This is my take on Book seven. I will do my best to follow canon. I thank J.K. Rowling for her tolerance of fan fiction, and promise to do nothing with her characters she hasn't had them do themselves.
Chapter 1: Back at Privet Drive
Mr. Vernon Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive, a large man with a very thick mustache, was very grumpy. There were several reasons for this, one of them being that it was just in his nature. Another reason, the main reason if truth be told, was that his nephew Harry was due back from that freak school in only a few days. He supposed he'd have to let him back in the house. He still hadn't forgotten the man who had, without even raising his voice, dressed him and Petunia down for mistreating Harry. He even had the nerve to suggest that he had mistreated Dudley! Preposterous! He settled down into his chair to read the paper.
Bing Bong! The doorbell sounded throughout the house. "Figures," he thought. "Salesmen at all hours. There ought to be a law." Grumbling, he got up, walked to the door and opened it. He found, much to his surprise and dismay, his nephew Harry. Behind him, flanking him to the left and right were two others. All of them were wearing robes. He recognized the red haired boy as one of the many red-headed weirdoes who had blown his fireplace apart three years ago, and the girl as being in the group of freaks who had threatened him at Kings Cross just the year before.
"Hello, Uncle Vernon," Harry said. "These are my friends Ron and Hermione. They'll be staying with us until my birthday, when we'll be leaving." With that, Harry, Ron and Hermione pushed their way into the house.
"They most certainly will not!" hissed Uncle Vernon, the vein in his neck inflating at once. He had to control himself to keep from shouting. He couldn't let the neighbors overhear this. He was about to continue, when he found himself staring at two wands.
"While we're on the subject," said the girl, her voice with a hard edge to it, "both Ron and I are of age, and perfectly allowed to do whatever we wish. Harry's been given permission to use magic out of school as well. He is the 'Chosen One,' after all."
Vernon's eyes were wide with shock. Somehow, the thought of what would happen when Harry was allowed to do magic out of school had never occurred to him before now. Petunia and Dudley were both staring now, fear in their eyes as the witch and wizard kept their wands trained on Vernon.
"So," said the boy, in the same tone that the bushy haired girl had used, "don't even think of treating any of us like you treated Harry." Vernon, his piggy eyes shifting from wands to angry faces and then to Harry, was mumbling something incomprehensible.
"Think of it this way, Uncle," offered Harry, his tone amused. "The more you ignore all of us, the less fuss there will be, and the sooner we'll all be gone for good."
For the first time in his young nephew's life, Harry had finally made a suggestion Vernon was willing to accept.
Sitting on Harry's bed in the smallest bedroom, Ron and Harry were still laughing about Uncle Vernon's reaction to their arrival. Hermione was sitting in a soft chair she had conjured out of nowhere, Crookshanks on her lap. She was looking something up in a book, and concentrating on her reading. Hedwig was on her perch, but happily not in her cage.
"So," said Ron, sobering up, "What do you think our first move should be."
"Dunno," replied Harry. "We'll have to…"
"You need to learn Occlumency, Harry," said Hermione in her usual businesslike tone. "It's more important than ever that you learn it now. Properly learn it, I mean," she amended, seeing Harry's thunderous look as he remembered Snape's disastrous lessons. "Dumbledore wanted you to keep the knowledge of the Horcruxes from everyone except us. He would want you to learn it."
"Yeah," said Ron. "I reckon if you can keep You-Know-Who out of your head, there's no way he can figure out what we're up to." Ron had never been able to say Voldemort's name, but was getting better about it. He didn't flinch so much now when others said it.
"But who will teach it to me?" asked Harry. "I don't know of any other Legilimens."
"I have a book about it," answered Hermione, raising the book she had been reading to show them. Harry and Ron exchanged a look of bemusement. "I can teach you. Perhaps not as well as Dumbledore could have, but hopefully well enough."
"Let's get started then," Harry said, getting to his feet. Clearing his mind took some effort, as he kept feeling anger at Snape, and rebelling against any instruction Snape had ever given him. Closing his eyes, he willed his mind to go blank. After a few moments, he was as calm as he would ever be. Hermione had also gotten to her feet. She pointed her wand at Harry.
Squinting her eyes in concentration, she leveled her gaze at him. "Legilimens!"
After a solid week of practice, and being knocked to the floor by Hermione about fifty times, Harry was doing very well in progressing on Occlumency. He knew he'd have to practice continuously to be able to withstand Voldemort, but the lessons were far better than with Snape. First of all, Hermione wanted to help him, not hinder him. She was able to give him pointers from her books, and Harry was pretty quick at picking it up. Uncle Vernon was not pleased with the noise from their spell casting, and Petunia was frankly livid with the thought of magic under her roof, but they were far too scared to make much fuss about it. With this step firmly underway, their talk turned to the Horcruxes.
"R.A.B.," muttered Ron. "I've been thinking about it, and it seems a bit familiar, but I can't quite place from where." He was perched on Harry's bed, massaging a crick in his neck. Hermione had been conjuring up beds for her and Ron to use each night, and whisking them away again the next morning to give them room to practice. Harry and Ron were not nearly as good as her at it, though and the beds they tried to conjure were hard and lumpy. Hermione kept threatening to make Ron sleep on it instead of conjuring the cushiony, soft bed for him each night if he didn't practice harder, and the night before she had made good on it.
"Did Sirius ever mention anyone who had a name that starts with an R?" asked Hermione.
"Yeah," answered Harry, thinking. "His brother, Regulus, who was a Death Eater before he…" With a stunned look on his face, Harry stopped.
"Regulus Black?" exclaimed Hermione. "Regulus A. Black? Why didn't we think of that? That makes perfect sense. We even found a locket in Sirius's house when we were cleaning it!"
"But even if it WAS the locket," said Ron, his face falling, "we threw it out ages ago. Who knows where it could be by now."
"I have an idea, said Harry, smiling slightly. Ron and Hermione looked questioningly at him. "Kreacher," he said.
With a thundering CRACK that shook the house, an old, disheveled house elf appeared in Harry's room. An almost identical thud filled the house as, downstairs, Dudley fell over in shock from the noise.
"Master called, and Kreacher must obey," the elf grumbled, his voice low and clearly not happy with being forced to obey Harry. "What does the filthy half-blood want?"
"When we were cleaning Sirius's house two years ago, you kept stealing things, didn't you?" asked Harry.
"The Noble House of Black needs to be preserved, Kreacher won't let his Mistress's finery be tossed and spoiled. Kreacher won't," the house-elf muttered.
"But was there a locket?" Harry asked. "Did you find and hide a locket?" Kreacher paused, clearly looking for a loophole to keep him from disclosing this information. "Kreacher, did you find and hide a locket?"
"Kreacher found, yes. Kreacher hid, yes," grumbled the elf, his face burning red and his voice trembling with rage.
"Do you know where it came from?" Harry asked.
"Found on the good sons' body, the locket was. The noble son, the one who died for the Dark Lord, the one who…"
"That's enough of that," said Harry. "Where is the locket now?"
"Hidden in the attic of his Mistress's house," answered Kreacher, leveling a look of pure hatred at Harry.
"Would you look at all this junk?" said Ron in disgust. "Good thing Mum never got around to making us clean up here. We never would have finished." The attic was in shambles, and filled with broken furniture and items of an indeterminate nature. A small table stood in the middle of the room, with broken chairs off to one side.
"Well," replied Hermione, "We'll have to go through it all now, anyway. We'd better get started." She had already done so, making her way through an old wooden box that she had found under a pile of old rags. Various medals were crammed into the box, detailing all of the wonderful things the Black family had supposedly done over the years. These, Harry knew, were mostly giving money to the Ministry of Magic. They got to work, clearing out old cabinets and boxes filled with things Kreacher had pilfered. He had actually managed to retrieve a remarkable amount of things the trio could recollect having thrown away.
Half the day had passed, and Hermione and Harry were talking as they sorted through boxes. Ron was in another corner, resolutely going through a filing cabinet.
"It really doesn't make much sense, Harry," Hermione told him. "She is just as aware of the dangers as we are, and just as able to handle them."
"But if anything happened to her…" began Harry, but Hermione interrupted him.
"What would you do if anything happened to either of us?" she asked. Harry looked at her, exasperated.
"I just don't want her to get hurt," he said. "Or worse," he added darkly.
"Look, I know that it's dangerous, and she could get hurt. Normally I'd listen to that kind of reason. But these are not normal times, and I think you need everyone you can get. You know she makes you happy, and I'm sure she's miserable without you."
"Not half as miserable as I am without her," Harry said. "But…"
"But nothing," Hermione interrupted. "You won't be able to fight Voldemort at all if you keep denying yourself the ones you love. And those who love you. How can you produce a proper Patronus if all you can think about is how much you miss Ginny?"
Their conversation was interrupted by a shout from Ron.
"Here it is!" he proclaimed. He was clutching the locket, which he had found in an inkwell that was stashed in an old shoe.
"That's it!" yelled Harry, taking it from Ron. "That's the same locket that I saw in the memory Dumbledore showed me, I'm sure of it!"
"Let me see that, Harry," said Hermione, softly. Harry gave it to her, grateful that, for now at least, the conversation about his love life was over. Quiet descended upon the attic as all three of them studied the locket.
"Dumbledore's arm," Hermione said. "I keep thinking about it. If a wizard as intelligent and powerful as he was couldn't destroy one of the Horcruxes without suffering that kind of damage, how are we going to?"
"Well," replied Harry, "I destroyed the diary, and I wasn't hurt by that. I think what we need to do is to break the object, somehow."
"What do you mean, break it?" asked Ron. "You mean just smash it? It couldn't be that simple."
"Horcruxes contain a bit of the soul of the person who made it," explained Harry. "When I destroyed the diary, I let that bit out. It's the same thing with Morvolo's ring, I think. When I saw it in the memory, the stone was whole. I saw Dumbledore wearing the same ring last year. The stone was cracked. I think you have to let the bit of Voldemort's soul out of the Horcrux, and it will die."
"But how do you know the… bit of soul won't go blabbing to You-Know-Who that it's been let out of the Horcrux? Ghosts can talk, you know," argued Ron.
"But a segment of soul is different than a ghost, isn't it?" asked Hermione.
"That's right," said Harry. "I asked Dumbledore if Voldemort would know if one of his Horcruxes had been destroyed, and he said he didn't think so! I think it just… dies."
"But then what about Dumbledore's hand?" asked Hermione, obviously worried.
"I think the ring was cursed," Harry said. "He got the injury from the curse, not from the object."
"Then this is probably cursed, too," said Hermione. "We need to be careful."
"How do I know how it's cursed?" asked Harry. "What do I do to prevent it?"
"I think that if you let go of your wand right after you cast the spell, it might not be able to hurt you," said Hermione, slowly. "It's risky. But can you let go of it fast enough?"
"Dumbledore said he got it with having slower reflexes." Harry said. "I'm a lot younger than he was."
"Then let's hope yours are faster," said Ron.
"Do you know what spell you're going to use?" asked Hermione.
"Yeah," answered Harry. He took the locket and put it on the table. Rolling up his sleeves, he pointed his wand at the jewelry. "Here goes," he said.
"Diffindo!" he yelled.
With a crack, the locket sprang open! A white light leapt up to Harry's wand. Just before it touched it, he released his grip on the wand handle. The light vanished, and the locket cracked. A white mist crept out, and vanished like steam. His wand bounced off of the table and lay on the floor, smoking slightly. Harry stood over the broken locket, panting.
"I don't like to think what would have happened if you hadn't let go in time, Harry," said Hermione, her voice trembling.
"Neither do I," answered Harry, picking up his wand. "But I think we've done it."
"Three down," said Ron, "only three to go."
Harry picked up the broken locket. Remembering Dumbledore and the ring, he clasped it around his neck. Ron and Hermione stared at him.
"Let's get to work finding them."
Authors note- This is a first draft of the first chapter. I would welcome constructive criticism. I will be adding filler to it, to try and draw out the suspense a bit more. I used Diffindo to destroy the Horcrux as it was listed in the HP Lexicon as meaning to cleave or cut open. I was going to invent something a bit more powerful, but thought simpler might be better.