He had taken the prophecy hard. Voldemort was, well, Voldemort. The most feared dark lord of the last few decades. People were scared to even speak his name, for Merlin's sake! And Harry, fifteen year old Harry, was expected to succeed where Dumbledore had failed. Harry was expected to kill Voldemort, a man who both matched Dumbledore for power and had had over fifty years to learn all manner of spells and curses (not even mentioning that he was a ruthless sod with no conscience whatsoever). Harry on the other hand had had only five years of magical education, many of these being interrupted while he foiled Voldemort's plans for world domination.
He had returned home the summer of his fifth year coping with both his godfather's death at what he considered to be his hands and the fact that his life was almost certain to end in the very near future. He didn't expect to see his 20th birthday. He actually had doubts he would make it to his 16th, hell bent on killing him as Voldie seemed to be. He had spent the start of that summer in a haze of depression, convinced that the lack of contact from anyone meant that they too thought that he was going to die and had decided to cut ties now, before it got too messy.
He was shocked beyond belief when Dumbledore had turned up unannounced in the Dursley's living room on his birthday and told him to pack his things. He was even more shocked when, on apparating into Grimmauld Place, he found all of his friends waiting for him with a surprise party. After asking if they still wanted to stick by him when he had what he imagined as a big ticking bomb hanging over his head and being shouted down by several very angry and indignant people, he tried to forget about his worries for the night and enjoy himself. His inner-voice (which had sounded like Snape, even then) told him he may as well have some fun, as the next party he would be going to would probably be his funeral ("and oh what a party that will be" inner-Snape had told him, sounding almost happy). Although not exactly cheered by this thought, he listened to the voice and got thoroughly drunk on firewhiskey supplied by Fred and George. (He turned out to be a rather sad drunk, and spent the evening sobbing into Ron's shoulder, before vomiting spectacularly all over Hermione's feet).
The next morning, he had woken up with the mother of all hangovers and was less than pleased when Hermione had appeared at the door to tell him that Dumbledore wished to talk to him after breakfast. He had scraped himself out of bed, stumbled into the shower and spent five minutes washing the taste of puke out of his mouth, before he made his way downstairs. He had spent the whole of breakfast wincing into his coffee cup as the twins booming voices mocked him for his behaviour last night and although he felt extremely smug as he looked at Fred and George's faces when Molly started scolding them for giving him alcohol in the first place, he wished that she would have a little consideration for the family of woodpeckers that had taken up residence within his skull and seemed to be determined to peck their way out. The serious look on Dumbledore's face as he led Harry into an empty sitting room and proceeded to cast several privacy charms did nothing to help his predicament. Neither did the discussion they proceeded to have on what had to be the most abhorrent piece of magic ever created- Horcruxes.
Harry was unsure why he was surprised that Voldemort had utilised this knowledge. He was evil enough to make the requirements for the creation of a Horcrux no big deal and evidently he was stupid enough to believe that 1) any man could avoid death and 2) splitting you soul was a good way to go about it. Over the course of the next week, Dumbledore showed him several memories that gave clues as to what Voldemort might have used as his horcruxes (if Dumbledore was right in the assumption that Voldie had made more than one, which Harry strongly suspected he was) and where they could be hidden. Harry had demanded that he be involved in the search and much to his surprise Dumbledore had reluctantly agreed.
"I made a grave mistake in not telling you what I knew sooner, Harry. A mistake which I do not intend to make again." Dumbledore's voice was low and thick with sorrow. Harry could hardly believe what he was hearing.
"You mean… I can come with you Sir? I won't be shut out, while the adults do all the work?"
"No, Harry. Not this time." And although the Headmaster was agreeing, his face looked pained. "I have withheld information from you before in an attempt to protect you and you ended up facing Voldemort because of it. This time, I shall attempt to do right by you. You, more than anyone, deserve the opportunity to help in delivering the fatal blows to Voldemort after all you have lost because of him." Harry stiffened at the oblique mention to Sirius and his voice was raw with emotion as he replied.
"Thank you, Sir. For…for giving me the chance to do this. It means a lot to me Professor. To be able to help, that is."
"Well, Mr. Potter, you may be able to help sooner than you think…"
Dumbledore had then shown him a memory, which he believed to be the key to what they wanted to achieve. A school-age Voldemort and his potions professor, discussing horcruxes. But it had been tampered with and they needed a copy of the real memory, whole and unedited. Dumbledore had explained Horace Slughorn to Harry and the professor believed that they could use the fame of the Boy-Who-Lived to get what they needed. And so it was that they set of to see Slughorn, and Harry first employed the Harry Potter persona. He was charming, confident and utterly convincing, persuading Slughorn to give him the memory that he was most ashamed of, willingly and almost without argument. It had taken a few seconds of his blazing green gaze and the softly uttered words, "For my mother, Sir, for Lily…" and the man had bent over backwards to comply. When Dumbledore had mentioned the opportunity to teach at Hogwarts that coming year, Slughorn had jumped at the chance, eager for any position that would put him closer to Harry, and the influence that he would undoubtedly hold.
So, they had the final piece of the puzzle. And seven it was. Seven horcruxes to find and destroy. Well, five, since Harry had inadvertently (but not at all regretfully) destroyed the diary in his second year and Dumbledore believed Voldie had meant to create another on the night baby Harry had destroyed him, but, of course, lacking a body made this a little difficult to do. Five quickly became four, when Harry realised why he had a niggling feeling of familiarity when viewing the locket in the pensieve and it was liberated from Kreacher's cupboard. At which point the story of Regulus had spilled out, a young boy who got in too deep, too quickly and had done his best to repent. Harry had felt his hatred of Kreacher lessen slightly on hearing this, but the pain of losing Sirius was still too fresh for him to forget completely.
Dumbledore had explained his theory on the location of the ring to Harry and it was mid August when they set out to recover it. Dumbledore had at first tried to protest Harry's accompanying him, but a quick reminder of what had been said at the start of their search and he reluctantly agreed. Harry was beyond grateful. While being stuck at Grimmauld with the Weasleys, Hermione and the Order was infinitely better than being stuck in Privet Drive with the Dursleys, sometimes the constant reminders of Sirius got to be a bit much and escaping from them would be good, especially if they came one step nearer to finishing Voldie once and for all. Retrieving the horcrux had gone smoothly, up until the point where Dumbledore had tried to place the ring on his finger and Harry, in a moment of panic, had stunned him.
"STUPEFY!" The red light left Harry's wand and struck Dumbledore squarely in the chest, a split second before the man could slide the ring onto his right hand. His aged body crumpled to the ground, the ring rolling to a corner of the dilapidated shack.
"Well done Potter, 100 points to Gryffindor." Inner-Snape said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Excellent move, stunning the Headmaster." Harry growled angrily, before quickly ennervating his professor.
"I'm so sorry, Sir!" He exclaimed, once Dumbledore had fully awoken. "But, I thought you were going to put the ring on, and that didn't really seem like a good idea…" he trailed off here, unsure what to say next. Dumbledore merely smiled, eyes twinkling.
"Good thinking, my boy, I should have checked the ring more thoroughly before picking it up." Harry carefully helped Dumbledore up, internally smirking and doing a victory dance, having at last bested inner-Snape.
"Not right all the time, are you Snapey?" He thought smugly to himself as Dumbledore retrieved the ring, this time checking for and removing several compulsion charms on it.
With the ring destroyed, they were down to three horcruxes, with Dumbledore sure that one of them was the diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw and another was Voldie's pet snake, Nagini. As far as Harry was aware, the other one was unknown .
On September 1st, he had returned to Hogwarts, slightly more hopeful that he would survive the year than he had been at the beginning of the summer, but still believing that he would not make it out of the final confrontation alive. It had been with these decidedly depressing thoughts in mind that he had found himself an empty compartment and settled down for a long few hours of ignoring the students who had finally decided that he was telling the truth after all. Even if they were genuinely sorry, what was the point in forming more attachments to people when he was just going to die anyway? In his defence, Harry had never pretended to be all sunshine and roses. Some might call him a pessimist, but he preferred to think of himself as a realist and sometimes, reality sucked.
AUTHOR'S NOTE :
Thankyou for the 2 reviews! It might not be a big number, but it made me happy anyway.
DukeBrymin: Your review was the inspiration for the focus of this chapter, which was originally going in a whole other direction. This part and the second part will show why Harry and Ginny never got together and hopefully show a bit more about why Harry is having difficulties in the future.
Nymphadora: Your review was very useful :) I was worried my thoughts had got a bit jumbled, but you summarised my whole chapter in a couple of sentences, which helped me to clear things up in my head and gave me some reassurance that I hadn't written a load of unintelligible rubbish.
In case this was not clear, and I think it was, this is the first part of the history to this story. Years 1-5 are as the books. But things differ after that, with Harry's reaction to the prophecy being more severe and Dumbledore feeling more guilt at shutting Harry out, with the result that he clues him in earlier. The reason Harry thinks that there is only one more Horcrux, when there are in fact two is because, like in the book, Dumbles has not told him that he is a horcrux.
Some bits of this are rather weak, I think. Unfortunately for me my urges to write seem to occur between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m.