The Boy Who Lived

Immediate Aftermath

'Are you able, now, to tell me what it is you were doing while you were away?' she asked after studying him, drinking in the details of his face.

'Voldemort split his soul, he made six... seven Horcruxes. Dumbledore tasked me with finding them and destroying them so he could finally be killed.'

'Horcruxes! But that's...'

'...dark and dangerous and very rare magic that very few people know about. It's also something I'm not sure if people should be made aware of or not. The diary that possessed Ginny in her first year, that was the first one to be destroyed. We weren't aware of what it was back then, I don't think that even Lucius Malfoy was aware of what he was giving Ginny. Then the Gaunt ring. It was cursed and when Dumbledore foolishly decided to wear it before he destroyed the Horcrux, he essentially cursed himself.'

'So, Severus was telling the truth.'

'Yes. He knew he was dying but chose not to say because it served his purposes.'

'But that poor child...'

'I assume you mean Draco's year of torture. Yes, but Dumbledore tended to use us all to serve his purposes or rather for the purposes of the Greater Good. In some ways he was as selfish and self-serving a bastard as Riddle...'

'Harry!' she warned.

'You'll see...' Harry shrugged. 'Though perhaps it was a necessarily severe lesson for Draco, one he needed to go through to see the truth. The night Dumbledore died we were back from retrieving the third Horcrux. A locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin. It turned out to be a fake that had been exchanged by Regulus Black. Mundungus then stole it from Grimmauld Place and it ended up around Dolores Umbridge's neck. That was why we broke into the Ministry. But even when we had the Horcrux, we didn't know how to destroy it. Not until Severus sent the Sword to us.'

'I don't understand how he found you?'

'Ironically, Mione had hidden Phineas Black's portrait in her handbag so he couldn't report to Severus our location when we were at Grimmauld Place. Phineas reluctantly fed us information about what was happening at Hogwarts and we must have let slip that night where she and I were...'

'She and you? Where was Ron?'

'We had a falling out. He left us for a bit. It wasn't his fault, the Locket Horcrux was playing with our minds and our major problem was not knowing where Voldemort might have hidden the Horcruxes as well as what they might be. He got frustrated and thought... well, he left us, for about a month but managed to pick up trace through Dumbledore's Deluminator. Anyway, we worked out that Voldemort he liked items of significance, possibly connected with all the Founders but we had no idea what or where. Dumbledore's clues were obscure at best but mostly non-existent. When we were captured and taken to Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix completely lost it about us having the sword, she thought we'd been in her vault and was petrified we'd taken something else. Scared enough not to alert the Dark Lord that we were at the Manor. It was obvious she had something else in there...'

'Hence the break in?'

'Yes. As soon as we made it into her vault, I could sense it. Turned out to be Helga Hufflepuff's cup. Voldemort lost control when he realised we were hunting the Horcruxes and suddenly everything happened very fast. He couldn't believe we knew about them but it opened an opportunity to break into his mind. The last two were Nagini and the Lost Diadem hidden here at Hogwarts. It became a race against him to get here and destroy the diadem before he came to retrieve it. That finally left us with the problem of Nagini, which Neville so deftly handled...'

'But that's only six...' Minerva's mouth went dry as she pointed out the obvious. She had a horrible feeling what was coming next.

'Yes, there was a reason I had a connection with Voldemort and a reason I could sense the Horcruxes so violently.'