The ageing wizard was standing in the front of an empty classroom. No students sat in the rows of seats, but he addressed the vacant room as if it was packed with eager children hanging on his every word.
Harry stood to the side and watched as a much younger and healthier looking Albus Dumbledore conducted a lecture on the twelfth use of Dragon Blood.
With a sigh of resignation, Harry closed his eyes and exited the memory.
"It's no good,' he told the others sadly. "Just like all the rest; just Dumbledore teaching an empty class."
"Worthless!" he spat slumping down into a chair.
For the last hour the trio and Ginny had been sitting in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, going through memory after memory from the chest, trying to find something of value to help them in the fight against Voldemort.
Harry had been more than a little reluctant to allow Ginny along, but even more reluctant to face her wrath yet again. Her decision to only permit him to take the Pensieve if she was allowed to see what he was using it for had been the decider.
"I would hardly call them worthless, Harry!" protested Hermione. "They are incredibly valuable as a teaching resource. There has never been anything like this before; it's a masterpiece."
"Yeah," he said sarcastically. "Great if you want to pass O.W.L.s, not so hot if you have an insane Dark Lord hunting you down."
Harry scooped the memory out of the Pensieve and put it carefully back into its bottle - careful despite his statements declaring the memory's value.
"Come on, mate," said Ron, watching Harry store the bottle back into the chest. "There is bound to be a lot of things in there that will help. There are hundreds and hundreds of spells and you have barely started looking. You can't write it off completely yet."
Hermione agreed. "I am sure we can find some really good duelling spells in there somewhere, Harry. We just need more time-"
"It's no good, Hermione," interrupted Harry. "Even with this, there is no way I can learn enough before Voldemort takes over the whole world."
"Damn it!" he swore, slapping his hand down on the table. He had been so sure the chest was the answer to his magical ability problem.
"Harry," said Ginny hesitantly, speaking for the first time in several memories. She had appeared deep in thought, or possibly tired, but Harry had been too caught up in his own frantic searching to pay her any attention. "You might not find this that useful, but do you have any idea how much this would help the Heroes?"
"What?" he asked.
"The D.A. We don't just get together to 'rob the rich to make Riddle poor', we train, and learn new spells too, but we are pretty limited to spells the older members have picked up, and not everyone is as good an instructor as you. We could really use these to boost what we can learn, even if they are just recordings that can't give us individual help."
"Why not?" Harry asked bitterly shoving the chest towards her. "It's not like it is going to do me any good."
"Harry!" admonished Hermione.
"Come on, Hermione, you know I am right. It's just a bloody training tool, like you guessed it was all along. I could have asked McGonagall to let me use her Pensieve and have been done with this weeks ago, instead of beating myself up trying to find out what the big secret was. A complete waste of time, that's what it was."
Harry stormed from the kitchen and headed to the shooting range to pummel some targets into sand. He was angry, and frustrated. Weeks of thinking he was sitting on the answer only to find he had once again fooled himself, struck his confidence a deep blow.
"Not again," he said, silently casting a spell and demolishing a block almost as big as a troll with a single angry blast from his wand.
"No more looking for an easy way out," he growled, setting fire to the next target, despite its usually inflammable nature.
"No more holding back," he yelled, cutting a target with vicious, whip-like strikes of his wand. It fell in six different directions.
He was sweating and panting from exertion, but his anger only grew. Pure rage boiled in his blood as the next target appeared and slowly started moving around the range. He imagined it was Voldemort, and his anger rose to dangerous new heights.
"No more," he whispered, rasing his shaking wand - his grip threatening to snap it.
Pain, anger, and frustration all came together as his mind overlaid the featureless grey stone with the snake-like visage of his enemy. His emotions ran together like the feeder streams of a river, and the resulting flood was called hate. His wand suddenly steadied and his anger blurred vision cleared.
"AVADA KE-"
"NO!" screamed Ginny, crashing into his back, knocking them both to the floor.
He lay there panting; the pain of his fall forgotten as Ginny recovered first and straddled him. She knocked away his feeble effort to free himself and grabbed his face between her hands when he tried to look away.
"You can't let that happen, Harry," she said. "You can't try to beat him by becoming him."
He opened his mouth to protest, but Ginny cut him off.
"LISTEN TO ME!" she yelled. "That's not you. That abomination of a spell is EVIL."
"It's all I have," he whispered, his rage somehow having fled in the face of Ginny's torment.
"No it's not, Harry," she said, lowering her voice. "There is so much you have, if only you would look. You are kind, and loyal, and brave, and despite everything you have been through, you can still love, Harry. You can still love."
Her fierce grip softened as she cradled his cheek in a hand.
"If you give in to hate, you will loose a part of yourself. Hate is what makes Riddle do what he does. Dumbledore himself told you your greatest strength was love-"
"Fat load of good that did him," he snapped, allowing some bitterness into his voice. "He's dead because of that wishy, washy, love claptrap!"
"But you can't believe for a second he would have wanted you to use that spell, Harry. Do you? Do you honestly think he could have wanted that?" she asked, her eyes boring relentlessly into Harry's.
"I don't know what he wanted me to do, that's the damn problem," he answered. "If he had left me something besides a useless box of old memories I might have had a chance, but unless I can use that spell, there is no way I can kill Voldemort."
"But why do you have to kill him, Harry? Why does it have to be you and you alone?"
"Because he killed my parents. He killed them, and Sirius, and Dumbledore, and he is coming to kill me because of some stupid prophecy that he believes."
Harry saw the tears in Ginny's eyes as she heard the truth in his words. There was no avoiding it; he would face Voldemort again, and eventually, if Harry didn't kill him, he would kill Harry.
"Oh, Harry," she said, stroking his cheek softly. "There has to be another way; something else besides that spell."
"I just don't know, Ginny," Harry said, the last vestige of his rage slowly slipping away. "I keep wishing there was, hoping for another answer, but I don't have a hope with anything else."
He looked into her eyes, and it was as if he was seeing directly into her soul. He could see the fear, and the hope, and other things he had never seen in anybody's eyes before. He felt his thoughts drift as he locked his sight into those incredibly deep pools of her emotion.
On instinct, he reached his hands up to her shoulders and drew her down until their faces were a mere inch away before hesitating. She didn't protest, as he had briefly feared, but moved willingly into the embrace, her lips touching his with tenderness and passion born from a love and despair so great, so consuming, it could never rightly be put into words.
The desperate yet gentle kiss felt like it went on for a long time; a very long and pleasant time indeed, but in the back of his mind, Harry knew he had to find a way to beat Voldemort.
-
The memories caused a lot of excitement back at the D.A. base, as Harry referred to it, refusing to call the group Harry's Heroes despite Luna's constant corrections.
The new D.A. 'founders', consisting of Ginny, Cho, Fred, George, Neville, and Luna, all thought the chest was an incredible asset to have access to and immediately started making plans to use the three Pensieves they had found in their treasure room to start training groups of people in the more difficult magic, and themselves in the much more powerful spells that were not taught in any class at Hogwarts.
Harry was still very cautious about allowing anybody to know what was in the chest, despite it seeming to be nothing more than an elaborate training tool.
Hermione obviously agreed with the others, but seemed to be placing a lot of weight behind what Harry was saying. He wondered if she was trying to make up for not believing him about Malfoy and Snape.
Ron backed Harry unquestionably.
"Dumbledore left it to Harry, not McGonagall," he said, making a very persuasive argument. "If he had wanted it to be used in a school, he would have left it to the school, but he left it to Harry, and put some effort into making sure nobody but Harry could find out what it was."
After a few hours they reached an agreement. Harry would leave the chest with them to use, but only the trio and the six D.A. members would be allowed to know about it or use it. They could learn the spells and pass the knowledge onto the others without telling them where they were getting instructions from, although they could truthfully claim Dumbledore had taught them.
In exchange, the D.A. were going to use their extensive resources to try to find all of the places Voldemort had been known to have visited or spent time at, as well as giving the trio any other help they could, including access to confiscated artefacts like the Pensieve.
"Wicked," Ron said, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of getting to explore the treasure room more.
Even Hermione looked excited to Harry, probably because of the extensive and somewhat illegal library that had been accumulated from the Death Eater houses.
Harry still wanted to remain based at Grimmauld Place, mainly to reduce the chances of anybody searching for him discovering the D.A. headquarters, but also because he needed the privacy to research and discuss the Horcruxes with Ron and Hermione.
This disappointed Ginny, who was hoping to be able to spend a lot more time with him, especially with access to the slightly unreliable Time-Turner.
"You really shouldn't be using it that much," Hermione told them. "Professor McGonagall warned me about using it too often in third year and said it can have horrible long term side effects if over used."
"We haven't had any problems," declared Cho. "Except for not aging or having to eat until we have 'caught up', there have been no side effects at all."
Just then, Luna walked past them with what appeared to be a small live Ostrich on her head.
"Ah, Luna?" called Hermione. "Do you know you appear to have a small live Ostrich on your head?"
"Don't be silly, Hermione," said Luna, her large eyes seeming to be having a problem staying in one place. "It's an Emu."
Harry managed to stifle a laugh as the blonde girl walked away humming to herself while the Emu clucked impatiently. Hermione looked pointedly at Cho and the older witch suddenly looked quite uncomfortable.
"We'll just cut back a bit then, I suppose," Cho said, Ginny nodding vigorously in wide eyed agreement.
From then on, the trio spent at lot of time at the secret underground base. Not only were there many more interesting things to do and better facilities, but they enjoyed the company of the others. Harry was careful to keep disguised or hidden away from anybody except the core members though, because he still worried about endangering his friends by his presence and didn't want there to be any slip ups.
During one of their regular visits to Grimmauld Place, Lupin and Tonks asked Harry about joining the Order of the Phoenix, but Harry declined, saying he still wanted to lie low and go travelling, even though he hadn't made any concrete plans. He wasn't sure if they believed him, but they accepted he was following his own course and was staying safe, for now. In truth, he considered the D.A. more effective and preferred to be helping them.
Percy was not fully recovered but was still insisting he be allowed to occasionally play Harry at the Ministry, despite the near fatal attack. The determined man wouldn't give out any details about it, but indicated that Scrimgeour had made huge strides in cleaning up the senior levels of the government, although nobody except Percy was particularly confident about that.
Ron and Harry had even joined the D.A. on one of their raids, stripping a dark and dingy Knockturn Alley shop that had been found to have close ties to a known Death Eater. The need for action, that Harry found burning inside of him more and more lately, had been particularly satisfied with that adventure, despite the lack of surprises in the clockwork-like operation. Wearing balaclavas and using codenames meant he had only known Fred and Ron out of the six other raiders, and the others hadn't known it was him joining them. He was fairly certain he recognised Susan's Bone's voice, but the over aggressive actions and attitude of the person he thought was her did not match his recollections of the Hufflepuff girl he knew from school. There was little doubt the camera wielding raider was none other than Colin Creevey though.
Harry watched some of the training sessions too, from under the invisibility cloak. The change he saw in Neville Longbottom was astounding. Once in front of a room full of people, many who Harry recognised from the original D.A., the shy young man became a different person. He was confident and commanding as he walked the class through various exercises and drills, explaining and tutoring the whole time with an air of competence that was completely at odds with Harry's memories of his friend.
"Where did you learn how to do that?" Harry asked him afterwards. "You were great."
Neville looked at him as if he wasn't sure if Harry was making fun of him or not before answering. "You taught me, Harry, you and Hermione, in the Room of Requirement - and Ginny here of course."
Harry also managed to spend a lot of time with Ginny, their burgeoning relationship becoming deeper every day, despite his desire to keep his distance. The persistent redhead simply refused to let Harry pull away from her, and even though they had many often energetic arguments on the matter, she was getting her way.
That was until they had a breakthrough in the search for Voldemort's base.
While the trio had been secretly trying to find a way to destroy the locket, the D.A. had been spending a considerable amount of effort looking into the history of one Tom M. Riddle.
The breakthrough came when one of the D.A. on assignment in Albania following up the leads there, discovered Riddle's name in an old visitor's book of a wizarding hotel.
According to the register that had been dug up out of archives, he had stayed there on two occasions, several months apart. This information alone wasn't that significant, but a few years prior to his visit there had been an uproar over a powerful vampire who had long ago taken over a section of the country and resisted every attempt to dislodge him with unspeakable acts of violence. Details were sketchy, but it seemed that nothing was actually done after the initial attempts, except for a few news articles and a bit of public outrage.
"Probably got covered up," suggested Ron, and Harry agreed.
It was just too strange to have the wizarding population screaming for blood one moment, and then totally ignoring the situation the next, unless Harry was involved of course.
"One thing is for sure," said Hermione. "There has been no news about this vampire after that. Cho says they can't even get into the area through normal wizarding channels, and the local wizards won't talk to anybody outside of their own families."
The trio were once again seated in the kitchen of Grimmauld place, going over the information the D.A. had supplied. A surprising amount of data regarding the young Riddle had been found in the most obscure of places, but his apparent long stay in Albania, along with the fact he was known to have retreated there after his first fall, was the best lead they had yet, by far.
"We need to get in contact with some vampires," Harry said.
"Not blooming likely," said Ron. "They're just a bunch of mindless beasts out looking for a feed, like Dementors, only not quite as scary during the day."
"Not all of them," said Hermione. "The older they get the more intelligent they become."
"Even worse," said Ron. "That means they have been successfully sucking the life out of people for long enough to know exactly what they are doing!"
Harry thought back to his only encounter with a vampire. It had been at the Christmas party Slughorn had arranged at Hogwarts. A guest had brought a vampire, although it had seemed to be a rather tame one. That had been the night he had finally gotten proof that Malfoy was up to something, and that Snape was trying to help him.
Inspiration struck at the memory of the party.
"Hey," he said. "I have an idea on where we get some up-to-date information about vampires without going to see one."
"Let's go see an author about my autobiography!"
The visit to Eldred Worple, author of ' Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires', and friend of Hogwarts potions professor, Horace Slughorn, was quickly and easily arranged via owl. Harry didn't even have to give an excuse for requesting the meeting, but simply asked if they could meet at his offices and let the man make his own conclusions.
The interview itself went very well. A blonde haired Hermione charmed Worple with her thorough knowledge of his book and fake fan-like adoration, although her out of character acting annoyed Harry, especially the almost random giggling. For a moment he felt like he had a tipsy Lavender Brown with him.
Harry made no promises, but did give the indication he was seriously thinking of having his autobiography written, once he had done more travelling. The subject of Albania and its vampires came up quite naturally, but Worple warned them to keep as far away as possible.
"There are clans there," he said, "that even other vampires will not go near. Ancient clans that still see men as nothing better than a delicacy, and it gets worse."
"Some of those clans employ men, Muggles and wizards alike, to hunt for them, like trained dogs. These people will lure strangers into the vampire's dens, or just outright kidnap them to take to their masters. They call themselves Hunters."
"Isn't that what we call vampire killers, Profession Vampire Hunters?" asked Hermione.
"Yes, yes. That's the irony of the name. The vampires have turned our own kind against us and given them the name we used for those who killed Vampires!" explained the author excitedly.
"Have you ever heard that You-Know-Who was once living in Albania?" Harry asked, earning a surprised grunt from Worple.
"Yes, indeed I have. Even more reason to keep away from there."
"Did you ever hear of any vampire clan You-Know-Who may have stayed with, about forty years ago," said Harry trying to draw more relevant information.
Worple's eyes widened in fear as the realisation of what Harry was asking him sunk in. He quickly stood up and ran to the door and for a second Harry thought he was going to leave, but he just opened it and looked out, presumedly to make sure nobody was in the next room. Locking that door, he then ran to the windows and closed all the shutters, before sitting back down in his chair nervously.
"I have done a lot of study on you, young Harry, for background material you understand, and I know that you are indeed the 'Chosen one'," he said, pausing to see if either Harry or Hermione reacted to his statement. When neither flinched, he continued undeterred. "I understand you might be looking to find out how your enemy has supposedly made himself immortal, so I will tell you this, but never let anybody know where you got this information."
"There is a clan, deep in the Albanian wilderness that is ruled by a monstrous and ancient lord, that you may want to find out more about. He calls himself Lord Rhokoth, though I am sure that he has much older, long forgotten names."
"Are you certain that you know that You-Know-Who had dealings with this Vampire?" asked Hermione.
Worple shook his head.
"Not for certain, I was only able to find the smallest bit of information about Rhokoth from some other vampires who warned me away from him. The thing is-"
Worple suddenly looked around nervously again before continuing in whisper.
"The thing is, you see, he has strict control over all of his clan, and some say his human servants too. They are all bound to him and even share some of their power with him, through a magical bond."
"What kind of bond? How does he do it?" asked Harry.
"I don't know the details, but it is said that you can always identify a follower of Rhokoth by the tattoo of a winged serpent they all carry. He marks his followers…"
"Just like Voldemort," said Harry, completing the thought.
Worple insisted they change the subject after that, and Harry and Hermione soon took their leave, promising to return when Harry wanted his life's story written.
"In about a hundred years or so," Harry said in whisper to Hermione as they left, making her giggle for real this time.
He knew what they had to do next, and although he felt fear and anxiety already starting to mount, there was also a sense of anticipation; an expectation of the excitement involved in doing something new.
Harry was finally going on holiday - to Albania