Jacob Spellman may have known a lot about horcruxes, but he didn't seem to know much at all about finding them. The first place he'd taken them had been a ruinous old shack that had supposedly belonged to Voldemort's maternal grandfather.
They'd spent days combing through the place inch by inch. Jacob had performed magic Barnaby could scarcely have imagined, but to no effect. He even cornered muggles in the nearby village, gave them memory potions and interrogated them for any possible information, then modified their memories and sent them on their way.
"Someone's removed it," he said, after the others had long given up in their own searching efforts.
"Maybe it wasn't really here in the first place," said Barnaby.
"No, it was. I can tell someone's been here. Someone good. They almost perfectly covered their tracks."
"The Dark Lord must be onto us already," said Merula. "He's probably removed it so we couldn't go mucking with it."
"Maybe..." Jacob admitted. "Let's hope its someone our side, someone who knows what it is and how to destroy it. But, we need to know for certain. There's no point in challenging Voldemort if we can't be sure that he's mortal."
So, the group spent months traversing the countryside, tracking down all of Jacob's leads and following up on each of his mad ideas, with nothing to show for it.
In the meantime, they camped in obscure locations and Jacob taught them dark magic. He always carefully explained how it was useful and why they would need it, and the girls seemed eager to learn, but Barnaby resented each lesson far more than he ever had his potions classes.
He'd refused to participate point blank in their lesson on inferi.
"They're the perfect assistants in life-threatening situations," Jacob had tried to explain. "It's not like their worried about dying again."
Despite the others' arguments about its usefulness, Barnaby just couldn't shake his gut feeling that it wasn't right. He couldn't rely on his brain, but he knew to trust his gut, and it squirmed at the sight of the other three figures standing in a lonely graveyard, surrounded by a sickly green glow as the ground below them shook and moved.
The months went by, and precious little changed about their situation. Occasionally one of them would sneak into a wizarding area and swipe a copy of the Daily Prophet to learn of more disappearances. Barnaby felt like he was being torn apart. All this effort would have been worth something if it was making any difference, but Voldemort was clearly gaining more ground everyday. Barnaby dreaded waiting for Jacob to return one evening and announce that their friends had died, that the ministry had fallen, the Voldemort had won.
On one such evening, Barnaby sat at the entrance to the tent watching with an uneasy stomach as Merula practiced a few of the dark spells Jacob had taught them, some of them his own invention. Elena was laying on the ground with her head in his lap. Barnaby stroked her brown hair absently.
He'd supposed they'd become something more than friends since they'd first met; they slept together after all. Last time Merula and Jacob had left them alone to watch the tent, Elena had cornered him and kissed him. He'd kissed her back. It had been nice. He felt strongly for her, but he couldn't quite work out what those feelings were. He admired her bravery and her kindness, but there was something within her, perhaps the eager look in her eyes as Jacob taught them dangerous magic, that made him uneasy. He didn't want to judge; he'd often been tempted by the same power, but he was afraid she'd tempt him to join in her efforts and he wouldn't be able to resist the evil side of the magic like the others did.
His thoughts were interrupted by a large crack as Jacob appeared in the clearing of the forest they'd hidden in. He was nearly hit by Merula's Curse of Despair.
"Watch where you're pointing your wand, you mad witch," said Jacob.
Merula scowled. "Keep your mouth shut or next time I curse you, it'll be on purpose."
The two smiled at each other. Apparently, they were also a couple, which Barnaby still had a hard time believing. But, he'd seen them kiss with his own eyes, and the two shared Jacob's bed.
"I know where we have to go next," said Jacob, stepping around Barnaby and into the tent. The others scrambled after him and gathered around the table, as they always did whenever Jacob had a new lead.
"Spare me the suspense, where is it?" asked Merula.
"There's a cave by the seaside near the Isle of Sheppy," said Jacob. "Apparently, Voldemort spent some time there as a child. I've...interviewed some kids he lived with in an orphanage, and long, brutal story short, I think this might be the perfect hiding spot for a horcrux."
"Sounds good to me," said Merula.
"I'd like to go to the sea," said Barnaby. "Maybe we'll see some merpeople."
Jacob shook his head the way he usually did whenever Barnaby spoke up. "Yeah, well this isn't a holiday, so let's all get some rest and we'll head out first thing in the morning."
After Elena served them some cooked sausages and potatoes for dinner, the group got ready for bed. Barnaby had just climbed into bed with Elena when he noticed Jacob was still seated at the table, and hadn't moved from that spot since their meal.
"Hey, you coming to bed?" Merula asked, shaking his shoulder. He didn't move.
Barnaby got up and walked over. Jacob was staring intently at the tent wall opposite, but it was obvious he wasn't seeing it. His eyes were glazed over, and Barnaby could have sworn they'd changed color, to a familiar shade of blue.
"Oi!" said Merula, slapping the back of his head impatiently. It was another ten seconds before Jacob shook violently, then stood up.
"Gotta go," he muttered. He hurried out of the tent, Merula grabbing his arm and sprinting to keep up with him.
"What? Go where?"
Barnaby hurried after the others as well, Elena untangling the covers so she could run after them.
"Sarah's done something stupid again," was all Jacob said.
Barnaby lunged forward and grabbed Merula's arm as Jacob disapparated, all three of them nearly suffocating as they were whisked away.
*********************
"Here it is!" Sarah called out to the others, but she wasn't sure if they heard her over the volleys of spells and chilling moans of the undead.
They'd spent months doing tasks for Dumbledore, mainly stopping massive attacks on muggles before the could happen. They'd saved countless lives, but more people died or disappeared everyday. Fighting Voldemort was like fighting doxies with only doxycide. A temporary fix before an onslaught of violent repercussions.
Sarah had fought to keep her head steady at the news of their latest mission, which involved another graveyard and keeping more inferi from ransacking the nearby muggle villages. She still had nightmares of their last visit to a graveyard, and of the Death Eater they'd buried alive there.
This time, the Death Eaters had managed to hide a beacon in one of the mausoleums. This beacon ensured none of the inferi would be back at peace until it was destroyed. Sarah finally found it as the others fought the dead, trying to keep them from wandering to the town.
Her tracing spell had brought her to a marble coffin in the back of the mausoleum. Sarah inspected it quickly. She couldn't touch it, and soon discovered it was under a blood curse. That meant only a blood relative of the person inside the coffin could remove the lid. Sarah wondered which of the Death Eaters was brave or foolish enough to admit to having a relative buried in a muggle cemetery, but she shrugged the thought aside as the strained her brain for a way to remove the curse.
Curses were her specialty. Usually, they were fairly simple. You had to give the curse what it wanted, or give it something better. In this case, it wanted blood. Sarah had plenty of that, but not the right kind. What would be better than a little bit of blood?
Sighing, Sarah cast every spell she'd ever learned in her time as a curse-breaker to weaken the spell and confuse the curse. Once the coffin gave off a faint, golden glow, she gritted her teeth and used a slicing charm to slit her wrists. If the coffin wanted a little of a certain kind of blood, she would give it a lot of another kind of blood.
Sarah placed her hand on the coffin. It must have been working, or she wouldn't have been able to touch it at all. Finally, when her vision was blurry and her knees buckled, the coffin lid disappeared altogether. Inside, there was a very decomposed body. The skeletal arms were wrapped around a beautifully bound leather book, complete with a large ruby embedded in its center. No doubt the pages contained the spell to make the beacon work, but Sarah knew better than to touch a cursed object.
"Incendio!" she cried, pointing her wand at it. The spell was weaker than it would have been had she not been close to bleeding out, but the pages burned nonetheless. Sarah heard violent screeches and glimpsed an orange glow emitting from the other side of the open doorway. The inferi must've been burning like the book that had animated them. Sarah used a healing charm to close the cuts she'd made to her wrists, but she'd need to take a blood replenishing potion before she was fighting fit again.
As her foot stepped on the last step before she reached the doorway, a set of bars appeared from thin air, trapping her inside.
Sarah tried a few spells to get rid of the bars, but either the magic that had placed them was too strong, or in her bloodless state, her spells were too weak.
The sounds of moaning and spellfire had subsided, so that must have been a good sign. She called out weakly, and after a moment, Diego rushed to her side.
"Sarah!" he cried. "Hold on, I'll take care of this."
He too tried a few charms on the bars to no effect.
"Where are the others?" asked Sarah.
"All the inferi burned up accept for a few that must have wandered too far away to be affected. They're rounding them up."
"Go help them."
"What? No, I'm going to help you."
Sarah forced her eyes to focus as she glared at him. "Diego Caplan, if a single muggle so much as glimpses an inferius, I shall never speak to you again."
"But what about you?"
"I'll be fine," she said. "Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere." She gave the bars a shake.
Diego smiled, then gave her hand a squeeze before running out of sight.
Sarah sat down, resting her forehead against the coolness of the bars.
After a few minutes of listening to her own deep breaths, she became aware that her jeans were wet. She opened her eyes. There was little light in the mausoleum, but she could see the liquid that had filled in the bottom floor and had been slowly creeping up the stairs. Sarah looked back at the coffin. The water was flowing from it, perhaps from the book inside itself.
Sarah took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet. As she did, her hand pressed against the liquid on the floor, and she realized it was too thick to be water. She held her hand out of the silver bars, and the little light that remained in the day revealed her pale hand covered in dark red liquid that was slowly running down her arm.
The mausoleum was flooding with blood.
Sarah called for the others, but she was sure they were too far away to hear. She tried the drought charm and the vanishing charm, but the blood continued to flow even faster than before. It was up to her knees now. Some spell prevented it from flowing through the gaps in the bars. Sarah tried a few more spells to get rid of the blood, but nothing worked. She'd have to attempt quenching it at the source.
Fighting to keep from throwing up or fainting, Sarah stepped back down the steps. The blood was now chest high, but she waded across the room and plunged her hands into the coffin that was now hidden beneath the pool.
After a few nauseating moments fondling a skeleton, her fingers found the cover and she yanked it up. Blood spilled from its pages, running down Sarah's arms, coating them in the sticky red liquid. Everything smelled of rust. Sarah's waded through the neck deep pool back up the steps.
"Diffindo! Relashio! Bombarda!" She tried spell after spell on the book, but nothing worked, and she got splattered in the face by blood whenever a spell caused it to shake violently.
Finally, she tried shoving the book out of the bars but something prevented the book from being removed from the mausoleum. No matter how hard she pushed, the book wouldn't protrude more than an inch on the other side of the bars. In her panic, she felt her vision tunneling and the threat of passing out grow with each second.
Sarah had to tilt her neck so that the blood wouldn't get into her mouth now. She wasn't sure what would would kill her first, blood loss or drowning. The irony of her situation almost made her smile. She glanced out of the doorway for her last glimpse of the sky, deep blue with a few stars already visible.
What should her last thoughts be about? She tried to dwell on something poetic, to picture the faces of the ones she loved dearly in her mind, but she couldn't concentrate over the loud beating of her heart. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine going to sleep after an exhausting day.
The next moment, she became aware of being on her knees again, but she was fairly certain she was breathing air and not choking on blood. She let her eyes creep open. All she could make out were dark shapes. She was woozy and, oh, so tired.
She slumped forward, too exhausted to brace herself for knocking into the silver bars, but instead she was caught by a pair of strong hands. She realized she was being lifted and carried by someone. She wondered idly if this is what happened when Death came for you. She rested against its comforting chest as it carried her away. Eventually, curiosity overcame her and she forced her eyes open, staring intently at its face until she could focus enough to make out its features.
"Hold on, Pip," said her brother.
Sarah laughed at the cruelty of her own brain before she closed her eyes again and passed out.