Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Wheeeee!
Magic Never Dies
Chapter 24
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Harry set the cup and the locket down on the kitchen table at Grimmauld Place.
"It's time," he said resolutely. "They've got to go."
They'd stayed at Hogwarts for two full days after Harry had managed to return to his own form. Madam Pomfrey had smuggled him up to a well guarded Hospital Wing and poked and prodded every inch of him, pronouncing him both healing and oddly… changed.
"I've known him since he was eleven, seen more of him than I ought to, and I tell you there is something different now. His magic appears altered."
"We can't keep him from leaving simply because something is different," Professor McGonagall had said anxiously. "Surely, Poppy, there must be…" her voice had trailed off and her eyes shifted to the portrait of Dumbledore.
"It is Voldemort's soul within him. He has at least another piece now, and two more to cope with. Remember how he changed his third year after the incident in the chamber. He was darker, moody, quick to anger…"
"He was thirteen," Madam Pomfrey had snorted. "They were all like that."
The corners of Professor McGonagall's lips had curled then.
"If you let him go," Dumbledore warned them, "being Harry, he will immediately attempt to eliminate the two remaining horcruxes. There are only two options open to him. Release them and allow them to join the portions of the soul already within him that are called by the horcrux in his scar, or destroy them. Harry has not had nearly enough time or training to manage the last without catastrophic results. He will attempt the first, to his great peril and quite possibly ours, Minerva. I myself would have done almost anything to restrain him."
`Fat lot of good that advice had ever done,' thought Hermione, who had been there for the former conversation. Dumbledore had pegged Harry exactly. On the other hand, however, it was certainly easy enough to see Harry's point as well, and McGonagall, not being Dumbledore, was ultimately swayed and allowed them to leave.
No one at Hogwarts other than Professor McGonagall, Madam Pomfrey, Luna Lovegood or Hagrid had the slightest clue Harry lived on. The mood of the students varied widely; the Gryffindors were for the most part deeply shocked and reinvigorated in their opposition to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Ravenclaws worried about the future and how to weigh the odds ahead of them, the Hufflepuffs were simply terrified that now all might be lost. The Slytherins still left at the school tended to be either moderates or spies; none showed any visible grief - or surprise - at Harry's demise.
Ron had spent an inordinate amount of time taking his leave of Luna, extracting a promise that she would come and visit them at Grimmauld Place during her Christmas holidays. Harry found himself wondering if there would even be Christmas holidays this year, or if he would be alive to see them. Hagrid and Hermione had been scrupulously careful to make sure he hadn't had so much as a glimpse of the Daily Prophet; he was sure Voldemort was reveling in his new Harry-free playground and he could not help but brood. It ate at him, constantly.
They had returned to Grimmauld place only hours before: Hermione realized Dumbledore had not been far off in his assessment of the situation. Harry had taken time for only one thing; he'd disappeared to Sirius's old room for something while Hermione and Ron made a makeshift meal. She found herself now doubly curious what that had been.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Hermione brought out the book that she had found in the Room of Requirement and set it on the table. "It's not exactly an answer to our problem," she told them, "but I did find something interesting about Horcruxes in here."
Harry's eyes narrowed and he rubbed his hip meditatively. "You had that it the cave," he said. "That's the book that I kept….""
"Yes! Well, yes it is, as a matter of fact," Hermione admitted hastily.
Ron had seemed to sense something was up with the two of them after Harry had managed to transform back from his thestral form and hadn't missed a chance to tease or comment ever since. Harry seemed ready to share the news of their more committed state with their other best friend but Hermione, for reasons she could not entirely name or defend, felt that the time wasn't right yet. She knew Harry was right when he pointed out it would end the teasing, but still something held her back. Her game plan was simply to avoid subjects rife with opportunity until she figured out why.
"If you look here, under "Dissolution or Disarming of Objects infused with the Soul or Essence of Dark Witches or Wizards unknown," you'll see we've still got something of a problem…"
"Yeah. The problem is even the chapter headings make my brain stutter. What sort of book is that anyway? And if they're Horcruxes, why don't they just say so and get on with it?" Ron moaned.
"It's an old teaching text. That's why the stack all looked the same. They were probably abandoned when a newer text was chosen, a carefully Ministry-sanitized one, I'm sure. It predates even Tom Riddle by more than fifty years. And they don't just get on with it for the same reason most wizards call Voldemort `You-Know-Who,' Ron. Fear of invoking evil by invoking its name," Hermione reminded him.
"Does it make any difference if the Dark Witches or Wizards are known? Shouldn't it be easier to get rid of if you know whose soul it is?" Harry asked, dropping into the chair beside her.
"Definitely," Hermione agreed. "But not necessarily why you'd think. Apparently there are lots of ways to infuse inanimate objects with someone's essential essence. Portraits are just one example. In fact this book's got just what we need to get rid of her if Mrs. Black ever gets her spellotape off. That seems to be the primary reason the subject's brought up at all, getting rid of spiritual essences that have been infused with the intent to annoy the living. A horcrux is a whole other story."
What good's it to us, then?" Ron groused. "Nice as it would be to get rid of Sirius' mother once and for all, Harry can't enjoy the quiet if he's dead. Oh never mind, maybe he can…"
"Enough dead jokes already, Ron. Getting less funny by the minute as I sit staring at these," Harry warned him, poking the locket dispiritedly with the tip of his wand. The cup was well away on the center of the table; it still seemed to want to attach itself magnet-like to his forehead if it got close enough. The locket, strangely, was much milder in its attraction. Yet another dilemma; what exactly did that mean? For all they contained portions of the same tainted soul, the two certainly didn't act alike.
"I said the primary reason, Ron. The answer's in the footnotes." Hermione said triumphantly, knowing full well neither of them had ever bothered reading a footnote in their lives. `If it so bloody important, they ought to put it right smack in the middle of the page, not bury it down in tiny print on the bottom!' had been Ron's howl after discovering the answer to one of Snape's exam questions had been contained therein.
She read aloud, "The rare object that appears an exception to the dissolution spell may in fact prove to be a far more worrisome state of affairs. If repeated applications of the spell under closely controlled circumstances fails, it is quite possible the caster is instead facing a horcrux; a vouchsafing created by deliberately shattering an intact human soul through the premeditated murder of another. Under such circumstances the caster is advised to consider the value and use of the horcruxed object most carefully, as destruction for purposes other than the reclamation of the soul fragment by its owner almost always results in the catastrophic emission of darkest magic. For advice on the possible repercussions, page 314. For those determined to proceed; page 672."
"What does it say on page 314?" Ron asked.
"Forget 314. The real question is what does it say on 673?" Harry countered.
"672," Hermione corrected automatically, flipping through the pages, although she already knew the information by heart.
"No, 673. I want to know if they think you'll live long enough to turn the page." Harry said gloomily.
Hermione determinedly ignored him. "Page 672 is… complicated. Apparently the creation of the horcrux is integral to its destruction, but the book pussyfoots so around the creation process because it's such a dark, despicable use of magic that it's almost impossible to get at the actual destruction theory. What good does it do not to talk plainly about it if someone's already done it?"
"Hermione," Ron said sharply. "Just give us the gist. What does it actually say of any use?"
"Well… here's the thing of it. There's destroying the object, and destroying the horcrux. Destroying the object doesn't necessarily destroy the horcrux it contains no matter how completely it's done. The freed soul will simply seek to join what it was severed from. The horcruxed soul itself has to be destroyed to keep it from rejoining. That's what negates the argument that he wouldn't keep trying to kill you if he knew or guessed you were a horcrux yourself, Harry. Killing you wouldn't hurt the horcrux in the scar immediately, and he could quite probably release it and reclaim it. He'd lose its protection as a horcrux, but regain the portion of his soul. Knowing Voldemort he'd quite possibly search for a way to try again. He doesn't seem to know or care how much it twists him."
"Are you kidding?" Harry said softly. "He knows. He gets off on it, I'm sure he does. The less visibly human he is, the less he believes he can die. But die he will, and soon."
His voice sent a shiver along her spine.
"That's also why you've ultimately been able to fight the influence of the horcruxes though, Harry. The first one is on you, but it's not part of you; it's contained in your scar. The others shouldn't be able to have actually joined it because it's still sealed by the magic that instilled it. The rest, the wand one, for example, is only held in you by its attraction to the intact scar.
The only reason they didn't transfer to Voldemort at Durmstrang is that you have three parts altogether in you now and he has only one remaining. You have your scar, the wand and the diary, and you were holding the cup. The horcruxed parts are driven to become whole again, so they want to be where the greatest concentration of the soul is."
"I still don't understand about the diary, Hermione, I destroyed it. I put a basilisk fang clear through it and Tom Riddle had holes in him when he disappeared."
"You destroyed the physical object, the diary, releasing the horcux. The image of Tom Riddle the horcrux was projecting was destroyed along with the diary. It needed Ginny's vitality to project that form and communicate with you. But you never knew it was a bit of Voldemort's actual soul, and what this book tells us is that if you don't do the specific magic required to finish off the soul, it will always survive. It wasn't strong enough to reach Voldemort without Ginny's body, so it clung to the bit of him in you, instead.
Your soul and Voldemort's are like oil and water Harry, they don't want to mix, in part because Lily managed to love you enough in those twenty months to infuse you with it. Voldemort was never loved, his mother died within hours of giving birth to him and was so full of her own despair that she couldn't or wouldn't even use her own magic to save herself for him."
"We've said all this, one way or another," Harry told her, the frustration evident in his eyes. "How does it help us destroy them?"
"It tells us for sure that it has to be a two step process, to begin with. Force the horcrux from the object in which it's embedded, then destroy the horcrux. Melting down the locket wouldn't do it, for example; the horcrux would just seek to rejoin the soul, which means either you or Voldemort since you both have part of it. The pain you feel in your scar whenever Voldemort is around isn't necessarily under his control either, Harry. At first it was the horcruxed soul bit in you trying to escape and reunite with what's left in him. Now you're actually more powerful. Your scar is drawing the bit of soul left in him toward you, and you feel the pull. The drive for the soul to remain whole is one of the most powerful and integral parts of our humanity; that's why he's become such a…. a thing, by doing what he's done. It's also why you don't have to die to defeat him. According to this it's definitely possible to force the soul from the host object; but in your case we just have to find a way to do that without hurting you. "
"Just," said Harry, reaching up reflexively to touch his scar and wincing.
"We need Dumbledore, then. He managed to destroy the one in the ring, didn't he?" Ron asked. "Where's that Chocolate Frog card, Harry?"
Harry rose and disappeared in the direction of the front room, returning moments later with the envelope protecting the card. He removed it and propped it against the sugar bowl on the table where Hermione and Ron could see it as well.
"Professor?" he called softly to the empty frame. It was several minutes before Dumbledore appeared, straightening his hat. His eyes were twinkling madly, but he seemed a tad cross.
"Sorry to disturb you, Professor…" Harry started.
"Not at all," Dumbledore informed him with a wry smile. "I just had to admit to Minerva and and the other portraits that I had lost the pool, first."
"What pool?" Harry asked suspiciously. "Please tell me you haven't actually bet on me battling Voldemort or anything."
"No, no, no. Of course not, Harry. Just on whether you'd ask for help or go crashing off headlong if you managed to locate the all horcruxes."
Harry's face transformed into a slow, deeply amused grin. "Don't know me quite as well as you thought you did, Professor?"
"You have grown, Harry. A year ago I would have been right. It's a bet I am not entirely unhappy to lose, I assure you. Of course the old truism that you can't take it with you makes paying it off so much less painful somehow."
Hermione saw Harry's eyes flicker and reached under the table for his hand. He grasped back, fingers twining tightly.
"You know what we want to ask you, then, Professor?" she asked.
"I would rather imagine you want to know how to destroy the remaining horcruxes without turning your wand arms into wizened, blackened stumps." Dumbledore guessed. "I have an answer for you, but I fear you are not going to like it."
"Shoot away," Harry told him. "I haven't really liked anything else you've told me for the last seven years, why should this be any different?"
"Harry," Dumbledore started, and Hermione thought she saw genuine fondness and concern in the great wizard's painted features. "I know you don't want to hear this, but it is time to ask Professor Snape for his assistance."
Hermione expected a resounding "no way," or a scoffing "you must be joking." She was unprepared for Harry's inclined head and slow exhalation of acceptance. Fear prickled along her spine once more; for Harry to agree to ask Snape for anything meant he must truly feel as if the end was near and there was very little hope of surviving else.
"Why the bloody hell would he want to do that?" Ron cut in belligerently. "I thought the point here was to find a way to get rid of them and have Harry survive strong enough to take on you-know… Voldemort. Snape's still got a lot to answer for before any of us should trust him in the same building. He's the one that sent us on that wild portkey chase to begin with. He doesn't even know Harry's alive."
"We ought to because he knows about them," Harry said resignedly. "Not just about their existence. He knows, or suspects, how they were made; more than anyone else who would actually consider talking to us, anyway. I don't think you can just shred your soul repeatedly without some help. If Voldemort actually managed to go further than anyone before him, the way he bragged that night at the graveyard, Snape probably helped, whether he knew exactly what it was for at the time or not. He already told us what he got up to with Regulus when Voldemort tasked him with making the potion that protected the locket. There was probably some lovely potion that made it easier to recover from tearing your soul to bits as well. Something that might have affected them. He was playing both sides even then."
Ron made a faintly strangled sound of fury.
"And of course because he's a bloody-minded git," Harry continued, rubbing at the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. "I can't die a completely miserable second death without him pitching in."
"That's the point, isn't it?" Ron insisted. "He'll have to know you found them all, he'll figure it out and run back to his master faster than you can say still a Death Eater, stupid."
"So?" Harry asked. "What will it matter by then? If he helps us destroy them first he can tell Voldemort the color of my boxers for all I care. It'll all be over then, him or me time, and you can bet Snape will just be standing back with that inscrutable look on his face waiting to see who wins so he can claim to have always been on their side all along."
"But," Ron spluttered, still incensed. "Harry, it's just wrong. You've always known he was against you…"
"Ron, we don't have time anymore. We don't have the luxury of hating him because he's a two faced jerk. People are dying just because I didn't. We need to end this soon. If that means asking Snape for help, then… so be it. I'm sorry," Harry told him.
Hermione could hear the sorrow in his voice; he wasn't saying it lightly. Anxiety began to prickle around the
edges of her nerves. `It's happening,' she thought sadly.
"I'll ask Professor McGonagall to send him to Grimmauld Place then, shall I? Do you want her to inform him about your…continued existence, or would you wish to do that yourself?" Dumbledore asked gravely.
"Oh, I think you know the answer to that one without even asking if there's anything I really want to tell you, Sir," Harry told him with a feeble grin. "It's one of the few pleasures I may have left, seeing his face when he finds out I'm not dead after all. Yet, anyway."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
It was early the following morning when the wards on Grimmauld Place alerted them to a potential intrusion. The resultant pulse of magic nearly thrust all three from their chairs. Ron swore at the sight of pumpkin juice pooling amidst his scrambled egg.
"What the bloody hell was that?" he asked, whipping his wand from his sleeve.
"Oops," said Harry, righting himself with a grin. "That was likely Severus Snape getting bounced back to Hogsmeade. I think I er,,,, forgot, to add him back on to the wards."
"Duck fast then, if you still don't want him to see you," Hermione told him calmly, resigned to the re-emergence of the cold war. "He'll be heading into the Hogs Head to…"
The fire burst to life. "I see that you feel you need to honor Mr. Potter's memory by maintaining his former level of idiocy," Snape howled through the flames. "Do you have any idea how unpleasant, not to mention potentially dangerous, it is to be bounced back to an unsecured location? If you wish my aid with whatever lame-brained scheme you are hatching now that the Boy Who Lived is but a regrettable footnote in Hogwarts, A History you'd best fix his last, petty little stab at humor at once."
"It's fixed," Hermione said coldly with a flick of her wand. She made sure her eyes relayed in no uncertain terms that the thing she'd really like to fix was Snape, and in the veterinary sense of the word.
She found her gaze equally certainly returned, and shuddered despite herself.
He appeared with a short, sharp crack that she knew was for show; Severus Snape could quite easily apparate without a sound.
"Lupin said that you wanted to proceed with destroying the horcrux Potter left behind here," he said, stepping out of his turn. "You are aware, of course, that…"
"Boo," said Harry when Snape's eyes finally reached him, lounging deliberately casually in his chair at the table and swinging the locket gently from one finger. Hermione noticed he had removed the cup from view. "I decided the afterlife was overrated and I've come back to remind you for all eternity of my unending regret over never getting to take my potions NEWT."
Snape's face, already pale, seemed to lose another shade or two. "Potter?"
"I know how deeply moved you must be to see me again, Professor, but you're not looking so good." Harry noted.
"If looks could kill you'd have been dead six years ago. He's just catching up," Ron said with a grin.
Harry pushed out the chair in front of Snape with his foot, and Snape sunk into it, still staring. The mind behind those obsidian eyes was obviously working furiously; Harry found himself oddly pleased to be the catalyst for such a major recalculation, but wished he knew what the results were coming up. .
"He cast the Dark Mark…" Snape sputtered.
"He was wrong," Harry stated unequivocally. "I want to finish this. I…"
God, this was hard. Harry felt himself eleven again, wondering with such naïve innocence why his potions professor hated the very sight of him. He'd thought learning the reasons why had been amongst the hardest lessons he'd ever have to endure, but he was wrong. The words he spoke now were far more bitter in his mouth.
"I need your…help, Professor."
He'd thought Ron's head would explode, but he merely shifted his chair closer to Harry's and glared at their former Professor. Hermione's hand slipped into Harry's lap, seeking his. They might not like what he was doing, but each was telling him in their own way that they were behind him.
`I am not scared,' He told himself. `Look at all I've been through to get this far. Dumbledore trusted him, trusts him still…'
`Dumbledore's a portrait!' his self raged back. `He can't change his mind, can't tell us anything new, he's dead!'
`He's told us he asked Snape to do it. I believe him. This is old stuff. I need to finish this, and I need him to do it.'
`Hermione might find the answer if you give her time…'
`Of course she would. But who am I to ask for that time? How many more people have to die while I do? Now that he thinks I'm dead it's all changing.'
`Dumbledore might have asked him to end it, but where did he find hate enough for that Avada to work? If it was really you he was thinking of can you ever really trust him, no matter what side he says he's on?'
`It could have been self loathing, couldn't it? Knowing what was in that potion that Dumbledore drank, knowing that he himself was the master of Dumbledore's death? What did he say that first day of classes? That he could teach us to brew fame and even stopper death…'
Brew fame and stopper death…
There was more than one way to read that, now.
Harry's mind was reeling, so he did what he had always done when bombarded with information he did not entirely understand.
He leapt, blindly and instinctually, into the void.
`So I can't trust him.' His Slytherin side accepted. `Trust isn't everything. I've got Hermione and Ron for that. I need what he knows.'
Snape face fell into its customary leer. "Help you? And why, pray tell, should I do that? Stupid, headstrong boy, getting yourself kil… almost killed. How do you propose to carry on, even if I do?"
"He thinks Harry's dead. He's not exactly on his guard right now." Ron said triumphantly.
"It will not take him long to realize such a feeble deceit."
"That's why I'm asking. I don't have time to work it all out myself. I need what you know. And I'm willing to… I'm asking. If you really believe he's gone too far, if you ever honored your word to Dumbledore…"
"Enough!" Snape cut in furiously. "Stop babbling about that which you know nothing. I told you weeks ago that if you were to carry this to completion you would need my help. You could have avoided this entire travesty of…"
"Yeah, I could see how cut up you were," Harry snarled. "My dying was hardly a blow. It just changed the odds on sides."
"Whether or not I would have danced on your grave had they bothered to give you one is irrelevant to what we can do now. Do you think you can manage to summon what little of Lily's intellect survived the invasion your father's sperm, or will you rely on James' method of using your prick for brains?"
Hermione felt Harry quiver beneath her hand. His voice, when he found it, was low and strained but he managed, "If you can help us diffuse your Dark Lord's sick little soul receptacles, I think I can manage it. Yeah."
"Then let us begin at once," Snape said. "While he at least is still under the happy illusion you are no more."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Hermione hated to admit to admiring Severus Snape, but despite the undoubted evil of the medium in which he worked, he was…good. He examined the locket using a series of escalating revealing spells, absently explaining what he was doing as he went along.
"The object appears to have been subjected to several crude attempts to open it…"
She remembered the morning before the start of fifth year, cleaning for Mrs. Weasley and finding the locket in the glass cabinet; the innocence of thinking it at worst might contain a picture of a really ugly wizard or a gruesome lock of hair.
"…none of which came close to releasing the horcrux. There is very little in the way of tell-tale traces of dark magic. The power of the object itself, Slytherin's essence, one imagines, obscures it almost completely…."
His wand wove delicate patterns over the surface; every so often the locket would -for barely a heartbeat - glow, or tremble, or jump of its own accord.
Snape removed the chain. "This could be nothing, or it could become a serious weapon during the destruction. Both Slytherin and the Dark Lord were and are snake lovers. Anything sinuous is immediately suspicious."
A fair point that; she could see Harry nodding despite himself. Even Ron was watching now, rapt.
He placed the locket gently on the table and eyed the room thoughtfully.
"Mr. Potter. What have you learned about the making of a horcrux?"
"I…I saw him do it. When we were in each other's minds, after Godric's Hollow. He showed me. He was proud of it. It was when he made the c… er, made one of them. I couldn't hear the spell or anything, but it looked just like Dumbledore putting a thought into his pensieve, except he pulled it from his mouth instead. This silvery, snake-ish thing came out of his mouth and he was already starting to look destroyed, skull-like. It was the dark mark come to life. He moved the thing on his wand to the… object, and there was a bright flash of green. It was sucked into it, right into the thing itself."
Snape's eyes narrowed at Harry's admission.
"He showed you this… willingly?"
"Well, not at first. But we were both, we were um, taunting each other and…"
The narrowed eyes widened and rolled. "And taunting the most powerful dark wizard ever, the one who destroyed your parents and repeatedly attempted to thwart a prophecy by killing you for the last six years seemed like a good idea because…?"
"Because there was nothing else I could do. But I got there, in the memory, because I think I was getting to him, or uncomfortably close. And then he was proud of it, he said `I have gone further than any Wizard before or to come because I do not let foolish Muggle sentiments like love and pity weaken me. That is why I will live forever and history will never miss you.' "
"Charming," Snape drawled, "and quite probably true. Not, however, a sufficient answer to the question…although the bit about love and pity might come in useful later. No, Potter, I meant the process involved. You must have realized, of course, that the steps may be drawn out. For example, you did not see him in fact kill anyone before you in the memory; the murder required to tear the fabric of the soul would have happened earlier. The period of time the witch or wizard intent on making a horcrux can survive with the fractured soul within them varies greatly. Generally it is from seconds, to minutes at most."
Harry looked as skeptical as Hermione felt. "He hardly seemed in a hurry… "
"That is because he was not. In my youthful ebullience and ignorance, I created for him an elixir that would lengthen the period significantly, allow one to live with a severed soul within almost indefinitely as long as one kept taking it. It seemed an odd, hypothetical challenge when he broached it, and I leapt to the task with the usual, pathetic need to prove oneself that so distinguishes the young. I had no real idea what he would do with such a thing, but that didn't stop me. Why think of consequences when you already know you can succeed?"
Hermione's amazement and distaste must both have shown on her face, for she saw Snape sneer as his eyes met hers.
"Yes, you, Miss Granger, would have asked. You have been for Potter and Weasley what Lily Evans once was for me: a voice of conscience. Just because a thing is possible, is it really necessary? Useful? Good? But I had long lost all but the shadow of that voice by then, and though the Dark Lord must have been well on his way to his self-determined seventh it is I that helped the weakened husk of what was left of his soul divide itself still further. I that provided the time to regain his strength before the horcrux itself need be made, ensuring the immortality of a mad man. It was, in great part, my… doing, if he succeeded."
Snape's eyes burned black; it was impossible to tell if regret or pride was truly the fuel.
"Do you remember, by any wild chance, Mr. Potter, the first question I ever asked of you at Hogwarts?" he asked.
Of bloody course he did. "What would you get if you added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood? Sir." Harry added automatically, hating himself.
Snape looked impressed, despite himself. "All three questions were likely enough to have an effect on your continued survival; the bezoar and the wolfsbane included, but it was the first you needed most to remember…just in case I did not myself survive until your sixth year, and by some wild chance you did.
In the end it was as well you found my Advanced Potion-Making text, Potter. Though you did not realize it because Slughorn was teaching the rest of the class the standard recipe, the subtle differences to the one you learned from my notes, the crushing of the sopophorous beans with the flat of the silver knife for example, was the one you needed."
"What does the Draught of Living Death have to do with anything?" Ron asked doubtfully.
"Be still my heart! Even a Weasley has learned something in my class! Perhaps it was not the colossal waste of time I thought… no, no, it still was. But I digress. The Draught of Living Death, the variation that Mr. Potter learned, at least, is also one of the keys to the safe destruction of a horcrux. A certain wormwood, A. dracunculus, is best for the infusion, although the whole family is remarkable for the extreme bitterness of all parts of the plant: 'as bitter as Wormwood' is a very ancient proverb. Asphodel flowers were traditionally planted near tombs and regarded to be the form of food preferred by the dead. The name itself is derived from the Greek word for Sceptre. Bitter food for the wandering immortal soul, indeed.
Use the correct Draught of Living Death when you sever the magic that binds the horcruxed soul to its home, Mr. Weasley, and it will be rendered powerless to seek its whole."
"How exactly do we get a horcrux to drink the Draught of Living Death?" Ron countered.
"Ask it politely," Harry told him with a grin. "Why hullo, tattered shred of Dark Lord's soul, wouldn't you like a nice cold Draught of Living Death?"
Snape appeared unamused. "You immerse the object in a cauldron of the stuff prior to doing the releasing spell, you foolish boy."
"That would simply, as you said, render it powerless. How do we destroy it for good?" Hermione asked.
"The spell is a matter of choice once the power of the escaping soul is under control. Avada Kedavra would be the most efficacious, but for our pure, unsullied Mr. Potter I would recommend Inanis Corpus Anima Concedere. More complicated to spit out, but more precisely that which you wish to achieve; the death of a soulless soul. Plus, the swish and flick to that one are purely for show. A good solid focus is all you should need; even he should be able to manage that."
"If it's so simple, how did Professor Dumbledore's hand get so… damaged?" Harry questioned suspiciously.
Snape sighed and Hermione thought for a moment he looked regretful, even wistful. "Albus Dumbledore at full force was an astonishingly powerful wizard. He had his own way of manipulating magic, ways a saner man might never have stumbled upon or tried. He was indeed growing old these last few years; Voldemort's return to power was a blow he took quite personally. When he tracked down the ring he sought to destroy it without involving my aid. The spell embedded in the ring required the retriever of the soul to first put it on a finger, under the theory that most would not damage themselves to be rid of it.. A lesser wizard would have left nothing but a clump of ash and an unbroken horcrux. Albus felt losing his wand hand to the dark a small price to pay for you, Potter. It was a near thing to hold it to that."
Hermione saw Harry swallow once and look away.
"We need a cauldron, then, and ingredients, I suppose," she found herself saying. "I think we have everything we need. Give me twenty minutes and we can be started. I assume we immerse the horcruxes before performing the spell, so we'll actually need two cauldrons to do it correctly."
"Quite so, Miss Granger. But tell me, what of the released soul fragments floating around in your…paramour over there? Now that he is alive yet again, he still holds opportunities for the Dark Lords' continued immortality. Are you suggesting we immerse him in a Draught of Living Death as well?"
"Oh no, Professor Snape," Hermione said sweetly. "I have entirely different plans in mind for Harry."
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
A/N: Thanks so much for all the reviews! This is my new years present to you. That, and I truly think I can get the next one out within the week.
Sorry about the density of the horcrux theory in this one…but as Harry himself said, they've got to go before he can go after Voldemort.
Sorry it took so long, too, but I'm a Mom and it's been Christmas. Kids come first. I put lots of thought into this chapter and into the approaching final battle. Don't like how long it takes me to post? I have three words of advice for you.
Write it yourself !
Ha! Thought it was going to be "Go pound sand" didn't you?? Writing this stuff takes time, and I can tell which of you write by the empathy of your reviews.
Best wishes for 2006 to you all and Cheers! ~ Lindsay
-->