The weeks following the recovery of the book saw a drastic change in the focus of the three teens and their tutors. Realizing that the entire book was written in Latin, Hermione asked Sirius if the Black family had any translation spells they could all use. After searching his family's library, he found one that he taught to them so they could all read the book without trouble.

A brief introduction told them that this was not the original work but one that was faithfully transcribed from the original Aramaic. According to the translator, an Arab scholar had obtained several items of a dark nature, and in his studies of those objects he had become as corrupted as those pieces. He sought out more and darker artefacts, eventually compiling the results of his studies into several books. One of his contemporaries, horrified at the potential for sheer evil that could result from this forbidden knowledge, sought answers of a holy nature in order to provide a workable counter to the madness and hopefully keep it in check. The result of his studies was the Book of Divine Warfare – a compendium of magic, disciplines, and even weapons and armour. The Latin translation the teens found had additional notes not found in the original work, mostly pertaining to the history of Templar order and how the remnants integrated into the Freemasons, so it seemed that some of it at least had been written here in England. That theory seemed proven when they found a note describing a cache of sacred items hidden under Glastonbury Tor.

"That doesn't actually surprise me," Hermione confessed once she read the note. "Glastonbury Tor has long been considered one of the holiest sites in Britain for thousands of years, from the ancient Celts to the Catholic church. It's even supposed to be part of the island of Avalon, for goodness' sake. I honestly can't think of a more appropriate place to hide sacred relics."

"But wouldn't archaeologists have discovered it already?" Harry wanted to know.

"Not necessarily. Okay, there are legends of a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers under the tor, but nothing has ever been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. There have been a few tunnels that were discovered at Glastonbury Abbey, where King Arthur is supposedly buried, but the abbey is almost a mile away and the tunnels were found blocked off after a short distance. As best as they can tell, those tunnels from the abbey were used either for supply runs or to easily get to other holy sites. Now, there was a church built on top of the tor, although St. Michael's Tower is the only part of it left, and one of the tunnels from the abbey does seem to go in the direction of the tower, but a lot of historians think that a tunnel that long was impractical."

"So, does the note say what these sacred relics actually are?"

Hermione shook her head. "No, but it does say that in order to find them we first need to find the wardstone at St. Michael's Church. Now, even though the church is gone we should still be able to find the stone. If we're fortunate it'll even be somewhere in the tower. The wardstone will have an obvious piece missing, but the note makes a reference to the book where we can find detailed instructions for making the missing keystone."

"We need to do this too," Luna broke in. "I don't know what we'll find there, but it will make all the difference."

Harry smiled. "Looks like we've got another treasure hunt, Padfoot!" he called out.

*DIM*

It was decided that after making a supply run to Diagon Alley, which primarily involved the purchase of a specialized trunk with a massive space expansion charm inside, permanently rendered thanks to the runes engraved throughout the interior surfaces, Hermione's parents would meet her, Harry, and Luna outside the Leaky Cauldron. If anyone asked, they were spending Christmas with Daniel and Emma Granger in Crawley, a little over an hour south of the Leaky Cauldron with decent traffic, but their other reason was so that the Grangers could take them to Glastonbury, nearly three and a half hours away to the west. Over the course of several letters owled back and forth, much to Hedwig's satisfaction, the Grangers were informed of the gist of what was going on and the importance of what the young people were doing. The specifics were avoided until they were able to meet face to face, but Hermione's parents still agreed to take them to Glastonbury. They had even reserved the last pair of rooms at a local inn for that very night. They had tried for three, but with the holidays fast approaching no more rooms were available. And so it was that after bidding Sirius farewell, the trio stepped out into nonmagical London for the second time in as many weeks, their luggage stowed in their new trunk which was currently shrunken to the size of a matchbox and safely resting in Harry's coat pocket.

After hugs and holiday greetings were exchanged, they climbed into Daniel's Range Rover and embarked on their journey. By unspoken agreement, the craziness of the last few months was not discussed. Instead, the long drive was spent getting to know each other. Daniel and Emma, it turned out, were both dentists who owned a successful practice in Crawley. Both had a love of classic literature, especially Shakespeare, which explained where Hermione's name had come from, and they both loved playing tennis together in warmer weather. They also enjoyed camping, but while Daniel was passionate about fishing, Emma didn't care for it so much. She much preferred cooking fish to catching and cleaning them, she laughed. She was also a talented painter, and had even had several of her paintings fetch a handsome sum at various art festivals in the area. Daniel's "at home" hobby was model trains. The basement of their home had an impressive model railroad track, complete with wooded mountainous terrain and villages, all painstakingly assembled and painted with the highest attention to detail.

The drive along the A303 was quite pleasant. It was still early afternoon when they passed Amesbury so they decided to stop and visit Stonehenge, as it was just off their route and none of them had actually seen the megalithic structure in person. After visiting the famous monument, they stopped again in Wincanton and had an early dinner at a local pub.

Glastonbury was a quaint little town in the lowlands of southwest England with a rich history going back thousands of years to Neolithic times. Some of the earliest Christian traditions in all of England were based here, primarily involving Joseph of Arimathea. According to folklore, the Chalice Well, located on the southeast side of town, was the spot where he had placed the Holy Grail, the cup that Jesus Christ used at the Last Supper and later during his crucifixion was used by Joseph to catch his spilled blood. Joseph was also considered by some to have founded Glastonbury Abbey, just to the northwest of the Chalice Well, sometime in the first century, and was also attributed to have planted the Holy Thorn, a plant that bloomed twice a year – once at Christmas and once at Easter. The Holy Grail became integrated with Arthurian lore, as did Glastonbury and the surrounding lands. Just south of the town flowed the River Brue, though during the time of Arthur the river had formed a lake which lore suggested was the home of the Lady of the Lake.

The most significant landmark, though, was Glastonbury Tor. Rising over five hundred feet above sea level just east of the town, the distinctive hill could be seen for miles. Terraces winding back and forth all the way around the tor were thought by many to be a meditative spiral pathway leading from the ground to the summit of one of the most iconic sacred sites in all of Britain. From neopagans to Christians to historians, Glastonbury held a special significance to many people.

It was early evening when Daniel Granger pulled his Range Rover into the car park of the inn where they would stay the night. The sky had been partly cloudy all day, but there had been no rain until they were almost to Glastonbury. As it was, it was no more than a drizzle, but it was enough to be uncomfortable, especially in the cold, clammy air. Hermione groaned as she opened the door and got hit by a wet gust of wind. "This is going to be fun," she groused. "I'm glad we packed extra jumpers. We're sure to need them."

Harry climbed out after her and immediately took her hand. "Hopefully it won't take too long," he said. "The big thing will be finding the wardstone, but with your point-me spell that shouldn't be too difficult."

The damp cold didn't seem to faze Luna at all. She'd experienced much worse weather during her family's hunts for the crumple-horned snorkack.

The Grangers checked in at the front desk and collected the two room keys. They allowed the three teens to take the larger room with two beds with the assurance that the girls would share one while Harry took the other. After the young people promised to behave and the elder Grangers admonished them to be careful on their pending adventure, they retired to their rooms.

The trio wanted to wait until well after dark before they left the inn, as there would be less chance of encountering anyone on the tor. Hermione grabbed the digital clock from the nightstand between the two beds and set the alarm for 10:00 PM. As they had several hours to wait, she then turned on the television and introduced her two best friends to MTV and the newly launched VH1. Harry had heard some of the music before from when his cousin Dudley would listen to his music too loud, but this was a new treat for Luna. She was instantly drawn to the sounds and styles of what Hermione called hard rock and heavy metal. The quirky blonde wasn't quite sure what rocks and metal, heavy or not, had to do with music, but whatever it was, she liked it. When Hermione mentioned that nonmagicals had devices that could play a person's favourite music anywhere they wanted to go, she was practically jumping on the bed with excitement. "We've got to get one!" she squealed excitedly.

Hermione laughed at her friend's antics. "Harry, I know what we're getting Luna for Christmas," she said.

At ten o'clock the alarm went off and the teens bundled up to go outside. Harry carried their shrunken chest in his pocket again while Luna carried the keystone they had made a few days prior. Hermione cast the same series of spells on them that they'd used when they first retrieved the Divina Bellica, as they'd taken to calling it, and then they slipped out of the inn.

The drizzle had stopped by this time, but there was still a patchy cloud cover overhead. Every so often there would be a break in the clouds, allowing the nearly-full moon to shine through. As they walked through the silent, damp streets of the town a light mist started forming. After a short while, they passed the Chalice Well and could easily see the hill looming up against the night sky before them.

The gate to the path leading up to the summit was closed and locked, but it was also low enough to easily climb over, which the teens did with no hesitation.

"I'm glad we don't have to follow the spiral labyrinth to get to the top," Hermione said as they climbed the steps of the path. "We'd have to wind our way around the entire hill seven times or so, and it would take us two or three hours."

All three were breathing a little heavier than normal by the time they reached St. Michael's Tower at the top of the tor. The moon broke through another hole in the clouds right then, allowing them to enjoy a truly magnificent view. They could see for miles in all directions, though the mist was getting a little thicker as it started collecting on the ground. It felt like they were standing on an island in the middle of a silvery-grey sea of fog, and it was easy to see where tales of Avalon might have come from.

Hermione cast her modified point-me spell, and the trio proceeded in the direction indicated by the brunette's wand. They found a smooth stone embedded in the ground just outside the small tower. Following the instructions on the note, Luna tapped a certain rune on the keystone with her wand, channelling her magic as she did so. The runes on the keystone lit up, and as she lowered it to the wardstone, runes that until now had remained hidden suddenly appeared on the wardstone, as did a slot just big enough to hold the keystone. Luna immediately slid the keystone in place. As she did so, the teens heard the sound of stone grating against stone. The ground vibrated as segments of grass-covered stone sank into the hill, creating a spiral stairway down into the earth.

After setting a notice-me-not charm on the surface of the stairway, the three teens went down the steps. At the foot was a stone wall with an iron-bound door embedded therein, leading even deeper into the tor. The door was not locked, and though obviously quite heavy was balanced on its hinges in such a way that after lifting the latch it barely took a touch for it to swing open.

Harry illuminated the tip of his wand and led the girls into the tunnel on the other side. The corridor was lined with rough-hewn stone, but the floor was relatively smooth. Thick wooden beams reinforced the vaulted ceiling overhead, and all three were amazed to see that there was no sign of rot or decay on the wood. Neither was there any dampness or mould. The air itself smelled clean and fresh, not musty or stale as would normally be expected in a chamber buried for centuries.

After going down a short flight of stairs and a few more turns, the corridor opened up into a room filled with weapons, armour, and various other items, many of them duplicates. Against the back wall, directly opposite the entry to the chamber, stood a complete suit of armour that Hermione and even Harry recognized as the type worn by the Templars. It consisted of a full suit of chainmail, a white tabard with a red cross pattée sewn on the front, a black leather sword belt complete with a cruciform-style long sword, and a flat-topped steel great helm.

In the very centre of the chamber stood a carved stone pedestal, on top of which was a book. As soon as she saw it, Hermione went straight to the ancient tome. "This looks like a catalogue of the room," she said a few moments later after she perused the volume. "We'll have to cast the translation spell – it's in Latin too."

"That's fine," Harry said as he removed the shrunken chest from his pocket. Placing it on the ground, he tapped the box with his wand in a specific pattern, causing the built-in spells to expand it. "We'll put that in last, Mione. In the meantime, we'll just grab everything and get out of here. We can figure out what everything is back at Grimmauld Place."

"Does one of us need to climb in and organize everything?" Luna wanted to know.

"No, just dump it all in. Everything will automatically be put in stasis so it won't matter how the chest gets tossed and turned."

"Well that's certainly convenient," Hermione said. "We'll be done in no time then!"

Using the levitation spell, the three began to move all the items in the room to the magical trunk. The task took several hours to complete, but in the end they scoured the chamber bare. Pieces of armour, shields, swords, maces, bows, spears, jewellery, chests of coins and uncut gems, and other items, including the suit of Templar armour, all found their way into the chest until there was only the catalogue left. Hermione picked it up herself and gently laid it in the trunk, and Harry closed the lid and shrunk it before he picked it up and put it back in his pocket.

Their quest complete, they left the chamber and climbed back up to the surface. Removing the keystone caused the runes on the wardstone to disappear once more, and the slabs of earth rose back up to the surface, erasing all trace that they had been there. Tired but triumphant, they climbed down the tor and returned to Glastonbury. By this time the moon had nearly set in the western sky and the temperature had dropped even more. Thankfully there was no rain, but clouds still blocked out most of the stars and there was an even frost on the ground. They made it back to their room without incident and immediately went to sleep, barely taking the time to brush their teeth and change into their nightclothes.

It was shortly after noon when Harry awoke, and he quietly got dressed before waking the girls. After making sure they wouldn't fall back asleep, he left the room and stepped across the hall to let the Grangers know that they had safely returned. After the girls had finished getting ready, they checked out of the inn and had lunch at a local tavern. They decided to visit the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and the Chalice Well as long as they were here in town, and after seeing the sights they climbed back in Daniel's Range Rover and returned to Crawley.

*DIM*

A few miles northwest of the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire County lay the small village of Little Hangleton, along with its neighbour Great Hangleton. There had only been one noble family of any note in the area, the Riddles, but the last of that line had been mysteriously murdered many years ago. The locals suspected that the murderer was the caretaker, one Frank Bryce, but his alibi had checked out and he had been cleared of any wrongdoing. Still viewed with a measure of suspicion, though, Bryce had continued taking care of the decaying Riddle manor house to the best of his abilities until he had disappeared without a trace this past summer.

So far it had been a particularly damp and cold December, though not as cold as past years. Snow was not expected until some time in January, but freezing rain fell with regular occurrence and the air itself seemed imbued with the very essence of the unlamented dementors.

The night of the winter solstice found a miserable, wet, and bedraggled Peter Pettigrew, also know as Wormtail due to his pathetic animagus form of a particularly scruffy-looking rat, preparing for a ritual at an overgrown cemetery behind an equally rundown church at Little Hangleton. A steady rain beat down, and though the full moon was just a few nights ago the heavy storm clouds obscured its radiant white light. The only light came from a hooded lantern resting on a dead tree stump and a small fire burning underneath a cauldron large enough to hold a full-grown man. A noxious mixture bubbled away in the cauldron, shielded from the rain by a water-repelling spell. Beside the cauldron, oddly enough, was a basket with a large snake wrapped around it, along with a hospital bed, the latter holding an emaciated patient strapped down. The patient's eyes were open but gazing straight up with a blank, unseeing stare. The basket and bed both were also protected by water-repelling spells.

"Hurry, Wormtail," a cold voice hissed from the shadowed depths of the basket. "The ritual must start at midnight." Almost as if in agreement, the snake raised its head and hissed, flicking its forked tongue in Pettigrew's general direction.

The unhappy man was shoulder deep in a muddy hole before a tombstone bearing the inscription of Tom Riddle. Another shovelful of freezing wet mud was tossed out of the hole as the rain beat down on the digger. Still angry at having Potter slip from his grasp, the deformed, spider-like homunculus that was the current incarnation of Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort, had denied Pettigrew the comfort of a water-repelling charm or permission to use magic for his task. Complaining, though, was useless. While nowhere near his former level of power, the homunculus Voldemort was still more than capable of using the torture curse, as Pettigrew had already felt multiple times since locating his master. Not for the first time, he wondered if his desire for money, fame, and women was worth the abuse he suffered from his master on an almost daily basis. In the end, though, it didn't matter. He'd made his choice years before when he'd committed the necessary rape, torture, and murder that all Death Eaters were required to perform in order to receive the Dark Mark, just as he'd made his choice when he told his master of the Potters' hiding place. If the "initiation" into the ranks of the Death Eaters hadn't sealed his fate, his betrayal of his closest friends certainly would have.

His musings were interrupted by the hollow thud as his shovel impacted wood. "I found the coffin, milord," he called out, raising his voice so that he could be clearly heard over the sound of the wind and rain.

"Excellent," Voldemort hissed. "Hurry, get the lid cleared off enough to at least break a hole in it. We have another half an hour before we must complete the ritual. I can already feel the magic start to flow around me."

Grumbling and cursing under his breath, Wormtail nevertheless got the lid of the coffin uncovered enough to raise. With a look of distaste, he reached inside the casket and yanked out a femur of Voldemort's long-dead father.

"That will suffice," his master said. "Now get up here and begin the ritual!"

Violently shivering, and not just from the cold, Pettigrew climbed out of the grave and laid the femur on the dead grass beside the fire. This ritual was the last thing he wanted to do, but at this point he had no choice. His life was basically over unless he was able to resurrect his lord, but the cost of doing so was high. So very high.

He reached into the basket and pulled out a deformed, misshapen caricature of a baby, such as might be expected if a demon and a reptile had an unholy spawn. Swallowing his distaste at handling the abomination, Pettigrew carried the homunculus to the cauldron and laid it inside the seething mixture contained therein. He reached down and picked up the femur of Tom Riddle and dropped it in the foul liquid as well, uttering a barely-audible line about "bone of the father."

Now for the hardest part of the ritual. Hands shaking, he drew a nasty-looking knife with a serrated edge and touched the blade to his left wrist. Tears streamed down his face, hidden by the pouring rain, and he whimpered in fear before he reached down deep inside and found the little spark of Gryffindor courage that had originally landed him in the House of the Brave all those years ago at Hogwarts. Gritting his teeth against the sobs that burst out of him, he began sawing through flesh, sinew, and bone. He nearly passed out from the pain but kept sawing as if he were possessed by a foreign spirit.

Though it felt like hours, it was barely fifteen seconds when the last shred of skin separated and the hand fell into the cauldron with a plop. Weeping from the agony, he screamed out the next line of the ritual, accompanied by a flash of lightning and peal of thunder.

His lifeblood flowing from the vicious wound, he staggered drunkenly to the hospital bed and, using the same knife, made a deep incision in the bound patient's arm. Holding the knife at an angle until the blade was completely covered in the patient's blood, Pettigrew crawled back to the cauldron and tossed the gory blade into the roiling liquid. He was barely able to chant the final line of the ritual before he fainted from blood loss.

With the final ingredient and incantation, the liquid exploded, cracking the cast iron cauldron in two. A flash of lightning revealed a pale, androgynous, snake-like humanoid standing naked in the deluge. Seeing the unconscious Pettigrew lying on the ground, the creature sneered in disdain. "Pathetic," it hissed. "Yet...he did serve his purpose well." It knelt down and retrieved an all-familiar wand before lifting Pettigrew's mutilated limb. A tap of its wand and a hissed incantation later, and the stump was capped with a hand of solid silver.

The creature stood, caressing the head of the snake that had approached, and walked to the basket. It pulled out a ragged black robe and donned it before turning to the hospital bed. "Frank Longbottom," it hissed. "I confess that you are a poor substitute for Harry Potter, but you are an enemy nonetheless and your blood was sufficient for my resurrection. Now it will be used to revive my servant." The oblivious man did not respond, but stared unblinking into the night sky.

The creature cast another spell, causing Longbottom and Pettigrew both to glow for a few seconds. As the glow faded, Longbottom's eyes closed and a long, slow breath escaped his body for the last time. Even in the pale light of the lantern it was easy to see that his body was much paler than it was earlier.

Pettigrew, on the other hand, blearily opened his eyes to find his master standing over him, and with his hand replaced with one of silver. "Thank you, milord," he whimpered.

"Give me your arm, Wormtail," the resurrected Voldemort commanded.

The pitiful man lifted his arm, displaying the infamous tattoo of a skull with a snake crawling out of its mouth. Voldemort pressed the tip of his wand into the tattoo and channelled his magic. Pettigrew hissed at the sting as his master summoned the surviving members of the inner circle of his Death Eaters.

"We will soon see who of the living will be brave enough to return when their master calls," the dark lord said.

In short order, the first apparation pop sounded amidst the pattering rain. A fearful yet relieved Thorfinn Rowle stepped forward and immediately knelt before his master. "Milord," he said reverently, "thank Mordred you're back." Voldemort pursed his thin lips together but otherwise said nothing. Rowle, not receiving permission to stand, did not move. Other pops sounded as more of Voldemort's Death Eaters appeared in the abandoned cemetery and gathered around, each kneeling as they arrived.

At last there were no more arrivals. Voldemort looked around in displeasure. "Eight," he whispered. "My inner circle, those whom I trained myself, those who held the most prestige and trust in my order, over a score total, and eight of you show up when I call."

The kneeling Death Eaters were terrified but said nothing. They were all familiar with their master's violent mood swings, and knew that speaking without being bidden to was a quick invitation for pain.

At length Voldemort sighed, his red reptilian eyes burning with anger. "Fortunately for you, I am well aware of the assassin who seems to have a vendetta against my followers. His destruction of Azkaban was a terrible blow to us, for not only did he murder many of my most effective followers from the regular ranks, he murdered seven of my most valuable of the inner circle. That alone would have earned him my eternal enmity, but he has also murdered an additional six of that same inner circle who never stepped foot in Azkaban, to say nothing of the scores of nonincarcerated regulars who are now dead as well. As of now, finding and stopping this assassin will be one of our two highest priority missions. Dead or alive, I care not. The so-called Boy-Who-Lived, though, will be brought to me alive. I reserve his death for myself, and he will be made into a public spectacle. None will dare stand against us at that point, not with their saviour's blood spilt on the streets of Diagon Alley."

*DIM*

The hunter silently cursed as the rain beat down on the slick roof of the small chapel at Little Hangleton. It's too late to stop the bloody ritual, but maybe I can thin the ranks just a bit more. For some reason it had been difficult to get a read on Voldemort's location, not to mention intentions, but tonight his location suddenly became clear. With that sudden clairvoyance, the hunter shadow-walked to the cemetery. And surprise, surprise! There was that rat bastard Pettigrew as well.

Arriving just in time to see Pettigrew toss the bloody knife into the cauldron, the ritual was immediately made clear, as was the method of Voldemort's survival. A horcrux, it had to be. Nothing else made sense. And that also meant that there was a certain spell, known only to those who had studied that sanity-destroying dark tome called the Necronomicon, that could be used to force the soul fragment to be ejected from its container and dissipate into the aether. The quickest way to accomplish this was to cast that spell at the horcrux itself, but if the container was not available the only other way was to cast it at the fool who was mad enough to make the abomination to begin with. That would create a kind of feedback into the container that would have the same results as casting the spell directly on it. The only problem with this version of the procedure was that it took longer to accomplish. Normally that wouldn't give the hunter pause, but there were eight Death Eaters present. Inner circle, too, which meant that they would be a lot more ruthless and dangerous to fight than the normal regulars. But the chance to eliminate Voldemort's grasp on immortality was too great to pass up. It was just a matter of timing.

There was not enough time to set up anti-apparation wards, unfortunately, so some of the Death Eaters would inevitably get away. As they were somewhat clustered together, though, a wide area-effect spell would disrupt Voldemort's pontificating for sure. There was a particularly nasty spell that would create a powerful blast of pure necromantic energy, killing every living thing in its radius before collapsing in on itself and pulling each released soul back in to the centre point where it would annihilate itself and all the souls it carried with it. The hunter didn't want to use that one, though, until Voldemort was mortal once more. While the fragmented soul inhabiting the vile construct down below would certainly be destroyed, the horcrux could certainly take possession of the hapless person that found it and create another version of the madman.

As Voldemort seemed to be winding down, the hunter muttered an arcane phrase accompanied by a deliberate gesture. Without warning, a tremendous bolt of lightning hammered the dark lord from the storm clouds above. Ten smaller bolts arced out from Voldemort's electrified body, catching all of his accompanying Death Eaters, including Pettigrew, and the snake for good measure, and blasting them all back at least twenty feet – those that didn't impact an obstruction of some kind, anyway. That should incapacitate them all for long enough to cast the spell that would overload the horcrux.

The ten figures collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. The snake twitched as spasms shot through its body. Moving quickly, the hunter shadow-walked from the roof of the chapel, stepping out of the shadows next to the fallen dark lord.

Recognizing the cloaked and hooded figure as the mysterious assassin, a semi-conscious Voldemort struggled to gain his feet, but his twitching limbs would not cooperate. He could still feel electrical pulses shooting up and down his nervous system, and pain like he had been beaten across his entire body with a beater's bat. He lay there, helpless in impotent rage as the assassin cast some kind of spell he'd never heard of before, and then his world dissolved into sheer agony that he could feel in what was left of his very soul.

*DIM*

Raw, focused magical energy spread out across Britain on six distinct invisible paths, originating in the Little Hangleton graveyard from the writhing body of the dark lord Voldemort. One terminated almost immediately in the snake that had accompanied Pettigrew and the dark lord this night. Already near death from the lightning strike, the snake began flopping and flailing in pain that matched that which its master now suffered. Another ended less than a mile away in a decrepit shack with the desiccated corpse of a snake nailed to the front door. Underneath a rotten floorboard, a gold ring with an onyx stone bearing a curious sigil, an equilateral triangle containing a circle, with a straight line bisecting the triangle and circle, began glowing a pale, sickly green. One ray went north, where it ended at the great castle of Hogwarts, in a room that was only sometimes in this plane of existence. Filled with the accumulated detritus of untold centuries, a dusty silver tiara resting on the crown of a long-forgotten bust began glowing the same unhealthy green as the ring hundreds of miles away.

The other three magical beams went southwards, one to a long-unopened vault in Gringotts, one to a hidden townhouse a mile or two away from Gringotts in central London, and one to a well-to-do house in Crawley. A gold two handled cup and a gold locket with a stylized emerald "S" on the front joined the ring and tiara with the same glow, and Harry Potter bolted up in his bed, screaming in pain, with his hand clapped to the hated lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.

*DIM*

The hunter frowned. The spell should have run its course by now, yet arcane energy still flowed into the dark lord, requiring focus that really couldn't be spared from the fallen Death Eaters. Judging from the moans, some of them were starting to regain their consciousness. Why was this taking so long? It was almost like... No. Even Voldemort couldn't be that stupid, could he? Did he really make multiple horcruxes?

*DIM*

Hermione awoke in a panic. It took her a moment to realize that the god-awful screams were coming from her boyfriend's room. She leapt from her bed, followed a moment later by Luna, who was staying in her room, and dashed across the hall to where Harry was sleeping. She was only distantly aware of the hall lights coming on and her parents rushing from their room, hurriedly tying dressing gowns shut. All her focus was on her Harry.

She found him collapsed on his bed, tossing back and forth and nearly frothing at the mouth. "Harry!" she screamed. She jumped in his bed and wrapped her arms around his convulsing body. "I've got you, Harry," she cried. "I'm not letting you go!"

Luna joined them on his other side, embracing them both. "Fight it, Harry," she whispered. "Don't let him win! He's nothing but hate and darkness. Come back to us, come back to the ones who love you!"

Daniel and Emma stood horrified in the doorway of the guest bedroom, unsure what they should do. Their daughter's boyfriend was screaming like the damned – never had they heard such anguish in a voice. They could tell that this was not normal, this was not even of their world. This was something of the world their daughter was now a part of, something that they, with all their education and expertise, were incapable of handling.

His trembling hands fell to the side as his eyes rolled back in his head. His breath was coming in short, rapid bursts but the tremors were subsiding. Even as his two best friends watched, a dull green light appeared from within his famous scar. The flesh around the scar bulged as blood mixed with pus and an unknown black ooze began to trickle out from the angry wound.

"Luna…" Hermione began in a worried voice.

"Back up, Hermione," the blonde Ravenclaw said as she took her own advice.

The bulging scar erupted in a gory spray of blood and foul-smelling black gunk. Luna's warning was just in time, allowing the girls to escape being splattered. A green, glowing cloud burst from the wound in Harry's head with the sound of a shrieking wind and coalesced into a hairless, reptilian-faced man with burning red, hate-filled eyes. Before it could say or do anything, the hellish apparition began to disintegrate. Screaming in fear, pain, and rage, the thing that had been in Harry's scar was torn apart and vanished before their eyes.

*DIM*

"Albus, the Dark Lord is calling. I must leave as quickly as I can."

The aged and battered headmaster looked at Severus Snape in shocked surprise. "So soon?" he asked. "I was sure he planned for his return to be at the summer solstice."

Snape shook his head. "Apparently he moved his timetable forward. His call is… unmistakable."

Dumbledore gave a weary sigh. Everything since Hallowe'en had gone dreadfully wrong. He'd just been released from the infirmary after recovering from his heart attack this very morning, and had a mountain of work relating to the tournament to catch up on, not the least of which was the impending Yule Ball. Though after the debacle of the first task and the deaths or severe injuries of most of the judges' panel, the excitement that would normally accompany the ball was muted. All his carefully-laid plans were now in shambles, and it was all that thrice-damned Potter's fault. "Do whatever you must to regain your place in his inner circle, Severus," he said. "Your role is more critical now than ever before. We need to know his thoughts, his plans, or our entire world and way of life is doomed."

The potions professor inclined his head and left the headmaster's office. He had to hurry to leave the castle wards before he could apparate. Voldemort was not known for his leniency when it came to his Death Eaters being tardy to a summons.

*DIM*

Across Britain, the cursed artefacts that held the fragments of Voldemort's twisted soul spewed forth the abominations housed within. Without exception, each soul shard withered and died, fading away into the aether as it was taken to its final judgment.

The snake at Little Hangleton's cemetery burst apart in a bloody shower of mangled flesh and bone as the final horcrux was destroyed. Voldemort screamed in agony as he suffered the further devastation of his ravaged soul. He had just enough awareness left to know full well what had happened as he watched an incorporeal version of himself dissolve and waft away rather than integrate back with himself. A moment later, he succumbed to blissful unconsciousness.

The pop of an apparation signalled the arrival of Severus Snape. The potions master took in the scene at a glance and immediately cast a silent blasting curse at the cloaked figure standing over his other dark lord. Before it struck, the assassin melted into the shadows and disappeared while the curse struck the wall of the chapel, blowing pieces of masonry everywhere. He hurriedly scooped up the trembling Voldemort and turned to the other Death Eaters, who were beginning to struggle to their feet. "Go to Spinner's End," he ordered them before apparating away.

One by one, they complied as they were able, until only Pettigrew was left. Before he could disappear, though, two lengths of chain shot out of the shadows and wrapped around him, immobilizing him. "You're not going anywhere, Wormtail," a voice hissed from the darkness.

Panicked, the treacherous rat tried to shift into his animagus form but was unsuccessful. "What do you want?" he screamed in terror.

"It's the end of the line for you, my friend." The hunter stepped out of the shadows, allowing the moonlight to fall on a very familiar face.

"It can't be!" Pettigrew shrieked. "You're dead!"

Two more chains shot out of the shadows and wrapped around his legs, while the first two unwound from his body and moved to immobilize his arms. Each chain pulled in a different direction, forcing Peter Pettigrew into a spread-eagled position upright between two trees. The craven Death Eater again attempted to shift into his animagus form, but the hunter was ready for such an attempt. An incantation later saw Pettigrew trussed back up in chains and unable to transform. "Congratulations, Peter," the hunter said. "You are going to be the first person to be quartered in Britain since David Tyrie in 1782. The only difference is, he was already beheaded when they tore him to pieces. You are going to be very much alive." The chains wrapped around Pettigrew's limbs tightened and began to retract around the two trees, inch by agonizing inch. Wormtail wept and pleaded, screamed and begged, but the hunter simply watched in cold, stony silence.

First were the snaps of bones popping out of their joints, followed soon thereafter by the tearing of tendon, sinew, and cartilage. Pettigrew's screams filled the night until they came to an abrupt halt as his body was ripped into four pieces. The hunter banished the chains, leaving the four dismembered chunks of flesh that used to be Peter Pettigrew, and walked across the bloody ground to the forgotten hospital bed. "I'm terribly sorry, Frank. Rest in peace, my friend."

*DIM*

An impatient Severus Snape, the unconscious dark lord Voldemort in his arms, waited for the last of the Death Eaters to make their appearance at his tiny childhood home at the end of a rundown block of terraced houses on a cobblestone street called Spinner's End. Located in a shabby section of the former industrial town of Cokeworth, the houses had been formerly owned or rented primarily by the labourers in the textile mill whose tall brick chimney still overshadowed the all-but-abandoned street. When the mill, originally built in the mid-1700s, finally went out of business in the early '80s, most of those same residents packed up and left for greener pastures. With the closing of the mill, the chief reason for the existence of Cokeworth in the first place, new tenants were practically impossible to find and so the homes had been largely abandoned for over a decade.

As Snape rather disliked the company of people in general, this suited him just fine.

"Where is Wormtail?" he sneered after a minute had passed with no further people apparating in.

Thorfinn Rowle, the most recent to arrive, shook his head. "Don't know. He looked as if he was about to apparate, but he obviously didn't show."

The sallow potions master sighed. "Well, it's his own bloody fault then if the dunderhead can't show up where he is supposed to in a timely manner. No matter." Removing a scrap of parchment from his pocket, he passed the note to Rowle. "Read this, memorize it, pass it to the next person. That is the secret to Malfoy Manor, where we will be going next."

Rowle's eyes widened as he suddenly remembered the location of the elegant manor. "Fidelius?" he asked.

"Yes. Narcissa was… concerned about her safety after the murder of her beloved husband." He took the parchment back after the last Death Eater had read it and replaced it into his pocket. "That is where we will stay while our lord recovers." Without another word, he turned and apparated away with their master. Lost in thought, Rowle and the others followed suit.

*DIM*

A wild-eyed Hermione held her unconscious boyfriend close to her chest. "What the fuck was that?" she said, her voice shaking.

It was testimony to how rattled her parents were that neither of them chastised her for her language.

"If I had to venture a guess," Luna said, "that was a soul fragment of Voldemort's."

Hermione gasped. "And that thing has been in Harry's head all this time?"

"It would appear so," the younger girl said. She waved her wand over the scar, which was now only bleeding red, and the wound closed itself up, ejecting any lingering foreign material as it did so. "He'll probably sleep all day tomorrow, but he'll be better than ever when he awakens," she said. "We'll need to change the sheets, though."

Emma shuddered. She was not ashamed to admit that she had screamed like a little girl when that… whatever it was… exploded out of Harry's forehead. She distinctly heard Daniel yell at the same time and suspected that they both would have nightmares about it for a little while at least. "We needn't worry about trying to clean them," she said. "I'm sure at this point I'd much rather burn them."

The two witches, as well as Daniel, nodded their agreement. No one wanted any concrete reminders of the horrific experience that they didn't have to keep. Hermione levitated her boyfriend out of the bed while Luna used her wand to strip the sheets off. No one wanted to even touch the contaminated sheets if they didn't have to. Rolling the linens into a bundle, she followed Daniel to the firepit on the back patio, everyone giving the floating bundle a wide berth.

While Daniel poured lighter fluid on the bundle and Luna stood by with a fire charm ready to release, Emma quickly made the bed with fresh sheets. As she was doing so, Hermione made her decision. "Mum," she said, "I'm taking Harry to my room for the rest of the night. I won't leave him alone like this tonight, and frankly for as long as he needs me."

"Honey, I'm not sure…"

"Luna will be with us. He needs us tonight, Mum. I promise, nothing inappropriate will happen. He's completely unconscious, for heaven's sake."

Emma sighed as she nodded her acceptance, knowing that her daughter would not back down from this. In all truthfulness, she herself desperately needed to feel her husband's arms around her, and she'd only watched from a distance. The whole family was shaken by what had happened to the poor boy, and she wouldn't insist on anyone sleeping alone, at least for tonight.