Harry knelt at the roots of the tree by the glowing patch of earth and stared down at it. Should I use the wand to get it out, or would that damage it somehow? Should I just dig it up manually? Another, more urgent question came to his mind, and he froze. What if it’s a trap? Taking a deep breath, he rolled up his sleeves and plunged his arms elbow-deep in the moist dirt. Well, I guess it really can’t be helped. Whether Voldemort’s got some curse on it or not, I have to get rid of this thing! His right hand twinged. He ignored it.
And then he began to dig.
It was much harder work than he’d first thought. The moisture in the ground seemed to make it twice as heavy as was normal; picking up one large handful felt akin to hoisting several small bricks. “Either I’m getting weaker,” Harry muttered to no-one in particular, “or this stuff is heavier than it ought to be. How deep is the cup buried, anyway?”
Almost a foot into the ground, as it turned out. Harry’s left hand abruptly brushed against something harder and more compact than the dirt he had been shoveling away for the past ten minutes. He took hold of the object and yanked it up, out of the cold earth.
He saw a medium-sized package wrapped in a length of brown parchment that crackled with age when Harry quickly cast it aside. As he stared down at the thing he held in his hands, he sent a silent thank-you to Remus Lupin. If he hadn’t given us a hand back there, would I have ever been able to find this? The fifth Horcrux?
It was a small, golden cup with two finely wrought handles, engraved on one side with the image of a badger. There was nothing especially remarkable about it... except for the dull light emitting from it that cast a soft glow on Harry’s triumphant face. “Wow,” he breathed in awe. Why is it glowing like that?
It was getting harder to see around him. At first he thought it was just getting darker as night set in, but then he saw the unnatural fog that had filled the clearing while he’d been digging. It was a thick, almost translucent fog that shrouded the bushes encompassing the large clearing, the huge tree in the middle, and even the freshly created pile of dirt by his knees.
As Harry stood with the newfound Horcrux, his right hand gave an ominous little shudder. The fog was growing thicker.
Suddenly, a dark figure appeared through the cloud and began to slowly walk towards Harry. He nervously took a few steps back, wondering if Voldemort had arrived already. Then the figure stepped into the dim glow of the cup, and his face was illuminated.
A long, freckled nose; red hair; and large, sticking-out ears.
“Ron?” Harry gasped, staggering backwards in shock. He watched, wide-eyed, as his best friend stopped about a yard away from the tree and stared at him, an eerily blank expression on his pale face.
Harry goggled at him for a minute or two, and then was somehow able to locate his mouth and stammer, “H-how did you get past ” all those werewolves? Ron...?” His friend was silent. Something in the very back of Harry’s mind told him that he should be afraid; but that was just irrational. Why should he be wary of Ron Weasley, the boy who had fought beside him for six long years, the boy who secretly loved Hermione Granger and was mortally afraid of spiders?
“Ron?”
Before he’d even had time to react, a flash of light whizzed past his ear, and, slipping the Horcrux into his pocket, Harry dropped to the ground and looked up, confused. Ron was still staring blankly at him, with one arm up and aiming his wand directly at the spot where Harry’s head had been seconds earlier.
“Ron? ...What the hell are you thinking?” he shouted angrily. He shakily got to his feet again and immediately had to dodge another spell shot by his best friend. “You idiot, Ron!” he yelled fiercely. “What are you ””
Most light in the clearing ” besides that of Ron’s spells ” had vanished; the cup’s glow was no longer visible from its spot deep inside Harry’s robes. But there was still just enough light left that Harry was able to make out another silhouette that appeared behind the zombielike Ron. This one seemed to have an extremely large head...
Walking into the clearing was none other than Hermione Granger herself.
And she had the same frighteningly blank look on her face that Ron did.
“...Hermione?”
There was something wrong. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to beware. The skin on the back of his neck prickled ominously, as if his senses recognized and understood the danger before his brain. Heeding the warning, he dove to the side just as twin beams of green light were jettisoned toward him from both sides.
He rolled to a stop and crouched down, all fours planted firmly on the ground as he looked over to Ron and Hermione. They were standing side by side, staring blankly into the distance with their wands pointed at the same spot.
Since they seemed to have slow reaction times, Harry took the moment to think this new development through. A cold feeling settled into the pit of his stomach as it dawned on him that his friends had used green curses. Not the red of a Stunning Spell, or the white flash of a Petrifying Spell, but the green laser of Avada Kedavra. What was going on here? He supposed they could have been put under the Imperius, but still... it didn’t seem right. They’d allowed themselves to be caught so quickly? And surely they couldn’t be completely under its control, so easily...
Another pair of green lights shot towards him, and he quickly rolled to the right, dodging them both. Whatever is wrong with them, I can’t let them catch me. But I can’t hurt them, either... Maybe a quick Stunner could get me away... He leapt to his feet, at the same time pulling out his father’s wand. He felt horrible doing this, but if Ron and Hermione were being controlled by some external force, this would be best ” for all three of them. “Stupefy!” he yelled twice, pointing his wand at each of them in turn to produce two separate red lights. They sped toward Ron and Hermione...
And went right through them. Harry watched, gaping, as the beams of light shot through their bodies as f they were nothing but air. and continued in the direction of the surrounding trees, where they disappeared.
Ron and Hermione did nothing in retaliation. It was like they weren’t even there ”
They weren’t even there.
You know from experience that Voldemort enjoys using mind traps, much more than actually physical ones.
The thought flashed into his mind so quickly that he staggered back ” he gasped as he suddenly realized ”
These things were not Ron and Hermione.
“You’re not them,” Harry whispered, as the two apparitions impersonating his best friends raised their wands. “YOU’RE NOT THEM!” he cried, screwing his eyes shut, willing himself not to believe it even as two final bolts of green death were released. “YOU’RE NOT!” he screamed, the sizzling heat of the spells mere inches from enveloping his body...
The heat was suddenly gone, as if its source had been abruptly cut off. All was still around Harry. Somewhere nearby he heard a cricket chirp the first few notes of its repetitive song. Am I dead? he wondered, eyes still squeezed shut. I didn’t feel them hit me. Does that mean I’ve died?
Half-expecting to see Dumbledore or Ginny or maybe even that white light everyone always talked about, he cracked open one eyelid. Then the other. At first he was vaguely disappointed, but the disappointment was quickly overcome by immense relief at what he saw. The stars were just coming out in the darkening sky above him, and a light breeze rustled in the leaves of the trees that surrounded the little clearing. The same breeze giggled around Harry, ruffling his perpetually messy hair and insisting it take a look through the wide sleeves of his robes.
Harry thought that he had never felt so glad to be alive as in that very moment. He felt he could take on the entire world.
And the false Ron and Hermione were gone. The fog which had heralded their approach had completely dissolved. Harry was alone in the clearing.
His momentary high quickly wore off; his legs suddenly felt like nothing more than columns of jelly, and he allowed them to collapse in exhausted relief. He fell to his knees on the corroded earth beneath the tall, barren tree in the clearing’s center and tiredly rested his head against its smooth bark.
The smell of rain suddenly swept through the woods, and within moments a torrential downpour had been unleashed from the sky. Harry just sat there, like a stone pillar, in the clearing, the silence of which was broken only by one lone growl of thunder in the distance. Rain soaked into his robes and his hair, which plastered itself against his dripping forehead and neck. The water flooded down the lenses of his round glasses and blurred his vision.
He didn’t even notice when the sky began to progressively turn black, and stars twinkled on ” one by one ” above him. The rain became a gentle mist, then ceased altogether, but still Harry did not move. He knelt still as a statue until the shaking in his legs and hands had stopped; only then did he finally pull his now-aching forehead off the tree’s rough bark and sit back on his heels.
He sighed and ran his hand through his damp hair, making it stick up at odd angles from his head. “Well,” he murmured, dropping the hand back to his side, “the least Ron can say to me now is ‘I told you so.’ I seem to do nothing but get myself in trouble when he and Hermione aren’t around.”
Ron and Hermione!
The thought of his two best friends hit Harry like an electric shock, and he leapt to his feet with a gasp. “I left them,” he whispered, horrified. “I left them ” back there ” to fend off the werewolves alone ” Harry, you idiot!”
Now you stop that, Harry, a part of his brain chided sternly. Calling yourself names will do nothing for anyone, least of all Ron and Hermione. Just calm down and try to think this through rationally.
Harry pulled himself together and began to pace back and forth, thinking furiously. There’s a good chance neither of them were stupid enough to come charging after me... Even if Ron didn’t think twice about it, Hermione would surely pull him back ” they might be perfectly safe. My top priority right now should be to get out of here and find them right away. He paused in his frantic pacing and bit his lip worriedly. But that’s not going to be easy with a couple thousand werewolves hanging around, waiting for Voldemort himself to show up...
“Dammit,” he muttered, then grimaced. He had been talking to himself far too much lately. It was high time he was getting back to Ron and Hermione, before he lost it completely.
His mind was suddenly made up. He fell to a crouching position and crept around the enormous tree until he reached the wall of bushes that he’d jumped through before. Then, flattening himself against the muddy ground, he made a small hole in the thick shrubs with both hands and listened intently.
As Harry had expected, a pair of guards stood just outside. Peering upward through the hole he could see that they were two relatively short, stocky men wearing trousers, ragged shirts, and no shoes. They, however, seemed to care much more about keeping a neat appearance than their partners-in-crime, though Harry assumed by the scars crisscrossing what little he could see of their bodies that they too were werewolves. For some reason they reminded Harry of Lupin, although he couldn’t imagine why...
They were currently talking about such insignificant things as the strange weather, and one complained ” though in a dry, slightly bored tone that indicated his complete lack of real interest in the subject ” that being a guard was too wet a job for his taste.
The conversation went on in this vein for quite some time, and Harry was soon fighting to pay attention in the hopes that one of them would let some vital piece of information slip. It also didn’t help that his eyelids kept insisting on closing. His ordeal had left him exhausted; but somehow he felt that letting unconsciousness claim him would not help in his current situation. He had to listen... listen... His eyelids drooped...
“...Fenrir’s hoping that tomorrow night will be just as clear.”
Harry’s eyes snapped back open and he strained his ears, listening.
“It’s full moon starting, uh, night after tomorrow, isn’t it?” the second werewolf asked casually.
“Mm-hmm,” the first mumbled unconcernedly. He chuckled quietly. “He wants them to see us, can you believe it? He wants them to be able to see what’s attacking them beforehand. Huh... Ironic, isn’t it?” he mused. “The ones they shunned destroying them all...”
“I kinda like it,” the second werewolf said slowly. He took a small, unconscious step back as he did so, until Harry could have reached out and touched the heels of his muddy feet. But he didn’t dare give himself away so stupidly; besides, he was practically paralyzed with the horror of what he was hearing. “It’s dramatic. They’ll pay for what they did to us. But...” His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “I wonder... why couldn’t he have waited one more night? Then we’d be in wolf form and be completely invincible. Instead, though, we’re going while still human...”
“I know,” the other answered just as quietly. “But I think we’ve been ordered to do it this way because they’ll react slower to a bunch of ordinary-looking humans. It’ll take them longer to realize what’s up, and by then we’ll have grabbed the advantage.”
When the second werewolf spoke again, his voice sounded slightly mollified, yet still mutinous. “Maybe... What about the Dark Lord himself, then? I don’t like taking our marching orders from him and his cronies, no matter what side he’s on... Once he gets what he wants... what will stop him from ””
The other werewolf shushed him and, in the following silence, Harry was sure he was looking about shiftily. Harry froze, not even breathing in the sudden quiet.
Then he began again in the lowest of whispers. Harry had to strain his ears to hear. “Actually, if you really feel that way, Fenrir’s been saying ” and this is strictly confidential, mind you, if you tell anyone else about this I’m sure he’ll gladly rip your throat out ””
Harry shivered. The werewolf was deathly silent.
“” but he’s been talking with his commanders about a plan to get to the Dark Lord’s people themselves, if they give something away or start getting too pushy. He’s already gotten a few safeguards in place, just in case, but he’s ready to shift into offensive at a moment’s notice.”
“Cross them before they cross us,” the second muttered to himself.
“Exactly.” The man chuckled in morbid glee. “As soon as he decides we’ve become ‘dispensable,’ or when he’s gotten what he ” and all of us ” wants, whichever comes first... he’s had it.” He giggled again. “I can’t wait.”
The other man mumbled something in reply, but Harry didn’t hear. He had already begun inching away, gradually letting the leaves fall back into place over the peephole he’d created. As he went, he slowly began to slide his wand out of his pocket ”
BOOOOOM!
An enormously loud noise like the sound of a cannon being fired reverberated throughout the little clearing, and for a second Harry stopped breathing. What was that?
“Hey!” one of the guards outside shouted. A few moments later, his disembodied head appeared just over the top of the tall bushes. By the vehement swearing going on just below him, Harry guessed that he must have been given a boost up by his short companion.
The head scowled darkly at Harry, who was sprawled across the ground less than a yard from the dead tree in the middle of the area. Then, suddenly, it smirked. “What the hell are you doing in there ” buttercup?”
Harry started at the idiotic nickname, having no idea where he’d gotten it from. Then he saw the tiny, half-dead yellow flower, one of the few living things in the clearing, sprouting up out of the wet ground just left of his head. “Ah,” he said, enlightened. “I was... um... I didn’t do...”
“Oh, shut up, buttercup.” The werewolf seemed to find his little rhyme extremely amusing, and sniggered at it for a minute or so before turning his attention back to Harry. “Don’t waste your breath explaining. You were trying to get out of here, weren’t you? Well, I feel I must inform you that the Dark Lord has put up with loads of barriers to keep anyone from getting in or out using magic.” He motioned his head toward the wand clenched in Harry’s fist, obviously of the mind that he’d been trying to use it to escape. “Won’t do you a bit of good, buttercup.”
The werewolf giving him his extra height used a break in his oaths to whisper something to him. A wide grin slowly spread across the top one’s unshaven face. “And the Dark Lord’s just now on his way, too!” he told Harry gleefully. “He had a couple things to take care of, but he’s coming now, and I’m afraid there’ll be little more left of you than that buttercup there, when he’s through with you.”
He grinned once more, a ghastly baring of crooked yellow teeth, and disappeared. “Been nice knowing you, buttercup,” his voice came faintly from outside. Then all was quiet again.
Harry’s heart pounded faster, as if expecting death to come at any moment and wanting to get in its fair share of beats before then. His mind raced just as quickly. Voldemort’s on his way over here... But he can’t get through using magic, so he’ll have to Apparate somewhere around the werewolves... which gives me... He did a few quick calculations on his fingers and sucked in his breath. Five minutes at the very most.
Better get moving, then.
He turned and started crawling away from the bushes, past the tree, which was shuddering slightly as if it were being torn up by the roots. Harry shivered and gave it a wide berth as he passed it. There was something he instinctively didn’t like about it, something that felt wrong... For some reason he felt he should avoid it as much as possible.
He reached the edge of the much healthier-looking trees opposite the wall of bushes, and chanced a look back. Nobody seemed to be watching him; they probably didn’t expect him to escape the old-fashioned, Muggle way. So he jumped to his feet and took off running.
As he raced through the woods, he shoved a hand into his robes pocket to make sure that everything he needed was still there. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the hard, rounded surface of Hufflepuff’s cup. Now that he finally had it, a familiar feeling of anxiety rose up in him again. This Horcrux had nothing to break, nothing to crack open, unlike all of the others so far. How in the world was he supposed to destroy the soul contained within when he didn’t even know how to get to it? Not to mention the enchantment on ” or even powers of, if that memory Dumbledore had shown him, centuries ago, was correct ” the cup itself, which he knew he had already seen once at work. Would it reactivate, whatever “it” was, and create more phantom versions of friends turning against him?
Harry shuddered to think what would have happened if he hadn’t figured out what the pseudo Ron and Hermione had really been. Voldemort would have love that, he thought grimly. Harry Potter, conveniently eliminated by an illusion.
As he fled blindly through the trees, stopping every few minutes to disentangle the hem of his robes from thorny bushes and weeds that clutched at them, he tried to make sense of the things he’d heard in the clearing. The boom that had come out of nowhere and brought his guards to investigate. What had made it? The strange tree in the center seemed quite a good suspect, but Harry didn’t see how something inanimate like that ” though not completely inanimate, he reminded himself, thinking about the way it had shaken itself ” could have possibly made such a noise. That’s a puzzle, Harry thought, but he had bigger fish to fry than a suspicious tree. He quickly moved on, putting both tree and noise out of his mind.
The werewolves. Their hushed conversation had given Harry a lot to think about. They were obviously planning to attack someone: wizards, by the sound of it. But they couldn’t possibly mean the entire Wizarding community in general. That was far too broad a category of people to attack... Fenrir would need millions, not just a thousand or so, scattered all over the globe to pull off something that spectacular...
A twig tugged persistently at Harry’s hair, and he yanked it impatiently away. It was then that he realized that he’d slowed his pace to a trot. Obviously his body wouldn’t allow him the capacity to think as hard as he was and at the same time avoid running into trees.
A thought suddenly struck Harry, a verdict delivered that his subconscious must have been working on for some time without his knowledge. He stopped in the middle of the endless forest, stunned.
Of course.
The Ministry of Magic itself had always been the lead of the Wizarding World’s anti-werewolf campaign. They themselves had been at the root of the prejudice that had spread throughout the world... Harry was glad to remember at least this from his History of Magic classes, though he wasn’t sure of any details. Attacking the Ministry itself would be a major hit to wizards everywhere, and it would also make an example of their leaders...
So Voldemort had told Fenrir to attack the Ministry tomorrow night. But they wouldn’t transform until the day after... And there, Harry realized, was their worst mistake in trusting Voldemort, even so little as they did. He didn’t really care whether they succeeded in their mission or not; he’d set the date so their attack occurred while they were still helpless humans. Well, more helpless than wolves, anyway, Harry amended. Especially with Fenrir Greyback in the lead, they would still be far more lethal than an average human; but even then, they wouldn’t last more than a few hours ” if even that long ” against the Ministry’s accomplished, wand-wielding wizards. True, the numbers were probably on Fenrir’s side, but even so... it was madness!
Voldemort was anticipating a massacre. But not of wizards ” though Harry was sure that the Dark Lord would count any such losses as an added bonus. The werewolves were planning to revolt, getting to be more of a nuisance than help, and Voldemort knew it.
“Cross them before they cross us.”
Always one step ahead, was Lord Voldemort. Harry felt sick to his stomach.
And then he was running again.
He ran on an angle, trying to circle around the werewolves’ camp, avoiding them completely but still getting back to Ron and Hermione, if they were where he had left them. He hoped they were still there, that they hadn’t run after him and been caught. Oh why, why had he left them? This had been by far the most stupid thing he had ever done.
Harry raced through the trees, clutching the cup in his pocket as he went. The noises of the werewolves grew louder and louder, until they sounded worked up into a frenzy. And then, just as suddenly, they fell silent.
Harry’s scar exploded with pain. The surrounding woods disappeared...
“You let him escape?” he asked, his quiet, high-pitched voice simmering with barely disguised rage. He lifted his wand in one pale hand and pointed it at the two werewolves cowering before him. “You had him cornered, and you turned your backs on him just long enough for him to escape?” The other beasts crowded around them, keeping a safe distance away and waiting warily for him to exact punishment. Rage overwhelmed him until he could hardly see straight, and he spat, “Avada Kedavra!”
A flash of green light, a whooshing sound, and the first werewolf crumpled to the ground, dead. Harry turned to the second guard, who was trembling with fear, and quietly said, “Lord Voldemort does not tolerate failure. Harry Potter is gone because of you...”
“Please, my Dark Lord!” the creature gasped, looking up at Harry with terrified eyes. “I didn’t know ” that he would dare to run ” I’ll bring him back, you have my word, sir, just please, please, have mercy... Give me another chance...” His words died away as he realized just how impossible they were.
“Another chance,” Harry said slowly through emaciated lips. “And what do you think would happen if I were to give you that chance and you didn’t bring Potter back? What then, wolf?”
The guard twitched, then turned around and bolted. The crowd of werewolves parted before him like the Red Sea, giving him a clear pathway to escape. He was almost to the trees, though he must have known how futile his attempt was...
“Avada Kedavra!”
A twin flash of light, and another body littered the grassy space. Harry turned to stare at Fenrir Greyback, who stood, looking fearlessly back, just behind him. “Discipline your troops better, Greyback,” he said coldly, “or the loss of two mediocre guards will be as nothing compared to the consequences.”
Greyback bowed, but a slightly scornful expression dominated his face. “As you wish, my lord.”
“Good,” said Harry, his anger retreating into the corner of his mind, and he began to fade away...
Harry opened his eyes to see dewy green, and he pulled himself up to kneel on the grass. He hadn’t had a vision like that in almost two years now; it troubled him to know that it was happening again. Voldemort knew he was closing in, and he no longer cared as much as he had, whether Harry broke into his mind or not. He was here.
Harry jumped to his feet, lunged a few blind steps forward ”
” and slammed right into another body, which gave a little “oof” of surprise before toppling backwards onto the ground, Harry on top of him. Harry felt sick; the world spun around his head and he dimly heard Hermione’s voice exclaim, “Harry! Ron, it’s Harry!”
“I noticed,” came Ron’s disgruntled voice as he sat up and roughly pushed Harry off him.
“Ron, don’t push him,” said Hermione reproachfully, helping Harry sit up. The trees ran in circles around him, but the longer he stayed still the slower they went, until they were only swinging slightly. “Can’t you see he’s dead on his feet?”
“Maybe he wouldn’t be so dead,” Ron growled, “if he hadn’t bloody well run away from us in the first place! What d’you have to say for yourself, eh, you stupid prat?”
For answer Harry fell sideways and vomited all over the grass in front of him. Ron jumped back.
“Harry!” Hermione cried, hovering above him as if wanting to help, but not quite sure how. “What’s wrong?”
Harry couldn’t answer; a roil of emotions that were not his own ” rage, hatred, frustration ” were tearing through his head. It hurt... and in the midst of it all, he was afraid. What is this? What’s wrong with me? Is all of this Voldemort...?
And then, abruptly, all of it was gone, as surely as if Voldemort had put up a brick wall between them. Harry’s mind was his own again; and with the alien feeling, went the nausea. His stomach was suddenly calm, like it had never been sick in the first place. He lifted his head and sat back up.
Ron and Hermione were both staring warily at him, waiting, maybe, for something to happen again. “I ” I’m okay,” he assured them, surprised at just how true those words were. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m fine.”
They surveyed him dubiously for a moment, Ron crouching on the floor before him and Hermione standing above the both of them. Then, apparently certain that Harry was alright, Ron swooped upon him again. “As I was saying... What have you got to say for yourself? We tried to chase after you and ran into three or four of your werewolf buddies. Hermione had to get them with Levicorpus ””
Harry looked, grinning, up at Hermione. She blushed.
“Well, much as I disapprove of some of those spells, Harry, some of them are quite useful... and that was the first thing I thought of!” she added defensively.
Ron frowned bad-temperedly at them. “Do you mind?” he snapped. Harry and Hermione looked back to him. “Thank you! Anyway, Hermione got them with Levicorpus, and then we took them out with a few good old-fashioned Stunning Spells. After that all we could do was wait and hide and hope that you hadn’t been captured or ” or eaten or something! And then you just come waltzing back here, puking all over us ””
Hermione giggled involuntarily. Then again. Within seconds she was laughing full-out, holding her sides and almost doubled over. “Ha! Hahahahaha...!”
Harry and Ron stared at her in shock. “Uh, Hermione... are you okay?” Ron asked hesitantly, shooting Harry a worried look out of the corner of his eye. “What is it?”
“Oh! I’m sorry!” she gasped, tears trickling out of her eyes. “I just ” you know, it’s been so hard lately... And then Ron, you ” you come up with this, and... and... I just couldn’t help it! It wasn’t even all that funny, but...” She started laughing helplessly again.
Ah, Harry thought, enlightened, I get it now. After all the immediate danger’s past, she just had to let go of some of the tension... And it was Ron’s “puking” that got to her first. A smile tugged at the corner of his own mouth; and after a moment of fighting it, he gave in, laughing just as hard as Hermione.
Ron watched them, an almost indignant expression on his face. “What’s the matter with you two? Have you gone completely off your rockers?”
Harry and Hermione stopped, looked at each other, and then burst into even louder fits of hilarity. Ron’s face twitched as he said, “I can’t believe I’m being the most serious of all of us right now.”
That did it. The very thought of himself being more serious than Hermione or even Harry broke down Ron’s defenses, and a wide grin spread across his face. “You...” He chuckled. And within seconds he, too, had joined in the others’ pointless laughter, celebrating the glorious facts that they were all alive, unhurt, and ” for the moment ” safe.
Harry reflected later that it was probably one of the happiest times he had ever spent with his two best friends.
Hermione was the first to stop laughing. She watched the two boys rolling on the ground for a while, then snapped, “Alright, that’s enough, you two. We’ve got things to do, remember? And Harry, you never told us if you found the Horcrux Professor Lupin told us about or not.”
Harry grew serious immediately, and elbowed Ron in the ribs to shut him up. “Right. You don’t know this stuff yet...”
He summarized for them all that had happened from the point when he had run away from them to when he’d found them again, leaving out only two parts: the tree that moved by itself and may or may not have made noises, and his brief dive into Voldemort’s head. He didn’t tell them about the first because he didn’t want them to think he was crazy; and as for the second, he didn’t think either of them, Hermione in particular, would like the idea of him being pulled into Voldemort’s head again, especially since it had been almost two whole years since the last time. But everything else: his werewolf guards’ conversation, the discovery and fighting of the cup Horcrux, Voldemort’s return, and his escape; all of that, he relayed to them.
Neither of their reactions were surprising. Hermione was shocked by everything, and Ron was greatly impressed.
“Wonder how we’ll get rid of this one?” he said, leaping to his feet and striking a dramatic pose. “Maybe we’ll run it through with another basilisk fang!” He pantomimed a stabbing motion. “Or! Maybe we can feed it to one of Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Skrewts! That ought to fix it!”
“Yeah, because basilisk fangs and Blast-Ended Skrewts are really easy to come by, Ron,” Hermione said sarcastically. “Just one Galleon per fang at the apothecary. And baby skrewts you can get for just ten Knuts and a few fingers apiece!”
“Hey, I’m just throwing ideas around here,” said Ron, looking wounded. “I don’t hear you volunteering any ideas.”
“Well, how about this,” Harry said quickly, just as Hermione indignantly opened her mouth. “Let’s just concentrate on getting out of here alive, and then we can figure out how to destroy the Horcrux. Okay?”
Ron and Hermione both grumbled a little, but Harry ignored them. They had more pressing matters to attend to than fighting amongst themselves.
“Alright then,” he said briskly. “Let’s do this.”
Harry Potter and the Seventh Soul by PadfootBaby
Chapter Notes: Okay. So here we are. I really had barely any motivation to finish this story now that we know what REALLY happens in book 7, and my version sucks compared to the real thing, but I decided I had to do it. Mostly for you guys - but I also hate leaving stories unfinished. So here you go, guys: the REAL longest chapter of the story. ;) Enjoy!
Oh yes, and one more thing. One sentence in this chapter is a tribute to DH. See if you can spot it!