Chapter 6

Suddenly, Harry felt tremendous pain from his scar. He rushed to the bathroom and locked the door so that his friends would not interrupt his vision of Voldemort...

He was standing in the Headmaster's Office at Hogwarts. Dolores Umbridge was leaning over a map of Hogwarts spread out on the desk. Magical notations swirled on the map.

"As you can see, my Lord," Umbridge twittered, "We have the grounds completely covered by Caterwauling Charms and the students have been confined to their quarters. If Potter comes here, we'll catch him... and punish him."

But he was not looking at the map or paying heed to her words. His eyes were fastened to the locket dangling from her neck.

"Where did you get that locket?" he asked in a deceptively soft voice.

"It's an old family heirloom, my Lord," said Umbridge. "The S stands for Selwyn. I am related to the Selwyns."

"How dare you lie to me?" he shouted. "It stands for Salazar Slytherin. Where did you get it? Crucio!"

Umbridge screamed. "I.. I took it from an illegal street peddler."

"Who?"

"Mundungus Fletcher, my Lord. Please..."

Fletcher was of the Order of the Phoenix, a crooked traitor who had revealed the time of Potter's move to Snape for money. Voldemort permitted himself to relax a bit. However Fletcher had come by the locket, he didn't know what it was and he wouldn't have told the Order about it. The man would have to be caught and questioned, of course. Meanwhile...

"That locket is mine," he told Umbridge. "Give it to me if you want to live."

"Of course, of course," she said eagerly, holding it out to him with trembling hands. "I had no idea it was yours. Thank you for your mercy in letting me live."

He grabbed it. "I didn't say I would let you live. I just wanted the locket safe in my hands first. Avada Kedavra!"

The locket felt strange in his hands. He probed it with a spell and it disappeared with a pop. It was a Geminio copy, not his Horcrux! Had Fletcher made multiple fake copies to sell? Plausible, but any sensible buyer would test for that possibility.

His mind went back to the raid on the Ministry of Magic a few months ago. Umbridge had been attacked and knocked out. Could that raid have had another purpose besides freeing Mudblood prisoners and recovering Moody's eye?

He drew from his pocket the wand of the Mudblood, Hermione Granger. He had already run a Priori Incantatum sequence on each of the captured wands to see what Potter had been up to. Mostly it was a boring series of protective spells. He had stopped with satisfaction for this one when it showed the failure to repair Potter's broken wand. Now he ran it back further, counting day by day from the failed trap at Godrick's Hollow to the day of the Ministry raid.

There it was. The wand showed the illusion of a single locket becoming two. Now there was no doubt: they were after his Horcruxes! He screamed in rage and blasted at everything in the room. Fortunately for his other followers, Umbridge had been the only other person in the room.

He would have to keep Nagini close now, no longer send her on missions under his control. And he would have to check his other hiding places: the Gaunt cottage, the Gringotts vault, and here at Hogwarts. The last was closest, so he would check it first. The next closest was at Gringotts.

Harry broke from his trance and went back to Ron and Hermione.

"We're in real trouble now! He knows we're after his Horcruxes. There's one at Hogwarts, but after that he's going to Gringotts."

"Oh no!" said Hermione. "He'll move them to more secure places and we'll never find them."

Another rage-fueled vision filled Harry's mind. Voldemort was trying to get into the Room of Hidden Things, but the Room of Requirement wasn't responding to him. He tried over and over, and blasted spells at the wall, but nothing worked. "Dumbledore must have found the room, taken the Horcrux, and sealed the entry," he thought.

"He can't get into the Room of Requirement for Hidden Things," said Harry. "Somebody must be using it for something else, but he doesn't know that."

"That saves one Horcrux for us, but what about the Gringotts one?" asked Ron.

"Somehow we've got to get to it before he does, or we've lost," said Harry.