Severus Snape and Minerva McGonagall peered intently at the golden locket on the desk before them, scanning it, feeling its unmistakably dark aura. Snape would occasionally walk around the table, as though a different angle may give him a better understanding of the object in front of him. McGonagall had twice picked the locket up, examining every nuance of it. It was largely unremarkable to look at.

But it happened to contain a fragment of the tainted soul of one of the most evil men alive.

"You were right not to put this on, Potter," said Snape. "If you had, you would likely be dead already."

Hermione, sitting unfathomably close to Harry, squeaked in horror and gripped his arm tightly. Ron gave him a look which said, quite plainly. 'I told you so'

Harry shifted a little at Snape's words, so blunt and direct. So knowingly correct. And to think, he'd thought to try the locket on when Ron and Hermione weren't looking, just to see what would have happened. That was a close miss.

"Then it does have to be opened, to face what's inside?"

"That would be the logical conclusion," said Snape. "The Horcrux works in three parts, as does the process for creating one. There will be an obvious use, which is generally the first line of defence. Wearing the jewellery, writing in the diary, etcetera. Then there will be the piece of the Dark Lord you must face directly. Finally, there is the embodiment of the victim used to make the Horcrux. They tie into The Act, The Incantation, and The Consumption. The stages of Horcrux creation."

"The Consumption?" Harry asked dubiously, not sure if he really wanted to hear this explanation.

"Yes, Potter, the Consumption," said Snape, impatiently, as though this was something as common as a Boggart and their discussion just another classroom joust. "The Dark Lord needed to partake of the flesh of his victims to complete the Horcrux creation process. It is ancient, and powerful, magic."

Harry felt his jaw drop. A revulsion rose from deep inside of him, a sweeping nausea that lodged uncomfortably in his throat.

"Are you...are you saying...Voldemort had to eat the people he killed!" Harry could barely get the question out.

"To take in the life force of his victim, yes. To add life support to the fractured soul fragment held in the Horcrux receptacle. It is a practice long followed by magic folk the world over. The final stage that sealed the creation of his Horcrux."

"But that's disgusting!" shrieked Hermione. "It's vile, its...its..."

Ron suddenly got up and ran from the room, making audible noises of distress. Harry hoped there would be another sort of receptacle nearby for Ron to throw up into. He didn't feel that he, himself, would be far from joining him.

"So is that...is that why I'm not a Horcrux," Harry asked, choking back another wave of revulsion. "Because Voldemort didn't eat me? After he murdered my parents, I mean."

Snape looked at Harry as though he were a three year old. "Don't be ridiculous, Potter. How could you be a Horcrux? Didn't you just hear me say that to create a Horcrux is a complex, three stage process? Leaving the moral ambiguities aside, this is a considered, planned out operation. The Dark Lord merely meant to murder you on account of the prophecy, and of course your parents would try to defend you. They were expendable to him."

Snape's tone was bitter, angry. He didn't want to think of Lily Potter, dead and lifeless after Voldemort's attack. This Harry could see etched into the lines of his face. It was deep and fierce, a shadow of memory behind the eyes. Had he been there? Seen her body, murdered and still? The idea crept through Harry like one of Snape's potions. He felt deeply unsettled by it.

"In any case," Snape went on. "The Dark Lord would not have been able to perform the incantations and rituals once his own body had been destroyed by the rebounding curse. And to consume you - if he had made you into a Horcrux - would have defeated the object. It would have been akin to self-cannibalism."

That idea was too much for Harry. His mind span, dizzy and overloaded. A deep disgust flooded him. As much as he hated Voldemort, this new revelation was altogether more horrific. He looked at Hermione for support. He'd noticed how her grip on his arm had loosened, then he saw quite clearly why. She was slumped against the arm rest of the couch, eyes clenched shut. She had fainted.

"What made you think you were a Horcrux, mister Potter?" asked Professor McGonagall. She too, looked distinctly pale, and more aged because of it. The soft morning light flooding in from the high windows of her office didn't help, as it made her skin look very thin and papery.

"Because I can sense the other Horcruxes," said Harry. "I can hear them, feel them sort of. I thought it made sense that I might be one."

"It does make skewed sense, in your two-dimensional, linear, cause and effect world," said Snape coolly. "There is certainly something of the Dark Lord within you, a remnant of the power transferred after he failed to kill you as a child. What the nature of this is we may never know. You were, and remain, the only person to ever survive the Killing Curse, so such residual effects can only be guessed at. We have no other benchmark to test you against, as your case is unique.

"But you are not a Horcrux, nor would you be able to sense the others, as though they were individual entities. For they are not. They are fragments, pieces of a larger whole. And, for the most part, encased within inanimate objects which give off no sense of 'presence' of their own. It is possible the Dark Lord and his snake have felt when the other parts have been destroyed, as they are living beings. But, again, we can only speculate. It is not common for a wizard to split his soul, and those that have are unlikely to consent to rigorous academic testing and research to more deeply understand the process."

"No," Harry agreed. It was the darkest of Dark Arts for a reason. Those who practised such things were not about to start giving out interviews. "So, how can I sense them?"

"My guess would be something innate," said Snape. "Simply another type of power. Your mother's sacrifice gave you a protection against the Dark Lord. She died so he couldn't harm you. It is possible that the Charm she used gave you a type of awareness unique to the Dark Lord. An early warning system, if you like, to alert you to his presence. Something to activate the fight or flight whenever conflict with him was near. The Dark Lord is his Horcruxes. He is with us now, here in this room, on that table. We cannot be sure in what form, but there he is."

Harry knew that part as surely as anything. On a deep, subconscious level, the Horcrux elicited the same response that Harry had felt to Voldemort before. He might have been back in the graveyard, or just emerging from the Department of Mysteries. The comparisons did not fill Harry with joy, or optimism.

He gritted his teeth. "There's only one way to find out. If you'll consent to the risk."

Snape looked at Harry. His expression was unreadable. No wonder Voldemort could never break him. Harry had to concede that begrudging respect.

"I consented to this risk before you were born, Potter."

Harry returned Snape's gaze, unbowed. He hated giving respect to Snape, he ached because of it. But increasingly he had to allow it. This man, who'd he'd once decried a coward, was actually one of the bravest people he'd ever met, to defy the evil of Voldemort so willingly, so calm and flagrantly. And it cut to Harry to admit it, singed his mind to accept it. But there it was, undeniable.

"Then lets get it over with," said McGonagall. She stood from behind her desk and drew her wand. Snape followed suit. Harry looked at Hermione, still unconscious on the couch. He wouldn't wake her, she need not be panicked about this. Better to not know, but just in case..."

"If anything happens...if this goes badly..."

Harry wasn't sure to whom he was speaking, but he couldn't even finish the sentence. He was about to unleash a part of Voldemort on the room, death was a real possibility. This could be the last time he saw Hermione, that he could gaze upon her beautiful face. A lump the size of a bludger wedged itself into his throat. His heart hammered madly. He should wake her. She'd be so cross with him for not. But he would deal with that later...if there was a later.

"We will take care of her, if anything bad happens" said McGonagall firmly. "Let's just make sure it doesn't."

Harry took a steadying breath and stepped forward. His hand trembled slightly as he fiddled with the Horcrux, finding the clasp on the side. He gripped his own wand tightly in his other hand, trying to draw courage from Fawkes' tail feather sitting inside it. He took one last look at Snape and McGonagall - then flicked the clasp open.

Nothing.

No fizzing, no smoke, no curse spiking out at his face. It was almost a let down.

The three of them stepped closer to look at the now open Horcrux. It was still remarkably bland. Each half had two translucent windows, dark and grubby. There seemed to be nothing there. Harry might have thought he had picked up the fake locket by mistake, if it wasn't for the dark aria of Voldemort's soul playing in his ear now he was this close.

"What do you see, Potter? Can you see anything?"

"No," Harry replied. "There's nothing. Wait..."

Harry looked closer. His eyes were so near the Horcrux now he was almost head-butting it. He could see shifting shapes, mingling mists, semi-formed figures moving about behind the windows. It was like watching a sort of scene playing out through a grimy sheet of glass. Harry couldn't make out the details. He explained what he could see, knowing he wasn't making much sense.

"How can I know what's going on?" he asked eventually. "If I can't wear the locket, and its impervious to breaking, how can I know what that's all about?"

"Stop thinking like a Muggle!" Snape snapped. "You are a wizard, Potter! Think like one!"

Harry frowned hard. "I was able to go into Tom Riddle's diary to learn about him. I had to go inside Gryffindor's armour...do I have to get in there somehow...and bring Voldemort out with me?"

Snape looked at Harry as though he had finally learned that a spoonful of sugar made tea a bit sweeter.

"The locket has to be reduced to its base form, made just an object again," said Snape. "Then it can be destroyed and the Dark Lord's soul will have nowhere to go."

"And with no body to protect it, it can be killed easily," McGonagall offered. Snape nodded.

Harry glanced up at them. Instinctively, he knew what to do. With another steeling breath, with his heart and mind focused on Hermione's limp form behind him, he plunged his head forward and into the Horcrux.

He fell, lithely and slowly, as if sinking through a heavy mass of black water. The silence was so utterly complete Harry couldn't even hear his own heartbeat. He wondered if it had stopped altogether. But he wasn't particularly afraid. It was strange, yes, but so far nothing to cause overt alarm.

Then he was somewhere else.

It was like a cage. Bars stood before him. Wooden and oddly low. There was no roof to this cage. Harry looked up. There was a star and moon above him, a rainbow too. That was odd. They were shifting gently, as though in a light breeze from an open window. Their movements were random but rhythmical. Harry watched them and felt relaxed, sleepy.

Then there was a loud bang, and a scream so shrill and piercing, so horrified, so broken, that Harry yelped out in terror.

That voice, he knew it. It soothed and sung to him, cured him and loved him. Why was it screaming like that? Why was it so afraid? Why did it sear with a tone like its heart had been ripped out?

Harry felt immense terror creep over his skin, through his senses and shoot like icy pin pricks through his veins. His bowels emptied and he could almost taste the stench. He cried hard and pained, so afraid that his mind couldn't function properly. His body didn't seem to respond to him anymore. He tried to move, whether to help or flee he wasn't sure. But he knew how staying put would end. Somehow he just knew, as if he'd been here before.

Then, another scream. Closer now, maybe outside the room. He definitely knew the voice, though he couldn't remember ever speaking to its owner. He knew it to be soft, gentle. It hummed him lullabies and told him stories. It didn't scream out like that, it didn't feel terror. It was a protector, Harry was safe wherever that voice was. Except for tonight, and the incomprehensible fear that realisation sent coursing through Harry made him lose his mind momentarily.

"Harry! Don't hurt Harry!"

The desperation was unrivalled, the panic all-consuming. Then, another voice. Icy, high-pitched, snake-like.

"Stand aside, woman!"

"Take me! Don't hurt him! Show mercy!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

A flash of green, a low blast like a gunshot, a wave of evil energy irradiating the room. Harry felt it prickle over his skin like droplets of acid. He tried to reach up and rub them away, but his arms were little and useless. It jarred him to see them, and the realisation began to dawn.

But another sound drew him. The dull thud as the body of the woman crumpled to the floor. Dead as the grave and still as stone. It resonated in his bones, but then, something else. He couldn't have said what it was. It was another surge, another coat of energy enveloping him. But this was different, potent, more powerful than the last. And so good. He felt he could have walked through fire with it. It trickled through his flesh like a medicine, it empowered him. He struggled to his stubby little legs and stood, hands gripped to the rim of his cot.

He knew where he was, and what this was.

He looked up at Lord Voldemort, hooded, his slit-like eyes shining malevolently in the dim glow of the night light near the crib. It was midnight, the little music box sounded the hour from the dresser nearby. The tingling note struck out and surprised them both. Voldemort crushed it with a fist, then advanced on Harry, raising his wand as he did so.

Harry didn't have a wand. Or did he? He remembered having one, as much as he remembered not having one. It was confusing. Voldemort seemed to notice.

"Hello, Harry Potter," he said, his icy tone lashing Harry like a whip. His voice was as much a question as a greeting.

Harry couldn't speak. He hadn't learned how yet.

"I killed you," Voldemort went on. "I remember it. I performed the Killing Curse. Right now, in this moment."

"Bah gah oooh," Harrysaid. He laughed at the sound. He hadn't meant his baby noises to come out. How was he able to think insults but only babble at Voldemort. For some reason, he found it hysterical. He garbled again. "Gah eerr looba. Ha ha ha."

Voldemort flinched. The sound seemed to hurt him. He stepped back as Harry laughed again.

"Again, Harry, keep doing it! Its weakening him."

A new voice, one so utterly sweet it was like bathing in honey. Where was it coming from? He wanted to run to it, not that he could run, but he could embrace it, and kiss it. Who was she?"

Voldemort heard it too. "Who speaks? Show yourself!"

"Laugh, Harry," the girl urged. He loved that voice. He loved whoever it belonged to. He knew that as much as he knew he needed his nappy changed.

"Acco, mamia, boo," Harry babbled again. The girl laughed at the sound. It filled Harry's heart with intense joy to hear it. It was as if he had been told the most hilarious joke ever written. He passed wind as he shook with the giggles and that effect simply magnified the mirth. He howled with laughter, the girl laughed hard with him. Where was she? She had to be close.

Harry looked around. Voldemort had slumped back against the dresser. He was scratching at his skin, as though trying to claw out a poison running through it. Harry looked down. The body of his mother was in a crumpled heap against the cot. Harry felt a piercing sorrow take hold of him for a second, then the body began to move.

And it wasn't his mother at all.

A mane of bushy, tawny-brown hair rose in front of him. Knelt at the side of his cot and looked at him with such a deep, intense love that Harry felt encased in it. This was Hermione. He knew her. He loved her. She was going to save him.

"We need you to come back to us now," said Hermione. "Voldemort will try to curse you, but he cant hurt you. Your mother's love protects you, my love protects you. Because I love you, Harry. You are so loved. Nothing can hurt you. Take my wand. It belonged to my ancestor. It will match Voldemort's when he strikes you. Can you say Accio? Say Accio Voldemort for me."

"Acco...acca...accio,"

"Good Harry, that's good! Now Voldemort. Try it Vol-du-Mort."

"Waldy, voldie, worldy more..."

"Keep trying! You're almost there!"

Harry looked up. Voldemort had risen behind him. The laughter had stopped, Voldemort had regained his strength and was advancing. He had seen Hermione. His wand was pointed at her. He was going to kill her.

A protective force rose in Harry so powerful, so potent, that Hermione, even in whatever form she was appearing before him, moved back. She smiled beautifully at him and kissed him on the head, pressing the thin handle of the wand into his baby hands, angling it towards Voldemort. He raised his wand, his thin lips forming the words of the curse.

"Avada K-"

How dare you! Harry thought angrily. How dare you threaten her! How dare you try to take her from me, as you took my parents, and Sirius, and Dumbledore. There will be no more.

"Accio Voldemort!"

The body flew at him, his curse skewed away from Hermione and decimated the roof. Harry saw only briefly the damage for he was suddenly hurtling upwards, towards a glass window in the ceiling, gripping the screeching body of Lord Voldemort in an increasingly powerful grip.

Then he slammed into a cold, stone floor. Screams and cries echoed around him. He heard Hermione's voice first.

"Reducto!" a blast of reddish purple and the locket on the desk exploded into a thousand, harmless shards.

"Harry! Catch!"

It was Ron's voice next. Harry instinctively threw up his hands to catch, as Ron had ordered. But it wasn't a Snitch he was throwing. The Sword of Gryffindor flew threw the air. Harry leapt up and grabbed the jewel-hilted blade.

Then he saw what he needed it for.

A terrifying, agonised cry came from the floor. The creature huddled there turned Harry's blood cold. It was in a sort of bent, foetal position. Its skin charred and raw, its eyes half lizard. Its cries pained and bitter.

Harry didn't hesitate.

He brought the blade down firmly into the creatures chest. Black blood oozed from the deep incision and the tip of the sword clanged against the stone below. The creature gave out one last, angry wail. It fell still. Then its body started to come apart, layer by layer, curling to nothing like parchment burning in a hearth until it had disintegrated completely.

And another piece of Lord Voldemort was dead.