too close to the stars - H.J.P

Chapter Sixty Nine

Collin's face had lit up. He was finally getting a picture where Harry Potter had willingly taken a part of.

Harry shifted a bit, he wasn't a fan of pictures, he turned to look at Noel for a split second, but she was already looking at him, gazing at him softly. He gave her a lopsided smile, which he knew threw her into a frenzy. She threw her arms around him and gripped his hair a bit, as she pampered kisses all over his face. He laughed a joyful laugh, pushing her away when she nipped his cheek.

The picture was taken right after that, her arms still around his shoulders, a lingering laugh on his face while she looked at him, her eyes crinkling with her smile. He could clearly see the lipstick smudges on his cheek.

Sighing deeply, Harry closed the locket and clutched it tightly in his fist.

The surrounding silence was broken by odd rustlings and what sounded like crackings of twigs: Harry thought that they were caused by animals rather than people, yet he kept his wand held tight at the ready. His insides, already uncomfortable due to their inadequate helping of rubbery mushrooms, tingled with unease.

He had thought that he would feel elated if they managed to steal back the Horcrux, but somehow he did not; all he felt as he sat looking out at the darkness, of which his wand lit only a tiny part, was worry about what would happen next. It was as though he had been hurtling toward this point for weeks, months, maybe even years, but now he had come to an abrupt halt, run out of road.

There were other Horcruxes out there somewhere, but he did not have the faintest idea where they could be. He did not even know what all of them were. Meanwhile he was at a loss to know how to destroy the only one that they had found.

From time to time Harry thought, or perhaps imagined, that he could feel the tiny heartbeat ticking irregularly alongside his own. Nameless forebodings crept upon him as he sat there in the dark: He tried to resist them, push them away, yet they came at him relentlessly. Neither can live while the other survives.

Ron and Hermione, now talking softly behind him in the tent, could walk away if they wanted to: He could not. And it seemed to Harry as he sat there trying to master his own fear and exhaustion, that the Horcrux against his chest was ticking away the time he had left... Stupid idea, he told himself, don't think that...

Harry's scar was burning now. He thought that there was so much they did not know. Why hadn't Dumbledore explained more? Had he thought that there would be time; that he would live for years, for centuries perhaps, like his friend Nicolas Flamel? If so, he had been wrong...Snape had seen to that... Snape, the sleeping snake, who had struck at the top of the tower... And Dumbledore had fallen... fallen...

"Give it to me, Gregorovitch."

"I have it not, I have it no more! It was, many years ago, stolen from me!"

"Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Gregorovitch. He knows... He always knows."

The hanging man's pupils were wide, dilated with fear, and they seemed to swell, bigger and bigger until their blackness swallowed Harry whole —

And now Harry was hurrying along a dark corridor in stout little Gregorovitch's wake as he held a lantern aloft: Gregorovitch burst into the room at the end of the passage and his lantern illuminated what looked like a workshop; wood shavings and gold gleamed in the swinging pool of light, and there on the window ledge sat perched, like a giant bird, a young man with golden hair. In the split second that the lantern's light illuminated him, Harry saw the delight upon his handsome face, then the intruder shot a Stunning Spell from his wand and jumped neatly backward out of the window with a crow of laughter. And Harry was hurtling back out of those wide, tunnellike pupils and Gregorovitch's face was stricken with terror.