Chapter 10 - Horcrux

Having cornered Harry after he'd taken a wrong turn into a dead end, Hermione's tears of laughter had rapidly changed into tears of sadness. She had thrown herself into his arms and wept until she could weep no more.

Harry was shocked by this new side to her character. He wasn't accustomed to her mood swings and had always considered her to be one of the more stable people in his life. Now, here she was, crying her heart out and he was torn between feeling sorry for her and feeling more than a little uncomfortable at the emotions she was displaying.

Standing there rubbing her back and murmuring soothing sounds into her ear, he mused that it hadn't been until recently that he had become fully aware of the debt that he owed to both her and Ron. They kept him sane; it was a simple as that. Now he realised that he didn't know what Ron's absence meant to her as he'd never felt that way about someone. He kissed her on the cheek.

"Come on, you ought to go and wash your face. The last thing we need is for them to think we're scared. They'll change their minds and not let us do anything useful. Imagine Ron's face when he comes back and finds out we've been doing nothing but eating crumpets in front of the fire in the common room. He'd never let us live it down."

"I'm not scared for myself," she had replied into his neck, "I'm scared for him, Harry!"

"I know that Hermione, but we're both Gryffindors, remember? We know no fear?"

At this feeble joke she had laughed and sobbed at the same time, inadvertently spitting on his neck.

"Ugh!" he groaned, "I stand corrected. I fear Hermione Granger drooling all over me!"

"Harry!" she cried, pulling back from him and stamping her foot in frustration.

"I'm sorry; I just want to take your mind off Ron, okay? He's surrounded by Weasleys, after all. What could possibly happen to him?"

"I know, Harry. I'm sorry... I just want to see him again."

"Me too, Hermione, me too," he said seriously. "After all, he does owe me a Galleon!"

"Harry!" she squealed, pushing him away and putting her hand over her mouth.

"You laughed that time," he cried with a grin as he pointed to her hand. "You're smiling!"

"No I am not!" she giggled.

"Harry Potter, comic genius!" he said, wiping the tears from her cheeks with his scarf.

They continued smiling and laughing for a minute, but then the gravity of the situation reasserted itself and they calmed down. They looked deeply into each other's eyes and embraced again, this time even more intensely.

"We'll get through this, okay?" whispered Harry. "There is nobody more important to me in this world than you and Ron and I will not let anything happen to you! You are the sister I never had and Ron the brother. Whatever happens to us, whether we're together or not, we'll never be alone and I don't know about you, but that means ever so much to me."

"Together," she whispered ferociously as she squeezed him even harder.

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When they finally arrived to the squat tower located near the boathouse, they had washed their hands and faces and straightened their clothes. Although there was a stiff wind blowing in from the Great Lake, it was a warmer day than they had seen in quite some time and as long as they kept their robes tightly wrapped about them, it was almost bearable. Squinting against the low winter sun, they breathed in the crisp, clean air of the purple-capped mountains. So impressive were the views that not a day went past without a considerable number of students and staff taking the time to scale the heights of one or other of the Hogwarts' buildings in order to gaze out across the majestic scenery.

There was a scale to the landscape unseen outside of Scotland, a certain wildness to the terrain that was not to be found either in England or Wales. It was interesting to note that the majority of those who habitually looked out over the mountains and Great Lake were Muggle-born. Those from wizard families found it hard to comprehend the mediocre nature of Muggle towns and cities and the mind-numbing boredom they could inflict on their inhabitants. Consequently, they found less of an escape in the spectacular vistas.

"Their loss," had been Dean Thomas' concise summary of the situation.

The tower of the 'Fifth Common Room' was strange even by the standards of Hogwarts. As Hermione and Harry paused before entering it, they too noticed its curious architectural style. It was as if the tower had been added as an afterthought by whoever had designed and built the castle so many centuries ago. To put it simply, it didn't fit. It was too short, too fat and it was a different colour from the other interconnected buildings of the school. It also stood completely alone, independent of the network of covered walkways which were so vital in the colder months.

A whole host of unique plants grew around its base. Not only were they not to be found elsewhere around the castle grounds, but they were also unheard of outside of Continental Europe. Had Neville found out, he might well have led his fellow Herbologists on a raid against the tower and its environs, desperate to lay his hands on such exotic specimens.

Given the scale of the castle and its grounds, those buildings which were not in daily use for school activities were paid scant attention. All of the students would, of course, have laid eyes on the tower before, but like Hermione and Harry its uniqueness had simply never occurred to them. Standing before the tower which was framed by the mountains and Great Lake, the young witch and wizard felt distinctly uneasy.

Hand in hand, they approached the enormous door.

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If Professor McGonagall - who was rumoured to have long ago transfigured her eyes into those of a hawk - noticed anything out of place when Harry and Hermione finally arrived to the Fifth Common Room, she chose not to mention it. She simply looked at them for a long moment with her lips in a tight line and motioned for them to sit at the side of her desk.

She had always been one of the more difficult teachers for the students to read, choosing not to let her own emotions show. This did not mean, however, that she was blind to the various and rapidly-changing emotional states of her charges. In fact, this level of unawareness was practically impossible. Even Severus Snape would have been hard pressed to claim that he was unaware of what passed for the sickening emotions of his students. Anybody cooped up with hundreds of adolescents for the better part of a year would be unable to escape the constant to and fro of their surging hormones and fragile egos. One might as well claim to be unfamiliar with the contents of one's sock drawer.

Now she was faced with the scared yet determined faces of two of her Gryffindors and found herself to be in a quandary. Should she say something and put a stop to all this, or allow them to participate? She toyed with the quill in her hands as she mulled it over.

"Professor?" said Hermione in a low voice.

"Excuse me, professor?" she repeated, glancing nervously at Harry.

"Hmmm? Oh, please do excuse me Miss Granger, I was miles away. What can I do for you?" she asked with a kindly smile on her face.

"Well Professor McGonagall, Harry and I wanted to say something...to you," she finished nervously.

"Out with it then, it never pays to tarry," she said in a less friendly manner than before, suspecting she knew what was coming.

"It's just that Harry and I have been worrying about you."

"You both have been worrying about me?" she asked incredulously. She had been expecting some half-baked arguments about why she shouldn't even be considering their exclusion from missions that would scare the robes off seasoned Aurors. Now these mere striplings were worried about her? On the one hand she was quite flattered that they would think about her as so few students would have done had they been standing before her now, but on the other hand she was quite put out. Did they think her to be over the hill, past it, fit only for the knackers' yard?

"Yes Professor McGonagall. We know how you worry about all of the students; not only the ones in Gryffindor, but from the other houses as well. Harry and I feel that you should concentrate on them and not worry about us. We know what we're doing and are as prepared as anybody could be given the circumstances. In fact..."

She sat listening to the young girl's sophistry for a few seconds, too shocked to interrupt. She had been correct after all - they were attempting to sway her with idiotic arguments! Finding her voice, she said in a shrill voice, "You're prepared, are you? Well Miss Granger, let me tell you a thing or two. You are not prepared! Nobody is, or could possibly ever be, prepared for the tasks which lie ahead of you both. Why, I have half a mind to put a stop to all of this right now!"

"How?" sounded Harry's voice for the first time. "How would you do that, Professor?" His voice was mild and his face bore an expression of polite interest, but his meaning wasn't lost on the elderly witch.

"This task is to be shared by everyone, but only one that I know of can finish it," he continued quietly. "If there is anyone better qualified for the task in hand you should use them. But that doesn't mean you should avoid using us." His voice was so low as he continued that the two witches strained to hear his words.

"You now know about the full prophecy made by Professor Trelawney. In the end it comes down to Voldemort and me and nobody can change that. But what if by sitting here I don't do something that I ought to have done? That by being mollycoddled by..."

"I know the arguments, Potter!" she burst out. "Better minds than yours have been mulling this problem for quite some time now!" She instantly regretted shouting at him as it was not his fault. Indeed, he was doing nothing more than reiterating points she herself had made. He didn't seem to be upset by her anger, however, and continued in his calm voice.

"That's as may be, Professor McGonagall, but all of these minds never came to a conclusion, did they? Even Dumbledore didn't and he wasn't able to..." he left the words hanging. "I can't sit here doing nothing. I have to act," he finished in a determined voice.

"You don't know that!" she countered, nostrils flaring.

"And you can't say for sure that I ought not to, Professor," he said with a small shrug and a sad smile.

"Listen to you! I don't now why that traitor Snape complained about your impertinence down through the years, Potter, when you can be perfectly infuriating even when being polite!" she snapped. Adopting an even more rigid posture in her chair than before, she tried to skewer him with her best glare. It was no use, of course. Before her was the boy who had faced Voldemort, straight-backed and defiant, in a duel. He had nothing to fear from a silly old witch such as herself, she thought bitterly. What was worse for the Headmistress was that they were correct and they knew it.

Looking at Harry's calm composure and Hermione's barely suppressed anxiety, she finally gave in. Putting aside their relative youth, would she really rather have anyone else out there taking care of matters?

"Very well, go and speak to Moody; he'll brief you. It goes against every instinct I possess to let you go gallivanting about, so for my peace of mind please heed my words: be careful!"

With this she jerked her head towards a small door to her left. Watching the rapid exit of the two, she put her hands up to her cheeks and closed her eyes. "And you can come out now, Deputy Headmaster. Since when did you take up eavesdropping as hobby, might I ask?"

Professor Massingbird stepped out from behind a tapestry behind her chair which hid another small door. "Oh, at about five years of age, I'd say," he replied without a hint of embarrassment.

"Humph! Nasty Slytherin habit! Do you have anything to say about the way I handled that situation?"

"Other than I would have felt, thought and said exactly the same as you did? No, not really," he stated with a single shake of his head. "Haven't got a match by any chance, have you?" he asked, producing his small pipe.

"No, of course not; don't be ridiculous - nasty, smelly things that they are. Why you insist on using them I'll never know. What's wrong with using your wand?"

"Wouldn't taste the same, Minerva," he said with an expansive shrug.

"Wilful children!" she huffed, turning to look at the door through which they had left and wringing her hands with worry.

"Gryffindors are often noted for their bravery, Minerva, sometimes for their recklessness, but never for their humility," noted a chortling Massingbird.

"Nor, Hero, are certain Hufflepuffs," she observed archly.

"Touché, Minerva," he conceded, clutching his hands to an imaginary chest wound. "Join an old man for a spot of tea?"

"Hieronymus Massingbird, if you call yourself 'old' one more time in my presence you'll feel the back of my hand. You know very well that you are only five years older than me!" Despite this sharp rejoinder, she didn't seem to be overly displeased at the thought of taking refreshment with her friend. Reaching into her desk drawer, she began to set out a tea service.

The sound of his booming laughter echoed throughout the tower.

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Any friends, families or acquaintances of Fred and George Weasley soon developed a 'Twin Radar'. It was nothing more or less than a sixth-sense attuned to mischief. Both Hermione and Harry had it, of course, and when they encountered their partners for this mission they both felt it twanging away merrily.

Seated at the side of another desk, this time Moody's, they were watching the three Aurors they had met just the other day. Moody had impressed them by grudgingly admitting that,

"These three are to be trusted as much as anyone else, I suppose. I've personally seen them battle Death Eaters and risk their sorry arses for Muggles, half-bloods and purebloods alike. They personally irritate me to death, but at least with them at your back you won't need to worry about a wand between the shoulder blades!"

From Moody, this was high praise indeed. The two young Gryffindors suspected that Mad-Eye didn't disapprove of them as much as he claimed to. As they sat watching him stabbing his blunt finger into a map, trying to convince Jerry Puddicombe of some point or other, they could see that the old Auror trusted them.

First of all, he wasn't as overbearing as was usually his wont when dealing with other people. He would actually stop and listen when any of them expressed an opinion. Bob Choeke was short and skinny with mousy hair pulled back in a short pony tail. He had a weak chin and pasty complexion and was, in all honesty, completely unremarkable to look at. He had been sat at the side of the room, giving the impression that he was paying absolutely no attention whilst biting his nails and cracking his knuckles. Yet despite this, when he had uttered, 'Won't work - too complicated', in response to one of Moody's ideas, the old man had instantly dropped the matter without a word of argument.

Secondly, they had seen him delegate part of the planning to them. For someone like Moody, who ordinarily felt the need to keep a tight rein on all aspects of a mission, leaving someone else in charge of tactical planning spoke volumes for their abilities. Upon receiving yet another parchment to read and sign off against, Moody had barked at Jerry Puddicombe,'Don't bore me with the details, just do it as you see fit!' By way of reply, the young man snapped back,
'Don't get your knickers in a twist, Mad-Eye; I've done this more times than you've had hot baths!' Harry and Hermione expected to see blood on the floor and were astounded to see the old man simply nod, apparently already immersed in the contents of the parchment. Puddicombe was obviously no walkover.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the old Auror actually laughed and joked with them. Admittedly, you would need to know Moody to pick up on this, but it was true nevertheless. It was real 'gallows humour' and Hermione gasped when she heard them laughing about the death of an old acquaintance of theirs from the Ministry. Apparently, Basil Rowntree, an experienced Auror working under Scrimgeour, had been standing on top of a stack of fire whisky barrels when he'd been on the receiving end of a fire hex from a Death Eater. They'd found his body in the branches of a tree clad only in a charred loincloth. All of the Aurors were creasing up, but none more so than Iain Knatchbull, a tall bull of a man with dark, shaggy hair. His barking laugh had almost drowned out the other three men combined.

Hermione cast a disapproving look at Harry that spoke volumes.

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After what seemed like hours the Aurors seemed to run out of tasks, and thereby excuses, to ignore the youngsters. Beckoning them over to an enormous blackboard, Jerry spoke to them in a low voice.

"Moody'll be here in a minute, you two. Don't let him get on your nerves if he's in one of his little tempers; he doesn't mean anything by it and you don't want to give him an excuse to pull you from the mission. Okay?"

"Yes, Sir," replied Harry, with a terribly earnest expression on his young face.

Frowning, the older man reached over and gave Harry's hair a vigorous ruffling.

"Hey, stop it!" cried Harry, reaching up to grab the offending hand. It was no use as Jerry, though no taller than him, was built like a Muggle Rugby player. His wrists were as thick as Harry's forearms.

"La-la-la! Tum-te-tum!" hummed the Auror as he continued his pointless attempt to further mess up the mop of black hair.

"Stop it!" Harry repeated, trying not to laugh.

"Only if you call us all by our first names, pleb," he shot back with a big smile on his face.

"Okay, okay. Jerry it is," muttered a blushing Harry as he glared at a giggling Hermione.

"Call him 'Jeremiah', Harry; he hates that!" Bob Choeke called out.

Jerry began to theatrically roll up his sleeves as he walked towards the small Auror, but before he could exact his revenge they all heard the unmistakable clump, clump of Moody's wooden leg. Turning their heads towards the door, they all watched as the old man stumped into the room with a black look on his face.

"The Spanish thing went belly up, apparently," he remarked to no-one in particular.

"Do we know the score?" asked Knatchbull casually.

"Not yet," answered Moody with a single shake of his head, "we won't be able to bring them back until we catapult you lot off."

"Excuse me Professor Moody," interrupted Hermione, "but what exactly do you mean by 'catapulted'?"

She looked rather worried. Having witnessed the testosterone-fuelled humour between the four Aurors, she couldn't quite trust that they were speaking metaphorically. Mad-Eye paused in his restless pacing and squinted at the young girl with an unreadable expression on his face. He stared at her for so long that she thought he wasn't going to respond. His rapid-fire answer did come, however, although the intensity with which he spoke unsettled her.

"You are a singularly fortunate young witch, Miss Granger. You are about to become privy to a secret very few people have ever known or shall ever know about." He stumped over to a stout wooden chair and plopped himself down unceremoniously. Catching Bob's eye, he jerked his chin in the direction of the fireplace where there was a hot water bottle. Snatching it from the younger man's hands, he placed it on the junction where his flesh met wood.

"Merlin, but how this aches in the cold weather!" He then launched into a short, but for Hermione fascinating, history lesson.

"This tower, and everything contained herein, is a relic of the Roman Empire - the northern most transfer tower of a once-vast network. When the Romans were bringing light to the barbarous tribes scattered all over Europe, history teaches us that they faltered when at last they reached Scotland. Well, that's a load of rubbish.

"The Roman Empire can be divided into two stages; the pre-Christian days when wizard-kind pulled the strings and, of course, the disastrous days of the 'Holy Roman Empire' when, under the control of Muggles, it all went to pot. That's a story for a different day, however. Suffice it to say that this network of transit towers was created by the Wizard Emperor Gaius Octavianus, who was more widely-known as Augustus Caesar.

"Magic in those days was, as you all know, less developed than it is today. Nevertheless, these towers, though clumsy by today's standards, were both a marvel of planning and immensely powerful. What they do is, in a nutshell, transport large quantities of men and materiel over long distances. You all will be travelling over 3,000 miles instantaneously."

"But Professor Moody," Hermione gasped, "if this is true, why isn't this system in wide use today?"

"Too dangerous," he grunted. "When the Romans used it, they carved out an empire in a remarkably short period of time. Muggle historians are still having a hard time explaining that away to this day. All the governments of the major countries included in the territory of the Roman Empire know that they exist and how they work, but they're not terribly keen on operating a foolproof way for someone to invade them.

"You see, Miss Granger, for these towers to work, they must swap equal masses of living creatures. Back in those days, this simply meant piling a load of animals or slaves into the 'Portus Vinculos', or link gate, equal to the mass of the men plus their equipment you were wanting to transport. If one end of the gate is empty, the material arriving from the other end will strike the floor at such speed that it will end up as thin as a piece of toast - probably destroying the tower to boot.

"Therefore," he added with a sniff, "in order to keep yourself safe, all you need do is ensure that the gate in your tower is as empty as Veela's head. In order to bring back some personnel we have in Spain, we'll balance the equation with your bodies and a magically sedated cow."

"Ah, the glamour of working for the Order of the Phoenix!" Bob sighed sarcastically.

"Quite," replied Moody. "Now, if there aren't anymore questions, I've got work to do." With this he rose as if to leave.

"Er, Professor Moody," Harry said tentatively, "we haven't actually asked any questions yet, but I do have one."

"Well out with it, boy."

"Well, er, it's just that you haven't told us where we're going or what the mission is."

"We found this in Dumbledore's personal effects," he answered, holding up a plain, leather-bound tome. "It contains his notes on the possible locations of the remaining Horcruxes. So as not to alert the Dark Lord by having herds of eager young Aurors galloping up and down the countryside, we're limiting these missions to this group for now. Additional experts will be drafted in as and when they are required.

"So that's your answer, Mr Potter; you're to search for a Horcrux and it's in a mountain. Now go with these three reprobates and they'll issue you with standard field kit. Good luck!"

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Puddicombe paused at the door when everybody else had left and turned back to the old Auror. Running a thick finger along his lips, he paused and then suddenly asked,

"D'you think Potter can save us?"

"No," Mad-Eye replied instantly with a single shake of his shaggy head. "No, I don't"

With this, the younger man turned and left, closing the door as he went.

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