Pieces of a Soul

Chapter 8: Severed

"Am I to understand that the Weasley boy bought a locket from Borgin just yesterday?" Lord Voldemort asked coldly, staring at a quivering Peter Pettigrew, who was kneeling so low on the cold stone floor of the throne room that he was nearly kissing the floor at his master's feet.

"Y-y-yes, Ma-aster," Wormtail stammered, not daring to meet Voldemort's eyes.

"When was this locket acquired by Borgin, Wormtail?" Voldemort persisted, lazily flicking his wand and causing Peter to suddenly gasp in pain as the tiniest sample of the Cruciatus Curse invaded his body.

"I d-don't know, M-m-master," Wormtail answered breathlessly.

"Of course not," Voldemort answered smoothly. "You were assigned to tail Potter, not Borgin."

"Yes, Master," Wormtail said, his relief evident that Voldemort realized he could not possibly have known of the locket.

"And yet you did not know the whereabouts of the locket before Potter and his friends came to Knockturn Alley to fetch it?" The Dark Lord's voice had begun to lower threateningly, and he flicked his wand again for just a bit longer, causing Peter to emit a short, high-pitched squeal.

"I w-was unable t-t-to hear wha-what Potter was uh-up to, M-m-master," Wormtail stammered. "The w-w-wards..."

"Wards," Voldemort scoffed. "You are a rat, are you not?"

"Y-y-yes," Wormtail answered, his forehead now touching the ground in his desperation to prove his devotion and subservience.

"You have utterly failed in your mission, Wormtail," Voldemort said softly. "I have told you, have I not, what happens to those who fail me?"

"M-m-my Lord...puh-please..." Wormtail simpered.

"Stand up," Voldemort ordered, and Wormtail complied, nearly tripping over the hem of his tattered black robes in his haste to obey.

As the Dark Lord cast a variety of painful curses on Wormtail, the other two occupants of the room watched with an interest belied by their nonchalant expressions.

Severus Snape had never had any great liking for the man being tortured in front of him - he had been one of Potter's friends, one of those fancying himself a "Marauder," and now was no more than a traitorous, lying weasel who, in Snape's opinion, deserved everything he got.

Even given that, however, and even given the fact that he served the most evil wizard of the age, Snape found this particular punishment session to be rather excessive, even by the Dark Lord's standards. Generally if Voldemort was as angry with one of his followers as he seemed to be with Wormtail, that person was killed. Snape wondered what it was about this locket that had the Dark Lord so enraged, and was even more interested when he read the plain look of greed on Lucius Malfoy's face as he watched the proceedings from beside Snape.

Peter's screams echoed off the stone walls of the chamber for what seemed like hours. When he was finished, the subject of Lord Voldemort's displeasure barely resembled a man, for his face and entire body were covered with an assortment of boils, burns and gashes.

"You," Voldemort hissed. "Snape. Take this out of my presence." He gestured contemptuously at Wormtail, who resembled nothing now as much as a stained heap of black robes lying motionless on the floor.

Lucius Malfoy's eyes glinted as Snape performed a simple levitation charm and took what was left of Peter Pettigrew from the room, ignoring the injured man's moans of intense pain. Just as the door was about to close, the reason for Malfoy's pleasure at Snape's assignment became evident.

"I find that I must reconsider my plans, Malfoy," Voldemort said smoothly. "The Potter boy knows more than he should."

~ x~x~x~x~x~x~x~

Harry's hands shook as he sipped his tea. Directly below him, a howl - of pain or of rage, nobody knew - sounded as clearly as though the walls and floors had not been constructed of thick stone. Remus Lupin might have been in the room with them, so plainly were they able to hear his shrieks of anguish as he waited for the moon to wane in the safety of the locked basement of Grimmauld Place.

"Labefactum viniculum..." Hermione muttered, trying to ignore what she was hearing from below as she concentrated on the translations of the runes they had found in Dumbledore's papers. She had been doing this for days, but always muttered the words in different orders, careful not to say the actual incantation as it was written with the Horcrux so near.

"Are you sure it doesn't feel weird to you?" Harry asked Ginny, handing her the locket for the umpteenth time.

She patiently took it and appeared to be considering the matter carefully, though she had long since concluded that either Harry was becoming paranoid or he could feel something that the rest of them couldn't.

"It's not a very strong vibration," Harry coaxed her, "but if you concentrate on it hard enough, you should be able to feel it. And doesn't it feel heavy to you?"

"I'm sorry, Harry," Ginny responded with sincere regret, "but it just doesn't feel strange to me. It feels like any gold locket would, not any heavier."

Harry nodded and took it back from her, stowing it once again in his pocket. He knew the others were likely losing patience with his constant insistence that something was strange about the locket, something other than the fact that a piece of Voldemort's evil soul resided inside it, but when he held the locket in his hands, not only did it feel many times as heavy as an object of its size should, but it seemed to hum slightly with a faint, buzzing kind of vibration. He just couldn't understand why he was the only one who felt it.

He sighed, his left hand straying into the pocket where the Horcrux was, turning it over and over as though this inane practice might give them a better idea of what to do with it. They were keeping their promise not to try anything it until Lupin had come out of seclusion, but in all honesty, they couldn't have anyway. Now that they had it, they really didn't know what to do with it. Their one comfort was that, as long as it was in Grimmauld Place, they knew it was as safe as it could possibly be, for it was very likely that no building in England, or perhaps even the world, was under better wards, charms and protection than the building they now inhabited.

Hermione, Ginny and Harry all jumped when Ron entered the room from the back garden, having spent most of the day at the Burrow with his parents, ostensibly helping his mother with some garden work, but actually because he needed a break from the constant tension between himself and his sister.

Though Ron had taken Ginny's side when her mother had found out she had left school, he had made it quite clear after the two women had made peace that he still did not approve of Ginny accompanying them on their journeys, and Ginny had responded to him with increasing frustration each time he broached the subject, until now, three days after they had obtained the locket, Hermione had finally intervened and suggested to Ron that his mother might appreciate it if he went for a visit.

Hermione got up from the table, pushing back her hair in agitation, and gave him a soft hug. "How was it today?"

"I swear Mum's got more garden gnomes than Hogwarts has house-elves!" Ron exclaimed without thinking. Hermione immediately stopped hugging him and glared at him reproachfully.

"And I suppose you threw them over the garden wall again, did you?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips while Harry and Ginny looked on, relieved to have something to concentrate on besides the object in Harry's pocket.

"Of course I did," Ron replied non-concernedly as he strode to the kitchen counter, removed an overripe banana from the bunch, and peeled it so quickly that one would have thought he was being starved to death.

"How many times do I have to tell you that you have to lure - " Hermione began as Ron stuffed his mouth full of the soft fruit.

"Ronald, that's disgusting," Ginny said lightly. "And Hermione, we've tried leaving food outside the walls for them. We've even tried leaving them flowers, which are almost like drugs to them. It doesn't work."

"Well, there's got to be a better solution than spinning them around and chucking them over a wall!" Hermione said, her eyes flashing. "It's not humane. They are living creatures and - "

"How are you coming on the rune translations, Hermione?" Ron asked, trying to deflect her. By now, they all knew that the discussion of any kind of harsh treatment to any kind of creature was not one in which they wanted to engage with Hermione, whether they felt justified in it or not.

They all looked at her as she seemed to struggle with whether or not to go along with the subject change. For a moment, it seemed as though she was going to continue ranting about the unfair treatment of garden gnomes when another earsplitting shriek followed by a loud bang sounded below them.

"I wish he didn't have to be locked up like that," Ginny said anxiously, worrying, as all of them were, that Lupin was hurting himself down there all alone.

"There should be a place for werewolves to go during the full moon," Hermione said ponderingly. "You know, like a refuge or something, because I'm sure that Professor Lupin isn't the only person who has ever had trouble taking the Wolfsbane Potion, and I would wager that some werewolves can't afford it or find the ingredients. They don't hurt one another, and they could be kept safe while they still didn't have to be alone."

"I think you might be onto something, Hermione," Ginny said with some surprise. This was the first time she had actually agreed with one of Hermione's ideas for improving the welfare of a downtrodden group. Most of them agreed with her in principle, of course, but thus far they had found all of her ideas for S.P.E.W. and the like rather irritating and slightly ridiculous.

"Of course, a society for their protection would also be a good idea," Hermione replied, thinking hard.

"How about those translations?" Ron asked quickly, hoping once again to cut her off before the situation became more serious.

"I've got the runes translated into Latin and English," Hermione snapped, glancing at Harry, who had sat silently through the whole exchange, fingering the necklace in his pocket. "I think, paired with what Professor Dumbledore had written in Latin already, that it might be the incantation we need. It makes sense."

"It didn't take an incantation to destroy the diary," Harry pointed out. "All I had to do was stab at it with that snake's tooth, remember?"

"Dumbledore wondered about that, too," Hermione replied. "I saw it on one of the corners of a page he was working on, written very quickly."

"What did he say?" Ron asked curiously, for they had all come to regard the pieces of parchments as extensions of the Headmaster they had loved so well. All four referred to them as if they themselves were imbued with Dumbledore's power, even though they knew it was not so.

"He said that the piece of the soul that was in the diary was already fragmented," Hermione explained.

"It was in that memory of him," Harry added, having read this part of the parchment over and over, trying to find clues as to how to destroy an intact Horcrux.

Ginny turned incredibly pale. "What if it was in me?" she whispered in horror, hardly able to stand the idea that anything so vile could have inhabited her body.

"His memory was in you, not his soul," Hermione said comfortingly as Harry squeezed her hand. "Professor Dumbledore was very clear on that. It takes powerful magic to transfer a Horcrux or to destroy one, but he was content to do that in the hopes of getting a body back, even if it was the body of his sixteen-year-old self. The Horcrux was beginning to transfer into his memory as he drew life force from you."

Harry didn't respond, preferring not to remember the nearly-dead Ginny on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets. He was simply thankful that nothing had happened to her in the end. He held her hand a little tighter as Ron continued the conversation, all of them trying to ignore the noise from below.

"But what about what the ring did to Dumbledore?" he voiced the question that none of them, thus far, had dared to utter out loud. "It burned up his hand, and then he was so weak that he..." he trailed off.

Hermione sighed. "Obviously, we're going to have to make sure Harry's safe, that we all are, when we try this." None of them failed to notice that she did not mention how, exactly, they were going to accomplish that.

"When?" Ginny asked, her voice trembling a little.

"Now that we know the incantation," Harry said, looking at Hermione, who nodded in confirmation, "it should be soon. The sooner the better, because we still have three more to find and destroy after this one."

The four teenagers fell silent again, listening to their own beating hearts and to the echoes of torture and despair issuing from the basement as they wrestled with their private fears and convictions. Now that the time had nearly come, they felt every inch as teenagers, no longer certain of their task or of what the future would hold.

~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~

"He's a man now," Molly Weasley said sadly to her husband as she watched Ron walk confidently through the front garden towards the Apparation point. She felt tears prick her eyes as he turned on the spot and disappeared, headed back to Grimmauld Place and to whatever horrible mission or task the teenagers had assigned to themselves.

"Well, Mollywobbles, you can't have expected him to turn into a woman, now could you?" Arthur responded, sipping his peppermint tea complacently. He had had a grand time that afternoon de-gnoming the garden with Ron, and he thought his son was an altogether capital fellow. He had said so several times over the course of the day until Ron was almost embarrassed by it. "Boys become men, girls become women, and our Ron was never a girl. Only Ginny was a girl."

"Yes, I know, dear," Molly sighed again as she cast a warming charm on her tea. Arthur no longer liked his piping hot, so she never heated the water to a full boil anymore and almost always had to charm hers to be hot enough to drink. "Speaking of Ginny," she continued, for she was making an effort to include Arthur in the parenting decisions and the day-to-day business of the family even though it seemed as though he had recovered as far as he was going to do from the curse that had hit him that summer, "I simply don't know what we're going to do about her."

"Do about her?" Arthur asked in frank bewilderment. Though Molly had kept him quite up-to-date with Ginny's activities up to and including leaving school to join Harry, Ron and Hermione at Grimmauld Place, he had yet to react in a way that satisfied her, and without his support she somehow felt lost, even though she seriously doubted he could even understand the gravity of the situation. "What on earth would we need to do about her, Mollywobbles?"

"Arthur, we've discussed this. You know she needs to be in school!" Molly protested, a desperate quality to her voice. She needed someone, anyone, to stand with her on this. Though she had made a tacit peace with Ginny because she could not stand to be at odds with her while the situation was so dangerous, she still wanted desperately for her daughter to return to Hogwarts and the relative safety of the castle with its rules, its regulations and, most importantly, its wards.

"School can be boring," Arthur said conversationally, and Molly felt a fond stab of remembrance, for he had often said the same thing while they were in school. Though Arthur was a very good wizard, he would always rather have been tinkering with Muggle and magical contraptions than learning the history and theory behind the spells he had mastered so easily.

"Yes, dear, I know that school can be boring," she conceded, knowing that she wouldn't be able to argue him out of that point. "But that doesn't change the fact that Ginny wants to be a Healer, and she'll be safer there, too."

"Ginny might be a good Healer," Arthur replied.

"I know she might," Molly said, her patience beginning to wear thin. "But she won't if she can't go to school, will she? Oh, won't you stand by me on this and tell Ginny she has to go back? Please, Arthur."

"Mollywobbles," Arthur said, setting his teacup too hard on the table so that his tea splashed out everywhere, "Don't you know what Harry Potter is doing?"

Molly was taken aback, for she had rarely seen her husband get this serious since he had had his accident. Indeed, the expression on her face was so grave that it reminded her of times in the past when he had come home from an especially hard day at the office. "Harry...he should be in school, too," she said faintly, though she knew that he could not be even if she did not care to admit it.

"Molly, this is important," Arthur said, banging his fist on the table. "Don't you understand that it is not about us anymore? It's about everybody, and Harry has to kill that monster, and if he doesn't have Ginny, he can't. So there!" His face had become red in anger for the first time since he had been cursed, and Molly felt her mouth drop open at his intensity.

"Why can't he do it without her?" Molly asked, trying to sound reasonable, but knowing that she sounded every inch the desperately afraid parent that she was.

"Because the only thing that beats hate is love," Arthur said. "You know that, and Dumbledore always said it. She loves him, Mollywobbles, just like I love you, and Harry needs that if he's going to get rid of that hate, doesn't he? What's the good in her being a Healer if there is no one left to heal?"

Molly could find no response to that and, as it was time for her to fix their dinner, she once again let the subject drop.

~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~

Harry placed the locket gingerly on the floor of the destroyed basement two days after the waning of the moon. Though the teenagers had felt ready to make a try of it as soon as Lupin was out of seclusion, they had found him to be too badly injured and far too exhausted to be able to participate, and out of respect for his wishes, they had waited until he declared himself ready. Harry was immensely relieved to find that as Lupin recovered from the full moon, he also seemed to be recovering from the virus that had been making him sick before the transformation. They were all glad of that because now, as they were finally going to begin an attempt to destroy Slytherin's locket and the Horcrux inside of it, they felt they would need all the help they could get. The mental picture of Dumbledore and his weakening strength and burning arm as he destroyed the Gaunt Ring was never far from their minds.

They stood in a circle around the large locket, each of them staring at it as though they expected something to happen right then and there. At a nod from Hermione, Harry said in as strong a voice as he could muster, "Solvo is animus! Labefactum viniculum quod ligo is ut is Terra! Solvo is animus! Tergum ut obscurum ex unde is venit." Though he had never actually verbalized the spell in its correct order, he had gone over and over it in his head and was quite relieved when it came out clearly.

Nothing happened, and the four teens and Remus Lupin looked at one another questioningly.

Harry repeated the spell, his confidence bolstered by the fact that the locket didn't seem to be dangerous even as his concern grew that they were going about this in the wrong way.

Still nothing happened.

"Let's say it together," Hermione suggested. "You know that a spell has more power if it is cast simultaneously with others. Maybe that's what has to happen."

"Dumbledore was alone when he did it," Ginny pointed out.

"Dumbledore was a right sight more powerful than we are," Ron retorted, still incensed that yet another attempt by him to keep Ginny from participating had been thwarted, this time by Lupin, who had insisted that Harry needed support from all of them.

"Will you two concentrate, please?" Hermione asked wearily. "Let's all point our wands at it and say the incantation with Harry. Maybe that will be enough to make something happen."

"Solvo is animus!" they chanted. "Labefactum viniculum quod ligo is ut is Terra."

Nothing happened even though Harry could almost feel the concentration of his friends in the air.

"Solvo is animus! Tergum ut obscurum ex unde is venit!"

Nothing. The locket simply lay on the floor as it had been placed, neither hot nor cold to the touch, nor changed in any noticeable way.

"Harry, you're sure this is the - " Hermione began uncertainly.

"I'm sure," Harry cut across her.

"Then why isn't it working?" Ron asked.

"Obviously," Ginny responded, "we're doing something wrong."

"Dumbledore was wearing the ring when he destroyed it," Harry said. No one replied, for they had all hoped that the necklace could be destroyed without any kind of physical contact from anyone.

After a long, tense pause, Lupin said quietly, "I'll hold it."

"No!" Harry cried. Lupin had already been through enough and he, Harry, was not about to let another person he cared for sacrifice himself for his sake.

Lupin ignored him, kneeling quickly to pick up the locket and hold it tightly in his fist. "Say the incantation," he ordered.

"No, I won't," Harry responded obstinately.

"Harry, listen to me," Lupin said intensely. "I'm going to be fine. Remember: destroying the Gaunt Ring did not kill Professor Dumbledore! It weakened him until he was not able to react in time to save himself, but I won't have to do that, Harry! You're all here with me and we're safe."

"But Dumbledore's hand..." Ginny said what they were all thinking.

"Could have been either mended by Madam Pomfrey or lived with," Lupin said gently. It was hard for all of them, especially now, to remember the events that had led to Dumbledore's death at the beginning of the summer. "Harry, say the incantation."

Harry looked straight into his guardian's eyes and saw that he would not yield, that unless he, Harry, was ready to duel with him for possession of the locket, this was the only way they were going to make any progress. Finally, he nodded, silently promising himself that if it looked as though Lupin was being seriously hurt, he would stop, Horcrux or no Horcrux.

Raising his wand and pointing it carefully at the locket dangling from Lupin's fist, which was clenched so tightly around it that the knuckles were white, Harry said the incantation. He could not decide whether he was relieved or frustrated when, once again, nothing happened.

A collective sigh rose from the group after Lupin himself tried saying the incantation and still nothing happened. It seemed that they were missing some important factor in the equation, but no one could put their finger on what it is.

"Harry's going to have to hold it," Hermione said after a long while had passed in silence.

"We tried that already, Hermione. Nothing happened when Professor Lupin held it," Ginny argued. "There's got to be something else wrong. Maybe the incantation..."

"The incantation is fine," Harry said quietly, for he had been thinking hard while they had stood in silence. "It matches Dumbledore's notes, and it matches what little I can remember about what he said during the battle."

"But what's the difference in Lupin holding it and Harry holding it?" Ron asked, for some reason feeling quite alarmed at the idea of Harry holding the Horcrux while it was destroyed, even though nothing had happened when Lupin had done it.

"Harry can feel something different," Ginny muttered, hating this idea more and more every time she thought about it, even though if she had told herself the truth, she would have admitted that she had been dreading this possibility ever since they had found the locket.

"It's because of the Killing Curse," Harry said, running his hands through his hair. Though he had suspected all along that he would have to be in contact with the Horcrux, he could not help feeling afraid as he remembered watching Dumbledore's hand burn black right before his eyes. "I've got some sort of connection with him; that's why he can perform Legilimency on me from a distance and why I had those dreams fifth year."

"But Dumbledore didn't - " Hermione began tentatively.

"I don't know how Dumbledore did it, okay?" Harry snapped, rounding on her, but he softened his tone when he saw the hurt expression on her face. "Look, I don't know how this works; I don't know why Dumbledore could do it and why the locket is different for me than it is for the rest of you. The diary wasn't like that, and I don't understand any of this. I'm pretty sure anyone could have destroyed the diary because I didn't even have to say a spell to do it."

"According to Dumbledore's notes," Lupin broke in, "the diary was the first Horcrux he made, and he made it with a random murder, something that wouldn't have excited as much emotion or power as the others did. He made the ring Horcrux soon after when he killed his uncle, and it stands to reason that that one would have been stronger." He stopped short of discussing the locket, because he, too, had been dreading the idea that Harry himself might have been the only one able to destroy it. Just the day before they had found the locket, Lupin had run into something very disturbing in the notes, something the teens had overlooked. Perhaps...he thought, but then he cleared his mind forcibly, not willing to even entertain the possibility that what Dumbledore had written could be even remotely true.

"Give me the locket," Harry said a little too loudly, revealing his nervousness to everyone in the room.

Lupin looked searchingly at him, reaching desperately into his own mind for another way to do this. Finding nothing and knowing in his heart that Harry was right and that it had to be done, Lupin handed it over, willing his hands not to shake.

To everyone's astonishment, Harry didn't keep the locket in his hands, but unclasped the chain and put the locket's thick gold chain around his neck. Though he knew no one but himself could feel it, the chain and the locket both hummed unpleasantly against his skin. "Let's do this," he said firmly to the others.

"Everyone touch him, just like we did in the spring when he was performing Legilimency," Lupin instructed quietly, moving behind Harry and placing both hands on his shoulders.

Having placed the locket around his neck, Harry was able to offer both of his hands to Ginny, who carefully hid her shock at how cold and sweaty they were when she took them into hers. Out of everyone in the room, she was, perhaps, the only one who the extent of Harry's fear.

After Ron and Hermione had each placed one of their hands reassuringly on Harry's arms, Harry took a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest, willing himself not to falter, to be as brave as Dumbledore had been.

"Solvo is animus!"

He and everyone else in the room knew that something was different as soon as he had begun the incantation, though at that early point they could not tell what it was.

"Labefactum viniculum quod ligo is ut is Terra."

Harry's voice did not shake, but the rest of them began to notice a queer burning smell coming from him.

"Harry, no!" Ron shouted, the first of them to see that the locket was glowing a dim purple and was charring a hole right through the front of Harry's robes.

"Solvo is animus!"

"Stop it, Harry!" Hermione cried as she felt Harry's skin becoming hot.

"Don't let go of him," Lupin cautioned, his face deathly pale as he, too, felt the heat and prayed that no permanent damage would be caused to Harry, who he had come to love as much as if he had been his own.

Ginny, who was the only one touching Harry's bare skin, was the first to realize how hot he was truly getting. She gripped his hands even more tightly as hers threatened to loosen from the burning pain of the heat emanating from his skin. She would not let go even if her hands were burned as badly as Dumbledore's had been, and if she was feeling this much pain, her heart ached at the thought of what must be happening to Harry.

"Tergum ut obscurum ex unde is venit!"

The burning smell intensified as the locket, now glowing so brightly that it could have been seen from across the room in the dark, burned completely through the front of his robes and began searing his skin with a sickening sizzle reminiscent of sausages in a frying pan.

"Harry!" Ginny cried, unable to contain herself as she gazed into his face, which gave no sign of the pain he must have been in as he began the incantation again. "Harry, stop!"

Tears were streaming down Hermione's, Ron's and Ginny's cheeks as their own hands began to blister, and they knew that if Harry's body became much hotter, they would have no choice but to let go.

"Solvo is animus!"

A pulse of magical energy pushed outward from Harry, accompanied by the most intense wave of heat that any of his companions had ever felt. As one, Ginny, Ron, Hermione and Remus fell back, breaking contact with Harry as his body became too hot for even the lightest touch.

"Labefactum viniculum quod ligo is ut is Terra! Solvo is animus!"

Harry's voice began to falter as his body was lifted from the ground, the locket around his neck now pulsing with purple light that filled the entire room. The locket had burned through the skin in the center of his chest and he knew that if this did not end soon, it would burn right through his breastbone and straight into his heart.

It was agony; yet, somehow, Harry knew that he had to finish the second recitation of the incantation. Though his chest and body burned and his scar felt as though it would burst into flames itself, he knew he had no choice, that there was no turning back. With this thought, his mind cleared and he heard the unmistakable notes of phoenix song, and he was filled with courage.

"Tergum...ut ob...obscurum...ex...unde...is..."

Ginny's eyes filled with tears as Harry's body drifted slowly back towards the ground, his face twisted with pain and concentration, the locket still heavy on his chest, the smell of burning flesh growing more grotesque with every moment.

"...venit."

The occupants of the room were blinded as the locket emitted a final surge of energy and dissolved into liquid gold that pooled in the cavity of the burn on Harry's chest as he collapsed to the ground. When nothing was left of the locket and the room had returned to normal, they knew that it was over, but that mattered little to them as they hurried to Harry's prone and lifeless form.

"Harry!" Ginny and Remus called together, crouching next to him as Ron and Hermione pulled him into a sitting position.

There was no response.

~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~

The Dark Lord was uneasy. Ever since Albus Dumbledore had destroyed the Horcrux contained in his uncle Morfin's ring, he had wondered if anyone else had discovered their existence or locations. The fate of Slytherin's locket and one other artifact, in particular, concerned him greatly.

"Regulus Black," Voldemort hissed to himself, remembering with grim satisfaction the day that he had ripped his traitorous former servant limb from limb and watched as he had bled to death, crying for his mother. He had not known at that time that the young Death Eater had become aware of the particulars in his quest for immortality, and he would never have guessed that one of his precious Horcruxes had been stolen. If he had known at the time, of course, the young Black would have thought being dismembered was particularly merciful compared to what Voldemort would have done to him.

It had only been recently that Voldemort had discovered that Regulus had stolen the locket from its original hiding place, and as the traitor had already been rotting in the ground for almost twenty years, there was no way to find out directly where it had been taken. It was not until Wormtail's report of Potter and his friends purchasing a locket from Borgin and Burks that Voldemort himself knew the location of it, too late to do anything but wait and hope that the fools would not find a way of destroying it.

As he thought of this, Voldemort was suddenly overtaken by a pain the likes of which he had not felt since he had been ripped from his body after trying to kill the Potter boy nearly sixteen years before.

Almost finished.

The thought, Harry Potter's thought, flashed into his mind unbidden as Voldemort dropped to the ground, not hearing the horrified exclamations from the two young servants who had been waiting upon him.

Desperately, Voldemort attempted to enter Harry Potter's mind, to turn the tables, to distract the boy from his task, but it was no use. The connection was too strong for him to overcome its direction, and though he would never have admitted it to even his most trusted servants, he knew that he did not have the power to change it.

Burning. My heart...

Though the increasing pain in his chest, Voldemort smiled the cold smile that cast fear into his followers every time they saw it. Yes, Potter, your heart, he thought maliciously, carefully keeping his face from revealing his pain to the others in the room. The ancient enchantments placed upon the locket guaranteed that few would ever be able to destroy it, and that those who tried would pay with extreme pain and possibly their lives.

"Leave me," he hissed to his two young servants, and they obeyed without question.

Voldemort's mind went completely blank with one last, tremendous surge of magical energy and pain, and as he closed his eyes, he knew that it was over.

Lucius Malfoy, his curiosity piqued by the sight of the two young manservants rushing from the room, cautiously entered, and he could not stop a moment of pure, undisguised pleasure as he saw Lord Voldemort lying prone on the floor, his body lifeless. Before anyone else saw it, however, he carefully arranged his face into an expression befitting the most devoted and trusted servant of the Dark Lord.

He was just in time, for as he was approaching the crumpled figure on the floor, Bellatrix Lestrange entered the chamber, having not even known anything was amiss.

"My Lord!" she shrieked, and she rushed towards him.

There was no response.