A/N: This is written for the MNFF monthly challenge #4 using the sentence- "Ten to one, we're gone when the smoke clears. They will do everything in their power to destroy us." Written by CraftySlytherin of Gryffindor. As with all of my other fanfics, I do not own any of J.K. Rowling's characters and am merely borrowing them to send them on a flight of my fancy.

Summer never really got hot in the tiny Irish village of Knockmarn Glen, but the day that Harry, Ron, and Hermione arrived the air held a stifling quality. Moisture-laden cirrus clouds circled overhead in the thick, humid air, never spilling a drop. The Trio could feel every square inch of clothing they wore sticking to their bodies with sweat as they walked through the little village looking for the Blue Banshee Pub.

"Are you sure we're in the right place?" Ron asked, looking around doubtfully and daubing the sweat on his forehead with his sleeve.

"Of course I am," Harry replied with certainty. "This is where he was seen last."

The Trio had spent almost a month retracing the path of Tom Riddle after he was first seen with the cup. Their search had begun in the vicinity of the run-down home of the late Hepzibah Smith. In a small cottage across the lane from her home, they had found a gentleman by the name of Gus Wiley. Gus had been a neighbor of Hepzibah's for twenty years before she was poisoned. He remembered seeing a young, dark-haired man skulking around the day she was killed; a young man who, incidently, carried a golden cup in his hand. Gus' testimony had never been taken, for he was a Muggle, incapable of being any help in the defense of a house-elf.

And so the Trio had followed up many tips like these over the past few weeks. There had been ten sightings in all, the last leading them to this quiet Irish village, home of the Blue Banshee Pub. There they were to ask for a man by the name of Martin McKeegan. He was the man reported to have seen Tom Riddle with the cup in this village. Harry hoped fervently that this would finally be the end of the trail; that here they would find the Horcrux which was in the form of Helga Hufflepuff's cup.

As they walked through the dusty streets, Hermione noticed that no one was about. Only the wind played tag in the sweet, green grasses where children should have been playing. Only small birds fluttered about in fields of crops where men should have been working. Empty clotheslines swayed in the humid breeze where women should have been out hanging the washing. Not a soul could be seen all through the village. Harry and Ron finally noticed the absence of life. They moved through the village of small cottages and dirt roads in seemingly slow motion.

"There!" Hermione said, pointing to a location up ahead. "I think that's it."

Hermione was pointing to a mid-sized rock building with a thatched roof. The front boasted a red wooden door and a large sign which read, Blue Banshee Pub and Inn. Under the writing on the sign was painted a picture of a banshee. Ron looked at the peeling blue and white sign, thinking that he'd never seen anything that looked less like a banshee.

The Trio entered the pub to find ... no one. Not one person was in the wooden-floored pub which was furnished with about eight beat-up tables and chairs, and a bar that took up almost all of the back wall.

"Hello?" Harry called out, his voice echoing a bit in the stillness. A crash came from behind a door off to the left of the bar, followed by a string of curses. The door swung open and in shuffled a rough-looking man. He was dressed in what could only be classified as gray rags. Cold, glinting green eyes regarded them over a mouth which held a bit of a sneer.

Harry cleared his throat loudly. "Um, excuse me sir, we're looking for Martin McKeegan."

"I'm Martin McKeegan," the man said smiling, revealing two rows of rotted teeth. "I'm the owner of this here pub. Can't say I expected to see anyone out on a day like today."

"Why is that, Mr. McKeegan? I mean, as we were passing through the village ... we saw no one," Hermione explained.

"You're the first person we've seen since we arrived in Knockmarn Glen," Ron added.

"That's because there's bad spirits about today," Martin explained. "You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to venture outside of their houses today. So what can I do for you three brave souls?"

Harry stepped forward. "We heard you might be able to tell us something about a man named Tom Riddle."

A crooked smile crossed Martin's face. "Well, I might know something, but my memory gets a little bit rusty sometimes."

After trying to persuade people to talk for the last few weeks, Harry, Ron and Hermione had been prepared for this. Hermione reached into her bag, pulled out a bottle of Ogden's Best Firewhiskey, and set it on the bar in front of Martin. Martin's smile widened and he uncorked the bottle, bringing it to his thin lips for a long swig. He slammed the bottle down on the bar, sighed loudly, and wiped his arm across his mouth.

"Well now, that's the finest stuff I've ever put to my mouth; just the thing to oil my rusty memory. If you kiddies want to have a seat, I'll pour meself a drink and tell ya a little story."

The Trio grabbed chairs at a table about halfway up to the bar as to be able to hear, but avoid Martin's clearly unwashed stench. Martin quickly downed a shot of firewhiskey and then began.

"I can remember Tom Riddle like it was yesterday. A commanding presence, he was. Could look at ya in just the right way so as to make your blood run cold. He twern't in town for long, only long enough to buy up a little piece of property that overlooks the village. He'd come in here every evenin' while he was in town and drink up glass after glass of stout. But he always brought his own cup, that's one of the things that sticks out most in my mind. It was a gold cup with carved up handles. Had a picture of some little critter on the side."

"Are there any houses or anything on the land he bought?" Hermione asked.

Martin downed another shot of firewhiskey, screwing up his face as it went down. "Naw, little miss, there ain't any houses up on Wickshaw Bluff, only the old Wickshaw wishing well. But you'd do best to stay clear of there. That's where all the bad spirits are coming from."

Harry scooted his chair back, the legs skittering loudly across the hardwood floor. "Well, thanks for your ... help. We'll be going now," he said as Ron and Hermione got up as well. The Trio made their way to the exit, leaving behind a very happy Martin and his bottle of firewhiskey.

Once they were outside of the pub, Harry scanned the edges of the village, noticing a large overlook to the east. It was covered with a small copse of trees and he thought he could just make out the peak of what must be the roof of the well.

"I think that's our destination," Harry said, pointing towards the bluff.

"Do you think there's really bad spirits up there?" Ron asked nervously.

"No, Ron, I'm sure there aren't any bad spirits. Chances are it's something much worse."

"Oh, right," Ron said, giving a small nod.

"Sorry, Ron, just trying to be honest so we'll be prepared. You never know what we could be up against. When Dumbledore and I went after what turned out to be a fake Horcrux, there were Inferi."

Hermione gave an involuntary shudder at the mention of reanimated corpses. As they walked towards the crest of the bluff, the well came into view. It was roughly constructed out of large, stone blocks and covered by a peaked, slate roof. Around the well was a small grove of trees. Dead branches littered the ground.

"Okay, so where's the Horcrux?" Ron asked, looking nervously down into the well.

"There's got to be a way to get down there," reasoned Hermione, walking the perimeter of the well and trailing her fingers lightly on the stones. Harry carefully studied the outside of the well, looking for some clue as to it's secrets. The minutes seemed to crawl by as Harry, Ron, and Hermione each studied the well, prodding and inspecting here and there.

After about an hour of inspecting the well in the hot, billowing air, Hermione finally noticed something. "Wait! There's one stone that's different from the others. All of the stone blocks making up the well appear to be limestone, except this one."

Hermione pushed on one stone that was a bit more darkly-colored than the others. "This one looks like granite," she explained, trying to push harder on the stone block. Ron and Harry got down on their knees on either side of Hermione, laid their hands flat on the block beside her, and pushed with all their might. There was a large crack and then a scraping of stone. The part of the well upon which they'd been pushing seemed to simply disappear. When the Trio inspected this new gap, a set of steps spiraling down the sides of the well into darkness were revealed.

"Bloody hell!"

"It might very well be, Ron," Harry assured him. "Guess we'd better get a move on."

There was no need for Harry to tell Ron and Hermione to have their wands at the ready, for their instincts of the danger that could lie ahead were keeping them on guard. Slowly they descended the steps, Harry in the lead and Ron bringing up the rear. As the little amount of daylight there was began to fade, all three teens whispered, "Lumos," to light up their wands. In the wand light glow they could see a green, slimy substance coating the rock interior of the well.

"Oh, it's getting colder as we go down," Hermione observed, quickly casting a Warming Charm on Harry, Ron, and herself. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs the Trio could see their breaths misting out in front of them. The stairs ended at the mouth of a narrow tunnel. Taking a deep breath to steel his nerves, Harry led the way down the small tunnel.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn't know how long they walked in silence through the cold, darkened tunnel. Finally it widened, ending in a large, circular room. Whispering a charm to make their wand light stretch farther, the Trio could clearly see the earthen room's interior. There, sitting in the center of the room upon a marble pedestal, was Helga Hufflepuff's cup, seemingly unprotected and easy to retrieve. All around the edges of the room, large blocks of ice were set into the walls. Upon closer inspection, the blocks of ice contained corpses.

"Inferi," Harry said matter-of-factly.

"Looks like they won't be a problem," Ron observed, "seeing as how they're frozen and all."

"I wouldn't count on that, Ron," Hermione admonished. "Just because they're frozen doesn't mean they can't get out. After all, there's got to be some kind of enchantment keeping it so cold down here with the heat outside. Who's to say there's not something that will trigger them to thaw or break out of the ice."

A look of determination came into Harry's eyes. He took a pair of thick, dragonhide gloves out of his robes and pulled them on. "Well, we'll never find out how to get it until we try."

Very carefully, Harry inched forward. Each step he took caused a reaction. As Harry moved closer to the cup, a coating of ice began to grow upon the cup; thicker and thicker into a block. Also, the closer he moved, the faster the ice encasing the Inferi began to thaw. When he saw that he was releasing them, he stopped and began to back up. The ice around the cup fell away and the Inferi stopped thawing.

"I knew it looked too easy," Harry muttered.

"There's got to be a way to get you up there without thawing out the Inferi," Ron said.

Harry took one experimental step forward, causing the block of ice to start freezing back up around the cup and the frozen Inferi to thaw. Quickly he jerked his foot back. Harry took his left hand and reached forward as far as he could. The ice began to thaw from the Inferi, but didn't freeze back up around the cup.

"The ground must be pressure sensitive. Accio cup!" Harry flicked his wand, but to no avail. The cup remained in place. "I'm going to have to physically take it, I think."

"We could levitate you across," Hermione suggested.

"Yeah, then Harry could get the cup, but what about the Inferi? They'll keep right on thawing, won't they?"

"I reckon they will, Ron. I'll need you and Hermione to hold them off. Fire will do the trick. I wish I knew the incantation for the spell Dumbledore used."

"I've got an idea," Hermione said. "After we levitate Harry, we'll summon down some of those dead branches from outside the well. We might be able to set them on fire and fend off the Inferi."

"So what happens after Harry gets the cup? We'll have to fight our way through fire AND Inferi to escape," Ron pointed out.

"Ten to one we're gone when the smoke clears. They will do everything in their power to destroy us," Harry said. "But we've come out of bigger scrapes than this before. As long as we stick together, there's still a slim chance we can make it out."

"Shall we?" Hermione asked. When Ron and Harry both nodded, Hermione pointed her wand at Harry and said, "Wingardium Leviosa."

Harry's feet left the earthen floor and he hovered in place. "If something happens to me, you two get out with the cup any way you can. If I don't make it, you two have got to continue the search for the Horcruxes without me."

Ron and Hermione didn't even have to nod for Harry to know that they'd carry out his orders without question. As Hermione began to carefully guide him towards the cup, the Inferi began to thaw at an accelerated pace.

Ron quickly aimed his wand towards the entryway and yelled, "Accio branches!"

Harry inched through the air, closer and closer to the cup, while Ron waited for the summoned branches, hoping they would arrive in time. The first Inferius busted through the thin layer of ice encasing it and began to stagger towards Harry.

"Hurry, Hermione!" Ron shouted, as one by one the rest of the Inferi broke loose. Clad in soggy, hanging rags, the rest of the Inferi moved in on Harry, staring dully with their sunken, cloudy eyes.

"Accio branches! Accio branches! Accio branches!" Ron yelled frantically, jumping up and down and flicking his wand toward the stairs. Just as Hermione got Harry to the cup and he snatched it up into his gloved hands, the claw-like hand of an Inferius closed around his ankle, soon joined by one around his wrist.

Hermione frantically tried to keep him in the air, but the Inferi had reached her as well and had broken her concentration. Harry fell to the ground, and the cup and the hand which held it became encased in a block of ice. He desperately swung around his frozen appendage, smacking one Inferius in the head and knocking out any teeth it may have had.

A large scraping noise could be heard coming from the tunnel. Ron's branches finally arrived, along with a few small, uprooted trees. "Incendio! Incendio! Incendio!" Ron aimed his wand at every piece as it landed. When the entire thing was ablaze, he yelled, "Wingardium Leviosa!"

Using his wand, Ron guided a large, flaming branch directly at the Inferi. Harry, who'd knocked away all of his attackers with his block of ice hand, joined Ron by also whizzing a torched branch around the room. Hermione was struggling with one of the Inferi, pulling desperately at it's sparse, scraggly hair. With a noise that sounded like wet tissue ripping, the Inferius's head came off in Hermione's hands. The body quickly fell, and with a look of extreme disgust, she cast the head to the side. She too joined Harry and Ron in levitating a burning branch across the room.

The Trio steadily backed up toward the stairs, using their wands to aim the branches of fire at the still oncoming Inferi. They backed all the way down the tunnel until Ron fell backwards on the bottom step. Without a backward glance, Ron, Harry, and Hermione turned and fled up the spiral stairs, tumbling out of the side of the well once they made it to the top.

"Cave it in! Cave it in!" Ron yelled.

Hermione uttered a spell and a red jet of light shot out of her wand, causing a small explosion. When the smoke blew away in the humid breeze, the well lay at their feet, only a pile of rubble.

"Well, there's one down," Ron said.

"Guess it's time to move onto the next one," Hermione suggested. Harry looked down at the cup in his hand, frozen in a block of ice.

"Could one of you maybe thaw out my hand so we can destroy this one first?"

Ron and Hermione looked at each other, then at Harry's hand ... and started laughing. Soon Harry joined in and for one brief moment, the trio was able to take a break from the daunting task of fighting evil that lie in their future. For one brief moment, they could again feel like normal teens.