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Chapter 60

As it was getting close to the evening, Harry and Hermione decided that the walk down to the forest to release the snake would be a nice one for the two of them. Hermione carried the snake draped over her shoulders because it was a little uncomfortable hanging off Harry's one arm. A few words of encouragement from Harry had the snake trusting Hermione. As they walked, they talked about everything they had just learned about what happened with Sirius finding a Horcrux. "How do you feel after finding out about everything?" Hermione asked.

"Honestly a little stressed. Not because of the Horcrux, we were already looking for those and I sort of expected stuff like this. It's not that it isn't nerve-racking, it is but I was prepared for it you know? Okay, the idea that there is one of those, in the school powering the curse on the Defence position is getting to me. But you want to know what it is that's really stressing me out? It's that one, all it took for Voldemort's plan to have an opportunity to steal my blood was for Malfoy to see the curse breaker leaving. It was such a small opportunity, and the ferret jumped on it. It makes me wonder how many other plans are just waiting for an opportunity to get at me," Harry said, kicking a stone along as they walked across the grounds.

"I can understand that. It must feel like you have assassins waiting around every corner. But I think you are relatively safe for the next few months. Voldemort is going to be focusing on getting his army healthy again. Just look at what happened to us in our third year when we got close to the Dementors. Some of them have had that for almost fourteen years, and even the people caught at the end of last year have been there for months. You don't recover from exposure like that overnight," Hermione tried to cheer him up a little.

"Maybe you're right, but I'm not sure. After all, Voldemort just set up Malfoy to do his dirty work and was focusing on how to break everyone out of Azkaban. For all we know, he set up another six plans that are just waiting for their opportunity to strike."

Hermione admitted Harry had a point and changed the subject slightly. "What's the other thing bothering you? You said one. That kinda follows that there are two at the least." her fingers of the hand not wrapped around Harry idly stroking the scales of the snake as she spoke.

"Dumbledore," Harry admitted. "The man is back in the school and has a weird obsession with me. Now we find out he knew about Horcruxes already. I think he knew what was in my scar and wanted me to die so Voldemort could be killed. That's why I was sent to the Dursleys, so I would have nothing to lose and he could keep throwing me at Voldemort. Maybe he hoped that I could somehow hurt him, but if I didn't and died then at least the Horcrux would be destroyed and Dumbledore would get to keep his hands clean." Harry explained how he saw it now given everything he knew.

That was a worrying thought for both of them, so Harry changed the subject again to Christmas; with it now being November, it was less than two months away. "So does your family have any plans this Christmas?" The question of whether they could spend it together was left unspoken but not unheard.

"They haven't told me about anything, so I assume it's going to be a family Christmas at home. But as we have a Floo at my house now I'm sure I can come visit for an hour or two," Hermione speculated.

"Any hints on what you want for Christmas this year?" Harry asked.

Hermione, who wasn't the type to go around making lists of material things she wanted as a habit, normally would still have had a few ideas. But suddenly she felt her mind go blank as she was put on the spot. "I… have no idea right now. My mind has gone blank."

Harry laughed. "Well, give me a heads up when the brain starts working again."

"You can laugh, what about you Harry, what do you want?" asked Hermione.

That stumped Harry, he was so used to not having things for so long that now he had all the stuff he used to wish for. Clothes that fit him, and while the desire for a bike had been replaced by a broom, he even had that now. Wanting more felt greedy.

They arrived at the forest, and once they had walked a little way in, not far enough to be dangerous but still far enough that they could only barely see the school through the trees, Harry summoned and stunned a rat that looked large enough to be a good meal for the snake. The snake thanked Harry, swallowed the rat whole and still alive, and slithered away into the forest to digest its meal.

They were just walking back to the castle when two figures stepped out from behind trees, blocking their path. Crabbe and Goyle were doing their big intimidating tough guy act, cracking their knuckles and trying to look scary. Harry and Hermione just stopped and looked at them, waiting to see where this would go.

It was Goyle who spoke first. "You got Draco thrown in Azkaban and now you need to pay," he said, and the two of them drew their wands.

Hermione. though, was faster than either of them or even Harry, who, thanks to not wearing his wrist holster while his arm healed, instinctively went for his wand in the wrong place. Hermione pointed her wand at a tree that was behind and between the two and without hesitation cast "Fulmenactus!" A bolt of lightning came flushing forth from her wand and struck the tree behind them. The lightning discharge flash-boiled the water under the bark, causing it to explode out from the tree, covering the two boys in harmless debris.

"That is the same spell Harry used to kill a fucking goddamned dragon." The statement was punctuated by the fact that she and Harry were actually wearing the coats Harry had asked to be made from its hide. "An extremely deadly combat spell both he and I are more than proficient in. One that would boil your blood as it still pumped through your veins, and one neither of us will hesitate to use in self-defence. Run back to your dungeon and I won't be forced to leave you as two smouldering hunks of overcooked meat." Hermione sounded incredibly angry as she spoke and none of them, not even Harry, thought she was bluffing. They say knowledge is power, and nowhere was that more true than in the wizarding world. At that moment, power was radiating off of Hermione in waves.

Harry couldn't help but stare at Hermione as the Slytherins turned tail. It wasn't often that something pushed her far enough to be dangerous, and the truth was Harry had missed a lot of them, but when she was like that she reminded Harry of the legends of warrior queens of old. Hermione noticed him staring intently at her and, blushing, asked "What?"

Harry simply replied with, "Sexy as fuck," and gently, so that any resistance would stop him, pushed her against the now dying tree and claimed her lips with his own. The two of them were lucky they were prefects, because they didn't make it back before curfew.

-ϟϟϟ-

At breakfast the next morning Harry and Hermione told Ron and Susan, who was sitting with Ron again, about Crabbe and Goyle's attempted ambush.

"God I wish I could have seen the look on the gormless idiots faces," said Ron as he pulled a face that looked like his brain had been turned off. "You just know those two are stupid enough to believe that just because they are purebloods they have more magic than seven muggleborn, only to have one muggleborn scare the shit out of both of them with one spell. I'd have paid to see it."

"Don't be so crass Ron," Susan lightly chided him. "But you two need to be careful. They may have been open about it the first time, thinking they could overpower you, but they won't be so brazen next time. Remember they are Slytherins, they think shooting spells at your back is a legitimate battle strategy."

That was a sobering thought. Crabbe and Goyle may be piss poor wizards, but they had at least made it to their O.W.L. year without being held back. The full body bind was a first year spell, and if they were caught from behind unprepared, the results of what they could do once the two of them couldn't move to fight back wouldn't be pretty.

"So what do you recommend we do?" asked Hermione.

"Keep to your common rooms as much as you can, and try to be in a large group when you can't," Susan suggested.

"Sod that," said Harry. "If they want to play at ambushing and cursing people in the back, two can play at that game. And I guarantee I am far better at that game than they could ever be." And Harry wasn't bluffing, with the invisibility cloak, the Marauders' Map and a few simple spells, he could be the perfect hunter.

"That sounds almost like a Slytherin," Susan said.

Harry shrugged. "It was one of the Houses the Sorting Hat considered for me."

"One of them? Not the other? How many houses did the Hat consider you for?" Susan asked.

Harry decided to try and be funny. "Let's see there was that one, and that one, and of course, all of them."

"If you had the qualities of all the houses, how did you end up in Gryffindor?" Hermione asked, as Harry had never told her this story.

"Because I absolutely refused to be put in Slytherin. It was the house of my parents' murderer, and I'd already had the misfortune of meeting Malfoy twice. Slytherin just sounded like a really bad idea. And apparently, opposing Slytherin is an extra Gryffindor trait and the Hat stuck me here," Harry explained.

"Pity, you could have done well in Hufflepuff," teased Susan.

-ϟϟϟ-

The rest of the week passed without incident. Crabbe and Goyle seemed to be avoiding Harry and Hermione as much as they could. Harry was sure it wouldn't last, but at least for now everything was quiet. Saturday rolled around, and with it the time for Harry to help open the Horcrux. Sirius came by the castle not long after breakfast to collect Harry. As they walked across the school grounds on the way to the front gate so that Sirius could Apparate them to their destination, Sirius asked him, "Harry, how is your shoulder coming along?"

Harry rotated his shoulder a little to test his range of movement, and after a wince said, "A little better but it's healing very slowly. Magical healing has sort of spoiled me, I'm too used to things being completely better. Maybe a few hours to a day tops."

"At least it's getting better. Rather a slow healing injury than one that's permanent," Sirius offered as a pearl of wisdom. "So how are things with you and Hermione?"

Harry eyed his godfather. He wasn't the type to normally pry like this, so the old mutt was up to something. "Everything is going fine. A little stress from me being stabbed and then the two of us being ambushed by Crabbe and Goyle, but genuinely between the two of us it's good. I have been trying to work out what to get her for Christmas. Why are you asking?"

"Making sure someone has had the "don't prematurely add to the population" talk with you?" Sirius said. It wasn't his real reason, but he didn't want Harry to guess anything and it was fun to tease his godson like this.

"Grandfather already covered all that. I know the charms and the potion recipes so there is nothing to worry about." Harry couldn't even look at his godfather.

Sirius was having fun, and while Harry was embarrassed like this he wasn't worrying about Horcruxes, so Sirius pressed. "Swear to me you have never forgotten protection."

"Haven't needed it yet," Harry admitted.

"You expect me to believe you and Hermione are all over each other but haven't…?" Sirius didn't want to call Harry a liar but he was having trouble believing that.

"We have done stuff, just not that." Harry clarified, and that Sirius could believe a lot easier. They crossed the gates and the ward line at this point, so Sirius reached out, took hold of Harry's arm, and Disapparated.

When they reappeared, Harry threw up. The feeling of being squeezed through a bicycle in a tube really messed with Harry even worse than when he braced for it. Harry got his revenge for Sirius pulling a stunt like that by aiming for and hitting Sirius's shoes with the regurgitated mix of toast, beans, and egg.

As Sirius waved it all clean with his wand, Harry threatened, "If you ever do that to me again, I will put you in a full body-bind, hit you with a continuous tickling jinx, and leave you in a cupboard until someone happens to find you." Sirius just laughed. Harry looked around, and from what he could see they were in the middle of nowhere without a building for miles. "Where are we?"

Sirius just smiled and called "Williams!" The curse breaker Harry had seen around Hogwarts suddenly stepped out of nowhere. He didn't Apparate, as there was no loud crack. Instead, it looked more like he had stepped out from behind an invisibility cloak.

"Morning Heir Potter, Sirius," said the man.

"Welcome to the Horcrux research cottage." As soon as Sirius said that Harry watched as a building materialised out of thin air directly behind Williams, where he had stepped from only seconds before. It took Harry a few moments for him to realise the property was warded so well that nobody could even see the building unless they already knew about it. Considering it was also a random muggle building in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like a solid defence.

Williams led them inside to the kitchen and offered everyone tea. Harry gladly accepted if for no other reason than to wash the taste of sickness from his mouth. "Mr Potter, what do you know about what we are doing today?" asked Williams as he set a kettle on a stove he had just lit with a flick of his wand.

"Well, you have one of Voldemort's -" the man flinched at the name, "Horcruxes. You need to study it to see if we can use it to locate the others, but this one is in the Locket of Salazar Slytherin which can only be opened by someone who speaks Parseltongue. So I need to work out how to open the Locket, and once it's open you will take it and do your research while I go back to school," said Harry.

Williams nodded. "In general you are correct, but in reality it's going to be a little more involved than that. Do not take this as an insult, but you are a child and we are talking about exposing you to one of the darkest things magic ever developed. While more experienced with dealing with the dark arts than even most adults, you are still woefully under-experienced to be allowed to deal with this level of dark magic. Because of that, we are going to be taking every possible precaution to keep the magic of the Horcrux contained. Which, to be honest, also makes it far safer for me to study. Tell me, what do you know about runic magic?"

"I'm about to take my O.W.L. in it this year."

"Excellent, so you should be pretty familiar with the concept of an array?"

Harry indicated he was. An array was a collection of runes, often in a circle, that worked together to produce a desired effect. They could get really complicated really quickly if you needed more than one simple effect. Most enchanted items that lasted longer than a week were done with runic arrays. A lot of companies went to great lengths to hide and protect their arrays, because for example if someone discovered the array used to make a Firebolt you could enchant any broom with those runes and make your own knockoff that could probably match the Firebolt in performance.

"Well, I have reworked the old back bedroom into a work room. In the floor, I have carved an array that I believe will contain the Horcrux, but for you and I to interact with the Locket to open it or to study it in my case, we need to follow certain steps," explained Williams.

Soon, Harry found himself in the workshop in brand new skin-tight clothes staring at an array that could be considered a work of art. When Williams said he had made a workspace and carved an array, Harry wasn't expecting anything like this. He had definitely made the room bigger on the inside, because this one room had more floor space than the entire cottage. And he hadn't just carved an array.

From what Harry could see, he had poured a concrete floor so that it was perfectly smooth with no breaks, just one continuous piece. Then he had carved what looked to be seven of the most complex arrays Harry had ever even heard of all, inside one another and acting together. Then he had filled every channel, groove, and carved rune with molten copper before letting it harden, and then buffing and polishing every part of it until every line was as smooth and mathematically perfect as human hands could make. The entire room was dust-free, and both Harry and Williams were wearing skin-tight clothes so that there was no chance of a bit of stray cloth laying over part of the array and diminishing the effect even slightly.

Williams took out a lead chest that Harry knew contained the Horcrux and explained what was going to happen to Harry and Sirius, who was ready to step in if the situation called for it. "I will place the Locket at the centre of the containment array, while you kneel in that circle there." He pointed to a smaller circle that sat on the third-level array. "I will raise the first two levels of protection, then you will start trying to open the Locket. When it opens, you will retreat back and I will continue to raise the remaining five ward levels. If by chance anything happens to me, the layers are set so that they only need a single drop of blood each on the unbroken outer ring of the level to be raised. You need to be outside the layer when you raise it, else you will be trapped inside. Any questions?"

There wasn't, everyone was clear on what their jobs were and what to do if something went wrong. Harry knelt down in his spot and waited for Williams to lay out the Locket and raise the two wards. A quick prick of a finger to get a drop of blood was all that was needed, and the wards went up no problem. Harry could now feel an energy in the air like a low buzz of electricity. It made him wonder just how powerful Williams had made these arrays if he could feel them like this.

Sirius waved his wand and conjured a snake in a glass tank across from Harry, and he started trying to open the Locket. By some luck, he got it right the first try. Apparently Salazar Slytherin or whatever ancestor he had inherited the Locket from didn't have much of a head for passwords. Harry had just tried the word "open", and it had been enough.

The Locket flicked open, and two things happened. First, two bands of copper erupted from the concrete underneath the Locket and wrapped around it so that it couldn't close again. The second looked like some kind of special effect they would use on TV after someone rubbed a genie's lamp. Smoke bellowed up from the Locket and formed into a vagey humanish face.

As Harry stood up and calmly started walking backwards, the face turned to look at Harry and spoke. "I know your heart, boy. You wish to protect her. To save her from the destruction that awaits her kind. Free me, kneel before me, and swear to serve and I will gift her to you. She will be off limits to my followers."

For about one second Harry was tempted. A way to guarantee Hermione's safety was an intoxicating proposition. But the part of Harry's brain that tried to figure out how that would work shut it down almost immediately. It was clear this part of Voldemort had no idea who Harry was. No way would Voldemort give up on killing Harry no matter what a fragment of his soul promised. And Hermione would rather die than live as a pet in a gilded cage. She could never accept such an arrangement.

So as Harry backed off, he made sure to keep the Horcrux's' attention on him while Williams raised the wards to their maximum. "Serve you? I am Harry fucking Potter! Sworn enemy of Tom Riddle. You killed my family, and in revenge I have killed you four bloody times already. I have destroyed two of your Horcruxes. The only reason I haven't destroyed you already is because I need information on where the rest of you are hiding. I'll give you one opportunity to take the easy way, but I really hope you choose the hard way."

Harry must have pushed too far, because as Williams was about to raise the last ward the Horcrux struck out at them and sent a pulse of magic through it. Like standing on a piece of metal and being struck by lightning, the effect wasn't pretty for Williams, as he was thrown away from the last ward line with it still down.

Harry didn't hesitate and strode forward, biting his thumb as he went, tearing the flesh enough that it started to gush quite a lot of blood. He slammed his thumb down on the copper line, spilling his blood that was also his mother's blood onto the array. None of them could have predicted it, but the protection against Voldemort that Harry's blood carried supercharged the array and all of the ones inside it. Voldemort was pushed back with a scream of pain and Harry quipped, "Looks like it's going to be the hard way." Sirius couldn't help but laugh at Harry's words as he rushed forward to attend to Williams, who was disoriented and dazzled from being thrown back like that.

While Sirius checked over Williams, his wand waving over him as his old Auror training kicked in to deal with first aid, Harry examined his thumb. It was still bleeding rather heavily because he had actually managed to bite off a chunk of the pad of his thumb in his adrenaline-fueled haste. Now, though, the adrenaline spike was wearing off and Harry's thumb was complaining about his abuse of it with an excessive amount of pain. Harry tapped it with his wand and muttered an incantation to stop the bleeding, but it was too big a wound for him to do more than stop himself from slowly bleeding out. Harry thought about it for a second and realised a curse breaker like Williams probably had an emergency supply of potions in his workroom in case of situations like this, so he started checking cupboards for a first aid kit.

He found it in the cupboard nearest the door, inside a traditional-style doctor's bag. He opened it and started looking for things that would be useful. He found something for his thumb first, a bottle of murtlap essence which he set aside while he continued to look. Eventually he did find something to help Williams as well, a potion to relieve a concussion. Harry handed the bottle of potion to Sirius and then took the murtlap back into the kitchen to find a suitable bowl or glass he could use to soak his thumb. He found a shot glass, which he thought was perfect as it would allow him to submerge his thumb completely without wasting too much essence. As soon as he put his thumb in the glass of extract of tentacle juice, it was like a wave of relief as the throbbing pain failed away.

After about ten minutes, Sirius and Williams came to join him. "How's your thumb?" was the first thing Sirius said. "Sorry I left you to it but banged heads take priority over bleeding thumbs."

"It's fine, I had it handled." He nodded to the bottle of murtlap essence and said to Williams, "Sorry about swiping your essence."

"Nah kid, that's exactly what it was there for. Never apologise for using something from a first aid kit if you need it. Just make sure the person in charge of restocking it knows something has been used. And damn kid, what the hell is in your blood? I thought seven ward layers were overkill but I completely underestimated how much power that thing had just before it hit me. I was worried seven may not be enough but then you added your blood and not only is it working but it's actually repelling the Horcrux. The smoke is now about the size of a snitch in the dead centre of the rings, unable to move."

Harry looked down at the table in front of him. "My mother gave her life to protect me from Voldemort. It did something I honestly don't really understand, but now I have a sort of protection against Voldemort. The Horcrux is part of Voldemort, so the protection extends to that. Using my blood must have given the wards an extra no-Voldemort kick," he said. He didn't like talking about how his mother died. Ever since the Dementors had unburied that memory, talking about it meant having to watch the memory on repeat in his head until he could think of something else.

It took an hour for Harry's thumb to finish healing but when it was done, Sirius decided it was time to get Harry back to Hogwarts. At least there Madam Pomfrey could take a look at Harry's thumb and make sure everything was healed okay.

A/N

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