The Twisted Mausoleum

"We discussed many things this past year" said Dumbledore. "We talked about Riddle's past, his motivations, his ambitions, and most especially his Horcruxes. We laid a very important foundation for your quest, but sadly we never got to the details."

"But," he laughed, " I am glad that we got the important things done first. Now we may move on to those very important details that will let you put that foundation to use." He plopped into his desk chair and smiled benignly at him.

"I am going to first teach you," he said, "how to bypass the defenses of Voldemort's Horcruxes. I'm going to make sure that you never make the same mistake I made…"

- - - - -

"…And that's why I say that Frank is innocent to this damn day, God rest his soul!" yelled a regular of the Hanged Man, slamming his meaty fist into the table in his righteous anger, and then for more of his dark ale.

Indeed, despite the fact that the death of said man was almost three years ago, he was still talked about every once in a while, though the story had been told so many times that its popularity had started to wane.

"Whatever you say Jim," laughed the good-natured proprietor of the pub as she took empty glasses from a nearby table to the back. She'd known Jim since the day she'd opened this old pub, more than fifty years back as a matter a fact. She still remembered the fiftieth anniversary celebration just about two years before old Frank had died.

The spacious room was just as she'd left it when she returned from the kitchen. The boisterous, drunken atmosphere of a busy night still permeated the dim room as joyous talk and friendly debates filled the air.

It was at times like these that she felt the most content, looking out over the crowded tables with a small smile on her plump face. But this night would prove to be another strange one for the town in just a few short years. This place rarely ever had any excitement, but when it did it was always so strange, almost…haunted. Which was why a distinctly suspicious silence fell over the pub when a sound that was something like a firecracker, except louder, was heard outside.

"Oh dear…" Martha said. She slowly made to start towards the door, but was saved the trouble when it opened and a tall, hooded figure stepped in. His footsteps made heavy creaking noises as he stepped across the room while conversation steadily restored itself after the awkward silence that accompanied his entrance.

The thin man reached the bar and seated himself. He turned on his stool until he was facing Martha, who was by now back behind the bar, still regarding her new guest with a keen eye.

"What'll it be, love?" she asked in a friendly tone. She couldn't have been more surprised by his answer.

"Whiskey, if you have it," said a voice that couldn't be older than his late teens. He pulled back his hood to reveal an equally young, though tired, face with round spectacles in front of possibly the most unnaturally green eyes she'd ever seen. His expression was so world-weary that she was tempted to give him the drink, but no matter his height or assumed experience, the fact remained that he looked barely seventeen, and she wasn't in the business of selling to minors.

"You look a little wet behind the ears, young man," she said with a raised brow and an amused smirk. "Got any I.D.?"

The teen reached into his cloak, which, in and of itself was strange, as she'd only ever seen a very sparse few enter this place with cloaks like that ever before.

"That should do," he said in a friendly voice as he shoved a completely blank, card-sized piece of paper across the scrubbed wooden panel of bar. She was slightly confused at first, but she knew as soon as she picked up the card that this young man was most definitely of age.

The sitting man smiled a little when her eyes glazed over in compliance, but immediately frowned when a slightly apologetic look took over her features.

"My apologies, dear, but we're all out of whiskey, anything else I can do yeh for?" She didn't even notice when her customer sighed in relief, and she promptly scuttled to the shelves in the back when he ordered mead instead.

"Have a drink with me," the young man said, holding up his mug of mead. "I could use the company." She looked back at him, seeing that he did look incredibly lonely. She poured herself a glass of something or other and sat down across from him and asked where he was from.

"Well," he began with a thoughtful tone, "you could say I was raised in a not-so-upstanding orphanage with a few other kids, some of whom were especially unsavory," he said with some amusement. "I was there till I was 11, and then, you see, I got accepted to a boarding school up in Scotland…"

The conversation continued for a long time. He eventually asked her about her origins, in answer to which she extended her arms outwards with a proud smile, indicating that she'd been there her whole life. He learned of the bizarre things that had happened there, and of the reactions that followed.

"Strange things about that old Riddle house, I tell yeh," she slurred after a few glasses. "No one ever figured out what was behind the two accidents that happened there."

"Strange indeed…oh, I best be on my way," said the man in a kind voice as he stood up slowly. "Thank you for your information."

"My wha –?" she started, but never finished. The young stranger had drawn a thin, sturdy-looking stick from his belt loops, flicked it, and walked away, never to enter again. All poor Martha could do was wonder why the young man would bother to enter at all if all he was going to do was immediately leave. She shrugged and sat back down as though nothing had happened at all, wondering why in the world she felt so tipsy.

- - - - -

"The Horcrux is, at its core, is only ever a fragment of a soul," said Slughorn, pacing the office again. "And when defending itself, it will do as perhaps any soul would, and try and destroy yours to protect itself."

He paced some more and then stopped. "It will be the second to last phase of the process, and undeniably the most difficult. It will test you on every level, and when it is done…well," he paused and looked up with a challenging smile in place, "then I guess you'll just have to thank your lucky stars that you're alive at all."

- - - - -

Harry couldn't have been more pleased at his success as he hiked his way up the steep hill towards the Riddle Manor. He definitely had enough to know that this was where Tom had murdered his father. It was only his second lead, but this place, in his mind, was almost a guaranteed Horcrux spot. Now he just had to figure out where on this property it was hidden. He had his hand on the back door ready to enter the house when he thought he sensed it. The corner of the back garden stood out, but only so slightly that someone who perhaps wasn't looking for it would have completely passed it.

He knelt down and carefully examined the dirt on the ground, stopping at the patch that seemed more freshly dug than the hard dirt just under his feet. He closed his eyes and let his fingers find it. He had heard that when someone's eyes were closed, their other senses sharpened, and apparently magic was no different. Without his eyes to distract him, Harry found exactly what he was looking for. He felt his fingers wrap around a cold handle and he sharply yanked, but only a tremble resulted.

Harry stood up and took a step back, pointing his wand outward. He waved his wand in a quick circle, watching as the dirt dispersed. He smiled, pointed his wand at the small trap door, and flicked it upward. The trap door flew open as though something had exploded under it and thudded loudly on the other side of its hinges, dust rising slowly from where it had landed.

Harry stepped to the edge and peered down into the opening, but saw only chipped, crumbling, stone steps descending into the blackness awaiting him, almost as though inviting him to fall into it. He lit his wand and slowly made his way down the steps until he reached the bottom. As soon he had descended the last step, he heard the trap door slam closed above him, the sound echoing ominously off the walls inside the now dark chamber, lit only by his relatively weak wand light. Harry twirled the tip of his wand in a circle and the tip flared into a blinding light, which Harry shielded his eyes from and held up, splashing the stark light against the stone walls of a very small room.

There were many shelves lining the far wall, filled with rotting food and jars full with what looked like molding preservatives. Against the other wall Harry's wand light fell on what he could only describe as a twisted mockery of some sort of tomb. A two-shelved wooden cabinet with an entirely glasswork front stood out amongst the other admittedly mundane things in this cellar, showing two yellowing skeletons with decaying flesh and ligaments still attached.

"I think I'm gonna be sick." Harry muttered to himself, marveling at the sadistic nature of his foe.

Harry, aided by the sense he had been slowly honing, placed his hands on the walls and unfocused his eyes, waiting for something that stood out among the blurry mess that the room had become, all the while trying to ignore the rotting corpses not two feet from him. He found what he was looking for when he felt a deep depression in the wall that his wand light had so conveniently failed to reveal.

He could only wonder what that depression was for, that is, until his gaze was drawn back to the skeletons in the corner. He stepped in front of the cabinet and opened the glass door. He reached for the skull of the skeleton on the bottom shelf, which was short, and seemingly weak, as though the man had been frail in life.

Harry wagered that he knew who this was. So overly dramatic was Tom Riddle, that he had placed the Horcrux made from his father's murder in Gaunt's shack, while Gaunt's skeleton and presumably the Horcrux modeled from his murder might lay here in his Muggle father's home. He had aimed to disgrace both hated ancestors in death. He put that thought aside and reached for the bones before him.

He reached for the head, yanking it roughly off of the rest of the spinal column. He turned and thrust it into the wall, smiling when a thunderous click sounded from behind the wall. The cabinet slid backwards and to the side, gradually revealing an unnaturally dark tunnel. Harry thrust his lit wand forward into the tunnel but was greeted with only a few feet of illuminated path. He moved his wand to the sides and saw that the walls were lined with stone snake heads in which the bottom jaws had been replaced with torches. The bright blue gems that sparkled in the eye sockets twinkled mischievously at him.

"There are torches," Harry concluded slowly, "He put them there for a reason. Guess I have to use them."

Harry waved his wand towards the torches but nothing happened. He frowned, and intoned the spell with as much authority in his voice as he could muster, and yet still nothing happened. He thought for a few minutes, mulling it over, then whispered "Incendio" in parsletongue and all of the torches in the hallway lit simultaneously, bathing it in an ethereal blue light. He crept down the tunnel, following the torches down a seemingly endless path, avoiding touching the walls until he reached a circular chamber. There, in the middle, was possibly the largest raven statue Harry had ever seen, perched on a raised pedestal, clutching a jawless skull in its obsidian beak.

"Ravenclaw," Harry whispered, examining the skull, and noticing that it had been petrified by magic, obviously for preservation reasons.

Harry approached it, looking at the walls for signs of traps. From what he could see, the stone-gray skull had a complicated rune on the forehead, etched crudely by what looked to be a knife. He could feel it pulsing with malevolence from where he stood. He took a moment to chuckle at Voldemort's apparent skull phase.

Times like this he really wished he had Ron and Hermione with him. He hadn't spoken to them since the incident at the orphanage and they were probably worried sick. Harry had come here with something to prove, and now that he was about to embark on the hardest part of this journey, he wished he hadn't been so stubborn. But deep down, he knew that if he couldn't even defeat a Horcrux by himself, he had no chance against Voldemort at all.

"Inimicus Cum Intentum Déstrūgere Repulse," he muttered repeatedly, moving in a slow circle around the area he was about to occupy, knowing he would need to impede whatever "guardians" this place might have while he worked. They'd have a tough time getting through this one, he thought to himself, proud of all the things he'd learned to help him. He cleared his head and with a step forward, seized the head by the back and yanked hard. Harry pulled out his wand as the skull became dislodged. He gripped it tightly in both hands and focused on the presence he could feel emanating from within it. Now came the hard part.

"EXPELLESAWOL!" he yelled, the arcane and chaotic nature and incredible power of the spell distorting his voice. The skull cracked with a sound like a gunshot, the rune on its forehead flashing a dark, sickly purple. He looked down and the skull's empty sockets met his eyes. Everything else faded away.

Harry was once again back under Hogwarts, facing off with Quirrell, the pain in his head mounting and the exhaustion creeping up on him as he battled Voldemort's feeble-minded host. Suddenly the scene whipped itself with a blur of colors into the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk fang was once more sinking deep into the flesh of his arm. It was like Legilimency, except this was so, so much worse. Every pain he had experienced in those memories was happening again, just as real as the first time around. Each time he had faced a Dementor and their effects, and he felt them one thousand-fold as each time added to the next.

He distantly heard himself scream out in anguish and severe pain. He was at the graveyard once more, feeling Voldemort's Crucio each time he cast it, the pain in his scar doubling again and again. Perhaps most painfully of all he had to experience the agony of possession a second time, as the presence of Voldemort consumed him yet again.

A voice in the back of his mind spoke, cutting through the fog like a razor. 'Get up! I will not let the bones of a dead witch bring me to my knees!' He recognized the voice from his fourth-year Imperius resistance lessons, though now it sounded vaguely like someone he couldn't place. 'Get up and fight! This is my mind and it is mine to control. He felt himself being pulled into more memories of pain and sorrow, but the last words of his inner voice had revealed a truth to him. This was his mind, and no one could invade it if he did not let them.

Harry came to with a strangled, choking gasp, greatly weakened and grievously injured but brimming with an unknown energy. As he broke away from the Horcrux's delusion, and the skull crumbled into dust slowly, the remains falling into a pile at his feet, an unearthly scream echoing in his own subconscious. He looked up to find the Inferi approaching him with the realization that the Horcrux was in trouble, just as they had done at the Cave.

He staggered to his feet and stepped up to the corpses that were steadily gaining on him. He twirled his wand above his head twice as though it were a lasso and pointed at the oncoming abominations. Fire streamed out of his wand in a powerful spiral that made his wand vibrate with such intense heat that it surprised even Harry as the spell engulfed the corpses in a whirlwind of bright green flame. Harry kept his pyromaniacal attack going as he shook with the effort of the spell on top of his injuries as they persisted in coming closer. And, as the last, badly burnt, dead body was feet from him, it too fell rapidly away to ashes. He had known Felfire would come in handy…

Harry fell to his knees, bleeding and traumatized, but this was far from over. He began to hobble back towards the entrance, but as he reached the middle of the narrow entrance tunnel, the blue flames lining the walls left their torches and blocked the door with a wall of fire. He held up his wand and used the water spell, but the torrent of water had no effect on the flames, which were so hot that the liquid evaporated before it touched them. Harry would have smirked had he not been so injured. This was going to take one powerful Freezing charm. Harry waved his wand in continuous circles, focusing hard until, at last, the flames began to turn into ice, before Harry lashed out with a Reducto that shattered it and walked out.

Harry smiled and turned back towards the tunnel, and then his face fell in absolute horror. A speeding jet of fire the size of a small train was rocketing towards him, gaining fast as though it wanted nothing better than to incinerate him. Harry understood why it had happened. Just like he had needed to use the water in the lake to help Dumbledore and consequently face the monsters the water wrought forth, he had had to extinguish the fire that blocked the door and consequently face the inferno that was on its way to fry him now. Harry knew that anyone other than Voldemort was meant to be burned to a crisp just outside the tunnel so that if and when he found them, Voldemort could smile cruelly as he put the Horcrux back, assuming they hadn't destroyed it yet, and fix whatever problem had let them even get that far.

As the fireball drew ever nearer, the only viable option made itself known to Harry, but it wasn't pretty, nor would it be even remotely within the realms of anything but a supreme effort, but then again, he'd defied the odds before. With only a few seconds left, Harry knew that timing was crucial at that moment. He raised his wand and waited, back straight, ready to die. At the last second, he acted.

At the last possible moment, he acted swiftly, roaring "DIFFRACTUM!" He watched in numb relief as the conflagration reached him and bent outwards and around him. It reformed around the other side of his shield and crashed into the wall behind him, but not before the sheer force of the magic behind the fireball broke his wand arm, or before the strain on his magic from deflecting said force made him vomit. The cabinet slid back into place and Harry laughed. He laughed for the longest time he could ever remember, partly with relief, and partly with victory. He had proven his mettle.

He staggered to his feet and focused the last of his magic into the trip home, and twisted sharply into the welcoming oblivion.

- - - - -

Ron and Hermione were sitting at the kitchen table when the thump up in the entrance hall startled them out of the stupor that Harry had left behind him in the wake of their failure at the orphanage. Hermione screamed when they came upon the unconscious, nearly dead, and disfigured form of one Harry Potter.

"How in the bloody hell did he manage to apparate here like this?" asked Hermione in a choked voice, flowing with guilt.

"That hardly matters," Ron said hurriedly, "Get a healer, now!"

- - - - -

Harry woke a day and a half later feeling as though he'd been run over by a rampaging giant. He sat up stiffly and noticed the bandages around the elbow area of his right arm, the large bandage on his forehead where his scar was, and what looked like a large cinderblock of chocolate resting on his bedside table with significant chunks missing.

He unwrapped the bandages on his arm and saw the scar where the old wounds had reopened had healed and so discarded the used cloth. He reached up and took the large patch-like bandage off of his scar and felt it. It felt as normal as it ever did though when he glanced at the inside of it the bandage he saw a lightning bolt shaped blood stain and raised his eyebrows in surprise. That Horcrux and his subsequent magic use had done a good number on him. He felt right now as though he could shout a first-year spell and get no results, all of his magic having gone to the healing process. He stretched his sore limbs and scratched his head, very hungry. He threw off his covers, dressed, and left the room heading for the kitchen. As he entered, Ron, Hermione, and Madam Pomfrey looked up at him. His friends smiled but the over-protective nurse glared at him.

"What," she began angrily, "are you doing out of bed, Mr. Potter?"

"Eating," he said simply, and sat at the table and pulled a box of cereal towards him.

"We'll see about that," Madam Pomfrey said as she moved over to him and started to check him over. "Well you seem fine, seeing as they were far easier to heal the second time around," she said giving him what he could have sworn was a secretive smile, "Rest, Mr. Potter, you should be back to full health in about a week."

She left the kitchen to return to Hogwarts and Harry sighed into his cereal, having known the nurse's antics for too long. He looked up at his friends, who were looking back at him with inscrutable looks on their faces.

"What?" Harry asked, looking confusedly between the two of them. If he thought recriminations were coming for having not brought them along, he was sorely mistaken.

They looked at him a moment longer before their faces broke into huge grins. "We destroyed a Horcrux!" Hermione exclaimed with a bright smile on her slightly flushed face. "Though it's a shame that it had to be something so closely linked to Ravenclaw," she said in a sad tone.

"It was her head, Hermione," Ron clarified, "Doesn't get much more closely linked than that."

Harry said nothing as his friends argued about whatever they usually argued about while he finished his cereal. Harry's mood was sky high at the moment. He, or "They" as Hermione would have it, had tracked down a Horcrux and destroyed it without lasting injury, and now they could start on the two definite items they knew to be Horcruxes. They spent the rest of the day relaxing and reveling in their small victory, treasuring the times like these that were becoming fewer and further between these days.