Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Parts of this chapter are quoted from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

A/N: *Sigh* I was really trying to get out a new chapter last week, but this will have to do. I'm working on How to Fight a Dragon Army, but it was a rough week to start with, and it's harder than I expected. That one is not going to be one of my priorities going forward, and I might even set it aside for a couple weeks, but I still want to finish the next chapter before I move on. In the meantime, here's another one of my discarded stories. I have four chapters of this one, so expect more to come.

Introduction

The Brothers Gaunt was actually inspired by Souls Abound by robst. The trouble with robst is that he has great ideas, but poor execution, and this one is a perfect example. The idea is that all of the other horcruxes wake up after the Chamber of Secrets incident and start possessing people, but where this should have made things so much harder for Harry and much more interesting, they all turn out to be pushovers. I wanted to really do the idea justice with the threat of five copies of Voldemort running around. In fact, I liked the idea so much that I wrote out four chapters of it, and I very nearly made this my second full-length story instead of The Arithmancer. In contrast to Souls Abound, it would have been a very Weasley-centric story, sort of in the tone of Nightmares of Futures Past, though with a very different plot.

The reason I dropped this story in the end was something that I've come across in many alternative Third Year plots, which is, "And then what?" I never really know what to do with third year if the canon plot gets derailed, and it's one of the most common plots to derail. Even though I had a lot of pieces set up on the board, I didn't know what to do next. Yes, I probably could have come up with something if I wanted to, but by that point, I really didn't feel like doing another Hogwarts-years story. At this point, all of my remaining stories besides Animagus at War are non-Hogwarts-years stories, so I don't have much motivation to pick it up again.

The Brothers Gaunt: Chapter 1

"So ends the famous Harry Potter," said Riddle's distant voice. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear mudblood mother soon, Harry…She bought you twelve years of borrowed time…but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must…"

If this is dying, thought Harry, it's not so bad.

Even the pain was leaving him…

But was this dying? Instead of going black, the Chamber seemed to be coming back into focus. Harry gave his head a little shake and there was Fawkes, still resting his head on Harry's arm. A pearly patch of tears was shining all around the wound—except that there was no wound.

"Get away, bird," said Riddle's voice suddenly. "Get away from him—I said, get away!"

Harry raised his head. Riddle was pointing Harry's wand at Fawkes; there was a bang like a gun, and Fawkes took flight again in a whirl of gold and scarlet.

"Phoenix tears…" said Riddle quietly, staring at Harry's arm. "Of course…healing powers…I forgot…"

He looked into Harry's face. "But it makes no difference. In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter… you and me…"

He raised the wand.

Then, in a rush of wings, Fawkes had soared back overhead and something fell into Harry's lap—the diary.

For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it. Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book.

There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Harry's hands, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then—

He had gone. Harry's wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady drip drip of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it.

Shaking all over, Harry pulled himself up. His head was spinning as though he'd just travelled miles by Floo powder. He picked up his wand and the diary in preparation to leave, but he was distracted by a growing headache.

While he collected himself, a parasite in his skull, a splinter of a corrupted soul, long suppressed, was waking up. So, too, were four others, scattered around Britain; and in distant Albania, a weakened, disembodied spirit threw all its effort into possessing a passing bat. It needed to make its way back to England once again, and quickly.

Then came a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. As Harry hurried toward her, she sat up. Her bemused eyes travelled from the huge form of the dead basilisk, then over Harry, in his blood soaked robes, holding the destroyed diary in one hand and a fang in the other. She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face.

"Ginny, it's all right," said Harry. "Riddle's finished. It's over. I—Ahhh!" He fell over backwards, screaming in pain as his scar felt like it was going to burst open.

"Harry!" Ginny screamed. "Harry, what's wrong?" She tried to help him up, but he thrashed away.

Her voice barely registered to Harry as the pain only seemed to grow worse. He felt an echo of a sinister presence was reaching out as if to control him, one that he had felt several times before, the last not five minutes ago. But how? Riddle was dead. In agony, he tried to rub his head with his fists.

Unfortunately, one of those fists still contained the business end of a deadly basilisk fang.

The tip of the fang scraped directly across Harry's scar. Instantly, his body convulsed, and his scar bled, though not with blood. A sickly black ichor poured out of it, far more than it should have been able to produce, staining half of his face black and oily. Then, there was a blinding flash of light, and he lay still.

"Harry? Harry!" Ginny scrambled over to him and took his hand, carefully removing the fang from his grasp. He began shaking from the poison again, but Fawkes fluttered back down beside him, letting out a squawk of what sounded suspiciously like protest, and cried a few more tears over Harry's scar. In another minute, the wound was healed, and he regained consciousness.

"Ginny?" he groaned.

"Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry," she said, forgetting what was left of her shyness and throwing her arms around his neck. "I thought you were dying. I'm so sorry, Harry, I tried to tell you—I swear I didn't mean to—Riddle, he made me do it." The words poured out in a torrent as she sobbed into his shoulder.

Harry awkwardly patted her on the back, for the moment still more embarrassed that he had managed to stab himself with a basilisk fang and forced Fawkes to save him again. Whatever had happened with his scar, the tears seemed to have fixed it for the time being. "Thanks," he muttered, looking the bird in the eye. The phoenix gave him what from a human would have been a clear "Har-umph!" and waddled away. "Ginny, it's okay," he said. "It's all over now. C'mon, lets get out of here."

In Albania, a large brown bat flew along in a panicked state, trying to find nearest wizarding village. Two horcruxes, the spirit possessing it thought. Two! How had someone managed to destroy two at once? He had protected them so well. Dumbledore himself would be hard pressed to find them all, and he knew the old man well enough to know that the ring would probably kill him outright.

Someone must be hunting them. Could it be Potter? The boy barely knew any magic and yet possessed a power against him that even the great Lord Voldemort still struggled to understand. Whoever it was, he could only hope they hadn't got a hold of any more. Left to their own devices, his remaining horcruxes would have sensed the destruction of two of their brothers and launched into equally desperate action. If they weren't in the hunter's clutches yet, they could take care of themselves, but that was not a chance he could take. And he still had a sixth to make to arithmantically balance his soul. He would have to take swift and brutal action when he returned to England.

The bat's body wouldn't last long. Small animals were such a hassle to work with, and worse, possession took a lot out of him. He needed something bigger, and even then, it could realistically take him months to get back in his weakened state. He would have to try to get the creature eaten by a hawk at first light so that he could jump ship. That should be enough to see him to a village.

Harry was quite the sight as he staggered into Professor McGonagall's office. He was covered in muck, grime, and blood, half his face stained black, and holding a jewel-encrusted sword in one hand. Ginny clung tight to his other arm, both of the weary, shell-shocked children supporting each other. The adults barely noticed when a clearly-annoyed Ron dragged an oblivious Lockhart in behind him, and Fawkes returned the Sorting Hat to Dumbledore's hands.

There was shock when Harry produced the twice-cursed diary from the folds of his robes, which turned to horrified gasps when he carefully unwrapped the basilisk fang from his torn-off sleeve and explained the whole thing, but when he mentioned the part about his scar, the colour drained from Dumbledore's face, and he sent everyone else out to the infirmary, leaving Harry to finish the story in private.

Dumbledore seemed to be mulling the matter over after he finished, but Harry pressed on with something that had been nagging him.

"Professor Dumbledore… Riddle said I'm like him. Strange likenesses, he said…"

"Did he, now?" said Dumbledore, looking thoughtfully at Harry from under his thick silver eyebrows. "And what do you think, Harry?"

"I don't think I'm like him!" said Harry, more loudly than he'd intended. "I mean, I'm—I'm in Gryffindor, I'm…" But he fell silent, a lurking doubt resurfacing in his mind.

"Professor," he started again after a moment. "The Sorting Hat told me I'd—I'd have done well in Slytherin. Everyone thought I was Slytherin's heir for a while… because I can speak Parseltongue…"

"I would like to test that, Harry. I think I know what happened down there." The old man waved his wand in a pattern that Harry recognised from his duel with Draco. He tensed up as a small snake materialised on McGonagall's desk, but it didn't attack. "Can you speak to the snake now?"

Harry stared at the snake, but something seemed different this time, almost as if something were missing. "He—Hello?" he said. The snake merely hissed back at him. "Hello? Can you understand me?"

"I don't believe it can, Harry," Dumbledore said. "You are still speaking English." He vanished the snake. "It would appear that your Parseltongue ability has gone."

"What? Gone? How?" Not that he wasn't glad to be rid of it, but how could he just forget how to speak a language?

Dumbledore grew solemn. "Harry, what I am about to say to you, I must urge you not to repeat to anyone, not even to your friends, without consulting me first. This knowledge is far too dangerous to become widely known. Do you understand me?"

"Ye—yes, sir," Harry said, feeling like something very bad was about to happen. Dumbledore was waving his wand over him now, much like Madame Pomfrey did when he was her patient. Then, he conjured a rag for Harry to clean his face.

"Voldemort delved into the darkest and most evil of all magics, roads that few dark wizards—not even Gellert Grindelwald—dared to tread. You see, Voldemort's greatest fear is death, and to escape death, he performed vile acts and rituals—committing murders, visiting death on others, and thus splitting his very soul into pieces. I have only begun to understand the depths of what he did, it appears that he placed these pieces into various objects known as horcruxes for safekeeping. While these horcruxes exist, he cannot die. How many he made I do not know. In fact, I only suspected all of this until today, but I can see now that tonight, you have destroyed two of them."

Harry stood transfixed by the old wizard's words, but the wheels were already turning. "Two? But I—"

"One of them was this diary," he explained. "Yes, the spirit that possessed young Miss Weasley was not Voldemort's memory, but in a very real way, Voldemort himself—a piece of his soul. The second, though, was a horcrux that he never intended to create. For when he tried to kill you all those years ago, and his curse backfired, a piece of Voldemort's soul broke off and latched onto the only living thing in that house—you."

"Me?" Harry whispered, feeling as if he were about to faint.

"Yes, I am sorry to say. It was that fragment, rather than the curse itself that gave you your scar. And because a piece of Voldemort resided within you, you received some of his powers—your Parseltongue ability was not your own, but came from him. But by your accidental application of the basilisk fang, it would seem that you have destroyed the horcrux that was bound to your scar, and with it have removed Voldemort's abilities and influence. I suspect that you destroyed something so dark is why Fawkes thought you worthy of healing again, despite such a mistake. With it gone, I do not think that your scar will ever pain you again."

Harry's face lit up at the prospect. No more headaches or weird premonitions—ever? "Really, sir?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Indeed. In fact, I think you will find a number of things have changed." He conjured a mirror and held it up for Harry to see. His face was clean enough now that his scar was plainly visible, but he gasped to see that it no longer looked like a lightning bolt. With the added cut the basilisk fang had made, it now looked, appropriately enough, like a crooked, jagged letter "H."

"I must say I appreciate how you have made the look your own," he said with a chuckle. "You are very fortunate, my boy. I would not have expected the basilisk fang to work at removing the horcrux with you living to tell the tale. You may have averted far greater trouble for yourself later on."

"Sir…" Harry continued. "Does this mean that Voldemort will leave me alone, now?"

Dumbledore sighed. "No, I'm afraid not." He seemed to think for a moment, then said, "Harry, a year ago, you asked me why Voldemort wanted to kill you. At the time, I refused to tell you, both because I felt you were too young, and secretly because I feared that with the connection between the two of you, Voldemort might learn things he ought not from you…Well, I still feel that you are too young, but the connection is severed now, and given recent events, I fear that I may not have much choice in the matter. If you wish it, I will—"

"Yes! Please, Professor," Harry interrupted.

"Very well. The truth is that Voldemort tried to kill you because before you were born, a prophecy was made about you—a prophecy that predicted that you, and only you, would have the power to defeat him."

"Me? But how—how can I…? What did it say?"

"I could tell you," the old wizard said with a twinkle. "But it might be better if I showed you."

And so, Dumbledore led Harry up to his office, showed him his Pensieve, and played for him his memory of the prophecy made by Professor Trelawny. They discussed it a little, but Harry felt that he just needed some time to think it over. When pressed, Dumbledore gave him permission to tell Ron and Hermione about it, as long as he did not reveal the exact words. Soon after, he went down to the infirmary to be with his friends.

In an abandoned shack outside Little Hangleton, a cursed ring was radiating powerful compulsion charms. Within a few hours, a passing muggle was ensnared, entered the cabin, and, not being magical, bypassed the traps. Without knowing why, he tore up a floorboard and found a beautiful antique ring. Overwhelmed by its aura of curiosity, he put it on.

No one heard his screams of pain and terror as the blackened, withered flesh travelled up his arm. He ran from the shack, but staggered, then stumbled, as his body weakened. It was hours before anyone found him, twisted and mummified by the side of the road. It was another muggle who found the unfortunate man and the ring, and against all sanity, he placed it on his own finger.

Three days later, Auror Eric Williamson was dispatched to Little Hangleton to investigate a mysterious string of muggle deaths. Whoever had done this had made no effort to cover their tracks. He easily found the ring in a matter of hours. Obviously, it was riddled with dark magic and was still radiating compulsion charms. Strong ones. So strong in fact, that even knowing what they were, Williamson couldn't help but reach out for it and—

Stay back!

The ring had other ideas. A wizard had finally found it, and it wasn't about to let him go like the others. The wizard had a strong mind, but the ring brought all of its formidable legilimency and a very useful secret to bear to bend him to its will. It reached out and found Williamson's greatest sorrow.

How many did you lose in the war?

"What?"

Friends? Family? A wife?

"What? How…?" Williamson's voice trembled. His partner in the Aurors and his wife had indeed both been killed in the war by Antonin Dolohov, but what was this cursed ring doing bringing it up?

Look carefully. See the symbol.

He looked, and his eyes widened. It was the same symbol as in Grindelwald's files, but also the same symbol he remembered from his old copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

Yes, the Resurrection Stone, the ring said, and I can teach you how to use it. Voldemort had always known what the ring was, though even Dumbledore, if he had found it, would probably never have guessed that he knew. It was just his luck: three Deathly Hallows of incomparable power, and he wound up with the one he had absolutely no use for. Honestly, who was he going to talk to? His muggle-loving mother? His incompetent grandfather? Sticking a piece of his own soul into it was the only thing it was ever good for…until now. Now, the Hallow was paying dividends.

The soul fragment within the ring did then something it had never expected to do. It told Williamson how to disarm the Withering Curse. Then, under its instruction, Williamson put the ring on his hand and rotated the large jewel around his finger three times.

He had him!

"Griphook, we've got an alert on the dark magic detectors around the Lestrange Vault," Ragnok said. "The levels are dangerously high. They're interfering with the wards. Go check it out."

"Yes, sir." Griphook silently grumbled to himself as he took the cart down past the dragon to the Lestrange Vault. Of course, there was dark magic around there. The only humans with access to that vault were in Azkaban. Still, he couldn't argue with the Director. When he reached the vault, he was startled to feel a wave of dark magic wash over him even before he opened the door. It really was interfering with the wards. He redirected his anger from the Director to whichever one of the idiot Lestranges had put such a powerful dark object in there. Storing anything that interfered with the wards was a breach of contract. He stroked the crack in the door with one long finger and took his dark magic detector inside.

Sensing only goblins around, the soul fragment inside a certain golden cup surmised that it was stored in Gringotts somewhere, with no guarantee that it was even in an active vault, so it did the only thing it could: flare up enough dark magic to get itself confiscated. Griphook's detector immediately fingered the valuable-looking chalice on a high shelf as the culprit. Wearing dragon-hide gloves, he took it down and transported it to the disposal area.

The cup was to be dealt with the same way as all other confiscated items: destroyed by a goblin sword and melted down. However, since the goblin silver they used hadn't been reinforced with something a little stronger, like basilisk venom, the sword shockingly just bounced off it. When an axe and a hammer bounced off, too, Griphook started to get nervous. He apologetically approached Ragnok again, and, after inspecting the offending item himself, the angry Director decided to just hand it over to the Improper Use of Magic Office at the Ministry. Let them deal with it.

That was how the cup wound up in the hands of Mafalda Hopkirk. Now, Mafalda had been a Hufflepuff, and she recognised the cursed object at once from the Founder's portrait. It was the cup of Helga Hufflepuff. This thing had gone missing in 1947! What was it doing locked in the Lestrange Vault in Gringotts with dark magic all over it?

The smart thing to do would be to hand the cup over to the Aurors to figure out what to do with it, but Mafalda failed to notice the compulsion charms that were planting a fairly un-Hufflepuff thought in her head: Wouldn't this look good on my desk?

There it sat for about a week, until the office had a particularly busy and aggravating day. "I swear," she shouted to no one in particular, "if I have to mop up after one more regurgitating toilet, I'm going to hex someone."

It was then that the cup made its move. In a passable imitation of what Mafalda expected Helga Hufflepuff to sound like, it began to whisper to her: So sorry to hear that, my dear…do you want to talk about it?

He had her!

The lone resident of 12 Grimmauld Place ran around the house ranting like an even madder elf than he was.

You fool, you cannot destroy me. You cannot get rid of me. You do not have that power.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

The locket that Regulus Black left behind had been tormenting Kreacher for two weeks now, mocking him for failing to fulfil his master's final wishes.

You have failed, elf. You have failed your master.

"No! Kreacher is good elf! Kreacher tries!"

The elf was stubborn. It was taking a long time to wear him down, but today, he finally cracked.

But you fail. Your are a bad elf.

"KREACHER IS GOOD ELF!" he screamed. "Kreacher will destroy bad locket. Kreacher will get help."

The elf popped over to the only place he knew where someone might know how to destroy such a powerful dark object: Knockturn Alley.

Finally.

Kreacher wandered around a bit until he met someone who took quite an interest in the locket he was carrying. Mundungus Fletcher may not have been that bright, but he knew his ancient artifacts backwards and forwards. With the large "S" and the snake motif on that locket, it might well have belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself. So he casually strode up and asked the obviously-insane elf what he was doing with it.

"Destroy! Kreacher must destroy it! Master said so!"

"Hey, hey," Dung said. This probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try. "I've seen these things before. I can destroy it for you."

"YES! You take it! You take bad locket. You destroy it for Kreacher." The elf thrust the locket into Dung's hands and popped away before he could get another word in.

Dung was surprised. The elf had to be pretty far gone if he could consider that following his master's orders. Oh well, he did get the valuable-looking locket out of it.

The real treasure is inside the locket, a strange voice whispered. To get it, you must speak the password, which I will tell you as a reward for saving me from the mad elf. Now, listen carefully, and repeat after me…Hesha-hassah.

He had him!

I need a place to hide my Fanged Frisbee. I need a place to hide my Fanged Frisbee. I need a place to hide my Fanged Frisbee.

It was the last day of the term, and Roger Davies found he had a few items that, while not technically banned (yet), his parents wouldn't let him keep at home. He needed someplace to stash them away where no one would find them over the summer, especially Filch. He wandered back and forth on the seventh floor, looking for hiding spots, when suddenly, a door appeared out of nowhere. Curious, he looked inside, and he gasped in amazement.

He stood in a vast storage room, filled with what looked like literally a thousand years' worth of junk. There were ancient suits of armour, piles of books from every century, congealed potions bottles, and Cornish pixies breeding in the rafters. Students must have been hiding things in here since the school was founded, he realised, and a lot of them. He wondered how many people in the school knew about this room right now. Still, he doubted anyone would come in here over the summer. He picked an identifiable spot near the door and set his Fanged Frisbee down, along with the rest of his contraband. He was about to leave when a voice whispered to him.

Over here.

It took him quite a bit of precious time to climb over the junk and locate the source of the voice, but it was worth it.

It can't be! He thought.

But I am, the voice whispered back.

Of course it was. He'd seen the statue in Ravenclaw Tower every day for the past four years. There was no mistake. It was the diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, lost for a thousand years, and he'd just found it!

Roger eagerly snatched the diadem up and hid it in his robes. He wanted to hand it in to Flitwick right away—there was sure to be a reward of some kind—but he was going to be hard-pressed to make the Express as it was. He would have to wait for autumn to unveil it.

A few hours later on the train, he got to thinking. The Lost Diadem was reported to make you smarter—or wiser, depending who you asked. But what did that mean? And was there any useful Lost Lore of Ravenclaw that came with it? The more he thought, the more he felt the diadem calling to him. When he could stand it no longer, Roger dashed into a bathroom, pulled out the diadem, and placed it on his head.

He had him!