me to the statement even if I claimed I never made it. I’m not prepared to die just to keep your Headmaster away from you.”

“But –”

“No, Potter,” Lucius continued. “The only thing you made me Vow was that no one would further injure Dumbledore while he remained here. I daresay you were thinking so hard on how to carefully word that that you forgot the main issue. Isn’t that right?”

Harry shook his head in denial, though he knew perfectly well that Lucius was right. He hadn’t really thought about it, and so probably hadn’t asked it of Lucius. He certainly couldn’t remember asking it.

“Shit.”

Lucius chuckled. “Indeed. But if you hurry up and find the Horcrux, and act a little more reverently toward me, I may be in a good enough mood to let you take him off my hands. I really have no need for an old and dying man, anyway.”

Harry would have liked to curse at Lucius. He wanted to call him every disgusting name he had learned from both wizards and Muggles alike. He didn’t dare, though.

“So am I going to be told where the cup is … sir?”

Harry had never realised that saying one word could hurt a person’s pride quite so much.

Lucius grinned. “Oh, I like that. Keep it up, Potter; you’ll make a fine lapdog. But no. You will have to find it yourself.”

Harry clenched his eyes shut to keep from screaming. When he opened them, Lucius was looking speculatively at him.

“If I agree to bring the Horcrux here intact within twenty-four hours of laying hands on it, regardless of whether Dumbledore still lives, will you vow to release him to me upon receipt of the Horcrux and let us get to Hogwarts safely?”

Lucius tilted his head. “I will, on one further condition; that you will bring Hufflepuff’s cup and present it to the Death Eater stationed here along with the locket when you come.”

Harry hadn’t even thought of that. He really wasn’t very good at this Unbreakable Vow thing. “Then you will tell me where it is? There’s no point in you not doing so if you’re going to get it back anyway.”

Lucius smiled. “I’ll tell you what, Potter. After we’ve exchanged Vows, I’ll give you a hint as to where it is.”

And so it was that Harry was kneeling before Lucius again, with Rookwood ready to bind him.

“You first,” Harry ordered.

Lucius smirked. “You are, by turns, too suspicious and not suspicious enough, Potter. You should really make up your mind.”

“Lucius Malfoy, will you vow, on behalf of yourself and all others affiliated with Lord Voldemort, to release Albus Dumbledore to me and let us safely travel to either Hogwarts or St Mungo’s immediately once I bring Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup to this cave and give them to one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters?”

“I will.”

Harry nodded as a rope of fire twirled around their joined hands.

“Harry Potter, will you vow to bring both Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup, both of which being the Dark Lord’s Horcruxes, to this cave and give them to one of Voldemort’s followers within two hours of gaining possession of Slytherin’s locket, and within a week’s time after making this vow?”

Two hours? He’d said twenty four! What if he got delayed somehow? And what if he couldn’t find the thing in a week? But then, it would hardly matter a week from then, because Dumbledore likely wouldn’t survive that long. Harry shot Lucius an angry look, but nodded anyway.

“I will. You bastard.”

Their hands broke apart a few moments later.

“You’d better hope that I make it here in time. Your master will never get either of the Horcruxes back if I suddenly drop dead in the middle of the ocean because I accidentally went over time and broke my Vow.”

Lucius looked amused. “I have faith in you, Potter,” he sneered.

Harry scowled. “What’s my hint? And how do you know it, anyway?”

“The Dark Lord has given me a small amount of information about each of his Horcruxes, in case I should need it for just such an occasion. Did you want to hear the clue, or not?”

Harry nodded grudgingly.

“It is that the cup resides somewhere that the Dark Lord can guarantee that you’ve never visited and will never desire to visit.”

Harry knew that his face must look baffled. “That’s it? That could be anywhere!”

Lucius shrugged. “That’s all you’ll get from me, Potter. Use that lump of grey matter that masquerades as a brain, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.”

Harry grunted noncommittally and stalked out. “One of these days, I’m going to watch you be put in as much pain as Dumbledore is in now,” Harry called back over his shoulder. “And I’ll enjoy every minute of watching it.”

Rookwood laughed. Lucius, though Harry wasn’t looking at him, most likely scowled, because his voice was deathly dark when Harry cut his hand and stepped out of the cave. “Careful, Potter. You wouldn’t want to become Dark after all the work you’ve done against us. You wouldn’t be well received.”

Harry ignored him.

* * * * * * * * * *

“It’s not a very good clue, is it?” Ron scoffed.

“Ron,” Hermione sighed. “You’re not being particularly helpful, either.”

They were back in the Room of Requirement. Ron and Hermione had been bursting at the seams wanting to know what had happened with the Mirror of Erised, but he hadn’t told them. He’d said he couldn’t, which was partially true. Even more so, he really couldn’t bring himself to take the time to inform them. As much as he wished them to know, would be happy for them to know, telling them what little they could be allowed to know would cost him energy he did not have, for it seemed nothing like as important as everything else going on.

He wished people could learn by osmosis. The world would be a much better place.

“So,” Hermione said, “since the clue isn’t exactly definitive, let’s think about where V-Voldemort might put one of his Horcruxes, just in general.”

Harry shrugged. “Well, like the choice of Horcruxes themselves, it has to be related to something that has meaning to him. Something that reminds him of his heritage or past, perhaps.

“The diary was left with Lucius. That’s significant because Lucius was both one of his highest-ranking Death Eaters and was one of the highest-regarded men in wizarding society, as much as I hate to admit it. I imagine that to Voldemort it was a sign of how powerful he was, that he could be followed by such men.

“Then there was the ring, which was left at the Gaunt house. That’s a place of historical influence, since his mother and many of his ancestors lived there. He likes to remember his roots, regardless of how well he likes them.

“The locket was kept in the cave he visited in his orphanage days. It’s a remembrance of where he came from. It’s also a commemoration of the first time he really exercised his power over others, I think.

“The mirror, of course – assuming it is a Horcrux, since I can’t tell for sure – was left at Hogwarts. As his selection of Horcruxes shows, he’s obsessed with Hogwarts. It’s where he became what he was destined to be.”

Hermione nodded slowly when Harry was finished. “Nagini’s kept with him, which is probably a show of his control over things; he can keep an independent creature at his side and protect its existence from those who might target it without batting an eyelash. And we don’t know where the cup is.”

Ron leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. “So that’s the question. A place that is significant to You-Know-Who because of his history, or because it shows his power, or maybe something else. Maybe an aspiration? Somewhere he wants to have power over.”

Harry nodded. “Yes. That’s rather like him really. He thinks ahead, plans moves in advance. He would leave it there because, of course, one day it will simply join the other locations as a show of his power, that he owns that place. But where? Hogwarts?”

Ron shook his head. “You have to have never been there, remember? I’d say the Ministry. You’ll probably never desire to go there. Even if you end up working there, who doesn’t dread going to work in the morning?”

“Lots of people, Ron,” Hermione sighed, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe that Ron could be so foolish sometimes. “You should know that, since your own father loves his job. But I suppose it could be assumed otherwise, since everyone knows that Harry isn’t always on the best terms with the Ministry.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “So, anything else?”

No answer was forthcoming. Hermione was frowning in concentration. Harry knew how she felt. They were working with an assumption that could very well prove false, and still couldn’t come up with more than one idea. An idea that would be almost impossible to check out, considering how large the Ministry was.

“I think you need more opinions,” Hermione said at last. “You should ask people who know a bit more about the world and have different perspectives, if nothing else.”

Harry frowned. “Like who?”

“The Order,” Ron said immediately. “My parents could get a meeting set up.”

Harry’s frown deepened. “It’s a bit urgent for that.”

Hermione shrugged this excuse off. “They have emergency meetings all the time. If we can get into the Headmaster’s office, we can Floo to the Burrow; his is the only Floo in the school that allows actual travel and not just communication. We can go straight to the Headquarters from there, once Ron’s parents get word out.

“Not many of the Order should be at work at this hour of the night, though I can’t promise they won’t already be in bed,” Hermione mused. “But then, if it’s as important as you’re making out, I don’t think it will matter much. What’s sleep in the face of ridding the world of one seventh of Lord Voldemort’s soul?”

Harry, who had no better ideas, conceded.

* * * * * * * * * *

“This had better be good,” Mad-Eye Moody grumbled as he entered the warehouse. He was one of the last people to have been contacted, so there were very few Order members still to arrive. It had been only about half an hour since Harry had finally guessed the right password to Dumbledore’s office. Mr Weasley claimed it would normally be quicker, since Dumbledore had better access to everyone than they could possibly boast. Harry was plenty pleased with the response. Here was a room full of people who knew better than anyone except perhaps the Death Eaters what Voldemort was thinking, because it was their job to find out so that they could work against him. Surely they could help. If nothing else, at least some of them were employed by the Ministry and could help him search there.

“I thought he was dead,” Rob muttered dejectedly. “He’s been missing since the Death Eaters came to Hogwarts. I thought maybe they just hushed his murder up.”

Harry followed his gaze and saw a disgruntled Snape walking through the door. Of course! He’d forgotten Snape. Snape might actually know the location of the Horcrux, if they were lucky. If not, at least he could explain the situation to the others, so that they knew what on earth was going on. Harry was fairly certain that Ron and Hermione would be quite relieved to finally be in the know.

A few minutes and a few more Order members later, Harry walked up to the table where they were all sitting. “Is everyone here, now?”

“Yes, Potter,” Snape spat. “But I want a private word before we start.”

Harry was taken-aback, but figured it would probably be important if Snape was voluntarily choosing to spend time alone with him. “Sure.”

He was steered off to one of the untouched rooms, and Snape cast an Imperturbable Charm on the room. The older man then spun around and practically pinned Harry to the wall.

“There are only four people in this god-forsaken building who know of the existence of Horcruxes. You and I are two of them. I assumed Weasley and Granger know also. All other individuals are ignorant, and should remain so. If you wish to tell them about Dumbledore’s capture, you will let me do the talking. You will have to anyway, I surmise, in order to keep yourself alive. If you want to implore them for ideas regarding Hufflepuff’s cup, I advise you not to tell them why you are looking for it, other than that it is needed to save Dumbledore – though, of course, I will tell them that, because as much as I think I’d enjoy your death, I will not allow it to happen before you do your part.”

Harry was furious, but nodded in agreement. He was glad that Snape had thought about it, for Harry wouldn’t like to go against Dumbledore’s wishes. If the Headmaster hadn’t told the whole Order already, they obviously weren’t meant to know.

“Do you know where the cup is?” Harry asked.

Snape looked wholly unimpressed, as if Harry had just said the stupidest thing he could possibly say.

“Of course I don’t, Potter. Do you think that the Dark Lord trusts his servants with the location of parts of his own soul? With his immortality? I think not. I know exactly what Lucius knows, and that is that Hufflepuff’s cup is, in actuality, a Horcrux, and that it is somewhere the Dark Lord believes you will never wish to go. If I didn’t know that the Dark Lord didn’t believe in the afterlife, I might have suggested hell. He’d certainly have a ticket in, if he so chose. But then, who of us wouldn’t?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’d say you, but I’m generally against lying point-blank.”

Snape sneered. “So am I, Potter, in all situations that don’t involve maintaining my own livelihood. That is why you’ve never heard a kind word from me in lessons.”

“Or anywhere else,” Harry muttered as Snape stalked away.

When they arrived back in the main room, all eyes were on Harry. It was, however, Snape who spoke.

“Let’s get explanations out of the road quickly, shall we? The Death Eaters have managed to capture and poison Headmaster Dumbledore and are holding him captive. Potter was stupid enough to make a number of Unbreakable Vows to Lucius Malfoy in order to secure the Headmaster’s eventual freedom. Regardless, by the time Potter does what he has Vowed to do, the Headmaster will likely have already died. Nevertheless, since Potter is now under an obligation to take action, it’s probably best that it is done now while he is still under the mistaken belief that there is a shred of hope.”

The room was silent with shock for a long moment before erupting into noise.

“I did not offer to answer questions!” Snape yelled angrily over the top of them. The noise died down.

“One of Potter’s Vows was, in fact, not to speak of his task until it is over. This, of course, explains why I appear to be coddling our boy hero by not allowing him to face your limitless questions. Luckily, we have a spy in our midst who can convey Potter’s predicament to you all.” Snape smirked self-importantly at this, and Harry snorted. He received a glare for his troubles.

“The Dark Lord, through Malfoy, has ordered Potter to track down an item of significance to him. For reasons which I refuse to disclose to you, because you do not have to know them, Potter is unable to secure this item without first having another item. It is the second item which we are seeking now. It is Hufflepuff’s cup; a goblet-like item made of gold and engraved with a picture of a badger. The only clue we have to its whereabouts is from the Dark Lord, again through Malfoy. This is that Potter has never been there, nor will he ever desire to go there. Since I’m rather exhausted from spending the last few days maintaining the boy’s relative safety, and Potter himself hasn’t slept for a grand total of about three days now, the answer has yet to become obvious. Any ideas you have as to the answer to this puzzle will not fall on deaf ears … unless they are unbearably stupid, of course. Remember, the faster we manage this, the sooner Dumbledore can receive attention, though probably not as much as he will ultimately need. And the less likely it will be that your boy hero will die,” he said almost as an unconnected afterthought.

Harry was impressed. If you took out all of the insults, that would actually probably be the most succinct version of his dilemma that would ever be uttered. Of course, he supposed that a fair bit had been left out.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione finally piped up, her voice sounding shaky. “No wonder you couldn’t tell us. How do you get yourself into these situations?”

Harry shrugged, his eyes trained on his feet. He wondered if she was crying, but didn’t dare look up for fear of what sight would greet him.

“Um …” Ron started. “If it helps, I know slightly more than most of you do, though I can’t elaborate. The place is likely somewhere that would be important to Voldemort. Somewhere that symbolises something in his past, maybe, or proves his power. I thought maybe it could even somewhere he wants or expects to be in power over in the future, like the Ministry.”

It was Moody who eventually said, “The only place to hide such an artefact would be in the Department of Mysteries; the Unspeakables rarely question what they find in there, since for secrecy’s sake there is no single person in the department who has access to a list of every activity taking place in there.”

“Is there anyone here who has access to the Department?” Harry asked, looking up but keeping his eyes averted away from Hermione, just in case.

Moody laughed. “Any person in the wizarding world can get into the department if they chose the right time of day – or, rather, night. The problem is, of course, knowing how to navigate the place. I’m certainly not well-versed in doing so.”

“Nor I,” Mr Weasley admitted.

Kingsley cut in, “I’m on friendly terms with one or two of the Unspeakables. If I can persuade them, we may have an escort. They may even have seen something and not realised its significance.”

“Right,” Harry nodded. “So, it’s probably best to send only Ministry employees, so that your presence at the Ministry in general, at least, is less questionable. Who does that give us?”

There were six in all – seven if you counted Moody, but he was no longer an official employee, and he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous – and Harry felt rather over-important ordering them off to the Ministry to begin the search. They were all at least twice his age, and many of them were a good deal more than that. However, it had to be done. Now was not the time to get squeamish about taking charge.

Harry addressed the rest of the Order, who remained behind.

“Are there any other ideas regarding the location?”

A man Harry knew as Remus Lupin, who’d been part of the guard who escorted him to the Weasleys the summer before last, spoke up.

“Ron’s – can I call you Ron? Right. Ron’s idea is certainly sound. One would automatically think of Hogwarts, but Harry has, of course, set foot there a number of times over the years. There is always the Order itself.”

Harry shook his head. “I searched the Headquarters up and down. There’s nothing here.”

Lupin smiled indulgingly. “That’s all well and good, Harry. However, I wasn’t referring to this Headquarters. Lord Voldemort,” he began amidst a room full of flinches – Harry privately decided that he liked the man solely based on his use of Voldemort’s name, “does not know the location of this Headquarters, after all. However, there was a reason we could not use our last location. It was, of course, found by Death Eaters and we were driven out not long after you were born, Harry.”

Harry hadn’t thought about that possibility. “How big is the place?”

“Not overly,” Lupin replied. “I’d say three or four people could scour it within a minimal amount of time while still being as thorough as possible.”

Harry nodded. “Right then. We’ll go with four to be safe. Who is familiar with the layout of the place?”

About half of the hands in the room went up.

“Right then, you three,” Harry pointed. They all rose and left the room. Harry was happy that he’d heard not a single complaint or grumble about his assumed role of leadership or the way he was handling things. He supposed that it might be because he was one of the only people with all the information, so they didn’t feel they could second-guess him using what little they knew.

“Also, just to be safe, I want you, Moody, to go through this building. Just a quick search to make sure I didn’t miss anything. You might pick up a thing or two with your eye that mine wouldn’t have seen.”

Moody nodded curtly at Harry and seemed to drift off in his seat, one bright blue eye swivelling madly, presumably peering through walls and other surfaces in search of anything unusual. The table was now only about half full.

“So, any other ideas?”

“Maybe,” Bill Weasley said, “it’d be best if you gave us some idea about what made you think You-Know-Who would choose the kind of place you’re talking about. Nothing specific if you can’t, of course.”

Harry sighed. “There are other items. They have been kept in places like his mother’s home, a place he associated with the orphanage he grew up in and Hogwarts, among others. All of these places have specific significance to him. It is likely that trend will continue.”

“So, they’re all places he’s visited?” Lupin asked.

Harry frowned. “Well, yeah. He has to put them there.”

Lupin smiled disarmingly. “You misunderstand. I meant that they are places that he would have a purpose in visiting, other than to place the items there. He wouldn’t, therefore, pick a place that he identified in some way with, but had no actual connection with because he’d never been there.”

Harry shrugged. “No. I guess not. It’s hard to be sure.”

“Let’s work with that premise though, just for a moment. When would he have placed these objects?”

“Probably around the time or slightly before I was born.”

“So, somewhere he had an interest in during his first term in power, and that you’ve never visited and wouldn’t be interested in visiting, but not necessarily somewhere you never will visit.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, “that just about sums it up.”

Mrs Weasley butt in. “There are so many places in the world that Harry would never want to go that You-Know-Who’s already been. To think that we could ever –”

The door burst open and McGonagall, who had elected to stay at the school for safety reasons instead of attend the meeting, stormed in.

“Dumbledore has arrived in the Hogwarts hospital wing. Poppy was organising emergency transport to St Mungo’s when I left, so he should be there momentarily.”

Every person in the room seemed to shoot to their feet all at once.

“Is he all right?” Hermione asked.

McGonagall ignored her. “He wasn’t quite all there, of course, but we managed to decipher that he wanted to see Potter and Professor Snape particularly, and in that order. If you would come with me, gentlemen?”

It was the first time all night that people seemed to be genuinely upset with Harry. They could have chosen something that was his fault; the fact that Dumbledore had been poisoned and was being held by Death Eaters seemed an easy sort of target. Instead, they focused on Dumbledore wanting to see him before them, something he had absolutely no control over. Harry sometimes questioned how the human brain worked.

McGonagall led them to the Apparition point. She was the first to go. Harry was about to Disapparate when Snape said his name, halting his actions.

“Potter, know that I don’t give a damn about your good opinion. I would prefer you to hate me. However, the truth of the matter is that you need to trust me. You will not survive the Dark Lord without having someone in a position where they can find out his inner workings.”

Snape went to turn on his heel and disappear, but then seemed to think better of it and glared at Harry once more.

“You are not the only person in the wizarding world who has ever had to make a vow he didn’t wish to uphold.”

Then Snape Disapparated.

Harry’s jaw felt like it have dropped through the floor.

* * * * * * * * * *

It took longer than Harry thought it should have to persuade the Healers to allow Harry in to see Dumbledore. Ultimately, though, they could not ignore Dumbledore’s repeated orders that Harry see him immediately, and alone. Half of the Order stood around in the waiting area in the ward of St Mungo’s where Dumbledore was supposedly being cared for. It may have been Harry’s imagination, but Snape seemed to be the only one among them who wasn’t exhibiting some detectable, if small, trace of resentment towards him for being allowed past the veritable barricade of Healers who stood between them and the Headmaster.

Harry wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he was escorted into Dumbledore’s private room. He’d seen how Dumbledore looked when he left him in that cave. Intellectually, he knew the Headmaster couldn’t have improved in condition, and was in fact likely to have worsened over the time that had passed since he’d been poisoned. Somehow though, none of that had prepared Harry for the sight of his mentor looking paler than Harry thought he’d ever seen anyone, lying helpless and sickly on a hospital bed.

Perhaps it all seemed worse seen under lights stronger than that dim glow of the cave, but Harry had the sudden sinking feeling that Snape had been right. It would likely have been more humane, and perhaps more sensible as well, to have finished what the poison had started and made a run for it. Certainly, he should never have gone back and further risked his life to secure the freedom of a man that looked as if his chest shouldn’t still be rising and falling, as shallow as that involuntary motion actually was. Dumbledore wouldn’t have wanted that, surely.

There was hope in the fact that Dumbledore’s eyes swivelled towards him and recognition flashed through them, though. It was for that hope that Harry knew he’d risked himself. He wasn’t like Snape. He couldn’t give up when there was even the slightest possibility that he could help. Yes, Hermione had been right all along. He had a complex about rescuing people. However, he hated to think what kind of person he would be if he didn’t want to rescue this man who had done so much for him and for the wizarding world as a whole.

He certainly wouldn’t have been the kind of person who kneeled by Headmaster Dumbledore’s bed and grasped his non-blackened hand in what he hoped was a comforting way, not expecting any reward for his actions. He was pleasantly surprised when his doing so prompted his name, spoken in a rasp, to spill from Dumbledore’s lips.

“Headmaster?”

“Harry. My dear boy.”

It was said in such a forlorn tone that Harry’s voice caught deep in his throat.

“I’m here, Headmaster,” he pushed past the lump that had formed.

Dumbledore smiled weakly. “Yes. I expected you might come. You worked …” and here Dumbledore paused to draw in an almost rattling breath “… far too hard to save me to give up on me now.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t –”

“None of that now, Harry,” Dumbledore admonished. He gave Harry a look that was reassuring even as it made him scared for Dumbledore’s condition. “I would have expected nothing more or less of you than what you did. I’m … proud of you.”

Harry nodded, biting back a harsh sob that seemed desperate to escape. Dumbledore was proud of him. As if to justify that, Harry told Dumbledore, “I found two Horcruxes. The real locket is inside the Mirror of Erised, which is a Horcrux as well.”

Dumbledore seemed to pause to consider this. Harry wondered whether he was surprised. But then he nodded almost imperceptibly. “Ah, yes. I should have suspected something of the sort. Tom was … one of those students who we worried might … go mad in front of it. I always wondered what he saw.”

“It belonged to Ravenclaw, I think,” Harry added.

“I imagine it might have. It’s been at Hogwarts for a great … number of years, after all. I’m only sorry that I … didn’t think of it sooner.”

Harry was grateful that the Headmaster agreed with him. It made the whole situation seem less hopeless, that he wasn’t the only one who thought that the mirror was another Horcrux.

“I don’t know how to destroy it, once I get the locket out. In fact, I’ve no idea how to get rid of any of the Horcruxes.”

“Ah,” Dumbledore sighed. “That is something that I cannot … tell you. It is different for each … The diary was able to be destroyed physically, while the ring required … a powerful spell that caused tremendous backlash that … has been slowly draining my strength all this year. I’m afraid you will have to figure it out yourself. I trust … that you will know what to do, when the time comes.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think I will. And I can’t find Hufflepuff’s cup. The clue Lucius gave me wasn’t enough for me to figure it out.”

“I’m afraid I … can’t help with that either, Harry. Nor can anyone else, since … the only other person who knows of the Horcruxes is … Professor Snape.”

“I get the feeling that he’s planning something,” Harry said, feeling stupid for having voiced that thought even as Dumbledore responded.

“Even so, Harry, you can trust him.”

Harry groaned at the oft repeated sentiment. “I wish you would tell me what makes you so sure.”

“You will just have to trust me as well.”

“I do. I –”

Harry was cut off by Dumbledore suddenly collapsing into a coughing fit. Healers rushed in from all sides, but Dumbledore seemed to gather all of his strength together for the simple act of shrugging them off.

“I need to see Severus Snape. Right now,” he argued with the nearest one who was trying to talk him into taking some kind of sleeping potion.

“I’ll get him, sir,” Harry promised, fleeing from the room. He called out to Snape, and told the Healers who had remained outside the room that Dumbledore wanted to see him now. Snape broke through the crowd of people and entered the room. Seconds later, the swarm of Healers who had invaded the room were kicked out. They looked extremely disgruntled about it, too.

Snape was alone in the room with Dumbledore for what seemed like less than a minute. When he emerged, he glared at the Healers and then stormed away. Harry noticed that as he left, he grabbed Remus Lupin by his creased robe and pulled the other man away with him. Harry was surprised by this; he’d been under the impression that the two men deeply disliked each other.

However, he was soon distracted from that train of thought by an alarmed cry from Dumbledore’s room. Moments later, some kind of magically-enhanced siren was screeching through the air, and what seemed to be security personnel were being informed to track down Severus Snape.

Nothing more was said, but Harry could think of only one reason why the hospital would be put on full alert like that. His heart seemed to still in his chest and time stretched longer than it should as his feet carried him towards the room Snape had just come from. The Healers tried to stop him, but whether it was because they hadn’t expected him or because pure adrenaline had given him a sudden burst of strength, he was able to break through into Dumbledore’s room.

If he’d felt confronted by the sight that met him the first time he’d entered that room, Harry discovered that it was nothing to how he felt just then. Yet, somehow, for all that his brain wanted to refuse to believe what his eyes were seeing, he wasn’t at all surprised at the reality.

Dumbledore lay exactly as Harry, and Snape after him, had left him. Now, though, he was entirely still. The slight movement in his chest that had comforted Harry even as its lack of strength had worried him was entirely missing. Harry’s brain seemed to finally catch up to the action and realise just what he was looking at.

Dumbledore was dead.

Snape had killed Dumbledore.

Harry had let Snape murder Dumbledore.

Harry felt numb inside.

And now Snape had gone. He’d escaped out of the building. That thought kick started his brain back into action … into anger. Harry had to get to him – to make him explain and to punish him if necessary – before he got away. Harry turned on his heel, bowling through the crowd amidst alarmed shouts of his name. He sprinted down three flights of stairs, unwilling to wait for the lift, and finally emerged out onto the Muggle street outside the hospital to find a group of what seemed to be Aurors already there. They were questioning Remus Lupin, who was no longer accompanied by Snape. Harry cursed, bringing their attention to him.

“Harry!” Remus called out.

“Where is he?” Harry demanded. “Where’s Snape?”

“I was just telling the Aurors, he spoke to me for a moment, and then took off down the street. He’ll have Apparated by now, I’d say. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Harry took in Remus’ stunned face and slightly worried eyes. He deserved to know.

“He killed Dumbledore,” Harry replied. He was surprised by how emotionless his voice suddenly was. It was as if the knowledge the Dumbledore’s murderer had escaped back to his true master had sucked all the enraged wind out of Harry’s sails, to use a Muggle metaphor.

“What? No, he couldn’t have.”

Harry just looked at Remus for a moment. Until a week or so ago, Harry might have had the same reaction. Even though he hated Snape, he never would have believed that Snape could have killed the Headmaster who’d protected him from being imprisoned for being a Death Eater. However, being advised by Snape that he should have put Dumbledore out of his misery had shed a whole new light on the man.

Then Harry laughed. He was as shocked as Remus looked, but once it started it wouldn’t stopped. He spared a thought to consider that he might be hysterical.

“Oh, he could have,” Harry disagreed when he calmed his manic laughter enough to speak again, “I saw the evidence with my own eyes. Dumbledore is dead, and was killed by the Killing Curse. Snape was alone with him just moments before. Snape has now run away. I think it’s fairly self-evident that he could kill Dumbledore, and that he did.”

“Harry, I still don’t understand. What just happened in there?”

Harry shook his head. “There’s a whole hospital full of witnesses in there. Ask them. Right now, I need to … get out of here. I’m leaving.”

Leaving Remus gaping at him, Harry fled down the street in the same direction to which the older man had indicated that Snape had run off. The ominous echo of his heels hitting the pavement seemed to precede him down the street.

* * * * * * * * * *

Harry decided over the course of the next three days that the stray dog he’d picked up must have been the smartest dog to ever exist. That, or it really was an Animagus. Frankly, Harry couldn’t bring himself to care. It wasn’t as if it had tried to hurt him, and he wasn’t sure right then that he wouldn’t welcome it if it did.

The animal somehow managed to assist him in packing his trunk when he arrived back at Gryffindor Tower. He felt like a blind man as it led him mostly unawares through a crowd of students out to the Apparition line. It gave him something to focus on so that he didn’t splinch himself when he Apparated to the alley on Grimmauld Place. If it hadn’t been for the dog, Harry didn’t think that he would have even eaten over the next few days, which he spent at the Black house, though later he was a bit vague on the details regarding how the dog managed to prepare food and bring it to him. All he really remembered of that time was lying around in bed in the room that had once belonged to Regulus Black, with the dog curled around his body, its weight against him comforting and warm.

He didn’t know what had driven him to pack up his things and leave school. Even more unexplainable was the fact that he’d gone directly to the house of the man that had inadvertently caused the mess that his life had become and actually decided to stay in his room, of all the places he could have slept. Had it not been for Regulus Black, Voldemort would still know where his locket was. He may have even left it there, and then Harry and Dumbledore may not have gone to that cave for no real reason, only to be caught in a trap.

It seemed so stupid, upon reflection. They needn’t ever have gone. They’d put themselves in danger for something that they’d never had any chance of laying hands on, since it wasn’t actually there anymore. Dumbledore had allowed himself to be poisoned and eventually been killed, all because of that stupid locket, and because Harry wasn’t good enough to save him.

It was a shock to Harry’s perception of life, that Dumbledore was fallible like that. The man had had his faults, to be sure, but Harry had never imagined that his weaknesses might extend to the physical aspect of his life. Somehow it had never seemed obvious that he was actually extremely old, except for perhaps his more quirky moments, in which some people might wonder whether he was actually senile, but Harry had known better.

Harry had fully expected Dumbledore to outlive him, even if he somehow managed to kill Voldemort before he was killed by him. And if he had to be around for Dumbledore’s death, if he’d given thought to it he imagined he would have expected it to be in some fight to the death with Voldemort, though he didn’t like to think of the Headmaster being bested by the Dark Lord. It would have been a more painful way to die, probably, though surely it would had to have been less humiliating than being killed while already pretty much already on his deathbed by Snape, of all people.

After two days of lying around, simply going from denying that it had happened, to being outraged at Snape, to blaming himself and becoming absolutely debilitated by guilt and grief combined, Harry gathered himself together enough to wonder what Dumbledore’s death meant for the immediate future.

He had a little over four days to find Hufflepuff’s cup, use it to get Slytherin’s locket out of the mirror and then deliver the locket to Lucius or whatever evil minion was waiting in that cave for his arrival. Since he still had absolutely no idea as to where he should start looking for the cup, it was an impossible task. Harry didn’t like to give up, but now that the constant push for action prompted by Dumbledore still being in danger was gone, all Harry had to motivate himself was the consideration of his own life. Somehow, Dumbledore’s death had made Harry confront his own mortality.

It was highly unlikely Harry would live to see the next week out. He knew that. He accepted it. However, it was detrimental to his own mental wellbeing to think on it. The more he focused on that kind of negativity, the more it seemed illogical to even attempt to find the cup. He should really go say goodbye to his friends while he had time, instead; he’d hate for the Vow to kill him before he got to say any kind of goodbye.

It was something of a relief when an owl arrived with a message from McGonagall. Headmistress McGonagall, in fact, as the signature proclaimed. The sight of that word in front of her name really brought home the fact that the Headmaster of Hogwarts was gone. Harry’s stomach clenched almost painfully at the thought. Just when he thought he’d begun to come to terms with it …

Harry suspected the dog had somehow let the owl in, since it trotted into the room not two seconds after the owl swooped through the doorway. It had an expectant look on its face.

Harry, uncertain why he did so, read the letter aloud so that the dog could hear what it said. It was about Dumbledore’s funeral, which was apparently being held the very next day. McGonagall said she thought he’d want to be there, though they’d all understand if he wasn’t. Harry highly doubted that there wouldn’t be some bitterness among students and members of the Order alike if he didn’t show, but he appreciated the sentiment all the same.

There really wasn’t even a decision to be made. Harry had to go. He had to say goodbye to the man who’d seen him through so many trying years, even before he actually knew who Albus Dumbledore was. He expected that he’d have to put up with other people’s blame on top of his own even if he showed up, though, so he decided that it would be best if he could stay out of everyone else’s sight.

* * * * * * * * * *

For the thousandth time since learning he was a wizard, Harry thanked both the makers of invisibility cloaks for inventing them and his father for actually owning one. Though he was staying far enough away from the crowds of people at the memorial for them to find it difficult to see him anyway, the knowledge that, even if someone happened to look off in his direction, they wouldn’t be able to see him anyway was of some reassurance for him.

Considering the problems Dumbledore had had with the Ministry and most of the wizarding world only the year before, Harry was surprised at how many people had shown up to supposedly pay him their respects. Harry suspected that a goodly number of them were there to do nothing of the sort. Some people had a truly morbid sense of curiosity.

Harry couldn’t seem to concentrate on what was happening down near the table where Dumbledore’s body lay. All he could do was look at where the Headmaster lay, with the phrase, “Dumbledore is dead, he’s really dead,” repeating over and over in his head.

It took Harry a while to realise he wasn’t quite alone. Standing just behind where he stood at the edge of the forest was a crowd of centaurs, watching the proceedings. Strangely, that was what made the tears that had been threatening for days like dark clouds that just wouldn’t lift finally fall from Harry’s eyes. The centaurs, apart from maybe Firenze, openly disliked humans in general, yet they had obviously thought Dumbledore great enough for them to deign to attend his funeral and pay their respects to his memory.

Harry was responsible for the death of one of the greatest wizards in recent history, if not ever. He was all alone in the world now, really. Dumbledore, his hero and protector, was dead because of him. Merlin, what had he done?

For all that he couldn’t seem to concentrate, he could hardly ignore the flurry of activity that broke out all at once. Dumbledore’s body seemed to spontaneously combust, white flames rising higher and higher into the air to form a tomb. Harry could no longer see Dumbledore’s body. The lack of that devastating sight seemed to lift a weight from his chest. Arrows fired over his head and Harry turned around just in time to see the centaurs retreat into the forest, having shown their regard for the fallen Headmaster of Hogwarts better than most of the so-called mourners attending could ever hope to.

“Harry, I know you’re there.”

Harry swivelled toward the voice, only to find that Remus Lupin had somehow snuck up in front of him while he was lost in thought. He was barely ten feet away. The older man glanced down at a piece of parchment that he was holding loosely in his hands, as if consulting it, then looked up in Harry’s direction, his eyes focusing on a point just over Harry’s left shoulder.

“You can take off that cloak. I need to talk to you. I’d prefer to be able to actually see you.”

Harry, feeling stunned, emerged from under the cloak. Remus nodded at him, as if in satisfaction that he was right.

“How do you know about my cloak?” Harry asked.

Remus smiled grimly at him. “The same way that I recognised this map your friends Ron and Hermione were using to look out for you before the memorial service. They both, at some stage, at least partly belonged to your father.”

Harry’s eyes widened further when he saw that the parchment Remus was holding was actually the map the Weasley twins had given him as a kind of counter-gift when he gave them his Triwizard Tournament earnings. But then, the rest of what Remus had said seemed to sink into his brain. “You knew my father?” he queried.

“Better than most, yes. I went to school with your parents. We were all in the same year in Gryffindor.”

Harry’s heart swelled a little. The only person he’d ever known that went to school with his parents was Snape, and he had hated them both.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Remus shook his head. “What would I have said? That you remind me so very much of your father? You’ve heard that often enough, I should think, and besides that, you’re not so much like him that I’d want you to think I only saw him in you. That I’m sorry that I was never there for you when you were younger? Harry, you have no idea how true that is, and you likely never will. I can’t tell you the truth of the matter even now. That I was one of your father’s best friends? My memories of him are too tainted to share with you, because I also was best friends with the man who betrayed you and your parents to Lord Voldemort.”

Harry inhaled sharply. “Who?”

“Never you mind, Harry. You’re happier not knowing. Besides, he’s already received what he deserved.”

Harry wasn’t at all satisfied by this, but even though he didn’t know the man well, he could tell by the closed off expression on his face that Harry would receive no more information from Remus Lupin on that front. Besides, if it was as painful a memory as it sounded, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to put the other man through recounting it. There would be some other way to find out, surely.

“Why did you come find me?” Harry finally asked, decisively changing the topic.

“I was worried about you. I heard you hadn’t been seen, that you’d holed yourself up somewhere to mourn the Headmaster,” Remus paused, as if considering how best to proceed. “Harry, Snape told me you only had a week to find that cup you told the Order about. Have you even been looking?”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know where to look.”

Remus suddenly seemed to grow angry. “So you’re just going to wait to die?”

Harry’s own hackles were quickly raised. “What else can I do?”

“You can help us help you, for starters, and not just give up all hope!”

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Harry shouted back. The sound seemed to him to echo across the lake, and he was surprised that the crowd of people didn’t suddenly rush over to him. “You may have known my father, but you’re not him! I’ve seen you maybe five times in my entire life. Do you think that gives you the right to ask anything of me?”

Remus recoiled as if stung by Harry’s words, and for a moment Harry thought he might actually regret what he’d said. But then Remus clenched his fists.

“For Merlin’s sake, Harry, I’m trying to help you!”

“Well, you shouldn’t!” Harry cried. “Not when every adult who’s ever tried to help me has ended up dead!”

The whole grounds of the school, including the Forbidden Forest, seemed to fall into absolute silence in that moment as they regarded each other. Remus’ eyes softened.

“Oh, Harry.”

Harry stepped back from Remus even before he moved forward, anticipating the attempt.

“Don’t touch me. I … Merlin, I just can’t.”

Remus stilled. They stood several feet apart, staring at each other. Harry’s breath sounded ragged to his ears. He prayed to whatever deities would listen that he didn’t start crying again. It wasn’t really weak to cry for Dumbledore, surely, because the man had deserved Harry’s tears and so much more. However, he refused to show such misery towards his own predicament. He would not let anyone see him drowning in self-pity, whether he’d earned the right to do so or not.

“What would you have me do differently?” Harry eventually asked softly.

“Go to Azkaban.”

Harry was stunned. He knew that he was partly responsible for Dumbledore’s death, but surely they couldn’t send him off to prison …

“No, Harry, that’s not what I meant,” Remus quickly back-tracked when he saw what must have been an utterly distraught look on Harry’s face. “After the meeting about the cup, it occurred to me that one of the places Voldemort is attempting to gain control of, before even Hogwarts or the Ministry, is Azkaban. Following your friend Ron’s line of logic, Voldemort may have left the cup there.”

“In a prison?” Harry asked, frowning. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed something like that in there?”

“Azkaban is run entirely by Dementors. The only humans to set foot on the island are the prisoners, most of whom are insane, and the visitors, all of whom want to get in and out as quickly as possible and thus aren’t likely to be paying particular attention to their surroundings. They wouldn’t know what they were looking for, either.”

Harry nodded slowly. “So we send the Order in and search. Today, if possible.”

Remus shook his head. “It’s not that simple, unfortunately. There are human guards that monitor who can board the boats to the island. They are extremely strict about who is authorised to travel there. There is a limited list of sufficient reasons why a person could visit the prison. Ministry officials can go, if it involves something particular to their work that cannot otherwise be solved. Family members of the prisoners are allowed to visit them. Even victims of prisoners can reserve the right to visit them once, just to observe them. I think that’s meant to strengthen the wizarding world’s view that the prison sufficiently punishes criminals, or something. A vote-winner, if you will.”

Harry thought this over. “So a Ministry official – maybe an Auror, like Kingsley – could go and search the prison if they came up with a good enough excuse?”

“Probably,” Remus agreed. “However, you can do one better. You yourself have a right to visit the prison if you tell them you wish to see Sirius Black.”

“Who?”

“One of the prisoners, and that’s all you need to know for now,” Remus replied in a stern, no-nonsense tone.

Once more, Harry decided there was no point in pushing him for more information. However, he already knew that Sirius Black had once lived in the house he was staying in. He wondered whether, if he had a closer look at the tapestry showing the Black family tree, he would find some kind of clue about Sirius Black’s identity. His room was unlikely to help in that respect, since it had been quite thoroughly cleaned out but for the note he had left.

“All right,” he said absently. “I should go straight away, then.”

“Be careful, Harry,” Remus warned.

“I will.”

“And …” Remus seemed to hesitate before tapping the Marauders Map with his wand, clearing it, and handing it to Harry. “Take this, for when you come back to Hogwarts. It rightfully belongs to you, now.”

As Harry took the map then slipped his invisibility cloak, a warm sort of feeling settled over him. His heart fluttered a little. He realised as he approached the Apparition line that the feeling filling him was a small grain of hope.

He might get through this, after all.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sirius Black didn’t appear on the tapestry at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. However, Harry was quick to note that there was a scorch mark beside Regulus Black’s name, where another name should have resided. If he was right, they would have been brothers. Harry wondered whether Sirius was a Death Eater, like his brother had been before he betrayed Voldemort and his cause.

Harry felt somewhat flustered at the thought. The last week or so had seemed filled with nothing but coincidence after coincidence, especially where the Black family was concerned. Harry found himself on the path to no longer believing in any kind of coincidence. If it was all happening for a reason – because it was fated, probably, with Harry’s luck when it came to Divination – he was going to be prepared for it.

It was for this reason that Harry secured his invisibility cloak on the dog. Just before he pulled the hood over the dog’s head, it seemed to give him a questioning look.

“You’re coming just in case. I don’t want to risk leaving you behind if you’re meant to be there. I’ve got a feeling about it.”

Harry led him outside the house and to the alley nearby to Apparate.

* * * * * * * * * *

Considering that Harry had no real idea where he was even going, he was surprised when picturing what he imagined Azkaban to be like in his head and using that as his Apparition focus didn’t actually get him and the dog splinched. Rather, they appeared not too far from where two men – wizards, Harry supposed, by the look of their apparel – were guarding the entrance to a kind of dock, at which were tied a number of boats not unlike those that transported first years across the Hogwarts lake.

His hand fell down to where the dog stood at his side, and he gave the invisible animal a slight push forward. The dog appeared to understand that he wanted it to walk with him, for Harry could feel brushes against his leg every so often as he approached the wizards.

“Name and purpose?” one of the men demanded.

“Er,” Harry started uncertainly, “I’m Harry Potter. I want to see Sirius Black.”

The two wizards gave each other a knowing look.

“Since this is your first visit,” the other man began, “we are obliged to tell you that visitors are not able to take further revenge on the prisoners. They are already being punished under the law.”

Revenge? Harry frowned slightly at the man, wondering what he was talking about. Why would he want to take revenge on a man he didn’t even know?

“Furthermore,” the older wizard continued, “there is to be no actual contact with the prisoner, either physical or magical. If you attempt to use magic inside the prison, be aware that the guards will subdue you. The Ministry of Magic takes no responsibility for what may happen to you in such circumstances. Do you consent to this?”

Harry nodded, a shiver running through him. He’d heard of the guards of Azkaban. Dementors. They’d begun running amuck since Voldemort’s return, if the Daily Prophet was anything to go by. Harry had no desire to get on their bad side.

“All right, then,” the wizard affirmed. “Sirius Black is located in cell number 119. Try not to get lost.”

Harry nodded and got into the boat he was shown to, glad to feel the dog brush up against him, slightly rocking the boat as he leapt in after Harry. One of the wizards silently tapped the side of the boat with his wand and it shot off in the direction of what looked to Harry like nothing more than a dark blob in the distance. However, the boat was moving fast, and what was merely a shadow soon became a foreboding sort of structure on an island not much bigger than the building itself.

Harry shivered as a wave of cold washed over him. At first he thought it was the ocean wind, but it grew progressively colder as the boat neared the island. Harry hugged his robe closer to himself, though it seemed to make absolutely no difference, as if the cold was coming from inside him rather than around him.

Dementors, he remembered suddenly. He recalled skimming over a reading about Dementors in his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook once a year or so ago. They sucked the happiness from people, leaving them feeling cold and often drowning in their own despair.

Harry grew slightly worried at this thought. He had a lot to despair about, really.

He felt the dog jolt against him and heard it whimper. He supposed it must be able to feel the Dementors as well. Perhaps it had encountered this feeling before. Harry would be unsurprised, considering how many other things the dog had seemed to be able to recognise and comprehend since he’d met it.

When the boat finally arrived at the island, Harry stepped out on shaking legs. He could hear the dog clamber out after him. As they approached the entrance to the prison, Harry could see a veritable cloud of black-cloaked figures swarming about, as if they’d been waiting with baited breath for the fresh prey that was now approaching.

As he reached the entrance, the Dementors seemed to all, as one, draw in a rattling breath. Harry felt as if they were drawing his soul out of him, memorising it even as they fed on the happiness they found within him. The sight of Dumbledore lying dead in his St Mungo’s bed flashed into Harry’s mind and he suddenly felt faint enough to collapse right where he stood. From the yelp the still-invisible dog let out, Harry knew he was going through something similar. The invisibility cloak obviously didn’t stop the Dementors from sensing and feeding upon the animal.

Harry just wanted to fall to the ground and sleep for an eternity when the assault finally let up. The focusing on the thought of Hufflepuff’s cup was all he could do to keep himself conscious as he staggered inside, attempting to get as far away as he could from the horde of Dementors gathered at the door. It didn’t help much, since they were still drawing the happiness steadily from him, and there were more Dementors littered throughout the prison, anyway, so he’d still feel the effects no matter where in the building he went. However, the idea of being further from the majority of them helped to harden his resolve.

Harry thought that he might understand now what it felt like to be a prisoner of Azkaban, except that it must be a million times worse to be kept here indefinitely. It was no wonder most of them went completely mad and/or died. The Dementor’s Kiss would be a mercy compared to a lifetime of this feeling. It was more than punishment enough for any crime one might commit.

Cell number 119 must have been located about as far away from the entrance of the prison as possible. Harry had to pass by countless cells on the way there. Some of them were empty. Some were filled with screaming, struggling prisoners. Most, though, were home to pale, dilapidated bodies that looked to be little more than corpses that could still draw breath. Harry was forcibly reminded of Dumbledore in his last moments and shuddered. He imagined that those were the people who had already spent decades or more imprisoned within the stone walls of the prison. Harry wondered whether Sirius Black would be one of those newer prisoners whose spirit had yet to completely break, or whether Harry would see only pale skin and dead eyes when he looked into that cell.

Harry saw something that he hadn’t expected at all, for cell 119’s sole occupant was a small blond man who was violently shivering where he lay on the floor. He looked nothing like any of the portraits at Grimmauld Place. He looked only a little worse for wear than Harry felt. Harry couldn’t imagine that he’d been in the prison for more than a month or so. But then, why hadn’t anyone, including the paper, mentioned this new arrest? Perhaps he wasn’t a Death Eater, and so wasn’t considered important enough to be discussed. But then, the human guards had acted as if Harry had some reason to seek retribution against this man. Shouldn’t he have had at least some idea who he was?

“Who are you?” Harry murmured.

The prisoner started at the sound of his voice. His head shot up to look at Harry. His blank eyes abruptly narrowed with recognition. Harry’s eyes mirrored that action, for he knew this man.

“Potter?” the young man wheezed.

Harry would have said the young man’s name in return if he could remember it. Unfortunately, all he could remember was that it definitely wasn’t Sirius Black.

The young man had been a seventh-year Hufflepuff prefect back when Harry was a first year. Harry had never spoken to him, but he could recognise him by sight well enough. He was fairly certain his name was Dingle or something similar, but Harry couldn’t be entirely sure.

“Where’s Sirius Black?”

The invisible dog brushed up against Harry somewhat urgently, perhaps as if it wanted to tell him something, or maybe as a question. Harry ignored it.

The prisoner’s laugh sounded more like a cough, it was so harsh. “Oh, he’s escaped. I was caught by Death Eaters and put under the Imperius Curse so they could bring me here and exchange me for him. The Dementors were none the wiser.”

Harry’s stomach felt like it was plunging right through the ground beneath his feet.

“Black’s a Death Eater?”

The prisoner snorted. “’Course he is. Would have thought you of all people would have heard of him. My parents said he was You Know Who’s main man. I heard it was him who told You Know Who where to find your parents.”

Harry stared uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then his vision seemed to go red as he realised that this was the man that Remus had been talking about. Sirius Black had betrayed his parents. He’d been their friend, and he’d betrayed them.

He didn’t think he’d ever wanted to kill anyone quite so much before, not even Snape, or Bellatrix Lestrange, and perhaps not even Voldemort himself. Right then, he felt fully capable of casting a successful Killing Curse, and then walking away without feeling any remorse whatsoever.

The dog whimpered beside him, bringing him back to himself. He pushed the rage he was feeling deep inside. He’d pull it back out when he found Sirius Black. The Dementors would seem like nothing compared to what Harry would do to him.

“The Death Eater that brought you here. Did he bring anything with him? A cup of some sort.”

The young man shook his head slightly. “No. But he did check on something, like he was making sure it was still there. Not a cup, though. A shield, like a trophy or something.”

Harry nodded to himself. “Transfigured. Where is it?”

The young man shrugged. “I wasn’t exactly myself at the time, was I? They had me under an Unforgivable. I’m pretty sure we walked for a fair while between there and here, though, so it’s probably closer to the entrance.”

Harry nodded once more. “Good,” he went to leave, but was stopped by a desperate voice.

“No! Please, don’t leave me here.”

Harry looked down at the young man with pitying eyes. “I swear I’ll have you out of here within the week. I won’t leave you to stay here.”

The prisoner didn’t seem to believe Harry, if the look in his eyes was any indication. However, he didn’t say any more when Harry walked away.

Perhaps it was just how the feeling of constant cold depression seemed to make every second take at least twice as long as usual, but it seemed to take forever before Harry found the shield the man had obviously spoken about. It looked archaic, as if it had come from the Muggle world in the time of great sword battles and conquests. It certainly fit in well enough in the medieval-feeling prison. Harry could feel some kind of magic around it, though he couldn’t really read much else from it apart from that. That was enough for Harry, though, especially once he noticed the tiny picture of a badger on the shield.

“This is it,” Harry whispered. He wasn’t sure who he was talking to. Perhaps he just needed to say it aloud to partly relieve the pressure that seemed to be welling up in his chest with each passing second that he stared at what could potentially contain a seventh of Voldemort’s soul, and could allow him access to a further two Horcruxes.

There was that feeling again. Harry wondered whether hope could be addictive.

Harry reached up and tried to dislodge the shield from the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. Harry frowned and drew his wand. Even as the words for an unsticking charm left his mouth, the dog barked in warning. A second later, Harry realised why.

The shield fell down into his hands. He had barely had time to tuck it against his chest with his left hand, his wand still clutched in his right, when Dementors started sweeping down on him.

Of course. The men back on the mainland had told him not to use magic. Sometimes Harry really felt like an idiot.

He shot several curses at them, but nothing seemed to even slightly faze them. In fact, each curse only seemed to sap his failing energy even further, as well as attracting more of the dark creatures toward him. As the Dementors loomed over him, Harry heard Voldemort’s voice saying “Kill the spare.” Cedric’s dead eyes swam before Harry’s own and Harry felt suddenly faint. Harry thought he felt himself falling, only to be caught around the middle and have his wand snatched from his hand.

“Expecto Patronum!”

A flash of white highlighted the gaunt face of a man, whose body was still half-covered by an invisibility cloak, before Harry’s eyes fell closed.

* * * * * * * * * *