Chapter 1

Fear shuddered deeply as he pulled incessantly on one of the levers in his section of the console, the chilly, slightly moist air of the afternoon only partly responsible for the biting cold he and his coworkers were feeling. In response to his machinations, fleeting purple glows flashed across Headquarters, growing slowly, but steadily more intense, to Disgust and Anger's chagrin.

"Can you stop that, please"? Anger grumbled. "It's not like we can do much to help, out here in the middle of nowhere, hiding like a hunted animal…"

"You can't deny we've got to do something"! Fear exclaimed. "The Weasleys don't need any more kids injured…what d'you think that means? What if they've gone for Fred and George now, or Charlie—"

"WILL YOU SHUT UP"?! screamed Anger. He jammed his fingers into the machine now, and the resulting red-and-purple memory orb slid into its place in the short-term racks. "Just another piece of shit to deal with, when we're already dashing all over the country, freezing halfway to death, losing body parts…"

"…forced to choke down these pitiful amounts of fish and mushrooms just to stay alive, living in this filthy piece of junk tent…damn it, why are we still here"? finished Disgust.

Sadness sighed dejectedly listening to the two complain. It was pretty miserable these days, there was no denying it, but today exceptionally so. It was Ron's turn to wear that…thing…and as usual, it had cast a profound shadow over Headquarters. The normal bright reds and golds overcast to dull shades of brown, the Chudley Cannons posters peeling and faded, and the surroundings bitterly cold. Fear, Disgust, and Anger, at times like these, would huddle to the console as if it would keep them warm, and so it was their influence that Ron would feel every minute of the day. And Joy…Sadness only felt pity for Joy, who was curled up under a blanket on the couch at the back of the room, in a torpor that would keep him as immobilized as any Body-Bind Curse. Not that he'd have much to do regardless, there had been so little to be happy about for so very long.

"And now those two! How perfectly wonderful for them, there's another thing that we've got to go gallivanting off to find for this damn mission, and I'm sure Hermione will be able to show off how smart she is, and Harry will pull off some incredible feat of courage and power and we'll just sit here and be useless like usual!"

"But…sword?"

It was the first word Joy had spoken all day. Fear rushed over towards the back of the room as Anger and Disgust pressed further into the console, to the point where Sadness wondered if they'd permanently impress themselves there. Sadness followed, and up close could see that Joy was weakly stirring, fighting even to sit up as his coworkers approached. "Now…can…destroy…this?"

"Shh…shh…" Sadness and Fear sat down next to Joy – Sadness was struck by how pale he was, his normally ruddy gold skin now a sickly, jaundiced color, his normally vibrant smile a weak upturn of the lips covered with droplets of feverish sweat. "Yes, they say they can use the Sword of Gryffindor to destroy the locket, but not right now, it's hidden somewhere, and we need to find where…" Sadness couldn't bear to take away this one little bit of hope and so kept quiet about the doubts that he was imagining, of the further suffering and pain that might have to be borne before they could find the sword. He exchanged a glance with Fear.

"What'd you reckon, Ron? Ron?"

Disgust was the first to hear their host's name, with Anger quick to follow. "Oh, so now they notice? They don't care enough about what could be happening outside, about what might have happened to our family, but then when we might be useful to them, when it's time for us to think of more places to go freeze and starve, then we're worth paying attention to?" Fear raced back to the console, as if sensing what was about to happen. "No, no, please don't…"

There was a loud crack, and Fear was sprawled on the ground, the blow so hard that it would have broken several bones if he'd had any. "Don't you dare, he's had this a long time coming!" Disgust lightly wound a clockwork dial, and the console lit up green as Ron said "Oh, remembered me, have you?"

"What's the problem?"

"Problem?" Disgust was almost shouting. "We're camping out in the middle of nowhere, barely enough food for a house-elf, haven't showered in weeks, having to hide from Death Eaters and werewolves and whatever else is hunting you down, no idea if our family or friends are even alive, no clue when or if it'll end…and you want to know what's the problem?" The console glowed a brighter shade of green now, as Ron stood up, not meeting Harry's eyes.

"Don't expect me to skip up and down the tent because there's some other damn thing we've got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don't know."

Anger pulled several levers now, and his signature red glow began to overtake the green. "I mean, I could grin and bear it if we had least had some plan to follow, some way to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but no! We're just going around in circles, completely lost and confused and with no way to find the other Horcruxes, and no way to get rid of them, and no way to find what we need to get rid of them, and you want us to seriously believe that Dumbledore didn't give you the slightest clue how to go about it all? We trusted you!"

"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for", said Harry.

"Yeah, I thought I did too."

"So, what part of it isn't living up to expectations? Did you think we'd be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you'd be back to Mummy by Christmas?"

Sadness heard Ron's name being called from afar. It was Hermione, and from the corner of Ron's eyes, he could see her standing off to the side, well away from Harry, but with a horrified expression on her face. He wanted so badly to reach out to her, to tell her that it would all be okay, but there was no room for him on the console, with Anger and Disgust taking up all of it.

"Take off the locket, Ron." she said. "Please take it off. You wouldn't be talking like this if you hadn't been wearing it all day…"

But was that even true? There was no question the Horcrux around their neck was terrible for them, the way it sucked all the usual comfort out of Headquarters, the way it reduced Joy to a quivering, ineffectual mess, but even in those times when Harry or Hermione wore it and they were free from its influence, Disgust and Anger would still grumble and keep close to the console, spending entire days producing nothing but red and green memories, going somewhere private to whisper conspiratorially about Harry whenever Sadness or Fear took control. Sadness remembered one such time a few days ago when he and Fear had been at the console, guiding Ron through a conversation with Hermione about how terribly wrong everything had gone and about how uncertain the future was…

…and as if reading Sadness' mind, Anger had that memory recalled to the forefront, only at his touch, the blue and purple tones were engulfed by fiery red. "You said it too!" Ron now shouted at Hermione. "You said you were disappointed, you said you'd thought he had a bit more to go on than—"

And then Hermione was denying it, saying she didn't mean it, and Sadness knew that Anger had to be stopped now, or else this would end very, very badly. Disgust took a step away, and he saw an opportunity. Slowly, he began to inch toward the console, despite the bonfire blazing there, Anger being too occupied to notice anything else.

"So why are you still here?"

"Search me."

"Go home, then!"

"WELL WHY NOT?" shouted Anger, with a plume of fire almost like one of those "nuclear bombs" that Hermione had tried to explain to Ron once. "Neither of them need us here, it's not like we can contribute anything useful! And it's not like their parents are going to mourn if something happens to either of them! What about Ginny? What about Mom and Dad? Does he even care what might have happened to our family? What they said—'the Weasley's don't need another kid injured—"

"Ron, I don't think it means anything new has happened, anything we don't know about…"

"It's all right for you two, isn't it, with your parents safely out of the way—"

"My parents are dead!"

"And mine could be going the same way!"

Now Harry was shouting again, and Anger's flailing around the console was growing more and more intense, and Sadness was now close enough to see him jam his thumb into a bright red button. Ron began to draw his wand from his pocket, the incantation for a Blasting Curse on Anger's lips…

"Look!"

It was Joy, speaking with as much energy as he was physically capable of, which wasn't much at the moment. Fear took a look at him, then from him to the windows overlooking the Islands of Personality, and gasped in horror. "Sweet Merlin, no…no!"

He dashed to the back of Headquarters, eyes glued to the windows that normally had the best view of Friendship Island. Sadness could only gape in despair at the towering structure, a sculpture of Ron with Harry and Hermione in their school robes, holding hands and ready to face anything the world could throw at them, together. It had been supported, over the years, by a succession of different yellow-tinted Core Memories, the most recent being a yellow-and-purple orb created at Albus Dumbledore's funeral, the moment Ron had sworn to follow Harry and Hermione on their mission to destroy the Horcruxes and stop You-Know-Who, because damn it, you do not let your friends go into danger like that alone…until now, because Friendship Island was crumbling to pieces. An earsplitting crack split the seam between Harry and Ron and Harry's likeness tumbled down into the Memory Dump, along with large chunks of the statue of their host.

The air temperature now warmed by several degrees as Anger forcibly removed the Horcrux and tossed it off to the side, but he still would not let go of the console. Sadness now yanked on a rope, hoping to make Ron feel one shred of regret for this, but Anger's powerful influence combined with his and so all Ron felt was resentment and betrayal. He tried to make Ron focus on Hermione – now that the Horcrux was off, maybe she could help him calm Anger down. But Anger snarled and clutched his specialty dials more protectively.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you staying?"

"I—yes, yes I'm staying, Ron, we said we'd help Harry—"

"Oh Hermione, please, please, look at me, do something, don't let us do this…" Sadness whispered more to himself than to anyone else, but Anger would not be stopped.

"I get it. You choose him."

From the back of the room, another loud cracking noise was heard, and the rest of Friendship Island went down. Now the statue of Hermione crumbled to pieces as if it had been hit by a Reductor Curse, several more pieces of Ron's statue falling into the abyss with it. The remaining statue of Ron swayed precariously without its structural supports, then it too toppled into the darkness.

Under Anger's command, Ron stormed out of the tent, and with the memory of a forest in Lincolnshire that they had visited a month before – as far away from Harry and Hermione as possible – Disapparated. As the view through Ron's eyes turned black, Fear managed to dash back to the console and push Anger out of the way, weaker now that he had vented his fury so. The console glowed blue and purple now, as Sadness looked out the window to the empty space where Friendship Island used to be, then to Joy trying to pitifully sit up, then to Anger, who had stormed off to the side to stand besides Disgust.

"Guys…" he said softly, "…what have we done?"