I do not own Harry Potter. Especially this chapter. This is taken from one of the chapters from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Do not read this story unless you read the last HP book, or you really like spoliers.

Introduction

"I'm going to open it, " said Harry, "and you stab it. Straightaway, okay? Because whatever's in there will put up a fight. The bit of Riddle in the diary tried to kill me."

"How are you going to open it?" asked Ron. He looked terrified.

"I'm going to ask it to open, using Parseltongue," said Harry. The answer came so readily to his lips that he thought that he had always known it deep: Perhaps it had taken his recent encounter with Nagini to make him realize it. He looked at the serpentine S, inlaid with glittering green stones: It was easy to visualize it as a minuscule snake, curled upon the cold rock.

"No!" said Ron. "No, don't open it! I'm serious!"

"Why not?" asked Harry. "Let's get rid of the darn thing, it's been months -"

"I can't, Harry, I'm serious- you do it-"

"But why?"

"Because that thing's bad for me!" said Ron, backing away from the locket on the rock. "I can't handle it! I'm not making excuses, Harry, for what I was like, but it affects me worse than it affected you and Hermione, it made me think stuff- stuff I was thinking anyway, but it made everything worse, I can't explain it, and then I'd take it off and I'd get my head on straight again, and then I'd have to put the effing thing back on- I can't do it, Harry!"

He had backed away, the sword dragging at his side, shaking his head.

"You can do it," said Harry, "you can! You've just got the sword, I know it's suppose to be you who uses it. Please, just get rid of it, Ron."

The sound of his name seemed to act like a stimulant. Ron swallowed, then, still breathing hard through his long nose, moved back toward the rock.

"Tell me when," he croaked.

"On three," said Harry, looking back down at the locket and narrowing his eyes, concentrating on the letter S, imagining a serpert, while the contents of the locket rattled like a trapped cockroach. It would have been easy to pity it, expect that the cut around Harry's neck still burned.

"One... two... three... open."

The last word came as a hiss and a snarl and the golden doors of the locket swung wide with a little click.

Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome as Tom Riddle's eyes had been before he turned the them scarlet and slit- pupiled.

"Stab," said Harry, holding the locket steady on the rock.

Ron raised the sword in his shaking hands: The point dangled over the frantically swiveling eyes, and Harry gripped the locket tightly, bracing himself, already imagining blood pouring from the empty windows.

Then a voice hissed from out of the horcrux.

"I have seen your heart, and it is mine."

"Don't listen to it!" Harry said harshly. "Stab it!"

"I have seen your dreams, Ronald Weasley, and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible..."

"Stab!" shouted Harry; his voice echoed off the surrounding trees, the sword point trembled, and Ron gazed down into Riddle's eyes.

"Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter... Least loved, now, by the girl who perfers your friend... Second best, always, eternally overshadowed..."

"Ron, stab it!" Harry bellowed: He could feel the locket quivering in his grip and was scared of what was coming. Ron raised the sword still higher, and as he did so, Riddle's eyes gleamed scarlet.

Out of the locket's two locket's two windows, out of the eyes, there bloomed, like two grotesque bubbles, the heads of Harry and Hermione, weirdly distorted.

Ron yelled in shock and backed away as the figures blossomed out of the locket, first chests, then waists, then legs, until they stood in the locket, side by side like trees with a common root, swaying over Ron and the real Harry, who had snatched his fingers away from the locket as it burned, suddenly, white-hot.

"Ron!" he shouted, but the Riddle- Harry was now speaking with Voldemort's voice and Ron was gazing, mesmerized, into its face.

"Why return? We were better without you, happier without you, glad of your absence... We laughed at your stupidity, your cowardice, your presumption-"

"Presumption!" echoed the Riddle- Hermione, who was more beautiful and yet more terrible than the real Hermione: She swayed, cackling, before Ron, who looked horrified yet transfixed, the sword hanging pointlessly at his side. "Who could look at you, who would ever look at you, beside Harry Potter? What have you ever done, compared with the Chosen One? What are you, compared with the Boy Who Lived?"

"Ron, stab it! STAB IT!" Harry yelled, but Ron did not move: His eyes were wide, and the Riddle- Harry and the Riddle- Hermione were reflected in them, their hair swirling like flames, their eyes shining red, their voices lifted in an evil duet.

"You mother confessed," sneered Riddle-Harry, while Riddle-Hermione jeered, "that she would have preferred me as a son, would be glad to exchange..."

"Who wouldn't prefer him, what woman would take you, you are nothing, nothing, nothing to him," crooned Riddle-Hermione, and she stretched like a snake and entwined herself around Riddle- Harry, wrapping him in a close embrace: Their lips met.

On the ground in front of them, Ron's face filled with anguish. He raised the sword high, his arms shaking.

"Do it, Ron!" Harry yelled.

Ron looked toward him, and Harry thought he saw a trace of scarlet in his eyes.

"Ron-?"

The sword flashed, plunged: Harry threw himself out of the way, there was a clang of metal and a long, drawn-out scream. Harry whirled around, slipping in the snow, wand ready to defend himself: but there was nothing to fight.

The monstrous versions of himself and Hermione were gone: There was only Ron, standing there with the sword held slackly in his hand, looking down at the shattered remains of the locket on the flat rock.

Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say or do. Ron was breathing heavily: His eyes were no longer red at the all, but their normal blue; they were also wet.

Harry stooped, pretending he had seen, and picked up the broken Horcrux. Ron had pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle's eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished; torturing Ron had been its final act.

The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to his knees, his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from cold. Harry crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down beside Ron, and placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He took it as good sign that Ron did not throw it off.

"After you left," he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron's face was hidden, "she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn't want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone..."

He could not finish; it was only now that Ron was here again that Harry fully realized how much his absence had cost them.

"She's like my sister," he went on. "I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It's always been like that. I thought you knew."