"Harry," I nodded as we turned towards the Gryffindor Tower.
"Perce," Harry said. "Jason."
"Is it true?" whispered the Fat Lady as we approached her. "It is really true? Dumbledore--dead?"
"Yes," said Harry.
She let out a wail and, without waiting for the password, swung forward to admit us.
As I had suspected it would be, the common room was jam-packed. The room fell silent as we climbed through the portrait hole. Dean and Seamus were sitting in a group nearby: this meant that the dormitory must be empty, or nearly so. Without speaking to anybody, without making eye contact at all, we walked straight across the room and through the door to the boys' dormitories.
Ron was waiting for us, still fully dressed, sitting on his bed. Harry sat down on his own four-poster and for a moment, they simply stared at each other.
"They're talking about closing the school," said Harry.
"Lupin said they would," said Ron.
There was a pause.
"So?" said Ron in a very low voice, as though he thought the furniture might be listening in. "Did you find one? Did you get it? A--a Horcrux?"
Harry shook his head.
"You didn't get it?" said Ron, looking crestfallen. "It wasn't there?"
"No," said Harry. "Someone had already taken it and left a fake in its place."
"Already taken--?" I started.
Wordlessly, Harry pulled the fake locket from his pocket, opened it, and passed it to Ron.
"R.A.B.," whispered Ron, passing the locket to me. "but who was that?"
"Dunno," said Harry, lying back on his bed fully clothed and staring blankly upwards.
I looked into the small piece of yellowing parchment inside.
To the Dark Lord
I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can.
I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.
R.A.B.
"R.A.B," I whispered, passing the locket to Jason.
The fact kept sinking into me with every passing moment.
We had lost the big game and the small game.
Half the universe was gone. Voldemort was going to take over everything....
I fell onto the bed and took a deep breath in. I told myself that I had been through worse.
But a tiny part of me that I had never been through something this bad. NEVER. Not even the experience I had at Tartarus was equivalent to this.
They'd come to my home turf, and killed my people.
All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed. Some students were hurried away from Hogwarts by their parents over the next couple of days--the Patil twins were gone before breakfast on the morning following Dumbledore's death and Zacharias Smith was escorted from the castle by his haughty-looking father. Seamus Finnigan, on the other hand, refused point-blank to accompany his mother home; they had a shouting match in the Entrance Hall which was resolved by a furious McGonagall and they agreed to stay at Hogwarts until the funerals.
We visited the hospital wing twice a day: Neville had been discharged, but Bill remained under Will's care.
He'd become Madam Pomfrey over the days, treating any injury so quickly that no one even noticed that she was gone.
Bill's scars were as bad as ever; in truth, he now bore a distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody, though thankfully with both eyes and legs, but in personality he seemed just the same as ever. All that appeared to have changed was that he now had a great liking for very rare steaks.
"...so eet ees lucky 'e is marrying me," said Fleur happily, plumping up Bill's pillows, "because ze British overcook their meat, I 'ave always said this."
"Let's not forget the fact that they have no spice except salt," I nodded.
Bill grinned at me. "Thank you for taking care of my brother."
Annabeth nodded. "No worries, Bill. You take care."
"The curse you have is at least small," Jason said, smiling. "You weren't given the curse of Lycaon. It's a good thing you won't be running after him every full moon."
"Is that what they do?" Bill asked.
"Yeah," Will chuckled. "Werewolves are all like slaves to their father, Lycaon. Just as a turtle searches for the sea, every werewolf hunts through the woods for their creator."
"Damn," Bill whispered.
***
"I suppose I'm just going to have to accept that he really is going to marry her," sighed Ginny later that evening, as she, Jason, Harry, Hermione, Ron and I sat at the common room.
"She's not that bad," said Harry. "Ugly, though," he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.
"Well, I suppose if Mum can stand it, I can."
"Anyone else we know died?" Ron asked Hermione, who was perusing the Evening Prophet.
Hermione winced at the forced toughness in his voice.
"No," she said reprovingly, folding up the newspaper. "They're still looking for Snape, but no sign..."
"Of course there isn't," said Harry, who became angry every time this subject cropped up. "They won't find Snape till they find Voldemort, and seeing as they've never managed to do that in all this time..."
"I'm going to go to bed," yawned Ginny. "I haven't been sleeping that well since... well... I could do with some sleep."
She kissed Harry (Ron looked away pointedly), waved at us and departed for the girls' dormitories. The moment the door had closed behind her, Hermione leaned forwards towards Harry with a most Hermione-ish look on her face.
"Harry, I found something out this morning, in the library..."
"R.A.B.?" said Harry, sitting up straight.
He had shown Hermione the note inside the locket the morning after Dumbledore's death, and although she had not immediately recognized the initials as belonging to some obscure wizard about whom she had been reading, she had since been rushing off to the library a little more often than was strictly necessary for somebody who had no homework to do.
"No," she said sadly, "I've been trying, Harry, but I haven't found anything... there are a couple of reasonably well-known wizards with those initials--Rosalind Antigone Bungs... Rupert "Axebanger" Brookstanton... but they don't seem to fit at all. Judging by that note, the person who stole the Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I can't find a shred of evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do with him... no, actually, it's about... well, Snape."
She looked nervous even saying the name again.
"What about him?" asked Harry heavily, slumping back in his chair.
"Well, it's just that I was sort of right about the Half-Blood Prince business," she said tentatively.
"D'you have to rub it in, Hermione? How do you think I feel about that now?"
"No--no--Harry, I didn't mean that!" she said hastily, looking around to check that they were not being overheard. "It's just that I was right about Eileen Prince once owning the book. You see... she was Snape's mother!"
"I thought she wasn't much of a looker," said Ron. Hermione ignored him.
"I was going through the rest of the old Prophets and there was a tiny announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement saying that she'd given birth to a--"
"--murderer," spat Harry.
"Well... yes," said Hermione. "So... I was sort of right. Snape must have been proud of being "half a Prince", you see? Tobias Snape was a Muggle from what it said in the Prophet."
"Yeah, that fits," said Harry. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get in with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them... he's just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle father... ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new name--Lord Voldemort--the Half-Blood Prince--how could Dumbledore have missed--?"
He broke off, looking out of the window.